Let It Be To Me According To Your Word

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome. It’s so good that you’ve braved the wind and rain to join us here in worship.

My announcements this morning are a little thin, but I do want to thank you for your prayers for Brenda Johnson this week. Brenda is still at UVA and probably will be for a little while, but her surgery went well and she is recovering, but there’s still a long road ahead for her with rehabilitation and getting her strength back. Please continue to pray for Brenda and for her family, and please reach out to keep in touch with her as she begins a long process of healing.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we thank You for another week and for the many blessings you gave us, just as we’re thankful now to be able to come together as one family in worship of you. We pray that the joy and love and pureness of this Christmas season fills our hearts and our thoughts and spills out onto everyone we meet. We thank You for the peace You have brought in the form of a tiny baby, and the peace we enjoy now because of the willing sacrifice of your son. For it is in his name we pray, Amen.

Second Advent Candle

Advent is the season when the church waits in expectation of Christ’s arrival. Part of that expectation is the lighting of five candles.

Last week, we lit our first candle, the candle of hope. Today we light the second, called the candle of Peace.

Jesus brought peace in the most unexpected way. Many of the Jews wanted their savior to overthrow Roman rule – to bring peace in a violent way. But Jesus had something else in mind, something better, something eternal.

The Hebrew word for peace, Shalom, goes far beyond simply not fighting. It means how things are truly meant to be. The peace of God allows us to look at others through heaven’s eyes and help guide the world to see that Kingdom of God which is both here and not here yet.

Paul writes in Philippians 4:6-7, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

(Lighting of the candle)

Let’s pray:

Father in this second week of advent, keep us in perfect peace as our mind is kept on the truth of your powerful love. Thank you for Your holy and eternal son who paid for our sins and now sits at your right hand in heaven and makes intercession for us. Thank you for your mighty, sovereign hand. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Sermon

When we talk about having peace, we can mean having an outer peace that’s free of conflict, like with our families, our neighbors or between nations. We can also mean having an inner peace, a stillness inside our hearts that comes from being free of things like worry and fear and doubt.

But whether we’re talking about an outward peace with others or an inward peace with ourselves, both of those things depend entirely upon our peace with God. He is where peace comes from. He is where hope comes from. He is where love joy and love come from. Everything that’s good originates with God. So the more peace we have with God, the more peace is going to flow into every other area of our lives.

That’s what Christmas is all about. That’s why Christ came into the world – to bridge that gap made by our own sin between us and God, and to offer us a peace so powerful and lasting that nothing in this world can take it away.

That peace is a gift God offers you every day, and the second gift we celebrate every Advent. Last week we talked about the first one, the gift of hope. Peace adds to that hope. It’s like God is building you a house to keep you safe from the hopelessness of this world. Hope is the foundation of that house. Peace is the walls. And the strength of that peace depends on just one thing: how much faith you have.

You cannot have true peace without true faith. It’s just not going to happen. And when I say true faith, I don’t mean the kind that shines in a church pew – or a church chair, in our case. It’s easy to sit here on Sunday morning and look at these pretty decorations and sing along with the pretty music and say “Amen” when the Spirit moves you and have faith.

That’s wonderful, it really is, don’t get me wrong. That is real faith. It’s genuine. But it’s not true faith, because true faith is tested.

True faith is when God reveals His holy and perfect will to you and you realize it makes no sense, you realize His will means you’re going to hurt and suffer and you probably won’t even know why, but you hang on to Him anyway. That’s when you know how much faith you have, and that’s when you know how strong your peace truly is.

That’s what happened to the two people we’re going to meet today. One of them is an important religious leader. The other is a poor peasant girl. Both of them are confronted by the holy will of the Holy God in an unexpected way, but they each react very differently according to the peace they had with God.

Let’s turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1. We’ll start out this morning with verses 5-20:

Luke 1:5–20 (ESV): 5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

8 Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty,

9 according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.

11 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

12 And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him.

13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.

14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,

15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.

16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,

17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”

19 And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.

20 And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

Now let’s move down to verse 26, reading through verse 38:

Luke 1:26–38 (ESV): 26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.

28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,

33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.

37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”

38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

And this is God’s word.

We have two people here — Zechariah, who will be the father of John the Baptist, and Mary, who will be the mother of Christ. Both are visited by the same angel who delivers the same message – “I have come to you to reveal God’s will.” Both will be given a miracle. And on the surface, both Zechariah and Mary seem to react the same way – by questioning. But Zechariah is punished for his question, while Mary is blessed for hers.

Why? Have you ever wondered that? What’s the difference between Zechariah’s question and Mary’s question that would get Zechariah punished and Mary blessed? And what does that have to do with our peace? Let’s find out, starting back in verse 5.

