God provided for and prepared His people for the promised gift of His Son. All they needed to do was trust and obediently serve Him. God would continually remind His people of the promised gift via the prophets. One such message for His people was given to Zechariah, through the angel Gabriel. The angel told Zechariah he would have an heir—a son who would turn the hearts of many Israelites back to God. We know his son was John the Baptist, the one would have the responsibility of paving the way for the ministry of God’s promised gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
Zechariah was one of about eighteen thousand priests serving Yahweh. Priests served in the temple only twice a year, and it was extremely rare for a priest to have the honor of entering the holiest place within the temple. “Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside” (Luke 1:8–10).
The opportunity to enter the Holy of Holies was considered a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Zechariah had no idea God would deliver a message of promise on that special day. Of Zechariah’s son, the angel said, “He [John] will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:15b–17).
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