Stories from the Bible - Ep 16 The Entrance and the Tempting of the Son of God (Luke 3-4)

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Last time we heard about an old priest, called Zechariah, and his childless wife, Elizabeth. And one day when Zechariah was doing his job in the temple, an angel came out of no-where, told him not to be afraid, said his prayers were being answered, and that his wife Elizabeth was finally going to have a baby. And this baby would make them, and lots of other people, very glad. The baby would be filled with the holy spirit and he would be the drumroll for, guess who? The Lord! That’s right, after all these hundreds of years of waiting, God is finally going to show up.  Hear more about how he entered the world and what happened next in this episode. The Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® http://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved

Beauty, perfection, desire, deception, rebellion, judgment, hope. You're listening to Stories from the Bible. Bible stories told in order, using the words of the Bible, with introductions to give a recap and provide context. At the end of each story, you might want to pause and take a moment to reflect on what you noticed in the story. Things you liked or didn't like. Something the story showed you about God or about people. Don't worry if not everything makes sense. Keep listening to each episode and sit with the journey. I'm stoked to have you on the ride. Hello and welcome back to episode 16. Well, lots of stuff happened in the story at the

end of last episode. So there was an old priest called Zechariah and his childless wife, Elizabeth. And one day when Zechariah was doing his priest job thing in the temple, an angel came out of nowhere and scared him half to death. But the angel, who was called Gabriel by the by, told him not to be afraid, that his prayers were being answered, and that his wife Elizabeth was finally going to have a baby. And this baby would make them and lots of other people very glad. The baby would be filled with the Holy Spirit. And get this, he would be the drum roll for, guess who? The Lord. That's right. After all these

hundreds of years of waiting, the Lord is finally going to show up. And this little baby who's going to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth will grow up to have the job of getting everyone ready for the Lord's coming. He is going to be the support act for the greatest main event in the history of the world. He will work the crowds and prepare the people to turn away from following their own ideas and turn their hearts towards the coming Lord. Wow. So that sounded exciting, but a bit too exciting for Zechariah, and he didn't believe a word of it. So Gabriel told him he wouldn't be able to speak until the prophecy came true. And sure enough, sometime later, Elizabeth does become pregnant, and she's pretty stoked about what God has done for her. So at the time when Elizabeth is six months pregnant, Gabriel the

angel gets sent by God to a town in the north. He goes to a young virgin named Mary, who is engaged to be married to a guy called Joseph, who just happens to be a descendant of King David. Now, Gabriel greets Mary and tells her God is with her, and Mary is understandably just a bit startled. But the angel comforts her and repeats again that she is favored by God and tells her to listen. And the message for her is this. You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and he will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will never end.

Mary asks the angel the obvious question, how will this happen since, you know, I haven't actually been with a man? When Mary asks this, it seems a bit like the question Zechariah asked when he was told Elizabeth would have a baby. But we're told that beneath Zechariah's question he was told Elizabeth would have a baby. But we're told that beneath Zechariah's question was disbelief of the angel's words. And he already had evidence from history that God was able to make an old lady pregnant. Think of Sarah, for example. Whereas for Mary, it's not that she doesn't believe the words of the angel. It's a genuine question of wonder. Unlike in Zechariah and Elizabeth's situation, God has never done this kind of thing before.

It is totally new, and it's fair enough for her to ask, so how is this going to work? And so the angel explains to her that the baby will not have an ordinary conception. It will simply just happen through the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the child born will be holy and will be called the son of God. And to reassure Mary of God's power to do this, Gabriel tells Mary the news of her relative Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy in her old age. And Mary believes the angel's words and accepts what God says will happen. So the angel leaves Mary.

And the next thing we're told is that Mary decided to get up in a hurry and go south to go visit this miraculously pregnant relative of hers. Fair enough. And when Mary arrives at Elizabeth's house, the baby in Elizabeth's womb is so in tune with his destiny that even as an unborn child, he does a somersault of joy when the newly conceived baby inside Mary comes near. Mary then praises God for his power to basically turn the world upside down. She praises him for blessing her, a nobody in the eyes of the world,

and for his power to be merciful to everyone who fears him, but to bring low those who are proud and rich and ignore God in their self-sufficiency. And she finishes with the reason God does these things is his faithfulness to the promises he made to Abraham and his descendants. Then Mary stays with Elizabeth for about three months, until the time comes for Elizabeth to give birth. Which she does, and they're all rejoicing. And when they go to name the baby, Zechariah is suddenly able to talk and he confirms the baby's name will be John. And then Zechariah is filled with the Holy Spirit and bursts forth with a beautiful prophecy about God's mercy in coming to rescue Abraham's descendants from their enemies so they can

finally serve him without fear and live in holiness and righteousness before him. And he speaks about his son, just recently born, who would be a prophet of the Most High and prepare people for God's coming. The coming of the Lord would be like the dawn breaking, which would give light to those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death so that their feet would be guided into the way of peace. And then we're told that the child John grew and became strong in God's spirit and lived out in the desert until his moment arrived. So then back to Mary. She's nine months pregnant and we're told that she and fiancé Joseph are forced to take a long and very inconveniently

timed journey south in order to meet with a requirement of the Roman emperor, who wants to know how rich he is. That is, he wants to know how many people are in his empire, so he knows how much tax he should be getting. In those days, the way to count subjects was to make them go back to the town their family originally came from. And for Joseph, who comes from the family line of King David, that town is Bethlehem. So they arrive in Bethlehem. It's all booked out. Mary's in labour, so they take the best shelter they can find, which is with the animals. Mary has the baby. She wraps him in some rags and puts him in the best available crib, which is the animal food trough.

