Study Through The Gospel Of Luke; Part 1; Chapter 1

okay let's let's get into the Book of Luke let's let's pray before we start I thought we just want to come before you lord and thank you again so much for the blessing it is to come together and to fellowship in you and just to spend time in your work and the Lord as we restart Sunday nights god we just we just want to dedicate the time into your hand Lord we know that there's a special thing going on whenever the church gets together and you make a promise that Lord Jesus that you're gonna walk up and down in the midst of the church so expect you to be here and we expect you to do cool things and so Lord we want to honor you as we're going through your word and like we were just talking about it's very cool Lord to be able to go through and see the things specifically that you said the things that that you taught yeah just all the red letters stuff is just awesome Lord pretty much the rest of the New Testament is nothing but and I don't know commentary on the things that you taught to the Apostles and so as we go through that we're we just pray that your word would just burn in our hearts and that you would bless the time that we have in it and we ask that you do this in Jesus name Amen okay look a Luke chapter one so as in as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the work delivered and ministers of the word delivered them to us it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write to you an orderly account most excellent Theophilus that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed okay I need to go through and do some introduction here first off the book of Luke is written to a guy or address to a guy named Theophilus the word Theophilus itself means lover of God and so this is a guy who is most likely almost certainly a believer there and I'll get into it and in a minute as to who this guy probably was one of the things that happens when you're looking at the beginning of the New Testament you know that it's divided the beginning in the New Testament is divided up into the it's the Gospels and then it's the book of Acts and then it's what's called the epistles and you have the the epistles of Paul it starts with Romans and some people say it ends with Philemon others say it ends with Hebrews and then you have the general epistles and that's that's James and 1st and 2nd Peter and for 2nd 3rd John and Jude and then you have the book of Revelation that's how that and that's that's the prophetic book in the New Testament that's how it's divided up and one of the things I ran into when I was first a Christian was why in the world do we do we tell the story of Jesus four different times what is that all about you know what do we need for different times could we all want to get together and get the story straight and just do it once you know what what is the deal with that and there are some reasons for that and some of the reasons for that are things that are actually attacked when you look at Scripture okay first off in the Old Testament the Bible teaches that you are that if if you're in a court of law you are only to receive an accusation or you only had good testimony I should put it you only had good testimony if you had two or three witnesses the more witnesses the better so you had to have at least two or three witnesses according the Old Testament law do you remember what Jesus said to the Apostles right before he left he said you are going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem Judea Samaria and to the outermost ends of the earth after the Holy Spirit is come upon you and so when one of the things that you kind of gotta get a grasp of when you're when you're talking about the New Testament night and then I address a little bit when when I was answering questions earlier is that what you have is eyewitness testimony in the New Testament every everything that you read in the New Testament is written by somebody who was either an Iowa of the Ministry of Christ or a very close associate to an eyewitness of the Ministry of Christ and Luke is one of those guys Luke is a guy who hung out with Paul the Apostle he was called the who he was in a physician he was there to help out Paul because Paul was pretty up he was a pretty beat up guy here's another thing each one of the books of the the Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John each one of them corresponds to a living Levitical sacrifice did you know that there are four Levitical sacrifices okay and so one is the whole burnt offering that was the idea of offering up everything that you add to God and that corresponds to the book of John and in the book of John you what you have is Christ dying to glorify the Lord and it's it's kind of one of those things where you see John reflects Jesus is giving everything Luke is a picture of the peace offering and the peace offering was bringing fellowship between God and man and so you a lot of it you have a lot of the humanity of Christ in the Book of Luke mark is a picture of the sin offering and in that in that book you have Jesus dying for what was not done a sin offering was given when I fell short of the commands of God now when i disobeyed them when I fell short of the commands of God and then finally Matthew is a picture of the trespass offering and what you have there is Jesus dying for sins that have been committed in for example the first miracle in the book of Matthew is the healing of a leper and leprosy that that whole picture of leprosy is a type of sin it's a picture of sin to the Jews and so Matthew is a real Jewish book here's another thing there are four different aspects of Jesus's ministry in the four different Gospels and we've talked about this before there are these angels that around the throne of God there they're called cherubim and they have four faces you guys remember what the faces are ones the face of the lion and when the face that ones the face of an ox ones the face of a man what's the last one and an eagle so there's four different faces on these guys and each one of those faces represents something the face of the lion the tribal symbol of Judah was the lion and Jesus has called the Lion of the tribe of Judah and so in the Gospel of Matthew you have Jesus pictured the most clearly as the Messiah the king of Israel who's come to save their people his people from their sins it's all about Jesus being the king and so Jesus is the line of the tribe of Judah in there in Mark's Gospel and by the way the genealogy in Matthew's Gospel is the genealogy from the line of the Kings I mentioned that this morning okay in Mark's Gospel Mark's Gospel shows Jesus as being a servant and you see most of the passages that deals deals with Jesus service and as a matter of fact even the Greek in Mark's Gospel is like serving flavored you'll you'll see the term immediately a lot in Mark's Gospel and it's it's the idea of something happens Jesus gets on it and gets it done basically and an ox is a symbol of service an ox is some some is an animal that is used to serve mankind and as far as the genealogy of a servant who cares we're serving came from and so there is no genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and then you have Luke and luke's gospel is the gospel where Jesus's humanity is pictured the most