Luke #2: Too Good to Be True (1:5-25)

Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here with Eastern Hills, and I’m blessed to be here this morning as the church gathers together to worship the Lord and to reflect on His Word. I pray that this time is a blessing to you as well, but more than anything, I pray that our joining together today brings honor and glory to God, and points us to Him. I wanted to take a moment this morning and say thanks to our praise band Worship 4:24. They work really hard to be prepared to lead us in musical worship and praise each Sunday morning, and I appreciate their hearts, talents, and faithfulness.

If you’re visiting with us for the first time today, I hope that you’ve already discovered that Eastern Hills is loving, friendly, supportive, and encouraging church body. We invite you, if you are a guest with us today, to fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Then you can drop that in the offering boxes by the doors on your way out after service, or you can bring them down to me at the front following our benediction at the end, as I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit with us today. If you’re online, and visiting with us today, feel free to head over to our website ehbc.org, and fill out the communication card on the “I’m New” page. Whether you’re here in the room or online, we just want to be able to send you a note thanking you for your visit today, and to see if we can pray for you or minister to you in some way.

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Opening

I want to thank Joe for kicking off our series in the book of Luke last week in such a tremendous fashion while I was on vacation. His explanation of the synoptic Gospels, as well as the features unique to Luke’s Gospel, was great. I appreciated his approach to considering Luke’s confident faith in Christ as revealed in the prologue to his Gospel (verses 1-4), and the application of that through reflecting on how we might develop deeper confidence in our own faith through looking more deeply into biblical truth and the fulfillment of God’s promises, through thorough study of the eyewitness testimony that the Bible provides, and through our own personal experience of God’s work in our lives through those who have gone before us and those whom we have discipled personally. Thanks, Joe, for your faithful preaching of the Word last Sunday.

As Joe mentioned last week, this year we are going to look at the Gospel of Luke in its entirety. It will take us just about the whole year to do this, as Luke is not a short book. Our hope is that as we go through this Gospel together, we will deepen our trust in the good news of Jesus and what He has done for us, that we will have a greater understanding of the historical context that Jesus came into, and that we will apply the teachings of this book to our lives in ways that reflect the kingship of Jesus Christ.

In the first three chapters of his Gospel, Luke sets up a back-and-forth between the miraculous arrival of John the Baptist, and the even more miraculous arrival of Jesus. His goal is for us to see the incredible fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy that God was bringing about, even as the world had no idea it was coming.

So let’s open our Bibles or Bible apps to the first chapter of the book of Luke, and read our focal passage this morning. Please stand as you are able to do so in honor of the reading of God’s holy Word as I read verses 5 through 25:

Luke 1:5–25 CSB

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. 6 Both were righteous in God’s sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord. 7 But they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along in years. 8 When his division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 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. 10 At the hour of incense the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. 11 An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified and overcome with fear. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth. 15 For he will be great in the sight of the Lord and will never drink wine or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb. 16 He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 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.” 18 “How can I know this?” Zechariah asked the angel. “For I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel answered him, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. 20 Now listen. 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.” 21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, amazed that he stayed so long in the sanctuary. 22 When he did come out, he could not speak to them. Then they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He was making signs to them and remained speechless. 23 When the days of his ministry were completed, he went back home. 24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived and kept herself in seclusion for five months. She said, 25 “The Lord has done this for me. He has looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace among the people.”

PRAYER (fires in California)

I don’t know how many of you know that there was a time that I was in the praise band every week, not just occasionally. But at the time, I was also the youth pastor and played guitar every Wednesday at Prime Time. I had a Yamaha APX-6A electric-acoustic in natural satin finish, and I loved that guitar. It was kind of a mid-grade instrument with a thin cutaway body, but still had enough resonance for decent bass. It had dual selectable pickups and low action. It was pretty sweet… the nicest guitar I had ever owned, and the first one I had ever purchased brand new. Since I played so often and was here almost every day, it just lived in my office.

Well, there was one Christmas season when there was a rash of thefts from churches right around the holidays. What this thief (or these thieves…they were never caught as far as I know) would do is to go into a church building when folks were around and ask to spend some time in prayer in the sanctuary. Just after the new year in like 2006, this person came to Eastern Hills on I think a Friday night when a Bible study group was meeting. He said he wanted to focus on God in the new year by getting alone in prayer. The person who let him in showed him into the sanctuary and left him to his prayers.

