‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
91st teaching
10.27.2014
“Breaking the
Silence”
Review:
Last week we looked at the
first few verses of Luke’s Gospel, his prelude and dedication to this person
named Theophilus. What is a gospel? Luke mentions that there were other
narratives being put together at the time of his writing, so what are some examples
of other gospels we talked about, such as the Lost Gospels? Why do we reject
these? What’s the benefit of having four Gospels in the Bible rather than just
one big one? What does the term Synoptic Gospels refer to? Since we have four
different gospels, remember we compared them to four different portraits of the
same person by four different artists. Who was the Impressionist? Who was the
Renaissance artist? Who was the Minimalist? Who was the Surrealist? What is a
fact about the four gospels that seems to indicate that they’re based on
eyewitnesses? Remember, the peripheral details may not perfectly match up, but
the core events remain unchanged: there were eyewitnesses who messed up details
about the sinking of the Titanic, but just because eyewitnesses said
contradictory details does not mean the Titanic didn’t sink. And lastly, I told
you four things about Luke, who and what was he? He was a doctor (language he
uses), a historian (accurate historical details), a saint (possible bias) and
an evangelist. That last one formed our final point that now we have the space
for growth, and evangelism is key to a healthy Christian life. Luke brought the
gospel to the world, we must follow in his footsteps and bring this same
message of the good news of Jesus Christ.
End
of Review
Let’s
begin with yet another question, to get our cogs a-turning: If you had to give
up any one of your five senses, which one would you let go?
Now let’s ask ourselves to put these
into spiritual terms. The question becomes more difficult. What if you couldn’t
see God’s written word? What if you couldn’t “taste” His goodness and joy? What
if you couldn’t “smell”, couldn’t discern between good and evil? What if you
could never again feel close to God, feel His presence? What if you couldn’t
hear the Lord speaking?
In the case of our opening passage
here in Luke chapter 1, we’re going to be introduced to the characters that
begin this epic narrative and we find them in a time in history characterized
by Deafness. This is a time when the spiritual senses of God’s own people have
grown dull. Whether it was the layer upon sedimentary layer of tradition that
had built up into a crushing weight, or whether it was the iron fist of the
all-powerful and irresistible Romans, or whether it was the steady passing of
time with year after year of silence from God, the land of Israel had had its
senses blunted. There had been four-hundred years of silence, four-hundred
years since the last real prophet of God had spoken. No doubt the fakes, the charlatans
and phonies had come and gone, but no true word of the LORD of biblical concern
had been heard by the people of God for four centuries since the final chapter
of Malachi had been scribed.
Let us not miss the sheer tragedy of
that long time of silence we call the Intertestamental Period. It is all the
more tragic still that Israel could survive for so long in such a state of
deafness. I was talking with a good friend of mine discussing the Rapture and
we both thought that one of the most frightening things would be if the Rapture
happened and a church just continued on just the way it always had, with one or
two people missing from among its members, but going on as it had before, like
some kind of soulless, spirit-less machine. How long can we survive without the
Word of God, which the psalmists compared to water and pasture and grass upon
which a flock feeds?
We ask ourselves, how long has it been
since we’ve heard the voice of our Lord? How long has it been since we’ve let
the sound of His calling seep down into the depths of our spiritual ears? I’m
not talking about audibly hearing some kind of supernatural voice crying from
the heavens. I’m not even talking about that “still small voice”. I’m talking
about hearing God in terms of His Word having an effect upon the deafness of
our lives. How long since we have really “listened” God’s Word, and not merely
“heard” its sound?
“Behold,
the days are coming, says the Lord GOD, That I will send a famine on the land,
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the
LORD.” Amos 8:11
In the case of 1st century
Israel, their spiritual ears had become deaf. But now, the first voice since
Malachi is about to be heard. Tonight’s study is entitled: “Breaking the
Silence”.
Read to Luke 1:1-25.
