The Bigger Story: In The Waiting

November 30th, 2025/Seventh Day Adventist

Do you ever get impatient with how long it takes for prayers to be answered? Or worse, wonder if prayer is even working?

Some of you are stepping into the holidays celebrating answered prayers, things are clicking, life is moving, timing feels right. Others are entering this season carrying disappointment. You’re not where you hoped you’d be, the prayers you’ve prayed feel unanswered, and there’s a quiet anxiety underneath the lights and the noise.

I remember praying for my grandpa to get saved when I was a kid, every night, sometimes in tears, and as the years passed, the prayer faded from my mind. Yet toward the end of his life, my family asked him about his faith, and he said he had surrendered his life to Jesus. I thanked God for remembering a child’s prayer even long after I forgot it.

That’s the tension many of us live in, the relief of answered prayers and the ache of unanswered ones, especially at Christmas and the start of a new year.

And that’s why we’re starting a new Advent series called “The Bigger Story.” Because Christmas isn’t only about a manger. It’s about a God who was working long before the manger, weaving generations, promises, people, and prayers into a story far bigger than they could see. Before shepherds saw angels and before Mary carried Jesus, God was moving in the shadows, in the silence, in the waiting. And the first people Luke introduces us to aren’t Mary and Joseph, but an older couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth. Their story is the doorway into the Bigger Story of Christmas. They show us what it looks like to wait longer than you hoped, to pray longer than you expected, and to discover that God was doing infinitely more behind the scenes than they ever imagined.

Question: What are you waiting on today?

Maybe you’re waiting on the breakthrough.
Waiting on healing.
Waiting on clarity.
Waiting for a spouse.

Waiting for the prodigal to come home.
Waiting on a promise.

And when you’re waiting, it can feel like God is distant. Silent. Maybe even absent. But the Christmas story opens by showing us the opposite: God often does His best work in the places we think He’s forgotten.

Let’s go to the text.

Passage: Luke 1:5-6

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest of Abijah’s division named Zechariah. His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

Pray:

Two quick insights that matter:

1. There were 18k–20k priests in Israel. They were divided into 24 priestly orders, and Zechariah belonged to the division of Abijah, a line that goes all the way back to 1 Chronicles 24.
   So every time Zechariah stepped into the temple, he wasn’t just doing his job, he was stepping into a 1,000-year-old legacy.
2. Zechariah’s name means “The Lord remembers” and Elizabeth’s name means “God is my oath.”
   Put them together and you can hear “The Lord remembers His covenant.” Luke doesn’t make that point himself, but it fits the story. And this is going to be crucial to remember as we unpack this story.

The Scripture says Zechariah and Elizabeth had no children, and they were well along in years.

Meaning:
The window was closed.
The dream was dead.
The prayers were old.

Elizabeth carried decades of pain, and in that culture, her barrenness was not just private grief but public shame. People would whisper. Judge. Assume sin.

But Scripture makes it clear: they were righteous and blameless.

People saw a curse.
God saw a calling.

This is where the story begins.

Title: The Bigger Story In The Waiting

Main Points: 3 Movements In The Text

1. They Were Waiting Longer Than They Wanted

   1. 6 Both were righteous in God’s sight, living without blame according to all the commands and requirements of the Lord. 7 But they had no children because Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along in years. - Luke 1:6-7
   2. Zechariah and Elizabeth loved God, served God, obeyed God, and still lived with disappointment.
   3. Question: And isn’t that a picture of real faith?

   4. Some of you are in a similar season:

      1. You’re obeying… but still waiting.
      2. You’re praying… but still hurting.

      3. You’re trusting… but still wrestling.

         5. And Israel felt that too… 400 years of prophetic silence. No burning bushes. No angels. No prophets.
            Four centuries of “God, where are You?”
         6. But silence is not absence.

      4. Waiting is not punishment.

      5. Waiting is preparation.
      6. Let’s go back to the text.
         7. 8 When his division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 it happened that he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense. 10 At the hour of incense the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.
         8. Zechariah is serving in the temple, and Luke tells us he is chosen by lot to burn incense. This is massive! Because burning incense was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Most priests never got picked… ever. There were too many priests and not enough days.
         9. Being chosen by lot didn’t mean Zechariah got lucky. It meant God handpicked him. The lot was the way people let God make the decision. So when Zechariah’s name was drawn, it wasn’t chance; it was divine appointment. God put him in that room on that day for that moment.
         10. This is the moment he’s prayed for, prepared for, dreamed about. And on that day, that once-in-a-lifetime moment, God breaks the silence.
         11. Meanwhile, a crowd is outside praying, likely not just personal prayers but national prayers for deliverance and the coming Messiah.
         12. Which leads to movement two.

2. God Was Working In Ways They Couldn’t See

   1. 11 An angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified and overcome with fear. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. 14 There will be joy and delight for you, and many will rejoice at his birth.

   2. That line right there: “Your prayer has been heard.” It is one of the most beautiful sentences in the whole story.

      1. And many scholars see something more here. They read Gabriel as speaking on two levels at the same time.
      2. Zechariah’s personal prayer for a child and Israel’s national prayer for deliverance and the coming Messiah.
      3. God is answering the personal and the national in one moment.
      4. Zechariah asked for a son. / God gave him a prophet.

