Okay, today we will be covering what is commonly called the announcing or the annunciation of the birth of John the Baptist to the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. This may sound like something of a dry subject. Initially, I thought that as well, but the more I dug into it, the more I realized how many lessons this has for everyone in our Christian life.

So, we'll talk about some of these lessons as we go through this material today. Also, one of the reasons for giving these Bible studies, we'll be covering a great deal about the backgrounds of what is taking place in the gospel because a lot of the story, I've mentioned this before, we're living in a day and age 2,000 years removed, not just time-wise, but also culture-wise, language-wise, and so on. And by understanding the background, and we'll go through a lot of this today, we can learn much deeper the lessons that there are in here for us today.

So, we'll be beginning today in Luke 1 and verse 5. This is on page 3 of your Harmony.

We'll be covering the bottom part of that page in today's study. So, I'll go through this rather quickly here. We do need to be out of the hall by 1.30 this afternoon, so I'll go through this fairly quickly here. So, we're just getting straight into it here.

Luke 1 and verse 5 tells us, “There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea.” So, this takes place during the reign of Herod the Great. We talked about Herod in one of the background studies back several months ago. This is the same Herod who was the great builder, the individual who built the temple. But he was also a ruler who was paranoid and quite brutal, and we'll see that probably in our next study or two. Herod died in about the year 4 B.C., so these events take place probably in 5 B.C., not long before Herod's death here. Now, mentioning Herod here, Luke introduces him without much background here, but there's a back story there that Luke's audience would have understood, and we need to understand this to get the context for what is taking place here. Everybody in that day knew what kind of ruler Herod was. He was renowned for his brutality. One of the Roman emperors, I mentioned this in the introduction, said that I'd rather be one of Herod's pigs than his sons because he had executed so many of his own household, his own sons, his own wives, relatives like there. Everybody in that day knew that Herod had built the Jerusalem temple, but they also knew that Herod controlled the priesthood, and as a result, the priesthood had become somewhat corrupted by that time because of the influence buying and so on there. We might also keep in mind that Jerusalem and Judea were under the control of Rome, of the Roman empire at this time, and many Jews were prayerfully waiting and hoping for God to intervene at this time and to send the promised Messiah who had been foretold so long before and to change this sad state of affairs for God's people, Israel, and to restore the kingdom to Israel and to also establish a right spiritual authority in the form of a righteous priesthood in the country. So it was during this time that there was, in the days of Herod, a certain priest named Zacharias. In Hebrew, his name would have been Zechariah, so I'll probably use that pronunciation throughout the study today. The Bible does not tell us anything about the parents of Zechariah, but it is interesting that they chose to give this name to their son who was a priest because Jewish parents in that time chose very carefully the names of their children. It's not like us today. We choose a name because it sounds good or because it's popular. They chose a name that in their mind would reflect, you might say, the destiny of the child, their aspirations for the child, who and what they wanted their child to emulate and be. And, of course, many of the names of that period have the name of God embedded in it, Zechariah as in Yahweh for God there, which means “Remembered by God”. That's what Zechariah means there. So, they gave their children names to convey more or less that child's destiny so that every time the child heard the name, the child would be reminded of the aspirations, of the goals, the ideals that the parents wanted for their child in giving that name. For instance, you know, we use our name. For instance, Tim or Connie or Scott or something like that. My name means tattooed wild man. We don't think of that in English, but that's what it means. Zechariah, though, when they were addressing Zechariah, they would say, hey, remembered by God. That's what it meant, “remembered by God”. Jesus, Yeshua, “God saves”. He would have been named and called “God saves”.          So, we need to realize that. Again, it's a very distinct cultural difference from our day.

