Gooding, David: 4 - The Arrival of the Son of God

Now, before we proceed with this particular talk, we have, I think, a little unfinished business to transact. And first of all, a comment from me upon a good, a question that came to me after last session. I had talked of Jairus's daughter and her being raised from the sleep of death, and the wonderful reunion as that girl woke up and found herself in the presence of her parents and Christ and three of the apostles. And I likened it to when we shall see the Lord, when he comes again, and away you reunited with all the saints. A very perceptive question was asked, asked me afterwards, and that was, do you believe then that when the believer dies, the soul sleeps as well as the body and will not become conscious of the Lord's presence until the second coming of Christ? Or do you believe that when a believer departs the body, his body sleeps, and yet he himself or herself is present with the Lord and consciously aware of the Lord's presence? My answer to that is, I believe the second view. I believe that when the body sleeps and we are absent from the body, we are present with the Lord and consciously present with the Lord. That is what I believe. And of course, the riposte to that is, well, you misled us this afternoon, of course. He, you see, you seem to suggest that, uh, um, as when the Lord comes, as he came to the house of Jairus, that, uh, uh, the awareness o- of the Lord and the saints in resurrection takes place. My defense, as Paul would say, is that I was just, uh, interpreting an a- thing in the Gospels. It was not, of course, the resurrection when Jairus's daughter was raised. She eventually returned, uh, to death, as all we all shall, unless the Lord comes first. So it was but a picture, uh, of what shall be, and pictures that are given us like that are not necessarily full in every detail. All I was wanting to do is to say that in that instance, and in the instance of Lazarus, the raising of Lazarus, you will notice that these pictures, these foreshadowings insist that the dead was not raised until the Lord came. You will remember that with the story of Lazarus, won't you? You will see when Lazarus took sick, the Lord wasn't there, and his sister sent him a note saying, Lord, uh, he who thou lovest is sick. They thought they knew the w- Lord well enough that because he loved them, he would come forthwith. But when he received the notice, he stayed where he was two days. And then he said to the apostles, you'll see Lazarus is asleep. They thought he meant physical sleep, but no, he explained he meant Lazarus has died. And then he added an extraordinary thing. I was glad I wasn't there. Well, you know, forgive me, Lord, but what difference would that have made? You'll say, wasn't there a story early on in the Gospel of John that a man came all the way from Capernaum to Cana to ask the Lord to come and heal his son, for he was very sick, and our Lord healed him at a distance, which put the father in a difficult position because he couldn't see the boy was well, but, um, the Lord said he was well, so, so he had to decide whether he would believe the Lord without any further evidence and go his way, or whether he would stay there in unbelief and plead with the Lord still to come. Well, he was a sensible fellow, and he believed the Lord and went off home, you'll see. So we're taught in that early chapter, number four of John, that the Lord could heal at a distance. So what sense does it make to the Lord to say, I'm glad I wasn't there? Because he could have healed Lazarus at a distance, couldn't he? And when Lazarus was dead and buried, our Lord could have raised him at a distance if he had wanted to. And therein lies a lot of the poignancy of the story. When he got eventually to Bethany, both the sisters in turn said, Lord, if you had been here, all the pathos in those words, but the Lord hadn't come. Why didn't he come? And we add, why didn't he save him at a distance anyway? The answer is because our Lord was laying down what the program of history should be after his departure. His disciples would, one by one, fall asleep. And he didn't propose in, eh, in the meanwhile, as he sat upon the Father's throne, to intervene and stop his people forever from dying. You've observed that since the first century, most believers have died anyway, haven't they? Eventually. The Lord didn't propose at a distance to save his people eventually from dying. Nor did he propose to raise the dead at a distance. Scripture is insistent, and the story of Martha and Mary and Lazarus bears it out in actual parable terms, that to raise the dead, the Lord had to come, and did come at last, to Bethany. That is the point, or one of the points that passage is making, and similarly the story of the raising of Jairus. While he raised the centurion's son, uh, saved him at a distance, he did not save Jairus's daughter at a distance, and certainly didn't raise her from the dead at a distance. He had to come to the house to raise her from the sleep of death. Hence the reunion in that house. Of course, the believer departing from the body is spiritually present with the Lord and enjoying the company of the Lord. Hebrews twelve, we have come, not we shall come, we have come to the city of the living God, and among them the spirits of just men already made perfect. That doesn't take away from the fact that when the Lord comes and raises the dead, he will catch up the, uh, living believers with them. Ah, that will be a reunion, won't