WHEN THE LORD BLESSES

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days He has shown His favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”

Luke 1:24-25

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever experienced a blessing from the Lord?

I know I have, many times over and I am so grateful for all His many expressions of goodness and provision. They have brought great joy into my life.

Maybe you can relate.

As we see in today’s short passage from the Gospel of Luke, we find Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth, in the midst of experiencing an amazing, miraculous blessing from God, one foretold by the angel Gabriel to Zechariah as he was fulfilling his priestly duties in the temple.

You’ll recall that Gabriel informed Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would have a son, even though they were old and well past conventional child bearing years. It was great news, news that Zechariah should have received with joy through faith in a God who never breaks a promise.

But that’s not happened, right?

Zechariah failed to believe that he and Elizabeth could do anything that would lead to her conceiving and because he doubted, Gabriel snatched away his ability to speak. Imagine how this played out when Zechariah returned home to his wife. We don’t know how that went but I imagine the priest communicated in some way regarding what had happened. The scriptures pick up after the Gabriel encounter with Elizabeth indeed becoming pregnant. Look again at these words here:

After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days He has shown His favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” Luke 1:24-25

To be an Israelite woman and childless in biblical days often brought on the perception that the woman (or her husband or both) had sinned and thus the Lord’s judgment was upon them, his punishment grounded in a restriction on bearing offspring. It was a perception that led to feelings of “disgrace among the people”, something we know Elizabeth was experiencing by her own confession.

Now pregnant, Elizabeth was experiencing the fullest measure of God’s blessing to her and Zechariah who would now have a son to carry on his name into at least the next generation. In direct contrast to when a woman was childless, Elizabeth’s pregnancy, especially in the latter stages of her life, would have been viewed as her being in great favor with God and indeed this is how she saw what God had done for her. Through her conception, God was showing His favor to her and Zechariah.

It’s interesting to me that Elizabeth stayed secluded for the first five months of her pregnancy.

Why?

Because she was waiting for the Lord’s timing to reveal the miracle He had instigated. It was His place to reveal the blessing He had bestowed upon Elizabeth and Zechariah, and we will see this play out over the next several messages as a virgin named Mary enters the Christmas story and receives her own miraculous blessing after an encounter with Gabriel, an encounter where she will learn how God had chosen her to bear His Son Jesus, the Messiah, and fulfill the prophecies of old.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.