So, why did they choose to name their son Zechariah? What was in the minds of the parents considering the culture, the context and the time of that day? When they chose that name, it hearkened back about 500 years to another individual by the name of Zechariah. He's a prophet and a priest. Again, Zechariah here is from a priestly family, but there was an earlier priest 500 years earlier by the name of Zechariah. He wrote the book of the Bible that we know of Zechariah in the Minor Prophets. What is his book about? Think about some of the major themes of the book of Zechariah. One of the biggest themes is the return of the Lord. His feet in that day shall stand on the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Olives shall cleave into and so on. That's found there in the book of Zechariah. Talks about the reign of the Messiah. Talks about the restoration of a righteous priesthood. Talks about these themes. You think that might have been on the mind of Zechariah's parents when they chose to name him Zechariah after this priest because, again, what were the circumstances? They were living in a Jewish world that was fairly corrupt in terms of religious leadership. The Romans, again, they did not have independence. They were crying out for the Messiah, the promised Messiah to come. So I think probably when they named their child Zechariah that that's what they had in mind to deliberately remind their son. Every time he would hear his name, he would be reminded of the great priest, the great prophet who had lived five hundred years earlier who bore that same name of Zechariah. Again, what does the name of Zechariah mean? “Remembered by God” or “the one whom God remembers”, something like that. Did they name Zechariah that in hopes that God would remember his people at that time? In essence, were they naming their child Zechariah as a prayer? “God, please remember us. Remember our plight. Remember the corrupt religious leadership that we're under. Remember the plight of our nation and send the Messiah to establish your kingdom here on earth.” Is that something they had in mind when they chose their name for their son Zechariah? Probably so, considering the culture in the background of that time.

So let's continue on here in verse five. A certain priest named Zechariah of the division or the course of Abaya, as would be pronounced in Hebrew. We'll talk about this very briefly today. We'll talk about it in more detail next time. One of the study questions that I sent out was how does this tie in with us being able to understand when the birth of Jesus Christ was? Well, this is important because it gives us the countdown for 15 months to the birth of Jesus Christ. So I'll cover this fairly quickly here. You might write down 1 Chronicles 24 verses 3 through 19. We'll just hit a few of the highlights of it. King David is near his death at this point and he is making preparations for the temple that his son Solomon will build after David's death. And one of the things that he does is divide up the priesthood because there are far more priests than the jobs to be done or than can physically fit and serve in the temple because the temple is a relatively small building. Its interior is probably no bigger than this part of the room that we're in right there. It is a large structure. We'll see some illustrations of it later, but the interior of it is probably no bigger than this room, actually quite possibly smaller than that. So David divides up the priesthood here.

Let's read through this fairly quickly. Then David with Zadok of the sons of Eliezer and Ahimelech of the sons of Ithamar, these are descendants of Aaron, the priest, divided them, the divisions of the descendants of Aaron who were the priests, according to the schedule of their service. Skipping to verse 5, thus they were divided by lot, one group is another. For there were officials of the sanctuary and officials of the house of God, referring to the tabernacle or the temple, from the sons of Eliezer and from the sons of Ithamar. Now the first lot fell to Jehorab, so what they're doing is casting lots. They've divided up the priesthood into 24 groups and they're casting lots to determine the order in which they will serve in the temple. First lot fell to Jehorab, the second to Judea, the third to Harim, the fourth to Sirim, the fifth to Malchijah, the sixth to Majomin, the seventh to Hakaz, and the eighth to Abia, which is where we read about there in Luke. And then it goes on to list the remainder of the 24 courses and it summarizes by saying, “This was the schedule of their service for coming into the house or the temple of the eternal according to their ordinance by the hand of Aaron their father as the eternal God of Israel had commanded here. So the way this worked is there were 24 courses and each course they rotated a week at a time from Sabbath to Sabbath and when the 24 weeks were up, each priesthood had served its course --- and the cycle would start again with another 24 weeks. Now also during the pilgrimage feast, during the week of Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread and during Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles, all of the priests would come in and serve during those times. So it all worked out over the course of a year that every priest would serve two to one week cycles in there and all of the priests serving for three weeks around Passover and Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. And this schedule started immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles ended each year. And then the first course would serve the following week, the second course, the next week after that and so on. And then Abaya, as we read, was the eighth of these courses. If you have a copy of the Companion Bible, you might refer back to that. It has a fairly detailed chronology of that, which we won't get into this week, perhaps next time, but he calculates the dates for the course of Abaya at that time as December 6th through the 12th. That would have been the first course after the Feast and also June 13th through the 19th, shortly after Pentecost that year. So for our purposes, we won't get into which date we're talking about. For our purposes, we'll just say it was in June and that began the countdown. The events we're reading about today begin the countdown then for 15 months until the birth of Jesus the Messiah. And of course, 15 months from June brings you to the fall of the year and not to December 25th in the dead of winter. Again, we'll cover that next time.

