1 The Birth of the Forerunner
Scripture: Luke 1:5-25; 57-80
The darkness of the night
Four hundred years had passed since the voice of prophecy was
last heard in
The “night” was indeed dark. Herod, an Edomite, a
descendant therefore of Esau, sat on David’s throne. He had been planted there by
the Romans, under whose dominion the Jews chafed. The scepter seemed surely to have
departed from
Worse still was the growing apostasy of the Jews generally. Under the leadership of the scribes and
Pharisees, religion had become a matter of mere form—a service of the lips
and not of the heart. And when John the Baptist, and then Christ Himself, would
later declare that the kingdom of heaven was at hand (Matt. 3:2 and
The promise of God, however, is sure. In fact, the prophet
Malachi had foretold that it would be in dark days such as these that the Lord would
“suddenly come to his temple” (Mal. 3:1). And thus it happened.
In the days of wicked Herod, the king of
Zacharias and Elisabeth
Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth lived alone, for God had not
given them any children. Elisabeth was barren (1:7), so while her women friends were
becoming mothers in
Though disappointed that he had no children to bring up in the
fear of the Lord, Zacharias was happy that he was able at least to serve God in another
way. For he was a priest in
Zacharias is chosen to burn the incense
The particular tasks
assigned to each priest were determined by the casting of lots. In that way there would be
a sharing of the work, so that certain priests would not, for example, every time
have to do the cleanup chores. Early every morning the priests eagerly awaited the casting
of the lots to find out what their work for the day would be.
One day, so we are
told, it was the lot of Zacharias to burn the incense in the
Zacharias watched while other priests cleaned the altar of burnt
offering and placed fresh wood on it, and while still others killed the sacrificial lamb
and sprinkled its blood on the altar.
And then it was his turn. He and two other priests prepared to
enter the
Once inside, the two priests who accompanied Zacharias prepared
the altar by spreading the live coals over its top. Then they went back out into the Court
of the Priests, leaving Zacharias standing alone next to the altar of incense, with the
censer of incense in his hand. The old priest listened there for the sound of a bell,
which was the signal for the people in the courts to be quiet and to pray to God. When he
heard the bell, he took the censer and poured the incense over the live coals, so that,
while the people were praying, and while he also as a priest prayed for them, the smoke
of the burning incense would pass through the veil and fill the Holy of Holies with a
sweet, pleasing aroma.
Significance of the burning of incense
Twice every day, at the hour of prayer, priests burned incense in
this way in the
Do you know why they did that? They did it of course because God told
them to do it. But what was the purpose of it all?
What did this twice-daily ceremony mean?
Think of it this way: In Old Testament
How did it do that?
How could sweet-smelling incense make prayers acceptable to God, who is not,
like a man, affected by pleasing aromas? It is true, of course, that the odor meant
nothing to God. What was important was that the incense was burning on coals taken
from the altar of burnt offering, on which was sprinkled the blood of the lamb that was
killed for a sacrifice to God. And why was that important? Because the sacrifice of
the lamb was an Old Testament picture of the death of Christ, who is the Lamb of
God, sent by God to take away the sin of His people in the world.
What right did
Ceremony abolished in new dispensation, but truth of it retained
No longer today do we kill animals for sacrifice to God. No longer do we burn incense on
live coals taken from the altar of burnt offering. That’s because we no longer need
signs pointing us to the coming of Jesus, for Jesus has already come. But that
doesn’t mean that we are no longer sinners. It doesn’t mean that we, any more
than the saints of God in the Old Testament, can come to God in ourselves. And
we don’t either. What the people of God once did, in a picture, by burning incense,
we do in our prayers when we close them with those little words that are so very
important, “for Jesus’ sake, Amen.”
The appearance of Gabriel before Zacharias
Now, what was it that
Zacharias prayed in the
At a time such as
that, he would surely pray for
The old priest was of
course frightened, for he knew himself to be a sinner in the presence of this heavenly
messenger. The angel, however, told Zacharias not to be afraid, for the news he had was
good: Your prayer is heard. The Christ will come soon.
In fact, your own wife will have a son, whose name you must call John, who
will be the herald, the forerunner, of the Messiah (
Necessity of a forerunner for the Messiah
A herald is one who
goes before another, before an important person, to announce his coming and to prepare
the people for his coming. Such would be the work of John the Baptist. It was a work that
was foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures. “Behold, I will send my
messenger,” God had said through Malachi the prophet, “and he shall prepare the
way before me” (Mal. 3:1).
But why, we might ask, would it be necessary to prepare
the people for something that they had been told was coming, and for something to which
they had been looking forward eagerly for hundreds, even thousands, of years?
