Dover Assembly of God
We're going to take another detour from our series on the life of David today and look at a passage in Luke, but before we do that, let's look at what's going on at the time...
The beginning of Luke is one of the 2 accounts of the Christmas story.
Up until this point, it was a dark time for Israel. The people had not heard from God in over 400 years.
No prophets had been called or had risen from their ranks.
The spiritual leaders were far from God and had gotten tangled up with 400 years of tradition that basically pushed God’s law to the side in favor of what they had been doing for all that time.
We constantly have to be on guard that we don’t make our preferences of the time, a tradition.
Why? Because things that we deem as traditions may push what God wants out of the way.
Because we like them or because we get comfortable with them.
What they became comfortable with over rode their desire to change and we see how those traditions eventually caused the death of Christ.
Luke 1:5 NIV
Not only were devout Jews in tough times with their own leaders, their governmental officials were also against them.
This is Herod the great, he was nominally Jewish. He was an Edomite.
The Roman government had appointed his grandfather and his father and now appointed him as Tetrarch. Tetrarch was basically ruler over ¼ of a province. Herod was the tetrarch of Galilee.
History tells us that he had 9 or 10 wives, one of whom he had executed for no apparent reason.
He was the one who ordered the slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem, so you get an idea of his wickedness.
The government was opposed devout Jews (they let them exist as long as they didn’t cause trouble).
Not only that, your own people had all these traditions that basically made it hard to serve God faithfully.
But not even all those odds kept everyone away.
No matter how dark the times are God always has a remnant of people who follow Him in spite of the atmosphere if the times.
Luke 1:5-6 NIV
No matter how difficult the times, God still calls us to be faithful.
Luke 1:7 NIV
Wow, not only were they probably getting grief from the outside, they were struggling within themselves.
Life for this couple who were faithful was not perfect.
Life had not gone the way they planned or hoped.
For most women and especially women in Bible times, having children was a huge deal.
Look how she expressed it when God showed up.
Luke 1:25 NIV
She called it a disgrace that everyone would have known about and referred to it as.
And being faithful, it is like that this was a constant matter of prayer for them.
They probably read and re-read the account of Hannah--how the Bible says God closed her womb and how it says she prayed in bitterness.
1 Samuel 1:10 NIV
Here we have a couple that have most likely faced opposition from their extended family, they knew they couldn’t count on any official siding with them.
They knew they couldn’t start and trouble or rock the boat. They really had nothing but their trust in the Lord.
They simply lived their lives for God and continued in their obedience.
Not only that, they went years of being faithful with unanswered prayer.
They were faithful and dedicated and God had not answered their prayers for a child.
How long have we prayed for something while being faithful and dedicated and nothing?
Hebrews 11 can be considered the "faith chapter." It details all the accounts of God answering dramatically and miraculously.
Hebrews 11:32-35 NIV
We, as believers, trust our lives to these and other verses where God shows up.
We’ve all experienced similar situations where God does the impossible.
And we keep praying expecting more of the same.
But in that same chapter, in fact the same paragraph, also details those who God did not deliver or answer.
Hebrews 11:35-38 NIV
Do you think that these took time to pray for help?
Do you think they trusted God to deliver them?
What does God say about this group of believers--ones who didn’t receive what they believed God for?
Hebrews 11:39 NIV
Zechariah and Elizabeth both served God faithfully in spite of not having everything go their way.
Neither this couple or Hannah knew what God would do.
In fact, Zechariah & Elizabeth had probably stopped praying about it because they were too old to have children naturally.
So in their eyes, God didn’t answer and never would, but they were faithful anyways.
We don’t know how God is going to respond to all the difficulties in our personal lives as well as our church life, but we continue to serve him faithfully and trust his response.
Seems similar to an account in Daniel, when the 3 boys were going to be thrown into the furnace...
Daniel 3:16-18 NIV
It is not a lack of faith or trust to acknowledge a possible outcome.
We buy health insurance. Do we not trust that God can heal us?
We buy homeowners insurance. Do we not trust that god will protect our home?
We buy those things because we acknowledge that it may be a possibility of needing it.
The thing is they trusted him with either outcome.
Bottom line is: Answered prayer didn’t affect the faith of those who trusted God.
They kept praying and trusting.
Our dedication to serving God should not be based on whether or not God gives us what we pray for. It should be based on our trust in who He is.
God eventually did give Zechariah, Elizabeth & Hannah a child, but their dedication was not based on that.
The Hebrews were delivered, but their trust in God wasn’t based on being delivered. It was based on simply trusting God regardless of the outcome.