Rev. Ron Sumners
I haven't been in your world very long, but I have noticed that you are a people who wait, and wait, and wait. You wait in lines at stores. You wait for traffic on streets. You wait for appointments. You wait for Christmas. You wait for your friends who are already fifteen minutes late. You wait and you wait and you wait! And sometimes, in your waiting, there is the nagging question, is it worth it?" Is there something in life worth waiting for? You see, I know something about waiting.
I am Zechariah, a priest. I spent nearly all my life waiting. Most of my waiting was waiting for God. As a young man I prayed and asked God for a son. Then I waited, and waited, and waited. And quite honestly, I got to the point that where I wondered if it was worth waiting any longer. I've come here today because I know that many of you feel the way that I did many years ago. You have been waiting for God. You have waited, and waited, and waited. And now in your heart you are wondering, "is it worth it? Does God really care?"
Luke tells you in the first chapter of his Gospel, in verse 5, that I lived in the days of Herod. He flatters me by going on to say that I was "upright" and "blameless" in my day. But I now know that for all my blessedness, for all my righteousness, I didn't understand what it meant to "wait for God." God had to teach me that His gifts are worth waiting for. I know that some of you love God as I did. You pray as regularly as I did. There may be people who look to you and call you righteous and blameless, just the way they said that about me. But perhaps, like me, you have been waiting for God and you are wondering if it is worth waiting any more. I would like to tell you my story. It is found in Luke 1 :5-25. Through the experience that Luke describes, God taught me that His gifts are worth waiting for. There are three gifts, in particular, that are worth waiting for.
The first is the gift of knowing God's purpose. I was a priest according to the order of Abijah. In my day, all of the descendants of Aaron were priests. There were some 20,000 priests who served God in Palestine. The priests were divided into twenty-four courses or divisions. Mine was the course of Abijah. There were about a thousand priests in my division alone. Because there were so many of us, we didn't all serve in the Temple at the same time. We all would go down to Jerusalem during the time of the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles and the Feast of Passover. But for the rest of the year we served God throughout Palestine. Each course then went down to Jerusalem to serve for two weeks out of the year.
As my story begins, it was our week to be in Jerusalem serving God. One priest had the privilege of going into the Temple to offer prayers and incense on behalf of the people. The lot was cast. I had about a one in a thousand chance to be called, but I was chosen. I know that you may not understand the significance of this, but you need to know that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was thrilled! I went to the temple to offer prayer on behalf of the people of Israel. I bowed in my place.
I was saying my prayers to God, burning incense before Him, when suddenly I had the strange feeling that I was not alone. I looked up. There was an alien being standing there. His extraterrestrial eyes bored right through me. I was terrified. When I went into the Temple, I did not expect to have "a close encounter of the third kind"! And then the intruder looked right at me and said:
Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to tum the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous - to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, and many will rejoice.
In that moment, I knew that the Lord cared for me. You see, all of my life I had been coming before God seeking His purpose. All of my life I had been coming before the Lord and praying that he would reveal His will to me. Yet, so often, I waited, and waited, and waited, and God's face was hidden from me. It was as if the windows of heaven were locked shut when I prayed. Now, in that moment, I knew that it was worth waiting to know the plan of God. Because as that angel stood before me and said, "Don't be afraid Zechariah; your prayers have been heard," I knew that God cared for me. I knew that He was interested in me; and I understood what it means to worship God. I understood what it means to come into His presence, and know that my fear can be taken away, that my disappointment can be eliminated, that I can know that there is a Father in heaven who hears when I pray.
I've come here today because I know that many of you have prayed as I prayed. You have bombarded heaven with your prayers. You have prayed and prayed and prayed that somehow God would reveal his will to you. But it is as if the heavens are closed and God's face is hidden from you. You have waited, and waited, and waited, and you wonder now if it is worth it. Let me encourage you. God does want to give you the gift of knowing His purpose. God is concerned about you as He is concerned about me. No matter what the trials and circumstances of your life, no matter how frustrated you may be in your waiting. God wants you to know His plan. God want you to know that He cares. The question that God asks you today is, "Are you willing to wait?" Are you willing to wait for the gift of knowing His purpose?
God gives good gifts to those who wait. God showed me that He desired to give me the gift of knowing His purpose. But also, God showed me that He wanted to give me the gift of realizing His promise. Luke tells you in verse 17 of chapter one that a great promise was fulfilled in my day. The prophet Malachi had given the promise. It is found in Malachi 4:5-6, the very last verse in the Old Testament. That's where God says; "I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes ... " For four hundred years we waited for that promise. We waited for the revival to happen and for four hundred years it did not happen.
In my day we desperately needed a revival. In verse 5, Luke says that I lived in the days of Herod. This was Herod the Great. He was an Idumean, that is to say, he was an Arab and a Jew. You can picture the difficulty that this would cause by imagining Yasser Arafat being both Jew and Arab.
It was a political nightmare. Herod the Great tried everything to please both the Jews and the Arabs. He built a beautiful Temple for the Jews. I believe that Herod's Temple was as awe-inspiring and ornate as the Sistine Chapel and the Crystal Cathedral combined. However, we priests were very disturbed that Herod also had built temples for the pagan idols throughout the land of Palestine. Although he was concerned to appease us somewhat as we talked about our religious concerns, he also encouraged immorality. He had ten wives. He didn't see anything wrong with polygamy. He even tried to impose his polygamous way on all of us. What's worse, he ordered the strangulation of two of his sons because they didn't agree with him. A third he also had executed.
