Were starting a new series today. While youre finding Luke 1, Ill give you just a little bit of the background of Luke. Luke is a physician by trade, by vocation, so during the course of our study, well often find him using medical terminology. He describes miracles Jesus performed in a very clinical way. This morning will be no exception. Well talk about one of the words he uses. So we see that element he uses throughout his book. Luke, as far as I know, is the only Gentile writer in all of Scripture. Luke traveled with Paul in his second and third missionary journeys. In the Book of Acts, there are periods when he writes in the first person and says we, the first person plural. He says we did this or we did that. He was a close companion of Paul. He was a faithful companion of Paul. He was with him even when others had deserted him. Luke quantitatively wrote the most in the New Testament. If you put the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts, which Luke also wrote, together, quantitatively, he wrote more than anybody else in the New Testament-more than Paul, more than John. So, Luke is a very important person for us as we study his writings. So, lets begin with Verse 1 [of Chapter 1-page 1012 of pew Bibles]. It says, Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. Luke says that truth was just handed from Jesus to the Apostles. It has been handed from the Apostles to us. The first church handed it down all the way through the generations to us. A week or so ago, do you remember that cold winter day when the schools were closed because of the cold? I started a fire in the morning, and I kept that fire going all the way though into the evening. It took me awhile to get that first log going, but once I got it going, I had a good fire. Even the coldest logs from outside, Id put in there, and in a matter of seconds, they would catch on fire. The last fire I had that night, it was the same fire that I had started early in the morning. That fire had passed down from log to log. The first log had turned to ashes. The heat had gone up, and the log had turned to ashes, but the fire had passed on. That is the fire we have received. That is the fire we pass on, the same fire that happened so long ago; long after our spirits have ascended and our bodies have turned to ashes, that fire is the one we pass on to our children and grandchildren and friends. That will burn on. Its the same fire. Thats what Luke talks about. He says [picking up in Verse 3], Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. So, we dont know who Theophilus is. We have theories, but we dont know exactly who he is. He says with the care of a surgeon, I am going to investigate. I am going to carefully study and examine the truth as its been given to us and convey it to you. The word investigate is the Greek word that we get autopsy from. Theres a little bit of the Doctor Luke coming out right there in Verse 3. He says, Im just going to do as close of an investigation as humanly possible from the very beginning of the truth, of the things, that we have received so you can know the certainty of what youve been taught. When an autopsy is performed, theyre looking for facts. Why did something happen? How did it happen? What does all this mean? They study in greater detail, under the microscope, and its just examined every way possible. Thats what Luke is going to do for us. Now hes going to get into a story about the birth of Jesus, and you know its okay to talk about the birth of Jesus when its not December. You understand that? We can talk about the resurrection when its not Easter; we can talk about His birth when its not December. Were going to see a story of two people who are given much the same word and have two very different responses. One responded in faith, the other in doubt. Before we talk about that, were going to watch a short clip from the Chronicles of Narnia, the allegory written by C.S. Lewis which Aslan represents the Lord. He has been shaved of his mane, seemingly stripped of his power, as Christ became a man for us, and Aslan is going to offer his life up to try to free Narnia. Lets watch as this clip takes place. I love when he roars later on. Hes been resurrected. Did you see the look on the little girls faces? Thats what were talking about. Thats doubt. When something you had trusted in, something you had expected, is all the sudden taken away from you-when life does not go the way you thought it should-something unexpected happens, that same doubt and confusion would have been on the face of the Apostles when Christ died on the cross. Thats not what Messiah is supposed to do. The cross is a place of a weakness. The cross is a place of death and defeat. He was supposed to be their king, and their dream died that day. They despaired. They doubted. They questioned God. What was this all about? There have been times you and I have done that same thing. When life has not gone the way we expected it to go, we struggle with doubt-when God does not answer our prayers in the way we think He should. That didnt happen for Zechariah. Zechariah wanted nothing more than to have a child, especially to have a male offspring to carry on his name. