Fear Not, Despite Your Disappointments

I’m particularly excited about this series and we are looking at the kind of peace that only Christ can bring. We are looking at how do you have a peace that defies expectation? Frankly, a peace that defies our fears.

Because whether we realize it or not, I think there’s probably more fear around Christmas than we’d like to admit.

In fact, I love the old Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It has a line in it, it’s talking about Bethlehem when Jesus was born and it says, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”

And I think it captures so much. When Jesus was born, all the hopes of all the years, but also all the fears. Everything that we had been against, everything we are up against, everything that can overwhelm, all that comes together and it’s answered through the birth and life of Jesus Christ.

You know, in this series, we’re going to look at four narratives in every one of these stories, different characters. Angels are going to show up and they always show up with the first two words: “Fear not.” Now, part of it is, if you saw an angel, you would be afraid. But you’ll notice in each of these stories, they speak to the heart of the person and the unique things they are wrestling with because Christmas has probably a lot more hope and fear than we like to admit.

See, I think as we read through these stories, the powerful thing that I find in them, it doesn’t just speak about an event two thousand years ago. It speaks to our lives now.

In fact, if you look in the context of when Jesus came, the first of these stories, you’ll see in Luke chapter 1 if you’ve got your Bible you can turn there, in Luke chapter 1. And it came in a time when the people of Israel, they were living with a lot of fears, they were living with a lot of disappointment. Life was not the way they thought it was supposed to be. In fact, it had been four hundred years since God had spoken to them.

And if you look in the book of Malachi, it’s the last book that was written in the Old Testament, the last of their prophets. And the last words in Malachi, God said, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction.”

Up until that time, they had had a series all the way going back to Abraham where God had spoken to His people, and He’d spoken through His people, and He’d spoken through the kings, and He’d spoken through the judges, and He’d spoken through the prophets, and these prophecies came and came and came and then Malachi speaks and He goes silent. Four hundred years they have heard nothing. And then during that time, they have seen world power after world power to now the kingdom of Rome, the Empire of Rome dominated the planet.

And they under the thumb of Caesar Augustus who could do whatever he wants, decree whatever he wants, call a census and taxes whenever he wants. They live in a land where even the religion of Israel at that point has become so political and there are so many divisions. They live under a king appointed by Rome, King Herod, who is not even fully Jewish. He doesn’t even embrace their religion.

And in the middle of this time of disappointment and silence, it would be easy for the nation as a whole to go, “God, what are You doing? Have You forgotten about us?”

The story zeroes in to one couple who walked through their own personal pain, their own personal disappointment. If you look at Luke chapter 1, verse 5, it says, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah;
and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.”

And so, he is of the tribe of Aaron; she is as well. She has grown up in a priestly family. I mean, they have grown up serving the Lord. They have grown up and then in their adult life, their married life, he faithfully serves the Lord as a priest.

“They were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.” So, he’s not just professionally a priest, he also trusts God; she trusts God. They believe, they followed God’s Word, they are right before God. It says they walked blamelessly. This does not mean they were sinless. It doesn’t mean they were perfect people.

What it’s describing here is they had put their faith in God and so when God had sacrifice in the temple system, when God had the law, when they brought their own sins and their sacrifice to it, they trusted God and believed God and they followed Him and all of His Word. They are living this blameless life. No one could look at them and go, “Oh, that couple? I’ll tell you what they do wrong.”

No, they are faithful. But then look at this last line, “But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.” Here’s the crushing blow in it. Because especially in that time period and in that culture and in Jewish culture, children were the most tangible blessing from God. And it was assumed, in that culture, if you didn’t have a child, you did something wrong or somebody sinned.

Yeah, maybe you look blameless, maybe you’re, you know, a priest and all, but we know, I mean, if God hasn’t given you a child, then that says it all. I mean, this went so deep, later in this passage, Elizabeth will describe her life and she describes, “I have lived under disgrace as a woman.” The pain, that private pain, but in their case it’s not really even private pain, because when you lived as a priest, you’re in front of everybody. Their life is on display.

