A Thrill of Hope for Those Advanced in Years
November 30, 2025
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Luke 1:1-25
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
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. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
8 Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, 9 according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. 11 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. 12 And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. 13 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. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. 16 And 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 the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” 19 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. 20 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.” 21 And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at his delay in the temple.22 And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he kept making signs to them and remained mute. 23 And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, 25 “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”
We typically break from our regular preaching to give special attention to Advent, which we’ll do again this year by teaching through Luke 1 and 2, in a series we’ll call “a thrill of hope.” In January we’ll go to 2 Corinthians, as our follow-up to 1 Corinthians.
To introduce you to Luke, I thought it would help to put a picture on the screen. We don’t have a picture of Luke, but we do have a picture of a papyrus that has his name on it. If you want to write down the phrase P-75 or papyrus-75 (P75) and Google it later, you’ll get this image of an early manuscript from perhaps the second or third century. You can see that it says, Euangelion Kata Lukan, which means the gospel according to Luke. Luke is writing to a man named Theophilus, likely a wealthy patron who commissioned Luke’s research and writing. Maybe we’d consider the gospel of Luke like an artist being commissioned for a public mural, a painting done for one person but really done for all to see—or in this case, done for all to read.
The word euangelion means gospel or good news. The word evangelical is built on this word for good news. When you hear the word evangelical in the news or on TV, it tries to describe how people tend to vote one way. But that’s not how we mean it here or how Luke meant it. The “euangelion according to Luke” means “the happiest story according to Luke.” It’s a good news story. And one thing that makes his story, Luke’s story, so happy is the way he focuses on good news for the outsider, the downcast, the one often ignored. Which is what we find here, in a story about an old priest, the wife he loves, the problem they face, and the shame they unjustly bear.
As God tells this happy, good news story with cosmic implications for the redemption of the whole world, how like our God that to zoom in on just one priest living under a long, dark shadow. Let’s pray as we begin. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
I don’t know about you, but my wife and I are in that time of life when if we get to watch a show or movie before bed, we get about thirty minutes. And with all the sports activities, school activities, and church activities at night, we might watch the movie two nights in a row for a total of sixty minutes, but we might have five nights between those thirty minutes, which doesn’t help us keep the plot. Wait, we’ll say, is that person the bad guy? Or, Why is she mad at her boss? Or, I thought they didn’t like each other.Stuff like this.
Losing the plot happened to me in a major way with Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the audiobook, so I rented the audiobook from the library. It’s 63 hours long. You only get the book for 21 days, and it took me renting it three times, because I only got about 20 hours each time. But get this: It had a wait list with a three-month break. I’d start again and be like, Wait, who is John Galt?
I know some of you high school math students will lose the plot over Christmas break: Wait, what does the SOH-CAH-TOA stand for? Some of you know. Most of us have lost the algebra plot. And it’s okay, I guess, that you don’t know that in a right triangle, the sine of theta equals the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypotenuse. And it’s okay if you’re reading a book or watching a show and don’t remember why one character doesn’t like the other.
But what happens when the happy, good news story of God that he is working in the world and in your life gets really long and seems to have lengthy interruptions? What happens when personal sorrows cast a dark shadow over your life? The temptation is to lose sight of the happy, hopeful Christian plot. This is certainly the case with the two people we meet in this early part of the Christmas story, when we meet a priest named Zechariah from the division of Abijah and his wife Elizabeth, a daughter of Aaron. Despite praying about it constantly, they have no children. Not yet, anyway.
1. A long and shadowed story…
Let’s look more closely at the story that Luke has given us. With the baptisms today, this will be a brief sermon. I want to point out the long and dark shadow that hangs over our story. And then I’ll point out the thrill of hope. Let me read vv. 1–7 again.
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
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. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Of course when we come to the story of Advent, the story of Christ in a manger and wise men and King Herod and shepherds off in a field, we think, Whew, this is an old, long story. In a few weeks we’ll read from Luke 2, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria…” And when we read that, again, we think, Whew, this is an old, long story that’s been going on for two thousand years. When we say that, we’re correct. In the wisdom of God, he chose to tell a long story.
But we are not the only ones to see it this way. You’ll notice some of the wording here in these verses. In v. 1 we read of the things that have been accomplished among us…” Many other translations have “fulfilled” instead of “accomplished.” The idea is of promises made long ago being fulfilled now, or accomplished now, in this first Advent. This idea of a long story coming to fulfillment is the idea behind the line in the Christmas hymn that goes, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” (“O Little Town of Bethlehem”). The story was long to them.