We’re introduced to two people here, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. Both of them belong to a long line of ancestors who were priests. Zechariah’s name in Hebrew means “Jehovah has remembered” – that’s going to play a big part in what the angel says. Elizabeth’s name means “God is my oath.” We talked about God and his oath last week, and what that means for our hope.

Zechariah and Elizabeth are godly people. Verse 6 says they’re righteous. They both walk “blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord.”

In a time when godlessness was creeping up everywhere, when even the holy city of Jerusalem was under Roman rule, these two people hold strong to their faith. They’re obedient to God. But in spite of all their devotion and faith, it’s almost like Zechariah and Elizabeth were cursed because of verse 7:

“But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.”

We’ve talked before about the disgrace women of that time felt when they couldn’t have children. It wasn’t unusual to believe that if a woman couldn’t have children, it was because of her sin. That wasn’t true, of course, at least in most cases and especially in Elizabeth’s case, but I’m sure that didn’t stop people from talking about her.

Years and years this man and wife had prayed for a child, only for years and years to pass without God giving them what they wanted so much.

The point of verses 5 and 6 is this: no one in this world is saved from trouble. Doesn’t matter how faithful you are, or how much you love God. Bad things happen, because that’s what life does. But with faith comes God’s peace, and even those bad things can become huge blessings — because that’s what God does.

In verse 8 we see that Zechariah is a priest “of the division of Abijah.” There were 24 divisions of priests. Each division worked in the temple for two weeks out of the year. Most of the priests spent the rest of that time away from Jerusalem in their own homes doing their own work. In these first verses, Zechariah is working his two weeks in the temple.

Part of the daily worship at the temple was the incense offering for the forgiveness of sins. This was made twice a day, once in the morning and again after the evening sacrifice, in the Holy Place inside the temple. It’s probably evening right here. The priest would go in by himself and make the offering while the people waited outside in prayer. Then the priest would come out and dismiss them all with a benediction.

Because there were so many priests, they would cast lots to determine which one of them would burn the incense in the Holy Place. On this day, the job of burning the incense falls to Zechariah. Now, this is a huge honor. Many priests never got the opportunity to burn incense in the Holy Place, and no priest was allowed to do it more than once. This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Zechariah.

So here he is, barefooted and wearing a white robe, waiting for the signal between when the lamb was sacrificed for the people’s sins and when that lamb is offered. Zechariah walks up the steps with two assistants. One of them is carrying a golden incense burner filled with half a pound of perfume. The other is holding a golden vessel filled with burning coals taken from the altar.

The three of them pass into the Holy Place, where only the Levites can enter. The two assistants arrange the incense and spread the coals on the altar, then they leave Zechariah alone. There’s only the dim light of the candlestick and the thick veil we talked about last week, the one that separates the temple and the Holy of Holies, where God dwells.

It’s funny how God will often choose to speak to His people while they’re busy doing their normal daily tasks. Moses and David were caring for sheep. Gideon was threshing wheat. Peter and John were mending their fishing nets. When we get busy, God starts directing. Same here. Zechariah is doing his duty, and in this moment, heaven breaks a silence that’s lasted four hundred years.

In verse 11, an angel of the Lord appears on the right side of the altar. And Zechariah responds the way almost every person in the Bible responds to an angel – with fear. But the angel says in verse 13, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.”

There’s a lot to talk about here. First, we see that all of the prayers Zechariah and Elizabeth have made for a child haven’t gone unheard. Every prayer of faith you make heard. Every prayer is filed away in heaven. No prayer you make to God is ever forgotten, even if even what you pray for isn’t given right away, because many times God says, “I’ve heard your prayer and I’ve granted your prayer, but it has to be in My perfect time.”

But now second, and this is interesting – notice that the angel names the son that Elizabeth is going to have. Naming a child was the father’s responsibility. For God to step in and name this unborn son means that God Himself is making the child His responsibility. And God is doing that because of what the angel says this son will do in verses 14 – 17:

Because of John, Zechariah and Elizabeth will have joy and gladness. Many will rejoice at his birth. He will be great before the Lord. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.

(This is especially amazing. Remember, the Holy Spirit hadn’t been poured out yet. That only happened when Jesus ascended into heaven. Having the Holy Spirit in Zechariah’s time was rare, but having it even while in the womb had never happened before.)

He will turn many people to God. And most of all, in verse 17, John, Zechariah’s son, will have the spirit and power of Elijah to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.

Try to imagine that if you can. Here Zechariah has just gotten the opportunity of a lifetime in being chosen to burn the incense in the Holy Place. Now while doing that, he’s visited by an angel who says not only will Zechariah and Elizabeth be given the son they’ve always prayed for, but their son is also going to be the man who will announce that the Messiah has come. It’s amazing. It’s wonderful. It’s a miracle.

So how does Zechariah, this holy priest, answer?

“You’re kidding, right?”

