The Gospel of Luke: From Darkness to Dawn

Transcript

JRNT 56
05/12/2024
The Gospel of Luke: From Darkness to Dawn
Luke 1:5-7
Jesse Randolph

Well, good morning, again and happy Mother’s Day to the mothers, mothers-to-be, grandmothers, great-grandmothers among us this morning. John Wesley once said, “I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians in England.” What a tribute. And what a gift godly mothers are. And I know we have hundreds of them here at our church this morning.

Well, I’d invite you turn with me in your bibles to the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. We’ll be sort of backing out of the gate in our study of the third of the Gospels. We’ll be in verses 5-7 this morning. But to get us started we’re actually going to jump way ahead to verse 67 of chapter 1, which is going to sort of set the stage for what we’ll be looking at this morning. So, turn with me please to Luke 1:67. Now, for context, the setting here in verse 67 is immediately following the birth of John the Baptist, who we know would become the forerunner to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And what’s recorded here in verse 67 is John’s father, Zechariah, an Israelite priest, being moved by the Spirit to prophesy about his newborn son. We see that prophecy in verse 67, all the way down to verse 79. Here's how it reads, “And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying: ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He visited and accomplished redemption for His people, and raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant – as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old – salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy toward our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. And you, child,” he’s speaking of John the Baptist there, “will be called the prophet of the Most High, For you will go on before the Lord to make ready His ways, to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace.’ ”

Now, those later words of Zechariah’s prophecy there… what I’d like us to zero in on this morning. Because they tell us that with the birth of Jesus, described in Luke chapter 2, a whole new time was coming. A new era had arrived, a new day had dawned. For Israel, the night had been long, and at times, very dark. But through it all, through the peoples’ wandering and their grumbling and their compromises and their disobedience and their division and their idolatry, through their apostasy and their pride, and their faithlessness and their sin, from the many warnings they received from the prophets, from their conquest and defeat, and their cursing and their shame, from their captivity and their exile, and their oppression and their partial return to the land, and their preservation – through it all, there was hope. Hope that, to use the words of Zechariah here in verse 78, that “the Sunrise from on high will visit us.” Which, by the way, was not a meteorological hope; this was not a hope that an actual sun would rise somewhere in the east. This was a messianic hope, a hope which was rooted in the last Spirit-breathed words of the Old Testament, in Malachi 4. There was hope, as Malachi 4:2 would say, that “for you who fear My name, the sun,” S-U-N, “of righteousness will rise.” And there was hope, Malachi 4:5-6, as it says there, that when the Messiah came, a forerunner would precede Him in the spirit of Elijah. Malachi 4:5-6 says, “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” Well, with the birth of Jesus in Nazareth, events we’ll devote much time and attention to when we get to Luke 2, this “sun of righteousness” promised in Malachi had come, the “Sunrise from on high” mentioned by Zechariah in Luke 1:78, had arrived, or, to borrow from the Gospel of John, in John 1:5, “the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’re not quite yet to our study of Luke 3. Here in our text in Luke 1 the sun hadn’t yet risen. We are still, historically speaking, in the last few hours before the sunrise. Chapter 1 of Luke’s Gospel represents the final hours of darkness before the Messiah’s arrival, before the rising of the sun you could say, before the daybreak, before the darkness had turned to dawn. And that’s the title of this morning’s message, “From Darkness to Dawn.” This will be an exposition of Luke 1:5-7. Let’s go ahead and get into our text for this morning. God’s word reads, Luke 1:5-7, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and righteous requirements of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in years.”

Starting here, in these three verses, the storytelling aspect of Luke’s Gospel begins. And where he begins his Gospel, as he’s tracing out some of the early history of the darkness which preceded the dawn, is here with Zechariah and Elizabeth. And in this scene leading up to the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, we have three points for this morning, each corresponding to the three verses we’ll be working through. In verse 5 we’re going to see, “The Dawn in Drudgery;” in verse 6 we’ll see, “The Dawn in Distinction;” and in verse 7 we’ll see, “The Dawn in Disappointment.”

We’ll start in verse 5 which describes “The Dawn in Drudgery.” Let’s look at verse 5 again, it says, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.”
Now note how Luke begins his account here leading up to the events up to the birth of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t start with a lightning bolt from the sky or a voice from above or some sort of supernatural movement of God. Instead, he starts with this very simple description of two people, Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were simply plodding along in their respective positions in life, the mundane seams of life, that we all experience. As they, like several generations of Jews before them waited for the promised Messiah to come.