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had been married a long time but with no offspring. Its sad when a couple wants to conceive and cant. In those days, it was more than just that. In those days, if you did not conceive a child, the woman would have been viewed upon with disgrace. So, Elizabeth and Zechariah prayed. God did not answer their prayers. Were going to find in this story that God is going to break a silence of 400 years, and Hes going to speak for the first time in 400 years though the angel Gabriel to Zechariah. Zechariah is a priest, and he has a duty that day. He has been chosen by lot to go in the temple and burn incense, one of those divine coincidences that weve encountered from time to time. While in the temple, he encounters an angel, and hes afraid. Every time that man encounters an angel in the Bible, he is afraid. Do you notice that? Do you think angels look like those little chubby things that we always see Renaissance art? Probably not. They were probably pretty imposing and terrifying figures. So, he says, Do not be afraid, Zechariah…Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. I want to back up a second. Do not be afraid Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Zechariah is probably thinking, What prayer? The prayer to have a son. Zechariah had long forgotten about that prayer, but God hadnt. God has never forgotten one prayer that youve prayed. There are prayers that youve have forgotten decades ago, but God has not forgotten them. Zechariah had given up hope. He was old. He should be a grandparent. Theres no way hes going to be a parent. That was a dream that had died. Some of us will pray something for days, weeks, months, maybe even years, but soon we give up and stop and we forget, but God has not forgotten. God says, That prayer is going to be answered. Youre going to have a son. You will name him John, the graciousness of God. John the Baptist is going to be born from him. We think of John the Baptist as this bold in your face kind of a person, wrath of God kind of person, but actually John was about the grace of God, wasnt he? He was about repentance and forgiveness and restoration, so he lived up to his name. Thats for sure. [Continuing with Verse 14] He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 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 from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous--to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Hes going to have a place of honor. He is going to usher in the time of Messiah. He is the one spoken of by the prophets who prepares the way. Can we put up [on the overhead] the verse from Malachi Chapter 4? Do we have that? There it is. This is the last of the Old Testament, right here. After Malachi, Malachi is the last writer of the Old Testament… When he makes this last statement, that closes out the old covenant. [Malachi 4:5, page 951 of pew Bibles] See, I send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers… Do you recall reading those words recently? Is that not what Gabriel said to Zechariah about his son John? You see, between Malachi and Luke, its a seamless transition. God picks up exactly where He left off. The last thing God spoke was that a prophet in the tradition of Elijah was coming to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, and the first words spoken of God through Gabriel were that time is now. God breaks the silence and continues on right where He left off. He said, That time is here. Youd think Zechariah would just be thrilled. Youd think hed go, Wow! I get to be the father of Messiah! but look at his response. [Luke 1, middle of Verse 18] How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years. Some of us have said, Well, I wish I knew the will of God better. I wish God would just send an angel to tell me His will. Well, that wasnt even good enough for Zechariah. God did that very thing, and he still needed to know more: Youve called me by my name. Youve called me by my wifes name. You reminded me about a prayer long forgotten. Youve told me the gender of my child, the first name of my child, what hes going to be like, his temperament, his ministry, what he will accomplish, what his task will be, but you know, I still need some more. Im still not sure. It doesnt go over well with Gabriel. It doesnt go well. He says, Im Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. If that would have been me, I would have went (Pastor flicks his head), Come on! Wake up! Im an angel and he cant speak. Hes not allowed to speak until the prophesy is fulfilled. He comes out, and his family is like, Whats going on? He is using sign language. They realize hes seen a vision. Finally, the son is born, and they name him John. Well learn about that next week. Then we transition to Mary. We find Mary, a young maiden. She is going to be married to a man named Joseph. That same angel, Gabriel, is sent to her in Galilee. He greets her and says in Verse 28, The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of this Father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end. Verse 34, How will this be, Mary asked the angel since I am a virgin? Notice they were both told by the angel they were going to have a child unexpectedly. The old man, the old priest, the ministry professional questions God, but this young maiden does not. You can be old in the Lord and have less faith than somebody who is young in the Lord. You can grow chronologically in years, but God never wants you to grow old in faith. He had been a priest in the Lord a long time; yet when it came down to God giving him his plan, it was the old priest who doubted and the young maiden who believed. Dont their questions sound sort of similar? They both question the angel. One of them is unable to speak. Im sure glad God doesnt act that way toward us when we doubt Him. If that were to happen, Id say more than half of us on any given Sunday couldnt speak. He doesnt act that way. Didnt Mary question too? Lets look at those two verses. Lets look at Zechariahs response and Marys response together. Zechariah says, How can I be sure of this? Im not sure what you said is going to happen. I need to know. I need more