Zechariah Prays...
When Zechariah went into the temple to perform his term of service, "the whole multitude of the people were praying outside" (Luke 1).
What were they praying? What the Jews always prayed for....salvation from our enemies...and from the hand of all who hate us.....that God would remember to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.....
Did they realize God was at work? Maybe veiled from their eyes, but that for the last 500 years He had been preparing the world for the coming Messiah.
But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, that we might receive the full rights as sons (Galatians 4:4-5).
Or as in the King James Version..."in the fullness of time..."
God sent His Son, that we might be called the children of God (I John 3:1).
At the exact right moment, God intervened in history and sent to us His Son so that we, too, could become children of God!
God is at work.....
From the destruction of the temple in 586 BC, through the Babylonian captivity, through the return from exile, through the oppressions of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, God was busy at work, preparing His people and the world for His great rescue mission.
Look at some of the things that God did during those 500 years, preparing the world for His Visitation:
1. The Greek culture had saturated the known civilized world and its language was spoken throughout all the kingdoms. A common language makes communication so much easier!
2. The Old Testament canon was organized and, in its entirety, translated from Hebrew into Greek, making its message accessible to all. (Translation was known as the Septuagint, completed around 270 BC, commonly called the LXX. It was written particularly to accommodate the dispersed Jews who were by then speaking Greek as their usual language.)
3. God used the destruction of the temple in 586 BC and the exile of the Jews to Babylon to create a synagogue structure, a model for local congregations of the coming Church. People learned to worship God without the temple.
4. God purified Israel from idolatry and mixing with other religions. After the destruction and fall of Jerusalem, Jews never again embraced other "gods." They were cleansed.
Not only that, as monotheism became permanently central to Israel it became the foundation of Christian thought and all of western civilization.
5. The dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the Greek/Roman empire provided a mission base by which Paul could carry the gospel to small Jewish communities throughout the world. Because of the synagogues and scattered groups of Jews, Paul could organize his vast mission trips and begin the spread of the gospel.
6. Because of their strict belief in monotheism, Christ's claims to be God led to the priests delivering Him up to be crucified, which, of course, was the central issue of God's rescue plan!
7. The Greek culture unified the world, and the Roman Empire with its vast system of roads (used initially for military conquest and control) united the world in a way never before in world history. It was convenient for the gospel to flow from nation to nation, and there was easy access to all areas of the empire. That made the spread of the gospel possible.
God worked His plan through the suffering of His people....
God was busy at work, weaving a extraordinary historical tapestry. But it all worked through the suffering of Israel. Without the Babylonian captivity, there would have no coming of the Messiah, no cross, no Christianity, and no civilization today as we know it.
In Psalm 137 we read about the sorrow of the Jewish people in captivity in Babylon:
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps,
for there our captors demanded songs of joy;
They said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
Five hundred years before Christ as born, the Jews were praying that they be saved from their enemies and that Jerusalem be restored to them.
Now, here, in Luke's account, while Zechariah was in the temple praising God for His revealed redemption, his family and friends were outside having a prayer meeting.
And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshippers are praying outside...
(Luke 1:10).
They prayed. God worked. The Messiah arrived...
"in the fullness of time."
Our God is always at work.
