God Points So He Doesn’t Have to Wave

God Comes Near / Luke 1:67–79

Advent is the act of God coming close enough to speak sense into and transform every category of darkness into light. In our text for this morning we meet a man named Zechariah who asserts that this is what happens when God gets close.

Zechariah’s First Response: Standing in the Wrong place

Luke 1:8–9 ESV

Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

Luke 1:11–13 ESV

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, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John.

Luke 1:20 ESV

silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”

Finding the right perspective or posture or orientation is not always about simply working things out. Because if we are standing in the wrong place, it doesn’t matter how much we try and work things out we will still be left looking at the wrong way.

Zechariah’s second response: Addressed by God

Luke 1:60 ESV

but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.”

Luke 1:63 ESV

And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered.

When we enter into a relationship with God, we are entering into a whole new world, a new way of thinking, of acting, of living. What Zechariah’s response shows us is that we have an incredibly rich world that is filled with the activity, the language, the power, the strength, the glory and the grace of God.

God Makes Himself Knowable

Luke 1:68–75 ESV

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

for he has visited and redeemed his people

and has raised up a horn of salvation for us

in the house of his servant David,

as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

that we should be saved from our enemies

and from the hand of all who hate us;

to show the mercy promised to our fathers

and to remember his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,

might serve him without fear,

in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Luke 1:76–79 ESV

And 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

in 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.”

Where Is God Pointing in Your Life?

This is the case with the Advent. We ask God to change and move and act in our lives. We yell His name because maybe He will hear us from across the room. We have to be reminded that He responds from right next to us. The work is not getting God to do what we want but is aligning ourselves with Him,