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19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and I was sent to speak unto thee, and to bring thee these good tidings.
20 And behold, thou shalt be silent and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall come to pass, because thou believedst not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
Luke's Record:
- 1. He tells us what the "angel" said to Zacharias: I AM (emphatic: ego eimi) Gabriel (meaning: geber of El -- a warrior {as a highly capable being} of the Exerciser of Power).
- a. There is a hint here of rebuke, though Zacharias couldn't have known this angel's identity without being told.
- b. There is an emphatic declaration here by Gabriel -- he uses the same grammatical construction of pronoun (I) plus verb (I am) that Jesus occasionally used when He identified Himself as the I AM. Gabriel wants Zacharias to sense that he has made a blunder -- OOPS!
- 2. He tells us the angel's normal identity as "the one who stands before the God".
- 3. He then reveals that the angel was "sent" (apostle) "to speak to you" (no emphasis upon content; rather, emphasis upon sound).
- 4. The "speech" was to bear "good news" as "these things" were told to Zacharias.
- 5. Then, Luke reveals that the angel took action to address Zacharias' weakness of projecting the past upon the future in disregard to the Word of God.
- a. He took away his ability to create sound.
- b. He told him that this inability would rest upon him until the words came to fulfillment.
- c. He told him that this was happening to him because Zacharias didn't believe the message (logos) which he had been sent to deliver.
- d. He then reinterated the fact that the prophetic words would be fulfilled in their time.
Luke's Theology:
- 1. By focusing upon the prophetic word, Gabriel established how men might know which words were from God and which were not.
- 2. The question, "how shall I know for certain", is a legitimate question -- when asked in the right context.
- a. Clearly, Zacharias was not "in the right context" because Gabriel rebukes him for his unbelief.
- b. Just as clearly, if Zacharias had not been immersed in God's intensive dealings with Israel (if he had been some Gentile raised in some far away nation), the question would have been somewhat legitimate in that God has never expected men to believe Him without reasonable cause -- i.e., God never expects a "leap" of faith if, by that, we mean "jumping" into a void of reason, or understanding, in the hopes that "it" might prove to be true.
- c. If man's minds were not already clouded by the fog of deceptions in this world, and their hearts were not already corrupted to the point that God is not their chief interest, they would already "know" because we are immersed in Truth so much that Wisdom can be said to be crying aloud in every street and at the head of every corner, but men's minds and hearts are already corrupted so that there needs to be a further "shoring up" of the Truth than is already present: enter the imminently reasonable apologetic of the Bible -- fulfilled prophecy.
- d. Thus, the angel takes Zacharias' typical, failed, approach to knowledge -- projecting his experience upon the future without due consideration of the Word of God -- and forces a focus upon the Word of God by instantly imposing a word from God upon the man (you shall not be able to speak) and then imposing a future expectation of a word from God upon the man (you shall be able to speak again when these "good news words", which you did not believe, come to pass just as these present "bad news words", which you cannot help but believe, come to pass).
- e. This tactic could not help but bring Zacharias to "faith" in the ancient text "...there shall be no barren among you...".
- 1) This instantly brought Zacharias to the joy of the wedding of love and faith.
- 2) The inconvience of speechlessness was, therefore, not a big deal.
- a) It probably had its moments of frustration when speech would have made the situation far easier to handle.
- b) But, the frustrations of minor problems were overwhelmed by the joy of the hope of a son!
- c) There is a huge principle here regarding the way a highly valued result, abiding in hope, just swallows up the lesser valued failed results which abide in experience. Joy swallows grief so that it ceases to make a very significant dent in our general sense of contentment.
- 3) Why did Gabriel impose "silence" upon Zacharias? Was there something inherent in Zacharias' approach to living that made "silence" a suitable "child-trainer"?
- a) The use of "to speak" as the expression of "communication with sound" (focus upon sound) is doubled up.
- i. I was sent to speak to you
- ii. You shall not be able to speak
- b) Zacharias had, in effect, told Gabriel that his "sound" was just so much "noise" -- words not to be believed on the face of them.
- c) Gabriel, in effect, told Zacharias, "You need to understand what it does to relationships to have words rejected as unworthy of utterance. Thus, I am going to make the vast majority of what you think is worthy of utterance unworthy of utterance so that you can experience the kind of unworthiness you have just imposed upon me. When you have something worth saying, you will be able, once again, to speak."
