12-25-23-ENG.

"It is he who will go as a forerunner before Him ... to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. "

Luke 1:17
ANOTHER MIRACLE

Read It: Luke 1:5-25
Today we meet the supporting cast of the Christmas drama. Mary and Joseph weren't the only righteous couple in the story. Their relatives Zacharias and Elizabeth were also righteous (v. 6). But they had a problem. lem. They were old and cold (v. 7). Zacharias was one of twenty thousand priests who served at the temple ple in those days, divided into twenty-four orders or "divisions" that rotated (v. 5). Therefore, the odds were against a priest like Zacharias being chosen for the honor of burning incense in the temple. If a priest got to do this once in a lifetime, he was fortunate. But Zacharias's number was called, because God doesn't pay any attention tion to odds. So Zacharias was performing his priestly duty in the temple when an angel suddenly appeared to him. That would be enough to scare most of us. But that wasn't the only reason Zack was scared. When a priest was offering sacrifice in the Holy of Holies in the temple, there would be only one reason for an angel to appear. Zacharias had done something wrong-and when you do something wrong in the temple, you die. So Zacharias was getting ready to meet God. He was scared to death.

But instead he got his own miraculous birth announcement, like the one God gave to Abraham and Sarah, another "old and cold" couple. Now Zacharias and Elizabeth must have been married for a long time. They had probably been praying for a child for many years, since barrenness renness in Israel was still a disgrace (v. 25). They may have even given up. But the angel said, "It's-prayer-answering time." See, they wanted a child, but it was not yet God's time. He didn't just want Zacharias and Elizabeth to have a child. He wanted them to be the parents of Jesus' forerunner, John the Baptist. In order to give them this special child at the right time, God didn't answer their prayer earlier. Zacharias questioned Gabriel, so Gabriel said, "Excuse me? I've just come from God's presence to speak to you. Since you don't believe God's word, you don't speak for nine months." It doesn't pay to doubt God! Think About It God wants you to believe Him just because He said it. In His case, saying it makes it so.