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
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.