Luke 1:5-25 In the Big and Little Stories

The Big and Little Stories God Is Writing

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series, King Over All, from the Gospel of Luke. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here. And I am really glad to be here with all of you. After a week off up at men's retreat, it was really good. Came back with a fuller beard.

So I don't know, we'll see where that, we'll see where Linda lets that go. And a new set of glasses, so if you're looking at me and you're going, Don, is there something new? Yes, I have gained a little weight.

So, but God has brought us all together in the name of Jesus Christ to grow our faith in him. He is the head of Recast Church, amen? He's the leader of us and he's the one who's over us. And as a under shepherd of him, I'm seeking to follow him in every step of the way.

And I encourage you only to follow me in as much as I'm following him. And you get the opportunity to look into God's word to see if I'm following him. And so I love that and that's why I encourage you to have your Bibles open and on your lap and in your life and in your mornings and in your evenings and throughout your week to be in the word.

Luke’s Narrative Begins With the Birth of John the Baptizer

This morning we're beginning the narrative portion of the Gospel of Luke. A couple of weeks ago we looked at the prologue of this, the introduction, and now we start right into the things that Luke carefully researched.

He told us in that prologue that he had carefully researched these things. Now we get into the accounts of the eyewitnesses of those that he had an opportunity to interview and talk with and these are the things that they shared with him.

Luke doesn't begin his account with the birth of Jesus, but he backs up and tells us some stories about the context surrounding the birth of Jesus. We look at Elizabeth in our text this morning, Zechariah in our text this morning, the parents of John the baptizer.

The birth of John was surrounded by miraculous events, the text is gonna tell us, and yet there is one primary point I want us to grasp together this morning. I'll go ahead and share that with you here at the beginning.

There is always a big picture and a little picture. There's always a big picture thing that's going on and there's also always little picture things going on. There is always a wide ranging huge story that God is working out in the global scene and there are also a bazillion little stories happening at the same time.

God is paving the way to bring forth the Messiah here in our text and we're gonna be in that section where we're looking forward to the coming of the Messiah and thinking about that over the next couple of weeks until the birth of Jesus up at Christmastime, but while working with a family struggling with fertility, he is bringing forth the Messiah.

The juxtaposition of those two realities, the bringing forth of a Messiah, big picture epic scope of the thing that God is doing while working with a family and their personal struggles, that juxtaposition had me rejoicing this week as I was reading this and studying it for this sermon.

We serve a God who works in our personal history while also at the same time working in the larger epic sweeps of world history, all at the same time. Big enough to bring forth a savior, kind enough to remove by the end of this text what is called Elizabeth's reproach.

The way the story is told is concerned for the faith of Elizabeth and Zechariah while also launching us out into the good news, the good news that God has brought forth a savior to rescue us all from our sins.

So I think that if you're anything like me, we can become so focused on our little lives that we sometimes forget we're caught up in a big epic story that God is working out in his history. This day hasn't been created for me.

This day has been created for his glory. This day has been created for his purpose. This day has been created for his worship. And so let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Luke chapter one.

We're gonna start in verse five. So Luke chapter one, verse five through verse 25, a chunk off here in the middle of a very long chapter of the Bible, by the way, but Luke chapter one, verses five through 25.

Recast God's holy word, what he desires to communicate to us here in this gathering today. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth.

And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years. Now, while he was serving his priest before God, when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him and fear fell upon him.

But the angel said to him, do not be afraid Zechariah for your prayer has been heard. And your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great before the Lord.

And he must not drink wine or strong drink and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will 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 for the Lord a people prepared.

And Zechariah said to the angel, how shall I know this? For I'm an old man and my wife is advanced in years. And the angel answered him, I'm Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. And I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.

And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their time. And the people were waiting for Zechariah and they were wondering at his delay in the temple.

And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them. And they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple and he kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.

After these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived and for five months, she kept it hidden or kept herself hidden saying, thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for hope that we find in it. I hope that you are a God, not just of the big picture but also a God of our little stories as well. We take delight and joy in the big things that you have done for us, but we also rejoice that we can bring our request to you of the, even the thing that might seem most insignificant to anyone else and you hear and you listen and you answer.

Father, I thank you that we have an opportunity to interact with you in our days and in our lives, in our circumstances. Father, I thank you for each person here who comes from a whole host of circumstances, a bunch of different things.

We come into a melting pot of emotion here when we gather together with people because some are hurting, some are sick, some are frustrated, some are delighted, some are rejoicing, some are finding promotions while some are finding layoffs and everything in between.

Father, I pray that you would meet us in this place with delight and joy and faith and trust in you who are not just concerned just for our salvation but are concerned for our lives moment by moment and day by day.

