Hope Begins

Sermon Transcript

In May 2023, Phoebe Bridgers performed at Lincoln Financial Field in front of a crowd of over 60,000 people on three consecutive nights. Most people don’t remember that though, because even though Bridgers is a four-time grammy award winner, on those nights, she was just the opening act for another artist, an artist named Taylor Swift. Tickets to see Swift in concert on those days averaged over $1000 apiece, and I may even know one or two of you who spent the money and went. I’m not a Swifty myself, but I can imagine the excitement that would have come to the faithful Swiftys in attendance when Bridgers came on stage, not because they were there to see her, but because her presence meant Taylor was coming soon.

How much more might that have been the case if for some reason the start of the concert had been delayed, and the Swiftys were all sitting there, having spent big money on their tickets, waiting, waiting, and waiting to see the star they so admired? Well when we come to the Gospel of Luke today, the people in the story are in a much more dire situation. We meet in this story a couple advanced in years, who had waited many years to have a child they desperately wanted, but who remained barren. We also meet a nation who had waited hundreds of years to hear from their God, and who had waited even longer for him to fulfill his promise of a king who would bring them salvation. Perhaps you’ve waited years for God to provide you a child, a spouse, a job, health, friendships, or something else, and at times you’ve wondered if you should just give up hope for the future entirely. As Christians, we’ve been waiting thousands of years since Jesus’ first coming for his second coming; should we really keep waiting? Well in this passage we’ll see that to a waiting people, whose situation looked hopeless, the opening act did come, because God gives real hope to his people when things look hopeless. To see that we’ll talk about when things look hopeless, how to live anyway, the hope God promises, how not to respond to it, and then finally at the hope God provides.

When things look hopeless

Our passage begins with some setting: These events took place in the days of King Herod, king of Judea. Now Judea was the land of the Jews, the descendants of Abraham, God’s people prior to the coming of Jesus, and in verse 5 of Luke, we’re still in the “prior to the coming of Jesus” time period. Judea was the land of the Jews, but Herod was not Jewish. Rather, Herod was appointed king over that land by the Roman Senate in 40 BC, because the Romans now had control of the land of the Jews. And that was a big deal, because God had promised that land to Abraham’s descendants, and God had promised that a descendant of David, Israel’s great king, would rule there. So God said the Jews would have the land under the rule of a Davidic king, but when we come to verse 5 of our passage, it’s clear that the Romans have the land and the Jews are under the rule of some other king named Herod.

And, in fact, it had been this way for some time. Though there was about a 100 year period of Jewish self-rule in the land prior to Roman rule, since 586 BC there had not been a king from David’s line ruling the Jews in the land God promised them. Our best estimates are that the story on which we’re focusing today took place in 4 BC. So for over 500 years there had been no Davidic king, they’re now under the rule of a foreign king from a foreign nation, and on top of that, it had been about 400 years since the last time God spoke to his people through the prophet Malachi, who wrote the last book of the Old Testament, the part of the Bible written prior to Jesus’ coming. So not only are they under a foreign ruler from a foreign nation, but God has been silent now for centuries. Things look hopeless for the nation of Israel in the days of Herod, the king of Judea.

But things also looked hopeless for one Israelite couple: Zechiariah and Elizabeth, who our passage introduces next. Zechariah was a priest, and his wife was also a descendant of Israel’s original great high priest, Aaron. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. Though the nation was in tough shape, and though the nation was often in tough shape, the Lord always kept for himself a faithful remnant who persevered in obedience to his commandments and statutes. But they had no child, verse 7 tells us, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Some of you I know have struggled with infertility in the past; others are struggling with it now, and you can testify to how difficult it is. God created humans to be fruitful and multiply, and the desire to do so is natural, right, and good. Add to that a society that exerted enormous social pressure on you to do that, and you can start to understand why Elizabeth’s barrenness was such a big deal. Today in the non-Christian world especially if you tell people you don’t really want to get married or have kids, nobody’s going to look at you funny. But in Elizabeth’s day, the idea of even saying such a thing was unthinkable. Every man and woman was expected to get married and have children, and women especially had little else they could do with their time and energy if they didn’t spend them on caring for their children. But now Zechariah and Elizabeth were advanced in years, and she remained barren. Things looked hopeless for them.