Now, as we’ve already seen, God had promised back in Malachi 4:2, that He was going to send a “sun of righteousness.” And He promised in Malachi 4:5-6 that one in the spirit of Elijah would proceed the coming of this Messiah. And by the time Zechariah and Elizabeth were living here in Luke 1, over 400 years had passed since God had moved Malachi to write those words. Putting it in our context, about as much time had passed between the writing of Malachi 4 and Luke 1, the scene that’s given here, as has elapsed between the arrivals of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and where we sit today. It was a long, long time, the period of darkness and silence was prolonged, the night was long-lasting. And it’s into that context with no prophet having appeared, and no word from God having come, and no light having been revealed, and unmet expectations, and unfulfilled messianic hope, that we meet the two individuals that we’ll be looking at carefully this morning, a man named Zechariah and this woman named Elizabeth, his wife.

Now, another thing to note, as we begin to explore these three verses here today, is something related to Luke’s writing style in these first few verses of His Gospel. As we saw last week, and as we went through the prologue, the first four verses of chapter 1, that prologue is one single, long sentence in the original language. It’s made up of 43 words in Greek. And in that prologue, verses 1-4, Luke is really flexing his literary muscles. He shows himself to be this prolific Greek wordsmith. But now, as we turn to the narrative portion of the Gospel, starting here in verse 5, Luke does something really interesting. He’s still writing in Greek, of course the whole New Testament is written in Greek, but as he does so, he takes on this notably Hebraic tone and writing style. And what I mean by this is as he begins to deliver this account of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Luke here starts to sound more and more like an Old Testament Hebrew prophet, as he sets the stage now for what the Spirit prompted him to write.

To see what I mean, just listen for a moment to how certain Old Testament prophets began their writings. And see if can’t detect a little bit of “Luke” here. Here’s Isaiah 1:1, “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he beheld in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” And then there’s Hosea, in Hosea 1:1, “The word of Yahweh which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.” Or what about Amos, in Amos 1:1, “The words of Amos, who was among the sheepherders from Tekoa, which he beheld in visions concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.”
Compare those writing styles, very historical about names and details and locations and backgrounds and settings, to what Luke here says in Luke 1:5, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.” In each, we see a similar narratible writing style, very focused on the powers and the places and the people involved.

Now, why is that important and why am I belaboring that this morning? I bring that up and I belabor that because when you compare the exquisite Greek of Luke 1:1-4, the prologue, and when you see how Luke switches things up in verses 5-7 and following, I think he’s actually doing something very intentional. And what he’s doing, is with a few strokes of his pen he’s intentionally straddling both worlds, of both the Greek-speaking Gentile and the Hebrew-speaking Jew. And what he’s doing here is he’s signaling to each group that the Jesus he’s about to proclaim, ultimately came to seek and to save those from both groups, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek -- Acts 1:8, written by Luke, from Jerusalem to Judea and then Samaria, and then “to the end of the earth.”

With that, let’s get our shovels out, let’s start digging more deeply into the text, starting with these opening words of verse 5, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea.” Now, with just those words we’re given an immediate time marker, a very clear time reference, as Luke here, ever the precise historian, is telling us that the events that he’s about to get into concerning the events surrounding the birth of John the Baptist, the precursor, the forerunner to the Christ, the Messiah, took place at a very specific time in Israel’s history, “In the days of Herod,” it says, “king of Judea.”

And who was Herod, king of Judea? Let’s start with some basic personal biographical information, some of the back-of-the-baseball-card information. Then let’s after that, work our way up into a discussion of the scope and the power that Herod had when he reigned. Then after that let’s look at some moral observations, meaning the kind of man this king was.
So, let’s start with the baseball-card information. Who was Herod? To answer that question, we need to address a preliminary question. Which Herod, which Herod is Luke talking about here? Because there are several “Herods” mentioned in the bible. For instance, the New Testament, at various places, refers to Herod Philip I, Herod Antipas. Herod Archelaus, Herod Philip II, Herod Agrippa 1, and Herod Agrippa II. Some of those ‘Herods’ appear in the Gospel of Luke, some of those ‘Herods’ appear in other Gospels, some of those ‘Herods’ appear only in the book of Acts. All you need to know, for our purposes, as we come to Luke’s account here of the days leading up to the birth of John the Baptist, is that the Herod here mentioned in verse 5, is not Herod Phillip, not Herod Antipas, not Herod Archelaus, not Herod Agrippa, but rather Herod the Great. And Herod the Great was the patriarch of each of the other ‘Herods’ I just mentioned. He was the fountainhead of the Herodian dynasty. This is the Herod, as we see here in verse 5, who was the “king of Judea.”

