Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Your Heart Ready? | The Gospels | Luke 3:1–20

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

What does it mean to prepare for God’s work in your life? How do you know if your heart is truly changing? And what does repentance really look like? In today’s episode, Tanya shares how Luke 3:1���20 shows that John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus by calling people to the kind of heart change only God can provide. 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 3:1-20

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 Tanya Wilmuth. Today we're talking about John the Baptist. We're in Luke chapter 3. And I don't know much about living in the wilderness, but I can tell you about moving across the state with four kids, ages 18 months to seven years. And I'll try to show you how those things connect. See, when my kids were 1, 3, 5, and 7, my husband moved into a new job while the kids and I stayed behind to do things like. like list a house and show a house and pack up a house and move to a new place.

He would come home and be with us on the weekends, but the daily responsibilities involved with finishing a school year and moving into a new house fell on me and my very gracious mom. Now, I remember this time, and the hardest things weren't the physical tasks, like cleaning out the closets or making sure the toilets were flushed before we left the house for a showing. But the hardest things were the emotional things. It was getting my kids and my parents' hearts ready for us to leave the place where my kids were born and where all their friends were and get them ready to move.

And I handled that by spending a lot of time talking to them about what to look forward to and not a lot of time talking about what we were leaving behind. And as I think back about those months, it's more obvious to me now that preparing my kids for the next chapter wasn't, just about moving, and it wasn't just about that particular time. I was raising people, or I think my job is to raise people to be prepared to go into the world and live the way God intended them to live, not dependent on me, but on someone far better. And I think John the Baptist would have understood that kind of preparation. In fact, I think that's the example that he shows us, is to look for someone better and to help people point their hearts in anticipation of something better. John the Baptist knew the art of something called self-forgiftfulness.

John's role wasn't about getting people to follow him. It was about getting them ready to hear and follow Jesus. One of the ways he prepared his listeners was by showing them what they were missing. They didn't just need better morals. they needed a king to break through their darkness and bring light to the sin and the heaviness that was weighing them down. Luke tells us that when John the Baptist came on the scene, it had been about 400 years since the prophets had spoken. And now out of the wilderness comes this locust and honey-eating man calling people to repent and be baptized in the Jordan River. This wasn't the covenantal baptism that you and I know of.

It wasn't what Jesus would later command, but this was a sin of. symbolic washing, an outward sign that something needed to change on the inside. The people who came to hear John the Baptist preach, these were people who were being hurt, but they were also hurting others at the same time. It was a world where oppression got passed down because people felt like they needed to use any power they had to survive. So when John said the kingdom of God was at hand, he meant, God is about to step into your story in a new way. The Messiah is coming.

Salvation is near. Get ready. See, in the ancient world, when a king was coming to visit, people would get ready. They would prepare the roads. They would fill in the potholes. They would make things look good that line the streets. They would kind of literally roll out the red carpet. So John took that imagery and said,

The road that you need to clear and make ready for the Messiah is your heart. You need to get your heart ready. Now the people didn't really understand this, and so they asked a question, what then should we do? And John answers by describing something that they should do, but he's pointing to something bigger. He's pointing to a changed heart and what a changed heart actually looks like. So to the crowds, he says, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. In other words, love people compassionately.

Don't make excuses not to help them. To the tax collectors, he says, collect no more than you are authorized to do. In other words, don't use your position and your power over others. Don't use it to hurt people. To the soldiers, he says, do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation

and be content with your wages. In other words, be content with what you have. don't try to get more. These are different people. They have different temptations, but they all need heart level change. You could sum it up like this. A changed heart looks like compassion.

It looks like using your position for good. It looks like contentment. John isn't saying that these actions will save the people, but he's saying this is what repentance looks like when it's real. Repentantant isn't a religious or moral performance. It's a heart change that only God can provide. Only God can do that kind of work in our hearts. What does it look like to be someone whose heart is being changed by God? Well, let's just ask ourselves a question. If you are going to do a real assessment of your conversations, what would they reveal about your heart?

Do you have to insert yourself into every story? Do you have to control the direction of the conversation? Do you have to win the argument? Linguist, those are people that study language. They estimate that we use the word I around 5% of the time in our everyday speech. That means out of all the words available to us, one out of every 20 that we choose is I. I think, I want, I remember, I need, I said, I did.

I am. Our language can expose what's going on inside, and it can expose who we're trying to exalt. John the Baptist used the word I, too. He said, I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. The straps of who singles, I am not worthy to untie. Notice the difference. John's eye wasn't self-exulting. It was self-lowering. Every time we talked about himself, it was to point away from himself. Do you think it was a little bit of himself? Do you think it was fraying for John to have nothing to prove? Nothing to exalt within himself, no reputation to defend, no need to win. All he wanted was to get people ready for someone better.

And Jesus said about him in Luke 728, I tell you, among those born of women, there is no one greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. John had something we desperately crave, something we need, a settled purpose. So when the crowd's asking what should we do, he gave them ordinary answers. But those are not ways to earn salvation. Their evidence of the throne of the heart has shifted. It's possible to do all kinds of impressive and moral and religious things

and still have a heart ruled by pride and control and a hunger for more. But John knew what was missing in the lives of these people. He knew the Lamb of God was coming, the one who would deal not just with behavior, but with sin. The one who would bring justice and mercy together. The one who would give himself up on the cross so that he could give a new heart to those who trusted in him. And when that happens, the conversation changes. The center of your world changes. Your eye gets dethroned and makes room for someone greater.

That's what John the Baptist was pointing to. That's who we should be looking for. for the true Messiah, the true king. Amen.