It wasn’t until Sunday morning when I went to grab my guitar out of my office that I discovered what had happened. It wasn’t there. “Oh, I must have left it in the youth room for some reason,” I thought, so I ran up there. Nope. “Maybe I left it on stage somewhere...” Nada. And that was when we realized it been stolen. I had a backup guitar that was usable, but I was just about heartbroken.

I wasn’t going to say anything, but Wayne Pittman was right there when we discovered the theft, and at the beginning of service he told the congregation what had happened, and just asked them to respond to that fact however God led them to. Many of you were there that day. I’m sure many of you gave.

That very afternoon, one of the men of the church who had been informed of how much had been given took me down to Guitar Center to get a new guitar… the guitar I have up here on stage right now. My Yamaha was nice. This is a Martin. Twice the cost of my Yamaha. And it came with a hard case and all the extras that had been stolen along with my Yamaha’s soft case.

When he told me how much the church had given in that single day, and what we were going to get, it seemed too good to be true, but there I was, holding a high-end brand new guitar. The guitar was, and still is, a tool that God provided for Him to use in my hands. I don’t play nearly as much now as I did then, as God has shifted my responsibilities quite a bit in the last 19 years. But I still get the chance to occasionally fill in for the band, to play for funerals and memorials, and to lead in the student ministry on occasion. This is really the Lord’s guitar… I just get to use it. He provided it when I couldn’t have. And through His work in the hearts of the members of this church family, He took away my heartbreak.

My point: Sometimes in His astounding grace, God brings incredible things out of very difficult situations. We might think that we’re at one of our lowest moments when God steps in and does something amazing. That’s what we see in the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth in today’s passage. I know that my guitar pales in comparison to what we’re going to see in their lives this morning, but it was one of the most powerful “too good to be true” moments of my life.

So let’s look at this defining moment in the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth. First, we see that they were a devoted couple:

1. A devoted couple

Luke starts the narrative part of his gospel by giving us a chronological starting point—in the days of King Herod of Judea. Herod the Great was really more of a puppet monarch for Rome than an actual king, and he reigned in the area of Judea from about 37 BC until his death in 4 BC. So the events of Luke begin somewhere near the end of Herod’s reign, but we can’t be any more specific just yet.

At the time in Judea, the way the priesthood worked was that there were around 18,000 priests divided into twenty-four divisions according to ancestral lines according the 1 Chronicles 24:7-19, and each division served at the temple for one week periods twice each year, and all divisions were expected to serve during the major feasts. Zechariah served as a priest, but he and his wife Elizabeth were both in the priestly lineage, with Zechariah coming from the line of Abijah.

Verse 6 says that they were “both righteous in God’s sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord.” This isn’t to say that they were perfect, but it also doesn’t mean that they were legalistic. It means that they were faithful. They walked by faith, and that faith prompted them to walk in obedience. And this is an important thing for us to think about in our own lives. We aren’t saved because of works. We’re saved by faith in what Christ has done. But if we claim to have faith in Christ and don’t do anything that Jesus would have us do, then have we really been transformed by the Gospel? Faith, not works, saves. But faith that saves, works. Zechariah and Elizabeth believed, and were obedient because of that belief.

Unfortunately, they had a major problem in their lives: they didn’t have any children. This was a big deal for the Hebrew people. Zechariah was a priest at least in part because of his lineage. He was someone’s son, who had been someone’s son, on back to Abijah. For them to not have children would have been a mark of shame for them, because at the time, many believed that childlessness was always a sign of being cursed by God. Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and likely many in their village saw her as inferior, or even worse: sinful. And the Scripture records that they were “well along in years,” a kind way of saying that she was past child-bearing age. Luke, however, makes it clear that their childlessness is not due to sin.

But their situation hadn’t hampered their faith. They kept on walking in faithful obedience all their days, with Zechariah serving whenever his division was called upon. I wonder if we would have done the same thing?

I mean, we all have difficult situations come up in our lives, and those circumstances are very real and very painful. And those difficult situations might threaten to destroy our hope. But often, we approach our walks with God by sort of bargaining with Him, saying that if He will keep up His end of the deal, and bless us in the way we would like to be blessed, at the time that we would like to be blessed, then we’ll be obedient. But if He doesn’t, then we can do what we like and blame Him for it. What a selfish perspective to have!

God is God. We exist for Him, not the other way around. Scripture tells us that He is for us, meaning that He wants His very best for us, but not that He exists for us. We exist for Him. And as such, He is sovereign and in charge, not the other way around. He is worthy of all praise and honor and glory, and of our complete and total obedience to Him, simply because of who He is. And it doesn’t depend on our circumstances. If you’re only willing to serve God when things are going your way, then you’re not really serving God—you’re serving yourself.