I mean, what else could they do? They were already walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord, so it’s not like they just needed to repent, and then God would bless them with a child. You ever feel like you’re doing everything you’re supposed to be doing, and God still isn’t giving you what you long for? I know couples struggling with infertility often feel that way. “Man God, we’re praying, we’re still doing what you command, we aren’t even dabbling in morally questionable practices like IVF, and you’re the one who says children are a blessing, so why are you withholding this blessing from us?” Brothers and sisters who want to be married but remain single struggle similarly: “Man God, I’m committed to not marrying an unbeliever, and I’m fighting for sexual purity; why won’t you give me a husband or wife?”

Situations like Zechariah and Elizabeth’s confront us with the reality that we are not in control of our lives. We are always dependent on God to provide a child, on God to provide a spouse, a job, health, happiness, friendships, and everything else, just as Israel was dependent on God to provide a king. And we don’t walk in his commandments and statutes as a way of then getting control over our lives, as though if we obey we can now put God in our debt and act like he owes us these things. We obey his commandments and statutes because he is our creator, and we are his creatures. We obey his commandments and statutes because they are holy, righteous, and good. We obey his commandments and statutes because we love him, and if that’s not why you obey him, then you aren’t actually obeying him. And here’s how you can tell: How do you respond when he withholds what you desire? If you find yourself grumbling against him in your heart or even aloud, thinking, “Man, I don’t need this in my life right now God. I’m trying my best to serve you; why won’t you bless me like you’re blessing that other person? They don’t care about obeying you at all!” Plenty of the people that had children in Zechariah and Elizabeth’s day didn’t pay any attention to the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

But, brothers and sisters, God has nowhere promised to bless us in this life in the ways we want if we will simply obey his commandments and statutes. He doesn’t owe that to us. Obey him because he’s worthy, even when your circumstances look hopeless. And the same goes for us as a church. Our job as a church is not to try to figure out how to achieve the good and natural desires we have to see more people converted, more elders appointed, more missionaries sent, and more churches planted. Our job as a church is to walk blamelessly in all the statutes and commandments of the Lord. Our hope is always in the Lord, and never in our ability to figure it all out. So even when things look hopeless, let’s look next at how to live anyway. 

How to live anyway

We’ve already seen how Zechariah and Elizabeth walked blamelessly in all the statutes and commandments of the Lord, but look what Zechariah does next starting in verse 8. While he was serving as priest and his 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. The priesthood at the time was split up into divisions, and while the priests ordinarily lived away from Jerusalem, they would rotate on to duty at the temple throughout the year, and when it was their turn to serve, they would come live at the temple complex in Jerusalem. Within the temple itself, there was an altar of incense, and according to the law God gave the people, incense was to be lit on it once in the morning, and once in the evening.

Evidently a custom had also developed that which priest lit the incense was chosen by lot, and this time the lot fell to Zechariah. Now we know when Zechariah goes in there to light the incense, an angel is going to appear to him, but Zechariah didn’t know that. What was Zechariah doing? He was just doing his job as a priest. When it was time for him to report for his rotation on duty, he went. When the lot fell to him to burn incense, he did it. He didn’t say, “Well God if you aren’t giving me a kid, why would I continue serving you?” He just kept serving the Lord. 

And bear in mind that prior to this day, that incense had been offered on that altar morning and night with no angels appearing. God hadn’t spoken to his people like that for the past 400 years, and Zechariah was given no indication that he would do so starting that day. God certainly can and certainly does do extraordinary things, but they are extraordinary precisely because he doesn’t ordinarily do them. Many priests before Zechariah took their turn and burned the incense on the altar without seeing anything extraordinary from God, and that doesn’t make any of their service to God any less meaningful. Don’t get hooked on looking for God to do something extraordinary when God is often calling us to serve him in the ordinary of the life he has assigned us. Even when God did something extraordinary here, it wasn’t because Zechariah went looking for it. The extraordinary came in the midst of Zechariah’s ordinary faithfulness to his priestly duties.

We gather each Sunday as a church because we’re a church, and that’s the pattern handed down to us in scripture. Sometimes you come and feel that something extraordinary happened: You gain some new insight, you experience God in a new way, you get unstuck from a sin pattern. But many times you come, you go, and “all that happened” was you sang God’s praises, you listened to God’s word, you prayed with God’s people, you took the Lord’s Supper, and you welcomed one another as Christ welcomed you. When things in your life feel hopeless, why bother with that? We bother with that even then because God is worthy of our worship. What if Zechariah, because he hadn’t seen anything change in his decades of temple service, had decided to give it up? He wouldn’t have been there to burn incense on this day something extraordinary did happen.

