Remember, There is Hope
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Christmas is a time of memories.
There are important things to remember in life. Christmas is a season to remember some of those key things. We will be looking at a different Thing to Remember throughout the Advent season.
Today we will be remembering Hope.
Is there any hope today?
1000 Fresh Illustrations (Illustration 18 > Prayer)
Robert Preston Taylor had reason to pray. During World War II, he served as a chaplain in battle, participated in the Bataan Death March and spent more than three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, they also dropped bombs on Manila, where Taylor was stationed.
He was part of the Bataan Death March, in which only 4000 of the 80,000 that began it, survived. During the march, the prisoners were forced to walk 55 miles without food or water.In the POW camp, worship, including burial rites were outlawed, but Taylor continued to minister. When the guards discovered that Taylor was smuggling supplies in to the soldiers they put him in a 4-by-5-foot bamboo cell to live, where he had to compete with the mosquitoes and maggots for space. They left him there for two months.
Taylor prayed, “Lord, if you still have a purpose for me, let me live.” On one of the few occasions his captors let him out of the box, he leaned on a bamboo stick to support himself and quoted scripture to the troops. When he asked the POWs to bow for prayer, the guards threw him back into the box. Taylor was near death.
For those soldiers, for Taylor, there was no hope. The Japanese were brutal.
People today may think there is no hope.
The passages for today are from the gospel of Luke.
Open to Luke chapter 1 with me. We will begin reading in verse 5.
In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.
Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.
But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God,
he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.
And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
The Setting
The Setting
Zechariah and Elizabeth
Zechariah - The Lord has remembered
Elizabeth - promise-keeping of God, but barren
Temple as described by Josephus - … wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye. For, being covered on all sides with massive plates of gold, the sun was no sooner up than it radiated so fiery a flash that persons straining to look at it were compelled to avert their eyes, as from the solar rays. To approaching strangers it appeared from a distance like a snow-clad mountain; for all that was not overlaid with gold was of purest white - R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 19–20.
Zechariah as Priest - 1 of about 8,000, served 2-one-week periods. 56 priests chosen by lot each day.
As he offered the incense, Zechariah was praying
“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
A prophecy: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord. “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’ “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob,
but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.” But this is what the Lord Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord.
You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’
“A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you priests who show contempt for my name. “But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’
“By offering defiled food on my altar. “But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’ “By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible.
When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty.
“Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?”—says the Lord Almighty.
“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.
My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord Almighty.
“But you profane it by saying, ‘The Lord’s table is defiled,’ and, ‘Its food is contemptible.’
And you say, ‘What a burden!’ and you sniff at it contemptuously,” says the Lord Almighty. “When you bring injured, lame or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?” says the Lord.
“Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,” says the Lord Almighty, “and my name is to be feared among the nations.
“And now, you priests, this warning is for you.
If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the Lord Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.
“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.
And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty.
“My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name.
True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.
“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth.
But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty.
“So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
Is there any hope?
Is there any hope?
Altar of incense and Holy of Holies before Him - God’s presence…?
Left- table of shewbread - God the provider and sustainer of His people
Right - golden candlestick - God the Light and guide of his people
White-washed tombs
Barrenness of his wife’s womb and unanswered prayers… Was there any hope for this nation which looked so good on the outside, but inside was corrupt?
Yet, he prayed…
And then…
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.
He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth,
for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born.
He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.
And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
There is Hope!
There is Hope!
God hears!
Zechariah’s name should have been reminiscent, along with the items before him in the temple.
God hears! It had been 400 years, but God is at work!
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
The Hope of a Son
The Hope of a Son
A joy
A Nazirite
Full of the Spirit
Restoring People
Preparing the Way for the Lord!
The Hope of the Lord, the Savior!
The Hope of the Lord, the Savior!
Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.
And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
Hope Requires Faith
Hope Requires Faith
When his time of service was completed, he returned home.
After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.
“The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”
Lack of Faith and Hope Does not Stop God!
Lack of Faith and Hope Does not Stop God!
When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son.
Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah,
but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”
They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”
Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child.
He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.”
Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God.
All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things.
Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.
His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us—
to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.
The POW’s began a prayer vigil, praying for their Chaplain around the clock for two weeks. God answered their prayers and Taylor recovered.In a chapel service at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on November 9, 2000 Brigadier Gen. Jim Spivey, a church history professor, told Taylor’s story to challenge the student body. He said, “Taylor’s recovery became a symbol of hope throughout the camp. They saw God answered prayer in the miracle of his recovery, and a revival broke out in that POW camp.”Sometimes God is honored by keeping His people from suffering. Other times His is honored by sustaining them in their suffering and inspiring others to greatness because of it.
Remember: There is Hope!
Remember: There is Hope!
“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”