Zechariah and Elizabeth had the right perspective. And this year, when his division came up, Zechariah was drawn by lot to be the one to take a live coal from the altar of sacrifice outside the temple, and to go into the Holy Place inside the Temple (not the Holy of Holies), in order to use that coal to burn the special incense on the altar of incense while offering a prayer for the deliverance of Israel, as the smoke from the incense reflected those prayers. The Jewish people saw casting lots as a conduit of God’s providence, according to Proverbs:

Proverbs 16:33 CSB

33 The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

Because of the number of priests and the few opportunities there were to offer the incense and prayers, each priest would only perform this important ministry once in their lifetimes. And this was Zechariah’s time, ordained by God. Many Jews assembled outside the temple while the priest went in, praying while the priest performed his duties, and when the priest came out, he would prayer a blessing over those gathered there, such as the priestly blessing from Numbers 6:23-27:

Numbers 6:23–27 CSB

23 “Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. You should say to them, 24 “May the Lord bless you and protect you; 25 may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.” ’ 27 In this way they will pronounce my name over the Israelites, and I will bless them.”

God was at work in Zechariah’s life, and he probably didn’t even know it. He was about to move and do something incredible in Elizabeth’s life, and she didn’t have a clue. Brothers and sisters, walking in faithfulness to God is never wasted, because God is always at work around us in the background, setting the stage for the unfolding of His plans and promises, the expression of His will, and He can bring about the miraculous when we least expect it.

That’s what He did in the life of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

2. A divine promise

Luke is the third Gospel of the four that we have. Matthew starts with the genealogy of Jesus, not his birth (he gets there). Mark begins with the start of Jesus’s earthly ministry as an adult. And while John’s first chapter starts well before the events of Luke’s (beginning at creation), Luke’s narrative holds a very special place in Scripture. When the angel speaks the message to Zechariah, it is the first message from God in well over 400 years. The Israelites had not heard directly from God since the prophet Malachi in about 460 BC. And the very last thing that they heard from Him was this:

Malachi 4:5–6 CSB

5 Look, I am going to send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

When the angel appears to Zechariah, he picks up God’s message from immediately where God had left off centuries before:

Luke 1:11–17 CSB

11 An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified and overcome with fear. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth. 15 For he will be great in the sight of the Lord and will never drink wine or beer. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb. 16 He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 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.”

It must have seemed completely too good to be true. Zechariah was performing an act of worship that he would only perform once in his life. He was alone in the sanctuary, likely praying to the Lord for the redemption of Israel, when the angel suddenly appears, breaking God’s silence to Israel through this message to Zechariah. Gabriel (he’ll tell Zechariah his name in a moment) is the same angel that had appeared to Daniel back in Daniel 8, and Daniel’s response was similar to Zechariah’s: he was overcome with fear.

Daniel 8:16–17 CSB

16 I heard a human voice calling from the middle of the Ulai: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.” 17 So he approached where I was standing; when he came near, I was terrified and fell facedown. “Son of man,” he said to me, “understand that the vision refers to the time of the end.”

And the promise that Zechariah received was incredible. Gabriel first told Zechariah to not be afraid, because his prayer had been heard. Which prayer? The prayer that he had likely prayed for most of his life—the prayer for a son? Or the prayer that he had just prayed for the redemption of Israel? The answer is both, because the two went together. It was in the answering of Zechariah’s prayer for a son that God would inaugurate the Messianic age through bringing forth the forerunner of Messiah in fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi that one would come in the spirit and power of Elijah: “He (John) will go before Him (the Lord their God).” He would be named John, which means “The Lord is gracious.”

Certainly the birth of a son at their advanced age would be a source of joy and delight for them, as well as for many around them. But even more than that: John would be great in the Lord’s sight, and would be filled with the Holy Spirit from before he was born. This was a new view on the Holy Spirit, because up to this point, the Spirit would come upon someone in a powerful way (like Samson, for example), allow the person to do what God wanted them to do in that moment, and then leave the person. With John, he would be constantly filled with the Spirit for his entire life, and thus, he was not to be controlled by anything else, such as alcohol, something that Paul would later instruct the church at Ephesus:

Ephesians 5:18 CSB

18 And don’t get drunk with wine, which leads to reckless living, but be filled by the Spirit:

But the most important part of the promise that Zechariah received was what John would do. He would “turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,” (verse 16) and, “the disobedient to the understanding of the righteous.” (verse 17). He would be a man who called people to be reconciled to the Lord through repentance and faith—the restoration of the vertical relationship between God and humanity. In this way, God was promising that John would be His ambassador to Israel, going before Him as His representative.

