Take your Bibles and turn to Luke, chapter 1. Am I getting a little ring from here? Luke, chapter 1. If you don't have a Bible with you today, you can take one of the few Bibles in front of you. It's on page 855. It's the first chapter in Luke, and that's where we'll be this morning. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to minister to you today. We've had great messages on Zachariah this fall, and a wonderful message from Luke 2 last Sunday. And as we kind of think about the end of the year, what I'd like to do is go back to the beginning, in a sense, of the Christmas story, even though it's several months before the time of Bethlehem. And that is what happened in Luke chapter 1. And Luke introduces us to the parents of John the Baptist. The gospel of Luke was not written by an eyewitness of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was written by a Gentile believer from Europe, and he was the only Gentile author of a book in our New Testament. To show you the seriousness of the task that Luke had endeavored to accomplish, I want to turn your attention, first of all, to the first four verses of Luke chapter 1 and see what Luke has to say as he begins his gospel account. Inasmuch as I have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that I've been accomplished among us, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught. When you look at these first four verses of this passage of scripture, this book gives you probably the most natural sequence between the Old and New Testaments with the account of the last and greatest of the prophets of the Old Testament, John the Baptist. Now God breaks his 400 year silence, not 400 years of inactivity, but just silence from heaven, with the sending of Gabriel to speak to Zacharias, or Zachariah, same thing, of the coming of his son, John the Baptist, which was a fulfillment of the prophecy in Malachi. Luke introduced us, as you see here in this passage, as we'll look in Luke, of several surprises. Now, usually when you give a narrative, you like to be able to think, I want to tell you what's going on, but I also may have some surprises for you. And so the first of the surprises that Luke gives in his gospel account is found here in these first few chapters, and that is the introduction of the Messiah in the Lord Jesus Christ, who later, he accounts, is crucified and risen. Now, the second Luke records as far as a surprise, he records in the book of Acts, and that is the inclusion of Gentiles as God's people without any attempt of being made for them to have to relate to the law. The third surprise that Luke gives an account of is Christ's resurrection and his exaltation as God's vindication of this claims as Messiah. Another surprise you see as you read the book of Luke is Jesus' conscious pursuit of the fringe of society, that is, the poor, the immoral, the children, and those who suffer. All this was met by opposition. But Luke, in these first four verses, wants to reassure this individual named Theophilus. We're not exactly sure who he is or was, but he was a learned man. He wants to assure him that the difficulty of the walk with Christ was worthwhile. And the message this morning, I want you to see three themes in this first chapter of Luke. All of those themes aren't just historical themes, but they're themes for all of us today. First theme is that God is always working, always. Do you see it or do you want to see it? How have you been preparing yourself to see and know God's work? So God is working always. But the second theme that you see in this first chapter of Luke is the obedience, repentance, and submission to God opens opportunities for God's grace and blessing in your lives. And this will be illustrated through the lives of Zacharias and his wife, Elizabeth. Obedience, repentance, and submission to God opens opportunities for God's grace and blessing in your life. Third theme that you see in this first chapter is this, and we'll get this toward the end of the message, is the understanding of scripture draws our attention to God's plan, the plan of a savior, the plan of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ himself. The only reason that we see all this that happens with Zachariah and Elizabeth is that they knew the Word and they understood what was happening. Now it frightened them and he struggled a little bit with it, but he understood because he understood Scripture. So let's go back to our first theme. God works He's always working, always. So God works in wondrous ways. And one of the things you find out when you read the book of Luke is that Luke wants you to understand God has a plan. The whole thing with the story of Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem from Nazareth was not just a random decision by Caesar to take a census. It wasn't just something that just happened. God had all this planned, and it's a miraculous plan that you see with Zacharias and with Elizabeth. So he has a plan. Christianity is certainly not humdrum. A lot of people think it is. You know, Christianity just, wow, you're a Christian. You don't have no excitement in your life? Are you kidding? Knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, seeing Him work in the lives of people, seeing answered prayer, seeing souls saved, there's nothing more exciting in this world than that. And what you see with happening in this first chapter is anything but humdrum. Sometimes you would look at the character of Zacharias and think of this old kind of