Merry Christmas. And welcome back to Scripture Central's. Come follow me. I'm Lynn Hilton Wilson,

and I've got a special Christmas lesson that's not my usual. I figure I've given three

Christmas videos so far, and I also have chosen different portions of the Christmas story to tell.

This year, also in the New Testament, we were blessed

with a week or two around the first nativity chapters in Matthew and Luke's account. And so I thought

for Christmas this year, I would give you a gift of a little bit of a different sort. I want to

start with a story of Zacharias and Elizabeth. As you know, the New Testament chronologically

starts with a priest and a priestess. We are told that Zachariah is from Aaron and his wife

Elizabeth is also from Aaron and that he begins the story in the temple. I think this is very

significant that our New Testament has that

beginning. And I wanted to focus on that with you today. As we've gone through the Old Testament

and the New Testament together, I've emphasized a lot of details about the ancient temple, but I'd

just like to remind you that Christmas stories that we have in our Gospels began at Herod's Temple.

Now this was not necessarily a pure place at the time. In fact, some of the righteous priests were so upset about it.

They joined a group called the Asseans and they left the temple and they tried to keep a holy priested line out in the desert. And we know of many of their

writings from the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in Qumran. Elizabeth and Zachariah lived close

enough to the temple that he could work there at that time. A priest had to serve for five weeks a year.

They came for the three pilgrimage feasts every year in the springtime Passover,

then 50 days later, Pentecost, and then the Feast of the Tabernacles or Feast Booths in the fall time

when they had their Thanksgiving celebration. All of these pilgrimages, the priest had to come in and work

for one week, and then the priest also had the

assignment for two other weeks. Now, the Lividical line had come in a little more often. Remember,

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