Does He? Does God treat everyone the same?

He loves everyone. He gives grace to everyone. But does He treat everyone alike?

The answer is “no.” God treats us differently.

If you read John 11, you’ll see that Mary and Martha each said the same thing to Jesus, but His response to them was very different. And think about how differently Jesus spoke to the Pharisees as opposed to the woman caught in adultery.

And then in Luke 1, we read about a couple of encounters with the angel, Gabriel. First, Gabriel shows up in the temple when Zechariah the priest is burning incense. Gabriel tells him his prayers have been heard and that his wife Elizabeth will give birth to a baby.

Because she is an old woman at this point and has never been able to conceive, Zechariah asks, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”

That’s a reasonable question, right? You’re an old man and you’re married to a wife who is “well along in years.” You’d want to know how this was going to happen, how you could be sure. After all, you wouldn’t want to run outside and start telling everyone without having some assurance. How many times over the years had Elizabeth gotten her hopes up only to be disappointed again? There’s no way you’d want to do that to her.

Gabriel responds by saying, “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 proper time.”

Zechariah gives him some assurance, but there were consequences to his unbelief.

And then there’s Mary (not the sister of Martha, but the mother of Jesus). Gabriel comes and speaks to her as well. He tells her that even though she’s a virgin, she’s going to have a baby. Quite naturally, Mary wants to know how this is going to happen.

So Gabriel responds, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”

That’s interesting to me. Zechariah asks a question and he can’t speak. Mary asks a question and Gabriel explains things to her. Why does God treat them differently?

Could it be that more was required of Zechariah?

He was a priest. Presumably, he had walked with and served God for many years. Mary, on the other hand, was a teenage virgin with a heart for God.

When Gabriel responds to Zechariah’s question, he begins with, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God…”

Standing in God’s presence. That’s powerful enough, but isn’t that also what a priest does when he ministers? Zechariah was in the temple burning incense in God’s presence.

I don’t want to read too much into this, but I can’t help thinking the bar was set higher for Zechariah. He was a priest. He’d been trained. He had opportunities for learning and study that Mary didn’t have. He ministered in God’s presence.

How about you and me?

If you’re reading this post, it means you have a computer and internet access. That means you have the Bible, in just about any translation you prefer, right at your finger tips. It means you can click over to iTunes and listen to great podcasts from Bible teachers like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, Francis Chan, Charles Stanely, Tim Keller, etc.

To those who have been given much, much will be required.

We’re much more like Zechariah than we are Mary…and much will be required of us.