Amy C Walters

The Birth of John the Baptist Foretold – Luke 1:18-25

God is making a huge promise to Zechariah in this story–a baby for his barren wife. Will God fulfill it? Elizabeth’s miracle pregnancy should build our confidence that God always keeps his promises. 

This story and the previous story rely heavily on promises. In fact, a lot of the tension in the story comes from this question, will God fulfill this promise?

You have the promise that the angel delivers to Zechariah at the temple, that in spite of this decades-long wait that they’ve had, that God will provide them with a baby.

This promise seems really far-fetched because as we’re reminded several times, Zechariah and Elizabeth are too old. Zechariah is an old man. Elizabeth is beyond the age of giving birth. And so they are completely unable in themselves to fulfill this promise. This promise is completely dependent upon God’s intervention to fulfill. So that’s one level of this promise.

But there’s another larger scale to this promise. The angel references it when he’s bringing to mind these prophecies in the Old Testament from Isaiah and other passages that talk about someone who will prepare the way for the Messiah. The angel in effect is saying, “This child that’s going to be born to you is going to fulfill that promise from centuries ago.”

So even though this promise to Zechariah and Elizabeth seems totally unlikely, the angel doubles down and says, “Not only are you going to have a child, he’s going to fulfill God’s promises from centuries ago.”

There are tons of people who are impacted by this promise, not just Zechariah and Elizabeth, but really the whole world has its attention drawn to this couple, to this child and eventually to the Messiah.

But there are a lot of obstacles standing in the way of these promises being fulfilled. What are some of them?

For one thing, the fact of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s age. Physically, this pregnancy and birth is impossible. There’s no way that it could happen without divine intervention. That’s a major obstacle.

There’s the obstacle of Zechariah’s own doubt. He’s thinking of those obstacles and he even expresses to the angel, “How can I be sure of this?” So Zechariah himself is doubting this promise, he’s calling it into question, but even that doesn’t stand in the way.

And when you look, too, at the bigger promise, this fulfillment of prophecy, these prophecies happened centuries ago. It’s been a long wait for these prophecies to be fulfilled and that passage of time itself can be seen as an obstacle. Will this actually happen? We have been waiting and waiting and it hasn’t happened.

So there are major obstacles standing in the way of these promises, but what happens? In our story, we have Zechariah challenging the angel and the angel’s response. We have Zechariah coming out of the temple to face the crowds and him pantomiming to them because he can’t speak. And then when Zechariah’s service is completed, he returns home and a little while after that, his wife Elizabeth becomes pregnant.

It’s stated so simply in this story that it would be so easy just to gloss over and miss the weight of those words, to miss the reality that it doesn’t matter what obstacle has been in the way, this promise has been fulfilled.

Elizabeth is pregnant, and this baby is gonna come.

Not because Elizabeth and Zechariah were able to make it happen. Not because of anything special that the angel did. This was God at work. He promised it, he made it happen.

Because our key truth for today reminds us that God always keeps his promises.

It doesn’t matter what’s in the way. If God says it’s gonna happen, it happens.

It’s such a foundational truth that we easily lose sight of because we’re conditioned to be disappointed by promises. We’ve all experienced a broken promise. We’ve all been someone who’s broken our own promise as well. And we’ve all also experienced promises not living up to their advertisement, not living up to the hype.

That’s something that my daughter is experiencing right now as she sees commercials and toys, and she wants those toys, and she gets them, and she realizes this is not what it’s cracked up to be.

Those are painful lessons, aren’t they? And they can condition us to expect the same from God.

So that’s why even though this is a really simple truth, it has a profound impact on our lives, to recognize that God always keeps his promises and that those promises are worth waiting for. Those are promises that will not disappoint us.

What are those promises that we have? Promises that God will never leave us or forsake us. Promises that the work that he started in us, he will bring to completion. Promises that he has set aside good works for us to do. Promises that we have an inheritance in heaven that’s waiting for us that will not perish, spoil or fade.

These are promises that God will keep every last one of them and they will prove to be worth it.

God does not exaggerate. He does not do false advertisement. God’s promises are trustworthy.