And what do we know about this Herod – Herod the Great, Herod the king? Well, we know he was born around 74 B.C. We know he was an Edomite, meaning he was a descendant of Esau. And if you remember back to the days of the conflict between Jacob and Esau, you remember that the Edomites had been cursed by God. And Herod apparently was mindful of this, because he very publicly held himself out to be this Jewish convert, this adherent to the Jewish faith. He even married a young Jewish girl to be his wife. Now, in terms of the scope and the power that Herod wielded, we know that his father, a man named Antipater, had himself been the governor of Judea. And his two sons, Antipater’s two sons, were named Phasael and Herod. And one of those two would be the next to inherit the throne after Antipater died. But before any of those succession plans could be finalized, Phasael committed suicide, leaving Herod as the sole heir apparent. Well, in 37 B.C. Herod was made king in Judea, a territory that covered the regions Galilee and Samaria and even portions of Syria to the north. And that verb there, “made,” is the operative one, because the power that Herod wielded in his time in Judea was borrowed power, it was derivative power. In these days, the Romans ruled over Jerusalem, the Roman Empire ruled over Judea. The Roman Empire ruled over much of what was known as the civilized world, so whatever kingly authority Herod had over Judea, it came from the Romans.

But that didn’t stop Herod, by the way, from acting as though he had ultimate power. Herod was an aggressive, strategic visionary, who wanted to build and build he did. He ran several large building programs in the region, including building theaters and racetracks and athletic facilities. He built a new seaport at Caesarea. He built a chain of fortresses at Masada. He built a magnificent… or embellished upon a magnificent palace for himself. On top of that, he contributed to major improvements in different cities. He contributed to the rebuilding or the fixing up of, the embellishing of the temple in Jerusalem. He contributed to refurbishing and beautifying ancient cities, like Damascus and Tyre and Sidon. He even, through his leadership, contributed to rebuilding parts of the great city of Athens. In other words, from the outsider’s vantage point, Herod was ‘getting things done,’ he was a busy man, and under his rulership Judea seemed to be prospering.

So that was the outside perspective on Herod, this king who was active and busy and getting things done. What was happening inside his rulership though, inside his kingdom? Well, internally in his kingdom, among his own subjects, Herod was known as this power-hungry, insecure megalomaniac, a man who would stop at nothing to climb that ladder of kingly success. He demonstrated relentless cruelty to anyone who dared show any sign of opposition to him. He would stop at nothing to fulfill his own unquenchable desire for power and prestige. He literally killed off anyone who got in his way. For instance, he was known for having a Jewish high priest, named Aristobulus, drowned. Harod killed his own wife, he killed his own mother-in-law, he killed three of his own sons. The man’s reign was deeply stained with blood. In fact, of Herod, the Emperor Augustus even went so far as to say, “It were better to be such a man’s swine than his son.”

And as if that weren’t enough, it was this Herod who, we know in Matthew 2, was the one who learned that a new king had been born in Bethlehem. And it was this Herod who then ordered the slaughter of all male, Jewish children under the age of two in Bethlehem and its surrounding areas, with the aim of killing that infant in case he’d later become a threat to Herod’s own reign. Herod, in other words, was merciless, suspicious, and ruthless. He was a paranoid, power-hungry man, who lived rent-free in his own head.

Now, getting back to our text here in Luke. It’s against this gloomy, blood-stained backdrop of Herod’s reign that Luke now starts to tell us the story here of this new day, involving this arrival of this Messiah, the coming of the Christ to earth. Which was preceded, we know, by the birth of John the Baptist, which in turn was first announced to his parents, John’s parents, a devout priest and his wife. And that takes us to the next part of our passage, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea,” and then look at the rest of verse 5, “there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.”
Talk about a swing of the pendulum, with this economy of words, Luke moves from describing Herod this tyrannical king to now describing this humble priest and his wife, who were just living and ministering and plodding along there in Judea at the tail-end of Herod’s reign.

We’ll start with Zechariah and describing him and working through who this man was. Now, there’s really so much involved with those words in verse 5, “there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah.” What do we know about this man, this priest, Zechariah? Let’s start with his name, Zechariah. That’s a name that is mentioned all over the Old Testament. In fact, it’s a name that’s associated with some 30 different people in the Old Testament. It’s a common name, it was a common name during this time. And the name Zechariah means “Yahweh remembers,” which was not only a common theme across the old Testament Scriptures, as God at various times in Israel’s history remembered the original covenant promises He had made to Israel. But that name, “Yahweh Remembers,” was going to be a fitting name to describe each of the events which were about to unfold, as the Lord remembered His people by sending them their long-promised Messiah.

Now, we also see here that Zechariah was a priest, he was a priest of Israel as the context clearly indicates. He wasn’t a priest serving some so-called god, some false god. He was a priest in service of the one true God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. And how God had set things up, going all the way back to the days of Israel’s wilderness wanderings hundreds of years earlier in the days of Moses, was that the priestly line of Israel was going to come through the line of Aaron, Moses’ brother. And all the Old Testament scholars in the room might remember that Aaron had two surviving sons, after the whole Nadab and Abiu incident, and those sons were Eleazar and Ithamar. And those two immediate sons of Aaron became priests. And not only those two sons, but their sons after them, all the way down to the days of Zechariah, leading up to the birth of Jesus. Meaning, any boy that was born into Aaron’s line for multiple generations to come was destined to serve as a priest.