“Inasmuch
as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which
have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to
me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to
write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know
the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.
“There was in the days of Herod, the king of
Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife
was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both
righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the
Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they
were both well advanced in years.
“So it was, that while he was serving as
priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the
priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the
Lord. And the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of
incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side
of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear
fell upon. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your
prayer is 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 in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink
neither wine nor strong drink. He will also 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. 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.” And Zacharias said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old
man, and my wife is well advanced in years.” And 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. 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 the people waited for Zacharias, and marveled 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 to them and remained speechless. So it was, as soon as the days of his
service were completed, that he departed to his own house. Now after those days
his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself 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’.”
This opening passage in Luke sets the
historical stage for the events that will lead us into the life of Christ, but
what Luke is setting up here is not actually the birth of Christ, but the
events surrounding the birth of Christ’s forerunner and herald: John the
Baptist. Therefore, Luke begins his gospel further back in history than Matthew
and Mark; only John goes back further than Luke to timeless eternity before the
world. So Luke chooses to start with the announcement of the birth of John the
Baptist.
v.5,
so Luke begins with three characters: two men and one woman. The first of the
men was a somebody, the second man was a nobody.
The first man was Herod. That’s King Herod to you. From the perspective
of the world: a somebody. Herod had “made it”. He was wealthy. He had fame. He
was successful. He was power. He had access to as much pleasure as he wanted.
He had it all and everyone looked up to him as king of Judea.
But history shows that this Herod,
though successful, was a real jerk. There are many Herods mentioned in the
Bible and they are known from historical records and evidence outside of the
Scriptures. This particular Herod was known as Herod the Great, but he was no
bueno. In fact, he wasn’t great at all. He certainly wasn’t a great ruler.
Herod the Great, though not Roman, was
appointed to be King of the Jews by the Romane Senate, and he was the head of a
dynasty of other Herods. He has been described as paranoid, a madman and an
evil genius. He was in fact an Idumean, or Edomite, which means he was a
descendant of Jacob’s brother Esau. That means that here the children of Jacob,
Israel, were being ruled over and oppressed by a man who had descended from
Esau’s children, a people who had a long and bitter history with Israel. Herod
the Great reigned up until the year 4 BC, (identified as 4 BCE), so Luke is
indirectly giving us the historical date for the opening of his gospel.
This Herod was an accomplished
architect and for that, he was regarded as a genius. For example, remember when
we studied through to Haggai, the minor prophet? They had a message of
encouragement to Zerubbabel and the returning Jews coming out of exile to
rebuild the Temple of God. They did, but when it was completed, those that
remembered the First Temple wept when they saw that this new temple didn’t even
come close to the glory of the first. Now that Temple from Haggai’s time is not
exactly the same Temple that we read about here in Luke chapter 1 when grandpa
Zacharias sees the angel Gabriel.
That’s because during the 400 years of
the Interestamental Period, the Temple from Haggai’s time was looted and desecrated,
its religious services interrupted. Antiochus Epiphanes, Greek king of the
Seleucid Empire, ordered an altar to Zeus to be put up in the Temple and he
ordered pigs, unclean animals, to be sacrificed on the Temple’s altar.
By the time we get to this time in
Luke chapter 1, the Temple has had a long history, and it has undergone some
reconstruction. Now it is known as Herod’s temple, one of the largest
construction projects in the area. It was Herod’s masterpiece, a magnificent
structure that Herod thought would immortalize his name for all eternity.
But though Herod the Great played
nice-nice by rebuilding and renovating the Jewish Temple, he was not a man to
be trusted. In fact, it’s been said that it was safer to be a pig in Herod’s
household than one of Herod’s family members. That’s because Herod the Great
suffered from great paranoia. Heck, his personal bodyguard of 2,000 soldiers.
