Day 3 Luke 1:8-13
02 Dec 2023
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“Now while he was serving as priest before God when 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. 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. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayers been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.”
The consistent and clear message of the Bible is, as Jonah put it when he cried out in the belly of the fish “salvation is of the Lord”.
As the apostle Paul emphasises in Ephesians 2, it was when we were dead in our sins that God acted to save us. In another place we are told that it was while we were enemies that God reconciled us. Dead people can do nothing. Enemies do not want to reconcile with those they hate.
The events surrounding the birth of Jesus highlight this. Whether it’s a virgin giving birth, or hundreds of years old prophecies being fulfilled the message comes through loud and clear - this is God’s doing, not ours.
However, as we consider God’s work we must be biblical in our emphases. It is a mystery, but also a certainty, that God sovereignly works through the Spirit enabled prayers of his people. It’s still his work - he gives his people the changed hearts and open lips to cry to him, but he delights to use those prayers to do even the greatest of his works.
That is highlighted in these verses. We meet Zechariah on the greatest day of his life as a priest. His name has come up to enter the temple to burn incense. This act of worship was a kind of acted out prayer - with the incense going up to the Lord symbolising the cries of the people. And those cries ultimately were the prayers for God to act, for him to come and send his Messiah and fulfil his covenant promises. This may have been performed habitually and unthinkingly by some of the priests, but not by Zechariah. We’ve already been told he was “righteous and blameless”.
And then there are Zechariah’s personal prayers for a child. Those cries that he and his wife would have cried out through the years of their married life.
Those prayers came together and were answered by the angel Zechariah came face to face with in the temple. “Do not be afraid, your prayer has been heard, you shall have a son and you shall call his name John”.
Sometimes the Lord chooses not to answer the cries of our heart with a yes. This is hard, but he does it for his own mysterious reasons but ultimately for his greater glory. And faith in this means trusting even in the hurt.
But the Lord always chooses to answer those prayers for things he has promised with a “yes”. And more than that - he chooses to use our prayers for those things in doing so. The prayers of faithful Israelites like Zechariah were heard and answered in the sending of John, the forerunner of the Messiah. And so, our prayers are also used. Prayers that his church will be built. That Christ will be seen as Lord. That “his kingdom will come and his will be done on earth as in heaven” - these are not pointless prayers because God is going to do it anyway. Keep praying. Keep knowing the Lord uses those prayers to achieve his purposes.