Now, in one sense, that priestly role was a noble, honored position. To be a priest in the line of Aaron, to have been fortunate enough to be born into a priestly line, that was a noble thing. Priests were considered to be the mediators of God’s rule over Israel, specifically as they spoke for God to His people in reading and teaching and interpreting scripture; as they pronounced blessings on the people of Israel, like in the infamous Numbers 6 blessing [verse 24], the Lord keep you and watch over you; they also drew near to God, the priests did, on behalf of the people of Israel in their acts of temple service.

So, it was a noble group of individuals. But at the same time, while priests in this time were an honored group, they were also a very hardworking group. This was not a group of white-collar elitists. Rather, this was a group of servants who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. And more specifically, bloody, as they slaughtered animals of various shapes and sizes and breeds, to carry out the requirements pertaining to animal sacrifice contained in God’s Law. In other words, the priests of Israel weren’t merely dispensers of biblical truth, though they were that. They were butchers and when it came time to offer sacrifices they were the ones who were bathed in blood. It was dirty work, but at the same time, and somewhat ironically, it was cleansing work, sanctifying work, done on behalf of the people of Israel.

Now, another thing to note here, is that by the time we get to Zechariah’s day, Aaron the priest’s family tree, as family trees tend to do, had expanded. And the result was that there were now thousands of men, some estimate 18,000 men, now serving as priests in Judea during Zechariah’s time. So, Zechariah, by this point, would have been a face in a crowd, a needle in the priestly haystack. In fact, that’s even suggested with Luke’s usage here in verse 5, where he describes Zechariah plainly as “a priest,” he’s just a priest, one of 18,000 potentially. Meaning, he’s not a high priest, he’s not some special class of priest, he’s not a member of the priestly aristocracy, he’s not a member of the Sanhedrin or the Pharisees or the Sadducees. He’s just a common, rank-and-file, daily priest, one of thousands of such men in this place, at this time.

So large, by the way, was this class of priests in Israel, at this time, that by this point in Israel’s history, they had been broken down into twenty-four different divisions of priests. And that actually goes all the way back to the days of David. If you’d like, you can turn with me over to 1 Chronicles 24. 1 Chronicles follows 1 and 2 Kings in your bibles, way, way back in the Old Testament. This all ties into how the priests were divided by Zechariah’s day. The setting here in 1 Chronicles 24, we’re in the reign of King David at this point, and David reigned some 1,000 years before Herod the Great. And what we see here in 1 Chronicles 24 is that, David with the assistance of two priests… look at verse 3 there, 1 Chronicles 24:3, David, with the assistance of two priests, Zadok and Ahimelech, it says, he “divided them according to their assignments for their service,” meaning he divided the sons of Aaron, the descendants of Aaron, into these different priestly orders. And he did so according to the names of the sons, his sons, Eleazar and Ithamar. Those were Aaron’s two surviving sons. And those two sons in turn had twenty-four sons. And those twenty-four sons, Aaron’s grandsons, became the priests over Israel. And if you look over at verse 10, you’ll see that the eighth order of priests, was for Abijah.

That ties us now back in to the Gospel of Luke, that order of Abijah. Zechariah, we see, in Luke 1:5, the one who would become the father of John the Baptist, he’s this direct descendant of Aaron, as were each of the priests of this time. And in verse 5, he’s described as being of the division of Abijah. And the division of Abijah, as was true of each of the divisions of priests, as we’ll get into next week, they were called only twice a year to come into the temple and offer a priestly service. We’ll go into more of what they were up to in the meantime next time.
But note here, getting back to verse 5 of Luke 1, note that Luke doesn’t describe Zechariah as being a “descendant” of Abijah. Did you notice that? Instead, he calls him of the “division” of Abijah. This is Luke, in characteristically Luken style, being hyper-precise and hyper-detail-oriented.

You know, back in the days of David, in 1 Chronicles 24, we just saw that there were 24 orders or divisions of priests, all coming from Aaron’s line. That’s how things were initially set up and structured, but that was a thousand years earlier. A lot happened in Israel’s history in the thousand years between David and Zechariah. We know, if we’re good Old Testament students and scholars, that there were hundreds of years in Israel’s history of wickedness and apostasy and spiritual adultery. We know that there were these warnings from various prophets of God, telling the people of God, Israel, to turn back to Him. We know that the Israelites were ultimately defeated and taken into captivity by two different sets of foreign invaders, first the Assyrians, later the Babylonians. And then later in history, after being taken into captivity, we know that many of the Israelites returned to the land, Jerusalem. That’s all picked up in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah. But those books also record that it was many, not all, of the Israelites who went back. Pockets of Israelites went back to the homeland after their decades of captivity, but not all did. And that includes those who were in these 24 priestly divisions -- not all, not each of the 24 priestly divisions made it back to the land. They were all sent into exile, but of those 24, only four we know, made it back to Jerusalem, back to the land. And those four priestly divisions or orders, out of 24, are listed in Ezra 2:36-39. You don’t need to turn there now, you’re welcome to but you don’t have to. The four are Jedaiah, Immer, Pashhur and Harim; those were the four of the twenty-four original priestly orders or divisions that went into exile and actually came back. Not listed there are the sons of Abijah, or the order of Abijah, or the division of Abijah.

