15-12-20 Jesse Tree Week 3

Now was the time when all the miracles began. After speaking to prophets like Habbakuk and Malachi, God fell quiet. For a very, very long time. For four hundred long long years, God’s children looked up to heaven and could have heard a pin drop. It had been five hundred years since anybody had seen angels. It had been six hundred yeas since Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked through the flames with a fourth blazing angel from heaven. But then, all of a sudden, it was like hundreds of quiet years shattered, and God’s voice reverberated loud in hearts.

There he was – an angel appeared right in front of one old man. A certain wrinkled and graying priest named Zechariah. A priest who was shocked that his name had been drawn to offer the incense in the holiest place in the Temple. It was a special day that came only once a year: the Day of Atonement, the day when the people celebrated being made right with God. Throughout a priest’s whole life, his name might never be drawn to go into the holiest place.

And once it was drawn, it could never be drawn again. This was Zechariah’s big day. Zechariah’s name means “God remembers.” But some days Zechariah felt like God had forgotten him. Everybody else had the gift of a child – but not Zechariah.

1. Providing one language (Greek)

2. Providing Roman Roads

3. Providing State-wide Peace (Pax Romana)

God will use the Period of Pause to…

1. WORK ON OUR WORDS

Luke 1 12 When Zechariah saw him [the angel at the altar], he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Luke 1 18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”

WORK ON YOUR WORDS…

Ask questions, not about God’s CHARACTER, but rather about our COMMISSION

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

Zechariah was asking for EVIDENCE from a posture of UNBELIEF Mary was asking for an EXPLANATION from a posture of not UNDERSTANDING…

and those are different things.



2. WORK ON OUR WAYS



2. WORK ON OUR WAYS

3. WORK ON OUR WORRIES

Exo 23 20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land… 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.

Isaiah 32:18 (NIV) 18 My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.

Isaiah 49:15 (NIV) “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

2 Timothy 2:13 (NIV) …if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

Documents

15-12-20 Jesse Tree Week 3