EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/19/2026
7:42 PM
My
Worship Time
Focus: PT-1 “Zacharias’s Personal
Righteousness”
Bible
Reading & Meditation Reference: Luke
1:5b-7
Message of the verses: “there was a priest named Zacharias,
of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and
her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous
in the sight of God, walking blameless in all the commandments and requirements
of the Lord. But they had no child,
because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both advanced in years.” (NASB)
This evening we begin to look at the first part of the
story that Luke gives about Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth as Luke continues
to slowly give more information for the background of what he will later say
about the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember he
is writing this letter to a friend to let him know the story of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and will continue the story for his friend in the book of Acts, and we
who read the Bible get to understand this wonderful story of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ along with the beginnings of the Church.
Now Zacharias’ name means Yahweh has
remembered, and that makes perfect sense and Yahweh did remember the he and his
wife were childless, similar to Abraham’s story. Now there were many in Israel who had the
same name. MacArthur states that “this
particular Zacharias was just one of thousands of priests in Isreal, carrying
out his duties in obscurity in a remote village in Judea.”
MacArthur explains “To be a priest
was to represent God to the people; it was a sacred and respected position (cf.
Ex. 29:8-9, 44; Numbers 18:7). The
priests were the agents of God’s rule in Israel’s theocracy. They brought God to the people as they taught
and interpreted Scripture and counseled and judged them (Num. 5:14-15; Deut.
17:8-13; 21:5; 33:8, 10; Mal. 2:7).” Now
we see a large number of verses that help us understand two points that
MacArthur has made here and I will not take the time look at all of these
verses but will just look at a couple of them from each list.
(cf. Ex. 29:8-9, 44; Numbers 18:7)
“8 Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on
them, 9 and you shall gird Aaron and his
sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a
statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.”
“44 I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar.
Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests.”
“7 And you and your sons with you shall guard
your priesthood for all that concerns the altar and that is within the veil;
and you shall serve. I give your priesthood as a gift, and any outsider who
comes near shall be put to death.’”
(Mal. 2:7)
“7 For the lips of a priest should guard
knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the
messenger of the LORD of hosts.”
“It was
also the priests’ sacred duty to bring the people to God by offering sacrifices
in the temple for their sins (Ex. 29:10-19; Lev. 4:13-20; 2 Chron. 29:34;
35:11).” Now just for a moment thing
about how all of this works in the Church age as all believers are priests and
so all believers can bring their petitions directly to the Lord. The Church age believers all have been indwelt
by the Holy Spirit of God and so will receive aid from Him to better understand
the Scriptures, and so there is a very big difference between the Old Testament
saints and the New Testament saints.
Now in the Old Testament times the
priests during the course of a year, each priest would leave his local duties
to serve in the Jerusalem temple two times for one week and this explains why Zacharias was
there as it was his time to be there, and as we will see this was a very, very
special time for his time being in Jerusalem.
MacArthur explains “Luke’s note that
Zacharias was part of the division of Abijah does not necessarily
indicate that he was a descendant of Abijah.” This is an interesting fact that
MacArthur is about to bring up, “David, Zadok, and Ahimelech had organized the
priesthood into twenty-four divisions (cf. 1 Chron. 24:4-19), the eight of
which was that of Abijah (v. 10). But after the Babylonian captivity, only four
of the twenty-four priestly divisions returned to Judah (Ezra 2:36-38).” Ok I want to stop this quotation and look at
these verses.
(Ezra 2:36-38).
36 ¶ The priests: the sons of Jedaiah, of the house
of Jeshua, 973. 37 The sons of
Immer, 1,052. 38 The sons of Pashhur, 1,247.”
“For the
sake of tradition, however, the Jews wanted twenty-four divisions, so the
leaders divided the remaining four divisions into twenty-four and restored the
former names to them. So Zacharias,
while probably not in the family line of Abijah (Abijah was not one of the
divisions that returned after the exile), nevertheless served in the division
that bore his name.”
More facts about the priests and
that is that they were expected to marry an Israelite woman who was a virgin as
seen in (cf. Lev. 21:7, 14; Ezek. 44:22).
Zacharias went even beyond that, however as he chose his wife from
the daughters of Aaron. Her name was
Elizabeth, who was after Aaron’s wife, a name that actually means “My
God is an oath” and this celebrates the faithfulness of God. MacArthur writes “Since all qualified name
descendants of Aaron were priests (Ex. 29:9; 40:13-15; Lev. 21:17-23; Num. 3:3;
18:7), she was familiar with the priesthood; most of the men in her family
would have been priests.”
Lord willing I will finish up this
section in my next SD on Luke.
2/19/2026
8:27 PM
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