to welcome you back to another edition of our Anchored in the Word morning reflection. And today we are in Luke chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, I'd like to encourage you to take it and let's look together at verses 1 through 6. Again, that's Luke chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. It says, now in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Uteria, and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas being the high priest, the word of the Lord came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And it came into all the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet saying, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare you the way of the Lord. "'make his path straight. "'Every valley shall be filled, "'every mountain and hill shall be brought low, "'and the crooked shall be made straight, "'and the rough ways shall be made smooth, "'and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'" Now, when we come to this passage, this is not so much going to be a devotional passage, but really it's gonna be talking about some important details from really a teaching standpoint. So let me give you a summary statement, and then we'll look at a couple of simple observations and then a few practical applications at the end. Here's a summary statement. This retelling of John's ministry, and that's John the Baptist, not John the Apostle, connected Isaiah's prophecy of Zechariah's statement about his son to the ministry that he would have preparing people to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And so really this is about connecting what Isaiah said hundreds of years before these events, what Zechariah said at the birth of his son, and then what actually took place there in around 29 or 30 AD in the year leading up to the beginning of Christ's earthly ministry. So let me look at a couple of details with you this morning. The first detail I'd like us to look at is that Luke presented verifiable references to strengthen his case with Theophilus. In verses one and two, he says it's in the 15th year, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate is the governor, Herod is the Tetrarch, and his brother Philip is Tetrarch. And he lists specific people in specific locations. What's interesting is you can go and look up all these people, and you can look up in history when they lived, when they worked, where they worked, and you can verify these people actually existed. You can verify the time periods that they actually lived in and that they worked in, and you can see the overlap. And based on that information, you can identify the timing of when John the Baptist began his earthly ministry in preparation for the Messiah's earthly ministry. Well, the reason that Luke takes the time to give those details is he wants this man Theophilus to have a confidence that the storyline that's being presented is in fact true. In other words, it's historically reliable. And so he's giving verifiable references to strengthen his case. The second detail I'd like us to see is that John preached a message of repentance. In verse 3 it says he came into all the country about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, it's very interesting. We need to stop and think about what the word repentance means when it's connected to this baptism of repentance. The idea is that the people that John is preaching to, the nation of Israel, needed a radical thinking change about some very specific things. When we look at Israel's history, we see that they were a people that had access to truth. They had access to the prophets. They had access to the Old Testament. They had access to the sacrificial system. Yet, as a general rule, the nation did not embrace the information that they were given. They were generally speaking, apart from a few periods where they had godly kings who basically reinstituted righteous living in the nation, As a general rule, the nation was in rebellion against God, and that's ultimately why God had to send the Babylonians and send the Assyrians, and Jerusalem was ultimately destroyed, and for 70 years, people were in captivity in Babylon. Basically when John comes on the scene, while there are some differences between the state of the nation at that point and the state of the nation during that Babylonian captivity and the generations leading up to it, the reality is as a general rule the people were not looking for the Messiah. They were not ready for the Messiah. And so John comes and he confronts them in their sin and he calls them out. And he basically says, you need to repent. You need to be confronted with truth. You need to change your thinking about how you're living your life and what you're living for and what you're looking for and not for. And then you need to embrace the Messiah in this message that I'm preaching. In other words, he preached truth to confront specific issues that were going on in the personal lives of people and in really the lives collectively of the nation. As these people were confronted with truth about themselves and about the nation, they needed to grieve about the condition of their nation. And they needed to grieve about their own personal contribution to the state of the nation. And as a result of that repentance, they needed to turn to God and recognize that their only hope was the coming Messiah. Their only hope to be forgiven and cleansed and restored, their only hope for them to experience God's covenant blessings, are a result of the Messiah's coming. And so when it says he preached the gospel of repentance and preparation for the Messiah, he's basically calling the nation to prepare to meet the Lord. The third observation that we see is that John's baptism and the baptism that we see during the time of the apostles and all throughout really the church age are different kinds of baptisms. Basically, what we can do is we can go to a passage like Acts chapter 18, and we can see that there were people who had been baptized under John's baptism, were anticipating the Messiah, yet were not yet Christians, believers in the sense that they understood the gospel and embraced the Messiah who had already come. In Acts chapter 18 verse 25 it says, this man, he's talking about Apollos, was instructed in the ways of the Lord, fervent in spirit, and he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord. But then Luke records a very interesting detail about Apollos. He says he knew only the baptism of John. And so Aquila and Priscilla took this man aside and they expounded to him the way of God more perfectly. The idea is that Apollos was anticipating the Messiah when the Messiah had already come. He believed the nation needed to be called to repentance in preparation for the Messiah. And what Aquila and Priscilla understood was that the nation didn't need to be called to repentance to prepare for the Messiah. The nation needed to repent over the fact that they'd crucified the Messiah, and they needed to embrace the Messiah as their Savior. They needed to trust in what he did for them on the cross. They needed to trust in his finished work, and his righteousness, and his triumph over the grave and the resurrection. And so when we talk about the baptism of John, we're talking about a baptism that is looking for the Messiah. When we're talking about baptism in the church age, in the New Testament, we're looking back at an event that's already taken place, and we're identifying with the significance and our belief in the personal need for that particular action of Christ's death and resurrection. So let me kind of lay it out this way. Let me talk to you for a moment about John's