While historians debate the most important event, person, or object to impact the history of humankind, believers know that the incarnation of Jesus Christ and his coming into the world stands second to none. And it’s this particular monumental event in history that Zachariah, the priest and father of John the Baptist, has in mind in Luke 1:67-80 when he bursts out into a song of praise and worship. He does so because he’s overcome by the awesomeness God and all that God had done throughout history for His people Israel (particularly through the Davidic and Abrahamic covenants)—and even more—by what He was about to do for the history of the whole world through the birth of the Christ to come (the New covenant). And it would all start with the birth of Zachariah’s own son, John, who would play a pivotal part in preparing the way. It’s the story of Jesus and redemption through him, starting first with the birth of John the Baptist as the forerunner, that is the crux of all human history.
07 - The Benedictus: Zechariah's Song
Luke 1:67-80
February 18, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 1:67–80
15 - The Homecoming of Jesus
May 5, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 4:14–30
The Jews of Nazareth, in Jesus' hometown, demanded miracles from him when he returned after a full year ministering down in Judea. They wanted miracles from Jesus but what they got instead was a lecture, and a most unpalatable one at that. Rebuking their unbelief (cf. Mark 6:6), Jesus invoked the Old Testament stories of the widow in Zarephath and Naaman the leper, turning the synagogue crowd against him. They took umbrage with him when he read aloud Isaiah 61:1-2 and 58:6 and applied those texts to himself, but they were fit to be tied when he invoked the stories of the Gentile window and leper as a rebuke. To suggest that God would favor Gentiles (who repent) over natural-born Jews who didn't was both unthinkable and unforgivable to them. But Jesus miraculously escaped their murderous intent to throw him off a cliff.
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.