In biblical times, names actually meant something beyond just sounding nice. Often a child would be named in honor of an event that took place at the time of their birth or based for some sort of unique physical characteristic that the child possessed at birth. To that end, often times God would sovereignly change a person’s name well into adulthood either to reflect their new identities as believers or their new calling as His ambassadors. In the case of John the Baptist, he was named John, meaning "God is gracious." That name mattered because not only was it the chosen name that the angel Gabriel had commanded Zachariah to give to the child but because it also reflected God’s gracious salvation, in which John would figure prominently as the Messiah’s forerunner.
06 - The Birth of John the Baptist
Luke 1:57-66
February 4, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 1:57–66
21 - The Lord of the Black Sheep
June 23, 2024 • Pastor Ronald H. Gann • Luke 5:27–32
The conversion of Levi the son of Alphaeus (cf. Mark 2:14), also know as Matthew the tax collector, was not a conversion celebrated among Jewish believers in the first century. As a tax collector, he was vilified as the scum of the earth whose conversion to Christ was thought to be impossible; he was more of an embarrassment to the Church than a praise report. If anything, the story of Levi's conversion tells us that nobody, no matter how despicable or despised, is outside the reach and grace of Jesus Christ and those whom He sovereignly calls to follow him.
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.