Daily Bible Reading 9th April 2026 // Luke 3:1-6
1 In the fifteenth year of the reign 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, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
“The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall become straight,
and the rough places shall become level ways,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
In the phrase in 2, 'the word came unto John....', 'unto' in the Greek is really 'upon'. The suggestion seems almost to be that it 'pressed down from above', that it was a pressure from on high upon John's spirit. At all events, there is no kind of doubt but that he was possessed with a burning conviction. He was a man who had something to say, and he spoke with authority. That is perhaps the best word to describe the nature of his ministry. And it is clear that it was something new in that day. In fact, for long years, the inspired word had been lacking in Israel. As in the days of Samuel, the word of the Lord was a scarce commodity, and there was no open vision. The religious life of the nation was at a low ebb, when suddenly, after the silence of the years, the voice of this strange figure was heard throughout the land, thundering out the word of the Lord to the people. The Baptist movement was significant because it bore an authentic, authoritative word from God about eternal issues. It was a case of eternity breaking into time, touching the lives of men. There was a recovery of the word of God, and a proclamation of that word as an ultimatum to a nation that had slipped away from Him. It is this that explains the stern, almost forbidding note in John's message. True, he was the forerunner of 'good news' (Isaiah 40), but the only way good news can come to a national situation of decadence and degeneracy is by the radical disease that has caused it being dealt with radically. Hence the solemn summons to repent.