Sermon

Introduction: Brothers and sisters, today we come to the opening of Luke's Gospel. Before we talk about this passage, I want to ask you a question first: when was the last time you heard God speak to you, as though he were standing right in front of you?

Not “when did you last read your Bible”, and not “when did you last pray”, but this: when did you last truly sense God speaking to you through the Scriptures? When did God last step into your life by his Spirit and turn it around and make it new? If we are honest, most of us would probably say, “It has been a long time.”

And that is exactly the spiritual climate of the time when Luke 1:1–25 was written. After the prophet Malachi, it seemed that God fell silent for four hundred years, because from the close of the Old Testament to the opening of the New, several centuries passed in which God gave no revelation through a prophet to be recorded in Scripture. And the Jews, who were God's own people, were waiting day after day — under the iron heel of the Roman Empire, under the tyranny of King Herod, inside a religion of mere forms. God had sent prophet after prophet, one after another, and yet their lives did not seem to improve in the slightest, and God's promises seemed as far off as ever. Faced with the word of God, after long years of waiting, should they still hold firmly to God's promise? And then one day, in the temple in Jerusalem, while an old priest was burning incense, an angel stood in front of him. God's revelation had come again.

This is what Luke 1:1–25 wants us to see. It is not a “prequel to the Christmas story”, and it is not an interesting anecdote about the birth of John the Baptist. It is the opening of Luke's Gospel in the New Testament, where God opens his mouth to speak to his people once more. And this time, by God's grace, the Spirit of God opened the ears and eyes of those he had chosen. And the first thing God says is: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.”

Today we are going to use this passage to answer three questions:

·       On what grounds do we believe these things are true? (vv. 1–7)

·       In what kind of situation does God speak? (vv. 8–17)

·       When God speaks, how should we respond? (vv. 18–25)

You could say that the preface to Luke's Gospel is one of the keys to understanding the whole Bible. Luke the author is not doing “religious literature”; he is doing historical investigation. Pastor Keller once said: “If Christianity is false, it is not worth five minutes of your time; if it is true, it is worth your whole life.” Luke wrote this book precisely so that his readers — that is, people in every generation, you and me included — would know: it is not made up. Today we are going to examine this preface together.

1. The foundation of certainty: God speaks in history (Luke 1:1–7)

Verses 1 to 4, these four verses, are the “statement of method” for the whole of Luke's Gospel. Luke the author was not an apostle. He was a Gentile, a doctor, and a travelling companion of the apostle Paul. By the time Luke wrote this book, roughly 30 to 40 years had passed since Jesus ascended. So the question comes: on what basis does he write like this? And on what basis do we believe any of it?

Luke the author answers that question himself. He gives us a threefold chain of evidence:

First, “Many have undertaken to compile a narrative” — that is to say, he is not the only one. “Many” tells us that by that time there were already several accounts of Jesus in circulation. Mark's Gospel had probably already been written, and the source material behind Matthew's Gospel was circulating too. In other words, Luke the author was not inventing stories in a vacuum. He was writing within a tradition that already had a considerable body of documents.

Second, there were “the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word” — that is to say, there were plenty of eyewitnesses at that time. Luke says the way these things he records were handed on was this: those who saw with their own eyes passed them on to “us” first. In the Jewish tradition, the oral transmission of eyewitness testimony was an extremely careful business; they were trained to remember a rabbi's words word for word. To put it another way, the gospel is not a legend from several centuries later; it is the testimony of eyewitnesses within thirty years.

Third, Luke himself “carefully investigated everything from the very first”. Luke the author is like an investigative reporter. He interviewed Mary, Zechariah's family, and Jesus' disciples, and he may well have gone to Jerusalem himself and checked the temple records. What is more, Luke wrote “in an orderly sequence”. He did not patch things together at random; he arranged and composed this Gospel in an orderly way.

In this passage of Luke's Gospel today we can see that Luke the author uses the form of “historical writing”. He marks the time (“In the days of King Herod”), the place (“Judea”), the person (“Zechariah”) and the event (“burning incense”). This is not the kind of mythical fable we so often talk about — “Once upon a time there was a mountain…” This is the method of a chronicle, the kind that says “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar”.

What is my purpose in telling you all this? Or to put it another way, why does any of this matter? Because Christianity is not a system of “spiritual philosophy”; it is a series of historical events. If Jesus did not really enter our human history; if Jesus was not born, did not die and did not rise again in a particular time, a particular place and a particular culture, then our faith is empty. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.”

