John 5:16-18
God is Always at His Work to This Very Day
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Exodus 2:11-25
God Hears His People
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
Luke 1:5-25
5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, 9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. 13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. 16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. 20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple. 22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home. 24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. 25 “The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.”
Some say there is a three hundred to four hundred year gap between the end of Genesis and the first chapters of the Exodus...Theologians also say that there is a four hundred year gap between Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus, and the New Testament...The people of Israel were waiting on God...Some may have wondered where He went after the death of Joseph, and then again others wondered where He went after Malachi wrote, that He would send the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day when the LORD would come...And after Jesus ascended back to heaven to be with His Father, I think there are those who think that God is silent once again...
God is often in silence, or so it seems...Yet, Jesus teaches us that His Father is always at His work...In Exodus we learn that God heard His people's groaning in Egypt and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob...So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them...And after a four hundred year period of not hearing from God, He sends His angel to Zechariah...And I think rightfully so, Zechariah is surprised by the angel...Zechariah being a cautious priest, wants some proof from the angel that he is getting a message from God...After four hundred years and many generations of not hearing from our Father might take a little convincing...But the angel seems to think we must be patient, because God's long period of silence is cause for Gabriel to silence the new father...The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel...I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news...And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”...Zechariah is disciplined by not being able to speak, because he did not believe Gabriel's words, until John the Baptist, his new son is born...
After four hundred years, God was not silent now...John would be born, and He would also send His Son Jesus to us...And we are told by Gabriel that his prayer was heard...After all those years of praying for a son, God was in fact listening...Just as He was listening to His children of Israel when they were being held bondage by the Egyptians...God heard the prayers of His people after another four hundred year period just as he heard the prayers of Zechariah during another four hundred year silent period...
God was there, and He was watching and listening during these silent periods...But God seems to like to be silent...Or at least from man's perspective He seems silent...He allows His fixed laws of nature to go about and do there thing, as He works and listens...
I believe God wants us to be patient in silence and pray as Zachariah did...But He also wants us to trust Him, even after these periods of what we think of as silent periods...God is there doing His work., listening to our prayers...