God Has Remembered!--Christmas 2012 First-Person Sermon

(Note: this sermon is a first-person sermon in which I speak as if I am the character from the Biblical story. In this sermon, I spoke as Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist).

            Baruch Adonai Elohe Yisrael! Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for allowing me to be with you today. My name is Zechariah, which means “God has remembered.” What an appropriate message for the story of my life! Many of you probably don’t know me very well, but you probably know my son John, who became known as John the Baptist because of his ministry. I am so proud of my boy, and I am honored that God chose to preserve the story of his birth in Luke 1. More than anything, that story is a testimony to the faithfulness of God, which teaches us that He will always keep His promises. That is the lesson that I hope you will take with you today.

            As Luke records in his Gospel, my story took place during the days that King Herod reigned over Judea. Our nation was part of the Roman Empire at that time, but with such a vast territory, the emperor needed people to govern for him, so he placed Herod over the land of Israel and gave him the honorary title of “king.” In your language today, you might say that we had a love/hate relationship with Herod. He made some extensive renovations to enhance the beauty of the Temple in Jerusalem. As a priest, I was very happy to see the Temple maintained, but Herod only did these things to take attention away from his atrocities. He was a blood-thirsty man, and if even his own wives or children appeared to be a threat to his power, he did not hesitate to have them executed. It was said at that time that it was better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son!

            With such a man in power, you can imagine that we were dying to hear something—anything—from the Lord just to know that He hadn’t forgotten about us. He had not spoken to us for 400 years, since the time of the prophet Malachi. Now, He had clearly been at work to preserve our nation because He did some miraculous things for us during those 400 years. In fact, those events are what Jewish people today celebrate during the holiday of Hanukkah. But we wanted to hear from Him as in the days of old to have that personal contact with Him again. Little did I know that God was planning to speak to us again, and He was planning to start the conversation with me!

            Now, I am rather embarrassed to repeat this, but Luke records that my wife Elizabeth and I “were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord (Luke 1:6).” Please don’t get the idea that we were perfect, because we were far from it. We were simply careful to follow God’s commands, and when we failed, we were careful to make amends as the Law of Moses called us to do. We just loved God for all that He had done for our people and for the promises He had made about things that were still to come.

            We did carry a tremendous sorrow in our hearts, however, because God had never blessed us with a child, and at the time that Luke picks up our story, we were well beyond our child-bearing years. If our barrenness wasn’t bad enough by itself, we also had to deal with the attitudes of our friends and family. Since the Scriptures said that children were a gift from God, our people reasoned that if you had no children, then God must have been punishing you for something. We should have known better from the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Samuel’s mother, Hannah. They were all godly people who were childless for a long time, so we should have known better, but you know how a mindset can become entrenched once it takes root in a culture. It was devastating to deal with other people’s assumptions that we were hiding some kind of terrible sin because we had no children.

            That was the greatest sorrow of my life, but the greatest honor of my life was serving as a priest in God’s Temple. At that time, there were far more priests than were needed in the Temple on a daily basis, so apart from the major festivals like Passover when we were all on duty, we were on a rotation to work in the Temple for two weeks each year. Even with that schedule, there were still more of us on hand than were absolutely necessary, so for some of the tasks that we all wanted to perform, we would decide who got to do them by casting lots, which would be like rolling a pair of dice, or what you do today when you flip a coin or draw straws.

            One of the tasks which every priest longed to perform was entering the Temple to burn incense at the time of the regular morning and evening sacrifices, and on one of the days of my rotation, I was chosen for this task! I could hardly believe it when my name was called. This was literally a once-in-a-lifetime honor for a priest, and now my day had come! I was so excited I could hardly remember the prayer I was supposed to recite in the Temple, so started to rehearse it in my mind. Some of the other priests helped me prepare the spices and put on the proper clothing, and before I knew it, I was opening the door to enter the House of God!

            Normally, this process did not take long. The priest would stoke the fire that was burning under the altar of incense, and then he would cast the spices onto the altar and come back out to speak a blessing over the people who were gathered outside to pray. But in God’s plan, this day would not be an ordinary day.

            I knew I shouldn’t delay once I entered the Temple, but I almost couldn’t help myself. I wanted to take in all the sights of this place where few people would ever set foot, but I did my best to stay focused on the task. As I walked toward the altar, I was looking down at my feet so I wouldn’t trip and drop the spices, so you can imagine my shock when I came to the altar and looked up, and there, just beside the altar, was a magnificent being clothed in white, looking at me. I was so startled I almost dropped the spices after all of my careful walking!

            A dozen thoughts ran through my mind before this man spoke. Who was this? I knew instantly that he was no mere man, but I had never heard other priests speak of angelic visitors in the Temple. More than anything I was just frightened. Perhaps God really was displeased with me for some reason, and He had sent an angel to do something about it.

            But then he spoke to me and said, “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.” Now, if you had asked me to guess what an angel might say to me, that would not have been on my list! He said my prayer had been heard and my wife would have a son, but I must confess, I hadn’t prayed that prayer in a long time. Years had passed since we last prayed for a child, but God had heard that prayer, and now, in His perfect time, He was granting us what we had asked.