We also get a sense of the length of this story from the lines in v. 5 about this couple. Notice how they are introduced: “Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron.” The division of Abijah goes back to an Old Testament practice described in 1 Chronicles 24, which divided the priesthood into groups, where they would report to Jerusalem for religious duty twice a year for one week and then also at the feast and festivals. So this has been going on for a long time. And there’s the phrase daughter of Aaron. That goes back perhaps fourteen hundred years to Aaron himself, that is, Aaron the brother of Moses.
So, my point is that, yes, the story is old and long to us. But the story God is telling was also old and long to them. And, we’ll soon see, Zechariah seems to have lost the happy plot, partly because the story is so long but also because his story is so darkly shadowed.
As I said, v. 5 tells us that they hail from the division of Abijah and daughters of Aaron. That’s a good pedigree of faith. Then in v. 6 we read, “they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.” Three statements of their exemplary character: from a family of faith, righteous before God, and walking blamelessly in all the commandments. But why, Dr. Luke, would you tell us this information? Why this emphasis? What are you saying?
Luke is preparing us for what he says next. Look at v. 7.
7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
The idea of barrenness echoes through the old stories, the story of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Manoah and his wife, Elkanah and Hannah, and surely untold others, then and now.
Infertility is always hard but notice here in this passage how the brunt of the weight falls on Elizabeth: “because Elizabeth was barren,” we read. The Bible’s not being backward or sexist. It’s just how infertility was viewed at the time. I mean, they’re in this together as a couple, but it’s especially difficult for her.
And not only this, but there would have been an assumption we don’t necessarily have today—at least not a common assumption, namely, that their barrenness is a sure sign of some moral deficiency, some character flaw, some secret sin that caused God to punish them. There are a few Old Testament passages that indicate barrenness could be a punishment from God (Lev. 20:20–21; Deut. 7:14; 2 Sam. 6:23), and from those, a culture arose that absolutized a one-to-one view of God’s punishment with barrenness.
“They must have done something wrong,” people would say to each other. “We don’t know what they did—Zech and Liz seem so likable,” they would say. Behind closed doors and sometimes even openly at Bible studies, people would speculate, people would imply. And it was hard.
It’s not that this same dynamic never happens today, but we don’t typically do this with infertility to the same degree—and we can be thankful for that. It’s hard enough already.
We do, however, tend to absolutize the connection between character defects and certain life circumstances. We tend (wrongly) to absolutize the connection between a character flaw and long seasons of singleness. We tend (wrongly) to do this with a person who is a victim in a divorce, even if we know it was the other spouse who went off the deep end. And we tend (wrongly) to do this with those in poverty. We do this when view the parents of adult, wayward children.
In theory, we think, a single person could be “righteous before God,” and in theory, one spouse wrongly divorced could him or herself be “walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord,” and, in theory, a poor person could be all this as well, and surely wayward children did get loved enough and disciplined enough—but we know, don’t we? We know it’s really about laziness or some secret sin or addiction or some other character flaw, and that’s why God is punishing them.
Just to state what I hope is obvious, by saying this out loud, I’m not endorsing this absolute, one-to-one kind of thinking of their culture or our culture. I’m not endorsing the gossip and slander, the innuendo. By saying what I’m saying, I’m trying to say what Luke is saying by sandwiching vv. 5–6 right next to v. 7, namely, that in a fallen world, sorrow is sometimes the result of particular sin and often not at all. If to others you’ve absolutized the connection between sin and suffering, you owe an apology. And if this has been done to you, well, you know more than the rest of us what this couple faced.
So, the story is long, and the shadows are dark. And poor, wonderful Zechariah and Elizabeth have lost the happy plot of the story God is telling. We see how they’ve lost the ability to believe in the goodness of God when Zechariah is told such wonderful news of a special son and he can’t even believe it. It would seem that this moment of offering incense in the temple was a once-in-a-career sort of day. It’s a happy day, if only for the chance to go into the temple, place hot coals on the altar, then burn the incense, which signifies the prayers of the people, and then offer a prayer, walk out of the temple, and then bless all those thousands of other priests waiting for him. It’s a huge day for him.