baptism, and then kind of transition that to what we call New Testament baptism. We talk about John's baptism, it was identifying with the message of John, that the nation individually, the members of the nation, I'll put it that way, and then corporately, the entire nation needed to prepare for the Messiah. It represented an admission of the brokenness of the nation and their need for forgiveness and cleansing. In fact, really, when we talk about the baptism of John, we're looking at it really as a national corporate preparation for the coming of Messiah. Not that there isn't an individual element to it, but the individual element is also connected to the fact that that person was contributing to the moral state of darkness in the nation, and they needed to turn to God, and they needed to embrace the Messiah who was coming for them. A third area is that it represented that one's understanding that this restoration was only found in the Messiah. So when John preaches, repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he's saying your only hope is the fact that the Messiah is coming. He's gonna die for your sins. He's gonna rise from the dead. And through him, you can have forgiveness and cleansing. And through him, all of the promises that God made to Abraham and Isaac and to Jacob, and all those generations from Abraham to the point that he's preaching, all those promises are gonna be found in the Messiah. Lastly, it represented their conviction that the Messiah was coming in fulfillment to God's promises. and that they were anticipating his coming. In other words, John's baptism was about people admitting their guilt, recognizing they were contributing to the national problem, that God would not accept them unless they embraced the Messiah. And by embracing the Messiah, they could be forgiven and cleansed and God could use them as a nation. So that's really what John's baptism was all about. It was about people, saying, basically, we believe this message is true, and we're embracing this message, and we're willing to publicly identify with this message. On the other side, when we talk about New Testament, church-age baptism, we're talking about a person identifying with the gospel message. Not the gospel message of God's coming, but the gospel message of God having come. In other words, we're looking back at the cross, not looking forward to the Messiah coming and then going to the cross. So the point of reference for the New Testament Christian is different than the point of reference for the person who was baptized during the ministry of John. Secondly, it recognizes that Christ has come, he has died, he has risen from the dead, and because of what he has done, we can have forgiveness of sins, we can be cleansed, and we can walk in newness of life as a new creature in Christ. In other words, when a person gets baptized, they are publicly confessing that they understand those details, they recognize them to be true, and in fact, they've embraced them, and they want people to understand that they've embraced them. It demonstrates a willingness to publicly confess that I have internal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he has purchased my salvation. I believe it and I'm resting in it. And lastly, it demonstrates a commitment to walk in newness of life because of Christ's work toward us and because of Christ's work in us. And so when I get baptized, I'm saying I've trusted Christ as my savior. And because I'm a new creature in Christ, I'm purposed to walk as a disciple of Christ, unashamed of that, willing to identify with the gospel message. As you can see, there's a distinction between these two kinds of baptisms. I mean, there is a similarity in the sense that they're focused on the same person, But the difference is the point of reference and the difference would be whether or not we're talking about a person who's a part of a nation that's anticipating the Messiah or a person who's an individual who's really identifying with the gospel and they're being connected to a local church assembly. The fourth observation or thing that we'll look at here is that Luke connected Isaiah's prophecy to Zechariah's statement, and then ultimately to John the Baptist's ministry to prepare the way for people to embrace the Messiah. In verses four through six, he writes, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare you the way for the Lord make straight his paths every valley shall be filled every mountain and hill will be brought low and the crooked will be made straight and the rough shall be made smooth and all flesh shall see the salvation of God You say, well, why do you bring that particular point up? I bring the point up to help us to see that there's a continuity between what was stated in the Old Testament, what took place and was recorded for us in the Gospels, and ultimately, the fact that God is connecting Old and New Testaments or Old and New Covenants together. In other words, when we start at Genesis and we move to Revelation, that we recognize two Testaments, we recognize one book, one unfolding story of redemption. And so there's not some massive disconnect between Old and New Testament. In fact, there's a continuity. They fit together as pieces in a puzzle. So you might ask the question, how can we practically apply these verses in front of us this morning? Let me give you just three simple thoughts that I jotted down that I hope that you can take with you today. The first is that the Christian faith is reliable and it's defensible. And Luke takes tremendous time and tremendous energy to record details so that people who want to can go and verify those details based on the people and the places and the timing that he identifies. The second practical thought I have is this, sometimes we need to be confronted in our complacency and called to repentance so that we are in a position to give evidence that repentance has genuinely taken place in our hearts. And so when John called the people to repentance, sometimes God needs to call us to repentance. Sometimes it's through a devotional like this. Sometimes it's through a sermon that we hear online or a sermon at church. Sometimes it's through our own personal study in our walk with the Lord. Sometimes it's through events that God uses to shake us and to humble us. But the fact is, like the people needed to be called to repentance, there are times that we need to be as well. And lastly, I want us to remember that there is a continuity, not a disconnect, between Old and New Testaments. There are people that believe that we have two different faiths, the Old Testament faith and the New Testament faith, or two different views of God, the Old Testament view of God and the New Testament view of God. But I want you to recognize that when we read the Bible and we read it carefully, we'll see that there's no disconnect. In fact, there is a harmonization. There's a continuity between those two portions of God's word. And we need to see it that way, and we need to teach it that way, and be ready to explain it that way to people who maybe don't understand that and have questions. I hope this has been an encouragement to you this morning. And Lord willing, we'll continue our study later in the week. And so let's bow together for a word of prayer, and then we will, Lord willing, meet again next time. Father, thank you for the opportunity to study your word. I pray that this would be an encouragement and a help to people. And I pray that you would use it, and we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I hope that you have a great rest of your day, and Lord willing, we'll be able to talk again next time. Bye now.