EPISODE 25 Luke Chapter 3 ”Prepare The Way” for Share The Word

Hi, and welcome to Share the Word, the best way to learn your way through the New Testament one chapter at a time. We know there are a lot of devotionals and encouraging thoughts for the day from the Bible available online, but our goal is a little more to honestly and systematically present the whole story of the New Testament. So let's listen in to today's lesson and go a little deeper. Luke chapter 3. Prepare the way. A couple of years ago, out of curiosity, I watched a show on Netflix called Messiah.

It only lasted one season, so you may not have heard of it. But the premise of the show was, what if a Messiah-like figure showed up in our time in the 21st century? Someone who came out of nowhere, someone who seemed kind of different with an otherworldly aura about him, and made apocalyptic statements. How would the modern world react to such a character? By the way, my personal rating for that show: Splat, one big rotten tomato. But I thought of that short-lived program when I read Luke chapter 3.

Luke focuses in this chapter on a character named John the Baptist. He's already been mentioned a couple times in our series at the outset of the Gospel of John, and then a couple lessons ago in Luke's opening when he was telling about John the Baptist's parents, who were told they were going to have a special child in their old age, and he was a special character. John the Baptist now briefly comes to the forefront as Luke sets the stage for the outset of Jesus' public ministry. Remember, I'm using the term the public ministry years for the approximately three years Jesus went about engaging the public in Israel, teaching crowds of people who were drawn to him, working miracles that confirmed his identity, and training his hand-chosen disciples. That period began when Jesus was about 30 years old, we learn from this chapter.

During the years since God had chosen the family of Abraham, the Jewish people, He had called one prophet after another to speak for Him. That's exactly what the term prophet means, by the way: a spokesman, a mouthpiece for someone else. We tend to use that term today, prophet, almost entirely in the context of telling the future, but that's way too narrow a definition for how it's used in the Bible. A prophet was someone specially called of God to be His spokesman. Their message may have to do with the future, but more often than not involved clearly declaring an urgent message from God to His people where they were right then. Think of John the Baptist as the final Old Testament era prophet.

Many had come before him throughout Old Testament history, people we read about like Samuel and Moses and Elijah and Isaiah, etc. The last Old Testament prophet Israel had any message from before John the Baptist was Malachi, who lived more than 400 years before Jesus and John's time. But after Malachi, there was apparently relative silence from God to His people for a long span until the special era in the first century. Then John the Baptist suddenly appeared, urging the Jewish nation to repent and to get ready for the impending arrival of the Messiah. Remember, John was born just several months before Jesus. Their mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, were relatives.

In chapter one, we heard the surprising message an angel gave to John's father when he was an old man. Your wife Elizabeth is going to bear you a son, he was told. Call his name John. He will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. He must not drink any wine or strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb.

He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him, that is the Messiah, in spirit and power. Luke identifies John the Baptist in this chapter as the one Isaiah had written about 500 years earlier when he was described as the voice crying out of the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord. John the Baptist lived out in the wilderness. He was kind of an eccentric, we'd say. He lived an austere life under a Nazarite vow, so he didn't cut his hair. He wore rough clothing, drank no alcohol, and ate some pretty weird things like locusts dipped in honey.

I picture him stalking out of remote places and suddenly appearing in a town or village and boldly challenging anyone who'd listen to change their ways and get ready for the coming of the Messiah. His message was, Repent, for the kingdom of God is close. He'd proclaim, The Messiah is coming. Today someone like that would be considered a kook. But remember, in Israel they had a past full of similar characters who spoke for God, prophets through whom he communicated to his people. Some didn't like John the Baptist, to be sure, but he was actually revered by many.

He became a legend in his own time and gained quite a following. We should think of him as sort of Jesus' advance man. His public ministry in Israel apparently began shortly before Jesus' own emergence. He preached this message of repentance, urging people to get their hearts and lives right with God. He called those who were ready to do that to come out to the Jordan River and publicly be baptized by him. This baptism, which amounted to plunging a person under the water and raising them up again, represented a washing from their past and the beginning of a new life of obedience to God.

A lot of people were joining his movement. It was a spiritual renewal in Israel going on. So many, in fact, that some were wondering if John the Baptist himself might be the promised Messiah. But when he got word of that speculation, he was really clear, no, no, no. He said, I'm not even worthy to unloose the straps of that one's sandals. Another time when he was similarly questioned, he said, I'm just a voice, one crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord.

But that role was important. He was preparing people for Jesus' coming. Jesus once said about this man, Among those born of women, and I think that's all of us, there's never been a greater person born than John the Baptist. Jesus greatly admired him. He fearlessly spoke for God as a prophetic voice in his generation. He delivered his challenging message with power and conviction.

Some who later became Jesus' own disciples were first impressed by John and wanted to be his disciples. But John urged them instead, No, follow Jesus. He's the Lamb of God who will take away the world's sins. He told others who wanted to be his followers after Jesus' public ministry began, he, referring to Jesus, must increase while I must decrease. John the Baptist clearly understood his role. It wasn't about him.

