Advent Encounters: Zechariah Part 4

The promised child finally arrived. Despite their old age, Elizabeth and Zechariah held their baby boy, the one promised by the angel many months before. Eight days after his birth, they joyfully gathered their friends, family and neighbors together for the baby’s circumcision and naming ceremony, as commanded in the law.

And for one last time in recorded Scripture, God’s power would be revealed through Zechariah.

The crowd gathered around the couple, thinking the baby would be named after his father. Elizabeth had a surprise for them. She announced that his name was John. Caught by surprise, the gathering wanted to double-check with Zechariah, who was still silent.

Wait. He was still silent?

But the angel said that Zechariah would “be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place (Luke 1:20).”

The baby was born eight days earlier. Shouldn’t Zechariah have been able to speak by now?

It seems there was one more task that Zechariah had to complete.

He was handed a tablet on which he wrote, “His name is John.”

And he could speak.

His words revealed his faith. Naming his child as the angel had directed showed an acceptance of the message he had rejected months before when the angel stood before him in the temple of God.

Created over 1 year ago