            But then, the angel went on to tell me that my child would have a very special role to play in God’s plan. He said John would be great before the Lord, and would be filled with the Holy Spirit even while he was still in the womb! And he would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare people for the Messiah’s arrival. Those were words from the prophet Malachi! The last promise God made to us before 400 years of silence was that He would send Elijah to us to prepare us for the Lord’s coming, and now the angel was telling me that in some way, my son would fulfill that prophecy.

            I could hardly believe what I was hearing, and I hate to say it, but I didn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Elizabeth and I have a son? We were too old; it just seemed impossible. I hope you will not judge me too harshly for my lack of faith, and most of all I hope you will not follow my example and doubt what the Lord has said. I would be happy if my story inspires greater faith in you, even if that means my error will be told over and over.

            After I expressed my doubt, the angel identified himself as Gabriel, the messenger of God. I remembered him from the book of Daniel, and already I began to realize the error of my ways. I had asked for a sign to prove the angel’s word, and I got one alright! He told me I would unable to speak until the day that his message began to come true, and from that moment I lost my ability to speak.

            By that time, I had already been in the Temple longer than normal, which created a stir among the people outside, so imagine their surprise when I came out and couldn’t tell them what took me so long! After numerous attempts at making signs, they finally figured out that something miraculous had happened (I always could imitate wings pretty well, so I think that finally tipped them off that I saw an angel!). It wasn’t until I finally got my hands on a writing tablet that I could explain things in detail.

            Well, since you’ve probably heard of my son, John, you know that everything played out just like the angel said it would. Elizabeth became pregnant, and during her pregnancy we received a visit from her young cousin Mary, who told us about her own miraculous conception. How incredible it was that God had chosen our family to bear not only the Messiah’s forerunner, but the Messiah himself! We were not an important family. We had no wealth, no power. My wife and I had the stigma of being childless, and Mary’s family was from Nazareth in Galilee. I think your term for them today would be “hillbillies.” Yet God chose us for such a special honor. It just goes to show you that God doesn’t look at people through the same kind of prejudice that we are tempted to use.

            When our son was born, we named him John, as the angel had instructed me. With that step of obedience, I regained my ability to speak, and all of our neighbors were amazed by everything that was taking place. As Luke records, they all began to wonder, “What then will this child be?” And who should be empowered to speak up and answer their question but me—the one who had been unable to speak for so long! The Holy Spirit filled me, and allowed me to give God’s commentary on the situation.

            It was only proper to begin with a statement of praise to God, so I said, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” The Old Testament prophets just loved that image of a horn, because for animals who had them, horns were the means of victory over enemies. In the Messiah, this is exactly what God would provide for us. And the Lord was doing this work through a descendent of David, just as He had said.

            The Lord was being true to His word, so I continued: “as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant.” The Lord gave me just the right words, and how I smiled at that word “remember.” That was the meaning of my name, and every time my name was spoken, it was a proclamation that God remembers! He remembers His holy covenant, or His promises to His people.

            And where did His covenant begin? With “the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” God’s promises to my people began with our ancestor Abraham. He promised Abraham a whole nation of descendants, and He told him that his descendants would be enslaved, but that He would save them. My people had to endure 400 years of slavery before they were delivered, but God remembered His promise.

            Later, He told David that one of his descendants would be the Messiah, but we had to wait 1,000 years before Jesus was born. And remember, when Gabriel spoke to me, his message ended a period of 400 years of silence from God. It is so easy to think that God forgets because He doesn’t work by our timetable, but my name—my very life—is a testimony that God remembers His promises, and He will not fail to fulfill them.

            Finally, the Lord moved me to speak about what my child would become: “and you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” I remember thinking about the verse from Isaiah 40 that my son would claim for his own: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord!’” And here is why he would do it: “to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.” Everyone who knew the Old Testament understood that our greatest need was to be forgiven of our sins. My people had no enemies but those who were allowed to trouble us because of our own sins against the Lord. That’s why God empowered the Amalekites and the Philistines and the Edomites and the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Persians and the Greeks and now the Romans. Above all else we needed a final sacrifice, one which could wipe our slate clean before the Lord forever, and we knew that somehow the Messiah would provide it.

            This salvation would come “because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” How lost we were—like travelers wandering in the dark! But the Messiah would bring light to show us the way, to lead us safely through the valley of the shadow of death.

            How I wish I could have seen more of His earthly life with my own eyes, but I passed away before His ministry began. But I know what He did because I’ve seen Him in heaven. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! He provided the final sacrifice for sin through His death on the cross, and He rose from the grave to display His victory over sin, to provide forgiveness for all who will acknowledge their sinfulness to God and accept the payment that Jesus has provided.

            I know that as I speak to you today, the world has been waiting almost 2,000 years for Jesus to fulfill His promise to return. But let my story remind you that God remembers! He is not forgetful; He does not drag His feet. He is patient with us to give us time to repent. Do not doubt the Lord’s Word; just think of my name and be reminded that God has remembered!