Love That Remembers (Derik Fuller) | Expectant

Good morning. If you've made it here in

person, congratulations. You have survived at least part

of the plague thus far. If you're joining us online and

you're sick in bed or you're home with sick kids where you're

glad that you can join us there as well, turn in your Bibles to

Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter one, verse 5 is

Luke 1 · chapter mention

where we're going to be today. Before I get started, I want to

recognize somebody this morning. It's Vern Farrow here.

Where's Vern? Oh, right there.

I I'm not going to make you come up on stage, Vern, because.

Because I love you. But some of you know, about 7

years ago, Vern stepped down from full time working on staff

here at the church to part time. Vern's now decided he's ready

for full retirement. And we are so thankful for Vern.

Yeah, you can give him a round of applause, Vern.

You can correct me if my numbers are wrong, but 25 years on staff

is what I heard. 2620, Oh, there you can take out with your

daughter. You guys can argue about that.

And then 35 or more years just serving in production as a whole

here on the church, both volunteer and staff.

So thank you for that. One of my favorite kind of

Christmas tropes is like the commercial that comes on where

kid has moved away from home and mom and dad are getting all

ready for Christmas and they think they're going to do it

like a video call with their kid.

They get on the call and all of a sudden they realized as the

doorbell rings, the kid they're on the call with has showed up

right there at the house that day.

That gets me every time. I think the older I get, the

older my kids get, the more I think about that, it gets me

even more. In fact, we had a personal

example of that this last Christmas.

At Christmas Eve. I was out there, I was greeting

people as they were leaving. And then all of the sudden I saw

Greg and Kate Isaac and I thought, what you guys are

supposed to be in Nicaragua? What are you doing here?

And it, it was just a joy that they were able to be present

right there in that moment. And I think that's because love

and presence go hand in hand, right?

We, we, we want to be with the people that we love and we

experience love in the presence of others.

So it's absolutely true, as the old saying goes, that absence

makes the heart grow fonder. There, there is a sense of a

longing that takes place when we're separated from people by a

distance. But there is a shift that can

take place in our hearts where, where there's just a long

absence, where it seems like we haven't seen somebody or heard

from somebody in such a, in such a long time that it starts to

feel like we wonder if we've been actually forgotten by them.

Maybe you don't get a phone call from a kid or from a loved one,

from a friend in such a long period of time that you start to

feel neglected and you start to wonder how important you really

are in their life. And I think that that's not just

true in our human relationships, but it's true in our

relationship with God, that there's a lot of people who

struggle. And maybe you're in those choose

today because you feel like you've been forgotten by God.

You're not sensing his presence. It feels like it's been a long

while since you've heard his voice.

Yes, sometimes doubt arises because of suffering, but I'm

convinced there's a whole lot of people where doubt in God, maybe

not in his existence, but in his love for them arises because of

his silence even more than the suffering when prayers go

unanswered. Years pass by when dreams seem

to fall to the wayside and life starts to turn out very

differently than we had hoped for or expected.

And and there's questions that begin to bubble up in our hearts

and in our souls where we're like God, Why?

Why are you answering? I mean, you tell me you care,

but but I'm not hearing from you.

God, have you forgotten about me?

God, do you really still love me?

We've talked about this by we're in Advent.

This is the fourth week, the last Sunday of Advent, and

Advent is this season of waiting.

And often times that season of waiting feels like a season of

silence. And in the story that we're

going to look at today, I am sure that the 2 characters,

Zechariah and Elizabeth, had long stretches of time where

they struggled in the waiting because God felt so silent.

And I think that their story reminds us of this truth by the

end, that God's love never forgets his people, even when we

feel forgotten by him. So let's work our way through

this story, this passage together, starting at verse 5.

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest of

Abijah's division named Zechariah.

His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was

Elizabeth. Both were righteous in God's

sight, living without blame according to all the commands

and requirements of the Lord. But they had no children because

Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along

in years. So we learn a few things about

these two characters, Zechariah and Elizabeth, in just this

first section of this passage. First of all, we learned that

they were righteous. This has been kind of a

recurring theme of characters that we've looked at and their

stories over these past four weeks.

But we learn again, in this case, Zechariah and Elizabeth,

God refers to them as righteous. They, they love God, they served

God, they were as far as we can be as human beings, obedient to

God. That doesn't mean they never

messed up or they never failed, but but they had a deep heart

and care for and faith in and obedience to God.

So we learned that they were righteous.