I once had a friend, a primary school teacher, and when the conversation came round to Christianity he said: “Christianity is just a rehash of ancient myth; there is no real difference between it and Greek mythology.” So I showed him Luke 1:1–4, so that he could see: what he was saying is not the case. Luke the author was a historical investigator. He interviewed many eyewitnesses, he examined the historical documents, and he wrote in an orderly sequence. That is to say, Christianity is built on historical facts that can be examined. And after that I went on inviting this friend of mine to read Luke's Gospel with me, and then I asked him: “If you think this is myth, point out to me which part is fiction, and give me your evidence.”

In a church where I served many years ago there was a couple who wanted to pass their faith on to their child, but the child kept asking them: “How do you know the Bible is true?” Later this couple shared with us that they answered their child like this: “Luke the author was a doctor. He examined a great deal of evidence like a detective, and only then did he write this book. He tells us this was not made up; it is what the eyewitnesses said. So we can believe it.” That is not just handing down “parental authority”; that is handing down “historical evidence”.

And notice that right at the beginning of Luke's Gospel a particular man is mentioned; his name is “Theophilus”. The name means “one who loves God”, or “friend of God”. This man may have been an official in the Roman government of the day, or he may have been a wealthy patron. Either way, he is the person Luke is writing to. But I think he also stands for every person in every generation who is looking for certainty; every person who wants to know, “Is this actually true?”

This man may already have come to faith, but his faith needed strengthening; or he may have still been enquiring, needing evidence to convince himself. And Luke's purpose in writing is not to “make people feel good”, but to “make people know for certain”. There was a believer who said in a sharing time that whenever he went through a low point in life he would often doubt, “Is what I believe actually true?” — so much so that his faith was always on the point of collapse. Not because he did not love God, but because he had never really “known” the one he believed in. And Luke 1:4 says: “so that you may know the certainty of the things about which you have been instructed.” So whether it is for this brother or for anyone else who is struggling in the faith, what we need to do is not to wrestle away inside our emotions, but to go back to the facts of history — to examine, to read, to talk with older believers — and let knowing for certain become the foundation of our faith again.

So this is also one of the themes of the whole of Luke's Gospel: Christianity is not blind superstition; it is commitment based on evidence. You may examine it, you may ask questions, you may doubt, but in the end all the evidence points to one thing: this is true. Christianity is not myth; it is history. With the rigour of an investigative reporter Luke tells us that these things are “certain” — historical events that can be examined and can be preached. And our faith is built on facts, not on feelings.

Then in verses 5 to 7 we see that Luke the author does not say this book records “a golden age of peace”; he says “In the days of King Herod of Judea”. So who was Herod? The historian Josephus records that King Herod was an extraordinarily cruel ruler. To keep hold of his own power he killed his wife Mariamne, three of his sons, his mother-in-law and his brother-in-law. Even the emperor Augustus once said: “It is better to be Herod's pig than his son.” Before he died this man also ordered a large number of nobles to be killed, simply to make sure the whole nation would mourn for him.

And it is against exactly this dark background that God begins to do something new. And our God very often does great things in dark times. Back when Israel was still enslaved in Egypt, God raised up Moses; in the chaos of the days of the judges, God raised up Samuel; when the whole of Israel was carried off to Babylon, God raised up Daniel; under Roman oppression, God sent John the Baptist and our Lord Jesus. Our God has gone on working right up to this day.

In verse 5 we see that Luke the author mentions two people: Zechariah the priest and his wife, whose name was Elizabeth, a descendant of Aaron. These two people carry a double identity:

First, in verse 6 we see that “Both were righteous in God's sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord.” That does not mean they were flawless; it means that before God they were faithful, godly and obedient.

But they had no children. You have to understand that in the Jewish culture of the time, childlessness was a deep disgrace, and people would assume it was God's punishment. That is to say, they were probably talked about by others, pitied by relatives, and even doubted by themselves. And in verse 7 Luke the author adds one more line: “and both of them were well along in years.” That tells us these two were not at an age where there is still hope; they were at an age that was already past childbearing.

