Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, let's go to Luke 1.
[00:00:04] Luke 1. We want to look at some events in association and related to with the nativity of our Lord and Savior.
[00:00:18] Luke, chapter one. We want to begin reading in verse number five. We will read a rather long portion of Scripture, but.
[00:00:28] But I think I'll be pretty brief tonight.
[00:00:31] Luke 1, verse number 5. There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abiah. And his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren. And they both were now well stricken in years.
[00:01:00] And it came to pass that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord, and the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John, and thou shalt have joy and gladness. And many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and to the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
[00:02:07] And Zechariah said unto the angel, whereby shall I know this?
[00:02:12] For I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years. And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee these glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be able to speak. And not be able to speak until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be performed in their fulfilled in their season. Excuse me. And the people waited for Zacharias, and marveled that he tarried so long in the temple. And when he came out, he could not speak unto them. And they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple. For he beckoned unto them and remained speechless. And it came to pass that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house. And after those days, his wife Elizabeth conceived and hid herself five months, saying, thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.
[00:03:14] And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, hail, thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
[00:03:55] He shall be great, and he shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, how shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth. She hath also conceived a son in her old age. And this is the sixth month with her who is called barren.
[00:04:34] For with God, nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, behold, the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. Let's pray together.
[00:04:49] Our Father, thank you for the chance to read the Scripture tonight, to sing the songs, to meet with your people, to fellowship. Lord, I pray for those who can't be here because of illness and of the burdens that they're bearing. I pray that you would ease their burdens, that you would give them patience, that you would give them healing and grace. Lord, bless those that are shut in that can't get out among us. Lord, I pray that you would strengthen them and encourage them.
[00:05:15] And, Lord, we pray that you would bless our time in the scripture, Lord, help me to say what your people need, Lord, what we need to hear and that which we need be reminded of. And, and I pray that you would give us all open hearts and Lord, help us to have insight into your word, Lord, that we might be encouraged and strengthened. For we ask in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:05:37] Now I want to look at Zacharias and I want to look at Mary. Zacharias and Mary are people that are kind of opposites in this story and I'll say more about that in a second. But there's things about them in this account of the nativity of Christ or the conception of Christ and what leads up to it. There's things about them that are similar, that are the same and then there are things about them that are much different. Now just consider it with me. That's why I wanted to read it all, to kind of familiarize ourselves with the details of the story a little bit. But one thing that's true of both of them is as we see in verse number, verse number five, Zacharias was a priest, so he is of the line of Aaron and he was. Verse 6 says both he and his wife were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. So we see that, remember in this time not everybody was like that, even though we might get that impression that these people stood out and they were righteous before God. So you have the idea of they were people of faith because righteousness comes by faith, right? That's how you're righteous in the sight of God. But not only were they righteous in the sight of God, they also walked with God, right? Everybody see that. So Zacharias and Elizabeth were upright, God fearing believers. Unlike everybody around them. They were much like you. They were just people who lived for God, people who served God, people who trusted in God and that we have to establish that. And then you have Mary.
[00:07:31] Mary was also as different as she was from Zacharias. Now she was related. I know the word cousin. We think of, you know, those who share a grandmother. That's what a cousin is. I know that because in Cambodian that's the word they. That's the actual word they use for cousin is jidon muy, which means one grandmother. So it makes it easy to remember. But that's what a cousin is, right? And then, but in the scripture a cousin is a little looser of a term. It just means they're related, right? And so you have Zacharias and Elizabeth and you have Mary and they're related, but they're. They're different in many ways. But they're similar in this, in that Mary, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, is a. Is a young lady who is also righteous before God. Now, where does the Bible say that? It doesn't say that. It doesn't say that. But I think it's safe to assume, right, that Mary was a believer in the Lord by her, you know, her prayer, the Magnificat, in verses 46 to 55 ish.
