Zechariah’s Song – Peace (Christmas Songs #2)

Let me start with a question. Have you ever had a deep, sustained longing for something?

Let me put some parameters on that. I am not talking about wanting ice cream. I mean a yearning that lasts for years.

Maybe it was a particular person you had fixed your heart on — that is who I am going to marry. Maybe, after you married, it was the longing for a child. Maybe it was a job, or a business you wanted to start. An athletic achievement. A certain income. A dream house. A dream car.

Whatever it was, something inside you said you had to have it. You lay in bed at night thinking about it. It was the first thing on your mind in the morning. You thought about it driving, scrolling, working. And somewhere deep down you became almost convinced: if I do not get this, I will never be at peace.

Anyone been there? Good — I was worried I would be alone on that one.

Now let me ask the harder question. What happens when you do not get it?

What is your emotional response when the thing you have yearned for keeps not arriving — and then starts to look like it never will? When she marries someone else. When the doctor says there is no way you are going to get pregnant. When you gave everything to win and someone else took it.

Some people go apathetic. They give up and stop caring. Some get angry — I deserved this, why can I not have it, that was supposed to be mine. And some conclude God is punishing them. They think back to something stupid they did, some sin, and decide: that is it. God is furious with me. He is withholding this. He does not want me to have peace.

Today we meet a couple who longed for a child, and after years and years of infertility, at least one of them had simply resigned. He let the dream go. And we get to watch what happens when that dream is suddenly placed back in front of him — and how all of this ties into Christmas.

Meet Zechariah and Elizabeth

Luke 1, starting in verse 5:

“In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord, but they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

“Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord… And he will 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 the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.’

“And Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.’ And the angel answered him, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.'”

Notice a few details. Zechariah is a priest from the division of Abijah, one of the priestly lines. And interestingly, Elizabeth is also from a priestly line. Women could not serve as priests, but she is descended from Aaron — Moses’ brother, the very first priest, whose sons established the priesthood. So here are two people from priestly stock, serving the people faithfully, and they are childless.

The text says they are “advanced in years.” When I read that, I picture people in their seventies or eighties. That is almost certainly not the case here.

In the first-century Roman world, average life expectancy was somewhere around thirty to forty years. If you reached forty you were starting to be considered old — which, I suppose, makes me old. Reach fifty and you were a patriarch or matriarch. Reach sixty and people assumed you had once owned a dinosaur.

But I do not think Zechariah was over fifty, because Numbers 8:25 says a priest retires at fifty, and he is still serving. So if he is “advanced in years,” I would guess he is in his mid to upper forties — call it forty-seven, forty-eight, approaching retirement. Given how marriages worked, that would put Elizabeth somewhere around forty-two to forty-four.

So they are not ancient and wrinkled. They are simply past the childbearing years. Most of their peers would already be grandparents. Some would be great-grandparents.

And they have nothing.

That would have been genuinely confusing to their friends and neighbors, because Scripture teaches that children are a blessing from the Lord. Since most married couples had children, being childless made you the aberration — and people started to whisper. Maybe there is a secret sin. Maybe God is punishing them. Maybe they are under discipline.

But look at this couple. Righteous. Blameless. Devout. Loved and respected by everyone. It did not add up. Why would God withhold a child from a woman like Elizabeth?

Because God had a plan. He was saving her for this moment, so that John could be born and prepare the way for Jesus.

But they do not know the plan. They are living inside the story.

Women typically married around thirteen to fifteen, men around eighteen to twenty. So if she married at fourteen and is now forty-four, they have been married roughly thirty years. Their peers have grandchildren. They have prayed and prayed and prayed, and God has not answered.

I do not know what Elizabeth’s inner posture was. Maybe she never lost faith. Maybe at forty-four she still believed God could work a miracle — after all, He did it for Abraham and Sarah, so why not again?

But Zechariah had given up. He had resigned himself: I am never going to be a father.

And we know that because of how he responds when the dream is handed back to him.

“Are You Sure You Have the Right Guy?”

I love how sovereign God is here. He arranges for Zechariah’s division to be on duty at exactly this time. And the text says Zechariah’s name was chosen by lot to be the one who enters the temple. So he goes in to burn the incense, doing the work he has done for years on behalf of the people — and an angel appears.

First words: do not be afraid. Which makes sense, because having a glowing being materialize in front of you would be terrifying. And then: congratulations, you are going to have a son.

He just handed him the dream.

Zechariah has watched his wife’s tears for twenty-five or thirty years. They have prayed. It has not happened. They are past the age. And now an angel says: you are having a child.

And Zechariah doubts. He essentially asks Gabriel whether he has the right person — my wife and I are advanced in years, she is past childbearing age, this is not going to happen.

What exactly was he expecting? “Oh, wait a second — I was looking for someone else. You are Zechariah? I am so sorry, wrong house, disregard everything I just said.”

