Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What to Do When Religion Fails You | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 1:5-25

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Christmas brings back a lot of memories. For most of us, they are fond memories, of being with family or being at home, being a kid in receiving Christmas gifts. My parents were the kind of people who saved up through the years. year so they could buy us some sort of special gift every Christmas. Some years we got more and some

Starting point is 00:00:41 years we got less. But now as a parent, I realize that the reason that they sacrificed is because they got so much joy from our response to what they had gotten us. I remember being a kid. I don't know. I was somewhere around 10, 11, 12 years old. And I remember going shopping with my dad when he was looking for her Christmas gift for my mom. It was pretty stressful because even at that age, I had a better sense of what my mom would like

Starting point is 00:01:12 than my dad did. He may have very well had the right heart. He may very well wanted to do the right thing, but in a lot of ways, he was pretty clueless about what she wanted. When he would give her a gift, it didn't always lead to the response that he had hoped for.

Starting point is 00:01:30 I remember shopping for one particular, Christmas. I was at with my dad in a mall and for some reason he decided to get my mom a pasta maker. Now, my mom was not into cooking and she had never expressed any desire to learn how to make homemade pasta. So while that may have been a perfect gift for some people, it was not a good gift for her. When she opened that gift on Christmas morning, I remember looking at her face and my dad's and the pasta maker. and thinking that her response was exactly what I expected. It's exactly what I told him it would be before he bought it when we were still standing in the store. There's all kinds of jokes made about clueless husbands who don't know their wives and who buy dumb gifts.

Starting point is 00:02:20 Maybe it's a pasta maker or a gym membership or a vacuum or Long Johns. Just because someone needs something doesn't mean that's what they want as a gift, from their spouse. You can get those things as a gift, but just like my dad discovered, you won't always get the response you're hoping for. Every Christmas, we give gifts to each other as a way to celebrate the greatest gift that has ever been given, the gift that God gave us in his son, Jesus. The Apostle Paul calls Jesus the indescribable gift. In the next couple episodes, we will look at two different people and how they responded to the gift that God gave them. Today we'll look at Zechariah. He was a priest. And the next episode, we'll look at Mary. Both of them responded to the gift that

Starting point is 00:03:15 God gave them, but in completely different ways. I think we can learn something from both of them. Now, last episode, we talked about how the Gospel of Luke is written to a man named Theophilus. And what Luke is doing in the first chapter is he's kind of laying out the events that led up to the birth of Jesus, but before Jesus, even the birth of John the Baptist. We pick up the story 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 upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly. But they had no children because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well along in years.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Zechariah was an ordinary country priest. There were about 8,000 of them living in Palestine at that time. And the priests were divided up into divisions, and we are told that Zechariah's division was kind of on duty. The priests were divided up into divisions that would do the war, work in the temple. Zechariah and Elizabeth had a strong faith in God. They were called blameless.

Starting point is 00:04:38 Now, that doesn't mean they were perfect. It just means that they wanted to follow God and were trying to obey his commandments. But we're also told that they didn't have children. Infertility is always an aching disappointment in any time and in any culture. but it was especially disappointing in this Hebrew culture, because infertility, the inability to have children was interpreted as a sign of God's punishment. And so they lived, Zechari and Elizabeth,

Starting point is 00:05:12 trying to follow God, knowing that God had not given them the thing they most wanted. It's a good reminder for all of us that being a Christian isn't protection against enduring hardship in this world. Well, as the story goes on in Luke chapter 1, we learned that Zechariah was called on to be the priest of the day, to go into the temple and to offer incense in the Holy of Holies. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you can be sure that he was incredibly excited for it. You can also be sure he was shocked when he was inside the temple and an angel appeared to him. We find out later that that angel is named Gabriel.

Starting point is 00:05:57 And what Gabriel tells him is that his prayer has been answered, that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son, and that they should name their son John. After Gabriel gives him some more details, I want to draw attention to Zechariah's response. Remember, he's in the temple, he's in the Holy of Holies. Gabriel has just appeared to him to tell him that all his prayers have been answered. How will this priest who followed God and longed for a child, how will he respond?