We learned they were childless and, and not a not a conscious

childlessness. This was not a choice that they

wanted to make. This is just a painful reality

in their life. And I think it's really

important that we recognize that this childlessness in the

society in which they found themselves in would be a deep

shame. It would point to many people

that they must be under the curse of God in some way because

children are a blessing. And so if God has not blessed

them, then why is that? And then we see they're both

well along in years, which means they're not just childless, but

they're hopeless about there being a child, about there being

a change in the childlessness that this moment seems to have

passed them by these, these righteous people.

For some reason, God has not blessed them with a child.

And there doesn't seem to be any hope on the horizon.

So what we have here is people, faithful people with unmet

longings, with unmet prayers, with unanswered prayers.

And the first thing I want us to see is that unanswered prayers

aren't necessarily evidence that we've failed to love God.

Luke, Luke is going out of his way to make this point.

If we understand the context and the culture, Luke is saying

Zechariah and Elizabeth, they're unable to have a child that they

desperately want to have. But for Zechariah and Elizabeth,

this is nothing of their do. They didn't do anything to make

God angry or to deserve this. They're righteous and faithful

people. And for some of us here or

listening online, I think the thing that you need to hear in

the midst of maybe your unmet prayers, unanswered prayers,

deep longings, is don't jump to the conclusion that just because

God hasn't answered your prayer, he doesn't care about you.

He doesn't love you, or more importantly, that you don't love

him, that you've failed him, but this is somehow God's punishment

in your life. Does God ever discipline us?

Of course he does. He wouldn't be a loving dad, He

wouldn't be a loving father if there weren't times where we

were disciplined. Hebrews 12/5 to 11 talks about

this reality that God disciplines those whom he loves.

If we're his kids, he's going to discipline us.

I remember growing up, I had a friend and I thought he was the

luckiest kid in the world, man, because that kid could do

anything and not get in trouble, right?

Like just anything. He, he would run out there, he'd

do crazy stuff. And I'd be like, are you going

to get grounded for that? And he's like, no, who's going

to do it? I thought he was so lucky.

And then one day I just realized, no, he's just so

unloved. Because when you love a kid, you

discipline them. You don't want them to do things

that are going to be hurtful or harmful to them.

You see where a roads are going to lead and you try and cut it

off before they get to a point of destruction.

So unanswered prayer is not proof of our failure to love

God, and unanswered prayer is not evidence that God has failed

to love us. Again, we need to understand

this. God never anywhere in His Word,

makes a promise that if you love Him and follow Him, everything

that you desire and want in that moment, every prayer you utter,

everything is going to go according to your plan.

If you find that Scripture, you come bring it to me.

We'll talk about that. But God's promise is this.

I love you so much. I sent my son to you.

I sent him to die for you. And if you place your faith in

him, I'll give you life and I'll give you life to the fullest.

And, and there will be a life that blows all of the realities

and expectations away that you could ever have in all of the

unmet longings of your heart will one day be met, but that

day is not going to be tomorrow. I imagine Elizabeth and

Zechariah had a lot of moments in the midst of what felt like

unanswered prayers in God's silence, where they sat there

and they wondered, so God did, did we fail you or are you

failing us? Right.

We know they've been praying for this child.

This, the story is going to show us this and I imagine their

prayers were like many of our prayers when we seem to go long,

long periods of time where God seems silent and answering a

prayer. I don't know if this is your

pattern, but I know it's been my pattern.

And in a number of things where I've just been praying and

praying and praying. And early on, right, you're

praying fervently, you're praying with hope.

And then that hope that those prayers of hope, they move to

prayers of desperation. And then kind of as that

desperation kind of fades and you can't live in that space

anymore, desperation turns to prayers of resignation.

You kind of just going through the motions on it.

Like I, I should keep on praying for this, but you know, I don't,

I don't want to put my heart into it anymore.

And then at a certain point when it just seems beyond the realm

of anything ever changing or happening, at least for me in my

life, there's been a lot of times where the prayers just go

silent. I'm just, what's the point if I

keep on praying? You know?

3 weeks ago we looked at the story of Simeon as we kick this

off. And Simeon had a waiting in

expectation, right? He was showing up and God had

made a promise and he was living in expectation of that promise.

But Zechariah and Elizabeth are living in a very different type

of waiting. So I think they have fallen into

living in the waiting of just acceptance.

Maybe that's the space you're in today.

We're you've long since moved past expectation and you're just

kind of in a place of acceptance.