Wow, what an entrance for God's eternal king who would rule his people forever. Did God really know what he was doing? Then nearby are some mangy shepherds who live outdoors with their sheep. Humanly speaking, not those whom you'd expect to be important enough to get the first announcement of anything worthwhile. But this is God speaking, not humans. And to the lowly shepherds, he sends angels who proclaim the stupendously wonderful good news that in the city of David,

that is Bethlehem, the rescuer, the long promised king has been born and that they will find him wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger. So when the angels leave, the shepherds look at each other, realize what they've just heard and hurry off to find the baby. They find the baby just as the angel said, and they glorify and praise God. When the baby is eight days old, he's given the name Jesus. And then when Mary and Joseph take him to Jerusalem to present him at the temple there, according to the Jewish laws, they meet a man called Simeon. Simeon had been looking forward to the rescue of God's people for a long time, and God had shown him by the Holy Spirit that he wouldn't die before he saw God's promised rescuer. And so, at the same time that

Mary and Joseph are in the temple with Jesus, the Spirit directs Simeon there as well. And when Simeon sees the baby Jesus, he takes him in his arms and blesses God for letting him see the salvation that God has prepared for Israel. Also in the temple is an old widow, Anna, who would live there praying and fasting night and day for 84 years. And when she sees the baby Jesus, she comes straight up to them and begins giving thanks to God, and she starts telling everyone who is waiting for God to rescue Jerusalem about the baby she's just seen. Now, after Mary and Joseph do everything the law requires of parents after the birth of a firstborn son, they travel back north to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.

Then in Luke's Gospel, we skip forward to when Jesus is 12 years old, and he and his parents and their friends and relatives have made their annual journey south to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast. Listen to episode 5 and 6 for the history of the Passover. When the feast is finished, they all start the trip home, and they've travelled a day before realising Jesus isn't among the group. When they can't find him, they go back to Jerusalem, and after a frantic three-day search, they finally find him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone there who heard Jesus was astonished at his understanding and his answers.

And his parents see him, and they're overwhelmed, and Mary basically says, How could you be so thoughtless? We've been stressing about where you were for three days. But from Jesus' point of view, he thought it was obvious and natural that he should be hanging out with his father. He says, why were you looking for me? He says to his parents. Didn't you know I must be in my father's house? But at that time, Mary and Joseph didn't get what he was saying.

Then Jesus goes back north with them to Nazareth, is obedient to them, and grows up. Then Luke skips forward again, this time to nearly 20 years later, and he tells us what John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, is up to now. Recall the last we heard was that he was in the desert, awaiting his moment to go public. And that moment has come. John goes all around the Jordan River, which was sort of the eastern border of Israel, and we're told he's preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Luke tells us John is the fulfillment of

the words of the prophet Isaiah when he said, about 700 years before this, The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight. Every valley will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be brought low, and the crooked will be made straight, and the rough ways will be made smooth, and all humanity will see the salvation of God. In episode 14 and 15, you can hear more from the prophet Isaiah and get a feel for the general expectations that Jews had around the hope of God's entering the world. In summary, God's entrance was expected to do two things. One, bring judgment upon all the evil in the world.

And two, bring salvation to the ones who turned away from evil and looked to him for help. Today's story starts here. So John said to the crowds that came out to be baptised by him, You, offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore produce fruit that proves your repentance. And don't begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees,

and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So the crowds were asking him, what then should we do? John answered them, the person who has two tunics must share with the person who has none, and the person who has food must do likewise. Tax collectors also came to him to be baptised and they said to him, teacher, what should we do? He told them, collect some soldiers also asked him, And as for us, what should we do? He told them,

While the people were filled with anticipation and they all wondered whether perhaps John could be the Christ, John answered them all, I baptise you with water, but one more powerful than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clean out his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his storehouse, but the chaff he will burn up with inextinguishable fire.

And in this way, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed good news to the people. But when John rebuked Herod the Tetrarch because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the evil deeds that he had done, Herod added this to them all. He locked up John in prison. Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized. And while he was praying, the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven, You are my one dear Son. In you I take great delight. Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he endured temptations from the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were completed, he was famished. The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. Jesus answered him,

It is written, Man does not live by bread alone. Then the devil led him up to a high place and showed him in a flash all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, to you I will grant this whole realm and the glory that goes along with it, for it has been relinquished to me and I can give it to anyone I wish. So then, if you will worship me, all this will be yours. Jesus answered him, It is written, You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him. Then the devil brought him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it is written, He will command his angels

concerning you to protect you, and with their hands they will lift you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus answered him, So when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until a more opportune time. The story ends here. Thanks for joining us for today's story. You might like to take a moment to pause and think about what you noticed. Things you liked.

Things you didn't like. Something the story showed you about Jesus. To read it for yourself, it's in the book of Luke, chapter 3 and 4. You've been listening to Stories from the Bible. I'm Jen, and I look forward to sharing more stories with you.