The Lord is still calling ambassadors. Those ambassadors are Christians—those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation through our having the message of reconciliation, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:

2 Corinthians 5:18–20 CSB

18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”

If you have never trusted in what Jesus has done to save you, surrendering to Him in faith, then the Bible says that you are estranged from God. You are His enemy, because apart from Jesus, we are all rebels against Him because of our sin.

But the message of the Gospel is that God loves you and wants a relationship with you as your Savior and Lord. He wants to be reconciled to you. So He sent His Son, Jesus the Messiah, to pay the penalty that we owe because of our sin, dying on a Roman cross, so that we can be forgiven by God.

And when we trust in what Jesus has done to save us, instead of trying to justify ourselves, surrendering to Him as Lord instead of trying to be in charge of our own lives, then we are reconciled to God, and we have the promise of eternal life because Jesus defeated death and rose again according to Scripture. Believe the Gospel this morning and surrender your life to Jesus. There is no other way to be saved.

This is the message of reconciliation that we carry as ambassadors, church. And it is the message the John proclaimed: “Be reconciled to God!”

But his message would also be one of horizontal reconciliation, again in fulfillment of the Malachi prophecy, as he “turned the hearts of fathers to their children.” (verse 17). How did he do this? He did so by calling the men to repentance and faith. Look at Matthew 3:

Matthew 3:7–8 CSB

7 When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance.

Men, there’s no other way to say it: We need Jesus. (Ladies, you do too, but give me a moment with the men.) Guys, we need to walk in repentance. We need to get real and confess our sins to the Lord and to one another so that we might be healed (James 5:16). We need to be praying for one another for healing, righteousness, and obedience. We need to model godliness, service, faithfulness, integrity, kindness, honesty, wisdom, humility, and purity for the church, for each other, for our wives, and especially for our kids. They need to see what it means to follow Jesus with all that we have and all that we are—not so that we look good or are praised—but so that they will desire to follow in the same path. It’s not that we save our kids—only Jesus saves—but we do have a responsibility as fathers to love our kids and to lead our them to Jesus as we follow Him ourselves… to clear the path for them, to remove obstacles (some of which we might be the cause of), to prepare the way of the Lord in their lives, as the prophet Isaiah said (and which John the Baptist also fulfilled, as we will see when we get to chapter 3):

Isaiah 40:3–5 CSB

3 A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. 4 Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled; the uneven ground will become smooth and the rough places, a plain. 5 And the glory of the Lord will appear, and all humanity together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

How will we respond to this calling? I pray that we will do so with repentance and faith.

How did Zechariah respond to his promise? Not so well, it turns out:

3. A doubtful response

Zechariah kind of gets a bad rap for how he responds to Gabriel. But I can’t fault him too badly. Abraham kind of did the same thing way back in Genesis 15. In fact, Zechariah almost says exactly what Abraham said there. We’ll see next week that Mary asked “how” when Gabriel appeared to her as well. However, the difference is what went on in their hearts. Abraham and Mary believed, and then asked how. Zechariah asked how, because he refused to believe.

Luke 1:18–20 CSB

18 “How can I know this?” Zechariah asked the angel. “For I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years.” 19 The angel answered him, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and tell you this good news. 20 Now listen. 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.”

When Zechariah asked, “How can I know this?” he was essentially telling Gabriel: “Prove it. Elizabeth and I are both old, so there’s no way.” Basically, he asks for a sign that would confirm that the promise was true. Well, he got one. But the sign that he received was also a punishment for his lack of faith.

Gabriel has been in the very presence of God, was given the message of the promise directly from God, and was sent to Zechariah directly by God. And the news was really good news, but Zechariah refused to believe it until he had enough “proof.” The promise was true, even though Zechariah didn’t believe it. And it would still come to pass. But Zechariah wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it in the meantime.

I believe that Zechariah became both unable to speak AND unable to hear as a result of this sign. We’ll see why in a couple of weeks when we look at John’s birth. But at this point, the people were getting concerned that he’d been in there that long, and when he finally does emerge from the temple building, he cannot recite the blessing over the people, as he can only sign to them. And they realize that he had had some kind of miraculous experience while he was in there.

