Silence Broken

Luke 1:5-17

It has been 400 years since the last prophet, 500 years since the last miraculous act of God in the case of the fiery furnace in Daniel, and 800 years since any long list of miracles occurred in the lives of the two prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  But now something dramatic happens.  All of a sudden angels start to appear.  And all of a sudden God starts to speak and reveal His Word and miracles begin to happen. And they come at a rate never before even imagined in the history of the world, far more miracles than at any other time.  This is literally an explosion of the miraculous on this little piece of earth that we know as the land of Israel. And all of that miraculous surrounding the greatest miracle, the virgin birth, is to indicate that God has invaded history with a supernatural message and a super natural reality, the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the most dramatic, the most important, the most special, the most unique event in all of redemptive history and it is attended to with miracles.  So we're going to expect as we go through the gospel of Luke to be engaging ourselves in the on-going study of God's miraculous intervention into human history.  We're not going to be able to apply scientific laws to all the things that happened.  We're not going to be able to find rational explanations for all of the amazing things that happen.  There is no reasonable or scientific explanation for the incarnation of God in Jesus.  There is no reasonable explanation for the fact that He lived a perfect life, died a substitutionary death on the cross in which He paid the penalty for the sins of all who would ever believe.  There is no way reasonably to explain a physical, bodily, literal resurrection from the dead. And no way to explain how one could ascend into heaven without the aid of science or a rocket or anything else as Jesus did in His ascension.  And we're going to see miracle after miracle after miracle.  And all of this attests to the fact that this is God acting in human history.

Luke then is writing the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it is really the account of divine intervention in human history.  God supernaturally acting and He does it in ways the likes of which the world has never ever seen.  Five hundred years since the last miracle, 800 years since a time of miracles, 500 years since an angel appeared, 400 years since God spoke, and now it all comes back in a volume and a quantity the likes of which it has never occurred before nor since.  God breaks His silence.

Luke, because he is the ever careful historian, understands the critical imperative, the critical importance of assuring his readers that the story of Jesus is not a human story.  It's not a cultural myth.  It's not a cultural legend.  It's not a fantasy dreamed up by men.  Luke wants us to understand that the story of Jesus is the revelation of the God of the universe and therefore Luke makes much of the miraculous element which has no human explanation. 

vv. 5-17

God is the God of small beginnings.  God does things that are so understated.  In fact, as you go through the gospel of Luke you kind of wait for some trumpets to blow or some brass section to show up and do a fanfare.  But it never happens.  The miracles are just matter of fact. They're just stated in very thoughtful and simple undertones.  It simply says in verse 11, "An angel of the Lord appeared to him."  It doesn't say, "Ta-da-ta-da."  It doesn't say, "And the earth shook and heaven rattled and fire came out of the sky and smoke and an angel appeared."  It doesn't say that.  It's that simplicity that makes the New Testament authors so believable.  They don't try to embellish it.  Now Luke doesn't say, "And I know you're going to find this hard to believe, but I’ve got to tell you folks, look, this is the way it was, like it or not, an angel of..."  It doesn't say that.  It doesn't have any need to prove itself.  It doesn't bear any of those pressures that somebody trying to sell a lie might feel.  Just very simply states an angel appeared.  In verse 13, "And the angel said, you're going to have a child."

So you have an angel from heaven.  You have a word from God and you have the promise of a miracle. The two people over 60, probably in their 70s, could have been in their 80s who can't have children because she's barren are going to have the miracle birth of a son.  It all happens, Luke launches it all.  Silence is broken, an angel appears and a miracle will happen.

Now the center stage is taken by a man named Zacharias and his wife. 