Father, I pray that you would allow our voices, a whole host of people that you have brought together in this room, a gathering of people who delight in your Son and rejoice in his salvation. And even though we have all of these circumstances swirling around us, I pray that together from all of these various perspectives, we would delight to sing your praises this morning and that you would be pleased to receive it as worship from hearts that are given to you today in Jesus' name.

Amen. I encourage you to get comfortable and reopen your Bibles to Luke 1, verses 5 through 25. Having that in front of you is only gonna help you to be able to just check up on me and make sure the things I'm saying about this text are coming from the text and help you to keep focused.

Start off by just identifying that John the Baptizer is an often misunderstood character. I call him the Baptizer instead of John the Baptist. I know most of you wanna call him John the Baptist but Baptist is a denomination that has all kinds of implications to it and what he really was known for and actually the best thing to think of is the fact that he baptized people was kind of where we get that title.

But he's misunderstood. Many of us likely have little clue as to his significance. We know he comes into the story. We kind of know he was there before Jesus, that they were relatives. But we might even just kind of wonder, and it might be a worthwhile question, why begin with his birth when telling the life of Jesus?

I mean, couldn't we just leave him out and skip right to the manger scene? You know, get to the shepherds and watching their flocks by night or something like that? But Luke had a strong, strong interest in his gospel and these gospel writers in tying the Old Testament to the New Testament here at the start of the New Testament in a way that communicated continuity and John provides that continuity.

He is there as a way of demonstrating that God is doing something the same. He didn't think of God's actions, Luke didn't think of God's actions as a new twist on the Old Testament, a new religion coming on the scene and Jesus is bringing it.

No, not at all. Instead, he saw the things he records for us in his gospel as fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies and John is there in God's big picture to do that. John is a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

As a matter of fact, the very last verse of the Old Testament will be quoted in our text to tie it together like God says, and, and then it just keeps going. It's like there's a comma, there's not a period at the end of the Old Testament and it's like here, and then right away, the angel speaks the words of Malachi at the very end of Malachi to basically say, and we're continuing on here.

As a matter of fact, God has not revealed any spoken words to any prophet for about 400 years before the angel appears here to Zechariah and then suddenly this angelic messenger speaks to a man about a specific birth and we find out that God is on the move to make good on his promises to bless all the nations like he promised to Abraham.

He is on the cusp of sending forth the one who will crush the head of the serpent as he in the Old Testament promised to Eve. He is about to send forth the king over all kings who will reign forever and ever and ever on the throne of King David just as he promised to that ancient real human King David.

Our outline this morning follows the narrative pretty closely. It's the setting, a sad family, verses one through eight. Second, the meeting, a scared man, verses nine through 12. Third, the promise, a disbelieving man, verses 13 through 20 and then fourth, the fulfillment, a happy family, verses 21 through 25.

And so we're gonna start with the setting, a sad family here in these first few verses, one through eight. And it began in the days of Herod the Great, the text tells us. We are introduced to a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah and his wife is Elizabeth who is also the lineage of Aaron, the brother of Moses, the line of the priests, both of these, raised in families from the line of the priesthood of Israel.

There's a lot of names in these first couple of verses and when I encounter these names, I'm either tempted to skip them or do a deep dive to understand, kind of opposite responses, right? Either we want to dive in and know everything about these people or we're just kind of like in a hurry and we just skip over them and I think that maybe it just depends on your mood and the time.

Sometimes you're just like, they're just names. And we might sometimes find the names of the Bible boring and that's just honest, but they root the work of God in real history and they're valuable from that standpoint.

They further show us that he is concerned for real people and how many of you are glad that our God is concerned for real people? Raise your hand if you're glad that he's concerned for real people. Some of you aren't.

No, you just didn't, some of you I know just don't like to raise your hand, but that's okay. He is concerned for us and we're only bored with the names of people.

And if we're honest in our own hearts,.

We get bored with the names of other people.

Because they're not our names.

It's not our own that's being said, but we're glad when he calls us by name that he knows our name. He knows all people and he personally knows us.

That's glorious.

But we're told that this couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were righteous before God and that they walked blamelessly according to his commands. Now, that might be startling words to some of you going like, can anybody be blameless before God?

Can anybody walk in righteousness before God? Is that possible? Some of us come from a theological background or history that has a hard time making sense of verse six, to be honest. We have been so quick to point out that God demands, that his demands for us are righteous perfection,.

Which is true.

They are for righteous perfection, but that has driven us all to define the word righteous too narrowly and apply that narrow definition everywhere we find it, as if it's only ever used in the Bible as a holy righteous perfection.