priest that has this vision in the temple, oh, he can't talk for a little while. Nah, I want you to forget all that. I'm going to paint a picture of Zacharias today that hopefully will be a lot more clear to you than that. So Luke wants to show you that there's a continuity of God's plan, and he gives us prophecy and gives us fulfillment. So you see, constantly in the Gospel of Luke, he's going to tell you, this is what God said in the past, and this is how it's had happened. But for the past 400 years, Israel's not actually heard a word from the Lord, but he was still working indeed. Do you realize Malachi, who we studied some years ago, last book probably written in our Old Testament, 400 years before Luke writes this, at that time the Persians were in charge of the world. And then in the course of history, the Greeks came along, and under the rule or the reign of Philip of Macedon and later Alexander the Great, they swept into power and brought with them the wonderful Greek language. Now always remember, as you look at the Christmas story, is the great passage in Galatians 4.4, but in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, made of a woman made under the law. Fullness of time. By the time of Christ's birth, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek, which was called the Septuagint by 70 scholars in Alexandria, Egypt around the second century BC. But when Alexander died, Alexander the Great died, he was only 32 years old. He died in Babylon following a drinking party. His kingdom had been divided into four parts. And he had about 10 days from the time he got sick to the time he died. So he assigned to four of his generals all these territories. He referred to his generals as the strong ones. Now, there are two that are important to Christians. And that is the Seleucid Empire, which was to the north of Israel, and Ptolemy Empire, which was to the south, or Egypt. And the territory between the north and the south, Israel, was right in the middle. So they were sandwiched. There was constant conflict. And the Seleucid Empire, one of their rulers, Antiochus IV or Antiochus Epiphanes, was a very evil fellow. And he decided he wanted to go down to Egypt and take over Egypt or the Ptolemy area. And so when he went down there, the Romans, who were now starting to get into power, didn't like to see what was happening. They wanted to keep it divided. They had a great Roman interest in Egypt. So when Antiochus went down there to try to take it over, he pretty much took all of it over except for Alexandria. Rome sent an old senator by the name of Gaius Bophilus And he sent him down there, you wouldn't recognize that name, but he sent him down there to meet with Antiochus to let him know that Rome was serious about him. So out in the desert, Gaius met with Antiochus. And the famous thing that we would all know of today is that he took a sword, we would use the expression which came from this story, as he drew a line in the sand. Actually, what he did was he drew a circle around Antiochus and he said to him, you have until you get out of this circle to decide to get out of Egypt and go back home. If you don't, all of Rome's coming after you. So you stand there in this circle and make your decision. Well, he decided he wanted his life and so when he got out of the circle, he went back home. On his way back home, he decided to take out his revenge upon Jerusalem. He went there and desecrated the temple. killed a bunch of people. As a result of that, the revolt of the Maccabeans took place under Mattathias Maccabeus and his son Judas Maccabeus in 164 BC. The revolt took place and the Jews had gotten rid of the Solution people out of their territory and rebuilt the temple, reestablished the worship there. All that took place in coming to get prepared for what happened in Luke chapter 1. The Romans were now in power by the time of Luke chapter 1. They brought with them their roads, their government, and their military power. So the world was coming together in a lot of ways for the introduction of the Messiah. So God was still working, working by arranging the national situation, the world situation, to prepare for the Lord Jesus Christ to come. But once you see in Luke, you see Luke is now saying, I want to focus on two people right now. It's interesting that the first person that he introduces us to in this gospel account is in verse 5, he's going to introduce us to this guy, Zacharias. In the days of Herod, and I love what he's done there, he's told you about Herod, but then he's also going to tell you about a priest who couldn't be more opposite than Herod. 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. they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly and in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord, but they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and both were advanced in years. God works with people to bless them as well as giving them this profit and to be able to announce the Savior in John the Baptist. When you look at society, even in Jewish society at this time, there's always been a class consciousness in almost every culture of society in history. And the Jewish culture in Christ's day or Luke's day was no different. The upper class of that social structure consisted of the descendants of Aaron, the official priesthood. Now just kind of weigh through all this. There were about 20,000 priests in the day of Zacharias. They served in and around Jerusalem. Sadly, many of them, most of