THE SILENCE IS BROKEN

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on August 7, 2019 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: August 7, 2019 from Luke 1:5-25

Theme: The four-hundred years of silence is broken with the angelic announcement of the birth of the forerunner John the Baptist.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

Today, we look at the actual beginning of the story told to us in the Gospel of Luke. And it is a truly remarkable beginning. It dramatically tells us of the breaking of four-hundred years of silence from God. After centuries of not giving any new revelation to His people, a message from Him finally comes.

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Let’s set this ‘breaking of the silence’ in historic context. The very last chapter of the Old Testament had told us about the beginning of that long period of prophetic silence. God had told His often unfaithful and failing covenant people these words in Malachi 4;

“Remember the Law of Moses, My servant,
Which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel,
With the statutes and judgments.
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
And he will turn
The hearts of the fathers to the children,
And the hearts of the children to their fathers,
Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (Malachi 4:4-6).

From the time those words were written down—at about the time when Nehemiah led his people in rebuilding the city wall—the Jewish people heard no other word from God. They waited through the long period of ’69 weeks of years’ that had been prophetically told to them by Daniel; where an angel named Gabriel told him;

“Know therefore and understand,
That from the going forth of the command
To restore and build Jerusalem
Until Messiah the Prince,
There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks …” (Daniel 9:25).

The command of King Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem was given in 445 B.C. And seven “weeks” of years later (49 years), the city was built. Then, from there, there would be another 62 “weeks” of years (434 years) that the Messiah would come. Malachi wrote during that 62 “week” of years. But four-hundred years is an agonizingly long time to have waited for the promise to be fulfilled! Would God keep His promise to the Jewish people? Would He send the promised Messiah? Would the forerunner, Elijah, come and turn the people back to God. The world waited in this long period of silence—with no further word from God.

And then, suddenly—in Luke 1—the silence was finally broken with the announcement of the birth of a little baby boy was given. The name of that baby was John.

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Look first at how …

1. THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAME IN UNLIKELY CIRCUMSTANCES (vv. 5-7).

We’re told

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 (Luke 1:5-7).

The king who was reigning at this time was Herod the Great. Humanly speaking, his reign would certainly not have represented the kind of times that one would have expected the fulfilling of God’s promise. Herod was a king who had been put into place by the occupying Roman government; and he was compliant with them in their occupation of the Jewish land. Herod was a brilliant man in many ways; but he was also an unspeakably cruel and ungodly king. He was so jealous of his title as ‘king of the Jews’ that, when the wise men came from the east to seek the One who was truly born the King, he had all of the baby boys slain in order to prevent another from sitting on the throne (Matthew 2:16-18). Herod’s reign was as unlikely time as we could imagine for the forerunner to have come.

And what’s more, the couple through whom God would would provide the forerunner was also unlikely. Zacharias was a priest of the priestly division of Abijah. The priests of the lineage of Abijah were a part of the 24 divisions of the Levitical priests who were appointed by King David to serve for two weeks each in the service of the temple (see 1 Chronicles 24:2, 10). He and his wife Elizabeth—also a daughter of the priestly tribe—were very godly people. But they were also in the later years of their lives. And they had no children—with no human prospect for children in the future. They were an unlikely source for the keeping of the promise.

But we learn a lesson from this with respect to the promises of God. God does not forget His promises and the fulfillment of the things that He sovereignly purposes for His people—even if it takes four-hundred years; and even if it is in times when it seems as if ungodliness prevails in the world around them; and even if it is through humble people who have no human ability to bring it about for Him.

“For with God nothing will be impossible” (v. 37).

Now; even though it was in unlikely circumstances, note that …

2. THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAME AS A FULFILLMENT OF PROMISE (vv. 8-17).

Often God’s unexpected keeping of His promises occur when His people are simply going about His call upon their lives—faithfully doing their job. Zacharias was simply doing his assigned priestly work—not at all expecting what was about to happen. Verses 8-12 tell us;

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 (vv. 8-10).

Zacharias would have been serving in the holy place of the temple—before the veil separated the ark of the covenant from the holy place. He would have been administering incense upon the holy alter—next to the golden lamp that burned with holy oil, and next to the table that bore the showbread offered to God. The priests—according to their divisions—had faithfully done this for the four-hundred-plus years after the temple had been rebuilt. And the people stood outside and waited and prayed as the priest Zacharias did his sacred work.

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 him (vv. 11-12).

This angel was Gabriel—the same angel that had appeared long before to the prophet Daniel in Daniel 8:15-16, to open his understanding of the vision God was giving him. Gabriel’s unique role in the Bible, it seems, was that of giving God’s specific message to specific people. It also seems that Gabriel had to, at first, comfort people who were terrified at his presence before they could listen carefully to what he had to say to them (see also verse 30). If he stood in the holy place facing east, then the altar on which Zecharias offered would be to his left, and the lampstand would be to his right. The illumination from the lamp would have perhaps shown upon him as the smoke from the incense surrounded him. It would have been a startling thing to see an angel from God in the temple of God in this way. It may too be that his position at the right of the altar was strategic; because the ‘right hand’ position was the position of honor and authority. In any case, verses 13-17 tell us how the angel calmed Zachariah down and gave him information about the fulfillment of God’s promise:

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” (vv. 13-17).

