I'm going to ask that you take your Bibles and turn to Luke 1-4. Here Luke writes, For as many have taken in hand to set forth an order, a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us. I'm reading in the King James. Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed." When Luke writes this, we need to understand that this is an introduction or a preface. Because it's an introduction and a preface, this is kind of how it works. You write your book, you write what it is you want to say, and then after you're done writing it, then you write an introduction or a preface to it. That's what Luke has done here. Luke has already written his book, and now Luke writes four verses to kind of introduce it. And so that's important to know, because it means that these four words, he has written them as he sits over and considers all that's been written. It's as if he says, now I'm giving this to you and I want you, before you open it, this is the wrapping paper, I want you to consider these things or hold this thought in mind as you take this book in hand and begin to read it. As you take this account in hand and you begin to read it. That's important to notice. The other thing I want you to note here is that the introduction reveals to us that Luke is writing to a particular individual. We don't know exactly who Theophilus was, there's different conjectures as to who he was, but most individuals consider him to be a Christian of high standing, either in the church in Rome or the church in Antioch, and that's why he's addressed as your excellent Theophilus. He's an individual who stands and has high standing within the governance or within the social setting in which he lives. Maybe a very wealthy man, maybe a person who has great influence in the area that he lives in. But what is most important for you to note here is that Luke is writing to an individual. That his gospel is an account that is personally addressed. I find this interesting because when you take the gospel of Luke, the account that Luke has written for us, and you begin to read it, you'll discover something. that when he presents Christ to us, Christ interacting with people, Christ teaching and instructing, the instruction that Christ gives, the parables that Christ offers are presented in a different light than the way in which the parables and the instructions of the Lord Jesus are presented by Matthew and by Mark. In Matthew and Mark, when they present to us what Christ is teaching, Matthew and Mark paint the scene and what you have is large crowds that have gathered around and large people that have crammed in to draw near to Him. And the emphasis and the focus that you want to have is that Jesus gave this instruction in a great authoritative manner to the crowds that were gathered in all around Him. But what Luke writes, and Luke shares this parable, in fact almost every parable you read in the account that Luke writes is spoken to not large crowds, but to individuals. And they're spoken in response to questions or actions that Christ sees the individuals engaged in or receives from the individuals. On some occasions you'll see him speaking to just a small group of individuals, but Luke kind of moves away the crowd from our eyesight and he shows us instead the man Jesus Christ interacting with the individual, interacting with people face to face. That makes sense. Luke is written for an individual to read. Theophilus is taking this account up in hand and he's reading it. Luke is showing him, as this individual reads the account, that this word comes to him in a very direct and personal way. That Jesus speaks to people face-to-face, comes to us in a very personal way. You know, most of the scripture that you have, most of the books of the Bible that you read, are written not to individuals. It's important that we see that. Most of them were written to the church in settings. They were read as they sat together as groups. Most of the verbs I've mentioned many times are not singular verbs. When you find various commands and instruction given, they're very rarely given in the singular. They're given in the plural. It was, you do this. Together, you all. That's the way it was meant to be read. And that's important for us to know because we were never intended to live our Christian life out on our own. We were meant to live it in community where we learn and we grow and we discover and we receive Christ's ministry to us together. And yet there are some occasions in which we find that there are letters that are written just to individuals because we must never forget that ultimately God also has a word just for us. That Jesus not only comes before the crowds and the community, but Jesus comes to the soul and the individual. So as you take this book in hand and you begin to read the book of Luke, maybe this might be the first book you should read. You should read it as a letter written just to the individual. Luke wrote this account out just for Theophilus to read. Now we're thankful that Theophilus took it and shared it with others and showed it to others and they shared it with others, which is another pattern that goes on here that we'll see later in our story. But what Luke now wants to do is he wants to shape into the mind of Theophilus a couple of key points of information or instruction