The Day That Changed Everything, Part 2

I can see Zacharias and Elizabeth as he's writing on a slate or parchment there at their kitchen table in this little humble farmhouse. We're going to have a son who will introduce the Son of God, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sin debt of the whole world. And that good news, that gospel will be delivered to our nation, but eventually it will go around the globe. Hello and welcome to Wisdom for the Heart, featuring the Bible teaching of Stephen Davey. Last time we began a message that we didn't have time to complete.

After a bit of review, we're going to conclude that message today. The good news of the gospel is rooted in Jesus Christ. But around the time of Christ's birth, his cousin, who would be known as John the Baptist, was also born. In today's lesson, Stephen has an essential reminder for you. Nothing is impossible for God. The births of John and Jesus demonstrate that. This message is called the day that changed everything.

Look at the middle part of verse 17. He will turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children. John's ministry will so impact the hearts of people that it would revolutionize the way they live inside the home. Fathers will be turned around so that they will once again care about their family. Because when a man is unconverted, when a man is pagan, when a man is rebellious, guess what he doesn't care about? His family. But when that man's heart is turned around by repenting to God, his heart goes to his home. He cares about his children and his family. So John's ministry will so impact the hearts of people that it's going to revolutionize the way they live in their homes.

Regenerated hearts, you could principalize it this way, will redefine relationships. Fathers are going to come alongside mothers in caring for the development and growth of their children. Listen, this truth is still alive and well. That's the kind of impact the gospel has even to this day. You go to a culture that has not been saturated or even built upon the foundational truths of the gospel or the word of God, and you will find a culture where children do not matter. And by the way, women don't either. They are chattel.

They're beasts of burden. You go outside the western world, predominantly influenced, of course, by centuries of the gospel, and you find polygamy is rampant. Adultery, in fact, is sanctioned for men only.

If you're a woman and you do that, you get stoned to death. Children are the sole responsibility of the mother, and don't let them get in the way of the father. But you get inside a culture impacted by the gospel, and you'll discover, among many things, the value of a woman is dramatically increased. She is honored and respected and valued, and the goal of a man is to faithfully love that woman that God has allowed into his life and to care for the children that are viewed as gifts from God and not chattel. Faithful monogamy then becomes the ideal of that kind of culture, and everything else is discouraged. And so in our culture, by the way, and I'm sure you're way ahead of me, where the Bible is being set aside, women are becoming things again.

Children, unwanted, as men simply have their way. The gospel comes along, and men repent, and their hearts effectively go back home. I couldn't believe I was actually reading a USA newspaper. I mean, the Internet was bad enough, but the USA newspaper actually had an article in my files. I've dated 2004, and I'm sure they probably wouldn't print this again, but I pulled it. The article is entitled, and this gets your attention, it certainly got mine, Do Evangelical Protestant Fathers Really Know Best? Now, of course, I began to read that article assuming that they were going to kick these guys to the curb.

And then what happened? And again, it's hard to believe, and it drew fire and criticism from our culture, and I'm shocked it was printed. But here it goes, and I quote, religious congregations give young families social support and enforce norms about what it means to be a good father. Protestant men are more likely to show affection toward their children than religiously unaffiliated men. I had to read that three times, and they actually wrote that. I mean, I knew it would be true, but it's amazing.

It went on. They are more likely that as Protestant fathers are more likely to want to know what's going on in their children's lives, and committed Protestant men have the lowest rate of domestic violence of any singular group in the United States of America. Is that great or what?

Do you know why? It's the gospel. The gospel influences culture.

Our culture can't quite put the dots together, but that's what's happening. Here's something else you didn't hear in sociology. Western civilization did not produce Christianity. Christianity produced Western civilization with all its freedoms and its values and its dignity, its treatment of women and children.

Fathers who follow Jesus Christ want to pursue this kind of ideal, and they call it the norm. When we fail, what do we do? We confess and then get back up on our feet. Amen? John's career is going to radically impact the disinterested. His career is going to impact the disobedient thirdly. The last part of verse 17 reads, and the disobedient, again the antecedent verb is there turned, to the attitude of the righteous so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And with that, Gabriel ends his message.