So continuing back here in Luke 1 and verse 5, picking up the story. So there's a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abaya and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. So she also is from a priestly family. She is descended from Aaron. Her name, Elizabeth, in Hebrew would have been Elisheva, Elisheva, E-l-i-s-h-e-v-a. So we have Zechariah who is a priest and he is married to the daughter of priests, descendants from Aaron. Elisheva means “oath of God”, oath of God. In her case, we have no idea what the oath was about. Perhaps her --- speculation --- perhaps her parents made an oath that she would marry into the priestly line and become the mother of future generations of priests. I don't know. That's just speculation but could well be.

Verse 6, they, Elisheva and Zechariah, were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. So Luke tells us they were both righteous, they were blameless in the way they kept the commandments of God. That doesn't mean they were perfect. No human beings are perfect there. But it does tell us that they loved God. They loved him from the heart, not just as a ritual, not just going through the motions, but they truly loved God and loved his way of life from the heart. And you might contrast this with some of the comments I made earlier and something we'll see later on in these studies on the Gospels regarding the rest of the priesthood. Because how does Jesus Christ view the rest of the priesthood? When He comes along in His ministry 30 years later, how does He refer to the priesthood? He calls them snakes, vipers, hypocrites, sons of Gehenna, this kind of thing. So it gives you some idea of what and how corrupt the priesthood was becoming during that period of time. And in contrast to them, Zechariah and Elisheva are called blameless, righteous before God there. So quite a stark contrast between them. So far, so good in the story. Nothing surprising here.

But then Luke in the next verse introduces something that is shocking in the culture of their day. He tells us verse seven, but they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and they were both well advanced in years. Now in the culture of that day, this just did not compute. It did not compute because if you were righteous, obviously you would be blessed with a lot of children. The Psalms, for instance, talk about, well, one of the hymns that we sing. Happy is he who has many, many children and his quivers like a quiver full of arrows there and so on. I won't try to sing it there, but anyway, there are many times where children are described as blessings. They're in the Bible and that's what people thought of there.

Trivia question. Anybody know what the first command in the Bible is? And this is why they viewed it this way. “Be fruitful and multiply.” That was the marching orders for a Jewish woman of that day. Be fruitful and multiply. Have children. Have lots of children. Be fruitful and multiply. So if you were not fulfilling that command in that day, there was something wrong. Something seriously wrong. You were a sinner. God was punishing you for something like that. That's the way it was commonly viewed there.

So here we have a priest, you know, not just anybody, but a priest and a priest's wife and they're barren. They can't have children. Think about what that meant in that culture in that day. Think of all the whispering that would go on. They're well advanced in years. You know, when they first married, surely they would have expected her to get pregnant during the first year there sometime. But a year goes by. No children. Another year goes by. No children. Five years. Same thing. Ten years. Same thing. Finally decades go by. No children. And finally it becomes evident that Elizabeth is barren. She can't have children. And everybody around them thinks that she's being punished by God for something. Yeah, she and Zechariah think they're righteous, but they can't be because they're being punished by God. It's evident. They've got to be involved in some kind of sin. Any of you ever been misunderstood that way? People spread rumors about you? Say things that aren't true? Judge you without knowing the circumstances. That ever happened to us? That's a lesson for everybody. I think it's happened to all of us at one time or another there. And this was happening to Zechariah and Elizabeth. And God says, however, that they are blameless in His sight. They walked in all the commandments of God there. So surely people thought that they had been disobedient to God and they're being punished as a result of that. So that's part of the context and understanding we need to wrap our minds around. Again, very, very different from our culture today. But what did Zechariah and Elizabeth do during all this time? They prayed. They prayed and they prayed more for a son, for a daughter, for godly offspring to carry on the priestly line that they were such a distinguished part of there. They continued praying and God never answered [“Yes”]. Has that ever happened to you? How often have you prayed for something and prayed and prayed and prayed for decades --- and your prayers never answered? That too is probably something that's happened to all of us at one time or another here. So see, there are a lot of things in common here that we can identify with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth here. But how did they wait all that time? How did they wait? Did they get frustrated with God? Angry at Him? No. It tells us the way they waited was to walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. They continued --- continued in faith and in trust as we just heard about in the sermon here. Believing God. Never losing sight of Him and His promises there. They did not let it affect their relationship with God even though it obviously had to be frustrating and discouraging to them to go through this for year after year after year of praying and not having their prayers answered (and knowing the whispering and the rumors that are going around. What sin are they involved in that God is punishing them by not letting them have children?)