Now, fast-forwarding another 400 years from the days of Ezra and Nehemiah and the return to the land, to the days of Zechariah, what Luke is writing of here. In what sense could it be said that Zechariah, this priest, was of the division of Abijah? I thought Abijah was wiped out and gone and forever integrated into whatever land they were taken into. Well, what happened, is that in the days after the exile and after the return to the land, for the sake of tradition, those four priestly divisions that actually made their way back, post-exile, were then divided up into twenty-four divisions just like they had been in the old days, and they were given the names of the original twenty-four divisions that had existed back in the days of David. So, even though the original order of Abijah or division of Abijah never came back from exile, there was still an order of priests by Zechariah’s day who were called the order of Abijah, and Zechariah belonged to that order. All that to say, this is why Luke here doesn’t call Zechariah a descendant of Abijah -- he wasn’t -- but rather, of the division or the order of Abijah.

Isn’t that fun? Alright. That’s enough about Zechariah for now. We’ll have much more to learn about him in the weeks ahead as we work our way through Luke 1. We need to move on and go into what Luke here now will tell us about Zechariah’s wife, a woman named Elizebath. Look at the next part of verse 5, speaking of Zechariah here, Luke tells us, “and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.” So, not only was Zechariah a descendant of Aaron, we learn here, too, that his wife was as well, Elizabeth. In other words, Zechariah had married a daughter of a priest. And because all the males in the line of Aaron became priests, what this means, going all the way up the branches of her family tree, each of Elizabeth’s male relatives was a priest. Her brothers, her father, her paternal grandfather, her paternal great-grandfather, they were all priests. Meaning, Elizabeth was immersed from birth in Jewish priestly culture, and that means, like her husband, Eliazbeth was aware of, and used to, the unique responsibilities of the priestly line and the unique rhythm of a priest’s life.

I talk about him a lot up here, but our youngest son is Asher and Asher is four-and-a-half. And Asher being four-and-a-half has only known life as a pastor’s kid. And Asher has this built-in tracking system which is centered around his favorite day of the week, Monday, when dad is off. And his world, Asher’s world, right now really does spin around how close to Monday we are. He knows that dad goes back to the office on Tuesday; he knows that things really ramp up from Wednesday on; he knows that Friday and Saturday are very busy days; he knows that Sunday is the busiest of days. But as soon as we walk out those northeast doors on Sunday night and he runs to my truck, he knows I’m his. And he knows… And when this happens, every time I kiss him goodnight on Sunday night, he will always say, with the biggest grin on his face, “Tomorrow’s Monday!” Like I don’t know. Asher, as a pastor’s kid, and really like any other pastor’s kid, is aware of the unique flow and responsibilities of a pastor’s home and a pastor’s family. So, if Asher, let’s say, were to marry the daughter of one of the other pastors here, like a Thomas girl or a Nicholson girl, hypothetically speaking (that never happens around here) they would have this home where they would each be uniquely aware of the flow of the life of a home dedicated to full-time pastoral ministry. Now, there’s always a place where comparisons between Old Testament priests and the New Testament pastor breaks down. But I think you get the point and the comparison here. Zechariah married someone, Elizabeth, who would understand the unique responsibilities of his role, someone who would be understanding and supportive of all that he was required to do, somebody who would understand his love for the priesthood and, most importantly, his love for the Lord.

Now, a bit more about Elizabeth here. We’ve already seen that she was a priest’s daughter, from the line of Aaron. But a couple of more details about her are worth noting here. First, her name, Elizabeth, means “the oath of God,” or maybe even “God has sworn”, or maybe even more generally, “God is faithful.” The meaning of her name is centered on the faithfulness of God. Not only that, though, when we go back to Exodus 6:23, and you don’t have to turn there, Elizabeth was actually the name of the wife of the original priest, Aaron. And that fact, that Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth, was named after the wife of the original high priest is significant, because it tells us that Elizabeth was raised in this home in which her parents were serious about their commitment to Yahweh and they were serious about the priesthood.

So, back to Zechariah for just a moment here. We see that he’s a priest, a descendant of Aaron, destined to be a priest of this division of Abijah. And while, in one sense, he was just one of thousands, maybe 18,000 priests, at the same time he wasn’t just any priest. Because we know that he was especially devoted to the priesthood and to his role, and one of the ways we know that is how he intentionally here married the daughter of a priest. Elizabeth, a woman whose whole life and lineage had been filled with priests. And all that Luke is doing here, he’s setting up for us, that this is the stock from which John the Baptist, the forerunner to Messiah, came, strong, priestly stock.

