When you think God cannot use you, Heaven may be laughing
by Keith Bassham
“There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.
And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.” Luke 1:5-7
When I pastored, I always began my Christmas message series with this story. I do it for several reasons. First, it shows the connecting link between the two testaments. Did you know that there is a lot of information about the actual coming of Jesus in the Old Testament, perhaps as much or even more than in the New? It’s true. If you consider all the prophecies, beginning in Genesis 3:15, you will find a good deal of information concerning the appearing of Jesus, and surprisingly little about his birth in the New Testament.
Although two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, of the four describe the birth of Jesus, only one of the epistles mentions it explicitly, Galatians 4:4: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” In the Gospels, which are made up of 89 chapters, barely four chapters describe anything that happens in the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. On the other hand, nearly all the Gospels are devoted to the three years of Jesus’ ministry, and about half of that material is focused on the last week of his life, his death, and his resurrection. The epistles are filled with references to his death and resurrection, with bare mention of his birth. Funny, is it not, that Christmas has become such a big Christian festival on that basis.
You see, the burden of the New Testament is not so much the birth of Jesus, but his appearing.
“Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:8-11).
It is the appearing, all that Jesus did — all his life, all his work, his death, and his resurrection — that the New Testament emphasizes. But, as a matter of course, before Jesus is able to taste death for us, he must come as all humans enter the world, through a birth.
Therefore, the verses before us from the Gospel of Luke help us connect the Testaments, and help to tell us that the One promised in the Old Testament is indeed the One who appears in the New.
And the connecting link is in the person of a man named John, who is to announce the appearing to the world. Mark 1:1 opens with the words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” And as any good narrative should, the storyline in the following verses tells us about the ministry of John, whom we begin to know as John the Baptist.
Now, you should know that this name, like a lot of religious names, was given him because of what John did. He was not a member of a Baptist church. He was not the founder of Baptist churches. He was called a Baptist because he baptized. He immersed people in water as a symbol. His message was that people should repent and show their repentance, their new way of life, by being baptized. The theology behind the symbol is given to us in Romans 6, where we are taught that baptism represents a death, burial, and resurrection. Thus, when I baptize, I use the phrase, “Buried in the likeness of his death; raised to walk in newness of life.” Of course, when John was baptizing, the death of Jesus was still yet to come, and after that the full meaning of baptism was filled out, so to speak. Yet, people observed what John did with people in the river with some understanding, and called him John the Baptist.
So this story shows the connecting link between the prophets of the Old Testament and the ministry of Jesus Christ in the New.
The second reason I like this story to build Christmas sermons is it shows the very dark days in which Jesus appeared. “In the days of Herod the king …” Herod was no real king of Israel. Not like David or Solomon. God did not put Herod on the throne except in the sense that He has a hand in the affairs of humans. Herod wasn’t even a true Israelite. His lineage was through Esau, not Jacob. He was, quite frankly, a political appointee. “King” was more an honorary title given to a wicked man. Before his death, Herod managed to outrage all true citizens of Israel with the building of numerous idolatrous temples and by killing off anyone in his family who even remotely threatened his own position.
“In the days of Herod the king,” those were dark days. Wicked days. The most awful days imaginable for people of God. Yet it was in those dark days that Jesus came.
The third reason I always liked to begin my Christmas messages with this story is the attractive character of the people involved. Zacharias and Elizabeth are in many ways very common, ordinary people upon whom the most extraordinary things are coming.
Now why would that be of interest? I say it is further evidence of a favorite pattern with God. Doesn’t He delight to turn the order of things upside down? What could be more ludicrous than for God to appear to a peasant girl and announce she would be the bearer of the coming king? What could be more hilarious than Him coming into the world in a stable? As Mary would sing a short time later, when she had fuller knowledge of the place she would occupy in God’s plan,
“He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he hath sent empty away.”
Like Mary, this ordinary couple is about to see God do some extraordinary things through them. You should never feel God is here only for someone else, that you don’t matter, or that you’re not important enough for God to break into your life. The more ordinary the life, the more room God finds to do His work. Jesus called the unrighteous, rather than the righteous, according to the Bible — there is room to work on them. God loves sinners — there is room to work on them. He comes to those with humble spirits and contrite hearts because they are not so full of themselves that God has no place to stand in their lives.
How ordinary and easily overlooked are Zacharias and Elizabeth? Think of it in these terms. According to Alfred Edersheim, author of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, there were, at any given time, about 20,000 priests and Levites in Israel to take care of the worship needs of the people. Not all of them lived in Jerusalem. There were 24 courses, or shifts of priests and many lived in the country and came to town only when it was their course, or shift. Those who lived in the country were considered, like today, hicks or bumpkins. The term used to refer to these commuting priests in those days, according to Mr. Edersheim, was “idiot priest,” not because they were stupid, but just to differentiate them from the Jerusalem priests who lived and served there all the time and were considered much more important. By contrast, Zacharias was quite ordinary.