before he proceeds in reading the account. And these points of information or instruction are to guide him in his interpretation of what he's reading. It's important because we're moving into the Christmas season and we're considering the Christmas story of how Jesus Christ came, how he was born, how his birth was announced. The announcements that came first, we read in the first chapter of Luke to Zacharias and to Elizabeth and to Mary and in Matthew you can read of the announcements that came to Joseph and the word and the anticipation that came to the Wiseman, and we read in chapter 2 of this message then coming to the shepherds, coming to the people around Bethlehem, then coming into the very Temple Mount where there's Simeon and Anna, and we read these stories. We put them all together and we weave it into our Christmas celebrations and it becomes the ornamentation of our holiday season. And for a moment here, we need to remember it wasn't ornament first. There's a different bit of instruction that Luke wanted to have in the mind of Theophilus when he read this account and these stories that are the Christmas story. And it's the kind of thing that he wants to be in our minds as we come before this holiday season. The first thing that Luke wants us to know is that the gospel, number one, that we fully believe is what is fully evident in the facts. The gospel that we fully believe is what is fully evident in the facts. He says, inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, have been fulfilled among us. That's what you'll find in something similar to that in the NIV and in the NASB and even the New King James. In the Old King James, it reads this way, those things which are most surely believed among us. One says those things that have been fulfilled among us. Another one says those things which are surely believed among us. And the reason we have these two different translations is because If you look at the original Greek, these words may be honestly translated in two different ways. They can mean those things which have been fulfilled among us. But they also can be those things of which you are fully and completely persuaded of. And it's the exact same way in which it's written. It's in the exact same grammatical structure. And it can mean two totally different things. And it's presented as two different ways of understanding it in different portions of scripture. Now, I have an idea that I've shared before in our church. And it's this when you come to a passage of scripture and you see two totally different translations that can be made. and neither one of them contradicts the other, and neither one of them contradicts the testimony of the full Word of God, in other words, they're consistent with them, then I think it's okay that you take them both ways. I figure that the Holy Spirit was capable of putting down words in a different way to be able to narrow it down to just one of these meanings. And he didn't. So, for me, to play it safe, and I usually do, in this area, when I come around the world, I think it's a good idea, when you're trying to understand what the Bible says. I understand, to some extent, that this probably means both things, in a sense. Or, at least, they can mean both things. In that way, what it says is this, that what has fully been brought to bear, that thing that has been fully revealed to us, that would be Jesus Christ and his whole gospel story. That thing that has come into fulfillment before our very eyes. The Bible says in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a virgin, born under the law to redeem us who are under the law and condemned. And Luke then would be saying, we have seen that which has been fully brought to bear all that the prophets had prophesied about, all that had been declared, all that had been anticipated and all the sacrifices that were made in the temple of a savior that God would send who would Be the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. All these things were fully fulfilled in our sight. And that's one way in which Luke, I should say, is writing. But the other way of taking is he's writing and saying this. These things of which we are fully or were fully persuaded of. These things that we saw, it was brought to fulfillment, but we also were completely and utterly persuaded. that this was the fulfillment of everything that God had planned, and everything that God had promised, and every hope that we have ever had. What is this fullness? What is this thing that is fully believed? Get this, folks. It is the narrative of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ. Remember, you're going to pick this book up now. This is an expression of all the fullness that we'd anticipated. This is the thing we have fully believed. And then you begin reading it, and you start reading the Gospel of Luke, and what you'll find in it is not a bunch of doctrines laid out before you, right? It's not a series of things that you must believe. It's not a series of laws you must follow. It's just the simple facts of the narrative of the life of Jesus Christ. That is the thing that fulfills all that God had promised. This is the thing, this is the one that they fully believed. They were fully persuaded of. And this should say something to us. And it's this. The first business of the