Road Trippin With Rachael

As we begin the Advent season, I think we need to take some time to really focus on the Christmas account piece by piece, and see how what scripture shares is meant to build on each other.

Over the next month we are going to be looking at Luke’s account if the Christmas Story. But don’t forget to check out the other posts for the Christmas Season as we go through my other series Christ in the Carols.

Why is Luke’s Account Accurrate?

If you spent any time watching my YouTube channel this year, you know that we went through the Gosoel of John, and at the beginning I said that John is a book specifically geared towards theology while the other Gospels (although still geared towards theology) are synaptic – more or less in order – and are meant for different audiences. Luke is meant for Gentiles. In fact, Luke’s Gospel account is written to an individual, Theophilis.

Luke opens by intentionally establishing that the account of what he is about to talk about is accurate. One, he investigated it himself. This isn’t heresy for Luke, and as a doctor, Luke was specific about details. He supports this claim by telling Theophilis that there are still individuals who are alive who saw and experienced all the miracles. He makes this claim in Acts 1, which is his follow up letter and outlines the history of the early Church.

Two, Luke attempts to keep things in chronological order. He gives details that identify the timeframe. Some of these would be that King Herod was ruling – which was a title, but the audience knew exactly who he was talking about. He states the division of priests Zechariah us a part of. Both of these pieces of information were things thatbthe audience would have been familiar with. Although written to a Gentile audience, there were Jewish people all over the Roman empire so details about their faith wouldnhave been generally known since it was consistent across the empire.

Miracle that everyone would have heard about

The biological clock.

Women are born with a set time that they will be physically capable of having children, after which they are no longer able to conceive. However, in Luke 1 Luke reports on what would have been the story of the century – Zechariah, one of the priests in Jerusalem, goes mute after an encounter with an angel and his wife who is beyond childbearing years is pregnant.

Let’s break this down a little bit. Zechariah has had an encounter with Gabriel. This is a major event considering the Lord hadn’t had a prophet now in centuries, and he was coming with good news. Think about it. Here is this man whose wife hasn’t been able to have children and they are far removed from being able to have them is suddenly told that they are going to have a baby. They aren’t adopting, they aren’t fostering, they aren’t pulling a Patriarch and getting a baby via a servant (which was coercion and should NEVER have been done). This was his wife, Elizabeth is going to have a baby the old fashion way. This was the thing that CNN and FOX report on, not the National Enquirer.

And Zechariah doesn’t believe Gabriel. Under any other circumstances we would agree that he probably wouldn’t believe it if your wife who was infertile was suddenly pregnant. You would probably believe that it was a false positive. However! There is a precedent for previously infertile women to conceive. This is all throughout the Old Testament. Just to name a few that immediately come to mind: Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 21); Isaac and Rebekah (Genesis 24); Manohar and his wife (Judges 13); Elkanah and Hannah ( I Samuel 1). Zechariah’s problem was that he didn’t believe Gabriel, and since Gabriel was there as a messenger of God, to not believe Gabriel was synonymous with not believing God.

Thoughts

Luke opens his Gospel with establishing that what he’s about to talk about is real. It did happen. There are people alive who remember these events, and here is what was happening in at that time to prove that it is real.

Was Elizabeth getting pregnant a miracle? Yes. But it was also a miracle that there was a history of similar miracles happening. Not often enough to say that it was the norm (that wouldn’t be a miracle if it were), but it was historical lyrics believable especially foe the Jewish people since these were their forefathers and judges before the time of their kings.