them probably, were proud, bigoted, overly indulgent, self-seeking men, religious only in the external matter that would impress the right people. The Lord Jesus called them painted sepulchres, just got a good look on the outside, but there's nothing on the inside. The priest in the story that Christ gave of the Good Samaritan is a good example of what the priests were like at the time of Zacharias. A few of them, though, were different. And among them was an old priest in the hills of Judea, probably south of Jerusalem, whose name was Zacharias. I want to examine a little bit of what Luke said about him, who he was and who his wife was. The Bible tells you their names, and then he said they were both righteous before God. Now God places a huge emphasis upon names. Pastor Sipes mentioned a lot of that. He mentioned even this morning about Grandpa Idu. We've got several ladies having babies this spring. Might want to consider Idu for a possible. Then again, maybe not. Zacharias or Zachariah, the name means God remembers. Elizabeth is a great name, which means his oath. Put the two of them together, God remembers his oath. Now, when you get to John, it goes further, but God remembers his oath. And that's significant because when you get to what we call the benediction of Zacharias in verses 68 through 79, you see that he carries through with that with going back to the Old Testament and talking about the Abrahamic covenant and what God promised Abraham that some of the people probably had forgotten about. He and Elizabeth, the Bible tells us, are given to us as devout examples. Not like most of the priests at their time, they were righteous, as if Luke was recording the fact these folks were really different than the normal. Sad to say. And they were both righteous before the Lord, walking blamelessly in all the commandments, the Bible says. It doesn't mean that they were sinless. but that they were faithful and sincere in wanting to keep God's ordinances. Their hearts were tender. I always loved that expression about Josiah in the Old Testament, when the Bible describes him as a person who had a tender heart. It's the only time that word occurs in our Old Testament. Their righteousness was before God, not for the show of people, and that's important. Everything about them was just the opposite of what Herod was really like. But the Bible tells you, Luke records, he told you what they were like, but then he says, but there was sadness in their hearts that God had not given them a child. To an Israelite woman, they longed to be the one chosen to be able to give birth to the Messiah, or at least to have a son. But the Bible says that they were old. If you have a King James, that language is a little stronger for Bible says about her, she was well stricken in years. That's a pretty strong expression. Zacharias and Elizabeth were content to live in the hill country south of Jerusalem, away from the prestige of the city of Jerusalem. And always when you see the scriptural story account in chapter one and chapter two, you see God was using the ones that the world would look at the least. So there's a lesson to learn. The quality of our walk with God determines our ability to walk happily and harmoniously with each other. And that walk with him can only grow as we seek to please him rather than impress men. Legally, Zacharias could have divorced Elizabeth for not being able to bear him a child. But the Bible teaches us instead of doing that, the angel announces, Zacharias, your prayers have been heard. We'll look at that in a minute. So obviously, instead of thinking what I could legally do, he loved Elizabeth and prayed for her and for the situation and for their lives. What a difference in him against the others. But no amount of obedience can possibly bring immunity from the problems of life. Theirs was a big one. It would be a stigma that would be thought of as divine disfavor. But the Bible tells us that when we look at Zacharias, that he was not only righteous before God, blameless as far as his life is concerned, but he was also a man of the word. When we look at this benedictus or benediction in verses 68 to 79, you see that it is liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Old Testament and allusions to Old Testament promises and passages. He probably took all these wonderful scriptural passages and consoled his wife with them through the years of her barrenness. But then the Bible tells us, And this is a part where the story just jumps off the page, is God gives them a memorable day. Beginning at verse eight. Now while he was serving as a priest before God, being in the division was on duty according to the custom of the priesthood. Now let me stop right there. Remember I told you there was about 20,000 priests at that time. Now, when you say these divisions, King David divided all the priests into 24 divisions. So each of these divisions would serve in the temple one week a year, or one week at a time, and so they basically, each division served two weeks a year. Abijah, which you saw earlier in this passage of scripture that he was of the division or order of Abijah, he's eighth in line. Now, when I say God is always working, let's line this up. That in the correct time, eighth in line, he was in a division that was serving in the temple for this particular week. And out of a thousand, The Bible says to us in this passage of Scripture, by lot he was chosen to be able to offer incense on the altar. By chance? Oh, it's by God's directive