Daily Bible Reading 3rd March 2026 // Luke 1:18-25
18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” 19 And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.” 21 And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at his delay in the temple. 22 And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he kept making signs to them and remained mute. 23 And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, 25 “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”
Let us take a further step in our thinking about the angels in this passage. The angel that appeared to Zechariah was the angel Gabriel (19). There is something majestic and awesomely thrilling in the words of that verse. But consider their significance. What must this announcement have meant to Zechariah? He was a devout, godly man well versed in the Scriptures. And he would know where in Scripture the angel Gabriel is recorded to have appeared in the past; where, indeed, alone he is recorded to have appeared - in Daniel 8, 9, and particularly 9:21ff, which records the prophecy of the seventy weeks, relating to Messiah, the Prince. And here was the same messenger of God, announcing the same theme to him, Zechariah, and indicating that the long promised coming of Messiah was now about to come to pass. This is one of the things that we indicated when it was said earlier that Luke is intent on showing that the gospel is the outworking of the divine drama of redemption; and this must be the next major consideration to occupy our attention in these verses.