Finally, it reached the point that the child rearing years were obviously over. As the Bible described it, they were well advanced in years. The way the King James puts it, I think, is quite graphic. They were “well stricken in years”, I think they're giving an indication of how old they were. How old were they? It doesn't say. Generally, the men at that time would marry at about age 20 and women at about age 13 shortly after they started menstruating there. So it was about roughly a 10-year age difference between them. So if Zechariah is well stricken in years, he's probably somewhere between 60 and 80 --- and Elizabeth not far behind there. Obviously, the end of their life is coming on --- and it's obvious that they are not going to have children now. They're not going to have a son to carry on the priestly name and the priestly line there. So that's part of the background that is a key part of this story that helps us understand what they were going through during that time. There's a lot of information packed into just these few verses and if we don't dissect them and understand the culture, we miss most of the story that's recorded there for us.

Can you think of anybody else's stories that parallel this? Abraham, Abraham and Sarah. How old were Abraham and Sarah? How long did they wait before they had a son? What did they do? Even tried surrogate motherhood. That worked out really well, didn't it (with the birth of Ishmael there). Yes, Abraham I think was 100 and Sarah was 90 if I remember correctly there. Obviously, a miraculous birth there. Not a miraculous birth like Jesus where Mary is impregnated directly by the Holy Spirit --- but still it took miraculous circumstances for Sarah to give birth to Isaac there. Anybody think of another story of a woman who was barren for years and years and waited? This one's a little more obscure. Yes, Hannah. Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel --- one of Israel's greatest prophets there as well. So Hannah, another one there. Yes, got ahead of myself here and didn't mention those two. You can write down in your notes Genesis 17 and 18 about Abraham and Sarah and 1 Samuel 1, the story of Hannah there. Yes, yes, Aaron. [In 2 Kings 4:8-17, wasn’t there a Shunamite woman who was barren that Elisha healed of being barren?] Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. I'd forgotten about that one too. Yes. Yes, right. Yes, you have to understand how important children were in that culture too because there was no social security system like we have today, no social welfare net. Their social welfare net was their children --- and men --- as it is today tended to die off younger, so a widowed mother would be taken care of. That is one reason, incidentally, why the firstborn was given a double share of the inheritance --- because it was understood that he would take that share and take care of his elderly widowed mother during that period as well. So that was their social safety net of that time. Yes, Faye. [Samson's mother.] Drawing a blank on that. Yeah, yeah, good, good examples. Yeah, you thought of several I hadn't thought about during this period here. So yes. And it's mentioned so often you can understand the stigma that was attached to it in that culture there. Yes, God is punishing you. You're not only childless but in your old age you're going to have nobody to take care of you there as well. Sure, absolutely. Would you like the microphone? True, yes, yes, good point, yes. Yeah, Gentiles had scores of children, but it didn't prove they were righteous. So yes, obviously there's a little bit of double standard going on there as well. So …. good points brought up there.

So continuing on with the story here. So here this has laid the groundwork for it. We have Zachariah and Elizabeth are well advanced in years, well stricken in years here, no children, looked down on, social outcasts to some extent (perhaps even within their own families --- because their own families and relatives would have thought the very same thing, that yes, they're being punished by God because of some secret sin). So it was that while Zachariah was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, the course of Abaya, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.

