Waiting in Hope | Sunday, February 16, 2025

Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of the things in which you were instructed. (Luke 1:1–4)

When the long-awaited promise finally arrives, an old, childless couple shows us that the gospel is the answer to all our waiting in hope.

The Difficulty of Waiting

One of the things that becomes clear as you study the Bible, especially the gospels, is that the story of the gospel given to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and really throughout all of Scripture—is the ultimate answer to our hope and our waiting in hope.

One of the most difficult things to learn is to wait. Patience is a challenge for all of us. It's been said that patience is a virtue, but unfortunately we are far better versed in the vice of impatience. We don't like to wait, we don't like to be told to wait, and we don't like to be put on hold. I'll procrastinate making a phone call because I know I'll spend forty minutes on hold.

We want things immediately. We want the "buy it now" button—and we want it delivered to our doorstep by 5:00 p.m. We live in a culture that caters to our impatience and even cultivates more of it: instant access, high-speed internet, drive-thrus, and free delivery. Yet patience is a virtue.

A People Waiting in Hope

The story of Jesus brings us into a period in Israel's history when they had endured a very long season of patiently waiting in hope. Their existence as we find them in the first century was itself miraculous. Many of the other people groups of that era—the Hittites, the Hivites, the Ammonites, the Arameans—did not survive the conquests of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. But the people of Israel survived, and they continued to wait and hope. The gospels answer the question: what were they waiting for?

The opening three chapters of Luke are a preface to the life and ministry of Jesus. You would think the story of Jesus would start with Jesus, yet it begins with about 3,500 words that have nothing to do with Him. What you discover is that these chapters prepare you for His story and remind us that the story of Christ began long before His appearance. All of the Old Testament, Genesis to Malachi, is the lead-in and the preparation for Jesus being the fulfillment of this anticipation and hope.

Zacharias and Elizabeth

The story doesn't start immediately with Jesus but with an individual who would otherwise be lost to history. He would have lived and died in obscurity except that he had an important son. His name is Zacharias. He and his wife Elizabeth are a picture of a couple waiting in hope, illustrating a long line of people patiently enduring difficulty.

This brings us to point number one: the gospel makes the most sense when you understand it in its global, historical, cultural, and sometimes personal context. The story must be situated in everything happening in the world up until that time. When you do, you realize the gospel—the life, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—is the fulfillment of humanity's hope, and the answer to our hope even today.

Centuries of Oppression

What were Zacharias and Elizabeth waiting for? In one sense, the same thing as the people around them. They had endured more than a thousand years of difficulty as a people. In the eighth century BC the Assyrians came and destroyed the northern ten tribes, carrying them away captive. In the sixth century BC the Babylonians came and destroyed the people again. By miraculous grace they endured and returned to their land, but then the Greeks came through and devastated them. Finally the Romans arrived in the first century BC.

Zacharias and Elizabeth lived through that. Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 63 BC, and they watched their nation subjected once again to foreign rule. Shortly after, the Romans set up a puppet king, Herod the Great—a man the people did not want and did not consider a great ruler. The sentiment among the people was one of devastation, and they were seeking a deliverer.

For centuries these people had hoped for a deliverer to free them from political oppression—first the Egyptians 1,400 years before Christ, then the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. Their desire for a deliverer was a microcosm of the bigger desire of all humanity for one to come and free us from the oppressor who devastates us.

A Personal Sorrow

Zacharias and Elizabeth's hope had an added dimension. As with all of us, there are big things weighing on the national consciousness, but every one of us also carries something personal we are enduring, hoping for resolution.

There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years. (Luke 1:5–7)

This was the problem that probably dominated their thoughts more than any national issue. They were old, Elizabeth was barren, and they were waiting through it, enduring patiently. They were experiencing what Solomon wrote about a thousand years earlier: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Proverbs 13:12). It gets harder and more painful to hope the longer we wait.

For a Jewish woman in the first century, barrenness carried multiple burdens. Childlessness meant no heir and the ceasing of the family name. It was the custom that a man would pass his name to his firstborn son, but Zacharias's name was about to die out. This was a massive shame, especially for a woman. And there was an added dimension: every Jewish woman hoped her child might be the one through whom God's ancient promise would be fulfilled.

The Bad News of Genesis 3

That brings us to point number two: **the good news of the gospel makes more sense when you understand the bad news of Genesis 3.** Good news only makes sense in the context of bad news.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. (Genesis 1:1–4)

That's the most fundamental thing Scripture gives us about God: He exists, and He made everything—even the things we cannot see. People can get sucked into debates over how He created—a literal six days, a day-age period, the gap theory—but those arguments matter little compared to the fundamental conviction that God is, that He made everything, and that what He made was good. Seven times in the opening chapter God declares creation good.

Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness..." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it." (Genesis 1:26–28)

Many strong Christian convictions go back to this passage. God created humanity distinctively as male and female—a controversial thing in 2025, but it is what we believe and what is taught. As He made man and woman, the very first command He gives is phenomenal: be fruitful and multiply. He intends the two to become one flesh, and out of that union comes children, raised to serve God's purposes.

The Ache of Unfulfilled Purpose

I have a theory that God's original mandate to be fruitful and multiply is the reason humans have this innate, deep desire to pair up, to marry, and to have children. When pairing up is postponed, there is a heaviness and weight that falls upon people. When it's delayed, there's pain. When marriage is postponed, there's pain and frustration. And when a married couple cannot conceive, there's a deep pain. Why? Because there is something within you God purposed for this.

