INTRO: We began to look at the Christmas story last Sunday and I am going through the Christmas story in a chronological fashion. We saw in the last message the long, 4,000 year wait until the Messiah finally came. Adam lived for almost a thousand years and still no Messiah, then the flood came and then the time of Abraham. We are now 2,000 years after creation and still no Messiah. Then king Saul and David came along and we are now some 3,000 years from creation and still no Messiah. Then the prophets wrote and they too fell silent, about 3,600 years after creation and then God's voice was stilled for 400 years and still no Messiah.
Yet the Jews kept up their temple rituals. And then one year, the lot to burn incense in the temple fell on a priest by name of Zachariah. Zachariah and his wife were elderly by this time and they had no child. But that year, as he did his duties in the temple, the angel Gabriel paid him a visit and he promised that they would now have a child.
Then, some six months later the Lord sent the angel Gabriel with a message to a young woman in Nazareth in Galilee of the Gentiles and he told her that she had found favor with God and would be the bearer of the Messiah. She agreed to this. And we wondered, what did she tell her parents? How did they let her go the long distance to Ein Karem where Elizabeth, the wife of Zachariah, a relative of theirs lived. But she went there. She stayed with her for several months. |
