Read: Luke 1:18-25

Sing: O Come O Come Emmanuel

Unbelief. That is the concept we will land on today. By all accounts Zechariah should have not been filled with unbelief. We learned of his character in the firts verses of this passage and yet here we are, getting to listen in to this most intimate moment and his response is, " How can this be?"

Since the garden we see throughout the Bible a faithful, promise-keeping God and a doubtful questioning man. 

J.C. Ryle discusses it, "Let us learn wisdom from the fault of Zechariah.It is a fault to which God's people in every age have been sadly liable. The histories of Abraham, and Isaac, and Moses, and Hezekiah, and Jehoshaphat, will all show is that a true believer may sometimes be overtaken by unbelief. It is one of the first corruptions which came into man's heart in the day of the fall, when Eve believed the devil rather than God."

Thankfully, we get to see Jesus refuse this and have a model how we too can triumph over disbelief. When Satan appears to Him on earth, no longer disguised but finding the Lord in the wilderness, he tries the same tactic. If you really are...and the Son of Man answers back with the Word and a solid conviction in who God is. May we too learn to stand against our own disbelief and that of a world who constantly asks the same question, with a solid grounding of the Word in our own hearts and minds. 

Let us never be too proud to shout out as the father who cries out to Jesus in Mark 9, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!" Such an honest prayer and a humbling statement. 

This weekend let us examine our own hearts and see areas where unbelief still lies, let us be in the Word, hiding scripture in our heart, that as doubt creeps in, we can answer it with the Spirit breathed truths of His everlasting promises. This Advent may the Lord help our unbelief!

A sermon for the weekend: Fulfilled among us. "A Prepared People"