And many of you know, if you’ve walked through infertility at all, I mean, Leah and I, we were married almost nine years before we had our first child. We had five years of just struggling with infertility and the pain that comes from that and the tears that come every month. And this feeling that you just have of failure. And they have carried it not for a few years, look what it says, they’re advanced in years. They are passed the age where you have kids.

And that combination, sometimes that juxtaposition can be so hard because you read stories like this in Scripture, how they are described as righteous but then you look at their circumstance. And I would just say for us, blameless living is not a guarantee of all the blessings of life. It’s not.

And this is one of the hardest truths, because even if we know it cognitively, there’s a part of us that can kind of work out a deal with God that, You know, God, if I’m a Christian and, man, if I’m reading Your Word and I’m following and I’m doing the best that I can in it and I’m faithful in it, I’m supposed to experience blessing in life. Or at least kind of stay in the middle of it.

But when I look at my life, and you look at your family and you go, “This is not what I expected. My job is not where I thought it was going to be, my kids are not where they are going to be, I didn’t think I’d be alone at this season of life.”

In fact, some of you, you are single and alone because you’re faithful to God, because you’re willing to live according to His Word. You suddenly look out and you go, “Man, my dating pool got really small.” There’s a loneliness that comes. And that disappointment that can settle into that, and you can find yourself in a place where that disappointment just settles over all of life, even how you see life, even how you see God.

And I say that because as we go on in this story, you’re going to see in Zechariah, he has kind of settled in a, kind of a level of disappointment despite what God is doing. And it’s easy for us to kind of jump on him and go, “Oh, come on, get with it.” I cut him some slack with all that he has been through and all that they have shared.

I told you he served as a priest. There was about eighteen thousand priests, they lived all throughout the nation of Israel. And about one week or two weeks out of the year, you were required to travel to Jerusalem, you were assigned a different week, and as a priest you would come because there was so many activities around the temple, between caring for livestock, between caring for the temple ground, caring for the actual worship with that.

And then they had these special roles where they would draw it by lot where just the few chosen for that time on that day would be the priest who actually got to serve inside the temple. And it says in this passage Zechariah’s lot was chosen. This was his day. He was going to actually get to go into the holy place of the temple.

And he had the special role of serving at the altar of incense, the altar right next to the veil, right next to the Holy of Holies. And the smoke of that incense would go to the Holy of Holies and it would go up and it was his responsibility on that day to lift up the prayers of the people. As the priest, he would represent the people before God in prayer.

And when you got to do this special role, there was no guarantee you would ever get to do it. Some people went a whole lifetime. But this was his special day and you had to wear special robes and vestments. And I can only imagine Elizabeth as she saw Zechariah standing there and he’s in the special vestments and he’s getting to go forward in this honored day. Like some sense of vindication that God chose him, that he gets to do this.

And as he goes there and he’s offering these prayers to God, this amazing thing happens after four hundred years, God speaks. Read in the text, verse 11, “And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, “Fear not, do not be afraid,” You don’t have to be afraid of me; let me tell you why I’m here.

Look what he says, “Fear not, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.” He’s praying for the nation as a whole, but somewhere in that prayer for the nation, boy, the prayers of his heart bleed out, what he has longed for his whole life. And the angel says, “God heard you.”

And here’s what I would encourage all of us: Never give up bringing the desires of your heart to God. Never give up praying. Never give up taking it to Him. And as I say that, it doesn’t obligate Him to you. There’s no amount of prayer that we do that God is obligated to bend His will and all that. But it will bond you to Him and He calls you to do that. He says: Actually, cast your cares on Me, because I actually care.

He says: You can approach Me as a great High Priest because I have been tempted and I have been through everything you have been through. And you can bring that to Me, you can bring your struggles to Me, you can bring your disappointments to Me, you can bring the deepest desires of your heart to Me.

I would encourage you, don’t ever stop bringing it to God. And the reason I say this is I have seen people, even blameless people, become bitter people. Because over time, at some point, instead of bringing it to God they kind of step back from God and they allow that wall of disappointment to build up. And now I’m not just disappointed with the circumstances in my life, I’m disappointed with God.

I believe the reason this couple stayed blameless, I think the reason this couple for a lifetime stayed that way is they never stopped taking it to God. They never had a point where they said, “It’s no use, it’s not worth it.” Even in the pain of it, they trusted God with it. And God’s answered their prayers.