So, while these were difficult days to live and function, this time in which Zechariah and Elizabeth lived under the reign of King Herod, there was yet this flickering light of hope, given where they came from, and what they were all about, and who would come from them. So, we’ve looked at our first heading there, “The Dawn In Drudgery.” As we move on to verse 6, we’re going to see “The Dawn in Distinction.” Look at verse 6, it says, “And they were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and righteous requirements of the Lord.”

So, in verse 5, what we just looked at, Luke treats Zechariah and Elizabeth separately, as he looks at and fleshes out various aspects of their life, individually. But now, as we get into verse 6, Luke suddenly joins them together in summarizing their spiritual state. And look at how he describes them, he says that “they were both righteous in the sight of God.” And that they were in keeping with their righteous position, “walking blamelessly in all the commandments and righteous requirements of the Lord.” There’s a lot to cover there. Because I’m imagining there are all sorts of questions firing around the collective minds in the room here. Questions like:
how was someone who lived before Jesus considered “righteous in the sight of God,” since Jesus Himself would say later that no one comes to the Father but through Him, or what does it mean that they’re “walking blamelessly,” does that mean they achieved some form of super-spiritual, sanctified, saintly status, so that we should now canonize them as actual saints?

Let’s start with the first one, this matter of Zechariah and Elizabeth being called here righteous, they were both “righteous in the sight of God.” What does that mean? The answer is actually pretty straightforward. See, when you read your bible progressively, not liberally… progressively, meaning in order, in its natural and intended sequence, from Genesis to Revelation, from Old to New. When you read your bible that way, you’ll see God declaring people, who were not righteous, judicially to be declared righteous. And it goes all the way back to the earliest pages of scripture. We think of Abraham who back in Genesis 15:6, it said, “he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness,” meaning God credited righteousness to Abraham on account of his belief. Abraham wasn’t inherently good or inherently righteous, just like none of us is, but God declared Abraham to be righteous and considered Abraham to be righteous. On the basis of what? Abraham’s belief, his belief in God, in God’s name, in God’s character. And God’s promises, specifically at that point, God’s promise to give Abraham land and seed and blessing, and to make his name great throughout the earth.

Reading progressively, we come hundreds of years later to the days of Isaiah and the prophet Isaiah wrote. As he wrote, the promises and the purposes of God started to come into clearer and clearer focus, as the Israelites of Isaiah’s generation were told they were an unholy and sinful people, but that ultimately they would be declared righteous before God based on the provision of a sinless substitute, the coming Messiah, who would one day stand in the place of those who would believe, with their sin being laid on Him, and the righteousness of God through Him being credited to them. The prophet Isaiah wrote these words of the coming Messiah in Isaiah 53. In fact, I’ll give you a moment to catch up with me. Turn with me, if you would, to Isaiah 53, where we’ll see the provision of righteousness, God’s righteousness, through the provision of a Savior, the Messiah, who was promised hundreds of years before He actually arrived.

Isaiah 53, dead center in the middle of your bibles, Isaiah 53:3 says, “He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”

Well, Zechariah and Elizabeth, living some 1,900, probably more, years after Abraham. And living some 700 years after Isaiah prophesied of the coming Messiah. No doubt they knew those words, they knew these truths, and each of them believed those truths. Like Abraham, they believed in God, the God of Israel, the one, true, and living God. They believed what God had revealed in His word, not only like in those accounts of Abraham, but also, those later historical, prophetic writings, like in the days of Isaiah. They were familiar with the lack of belief in Israel and other times in Israel’s history, like in the days of the judges, or the days of the divided kingdom in Judah and Israel. They were familiar with the accounts of individuals in the Old Testament who manifested true faith, like wicked king Manasseh who eventually repented, or the people of Ninevah in the book of Jonah who repented. They knew, like in Jeremiah 17:9, that God had declared that their own hearts were desperately wicked. But they also knew, going back all the way to the days of Exodus 34, that God was a patient and merciful and compassionate God. They knew that they fell short of the glory of God, and that even faithful law-keeping couldn’t save them. And they knew, as they read their Hebrew scriptures progressively, that One was coming who would be pierced for their transgressions and crushed for their iniquities. And they knew that through this Coming One, Isaiah 61:10, that they would be “clothed… with garments of salvation,” and “wrapped…with a robe of righteousness,” God’s righteousness.

Now, could Zechariah and Elizabeth have possibly known that this coming One, who was going to be born in their midst to Mary, Elizabeth’s cousin, could they have known that His name would be Jesus? Or that their own son, John, who they didn’t at this point know was coming, would one day declare in John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” No. They wouldn’t have known those details, they wouldn’t have foreseen those specific details. But they did know that a Lamb was coming and they did believe that a Lamb was coming. And unlike those many lambs Zechariah had slaughtered in keeping his priestly service, they knew that through the sacrifice of this coming Lamb they would receive the righteousness of God.