But it's both true that God's demands are complete perfection in order to enter his kingdom, his eternal kingdom, while it's also true that people can be declared righteous and blameless by faith. We are not to think that Zechariah and Elizabeth never ever sinned.

That's not what this is trying to communicate to us. But even in their sin, they followed the law. They sought forgiveness and repentance before God. In that Old Testament context, they made the sacrifices that were required.

He was a priest. They brought the lamb with them. They did these things. Don't forget that the commandments and statutes in the Old Testament include instructions on what to do when they sinned, both intentionally and even unintentionally.

I always find that really satisfying to my own heart. When I go through the Old Testament in my yearly reading and I encounter those parts where there are sacrifices for unintentional sins. And how many of you go like, I got some of those.

Like there, it's really nice that there's an offering for sins I don't even know I committed.

Right?

How many of you know that? Like how many of you, when I was a kid, I used to wrap up every day with like, God, please forgive me of my sins. Forgive me of everything. I don't even know what to say. Like I don't even know what to say.

Like I don't even know all my sins. And I say that as a kid, but I probably ought to do that more right now as well. Like just, I don't even know in how many ways I have broken your rules and your laws and your commandments today.

But I thank you for the blood of Christ who covers me and forgives me and has set me free. So those instructions are all there. And these were people of the Lord, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who sought to live his way and not their own way.

These are good people. You want them as your next door neighbors. These are good people, just generally all around good people who want to honor God, are seeking by faith to honor God. But there's a sad problem in their life.

We know what the sad problem is because we've been kicking it around a while, but they had no children. Elizabeth was barren, it says, and both of them were outside the childbearing years. We're not given their age, we just know that they're getting up there.

And think about how hard verse six must be to put in the light of verse seven. They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commands and statutes of the Lord, but they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years.

There's just a couple of verses of scripture to us, and they represent a lifetime of heartache and hardship. Just a couple of verses to us, but they represent amazing and glorious faithfulness. Serving the Lord.

There he is doing his responsibility in the temple. Job's wife said to him in the midst of their hardship,.

What?

Curse God and die.

Get it over with.

Mists of hardship and pain. Could you fault Zechariah and Elizabeth for seeing God as terrible? Can you imagine a couple like that who would see God as vindictive and angry and mean?

They were good people.

They would make great parents, and they were barren, a word that evokes a desert parched and lifeless, but they were righteous and blameless before God. Zechariah even kept serving him. How can this be?

Faith serves God because of who he is, not because of what he gives. If we only ever serve God for what he gives us, then we are only truly worshiping ourselves. That, by the way, church, is the prosperity gospel.

I don't know if you ever heard it defined, but that's what it is. Serving self and using God to serve self. Making yourself the idol and using God as a tool to make this guy happy. In the prosperity gospel, we're the one worshiped and using God to do it.

Zech and Beth loved God, even though he hadn't given them children. And the narrative continues by letting us know that Zechariah was serving one of his mandatory two weeks out of the year. Not consecutive, it was always in consecutive weeks, but every priest was allowed to live outside of Jerusalem.

They were allowed to live in their own town and cultivate their own fields and do their own stuff, but they lived outside of Jerusalem. But one week, twice a year, they had to travel to Jerusalem and perform the services and be a part of it.

And there were so many priests during this time that they didn't have to take, I mean, they were able to manage that and it's pretty impressive. Some of the records that I went through kind of like studying about the priesthood during this time.

The Angel, the Promise, and Zechariah’s Unbelief

And so the mandatory two weeks out of the year, Zechariah's on one of those and he's in rotation. And that leads us to the meeting, a scared man, verses nine through 12, our second part of the text. Zech was on duty when something amazing happened.

Now, and you're going like, yeah, an angel appeared to him. No, we're not there yet. Something amazing happened to him and it's not immediately what you think. The lot fell to him. That's a big deal in the life of a priest.

One time in his lifetime, a priest was allowed to enter the holy place. One time, not the most holy place, not the place where the Ark of the Covenant was, but the holy place just outside of that curtain.

Only the high priest himself once a year was allowed in to the most holy place. But this is the holy place, not the holy of holies. But that was a once in a lifetime and inside the holy place was the table of bread that needed to be changed out regularly, a lit menorah that needed to be trimmed and oil added to it and the altar of incense where the incense needed to be replaced.

And that happened actually twice a day. That was quite frequent that the priest needed to go in there. But twice a day, the service would be performed but only priests who had never been selected were put into the lottery.

