God Has Already Heard

Introduction

Everyone has a prayer request they hold dear. You have prayed over it for a long time, yet nothing changes. The objective circumstances drain you of the strength to pray any further. You have waited and waited, but God still does not answer. The couple in Luke 1 — Zacharias and Elisabeth — were in exactly that place.

It was the time of Herod the king of Judaea. Herod was a descendant of the Edomites, Israel's ancient enemy. He had obtained his power by aligning himself with Rome. A man of foreign blood sat upon the throne of David. He built the Temple in grand splendor to pacify the people, yet he was a man who would slaughter infant children if he perceived any threat to his reign. With Roman exploitation and Herod's excessive taxation pressing down together, the people were driven to the very edge of poverty and ruin. Some sought to resist by force. Some retreated into the law. Some fled to the wilderness. The nation was shattered.

And God was silent. Four hundred years had passed since Malachi. There was no prophet. There was no revelation. The people's lives had never been more impoverished, the oppression never more severe, the grief never more deep — and at that very moment, the longing for the Messiah burned with explosive intensity. This was not mere religious expectation. It was a desperate cry to survive. Where is God? Has He forgotten us? This was the question lodged in the heart of every person living in that age.

In that age, there was a priest. His name was Zacharias. He was of the course of Abia, and his wife Elisabeth was of the daughters of Aaron. The Scripture says they were both "righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." (Luke 1:6) Yet this couple carried a burden of their own. Elisabeth was barren, and they had no child. For a priestly family, the cutting off of the line was not merely a personal sorrow — it meant the end of their ability to carry out their sacred calling.

Zacharias belonged to the course of Abia. King David had divided Israel's many priests into twenty-four courses. Each course served twice a year, one week at a time, from one Sabbath to the next. The course of Abia was the eighth.

During that week of service, the one priest who would burn incense at the altar was chosen by lot. With dozens of priests in a single course, this was an opportunity that might come once in a lifetime — or never at all. Some priests finished their service having never been chosen. The lot fell to Zacharias. Was it chance? Was it fortune? No. God was invisibly at work within that casting of lots. In what appeared to human eyes to be mere chance, the hand of God was moving.

Zacharias enters the Temple. He stands before the altar of incense and burns the offering. In the Old Testament, incense was not a mere ritual. The smoke rising upward — that was prayer itself. The Psalmist confesses: "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense." (Psalm 141:2) In this moment, as Zacharias burns the incense, the prayers of Israel are being lifted before God. Outside, the people are praying together. Four hundred years of lamentation rise on the smoke before the Lord.

And at that very moment, the angel Gabriel stands on the right side of the altar of incense.

"Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son." (Luke 1:13)

This single sentence shattered four hundred years of silence. But this declaration is not simply news of an answered prayer. It is a declaration of who God is. Today's text asks us: who is this God who was silent for four hundred years?

Part 1. God Never Stopped the Work of Redemption Even in His Silence

— The Hand of God Was in the Casting of Lots

Four hundred years of silence. How are we to understand this? Had God stepped away? Had He turned His face from the cries of His people?

No. His silence was not His absence.

Look at the casting of lots. Out of dozens of priests, Zacharias was chosen. To human eyes, it was chance. But in God's eyes, there is no such thing as chance. The Proverb says: "The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD." (Proverbs 16:33) God had already entered into that casting of lots. Though He appeared to be silent for four hundred years, God had not been outside of history for a single moment.

Look carefully at the angel's declaration. "Thy prayer is heard" — in Greek, εἰσηκούσθη (eisēkousthē). It is built from εἰς (eis), meaning "into," and ἀκούω (akouō), meaning "to hear." This is not merely receiving a sound. It means to receive deeply inward, with full attention and care. Not a passing ear. The decades of Zacharias's prayers, the four hundred years of Israel's lament — God had been hearing them in precisely this way. And this verb is in the aorist — the tense of a completed act. At this moment, Elisabeth's womb is still closed. John has not yet been born. Nothing is visible. Yet from God's side, the hearing is already treated as a completed event. In human time, it was four hundred years of waiting. In God's time, the answer had already begun.