In terms of spiritual life, everything was fine with this couple.  But in terms of the social, it wasn't because verse 7 says they didn't have a child and that was something that was tragic because it bore a stigma.  Many of the Jews believed that if God cursed you, He would make you childless, and so this was some symbol of their wickedness and their sinfulness and they bore this social stigma of being barren and now they're up in years and there's now no hope, except by the miraculous and miracles didn't happen up until then.

v. 9 This is a great moment in this man's life.  The custom of the priestly office was this:  Every day at the temple, in the morning and in the evening, there was a burnt incense offering given to God.  And there was the sacrifice of the animal on the brazen altar. That was the spotless lamb that was sacrificed in the morning and in the evening.  Not every priest could do that.  The priest was chosen to do that by lot.  In other words, his name was drawn.  And it was a very, very great honor if your name was drawn because many of the 18,000 priests would never have their name drawn, ever.  No non-priest would ever be able to have this privilege and only some priests. And in order to spread it around, it could only happen once in your life.  If you had ever done this, you couldn't do it again.  This was then Zacharias' great moment.  This is the pinnacle of his priestly service.  This would have been the high point of his whole life. It would bring him from the outer court of the Israelites into the holy place.  Only one priest in a day could walk in there and offer that burnt incense and come right back out.  This then would take Zacharias from the normal place where he was outside butchering animals by the altar, and it would take him into the holy place.  He would be able to do this only once in his lifetime so the privilege was just supreme.

The temple entrance faced east at the far end of the holy place, when you went in, the far west end as you went in was this incense altar.  It was golden and it was for incense.  It stood just...just barely outside the veil between the holy place and the Holy of Holies.  To put it simply, it was as close to the presence of God as anybody could get except the high priest once a year going inside.  This was as close as one could get.  This was the supreme honor.  God, to them, was at a distance and this was getting as near as you could get.

Using some utensils, he would gather coals off of the brazen altar and he would place them in a golden bowl.  He would go inside the holy place. Never have been there in his life, he would go in.  He would proceed through a place he'd never seen to the far end where he would find the golden altar of incense.  There he would dump the coals and they would be spread around.  At that point he would put incense on top of those burning coals and immediately a huge column of smoke would rise up and it would carry both the smoke and the fragrance of that incense wafting everywhere around the temple.  That was all his duty was and then he was to leave.

It was customary that the priest doing this didn't stay very long.  There was a tremendous fear as they got close to the curtain, close to the Holy of Holies that they might do something to dishonor God, do something trivial, do something blasphemous and it was a dangerous place to be, almost as dangerous as going inside the Holy of Holies.  They put bells on his skirt so they could hear him moving around so they would know if God killed him in there for some blasphemy.  So it was a frightening thing, in one sense. 

The ascending, aromatic cloud was symbolic of the prayers of the people, symbolic of the prayers for salvation, for repentance, prayers of confession, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers for the peace of Jerusalem, prayers for the coming of Messiah, prayers for blessing, prayers for family, prayers for the nation, prayers that the Savior would come and take away sin, prayers for the kingdom to come.  All those things would be part of the praying of the people, and that's what was going on outside [see verse 10].

This heightens the drama of the moment. 

v. 11        God has invaded history.  It has been hundreds of years, and now, an angel.  Zacharias was probably just about ready to leave.  He saw that angel.  He had read Old Testament accounts about angels, angels appearing to the patriarchs in the book of Genesis, angels appearing to the prophets, angels assisting Israel.  He knew about the last apparent appearance of an angel in a vision to Zechariah the prophet nearly 500 years before. But this wasn't like that. This wasn't really a vision.  This was an actual angel.  He actually saw this angel standing to the right of the altar of incense.

This angel was present in actual physical form so that he could be specifically located.  This is not an apparition. This is not some foggy thing. There was an angel there and he was standing right over there to the right side of the altar of incense between the altar of incense and the golden candelabra. 

And what was his reaction to this incredible, unheard of event?  Verse 12, Was he happy?  No. He was panicked.  This didn't happen.  An angel is a perfectly holy, glorious being and this was an angel of the Lord that came right out of the presence of God.  Panic was the right response, sinful man in the midst of a holy visitor from heaven.  It says he was troubled. The verb means startled.  Fear gripped him. He was terrified. 