That’s what Zechariah basically says in verse 18. You would think that the presence of an angel and the announcement of God’s word would be enough to chase away any doubt he has, but it’s not. Pay attention to this, because it’s important – Zechariah doesn’t doubt God’s power to do what the angel says, he doubts God’s power to do it for him.

And the reason why Zechariah thinks that way is because he’s not looking at God right now, he’s looking at himself and Elizabeth – how old they are, and how long they’ve been praying without God answering – and because of that, it doesn’t matter that he sees an angel, and it doesn’t matter what the angel says. Zechariah still thinks this is all impossible.

That’s why in verse 18, he actually asks the angel for proof. Can you believe that? Zechariah won’t take an angel by his word. He wants a sign. But we can’t be too hard on him, can we? When we keep praying for one thing that God in His wisdom won’t provide, when God finally says He will, it’s hard for us to believe Him because we’ve been disappointed for so long.

But Zechariah should still know better, because of one simple thing – because he’s a priest. Zechariah might be just an ordinary human being with ordinary human faults, but he knows the scriptures. Which means he knows the story of Sarah, and Rebekah, and Rachel, and Hannah.

All of those Old Testament wives were barren. All of them cried out to God for children. And God gave them all sons.

So on one hand it’s excusable that Zechariah would doubt. But on the other hand, it most definitely is not. That’s why the angel says in verses 19 and 20, “You dare ask me for a sign? I’m Gabriel. I’m an archangel. I stand in the presence of God. He sent me to give you this good news. But since you still want a sign, I’ll give you one. I’m putting a seal on your lips until the day your son is born, because you didn’t believe my words. It’ll be a punishment for you, but a sign to the world.”

Imagine that crowd of worshippers waiting outside for Zechariah, wondering what’s taking so long. Imagine him finally coming out, stunned and wobbly on his feet. The priests and Levites wait for his benediction, but Zechariah can’t give one. All he can do is put a finger to his lips, point to heaven, and wonder why in the world he questioned God’s holy messenger.

But now let’s look at the second half of our scripture, starting in verse 26. Six months later Gabriel arrives again, this time to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a young woman named Mary. It’s a strange place for an angel to be. The people of Judah hated the Jews in Galilee. Galileans weren’t considered holy enough to be proper Jews because they had so much contact with Gentiles.

We don’t really know much about this young woman, either. Mary is of the tribe of Judah. She’s a descendant of David. She’s engaged to a carpenter named Joseph, who was a descendant of David as well. Both of them are poor. There’s no mention of Mary’s parents anywhere in the gospels, though Papias, who was an disciple of the Apostle John, writes that Mary had two sisters who appear in the gospels – Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Salome, the wife of Zebedee.

But it’s to this unknown woman that Gabriel appears in verse 28, and it’s to Mary that he says three incredible things.

First, there’s no “Fear not” to Mary like with Zechariah. Gabriel just says the equivalent of “Hello.” Then he calls Mary “O favored one,” and then says, “the Lord is with you!”

Now here’s where it gets interesting, because Mary has the same reaction in verse 29 that Zechariah had back in verse 12. She’s “troubled”. She never expected to see an angel. She certainly never expected to receive any special favors from heaven. She doesn’t think there’s anything special about her.

But we get a clue at the end of verse 29 about one of the things that make Mary so unique – she “tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.”

That word discern — or your translation might have wondered — is tough to translate from the Greek. The Greek word actually means “to make an audit.” It’s an accounting word. It means to add things up, to weigh and ponder. Mary’s a deep thinker. She has a reflective mind. She’s trying to figure out what this all means.

Gabriel tells her the good news from God Himself. Mary is going to have a son named Jesus – again, God is naming this child, just as God named Zechariah’s child. And in verses 30-33, Gabriel predicts five things about this child:

1. He will be great.

2. He will be called “the Son of the Most High” – meaning he will be equal to God Himself.

3. He will be given David’s throne.

4. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

5. And his kingdom will live forever.

With all of those things, there can be no doubt in Mary’s mind who this child of hers will be. This angel is telling her that she’s going to give birth to the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

So how does Mary answer? She asks in verse 34, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

On the face of it, that sounds a whole lot like what Zechariah said, doesn’t it? But there’s an important difference. Mary believed what Gabriel said. She knows it’s going to happen because God says so. Mary just doesn’t know how it’s going to happen. Her question in verse 34 isn’t an expression of unbelief, it’s an expression of faith. Mary believes the promise, she just doesn’t understand the performance.

Because she’s not married. Mary knows how babies are made, but she hasn’t been with a man yet. And she knows that God would never tell her to be with Joseph physically if she’s not married.

But Gabriel says never mind that. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God.”

