I'm gonna ask you to take your Bible to Luke chapter one. We are going to break away from our final segment in the book of Ephesians. I have one more message I wanna do, and then we'll wrap that series up, and I'll do that after the start of the new year. But this Sunday and next Sunday, we are going to look at one of the most beautiful hymns in all of our Bible. This Sunday we're going to look at the setup for the hymn, and the next Sunday we're going to look at the hymn itself. And I've titled the message, What's in a Name? What's in a Name? We could almost call the sermon, if you are into this, the idea that there is another Christmas sun that we never talk about. And so this morning as we come into the season that we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, there was another birth. And I want us to look at that birth so that we can magnify and understand and celebrate the second birth even more fully and with greater intentionality. It's hard to imagine things that are. It's hard to imagine a time when they weren't. especially if those things have been a part of your life for the entire time that you've been alive. Let me give you an illustration of what I'm talking about. How many of you were born before there was an iPhone? Can I see your hands? All right, now, those of you who your entire life, you've known an iPhone. You came out of the womb and here was a little iPhone for you. You have no idea what life was like before that device. But there are people here who remember what it was like before there was an iPhone. In fact, how many of you here remember when the only kind of phone there was had a cord and it had this circle that you rotated with your finger? How many of you remember that? All right, how many of you remember the party line? This was a phone, some of you are like, oh, you had a party on your phone. No, that's not at all what happened. Basically, there was one phone for about five households. And if you were really, really careful, you could pick up the phone in your house and really slowly depress the little thingy and you could hear what was going on in the other house. It was a means of keeping up with the people in your neighborhood. And so thank the Lord that that's no longer the case. It's very hard to imagine life when your entire life has been lived with something like an iPhone. It's very, very difficult to imagine life before that kind of instant, constant barrage of information and communication. I want to ask you this morning to imagine what life would be like before there was Christmas. I mean, if you could go all the way back to the passage, to the time in the days of Herod that we read about in verse five, the entire world had never imagined Christmas. I mean, all of our life, our entire life, from the time we were born forward, And from the time our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents, the world in which we live has known, has celebrated, has observed, and has been impacted by the season that we're in called Christmas. So it's very, very difficult for us to imagine. I mean, we can sort of think about it conceptually, but it's very, very difficult to go all the way back to a time when nobody on the planet would have been thinking about the things that we're thinking about during this season. But I want to take you back to that time, because if we're going to really understand the magnitude of what we're reading about in Luke 1, we have to get there. Luke is going to present the Christmas story around a number of themes. So if you read Luke 1 and 2, you read about two conceptions that are miraculous. You read about two women who experience amazing things, miraculous things from God. You read about two husbands who play amazing roles in different ways in the story. There are common themes that run throughout these two chapters. The Holy Spirit is amazingly present in almost every paragraph. You're gonna read a reference to the Holy Spirit. The idea of good news is present in the texts. The idea of great joy is in almost every paragraph. the anticipation of great joy. Shalom is here. And all of those themes that you're picking up as Luke leads you through these narratives that lead up to this astonishing birth, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, are happening in a context where very few people really realized what was going on. And the people that realized what was going on are described in this way. They are righteous. They are blameless before the Lord. You are gonna meet in the narratives that Luke presents to you common, ordinary people who were living in the land of Israel. And when God describes them to you, other than their name, he wants you to know that they were blameless before him. That doesn't mean they were sinless. That doesn't mean they didn't ever do anything wrong or say a cross word. It just means that as they lived their life, they lived their life in loyal pursuit of him. They lived their life in obedience to the best of their ability to the Torah of God. And they had been praying for a long time. And so the other theme that runs through these narratives is the theme of prayer. And so as we come to the story of the other son, maybe the best place for us to start is with the promises that had been made about this other son 400 years earlier with the last living prophet that Israel ever experienced, and his name was Malachi. And he makes up the last book in your English Old Testament. And in Malachi chapter three and in Malachi chapter