So we can see that the people God chooses are not necessarily people whose lives run smoothly. Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous, but they had an “impossibility” that was never resolved in their lifetime: no children. This tells us: godliness does not mean the absence of pain, and it does not mean everything goes well. Perhaps you and I can be faithful before God and still have one “no children” of our own — something we have prayed about for decades and never had answered. On this trip back to China to serve, I got talking with a brother at one of the churches. This brother is faithful in his work and works very hard as well, but he has gone ten years running without a promotion, while colleagues who joined the company after him have all gone past him. He shared with me that he often feels humiliated and always feels that he has been forgotten by God. So I used Zechariah's situation and said to him: your worth is not determined by whether or not you have “children” — that is, career success. In the eternal record, what God remembers is “the righteous”, not “successful people”. And so he can rest while he waits, knowing that God has seen his faithfulness.

In fact there are often quite a few couples in the church who have served in the church for many years, and yet their children are rebellious and far from God. These brothers and sisters often feel, “What have I done wrong, that God should punish me like this?” And our passage today lets us see this: Zechariah and Elizabeth did not lack children because they had sinned. As parents, what we need to do is to hand our children's salvation over to God, go on serving faithfully, and trust that God has his own time and his own way of stepping into our children's lives.

So from these first seven verses we see this: our faith has a foundation of certainty — God speaks in history, and he speaks even in the darkest of times.

2. The initiative of the promise: God speaks into the impossible (Luke 1:8–17)

In the priestly system of Israel at that time there were 24 divisions of priests, and each division had over a thousand priests. They took turns serving in the temple, and each day a priest would go into the sanctuary to burn incense. Because there were so many priests, many of them only ever had one opportunity in their whole life to go into the sanctuary and burn incense. It was decided by lot.

Just imagine how Zechariah felt at that moment. He was already old, and he had waited many years for this opportunity. He walks into the sanctuary, and there stand the golden lampstand, the table of the bread of the Presence, the golden altar of incense. He is to burn incense before God, representing all Israel praying to God. Outside, the people are praying; inside, he is the only one there. You could say this is the one glorious moment of his life. And in that most holy, most longed-for moment, the angel appeared.

And the first thing God says to Zechariah through the angel is not a rebuke and not a command, but “Do not be afraid”. These four words appear countless times in the Bible: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Mary, the shepherds, the disciples — they all heard God say these words to them. And we notice this: every time God steps into a person's life, that person's first reaction is fear. Why? Because the presence of holiness makes a person aware of how small and how unworthy they are.

But the first thing God says is comfort: “Do not be afraid.” That is not commanding you not to have feelings; it is a promise: “I have come, not to destroy you, but to bless you.”

And then comes the central announcement of this passage, in verse 13: “your prayer has been heard.” Zechariah had probably already given up praying for a child, because he and his wife were both old and it was no longer possible. And yet here God says: “your prayer has been heard.” And this lets us see the initiative of grace, which is this: God had already heard Zechariah's prayer at the very time when Zechariah had no faith.

Notice the tense here: it is not that his prayer will be heard, and not that it is heard now, but that it has been heard. This means that the prayer Zechariah prayed many years ago has been in God's ears all along. God had not forgotten, God had not overlooked it; God was simply waiting for his own time.

Sometimes God delays his answer, not because he is not listening, but because he is preparing a greater blessing. God's timing is not our timing, but his promise will certainly come to pass. Zechariah asked for a son; God gave him a prophet. He asked for a happy family; God gave him the renewal of a nation. God's answers are always beyond what we ask or imagine.

And this child God gives has a holy mission. In verses 14 to 17 the angel describes John the Baptist's mission: “There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth” — that is to say, John the Baptist's birth is a source of joy. “He will be great in the sight of the Lord” — this is not great by the world's standard, but great in God's eyes. And he “will never drink wine or beer” — John the Baptist is a Nazirite; he has been set apart as holy. And it says he “will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother's womb” — so we can see that the Spirit's work began before John the Baptist was even born. And then, “he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah” — that is to say, John the Baptist is an end-time prophet, calling people to repent as Elijah did. And so his task is “to turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous” — which is in fact the fulfilment of Malachi 4:6, and the promise of end-time renewal.

Another important task of John the Baptist is “to make ready for the Lord a prepared people”. So we can see that John the Baptist's mission is to prepare, not to complete. And the one he points to is the one greater than himself: Jesus. There was a brother who had served in the church for many years and always felt that he had no gifts and that his service bore no fruit. Every time he saw other people leading many to faith, and other people sharing God's word with great power, he felt inferior. And then God used the example of John the Baptist to let him see this: John the Baptist's mission was to prepare the way for the Lord; he was not the final main character, he was the one who opened the road. That is to say, this brother's service may not be standing on the platform but quietly preparing — praying for others, supporting from behind, showing hospitality in love. These things matter just as much, because what God values is not how big the results are, but faithful preparation.