He says: You’re not just going to have a son, he’s going to be the fulfillment that the world has been waiting for. He’s going to be the fulfillment that the nation has been waiting for. He’s not going to be a priest, by the way. He’s going to be a prophet. And there’s a big difference.

See, the priest went and they represented the people to God and that’s what had been happening for four hundred years. They would go and they would take the prayers and they would deliver them to God and now four hundred years later, he says, “It’s time for a prophet.” A prophet brought the message from God, because God is about to do something in the world.

And he says: Zechariah, he’s not going to be just any normal prophet. Look what He says: “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before Him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to make ready for the Lord, a people prepared.”

He's the fulfillment of Malachi. He is the promise of Malachi. Zechariah, God is not just going to give you a son, He’s about to prepare the way. He’s about to bring a Savior. God is about to do something really exciting in the world and it’s going to happen through you!

And I don’t know about you, but man, if I’m sitting there and I’m hearing that and an angel is saying that and you’ve got the incense all around and you’re in the middle of the temple, I’d get pretty fired up.

Not our boy, Zech. Look at his response. “Zechariah said to the angel, ‘Well, how shall I know this?’” I mean, how am I going to know this is true? He kind of just goes, “I’m an old man; my wife is advanced in years. Yeah, we’re passed that age.”

I’ve seen this in ministry. Even good people struggle with doubt and disappointment. It can overwhelm the best of us. And if you carry it long enough and you carry that pain long enough, you can start to put up kind of this wall of self-protection, because I just don’t want to be disappointed again. I don’t want to be hurt again.

And especially if you’re somebody like this couple that you have gone through years of maybe your disappointment, you have carried your pain for years, it’s so easy to put up that wall of self-protection, but hear me, hear me. That wall never helps, because all you have done is put up a wall that keeps you alone with that pain, it keeps you alone with the disappointment.

Instead of trusting the God who can answer and might answer and might miraculously answer, but even when He doesn’t do what we would want Him to do, it gives us the one person in the universe, our Savior, who can actually speak into the pain, sympathize with it, identify, and have the power to sustain you through it.
“Fear not, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.” You’re not just going to have a son, he’s going to be the fulfillment that the world has been waiting for. He’s going to be the fulfillment that the nation has been waiting for. He’s not going to be a priest, by the way. He’s going to be a prophet. And there’s a big difference.

See, the priest went and they represented the people to God and that’s what had been happening for four hundred years. They would go and they would take the prayers and they would deliver them to God and now four hundred years later, he says, “It’s time for a prophet.” A prophet brought the message from God, because God is about to do something in the world.

And he says: Zechariah, he’s not going to be just any normal prophet. Look what He says: “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will go before Him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, to make ready for the Lord, a people prepared.”

And I don’t know about you, but man, if I’m sitting there and I’m hearing that and an angel is saying that and you’ve got the incense all around and you’re in the middle of the temple, I’d get pretty fired up.

Not our boy, Zech. Look at his response. “Zechariah said to the angel, ‘Well, how shall I know this?’” I mean, how am I going to know this is true? He kind of just goes, “I’m an old man; my wife is advanced in years. Yeah, we’re passed that age.”

Even good people struggle with doubt and disappointment. It can overwhelm the best of us. And if you carry it long enough and you carry that pain long enough, you can start to put up kind of this wall of self-protection, because I just don’t want to be disappointed again. I don’t want to be hurt again.

And especially if you’re somebody like this couple that you have gone through years of maybe your disappointment, you have carried your pain for years, it’s so easy to put up that wall of self-protection, but hear me, hear me. That wall never helps, because all you have done is put up a wall that keeps you alone with that pain, it keeps you alone with the disappointment.

Instead of trusting the God who can answer and might answer and might miraculously answer, but even when He doesn’t do what we would want Him to do, it gives us the one person in the universe, our Savior, who can actually speak into the pain, sympathize with it, identify, and have the power to sustain you through it.

When Zechariah answers that way, look what the angel, Gabriel says. “The angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God.’” I mean, he looks at him and he goes, “I’m kind of a big deal here.”