[00:08:37] And so her prayer describes how that she recognizes God as her Savior and her low estate and all those things. So even though the Bible doesn't say that Mary was righteous before God, Mary was an upright young lady. She was definitely. She was definitely a lady of purity, right? She was definitely a lady of faith. You see that even though it's not directly stated like it is with Zacharias and Elizabeth, yet it is seen. It is seen in her works, in her life.
[00:09:03] So that's what's similar between them. Not only that, but we also see that when the angel, in both cases, both for Zacharias and for Mary, the same angel appeared to both of them.
[00:09:19] So Gabriel appeared to Zacharias and Gabriel appeared to Mary. Which means that the message that they had was a similar message. I know the content was different, but it carried the same authority. The same angel, the same person came and gave the message for that respective person. And so there was the same level of authority. And what we're doing is we're comparing the two events.
[00:09:48] And what you read when they meet the angel is you read that like for instance in verse number 12, when Zechariah saw him, he was troubled. He. You see that? And then with mary, verse number 29 says, and when she saw him, Gabriel, she was troubled at his saying. So they were both troubled.
[00:10:09] And then in back in verse number 12 or verse 13, verse 12 says, and fear fell upon Zacharias, verse 13. And the angel said unto him, fear not Zacharias. And then with Mary, verse 30, and the angel said unto her, fear not Mary. So they met the angel.
[00:10:27] They were both troubled at the angel's greeting. They were both afraid and had to be calmed.
[00:10:34] So you see the way that they're similar. But there's one way, at least one way that they were far different from one another. Now think about Zacharias for a minute. Zacharias was a man of position.
[00:10:50] He was a priest. Zacharias was a man who was a religious leader, not only as a priest, a priest were not only those who did the job, because at this point in history, there were a lot of priests. And so what the priests would do is they had a by the law, they had a teaching function. And so he was a priest, he was a servant of God. He was a man of position.
[00:11:13] And then he was also a leader, he was a teacher, Right?
[00:11:18] And then he was also, unlike Mary, he was an older man. And for all of these reasons, we expect, we would assume, and I think we should assume that Zacharias was going to be a man who was a man of faith. And we know he had faith. Obviously he was a man who was righteous before God. It's not that Zacharias was an unbeliever. He was.
[00:11:40] But we expect when Zacharias meets this angel because of his age, because he's a priest, because he's a religious leader, because he's a teacher, because he's acquainted with the things of God, and he is acquainted with the ways of God, and he's acquainted with the law of God, the scripture, because of his age. You know, remember, priests serve from what age? Anybody remember off the top of your head, at what age until.
[00:12:11] Exactly. So he has been. He's obviously not 50 yet, but he's getting up there. And I'll say more about that in a minute. But he has been serving in the priesthood for probably close to 30 years.
[00:12:26] And as a son of Aaron, he has been involved in the temple, you know, the temple worship and service for a long time.
[00:12:35] He's used to it. He knows the Bible.
[00:12:38] He's been around God's people. He's been around. He knows God's ways.
[00:12:43] Everything in Zacharias life, including his age, tells us that when the angel appeared to him, he should believe, right?
[00:12:55] But he doesn't.
[00:12:58] He doesn't believe. Everything in this man's experience tells us that he should have responded to the news of his son's birth, of his son's conception and birth with great faith and joy. But he didn't. All of his experiences up to this point, all of his knowledge up to this point, none of which is bad, it's all good, should have deepened his faith.
[00:13:24] But here we see his faith falters.
[00:13:28] Now, that doesn't mean he's not a believer. Zacharias is a believer. In fact, we can identify with this man. Now let's look at a few verses here. Look, look at job 15.
[00:13:38] Look at job, chapter 15 and job, chapter 32.
[00:13:48] Now, job's three friends were a lot older than Job was in Fact, they described themselves as much older than Job's father. That's how they described themselves.
[00:13:59] And in job 15, nine, look at what it says. This is Eliphaz. Now he's one of the friends. Now remember, he's much older than Job. He's of a different, even a different generation than Job. Job 15, verse 9 says, what knowest thou? This is Eliphaz speaking to the younger Job. What knowest thou that we know not?