The silence was not neglect. God was moving all things toward the most precise moment in the history of redemption. The day the lot fell to Zacharias, the hour, the altar before which the angel would stand — God had been preparing all of it for four hundred years.

Part 2. God's Answer Contains Our Prayer and Always Exceeds It

— Zacharias Asked for a Son; God Gave Him a Prophet

Hear the angel's words. "Zacharias." He called him by name. While hearing the prayers of a nation, God knew at the same time the deepest wound of this one man. The tearful prayers offered for a child over decades. The prayer he had perhaps stopped voicing because it seemed impossible. God had forgotten not one word of it.

But look at the content of the answer.

Zacharias asked for a child. God gave him a man who would change an age.
Zacharias prayed to fill an empty place in his home. God entrusted him with the mission of preparing the way for the Messiah.
Zacharias wanted a son to carry on the priestly line. God sent the voice crying in the wilderness — the very one Isaiah had prophesied.

Zacharias did not know. He did not know that the prayer of his household was the prayer that would break four hundred years of silence. He did not know that his son would be the one to prepare the way of the Messiah. He did not know that the tears of one family would become a channel for the plan of God's salvation. But God had known from the beginning.

This is how God answers. He does not ignore our prayers. He receives them. But He always exceeds them. This is not a technique of God. It is the character of God. He is greater than we are. We do not know where our prayers are being connected. But God knows. That is enough.

Part 3. God Is Faithful to His Promise Despite Human Unbelief

— The Doubt of Zacharias Did Not Stop God from Working

But here the text does not conceal something. It is the response of Zacharias himself.

Having heard the angel's declaration, Zacharias says: "Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years." (Luke 1:18) He doubted. Before the angel, before the altar of incense, in the very place where four hundred years of waiting had come to this moment — he wavered.

Luke does not hide this. Zacharias is not presented as a man of perfect faith. He doubted, and as the consequence of that doubt he was struck mute.

Yet the work of God did not stop.

Elisabeth conceived. John was born. The history of redemption moved forward. The unbelief of Zacharias did not hold back the promise of God. Because God's answer was not built upon the perfect faith of Zacharias. It was built upon the faithfulness of God Himself.

Elisabeth later confesses: "Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men." (Luke 1:25) The word "reproach" is the Greek ὄνειδος (oneidos), rooted in the Hebrew חֶרְפָּה (herpah). Herpah is not merely personal grief. It is the public shame inflicted within the community — the mark of one excluded from God's blessing. When Rachel bore a son and cried out, "God hath taken away my reproach" (Genesis 30:23), that was this very word.

They had lived righteously, yet they bore the herpah. They had prayed for decades, yet the womb remained closed. And Zacharias doubted even before the angel. Yet God worked.

This is where the joy comes from. "Thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth." (Luke 1:14) The joy of Luke's Gospel is not a joy that arrives because human faith has been perfected. It is a joy that breaks through human weakness and unbelief because of the faithfulness of God. That is the joy Luke proclaims. Wherever God answers, joy follows without fail. The ground of that joy is not us. It is God.

Conclusion

God did not hear the prayer of Zacharias merely to make one family happy. It was to prepare the way of Jesus Christ through that son. The four hundred years of silence was not abandonment. God was preparing salvation. And at last, God gave the greatest answer of all. He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world.

God never stopped the work of redemption even in His silence. His answer received our prayers and always exceeded them. And God remained faithful to His own promise despite the unbelief of Zacharias.

Is there someone here today carrying an old prayer? A prayer you have brought before God for years. A prayer offered in tears. A prayer you at some point gave up. A prayer about which you are no longer certain God even hears.

This is what today's text says to that prayer. Look at who God is. He is the One who did not stop the work of redemption through four hundred years of silence. He is the One who kept His promise despite the unbelief of Zacharias. He is the One who made the tears of one family a channel for the history of salvation.

The word given to Zacharias rings out to you today.

"Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard." (Luke 1:13)

God is not One who will hear your prayer. He is the One who has already heard it.