No. Gabriel looks at him and says, in effect: I know exactly who you are. This is what is going to happen. God has heard your prayers and He is answering them. And because you would not believe my words — you will not be able to speak words.

Nine Months Later

Verse 57: “Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, ‘No; he shall be called John.’ And they said to her, ‘None of your relatives is called by this name.’ And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God.”

Nine months have passed. Zechariah is still mute. Elizabeth gives birth exactly as the angel said. And on the eighth day, per Jewish custom, the child is brought to be circumcised — and at that ceremony he is named.

Normally the father does the naming. This father cannot speak. So the officials step in to help. They love Zechariah. They respect him. Naming the boy after him is the obvious move. It is going to be Zechariah Junior.

And Elizabeth speaks up: “No. His name is John.”

Understand that women in that culture would not have had the standing to name a child. I am sure those officials were startled and maybe a little offended — we have this handled, your husband cannot speak, we are stepping in. But she knows. Her husband told her, one way or another, what the angel said in the temple. His name is John.

Then comes my favorite detail: they make signs to Zechariah.

Some commentaries I read this week suggest that means he was also deaf. Those scholars are far smarter than I am, but forgive me — I do not think so. Luke, the author, was a physician, and Luke tends to be precise about people’s ailments. If Zechariah were deaf, I suspect Luke would have said so.

So why the charades? Because Zechariah, being mute, had spent nine months communicating by gesture — so everyone had simply started communicating with him the same way. Zechariah, what do you want to name the baby? And he rolls his eyes, motions for a tablet, dips the pen, and gets ready to write.

Take in this moment. A couple who could not have children, past the age, suddenly has a baby. The father, a well-respected priest, went into the temple to perform an ordinary duty and came out unable to speak — and everyone has figured out he saw something in there. Now the child has arrived, and they are about to do what every Jewish family does and give him a family name, after his father, who is himself named after a famous Old Testament prophet. It all makes perfect sense.

And then the mother speaks up, which she is not supposed to do, and announces the name is John.

So everyone crowds in behind his shoulder to see what he will write. He puts pen to tablet: His name is John.

And in that instant his tongue is loosed — and out comes his Christmas song.

Zechariah’s Song

Verse 67: “And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

“‘And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.'”

First: he is full of joy

That much is obvious. For one thing, he can finally talk. I had strep a couple of weeks ago and it hurt so badly that I did not speak for three days — and that was rough enough. Imagine nine or ten months. I am certain Elizabeth found it frustrating on more than a few days.

But more than that, he has a son. Nine months of silence is nothing next to twenty-five or thirty years of waiting. Gabriel had told him plainly: you will have joy and gladness.

We will spend all of next week on joy — that is week three of Advent — so let us move on.

Second: he sings about God’s faithfulness

Look at how far back he reaches. Verse 72: “to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham.”

All the way back in Genesis 12, God promised Abraham He would make a people out of him. And in Genesis 15, God promised that even if Abraham broke the covenant, God would not — and God would absorb the penalty Himself. That promise finds its fulfillment in Jesus at the cross.

So God made a promise thousands of years before this moment, and Zechariah is standing there stunned: He is actually doing it. He is keeping a word He gave millennia ago.

And not only Abraham. Verses 69–70 say God “has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” When David was king, God promised him a descendant whose throne and reign would never end — fulfilled in Jesus. And then: “as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.” In other words, God has been saying this all along. He said it to Abraham. He said it through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, and the rest. And now He is doing it.

Which is especially staggering because God had been silent for four hundred years. From the last word of Malachi — the final book of the Old Testament — to the coming of Jesus is four centuries of nothing.

And look at what those last words were. Malachi 4:5–6: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

God prophesies a great and awesome day — the coming of the Messiah — and says that to prepare for it He will send Elijah, who will turn the hearts of fathers to children and children to fathers.

Then silence. Four hundred years. That was the last thing the Jewish people had to hold onto, and they had it memorized. They believed it pointed to the Messiah. So they were watching for Elijah.

Now go back to what Gabriel told Zechariah in Luke 1:17. Your son “will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

Zechariah realizes God is not only keeping His promise to Abraham and His promise to David — He is keeping the very last promise anyone heard, four hundred years earlier, through Malachi. And Zechariah cannot help but sing about the faithfulness of God.

Which means: if you are in a genuinely hard season right now and finding yourself doubting God’s faithfulness — thinking He has forgotten your situation, or does not care, or is punishing you — hear this song. God is faithful. He is with you. And if you sensed years ago that God was going to do something in you, the fact that you are still breathing means He is not finished.

If He could be faithful to Abraham, and faithful to David, and faithful to the word He gave through Malachi, and faithful to an aging priest and his wife who had waited three decades for a child — He will be faithful with you. So do not give up. Do not let this year rob you. Hold on. He is faithful.

