Hey, my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast, and we are working our way through Luke 1.

Some of you are going to be like, wait, hang on a minute, and you're going to pull out your device, and you're going to hit the unlock code to 228, 7. There you go. Now it's unlocked. Yeah, that's right. I know your code, Sarah. Isn't that weird? Now you got it unlocked, and you're looking at it, you're going, wait, this whole podcast series is on John. Why do we keep talking about Luke? Well, the answer is that John said us,

it's his fault. John the Evangelist sent us on a rabbit trail because he kept talking about

this John the Baptist guy. We need to know more about him. And John the evangelist seems to

assume that we know some things about John the Baptist.

So we're going and digging into Luke 1, where we learn things about John the Baptist.

And it has been interesting so far, learning about the miraculous manifestation and prediction of his birth, the well-intentioned fumbling of that on the part of John the Baptist dad, Zechariah, nine months of silence for Zechariah. But then Mary gets a visit from an angel as well. She's going to have a baby. Turns out it's Jesus. That's an even bigger deal than John the Baptist. Sure enough, Mary and Elizabeth, they're going to compare notes on them. Yeah, we're both having miraculous babies. Demonstrate the forward progress of the work of God, that God is moving again, this most exciting

thing ever. Then Mary says amazing stuff about that, that is theologically rich, and probably

Zechariah heard about that as well. It's like, I have theological things I want to say.

I am thinking about the blessing of God right now, too, but dang it, I can't talk because I'm dumbstruck.

Well, we're about to the part where he's not going to be dumbstruck anymore. And I, for one,

cannot wait to hear what comes of it. So with that said, I'm going to have my friend Jeffrey

foot play a little bit of music, and we're going to go do more of Luke chapter one.

Yeah. and we're going to go do more of Luke chapter one. This is the consolation of Israel. This is the consolation of Israel.

This is the hope that the entire story of history and time has been pointing toward. This is the vindication of what all of these people have been faithfully preserving and investing in. And it finally happened.

And you, a professional talker, can't talk about it. Still, he gestures enough that people are like,

okay, well, he had a vision. Something happened. Then it says when his time of service was completed,

he returned home. After this, his wife Elizabeth became pregnant, and for five months remained in seclusion. The Lord has done this for me, she said. In these days, he has shown his favor and taken away

my disgrace among the people. And there's this echo. It's another motif that I'm not going to

chase down today, but all through the Old Testament, there are these moments of these faithful

women who endure very heavy things, and it kind of seems like nobody sees them. Nobody cares.

I mean, Sarah, Hagar, Hannah, Ruth, and Naomi. It happens a ton. And there's this motif,

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