clearly you'll see Jesus being tired you'll see Jesus being angry you'll do you'll there there's Jesus weeping you you you see a lot of the humanity of Christ there's a lot of emotional content for example in in the book of Mark and the phrase that's used over and over in the book of Mark is Son of Man Jesus uses that of himself all the time son of man in excuse me and I said mark I mean Luke in the Book of Luke and so in that one that pictures the man the the humanity of Christ and because of that you have a genealogy there and that genealogy goes from David to Nathan then on down to Mary and so when we get there you know you'll have the genealogy of Mary in the Gospel of Luke and that's important because according to Jewish tradition a child gets his humanity from his mother a child gets his spirit from his father and so if you are for example if you are born to a Jewish mother and you have a Gentile father you are considered Jewish but if you're born to a a Jewish father and a Gentile mother you're considered to be a Gentile and you need to be converted because your nature comes through your mother in that sense and so you have that in that gospel and finally had the eagle and the eagle is has always been a symbol of deity he's the one who comes from heaven and that's what you have in the Gospel of John Jesus is the one who comes from heaven and so you have a genealogy there - only it's the real genealogy in the beginning was the word the Word was with God and the Word was God he was in the beginning with God nothing was made that was made without him and so you see the one who's come down from heaven who is the creator of all things and that's the real genealogy of Christ Luke is called the beloved physician in Colossians chapter 4 like I was saying before he was a travelling companion of Paul about the last half of the book of Acts goes from they and them to we and you see that happening when Luke and Paul are involved in the stories and them in the book of Acts and so Luke was with Paul all the time one of the reasons that he was with Paul is like a reference before Paul was a pretty beat up guy and he was pretty messed up and there's a good there's a real good possibility that he was with him because he needed a doctor all the time there's there's traditions from ancient times about Paul that he was a small man and like like most godly men almost almost exclusively he was bald and he had weeping eyes and you're weeping eyes and so you know I'm joking right about the whole thing so know what you do if you don't you're gonna have a hard time around here and so he constantly according to church tradition had an eye issue he's probably a Gentile too Luke is probably a Gentile in Colossians 4 10 through 14 I'm gonna read this to you it says Paul speaking he says Aristarchus my fellow prisoner greets you with Mark the cousin of Barnabas about whom you received instructions if he comes to you welcome him and Jesus who is called justice these are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God who are of the circumcision so he lets you know that all those guys are Jewish that's what that means they're of the circumcision they're Jewish Jews were circumcised they're proved to be a comfort to me a Patras who is one of you a bondservant of Christ greets you always laboring fervently for you in prayers that you may stand perfect and complete and all the will of God for I bearing witness that he has a great zeal for you and those who are in Laodicea and those in who are those in hierapolis Luke the beloved physician and demas greet you and so what you have in that passage is Luke is separated out from the circumcision and he's put right smack in the middle of two guys that we know are Gentiles and Luke is a is a Greek name and so he was probably Gentile of Greek heritage which is interesting because this this would make one of two passages two books in the Bible actually one's a chapter and this one's this one's a book that were written by Gentiles one of them is in the Book of Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar makes a pronouncement and writes things down and this one the Book of Luke would be written by Gentile also time of the writing Paul died about six between 64 and 68 AD during Nero's persecution you remember Nero was you know he was the crazy Emperor and basically what had happened was Roman burnt down there was an accusation that Nero did it so that he could build a bunch of buildings with his name tag on them basically and when that accusation went around he had to find somebody to be a scapegoat and so he used the Christians and he launched off from there and started a persecution of the Christians in which both Peter and Paul were killed and so Nero killed those guys and again Paul died between 64 and 68 AD his trial his first trial before Nero there's probably two was in 62 AD and Acts the book of Acts is finished before 62 ad you can't date Acts any later than 62 okay the reason that's important is because Luke broke both Luke Bo Luke wrote acts and he wrote the Book of Luke itself and so this book was probably written while Luke was in Israel during Paul's second year of imprisonment that puts at about 58 60 ad that's important dates and the reason it's important is because it's before the fall of Jerusalem and if it's before the fall of Jerusalem Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem in the Book of Luke in chapter 21 and it's because of that prediction that many of the Christians were spared from that whole thing and you have Luke so again you have Luke being a prophetic book or the other thing one of the things the reasons that we believe it was written while he was in Israel is because he interviews people you have stuff in the Book of Luke that you don't have in any other gospel for example this the first story that we're gonna read about here is about a guy named Zacharias who's the father of John the Baptist and see so he goes to first-hand sources to find out what happened in the birth of John the Baptist he also goes to first-hand sources to find out what happened in the of Jesus and so you have the whole story of Mary receiving a visit from the angel and what probably happened there was Luke went and interviewed her and got it firsthand from her and so you have a first-hand account in that it's written to Theophilus again the word the name itself means lover of God and he's given a title in verse three most excellent Theophilus if you look at the at the end of verse three there and that title most excellent was used for a title of rank for Roman rulers and so there's a good chance that Theophilus was in the Roman government in the either case in any case he was a bully he was either a believer who was sponsoring the publishing of the Book of Luke and that sounds kind of weird but here was a deal at the time writing materials were hugely expensive and to get something out you know in a way where people could copy it and it could be spread around was a highly expensive endeavor and so many times guys who were writing books back in in ancient times would have a sponsor who would be willing to pay for the price of the writing materials and and getting those things out kind of like a publishing house now so he's either a believer who's sponsoring the writing of the Book of Luke