In his lifetime, he exiled his firstborn son and first wife to marry somebody
else. His second wife, Mariamne, he later had executed on suspicions that she
was plotting to poison him. Herod’s firstborn son, Antipater II, later returned
from exile and regained his position as his father’s heir… until Herod later
had him executed too under the suspicion that he too intended to murder Herod.
Even the biblical account acknowledges
Herod’s maniac paranoia of rival kings when in Matthew’s gospel we read in 2:16 that Herod killed all the male
babies under two years old in Bethlehem and in all its districts in an attempt
to exterminate Christ, who the wise men called the King of the Jews. Though
Herod built great buildings, he was a cold-hearted killer of children.
So that’s Herod, what a piece of work.
But in the eyes of the world, a somebody. He had power, fame, wealth, pleasure,
success, accomplishments but paranoia, loneliness, guilt, emptiness and a
bitter destiny in hell.
Imagine for a moment what it would be
like to live under the rule of such a tyrannical and unpredictable leader like
Herod. Why, it would mean constant anxiety and turmoil, political chaos
involved in all the subterfuge and espionage and failed assassinations, civil
unrest and worries about the future. Is that really so far off from the state
of our nation today, full of unrest and worry and anxiety and distrust and
disillusionment with our own political leadership and government? Yet this is
precisely the state of affairs that God chose to speak into. And God can just
as surely speak into our country’s unrest and anxiety today.
Did the people of God in the 1st
century need to fear the future? No. God’s plans were still in effect and the
Savior was coming. Do the people of God in the 21st century need to
fear the future, for all the worries and concerns we have today? No. Despite
growing threats abroad, despite incompetent leaders, despite a rapidly
splintering culture, despite rampant sin and immorality, despite Ebola, God’s
plans are still in effect and the Savior is still coming.
The second man in our introduction is
this man Zacharias, who will become the father of John the Baptist. We don’t
know much about him other than what the account here tells us, but we have
every reason to assume that this was a real man, just as real and historical as
the previous character, Herod, set in a time and a place that was a real
historical time and a real historical place.
Zacharias is really a nobody. Who is
he? There aren’t any huge historical records or accomplishments attributed to
him. He didn’t have fame or fortune or power or possessions. He was just one
priest of many priests. And there were many of them. One commentator I read
suggested that there were as many as 20,000 priests at the time of Christ.
Zacharias would just be one of many, one face, one priest among thousands. He
and his wife Elizabeth were just Levitical descendants living out their lives.
So what made Zacharias special?
v.6,
“And they were both righteous before God…”
Though Zacharias and Elizabeth were just two ordinary people, two ordinary
nobodies, the Lord saw them. They lived righteous lives before God even during all the turmoil, upheaval,
unrest and anxiety of their time.
But they had a problem:
v.7,
“…they had no child, because Elizabeth
was barren, and they were both well advanced in years.” Their problem was
they had no children.
Understand that in this period of
time, children meant everything, especially to the Jewish family. The Jews were
incredibly good at mathematics, especially multiplying; remember how they
multiplied so quickly during the time of the Exodus that even Pharaoh became
afraid of how many millions of Hebrews suddenly filled his land? If there’s one
thing the Jews knew how to do, it was have babies. But they understood that the
Messiah would be a human descendant and there could be no dream of being the
woman to bring the Savior into the world if you could not have children. No
children meant the family name could not be perpetuated, another all important
factor for the Jews since heritage meant things like your allotment of land as
promised by God or the ability to serve in the priesthood as in the case of
Zacharias. Barrenness was sometimes even looked upon as a matter of Divine
displeasure.
In a body of text entitled “the Nature
of Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible”, a Joel Baden points out that barrenness or
infertility can be presented in the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) as a
disability. That sounds strange to our modern ears. If we meet a married couple
with no children we hardly think anything about it. Mr. Badan quotes another
writer, Rebecca Raphael, as saying “an understanding of disability as bodily
impairment in the context of social environment reveals that female infertility,
seldom views as a disability in modern post-industrial societies, is the
defining female disability in the Hebrew Bible”.