Zecharias had prayed for a son; and God had heard his prayers. But perhaps he felt as if the prayer would never be answered. And perhaps the people of Israel had begun to wonder if God would ever answer their prayers for the coming of His promised Messiah. But now, Zacharias’ prayers would be answered—and it comes as a picture of how God heard the prayers of His people and would keep His promise to them about the Messiah. Gabriel told him that this promise would now begin to be kept by the birth of the promised forerunner to the Messiah.

His name would be called John; and he would bring joy to his parents; because he would be a great man in the sight of the Lord. Jesus Himself said that among those born of woman, there had not risen a man greater than John (Matthew 11:11). The angel also said that he would be a Nazirite—a man uniquely set apart for God as was described back in the book of Numbers—neither drinking wine or strong drink (see Numbers 6:3). Imagine! A baby devoted to God as a Nazirite before he was even born! (John had this in common, by the way, with Sampson; see Judges 13:7.) But more than that, John would be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in Elizabeth’s womb. (Do we see something of this represented to us in Luke 1:39-44?) And just as was promised in Malachi 4, John would turn people back to the Lord.

The angel said that the forerunner of the Messiah would come in the spirit and power of Elijah. This was in keeping with the promise of Malachi 4. Jesus once said of John,

“Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things. But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished” (Matthew 17:11-12).

John was not the same literal person as the Old Testament prophet Elijah; he once even testified to the people very clearly that he was not Elijah (John 1:20). But he came in the same spirit and power as Elijah—as a powerful prophet that declared repentance to the people; calling them to make way for the coming of the Lord. His birth was the fulfillment of the promise God had made way back in Isaiah 40;

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

“Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3; see also Luke 3:4-6).

When God keeps His promise, He keeps it powerfully—and everyone knows it!

But notice next how we’re shown that …

3. THE ANNOUNCEMENT CAME INSPITE OF UNBELIEF (vv. 18-20).

As great and godly a man as Zacharias was, he still stumbled in a lack of faith. Verse 18 tells us;

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” (v. 18).

In our own frailty, we can understand why someone might ask this. After all, it was normally physically impossible for an old couple to have a child. But we know from the Bible that God can do this. He did it for Abraham and Sarah (see Genesis 15). He also gave a promised child to the childless parents of Sampson (see Judges 13). But Zacharias the priest should have known this too; and perhaps that was the great error in his question. He did not believe the God who had already proven Himself fully capable of do whatever He promised He would do. And Zecharias didn’t even believe this when it was told to him by—of all things—a mighty angel of God!

You can hear clearly, in Gabriel’s words, the rebuke for Zecharias’ unbelief. We read;

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” (vv. 19-20).

In judgment, Zacharias lost his ability to speak for a time. It might even be that he lost his hearing too; because we’re told later on that people had to make ‘signs’ to him to ask him what the name of the child would be (v. 62). But the time would come when John was given his name—and Zacharias’ mouth would be opened again. And Zacharias offered great praise to God when it happened! He even affirmed all that the angel said; saying,

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest;
For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,
To give knowledge of salvation to His people
By the remission of their sins,
Through the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;
To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:76-79).

What a wonderful thing it is that our God is able to keep His promises fully—even if the human instruments of His work have times of doubt and unbelief! Praise Him that even our doubts and lapses do not hinder Him. As the apostle Paul has put it;

For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written:

“That You may be justified in Your words,
And may overcome when You are judged” (Romans 3:3-4).

But how much more blessed we will be in the course of it all, if we will—from the very start—trust Him to be able to do everything that He says He’ll do!

And this leads us, finally, to note that …

4. THE ANNOUNCEMENT RESULTED IN PROOF OF GOD’S POWER (vv. 21-25).

People waited for Zacharias to come out of the temple. It was generally assumed that the priest would not linger long inside the holy place of the temple; lest some failing on his part would incur God’s wrath. But we’re told,

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 (vv. 21-22).

What a story he had to tell! He must have almost wanted to explode inside with the desire to tell it! He must have wanted—most of all—to tell Elizabeth. But it would have to wait until he could tell it. Nevertheless, to him and to Elizabeth, the very proof of all that was involved in the birth announcement—the power of God to keep His promise for the salvation of His people, in spite of the years of silence—was being demonstrated in the fact that they became expectant parents in their old age!

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” (vv. 23-25).

The four-hundred years of silence had been broken. God once again spoke to His people. And what He declared was that the long awaited promise of the coming of the Savior would now be kept.

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This is how the Gospel of Jesus Christ—as given to us by Luke—was begun. What a beginning! And let’s learn from it that we can now trust that God will keep every promise He has ever to us in His word about His Son Jesus Christ;

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us (2 Corinthians 1:20).

EA