Graceful faith reboots
This week's study is on Luke 1:5-20:
We usually hear these verses around Christmastime, but they're beautiful in their own right. It's not just the back story for John the Baptist. It's a story of a miracle mixed with grace.
We start with Zechariah and Elizabeth, who are doing everything right, and yet the desire of their hearts to have a child is left unfulfilled. Luke mentions that they're both very old, as if to short-circuit any confusion we might have about whether things would have worked themselves out on their own given time and practice, or whether it might have been a "training issue" (remember, this is millennia before state-mandated mandatory sex education classes for kids.) They had clearly been let down and were beyond the point where hope would have been a reasonable thing.
One day, Zechariah gets chosen as a "random selectee" to go burn incense in the temple as part of his duties. And when he's in there, with nobody to watch his back, the angel Gabriel appears next to him and scares the living daylights out of him. Remember, angels in real life actually looked more like giant comic book villains than the fat kids with fluffy white swan wings we see nowadays in art. He had every right to be afraid, especially by himself in a dark temple full of smoke with nobody around to hear him scream.
Anyway, this angel gives him what was probably the best news of his life: he will have a son, and his son will grown up to be a mighty man of God, and will help to save the world. Imagine you're old, and all of your friends on the shuffle puck court talk about nothing but their kids and grand-kids, and you've got nothing. For your whole married life, you've waited not always patiently, going to fertility clinics, trying countless embarrassing things you read about on the Internet, praying and believing, listening to well-meaning people tell you what they think you're doing wrong, and so on. And still nothing.
Until one day a seemingly imaginary being comes and tells you that not only will you now have a kid, years late, but the kid will grow up to be more fantastically perfect than any kid could be expected to be. You could be forgiven for having a bit of doubt, even under the circumstances. Zechariah responds with his doubts, plus a quick science lesson for Gabriel: “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
Gabriel's response seems harsh at first: "Well okay then, you're not going to talk for nine months because you didn't listen the first time." But it's actually an incredible act of grace! Zechariah's doubt didn't disqualify him from the blessing God had for him! Rather than work through a dusty box of apologetics scrolls trying to convince him, or taking away the blessing and going elsewhere, God has Gabriel simply rebuke him and give him time to process things.
If faith was the only factor, Elizabeth probably would have gotten pregnant in her teens or early twenties like most women in her day. Remember, these guys were a holy power-couple. I'm sick of Christians talking like we have to bunch up our fists, furrow our eyebrows, and squat out our faith miracles by sheer force of willpower, with barely a mention of God's divine graceful will. Without God's will and his grace, you'd just be shooting blanks like Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth didn't get pregnant because she and Zechariah finally managed to believe hard enough. She got pregnant because God decided it was time, and wanted to give them a gift they couldn't buy for themselves.
So if "believing hard enough" isn't going to produce a miracle on its own, "not believing hard enough" isn't going to stop a miracle on its own. Miracles come from God. That's what makes them so beautiful when they happen.
God relates to us on an eternal time frame. Sometimes we know what is going to happen, other times we don't. Sometimes we get what we want right when we ask for it, or before we think to, and other times it's more of an eternity-scale payoff. He's more patient with us than we are with ourselves, despite his perfect standards.
I imagine that what happened with Zechariah and Elizabeth was worth the wait for them. Not only did they get to have what they always wanted, they got to see the character of God, and how he is willing to patiently wait for us when our faith is slow, and to give us what we can't hope to achieve on our own efforts.
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
We usually hear these verses around Christmastime, but they're beautiful in their own right. It's not just the back story for John the Baptist. It's a story of a miracle mixed with grace.
We start with Zechariah and Elizabeth, who are doing everything right, and yet the desire of their hearts to have a child is left unfulfilled. Luke mentions that they're both very old, as if to short-circuit any confusion we might have about whether things would have worked themselves out on their own given time and practice, or whether it might have been a "training issue" (remember, this is millennia before state-mandated mandatory sex education classes for kids.) They had clearly been let down and were beyond the point where hope would have been a reasonable thing.
One day, Zechariah gets chosen as a "random selectee" to go burn incense in the temple as part of his duties. And when he's in there, with nobody to watch his back, the angel Gabriel appears next to him and scares the living daylights out of him. Remember, angels in real life actually looked more like giant comic book villains than the fat kids with fluffy white swan wings we see nowadays in art. He had every right to be afraid, especially by himself in a dark temple full of smoke with nobody around to hear him scream.
Anyway, this angel gives him what was probably the best news of his life: he will have a son, and his son will grown up to be a mighty man of God, and will help to save the world. Imagine you're old, and all of your friends on the shuffle puck court talk about nothing but their kids and grand-kids, and you've got nothing. For your whole married life, you've waited not always patiently, going to fertility clinics, trying countless embarrassing things you read about on the Internet, praying and believing, listening to well-meaning people tell you what they think you're doing wrong, and so on. And still nothing.
Until one day a seemingly imaginary being comes and tells you that not only will you now have a kid, years late, but the kid will grow up to be more fantastically perfect than any kid could be expected to be. You could be forgiven for having a bit of doubt, even under the circumstances. Zechariah responds with his doubts, plus a quick science lesson for Gabriel: “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
Gabriel's response seems harsh at first: "Well okay then, you're not going to talk for nine months because you didn't listen the first time." But it's actually an incredible act of grace! Zechariah's doubt didn't disqualify him from the blessing God had for him! Rather than work through a dusty box of apologetics scrolls trying to convince him, or taking away the blessing and going elsewhere, God has Gabriel simply rebuke him and give him time to process things.
If faith was the only factor, Elizabeth probably would have gotten pregnant in her teens or early twenties like most women in her day. Remember, these guys were a holy power-couple. I'm sick of Christians talking like we have to bunch up our fists, furrow our eyebrows, and squat out our faith miracles by sheer force of willpower, with barely a mention of God's divine graceful will. Without God's will and his grace, you'd just be shooting blanks like Zechariah and Elizabeth. Elizabeth didn't get pregnant because she and Zechariah finally managed to believe hard enough. She got pregnant because God decided it was time, and wanted to give them a gift they couldn't buy for themselves.
So if "believing hard enough" isn't going to produce a miracle on its own, "not believing hard enough" isn't going to stop a miracle on its own. Miracles come from God. That's what makes them so beautiful when they happen.
God relates to us on an eternal time frame. Sometimes we know what is going to happen, other times we don't. Sometimes we get what we want right when we ask for it, or before we think to, and other times it's more of an eternity-scale payoff. He's more patient with us than we are with ourselves, despite his perfect standards.
I imagine that what happened with Zechariah and Elizabeth was worth the wait for them. Not only did they get to have what they always wanted, they got to see the character of God, and how he is willing to patiently wait for us when our faith is slow, and to give us what we can't hope to achieve on our own efforts.
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