Zechariah had spent nine
months unable to speak. It happened
because he had acted in unbelief. Nine
months prior, an angel had appeared to Zechariah to tell him his prayers had
been answered; his wife, Elisabeth, would bear him a son. The conversation went something like, Are
you nuts, man? I am like a zillion years
old, and my wife’s past all that…way past.
Some things never change! Both Abraham and Sarai had laughed when an
angel came to tell them her 90 year-old body would produce a son the following
year. Zechariah was Abraham’s descendant
in more than one way!
I used to think it was rather
cruel of God to make Zechariah speechless for nine months just because he asked
that question. I’m a lot older, and just
a little bit wiser now; I see the point.
Zechariah was to be the father of Jesus’ forerunner, John the
Baptist. Zechariah was going to need all
the faith available to handle his responsibilities as father of a prophet. He needed nine months to think. When you talk a lot you don’t think
much. God shut Zechariah up until the
right time.
When his son was born,
Zechariah had come full cycle in faith.
Everyone looked to him when Elisabeth wanted to name the child
“John”. Zechariah couldn’t speak, so he
took chalk and slate in hand and wrote in big bold letters:
His name is JOHN!
And that changed everything; Zechariah’s
mouth was opened. Nine months of silence
brought repentance; Zechariah was a believer.
The result was the prophecy and praise of a converted heart! There is a lesson in that. If you have sinned…even sinned big time, and you sense that you are
laboring under the rebuke of God’s punishment – remember Zechariah. Remember the Lord forgives, and even turns our
rebuke into reward.
God took faithless Zechariah
and made him the faithful prophet and father of John the Baptist. So if you are a Zechariah today, remember,
you can
come home to faith!
What did Zechariah say once his tongue got loose?
“And you, my little son, will
be called the prophet of the Most High, because you will prepare the way for
the Lord. You will tell his people how
to find salvation through forgiveness of their sins. Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning
light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who
sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of
peace.” Luke 1:76-79
Zechariah told the Good News!
The prophecy of Zechariah
centers around two major facts – and those which separate Christianity from
every religious thought or faith in the universe:
We have a God who shows-up in
person.
We have a God who forgives by
grace.
Zechariah spoke of a God who would
give
light to them that sit in darkness.
He talked about a God who would guide our feet into the way of peace. This is a God who showed up in the person of
Jesus Christ. This is the mystery that
showed up in the manger, a personal God who has taken on the flesh of man and
visited us.
And that God forgives by
grace. There is no doing or achieving you
can do to be absolved of your sins. You
can’t work hard to stockpile good karma through your good deeds in this
life. Jesus Christ, a God who shows up,
and forgives by grace. That’s the
mystery of Christmas, the shadow of the cross over a manger.
· Only in Christ is there the
correct understanding that we are lost in darkness. That darkness is sin.
·
·
Only in Christ has God come and paid the un-payable price of death, so
our sins could be forgiven.
·
Only in Christ has there been resurrection.
·
Only in Jesus Christ is there life!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
imprisoned by Hitler during World War II, wrote to his fiancé about a lesson
learned from life in prison:
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential
things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to
be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.[1]
So what do we think about how
God did that? What does it mean to be
loved by a God who understands us enough to have the shadow of a cross over a
manger containing His only begotten son?
Dr. Maxwell Maltz, was a
famous plastic surgeon. One day, a woman
came to see Dr. Maltz about her husband.
She told the doctor that her husband had been injured while attempting
to save his parents from a burning house.
He couldn't get to them. They
both were killed, and his face was burned and disfigured. He had given up on life and gone into
hiding. He wouldn't let anyone see him, not
even his wife. Dr. Maltz told the woman
not to worry. With the great advances
we've made in plastic surgery in recent years, he said, I can restore his face.
She explained that he wouldn't
let anyone help him because he believed God disfigured his face to punish him
for not saving his parents. Then she
made a shocking request: I
want you to disfigure my face so I can be like him! If I can share in his pain, then maybe he
will let me back into his life. I love
him so much; I want to be with him. And if that is what it takes; then that is
what I want to do.
Of course, Dr. Maltz would not
agree, but he was moved deeply by that wife's determined and total love. He got her permission to try to talk to her
husband. He went to the man's room and knocked,
but there was no answer. He called
loudly through the door, I know you are in there, and I know you can
hear me, so I've come to tell you that my name is Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I'm a plastic surgeon, and I want you to know
that I can restore your face.
There was no response. Again, he called loudly, Please come out and let me help
restore your face. But again,
there was no answer. Still speaking
through the door, Dr. Maltz told the man what his wife was asking him to
do. She wants me to disfigure her face, to make
her face like yours in the hope that you will let her back into your life. That's how much she loves you. That's how much she wants to help you!
There was a moment of silence,
and then, ever so slowly, the doorknob began to turn. The disfigured man came out to make a new
beginning and to find a new life. He was
set free, brought out of hiding, given a new start by his wife's love.
It's a dramatic expression of
human love that gives us a picture, however faint, of the saving love of Jesus
Christ, what we call the Atonement,[2] this gift God gave us in that
mysterious manger – Jesus Christ, becoming what we are to give us what He
is. It’s a gift you can’t buy, earn,
inherit, or find by chance; it is entirely received with open hands and bowed
knees.
Now the only thing you
shouldn’t do with the offer of a gift like that is act like Zechariah. Don’t imagine it can’t be done. Open-up your mouth right away and say, Yes,
Lord! Be faith-filled, and live!
Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture from The New Living Translation
[1] PREACHING TODAY.COM, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Letters and Papers from Prison; in a letter to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer from Tegel Prison in Germany, November 21, 1943; submitted by Bill White, Paramount, CA
[2]HomileticsOnline.com, quoting Maxie Dunnam, This Is Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 60-61.
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