proof. Mary, on the other hand, says, How will this be? Mary doesnt question that its going to happen. She just wants to know how. She has a right to know quite frankly. If you had been told by God, Youre going to have a baby. Youre going to bear the Messiah, and youre not married, and God is going to impregnate you somehow, youve got a right to know some details. Its a logical question. As best he could, Gabriel tried to give her an answer. Which are you here? When life pulls the rug out from under your feet…When life takes an unexpected turn, and youre future looks uncertain, do you respond as Zechariah or Mary? When something happens in your life, God has asked you to do something or say something you are not necessarily comfortable with, how do you respond? Like Zechariah? Or like Mary? Are you the kind of person that needs signs upon signs? Or do you say, God, Im going to take You at Your Word. Im going to trust You. Mary looked at the promise. Zechariah looked at the problem. If youre in doubt this morning, I guarantee you the place youre looking is at the problem and not at the promise. If you look at the problem, youre going to be shook up. If you look at the promise, youre going to have faith. Zechariah looked at himself because he was the problem. He said, Well, I cant. Im old. I should be a grandpa, and youre telling me Im going to be a dad. I think youve made a mistake. Im not sure this is really going to happen because, you know, Elizabeth is really not a spring chicken either here. He looked at himself. Sometimes we do that. We look at ourselves and say, Well, I cant. How many times in the Bible did God call somebody to do something, and their response was, Well, I cant do that. Im too young or Im too old or whatever excuse they give. You and I have given the same excuses to God because weve looked at the problem. God never told you to look at the problem. He told you to look at the promise. Dont look within; look to Him. Mary looked to Him, and she said, I dont know exactly how its going to happen, but you know what? Youre in charge. Be it done unto me according to Your Word. Faith is kind of like a trapeze, a flying trapeze. Whenever I go to the circus, Im always amazed at the flying trapeze. I think one of the reasons is because I am deathly afraid of heights. If I were the flying trapeze guy, I would climb up about one-third of the ladder, look down, see how far up I was and think, Ive accomplished something significant here, and go, Ta-da! Then Id climb back down. Thats about all youd get from me, but these guys climb way up, and they get on those bars. They start swinging back and forth. Theres the flyer and the catcher. The flyer is going back and forth, and the catcher is upside down, holding on with his knees. He has his arms extended. Theyre flying back and forth, waiting for the right time. At a certain designated time, the flyer releases the bar, and he has now entered the realm of faith. He is now trusting someone else to catch him. If youre the flyer, you dont try to catch the catcher. You let the catcher catch you. Ive never done this before. I never want to do this. But from what I understand, if youre flailing your arms or moving around, the catcher cant catch you. Your job is to be still and allow the catcher to catch you. You do not catch God; God catches you. Faith is that time from the time you release the bar until the time God catches you. That time in between-which sometimes seems forever-thats the realm of faith. To some of us, God has said, Let go of the bar, and we look down and go, Uh-uh. Not yet, a few more swings because we like to be in control, dont we? We want to be in charge. Last week, we said that if you have not accepted Christ, you have rejected Christ. If youre in charge of your life, Hes not. Let go and trust Him. Take that step of faith. But some people want to be in charge and do not like to let go. When you let go, thats faith. Then when God answers, when God grabs a hold of you; and you no longer need faith, do you? Because now the answers come. The manifestations come. When Mary became pregnant, and her belly started to swell up, and she knew she had not had relations with Joseph, did she need faith to believe that shed be pregnant at that point? No. When Elizabeth starts to show, will Zechariah need faith to believe that she is pregnant? No. He needed faith before. From the time you let go until the time God catches you, that time right in there, thats faith. Thats not fun for a lot of us. Thats not a natural thing. A natural thing is to hold on. Its unnatural to let go. Its unnatural to be dependent upon somebody else, but thats exactly what God has called you and me to do. Habakkuk 2:4 says the just shall what by faith? Live by faith. God has called this to be a lifestyle for you and me. What was Mary called? Mary was called highly favored, wasnt she? It says, You are highly favored. God thinks a lot of you, Mary. God has chosen you for a very special path. What was Marys response? May it be done to me as you have said. I am the Lords servant. Do you think thats the first time Mary responded that way to God? No. I think Mary was a person who had a reckless abandon in her faith and trust. Thats exactly the reason why she was chosen. She was chosen because of that very fact that faith for Mary had become a lifestyle. God doesnt want faith to be an event for us that every once in a while, we muster up some faith. He wants you to live by faith. When was the last time that you let go of the bar, figuratively speaking, and had to trust God or you would have fallen? If its been a long time, youre not living by faith. When was the last time you did something on the edge? You said, Im just