Christian witness is to proclaim to individuals the plain facts. That's it. The first business of the Christian witness is to proclaim to individuals the plain facts. That's exactly what Luke says has taken place. This is the thing, I'm just telling you what we were completely persuaded of and was fulfilled before us. Just the facts. That's what we have here. The Christian faith, we must always remember, rises out of a historical apologetic, historical evidence. It therefore calls for an open-minded investigation and consideration. It doesn't first come and appeal to individuals who are spiritually and morally desperate so they'll clutch at any kind of straw that's out there. You know, the person who comes and they're just desperate for meaning in life. We see those individuals and they go, all right, this person is tailor made for me to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to. But that's actually not who the gospel was sent out to. The gospel was sent out to individuals who are willing not simply to find an answer to their desperation. To receive a faithful account of the history and facts of the life of Jesus Christ, that's it. The gospel was not sent simply to promote a sense of higher consciousness or enlightenment. It wasn't set forward for us as a presentation of meaningful and profound and elaborate doctrines. No, it comes as facts. And this is what Luke wants to attest to. This is the fullness they found. This is what they fully believed. Facts. Facts. Now, out of that, faith gave rise. Faith took shape. Yes, they said, as a result of these things, they proclaimed those early apostles. They said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And that was an expression of faith. But it was faith that was born out of, that was built upon, the facts. They had seen his life. They had heard him teach. they'd seen as miracles and drawing upon what they saw and what they witnessed and what they observed and what they considered, there rose up at that point a faith in the facts. And folks, that is always where faith rises. This is always where the Christian faith rises. It rises upon and at the point of encountering the facts. I guess an application of this would be this, that we shouldn't rush people past the facts. We shouldn't rush people past a reasonable consideration of the questions they have and a reasonable consideration of the very things that the Bible attests to to be true about Jesus Christ. Listen, the facts can be trusted to speak for themselves, and they will. And for the individual who will openly and honestly come before and seek to explore the facts of the life of Jesus Christ, They will ultimately demand faith. They'll ultimately demand faith. J.C. Ryle has a very interesting thing along this and he wrote about 150 years ago. Just listen to this quote. He says the apostles went about telling a sin laden world that the Son of God had come down to earth, had lived for us and died for us and risen again. The gospel at its first publication was far more simple than many make it out now. It was neither more nor less than the history of Christ." Neither more nor less than the history of Christ. That's what Luke is saying here, right at the very introduction. You read this, listen. This is what is fulfilled among us. This is what we're fully persuaded of. This is the gospel. The history of Jesus Christ. The second thing I want you to notice here is that Luke goes on and he wants to share with us the impact that these facts had upon the first ones who encountered them. He tells us that the apostles were eyewitnesses and servants of the gospel. That's the second thing. The apostles were eyewitnesses and servants of the gospel. He says, just as those who from the beginning, speaking of the apostles, they're the ones who were from the beginning, were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word they delivered then unto us or delivered to them for us. This word, eyewitness, is more than you might think it is here. So the first is, look at these, eyewitnesses and ministers. And these are their two responses to the facts. The first, apostles, had a response to the fact that they ultimately discovered, they realized had been fulfilled among them, the fact, the supreme fact of God's salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. And then they became servants of it. And here are the two things, the two responses they had to the facts. The first was, They became eyewitnesses. They were eyewitnesses. The second thing that they did in light of these facts is they became servants of the Word. The first one is eyewitnesses. And the word eyewitness there means something more than what you might think it means. The word is from the word apoptos in the Greek. It's a medical word which is fitting, by the way, because Luke was a medical doctor. Apoptos is the word that we get autopsy from. It speaks of a careful study and analysis of the facts that are set before him. It's a word that denotes a personal, first-hand investigation. It means to see something for yourself. These apostles did not simply note the facts. They looked into the facts. They weighed them and they measured them. This was not simply a casual reckoning with information and data. This was a sifting of it. The Bible tells us that over the course of Christ's