or another option is that he's a sponsor of Paul while Paul was in prison and that these are literally trial documents what's going to happen to Paul when when he goes before Nero at the end of the book of Acts is he has to stand before Nero and give an account of what's happened to him and why he's there and this you know some historians think that Luke made literally be the trial documents that were put together showing where Jesus came from and why Paul was following him and what the what the whole ruckus was about and obviously if that's the case than the Christians at the we're taking the opportunity of Paul's imprisonment to try to get the gospel to people who are in government office that's one of the things that you see Paul doing a lot of when he gets to Rome you remember that he was when he was in Rome he was under house arrest but he was chained to a Roman soldier and a lot of times you know when you when you go through and you look at that that situation many times Christians might look at that go man it's a it's such a bummer I can't even be alone in my own house I got to be chained to this Roman soldier and Paul just took it as an opportunity for ministry and he didn't think of it as being chained to a Roman soldier he thought of the Roman soldiers being chained to him and he had a captive audience the guy can't get away if he tries to get away the Romans will kill him and so he's got to hear the gospel no matter what you know and so he led many of the Roman soldiers to Christ the Bible the the Bible says that he read led many in the Praetorian Guard to Jesus those were the those were the soldiers who guarded the Emperor and specifically according to church history Nero's wife became a Christian and it may be one of the reasons that Nero went nuts besides the fact that Paul stood before him at one point and sure the shared the gospel with him Nero was an excellent ruler up till 62 ad he did a pretty good job and then somewhere between 62 and 64 AD the guy went crazy and started doing crazy things and some people think that it may have literally been the testimony of Paul and possibly even the the conviction that was coming from his wife being a Christian that caused him to pick one side or the other and he picked against Christ he says in this in in the very beginning here verse one in as much as many have taken in hand to set and order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us just as those from the beginning were were eyewitnesses and ministers the word delivered them to us it seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write to you and orderly account most excellent Theophilus and look it for first for that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed know the certainty you know the stuff really happened and one of the things that people have been doing for ages is attacking the Gospels for a long time people were trying to come up with proof that Jesus never even existed you may run into people who think that Jesus never existed these people are ill informed and they are not scholarly there are I don't know of any historical scholars that think that Jesus never existed and the reason that that's just nonsense is because the the Bible is not the only evidence for the existence of Christ the Romans spoke about Christ the Jews spoke about Christ the there's a Jewish historian Josephus who spoke about Christ and he was kind of a traitor to the Jews and a turncoat to the Romans and he mentions Christ there's a guy named Tacitus who wrote what were called his annals and he he wrote this I'll just read it to you it says consequently to get rid of the report Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace he's talking about the Nero Neronian persecutions Christus from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurator's Pontius Pilate Pontius Pilatus and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment again broke out not only in Judea the first source of the evil but even in Rome where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their Center and become popular accordingly an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty then upon their information an immense multitude was convicted not so much of the crime of firing the city means burning the city down as of hatred against mankind mockery of every sort was added to their deaths covered with the skins of beasts they were torn by dogs and perished or were nailed to crosses where were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired and what he's talking about is that killing off of the Christians and so he gives a reference to Jesus as being a historical figure and he gives a reference to Pontius Pilate back in the day people question whether Pontius Pilate even existed it's another one of those things where you see these guys arguing from Silence is what it's called we've never seen any evidence of Pontius Pilate in the archaeological record therefore Pontius Pilate didn't exist until they turned up a stone in Caesarea with Pontius Pilate snai maan it then all of a sudden they go oops well maybe not and so you know again it's it's one of those things Josephus said this Festus was now dead Albinus was but upon the road so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ whose name was James that's the James in the Bible and some others or some of his companions and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law he delivered them to be stoned and that's in Josephus as antiquities and so I you know I could go on with with quote after quote from the enemies of Christians giving testimony to the fact that there is a Jesus and it was who he said he was they you know the Jews for example will talk about jesus and say that yeah he did miracles but they were of the devil and so what you get from that is that Jesus did Jesus was real he was there and that he did miracles they say it was of the devil but he was there and he did miracles you have youin references to the fact that he rose from the dead and and and that kind of thing Jesus in the Talmud is called Jesus the Nazarene over and over and over again and so anybody who tells you that Jesus didn't exist he's not a historical figure does not know what they're talking about they are not scholarly they don't know what's happening okay so Jesus actually existed and one of the things that that Luke says is that you can know for sure the certainty of those things in which you were instructed and what he's doing is going to I witness --is so that he could pass this knowledge on to specifically without Theophilus and everybody who reads the book that's part of the point of the book he went and got I witness testimony was in second hand was in third hand eyewitnesses is what he did now I can know for sure again that the things that you have in the in the in the Bible are things that come from God and there are issues that come up anytime that you talk with people about the Bible how do you know that the Bible is the Word of God how do you know that these are actually the events that took place 2,000 years ago how do you know that a drunk monk didn't add in a virgin birth somewhere how do you know that that didn't happen that's called the Xerox problem and the idea there is that you know maybe you have some eyewitnesses back in the day but the