About

Someone once said that the primary results of the twentieth century were more speed and more noise. We certainly live in a noisy culture. Many people want to talk, few people want to listen. Even fewer people are interested in listening to what God is saying. Luke 3 illustrates our tendency to value human activity more than God’s activity. Luke 3:1 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 Ablilene, Vs 2 in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. You wonder why Luke would go to this amount of detail. He gives us the names of several rulers and the domains they ruled over. There were emperors, governors, rulers, politicians, priests, royalty and rascals. They pulled the levers of governmental and religious power in order to accomplish what they wanted. All the media of the day reported on what they said, and what they did. These people were the movers and shakers of their time. People really thought that they controlled the world of that era. In stark contrast to all that humans were saying and doing, we go to the last half of verse two and see what God is up to. It says that “the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.” When Caesar spoke, everybody listened, because he had the power of life and death over his subjects. When God spoke, He didn’t speak to the movers and shakers, the elites of the day. He spoke to an obscure, mysterious man named John who lived alone in the desert. About 30 years earlier, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a priest named Zacharias to tell him that he and his elderly wife Elizabeth were miraculously going to have a son. Their son John was going to be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in the womb. John was going to need supernatural power since God had called him be the forerunner or herald for the promised Messiah. John’s job description was to tell people to get ready because God’s Savior was coming. In that era, when a king traveled through his country, he sent heralds before him to announce his coming, so that his subjects would be prepared to meet him. John was to prepare Israel to meet their Messiah by calling them to turn away from their sins and turn to God. The text records that John was born……. And the child continued to grow, and to become strong in spirit, and he lived in the deserts until the day of his public appearance. (Luke 1:80) John was called to speak God’s word to his culture. In order to speak for God, he first had to listen to God. In order to listen to God, he had to stop listening to noise of the world, so he lived in the desert where it was quiet. The same is true today. We need to get quiet and alone with God, so we can hear what He has to say. Many times in the Bible, God spoke to, and spoke through obscure, unknown, common people. God has plans for His planet, and they don’t begin in the minds of men or the halls of Congress. What is really going on in the world today is not what people are doing, but what God is doing. Every day, God still speaks to people who want to listen to Him. God says that He loves sinful people so much that He sent His only Son Jesus, to pay their sin debt by dying in their place on the cross. When people turn away from their sin, and trust in Jesus alone to forgive their sin, He will. That’s good news. And God has given us the gift of the gospel, so we can share it with others. Like John the Baptist, we are called to introduce people to Jesus, the Savior of the world. The gospel is the gift that only gets better the more you give it away. Remember, God designed us to “do life together!” Love and prayers, Brad Visit mannapodcast.com. ©2018, 2019, & 2020 - Brad Hannink - All Rights Reserved