Man's Extremity God's Opportunity.
Reflect:
I. On the low ebb to which the fortunes of the house of Israel were reduced at the period when St. John the Baptist was miraculously born. The very language in which the sacred books are written, had long ceased to be a spoken language. The noble spirit of the ancient days had, in a great measure, died out. The very nationality of the Jews had been broken up. Mixed races inhabited Galilee; aliens dwelt in the cities of Samaria; Judea itself had become a conquered province. An Idumæan was king, and even he was but the viceroy of a higher Gentile power. A Roman governor dwelt at Cæsarea, and had his law court in the capital. The descendants of Abraham were heard to declare: "We have no king but Cæsar."
II. The state of religion and morals. What a degraded people the Jews must have been, that the very ministers of religion should have deserved such reproaches as our Lord showered down upon them in the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel! Their shameful way of evading the law of God even the law of nature by a system of quibbling traditions; their shameful violation of the law of marriage; their neglect of the Fifth Commandment; their hollowness about the Fourth; all that happened in the highest quarters in the matter of our Lord's betrayal, death, resurrection, showing such an utter contempt for truth, justice, right; you cannot read and weigh the story carefully without feeling that the race must have been degraded and corrupt; that, indeed, things had sunk to a miserably low ebb everywhere.
III. Now it was at such a time as this, that the message of the Angel Gabriel to Zacharias, as he officiated in the Temple at Jerusalem, conveyed the first tidings of the coming Gospel. When night was darkest the day began to dawn, and the first faint streak of light the harbinger and earnest of the glory that was to follow was that message of the Angel. The lesson is to us a consolation, a help, and a warning. Be content to leave the future of thy Church, thy country, in the hand of God. In His own good time He will work work wondrously, but not yet. The night is darkest before the springing of the day. The gathering clouds are meant to conceal the coming glory. Let the shadows, therefore, yet deepen apace, and be thou patient.
J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons,No. 60.
References: Luke 1:6. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 40. Luke 1:6-80. A. B. Bruce, The Gospel of the Kingdom,p. 14.Luke 1:8-23. Ibid.,p. 41.Luke 1:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 175.