Without children, Zacharias and
Elizabeth had little hope for support in their old age. And old they were. So
old that they were beyond hope. They were well past the age of child bearing. In
fact, the KJV says that they were “stricken
in years”. They were struck down by time. Parts were well past just
creaking and hurting. Parts were beginning to become inoperable. They were
really up there. There’s suggestion later on in Luke that its possible
Zacharias was already deaf in his old age.
*So we’ve got our opening characters:
The mad genius Herod the Great, a somebody, and the lowly, commonplace priest
Zacharias, a nobody, together with his wife Elizabeth. Though this beautiful
married couple that had been faithful to each other for so many years lived
faithfully to the Lord, they were stricken with age and had no children.
Considering what a sore trial
childlessness would be in the ancient world, why do you think God was allow
that to happen to two people who lived righteous lives before him? Why would
God allow Elizabeth to be barren and bear that shame of an apparent
“disability” in their cultural context for almost an entire lifetime? It would
be possibly the heaviest and hardest of all trials inflicted upon a Jewish
woman of the ancient world.
Why?
Consider the words we heard even this
Sunday out of James 1, “…count it all joy when you fall into various
trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let
patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking
nothing.”
Did Elizabeth’s barrenness test her
and her husband’s faith? No doubt. If it was indeed a trial of the kind of
magnitude that has been suggested to us because of the nature of barrenness in
the ancient world, it would be a sore and grievous trial indeed. But no doubt
Elizabeth and Zacharias were patient people, and their faith had been tested
and refined to such a point that is evidenced by the introduction of their
moral character: that they were both righteous before God. That doesn’t just
happen. It’s not that Zach and Liz were made of sterner stuff than you and I.
No, they were ordinary, mundane human beings made of flesh and blood and
anxiety just like you and me. They had become spiritually mature as a result of
their enduring the incredible trial which God purposed to lay upon them.
Let me ask you: How much do you think
your faith and spiritual maturity is worth to God? Do you think it’s worth a
whole lifetime of suffering? Even if you don’t, God does. You may not think
that faith and maturity is worth even a moment of discomfort, but God puts
things the other way around. He knows that discomfort lasts for a moment in our
lives that pass like vapors, whereas faith has eternal worth. And that means
that your faith and maturity is one of the most important things in the world
to our Lord, so important that He would allow a lifetime of disability in order to secure the kind of righteousness
Zacharias and Elizabeth experienced daily. Something to think about the next
time you happen to be suffering a trial. We are hasty to rush to its end,
forgetting that Elizabeth endured a lifetime of barrenness, yet it wasn’t all
for nothing.
v.8-10,
understand the significance of this event. Because there were so many priests,
even in Zacharias’ division, they had to cast lots in order to determine who
got to do what in serving for their time in the Temple of the Lord. Included
among these duties was the offering of incense upon the golden altar, which
according to Exodus 30:7-8, was to
be offered in the morning and the evening. It’s been noted that because there
were so many priests, some of them may have went their entire lives without ever
having the opportunity to offer this incense at the hours of prayer. And when a
priest was chosen to perform this duty, apparently he could never perform it
again. So this is really a once-in-a-lifetime event.
David Guzik writes in his commentary
on Luke: “By this time, there was an established ritual for the practice. There
were several lots cast to determine who did what at the morning sacrifice. The
first lot determined who would cleanse the altar and prepare its fire; the
second lot determined who would kill the morning sacrifice and sprinkle the
altar, the golden candlestick, and the altar of incense. The third lot
determined who would come and offer incense. This was the most privileged duty;
those who received the first and second lots would repeat their duty at the
evening sacrifice, but not with the third lot. Before dawn, hundreds of
worshippers gathered at the temple. The morning sacrifice began when the
incense priest walked toward the temple, through the outer courts, he struck a
gong-like instrument known as the Magrephah.