[00:14:20] What understandest thou which is not? In us?
[00:14:25] With us are both the gray headed and the very aged men, much elder than thy father. You see that? So Eliphaz is saying, what do you know that we don't? You can see this kind of assertion, this kind of trump card, if you will, based upon age. Look at a couple more passages here. Look at job 32, job 32 and verse number nine.
[00:14:52] Now in this case, job is answering.
[00:14:56] His three friends have stopped talking.
[00:14:59] Job is not as strong. I'm sorry. His three friends have finished their speech and now Elihu is speaking. Now, Elihu is young, okay? He's not the same age as Job's other. The other three friends. Look at verse number nine. He says this. Great men are not always wise, neither do the aged. Understanding, judgment.
[00:15:24] See that?
[00:15:26] But there's an assumption that they should. Right.
[00:15:30] In that verse is implied. They should have judgment and have knowledge. But that's not always the case. Alright, let's look at one more. In Proverbs, chapter 16.
[00:15:44] Proverbs 16, Proverbs 16. And verse number 31, Proverbs 16:31 says this. The hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness.
[00:16:16] Right. The gray head, you know, silver headed, if it be found in the way of righteousness. Which again tells us that it should. Right. Age should teach us things.
[00:16:30] Age should. And a lot of people. Is it not true? I mean, I know people in my family, I won't name names, but I know people in my family that were wild, were the wild child when they were younger. And as they aged, they mellowed.
[00:16:45] And so all of those wild things they used to do, they stopped doing. You know, that's kind of the way it goes sometimes. But this verse tells us, in verse 31, it tells us the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness. So it should, but it's not always the case. And this is what happened with Zacharias. Now, going back to the text here, I just want to remind you of something.
[00:17:11] Is that as we get older, sometimes we start to. And listen, I'm not speaking to myself tonight as one of the younger.
[00:17:22] I'm speaking to myself as one who is in the transition, in the transition period.
[00:17:28] So just to get the categorization correct, but we need to remember that as we get older, we should mature. Our faith should deepen, should it not? Our faith should get stronger.
[00:17:46] And I know we looked at wisdom, you know, the hoaryhead with wisdom be found the way of righteousness. We looked at Job.
[00:17:53] There should be wisdom with age. But the principle applies is not only wisdom, but not only knowledge and all of those things, but also our faith that the spiritual part of our lives, our spiritual life should also deepen and strengthen and grow as we get older.
[00:18:09] But that doesn't always happen. And in Zacharias, something broke down.
[00:18:18] See, the Lord does not show respect of persons regarding age to God. Nobody's old, right?
[00:18:29] Who's old?
[00:18:31] Who is old in the sight of the Lord? Nobody's old.
[00:18:35] You know, that's one thing. As I've gotten older, what I've realized, and especially as I've interacted with like my grandparents, as I've been older and I've interacted with them as an adult, what I've realized is people that are aged are nothing more than young people in a body that doesn't cooperate like it used to. Is that not true? But inwardly like, and I say this, I mean this, my grandmother, I actually had a conversation with my grandmother a few months ago when I was visiting her, you know, my grandma Elizabeth. And I said, grandma, how old do you feel? And she said, well, I feel about.
[00:19:14] I feel about 25 now. She doesn't mean her body, but she means inwardly, right? And you all know that's the way I feel. I feel like I'm about 20 in my mind. I don't look it, I don't act it, I don't have the habits of a 20 year old, but that's what's in my mind, right? And you no doubt feel the same way, right?
[00:19:36] And in that way we can understand God is not a respecter of person. So listen, just because you and I are aging on the outside, what should be a faith that is deepening and growing and getting better doesn't always happen. God's not looking at us and say, well, that person has some age on them. So you know what? They don't. You know, they've already done a lot. So you know. No, the Lord is looking at our faith at every stage in our life.
[00:20:05] In other words, there's a tendency, as we get older, to rest on our lees, the faith that we've had the good decisions for the Lord in the past.
