Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Will God Set the World Right? | The Gospels | Luke 1:1–25

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

If the world feels unjust, is anyone truly in control? How will lost sinners ever be reconciled? Where does real hope begin? In today’s episode, Patrick unpacks Luke 1:1–25 and explains how the birth announcement of John the Baptist signals that God is already at work—bringing life, healing, and ultimate restoration through Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2026! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Luke 1:1–25

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Good things come to good people. Bad things come to bad. The universe always writes itself. Manifest your desires, and they'll become a reality. Those are a few of the truisms you'll hear from modern-day spiritualists. It's the idea of karma, of animal magnetism, the idea that like comes to like, good to the good, bad to the bad, and what goes around comes around. It's a pleasant idea because it's a neat and tidy idea. It explains away evil by saying that evil will fall back on evil-doers, and it explains away suffering by saying that it's a consequence of evil and wrongdoing or manifesting the wrong

things. Of course, the neatness of the idea is precisely its problem. I doubt you tell someone suffering from pancreatic cancer, well, evil comes to those who do evil and good to those who do good. nor would you tell that person to manifest their own healing by positive thinking, nor would you tell a billionaire who lied, cheated, deceived, and betrayed his way to the top, ah, well see, good comes to those who are good, just like you, nor would you congratulate that person on manifesting their wealth by their own positivity. With a little thought, so many of the truisms we hear about spiritual reality today are vacuous and empty.

That doesn't stop them from being potent. It doesn't stop us Christians from sometimes drinking the Kool-Aid. But the Bible gives us a very different picture of reality. And the biblical picture of reality, the world is not in a state of order where good things come to the good and bad things come to the bad, quite the opposite. Human sin has broken the cosmos. It's vandalized the cosmos. Things here are not in working order.

And that means that sometimes good comes to those who are evil and evil comes to those who are good, Again and again, the Psalms mourn this reality. We read in Psalm 73, 3, for I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They're free from common human burdens. They are not plagued by human ills.

Of course, the Bible doesn't end here. The Bible acknowledges the reality that this world can be deeply confusing and unfair. And yet, it also plants hope in every human heart. that one day God will act to straighten things out, that he will do something new to deal with the problem of human sin, to bring justice to evil, to reward the good. The question of course is, when will this new act of God take place? And how will he be both judge of sinners and justifier of those sinners? Because no one can pretend that he or she is without evil in this life. No one can pretend that he or she does not deserve the just judgment of God.

Today we begin Luke's gospel, and his opening stories point us towards these exact questions. The apparent unfairness of the world and the question of how God will set the ship right and reconcile himself to lost sinners. In the opening passage of the book, Luke addresses himself to a man named Theophilus, which means lover of God. Now, Theophilus may have been a real person, or this may have been a way of referring to anybody that loved God. Either way, Luke explains that His gospel will be an orderly account of a real person. what happened in Jesus' life based on eyewitness testimony. But then, something strange happens. He doesn't start with Jesus. Instead, he starts with an elderly couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth. Let's pick up in verse 5. In the time of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah,

who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah. His wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless, because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old. Later, Elizabeth calls her infertility, quote, My disgrace among the people.

This is because infertility in that culture was a double-edged sword. Just like today, parents experiencing infertility wrestled with a lot of pain and loss, with the knowledge that their vision of a future with a family might not ever become a reality. But back then, there was a second edge beyond personal pain. Not having a child meant that you'd have no one to provide for you in your old age. There was no elder care. There was no social security. And maybe even more importantly, it meant that you had no one to carry on your family legacy. Thus, for them, infertility was viewed as a

curse, as a sign that God did not favor you, as a sign that you'd done something evil and thus deserved the evil that fell upon you. In other words, karma. So infertile women, as Elizabeth says, were disgraced. But notice what Luke is careful to say in verse six. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God. They were both righteous before God, faithful to His covenant. But despite being good, good didn't come to them. In this way, Luke reminds us that the world is not properly functioning, that we need God to do something new. And that's precisely. what happens in Zechariah and Elizabeth's old age. An angel appears to Zechariah in the temple and tells him that Elizabeth will conceive. Zechariah is flabbergasted and doubts the angel because of their age.

As a result, God causes Zechariah to remain mute until his child is born. But this is only a discipline. Because what the angel says is going to happen. It does happen. Zechariah gets a son. Elizabeth does conceive. And as we'll later learn, her son is John the Baptist. Gabriel explained John's calling to Zechariah in verse 15. He says of John, He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go on before the Lord, and the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. This statement is loaded with

references to the Old Testament. But the most important are references to Isaiah 40. Now in that chapter, God promises to end Israel's exile and do something new to set the world to rights. He explains that he's going to send someone to prepare the way for him by turning the hearts of the people back to God. And clearly, John is that person. God is doing something new. He's going to bring justice. He's going to reconcile himself to the lost. So why start with Zechariah and Elizabeth? I think it's because Elizabeth's womb and her disgrace, well, there are a microcosm of what God intended to be true for the whole cosmos. To a womb that could not carry life, he gives life. To a woman disgraced, he brings honor. To the one who craved justice, he brings healing.

You see, God's answer to the evil in the world, and the evil in every human heart is the resurrection. Yes, death must come before life. The pathway to a new creation is always through a cross, Nonetheless, our hope is not in karma or false spiritual aphorisms that fall flat in real life. Our hope is that God did do something new through Christ and that God will do something new and final when he returns.