Woody Allen has been quoted as saying that 80% of success if showing up, and there is some real wisdom to that: Zechariah just showed up that day, and if you consistently show up to the gatherings of your church, your personal time of Bible meditation and prayer, or your family worship, just to give some examples, and you don’t constantly stop and ask, “Is this working?” an all-powerful God can do a lot with it, even when your situation looks hopeless.

But the particular thing Zechariah showed up to do that day was to offer incense, and incense represents prayer. As the smoke from the incense goes up to heaven, it is a sign of our prayers ascending to God. So we see in verse 10 that the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. It wasn’t just Zechariah showing up; it was a whole multitude of people in Israel showing up to pray, once again, another day, while the situation of the nation still looked hopeless. So when Zechariah goes in and offers the incense, he’s not just doing that in hope that God will hear his prayer for a child. He’s doing it as a mediator for Israel, so that God will hear the prayers of the nation, praying for the redemption of the nation through the Davidic king God had promised to send.

When your situation looks hopeless, this is the thing to keep showing up at: Prayer. Yes, that means keep showing up at private prayer, and yes that means keep praying for those natural desires that are still unfulfilled: The child, the spouse, the job, the mental health, or whatever else. But we see here also the value of praying together as God’s people. At our church we do that each week at 9:00 am downstairs here, and then we do it 7-8 times per year in our evening prayer services. What that does is it broadens your focus from your private interests, which matter to God, to the concerns of all God’s people, which also matter to God. Then even when you go to pray privately, you’ll have some ideas of what to pray for besides the specific thing you’re wanting to see God do in your life. It’s going to be really good for you, in addition to that, to get out your members’ directory, and pray for some other saints. It’s going to be really good for you to pray for pastoral training in India and language learning in Japan and a church plant in New York City, things we pray for when we come together as a church to pray.

This is how we live anyway when things look hopeless: We persevere in prayer for and with God’s people because we know he is able to do the extraordinary as we persevere in the ordinary. So let’s look next at the extraordinary hope God promises in this passage.

The hope God promises

So Zechariah goes in to burn incense and an angel appears on the right side of the altar of incense. The angels tells him that his prayer has been heard, and his wife Elizabeth will bear him a son, whose name he shall call John. You see this is why we persevere in prayer, because an answer delayed is not an answer withheld. For how many years had Zechariah and Elizabeth been praying before he heard these words from the angel? “Your prayer has been heard.” 

But it’s not just Zechariah’s prayer that had been heard. In verse 14 we read that not only will he have joy and gladness, which we’d expect, but many will rejoice at his birth, because this was not just going to be any son like any of us would be glad if God gave us a child. We’re told this son would be great before the Lord. Parents, isn’t this what we want for our kids above all else? Sure it’s cool if they’re a great athlete or a great artist or a great singer or a great student, but would you really take any of that above them being filled with faith, hope, and love for the Lord Jesus? Kids, this is the true greatness, and the only greatness that will last: To be great before the Lord. 

For this child that meant he must not drink wine or strong drink, which is just a catch-all term for alcoholic beverages, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. While Zechariah and Elizabeth just wanted a child, the nation needed something more: A child who would be filled with the Holy Spirit to turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, to go before the Lord himself in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.

Do you see now what the people really needed? Not this child, but the Lord himself. The child was coming to turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. After 400 years of silence, the Lord was not just finally speaking…The Lord was finally coming! He is who the people ultimately needed, he is who Zechariah and Elizabeth ultimately needed, and he is the one we ultimately need. When you face trials like infertility or joblessness or mental illness or any of the other trials that can make life feel hopeless, here’s the thing to consider: Even if you got what you wanted, would that really solve everything? For how long do you really think you’d be satisfied before in some way, the fallenness of this world, even the finitude of this world, would hit you again?