God gave Zechariah a son in order to give the world a prophet who would prepare the way for the Lord. So we can see that God's blessing is never only there to make you and me feel good; it is there to make you and me a blessing. We often ask God to give us a better job, and in the end God may well give us one. But what do we do with that job? Just live a more comfortable life? Or use that job to be an instrument of God's kingdom? Zechariah's story tells us that God's blessings very often have a larger purpose. Perhaps God gives you a good job so that you can be a witness in the workplace; perhaps God gives you a child so that the child may be an instrument in God's hand; perhaps God gives you a restored relationship so that you can go and serve those whose relationships are broken. Brothers and sisters, let us not stop at “God, you have to come and bless me.” The question we should keep asking is: “God, what have you blessed me for?”

God's promise is not limited by the laws of nature, and it is not limited by our timetables. Very often, God speaks into the impossible. He says his words “will be fulfilled in their proper time” — and so they certainly will be.

3. The grace of silence: God speaks in the waiting (Luke 1:18–25)

Zechariah was a righteous man, a priest, a man in the middle of serving in the temple. But after he heard the angel's words, his first reaction was doubt. Verse 18: “‘How can I know this?’ Zechariah asked the angel. ‘For I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.’” Zechariah's doubt is not “I do not believe in God”; it is “I believe, but I cannot understand how this could happen.” He says, “How can I know this?” — so we can see he is asking for evidence, for a sign.

So Zechariah's doubt is not that he does not believe God exists; it is that he does not believe God's promise can come true in his own situation. And that is exactly the problem most of us have, is it not? We believe God can part the Red Sea, but we dare not believe God can sort out my marriage. We believe God raised Jesus from the dead, but we dare not believe God can get me free of that bad habit. We believe God created the universe and everything in it, but we dare not believe God can make someone of my age bear fruit.

And then the angel answers Zechariah. In these two verses, Luke 1:19–20, we see that the angel's answer has three parts. First, the angel states who he is: “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God.” The implication is: I am not just any spirit; I am a messenger who comes from before God's throne. My words carry the highest authority.

Then the angel announces how certain the promise is: his words “will be fulfilled in their proper time”. Not that they may be fulfilled, not that they might perhaps be fulfilled, but that they will be fulfilled. God's promise does not depend on how great your faith or mine is; it depends on God's own faithfulness. And finally, the angel gives a sign: silence. Verse 20: “You will become silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place.”

So why do we say the silence is a sign? Many people quite naturally see being unable to speak as a punishment. But theologically, this silence is in fact a sign of grace. Over these last few weeks we have seen on the news that the conflict between Iran and the United States has escalated again. More worrying still, at the same time on the other side of the peninsula the conflict between Yemen and Saudi Arabia has also escalated, so that the Saudi oil pipeline has been cut. Analysts warn that “if supply cannot be restored within a few days, global oil supply could lose 4%, and panic will spread through the markets.” Just look at these oil prices that keep climbing and you will know.

In a world like this, fear is the natural reaction. We worry that the war will widen; we are anxious that the economy will collapse; we are afraid of the uncertainty of tomorrow. Zechariah's muteness is a grace of silence. Because for the next nine months he cannot say, “But what if it does not work?”; he cannot say, “But we are already old”; and he cannot say, “But things are in such chaos — is this really a sensible time to have a baby?” God made Zechariah quiet, so that God's promise would not be drowned out by his anxiety. In the same way, when we are bombarded by the headlines and gripped by fear, God invites us into a kind of “grace of silence” too. Not pretending that there is nothing wrong with the world, but training us to stop filling the space in our heads with anxiety. What I want to train myself in is this: letting God's promise take root inside us.

So the silence is a protection, because it means Zechariah could not go on using his tongue to doubt, to complain, or to spread all kinds of unbelieving talk. God made him quiet so that the promise could take root in him. And the silence is also a preparation: in those nine months of silence Zechariah was forced to think, and pray, and wait, far more than before. And when he finally broke the silence, later on in Luke 1:67–79, we see that the first thing out of his mouth was praise. So we can see that God used silence to strengthen Zechariah — because in the silence, God's faithfulness was proved to be more real than a man's fear.