Bible's been around a long time and people have been copying it over and over how do you know that the copies weren't bad how do you know that people didn't add things in take things out and that kind of stuff and is that a bad question no it's a good question and so how do we know that and the way that we know that is by going back to the documents you know we don't have originals of the New Testament what we have is copies of the originals of the New Testament but we have copies of the original that are so close to the source writings that it's just ridiculous so for example all Paul's writings these these are I don't I'm not gonna get well all the way into but they're they're given certain designations P 66 p67 and it yeah anyway they're given designations I'm not gonna get into that in any case Paul's writings are dated all the way back to 80 AD it that is within 20 to 25 years of the writings of documents themselves that's how far back that goes matthew is dated all the way back to 80 and there's a new dating of what's called the Magdalene papyri which is a part of Matthew that stated all the way back to 50 ad and what we're talking about is an original document not not an original source but it's the it's it's a copy of the New Testament from 50 ad well Matthew wasn't written not too not too long before that and all the you know we already have a copy we have a copy of the Gospel of John a section of the Gospel of John that's dated from 114 ad and you know you look at that you know one of the things got to keep in mind is if you're talking about Paul's letters or your pend talking about Matthew you know the the story of Jesus is pretty straightforward Jesus comes he lives this perfect life he dies a criminal's death and three days later he rises from the dead now in his teaching he teaches that he's God come down to earth and that he's going to prove it by rising from the dead pretty straightforward story okay pretty fantastic story but it's pretty straightforward in every gospel that's what you've got you've got that in Paul's writings too and so you know if if you're going to try to make the whole Jesus thing a myth and say that Christians came up with it you've got a hard situation if you want to do that for example John F Kennedy died in 1963 right just want to tell you that before John F Kennedy died he let me know that he was God come down to earth and that he was going to die in Dallas and when the bullet went into him that was going to take away my sin and he was going to rise again three days later do you any of you believe that story no why were you there I was there I was three years old in 1963 John F Kennedy had a talk with me and that's the kind of thing that you would have to be accusing the writers of the gospel of it would be that kind of thing you have to literally get a group of people to believe the most fantastic things about Jesus who lived with Jesus at the time of Jesus and knew who he was so somebody comes along you know let's I mean we have some real basic stuff that we do as Christians that we've been doing from the very beginning as Christians and two of them are Communion and baptism okay you know what baptism represents it represents the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus so Paul in the 50s lets us know that when you get baptized you're getting dipped in the water and you're getting buried just like Jesus was buried and you're getting pulled up out of the water and that represents you rising from a dead life just like Jesus actually rose from the dead now can you imagine me trying to pull that one off with John F Kennedy okay what we're going to do is we're going to baptize and the baptism represents that John died but then he rose from the dead and you would go what that doesn't even go because John F Kennedy did not rise from the dead doesn't go and it's not gonna it's not gonna go anywhere because you would have people who were there who saw the events who knew what what happened with that right and it's the same thing with Communion you have this whole thing with communion where every you know every single Christian Church on the planet at least once a month is getting together and they're taking from bread and saying this represents the broken body of Jesus stripes and piercing and all that stuff and this represents the blood of Christ and this is what cleanses us from our sin and if Jesus had never taught that that my body isn't going to be broken for you and you know a and he'd never taught that his blood was going to cleanse sin can you imagine trying to come up with that no we're gonna have communion now I'm gonna come up with this brand-new ceremony I should do it just do a totally different ceremony it should be Oreos and milk and the Oreos represent the good and the bad of John F Kennedy right and the milk isn't go on with this whole thing and pretend like Kennedy rose from the dead and all that stuff and it would never go over and it's you know it's some of the earliest things that you have with Christianity and the point that I'm making is that from the very source from the very beginning there were things that the believers believed and you can't get past it Jesus came he died he died for my sins he rose again from the dead and you know he he's the God who came down to earth and so again you you have all of that stuff how many you guys are in college raise your hand you are going to hear about the Q source if you how many of you have heard of the Q source okay what it's it's not very interesting it's extremely boring but I'm gonna tell it to you anyway Q comes from Kavala in German and it means source and basically what you have is a bunch of modern scholars who have decided that Mathew didn't wasn't able to come up with his own story in the book of Matthew and Mark wasn't able to come while Mark came up with his own stuff Luke wasn't able to come up with his own stuff and John's in a totally different you know situation and so Matthew Mark and Luke are supposed to be plagiarizing from each other specifically Matthew and Luke plagiarize mark and Mark didn't even get all of his own stuff there is another source document called Q and you have mark borrowing from Q and then Matthew and Luke borrowing from Mark and using it as their own and so what you got which is calling these guys Matthew and Luke are plagiarizes they're plagiarizing from these other guys saying for example Luke says this was this was source stuff and you know there's some real problems with that first off the reason that they do that is because mark is the shortest gospel and you have a number of things in mark that are in both Matthew and Luke where the stuff in Matthew and Luke aren't found in mark the early church tradition is that Matthew was written first that's why it's the first book in the New Testament that Matthew was written first now one of the things he got to keep in mind is that the guys who lived back in like the first and second century knew the Apostles and so there's a really good chance that they knew which book was written first really good chance and there's a really good chance that everybody who comes up with other stuff doesn't know what they're talking about especially if you're talking about anybody from the 1900s or the late 1800s because that's when liberalism entered in the