it? For if the Lord comes tonight and we are taken to be with the Lord at his second coming, it'll be a reunion for us, won't it? Because our loved ones that have departed, they are with the Lord, but we are not in that sense. And we have no communication with them. So for us, at that part of the resurrect- when the resurrection happens, there will come this glorious, uh, reunion of all believers with Christ. That is my defense. I- I- uh, I was ex- expounding the implications of an actual historical thing. I was not really intending to e- expound all the detail of the timetable as you get it in the epistles. Now there's another piece of unfinished business, but I've forgotten the name, the name of the person who volunteered to tell me what I ought to think of that story of the woman with the hemorrhage. Remember what the question was, all of you. Um, what particular aspect of salvation, uh, should I say that that represents, you see? I got some clear ideas of all the others. Uh, and if this one is an aspect of salvation, thy faith has saved thee, and it is not simply a repetition of the others, what aspect of salvation does it represent? I forgot the name of the person who volunteered to say, uh, to tell me. Yeah. Anyway, never mind. Anybody's free to volunteer. Uh, oh, yes. Pardon? Social salvation. Social salvation. That's very interesting, sir. Uh, in what sense? In the sense that once a hemorrhage, he was an outcast and stigmatized and not out of the temple. Ah, yes, that's a very interesting question, uh, suggestion, that isn't it? Social salvation in the sense, did you hear that? That the dear lady, with her particular affliction, would have been regarded by the Jews as ceremonially unclean, and everywhere she went, she's, uh, would spread ceremonial uncleanness, and therefore she would have been a kind of an outcast, yes? Yes, I'm inclined, uh, to think, sir, you have, uh, hit upon a thing, because in that other story, in that other story of the woman in Simon's house, she was a social outcast originally, wasn't she? She for moral reasons, and forgiveness for her brought her back into decent company. This other woman would have been excluded not for moral reasons, but for ceremonial reasons. But what a terrible blight that put upon her life when she wasn't free to go anywhere, nor even to the temple of God, and where touching somebody would have defiled them. Deliverance from her affliction, therefore, was deliverance from that kind of alienation, wasn't it? That is a very good suggestion. Would you be tempted to carry it further? No. Yes. Well, I mean, he publicly, um, well, I imagine the fact that she was healed was a public declaration that she was restored. Yes, yes. Because if anybody had known that she suffered from this, and uh, she had touched our Lord, they might have thought that our Lord had contracted defilement thereby. So that his demanding that she come and tell, and that she was now clean, would have been an important thing both for her and for the Lord. Just as if our Lord hadn't shown Simon with clear evidence that the woman was forgiven, then the very fact that he allowed her to touch him and didn't complain would have suggested to, uh, Simon that he was morally defiled. Mm-hmm. Good. Well, anyway, thank you for that indeed. Thank you for that contribution. And now tonight, briefly, I want to come to the first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke that deal with the stories of the Nativity. In your notes, it is as styled The Coming Stage One: the arrival of the Son of God. Now, all I aim to do tonight is to give what the Americans would call an overview. I am not proposing to expound all the stories, for if we are to get anywhere at all in the Gospel of Luke this week, then we cannot afford to spend detailed time on each of the sections. This is a very well-known section. What I want to do, however, is to suggest to you that here too, Luke, by his very selection and arrangements of his stories, gives us help towards our understanding of what he intended us to get. We have seen that, I hope, fairly well demonstrated in the sections chapter seven and eight. Their stories are selected very deliberately, and their position in the context is important. The stories all combine to to present the whole, which is, for the moment, Luke's doctrine of salvation as he understood it in the life of our Lord. Now we have this story of the nativity, and it is obvious, isn't it, that, uh, Luke is very different from the others. Mark has no nativity story. John mentions the nativity in those pregnant words, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Otherwise, he has no further description of our Lord's birth. Matthew gives us more. He gives us two chapters, as we remember, but there, uh, it is that, uh, the Virgin Mary was found to be with child. We told the story of what Joseph thought of it, for he was betrothed to Mary and Mary to him, and when he found that she was with child before they came together, he listened to her story, but he was far from being convinced. And therefore, being a just man, he minded to put her away privately, but he wasn't going to marry the woman. She told him the story of a virgin con- virginal conception, and so she might. He would have put her away. But the angel appeared to Joseph, not to Mary in in the Luke and Matthew's account, and said, fear not to take the to the uh Mary as wife, that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Spirit, and all this has come to pass. Notice that