That’s the connection between Zechariah and Elizabeth’s barrenness and Israel’s barrenness: Both show us that what we ultimately need is the Lord himself! And both show us that as long as we are in this fallen creation, there is a hunger in us that nothing in this world can satisfy, because we were made for another world, and especially for another being: The Lord. When you feel your need for a job, food, health, or anything else, follow the thread all the way through to the God you ultimately need: “God, I don’t ultimately need this; I need you, and it’s not just I that needs you, it’s all your people who need you. We need you, and we need a new creation from you.”

But before we get him, God says we need to be prepared for him. Here when it says John the Baptist will come in the spirit and power of Elijah, it’s alluding back to the last book of the Old Testament I referenced earlier, Malachi, where God promised he would come again, and there he said this, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:5-6). In other words, unless someone else comes first to turn the children of Israel to their Lord their God, God will be coming in judgment, rather than for salvation!

So here’s our predicament: We need the Lord himself more than we need any particular thing he can give us, but if he comes while we remain in rebellion against him, he’ll destroy us, rather than saving us. So God sent John first, to turn the hearts of the children of Israel back to the Lord, and so to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. Sometimes people today will wonder why, if God exists, he doesn’t just come and make everything right. Have you considered that if he came now and made everything right, that part of how he might do that would be by coming in judgment against you? Rather than questioning God as to why he hasn’t yet come, we should prepare ourselves now for his coming by turning from our sin, and turning to him. 

There is real hope now when things look hopeless. God himself is coming, and he tells Zechariah and Elizabeth that he will give them a son who will prepare the people for his coming. But from Zechariah’s response, we can learn how not to respond to the hope God promises.

How not to respond to it

So in verse 18 we read Zechariah’s response to the angel’s proclamation: How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. He’s basically asking for a sign that this will happen. And Gabriel’s like, “Well, how about the angel who appeared to you beside the altar?” I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak this good news to you, but still you haven’t believed it. Speaking of things people often say, how about, “Well if God would just appear to me or write in the sky that he exists, then I’d believe”? Are you really so sure, though? Here an angel literally appears to Zechariah and tells him his wife will bear a son, and he’s like, “Really though?” 

Unbelief is not a function of the evidence; it’s a function of our hearts. When God himself speaks, in this case through an angel, to us through the Bible, we have no good reason not to believe him, even when things look hopeless. This is the God who spoke galaxies into existence, the God who rules over the smallest atom at the farthest reach of our galaxy as much as he does each of the hairs on our heads, who actively upholds everything in existence at every moment of time and who pervades every point in space with his presence, and you’re going to be like, “yeah but he can’t give us a child. I mean, we’re old”? I know scientifically a post-menopausal woman cannot conceive, but this is the God whose providence gives rise to the laws science observes, not the God who is bound by what science says can and cannot happen.

So yes, if you are infertile or you don’t have a job or anything, this means God can give it to you! But God hasn’t promised to give that to you, and remember that even this promise to Zechariah and Elizabeth wasn’t ultimately about them just having the kid they’d always dreamed of. It was about them having the kid who would prepare the way of the Lord. This good news the angel proclaimed was organically linked to the good news, the gospel, the good news that the Lord did indeed come after John in the person of Jesus Christ, and now what God does promise through Jesus Christ is something far greater than a job or friends or anything else that you could ask or imagine: He promises eternal life in a new heavens and new earth, in which we will dwell with him in renewed bodies, and experience fullness of joy and peace in his presence forever. And he promises that in the meantime, he will take every trial in our lives and use it to finish the good work he began in us, to make us more into the image of Christ, so that after suffering with him, we will also be glorified with him.

Will you believe these promises today? I know you’re like, “Right, right, Jesus is going to return and there’s going to be heaven and all,” but do you really believe that? If you did, would you really be as anxious, or as despondent, even when things look hopeless? I mean unless Jesus comes back in our lifetime, we aren’t just going to be old—we’re going to be dead, and yet God promises that our bodies will rise again to live with him forever. If you’re here today and you are not yet a believer in Jesus Christ, the Bible says even now you are dead in your trespasses and sins, but God promises that there is abundant life, new life, even for you, in Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ didn’t just come; he died to bear the condemnation for the sins of his people, and then rose from the dead, so that now whoever believes in him will not be condemned for their sins, but will be forgiven, given eternal life, and one day risen from the tomb to live with him forever. But even to those of you who believe in Christ, how easy is it for us to still functionally live like we have no hope for the future when our circumstances look hopeless?