You keep showing up, you keep moving forward, try and put 1

foot in front of the other, but to protect your heart, to keep

yourself from hurting too much, to protect yourself from getting

too disappointed in God, you've stopped expecting and you just

live in acceptance. I think that's where Zechariah

and Elizabeth were. But then one day when ordinary

day Zechariah is going to do his priestly duty, God shows up.

Verse 8. When his division was on duty

and he was serving as priests before God, it happened that he

was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to

enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense.

At the hour of incense the whole assembly of the people was

praying outside, and an Angel of the Lord appeared to him,

standing to the right of the altar of incense.

When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified.

So overcome with fear, the Angel said to him, Don't be afraid,

Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.

Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him

John. There will be joy and delight

for you, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be

great in the sight of the Lord. He'll never drink wine or beer.

He'll be filled with the Holy Spirit.

While still in his mother's womb, he'll turn away.

He'll turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,

and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to

turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the

disobedient to the understanding of the righteous to make ready

for the Lord. A prepared people told you that

they've been praying for a child.

And here's where the Angel confirms it, right?

This is how we know it. He says don't be afraid,

Zechariah, because your prayer, it's been heard.

I wonder how long it had been since Zechariah had last uttered

that prayer. I mean, scholars agree that

Elizabeth here is at a minimum 60 years old, that that when

when they talk about her age there, the cultural threshold

for advanced age was 60 at the time.

They're saying she's well past biological childbearing age.

I would guess that it had been quite a while since Zechariah

had uttered a prayer, expecting that a prayer would be answered

for a child for him. I mean, it's obvious as we're

going to see in a moment that he certainly was not expecting an

answer. He he wasn't expecting God to

show up in any way to answer this.

God tells him then through this Angel, hey, your prayer has been

heard, Zechariah, that prayer that you had forgotten about,

that you had given up on, it's about to be answered.

And then he goes on, he says more.

And it's about so much more than your longing for a baby.

It's about so much more than your longing for a child because

it's about fulfilling a promise that was made from the very

beginning of everything getting all messed up, that a saviour

would come, a rescuer would come, a Messiah was coming.

Your son is going to be the one who prepares the way for that.

And what I see in this, what we see in this, is that what seemed

like delay in answering Zechariah's prayers was actually

God doing something much bigger and better than he ever dared

dream. And I want you to know that the

ultimate proof of God's love for you is found in the coming of

Christ, not in the current status of your prayer.

You can't allow your heart to get pulled off course and to

doubt God's love for you because in this moment your prayer seems

to be left unanswered and unmet. I love the fact that the

unanswered prayer and the coming of the Messiah are tied together

because when we're in that spot, we're tempted to wonder, God,

what are you up to? What are you doing?

Do you care about me? Do you love me?

And what Zechariah and Elizabeth, what they may have

longed for was a son, but what God knew they needed more than

anything was a savior. The granting of their son was

delayed because God understood that they had bigger needs than

they even understood. So what is Zechariah's response

to this incredible news? Verse 18 he says, how can I know

this? Zechariah asks the Angel.

How can I know this? I'm an old man and my wife is

well alone in years. I love that when God finally

shows up and God finally answers Zechariah.

He can't even allow himself to believe it.

And I totally get it. I've been there.

Again, like, it's, it's dangerous.

It just feels dangerous to allow our hearts to begin to hope.

As Gabriel points out, though, an Angel showing up, that's

pretty good proof, right? He says the Angel answers him.

I'm Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent

to speak to you and tell you this good news.

How can I know this? You've got an Angel in front of

you, Zechariah. What more you looking for?

What I what I see is I look at this, I see a guy who knows in

theory that God could do the miraculous.

I mean, he knows in theory that God could even do this miracle.

This is a man who is well acquainted with Scriptures.

He knows this is not the first time this miracle has been done.

He he knows the story of Abraham and Sarah like the back of his

hand. Every good Jewish person knows

Abraham is the father of all those who believe.

He knows that he comes, that his story is one of a woman who was

barren, who gave birth to a child.

That's the story of his entire people.

He knows. But knowing and knowing are two

different things, aren't they? You know what I'm saying,

Knowing God loves you and knowing that God loves you and

trusts you are two different things.

I do wonder how many of us would say, yeah, I know God loves me

Intellectually, I would assent to that statement.

I could write it down on a sheet of paper.

But in this moment, I'm not sure that I know that God loves me.

With what's going on in my life right now, what my head knows,

my heart isn't feeling. I just want to say to you, no,

No matter what you're going through, no matter how silent

God seems, no matter how long you've been praying for that

thing, I can tell you with 100% certainty with something that's

even more miraculous than an Angel showing up to answer your

prayer, that God loves you. Because Romans 58 says this.

