Day 4 - Luke 1:14-17
03 Dec 2023
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And you will have joy and gladness, and will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him 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.
It is no surprise that we were in told in verse 12 that Zechariah was “troubled’ when he came face to face with an angel of the Lord, nor is it much of a shock that “fear fell upon him”. It was probably his first time entering the temple of the Lord to burn incense - nothing would have prepared him for this.
Nothing would have prepared him for the message he heard either. Miraculously, given he and his wife’s age and condition, they were to have a son - John. And yet, this in itself wasn’t the greatest message the angel brought to him.
Every parent has hopes and dreams about the life their unborn child may live. Zechariah is told months before John’s birth the life he will live. He is no ordinary child. He has been set apart for the Lord. He will live as a prophet filled with the Holy Spirit, to call the Lord’s people back to him. It is a humanly impossible task - we cannot turn hearts or produce obedience in others - but the Lord will use John to do his work.
But why? And why now? There are hints in the language the angel uses. He speaks with an Old Testament accent - and John being a priest would have picked up on this. The last Old Testament prophet Malachi spoke of a messenger who was going to come - another Elijah who will “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” In Isaiah 40 a voice cries “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord”.
The angels message is more than just that a special baby will be born. It is that the Lord is speaking and active again. To use C.S. Lewis’ memorable phrase from “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, Aslan is on the move. The time of waiting is over. It may not yet be morning, but it is the beginning of dawn. The darkness of waiting is over. The Lord is about to fulfil his promises to rescue and rule.
But what are the people to do? The answer in the angel’s message is they don’t do anything. This is part of the Lord getting his people prepared. The Lord, through John, will make the final preparations. It is his work.
This would have been surprising to Zechariah, but not totally unexpected. After all, it is all laid out in the Scriptures he would have known so well. The Lord does not share with us everything he is going to do (there is a hidden will), but he has shared many things about his plans and purposes. As it says in Deuteronomy 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do the all the words of this law.” For us, there is one thing left on the Lord’s to-do list. We are told that Jesus will return. So we can be prepared for that, even if we do not know the exact time or date.