      5. Zechariah was praying a private prayer / God was fulfilling a public promise.

         3. And to understand the weight of this moment, you have to zoom out and see the timeline.
         4. THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS
         5. The last time God spoke before Luke 1 was through the prophet Malachi. And in Malachi 4:5–6 he says “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes… and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children…”
         6. Then the curtain falls. For 400 years: No prophets. No visions. No angels. No new Scripture. Just silence. Families grew up, lived, and died thinking nothing was changing.
            Nations rose and fell. Israel was conquered, scattered, reassembled, and oppressed. And heaven remained quiet.
         7. Then in Luke 1, an angel appears, and in Luke 1:17 the angel Gabriel declares “He will go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah… to turn the hearts of fathers to their children.”
         8. It’s the exact phrasing of Malachi 4.

      6. Meaning: God breaks the silence exactly where He left off. He picks up the story mid-sentence.

      7. John isn’t just a miracle baby, he is the bridge. The hinge between the Testaments. The spark that ignites the dawn after a long, dark night.

         9. Israel thought the story was stalled. Zechariah thought his prayers were ignored. But heaven was scripting a perfect handoff the whole time.
         10. DIVINE ACTIVITY IN ORDINARY MOMENTS
         11. And all of this, the fulfillment of Malachi, the breaking of 400 years of silence, the launching of the New Testament story, happens while Zechariah is simply showing up to do his job on a random Tuesday.
         12. He wasn’t doing anything dramatic. He wasn’t on a spiritual high. He wasn’t fasting for 40 days. He wasn’t praying in tongues for three hours. He was doing what he had always done: serving faithfully, quietly, consistently.

      8. And it’s as if God said, “Perfect. That’s where I’ll show up.”

      9. Hear this: You have no idea how much heaven is doing while you think nothing is happening.
      10. Just because you don’t see movement does not mean God isn’t moving.
      11. Just because you haven’t heard an answer does not mean God isn’t aligning an answer.

      12. Just because it looks silent does not mean it’s stagnant.

          13. Story: I’ve never been a big planner on the day to day activities. I’ve obviously had to adjust that as I got older and gained more responsibilities. But I’ve always been a long term planner. I would envision my future life and then work backwards from there. Reverse engineer as they say.

      13. I can say with 100% certainty that nothing big or significant in my life has happened on my timeline. I got married later than I thought. We struggled to have a family for years. I stepped into pastoral ministry later than I imagined. We moved to Boulder 2 years after we originally planned. And every year, our timeline of growth, salvations, and baptisms has been slower than I would have hoped… BUT through it all, looking back, I can say that God’s way, in God’s time, was exactly what was needed.

          14. It was there.

      14. We were waiting.

      15. God was working.
      16. We just couldn’t see it, at the time.
          15. This is what’s happening in Luke 1.
          16. Let’s move forward.

3. Your Waiting Is Part Of God’s Bigger Story

   1. 23 When the days of his ministry were completed, he went back home. 24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived and kept herself in seclusion for five months. She said, 25 “The Lord has done this for me. He has looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace among the people.”
   2. Elizabeth conceives after Zechariah leaves the temple. And she says: “The Lord has done this for me.”

   3. Her disgrace, decades of shame, is lifted.

      1. Her waiting was not wasted.

      2. Her story was not forgotten.

         4. This is the heart of the passage: God was writing a bigger story all along. And the same God is at work in your waiting.
         5. There is no small story when God is in it.

      3. There is no wasted waiting when God is in it.

         6. Application: I’ll be real with you, some of the times I thought God was the most silent were the seasons He was doing the most in me.
         7. There was a season where I prayed for a breakthrough for months, I wanted a quick fix. But what I didn’t see then was that God wasn’t changing the situation; He was changing me. Strengthening me. Deepening my trust. Teaching me dependence. And later I realized: That waiting season became the foundation I stand on now.

Response:

Where are you waiting?

Where does it feel too late?
Where are you tempted to give up?
Where have you stopped praying?
Where have you lost hope?

I believe God is saying to someone today:

Your prayer has been heard.
Your tears have been seen.
Your waiting is not wasted.
Your story is not finished.

Prayer:

“Jesus, I surrender my timeline.

Do a mighty work in me as I wait.

There’s a bigger story that I cannot see.

I trust you. You are my only hope. Amen.”

Walking Points:

1. “Bring to God the Thing That You’ve Stopped Praying For.”

   1. Cost if you don’t: Your heart grows numb, disappointment deepens, and you live assuming God has already said no.
   2. Gain if you do: God renews hope, restores faith, and meets you in the very place you gave up.

   3. “Surrender Your Timeline to God.”

   4. Cost if you don’t: You will always feel behind, rushed, or frustrated that life isn’t happening faster.

   5. Gain if you do: Freedom. Rest. A life aligned with God’s timing instead of your own.

   6. “Let God Turn Your Waiting Into Worship.”

   7. Cost if you don’t: Waiting becomes wasted, and worry fills the gaps.

   8. Gain if you do: Your waiting becomes meaningful, strengthening, and full of God’s presence.

Invitation:

If you want to make a decision to follow Jesus. Then join me and everyone else in the building as we pray out loud together. It’s not the prayer that saves you, but your faith, making Jesus Lord of your life. We don’t let anyone go on the journey alone. If you have faith in Jesus, then let’s join together as we pray…

Prayer of Salvation:

Jesus, I acknowledge that I need you

I confess that I have sinned against you

I believe that God raised you from the dead

And right now, by faith, I say “Jesus is Lord”

Thank you for forgiving me

By your grace I am saved

And by your power I am set free