God proves his own love for us in this while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us. The cross is a better proof than

an Angel of God's love for you. It's the ultimate good news.

The Angel comes and says, I got good news.

Your prayers been heard, but there's better news to come.

A Savior's coming. God's love is proven at the

cross. Not in the state of your current

circumstances, but the most famous verse in all of

Scripture, John 316 For God so loved the world in that world,

that's you and I. For God so loved the world that

He gave His one and only Son, so whoever would believe in him

would not perish, but have eternal life.

The proof of God's love for you. You don't need an Angel because

He sent you His Son. He sent you something better.

That God came while you and I were still sinners.

We didn't qualify for that title Righteous.

And he loved us anyhow. And he sent his son, not just

ASA, not just a baby, but his son.

He stepped into his creation. That's what we celebrated

Christmas, God with us. The incredible mind blowing

reality of the incarnation that the Creator takes on flesh, he

adds to his divinity, humanity and and comes to be with us.

Not just to be with us, but to die for us so that he could be

with us for all time. That's the invitation that

you're given, the invitation that God has given to you.

His presence showing up to show you his love.

That's why we celebrated Christmas goes on.

Now listen, the Angel says to Zechariah, You will become

silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place,

because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled

in their proper time. Meanwhile, the people were

waiting for Zechariah, amazed he stayed so long in the sanctuary.

When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and then they

realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.

He was making signs to them and remain speechless.

When the days of his ministry were completed, he went back

home. They won't even let him go home

and you got to stay and complete.

You think you got a bad boss? I mean, Zechariah is here.

He comes out, speeches are like Zach.

He's still got some work to do Stick around.

I think it's really ironic that Zechariah manages to stay

righteous and faithful to God when it seemed like God was

silent. But the moment God speaks, he

struggles to believe him. And so he says, OK, well, now

you're going to go silent. And it is important, I think, to

recognize when we fail to trust God and we fail to take him out

there, there's consequences to that.

And some of you, you're living in the mess of some of the

consequences of you failing to take God at his word.

You're, you're living in a mess where you didn't listen to his

commands and you're just living with some of the natural

consequences of being disobedient.

It's not because God doesn't love you.

It's not because God's punishing you.

Maybe today it's like you just you feel anxious and you feel

angry. And deep down, the reason that

you feel anxious and angry is because you're really refusing

to trust God and take Him at His word and believe His promises.

Sometimes there's times where I felt abandoned and I felt

forgotten by God. And in my heart, the reality of

that is I just am failing to believe that when He said in

Matthew 28, I will never leave you or forsake you, that He'll

be with me until the very end of the days.

I struggle to believe that. My heart struggles to believe

that and I deal with the consequences of that sometimes.

But the good news is the story doesn't end with us living in

the consequences of our struggle to even as believers sometimes

believe. Because verse 24 says after

these days his wife conceived and kept herself in conclusion

for five months. So first of all, God still kept

his promise despite Zechariah's failure to to believe that he

would. And then Elizabeth says this.

She said the Lord has done this for me.

He's looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace

among the people. What I want all of us to

understand is that God's love is demonstrated to us through his

unfailing grace. Question, did God owe Zechariah

and Elizabeth the child? Answer no, He doesn't owe them

anything. Something in US says, but they

were righteous. So surely at some point he

should have answered that. Cry.

Let me point out to you that Romans 310 makes clear that

we're none of us are actually righteous.

We are only made righteous through faith in Jesus Christ,

through faith in the Messiah. And Elizabeth and Zechariah had

faith that God would be faithful to His promise in sending a

Savior and sending a Messiah, so they were counted amongst the

righteous. We look back now and if we have

faith in Jesus, that He is our Savior, that He died on the

cross for our sins, then we're made righteous through Christ,

not through what we do, right? That's what 2nd Corinthians 521

says God made him to be who knew no sin to be sin for us so that

we might become the righteousness of God.

So through Jesus we can be made righteous.

But God doesn't owe us anything. He didn't owe Zechariah and

Elizabeth anything. We received that righteousness

by faith through by grace, through faith.

All of us in our sin, we deserve God's wrath and His punishment.

But God in his love offers his Son to us so that we can be made

right with him. He gives us forgiveness.

He gives us grace. He gives us freedom from shame.

That's what the love of God does.

That's what Elizabeth understands.

God is the type of God who gives a love that takes away disgrace.