into Christian theology these guys just literally make stuff up one of the things that you have with the Gospel of Mark verses for example the Gospel of Matthew you know there are stories of Mark's in Matthew and Luke but they're also excerpts from Matthew specifically in the Gospel of Mark and in in other words they have the same information and Luke may not have something that's in Matthew and may have something that it's in mark and you had this whole thing going on where there's kind of back and forth and what they always do is I try to make mark first and they try to make the other guys copiers of that it doesn't work on the face of it because if it works one way then it's gonna work the other way also if you have stuff in where where Matthew is more extensive than mark then why couldn't Mark have borrowed from Matthew and just editorialized it there's a you know and you anyway basically what I'm telling you is it cuts both ways Matthew was a disciple of Jesus he was a tax collector you know what tax collectors did they they took taxes wrote down names and they had to keep extensive records these guys knew shorthand literally and there is a good chance when you when you go through Matthew's Gospel you have the most complete records of Jesus's sermons so when when Jesus is speaking if you want to find out what he said in a sermon you can you can see parts of it and Luke you might see parts of it in mark but when you go to Matthew a lot of times its extensive and he goes through and he hits a lot of the stuff and probably the reason is because he's literally writing it down as it's being spoken he was able to do that they had a memory system back then - in any case why would Matthew go to mark for info that he saw mark wasn't one of the disciples mark was a follower of Peter the reason that Mark's Gospel is in the Gospel is because it's excerpts from Peters sermons and so Matthew doesn't need Mark's help in any case Matthew was probably written first Luke like I said was written just prior to the captivity of Paul or actually Paul being sent to Rome and so on in any case when you when you go through and look at all the information I just gave you all that stuff and I was I didn't give it to you so that you would remember it and have it always locked there inside your brain somewhere and be able to repeat it to me when I do that stuff a lot of times all that I'm doing is letting you know that when you go to a college class and they start talking about Cabella which is the cue document and they start talking about mark and priority that there are answers to those things and that many times these guys don't know what they're talking about you just need to know that there are answers and all that stuff if you want to chase it down you can pick it up in books that are readily available so evidence that demands a verdict for example and there's a volume 1 and there's a volume 2 and volume 2 if you are interested in that the some of the most boring subjects on the planet but if you are interested in that he does extensive background work on that and you can get as much as you want on Cabella so you know that whole thing let's get in to the rest of the text verse 5 it says there was in the days of Herod the king of Judea a certain priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah his wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her knee was Elizabeth and they were both righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly dallisa the Aaron and they were both well advanced in years so it was that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of the division according to the custom of the priesthood his lot felt to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord and the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense let's stop right there and talk about a couple of things number one he talks about this whole thing with he was in the order of Abijah the division of Abijah and when that's talking about is back in 1st chronicles David took all of the priesthood and he divided them up into 24 ok so there were 2 what were called 24 horses of the priesthood and each one of these groups of 24 got an opportunity to opportunity to minister in the temple for seven days twice a year ok so that's what a course was and so if I was of the course of Abijah that means I'm descended from this guy Abijah and twice a year it's a and and of course was a seven-day period it was one week twice a year so two weeks every year somebody from the course of Abijah got to go into the temple and do all the stuff that was connected with it which was which included going in and burning incense and offering prayers and that kind of stuff it was a very very great honor so he tells you what course that he's from the course of Abijah so this guy's a priest not only that he is a he is married to want a wife who is one of the daughters of Aaron and so she is a priest's daughter and so there's this kind of double honor in his life in the sense that he gets to be a priest and not only as a priest but he's married to the daughter of a priest one of the reasons I'm mentioning a whole course of a budget thing is because it has to do there's interesting things there that has to do with the birth of Christ okay the courses of the priesthood that that whole series of you know one week periods started every nice on which is basically March March and April of our calendar right in there someplace that's that's usually where my son falls and it would start at that period of time and then go through the course of Abijah was the eighth course in twenty-four okay we know from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem what course of the priesthood was there in July of 70 AD okay so at that point all you got to do is start working backwards and go backwards and you get to the time of the birth of Christ which is right around 32 ad yet back to that time and the course of Abijah was somewhere around May for the first time that a by jiz course would be that week that they would be in there the second time the course of Abijah was it would be in there was be right around october/november okay why is that interesting and the reason that's interesting is because what's going to happen here is Gabriel is going to appear on this day when it's the time of the course of Abijah to this guy Zechariah and tell him he's going to have a son and the son is going to be John the Baptist right just to let you know where we're going okay that's interesting you know that's interesting do you know how old Jesus was actually do you know how old John was when Jesus was born six months okay so now we could do some math here if the course of Abijah in that year this is there's a bunch of ifs here we we know according to Hebrew history what the course was when the temple was destroyed if that's right okay and if you go back and they didn't skip any courses at anything mess around with anything and all that kind of stuff if you go back and if you get to this time and there's there's no mess-ups with all the whole course thing or no changes then basically if you have john conceived during may where am i out here yeah if you have john conceived around May then you would have Jesus conceived six months later and that would put his conception in October November right