Even Augustus Caesar said, "It is better to be Herod's hog than his son." We needed revival in my day. Jews all around the world were turning from God, living in sin and acting as if God didn't care. And those of us who believed in God prayed for revival. We prayed for that prophesy of Malachi to come true. We prayed that we would see the day when the hearts of the fathers would be restored to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers. We waited, and waited, and waited for that promise, but it didn't come.
And to be perfectly honest, I had come to the point where I was seriously wondering if I should preach that promise any more.
I have come here today because I know that many of you have been praying for revival. Many of you here realize that you live in a day just like mine. This is a day when people need to tum to the Lord. People need to tum toward God because of the X-rated values that are propelling your nation headlong into a sewer that reeks with the foul odor of relativism and hedonism. Some of you have been praying that God would do something special in your own home. You've prayed and you've waited, and you've waited, and you've waited. And you've wondered if the promise of God is true anymore. You wonder if your waiting is worth it. I'm here to tell you, "It's worth the wait." God has promised that He will be a day that revival will come and hearts will be renewed before God. There will be a day when God will usher in the new age. God sent His Messiah in my day and He will send the Messiah again. Someday we will be able to live with Him for all eternity in joy and happiness. There will be a time without tears, a time of joy. I believed that promise. But God had to teach me the hard way that I didn't believe enough. Perhaps you want to believe that promise too, but you have waited so long that you wonder if you can claim it any more. God's promises are true. The question God asks you is, "Are you willing to wait?"
God had to show me that He was willing to give me the gift of knowing His purpose, if I would only wait. He had to show me that He would give me the gift or realizing His promise, if I could only wait. And finally, God had to show me that He would give me the gift of experiencing His power, if I would only wait.
When the angel Gabriel told me that I was to have a son, I couldn't believe it. I asked, "How can I know that this will be true?" As a priest, I had the responsibility of teaching the Torah. We were to teach the first five books of the law wherever we were. People would gather as we talked about the great stories of the Bible. I had taught the people about the miracle of God delivering our ancestors from Egyptian bondage. I had taught the people about the miraculous birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, even though they were old. I had taught the people what Abraham said when he was told that God was going to do a miracle for him. He said what I said, "How can I know that this is true?" In that moment when the angel rebuked me for my disbelief, I realized that it was far easier for me to pray for a miracle than to believe that one could happen. It was far easier for me to get down on my knees and pray, and pray, and pray that somehow the power of God would come into my life, than to trust and believe that there is a God in heaven who can tum the key that ignited the power in my life.
I am here today because I know that many of you are just like me. Maybe it is easy for you to pray for God's power, but a lot harder to believe it and receive it. You may want to trust that somehow God is going to do something special for you, but it is hard to believe that it can be true. The great prayer burden in my life was my prayer for a son. I don't know what your great prayer burden is.
Maybe you have been praying for your family. Maybe you have been praying for your ministry, or you have been praying about a sin that continually defeats you. You have prayed for an explosion of God's power in your life. Yet, you have waited, and waited, and waited so long, that if the angel of God came to you and said, "God has answered your prayer," you would say what I said, 11How can this be? How can I know that this is true?" Because for you, as for me, it is easier to pray for a miracle than to believe and to trust that God wants to create that miracle in your life.
Because of my disbelief, God took away my ability to speak. For nine long months I contemplated what the angel Gabriel had told me, "You will be silent and not be able to speak until the day this happens, because you have not believed my words, which will come true at their proper time." For nine months, I was forced to endure the judgment of God because I did not have the faith to wait for God's "proper time".
Then after nine months, my son was born. All of our friends were rejoicing with us at this marvelous demonstration of God's power in our lives. Our friends assumed that we were going to name our son, Zechariah. Elizabeth said, "No! He is to be called John." Our friends couldn’t believe it. No one in our family was called John. They knew it would be an insult to me and my family not to have a son named for one of our relatives. They came to me and asked me what we really wanted to name our son. Taking a tablet, I wrote, "His name is John." My friends were amazed. Elizabeth and I were not following the practice of our day. We were breaking the tradition of our people, but we had no choice. God told us, through His angel Gabriel, what his name was to be. John is an abbreviation of "Jehohanan," which means "the gift of God," or "God is gracious." In my waiting, that is what God wanted to teach me. He is gracious to those who wait on him. As if to confirm that lesson, it was only when I indicated that my son's name would be John, "the gift of God," that God showed His power again by allowing me to speak.
I suppose I was a righteous priest. I suppose it could be said that I was blameless. But I know as I reflect back on my story that for all of my righteousness, for all of the time that I spent worshipping God, I hadn't come to the place where I knew what it means to wait for the gifts of God. God had to teach me the importance of being willing to wait for the gift of knowing His purpose. I had to learn that God cared for me enough to demonstrate that the windows of heaven could be opened just for me. I had to wait for the gift of realizing God's promise, even though I was living in an immoral age, where sin and sickness were multiplying all around me. I needed to be willing to wait for the gift of God's promise and to believe that God's Word is true. And I needed to be willing to wait for the gift of experiencing God's power. I needed to believe that as I was praying for God's power in my life, God wanted to show that power to me, if I'd only be willing to wait for what He could do.
I know that many of you feel that you have wasted a lot of hours waiting. You have grown impatient in your waiting. Some of you have come to the place where you are wondering if you should even be waiting for God any more. God sent me here to encourage you, to challenge you to believe that the waiting is worth it.
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