Starting point is 00:06:33 Verse 18. Zechariah asked the angel, how can I be sure of this? I'm an old man and my wife is well along in years. The angel answered, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. And I have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. 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 proper time. Zechariah did not believe the words

Starting point is 00:07:07 that Gabriel had told him. Now, there were only two angels in the Bible that get named, and they are Gabriel and Michael. So we can be sure that this is not a junior varsity angel. Gabriel is a first team angel. And you've heard people say, maybe you've even said yourself, if an angel appeared to me. You know, like if God appeared to me, if an angel appeared to me, then I would for sure believe in God. I would for sure do whatever the angel told me to do. But whenever I hear people say things like that, I think of Zechariah. God sent the angel Gabriel to give him a message, but Zechariah the priest did not believe.

Starting point is 00:07:47 So Zechariah comes out of the temple. and just like Gabriel said, he was not able to speak. But the promise of the angel was fulfilled. And Elizabeth, even in her old age, conceived a child. She was finally pregnant. We'll talk more about the story and how it plays out in Luke chapter 1 in our next episode. But for now I just want to pause and ask, what can we learn from Zechariah's lack of faith?

Starting point is 00:08:18 What can we learn from his unbelief? The first thing we can learn is that religiosity doesn't guarantee faith. Zechariah is a priest. He's standing in the Holy of Holies in the temple of God. And yet, he doesn't believe God's promise. Maybe you go to church. Maybe you grew up in a religious family. I mean, those can be real helpful in our spiritual life.

Starting point is 00:08:47 but they don't guarantee that we'll believe. There's a lot of people who are around religion, who don't respond to God in faith. So don't put your confidence in religion. Second, Zechariah's past obedience didn't guarantee his future faith. Remember, he and Elizabeth were faithful to God. They were blameless. They really sought to follow God with their whole heart.

Starting point is 00:09:17 But in this moment, when he's promised something by God that seems too big, too special, too spectacular, he doesn't believe God's promise. Just because you and I obeyed God in the past doesn't mean that we will in the future. Just because we trusted him in the past doesn't mean we'll do that in the future. Every day has its own set of challenges. Third, knowledge doesn't guarantee. faith. I promise you that Zechariah knew his Bible better than you or me. If we would have taken a test over the Hebrew Bible, Zechariah would have crushed us. He wouldn't have just set the curve.

Starting point is 00:10:00 There wouldn't have been a curve because Zechariah would have gotten 100%. He knew the stories inside and out. That was part of the requirements of being a priest. It was the result of growing up in the faith. And our hope is that those stories of the faith, that knowing our Bible, that soaking our mind and heart in these truths, will produce in us a faith that trusts God in daily life. But there's no guarantee of that. We can't put our trust in our knowledge. We can't put our trust in how we were raised.

Starting point is 00:10:38 We can't put our trust that, you know, we know all the Bible books in order. we've got to put our trust today in the living God to be good to provide, to do what's best. Fourth, even prayer doesn't guarantee faith. Do you remember this story said that Zechariah and Elizabeth had been praying for a child? Imagine, God, we pray that you'd give us a child. God, we pray that you'd give us a child. God, we pray that you'd give us a child. God, we trust that just like Abraham and Sarah had a child in their old age, that you would provide for us a child in our old age.

Starting point is 00:11:18 And then God shows up in Gabriel and says, yep, I'll answer that prayer. And they go, no way, I don't believe it. You ever feel like sometimes you pray for things, but you don't really expect God to come through? You pray, but maybe to go through the motions or to comfort yourself, but not really with some sort of expected. faith that God, the God who raises the dead, the God who gives children to people even in their old age, that that God might just answer your prayer. The story of Zechariah is a warning to religious people. It's a warning to not trust in ourselves, not trust in religion, not trust in our knowledge, but put our trust in God, a God who answers prayer, a God who does the miraculous.

Starting point is 00:12:08 in the next episode, we'll look at Mary and how she responded. And I'm sure you already know the story well enough to know that her response was the opposite of Zecharias. But before we move too quickly to the right response, let's examine our heart to see where our trust is. Let's examine our heart to see if our trust is in God or in our religion, our knowledge, our power. faith. God, our prayer today is that you would give us faith to believe your word, your promises. Amen. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this

Starting point is 00:12:57 podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What to Do When Religion Fails You | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 1:5-25

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