translation. All this came to pass is at that point not Matthew's comment. It's the angel that is still speaking, hence the perfect tense and not the past definite. He said to Joseph, don't be afraid to take your wife. What is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. All this, says the angel, has come to pass. He's talking to Joseph, that the scripture might be fulfilled. It was the angel that called Joseph's attention to that scripture. It's not something made up by Matthew. All this has come to pass that the word might be fulfilled, spoken through Isaiah the prophet. And being thus pointed by the angel to that prophecy, Joseph therefore found Mary's story utterly credible, and he took Mary to him, and subsequently Jesus was born before Mary and Joseph were formally married. Lu- uh, Matthew goes on, does he not, to tell us about the way Herod tried to have the child killed, and how Mary and Joseph were obliged to take the child down to Egypt, and they waited there until it was safe to return, and there were other rulers now in power. Even so, they did not return to Bethlehem, but returned to Nazareth. So John tells us. And then it's some years before he eventually mentions in his pro- pro- his next chapters, chapter three, John the Baptist's ministry as the forerunner of our blessed Lord. But in the nativity stories themselves, Matthew has nothing about John and certainly nothing about his father Zechariah. How different Luke is. He has two chapters, but they're two very long chapters, and the material he selects for the nativity stories are quite different in proportion and in subject matter from those given us by Matthew. The arrival of the Son of God in our world, according to Luke, comprises ten stories. Zechariah in the temple, then the Annunciation to Mary, then Mary's visit to Elizabeth and the Magnificat, the birth and naming of John, followed by Zechariah's prophecy at the birth of his son John. Then the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the story of the shepherds directed by the angel to angels to come to the manger, Simeon's prophecy upon the child, Anna's prophecy about the child, and finally the story of the boy Jesus in the temple. And you will at once see how much of that material is unique to, uh, Luke. Of course, the major topic of the story and subject is the birth of Jesus. But look at once, if you care, to how much is told us of other people beside Jesus. Look at all that first story about the angelic visitation to Zechariah, for instance. There are very few people in this world that know who the father of John the Baptist was, but here he is, and a whole long paragraph given to Zechariah the priest and the angelic appearance to him. Then look at story four, the birth and naming of John. So much about John, isn't there? Uh, you will see. And then in story five, Zechariah's long prophecy. It is therefore very interesting how much of the nativity stories is taken up, not with our Lord directly, but with Zechariah and the birth and naming of John and Zechariah's prophecy. We shall want to know why that is, why Luke has selected these elements to go into his nativity story. The, uh, second thing about it is that while mention is made of John, the way the stories are told concentrates our attention not on John the Baptist so much, but as I have said, on Zechariah. And then, uh, we notice, uh, what is told us about Zechariah. The, uh, story tells us of his lack of faith, and how because of his lack of faith at this dramatic moment in history, he was struck dumb by the angel because of his positive disbelief. Then Mary's story is told us in st- in number two and number three. We revert, however, to, uh, Zechariah, the birth and naming of his son John, and then to his prophecy. And Luke, of course, has set up the anticipation. Zechariah was struck dumb until the angel's prophecy should be fulfilled, and then when the angel's prophecy was fulfilled and his wife gave birth to the son, and Zechariah was called to name him and named him what the angel had told him to name him, Zechariah's dumbness was removed, and he spoke and prophesied. This is, therefore, a very dramatic presentation. If it were a novel, it would be a deliberate, of course, Zechariah and his disbelief leaving to his dumbness until, and we're all on tenterhooks, until Zechariah's faith that has been so tottery and earned him to be smitten with dumbness is, uh, at last recovered and absolutely triumphant, uh, in story five, just before, so to speak, the blessed Savior was born. We are looking at these events, therefore, not simply about the fact of the Lord's birth. We are now being invited to think about the chief agents in the story, the people who now were prominent in this great event and had responsibility therein, and we're not only told about them, we are invited to look into their very hearts and souls and see the emotions and see the struggles with unbelief and see their reactions to what was told them at this particular time. That is a very interesting thing, as we shall presently notice. And secondly, we're told about Mary. And of course, we are told in two and three of Mary's reaction to the na- the announcement. Pray, look how much time is spent not telling you merely about the birth of Christ, but about that dear and honored lady's reaction to the tremendous news that was given her by the angel. We shall be very interested in Mary and her reactions. And more of that in a moment. Mary, uh, believed right from the very start. She was