God did not use one of the Herods who ruled the territories in and around Israel to introduce His Son to the world? He did not use Pilate, the Roman procurator/governor who ruled Galilee, to pave the way for His Son in the world. He did not use the Pharaoh of Egypt who ruled much of the Mesopotamian area to herald His son before the world. And He did not use Tiberius Caesar, the emperor of Rome, to be the forerunner for His Son. Instead, to introduce His Son formally and officially to the nation of Israel, God chose a homeless, uncouth, unkept, politically incorrect, socially eccentric, and poorly educated water baptizer known as John the Baptist. And one word summarized his message … “Repent!”
11 - The Ministry of John the Baptist (Part 1)
Luke 3:1-6
March 17, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 3:1–6
More from
Luke
14 - The Temptation of Jesus
April 28, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 4:1–13
Generally speaking, when Christians fall victim to temptation, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Temptation, we are told in James 1:14, comes from deep within our own decadent heart and unredeemed flesh. For the perfectly sinless Jesus, however, in whom there was no decadence or fallenness, his temptation came from outside him--from the devil. Each of Satan’s temptations were met with the same answer by Jesus: “It is written,” followed by three citations from the book of Deuteronomy. In other words, Jesus didn’t dialogue with the devil. He didn’t debate the devil. And he didn’t dance with the devil while in the midst of temptation. Instead, he defeated the devil using the only weapon he had on him at the time—the Word of God embedded in his mind.
01 - Introduction - The Son of Man
December 17, 2023 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 1:1–4
Luke wrote his gospel from the perspective of a Gentile writing to another Gentile, named Theophilus, about Jesus being the Son of Man. Despite his anonymity, we see in the first four verses of his prologue a few elements that hint at, or point to, the type of Christian man that Luke was. They are both implicit and explicit. In addition to being a physician (Col. 4:14), Luke is revealed to be a biographer, a historian, and a theologian who took it upon himself to write the most expansive, complete, and thorough gospel on greatest story ever told—the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
02 - The Parents of John the Baptist
December 31, 2023 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 1:5–13, Luke 1:18–25
In writing to Theophilus, it was essential that Luke begin the saga of salvation with the forerunner, John the Baptist. His story is the tie that binds the Old and New testament together. He’s the last of the prophets to come the order of the Old Testament but the first to grace the pages of the New Testament. Most significantly, the story of John the Baptist established that he was in fact the divinely prophesied forerunner to the Messiah. His testimony concerning Jesus, therefore, carried a lot of weight and verified that Jesus was in fact the Christ. And John’s story first begins with his godly parents, an aged priest named Zechariah and his barren wife Elizabeth, and how God broke 400 years of silence in Israel with a personal revelation to them about the miraculous birth of their son that was to soon come.