or if you have John conceived in October November that puts Jesus's conception right around the march/april thing if Jesus has conceived in October or November then that puts his birth in July or August if he's conceived in the march/april area then that puts his birth somewhere around December January so they're your options that's kind of cool and I don't know if any of that is even valid that's just for your edification but you know that's that's one of those places where you can play around with the dates and try to figure things out and see where Jesus was actually born the point that I'm making there is a lot of people will come up with Jesus could not have been born on December 25th and that's not so that's not so there's a possibility that he could have been born there's some early traditions that that throw some things right around that date and so don't just throw it out okay the other thing that that you have here is is you have with these guys this whole lifestyle in verse 6 it says they were both righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly --mess does not mean perfect it has the ideas of right motives and basically what you have is two people two very old people who really aren't all that significant he's just one of a group of guys in a whole huge pile of guys that are priests but they're serving the Lord and walking with God everyone commentary that said these were just lovely people now that's the picture that you have there but they're childless it says verse seven they had no child because Elizabeth was barren and they were both well advanced in years childlessness in Israel was something that was considered a curse from God literally you didn't have children it's because God didn't like you on one level or another and as a matter of fact one popular sect of the Jews taught that if you were married to a wife and you had no child within ten years than you had the right to divorce her and what they used for a proof text was in Malachi chapter 215 where it talks about one of the reasons for marriages so that you'll have godly offspring and so the reasoning was you can't have any godly offspring something wrong with that woman you can get rid of her and obviously you got a man who's not willing to go there he loves his wife and he doesn't care if she's barren and so she so she stays with him this honor of being able to serve in the temple happen for a priest once in his lifetime you only got to do this once in his lifetime and everybody else got a chance in this and what he would do is again he would go out he would stand in front of the temple and he would offer prayers to God before the people and then he would walk into the temple there were two parts of the temple there was a first room which was called the holy place in the second room that had in Old Testament times the Ark of the Covenant at this point they didn't have that anymore but there was the veil before you went into the holy place and right in front of the veil was this altar and it was about yay high about this long about this wide and it was all out of gold and it was called the altar of incense and the priest would go in and he would offer incense on that altar and that's where Zacharias that's what Zacharias is doing when he's offering the incense he's coming in there and so he would walk in the menorah the seven-branched candlestick kind of like this would be on his left hand side there would be a table with pieces of flatbread on it that represent represented God's provision for the twelve tribes and the right hand side and he was going in and offering up this incense and as he would do it he would pray and the way that you did incense was you walked in and it would be set out on a tray basically like on a little plate and then you would light it and then the smoke from the incense would come up and fill in fill the whole tabernacle or the whole temple where you were at that whole room and it represented the prayers of God's people going up before the Lord the the altar of incense was connected as far as as far as the Jews were concerned with the Ark of the Covenant that was on the inside in fact in the book of Hebrews it almost looks like it's inside with it and that's the that's the connection thing that's going on and so it's a picture of the people of God praying I'm just on the other side of the veil before the presence of God and when the Bible talks about our prayer it talks about it coming up before the Lord like incense it's something that smells good to God it's something that fills the room and it smells good that's what God thinks about you when you're praying that's what's represented here and so he get he gets this honor this is his big chance he goes into the temple and he's doing everything that he's been trained for all his life and it's the only time that he's ever gonna get to do it and in verse 10 again it says the whole multitude of the people was praying outside at the hour of incense then an angel of the Lord appeared to him standing on the right side of the altar of incense no you get that picture there's the veil right there there's the altar of incense right there if I'm Zechariah and I'm standing before that then this guy just appears right there at that point and this isn't when Zechariah saw him Zechariah saw him he was troubled and fear fell upon him it's one of those things that you see all the time with angels when people sees I see angels they get they get scared every single time you even see it in 30 look over verse 30 and the same angel is gonna appear to Mary and it says actually in verse 28 it says and having come in the angel said to her rejoice highly favored one the Lord is with you blessed are you among women but when she saw him she was trouble that is saying and considered what manner of greeting this was and then the angel said to her do not be afraid Mary why is he saying that it's because she's afraid and every time the angels appear to people they're afraid they're and they're not just afraid in the sense of oh ho you know somebody's in the room with me they're they're afraid of these guys and you know it's well it's it's one of those things that that I've always seen in Scripture and wondered what it was about and I never got a real handle on it until I read a book by CS Lewis and it's it's a science fiction book and it's called out of the silent planet when one is out of the silent planet another one is parallel andr and another one is called that hideous strengthening when he pictures angels he pictures and it's just fiction but he pictures of them as being inhabitants of heaven and and what he means by that is that they have no earthly reference and so literally he would picture an angel as standing there in front of you but it's like he's moved you the the way that his robes are flowing in the way that his hair is flowing it's like he's moving at this radical speed and he just happens to be in front of you and what Louis was trying to say was that there's no earthly reference for these guys they are heavenly beings and they're moving through the heavens at the speed of the earth around if they're gonna localize themselves on the earth then they're moving at the speed of the earth going through the heavens and the speed of the Sun going through the galaxy and the speed of the galaxy