four, Malachi prophesies two amazing things. Let me read what Malachi prophesied. In Malachi chapter three verse one, God said through the prophet Malachi, behold, in other words, pay attention. That word behold carries that idea of paying attention. Behold, I am going to send my messenger And he will clear the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, saith the Lord of hosts. And then in Malachi chapter four, verses five and six, he says this, behold, I'm going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. That was the last time God spoke in revelatory ways to his people. And then there was 400 years of silence. from God. It wasn't a silent time. Great things, terrible things, devastating things had happened to this nation in those 400 years. In those 400 years, the Greeks had come. And after the Greeks, the Ptolemies from Egypt had come. And then after the Ptolemies from Egypt had come, had come the Romans. And everywhere you looked in Zechariah's time, in the days of Herod, you could see the evidence of a land under oppression, a land under the devastating bondage of Roman oppression. And yes, the Romans made roads, and yes, they introduced law and order, but there still was a devastating sense of oppression on the lives of the people, and it had been this way for 600 years. It had been 600 years since a legitimate heir of David had occupied the throne of Israel. The current king, Herod, that we read about in verse five, wasn't of the Davidic line. In fact, he wasn't even a full Jew. He was a puppet king, set up and governed and ruled and controlled by Rome. And in the midst of all of this burden, in the midst of all of this oppression, there were righteous people who remembered the promises that God had made through the prophets like Malachi that one day all of this would change. And Luke is bringing you into that story and he is going to set up for you in the story the amazing birth of a son that is going to be the precursor to an even more amazing birth, an even greater birth. And so to kind of give you the context of this, let me lay out three ideas that you need to keep in mind and I need to keep in mind if we're gonna make sense of what Pastor Mike read to us a few moments ago in chapter one, verses five through 25. Immediately, you're brought into the reality of a barren couple and you're immediately brought into their life. Notice how Luke says, in the days of Herod the king, There was a priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron. I mean, these were impeccable credentials. Married a son of Levi, marrying a daughter of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous in the sight of God. They walked blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord, but And it's like the butt just jumps off the page at you. There is something that isn't congruous with what's going on here. It doesn't make sense. They had no child. And the reason they had no child was because Elizabeth was barren and they were both advanced in years. They were righteous and blameless. They had no child because Elizabeth were barren and they were advanced in years. and you wanna know why. I mean, that's the whole point. Luke is setting up this couple in such a way that what you're reading and what actually is happening in their life doesn't make sense. God, if they're righteous and they're walking in your commandments and we can go back to your law and you actually say that the fruit of the womb is the blessing for righteous living, why is this righteous couple barren? And Luke is wanting you to see that sort of incongruity that's there because it's not due to any fault of the couple. I mean, when you start thinking about the fact that you have a couple here that should have children and they don't, if you lived in the first century, one of the immediate questions you would have is there's something going on that God is displeased with. In fact, Elizabeth is gonna actually talk about that at the very end of the narrative. This is exactly what people were wondering. And God wants you to know that's not at all what's going on here. That is not at all why this couple is barren. So why are they barren? And before Luke answers that question for you, he wants you to think about the fact that this righteous couple who have been praying for a son represents a nation that has been praying for a son to come. In fact, we're gonna find out that Zachariah He's at the place of prayer, at the time of prayer, and he's praying about this. And there are people gathered outside of this place where Zechariah is praying, and they're praying about this, and the content of their praying is this, God, send us the Son. And generation after generation they prayed that somewhere in Israel there would be a virgin who would conceive and out of her womb would come this long-awaited son. And generation after generation after generation, the nation remained barren. The nation remained barren. And so Luke is wanting to set up this context in which you look at a barren couple that stands in for a barren nation, longing for a son, and it has been so long that the praying has almost become perfunctory because we really don't think God is gonna do it in our day and in our age. because he didn't do it in the days of our fathers, and they prayed just as faithfully and just as fervently, and it didn't happen in the days of our grandfathers or our great-grandfathers. In fact, our entire nation has been praying for generations, for years, for decades, for