Week 32 Luke 1
Like a bolt out of the blue an angel appeared to Zacharias and told him he would soon have a son:
He will be great in the sight of the Lord…He will be filled with the Holy Spirit…He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord…He will go on before the Lord…to turn the hearts of…the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
The angelic visit is pretty striking. What got my attention was that the forecast uncovered a couple of things about the current state of religious affairs in Israel. First off whatever all else was going on in first-century Israel Gabriel made it clear that people in Israel had gotten into a serious state of disconnection from the Lord. How long that had been going on prior to John the Baptist’s arrival is hard to say. But people had gradually decoupled from the Lord. And John’s responsibility would be to convince some of them to come back.
The second thing was that the people who’d drifted away had lapsed into a serious state of unpreparedness. Religiously & psychologically they weren’t primed or conditioned for Jesus’ arrival. So John needed to help rectify that situation. He had to get things ready for the Lord. Clear the ground. Stir things up. Get people thinking. Tune up religious senses.
John was a prophet to people who were unplugged & off-guard.
Note: quote from Luke 1:15-17 (NIV)