I said that I can’t fault old Zech too badly here. I mean, if the promise had come from anyone other than and angelic being, it would really seem too good to be true. And I think that we kind of all have a tendency to doubt God’s promises at times. This is because we’re all finite. We can’t see the future, and we trust our senses and our experience too much. But instead of those limitations driving us away from God, they should drive us toward Him. He is the only One who can do the miraculous! There’s nothing wrong with asking Him to move in incredible ways, because He’s the only One too ask.

What is your doubt keeping you from asking God to do today? Trust that God can move, and boldly ask Him to do so. He may very well have a better plan that you ask or even think, so trust Him to bring about the results that will glorify Himself, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:

Ephesians 3:20–21 CSB

20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

This is what Elizabeth would do: give God the glory for the fulfillment of this promise in her life, and the removal of her disgrace, which is our last point:

4. A disgrace removed

Even though the ultimate purpose of God’s promise to Zechariah and Elizabeth was for His glory as He brought about the Messianic age, the revelation of His purpose for Israel, and the redemption of mankind, that didn’t mean that the fulfillment didn’t bless this devoted couple. And in keeping with the promise that Gabriel had declared, Elizabeth conceived:

Luke 1:23–25 CSB

23 When the days of his ministry were completed, he went back home. 24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived and kept herself in seclusion for five months. She said, 25 “The Lord has done this for me. He has looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace among the people.”

As I mentioned earlier, childlessness was a big deal for Hebrew women in their day. Sons carried on the family line and (generally) property. A woman who never had a child could not possibly be the one to bring forth the Messiah. Childlessness was such a big deal for Jacob’s wife Rachel, for instance, that she cried to her husband, “Give me sons, or I will die!” (Genesis 30:1).

And now, in her old age, Elizabeth discovers that she is pregnant. Her disgrace would be removed. Again, it was almost too good to be true.

We don’t really have any idea why she stayed in seclusion for five months. All we can take are guesses, because there is no precedent or custom in the Scriptures. Perhaps it was just to savor the moment just between her and then deaf and mute husband? Maybe she had terrible morning sickness? Who knows?

But one thing that we do know: God had not forgotten them. In fact, Zechariah’s name means “Yahweh remembers.” God’s Word had promise had come to pass in their lives. Elizabeth’s name means “My God is an Oath,” a declaration that what God says, He will do.

Elizabeth had glorified the Lord in her trial, and now she glorified Him in her triumph. God’s promises had come to fruition in His time and in His way. Like Elizabeth, we can remember that praising God is never a waste, and worshiping Him is never pointless. Faithfully serving Him, even in times of silence or waiting, has its own fruitfulness as we grow to be more like Jesus. God Himself is our goal, and the fact that we get to be in a relationship with Him the ultimate gift and blessing. And by His sovereign choice, He will reveal His will and the fulfillment of His promises in and through the lives of His faithful ones.

Closing

Even when things are hard, God’s at work. Even when we might fear or doubt, God is not absent. Even when we might face the impossible, nothing is impossible for the Lord. Though Zechariah doubted, God’s promise was fulfilled. Though Elizabeth had walked in disgrace and shame, the Lord lifted her up. We can trust Him. And since He is so faithful, we can remain faithful when the waiting feels long and the end seems unreachable. Praise the Lord and hold on to Him. His good purpose will come to pass, perhaps in the most unexpected of ways, and it will be better than we thought it would be.

And I promise you that following Jesus is worth it. Being in a right relationship with God is more important than anything in life. So if you’ve never believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I’ve explained this morning, I want to fulfill my role as ambassador: Be reconciled to God through faith in His name. Surrender to Him as Savior and Lord. And come and tell us about that decision so we can celebrate with you. Trevor, Joe, Rich, and Kerry will be down here with me as the band plays a song of response in a moment. If you’re online, send me an email.

Baptism. Testifying to the fact that you belong to Jesus. Declaring what God has done for you to others.

Church membership. Formally declaring your participation in this body of believers.

Prayer

Giving

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Jer 2:1-3:5, Ps 5)

Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting Wednesday, looking at Jonah’s prayer from inside the belly of the fish

I just wanted to commend our church family. We’ve cleared the $1M mark in our giving to Endeavor. And together, we gave over $1M last year to the budget. Thank you, church, for being so faithful to the Lord in your giving.

Business meeting next Sunday night at 5:30.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

In remembrance of Zechariah, as our benediction this morning, allow me to pray over our church family the blessing of Numbers 6 that we read earlier during my sermon:

Numbers 6:24–26 CSB

24 “May the Lord bless you and protect you; 25 may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.” ’

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