Day 274 (Luke 1, John 1) - Year 4
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. If you're new here, welcome. We've put all the information you need about our reading plan on the start page of our website, thebiblerecap.com, as well as in the episode we posted called New Testament Prep.

So be sure you check that out if you're brand new. And if you haven't already, I also want to encourage you to listen to our six prep episodes that will really help set you up for success as you begin reading through scripture with us. We'll link to all those in the show notes of today's episode.

Today we launch into two of the four Gospels. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are narrative accounts of the life of Jesus, and they're primarily eyewitness accounts with the exception of Luke. And while maybe Luke did see a lot of these things firsthand, he treats his role more like an investigative reporter who goes around interviewing all the other eyewitnesses in order to tell the story well. He's kind of like the weather reporter in the rain jacket who stands in the storm talking to the locals.

Since the Gospels are narrative and you're likely to grasp the stories, I'll spend less time recapping the stories themselves and more time recapping the meaning and underlying implications. Each of the Gospel writers has a unique lens on who Jesus is. Luke's primary lens is Jesus as man, and John's primary lens is Jesus as God. Since Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine, it's fitting that we're starting out our study of his time on earth with those two books today.

Luke's Gospel is written roughly 30 to 55 years after the resurrection of Jesus, and it's actually written as a letter to a Greek man named Theophilus, who probably wasn't super familiar with Jewish tradition, like many of us. So Luke will do a great job helping most of us understand things that would otherwise escape us. He starts out with the story of a local priest named Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth. Scripture lets us know that they were righteous but infertile.

reinforcing that those two things aren't mutually exclusive despite what the religious culture of the day says. One day, Zachariah is assigned the rare honor of burning incense in the holy place of the temple. Most priests only get this assignment once in their lives. After he clocks in, he's greeted by the angel Gabriel, who tells him God has said yes to his prayer to be a dad and that his son's name will be John.

God has some special assignments for John, which include strict rules for his life. God is assigning John something called the Nazarite vow. We first read about this on day 56 in Numbers 6. We'll link to a short article with more info on this in the show notes in case you want to find out more. John will eventually be called John the Baptist, so to avoid any confusion about which John we're referring to, we'll call him JTB from now on. Gabriel says JTB will be filled with the Spirit of God even when he's in the womb.

If you are with us in the Old Testament, you know this is a big deal. At this point in history, God the Spirit doesn't really dwell in people. For the most part, he moves around a lot, resting on people to empower them for specific tasks or callings. So it seems JTB must have a pretty big calling on his life.

In fact, Gabriel says his life will be kind of like Elijah's, which recalls what we read yesterday in Malachi 4, 5-6. Essentially, his life will be a flashing arrow pointing toward the Messiah. A few months later, the angel Gabriel goes to deliver another message to another unsuspecting person named Mary. He tells her she's going to be pregnant soon and that her son's name will be Jesus and that he will be a king like his ancestor David, except that his kingdom will be eternal. And Mary's like...

Like, hold up, I'm still a virgin, so how is this possible? Gabriel reassures her that it's not a problem because the baby's father isn't human anyway. He's divine, and he has access to dimensions we haven't even discovered yet. Then, as Gabriel is leaving, he says, Yes, your cousin Elizabeth is pregnant too. She hasn't posted it on Facebook yet, but you need to know.

Based on the messenger, Mary probably figures Elizabeth is the one person she can confide in, so she goes to visit. When the women see each other, JTB jumps for joy in the womb, showing that he's already using his God-given gift of prophecy. And Elizabeth has a Holy Spirit moment of her own, where she prophesies about Mary being pregnant with the Lord.

The first human to prophesy aloud about Jesus being the Messiah was an elderly woman. And for Mary, this is probably such a relief to have some other human confirming what Gabriel said. Mary breaks into song. Next, we move to John's Gospel. It was written around 50 years after Jesus. John was almost certainly one of the apostles because he references himself in several of the personal stories he tells. He never uses his own name. Instead, he calls himself the disciple Jesus loved.

Some people think that's arrogant, but I tend to think it's confident humility. It's like he doesn't want to drop his name into the story and say, it's me, you guys, but also he knows his true identity in Christ. As we said earlier, John's unique lens on Jesus is Jesus as God. So you may have noticed a lot of that in today's chapter. In fact, John starts out by taking us way back to the beginning of time and putting Jesus right there at the start of it all. We talked about this on day one in Genesis 1, where God the Son, Jesus,

Jesus is there doing the manual labor of creation. In verse 3 here, John says, All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. God the Father commanded it, God the Son made it, and God the Spirit approved of it and sustained it.

The Trinity, the three unique persons of the one true God, has always existed in total unity, working together toward the same goal. Jesus, God the Son, wasn't created. He always existed as God the Son. Then he took on the name Jesus when he was born on earth to join humanity for a few decades. If you're new to the idea of the Trinity and you want to learn more, you can check out a book and two sermons in today's show notes.

