Best Of- Luke Chapter 1 Part#1

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Learn more at arnicare.com. That's a-r-n-i-c-a-r-e.com. This is Darren Kuhn with the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we search the ancient paths to find ways that God brings light into a dark world and helps set men free from the struggles that we all face on a day-to-day basis. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Do you feel like you're on a religious treadmill? Do you feel like Christianity is just a system of rules and regulations?

I can do this, but I can't do that. Do you feel like your efforts to reach God, find God, and please God are futile? Do you feel like your faith is dead or alive? Today, Pastor Russ Andrews will walk us through Scripture to answer these questions. Join us on Finding Purpose, a local triangle ministry glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living.

For more information and to connect with Russ Andrews and Finding Purpose, you can visit us online at findingpurpose.net or connect with us on Facebook. Now let's listen to Russ Andrews as he teaches us how to be a Christian without being religious. The highest honor that could fall upon a priest to be chosen to go into, if you understand a temple, you come in and you're in the holy place, and then you come to a thick veil. Remember when Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn into from top to bottom.

It's about the width of your hand. It takes a team of horses at each end cannot tear it apart. It's thick, and right behind the veil is the ark of the covenant that contains the Ten Commandments, and on top of the ark is what seat, the mercy seat, and that's where the high priest would come in on the day of atonement with the blood of a lamb, and he would pull, and he could only go in there once a year, and nobody else was to go in there, and they would tie a rope around his ankle in case he died. They'd pull him out because nobody was going to go in there, and he would pour that blood on the altar to make atonement for the sins of the nation. Well, that's not what Zechariah is doing here. He's coming in here to burn incense, and so it all happened because the lot, I don't know exactly what a lot looked like. Somebody may know, but I think of dice. They roll the lot, and Zechariah's name, you know, like you want to get seven, Zechariah pops up. How did that happen? Huh?

Who do you think was behind that? You know what that's called in the Bible? It's called the providence of God. God is sovereign, and listen, He rules in the affairs of men, and nothing happens by chance, particularly if you're walking with Jesus. Your path is ordered by Him. Vance Havner, who was an evangelist, I think, in the early 1900s in western North Carolina, but he went all over.

He was a great evangelist, and he once said, this is Vance. He said, I thank God for the unseen hand, sometimes urging me onward, sometimes holding me back, sometimes with a caress of approval, sometimes with a stroke of reproof, sometimes correcting, sometimes comforting. My times are in His hand. Whose hand are your times in? And let me ask you a question, particularly you young men. Y'all listening up there? Do you want to go through life on your own, making all your own decisions and choices without God?

How well do you think you'll do? Any old men of Him want to testify about how much trouble you're getting into? Do you know what we tend to do? I think I'm going to invest in this piece of real estate over here, even though I'm having to borrow 99% of the money, and then you get it, and you say, Lord, I pray that you will bless that. Well, you know what God says?

Well, you should have asked me before you bought it. Or, you know, Lord, who do you want me to marry? Well, you know, most of you guys go to the bar and just pick out the best looking one there who's getting drunk, you know, and then you get married, you think, well, I wonder why this thing didn't work out. Let me tell you, learn from us old, bald-headed men in here.

We've made all the mistakes you can make. Do you of men want to go through life knowing that the Creator of the universe has got you by the hand, and He's just guiding you along? Isaiah 30 21 says, whether you turn to the right or the left, you will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He guides me along the way. Listen, when you choose to follow Jesus, I'm telling you, He will direct your path. He will close the doors you should be going through, and He will open the doors you should go through. Only once in a lifetime was a priest allowed to receive the honor of pouring incense on the altar in the temple.

There were 24 divisions, and each division numbered about 300. That's over 7,000 priests. How did this thing fall on Zechariah?

I'll tell you why, because he was God's appointed man, and Zechariah received this honor only because God was directing his life. Proverbs 3 5 and 6 says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on who's understanding. Your own. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths what?

Straight. So let me ask you this question. So there are three things you've got to do. Trust God. Don't trust yourself, and give Him glory. Acknowledge Him. Are you willing to acknowledge Jesus? Jesus says, if you will acknowledge Me before men, then one day I'll acknowledge you before My Father who's in heaven. But if you are not willing to acknowledge Me, I will not be willing to acknowledge you before My Father in heaven.