ministry, on many times as the disciples lived with him for those three or four years, that they asked the question, who is this man? Who is this one? They were pondering and weighing these things all along. Peter's confession, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, was made in the last few months, maybe even weeks, of the life of Christ's earthly ministry. They saved it. They were considering it and weighing it. Thomas didn't even say it until after he'd risen from the grave. And then after he'd risen from the grave, Thomas said, my Lord and my God, In the meantime, they were weighing this. They were studying it. They were looking at it and breaking it apart and trying to figure it all out. Some of them came to a positive conclusion and Judas didn't. But they were weighing the information, the data. They were eyewitnesses. That's what it means to be an eyewitness, to consider the evidence and weigh it. Theophilus needs to do the same thing, you see. Theophilus, I'm giving you the facts. These are the things we weighed and considered. These things don't come down to you lightly when we pass them on to you. We were eyewitnesses. We conducted our autopsy. Luke chapter 2, verse 19. We're told of the wonderful account of the story of Jesus Christ. The shepherds that came told the story of angels who proclaimed this wonderful message to them. Here is this mother and father and this little baby in a manger. Not where they expected to find or not where you'd expect to find God's Savior. Shepherds go out and start declaring everything, the noise abroad, all that they've heard. What does Mary do? Luke 2.19 says, Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart, weighing them, trying to understand them. She knows what's happened. She knows the facts of these stories very clearly. She's experienced them, you know, the pains of childbirth, weighing, pondering. We are to do the same. The Apostle John actually communicates to us this very course of study of the Apostles in 1 John 1. You might turn there for a moment. In 1 John 1, the Apostle John wants to communicate to us the same thing that Luke is communicating, this idea of the nature of their autopsy, you might say, of their eyewitnessing, of their weighing these things. And in 1 John 1, verse 1, this is what the Apostle John writes. That which was from the beginning, which we heard, which we've seen, which we have looked upon, the idea there of the word is gazed intently upon, which our hands have handled, that idea is our hands have assayed and held, of the word of life. For the word was manifest and we've seen it and bear witness and show unto you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. That's it. He's just describing the course of their investigation. We heard it. We saw it. We gazed on it. We drew near and handled it. We considered these things. We weighed these things. We investigated these things. And now we're declaring it unto you. And Luke says this is the same thing. He's saying the exact same thing. They, the apostles, were declaring as servants of the word what they had studied and explored personally themselves. Once they had believed fully what had been fulfilled before them, they became servants of that word. And that's the second response. And the first response to these facts was they explored them. The second response to these facts was they became servants of him. First, they explored. They studied Jesus as the supreme fact. Second, they served him as the supreme word. And by the way, that word, word there, has the article before it, and it really can be, and I don't understand why, but I believe should be, and there's no reason that it can't be, translated, word, not small W, but big W. The word. They became servants of the Word. The Word there is two lagoons, from the Word Logos. The Word, it's the same thing where you have in the Gospel of John, in the beginning it was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He said they became servants of the word. The word servants there means under rower. It's the lowest level of service that they knew in society. It was the slave who was in a slave ship, but he was the lowest class of slave because he served in the lowest galley in the ship below all the other oarsmen. with all the other trouble and all the other refuse of those working above them, falling in upon them as they rowed in the ship. And that's the name that he gives the apostles of Jesus Christ. They were the under rowers of the Word. It's interesting that James uses the same word for servant, under rowers, at the very introduction of his epistle. James calls himself and declares himself to be the servant of God and of Jesus Christ, our Lord, the under rower. It's the word he uses. They became slaves of Christ. Slaves of the Word. Slaves of the Word, not of doctrine alone, but the Word of the person who is our doctrine above everything else. servants of his. And as his servants, they witnessed to what they had studied. They gave witness to what they had discovered in him. And that witness was a life of complete abandonment to the service of God, to the service of Jesus Christ. So here's what he says first. First, I want you to know that this one I'm writing to is the facts. It's the facts that we're presenting, the narrative of the life of Christ. And