Doesn't mean I have. I haven't finished, but he finished his, okay? Zacharias, I know that you and your wife are 80 years old, but you're going to have a baby, and he's going to be the prophesied forerunner of the Messiah. And I can just see Zacharias in there after hearing that. He probably spills frankincense all over his robe. His mouth is wide open.

He doesn't know whether to faint, what to do. And verse 18, look there, it tells us that Zacharias' first words are, oh Gabriel, messenger from the living God, how wonderful this news is to my heart. Oh wait, maybe I didn't memorize the right verse. Zacharias' first word is, how?

How am I going to know this for certain? I get this. Zacharias is asking for a sign. He's in the holy place all by himself. An angel appears, eyes glowing like coals of fire, face like lightning, and Zacharias says, I need a sign. I'm so glad God didn't clean this up, you know, so the prophet would have responded with a prayer or a blessing.

How? And would you give me a sign? Like, this isn't enough. I'm an old man. He says, latter part of verse 18, I love this, and my wife is advanced. He doesn't say she's old. He says, I'm an old man. My wife's just advanced in years. He's a wise man. I'm old, she's just mature.

I love the play on words, however. I am an old man, Gabriel says in verse 19. I am Gabriel. I'm an old man.

My wife's advanced in years. I'm Gabriel, and I stand in the presence of the ageless one. In fact, I just come from the great I am. And the obstacles of your I am are no match for the great I am. Okay? Here's a sign.

I'll give you a sign of your unbelief that will physically mirror the spiritual condition of the nation. They haven't been listening to me. They can't hear me. And they haven't been speaking for me. So you're not going to be able to hear or speak until your baby boy is born.

That's your sign. Luke chapter 1, verse 62, we don't have time there, but it tells us that Zacharias is not only unable to speak, but to hear he's making signs to everybody around him. The people have been waiting for him to come out of the holy place. He's supposed to be in there just for a few moments burning the incense, and then he's supposed to come out to this portico and bless the people, and they wait.

The tense of the verb says they keep waiting, and they keep waiting, and they keep waiting, and they keep waiting, and finally he comes out, and he can't talk, and he's making motions. And I would agree with some who believe the rabbis and the priests more than likely wrote this guy off. You're going to have a baby, and you can't tell us about it? Why? Because you saw an angel, and he did this to you?

You ought to retire. They wrote it off. In fact, we have no indication that they followed up on it, just like the religious world did not follow up on all the things related to the birth of Christ. You'd think an entourage would head to Bethlehem, and they never did, remember? They just assumed that Zacharias' mind is muddled. He's so excited about being able to go into the holy place, and now he comes out thinking he's going to have a son and a forerunner to the Messiah of all sons.

Poor guy. The Bible tells us that he had to finish his week of service, verse 23, when the days of his priestly service were ended. So yeah, they wrote it off. They didn't believe him.

In fact, they didn't even give him a free pass home after this happened. You finish your week. I know this angel stuff.

Just keep it to yourself. You finish your week of duty, and then you can go home. And as soon as his week is over, I can only imagine how Zacharias raced home. No doubt he's driving his mule way over the speed limit in fourth gear, probably reaching five miles an hour, gets home, hops off his donkey, rushes in, gets a hold of Elizabeth, and starts making signs to her for her to understand, and she more than likely couldn't read his mind and maybe thought he'd lost his mind.

Zacharias got some reading material, maybe a slate, some parchment, and the more he began to write, the more she found it hard to breathe. We're going to have a what? A baby. Oh, that's not all. He's going to be the forerunner of the Messiah. Honey, could you use a cup of tea? I'll be right back.

You just sit here and rest your feet. You know what I think was more than likely happening? And I'm guessing here. What I think is more than likely happening, and others agree with this part of it, that she probably already knew the news. She'd already heard that her husband had suffered a stroke, that he was a bit addled, maybe a little out of his mind. He'd gotten the privilege of going into the holy place, and there he just, something happened, we don't know, poor fella. He was seeing things and hearing things, and it's paralyzed his ability to speak and hear. And I can imagine with that kind of message that Elizabeth would have been waiting for him, but in her heart I can imagine that she would have been saying, Lord, this too? My husband has served you for 50 plus years. We've lived under a cloud of suspicion.