I have prayed with and counseled many couples over the years who could not conceive, and the pain it causes is real—because there is something within you purposed by God to do this. So there is a waiting in hope, and it is painful. This is pictured in Zacharias and Elizabeth. The fact that they show up at the start of Jesus's story tells us something: the gospel is going to answer this deep desire and the pain we endure as we wait.

The Fall and the First Promise

Before Adam and Eve could fulfill the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, something bad happened.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field... And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1)

It was apparently not strange to Eve that the serpent spoke—she was not afraid. In Genesis 2 there had been a conversation between God and Adam about two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of which God said, "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die," and the tree of life. If the one tree brings death, the other brings life. The serpent deceived Eve, she ate, she gave to her husband, and the eyes of both were opened. They knew they were naked, sewed fig leaves, and hid from God.

Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men. (Romans 5:12)

All the brokenness in the world is the result of that action in the garden. We have creation in Genesis 1 and 2, the fall in Genesis 3—and then, in Genesis 3:15, a promise. God declares that through the seed of the woman would come One who would destroy the work of the serpent, undo the curse, and overcome death. Theologians call this the protoevangelion—the first announcement of the gospel. From that point on, there is a desire for the fulfillment of God's promised redemption.

The Recurring Pattern

This is the big story of the whole Bible: creation, fall, and God's promise of redemption. From Genesis 3:15 all the way to Zacharias and Elizabeth, humanity hoped for a son who would bring redemption and undo the stain of sin. And the theme of barrenness shows up again and again. Abraham and Sarah were old and barren when God brought forth Isaac. Isaac and Rebecca were barren before God gave them Jacob and Esau. The story moves progressively—from Adam and Eve through Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—toward this moment in Luke where we meet another old, barren couple.

The Angel in the Temple

So it was, that while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. (Luke 1:8–9)

Each priest served at the temple for one week, twice a year. On this day Zacharias was chosen by lot to enter the holy place and burn incense on the altar before the holy of holies—likely the one time in his entire life he would do so.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John... For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah... to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:11–17)

The angel referenced words Zacharias knew from the prophets. This son would be under a Nazirite vow, filled with the Spirit, coming in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the way for the Lord.

And Zacharias said to the angel, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well advanced in years." And the angel answered and said to him, "I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time." (Luke 1:18–20)

Letting Patience Do Its Work

Why does the story of Jesus begin this way? Because the gospel is the answer to those who have been waiting in hope. Zacharias and Elizabeth waited with their whole nation for deliverance from Rome, with all humanity for deliverance from sin and death, and personally for a child they desperately wanted but never had. Now the angel says, "Your prayer is heard."

One of the New Testament writers says, "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." The fact is, we don't always let patience have its work in us. Sometimes we come out of difficult things not more mature, but bitter and angry.

This is point number three: the tested faith of those waiting in hope produces patience and maturity—if we let it. Going through trials can make us bitter, but if we allow God to work by His Spirit during the waiting, He can produce patience and maturity. That is what happened in Zacharias and Elizabeth. Verse 6 tells us they were righteous and followed the Lord faithfully. They had not become bitter; they waited in righteousness.

The Reproach Taken Away

And so it was, as soon as the days of his service were completed, that he departed to his own house. Now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself five months, saying, "Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me, to take away my reproach among people." (Luke 1:23–25)

Solomon said, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick"—but his word doesn't end there: "but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12). That reference appears only about a dozen times in the Bible, mostly in Genesis and finally in Revelation. Humanity has been seeking the tree of life ever since it ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Access had been restricted—until 2,000 years ago, when the hope deferred for Zacharias and Elizabeth was answered and the door to the tree of life began to open again.

Preparing the Way

The son God promised Zacharias would fulfill a purpose spoken of by two prophets, Malachi and Isaiah.

"Comfort, yes, comfort My people!" says your God. "Speak comfort to Jerusalem... The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'... The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:1–5)

The angel's message was this: your son John is the one Malachi foretold, coming in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare the way of the Lord. The Messiah is coming—the One the whole world has been waiting for, the One who will make the way straight for the glory of the Lord, who is the answer to every heart's desire that has waited in hope, who will open the way to the tree of life.

Those Who Wait on the Lord

The last word of Isaiah 40 declares: "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." Some of you this morning have been waiting in hope for a long time. David wrote in Psalm 27, "Wait on the Lord... wait, I say, on the Lord."

This is point number four: God renews and restores the hearts of those who wait patiently on Him. Israel waited patiently for centuries, enduring the pain of conquest and devastation by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. Eventually their deliverer came—but not in the way they expected. He came not to deliver from a political foe but to rescue us from the bite of the serpent, to rescue us from our sins. John the Baptist would simply be the forerunner, making straight the way to Him.

For us who wait in hope, our ultimate hope is answered only in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We constantly need this reminder, because we imagine our hope lies in some political thing, some earthly thing, or some unexpected inheritance. But our ultimate hope is answered only in Jesus. May we recognize that, and share it with others.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would remind us today that You are the answer to the deep longings of our soul. As we wait in hope, You are the One who answers that desire. Some standing in this room have been waiting in hope for something, and I pray You would reveal to them the reality that You are the ultimate hope, the ultimate answer to our desire. Lord, help us to share that reality with others, because there are many desperate people we live next door to, work with, and go to school with who are also seeking for something they cannot even fully articulate. In You and You alone are our deepest needs and desires satisfied. May we discover that first and be able to share it with others. We praise You, Jesus, for the reality of Your word. Cause these things to sink deep into our hearts, that we would meditate on them today and this week. We praise You, Jesus. Amen.