They were then believers in the purest sense of the term. And so, back to Luke 1:6, they were righteous. And not just righteous, they were “righteous,” and this is important, “in the sight of God.” Meaning they weren’t compelled by a fear of what others might think of them. They weren’t like the other religious rulers of the time, who were only concerned about outward appearances and maintaining this façade of religiosity. They weren’t the whitewashed tombs and religious hypocrites that Jesus would later go after in His ministry. No. In these dark times in Judea, times which were marked by this tyrannical ruler named Herod, times which were marked by a hollow religiosity and empty formality, Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful, believing, God-fearers. They were “righteous in the sight of God.” To use a theological term, if you’d like, they were justified.

And not only were they justified though, the rest of verse 6 tells us that they were “walking blamelessly in all the commandments and righteous requirements of the Lord.” The term for that would be, if you want to use a theology term, is they were being sanctified. They were obedient. The good soil of their faith was producing good fruit of growth in the Lord. That does not mean that they were sinless, or perfect, or that they’d reached some sort of ‘second blessing’ level of spirituality or spiritual maturity. What this does mean, though is that they were obedient, they were faithful. They were like how Job is described in Job 1:1, that he was a “man [] blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil.” They were like the one described in Psalm 119:1, the very first verse of that incredible Psalm, “How blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of Yahweh.”

I’m sure many of you here this morning who take obedience to the Lord seriously, as you seek not only to read and study God’s word but to live it out, I’m sure you have faced some slings and arrows from those who feel their own sense of conviction about the way that you are living, and who can’t resist the urge to call you a perfectionist or a ‘goody two shoes,’ or everyone’s favorite ill-defined term, a ‘legalist.’ But what we see from the example here of Zechariah and Elizabeth is the reality that justification/salvation is never divorced from sanctification and growth. A truly holy, set apart position will always produce holy living; being saved by God will always produce a desire to live faithfully for God. That’s not legalism, that’s not perfectionism, that’s plain and simple obedience. That was Zechariah and that was Elizabeth. They were obedient, they were godly, they were devout, they were upright, they were serving God faithfully. That’s what’s baked into this last part of verse 6, when it says, they were “walking blamelessly in all the commandments and righteous requirements of the Lord.” They didn’t have halos on their head, they weren’t walking on air, they were simply walking a faithful walk in service to Yahweh.

Which is why what we see about this couple next, in verse 7, comes as such a surprise and with such a jolt. Look at verse 7, “But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in years.” Here’s our third point, “The Dawn in Disappointment,” “The Dawn in Disappointment.” Luke here is portraying quite the turn of events. He’s just reported on Zechariah and Elizabeth being these people of unassailable character and incredible moral integrity and godliness. And if you were reading this in original context or even now, the next natural thing you’d expect to read here is that this couple experienced abundant flocks and fruitful fields and for Elizabeth a fruitful womb.

In fact, those are the very promises and the blessings laid out for faithful obedience laid out by God in Deuteronomy 28. Now here’s Deuteronomy 28:1, it says, “if you diligently listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I am commanding you today . . .” And then in verse 3 it says: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.” And get this, “Blessed shall be the offspring of your body.” Then there’s Psalm 128:1, it says: “How blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh, who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands, how blessed will you be and how well will it be for you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears Yahweh.” So, there are these statements of blessing for those who, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, were faithful and obedient.

On the other hand though, to be childless during this time was this mark of divine disfavor. That’s what people thought of it. We think of Rachel, in Genesis 30:1, she says to her husband, “Give me children, or else I die.” We think of Hannah, who was provoked by her rival, Peninnah, in 1 Samuel 1, because of her barrenness. And in 1 Samuel 1:6, we’re told that Peninnah would “provoke [Hannah] bitterly to irritate her because Yahweh had closed her womb.” And the result was that Hannah then would shed bitter tears it says. Or even Elizabeth here, if we drop down to verse 25 of Luke 1, which records a different season, a more joyful season for Elizabeth. Once the Lord had sovereignly opened her womb, look what she says there in Luke 1:25, “This is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when He looked upon me to take away my disgrace among men.” In other words, back to verse 7, she thought of and saw her inability to conceive as a disgrace.

And not only that, whereas perhaps another, younger woman who might also had trouble bearing children or conceiving, might be comforted by the fact that conception still might happen by virtue of her young age, for Elizabeth that wasn’t the case. Look at the last part of verse 7, it says, “and they were both advanced in years,” that’s a nice way of saying they were old, very old, like Abraham and Sarah old. Meaning the door to them having a child was not only shut but firmly shut and it was locked. And so, whatever flame of hope Zechariah and Elizabeth once had had about having their own child, it had started to flicker as they had aged, it was now all but gone.

