Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.
Have you ever felt like giving up? Have you ever looked at your situation and thought, "Well, that's it. It's never going to happen for me."?
You know what I mean, don't you? Your homework is too hard. An assignment is impossible. A colleague at work is frustrating you. You just want to scream inside and run away and hide. It's not a nice feeling.
Sometimes giving up is the right thing to do. I gave up playing boys football before I hit my teens. Why? Because I wasn't any good at it.
Giving up a bad habit is a good thing, of course.
But we don't see that here. What we see here is two people who have waited a very long time for something good to happen and it hasn't happened. From Zechariah's reaction especially we can see that they have given up completely. And they're not happy about it.
But God is about to do something really special.
However, from the outside, we might think that THEY HAVE EVERYTHING. Now, that's a different approach to these verses that I bet you've never heard before, but hear me out. Zechariah was a priest (Luke 1:5), and a good, respected one at that (Luke 1:6).
Now being a priest was a really special job. The priest was responsible for leading worship in the Temple, making sacrifices and burning incense on behalf of the people. The Bible tells us that the priests had a special uniform (Exodus 28). They also got free food - and plenty of it - as they ate some of the sacrifices the people brought - both them and their families (Leviticus 6 and 7; Deuteronomy 18:1). This food wasn't just crisps or juice or biscuits. No, it was the best that their country had to offer.
And it gets even better. Not only did the priests have free food for life, but they also had somewhere to live. The people of Israel had to give them land and places to live in their towns and cities (Numbers 35:1-5).
And if that is not yet enough, they had one last perk that all of us would love to have. Do you know when a priest should retire? At fifty years old (Numbers 8:25). So if I was a priest, I could retire in just four years! But because I live in Scotland and I'm not a priest, I'll have to wait twenty-one years!
Brilliant job, nice uniform, amazing and free food, somewhere to live and early retirement... who wouldn't like that?
We are surrounded by such amazing blessings, just like Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. We live in one of the safest places in the world. We have few problems with food. We have good healthcare and education systems. We have good opportunities in life. We live in warm houses. And if you don't think this is such a blessing, look on the news and see people risking their lives to come here. Hundreds of millions of people in the world see videos of people in our country and do you know what they think? "They have everything!". And that's before they see the presents under the tree.
However, Zechariah and Elizabeth had a problem. This problem was so big and so sore that it felt like THEY HAD NOTHING. These people, who had the best situation of many, many people in their country were trapped in a sad situation and they couldn't get out of it, no matter what they did. Do you know what that situation is?
But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
This was a heart-breaking situation for them. You see, when they were younger, they might have had a chance to have children. But not now. That chance had long gone.
"But why was that even a problem?" you might ask. There are many people in our day who actually choose not to have children and it's not an issue.
But Zechariah and Elizabeth didn't live in our day. They lived in another culture, in another place, and in another time. In their culture, place and time, men worked and women had babies. That's basically how it was. While a man's worth was measured in how well he looked after his family, a women's worth was measured in how many children they had. We can even see this in the Bible: in the situation between pregnant Hagar and Abraham's wife Sarah who had no children (Genesis 16:4); in the competition between Jacob's wives over who could have the most children (Genesis 29:31-30:22); in the teasing Hannah endured because her husband Elkanah's other wife Peninnah had given him children but Hannah had not (1 Samuel 1:6); in how Elizabeth herself feels that not having children is a 'disgrace' (Luke 1:25).
So Elizabeth's situation is really bad. There is no doubt at all that she would have felt like she had somehow failed - that she didn't measure up as a wife because she couldn't give her husband children.
We can see this when Zechariah responds to the angel telling him that he will have a son:
Zechariah asked the angel, ‘How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years.’
Zechariah can't believe it. It seems impossible. He has endured being childless for years - decades even. Now when even an angel tells him that he will have a child, it seems too good to be true and he can't believe it at all. Even if the sight of the angel is so awesome that it terrifies him (Luke 1:12).
You see, nothing sours the taste of plenty like the bitterness of lack. Nothing spoils everything we have worse than thinking that it isn't enough. Feeling inadequate is one of the worst feelings there is.
Many of us here will feel like Zechariah: that our situation is beyond us, that it's impossible, and that it's never going to change.
One of the most famous psalms, and one that Zechariah may well have sung himself has these words:
The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
I want to ask you a very serious question: is this how you feel? Or do you feel that who you are and what you have is not enough?
If you feel like this, if you are feeling the lack, then I want you to hold on for a second. Because Zechariah and Elizabeth might have had everything and felt like they had nothing, but THEY HAD GOD, and that made all the difference.
You see, God sends His angel to tell Zechariah that they will have a son, and that he won't just be any old son - no, he will prepare the way for the Messiah - Jesus - to come (Luke 1:13-17).
His coming also took away two things: it took away Zechariah's ability to speak, because he hadn't trusted God (Luke 1:19-22), and it also took away Elizabeth's disgrace at being a childless woman (Luke 1:24-25).
But what their son did was awesome. He led people to put away things - to put away their bad, sinful ways, ready for Jesus to come and save them (Luke 1:16-17).
Instead of the pain and the sorrow and the feeling of lack they had carried round with them for decades, God gave them joy and delight (Luke 1:14). More than that, God gave them an important role to play in changing the world.
And this is what Christmas is all about. Christmas is not for the rich to show off their wealth, or those who are full to eat more and become more full.
No, Christmas is about bringing hope to the hopeless, joy to the joyless; to meet the needs of those who lack.
Probably the best Christmas I've ever had was in Pitesti, Romania, when I was a missionary. I had money from home that year but I didn't have any presents to open. I was all on my own because my team members had all gone home but I'd decided to stay. However, I had the best time. And not because of Netflix either. It hadn't been invented yet. No, I was taken in by the family of a good friend of mine. I met them on Christmas morning. We took some food to children sleeping on the streets. Then we had lunch together and went visiting and carol singing in an old folk's home, visiting people whose families didn't come to see them. I've never had a more special Christmas than that. It wasn't just the snow or the temperature - minus twenty-five, anyone? No, it was the feeling that this was what Christmas was all about.
Why? Because that's exactly what God did at Christmas. He came down to lift His people up. You see, the Jews had been waiting for thousands of years for Jesus to come. They had just endured four hundred years when no prophet or preacher had preached the Word of God. And now, in the sorrow and the hardship and the sense of lack, when the Jews were being dominated and bullied by the Romans, God was breaking the silence.
And how did He break it? Through two elderly people who believed that their time had gone. Two despondent people who had given up. Two people who had everything and yet felt like they had nothing. And yet at that first Christmas time, they found out that God had a plan for them, that it was to prosper them and not to harm them, that He would take away their pain and their disgrace, and that He would give them an important role in changing the world.
2021 has not been easy for many of us. It's been really hard. But this is Christmas. This is the time when God changes impossible situations, steps in and saves His people. So don't give up. Don't give in. Just trust Him. Because God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is in control. He has a plan. And with Him it's never too late.
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