“Intro to Luke 3:1-6”

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/17/2026 7:57 PM

My Worship Time                                                                             Focus:  “Intro to Luke 3:1-6”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                                    Reference:  Luke 3:1-6

            Message of the verses:  “Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip was tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, 2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. 3 And he came into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; 4 as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

“THE VOICE OF ONE CALLING OUT IN THE WILDERNESS,

‘PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD,

MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT!

5 ‘EVERY RAVINE WILL BE FILLED,

AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL WILL BE LOWERED;

THE CROOKED WILL BECOME STRAIGHT,

AND THE ROUGH ROADS SMOOTH;

6 AND ALL FLESH WILL SEE THE SALVATION OF GOD!’”

            I try to make a point when I take my walk during the day to listen to the sermons by John MacArthur that go along with the verses that I will be studying in order to write my Spiritual Diaries each day.  I did this in the afternoon while walking and all MacArthur got through were the first three verses of Luke 3, so it looks like I will have to be listening tomorrow to get through all of these verses.  I will quote from MacArthur’s introduction to these verses for my evening Spiritual Diary.

            “In chapters 1 and 2 of his gospel, Luke recorded the birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.  As chapter 3 opens, eighteen years have passed since the last historical event recorded by Luke, the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple (2:41-51).  The public ministries of the Baptist and Jesus are about to begin.

            “For thirty years each had lived in seclusion.  John ‘lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance to Israel’ (1:80).  Jesus loved in the obscure, out of the way off the beaten path village of Nazareth, where ‘He continued in subjection’ to His parents (2:51).  Only a select few, those who were looking for the consolation and redemption of Israel (2:25, 38), knew the true identities of John and Jesus.  Of that small group many, such as Zacharias, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, and Joseph, had most likely died by this time and gone on to glory.  The angels who announced their births had long since returned to heaven.  But the three decades of silence were about to end.  The beginning of John the Baptist’s public ministry would also mark the end of an even longer silence—the four centuries of prophetic silence since the time of the last prophet, Malachi (about 430 B. C.).

            “As the curtain rose on the ministries of John and Jesus, Israel was shrouded in deep darkness.  It was the bleakest of times politically.  The nation chafed under the oppressive rule of pagan idolaters.  Israel, God’s covenant nation, was now part of a minor providence in a backwater region of the mighty Roman Empire.  It was also the darkest of times spiritually. The Jewish people were crushed under the heavy burden of an apostate, legalistic, hypocritical religion dominated by corrupt, wicked spiritual leaders (cf. Matt. 23:1-33).  Israel had not realized the promises of the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants; they possessed neither the land promised by the former, nor the kingdom promised by the latter.  Engulfed in legalism, hypocrisy, and external ritual, the nation also failed to experience the New covenant blessings promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Ezekiel 37:26.”  Now let me just add one more prophet to those two and that would be Daniel, and what I mostly am referring to is the 9^th chapter of Daniel where we see the very famous 490 year prophecy which will end with seven years left on it when we get to the 19^th chapter of Luke where Jesus offers Himself as their Messiah and they reject Him, so what we now have is seven years left on that prophecy which when that begins will begin the last seven years of history as we know it now, for at the end of that time the Lord Jesus will return to planet earth with His saints who will help Him rule in the Millennial Kingdom.

            “The Old Testament closed with the promise of Messiah’s coming (Mal. 3:1; 4:2), and throughout the ensuring centuries of political and religious darkness the Jewish people had clung to that hope.  But before Messiah’s ministry began, His forerunner was to appear to prepare the way for Him Years earlier John the Baptist’s father, Zacharias, had prophesied concerning him, ‘And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways’ (Luke 1:76; cf. Mal. 3:1).  Thus John, the first prophet in more than 400 years, appeared on center stage to introduce the main character of the story, the Lord Jesus Christ.  His task was twofold: to prepare the people for the Messiah, and to present the Messiah to the people.

            “Like any good historian, Luke understood the importance of placing his historical account in its proper context.  In this passage he gave four settings that provide the backdrop for the ministries of John and Jesus:  the historical, geographical, theological, and prophetical settings.”

            So now we have the outline that we will be following as we look into these verses from Luke chapter three.  I have to say that I’m learning much from the gospel of Luke and have a great deal of respect for Luke as he writes this gospel. 

4/17/2026 8:55 PM