work that he's doing this. So what all does that mean? Well, in the temple area, there's a large amount of acres that were on the outside. That was where the Gentiles could stand and watch what went on from a distance. Then inside that was a court closer to the action, and that was the court of the women closer to that, that would be Jewish women, and then closer to that would be the area of the court of the men, Jewish men, to be close to what was going on in the temple area. Now the Bible tells us that Zacharias, on this time period, was to be offering incense into the holy place. Now, if you know Old Testament images as far as these details are concerned, in the temple, there was a holy place, which was a room that was 15 feet wide, 30 feet long, not large. On the other side of that room was the Holy of Holies, which was only 15 by 15. Now, as what happens in this situation is that the priest that was chosen, and this was a great opportunity to be able to offer incense. Now, what that means is you're offering incense to be burnt in on this altar, which would represent the prayers of the people going up on this day of sacrifice. And so he chooses two friends. One friend goes in and removes the ashes from the previous evening sacrifice. Then he chooses another friend to be able to get fresh live burning coals, live coals to put on the altar before he goes in to offer the incense. So he enters and this was a grand time for him. He's an obscure priest from the south part of Judea, and he has a chance to be able to go into the holy place and to offer incense on the altar. When he walks in, to his right, to your left and to his right, is a table of showbread, which is a small table that has 12 loaves on it. Those loaves were changed weekly by the priest. To his left was the golden lampstand, the menorah, the seven-channel candle that was there to be burning constantly, constantly being refilled by the priests. Straight ahead of him, on the other end, right next to the curtain that divides the holy place from the holy of holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, was this small golden altar, when I say small, the Bible says it was three feet tall, a foot and a half wide, and a foot and a half deep. It's only talking about a small table, but it was golden-laid. And so he's there, and he is to offer this incense. Now, what should have happened, or what normally would happen, is that he would go in there, and he would offer this incense, and then he would come out rejoicing with the people that their prayers had been offered up to the Lord, and he would quote the famous Aaronic blessing in Numbers chapter six, verses 24 to 26, which you all would know, the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Now that was what was supposed to happen. But the story abruptly changes. Let's go back to your word there. Let's start again in verse 8. Now while he was serving as a priest before God, when the division was on duty according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by Lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense." Now this is where the story dramatically changes. But this was all set up by God. Remember I told you one of the great themes of Luke chapter 1 is God is always working, always. And the angel did not appear when he first walked in, he appeared when he was there in front of the altar, and this angel appears. And the angel speaks to him. And right away, when the angel said, appeared an angel of the Lord standing at the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. Astrocyte mentioned last week that many times when people have, in scripture, this was common, if somebody would see an angel, there would be great fear, and the Bible would say, fear not. That's exactly what Gabriel said to him. Don't fear. And then he says to him, do not be afraid, Zachariah, for your prayer has been heard. And your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. Now, none of this was supposed to happen when he had this great privilege of offering incense in the holy place. Everything now changes. All of a sudden now, this angel is not speaking necessarily to the nation of Israel as a whole, but would affect them later. But he was looking right at Zacharias and said, your prayers have been heard. Your wife will have a son. And he tells him what to name that child. God comforts us in our fears. The angel calls him by name, understood his anxiety. What an amazing conversation they had. The commentator Geldenhais wrote a great commentary on Luke, said this, the grace of God soon to be revealed in the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus, whose coming is prepared by John. is the outcome of his remembrance of his covenant and of his absolute faithfulness. Now remember, I told you that Zacharias meant God what? Remembers. Elizabeth, his oath, God remembers his oath. But now the angel specifically tells him, I want you to name this child John. John means the gift of God. You tag all those three together, God remembers his oath with a gift from God. All this is working because God is at work dealing with Zacharias and with Elizabeth and with the nation of Israel. Now, notice what happens in this reaction. Well, the angel then tells him some description about this child. He said, for he will be great before the Lord. I love that expression, great before the Lord, not necessarily great before men. When you read, for example, the Gospel of John, and you're there at the epitome of Jesus' popularity in John