At this sound, the Levites assembled and got ready to lead the gathered people
in songs of worship to God. The other two priests chosen by lot that morning
walked up to the temple on each side of the priest chosen to offer the incense.
All three entered the holy place together. One priest set burning coals on the
golden altar; the other priest arranged the incense so it was ready to go. Then
those two priests left the temple, and the incense priest was left all alone in
the holy place. In front of him was the golden altar of incense; it was 18
inches square and 3 feet high. On that small table lay the burning coals, with
little wisps of smoke rising up, ready for the incense. Behind the gold altar
was a huge, thick curtain, and behind that curtain was the Holy of Holies, the
Most Holy Place… As he faced the golden altar of incense, to his right would be
the table of showbread, and to his left would be the golden lampstand, which
provided the only light for the holy place.”
This would mean going into the Temple,
standing before the veil that separated you from the Holy of Holies, where once
the visible glory of God, the Shekinah, had dwelt. This would mean representing
the prayers of your entire nation before God when you offered this incense and
the smoke arose to heaven, representing the prayers of all Israel arising to
God. This would be the closest you could ever get to God’s Presence in the
ancient world in Jewish society, and only if you were a priest like Zacharias.
What he must have felt to stand there, all alone in that vast room before the
huge curtain that separated you from the chamber that represented God’s
Presence on earth! Only one man could ever get closer to God than the point
Zacharias would be at and that would be the high priest, since only the high
priest could go past that veil once a year into the Holy of Holies. But for
Zacharias, this is the closest to God he would ever get in his whole life.
Outside, hundreds of people would be
bowing and kneeling in silent prayer and anticipation while inside the Temple,
Zacharias prayed at the altar of incense, representing a nation before God. A
few verses down, we’re told that the people waited for Zacharias and were
surprised that he took so long in temple.
That had to be awkward. You know when
you’re in a prayer group and there’s that long pause between two people
praying, or when someone takes a long pause in the middle of their prayer and
you’re not sure if they’re finished with their turn yet or not, and you sense
there’s some opening of eyes and glancing around to make sure the whole thing
is still happening or not? I imagine it was kind of like that.
Because it was a ritual, a ceremony of
prayer, everyone knew how long the incense-priest was supposed to take all
alone in the Temple praying. Probably there were ritual prayers that could be
prayed in the correct amount of time. But Zach was taking too long. People were
beginning to shift uncomfortably. Those people praying with their arms
outstretched were beginning to feel their arms getting sore. Those who were
sitting in the front row wished they had sat in the back so they could sneak
out for a convenient restroom break. Others were beginning to open their eyes
to make sure everyone else was still prayer. Maybe even there was some
whispering going around. Maybe they thought old Zach had fallen asleep, since
he was so old. Heck, since he was so old, maybe he died! But who in the world
would want to go in and get him? What was taking him so long anyway? Nobody presumed upon God’s time like
that! Nobody dilly-dallied in the temple!
But remember, Zacharias was a nobody.
Just an average priest. Yet he was having an incredible experience. This
ordinary man was having an extraordinary encounter.
v.11-12,
perhaps Zacharias had been praying with his eyes firmly shut, or perhaps his
prayer shawl had been drawn over his forehead and his eyes, perhaps he sensed a
change in the light, from the dim, dancing candles of the temple menorah to a
strange and dazzling brilliance that suddenly appeared next to him. And when he
looked up, he saw an angel standing beside the altar.
Notice that this is the standard
reaction to seeing an angel: abject terror. We have never been greatly aided by
the conceptions of popular culture, no more so than in the case of angels. Take
all your culture-ingrained ideas of angels as beautiful women with white wings,
as armored blonde men with giant swords and billowing robes, as austere
“guardian” angels, or as cute little “precious moments” babies with
cherub-faces and realize that the Bible gives very few descriptions of what
angelic creatures look like. This is a whole realm, a whole species of life
form that we know extremely little about.
