Post by Murph on Dec 23, 2023 7:47:19 GMT -6
Christmas and the Reliability of God’s Words
Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he reads, even when it’s a passage he has seen many times before. As I was rereading (for the fifth or sixth time this Christmas season) Luke’s nativity narrative, I was surprised by a repeated emphasis on the utter certainty of God’s words. Over the years, I’ve given a good deal of attention to that passage, and to that theme.1 But Scripture has the unique capacity to delight even the long-time reader with previously unnoticed details, sometimes in the most familiar literary terrain.
What I had never noticed before is that when you read Luke’s nativity narrative attentively, a mosaic emerges that repeatedly depicts the reliability and trustworthiness of God’s words. Where in this most familiar of biblical stories does Luke underscore the fidelity of God’s words?
The first occurrence was when the angel Gabriel delivered an astonishing promise to the aged priest Zacharias: he and his wife would have a son (Luke 1:11–17). But Zacharias “wavered concerning the promise of God” (unlike Abraham, Rom 4:19–20), and asked the angel for some kind of confirmation that this was really so (Luke 1:18). Gabriel clarified that he was relaying God’s words, not his own (Luke 1:19), and consequently pronounced the old saint speechless until those words from God were fulfilled. Why? “Because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their own time” (Luke 1:20). And so they were (Luke 1:57–66).
www.proclaimanddefend.org/2023/12/20/christmas-and-the-reliability-of-gods-words/