centuries, and it hasn't happened. There is a barren couple and a barren nation, but secondly, there's a praying people at a praying time and a praying place. Here is Zechariah performing his priestly duty before the Lord. And you know the story, Abijah is one of the divisions of the priestly tribe. They live scattered throughout the land of Egypt, or Israel rather, and they would come by appointment to Jerusalem. And there were 24,000 of these priests, and 1,000 of them would come. two times a year to serve in the temple. So every order, the 24 orders, every order would come two times a year and for a week, and they would do their service. And that's how the temple was staffed every day. And it was Zechariah's turn. And when they got there, They would have all kinds of different duties, but one of the highest duties that could be given to a priest that was not the high priest was the privilege of going into the holy place and laying on the golden altar of incense, the incense on hot coals that would then vaporize and rise up as a sweet savor, a sweet smelling smoke to the Lord, representing all the prayers of Israel. for the coming of this son. And that would happen twice a day. It would happen in the morning and it would happen about four o'clock in the afternoon. And it was such a high honor that if a priest was ever given this honor, it could only happen once in his lifetime. And so here at the end of Zachariah's priestly career, he had been coming to the temple two times a year for his entire life, and now he's here, and in one of the final times that he's here, he gets the highest honor, that he could ever have been given in his priestly career, and he's given the responsibility to go into the holy place. Two other priests would go before him with the coals. They would put the coals on the altar, and then they would depart, and he would be there alone, and he would pour the incense on the altar, and as the smoke went up, he would pray for the entire nation. And outside the temple area would be all of the faithful of Israel who had gathered. If you were a faithful law-keeping Israelite and you were in Jerusalem and you had the time free, you would make your way to the temple in the afternoon prayer time to offer your prayers with the prayer of the priest that was going on inside that would rise up to the Lord. And all of those prayers would be for the coming of this long-awaited Son. There was a praying priest representing a praying nation. And he would come out at the end of offering that incense and those prayers, and as he stood on the stairs, he would say to the people, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you shalom. How would he give shalom? Everybody knew that the Lord would give shalom by the sending of this son. And then the third thing that Luke wants you to know, he wants you to know about a barren couple and a barren nation, he wants you to know about a praying priest and a praying people, but he wants you to know about a great joy and not just momentary gladness. He wants you to know that there is great joy coming in verse 13 and 14 of the text. The angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard 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. The idea behind the word heard here is not just that God's ears heard Zechariah's words, it's that God decided that the time had come for him to answer all of these prayers that his people had been praying day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, and now Zechariah wants you to know that your prayers have been heard. Great joy is coming. The word joy here is an interesting word. It doesn't just mean momentary gladness or momentary happiness. It's the word that's used in the Old Testament to describe a little lamb skipping for joy when it anticipates what the mother lamb is going to give to her in its food. It's what you see when you see a little kid at Christmas, and they can't stand still, they can't sit still. They're like just, they're just moving with all this energy, because they know that you're about to hand them a present that's gonna make their life really happy for a few minutes. Right? Until it breaks. Or until you figure out, I forgot to get batteries. Never happened to you, and then all the joy is gone. This word here is a word that God is saying to Zachariah, there is about to come a great joy that is far deeper than just a momentary happiness. And throughout the entire narrative, You are reminded and you are brought into, in all of this darkness and all of this oppression and all of this bondage, there are these lights that just sort of flare up and when you come close to the light, it is people that are rejoicing over something. So what are we to make of all of this? And so let me maybe draw our attention now to the story here that we see in verse five all the way through verse 24. And there are really many ways to tell the story. I mean, I wrestled all week trying to think through how do I take this passage and how do I break it down in my own mind so that it impacts my life and how do I tell the story that's being told here in a way that will be an encouragement to you and that will draw our attention to the one big idea that I think Luke is trying to get us to see. And by the time you get done really thinking about what happened in verse five through verse 25, of this text, here's what you walk away with. Nothing is impossible for God. Nothing is impossible for God. In fact, by the time you get to verse 