But it’s even more special because, once inside, he meets not just an angel but Gabriel, the angel who met the prophet Daniel so many years ago, and this angel tells him that he will not only have a son but the son to prepare the way for the special child that all God’s people have been waiting for. Yet he can’t even believe it. Look at vv. 13–15,
13 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. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great before the Lord…
In v. 14 we read three happy words: joy and gladness and rejoice. Later, in v. 19, Gabriel tells him, “I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.” That phrase comes from the same root of euangelion. But he can’t even believe.
Look closer at v. 13. Notice the specific wording from the angel. He says, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son…” Okay, but I’ll ask the question: what prayer?
There are no prayers in the passage. I believe this is a way to say that the deep prayers for a child have been heard. Gabriel is telling him that God hears the struggling prayers, the groaning prayers, the prayers that are neither neat nor tidy. God can hear prayers full of angst. In fact, you could say that this prayer from Zechariah was so deeply felt that, in a sense, it became the prayer behind all his other prayers. Some of you know these kinds of prayers.
For Zecheriah, the shadow is so dark he can’t even believe the good news. So he asks for a sign, which he gets. Because he did not believe God’s words, God took words from him. In an upcoming sermon, we’ll see that after a year of silence, the words return.
All this personal shadow is to say nothing of the political shadow that hung over the people of God. In v. 5, we read that Herod is the king of Judea. That’s not a good thing! He was a terrible man who murdered many family members. Herod was an insecure tyrant who wasn’t really even properly connected to the throne of David.
So, in summary, Luke tells us that the good news of the Christian gospel, the good news of the first Advent, grows in the soil of a sad story. From a personal standpoint, the shadow falls long and dark. From a cultural standpoint, the shadow falls long and dark.
2. A thrill of hope…
Into this context comes the Advent trill of hope. Zechariah goes home. Elizabeth becomes pregnant. When she does, she quotes one of the more famous barren women of the Bible, namely, Rachel, in saying that the Lord has taken away her disgrace (see Gen. 30:23).
I’d love to have 20 more minutes, but I need to close but I also need to point out that it wasn’t just that Zechariah and Elizabeth who were old and advanced in years and barren. In many ways, this couple represented the remnant of believers in God. The people of God had been waiting had been waiting inside a long story with a dark shadow. From the very beginning, they had been waiting for a special child. In Genesis 3:15, God promises the serpent,
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15)
Theologians call this the first euangelion, the first promise of good news. God is going to send a special child from a special woman who will crush sin and evil. Which we know to be Jesus. And as Luke writes, the people of God wanted the kind of certainty that Luke talked about in his introduction. “It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you . . . that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:3–4).
And so he opens with a story that would have been very relatable to the true people of God, a people in a long story with dark shadows and no special child. And that was about to change.
I gave the title of my sermon “A Thrill of Hope… for Those Advanced in Years.” I’m not trying to insult anyone about age; I’m not saying anyone is old. Nor am I saying this applies only to old people, not to young people. I’m trying to make the connection to all of us collectively. Christians are those saved by Jesus and who are waiting for his return. And it’s been a long two thousand years, and at times the shadows seem dark.
We are, together, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, struggling to believe with certainty that the good news story, the euangelion, is a true and happy story. In the same way they could sing, O Come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel / That mourns in lonely exile here / Until the Son of God appear,” we can sing that too.
God is very wise to give us seasons. As we enter the time of Advent, perhaps in the same way Zechariah got a surprise, as he got woken up to just how hard his heart had become, how cynical, how much he at lost the plot of the gospel, maybe for some of you the same will happen. And if this is the first time you’re experiencing the story of Advent, the story of the God who so loved the world that he sent his only Son, it’s a good story that only gets better.
With the baptisms today, we do not exactly have a reminder that Jesus is coming again. But, like John the Baptist, they point to the work that Jesus will do. They are not exactly an angel standing next to us in the temple, shouting at us that he typically stands in the presence of God, but it a sign that Jesus still changes lives, that his first advent as a baby, and the advent in our hearts by faith, all promise the second coming.
Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father…”
Sermon Discussion Questions
Is Advent a sweet time for you or a difficult one? Why?
In what ways did the good news story feel both long and shadowed to Zechariah and Elizabeth? In what ways do they represent the people of God? In light of Genesis 3:15, how are the people of God at this point still “barren” and “advanced in years”?
What makes the story feel long and shadowed to you? What about to those you love?
Do you tend to assume people suffering must being doing something wrong and are being cursed by God? How does that affect the way you view successful people? How does that affect your view of yourself?
In the midst of suffering, how do you keep yourself believing the story is a happy story with a fixed or “certain” ending, to use Luke’s words from v. 4?
