God Always,
Always Hears Our Prayers
Luke 1:8-20
Dr. Larry D. Thorson
Two things I discovered in studying our passage of
Scripture for today: one, never consider a prayer that you offer to God dead
even though the likelihood of it being fulfilled has diminished. Two, you never know what God is going to do
next.
The account begins in Luke 1:5 which says “In the time of Herod king of
“But”
when you see that little word you know there’s a condition. Last summer I was helping our college student
daughter buy a car. My in-laws had given
us a $5,000 inheritance check and we decided to loan it to her to buy a car
after her car broke down. I always buy
new cars and keep them practically forever and wasn’t used to the used car
market nor of how little an amount of car one gets for $5,000. I went up to
If you were shopping for a priest Zechariah had the
perfect credentials. Born in the right
family, married a daughter of a priest from the right family, it even says he observed
all the Lord’s commandments. They had
done it all right except for one little “but”.
“But they had no children, because
You
might say how is that a flaw, they couldn’t help it? Ah yes, that’s what science tells us, but
that’s not what amateur theologians believed.
To bear children was considered a blessing from God. So the opposite of not being able to bear
children implied that something was wrong between you and God. That was especially bad if you were a
priest. I mean are you going to trust
your spiritual welfare to someone cursed by God? That’s what childlessness meant to
Zechariah.
This
is the kind of situation that eats at your core. It’s painful.
You question where you went wrong.
You question what you could have done differently. “Why, God did you allow this to happen? I was faithful to you, what more could I have
done?”
Then
of course we’ve all been on the other side, like the amateur theologians
throwing stones. “The reason their kids
rebelled is because they didn’t spend time with them when they were younger.” “The reason that happened to them is because
they didn’t tithe.” “The reason that
happened to them is because they were cocky.”
But it’s different when you’re sitting where Zechariah and Elizabeth
were.
Zechariah could have said, “I can’t be a priest any
longer. I don’t have the blessing of
God” but he didn’t. We continue in verse
8 “Once when Zechariah’s division was on
duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according
to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn
incense. And when the time for the
burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.” He continued doing exactly what God called
him to do.
In those days they broke the priesthood into 24 divisions
of priests who lived throughout
In order to be fair they compiled a list of every priest
who had had the opportunity to go into the Holy of Holies and the rest were
thrown into a lottery. They would draw
straws to see which priest would have this privilege.
You have to understand the significance of being chosen
to do this. You had to be a Jew but not
just any Jew one born to the family of Aaron, Moses’ brother. Secondly you had to be faithful to live a
righteous life. If he had fooled around
on
Zechariah was just an ordinary, faithful priest unknown
to most of the world when he won the opportunity to light the incense. You can imagine his thrill when he was
packing his bags to leave his little village to travel to
Normally it didn’t take very long and the priest came out
refreshed and thrilled with the opportunity.
Something he would remember all of his life. But that was pretty much it. Kind of like going to church. It’s nice, you feel better, you might get a
little spiritual high and you know that somewhere within an hour you’re going
to be out. Something highly unusual
happened when Zechariah went in that day.
We read in v.11 “Then
an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar
of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he
was startled and was gripped with fear.” I don’t see what’s so scary about seeing an
angel. I don’t remember the last time I
read about a grizzly angel mauling a man.
“But the angel said
to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard.” Notice he didn’t say “prayers.” He didn’t say “Zechariah your prayers have
been heard.” He said his prayer had been
heard. What prayer? His prayer for a long life? His prayer for his people? His prayer to go to heaven? The angel said “Your wife Elizabeth will bear
you a son, and you are to give him the name John.”
You’ve got to
understand how ridiculous that message would have sounded to Zechariah. The oldest woman to give birth that we know
of was 67 year old Romanian Adriana Iliescu in January of this year. She gave birth to twins after nine years of
fertility treatments of which one survived.
Then
the angel went on to describe what this child would be like in verse 14. “He
will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.
He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled
with the Holy Spirit even from birth.
Many of the people of
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I doubt that Zechariah heard anything after
the angel said “Your wife Elizabeth will
bear you a son...” I picture him
standing there with his mouth hanging open.
“My wife was going to what?”
The first words out of his mouth after the angel gave him
the news was “How can I be sure of
this? I am an old man and my wife is
well along in years.” Guys I want
you to notice the sensitivity of Zechariah to his wife, this was a smart
man. Notice that while he called himself
an old man, he never called his wife old.
She was just well along in years. Actually that was a direct quote from
Genesis. That’s exactly what Abraham
said when an angel told him that his “well along in years” wife was going to
finally produce a child.
I like how the angel responded to that question. Zechariah said “I am an old man” and the
angel responds in v.19 “I am Gabriel.”
Big deal that you’re an old man.
I am Gabriel. “I stand in the presence of God, and I have
been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to
speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which
will come true at their proper time.”
That’s all we know about the encounter with the
angel. We read in v.21 “Meanwhile, the people were waiting for
Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. When he came out, he could not speak to
them. They realized he had seen a vision
in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.”
If we had been there we wouldn’t have known what had
taken place inside the temple but we would have known that there was an
encounter with God between our priest and our God.
Two things keep sticking out in my mind from this
study. Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed
for a son. We don’t know if they kept
praying or if they stopped praying when they got old. That’s not important. What’s important is that God needed a
messenger to prepare the people for the coming of his son Jesus Christ and he
chose to get one by blessing a faithful couple who couldn’t have children.
What’s important when we have a problem that won’t go
away is that God hears our prayer. The
name John means “God has been gracious.”
God sent his only begotten son that whoever believes in him may have
eternal life. He was gracious to us when
we didn’t deserve it.
The second thing that stands out to me is that you never,
ever know when God is going to suddenly work.
Why then? Why in the holiest of
holy places in the temple? Why after he
got so old? Why couldn’t this have
happened when he was a young man. Why,
why, why. We simply don’t know God’s
specific plan. But what’s important is
that God works. He may seem really quiet
right now in your life, and he may be blessing people all around you. He may be blessing other churches around
us. We may even feel like this faith is
kind of dead. But if we can learn
anything from Zechariah and Elizabeth it is to keep on marching in the
direction he once headed us. Keep on
marching doing those things that we know he’s called us to do. If nothing happens while we’re here on earth
we know we’ll meet him on the other side because of Jesus Christ. So don’t stop praying that prayer. God always, always hears our prayers.