He was gathering an audience hungry for God and then pointing those people to Jesus, the Messiah. So how did John the Baptist know that Jesus was the promised one God would send? Well, Jesus actually appeared one day where John was ministering and presented himself to be baptized. John at first was very reluctant. I'm pretty sure he already had a strong inkling that his relative Jesus was the promised Messiah. I can't help but believe his mother or father had told him about the extraordinary things surrounding Jesus' birth and what the angels had said about him.

So his initial response was, You're coming to me to be baptized? I should be coming to you. And it was then that Jesus' true identity was confirmed to the prophet. In John's own words, he said, I saw the Spirit descend on him like a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. He who sent me to baptize with water had said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness, this is the Son of God.

That quotation comes from the Gospel of John in the first chapter. But Luke writes the same thing here in verses 21 and 22. The reason John the Baptist was certain that Jesus was the one God had promised for centuries to send, the Messiah, was that God gave him this very specific sign. The Holy Spirit will visibly come light on him in the form of a dove, he was told. And that's exactly what happened. When Jesus waded into the Jordan waters to be baptized, a dove fluttered down and landed on him.

And at the same time, a voice from heaven audibly said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Jesus was positively ID'd as the one come out of heaven on a mission from God. He was the Messiah. He was the Lamb of God who would take away the world's sins. The last thing Luke mentions about John the Baptist in this chapter is that he got into some trouble with Herod, one of the local puppet rulers under the Romans, and was thrown in jail. This Herod and two of his brothers were sons of Herod the Great.

Many years before, if you remember, Herod the Great, who was half Jewish, had forged an alliance with the Romans, which allowed him to retain power in Israel as long as he did their bidding. It was a complicated political arrangement between Rome and the Herods and the Jewish Sanhedrin. And it got even more complicated when Herod the Great died, because after he died, in his will he split his control of geographical areas between three of his sons. Can you say sibling rivalry? It got messy. In fact, the Herod mentioned here by Luke, who arrested John the Baptist, actually had seduced and married his own brother's wife.

John the Baptist, as a prophet of God, boldly called him out for that, caused the woman to develop a serious grudge against him. She kept after her new husband to shut John the Baptist up, and Herod finally gave in to her and had the prophet jailed. Their public act of immorality was not the only thing John the Baptist had called Herod out over, but it was apparently the final straw. The prophet was held in prison for some time because Herod didn't know what to do with him. There were many people in Israel who highly regarded him as a true prophet of God. We'll see how that subplot plays out later.

But by now, John had spent some months preaching his message of repentance, urging people to get ready for the coming of the Messiah. He had prepared the way for Jesus' public ministry, and going forward, the spotlight in Luke's Gospel will be focused directly on Jesus. I don't think we should leave this chapter without explaining why Luke would include this detailed genealogy of Jesus he did starting at verse 23, and it runs to the end of the chapter. He introduces it with this note. Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about 30 years of age, being the son, as it was supposed, of Joseph. The Gospel of Matthew has a genealogy of Jesus as well in its opening chapters, and although they are different, both show that Jesus' physical lineage could be traced back to King David.

Apparently Luke is tracing Jesus' ancestry back through his mother Mary's family tree, his bloodline, we would say, and that goes back to King David through his son Nathan. While Matthew's genealogy, if you follow it, apparently is the adopted father Joseph's family line, so you might say his legal line back to King David through his legal heir Solomon. You notice Luke makes the point of saying that Joseph was assumed to be Jesus' father. He's already explained to us that Joseph was not responsible for his physical conception. Mary's pregnancy was supernatural. God was literally his father.

That fact is critical to Jesus' identity, as we've already learned. So Luke's note here is important. Joseph was actually his adopted father, although people assumed he was his natural father. Taking Luke and Matthew's genealogy together through the lineage of both of Jesus' parents, he was a direct descendant of King David through both his bloodline as well as his legal line, and that's the key point. You might be thinking, why does that matter so much? Why did both Matthew and Luke take the time to show us these lengthy genealogies?

Because the Old Testaments had said the Messiah must be in the royal line of King David, who was Israel's greatest and most godly ruler of the past. He had to be legitimately in that line, because he would one day himself assume Israel's throne and again rule from Jerusalem over a restored kingdom. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah, for example, wrote, Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up from David a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and deal wisely, and will execute justice and righteousness over the land. Jeremiah made that prophecy 500 years after David's death and about 500 years before Jesus' birth. Several other prophets speaking for God also promised the very same thing. But shortly after Jeremiah's time and after that prophecy, in the year 586 B.C., the Babylonian Empire overran the ancient kingdom of Judah and its capital of Jerusalem.

The Davidic dynasty ended, and the Jews were driven from their homeland and dispersed. Believing Jews, however, those who had kept faith in God's word, held on to the promise that one day a Messiah, the prophets had promised, a descendant of King David's, would arise. He would right things. He would restore their kingdom's control over their land and over their fortunes. This was the messianic hope, and they held on to it dearly. All this is really important to digest and to keep in mind when you read the Gospels.