Third: he sings about peace

Because when you realize God is faithful, it does not only fill you with joy. It gives you peace — which is our Advent theme today. And Zechariah sings about two kinds.

A national peace

Verse 71: “that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.”

If you have even a general grasp of Israel’s history, think about what that nation went through. Slavery in Egypt. Forty years wandering in the desert. Crossing into the promised land and having to fight for it, sometimes losing. Establishing themselves as a nation, then drifting from God. Prophet after prophet warning them that foreign nations would destroy them if they did not turn — and then it happening. Defeat. Exile. Return.

This nation had been through so much that whenever a prophet said God would bring them peace, they clung to it. So it is no surprise that when Zechariah learns his son will go before the Messiah, he sings about being saved from enemies and from all who hate them.

An internal peace

And who could blame him for feeling it personally — after longing so many years for a child and finally holding one. But notice that Zechariah is humble enough not to sing about himself. The internal peace he describes is one anyone can find.

Picture the scene as you reread verse 76. A Jewish priest with a long beard, in his priestly robes, holding his newborn son at the temple. He has not spoken in nine or ten months. His tongue has just been loosed. They have named the boy John. And he knows exactly who this child is. With tears rising, he sings:

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

The King They Expected, and the King They Needed

Many Jewish scholars of Zechariah’s day read the messianic prophecies and concluded they described a conquering king. Given the history — defeat, exile, and now Roman occupation — that is understandable. What the people wanted was freedom. Sovereignty. To govern themselves. To be a power again. They were waiting for the king who would take David’s throne, lead them to victory, throw off the empire, and re-establish Israel.

What so many of them missed was that the Messiah would not only be a conquering king. He would also be a suffering servant. There were prophecies pointing to a Messiah who would die for the sins of the people.

And Zechariah — whether through his own study or simply under the inspiration of the Spirit in that moment — names it in verse 77: his son will go before the Messiah, and this Messiah will “give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.”

Zechariah understood that what Israel needed most was not Rome overthrown. It was their sins forgiven.

Because empires come and go. There had been Egypt. Assyria. Babylon. Now Rome. But do you know what had been reigning through every one of them, on the spiritual plane? Sin. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin had been ruling. And Jesus came to throw off that empire and establish the kingdom of God.

Zechariah sings about it, because he knows that is what people actually need.

Chasing Peace Through External Things

The problem is that so many of us are hunting inner peace through external means.

If the government changes, I will have peace. If I find a spouse, I will finally have peace. If I could just have a child. If I reach a certain income. If I land that job. If I get the dream house, the car, the achievement — then I will be at peace.

That is why we ache for it. That is why we lose sleep over it. It fills our thoughts in the car and on our phones, because somewhere inside we are convinced that once we get it, we will be complete, we will have joy, we will be at peace.

And countless people have chased those things, gotten them, and found no peace at all.

Zechariah is singing that what we need is Jesus. What we need is the forgiveness of our sins. And when you begin to value Jesus above all these other things, that is where peace shows up.

Then, when you have peace in Jesus through the gospel, the marriage or the child or the job or whatever the dream was becomes bonus. Because that was never what your life was about. Your life is about Jesus. And when God brings those other things in, it makes you shout with joy and sing about His faithfulness — but your peace was never contingent on getting them. Your peace is because you already have Him.

Where That Leaves You

If you have never surrendered your life to Christ, I would love today to be your spiritual birthday. As we look at the arrival of John the Baptist, I would love this to be about your arrival into the kingdom of God.

When people realize this story is actually true — that God sent John to a childless couple, that John prepared the way for Jesus, that Jesus arrived pointing people to the kingdom of God and ultimately went to a cross and died in our place so our sins could be paid for and we could come into relationship with God — they usually confess. They see how far short they fall of a story that staggering, and they surrender: Jesus, because You gave Your life for me, I now give my life to follow You.

And some of you made that decision long ago and would say, “I am already a Christian, but I do not have peace.”

Usually that is because your eyes have drifted off Jesus and onto your circumstances, and you have started believing peace will arrive with the thing, or the person, or the achievement. Today is a chance to reorient — to regain the right perspective and put your focus back on Jesus, who came to give you the forgiveness of sins. That is the greatest thing you will ever receive.

And because you already have the greatest gift, everything else is bonus. So when you walk through something hard and hold it up against the cross and what Jesus has already done for you, it begins to pale. And you can still have joy. You can still have peace, even when everything around you looks like chaos.

Look back at the cross. Look back at Jesus. Reorient. And let yourself start singing Zechariah’s song.

Father, You sent Your Son to live among us — sinlessly, perfectly — and though He did not deserve it, He went to the cross in our place for our sins, so that our sin could be exchanged for His grace and His life, so we could know You, love You, and trust You. Remind us of the peace we have through You. Amen.

Go in the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Go and be a blessing. Go and follow Him.