36, that is exactly what the text says. Listen to verse 36. Here is Gabriel and he's talking now to Mary, Elizabeth's cousin, and he's telling her about Elizabeth, right? And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age. I mean, without being inappropriate here, there's a certain age at which childbearing doesn't just become difficult, it becomes impossible. And Elizabeth and Zacharias are there. This is not like getting pregnant in your 40s and saying, oh boy, now what? This is, think about getting pregnant in your late 60s. This would be, you know, your mom and dad calling you up and saying, hey, we have news about grandma. And you're going, I can't even comprehend this. I can't even imagine this. Okay, that's what you're supposed to think. I mean, when the crowd comes to Elizabeth and they say, what are you gonna name him? In Jewish times, you generally tried to name your son after the grandfather. And so they're saying, name him Zacharias. That ought to tell you a little bit about Zacharias' age. And so here is what the angel says, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has conceived a son and this is the sixth month with her who is called barren. And then in verse 37, for nothing will be impossible with God. What does God want you to walk away with? He wants you to walk away with one big truth. Nothing. Nothing. Your cancer, your bank account, your job, your marriage, your kids, your unsaved husband, your unsaved wife, your mom and dad that you don't think knows the Lord, nothing, nothing is impossible. for God. How does Luke tell the story? Well, he tells the story in four names. Let me give you the names. The first name is Zechariah and the word or the name Zechariah means God remembers. God remembers. In choosing Zechariah to be the father of this messianic forerunner, God was announcing something. He was saying through this priest, I remember. I remember, God remembers. Look at verse 13, the angel said to him, do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son and you will name him John. Zachariah, God has heard your prayers. He has remembered his promises to Abraham and to David. And the time has come for him to answer those prayers and fulfill his promises. But before that comes, we're gonna read about that next Sunday when we read about Zechariah's amazing hymn. Before that comes, Zechariah, there's another prayer that you and your wife have been praying for many, many years. In fact, in all likelihood, we don't know this, but in all likelihood, probably they had stopped praying at some point for a son. And God says, now Zachariah, I remember, I remember that prayer, and I'm gonna answer it. I mean, realistically, the time had come where praying for a child of their own had become just a sorrowful memory of what might have been. And even if they were continuing to pray for a son, maybe it had been relegated into the same category that many of us relegate our praying when we prayed for something over and over and over for a long time and it just hasn't come. We still pray for it. If you ask us, we still believe that God can. It's not like we start denying God's word, but in our minds, we just sort of relegate it into a category of things that we talk to God about because we're supposed to talk to God about these things, but they really aren't things that we think God is going to do. And God says, I heard. And I didn't forget. I remember. What's amazing is Zachariah remembers, or God remembers, but Zachariah doesn't. Zachariah doesn't remember. So here's Zachariah, think about this. He comes in to this place, highest day of his life, biggest honor you could ever have as a priest. The other guys leave, he walks in with about a gallon of incense in this golden ladle, and he's about to put it on the altar of incense and offer the traditional prayer that he would have prayed as the incense went up. And as he lifts up his eyes, There's somebody else in the room who's not supposed to be there, and he's at the right hand of this altar. This is a good sign. I mean, this is a sign of good things to come. God is about to do something amazing, but for Zechariah, this is terrifying. Number one, it's confusing. What are you doing here, and who are you? I'm the priest that's supposed to have this honor, and then he realizes this isn't a priest. And then he realizes this is an angel, and he's terrified. And then the angel talks to him, and he says, now, Zechariah, don't be afraid. In other words, stop fearing. This is a traditional greeting that happens any time a human being encounters an angelic being in his full glory. Stop being afraid, don't be afraid. I have good news. And so he hears the news and he's shocked and then he starts talking back to the angel. He says to the angel, how will I know this for certain? I mean, I hear you, but how do I know for certain that this is gonna happen? I mean, after all, I know my age, I know Elizabeth age, and I know what's being said out there. And if I go trotting out there with this news, I know what's gonna be said. So how do I know that this is really going to happen? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years. In other words, Gabriel, how in the world is this possible? Zechariah forgot something that he had heard his entire life as a priest. He forgot about another couple in Genesis. who had also been barren and who were far more advanced in age than he and Elizabeth. You remember that couple? Abraham and Sarah. And God did the very same thing for them that he was about to do for Zechariah and Elizabeth. And in the moment of receiving this news, Zechariah forgot. And so he demanded a sign. This is not an act of weak faith. It's actually an act of unbelief. And how many times are we like Zechariah? I mean, we have a Bible full of evidence that God hears and God answers and God doesn't ignore and God doesn't forget. And yet we go week after week after week as though God did forget and God doesn't really know or God doesn't care. And so, God says through Gabriel, I want you to tell Zechariah that I am gracious. And here's how I'm gonna do that. I want you to tell him to name the boy that's gonna be born to him John. And that's our second character in the story, right? So you got Zechariah, God remembers when Zechariah didn't, and then you've got God is gracious. John, the word John in Hebrew actually means God is gracious. God is merciful. In verse 13 of the text, you will name his name John, and then in verse 14, you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while he's in his mother's womb. He will turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God. He will make a people ready for their Lord. Zechariah, God, in spite of your unbelief, is gracious and He wants you to name your son gracious. God is gracious. And that's exactly what John did. He was great in the sight of the Lord. How do we know that? The Lord Himself said that in Luke 7, 28. The Lord speaks of John and He says, He is the greatest person who ever lived. Remember we talked about the Holy Spirit? He was filled and controlled with the Holy Spirit even in the womb. The Holy Spirit is unusually active in these narratives and in both of the lives of the people whose births we are reading. And here he is overshadowing John, even in the womb. And the reason we know this is that when Mary comes into Elizabeth's presence six months later, something happens to John. He instinctively knows, even as a pre-born infant, that he is in the presence of the Lord. And he leaps in Mary's womb. And John is overshadowed by the Spirit of God. Zechariah, your boy, your son, here is who he is. He is that forerunner. He is the one that you all have been longing for and praying for at every Passover. Every Passover, you articulate a prayer that Elijah would come because you know that when Elijah comes and the ministry that he does by the Spirit of God, you know that when Elijah comes, right behind him will come Messiah. And Zechariah, that's who John is. Do you wanna know who this boy is? This boy is Elijah, the forerunner. Not Elijah sort of reborn or reincarnated, but he's coming in the spirit and in the power of Elijah. The same Holy Spirit that energized Elijah's ministry is the same Holy Spirit that is now energizing your son. And like Elijah, he will go and confront the people about their sin, and God will use him to call people to repentance so that they will be ready to receive Messiah when he comes. He will make a people ready to receive the Lord. Other than being the parents of Messiah himself, there could not be a greater honor given to a couple than to be the parents of the forerunner of the Messiah. God is gracious. I mean, God could have said to Elijah or to Zechariah, Zechariah, you didn't believe, so therefore, we're gonna pick, I'm picking another couple, he didn't do that. He simply said, name him John. And that brings us then to the third character in our story, and that's the angel. Zechariah said to the angel, how will I know this for certain for I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years, verse 18. The angel answered and said to him, I am Gabriel. I am Gabriel. The name Gabriel means God is strong. Zechariah, God remembers. John, God is merciful. Gabriel, God is strong. Zechariah had been standing in the presence of God, serving the God of heaven for all of eternity. The last time you saw me in the scripture was 500 years ago when I showed up to somebody else who was just like you, a man named Daniel, and I gave to him an interpretation of a vision about the son that is coming. and 500 years later, I'm standing in front of you because that vision is about to happen. Somebody greater than your son. Your son will be great in the eyes of the Lord, but the son that I'm talking about that's coming after your son, he will be great because he is the Lord. I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I have been sent I mean, think about that. God sent this angel to this elderly priest, and he had one message. I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you good news. Good news. That's the word for gospel, evangelizo. It's a verb form. I have been sent to give you good news. And because you didn't believe, you are gonna be the sign. Just like Jonah was a sign, and Luke, Zacharias is also a sign. Zacharias, you're gonna be the sign. You know how this is gonna happen? Because I'm gonna tell you something that's gonna happen to you, and it's gonna happen. And the thing that's gonna happen to you is gonna stay with you until the thing that you're thinking isn't gonna happen happens. You don't think that it's possible for your wife to conceive and have a son? You don't think it's possible for your son to be the anointed forerunner of the Messiah? You don't think any of that's possible? Well, until that happens, this is going to happen to you. You are gonna be the sign. And people are gonna have to sign to you. And so all of a sudden, Zacharias, loses his ability to speak and most likely his