I invite you to take your Bible and open to the last chapter of Malachi. Now between Malachi and Matthew, there's roughly 400 years of silence. So Malachi's ministry was around 425, 450 to 425 BC. And when he was through speaking what the Lord had told him to speak, there's 400 year gap. between his prophecy, which we read together a while ago concerning the one who would come with righteousness, the son of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And then those last two verses, behold, I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And He will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse." And then there's 400 years. Silence. We had about a minute a while ago. I don't know if you remember that, but we were pretty cooperative with that. It was pretty silent in here. Not completely, but we did pretty well with that. And during that 400 years, the people of God are there in Jerusalem. The temple had been rebuilt under Zerubbabel and Ezra. So they're able to carry on their worship there in the temple. And the people are waiting. Some more than others, but looking for the Messiah, looking for the fulfillment of the prophecies. So we've started a study in the gospel of Luke. It's interesting where the gospel writers pick up the story. So Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus. Interesting. Mark begins with the preaching of John the Baptist. Because we know that the Messiah, the King, would come. Jesus prophesied, or God prophesied through his prophets, the King will come. But what was necessary for the King to come was the forerunner to the King, the herald. Back then and there, in those days, they had kings. And the king would travel, the king would visit a certain town, have a certain destination, but he would never just strike out on his own. He always sent a herald so that the way would be prepared for him. The herald, the forerunner of the king, would announce that the king is coming. Get the trash out of your backyard. Cut the grass. Fix things up. Make the town look presentable. The king is coming. Let's make it as secure as we can make it. The herald was responsible to let those people know in those towns that the king would visit that the king was on his way. Well, Our God prophesied that the King, Jesus, would have a forerunner. And so when we get to the gospel of Luke, we have Luke in his introduction, which is one sentence there, verses one through four. Luke begins, and you wonder where he would begin. If you look in the first four verses, there it is, verse three. I love verse 3 of Luke's gospel. Luke says, "...it seemed fitting for me as well, or good for me as well, having investigated everything carefully..." There it is, "...from the beginning." And we ask ourselves, well, what does Luke consider the beginning? John's gospel begins with, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and apart from him was nothing made that has been made. John goes all the way back to eternity past and visits, brings us to the deity of Christ. Christ preexistent. Luke, interestingly enough, begins with not the preaching of John the Baptist, but the birth of John the Baptist. In fact, the birth announcement of John the Baptist. So Luke, in his blessed gospel, brings us to the details, to more details concerning the forerunner of the king and then the king. And that's where we are right now. And it's a good season to be there, to read Luke's gospel. This one, this doctor, this historian that researched all of the tradition concerning John the Baptist and Jesus and the life of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus. And then Luke wrote it down so that we would what? Look at that verse four. And this verse is for you this day, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. So Luke will take these themes, the forerunner, John the Baptist, the king himself, Jesus, and Luke gives us more detail concerning their birth, how God broke the silence of 400 years, to say to Zacharias and Elizabeth that they would have a child. And so we wanna get started today here in verse five. The account will take us through verse 25. So five through 25, we'll read the whole account, but we're only gonna preach on half of that. So five through 15, there's a lot here. but it's fascinating. So the question is, how did God break the silence? 400 years the people are waiting and waiting and they gather for worship and they make their evening and their morning and evening sacrifice and they gather for prayer and there's the temple and all that goes on with that. How would God break the silence? Wonderful story here. We love birth stories, right? I mean, I know there's some of you here, don't get you started, right? On the birth stories, everybody's got a birth story. I got a birth story, we don't have time for it today, right here. This is some kind of birth announcement. Let's read the account here, five through 25. And I pray that you are drawn into the wonder of who God is and the great lengths that he has gone to save your soul. And then think about how you respond to that. In the days of Herod, king of Judea. So Herod, he reigned from about 45 BC to about four. And Herod is a Jewish king, but he's controlled by Rome. He does things, he does like projects, but his culture is party lifestyle. You think of Herod and his house? You think of Herod and his successors? They're just party people. They're enemies of God. They're not friends of God. And we'll see that as we go through the gospel. But in the days of Herod, so Luke places this God breaking the silence in the days of Herod, King of Judea. And this is not just South of Jerusalem, In Judea, King of Judea means Judea proper, which would be Galilee, Perea, it would be South Judea, it would be Samaria, so all around Jerusalem. And in the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. So Luke introduces us to a priest. Now this priest is one of many priests. Okay, so it's important to get this. Zacharias was of the course of priests in the division of Abijah. So in a course of priests, there are four to nine families. There are 24 courses of priests. That was the division of labor that David set up in the Old Testament. So there's 24 divisions or courses. And