[00:20:18] And we kind of put it like this. Our faith gets kind of crusty.
[00:20:27] It's there, but it's kind of. It's not used a lot. What happens is because we get so much experience, and that's what younger people don't have a lot of, don't have a lot of experience.
[00:20:37] But as you get experience, what happens is your experience increases and you start to. And it's subtle because you start to rely on experience. And before you know it, you're relying on experience instead of your trust in God.
[00:20:53] And sometimes we even think that while we're doing that, we think that is faith and it's not. It's experience. In other words, it's the same thing that Job's friends had, but they were off base.
[00:21:06] We start saying things like this. And I'm saying, we. I'm saying we. God doesn't do things like that. Or I've never seen God do that before. Or that can't happen.
[00:21:19] That's impossible. Now sometimes, especially if we, you know, we're very careful about our words, we dare not say that in the context of God. Did we not just read? For with God, nothing shall be impossible. But in our mind, we think it and our faith acts like it.
[00:21:36] That's exactly what happened with Zacharias. Zacharias is a man of faith. He is a just man. He is a righteous man. He loves the Lord. He walks with God. He has served God his whole life. But what has happened to his faith? He's saying to the angel, in essence, yeah, that can't happen.
[00:21:55] But look at what he says.
[00:21:58] Look at what he says. Verse 18. And Zechariah said unto the angel, whereby shall I know this?
[00:22:06] For I'm an old man and my wife well stricken in years. He does not say, like Mary, how is this going to happen? He says, I need a sign to prove that it's actually going to happen.
[00:22:19] What happened to Zacharias faith?
[00:22:25] But then you have Mary.
[00:22:29] Mary was a young lady of no position.
[00:22:33] She was a nobody in a nothing place that was despised.
[00:22:40] The very opposite of Zacharias. Right.
[00:22:44] Mary was a follower.
[00:22:47] What do I mean by that? She was getting married to her leader, Joseph. She was espoused to the man who would be her husband, her leader.
[00:22:58] She was not a religious leader like Zacharias was.
[00:23:02] And not only that, but Mary was very young. Now, especially by our standards, in all likelihood, based upon the culture of that time, Mary was probably between 15, 15, 17 years old when she was espoused to Joseph. Now that's like, to our standards, that's really, really young. I was actually doing a little bit of study on the life expectancy of people in the first century. And there's something called life expectancy at birth. Birth average life expectancy is what they call it. B E, L E, B A L E. And what that is is that's the life expectancy on the day you're born. On average in our day, you know what that is? For men it's 73, and for women it's 76, 79, 79. The average between the two is 76. But that's at birth. Now, as you go, you know, if you get through the first two years and especially the first 15 years, that goes up, obviously, because you've lived through, you know, know, a set of things. But you know what, the birth, the birth, average life expectancy was in Bible times, likely around 30 to 35.
[00:24:23] Now I'm going somewhere with this. If you got past two years old, you might live on average, you would live into your 40s or 50s, and if you got past about 15, you might live to your 50s or maybe your 60s. That was the regular life. And they know this from historical records because, you know, for instance, Herod was in his 60s when he died and he was a king. Best medical care, best everything.
[00:24:49] You know, there's a lot of diseases and, you know, so you can wars and all that kind of thing. So what am I saying?
[00:24:56] When you were born, you knew you probably weren't going to live, like as long as we live. And so when we look at Mary and we think, well, Mary was, you know, Mary was. Might not have been out of her teens, likely was not out of her teens. At this point we think, man, that's a baby.
[00:25:15] That's a baby. My youngest daughter is 15.
[00:25:24] That's crazy, right?
[00:25:28] But historical records say that's, that's the age that people in first century Israel, that's when they were starting to prepare for marriage. It's just like blows your mind, why does that, why am I bringing that up?
[00:25:43] Mary was very young, right? Even if we go, we kind of extend it out to make ourselves feel maybe a little bit better.
[00:25:52] She was still really young.
[00:25:56] But you know what Mary did.
