That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 39: REMEMBERED BY GOD

1. Your Prayer is Heard

The day broke like every other day.  The sun did not rise from the west.  The birds did not sing with a croak in their throat.  He did not have any dream the night before to prepare him to expect the unusual.  That day, according to his priestly routine, Zacharias reported at the Temple for his holy tasks.  His division (or priestly department) was on duty that week.

In the course of his rituals in the inner Temple, Zacharias received a very strange visitor, the angel Gabriel, from “the very presence of God” (Luke 1:19, Living Bible).  What could this mean?  Suddenly, the angel said to the startled priest,

Don’t be afraid, Zacharias! For I have come to tell you that God has heard your prayers, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son (v.13, Living Bible).

2.  A Late Answer

By this time, Zacharias was already a very old man, with his wife.  For that reason, he could not help querying the angel about the message.  “But this is impossible.  I’m an old man now, and my wife… also…,” he protested (v.18, Living Bible).

“God has heard your prayers,” the angel announced to Zacharias.  Why did it take so long then for God to answer the prayers He since had heard?   Why now when it was almost too late?

It is said that the original Greek actually reads: “Your prayers were heard.”  That would suggest that: 

1) the prayers is question were not recent prayers but prayers of a past time; prayers which Zacharias had ‘banked’ into his heavenly account;

2) as Zacharias advanced in age and saw no sign of an answer to his prayers, he may have lost faith and ceased praying;

3) God’s ‘approval’ to his ‘application’ had since been granted nontheless.

Why did the answer take so long to arrive, even though an angel of no less a status than Gabriel, who stands “in the very presence of God,” was the one in charge? 

3.  The Time of Incense

The burning of incense is symbolic of prayers (Revelation 8:3; 5:8; Psalm  141:2).  The time of incense in the Temple could therefore be said to be a time of prayers.  Zacharias was in the inner Temple burning incense when the angel came; he was in the process of a priestly intercession for others, the others who waited outside for him while he went into the “inner” place of incense on their behalf, in spite of his own unanswered prayers (vv. 21-22).  God had since heard his prayers, but the breakthrough came only at that moment of prayers in the inner Temple.

Therefore, even when God has opened to us a “great door,” there are usually “many adversaries” to be cleared off our path into that open door (1 Corinthians 16:9).  Sometimes it takes further prayers to receive answers to the initial prayers that God has already heard.  Elijah “prayed earnestly” and “prayed again” for rain to come upon his thirsty land (James 5:16-17), even though God had already heard his prophetic words about “a sound of abundance of rain” (1 Kings 18:41). 

God hears everybody, but He does not answer all.  Your mouth does not answer all that your ears hear.  May God answer you today.

4. Jehovah Remembers

Zacharias means “remembered by Jehovah,” or “Jehovah remembers.”  According to his good name, God remembered him. But why did it take so long?  Did God forget, until the time of incense? 

God will surely remember you, too, no matter how long it has already taken.  May your prayers serve to remind Him about you.  “Put me in remembrance: let us plead together,” He Himself urges (Isaiah 43:26). Remind God about you today.

5.  In Spite of Unbelief

Zacharias had thought that the message from God was ‘practically’ impossible.  That suggests that the priest had lost faith in his prayers.  Yet, Jehovah still remembered him.

Your faith may have grown small, yet your God will remember you.  May you receive His mercy today not because you deserve it, but merely “for his name’s sake.”  Jehovah remembers.

6.  Help Your Angel

There are countless millions of angels of God, who minister to God in their hierarchies.  Michael and Gabriel, with Lucifer before he fell, belonged to the ‘top class’ of God’s angels.

The fact that this message to Zacharias had to be delegated to as eminent a heavenly ambassador as the angel Gabriel suggests that the message was very, very important to God.  Even then, the message did not arrive on time.  Why?

This brings to mind a previous account of the same angel with a message to Daniel (Daniel 10-11).  On that occasion, the angel had been intercepted for twenty-one days by atmospheric agents of Satan, who wish the inhabitants of the earth no good.  At that time, it took Daniel’s persistent prayer to aid the angel to breakthrough to him with the answer from God.  In Zacharias’ case also, it took the priest’s persistent offering of incense in the “inner Temple” of prayers for the angel to get through to him.  Therefore, the fact that God has heard does not mean for us to go to bed before the answer has come.  Some conditions need not merely the prayers that God will hear but also the reinforcing prayers on whose wings the answers should come.

7.  Take Away My Disgrace

In her reaction to the miracles, Mrs. Zacharias said that God had intervened “to take away my disgrace of having no children” (v.25).  When childbirth is delayed, the woman is the one who usually bears the “disgrace,” much more than the man ever would.  So, God not only heard the prayers of the husband but also saw the tears of the wife, as He had seen the tears of Hannah the mother of Samuel centuries before (1 Samuel 1:3-25).

8.  Whose Prayers?

“God has heard your prayers” (v.13), the angel told Mr. Zacharias.  The wife must have prayed too, but a husband’s prayer does much to a wife.

When Isaac’s wife was late in conception “because she was barren” (Genesis 25:21, KJV), it took the husband’s prayers to procure divine intervention for her.  We are told, “And Isaac entreated the LORD for his wife… and Rebekah his wife conceived” (v.21, KJV).  A husband’s prayer does much in a wife’s life.

Jacob merely wished and spoke death on whomsoever had stolen his father-in-law’s “gods,” not knowing that his pregnant wife was the culprit.  In a few short weeks, she was dead, her childbirth being a ‘natural’ explanation (Genesis 31:32; 35:16-18).

9.  Angelic Encounters

Zacharias was struck dump because he doubted the message from God.  When he came out dumb from the inner Temple, the people remarked that his awed and speechless response to their greetings could mean that “he must have seen a vision in the Temple” (v.22).  Their response appears to suggest that although it did not happen frequently, encounters with angels were not unusual, even in those late Old Testament days.

If such encounters were not unusual then, we need them much more now.  May they come as we go beyond the outer court of the prayer-contracting crowd into the inner Temple of incense.  Amen.