going through the universe that kind of thing that was kind of cool and it's not necessarily so he just made it up and then the other thing that he said about them was he pictured these characters as being in the room with these guys and they felt the people in the room felt small it's like something was filling the room and almost suffocating them that's a great picture of heaven so overwhelming so intense that you're almost suffocated there's something big in the room I've had I've had periods of time when I've been in prayer and you know just talking to the Lord and felt you know just felt really really small in a huge way and almost frightened because I felt like there was something huge in the room with me and if at that point an angel had appeared to me he might be all the more frightened but you see this thing with angels it's not you know it's not like they're blonde ladies you know pretty broad blonde ladies with wings on their back or something there's something intimidating about these guys and so he's afraid and this visitation makes him afraid but the visitation was for information about salvation back over in verse 12 again it says and when Zechariah saw him he was troubled fear fell upon him but the angel said to him don't be afraid Zechariah for your prayer is heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall call his name John John means Grace from Yahweh literally the gift of God is what John means and in verse 14 he says and you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the sight of the Lord and she'll drink neither wine nor strong drink he will also be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb and he'll turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God he'll also go before him in the spirit the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the father's to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord he's quoting from Malachi 4 verses 5 & 6 in that passage and Zechariah said to the angel how shall I know this for I'm an old man and my wife is well advanced in years and so this angel comes along and appears to Zacharias and so Zacharias I got some good news for you you're going to have a son you've been praying for years for a son and God is going to give you one so his prayers are answered and he tells him that this is gonna be all about joy and gladness and in their lives that's a very cool thing and on top of it he lets him know that he that this kid is gonna be a Nazarite and a Nazarite was a guy that was set apart for God and Samson was a Nazarite for example these guys did not drink wine or eat anything that had to do with grapes they did not cut their hair for the time of their vow and so if you were going to take a Nazarite vow for example so you were gonna do it for six months or something you would cut all your hair at the beginning of the bow that you you would then for the period of the vow sanctify yourself before God and do the things that God told you to do in the in that situation no no no grapes no wine you were now allowed to touch a dead body there was a third thing what was it oh the razor on your head okay and so you cut off all your hair and then at the end of that bow you would take an offering in you would cut your hair again and part of the offering would be your hair and you would burn it okay that's the reason that Samson lost his strength his strength wasn't in his hair his strength was in his valid and when you go through the life of Samson you see him messing around with all of that stuff he was drunken but she wasn't supposed to be he ate he touched things that were dead remember the honeycomb out of the Lions carcass he touched things that were dead and then finally he cut his hair and at the end of cutting your hair your vowel is over that's why Samson lost his strength his strength wasn't in you know in himself he wasn't lifting or something his strength was in the fact that he was devoted to God and so he's a really famous Nazarite but he was a failure there are two other Nazarites in the Bible that that are specifically mentioned one is Samuel and Samuel is a guy who did it right he was a Nazarite from birth so by the you know by the time he's an old man when he's around David he's got hair down here somewhere he'd been a Nazarite all his life and when you think of John the Baptist the Baptist is a Nazarite and so by the time he gets to the the period when Jesus is gonna be ministering how long is your hair after 30 years I have no idea it's probably down here again and so you know he was he's a long hair in any case he tells him he's gonna be a Nazarite which which is kind of a cool thing and that he's going to fulfill the passages where the hearts of the fathers are gonna be turned back to the Lord you know John the Baptist ended up being a really fiery guy he was an awesome guy when when he preached things happened and by the way there is no evidence even though he was a prophet and even though he was some somebody filled with the Holy Spirit from the time of his birth the guy didn't do any miracles he only did he prophesied the coming of the Messiah it's all he did and he was called the greatest of the Old Testament prophets and that's what's being told to Zacharias at this point and so Zacharias when the angel says that to him look at verse 18 Zechariah said to the angel how shall I know this for I'm an old man and my wife is well advanced in years and the angel answered and said to him I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings but behold you will be mute and not being able to speak until the day these things take place because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time and so he strikes him dump strikes a mute at that point why does he do that and the reason he does that is because he's an angel he can't you have you have this unbelief going on and in a believer he's been praying for decades that God would give him a child and God in the temple sends an angel to stand he sees him pop into existence sends an angel to tell him that this is so and Zacharias goes can you give me a sign it's like the sign was me you dummy there's a there's another passage in that in the Book of Luke they later on in chapter 11 where the Pharisees are talking with Jesus and Jesus has just gotten done healing a demon-possessed guy and some of the Pharisees come up to him and say give us a sign and you know whenever I teach on that I just go back through all the things that Jesus had done it up to that point before chapter 11 jesus makes lame people walk he casts out demons he gives sight to the blind he raises the dead and then people come up to him go can I have a sign and the sign is shut up that's basically what Jesus said to those guys and that's what this angel is saying to Zacharias yeah give me a sign shut up for the next nine months until you can get this thing straight Bucky I mean I'm Gabriel who stands in the presence of God I don't need to mess with you the priest in here offering and not believing and all of that stuff and so that's exactly what happens he can shut up for the next nine months until you have the right answer and so in verse 21 it says the people waited for Zacharias marveled that he lingered so long in the temple but when he came out he could not speak to them