Pretty convicting, isn't it? Zechariah at the proper time headed into the temple where, at the right moment, he poured the incense on the burning coals on the altar, and as soon as that incense hit those burning coals, smoke arose. It was just symbolic of His prayers for the nation, and suddenly a powerful messenger from heaven appeared. It was the angel of the Lord, Gabriel, who is an archangel.

There are only two angels, I believe, mentioned in the Bible who appeared of mankind. Gabriel, who's the other one? Michael. Anybody know what book of the Bible he appears in?

Come on. Daniel. Remember, Daniel was praying. He prayed for 21 days.

He was fasting. Michael finally arrived, but it said it took him three weeks because he was fighting in the unseen world against the demonic forces. We have no idea, I mean, what's going on in the unseen realm. We're just the visible manifestation of a tremendous battle that's taking place in the unseen world. Did you know that? Satan versus God, and guess who they're both after?

You and me. And so Gabriel appears, and he's like a new messenger that God chose to bring a message of good news. Not only would Zechariah be getting a son, but the nation would be getting a prophet. Kent Hughes writes, whatever the case, Gabriel spoke in prophecy which had ceased at the close of the Old Testament, occurred for the first time in over 400 years, and it was uttered by Gabriel. A light had dawned on the people who were walking in darkness. A prophet by the name of John, who would be John the what?

The Baptist would be born, and he would prepare the way of the Lord in the power of Elijah, just as who had prophesied. Is Jeff the only one listening? You guys, did you all go to state? I'm sorry I had to say that. Hey, look, I got on a red-white shirt tonight.

Let's see, if you go to Carolina, you don't have to go to class. So Malachi said, behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and awesome day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Now, some people believe that before the Lord returns, he's going to send Elijah and Moses back into the world. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but what he's referring to here is that John the Baptist was not Elijah, but that he came in the power of Elijah. Remember what Elijah did? He was on Mount Carmel, and he got an altar, and he challenged 800 prophets of Baal to a little showdown on Mount Carmel.

I've stood on Mount Carmel in 2018. It's just unbelievable to look at you up on a mountain, and you can oversee the valley below you, the valley of Armageddon, and the wind was blowing, and you could see the wind was blowing, and he got these 800 prophets and said, okay, you call out your God, and I'm going to call out to mine. Let's see who's God answers. And it says they cried out day and all day long, six hours, and God, Elijah was over there mocking them. Hey, your God must be asleep.

Maybe he's going on vacation. He said, okay, enough. Let's see what my God does. So then he ordered, and this was not in my sermon, but I'm going to tell you anyway. He ordered like 15 gallons, huge like those kegs we used to drink beer from, about 15 of those doused the altar with water, doused it completely, so it was just flooded and running over, and then he called out to his God. He said, God, if you're there, strike this altar with fire, and lightning came down and lit it, and then he ordered, I don't know who, but somebody to capture all 800 of those false prophets, and you know what he did with them?

Killed them. When time seemed dark, men, if you're truly walking with the Lord, I want you to know this truth. The light always shines the brightest when it's the darkest. God is faithful, but sadly we're not. Look at verse 18. And Zechariah said to the angel, how shall I know this?

For I'm an old man, and my wife has advanced in years. And the angel answered him, I am Gabriel. That's really all he had to say. I stand in the presence of God.

Do you think he might have said this with a little bit of anger? I was sent to speak to you, to bring you good news. And behold, since you didn't believe, 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. And then meanwhile, outside, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at this delay in the temple, because normally they were kind of in and out, but he's been in there a while. And when he came out, he was unable to speak. And so the people all knew that he must, something happened in there. He must have seen a vision. And when his time of service ended, he went to his home.

And after these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived. And for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, can you see her? She's alone with the Lord. She knows the miracle. She says, thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among the people.

The guys in closing, I want y'all to notice this. Zechariah knew the Scriptures. He was acquainted with how God had intervened in the lives of Sarah, Rachel, and Leah, all in the Old Testament, who were all barren.