So sometimes God will take us through a season of silence, not because we have sinned, but because he wants us to learn this: not to fill our space with our own voice, but to let God's voice be what we lean on. Your doubt and mine does not make God's promise fail; your silence and mine may be exactly the way God works in our lives. It is often in the silence that we discover more clearly how much we actually depend on our own sense of being in control; and in the silence we learn better that faith is not seeing, but waiting.

And set against Zechariah's doubt is the faith of his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth did not ask for evidence, and she did not question how this could possibly happen. In Luke 1:25 we see Elizabeth declare straight out: “He has looked with favor in these days.” To look on someone with favour means this: God steps in personally, God comes to visit on his own initiative, God acts in grace to save. Elizabeth waited a whole lifetime. She had probably been longing for a child since she was a young woman, and yet year after year there was nothing but disappointment on top of disappointment. Over all those years she was probably always being pointed at by others, pitied by relatives, doubted by herself. But at this moment she says: “He has looked with favor in these days.”

Some time ago, during the period when I was serving in China, at our conference there was a sister who was helping in the kitchen, and she shared with us that she had prayed for thirty years for her husband to come to faith. But her husband stayed hard, mocked her and made fun of her, and turned her away. She had nearly given up. But one day her husband suddenly asked her: “This Jesus you believe in — can he forgive me?” When she heard it, this sister wept. She said, “The Lord has looked on me with favour in these days.” Not because she had finally got what she waited for, but because she knew that God had been looking on her with favour all along; she simply had not seen it yet. God's favour is not something that finally shows up; it has been there all along. Brothers and sisters, God's favour does not necessarily come when you are at your youngest and most capable; God's favour will come when you need it most.

Conclusion:

Brothers and sisters, let us come back to the question we started with: when was the last time you heard God speak to you through the Scriptures? Perhaps you have prayed for a long time and God seems not to have answered at all; or you have served for a long time, but the fruit does not seem to have appeared; perhaps you have waited a long time, but God's promise still seems not to have come to pass.

But today, through this passage in Luke 1:1–25, God wants to say to us:

·       God has not forgotten us. Zechariah's prayer “has been heard”. Not that it will be heard, but that it has been heard. Just as we learned from last week's sermon in Galatians: the Spirit of God's Son makes us cry out, “Abba, Father!” So we can see that your prayer and mine are in God's ears, and in God's timetable too.

·       God works in the silence. Zechariah's nine months of silence were not wasted; they were preparation. In the same way, your season of silence and mine are not wasted either — God is doing work inside you and me that we cannot see. And when God's time comes, it will certainly come to pass. Because God is never careless, and never late. His timing is the best timing.

·       And God's favour goes beyond what we ask for. You ask for a son; God may give you a prophet. You ask for a job; God may give you a mission. You ask for a way out; God may give you a completely new you.

So today, if you are in a season of silence, I invite you to say, as Elizabeth did: “The Lord has looked on me with favour in these days.” Not because you have seen it, but because you believe in the God who keeps his word. If you are doubting, as Zechariah was, I invite you to receive that grace of silence — that is, to stop filling your space with your anxiety, and to let God's word take root in you. One day you too will open your mouth as Zechariah did, and that first word will be praise. And if you have already seen God's faithfulness, I invite you to be someone who prepares the way for the Lord, as John the Baptist was — passing on your experience, your testimony and your hope to those who are still waiting in the dark. May the Lord help us. Let us pray together.

Prayer: Lord, we confess that we so often doubt, as Zechariah did. We keep staring at what we call our own old age, and we cannot see your promise and your faithfulness. We keep fixing our eyes on our own impossibilities, and we forget your almighty power.

Today we thank you again that through the Holy Spirit you open our ears, so that we hear what you say to us in history, in the Scriptures, and in our own lives. We ask you to keep us from losing faith in the silence; from losing hope in the waiting; from losing vision in the dark.

Lord, we believe your promise. We believe that your words “will be fulfilled in their proper time”. We believe that you are the God who looks on us with favour. And we ask you to make our lives a testimony that prepares the way for the Lord, until the day we see with our own eyes everything you have promised. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Three questions for reflection and discussion:

1.      On what grounds are you certain that the biblical record you believe is true? What does the preface to Luke's Gospel show you?

2.      Have you had the experience of praying for a long time without an answer? How does Zechariah's story help you understand God's delay?

3.      What does Elizabeth's “the Lord has looked on me with favour” mean to you?