It's never been easy for us. And now he gets the chance to go into the temple, and in there he's physically stricken. Why this? I think she was prepared for him to come home, and in her heart was an array of questions and even greater confusion as to the providence of God, who it had seemed to them as a couple didn't know them or care or understand them. They had lived under the cloud of his displeasure in this Abrahamic covenant period of time because they couldn't have children, assumed that they're under the displeasure of God.

Somehow he just looked over them. Well, now he gets into the holy place. He's representing the nation in prayer to you and you do this. Most often we're never enlightened to those things that do mark us, challenge us.

We don't get trials in a little box, and on top when we open it is a little booklet of instructions on how it's all put together. We're only encouraged to trust and persevere and his grace is going to be sufficient. Zacharias, you and Elizabeth, you're to name your son, the grace of God, John. About 11 years ago, I shared with our congregation an illustration of how answers sometimes come late in life, and this came back to my mind, and you can pack your things away.

I'm going to read a lengthy section and then we'll pretty much be done. Answers coming late in life to the mysterious working of God's plan. In 1921, a young missionary couple left Sweden for the interior of Africa. This is out of Jim Simola's book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, printed in 2001. They were soon joined by another young missionary couple and together they decided to go to a remote village where the gospel had never yet arrived. When they got to the village, however, the chief rejected them and would not let them enter his village for fear of displeasing the local gods. So these two couples had no choice but to go up a hillside on a slope of land and build their own mud huts. They prayed for spiritual breakthrough.

None came. The only contact they had was with a young boy who was allowed from the village to come and sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. One young couple by the name of Seveja and David Flood decided that if this was the only villager they could talk to, Seveja decided that she would make him her mission and take every advantage of it. So over the course of time, she taught him how to read and write. She introduced him to the gospel of Jesus Christ and he accepted the Lord. Beyond that little boy, there were no other advancements made into that village.

He was it. In the meantime, malaria began to stalk them. The other couple finally decided they'd had enough.

There were no open doors here and they left David and Seveja Flood alone on that hillside in their mud hut. In the midst of these trying times, Seveja became pregnant and only then did the village chief soften his hard stance against them and allowed a midwife from the village to help her when she delivered their little girl. But it was all too much of a strain for this young missionary woman. She was weak from her delivery along with her own personal battle with malaria. She lived only another 17 days and then died.

Something caved in at that moment in her husband's heart and mind. David Flood dug a crude grave, buried his 27-year-old wife, and took his baby girl down the mountain to a mission station where he handed her to a missionary couple and said, I'm going back to Sweden. I've lost my wife. I can't take care of the baby. God has ruined my life.

He is not good. With that, he turned his back on his daughter, his ministry, on God himself. Within eight months, a little girl they named Ina was alone again for her adoptive parents also died of malaria. Ina was given to yet another missionary couple who was retiring from the field and they brought her home with them and raised her in the United States. Changing her name to Aggie, she grew up under the care of her adoptive parents in South Dakota. She eventually attended North Central Bible College in Minneapolis and married a man who entered the ministry. She knew very little of her past. She only knew her parents' names, the fact that she had been born in Africa, that her mother had died soon afterward, and that her father had given her up for adoption. She assumed her father still lived in Sweden, but she'd never met him.

In the meantime, she enjoyed her growing family and fruitful ministry supporting her husband who eventually became the president of a Bible college in Seattle, Washington. Then one day, a Swedish religious magazine appeared in their mailbox at home. She had no idea who sent it. In fact, she couldn't even read the language.

It was a complete mystery. But as she stood there turning the pages, all of a sudden, a photograph arrested her attention. It was a jungle setting in Africa. The photograph focused on a grave with a simple white cross at the head of it, and carved into that little white cross was the name Sevea Flood, her mother.