And we're also linking to a seven-session Bible study I wrote for Lifeway called He's Where the Joy Is, Getting to Know the Captivating God of the Trinity. So if you really want to dig deeper, that's a great option for you.

John skips forward to the time when JTB and Jesus, who is the light himself, were born. Even though Jesus made the world, the world doesn't recognize him. But John gives us hope. He says that among fallen humanity, there are some that God has adopted into his family, and he calls them the children of God. John makes it clear, just like we saw throughout the Old Testament, that this title, child of God, isn't given to every human God created, just the ones God adopts into his family.

One day, JTB is in the desert just north of the Dead Sea, baptizing people. This is similar to the ritual purification baths that the ancient Jews performed, like in Leviticus 14, except John is doing it in the wilderness rivers with dirty water. It's not a very clean situation. So what's the point? The Gospel of Mark tells us that baptism was a physical act that symbolized the spiritual reality of turning to follow God. The Pharisees, who are the Jewish religious leaders at the time,

sends some people to interrogate JTB about it, and he says, Remember how our prophets foretold the coming Messiah? He's here, and it's not me. I'm not trying to start my own religion. I'm here to point to him, the one we've been waiting for. The next day, Jesus shows up at that river, and JTB says, This is him. This is the guy I was telling you about.

Jesus and JTB are second cousins, but they live really far apart from each other. They may have met before, like on holidays maybe, but JTB first sees Jesus as the Messiah when the Holy Spirit affirms his divine identity. This wasn't something everyone saw. JTB saw it, but he appears to see in the spiritual realm, things normal human eyes can't see.

On day three in this chapter, JTB and two of his followers run into Jesus and JTB can't help himself. He's always pointing to Jesus. So that's what he does and his two disciples head off with Jesus instead. Andrew is one of those guys and he immediately calls his brother Simon. When Simon shows up, Jesus pulls a God move. He renames him. Simon means to hear, listen, or obey. But both of the new names Jesus lists...

Cephas and Peter mean stone or pebble, like a fragment of loose rock. This is going to come into play later in Simon Peter's life, so remember this. On day four, Jesus decides to take a road trip back to the Sea of Galilee. It's about a 30-hour trip uphill by foot. It would probably take a week in the desert heat.

When he gets there, he recruits a guy named Philip. Then Philip spreads the word to Nathaniel that they found the Messiah. Nathaniel, who, by the way, is probably the same person as the apostle Bartholomew, is kind of skeptical because Jesus comes from the wrong side of the tracks. But when Nathaniel slash Bartholomew meets Jesus, Jesus automatically reveals that he can see things happening in places where he isn't.

Jesus is already demonstrating his divinity to us here, his ability to read minds and know hearts and see things most people can't. And as he reveals that to other people throughout his ministry, they're confronted with his identity, and it serves as a line of demarcation in their life. Either they follow him or turn from him. There's no middle ground. You can't realize a person is divine and remain neutral about them. In each day's reading, we like to find a God shot that

That's a picture of God and his character that we see show up in what we read that day. It's not necessarily just our main takeaway, and it's not an application point. It's the picture we see about who God is.

Today, my God shot was in the songs of Mary and Zachariah in Luke 1. It's clear that both of these people know scripture well because the songs are full of scripture. Mary was getting a tough assignment, probably something she did not want initially. But she joyfully submits herself to God's plan, even though she was probably terrified. She recognized that she was on the receiving end of both God's grace and mercy. Mary is grateful, even though she got something she didn't necessarily want.

Zachariah, on the other hand, had just gotten a yes to a long-prayed prayer. So you'd think that when he breaks into song, he would be singing about the birth of his child. But he doesn't do that. He skips straight past that to praising God for the upcoming birth of Jesus.

Zachariah knows what the point is. It's not the yes to his own desires. It's the yes to all of humanity's long-awaited redemption. And Mary knows what the point is. It's far more than her or her desires. The birth of Christ is the yes that surpasses all our prayers and the peace that surpasses all our fears. He's where the joy is.

Tomorrow we'll be starting the book of Matthew. It's 28 chapters long. We're linking to a short video overview in the show notes that covers the first part of Matthew. The video is eight minutes long, so check it out if you have some time to spare. The Trinity is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. It can be really confusing though, and if we aren't careful, we end up putting the three persons of the Trinity in a blender and mixing them all up together as though they're the same. While God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are one, and they are unified in their will and purpose...

They're also distinct in their roles. We've built out a PDF that talks more about the roles of the persons of the Trinity using examples and scriptures, and we'd love to share that with you. If you want to get this PDF for free, all you have to do is go to thebiblerecap.com forward slash Trinity and submit your email address. That's thebiblerecap.com forward slash Trinity.