[00:26:02] When Mary heard the angel's announcement, her faith immediately embraced it.
[00:26:15] So you have a man who has served God his whole life, who knows the Scripture, who has faith, who. Who has lived for God. And he hears the same basic message and says, prove it. He doesn't believe it, and as a result, God makes him mute.
[00:26:35] And here you have a young lady with very little experience who, the moment she hears it, responds totally differently.
[00:26:46] You know, sometimes we.
[00:26:49] We tend. The people who are older tend to criticize younger people because we talk about their zeal, right? How many of you know what I'm talking about? Their zeal. We'll talk about zeal without knowledge. That's actually a quotation from Romans 10:2. But in Romans 10:2, the zeal without knowledge is not referring to young people. It's referring to the Jews.
[00:27:09] But sometimes we say, well, that person has zeal but no knowledge. And so we kind of. Kind of pick at. We pick at the expression of their faith, right? Because it's energized, right? It's energized. But we pick at it and we kind of pat them on the head, right? If not physically, we kind of do it intellectually, pat them on the head and say, well, they have a lot of zeal. And we say they'll cool off after a while.
[00:27:38] But here's the thing.
[00:27:40] That's the kind of zeal of faith that Mary had when she heard. Now, consider it. When Zacharias heard it, what did he hear? He heard that his wife, natural wife, granted, she was old, but he heard that his wife, who was his natural wife, was going to have a baby in the natural way. Now, that might be hard for him to believe, but that's within the realm of natural law, right?
[00:28:07] That's, like, possible.
[00:28:09] Mary, on the other hand, gets news that she's gonna have a baby, having never known a man at all. So would you say which one is harder to believe?
[00:28:22] Zacharias news or Mary's news? Well, obviously, Mary's news is harder. And yet she embraced it immediately, without hesitation. Here's the thing. Sometimes we criticize the zeal of young people, the younger people, because they don't have experience, they haven't learned stuff. And we pat them on the head, metaphorically, and we say, well, once they get some experience, they'll realize that's not possible. What?
[00:28:48] No, what we need. See, in a young person's simplicity, they haven't been talked out of their faith.
[00:29:00] And so they hear something that God tells them. They read something in the Bible. You know what they do? They do it out of the simpleness of their heart, out of their zeal.
[00:29:11] You know what they do? They respond simply. They Respond quickly and they respond without reserve. And you know what we call that? We call that zeal.
[00:29:21] And sometimes it's a little off, it's not exactly where it should be because they haven't learned the ropes.
[00:29:30] But that is to be preferred to a crusted over faith that balks when God says go.
[00:29:40] I want to ask you a question. Who was rebuked in this case, Zacharias or Mary? Zachariah. So his position, even his age, his status is not to be commended.
[00:29:56] Zacharias left the meeting with the angel mute. Mary left the meeting with the angel having verbalized her joyful and humble submission to the Lord. Look, Zacharias was a servant of God, but he was not submitted to the will of God. He didn't believe it. And yet here's this little nothing teenager who is.
[00:30:19] Look at her words. Verse 38.
[00:30:22] This is, this is beautiful. This is. Just, just meditate on this a minute.
[00:30:30] And Mary said, behold the handmaid of the Lord.
[00:30:38] What is she saying?
[00:30:40] Think about this.
[00:30:43] Zachariah says, ha. Prove it.
[00:30:47] Whereby shall I know this do a sign. I need something to show me this is going to happen.
[00:30:54] And here's what Mary says.
[00:30:57] Behold the handmaid of the Lord. You know what that is? You know what that's, that's such a brief, succinct statement. But you know what she's saying? She's saying, I am yours.
[00:31:13] This little teenager pretty much right?
[00:31:18] No matter how old she was, by our standards, she was really young. She had no business saying things like this. And she's saying, the handmaid, you know what? That's a servant girl. God, I am yours. Now think about what she's saying.
[00:31:36] In a very real sense. She's saying, this body is yours to use however you see fit.