Well, not quite. They had no children as an ordinary family would. Like Abraham and Sarah, they were old people with no children. Elizabeth, in very plain language, is barren, and they are well stricken in years — you have to love the language of the Authorized Version in these early chapters of Luke. Now, this barrenness is a tragedy in any family in Israel, but especially so for this family. Why? I think perhaps it is because of their expectation.
A common phrase used among the people in those days was, “When the Messiah comes…” They would talk about the wicked ways of Herod quietly and among themselves, and then say, “But when the Messiah comes, He will take care of that.” They would see people on the street — beggars, cripples, the most unfortunate of the unfortunate — give them a little something and say, “I can’t help a lot, but when the Messiah comes, you will be healed.” When the Messiah comes. When the Messiah comes.
Yes, when the Messiah comes, He will show those Romans and restore the godly. When the Messiah comes, the lame will walk and the blind will see … well, you know what they wanted and had come to expect.
And how would the Messiah come? He would be born, of course, to the most-favored couple in all Israel. What could be more thrilling than to be the father or mother of the Messiah? And what could be more tragic for a true believer in the Messiah than for year after year to pass with no child — no chance your child would be Messiah, nor even participate in Messiah’s kingdom, because you had no child.
But Zacharias is a priest even though he’s one of the country priests. There was only one high priest and he had special tasks. Everything else connected with worship was divided among the priests on duty. Of those jobs, there was one particularly special job, the offering of incense. In the temple, there was a place called the golden altar of incense.
The temple itself, the one built by Herod, was patterned after the tabernacle in the wilderness, for which Moses had received instructions at Mt. Sinai. Think of the temple as a large complex, enclosed by a wall. There were walls within walls, forming several courts. As you moved from area to area, you were getting closer to the actual building called the temple proper, and thus getting closer to God.
Within that complex one could easily find the court of the Gentiles, and the court of women. These were in the outer areas, and as you can guess, these walls were to keep certain people out, and away, from the actual holy place, the true temple. Finally, you would get to the actual temple area. As you entered that section, before you would be a large brass altar upon which animals were sacrificed and burnt. But you would not be in the holy place yet. Between you and that holy place was the golden laver, a place for the priest to wash his hands and feet before entering the holy place.
The priests, and only the priests, could enter this building. As you stepped inside, you would see to your right the table of shewbread. A low table with 12 flat loaves of bread, changed every day, and blessed, each one representing a tribe of Israel. To your left, the gold lampstand (called in the Authorized Version, candlesticks), with seven branches, something like a menorah. And directly in front of you in this holy place would be the altar of incense. At this altar, a priest would place incense — incense based upon a recipe given to Moses by God, and forbidden to be used for any other purpose — and then pray. The priest would pray for his nation, for his people, for himself, that God would bless them and protect them, and that His judgment would come into the world, that he would send His Messiah. Smoke from the incense would rise through a hole in the top of the building, signifying that prayers were rising to God.
This offering of incense was ordinary, in the sense that it happened every day in the morning and evening. But to be chosen to do it was extraordinary. With 20,000 priests, you might do the job once in a lifetime. So the day you were chosen would be an extraordinary day for you.
It was during the offering time that an angel appeared to Zacharias. Try as he might, Zacharias could not remember anyone telling about an angel appearing. And the angel had a message. Your prayer is answered. What prayer, do you suppose?
Remember that business about when the Messiah comes? While Zacharias is offering the incense, the picture of Israel’s prayers wafting up toward God, the people taking part in the service outside, the few believing ones are praying for Messiah to come and deliver them. Now some people think that Gabriel is saying that Zacharias has been praying for a son and that is the prayer that would be answered. I’ve always felt that Zacharias fully believed his days for becoming a father were over. I find it difficult to believe that an old man prays for his wife to have a baby. But, there is desire still present — the desire that Israel would see the salvation of God. The desire that somehow, somewhere, he could have a part in that.
And so the angel announces a two-part blessing … you will have a son and he will be part of the salvation of Israel. And this is where Zacharias makes his first mistake in a long time. He asks for a sign. Listen closely and you will hear Abraham and Sarah laughing in the background. They’ve been there. I imagine everyone in heaven would have laughed if they had seen this old man stumble as he did. But Zacharias’s time to laugh will come later, nine months later. Until then, he’s silent. Silent to reflect on God’s word to him.
Feeling ordinary today? Overlooked by God? That’s good, because that’s where God works. And don’t say, “Through me? I’m a nobody. God won’t work through me.”
I would be careful. Heaven laughs at you. All in heaven know that God takes ordinary days and makes them extraordinary. They all know that those things that seem very extraordinary to us are just ordinary business with God. They know that God delights in taking ordinary people and doing extraordinary things through them.
May God give you and your family an extraordinary Christmas as you open your life to Him.