Luke 1:9

Luke begins by speaking of the priesthood in Israel in the days of Herod. But he passes over the high priest and the other prominent men. He singles out Zacharias, an otherwise very ordinary priest, and his wife Elizabeth. Both came from the priestly line of Aaron, and both were comparatively righteous before God and blameless as far as the law went (v.6). Zacharias means "God has remembered." Elizabeth means "God has sworn." The names fit exactly, because God was about to keep His great promise about the Messiah.

"It came to pass, as he fulfilled his priestly service before God in the order of his course" — for here he was faithful to the requisition of daily duty — "it fell to him by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter into the temple of the LORD to burn incense."

David set up the twenty-four courses of the priesthood, as 1 Chronicles 24 records. The course of Abia (or Abijah) was the eighth of them. In the times of the Gospels each course served as priests in the temple of the Lord for one week at a time... On any given day, at both the morning and the evening sacrifice, the priests cast four lots. The lots decided who would prepare the altar, who would kill the sacrifice, who would offer the incense, and who would burn the sacrifice on the altar. The third lot, to offer the incense, was the most coveted and could fall to any priest only once in his lifetime.

So Zacharias comes into the temple in the order of his course, and the lot falls to him to burn incense when he goes in. The lot is the expression of the sovereign will of God, which in man's extremity has ever been his resource.

Incense is the fragrance of Christ to God — perhaps not the fragrance of atonement, but of Christ Himself. And that is what is in view here. Later it becomes clear that atonement must be by His blood... yet in fact, when He did come, the need for His death was kept well in the background... the incense came before the blood, just as it did on the day of atonement.

How appropriate that he should be offering incense in the temple at the very time when God announces to him, through an angel, the beginning of the fulfilment of His purposes. The true Priest would appear in the true sanctuary. There He would offer up what will be an eternal fragrance before God — the excellence of His own person.

Is there not something significant about the place where God sent this message to Zacharias? He stood in the holy place as the priestly remnant, though fruitless as far as Jewish hopes went. This was not like a prophecy announced to the world by an inspired man. "Entering into the temple of the Lord," i.e., the holy place... everything else, even the area holding the altar of burnt sacrifice, is called "outside."

The work of Zacharias was to burn incense in the temple where only priests could enter. So he acted as a go-between: the people prayed while he prayed for them inside. This was God's order in Israel, and it is very different from God's order now in the Church.

When the temple system began, the lot fell to other priests to burn incense, as we see in Luke 1:9... Our privilege, as priests of God, is not only to enter the holy place. We may go right into the holiest of all, through the blood of Jesus, and there we worship before the face of God.