She rushed to the office of a college faculty member who could translate the magazine article. He summarized it for her, telling her well, it's about missionaries who came long ago, the birth of a baby, the death of the young mother. The one little African boy had been led to Christ by the woman before she died. How after the missionaries had left, that boy had grown up and persuaded the chief to let him build a school. He won all of his students to Christ, eventually their parents, the chief also.

Today, there are 600 believers in that village. For their 25th wedding anniversary, the Bible College gave them a vacation trip to Sweden, where among other things, Aggie could finally search for her father. She discovered that he had remarried years earlier, had a family of four children, but the bitterness had slowly taken its toll.

He'd only recently suffered a stroke. After an emotional meeting with her half brothers and sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father. They replied, well, that would be wonderful. You can go and talk with him, even though he's very ill, but you need to know that he's had one rule in our family all these years, and no one has ever been allowed to break it. The rule was simply this, never ever mention the name of God, because God, he taught us, is not good.

Aggie was undeterred. When she finally walked into his bedroom, her father was now 73 years old, lying in bed in frail condition. He turned toward her, and when he saw her, immediately began to weep, and he said, Ina, I'm so sorry. She replied, it's all right, Papa, God took care of me. The old man instantly stiffened a tear, stopped as he said, God, God, God forgot us. God forgot us out there.

And he turned his face back toward the wall. Papa, you didn't go to Africa in vain. Mama didn't die in vain. God was at work through you. That little boy who accepted Christ grew up to win the whole village to Jesus Christ. Today, there are 600 African people serving the Lord, a vibrant church, because you followed the call of God in your life. Papa, God had a plan all along.

He had not forgotten you. He turned back toward her from facing the wall, and they began to talk, and by the end of that afternoon, the kindness of God had brought him back to repentance, restoration, and fellowship with his Savior. And a few weeks later, David Flood went home to heaven.

It's not the end of the story. A few years later, Aggie and her husband were attending an evangelism conference in London. A report was given during that conference from the nation of Zaire by the superintendent of the national church, which now represented more than 100,000 believers. He spoke eloquently about the spread of the gospel in his country. And afterwards, Aggie couldn't help but go up and ask him if he'd ever heard of her parents, David and Savelle Flood. Oh, yes, ma'am, he said, as a little boy, I used to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. It was your mother who led me to Christ.

They embraced for a long time. And then he said, you must come to visit us. Your mother is the most famous person in our church history. And in time, Aggie did come and was welcomed by cheering throngs of believers. Eventually, she was led to her mother's grave with that white cross and the words written on it, Savelle Flood.

She knelt in the soil to pray and to give thanks to God who had been good. While the national church leader read from scripture, those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. Friends, there will come a day when everyone's story will make sense. For most, it will not be this side of heaven. But for a few, answers come and God's plans are revealed so that the grace of God can be magnified and our faith built up.

I can see Zacharias and Elizabeth as he's writing on a slate or parchment there at their kitchen table in this little humble farmhouse. Lady in life, the answers came. And I wonder, what would he have written? Maybe something like, Elizabeth, we've had 50 years of tears. We've had 50 years of ministry without answers. We clung to the belief that God was worthy of service and worship, that God was good, not so much to us, but he was good.

Just think, Elizabeth, your disgrace will soon be over. This was his plan all along so that it could only be God who could do this. We're going to have a baby and not just any baby. We're going to have a son who will introduce the son of God, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sin debt of the whole world. And that gospel Gabriel announced, that good news will not be delivered to one village alone or even one geographical area. That gospel will be delivered to our nation, but eventually it will go around the globe. For this godly couple, I want you to understand that their life would be measured. They would view life in two sections, one before that angel came, and that was most of it, most of their lives. And then in their 80s, the day the angel came and delivered the news to them of their soon to be delivered son, whose gospel will to this day, not just his generation, but our generation, provide the foundation for forgiveness and hope and joy. As you and those you love celebrate this Christmas season, I hope your life will be filled with the hope and the joy Stephen was just describing.

This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. I'm glad you joined us. We'd enjoy interacting with you. Our phone number is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. Call us if we can help you with anything. Thanks for listening. Join us again on Wisdom for the Heart. I'm Stephen Davey, and I'll see you next time.