Luke chapter 3

vs 11

Not quite "sell all you have and give it to the poor" but certainly some sort of formative equality going on here. This is the sort of fruit repentance brings. It's not just equality, though - notice you don't give one of your three tunics to someone who has one. This is more like the equality Paul talks of - those with much don't have too much, those with little don't have too little.

vs 12

Tax collectors like those of this time and place still exist in the world, we just don't really have a good example of it here in Australia. Perhaps bouncers who control cover charges at an exclusive nightclub - who charge you extra to let you in, and skim off the top. But even this practice has become so despicable that most nightclubs now have tills and receipts for the entry charge.

vs 13

The response is obvious then - they are to do their jobs (taxes must be paid, after all) but not to abuse their position. Again, this provides a greater fairness to the poor, who were the easiest ones to rip off.

vs 14

Well dog my cats, Jesus doesn't say this after all, it's John the Baptist. So now some soldiers, and John's answer to them has the same effect - don't cause injustice. And also don't be greedy.

vs 15

Surprising that, although Simeon and Anna have both testified to Jesus as being the Christ, that message seems to have disappeared, and so people are once again looking for a saviour wherever they can find one.

vs 16

John says he's not the one. He knows another one is coming. This begs the question whether he knows it's Jesus already. I mean, the parents both knew each other, and had that thing with the pregnancies going on. Surely John the Baptist would have at least heard about that? you sort of get the feeling that he doesn't know, but I don't think it can be completely discounted.

Anyway, specifically this Christ is going to baptise too, but not with water. So the idea of repentance continues to be a feature of his ministry, but not through a simple baptism.

vs 17

He will also separate the true believers from those who reject him. But he doesn't really do it actively per se. He merely presents himself, and lets people take sides. Of course, I guess a more diehard calvinist might say that he does actively do it in election.

vs 18

Were his many other words about the Christ too? I wonder. Regardless, Luke doesn't think they are necessary for us to hear. We've got our little picture of what John the Baptist was like, and the sort of stuff he did and said. We can move on.

vs 19-20

This is a bit of an added extra - a way of keeping a lot of the information about John the Baptist in one place, I guess, because this does not happen so quickly. Jesus hasn't even been baptisecd yet. Of course, he hasn't mentioned beheading - probably because there's a Jesus story linked with it, and Jesus hasn't really come on the scene yet. But it means we do get a bit of an idea of what John the Baptist did.

It's interesting, when you look at the OT at the role of the prophets in the monarch of Israel, you see that John fulfils a very similar position by criticising Herod. However, Israel has for many years had a long tradition of mistreating, torturing and killing the prophets, and Herod isn't going to let that tradition fail!