Now, I know my time is running short here. And I am aware, very aware, that today is Mother’s Day. And I am aware that this can be and is a very difficult day for many women in the church. Whether that’s because you’ve been unable to conceive, or because you’ve not had the number of children you wanted, or perhaps because you lost a child, or now you’re walking with your own daughter or granddaughter through a trial like this. God made no mistakes in leading us to this passage today with Elizabeth and her barrenness or her inability to conceive. And I just want to give you some pastoral points of application, some principles to grab onto here as we think of this account.

First, is the reminder that trials are inevitable, and an essential part of the Christian faith.
We all go through “various trials,” to borrow from James. Hebrews 12:10 says, the Lord “disciplines us for our benefit, so that we may share His holiness.” The old Puritan Thomas Boston spoke of the “crook in our lot”, as he sighted Ecclesiastes 7:13. But the grace of God that we’ve received exempts none of us from trials and difficulty and pain of whatever sort.
Second, you’re not alone. There has been a long line of women, both in scripture and in church history, including the history of this church, who have walked a similar path to the one you’re walking right now. We think of Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel and Hannah and here Elizabeth. So, if this is a road you’ve walked, you can rest assured that you are not being singled out for unfair treatment by God. Remember that God has appointed every detail of your life for you, including this one. Third, grieving isn’t necessarily wrong. The reality is that God has designed your body, as a woman, to carry a child. One of the ways God has perfectly designed you, is to carry another human life. So when you, like Hannah, see others carrying children, and bearing children, and raising children, it’s not necessarily sin to grieve the fact that God hasn’t given that to you at this time, or yet, or ever. Fourth, God remembers you. You might remember, going back to Zechariah and the meaning of his name. His name means “God remembers.” And if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, it means you are one of those whom God has chosen before the foundation of the world. And His promises to you, each of them, He does remember, and He will remember. This includes His promise to preserve your faith in this life. And His promise to take you into the life which is to come. Ultimately that will take you to a place where there will be no tears, and no loss, and no disappointment ever again. Fifth, God is good. So, no matter how strong your desires are, no matter how deeply-seated and sincerely those desires are held, we all have to remember that God’s plans and purposes are better than ours. I don’t want to in any way make light of the grief and the unique heartbreak that’s associated with childlessness. But if that’s the season that you’re in, or you’ve been in, or you’re walking someone else through, remember that it is all part of God’s good and perfect design and purpose for you and His ways are far better than ours.

Sixth, last, faithful perseverance is a must. Grief can be birthed out of noble desires, for instance, the birth of a child or conception of a child. But if you’re not careful, grief can devolve into idolatry. When the thing desired, even something good, like a child . . . becomes more important than the One who is to be the supreme object of our affections, namely God Himself. Elizabeth here is a really good example of the type of faithful perseverance we’re all called to strive for. Remember, we’re only told of her barrenness in verse 7, but that’s after in verse 6 we’ve been told how faithful she was. She was righteous and blameless in all her ways. In other words, notwithstanding her grief, and notwithstanding her disappointment, Elizabeth persevered faithfully in the service of God, which is the call on each and everyone of our lives, male or female, young or old, here this morning. I don’t know how many of you needed to hear those words. But with it being Mother’s Day, and we just ‘happening to land’ in this text, I wanted to make sure I at least said something.

Getting back to our text and winding down our time today, Luke has written what he’s written in these three verses to get us, his audience, to see, that if this situation involving Zechariah and Elizabeth and their inability to have a child -- if it was going to be reversed, divine intervention was going to be needed. And as we’re about to see, as we get to verse 8 and beyond next week, that divine reversal was going to happen with a visit from an angel. We need to cut it for now and get into that next week.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank You for the chance this morning, to dive into these three precious verses of Luke’s Gospel. Thank You for the reminders they contain for each and everyone of us. That this, while certainly is accurate, true, and important recorded history, there are truths that we can take away from these recorded verses. Timeless truths, like the ones we just went through about Your perfect provision, Your unrivaled goodness, and Your perfect plans for each and everyone of us. Thank You for the example of faithfulness that we see here this morning in Zechariah, in Elizabeth, who were living and serving in a time that was dark, the days of
King Herod. But yet who exemplified faithful, godly living and faithful, godly service. And yet weren’t given every desire of their heart in the meantime, including that of a child. May we hear these words and read these words and process these words and understand these words so that we can more faithfully live for You in our day. God, I do pray that no one here would leave this morning, with a sense of being right with You being all about what we do, or how righteous and godly we think we are. I pray everybody here would remember that the only way we could have access to You, a holy God, is by putting faith in Your Son, Jesus Christ and trusting what He did on the cross. And trusting that His death, and His burial, and His resurrection are the only means by which we might be saved. And I pray, that if there is someone here this morning, who has not put their faith in Jesus, His death and His resurrection, that today would be the day they would believe and be granted eternal life. Thank You for this time. May You be glorified in the rest of our day today. In Jesus’ name. Amen