in each division, there are four to nine families. And to be a priest, you had to be of the tribe of Levi. You had to be of the family of Aaron. And if you weren't, and you didn't have the credentials to prove that you were, you weren't gonna serve in the temple as a priest. Here we have Zacharias. He's a priest and he's of the division of Abijah and he had a wife. Now, if a priest had to be a priest, he had to have a wife of Israel. But it was even better if he had a wife of a priestly family. And in Zacharias's case, he had a wife, and what does it say? From the daughters of Aaron. So we have a priest, Zacharias, and we have him married to Elizabeth, and she's the daughter of a priest. So here is a double blessing bonus for Zacharias. We continue. We have a little biographical information on them. Verse six. You don't get this anywhere else in the New Testament. You don't get it, Matthew. You don't get it in Mark. He's in a hurry. You don't get it in John. You get it here. with Luke, because what? He wants you to know the exact truth. That tells me that it's important for us to know the exact truth. And Luke's gonna unfold it for us right here. He says, they, referring to Zacharias and Elizabeth, were both righteous in the sight of God. That means they were people of faith. It could not be said or would not be said that every priest, you would think they would be people of faith. Every priest would be a person of faith, a man of faith. That the wife would be a person of faith. But that could not be said of all priests. So how do we know that? Well, we know that because if you read Malachi's prophecy, He prophesies in the first and second chapter against the priests, because their hearts weren't toward God. But he says right here, he says, these two, Zacharias the priest and his wife, were both righteous in the sight of God. He says they were walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. So you have a dynamic duo here, Zacharias and his wife, and their hearts are toward God. They are spiritual people. They love the Lord. They're looking for the coming king. That's what you get from this. They are looking. He is not going through the motions as a priest. He is not just one, a priest in title or a priest who is entitled because of his pedigree or his heritage. He is a priest whose heart is toward God. And his wife, a daughter of the house of Aaron is a woman of faith. They're both righteous, there it is, inside of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. Right there, verse 7, that first word is really important, but they had no child. Now, that's really interesting that Luke puts the fact that they were righteous, they walked blamelessly, in all the commandments and the requirements of the Lord. And most people in that day and age, looking at Zacharias and Elizabeth, realizing that they have no children, would probably doubt how righteous they were. Oh, there had to be some sin. That's what most would have said, because you associate righteous living, a heart for God, with the primary blessing of God, which is children. And Luke makes sure that we understand that there's no sin here. There's no judgment of God on their lives. Just because they have no children, you can't conclude that they weren't righteous, because that would have been really easy to do. Oh, they don't have that great blessing from God of children, therefore they must not be righteous. Luke says, uh-uh, perish the thought. He says they were both righteous in the sight of God. They walk blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. And even at that, even with their spiritual disposition toward God, they had no child. Because Elizabeth was barren. So Elizabeth couldn't have children. But that wasn't all. The Bible says, and they were both advanced in years. So not only could Elizabeth not have children, but her and Zacharias were too old to have children. That's a double whammy. Verse 8, now it happened that while he was performing his priestly service before God in the appointed order of his division, so there's an order to all this, according to the custom of the priestly office, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. So, a little more on the priestly service. Each family of priests would serve in the temple twice a year for a week. Offering incense in the temple, in the holy place, at the altar of incense was once in a lifetime. There were about 18,000 priests. It was a privilege, it was an honor to be in the temple that day for Zacharias, that only time in his whole life, and he's up in years, that he would have that high honor and privilege of offering incense in the temple to the Lord. He would offer it at the altar of incense. And this offering of incense is symbolic of prayer and intercession. Once this was performed, once this function was performed, he was done. He was never gonna offer the incense or burn incense again. So it says, according to the custom of the priestly office, he was chosen, how? By lot. I wonder who's gonna be the next priest to offer incense in the temple at the altar of incense. Wonder who it's gonna be. How are they chosen? By lot. It's a roll of the dice. We're drawing straws here. And it was Zacharias. The Bible says, and this is a beautiful picture here, and the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. So we think the offerings were morning and evening. We think this is an evening offering. It would have been prepared around 2.30. He would probably go into the temple around three. So it was like 3, 3.30 in the afternoon. Zacharias is doing his priestly service in the temple. The priest was the only one to be able to go into the holy place. Everybody else is outside. And what are they doing? They're praying. Never take for granted corporate worship. the opportunity to gather with brothers and sisters in the Lord for the reading of scripture, the study of scripture, for the praise through song offered to God, the fellowship that we share, the encouragement that we derive from one another. Never take that for granted because God not only has ordered that, but he smiles on that. He smiles on this, he smiles on this. He loves seeing his people come together for worship. We see it here, there it is. The whole multitude of the people in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. And they would have been praying, they would have prayed A couple things. One sentence, quote, they would have said, May the merciful God enter the holy place and accept with favor the offering of your people. And then they would have prayed for the Messiah to come. And little did Zacharias know that day when he was performing his ministry function, and that was a one and done offering of incense, he would never have that opportunity again. Little did he know that that day when he was there in the temple, God would break the 400 years of silence. God was about to do something that no one, not many at least, would have expected God to do. And they certainly wouldn't have expected him to do it the way that he did it. So everybody's praying, he's in there offering incense. Are you ready? Okay. