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The Birth of John the Baptist Is Announced
Luke 1:1-25
Good News Translation (GNT)
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Introduction
1 Dear Theophilus: Many people have done
their best to write a report of the things that
have taken place among us.
2 They wrote what we have been told by those
who saw these things from the beginning and
who proclaimed the message.
3 And so, Your Excellency, because I have
carefully studied all these matters from their
cbeginning, I thought it would be good to write
an orderly account for you.
4 I do this so that you will know the full truth
about everything which you have been taught.
The Birth of John the Baptist Is Announced
5 During the time when Herod was king of
Judea, [a] there was a priest named
Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order
Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order
of Abijah. His wifof Abijah. His wife's name
was Elizabeth; she also belonged to a priestly
family.
6 They both lived good lives in God's sight and
obeyed fully all the Lord's laws and
commands.
7 They had no children because Elizabeth could
not have any, and she and Zechariah were
both very old.
8 One day Zechariah was doing his work as a
priest in the Temple, taking his turn in the daily
service.
9 According to the custom followed by the
priests, he was chosen by lot to burn incense
on the altar. So he went into the Temple
of the Lord,
10 while the crowd of people outside prayed
during the hour when the incense was burned.
11 An angel of the Lord appeared to him,
standing at the right side of the altar where the
incense was burned.
12 When Zechariah saw him, he was alarmed
and felt afraid.
13 But the angel said to him, "Don't be afraid,
Zechariah! God has heard your prayer, and
your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.
You are to name him John.
14 How glad and happy you will be, and how
happy many others will be when he is born!
15 John will be great in the Lord's sight.
He must not drink any wine or strong drink.
From his very birth he will be filled with the
Holy Spirit,
16 and he will bring back many of the people of
Israel to the Lord their God.
17 He will go ahead of the Lord, strong and
mighty like the prophet Elijah. He will bring
fathers and children together again; he will
turn disobedient people back to the way of
thinking of the righteous; he will get the Lord's
people ready for him."
18 Zechariah said to the angel, "How shall I know
if this is so? I am an old man, and my wife
is old also."
19 "I am Gabriel," the angel answered. "I stand in
the presence of God, who sent me to speak
to you and tell you this good news.
20 But you have not believed my message, which
will come true at the right time. Because you
have not believed, you will be unable to speak;
you will remain silent until the day my promise
to you comes true."
21 In the meantime the people were waiting for
Zechariah and wondering why he was
spending such a long time in the Temple.
22 When he came out, he could not speak to
them, and so they knew that he had seen a
vision in the Temple. Unable to say a word,
he made signs to them with his hands.
23 When his period of service in the Temple was
over, Zechariah went back home.
24 Some time later his wife Elizabeth became
pregnant and did not leave the house for five
months.
25 "Now at last the Lord has helped me," she
said. "He has taken away my public disgrace!"
Footnotes
Luke 1:5 The term here refers to the whole
land of Palestine.
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Commentary taken from 'word-on-the-web'
supplied by Scripture Union
The Birth of John the Baptist Is Announced
Luke 1:1-25
It is instructive to compare how each of the four evangelists opens his Gospel.
Luke, the only Gentile author in the Bible, begins in a characteristically Greek way, with a preface.
We are alerted to his intention to write as a historian, with careful attention to detail.
We are also alerted in verse 5 to his perception of the story of Jesus in the context of the sociological history of the time.
After the first four verses we are in a thoroughly Jewish milieu.
The setting is the Temple, with the rotating priesthood, incense offering, people praying - and an angel.
The angel's message sets up the sense of expectation that will run throughout this chapter.
For four hundred years very little had been heard from the Lord.
The last of the prophets, Malachi, had ended his book with warning and promise (Mal 3:1; 4:1-6), ending with the prophecy that God would send Elijah to prepare his people.
Then silence.
The angel's message is full of allusions to the Old Testament.
The story of Jesus is not told in a vacuum.
We will read of various faithful Jews who see in these events God's eternal purposes being played out before their eyes.
Although at this point there is no mention of the coming of the Messiah, verse 17 ends with words that further set up our sense of anticipation: 'to make ready a people prepared for the Lord'. Elizabeth's barrenness, like the barrenness of God's silence, will come to an end.
She will bear a son.
This much Zechariah and Elizabeth had prayed for.
They could not have foreseen who this son would be: the forerunner of the Messiah, who would prepare the people with a call to repentance.
God is on the move again.
It had been painful for Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth to hold their heads up high, knowing that many of their fellow Jews believed their lack of children was God's judgement on their sin.
But they had faithfully continued to serve God, and now in his sixties a day had come that Zechariah had long been waiting for.
He had been selected to burn incense in the temple, the symbol of the nation's prayers rising to the throne of God.
As a member of one of 24 divisions of priests, each serving for only two weeks each year, this was a once in a lifetime honour.
For once, thoughts of his wife's barrenness left him, as he reverently approached the altar.
But God had heard the couple's prayers, and an angel was waiting by the altar to impart to him the news of a son:
A son who would bring his parents joy and delight (v 14).
A son who would, in the mould of Elijah, restore relationships within families (see Micah 7:5,6; Malachi 4:4-6).
A son who would have the task of preparing a jaded and forgetful people for the coming of their Lord (v 17).
Elizabeth was to join a long tradition of women blessed with miraculous babies - Rachel, Rebekah, Hannah, Samson's mother, Sarah - who in their motherhood were granted longed-for respect and honour from their societies (v 25), and whose children played significant roles in the drama of salvation.
Angels usually create a bit of a stir, and this angel was just as frightening as all the others.
Zechariah in fear and disbelief wanted more than the angel's word to reassure him that this staggering news could possibly be true, and as a result was struck dumb until John's birth.
But I think we can safely assume even this punishment failed to spoil his day!
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