[00:31:46] Because literally the Lord Jesus would be in her body, would carry. She would carry the Lord Jesus. So when the Bible says we're to present ourselves a living sacrifice, that is exactly what she's doing. She's saying, I am your hand. And listen.
[00:32:03] We have to have, we have to have young people listen. Younger people, people who we older people tend to pat on their head and say, you know, kind of chuckle at all the crazy things they do. We have to have those people, you people, these people, we have to have them that are going to say to God, behold the handmaid of the Lord, I am yours.
[00:32:35] In simple, energetic, zealous, quick to react faith.
[00:32:43] We got to have that. And here's the thing for us older people, being careful who I look at, we have to have that kind of faith and not have the natural kind of degradation that happens in our faith. We've got to have the faith because remember, Mary was commended, Zachariah was reproved.
[00:33:07] We don't need to his faith. We need to have the faith of Mary that says, lord, I am your handmaid, I am your servant. I am not my own.
[00:33:21] Verbally, with our mouth to the Lord in private. That's what we need to do. Just like Mary did to the angel.
[00:33:27] That should be. Listen, if you don't take anything else away from looking at this passage is make those words your words.
[00:33:36] Behold the hand. She didn't even say, I am the handmaid of the Lord. She says she just said, your servant, the Lord's servant.
[00:33:47] Is there a better expression that. That exists for the kind of wholesale abandon of oneself to the Lord in that. And you know what? God. God would use her body right?
[00:34:01] Now, think about the spiritual connection, right? God would use her body to carry the Lord Jesus because her body was totally yielded to God.
[00:34:12] And what the Lord told her was crazy.
[00:34:18] But that youthful, simple, uncomplicated, sincere faith embraced it immediately.
[00:34:30] That's the kind of zealous faith we need, right? As we get. I know, as we get older and I feel this tendency in myself, right? We rationalize things. We have experiences that have disappointed us and they put clouds over our faith and made us think, well, maybe that's not possible. We prayed prayers that haven't been answered like we hoped that they would have been answered, right?
[00:34:51] And it's made us. It's made our faith shy.
[00:34:55] I feel it too. It's very frustrating. It's very frustrating.
[00:35:02] But we ought to be saying, you know, when we look at the Scripture, when the Lord's directing us, it ought to be immediate, immediately, embrace it and not let our experiences that come with age or position or whatever interfere with our faith like it so often does.
[00:35:30] But that's not all.
[00:35:38] Questioning is okay when the Lord's directing you, when the Scripture says. But the question that Zacharias has, as I said a minute ago, is what sign will you give me that you'll do this? It was a question of unbelief. Mary's question was a question of faith.
[00:35:56] How, Lord, will you overcome this impossibility?
[00:36:03] You know, Zacharias went out of that, out of the temple, mute, disappointed, ashamed, rebuked. Mary went out of her meeting rejoicing. Verse 46.
[00:36:18] And my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God, my Savior. Those nine months that John was in the womb, right before he was born, Zacharias was muted. No praise, no joy.
[00:36:33] But those nine months that John was in the womb, part of which Jesus was in the womb of Mary, Mary was rejoicing.
[00:36:41] So the one that believed was the one that had joy. And the one that did not believe was the one that was ashamed, right? Joyless because of his unbelief. Now, thank the Lord, though all of us have times where our faith falters like this.
[00:37:04] But just because Zacharias faith faltered, God did not stop what he said he was going to do. He did it anyway. It was not dependent on his faith.
[00:37:13] And in the end, you know what? When Zacharias learned his lesson, when John was named, eight days after he was born, all of a sudden Zacharias is mouth opened. His faith came alive, even though it had been crusty and old.
[00:37:27] And what came back?
[00:37:29] Joy.
[00:37:32] And that's his prophecy. In the last part of the chapter, Starting in verse 67, he had joy.
[00:37:41] So we should pray for the faith. The quick, active, simple, energetic, zealous faith that responds immediately to what the Lord tells us.
[00:37:55] Let's pray together.