chapter 6, with the bread of life discourse, the feeding of the 5,000, all that, thousands and thousands of people, and by the time you get to the end of chapter 6, or chapter 8 rather, that the crowd is down basically just to his disciples. In fact, he had 70 for a while, and many of those left. And so the group of thousands went down to a small group of just that inner group that he had of his disciples. And when you look at this passage of scripture, Zacharias is looking at this and he's saying, yeah, he's going to be great before the Lord, the angel tells him. He must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. and will turn, and this goes back to the prophecy at the very end of Malachi, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before them in the spirit of the power of Elijah, which is also from Malachi, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready The angel tells him, your child, John the Baptist, your child will turn hearts. His message of repentance and baptism will resonate with the people and he will make ready for the Lord to be able to come. So the birth of John the Baptist is obviously extremely important. And Zachariah said to the angel, it's almost like Zachariah just, you gotta be kidding. And it's almost as if he blurted out this idea of prove it. He says, how shall I know this? Now, wait a minute, let's go back. Zechariah was righteous before God, blameless, all that. How can he do this? How can he react this way? He lets him know, I'm an old man. And besides that, my wife is advanced in years. Glad she wasn't there to hear that. It's always interesting that unbelief robs us of the joy of the promise of God. Essentially, he was asking God to prove this. Now, Zechariah was a man of God, but he was also a man, and he had human weaknesses. God understands our weaknesses, but he's not ecstatic about it. He wants to strengthen our faith and to give us his word, to allow us to meditate on that word. Now, I want you to understand this. When God corrects, he also couches it in grace. What the angel did, what God did to Zacharias was not just correction. Now notice this. Verse 22, and when he came out, Of course, the people were all waiting for the Aaronic blessing, number six. He was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. Now, the Bible tells us later on, about verse 39, that in communicating with him, they also had to communicate with signs. So he might have been, couldn't speak, he might have also been mute. He was deaf, he couldn't do anything. They kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when this time of the service was ended, he went to his home. Now, when that occurred, when he came out and he could not give the blessing, there was evidence of the fact that God was doing something special with him. and that God announced something, because they said, well, he must have seen a vision in there. They didn't realize he saw and had a conversation with the angel. When Zechariah emerged from that holy place, he was a changed man. The encounter with the angel left him with a new awareness of God's greatness and a new sense of his own unworthiness, and also brought to him a strong and vibrant faith. but also beginning in verse 24, that God fulfills His promise gloriously. God's always working. And when we have obedience, repentance, and submission to God, we find out that that opens an opportunity for God's grace and His blessing. And we certainly see it in verses 24 and 25. And after these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach from among the people. Elizabeth remained seclusion for the first five months of her pregnancy. What did she do during that first five months? I think she concentrated on quiet worshiping of the Lord, and she was overwhelmed with the happiness of what God has done. Now her words to Mary beginning at verse 42 in this passage of scripture are there for several reasons. If you skip down to verse 42, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Now this was a great announcement that she was giving. She calls Mary the mother of my Lord. Now that's a messianic title, goes back to Psalm 110 in verse one, where the Bible says, the Lord says to my Lord, which we get a great understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father together. She acknowledged by divine revelation that Mary would give birth to the Messiah, the son of God. But more amazing than that was her attitude toward Mary. If you're there in that passage scripture, look at that. In verse 41, 42, but when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb in Mary and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. While she knew that she herself had been honored by God, she realized that Mary, this young teenager, Mary was infinitely more honored. And we go back a little bit to the character that we talked about at the beginning of the message. She did not even feel worthy of Mary's visit. Such utter humility and self-abasement are rare qualities. Remember the difference between Elizabeth and Zacharias as compared to most of the priests of the time? And although she was older than Mary, she was in the order of Aaron, she had every right to maybe ask the Lord, Lord, why didn't you choose me? But there's not one trace in Elizabeth's response of jealousy or self-seeking in her spirit. And now maybe we can understand why God blessed her so richly. The greatness of God's grace inspired Zacharias to utter a magnificent song of praise, which we find later on