going to trust you, God. Thats faith. Thats where God wants us to live, and its not easy to live there. Its much easier to just hold on to the bar and trust myself than to let go and let God. God doesnt call us to do something ridiculous and stupid. Dont run out on HWY 90 and say, Stop in the name of the Lord. Youre going to be a pancake. But if God has called you to do something, take that step of faith. God has called you and I as believers and as a church not to take the safe road all the time. Its not natural, but do you know what? The more you live in faith, the more natural it becomes. After a while, those catchers and flyers become so skilled and proficient that you can take the net away, and some do. They take the net away, risking their very lives; and they let go of the bar and just be still, and they let the catcher catch them. God wants us to come to the point, like Mary, when things happen that we dont understand or we may not like- we might be surprised by-and we can say, I dont understand everything thats going on, but Im going to trust You. Im going to let go of the bar, whatever that bar represents in your life, and Im going to trust you. The good news is that for those who release the bar and enter into the realm of faith, God has never dropped any of them. He has never dropped a single person. Five or so years ago, we decided we were going to learn to go scuba diving. We took some classes and went into the pool at Milton High School. That was going to be our first experience. Wed read about scuba diving. Wed watch people scuba dive. We became familiar with the equipment, but we had never actually gone under the water. Your first task as a student is simply to breathe, to get used to being under water breathing because its not natural. There is a problem. Man was not made-created-to breathe under water. The promise is that this equipment has the design to enable me to do something I cannot do on my own, cannot do naturally. So I put my faith in that equipment and I inhale when Im submerged under water. Thats the job. All you have to do first up is just breathe. So you go down there, and theres a little bit of anxiety before you take that first breath. You know you have the equipment on, but you also know this is water and you think, What if some of this gets in my lungs? Then you think, Im in the shallow end of a pool. I think Ill make it. You go, Here goes nothing. You let go of the bar, and you go, Pffffff. You get air, and you breathe it out. Usually, you watch all these rookies learning how to scuba dive; theyre all kind of hyperventilating under the water. When you go up, there are a lot of bubbles because you are breathing in and out very, very fast. Youre a little bit scared. After a while, you start to relax, and you take long, deep breathes. You start to trust, and you say, You know what? This stuff works. Im breathing, and Im under water. The next time you go scuba diving, youre not anxious about that because you know this stuff works. The promise works. That is what its like in the realm of faith. Mary, even at this young age, knew that faith worked. She knew that God would equip her and enable her to do something she couldnt otherwise naturally do, so Mary doesnt have time to process it. She doesnt say, Give me a few days to think about this. I need more proof, like Zechariah. Mary just says, I dont understand everything. I dont know how its all going to work, but you know what? Youre God. Lets do it. She lets go. Thats where God wants you and me to be, a person who lives a lifestyle of faith, who takes some spiritual risks. Im not saying you all have to sell your homes and move to Haiti like Pastor Sean and Heather, but what if He does call you to do that? What if God does tell you to do something radical for Him? What if God tells you on Monday morning to share about Him to the cranky guy at work? As soon as you open your mouth and start to speak and start sharing your faith, youve let go of the bar. So if youre saying, How do you like the weather today? Its pretty cold, isnt it? Youre holding on. But as soon as you say, You know, I just wanted to invite you to my church. Or you go, You know, Ive been going through what youve gone through, and my faith has helped me. Heres how. The moment you start to speak that, youve just let go. You are now in the realm of faith. When was the last time you let go of the bar and trusted God? Lets pray: Father, Your Word says that we are to be people of faith. Its not to be something sporadic or occasional. It is to be normative. It is to be characteristic of who we are. You want us to live by this stuff called faith, to trust. Its a dependency in something other than ourselves. Its a trust in You. We can also have a confidence knowing that weve got the best catcher in the business. Youve never dropped one who has surrendered to You. Those who fight and struggle have a difficult time; but those who surrender and are still, like Mary, theyre caught and theyre sustained. I pray that Your Holy Spirit would tell us what that bar is in our lives that we need to let go of. Those who are right now in that act of faith, who have taken those steps of obedience and have not yet been caught; theres not yet been a manifestation of the promise, my prayer, Lord, is theyll stay the course. They will realize that You are aware, that You will provide. Lord, we have been Zechariah all too often. We have heard Your leading, and weve not followed. We have seen a turn in the road that we did not like, an unexpected obstacle along our path, and weve desired to turn back instead of pressing on. Help us as a people and as a church to be a people of faith, to trust You. In Your name we pray, Amen.