The Bible Study Podcast, episode 103.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of Luke.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

Well, we barely got started in Luke last time, so let's jump right into the

first chapter of Luke. It's interesting to compare how the four gospels start, because remember

we said they're written to different audiences. So Matthew's gospel, which was written to the Jews,

starts with the genealogy of Jesus starting from Abraham. And John's Gospel, which we said is very theological, starts

with the very enigmatic phrase, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God. And Mark's Gospel has a one-sentence introduction, the beginning of the

gospel about Jesus Christ, the son of God, and then a

seven-verse section on John the Baptist. Luke goes into a little more detail. Luke's gospel is longer,

and he starts also with John the Baptist. So even though Jesus is what this whole gospel is about,

we won't actually get till Jesus till a little later. And so, and starting in verse

five, we get, in the time of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zachariah who belonged

to the priestly division of Abijah. His wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them

were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly.

But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well along in years.

Some of those sentences may seem a bit non-sequitur, like did you take the bus to work or did you take your lunch, that they were both obedient and had no children.

But that is actually irony because the understanding would be that someone who is following

the Lord's commands would be blessed with children.

And so there would be some sort of stigma against Elizabeth and against Sechariah because they were childless.

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