And on this day, Zechariah won. This was likely the evening time of dedicated prayer in the temple by the indication that people were outside praying. And this prayer gathering was not required in the law and isn't really spoken of as any kind of requirement, but a tradition formed around it that we have all kinds of documentation for.

At the changing of the incense, people would come into the inner court. Only the Jews were allowed in the inner court. Gentiles were in the outer court. But in that inner court, they were allowed to come in and then they would be out there praying during the evening changing of the incense.

Interestingly, it's kind of how the Bible ties our prayers to incense in that tradition. And so there's an image in the book of Revelation of our prayers being like an incense that rises before the Lord.

And I kind of find that interesting that the Jews had tied incense and prayer together. But there would be a substantial gathering of Jews in the inner court offering prayers during the changing of this incense on this day.

And verse 11 hits us out of nowhere. An angel appears to him. Boom, bam, there's an angel standing on the right side, right-hand side of the altar of incense to his left on the right of the altar. And just like everyone who encounters an angel, how does Zechariah respond?

Fear, fear fell upon him. That's the predominant effect of a meeting with an angel, fear. When you read these books, you read these books about people who encounter angels and they're just like, oh, it's so glorious and it's so fun.

I'm like, that doesn't, right away,.

Something's not jiving with scripture. Because I mean, when you read those kind of modern accounts of a, you know, touched by an angel, met an angel, and it's like, everybody just like in the Bible freaks out and falls on their face.

And it's like, I'm dead, don't kill me.

And these people are like, oh, I just felt so warm and fuzzy all over.

And he gave me a hug.

I don't know, I don't think that's the way it goes down. Fear, fear is a universal response of humans in encountering the angelic. And I love that scripture records that for us, by the way, letting us know that this is both rare, like the encounter with an angel is rare, like not everybody was expecting it.

It was startling. We tend to think that they used to have miracles all the time and it was just like, they expected like the water to part for them on the way to work or something, you know. But it was surprising and startling when these things occurred in scripture and it's recorded for us that people were like, no, that doesn't happen every day.

So the angel offers the routine here. Fear not, don't be afraid. And that leads into our second section, the promise that the angel gives to this disbelieving man. So the promise is juxtaposed to a disbelieving man in verses 13 through 20, the third point.

The angel calms Zech and lets him know that his prayers have been heard. What prayers? This is the first time we find out that Zechariah's been praying. And I wanna point out that at his age and based on his response in verse 18, I think I'm on good footing to say it's likely that Zechariah was no longer praying for this.

He's no longer praying for this. Having children was a prayer of his past. That's something he used to pray for. So that when the angel tells Zechariah, your prayers have been heard, he's like, oh, that's right.

I remember I used to pray that way. I remember that. How often, how often have we prayed for something so long and assumed that the answer was no? We prayed for it so long and so hard and nothing came of it that we assumed the answer was no, but God has heard Zechariah and Elizabeth's prayers from their younger days.

Sometimes we get a delayed yes from God, right? Sometimes we get a very delayed yes from God and that's what this one is, very delayed yes. But happy news, Elizabeth will bear a son and they are to name him John, which means God is gracious.

What a name, God is gracious. And interestingly, the angel doesn't just promise a son and I think there's something really key in this I wanna tease out. God doesn't just promise them a son, the angel doesn't just promise a son, but he promises something else along with it.

Joy and gladness. Joy and gladness for Zech and Beth and many who will come alongside of them rejoicing over the birth of this one. And I wanna take, it's down a rabbit trail here for just a minute and identify something from the speech of this angel.

The desires of the human heart go beyond fixing our circumstances. Do they not? They go beyond the fixing of our circumstances. The promise of joy and gladness goes beyond fixing our problems. Someone can tell me, you know, something that I'm praying for right now, for example, that we'd be able to expand this facility, that the money would come in to be able to expand the facility and we'd be able to get back to one service and something that I am diligently praying for and I would encourage you to join me in.

But I still have a follow up question. If an angel appeared to me and said, Don, fear not, that's gonna happen. That's gonna happen, we're there. I still might have a follow up question, wouldn't I? Will the church have joy and gladness?

Will we have joy and gladness? What I'm getting at is that giving us what we want doesn't always result in our joy and gladness, does it?

It doesn't.

This is important and important enough for the angel to clarify. You will have a son, three things. Three things I'm pledging to you. You will have a son and you will have joy and you will have gladness.

Three things. I think that's glorious. But this son, he says, will be unique. Not only will you, his parents, rejoice, not only will others rejoice, but he will be great before the Lord. He will be great before God.

And he is to be kept from strong drinks so that he can be filled with the Holy Spirit. The interesting thing is the juxtaposition of strong drink and the Holy Spirit is about control. He is a man who will be controlled by the Spirit, not by substance.