So let's talk about the temple a bit here. The temple is something that comes up again and again in the Gospels. So we'll be talking about it a fair amount here. So a little bit of background here. The temple was the religious heart and core of the nation. This is a computer-generated image here of the Temple Mount overlooking the area of Jerusalem. And you can see the city walls of Jerusalem. I have a pointer here somewhere, but I'm not sure which pocket I put it in. But you can see how it totally dominated the city of Jerusalem, not just height wise because it stood up elevated above the city there on this huge platform that Herod the Great had built. But just the physical size of it was enormous there. Another view of it gives you some idea of the size. Here's an artist's painting of the front of the temple. And you can judge the size there by the size of the priests down here dressed in white down in front of it here. Just an enormous structure for that day and age. Quite an architectural masterpiece there. What did it look like inside? Here's an artist's conception of that. We have on the left here the famous, what's referred to in the Bible, the Candlestick. It's a Menorah. And over to the right, you see this unusual looking object there. That is the Table for the Showbread where the loaves would have been put there. And in the center, we see what is called the Altar of Incense --- a rather small gold-plated altar there which you can see some of the smoke ascending from the incense there. And notice the large curtain in the back that sealed off the Holy of Holies. This area where the priests are here is called the Holy Place and then behind the curtain was the Holy of Holies where God's presence supposedly dwelled there during that period there. This helps us conceptualize these things quite a bit. Where possible in these studies, I'll be giving you some graphics and photos and so on that I've frankly spent a lot of time researching to make sure they're as accurate as possible to help us get a better idea of this. So this is where Zechariah, when he's called to present the --- to do the offering of the incense, he would have been serving here at the altar of incense, but there would have been nobody else in the room, nobody around him. There he's totally, totally isolated in there when these events took place and he's only a few steps away from the curtain that separates off the Holy of Holies and the presence of God as they would have viewed it there. So Zechariah would have been facing, standing on this side of the altar of incense and facing the Holy of Holies when he gives his incense here, which represents the prayers of God's people. And when he finished praying, he would take a bowl of incense and he would pour the bowl of incense onto the altar and it would steam and smoke and that would represent the prayers of God's people ascending to God. We find reference to this. We won't talk about it here in detail but references you might write down Revelation 5 verse 8 and Revelation 8:3 and 4. And we have three verses here that state the incense is the prayers of the saints, or draws a connection between the two of them. So this is what it represented. The priest is going in, Zechariah is going in to offer this incense and it represents the prayers of the entire nation ascending to God. And when the priest would put this on the altar, the smoke would rise up and there was an opening in the roof of the temple and the smoke would go out through it. And the people assembled outside would be praying themselves and they would look up and they would see the smoke representing their prayers symbolically ascending to God in heaven. So it's a very powerful word picture, visual picture that is taking place here.

Now by the time Jesus comes on the scene, here getting back to the story, the number of priests numbered somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 priests. So again, this is a huge number. This again is why they were divided up into the courses. So the priest served again a one week shift at a time. And if you were a priest, when it came time for your course, you would come to the temple to serve. And there an elaborate ceremony took place, something akin to choosing lots, although it was a different complex method, don't have time to explain here, but they would choose priests for the four major responsibilities. And those four responsibilities were to offer the sacrifice on the altar, to wash in the bronze sea that is referred to in the Bible, putting the bread on the table of showbread and offering the incense. And offering the incense was considered the most prestigious of these duties or responsibilities because it was the one that was closest to God there in the Holy of Holies. Now do the math here for a minute, because if there are a thousand priests who are doing this and somebody is and you serve two weeks a year in your course and then three weeks, with all of the 20 to 30,000 priests, your odds of being drawn for one specific responsibility like offering the incense are about once every 80 years, which means that most priests might do it once in a lifetime. And if you don't do it once, you're never going to do it because they also had a rule you could not offer it again until every priest in your course was given that opportunity. So it was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity if even this. So this is some of the background again to help us understand how important this is to Zechariah here. So this year, in this year, the course of Abaya is serving and they choose the four priests who are going to be doing this. So it comes time to choose the priest who will offer the incense and the selection process stops on this elderly priest by the name of Zechariah.