It is because the
Jews were looking for the wrong thing. A Messiah they surely wanted, but they
wanted a Messiah who would lead their armies in victory against their earthly enemies and
make the Jewish nation great again in the eyes of the world. For that kind of a
Messiah they would need no preparation. But for a Lamb of God, who would take away
the sin of the world—for that kind of a Messiah they needed to be prepared.
The forerunner, therefore, must turn the hearts of the children of
Zacharias’ disbelief
These were the things of which the angel Gabriel spoke to
Zacharias in the
But it was just too much, too sudden, and too unexpected for old
Zacharias. He couldn’t all at once understand, get a hold of, all the things that the
angel of God told him. There was however one idea that right away did strike home: You are
going to have a son. And Zacharias just couldn’t believe that. He understood
that it was an angel of God Himself who said it, but he could not believe it. He
and his wife were both old—and old people just do not have babies.
“Whereby shall I know this?” he therefore asked the
angel, “for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years” (Luke
What he was saying, really, was, “This cannot
happen . . . because I am old.” And Gabriel’s answer amounted
to this: “This will happen . . . because I am Gabriel. I
stand in the presence of God. My message is from Him. It is His word that you are
doubting.”
Furthermore, the angel said, “You ask for a sign? A sign
will be given you. You will be dumb, not able to speak, till the word of God is fulfilled
in the birth of your son” (
Curiosity of the people
With that, the angel was gone, and Zacharias was left alone in
the
The people in the temple courts, meanwhile, were beginning to
wonder why Zacharias stayed so long in the
When Zacharias finally did come out to them, the people had all
the more reason to wonder. For, when he took his place on the steps where he was supposed
to give the benediction, the old priest could not utter a single sound. Zacharias made
motions with his hands, and the people guessed correctly that he had seen a vision in the
A happy couple awaits the birth of John
At the end of his
week of service in the temple, Zacharias returned to his home in the hill country of
Zacharias would have
loved to have been able to talk about all that with his wife, but he could not.
Because his faith had faltered and he had doubted the word of the angel, he could not
say a word. He could share the news with Elisabeth only by writing it all out.
Nevertheless, they were very happy, and together they waited for the birth of John.
The naming of the child
In due time Elisabeth
gave birth to a baby boy. And when the child was eight days old, all of the friends and
relatives of Zacharias and Elisabeth came together to celebrate with them the
circumcising and the naming of the child (1:59).
The new parents had said nothing about the name of their baby
boy, but all of the guests were sure that it would be Zacharias. It was common in those
days, as it is today, for a man to name one of his sons after himself. Zacharias was too
old to expect another son, so he would surely, they thought, want to name this
one Zacharias.
But when they began to refer to the baby as little Zacharias,
Elisabeth told them that that was not to be. His name, she said, must be John (1:60).
Puzzled by that, the guests all looked toward Zacharias, to see
if this was really what he wanted. (“Nodded
toward,” incidentally, is evidently a better translation here than “made signs
to,” which has led some commentators, mistakenly, to assume that Zacharias must
have been also deaf. There is no good evidence for that in the text.) Zacharias responded
by motioning for a writing tablet, and on it he wrote simply, “His name is John”
(1:62, 63).
Meaning of the name
No better name could there be for such a child as this. For John
means “the Lord is gracious.”
The Lord was gracious, of course, in giving to this old couple
a son. But, during the months in which Zacharias was waiting for the birth of his son, he
had begun to understand that the little baby he would hold in his arms would be far more
than a gift of God to two old people. The child was a gift to all of God’s
people. That would be true because John’s great work would not stand alone. He would
prepare the way for the Lord Himself. You might say that the Messiah, the long-awaited
Redeemer, was at the very door, and John’s work would be to introduce Him.
What was important, therefore, in all of this, was not first of
all Zacharias and Elisabeth and their happiness. It was the fact that Christ was coming
soon, for His forerunner was born, was alive, was in their very arms. God is indeed
gracious—to all of His people. Redemption is near.
So . . . “his name is John!”
The song of Zacharias
Did Zacharias understand that? Listen to him. Yes, we can listen
to him. For all of a sudden he talks. For nearly ten months he had been unable to say so
much as one word. But now, right after he wrote “His name is John,” his voice
comes back and he bursts into praise to God.
And what did he say? Did he say anything about himself? Did he
talk about how glad he was that God had given them a baby in their old age—so that
they could have the joy of bringing up a son, and so that they would not, as they had
before thought, die childless?
No, he spoke only of
salvation and redemption—for
John’s preparation for his great work
That was the
“song of Zacharias.” And that is the last we hear of Zacharias and Elisabeth.
How long they lived after the birth of John we do not know. Very likely they lived long
enough to give him godly instruction in his childhood—but almost certainly not
long enough to see him begin his work as forerunner of Christ.
We do not read
anything about John either, from the time of his circumcision on the eighth day, to the
time of his “showing unto
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