As Mary’s son, Jesus would be human. But as the Son of God, he would also be divine. The child he would be and the man he would grow into would be as fully human as any of us, but also as fully God as God Himself, because that’s exactly who Jesus was. We struggle with wrapping our minds around that that (just as I’m sure Mary did), but Gabriel says not to worry about that either. Because, in verse 37, “… nothing will be impossible with God.”

The difference between the way Zechariah reacts to the news about his son named John and the way Mary reacts to the news about her son named Jesus was their peace with God, and your peace with God depends on one thing: how much you trust Him. That’s what faith really is.

Faith is trust, and trust is shaped like a circle. The more you trust God, the more you’ll know God. The more you know God, the more real He becomes. The more real He is, the more trustworthy He is. The more trustworthy He is, the more you’ll trust Him. And then the circle goes around again.

You would think Zechariah had a lot of peace with God. He was an important priest, after all. He was educated in the scriptures. He spoke for God. But would he have agreed with what Gabriel tells Mary in verse 37? Did Zechariah really think that everything was possible with God?

No. Not right here anyway. Zechariah was overwhelmed with doubt. We talked about hope last week and how everything depends on that hope. Zechariah had abandoned his. He’d been praying so long for a son that he started believing a son was impossible, even for God. That’s why he asked for a sign while an angel was standing in front of him in the temple.

But that’s human nature, isn’t it? Doubt just comes so easily for us. The Bible is filled with people who struggled with doubt like Zechariah. Moses struggled with doubt, Gideon struggled, Abraham struggled, David struggled.

But here’s what you always have to keep in mind, whether you’re reading about the doubts of someone in the Bible or you’re thinking about your own doubts or the doubts of someone you love: the Bible is clear that doubt is sin. Right? Lack of faith is a sin. But the Bible also says that sometimes doubt is okay. Sometimes, doubt is even good, because that’s how we grow.

There are some people who say we should doubt everything. That’s especially true in our modern culture. Trust nothing, doubt everything.

But there are also a lot of people, especially religious people, who say that any doubt, any questioning, is bad. If you have questions about the church, if you have questions about God, if you have questions about the Bible, then you’re sinning. You shouldn’t have questions, you should have faith.

What people on both sides of the issue of doubt and faith need to understand is that there’s a kind of doubt that’s the sign of a closed mind like Zechariah had, and there’s the kind of doubt that’s the sign of an open mind, like Mary’s. There are people like Zechariah who ask questions just to make their doubt stronger, and there are people like Mary who ask questions to know God more and better.

That is exactly the difference between the end of these two encounters with the angel Gabriel. One person is struck mute for the next nine months, while the other is the perfect picture of peaceful surrender to a loving God.

Look at what Mary says in verse 38. Underline that or highlight it in your Bible: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Mary is not saying that she completely understands what’s going to happen. Mary is not saying that she’s excited to be part of God’s plan. What Mary says is this: “I don’t understand any of this. None of it makes sense to me. But I love you, God, and I trust you, God, and so I’m going to follow You, God.”

That’s the secret to peace, right there. And the way to get that peace is to accept the fact that you don’t have the wisdom or the power to see everything that God sees, and so you don’t have the right to tell God what to do.

When Mary says that she’s the servant of the Lord, the Greek word there means handmaid. It’s the lowest kind of female servant. She says she completely belongs to God. Her life is His, and so He can do with her life whatever He wills.

What do you think of that? Do you want true hope like we talked about last week? Do you want true peace? Do you want true joy like we’ll talk about next week, or true love like we’ll talk about on Christmas Eve? Then you have to answer the two questions that Gabriel put to Zechariah and Mary in this scripture.

The first one is, Are you willing to obey what the Bible says you have to do, whether you like it or not?

The second one is, Are you willing to trust God in anything that comes into your life, whether you understand it or not?

Zechariah, as devoted and godly as he was, struggled with those two questions. Mary didn’t. That’s the difference between them. And let me tell you this: if you can’t answer yes to both of those questions – if you can’t say “Yes, I will obey what the Bible says whether I believe it or not,” and if you can’t say, “Yes, no matter what happens in my life, I will choose to trust Christ,” then you might believe in Jesus in some mushy general way, but you’ve never said to him, “I am your servant.”

If you’re wondering why you don’t feel true peace in your life, that’s why. Because you’re still trying to control everything, and you can’t. But Christ is saying, “Let me take that burden from you. Let me give you my peace. Obey me. Trust me. And then watch in wonder at what I will do in your life.”

And if you’re missing that peace but want to find it, I invite you to the front as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father in a world of pain and struggle, in a world filled with unknowns, how precious it is to know the unbreakable peace that only You can offer. A peace that comforts us in our hard times. A peace that inspires us in our joys. A peace that is certain and without question. A peace that defines not only this short life, but the eternal life to come. Let that peace grow in us. Let it become the truest part of us. And let that peace, Father, be guide our every day so that each of us can say, “Let it be to me according to your word.” For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.