And he’s not doing it as an ego trip, by the way. But he is pointing out he is of the highest order of angels. His role is in the presence of God. And he is saying, “I came straight from the throne room of God to bring you this message. This isn’t my message as an angel. I was sent to speak to you and bring you this good news. And because you stayed so skeptical in this, and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the days these things take place because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

Some scholars debate. We know that he was mute. He could not speak. Some say he was deaf too, like it was total silence. As we look at this story, and here’s what I would just say to you with it, it’s okay to struggle with what we hope God will do. We don’t always know how God will move. We don’t know if He will answer the way we thought. It’s okay to struggle with that, but listen to this, never doubt what He says He will do.

Gabriel came from the throne room of God. This came from the lips of God. This came as the promise of God. And you can take the promises of God to the bank. You can trust the promises of God.

In fact, I would encourage you, if you’re in a season right now and maybe you don’t know what God is doing, maybe it’s been disappointment, maybe you have carried pain for years. I’ll have people and they come and I’ll counsel them, sometimes they want answers, specific answers. And I can’t always say, “Oh, man, I know exactly what God is going to do.” I will always tell them and I will tell you though, I’ll always tell them, “Man, are you spending time in God’s Word? You need to read your Bible more. You need to go through the promises that He has promised you. Spend time with it.”

And sometimes you kind of get a response where people go, “Okay, thank you, pastor. I’m dealing with a big problem. Read my Bible. Thank you, that’s kind of quaint.” And, yet, even though it feels quaint, there’s nothing more powerful, there’s nothing you need more.

The latest NASA rover that they sent to Mars, the Perseverance, it’s named Percy, it goes along the planet and looks for life, looks for different things. When they sent it in 2020, it took a year to get there, it got there, 2021 was when it arrived. And you would think this rover, this piece of technology that they are sending, that every single part of it would be the latest and greatest technology. And, yet, they chose for the processor, the brain of the rover, they chose a piece of technology from 1997. They went back to the G3, the G3 processor. And back in 1997, ’98 remember when the Apple Mac was released, it had the G3 processor, and Apple nerds, man, they are like, “Oh, that’s one of the best.”

You know why they chose it? Because the G3 is so reliable. We want what we know is proven and reliable, because this mission is so important. I know this book was written two thousand years ago, the last parts of it. I know you can look at it and go, “Oh, it just seems, you know, so quaint.”

Hear me. In your fears, in your frustrations, in your disappointments go back to the proven, reliable promises of God. Some of you would do well. Get off social media. Stop watching network news, stop watching the latest cable program, stop watching what everybody says about what is going on in the world, stop taking in the latest fear mongering in every level and spend more time with the promises of God.

And so, Zechariah who has stayed in there way too long, by the way, they start getting scared something happened to him. And then he walks out and he can’t say anything, can’t explain it. Goes home to Elizabeth and, you know, he’s writing things out and I’m sure she asked him, “Wait, you had a message from God? What did God tell us that we need to do?” “Well, we need make a baby.” I’m sure she’s like, “Oh, yeah right. Yeah. Good one. Good try.”

And she gets pregnant. She just exults, she says, “My disgrace has been removed.” You feel how deep that went in her life? And if you read in this chapter, she’s got this young cousin named Mary who is about to be visited by an angel too. And Mary comes and sees Elizabeth, how God wove all the story together.

I just want to skip ahead to verse 57. “The time came for Elizabeth to give birth. She bore a son and her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her. They rejoiced with her. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. They would have called him Zechariah after his father,” I mean, he’s going to be like dad. He’ll be a priest; he’ll be Zechariah.

“But his mother answered, ‘No! He shall be called John.’ They said to her, ‘None of your relatives is called by this name.’ They made signs to his father inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet, and he wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And they all wondered and immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he spoke, blessing God.”

Read the remaining part of this chapter, he speaks this marvelous song. It’s like out of the book of psalms. It’s this prophetic passage. It’s this beautiful passage. Now, he has had nine months to think about it. Nine months where he couldn’t serve as a priest because he couldn’t talk. Nine months where he had to pull back from the normal stuff of life.

