Paul's Persuasion

Luke 1:68-79 records a praise from Zechariah, John the Baptist’s dad, for seeing how he never should have doubted God’s blessing of a child. God is faithful! His situation reminds us of Abraham and Sarah and their lack of children to carry on their family line. Just as the history of God’s people really begins with Abraham and continues throughout the Israelite’s continued disbelief in his promises, the Gospel of Luke picks up with a similar theme, and yet that’s where the “good news” comes in. 

Zechariah’s name means “The Lord has Remembered.” Yet it was really Zechariah who had forgotten God’s ability to fulfill His promises. As a priest, Zechariah was familiar with the rituals of worship, but apparently, he wasn’t persuaded of God’s power. However, after several months of silence, he was persuaded that God had not forgotten them. John, his son, would be the forerunner for the Messiah—Immanuel, “God with us.” 

Sometimes in our lives, we need persuasion to accept the hand of God in our lives. It’s easy to focus on the negative, or the fearful, or the failures of ourselves or the people around us, but God has demonstrated that there is no power able to keep Him from doing what He said He would do. 

Romans 8:31-39, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies... (38) For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

When you read through Luke’s effort to persuade Theophilus to either follow Jesus (or have more understanding of who he is following), we can see some amazing parallels that pull Theophilus, or any reader, back to the motif (design patterns) of God fulfilling His promise way back in the Old Testament. Throughout that effort to persuade us to trust Him, Satan constantly tries to put obstacles in the way of us understanding this. “We are not ignorant of His schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11). 

The goal of the Gospel accounts is to help us see how Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise, and that by believing in Him, there is hope for tomorrow. “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has come to His people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies…” (Luke 1:68-71).