EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
4/27/2026 7:15 PM
My
Worship Time Focus: Introduction
to Luke 3:18-20
My
Worship Time Focus: PT-2 Intro. To “The Boldness of John the
Baptist”
Message of the verses: “So with many other exhortations he
preached the gospel to the people. But
when Herod the tetrarch was reprimanded by him because of Herodias, his
brother’s wife, and because of all the wicked things Herod had done, Herod also
added this to them all: he locked John up in prison.”
It is my desire to complete John MacArthur’s
introduction to these verses above.
“Among the hundreds of Protestants martyred in England during the
reign of Mary Tudor (‘Bloody Mary’) was the great preacher Hugh Latimer. As he was about to be burned at the stake
along with fellow reformer Nicolas Ridley, Latimer said to him, ‘Be of good
comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle
by God’s grace in England as I trust.
“In modern times many faithful
preachers of God’s Word have faced persecution or martyrdom in such places as
China, the Middle East, parts of Africa and India, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, as Paul wrote during his own imprisonment
for the cause of Christ, ‘the word of God is not imprisoned’ (2 Tim. 2:9).
“The first of many through the ages
who would be martyred for faithfully testifying to Christ was His forerunner,
John the Baptist. By human standards,
John’s career does not appear to have been very successful. His brief ministry of about a year was spent
in the Judean wilderness, and ended with a long stretch in prison followed by
his being beheaded.
“But such an evaluation of John’s
career is misguided. The truth is, he
was eminently used by God to accomplish the task for which he was born (Luke
1:13-17, 76)—so much so that Jesus said of him, ‘Truly I say to you, among
those born of women there was not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!’(Matt.
11:11). John accomplished precisely what
God purposed him to.
“Having given examples of his
preaching and interacting with the crowds in verses 7-17, Luke closed out the
story of John the Baptist with this brief summary of his ministry. It should be noted that Luke’s insertion of
this section here was not chronological,
but thematic. John was not actually
imprisoned until later in Jesus’ ministry, but Luke pulls his imprisonment back
to this point to conclude his account of John’s ministry and set Jesus on
center stage. For the rest of Luke’s
gospel John appears only in reference to Him.
“Three Words, ‘preaching,’ ‘personalizing
,’ and ‘persecution,’ help unfold John’s impact.”
4/27/2026
7:27 PM
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