Nine months of setback where God is preparing Him and coming out of that, man, he speaks the prophetic Word of God.

Every season of setback is a great opportunity for spiritual discernment and growth. Every season. And you might be in one right now. And you probably don’t want to stay there. But I would encourage you while you are there, just stop and listen and say, “God, what do You want to teach me? God, how are You preparing me?” See, He is preparing Zechariah to be the father of a prophet. He’s preparing Zechariah to come to grips with what He was doing in their lives.

And I would just say, I can look back on my life and there are several seasons of setback in it. And I would not want to go back to them, but I am thankful for them, because I would say I grew more in those seasons than any other time in life. And if you’re in it right now, don’t resent it, don’t pull back from God in it. And look for what He wants to do in you and through you.

And in Zechariah’s case, he delivers this magnificent song and at the end of it, he ends the song addressing his son, addressing his boy. Look what he says, he says, “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most-High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people and the forgiveness of their sins. Because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

I mean, he has fully embraced that his son is not going to be a priest, he’s going to be a prophet, and not just any other prophet. He’s the prophet that was promised, he’s the prophet that is preparing the way, he’s the prophet that’s opening the doors, he’s the prophet that is pointing the whole world to the actual light that will come that they have all been desperately waiting for, that all of us need.

He sees in that how God has worked, not like they thought He would, not in the timing they thought He would, but we can hold on as well. You can trust that God will give us what we need even more than what we want. You can trust that. He wanted a son who would be a priest just like dad. What he needed, what they needed was a prophet, a prophet who would prepare the way, a prophet who would live a life, I’m sure, different than what his parents thought he would live.

I mean, if you read about John the Baptist, this prophet, he’s kind of a rough and tumble guy. He’s a little bit different. It says that he ate honey and locusts. He’s kind of a wild man with it.

He roughed up and caused disturbances with the religious establishment. He would die as a young man in his early thirties. Martyred for standing up for what was right. It was not the life that his parents had dreamed. It was so much more. It’s what they needed. It’s what the world needed. It’s what God was doing.

See, the same is true for us. One of those great promises of Scripture, Romans 8:28, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. It doesn’t say all things work together the way we want. All things, though, work together for our good. God redeems all things. God takes all pain, God takes even the disappointment. He doesn’t say they are good but He says, “You know what? I can work them for your good, and you can trust Me for that promise.”

“For those who are called according to His purpose,” because He had a plan. He had a plan not only for Zechariah and Elizabeth, He had a plan for Israel, He had a plan that even during those four hundred years when they kept going, “God, what are You doing? God, when are the promises coming? God, are You ever going to move?” God was preparing the world.

Galatians tells us, “In the fullness of time, Jesus Christ came.” And here’s the fascinating part. There was a population explosion that happened right after the birth of Jesus, that ninety-eight percent of the people that have ever lived on this planet were born after that time, because there was stability with the Roman Empire, because there was a road system that went in, because there was literacy like they had never experienced, because there was learning and the ability to share information.

All of these things converged together at that time - in the fullness of time - that Jesus came, because God had a plan and He had a purpose.

And even when His people stepped back from Him and they go, “God, this is not according to our timeframe. This isn’t even how we would have wanted it. We wanted a king to come put Israel in charge.”

And God said: Oh no, I’ve got so much better. I’ve got a Savior who will not just save your nation, He’s going to save all people who come to Him. And that Savior needs a prophet who prepares the way.

I don’t know what you’re dealing with here today. You don’t have to gather a group very large before you start running into some real pain and disappointment and part of your heart may be that you’ve put up walls of protection. Part of it that God has asked you to live in something for a long time and the enemy will attack and your own thoughts will attack and everything in your heart wants to pull back from it or question Him.

Hear me, the story of Christmas tells us again: God loves you. He is for you. And He has a plan for you. It may not match what you would have wanted, but I promise, I promise you, I promise you, He always provides what you need, what I need. We can trust Him.

So, I would encourage you today, would you just let down the wall a little bit and trust Him a little bit more today? Would you just rest on the promises that we know are true? Would You draw near to Him in prayer? And maybe share with Him again your desires. But trust Him that He will meet you there.