And God gave them all three a son. So Zechariah knew that. He knew God had done it before. Plus, he was a priest. He was not an atheist.

He was offering prayer on the most important day of his life. Do you know there's one sin that God cannot forgive? It's referred to as blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but you know what it is? It's just unbelief. If you don't believe, he can't forgive you. That's the only sin that cannot be forgiven. Now, Zechariah didn't have that kind of unbelief.

His problem was he believed, but he didn't believe completely. So let me ask you this. Should we throw stones at Zechariah? Have we not done the same thing, just worst? We've been given a lot more than Zechariah.

Think about it. We have the completed canon of Scripture, the entire Bible. Zechariah did not.

We stand on this side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Zechariah did not. We have the evidence of countless fulfilled prophecies and all the eyewitness accounts contained in the New Testament. And 2,000 years of church history documented by thousands upon thousands of changed lives. And Zechariah had none of this. And yet, with all of this, most people, right here in Raleigh, still refuse to believe.

What about you? See, here's the problem with our world, and in particular our country. Jesus said in John chapter 3, excuse me, John writing in John 3 verses 19 through 21 said, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light. It will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. This is why so many of our friends won't come here.

They are afraid that something bad is going to happen, I guess, not realizing that this is the best place they can come if they want to experience life. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. I mean, every time you pick up your Bible this year and do this, do these questions, you're going to be given light. Light's going to flood your mind and your heart. And every time you sit here in this sanctuary and you listen to this sermon and you listen to the hymns we sing, God is shining light into your mind and your heart.

And so this is the question. What is your response to the light? What is your response to the truth? Belief or unbelief?

In John 3 18, Jesus says, guys, listen to this, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's only Son. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. Our nation, United States of America, we have had more light than any country in the world. Did you know that? Churches on every street corner, Billy Graham for 75 years, Christian bookstores, Bibles galore.

Christian bookstores, Bibles galore. We're choking on all the light we've had. And yet our country probably has the lowest rate of growth of Christianity than any country in the world.

Do you know why? Because we've got too much money, we've got too much education, and we've got too much religion. You go there to Afghanistan, growing Christianity in the underground church. You go to Iran, I just want to say it's the fastest growing church in the world.

Do you know what they're praying for, for us to have here in America? Persecution. Persecution. In John 8 12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. So if you will, take your Bible and open up to Luke chapter 1. Unfortunately, given the time, I'm only going to be to focus on verses 26 through 38. I just really decided that I would rather go deep on a few verses than give you a bird's eye view over a lot of verses.

So Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38. I want to begin tonight by telling you just a story about a person who's a very dear friend of mine. She wrote a book, and in her book it's entitled Sugar in a Shoebox.

Sugar in a Shoebox. It's by my dear friend Joyce McFallen, and in this book she tells the story of her incredible birth. Joyce was born to a very sick and frightened 18 year old girl 67 years ago in the town of Dunn, North Carolina, and she was born at a time in the 50s when racism was very much a part of life. She was born premature and weighed only two pounds, and the doctor's words to her grandmother were, take this thing home and let it die. In her book, Joyce writes, so my grandmama took her poor little sick daughter, my mother, with her poor little puny grandbaby back to her house so that she and the good Lord could begin the work they had to do to make mere man, the doctor, out to be a liar.

My grandmama was a woman filled with wisdom and she trusted the Lord. She took me this two-pound lump of quivering flesh and put me in the only thing that would accommodate my size, a shoebox. Grandma lined that shoebox with the softest material she could find. Next she filled a medium-sized mason jar with warm water and wrapped it in cloth so it would not burn the delicate skin of this teeny baby. Into this homemade incubator I went the barely viable form of a tiny human clinging to life, struggling to live.

Every inch of that shoebox from top to bottom, from side to side, inside and out, was filled to overflowing with an everlasting love, fortified and saturated with prayer. Grandmama would empty and refill the mason jar every hour, replacing cool water with warm water. And every hour grandmama would feed me from an eyedropper filled with formula made with evaporated milk. All throughout the days and all throughout the nights, grandmama and grandma Sooty nursed and prayed, sang and prayed and prayed and prayed so that a death sentence pronounced at birth would not come to pass. My mama was very sick but no one knew just how sick she was. Three months after bringing me into this world she slipped peacefully away into the waiting arms of Jesus, leaving her precious gift me to her mama and family.