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. That didn't happen every day. How do we know this? Because Luke researched this. He says in verse 3, "...it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order." So here it is. Here's a result of his research. The angel of the Lord appeared to him." To who? To Zacharias standing to the right of the altar of incense. Zacharias was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. And that's normal. That's normal in the scriptures. When people see an angel, see the Lord, they are gripped with fear. And this was true of Zacharias. But the angel said to him, so the angel not only appears to him in that ministry as he performs that ministry of offering incense, the angel spoke to him. And this is normal as well, when someone's gripped with fear because they see an angel in the scriptures, the angel usually speaks and says, don't be afraid. And that's what this angel spoke to Zacharias. Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard. He says, and your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you will give him the name John. 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 he will drink no wine or liquor." So no wine made of grapes, and the word liquor there is the absence of grapes. It's some kind of barley thing. And he goes on, not only will he drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb. or belly here. And he goes on, he says, and he will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. It is he who will go as a forerunner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah. to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." So the Lord breaks 400 years of silence by speaking to a priest in the temple as he performs his priestly function, which would have been a once in a lifetime experience of offering incense to the Lord. And the angel announces to Zacharias that he and his wife, his wife who had been barren, and he and his wife who were way too old to have children are going to have a son. And this, this forerunner, this John the Baptist who is being announced to his father here, this John the Baptist is the forerunner to the king. So every king had to have a forerunner, including our heavenly king, our king of all kings, king of kings had to have a forerunner. And unless you have a forerunner, you don't have a king. And unless you have a king, you don't have a forerunner. Jesus has a forerunner, and that forerunner is John the Baptist, and the angel announced his birth right here. And in the other gospels, you get John the Baptist preaching. You just kind of, oh, there's his ministry. There's John the Baptist. There he is. He's got the coat of camel's hair. He's got the locusts. He eats locusts and honey. So if somebody said, hey, John, you hungry? what you want, what's your favorite snack? He'd say, I need some locusts. And I like honey too, because that makes it go down better. I mean, John the Baptist is gonna have locust legs in his beard and dried honey. This is who the forerunner is. Zacharias, you ready for this? He says, he's gonna speak to the angel. So Zacharias says to the angel, how will I know this for certain? I mean, what more do you need, right? How will I know this for certain? For I'm an old man and my wife is advanced in years. Even Zacharias understood the impossibility of this from a human perspective. The angel answered and said to him, I'm Gabriel. I mean, that takes your breath away. I mean, he's talking to Gabriel, the angel. How do we know this? Because Luke researched everything carefully from the beginning to write it out for you in consecutive order so that you would know the exact truth. Evidently you need to know this. Well, I wonder what the angel is gonna say back to Zacharias after that. Verse 19, the angel answered and said to him, I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God. And I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you shall be silent and unable to speak until the day when these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their proper time. The people were waiting for Zacharias and were wondering at his delay in the temple. I mean, he had a good reason for the delay. An angel had a message for him, but not just any angel, Gabriel. And Zacharias had to question the angel about this good news. But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them. And they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple and he kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when the days of his priestly service were ended, he went back home. After these days, Elizabeth, his wife became pregnant and she kept herself in seclusion for five months saying, do you hear that? After these days, Elizabeth, his wife, became pregnant. There's the fulfillment. And what did she do in response? She kept herself in seclusion for five months. And this is her story. She says in verse 25, this is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked with favor upon me. to take away my disgrace among men." This is the Word of the Lord. Father in heaven, we thank you for this story, this gospel story that Luke tells from the beginning. And his version of the beginning is, the birth of John the Baptist, the announcement of the birth of the forerunner of King Jesus. So we're really thankful for this and we