not like Zechariah, filled with disbelief. She believed what the angel said. And when she eventually got to see Elizabeth, Elizabeth complimented her, blessed is she that believed. Her difficulty was not one of unbelief, she believed. Of course she did. When you come to the birth story six, seven, eight, nine, and ten, then again you will find they are told from Mary's point of view. You are told two or three times straight over that when something happened, Mary pondered it in her heart. The shepherds came, and they came with their magnificent story of angels, but when they were gone, Mary pondered it in her heart, thinking now about the implications of what was happening. And then, of course, she was told about Simeon, by Simeon's prophecy and Anna's prophecy, some very sorrowful news. And whereas she had rejoiced, uh, uh, and the magnificent, my soul rejoices in God, my Savior, now she was to find the sorrow connected with the birth of the Savior and his subsequent death. We're being told it from Mary's point of view. And whereas Mary at first was full of belief, then that last story tells us that she hadn't quite yet worked out the implications of what she believed. Her son was to be called the Son of God, but what were the implications for it? Imagine, had you been the mother of the Lord and been faced with bringing up this child, what would your reactions have been? With that enormous, that colossal responsibility on the shoulders of a country girl from Nazareth like Mary was. We mustn't be hard on her, m- must we, when we find that when the boy was twelve and she apparently lost him and found him again in the temple, that she was flustered and chided the boy and said, why did you treat me like that? You, why did you treat me and your father like that? She hadn't quite worked out, had she? All the implications of what it means to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Marvelous things. So here is Luke telling us the objective facts that Christ was born and he did have a forerunner, but spending most of his time painting in for us the reactions of the leading actors in this great drama. They are for us objective evidence, but they are important evidence. What were the people like who claimed to be the actors in this world-shattering drama? Good. Well, now notice the, um, uh, uh, another little thing that Luke has done i- in this, uh, uh, uh, part of his work. The first five stories, then, up to this point here, first five stories all happen before the birth. Then come the second five stories, the birth onwards. To use a phrase that Zechariah uses in his prophecy, uh, he talks about the dayspring from on high visiting us, that is to say, the dawn, the daybreak from on high visiting us, and we might sum up the two groups of stories that fashion. What was happening in the last hours before the dawn, and then what happened when the sun rose. Hmm. Hm? Now I call your attention to another feature of the narrative that is historically important. Look, if you will, to the way Luke has interspersed those ten stories with details of timetable. You see how it is done. First story one about Zechariah and the visit of the angel to him. After these days, his wife conceived and hid herself for five months, saying, the Lord it is that has done this for me. He has graciously intervened to take away my reproach among the people. She hid herself five months. Now follow two stories, the Annunciation to Mary, and then Mary's visit to Elizabeth and Mary's Magnificat. Then comes another timetable observation. And Mary stayed with her about three months and returned to her home. There follow another two stories, the birth and naming of John and Zechariah's prophecy. Then we get another, uh, interval here, and the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the desert until the time came for him to appear publicly to Israel. Notice these intervening time remarks. Two stories, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and the angel directs the shepherd to the manger. Here comes another timetable thing. You notice it. And when eight days later the time came for him to be circumcised, his name was called Jesus, which was the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Two more. And then another timetable, uh, you see the child grew and became strong, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. And with that, there is a gap from his birth until the time the child is twelve. And then at the twelve years, the final story, the boy Jesus in the temple, and the whole thing brought to a conclusion, and Jesus advanced in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and man, and the interval between that and chapter three is some eighteen years. Now, one of the immediate deductions to be made from this simple observation of timetable is that Luke was obviously intending to write history. Notice he doesn't content himself with general remarks. There is a very famous, uh, uh, uh, dating of the whole thing in chapter three by, uh, pointing to the world rulers and who was in charge of what, at which time John began his ministry. But here also, in these toros, these remarks about exact timetabling show that, uh, Luke is not, uh, writing mere myth. He is writing, intending to write detailed history and its timing. That is a general point. It is also an exceedingly important point when you come to Mary's story. When exactly did Mary go to Elizabeth and tell her story and make her claim that she was with child and an angel at least had