Thoughts for the Day

Luke 3: 1-2 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar – when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene – during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.

We are going to spend a few days looking at the connection between the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus.  All four gospels make this connection, but Luke tells us the most.   He opens the birth narrative of Jesus by telling us first about the miraculous birth of John, and it is John’s birth that he carefully time-stamps.  John’s first recorded action is to leap in his mother’s womb as Mary, pregnant with Jesus, approaches, and John’s father prophesies at his circumcision that John will ‘go before the Lord to prepare a people for him’.  Later Luke launches Jesus’s adult ministry with a very carefully time-stamped reference to John emerging from the desert to begin his ministry.  Tiberius reigned from August 14 AD, so this is sometime in 29 AD.  And Luke picks up the earlier prophesy quoting Isaiah, ‘A voice of one calling in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord …” ‘ Doubtless John reflected on his mission many times.  I wonder how he pictured it.  He knew he was preparing a way for the Lord, which meant for God, yet he also spoke of someone coming after him who would ‘baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire’.  Did he manage to put all the pieces of this jigsaw together perfectly?  I find it encouraging to discover that even John didn’t!