Another thing I might think about too, you know, Elizabeth is somewhat ostracized obviously because we're not being able to bear children but think about Zechariah too. Here's Zechariah, 70, 80 years old, and he's never been chosen for this in all of his years as a priest. He served 40 or 50 years as a priest and never been chosen. This also would give credence to the rumors he and Elizabeth are sinning somehow. God is punishing him. So Zechariah never gets chosen, year after year after year while other priests who are much younger than him get selected for this honored role, this honored responsibility, and he gets passed over again and again. So think again about the ostracism, the rumors going around, not just about Elizabeth, but about Zechariah himself. What they don't know is what God is doing in the background for this entire time. Finally, finally, he is selected to carry out this important responsibility. So the people are gathered outside the temple. Zechariah takes the bowl of incense and he goes into the temple to offer the incense that represents the prayers of God's people going up to heaven. And this has to be the highlight of his entire tenure as a priest. Again, 40, 50 years that he served in this way and never been chosen. He goes in, he reverently approaches the altar slowly, maybe, maybe his hands are even trembling a little bit with the age and realizing the significance of what he's doing here, coming before the presence of God. And just behind this curtain a few feet away is God's presence and the Holy of Holies there. So he holds the bowl in his hands and he approaches the incense altar and he begins the prayer that is offered at this time. What does he pray? You ever thought about that? What does Zechariah pray when he comes before God to offer the incense? Did he pray for his son one last time thinking, hey, this is it. This is as close to God as I'm ever going to be. Did he take that opportunity to pray for his son? Quite possibly. I think it's reasonable. We don't know for sure. But there is one thing we do know. I’ve mentioned before the Mishnah. This is a collection of Jewish writings accumulated about 100 to 200 years after the time of Jesus Christ, the time of the Gospels there. And they record all kinds of Jewish practices and customs and traditions and all of that that happened in the period leading up to that. And their tradition changed very, very little. You might remember Fiddler on the Roof “Tradition”, the song and so on. These traditions went on for centuries without change. And the Mishnah records the prayer that is offered in the offering of incense. And in that prayer, we can't say this is 100% accurate again because there is something of a time difference in there. But considering how meticulously they recorded everything, I suspect it's probably very close if not 100% accurate. So picture Zechariah standing before the Altar of Incense to offer this. And he prays. And in his prayer to God, there is a line that goes like this. “Send us the one who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.” The Mishnah records that as part of the prayer of the offering of incense. Does that blow your mind? It does me. Zechariah has been waiting decades, never chosen for this. Never having a son, wondering why God has never answered his prayers. And he goes in and he offers a prayer, one line of which is, “Send us the one who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.” Blows your mind? It totally blows your mind. And then what happens? Zechariah realizes he's not alone in this room where he's supposed to be alone. And he realizes suddenly, as it says here, that an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah standing on the right side of the Altar of Incense. And when Zechariah saw him, he was troubled and fear fell upon him. So to be blunt, Zechariah is scared stiff. He's supposed to be in here all alone --- and suddenly there's this other being in here with him in the Holy Place. And it's an angel. And we see he was scared stiff because what does the angel say to him? Don't be afraid, Zechariah. He realizes Zechariah is scared stiff. He's terrified by this vision that suddenly appears to him there. And the angel says, don't be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer is heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall call his name John. So here's a profound answer to prayer. Did Zechariah pray for a son? Quite possibly. Did he pray for the one who would prepare the way for the coming of the Lord” According to Jewish tradition --- Yes. And an angel appears and says, your prayer is answered. You will have a son. And then he goes on to say what this son would be. The angel tells Zechariah that he is to name his son John. In Hebrew, it would be Yochanon. Yochanon. You'd spell it Y-O-C-H-A-N-O-N. Yochanon. What does Yohanan mean? It means “God is a gracious giver”. God is a gracious giver. Now think about that. Again, the depth of these stories is just amazing here, because the angel tells Zechariah that God is about to give Zechariah the gift that he has waited for his entire adult life and he is to tell Zechariah to name his son “God is a gracious giver”. He's giving him a gift of a son. And he's to name the son “God is a gracious giver”. So every time Zechariah says his son's name, he's going to be reminded that God is a gracious giver. And John, Yochanon, every time he hears his word, he's going to be reminded of what the angel told his father Zechariah. “God is a gracious giver.” He's going to be reminded every time he hears his name throughout his entire life of the circumstances under which he was born and the angel's appearance to his father and saying I have chosen you, chosen your son to be a special prophet for Me. Again, amazing depth and detail in here. I don't know how it strikes you, but to me that is so incredibly powerful. When we look at the context here, God is using a system and timing, a system originally set up about 1400 to 1450 B.C. and David's selection of the priesthood and the courses and all of this --- approximately 1000 B.C. God is using things that went into place that far back (1,000 to 1,500 years) and he's working out the timing precisely for the point when this old priest will come and appear to offer his prayer and offer the incense and to announce “To you will be born the one who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.” Is God a God of perfection and planning or what? He doesn't leave things to chance. He's a God of perfection and of planning --- in everything that he does. And He's a God who is always faithful. He is a God who remembers what He promises, which is the meaning of the name of Zechariah again, “Remembered by God”. God remembered Zechariah and carried out His promises through him.