It was the reaction of Gideon in Judges 6 when a heavenly visitor confronted him.  It was the reaction of Manoah, the father of Samson, in Judges 13.  In fact he said to his wife, "We're going to die, we're going to die.  There's a visitor here from heaven, we're dead.  In fact, I saw the Lord, we're dead."  Sinners feel the tremendous weight of their guilt in the presence of a holy visitor.  It was the exact same reaction of Isaiah when Isaiah saw God high and lifted up, heard the angels singing, “Holy, holy, holy,” or saying, “Holy, holy, holy, he immediately condemned himself, damned himself, pronounced judgment on himself. Daniel 6.  It was the same reaction of Ezekiel the prophet in the first chapter of Ezekiel when he saw that almost indescribable presence of the glories of the throne of God, he says at the end of the chapter, "And when I saw it I fell on my face," sort of a going into an immediate position of humility.  It was the same reaction of Daniel in Daniel 8 and in Daniel 10 when Daniel was confronted with a heavenly visitor.  It was traumatic, it was terrifying.

Same thing happened to Mary.  You look down at verse 29 in Luke 1.  When the angel appeared to her she was greatly troubled at the angel's presence and at his statement.  And he has to say to her in verse 30, "Don't be afraid, Mary."  And the shepherds in the second chapter of Luke.  The angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, the glory of the Lord shone around them, they were frightened.  And the angel said to them, 'Don't be afraid.'

The apostles, when they saw the unveiled Christ in Matthew 17, fell into a coma.  John the apostle, when he saw the vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation chapter 1, he says literally, "I fell at His feet as a dead man."  It just knocked him out with fear. 

Luke, by the way, likes to talk about this fear.  He refers to it repeatedly through his gospel.  He makes note of the fact that it's a frightening thing to encounter holiness from heaven.  So he had an appropriate response.

Angels must have learned to say “fear not,” because whenever they show up, people panic.  And why not be afraid?  Zacharias would have known what the others knew, that God is a great judge of sin.  That if the holy God, or a holy angel appears, that sin is manifest, that sin is revealed and that the appearance of a holy being simply paints the picture blacker of one's own sinfulness.  And so the fear of judgment sets in.  Zacharias would know that angels were the instruments of divine judgment, they had been in the past.  But this isn't a judgment visit.

On the contrary, this is a blessing.  "thy prayer is heard."  Some have suggested that he was praying for the salvation of Israel.  Some have suggested he was praying at that very moment for the Messiah.  It doesn't say that.  Some say he was praying that the Savior would come, that the true Lamb, the true sacrificial Lamb would come.  It doesn't say that.

What is the petition?  I think the next statement of the angel tells you what it is.  Your wife will bear you a son.  The Greek implies that this is a long-standing petition.  It doesn't necessarily mean he was praying it that day.  He may have lost hope.  They may have been so old that maybe it was far past time for them to ask God to give them a child anymore. But that was a common prayer for, you can imagine, years of their life.  The prayer which maybe you started praying long ago and is still somewhere in the back of your mind has been answered and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.

A near dead guy with a barren wife – and they are expecting!

They had been so deeply burdened by this barrenness, asking God probably mostly for a son. Why? Because he wanted to pass on the priesthood.  And in answering their prayer, He answers the greatest longings of the world.  It launches it all.  Never underestimate what God has intended through small beginnings.

Well, at that moment Zacharias' fear must have turned into shock, not the shock of terror but the shock of disbelief.  What? 

Name him John. It means "God is gracious."  God is about to explode upon the world His grace.  Better than giving him the name, "God is really upset," "God has had enough."  "God is gracious" signals the whole thing, doesn't it?

Well, there was a little debate about that.  Look over in verse 59 - they were going to call him Zacharias for his father.  But mama said, no, his name is John.  And they said to her, “There's nobody in your family, no one among your relatives called by that name. Where did you get that name?”  His dad wrote on a tablet:  His name is John.

So when she had the child, in verse 58, everybody rejoiced.  But when John grew up and preached, a whole nation rejoiced. And when the Messiah whom he announced came, the whole world rejoiced.  Isn't God the God of small beginnings?  Don't be afraid.  This child will bring you joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth.

So, silence is broken, and the story is launched.  God sends an angel.  God speaks through that angel His message and God promises a miracle birth to this couple.  And with that, divine intervention in the saga of salvation begins.