That's a thought that you can run with. But even from the womb, he will be filled from the Holy Spirit. Well, that's a thought. According to Luke, we will see in just a couple of weeks that he begins his ministry.

John will begin his ministry pointing to Jesus before he's even born. In the womb, he will leap with joy in the presence of his Lord and Savior. In the womb, filled with the Spirit. In the womb, having a ministry.

In the womb, doing something that we can identify and see in Scripture recorded for us as valuable to our faith here today, a fetus ministering to us. Huh, I'm not, I'm gonna let you tie loose ends on that when it comes to our current political climate.

What is a fetus capable of? I read a chapter in a book this week on this passage and it was titled, it covered a little bit more of Luke than just this section that I'm preaching on, but the title was Jesus Was a Fetus.

And I just wanna point out, so was John. And God's purpose and ministry for John didn't begin with his birth. God's purpose didn't begin with Jesus' birth. It began with God calling John while he was still in his mother's womb.

And this message highlights the special nature of the ministry of John the Baptizer. He will turn many to repent of their sins and turn to the Lord their God. His baptizing of people in the Jordan River was a baptism of repentance and dedication to the Almighty and to the Lord.

He was preparing the hearts of the people to welcome their king who was standing in the crowd with them that day. And this John will go before him, like as in him, him. Look at verse 17 with me. It starts out, he will go before him in the spirit of the power of Elijah.

We might have a question mark in our mind who the him is. He is John, clearly. He will turn many. He will, I'm sorry, he will go before him in the spirit of the power, but who is the him? All the Jews were longing for him, the Messiah.

They were longing for the deliverer to come. They knew who this angel meant when they said he will go before him. But if there was any doubt, the angel clarifies by quoting Malachi 4, 5, and 6, and this is where we get the very end of the Old Testament tied in with the beginning of the New.

In that passage, it's predicted that God will send forth one in the spirit of Elijah who will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to justice, preparing the way for the Lord.

Here at the start of Luke, we see an angel quoting the very end of the Old Testament. God is picking up right where he left off. The story of the Old Testament is continuing in the New. It was a comma, not a period.

But I wanna highlight a phrase that might strike our ears as weird. What does it mean that John's ministry will be to turn the hearts of fathers to their children? Ask yourself, how central is the family and even fatherhood in your understanding of God's plan?

If we cannot understand the way the Old Testament ends, we cannot understand what this prophecy is fulfilling through John and Jesus. God is healing relationships. He is restoring families. He is establishing justice.

He is bringing about conviction, and he will use his servant John to highlight just how far their culture had slidden. Fathers not taking the responsibility for their own kids. Sound familiar? How far could a culture slide on that one?

What are we supposed to do with a promise of God? What do we do with that? When God promises something, when God promises, there, there he's actually giving a quite specific promise to Zechariah. He's standing in the holy place, ministering to his Lord, and an angel appears with a message from his Lord and says, here's a promise.

What are you supposed to do when you hear a promise of God, church? I thought I heard it.

Believe it. Believe it.

That's all you can do is believe it. Trust it, accept it. When you read his promises from Scripture, do you believe it? Trust it, accept it. Zechariah, blameless and righteous in his actions, suddenly has a trust issue.

Now, I feel like all of us could cut him some slack, right? He is, after all, talking to an angel, but he asks for a sign. He wants some kind of confirmation that this will indeed come to pass, and he basically says, show me, prove it.

Show me some kind of proof. Verse 20 makes it clear that this exclamation is not, so it sounds very similar to what Mary is gonna say in a couple of chapters, and it's not, I mean, in a handful of verses, but it's not the same thing.

She says, how's it gonna happen? He says, prove it. She says, explain to me the mechanics of this. I've never been with a man. How am I gonna have a baby? He says, no way. You gotta be kidding me. You gotta show me something else.

You've gotta prove this.

A word of promise is not enough for this righteous and blameless man, and what that tells me is that we're in good company when we're with Zechariah, because unbelief and faithlessness can follow us anywhere, too, right?

Have you been there?

Even a righteous man serving God in a holy place is not beyond the temptation of faithlessness. It's not past doubt. He's talking to an angel. I mean, an angel has just come and like, I mean, he's probably gotta change his drawers after this encounter, and he's still like, doubt it, prove it.

There's a request for a sign even as he stands speaking with an angel. The human heart always craves more evidence as I see myself reflected in the heart of Zechariah here, wanting what is right, wanting what is true, wanting to honor my Lord, wanting to do the right thing, and simultaneously going, ah, man, doubt creeps in.