DEC 20 | The Gift of a Closed Mouth
When God Closes Your Mouth | Luke 1
“In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him.
But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord..."
And Zechariah said to the angel, "How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years."
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. 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."
— Luke 1:5-20 (ESV, abridged)
Zechariah had prayed this prayer for decades. A child. An heir. A son to carry on the family line and the priestly calling. Year after year, the prayer rose. Year after year, nothing. At some point—Scripture does not tell us when—he stopped expecting an answer. The prayer may have continued out of habit, the way we sometimes keep knocking on a door we no longer believe will open.
Then came the day he was chosen by lot to enter the Holy Place. This was the honor of a lifetime. Most priests never got this chance. Once in an entire career, if you were lucky, you might stand in that sacred space where incense rose like prayers made visible. Zechariah walked into the temple that morning as a faithful old man with a long-abandoned hope.
He walked out unable to speak.
Notice what Gabriel does not do. He does not argue with Zechariah. He does not provide additional evidence. He does not explain the biology of geriatric conception or offer reassurances about God's track record with barren wombs. Instead, Gabriel essentially says: "You want proof? Here is your proof. You will be unable to speak until it happens."
We tend to read this as punishment—a divine slap for doubt. And there is certainly a corrective element here. Zechariah's question was not the humble inquiry of someone seeking understanding; it was the skeptical demand of someone who had stopped believing. "How shall I know this?" is not the same as "How will this happen?" Mary asked the latter. Zechariah asked the former.
But punishment is not the whole story. Look closer at what God actually gave him.
He gave him silence.
For nine months, Zechariah could not speak. He could not explain to his neighbors why he had emerged from the temple pale and gesturing. He could not narrate his experience into meaning. He could not process the encounter through endless conversation, turning the mystery into manageable anecdote.
He had to sit with it.
This is what we miss when we read the silence as mere rebuke. God was not simply shutting Zechariah up. God was creating space for Zechariah to listen—perhaps for the first time in years. When you cannot speak, you notice things. You watch. You attend to the world differently. You have no choice but to receive rather than produce.
Consider what those nine months must have been like. Elizabeth's belly growing while Zechariah's doubt shrank. The visible, undeniable evidence of God's faithfulness expanding in front of him, day by day, while he had nothing to say about it. No commentary. No caveats. No attempts to manage other people's expectations or protect himself from looking foolish if it all fell apart.
Just silence. And a baby growing.
When his voice finally returned—the moment he wrote "His name is John" on the tablet—the first thing Zechariah did was prophesy. Luke tells us he was "filled with the Holy Spirit" and began to speak words that have echoed through two thousand years of Christian worship. The Benedictus. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people."
These are not the words of a man who learned nothing in his silence.
The waiting had done its work. The closed mouth had opened something else—a capacity for wonder that years of religious routine had slowly calcified. Zechariah entered the temple a priest doing his duty. He emerged a prophet with a message burning in his chest that would take nine months to fully form.
Perhaps you are in a season where God seems to have closed something—a door, an opportunity, your own capacity to understand what He is doing. Perhaps you have been asking "How shall I know this?" for so long that the question has curdled into resignation.
What if the silence is not absence? What if the closed door is not rejection? What if God is doing with you what He did with Zechariah—creating space for something to grow that could not grow any other way?
The waiting is not empty. It is pregnant.
Today
Identify one thing you have been talking about repeatedly—processing, explaining, analyzing, complaining about—and commit to not speaking about it for the rest of the day. Not to fix it, not to ignore it. Just to hold it in silence before God. Let the quiet create space for something new to grow.
An Invitation to go Deeper….
If today’s message spoke to you, join the FaithLabz 30-Day Prayer Challenge and strengthen your connection with God’s unshakable love. You are never alone—let’s grow together!