visited her and said that she was to be with child and be the mother of the Son of God? Exactly when did she tell the story? You'll say there is a certain importance depending upon it. If Mary had waited until she could no longer disguise the evidence of her pregnancy, and then have told the story, who would have believed her? When, if she had waited six months, seven months, when you could no longer hide the evidence, and people asked, and she's made up a story, she's told a story of that, well, an angel visited me, and uh, who would have believed it? We may be very thankful to God that encouraged by the angel, work out the timetabling, Mary went to see Elizabeth before there was any evidence that anybody else could have noticed, perhaps even before she had the evidence other than the angel's word. That is a very important piece of evidence for the truth of Mary's story. More than that, I do not now say, for I need to pass on to other things. Uh, you have seen here how Luke is, uh, grouping his stories then with these timetabling intervals. Now let us notice, uh, the topics raised by these ten stories. And you will notice the effect of the division is... that we get one story by itself at the beginning, and then stories two and three are grouped. Then stories four and five are grouped. Stories six and seven are grouped. Stories eight and nine are grouped, and then you have a story standing by itself at the end. That is not accidental, of course. For look at now, look at story number one, an old man in the temple. And look at story number ten standing by itself. It's the story of a young boy in the temple, is it not? The similarity is not accidental, of course, and there's more to it than similarity, because when we look at these two stories, we shall find that they raise the two fundamental issues which are at stake in the incarnation of our blessed Lord. The issue in story number one is the issue of miraculous parenthood. The issue in story number ten is the issue of miraculous parentage. And the difference is obvious, isn't it? The question that number one raises is, is it possible for an ancient old man like Zechariah and his barren wife in her elderly years to become parents? Is it possible for them to know the joy of parenthood? They are so old. The issue will be, therefore, with them, can God miraculously reverse the processes of nature that have led to decay and decrepit bodies. Can God reverse the decay of nature? That is number one. And let us observe immediately how important this story is. If God cannot intervene in our world to reverse the processes of nature and to reverse the decay of nature, then we might as well stop at this moment talking about redemption altogether. Redemption is not the story of scrapping this world and starting with a completely different world. That would be good, but that would, you wouldn't call it redemption. The story of redemption is God taking this world, creation herself, who groans in bondage, in travail until now. She shall one day be delivered from her bondage to corruption and introduced into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Redemption is not about scrapping our bodies and giving us a a a new lot that's nothing to do with our bodies. Redemption is about the resurrection of the body. And I say again, if it is impossible by definition for God to intervene and reverse the decay of nature, then we might as well give up preaching the Christian gospel. Some fifteen years or perhaps more ago, there appeared a book in England written by a professor of theology in the University of Oxford. It was called The Myth of God Incarnate, in which a number of theologians, professional theologians, Christian theologians, so they would have said, finally came out of the woodwork and proclaimed to the world that the doctrine of the incarnation was nonsense. They said it was nonsense in itself. According to them, nobody had ever succeeded in, uh, showing how you can explain the fact that Jesus is supposed to be the Son of God and altogether human at the same time. But not only they- that, they said, it is physically, it is philosophically impossible, uh, to believe the incarnation. Why? Because if the incarnation is true, this is the biggest intervention in earth, in nature, that ever has been. And according to these supposedly Christian, uh, theologians, it is impossible for God to intervene in our world. That is their basic presupposition. Luke is not just telling us simple, naive stories. He knows what he's doing when he presents us with this story at the beginning and the other story at the end. This one raises the question, can God intervene and reverse the processes of nature? If he can't reverse the processes of nature in Elizabeth's decrepit body, how shall God ever stage the resurrection of the redeemed dead? And how would he bring a body that has been dead in the grave three days and bring that out of the grave? This is an issue then to be faced head on. And we shall come back to the story in a moment. The second, the last story, a boy in the temple, raises a similar but a different question, doesn't it? Not now parenthood, but parentage. Mary had had a son. She was a mother. She had experienced parenthood. The question was parentage. Who was the father? And mark how the story is arranged. Mary and Joseph were going back, and they went so many days journey because they would have gone up in the caravan of people going up, and their boy, now being twelve could be expected to be playing with his nephews