God is the type of God who who pours out his favor on the

undeserving. That's the type of love he

offers up. That's the type of love that we

celebrate came at Christmas. A love that that that didn't

just hear our prayers, but that responds to our needs.

The love that doesn't just bring a son to Elizabeth and

Zechariah, but brings a savior for the whole world.

Some of you, you're coming to Christmas and you're wondering,

does God love me? Has he forgotten about me?

You've been waiting for him to show up.

You've been wondering when he's going to show up.

I just want to go back to that picture of the the child who

shows up at his parents house or her parents house for Christmas

to just be present and demonstrate love at Christmas.

God doesn't send a message. He shows up at the door because

God's love and his presence go hand in hand.

And so even in those moments, if you love Jesus, you feel like

he's gone silent. He hasn't forgotten you.

He hasn't forsaken you. Not if you know.

Emmanuel, God with us, I want to invite you to church to invite

some people along with you who need to know that message this

Christmas Eve. We got 2 Christmas Eve services

coming up and there's a whole whole world of people outside

our front door, outside of your front door in your workplace who

need to know that there is a God who loved them so much that he

showed up at Christmas. And so just be asking the Lord

who he'd have you just tap on the shoulder to invite to come

along with you this. I'm telling you, there are

people, they're itching to come. They just need somebody to

invite them. The story of Elizabeth and

Zechariah, the story of Christmas is this God always

shows up. He's not forgotten you.

He won't abandon you and he'll never fail you.

I'm going to, I'm going to ask the band to come out.

We're going to close today with a song called Oh come all you

unfaithful. We've already sang Oh come All

Ye Faithful. But I think we need this song

this morning. I think we need this song in

Advent. I want to read some of the

lyrics to you. The lyrics go like this.

Oh, come, all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable.

Come. No, you're not alone.

Oh come barren and awaiting ones, weary of praying.

Come and see what your God has done.

Oh, come bitter and broken. Come with fears unspoken.

Come taste of his perfect love. Oh, come guilty and hiding ones.

There's no need to run. See what your God has done.

Christ is born, Christ is born. Christ is born for you.

He's the Lamb who was given, slain for our pardon.

His promise is peace for those who believe.

Then it closes with this verse. So come, though you have

nothing, come. He is the offering.

Come, come see what God has done for you.

We're going to have some people up here ready to pray.

If those lyrics describe how you've walked in the door today,

if you find yourself in one of those spots, maybe you're

sitting there with an unanswered prayer, waiting and weary.

We would love to be able to just pray alongside you.

Hold up your hands. If you've come today and you

feel disgrace and shame, we'd love to pray alongside you that

you would know God's grace and favor and mercy and His love.

If you've come today filled with anxiety about what this next

week might bring, or you've come filled with a heart that is

broken over who won't be sitting at the table, we want to be able

to pray with you. If you're mad at God because you

feel like he's dropped his end of the bargain, then let us pray

and you can express that to him because he's big enough to take

it. But don't leave here today

taking the same burdens that you brought in.

Come on down and let somebody help carry the burden with you.

And I know, listen, I've been around this church long enough.

I know the amount of fear that it can exist in coming forward.

You know what? There's not a single person in

in this room who those lyrics don't describe today in some

fashion or form. It's not a single person in this

room who doesn't need prayer for something.

But there's an enemy who's come to seek and kill and destroy,

and he's the father of lies. And he's going to tell you, the

people will judge you that you don't really need it, that

somebody needs it more, that it's going to be too difficult.

You can't come down from the balcony because it'll take so

long. And your kids, what, how are you

going to get to them? They might run out of time and

they'll be 1,000,000 reasons why the enemy wants you to walk out

the door as burdened and as heavy laden and as broken as you

came in. But there's a God who loves you

enough that he beckoning you, if you need to, to come down this

morning and be prayed for so he could give you healing and so

you could sense his presence today.

And so let's sing this song. And if, if you don't need to

come down today, would you just be praying for those who do?

And if there's people down here who come down, would you lay

your hands out and pray over them?

I love the fact that in this story, if you go back and you

remember at the beginning, Zechariah was in the place, he

was lighting the incense and all the people were gathered,

praying, and God showed up. I think there's some people here

who need you to be praying that God would show up for them this

morning as they come down. And we'll take as long as we

need to this morning. And if you need to get out for a

Turkey dinner, you're welcome to leave whenever you need to.

But we're going to sing and I'm going to ask the the band to

lead us, and I'm going to pray that many of you will have an

opportunity to have God lift some burdens off you today.