Continuing with the story, verse 14, I need to pick up the pace here. Continuing on, “And you [Zechariah] will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine or strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. So again, this promised son would have a special mission. He would be great in God's sight and he would possess God's Spirit from birth. As we read here again, not that he would be conceived by the Holy Spirit as Jesus was, but he would nevertheless have God's Spirit from his mother's womb. Continuing on, verse 16, “he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Eternal their God. In other words, he's going to be a witness for Jesus Christ as the one who would come before him and proclaim the coming of the Lord. It also says he will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah. And we won't go through these verses, but you might write down a few here:

Matthew 17 verses 11 through 13, and this is where Jesus is talking to His disciples and he talks about Elijah coming first and restoring all things. “And then he says, Elijah has come already, but they did not know him.” And then verse 13, “Then the disciples understood that He spoke to them of John the Baptist.” And of course, this prophecy that the angel gives is a reference back to Malachi 3 and verse 1, “Behold, I will send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Eternal of hosts.” This is in the [second to] last chapter of the last book of the last prophet of the Old Testament. One of the questions I asked was how long it had been since a prophet had appeared on the scene? Who was the last prophet. The last prophet was Malachi right here. And what does he say? He says, I'm going to send one who is going to prepare the way of the Lord. This is about more than four centuries earlier was the last time a prophet had appeared to Israel before John the Baptist. A few more verses here in Malachi. Malachi 4 and verses 5 through 6, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse (or with utter destruction).

And continuing back here in Luke 1 verse 17, the angel is quoting here from the prophet Malachi, “He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” So, John is the one who would prepare the way for Jesus the Messiah by telling people that One greater than he was going to come --- and urging them to repent and to be ready for that. 