and nieces and other children in the caravan, and they weren't much concerned about where he'd got to until they found that he wasn't there when they expected him to be there. Couldn't be found. So they went back to Jerusalem in a bit of a flurry. Meanwhile, the boy was in the temple. They found him there at last, after three days' search, both hearing and asking questions of the learned rabbis. And you, I suspect, can imagine what would have happened when the temple authorities and others had found this boy of twelve left behind when all the pilgrims had gone. What would you have said if you had met a boy like that hanging around, so to speak? Your first question, I expect, would be, hello, Sunny. Are you okay? Yes. Um, hmm. Are you by yourself? Yes. Hmm. Oh, um, got anywhere to stay tonight? Are you staying with friends? No. Oh, well, who are your parents? And three days he was asking questions and answering questions in the temple. I was astounded at the precociousness, as they took it, of this boy, when in comes Mary and Joseph all of a fluff, you know, like mothers get. Well, dear old mothers get when they've lost somebody, you see, and they've been so tensed up, uh-huh, uh, when at last they find the infant that has, uh, so far, uh, uh, uh, uh, gone away, that their anger, boom, bursts out. Son, she said, why have you treated us like that? Thy father and I. Well, now the, now the good rabbis are going to find out who his father is. So these are his parents, are they? Yeah, I see. And she says, thy father and I have sought the sorrowing. She said, why did you seek me? Did you not know, do you not realize I must be in my father's house or about my father's business, as some people translate it? All those two words, my father's, how they rang out in the tenseness of the atmosphere in that place. Thy father and I? No, no, no, no. My father. It wasn't referring to Joseph. It was referring to God. The question of parentage and the child at twelve, at which time in Jewish law he became a responsible citizen, answerable for himself, aware of this special relationship with God, his father. Now it is not a question, therefore, of God intervening in nature to turn back nature's decay, as it was with Elizabeth and Zechariah. It was a question of God introducing into nature something that had never been in nature before. That is the story of the incarnation. They are the two great issues at stake in this nativity story and in the gospel. So let us spend just a few more moments, now at the end, considering dear Zachariah, you'll see. Um, the notion has come around somehow in certain circles that the early Christians believed in the virgin birth and things like that because they were so primitive and naive. They didn't understand all the marvels and mysteries of physiology, you see. So they were quite happy to think anybody could be born, born of a virgin. They didn't see why. Not, you see, simply because they were ignorant of the laws of physiology. But we, of course, who know so much about physiology, we couldn't bring ourselves to believe such a thing as a virgin birth. But that's absolute nonsense. If the ancients believed that virgin births were quite ordinary, they wouldn't have been a miracle, would they? And, And uh, uh... the idea that the ancients didn't know how children are produced... is itself a little incredible, isn't it? Precisely because they did know how children are normally produced. But they pointed to this birth and said it was a miracle. What is more, the idea that early Christians believed any old story of miracle, the more cranky it was, the better, is stupid. Because Luke opens his story of the nativity with Zechariah, a priest, who, when he was informed of the in- coming miracle, flatly disbelieved it, wouldn't believe it. The angel came to him and said, uh, Zechariah, thy prayer is heard. You and your wife are going to have a child, and I'm Gabriel as telling you. Well, he said it politely, no doubt, but he indicated it would take more than an angel's word to convince him of that. Whereby shall I know it's going to happen, said he. The reply to that was, well, I've told you, and I'm Gabriel. Oh, well, that wasn't enough for Zechariah. Not even if he's told it by an angel. And he gave his reasons, because I and my wife are elderly, you see. It's possible for us to have, impossible for us to have a child. He refused to believe. We might ask, therefore, a little bit about Zechariah and how rational his disbelief in this miracle was. It's an extraordinary situation, wasn't it? The man was a priest, so he believed in God and believed that God was almighty. Not only a priest, but he had prayed along with his wife in their earlier years that God would give them a son. But that was in the earlier years, I suppose, when Zechariah thought that it was worth praying because all God had to do to answer that prayer was to give nature a little nudge to get on with what nature could at that stage do very well by herself, really, but was showing a certain reluctance to do it. So that was a reasonable prayer, you know, when God could just give nature a nudge, and that would make it work. But those days were long gone by for Zachariah. Now he was an elderly man, and uh, his wife was elderly too, uh. I don't know, I think he'd given up praying a long time. There were, according to him, certain things that God couldn't or wasn't likely to do. Now it wasn't a question of giving nature a nudge to get on with the job. It would re- be involve reversing the