in this chapter, beginning at verse 68. This gives a reference to the Abrahamic covenant that God swore to Abraham and his descendants, that we would be blessed and would be a blessing to the old earth. Let's look at verse 67. And his father, Zacharias, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, Blessed is the Lord God of Israel. for he has visited and redeemed his people and he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David. As he spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us, to show the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. And you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. That's a great blessing. Many of the Jews by the time that Zacharias lived were beginning to think that God had forgotten his promise. They hadn't heard anything from the Lord for 400 years. They maybe thought that their national situation was hopeless. But Zacharias and Elizabeth never thought so, and together their names would be a constant reminder that Jehovah remembers his oath. So when Luke is writing to Theopolis to help him to see that believing in the Lord Jesus Christ was worthwhile that he introduces him to this obscure priest and his wife who had troubles in their own lives and disappointments in their own lives. Yet they believed God because they knew that God was always working They knew that if they live righteously before the Lord, if they confess their sins, if they remain submissive to what God wanted them to do, it possibly could open doors of opportunity and blessing. And he never could have imagined that it would happen in the holy place with the angel Gabriel all of a sudden shining right there in front of him while he's standing there offering incense on that altar and announcing to him about the birth of John the Baptist. But then when you read that benediction, you're just filled again with the fact that how did Zacharias know all this? How did Simeon know all that was happening when the Lord Jesus came into the temple? when Mary and Joseph brought him there. How did Anna know that as well, the prophetess there in the temple? It's because they read their Bibles and they understood their Bibles and they realized that there was a Messiah to come and it was close at hand and they believed God in all of this. So let's look at just a couple sentences of application. Zacharias and Elizabeth, the Bible says, were righteous in the sight of God. I told you this wasn't just an historical story. It tells us a little bit about how Luke was going to introduce the coming of the Lord, yes, and a great surprise for Israel, the coming of the Messiah. But the Bible tells us that Zacharias lived as a righteous inside of God. What things in your lives might make it difficult to apply the same statement to you? If Luke were recording, could your names be there? Would you be willing to covenant with God to seek his victory in those areas in this new coming year, 2015? Maybe through the preaching, through things that you've been looking at in God's Word, you see, boy, there's some things in my life that need to change, and I need to confess those things, and I need to make them right, and I need to change. The last thing is, what promises in God's Word do you find difficult to believe? One of the things that Luke was trying to accomplish is he wanted to let you know, improbable things can happen with God. And one of the most improbable things was the birth of John the Baptist. God is always working, always. Obedience, repentance, and submission to God opens opportunities for God's grace and blessing in your life. An understanding of scripture always draws our attention to the gospel, God's plan of a savior, and salvation that we can have in knowing Him. I hope you know Him today. Zacharias and Elizabeth, priests that were different from the majority of the priests of their day, look to God. I hope you're looking for Him today as well. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, I know that when I was reading through this this week, that I was just struck with humility. That sometimes I used to think of Zacharias as this old guy that got in the temple there and he lost ability to be able to speak. I knew what was happening. But yet, Lord, it struck me afresh just how you worked all of this out. That he was in the right division, which offered sacrifice at the right time of the year. That out of a thousand priests, he was chosen by lot to offer incense so that he could be in that holy place alone. and have an encounter with an angel, Gabriel, who announced to him the birth of John the Baptist, which would prepare the way of the coming of the Lord Jesus. O Lord, it just challenges all of us to know that you are always working, always. Help us to look for that this new year. Find ways that we can change for you, that you can change our lives and our hearts. Draw us close to you. See you work in our lives in ways that we could never have imagined. Zacharias could never have imagined what happened to him on that memorable day. And Luke wrote that to help Theophilus know that believing in the Lord Jesus is worthwhile. And he certainly is worthwhile this year as we go into the next. In Jesus' precious name, amen. Shall we stand together? Let's just hear that great Aaronic blessing again in Numbers chapter six. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. Remind you to be no service this evening. Enjoy fellowship, godly conversation with your family. Look forward to seeing you next Sunday. Lord bless you.