and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple for he beckoned to them and remained speechless how do you do that how do you how do you do I saw an angel in silent I was somehow that he's making it known that he that he's seen something in any case verse 23 so it was as soon as the days of his service were completed that he departed to his own house now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived and she hid herself five months saying thus the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among the people and we're gonna stop right there but but basically later on when John is born they want to marry they want to name John the relatives of Zacharias and Zacharias refuses to let it happen and writes down and says John is going to be his name as soon as he does that the muteness is taken away and he begins praising God and you know cool things happen at that point let me just send it with this the there are times in your life that God is going to wait a long time to give you the things that you want and sometimes the things that you want are things that are really good and things that lots of people around you have having children is one of those I was married for 13 years before we had Bethany and didn't have Nathan until I was 39 and my wife was 40 just want you to know we waited a long time for our kids and all during that time we're seeing all of our friends having kids all that stuff going on and there were times when it was just kind of a bummer but not you know he was a little bit I've always wanted lots of kids it was probably more of a bummer for Bobby than it was for me at that time I had I had lots of things to do I had lots of kids in my house because of youth groups and that kind of thing and so it got kind of filled some gaps for us during that time but it was nothing like getting our kids and so ever since I've had our kids I don't know if you noticed this but I'm really really thankful for them I like my kids a lot even when they're jerks I like them a lot and I think that that one of the things that God will do with you is he'll make you wait for things just because when you get them it's gonna be so good a guy named Spurgeon said this if Lord Jehovah makes us wait let us do so with our whole hearts for blessed are all they that wait for him he's worth waiting for the waiting itself is beneficial to us at rice faith exercises patience trains submission and endears the blessing when it comes that means makes you love it when it comes the Lord's people have always been awaiting people CS Lewis said this I'm sure God keeps no one waiting unless that is good unless that it is good for us to wait and that's what I found in my life and I'll betcha that was their experience you see there's this certain time period that the Messiah was going to come the Bible says that it was in a certain period of time that this was going to happen and the forerunner of the Messiah had to be born again at a certain point in human history couldn't be too late couldn't be too early had to be right at the right moment and God has to certain people that he wants to bless with being the last prophet having the son who is the last prophet from the Old Testament and the greatest of the prophets from the Old Testament and it's Zacharias and Elizabeth he wants to bless them with that and he does that in the twilight of their lifespan and he does it because not because he wants to give them a trial but because he wants to bless them I think that if you had talked to Zacharias and Elizabeth like apparently Luke did if you would talk to them or to their children or to the people who knew them I don't know if they were still alive by the time that Luke got to talk to them probably not but if you were able to talk to them I don't think that they would have changed a thing if if the revelation that I was gonna have a kid came from an angel while I was serving God in some place and he told me what his future was going to be and then he was going to be doing this awesome stuff with the Messiah I'd go that was worth the wait I would do that again no problemo and especially having the awesome guy that that God has or that God gave him Isaiah 30 verses 15 through 18 says this for that says the Lord God the Holy One of Israel in returning and rescue shall be saved in Quine that quietness and confidence shall be your strength but you would not and you said no for we will flee on horses therefore you shall flee and they say again we will ride on swift horses therefore those who pursue you shall be Swift he's talking about people running away from judgments that God was performing at that time he says 1000 shall flee at the threat of one the threat of five you shall flee till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill that's a picture of one lone tree sitting on top of a mountain stripped of all its branches and he says that's what I'm gonna do with you people because you're constantly going off on your own and will leave you as a pole on a tree or as a pole on a hill therefore the Lord will wait that he may be gracious to you and therefore he will be exalted that he may have mercy on you for the Lord is a God of justice blessed her all those who wait for him the point that I say is making there is that we are so busy trying to make things happen trying to get out of the way of stuff trying trying to get the blessing of God and try and try and try and try and try and we never wait for anything and sometimes what God does with us is he just takes us and puts us off alone like like that tree on a hill and he just strips us of everything that we have and the reason that he does that is so that in the end we'll fail of our own devices and we'll look to God and God will go okay here you go this is what I had for you all along this is what I wanted for you when I get to the end of my rope gods get just getting started that's what he does with it with this guy and so it's good it's a good lesson a good thing to remember it let's pray and father we thank you again for the examples that we have in Scripture with this example of Zechariah is just awesome what a cool thing to do be walking into the temple and actually see Gabriel the guy who talked to Daniel standing in front of you telling you that the Messiah is going to be coming and your son is going to be the one that's going to Herald him to the world to Israel what a cool thing and Lord we thank you that anytime that we're waiting for something from you it's because you have this awesome thing for us you want to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think and God we just pray that you'd help us to trust you when we pray that when when you give us the stuff that we've been praying for there will be people who hear your voice and listen and recognize that it's from you instead of doing dumb things like saying can I have a sign and we just trust your Lord thank you for these guys thank you for the blessing that they are to me thank you for the fact that they want to hear your word and follow after you and I just pray that you bless their lives and we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 14,857

Rating: 4.7300615 out of 5

Keywords: luke chapter 1, calvary chapel, steve whinery

Id: oo0ydme0DuM

Length: 66min 13sec (3973 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2013