That is, that there was a very strong undercurrent of messianic expectations among the Jews in Jesus' time. Luke and the other Gospel writers are making the case for Jesus being that promised Messiah, the rightful son of David. But here's the problem. Here's what threw people. During his public ministry years, Jesus made no moves toward the political whatsoever. He never raised an army, ever talked about overthrowing the powers that controlled Israel during that time.

Nothing even remotely close to that. Remember he told Pontius Pilate when he was questioned on this exact point about if he was a king, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my followers would be fighting for me right now. You may also remember from John chapter 6 that lesson about Jesus feeding the 5,000 people from a boy's lunch. That spectacular miracle lit up that crowd with messianic fervor. This man has to be the Messiah, they were convinced.

They were ready to proclaim Jesus their king right then and there. Anyone who could do miraculous things on that scale, he could certainly lead the nation to defeat their oppressors. But Jesus turned decisively away from their overtures and went up into the mountains, John told us. When he reemerged in Galilee later, he didn't say, I am the son of David, here to become your king and restore the fortunes of our nation. No. His message then was, I am the bread of life that has come down out of heaven for the life of the world.

Jesus never made one remotely political move during his public ministry. Nothing to do with Israel revolting against the Romans. Nothing to do with him becoming their king. Instead insisted that he was here on a spiritual mission that had to do with sin, salvation, and eternal life. So can you see now how all this caused confusion and controversy among the people in his nation, among the Jewish religious leaders, even among Jesus' own disciples? Was or wasn't he the promised Messiah?

Religious Jews to this day insist, no, Jesus could not have been, since he did not fulfill the political mission of the Messiah. He did not restore Israel. He did not rule from David's throne over a renewed kingdom or anything close to that. They're still looking for someone to do that. But Jesus' followers, after his death and resurrection, came to believe that yes, he certainly was the Messiah, but that he at that point in history came for a different and actually far more critical mission. He came to deal with sin, to become the Savior of mankind, to make a way for anyone anywhere who would believe in and receive him to be made right with God and given the gift of eternal life.

The early Christians came to understand there are other prophecies in the Old Testament about the Messiah, which described him as a spiritual Savior, as the one God loved the world enough to send as a sacrifice for sin. This is very important to understand. Jesus is definitely the Messiah, and he will absolutely reestablish a kingdom in Israel one day and bring peace and justice not only to Israel, but to the whole messed up world. But that was not his mission coming 2,000 years ago. Listen to these words from the New Testament book of Hebrews. Christ, that's the Greek translation of the word Messiah, Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Early Christians came to understand that God actually had to have had two planned comings for the Messiah. Jesus accomplished his first mission that first time he came, to make a way for us to be saved from sin and reconciled to our Creator. But he will come a second time to save those of us who have believed in him, just like he promised his disciples when he said, I am going to my Father's house to prepare a place for you, and I will come again. And when at that second coming, when that happens, he's going to right the wrongs on this planet. He's going to become the long-promised Messianic King. He clearly told Israel's religious leaders, when they commanded him under oath at his trials to confess if he claimed to be the Messiah, Yes, I am.

And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming again on the clouds of heaven. That was literally only a few hours before they crucified him, when he declared to them under oath and without blinking, I am the Messiah, and I will come again. When Jesus the Christ comes again, the Jewish nation who are alive then, in the words of their own prophet Zechariah, will look on him whom they have pierced and mourn. And Zechariah says their mourning will be exceedingly great. Real repentance will occur then for their rejection of Jesus, and they will accept him en masse on that day as their rightful Messiah and King. It's at that future time that Jesus will literally take charge of this planet and rule on the throne of his forefather David from Jerusalem over a kingdom of peace and justice that the Book of Revelation tells us will extend for a thousand years.

Is your brain aching yet? Understand, when we take into account all the messianic prophecies from Moses clear through to John the Baptist, in the plan of God there were always going to be two comings of the Messiah. One is now behind us. He came in the first century. His purpose then was to tell us the truth about our broken relationship with God and to make a way for us to be saved from sin and its consequences. He was the Lamb of God, as John the Baptist called him, who took away the sins of the world.

But there's coming another. It's still ahead of us. When he will return to rescue his people and restore Israel's greatness, he will establish a kingdom of peace and justice over the whole earth. The prophets promised this, and the Messiah will do it. We've wandered a little bit today, but let me say as we wrap up Luke chapter 3, in a very real sense, those of us who have received Jesus now have a calling similar to what John the Baptist's role was in his generation. No, we don't need to eat locusts or live out in the boondocks.

You can even visit a barber occasionally if you like. But our calling today is also to prepare the way, to be Jesus' advance men and women, to urge people to turn to God and to be ready for the return of Jesus the Messiah, because God always does what he says. Jesus the Messiah will come back. Thanks for listening. We hope you found this commentary both interesting and insightful. Keep in mind that Share the Word releases two new podcasts weekly at 9 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays.

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