want to be a people who wonder who just are in amazement at your greatness and your glory, and not only of the blessings that you give, but how you bring those blessings to bear on our lives. So today help us to understand that nothing is too difficult for you. Thinking first and foremost of the fact that We need a savior. And you've supplied that savior in Jesus. Nothing is too difficult for you, including our salvation. So thank you for this and help us in Jesus' name. Amen. So the point here, and we'll see it all through Luke, supernatural God, who's high and holy, creator of everything we see and don't see, this God, being faithful to his word, shows up in time and space to fulfill his word. So we see the supernatural God coming in to earth announcing his plan for the salvation of man. And Herod can't stop him. Herod's house can't stop him. The point is that God is not bound by wicked kings. God's not bound by that. So sometimes we look at the times that we live in and we say, well, how bad they are, whatever. And we forget that we serve a good God who is not bound by circumstances or the times in which we live. You know, we read headlines. Well, how could God do anything with this? How could God do anything with my life or my heart? God is not bound. He is supernatural. He is big. His ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts. And nothing is too difficult for Him, including your salvation. So this was in the days of Herod. Looks like great timing for God to do what God does. The next thing is God is not bound by religious structures. We said it a while ago, Malachi is offering this prophecy against the priests. because most of them weren't genuine, but thankfully God has a remnant, a remnant of a remnant, if you will. And God works through the remnant. God is not bound by human instrumentality. He will use human instrumentality. He will use the faithful in this case, Zacharias and Elizabeth. but he's not handcuffed by a religious system that were more intent on fulfilling their own needs than on doing God's will. And that's good news. Our God is bigger than that. And our God has plans that supersede that kind of stuff. I like that. And next, our God is not bound, He is never bound by human unbelief, even among His people. Why did Zacharias say what he said? How will I know this is true? I mean, what would you think a holy God would do, or the angel would do at that point? Well, it's all off the table now, Zacharias. Things were going pretty well until you voiced your concern and put in your two cents. Thank you very much. You've ruined it for all time. You know, even our moments of unbelief, Confusion. Sometimes it's just irresistible. We just have to ask, how? How? And God's not bound by our unbelief. You look at it right here. Yeah, Zacharias is going, he's gonna feel it. He's gonna feel some discipline. But the whole operation isn't off the table. God is going to see this thing through. And John the Baptist is going to be, this baby boy is gonna be born and his name is gonna be John, even though they're going, hey, there's no, this isn't a family name. Why are you naming him John? And Zacharias is gonna write it down. His name is John. He still can't speak. His name is John. No more conversation about it. His name is John. That's what Gabriel said, but God fulfills his plan. God is big and good. And when he has decreed something in his word, he will fulfill it. He did it then and he continues to do it now. You say, well, does he still have a decree out there? Yes. Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. By the way, I love Luke. You know, we used to tell people when they first get to know Jesus, we'd say, read the book of John. Anybody ever told you that? Read the book of John. I read the book of John. Okay. John's good. They're all good, but Luke's the only gospel writer that writes a sequel. He wrote the book of Acts to tell us about the results of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection, that the church was born on the day of Pentecost. And he did gather people into the church. And he continues to gather us to himself in the church to this day. Why does he do that? Because that's what he is decreed to do. That's what he wants to do. And he is magnified as he saves the lost, as he redeems those who are enslaved in sin, as he brings those who were enemies of God into a friendship with God. So we see this. We see that he is not bound by man's unbelief. He's not bound by religious institutions that have gone, that are now in unbelief. We see that he's not bound by human instrumentality. He can do anything. And he is not bound by natural law. That's our God. He's not bound by... Elizabeth was barren. They were both old. But Elizabeth had a baby boy. And that was possible because our great God is not bound by natural law. Our God is the supernatural God, all powerful God, who fulfills his word. And he fulfills that word in the way that he desires to fulfill it. And as a result, we have the forerunner of the king and we have the king. Now, Next week, we'll go through the last 10 verses of this account of John's birth announcement. And then Jesus' birth will be foretold as we move forward. This morning, I want you to think about God and his supernatural power and his love for the lost. that would cause him to fulfill his word in the manner in which he fulfilled it. And we give him praise for this. Father in heaven, we thank you for this day. We thank you that there was a forerunner to the King Jesus, our King. His name was John and he came about, he came to be in a miraculous manner. And Lord, we thank you for this. And we are amazed, Lord, by your goodness and mercy to us. And we thank you. And we ask God that today, that if there's one here that doesn't know you, that doesn't know you through your son, Jesus, that you would draw their heart to you. That they would see the truth as Luke presents it. and that they would confess Jesus the King. We give you praise. We give you glory. You are the great and mighty God. That you have no limits as to your goodness and the extent that you will go to save us from sin. We give you praise. We thank you for Jesus. And it's in his name that we ask these things, amen. Amen.