decay of nature. But he was a priest, you say. And he was a priest. In fact, the whole priesthood and Levitehood had their origin for Israel, notably after the, uh, Passover in Egypt. And look at the astounding miracles that God had done all the way through the centuries for Israel, through Moses, and then through people like Joshua and Elijah and Elisha. Didn't he preach them as a priest? It was his job to teach scripture in the temple. Ah, but that was ancient history. Marvelous how people can teach Old Testament in schools about miracles and not believe them themselves. Hey, what? Yes. And he believed in angels. Extraordinary. Was when Gabriel appeared and said, you're going to have a child, he didn't say, who are you, like Scrooge might have done. Are you an undigested piece of cheese or something, and am I having a dream? No, it was an angel, okay? Believed in angels. Wise man. He would be a fool who thought he knew enough about the universe to say that there are no angels around, wouldn't he? And yet he disbelieved. His faith, I suggest to you, wasn't rational. You see, unbelief lies at the human heart, and it simmers underneath. Given a crisis like this, then unbelief, which is endemic in the human heart, will suddenly surface, irrational though it is. And when he said, how shall I know it will happen when the angel had told him on the word of the God that it was going to happen, the angel struck him dumb. That wasn't the angel being peevish, surely. You'll see Zechariah was a priest. If he'd have said, look, angel, this is marvelous, but if like Gideon he'd said, but I'm unworthy, I'm the least in my father's house, and I can't believe this is going to happen to me, well, then the angel might have comforted him. But it wasn't that, was it? I'm sent, said the angel, to you to bring you these good tidings. The word is the same as for gospel, of course. Marvelous good tidings. And what was now being announced was the beginning of this great outburst of the gospel. The great forerunner was to be born in the spirit of Elijah, to go before Messiah and to prepare the way of the Lord. This was an integral part of the gospel, and old Zechariah ought to have known his scriptures that the angel now quoted to him. He ought to have believed them and said to himself with amazement, why am I chosen for this? But here is, on the authority of an angel, the very wheels of God's gospel beginning to roll. The vast event that the prophets prophesied is going to happen, and the forerunner is to be born, and the Messiah will come shortly thereafter. This is the gospel. Or have rushed out of the temple, and there, where the people gathered at the hour of prayer, said to them, your prayer is going to be answered. Not simply my prayer, my wife and I are going to have a son, but the prayers of the nations all down the century, the nation of Israel, waiting for the coming redeemer, waiting to hear that voice that should cry in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Zechariah ought to have danced out of the temple, blessed the people, what a blessing it would have been. But he didn't believe it. On the grounds that God couldn't do it. God couldn't reverse the decay of nature. And he wasn't prepared to believe it just because the angel said so. All right, said the angel, you will be smitten dumb. Until it be fulfilled. That wasn't peevishness. He was now responsible to go out and bless the people. But if a priest has lost faith in the possibility of God's intervention to reverse the processes of nature's decay, then ultimately he has no message of blessing for anybody. But if God can't do that, there is no gospel. If Christ is yet in the tomb, there is no gospel. And priests that can't believe that God can reverse the process of decay and death still have no gospel. It wouldn't be a bad thing if God struck them dumb as well. They fill our radios, don't they? And sometimes our newspapers, telling the world that advanced and intellectual believers can't bring themselves to believe in the incarnation or even in the bodily resurrection of Christ. And God, God's purposes were not to be delayed by the unbelief of a priest. It will be done until it be fulfilled. And we wait in suspense, don't we? To see how Zechariah will recover his faith and the other wonderful stories that followed. But the time of our evening session is gone, and we have a more important session, so soon afterwards, in your quarter of an hour. Let's break off now and commit ourselves to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we thank thee for these whom thou didst choose to be the vessels and the agents at the time of thy Son's incarnation. We thank thee for telling us about their internal thoughts and their reactions, their doubts and vacillations. We bless thee for adhering to thy great purpose in spite of it. We ask now thy help for us in our far distant day, as we are chosen of thee to be the vessels of this gospel to the world at large. Remove from us, we do beseech thee, any vestige of lingering unbelief in thy divine power to reverse nature's decaying process. Take from us any lingering unbelief in the bodily resurrection of thy dear son, and give us that full-hearted, uncompromised belief in his divine parentage, that we may face the world with a genuine gospel, that our lips may not be dumb, but opened to tell out the glorious message by which men and women are saved and reconciled to God. So bless our study tonight, we pray, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.