Fear Not, Despite Your Disappointments, Part 2

“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.