ability to hear because of unbelief. You say, well, how does it all end? Well, it ends this way. It ends with Elizabeth. You know what Elizabeth means? God is faithful. The actual word is debated. Some people say the word means favorable or good fortune, but the idea there is that God is faithful. And so here's what happens as Zacharias comes out. The people are actually worried because he's been in there for so long. And they know that if you walk in to that place and you are not perfectly righteous and ritually pure before the Lord, and you walk into the holy place, something bad can happen to you. You know that, they believe that. And they were already suspicious that something was going on because this priest and his wife had no children. and surely something was up that nobody knew about. And now he gets to go into the holy place and he's in there for a long time. And they're thinking, okay, maybe something happened here. Maybe God dealt with that thing that we didn't know about. and then all of a sudden the curtain parts and he comes stumbling out and he's standing there in front of them and they're waiting for him to pronounce the Aaronic blessing out of numbers. And he can't talk. And he's mute. And all he can do is try to sign something and the people pick up that something monumental happened inside. And they're not gonna know until six months or nine months later what really happened in there. And so Zachariah and Elizabeth go home. I don't know how he communicated to her all that happened, but somehow he did. And listen to how the text ends. After these days, Elizabeth's wife became pregnant. and she kept herself in seclusion for five months saying, 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. God is favorable. Here's an aged woman whose entire life has been lived under a shadow. She knows, Zechariah knows, but she's lived under a shadow. And they've wondered year after year, has God forgotten us? Maybe you wonder that sometimes. Has God forgotten me? You haven't abandoned the Lord, you haven't walked away from the Lord, you haven't stopped worshiping the Lord, you haven't stopped being faithful to the Lord, but in your heart, you just wonder, God, have you forgotten me? Every year I pray, and every month I pray, and every week I pray, and have you forgotten me? You say, well, that doesn't happen to righteous people, it happened to this righteous couple. It's in our Bible for a reason. It happens to you, it happens to me. And we come before the Lord and we just beseech the Lord over and over and over until finally we just pray because it's the right thing to do and we don't really anticipate that God is gonna answer. What have you been praying for for a long time? I'm not talking about the, you know, hey, I need money for the rent, or man, it'd be really nice if the Lord could help me figure out how to get a new car, or I don't know which job to take. I mean, what is it that you have been really agonizing with God about? It's just over and over and over, and it's like God has forgotten. And Elizabeth says, God looked on me. God remembered me. God vindicated me. God reached down into all of this oppression, all of this darkness, all of this gloom, and he touched one woman who lived in the hill country. And she said, God remembered me. You know, God remembers our praying even when it appears He has forgotten. God is merciful and gracious. He is constantly displaying His grace even when it appears that He has forgotten or failed to give us the thing that we've been longing for and praying for. God is strong and mighty. If we haven't received it, it's not because God is unable, and John reminds us that God is favorable to us. I don't know what you've been praying for. I don't know why the Lord laid this passage on my heart so strongly this week, but I believe that there are many of us who are like Zachariah and Elizabeth, and we've come to the Lord, and we've come to the Lord, and we've come to the Lord, and we haven't walked away from the Lord, and we haven't walked away from our Bible, and we haven't walked away from the truth of Scripture, but in our hearts, we've crossed over a little line that says, you know, I'm gonna keep praying, but that's all it is, it's just a prayer. Because I don't really think God is gonna answer this one. And I wanna challenge you to move from the corner where Zacharias started to the corner where Elizabeth is and say, God remembers me. God has been favorable to me. None of this has happened yet when she's saying all of this. And so as we come, let's pray that God would help us to do that. Let's bow our heads together. Father, you are a great God. You see and you hear. and you know things that we don't see and that we don't hear and that we don't know. All we know and all we see and all we hear is the momentary peace that's around us and the circumstance in which that little peace operates. And so, Lord, help us with a heart like Elizabeth to come before you and confess again that you remember that you are strong, that you are gracious, and that you act favorably toward us, and you have in sending your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I pray that each one of us would grasp this truth, that it would encourage us, that it would strengthen us, and that would move us to confident praying so that we would receive from you the thing for which we ask. For it's in your name we pray, amen. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you. May he lead you in the way of peace.