Reading: Luke 1:57-80

Despite his severe handling, God's favor was on Zacharias and the very evidence was in His swift discipline of him. Those He loves He chastens and scourges. He kept the priest from sins of word, from touching the holy with common human doubt. And in that stark silence, somehow Zacharias experienced the God of his priestly service and he was released from the prison of his religious self. 

The priest was restored at John's birth and vindicated as priest. The man now burst with faith and prophecy, the knowledge of God's will and future. Gone was the old thinking, banished was the doubt and dead were stodgy views of the divine.

Zacharias was immersed now in God's words, not his own. The words of Gabriel had been seared into his silent soul and he believed now by inner revelation and heavenly understanding. The Holy Spirit came upon him and possessed the man
Zacharias was caught up in the wonder of God's doings and became the transparent vessel of His future plan.

And you child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
For you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways,
to give to His people the knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins
because of the tender mercy of our God
with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us,
To shine upon those who sit in darkness and
the shadow of death,
    to guide our feet into the way of peace.

This only son of Zacharias belonged to God and the father entered the surrender of John, with all enthusiasm and vision.The hardest lesson for any parent is that your children are not yours. They are part of God's tapestry, a weaving for the history of His Son.

How much better to have a son of divine purpose, than to have a son at your table. But this is true only for the servant of God. Zacharias had been a servant of the service of God but by this cataclysmic event, transformed into a servant of the Person of God. 

Now that Zacharias had something to say, his tongue was loosed. Now he was speaking from personal experience, from the place of vision and amazement.

Experience is the basis of ministry and there is no other. Zacharias' new experience of God became real ministry, at once prophetic and revelatory. Amazing is the parent who can see his son by vision, the view out of heaven's design.

In that nine month hush, Zacharias made the amazing transition from the old order into the new, from a traditionalist to a Spirit-filled priest, vibrating with current awareness of God. Speaking with an absoluteness of faith, Zacharias declared the entire life of his new infant as it related to the purpose of God. And the priest, by being set aside and put out of it, was now able to enter it as its very interpreter.

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,   
For He has visited us and
     accomplished redemption for His people
     and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
          In the house of David His servant---"

"How will I then know?" Ah, now the man knows. He knows all and he believes all. Zacharias had bowed to the stern correction and been wrapped for months in the silent womb of God's thoughts of him. Now he was released into the discovery of himself. The chastening and the shock had birthed the father by the birth of John. God's redemptive discipline swallowed Zacharias' doubt and the man became what he was meant to be. 

Wonderful story, divine picture of God, His overcoming us and pushing us through the door of our staidness. He sets it up for our true hearts to be exposed but He has always His perfect way of splaying our hearts to meet His higher view of us.

The man had lost the whole reality by involvement in the function. He had become the center and lost the person of God. And that is what easily - and humanly - happens. God displaced Zacharias and put him in his true position, a living priest now, not the shell of mere position.

This paints the whole picture of salvation. "I think I know God." But I merely know ABOUT Him. Then the real One appears with His invasive purpose, I am struck dumb and all I think I knew is laid in the dust. I have nothing to say.
Then I hear and find my own secret.

Our stupidity is always right out there to be seen. God will have His way. He knew the rigidity of the priest but He knew the man's potential as well and on that possibility, lying dead in Zacharias' heart, God moved! And He transformed his bored state of religious observance into the exuberance of God's shocking move!

Someone said, "I don't care about all my mistakes, I care about how I finish."  There is yet hope, even when we are old in our ruts.

Zacharias ended not as he began. He finished his days WITH God and all the past fell away as merely a breath before the wind of the Real Presence.

The tender mercies of which Zacharias testified, were his transforming experience and he moved into the realm of the New priesthood, anticipating the Transcendent Priest, coming for the throne of David

As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old
Salvation from our enemies,
And from the hand of all who hate us:
To show mercy toward our fathers,
and to remember His holy covenant,
         The oath which he swore to Abraham our fathers. 

How awesome this is . . . Zacharias blended what was before unblended but fully separate: priest and prophet. 

And he, the priest, spoke as prophetic spokesman of the Holy Spirit:

In the house of David His servant ---
To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies,
Might serve Him without fear
In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

Such was the grace of God to one who had no hope and no faith, a grace that chastened, redeemed and gave new life.

It appears that Zacharias had to relinquish the son God gave. He released him into the new, let him be sent to the bare desert, shorn of the grandiose priesthood to which John had been born.

And the child continued to grow and
to become strong in spirit and
he lived in the deserts until
the day of his public appearance to Israel

Custom holds that John was reared by the Essenes, a group of very spiritual men who lived ascetic lives in the desert. There is no mention of Zacharias or Elizabeth in John's adult ministry. Perhaps they were not living and never saw the anointing of their son. But if they died before John's time, they died in the sweet satisfaction of faith fulfilled.

Zacharias' story is one of unbelief. That's what we remember, but more important it is a story of divine intervention and total redemption. Nothing is impossible to God, neither the birth of a child to the elderly, nor the transformation of a rigid religious man into a blazing spokesman - an old system, an Old Man brought radically into the glory of the All New.

So the first character of the Holy Story is also the first evidence of a New Grace pouring on the earth, a redemptive, forgiving God coming in "tender mercies" to a people who neither believe Him nor want Him.

Such a God!

Copyright © 2005 Martha Kilpatrick