And so from that point on grandmama Mary Florence became mama. After many months mama's efforts were rewarded when she took me back to the place where I was born and asked to see that same doctor. When she stood face to face with him she asked him this question. Doctor, do you remember who this baby is?

His brisk and curt reply was simply no. Then she proudly proceeded to hold up for his inspection the prettiest, chubbiest, happiest little cooing baby he would ever see. And with these words she pierced the innermost chamber of his heart.

This is that thing that you told me to take home and let die. My mama said she could see the years of his haughtiness and his great swelling arrogance crumble as he stood there staring in the shining eyes of this precious child who unwittingly held out her hands to him as the tears of shame and humility cascaded down his cheeks. George writes, God has a way. What He means to be will be. What He purposes to be will come to pass.

What He starts, rest assured, He will finish. If you don't believe it, just ask the little shoebox girl. That's my friend Joyce McFallen. She actually came to work for my family and helped us raise my two little boys and they, to this day, call her me mommy. I called her this morning. She struggles from diabetes, but she's got the greatest faith. She lives in a little apartment by herself, and I told her I was going to be talking about her and of course in her humility.

She wanted none of it. So men, when it comes to genuine saving faith, God in His wisdom faith, God in His wisdom before He created the world determined in His providence that He was going to give faith to the lowly, to the poor, and to the humble and contrite. In James chapter 2 verse 5, it says, listen my dear brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom which He promised those who love Him? And Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 27 and 28, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

He chose the lowly things of this world and to despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before Him. So let me ask you, do you come here tonight humble, lowly in spirit, feeling insignificant, and knowing that you're in need? Do you come, you consider yourself poor in the eyes of the world? If you do, then I want to tell you this, you are the perfect candidate for God to show His favor to. However, on the other end, if you come here tonight feeling as though you are doing pretty good on your own, thinking of yourself more highly than you should, taking great comfort in your wealth and your sense of self-reliance, then let me tell you something, you are as far from God as you can get and you need a wake-up call.

You need a reality check. And so let me ask you this and so let me ask you this question, would you all like to experience the favor of God? I know I would. I want to walk in God's favor every day. That just means I want Him to shower me with His grace. Not that I deserve it, but we serve a God who wants to shower us with His grace. He, man, He wants to give you His favor.

He wants to place His favor over you. And so if you want to have God's favor, then I want you to listen carefully to what I'm going to share with you tonight as we read about a woman who was truly humble and lowly in the eyes of the world and yet she was rich in faith and because of her rich faith and her humility, she was highly favored by God. So Luke chapter 1, let's pick up with verse 26. Here's what Dr. Luke writes, in the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, greetings, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you.

Mary was greatly troubled at His words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be, but the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David and He will reign over Jacob's descendants for how long? Forever. His son will reign over Jacob's descendants for how long?

Forever. His kingdom will never end. How will this be, Mary? asked the angel, since I'm a virgin. And the angel answered, the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age and she who was said to be unable to conceive is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God. And then listen to Mary's answer, I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said. And then the angel left her. Now man, here's the question I want to answer tonight. What kind of man is God looking for? Really, what is God looking for in a man?

Well, first of all, I want you to understand this truth that we learned from the Bible. God does not look at the outward appearance of us. What does He look at? He looks at the heart. He looks inside of us.

That's the real you. 1 Samuel 16 7 says, the Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

So let me ask you, what does God see when He looks into your heart? Being a Christian is not about being religious, but about having a dynamic alive relationship with Jesus Christ. You've been listening to Finding Purpose with Pastor Russ Andrews, a local triangle ministry glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living. Discover more about finding your purpose in life by checking out the resources at FindingPurpose.net or connect to Finding Purpose on Facebook. Pastor Russ would also like to extend a special invitation for you to join him and over 300 other local triangle men to study God's Word together every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. in downtown Raleigh. Find out more at FindingPurpose.net This is the Truth Network.