A People Prepared (Luke 3:1–14) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

What you prepare for exceeds the preparation. At least, you hope it does. One doesn’t research and plan a trip, take off work, wash clothes, and pack bags for the experience of loading the car. The preparation isn’t the end; it’s that which you prepare for.

Yet, often the preparation helps you to fully enjoy that which you prepared for. If you do your research, you might better avoid the tourist trap in that city. Or you might know the right time to visit this or that place to avoid the lines. You’ll have the extra coat to keep you warm.

What you prepare for exceeds the preparation. That’s the intent. Also, preparation helps one to fully enjoy that which you prepare for.

In one sense, this text and this sermon will be an intentional cliffhanger. We’re reading about preparation. Luke 3 fulfills the words of Gabriel to Zechariah in chapter 1, speaking of Zechariah’s soon to be born son John the Baptist. Gabriel tells Zechariah that John the Baptist would come, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared (Luke 1:17). What Gabriel stated, this text unpacks.

God would prepare His people for the Messiah; and He would do so in part through John the Baptist. To study the text, we’ll ask three questions of it.

What does John the Baptist do to prepare God’s people?

Last week, we moved from 40–day–old Jesus to 12–year–old Jesus. In one week we skipped ahead 12 years. This week we fast-forward even more than that. Verse 52 of chapter 2 summarizes this fast–forward, asserting that Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

After a good bit more than a decade passes, we’re in the next verse. 3:1 In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

This first verse tells us where the details that follow should be placed historically. Interestingly, all the information the reader needs to locate the year is the first clause about Tiberius Caesar. However, Luke includes all these other names, beginning with the most powerful rulers and working his way down the corporate ladder. Since he didn’t need to include all those names for dating the events to come, the question might arise as to why he did so. The style actually points us to something we’re relatively familiar with. For example, if you were to go back and read Jeremiah 1:1–3, you’d read: The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon. In short, Luke 3:1 reads stylistically like an Old Testament prophet. And that’s on purpose.

But that’s not the only reason these details are included. Luke, the historian, intends to give us a date for the events that follow. Since we can find these rulers in our history books, we place this event around 28 AD.[1] It’s always helpful for us to remember that while we often read books as a temporary escape from reality, that is, in picking up a story we leave real life for a few moments to enter into a different world. But that’s not the case here. When we pick up this book, we’re not escaping from reality, we’re in it.

You can read about Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate or Herod in your history books. Herod is actually Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. He’ll return multiple times in the Gospel of Luke. And if you choose to read about these leaders, and this era, you’ll find this to be an incredibly complicated political time.[2] Tiberius Caesar’s biographical details unfortunately read like the latest bestseller: full of intrigue, backstabbing, infidelity, and murder.

And Luke notes that some of these complicated dynamics ac[...]