In Theology there is a small and
obscure branch of study known as Angelology, which obviously deals with angels.
Let me give you a crash course in Angelology. What do we know about angels?
Hardly anything at all. There you go. That’s it.
Make as many guesses, educated or not,
and entertain all the flowery, romanticized, pastel-colored thoughts of angels
you want, but really, we hardly have any idea at all about angels, and some
angelic appearances differ widely from very humanlike to very bizarre indeed.
Hebrews describes angels as flaming spirits. Ezekiel described uncanny
four-faced, six-winged angelic creatures. Luke describes the angels at the tomb
of Christ as having shining garments. Revelation, the most angel-filled of all
the New Testament books, itself hardly sheds much more light on angelic beings.
Though they are more prevalent in the
Old Testament than the New, on the whole, angels have very little focus in the
Bible. Very seldom do they take center stage or interact with the people
involved in the story. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist. But it does mean they’re
not the central focus of the biblical accounts. Our modern society has an over
concern with guardian angels and guiding spirits and even their fallen
brethren, demons, but realize that most of the Bible has little to say about
what these angels are like and who they are. The focus of the Bible is not on
angels or demons, but on Jesus Christ the Son of God, who is immensely more
powerful, more beautiful, more personal and more important than angels.
So we’re given no description here.
Whatever this angel appeared to look like to Zacharias, he did give him quite a
shock. Since this angel gave old Zach a feeling of awe without making him say
“aww”, we can theorize that this angel at least did not look like a cute, fat
baby with wings. The real biblical angels always freaked people out.
What the angel says to him indicates
the fear Zacharias felt, but these words communicated to this one old man
represent the Breaking of the long Silence, the first time in 400 years that
God has a direct message for His people.
v.13,
what do you think Zacharias prayed for?
Do you think that this good and
righteous man was there before the Presence of God in front of that altar
representing his nation but thinking only to pray for himself and his own
problems? I think he was praying the fervent prayer that was on the heart of
his people in that day: crying out for the oppression of the Jews under the
Romans, crying out for the Savior, their Messiah, to come into the world and
save them. So important was the situation that perhaps Zacharias’ own problems
were far from his mind. And besides, was Zacharias at this point even hoping
for a son anymore, an heir, one to carry on his name after he was gone? He knew
he was old.
But look at what the angel tells him:
His prayers have been heard, therefore Elizabeth is going to have a son named
John. And that son, old Zacharias, is going to be the forerunner and herald of
the Messiah, the one who will precede and announce the coming of the Savior to
the world!
By solving the problem of an entire
nation, God in His infinite wisdom was going to solve the problem of one little
old man and one little old woman. They were going to have a son who would
announce the Messiah.
We’ll stop here for this week and have
a few final thoughts in closing:
Consider what we learn here about
prayer. First, in the case of
Zacharias, when was the last time you think he had prayed for a son? Must have
been years ago. It must have felt like a lifetime since he had last poured out
all his fervency and pleading and passion and wishing before God that the Lord
would grant him a son. Probably he had given up praying for a son a long time
ago. He was old now, stricken in years. From every human perspective, there was
no more hope that any of the prayers of his youth would ever be answered.
But note, ladies and gentlemen, that
God still answered him. It pleased the Lord to wait till long after any hope
had passed, but He answered the pleas of this righteous man and his wife, and
they would have their son.
One of the greatest disciplines
necessary for great prayer is this: Perseverance in Prayer. We hardly know
anything about perseverance except for a few trite motivational posters scattered
across the office cubicles of America. We hardly understand what perseverance
is in our world of instant noodles, fast food, quick divorce, 3-easy-steps to
success and shortcuts to fortune. For us, waiting a mere two and a half minutes
for our microwaveable dinners seems like an intolerable wait.