I mean, remember that Zechariah was righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the statues and commandments of the Lord, but even he did not believe when this good news was proclaimed to him. As author Jerry Bridges has said, sometimes it’s easier to obey God than it is to trust God. But the good news of salvation only comes to those who believe, not to those who do. You can think, “Ok God; I know the rules and I’ll keep them,” but then go through life with no hope for the future because you’re not believing God’s promises to you in the gospel. So Augustus Toplady, in one of his hymns, counsels us: “Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus’ feet; stand in him, in him alone—gloriously complete.” 

Does God want us to obey his law? Yes, a thousand times yes. But the obedience he’s really after is not an obedience apart from faith; it’s an obedience that flows from faith, and an obedience that flows from faith, faith that God’s promises are true to us in Christ Jesus, faith that he will work all things together for my good, faith that he is right now working all things together for my good and the good of all who love him, faith that in a few short days or years or decades, we will be with him forever in a new heaven and new earth, an obedience that flows from that kind of faith will not just bear the fruit of obedience. It will bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, and more. 

But Zechariah didn’t believe, and so despite his blameless walk according to God’s commandments and statutes, the Lord disciplined him for his unbelief, and the angel struck him mute until the promise was fulfilled. The Lord gave him a sign, alright, but it was a sign of discipline. God is not cool with our unbelief. Sometimes we can coddle and glamorize doubt, and hey look, unbelief is one of the sins I have the hardest time putting to death. We can acknowledge that while still acknowledging that it is in fact sin, and we have no good excuse for it. God is truth, God has spoken, all his promises to us are yes and amen in Christ Jesus, and so what good reason do we ever have to doubt him? 

But here’s what’s glorious about God’s promises: They aren’t ultimately conditional on the strength of our faith. The angel is clear that the promise will still take place, even though Zechariah didn’t believe it, because God was committed to coming to his people, even when their faith was weak. So let’s look last at the hope God provides.

The hope God provides

So after Zechariah comes out of the temple and it’s clear to all that he can’t speak, when the time of his duty is up, he heads back home. And verse 24 tells us that after these days, God’s promise did indeed come true. His wife conceived. The hope God had promised had now come. This child who would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb was now in his mother’s womb. The woman who began our story barren now had a child. Though she was advanced in years, that didn’t stop the Lord from providing a child not only for her, but for the people. Though her situation looked hopeless, the Lord gave real hope, not wishful thinking, but a real hope that resulted in a real child being conceived in her womb.

And interestingly, once this happened, Elizabeth hid herself. Why? Well she says in verse 25 that thus the Lord has done for her in the days when he looked on her, to take away her reproach among the people. Five months is probably the amount of time it took for Elizabeth to really be showing that she was pregnant, and so she hid herself in the time before that as a way of reenacting what the Lord had done for her. For those five months she was visibly barren and unseen by any, just like she had been truly barren for her whole life prior to that, and had as a result, in a society which valued childbirth so highly, been hidden from the sight of others, “reproached” even as she puts it here. But the Lord saw her. The Lord looked on her, and whatever you’re going through, however invisible you may feel to the world because of your circumstances, the Lord sees you.

And so at five months, when it would be visible to all that the Lord had given her conception, she came out of hiding, and her reproach was taken away among people. This is just the beginning. It’s literally just the beginning of the Gospel according to Luke, and right here at the beginning hope springs. As God looked on Elizabeth and took away her reproach, God was looking on his people, and he would take away their reproach. For as great as this child was, and for as miraculous as his birth was, a greater child was still to come, who would be born through an even more miraculous birth, and that child, Jesus Christ, would grow up to bear the reproach that God’s people deserved. He took on the most shameful position imaginable of death on a cross in the place of sinners, so that our reproach would be lifted from us, and we would be restored to the honorable and exalted position of the children of God.

And as his people, we too must bear the reproach he endured from this world. His church on earth is often unimpressive, and even downright shameful, in the world’s eyes. So the apostle Paul wrote how in his day that he had become, and was still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things (1 Cor 4:13). Yet he could also write, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Cor 6:8-10). And we too can say this, because the Lord has taken away our reproach in Christ, and the day is coming when even our reproach in this world will be gone.

God has given real hope to his people, even when our circumstances look hopeless. However hopeless your circumstances look, keep walking with Christ in the path of ordinary obedience, keep walking by faith in his promises, and look forward to the day when he comes again to take away all our reproach.