Verse 18, let's see, I'll go through this fairly quickly, “Zechariah said to the angel, How shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is well advanced in years.” Wasn't necessarily [distrusting] God, but just admitting the reality. He's an old man. And hey, Mr. Angel, have you looked at my wife Elisheva lately? You know, she's good looking, but she's like 70 years old. And we're going to have a son? You know, it may have been more of a reflection on the biological realities of him and his wife Elisheva than not having trust in God. But obviously, he shouldn't have said that. So continuing on, the angel answered and said to him, I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings or this good news. And that's obviously got Zechariah's attention because he was well aware of the angel Gabriel, who was mentioned twice back in the Book of Daniel there. There were three archangels. Who remembers the name of the three archangels? Michael, Gabriel. We just got one. Hillel, Hillel. We say Lucifer, but actually in Hebrew, it's Hillel. Lucifer is a Latinized term. But there were three angels, and one of them is Gabriel, three archangels rather, and one of them is Gabriel, who now appears before Zechariah. He is the archangel as we read about in Daniel. We won't turn there, but he's the one who is essentially a prophet. He comes and appears as God's messenger to people to tell what the future holds. We see that from where he's mentioned in the Book of Daniel. And we also see that right here as well. Gabriel, incidentally, means when he says, I am Gabriel, that means “Warrior of God” or “Man of God”. That is Gabriel's name there who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their own time. And I might mention here that this word mute, depending on the context, can mean either mute, not able to speak, or deaf, not able to hear. It's from a root that means “silence”. So, you can have silence if you can't hear, silence if you can't speak, or it can also mean both. And actually, we see from this example that Zechariah was both mute and deaf. Verse 62, describing later on when he's naming his son “John”, says the people made signs to his father Zechariah, what he would have his son called. Why are they making signs to him? They're making signs to him because he can't hear. So, they have to communicate through signs. What are you going to name your son? So, a little interesting tidbit there when we dig into that a little bit deeper. Now, this might sound pretty harsh for Zechariah here, for the angel to tell him this, that he'll be made mute and deaf, but is it? Let's again think about this, dissect the context and the circumstances a bit here. Zechariah has just been told that he's going to have a son in his old age --- and not just any son --- but his son is to be the one who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. A miracle is about to take place in this birth because they are past the age of childbearing here. And the angel Gabriel wants to leave no doubt that these are miraculous events. So, he performs another miracle right there. From that point forward, Zechariah is not going to speak and he's not going to hear for nine months or whatever time it takes after nine months until his son John is born here. Now, is that such a bad thing? Some of you may think, well, that wouldn't be a bad thing with my spouse. Yeah, if she didn't talk for the next nine months or he didn't talk or he never listens anyway, so what's the difference? So, but anyway, a little humor there, but very little humor. But Zechariah in nine months is going to be the father of the one who will prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Put yourself in the Zechariah sandals there. You are told that in nine months your wife is going to have a son and he's going to be the prophesied one who is coming to prepare the way for the Lord. How long would it take you to mentally process that? You'd be walking around in a daze for at least several months just letting that sink in. What kind of questions would come to your mind? What do I do now? I prayed for this and now what do I do? How do I teach this boy? How do I train him? How do I bring him up? What do I do? Why did God chose me? Why did he give me what I asked for? Wouldn't you need nine months to think and sit in silence and process all of that? I would. I don't think it was as much punishment as just the reality to let it sink in, to let it sink in here. Amazing stuff. So, being deaf and mute for nine months is probably nowhere near as bad as it sounds here. Might have been doing Zechariah a favor. To put him in “time out” you might say, for a while --- and let him think and let him process through the reality of what is going to happen with his son that his wife is going to bear.

Continuing on here, verse 21, Meanwhile, outside the temple, the people are wondering and saying, what's taking so long? You know, this guy's been in there forever. Doesn't he know I've got a roast in the oven I need to go take care of? So, they're kind of wondering what's going on here. They've never seen somebody take so long to do the incense offering. And the people waited for Zechariah and marveled, wondered, that he lingered so long in the temple. But when he came out, he could not speak to them, and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple, for he beckoned them and remained speechless. He can't talk, so he just has to sign what is going on, trying to convey what had happened. And so it was, as soon as the days of his service were completed, that he departed to his own house. Again, the priests would come in, and then they would have to leave and return back home.

So, let's see, continuing on at verse 24, Now, after those days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, and she hid herself for five months, saying, Thus the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people. Again, Elizabeth had lived with decades of shame, of rumors being spread about her. She had to be sinning, that God had to be punishing her for some kind of sin. And she felt being ostracized, being an outcast for decades over misunderstandings. God had not forgotten her. God had not forgotten Zechariah. God knew they were righteous people, and he chose them to be the parents of a great prophet, John the Baptist. So now she is vindicated. She's considered honorable. She will give birth to the foretold individual who would prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.

Why did Elizabeth hide herself away five months? It doesn't say. Perhaps in her old age, she was simply wanting to make sure that she didn't lose the baby, didn't want to exert herself or something, and essentially confined herself to her house or bedrest for five months. I think that's probably part of it. Perhaps also it ties in with what we talked about with Zechariah. Perhaps she needed to hide herself away for five months to think and process what was going to happen. She's going to give birth to the prophesied individual who would prepare the way for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. It's quite a remarkable story here of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the one whom God remembered.

That's the end of our study. We'll unfortunately don't have time for questions, but if you'll save those or write to me or whatever, I can share them, everyone. Next time, we'll pick it up with the story of another amazing announcement from an angel, and that's the announcement to Mary that she would give birth to the Son of God. So we'll wrap that up. Hope you all have a great week, and we do need to vacate here in the next 15 minutes.