Zacharias and Elizabeth waited a
lifetime for a child and had given up on waiting, but God still answered the
prayers of their bygone days. Let that encourage you and I not to give up in
prayer simply because it seems to us like the time has passed for them to
possibly be fulfilled. We must pray with perseverance. We have to pray with
patience. It may seem to us living in the moment that God is simply turning a
deaf ear, that he seems uncaring about all our concerns and worries, that he
doesn’t seem to care about our own cares for a job, for a car, for a school,
for a future mate, for any of the things we have prayed for and yet found
unanswered for a long time. Is that not
what Zach and Liz would have thought, too? Yet look at how God answered their
prayers. Don’t give up in praying.
Secondly,
we assume that Zacharias, being a righteous man, did not take advantage of his
position there at the altar of incense to intercede and pray only for himself
and his own problems. He went in there to represent the nation, his neighbors,
his countrymen, his family, and not just himself. Though his own prayer was
answered, it took into consideration all the woes of those around him.
Zacharias’ problems would be solved by solving the problems of his nation.
Realize that righteous prayer is
Selfless Prayer. Let me say right away that it is perfectly alright, perfectly
fine, to pray for yourself. Please do so. I hope you do. Hey, you might be the
only one praying for yourself sometimes. But don’t let all your prayer time be
consumed with selfish thoughts. What are the things that we “want” in
comparison to the needs of others?
This kind of self-less prayer, praying
for others, is known as Intercession. It comes from Latin words meaning
“go-between”. Intercession is literally praying for somebody else, going
between them and God, not to interrupt anything they have with God, but to
strengthen that bond, in a sense to take a hold of God’s hand and to take a
hold of that other person’s hand and put them hand in hand together.
Intercession is to bring them both together.
That’s what Zacharias was doing,
standing between his people and God in order to pray for God’s blessing upon
his people on their behalf. This is what we should be doing. Again, nothing
wrong with praying for yourself, but we give ourselves only a few minutes of
prayer each day, perhaps each week, and we can’t waste these valuable moments
of stillness in total self-absorption.
"The greatest thing anyone can do
for God or man is pray," writer S.D. Gordon. It’s not some mere sentiment
to say and mean to someone that you
will pray for them. It is to say everything meaningful to them. Remember others
in your prayers.
Thirdly,
finally, prayer should be Anticipating.
Bringing this study around full
circle, remember who Zacharias was. He was no Herod. They didn’t even call him
Zacharias the great. He was just a man, a good man, but a very old one. He was
just a nobody. Yet God purposed that this one old nobody would live a life that
set into motion a course of events that would lead up to the announcement of
the Messiah to the world! Zacharias plays a key role, a vital role, really,
since without his tender lovin’, mama Elizabeth would never have brought John
the Baptist into the world.
Sometimes it seems as if we pray in a
very ritualistic way. We know what things to say. We know how to say them. We
know how to begin and how to finish. We pray that God would “bless”, “get us
through the day or week”, “help so-and-so with such-and-such” “in Jesus name,
Amen”. But where’s the anticipation? Where’s the expectation that God wants to
take nobodies just like old Zacharias and do something spectacular with them?
We should pray in such a way that
we’re clearly looking forward to what God might intend to do. Every church
meeting, every bible study, every prayer meeting, every moment of fellowship is
not just another church meeting, bible study, prayer meeting, etc. Every day we
live is not just another day.
I can almost imagine God just waiting
for us to notice Him, to notice that He wants to act in our lives in some
opportunity, only we’re too busy worrying about just “getting by”, just
“getting through the week” to let Him.
Let us pray with anticipation, with
excitement, with expectation of the things God would want to do in us and among
us and through us. Pray with suspense! If God can use an old man beyond hope
like Zacharias, he can use you and I.
Andrew A. Bonar, one of the saints of
God, once said in issuing a powerful challenge: “O brother, pray; in spite of
Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray;
rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper - and sleep too - than
not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The
Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber."
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