these facts have been discovered, they've been studied by eyewitnesses, they've been sorted out, they've been personally explored, and once having explored it and discovered the fullness of Christ and the fullness of God's promises, these men became servants to what they discovered, under rowers. By the way, here's a little aside here. I think it's interesting that if we were to put a hierarchy of leadership in the church, the hierarchy would come down to us from the twelve apostles. These were the men who were the foundation stones from which the church arose. And when Luke is struggling to find the title to give them, what name should we give these men who are the highest level of leadership in the church? He calls them the lowest name of servanthood, under rowers, servants, at the lowest level. It's just an interesting contrast from the kinds of names that are used for leaders nowadays in the church. I actually tried to go and find some on the internet, and I was trying to find just some that are relative to our own community, and I couldn't. I found some stuff, but what really struck me was I found this little treatise written for the Orthodox Church on how they were to address the spiritual leaders in the Orthodox Church. I thought I would read it to you. I want you to consider it in contrast to Underrowers. This is what I read. When we address deacons or priests, we should use the title Father. Bishops we should address as Your Grace. Though all bishops, including patriarchs, are equal, they do have different honors that accrue to their rank. Thus, your eminence is the proper title for bishops with suffragans and assistant bishops and metropolitans and most archbishops. Among the exceptions to this rule is the Archbishop of Athens, who is to be addressed as your beatitude. Your beatitude is the proper title for patriarchs, except for the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, who is to be addressed as your all holiness. When we approach an Orthodox presbyter or bishop, but not a deacon, we make a bow by reaching down and touching the floor with our right hand and then placing a right hand over our left palms upward and say, bless father or bless your grace or bless your eminence or bless your all holiness. The priest or bishop then answers. May the Lord bless you, blesses us with the sign of the cross, places his right hand in our hands. Then we may kiss his hand. Under rowers. Slaves of the gospel, the word of Jesus Christ, that was the impact of the facts upon their life. We need to somehow sort out all of the ornamentation of our Christian faith that we've allowed to creep in. We see it particularly highlighted at times like Christmas and Easter, and we need to settle down upon the facts. The fullness of Christ revealed to us. Be ones who examine them, and then being convinced of them, become slaves, under rowers to the facts. Oh, excellent Theophilus, this is what you need to know. The third thing is this. Luke just wants us to understand that he has secured and put in order the witness of these individuals by his own investigation, by his own autopsy, might say, and by God's inspiration for Theophilus and for our benefit. He has secured and put in order these things by his investigation, by God's inspiration, for Theophilus and our benefit. Here are Luke's sources. They are the primary first-person witnesses from the very inception of the gospel who studied Christ's life and now speak of that word and of his fulfillment of salvation. There, Paul, who Luke accompanied with and was with at his death in Rome, was also with, by the way, at that time Mark, Mark, who had been with Peter and had written out his gospel from Peter's own witness, and Mark, who was there in the early church and possibly was there even before Christ died and rose from the grave, he has Mark's witness. Luke travels with Paul all the way back to Jerusalem. He's in Jerusalem when the Jews try to hang Paul and kill him, and Paul escapes. But it's there in Jerusalem that we can imagine that Luke encounters the various individuals who are trying to compile accounts of their experiences with Christ and the things they've heard from eyewitnesses. And Luke gathers together all this information that's been written down, but then he also goes and visits them. You can imagine. Luke is interviewing Mary. And Mary is sharing with him her account and her experience. And Luke is interviewing John and various members of Christ's earthly family. and those individuals who have possibly been healed by him, and the man who has stepped out and bore his cross for him, and in his travels he encounters these individuals who have become slaves of Jesus Christ, and as a result have gone out into the blood flow, the witness of the gospel that's going out to the ends of the earth, and as he's traveling these ways, by the way, when you get into missionary work is you find that the world becomes small. You start meeting people and you connect with people who have worked all over the world, and you start tracing it back, you discover you have things in common that You know the same individual they know, and you had another experience with them, and you share your stories together, and this is the early church. It's only been 30 years since Christ has risen from the grave and ascended into heaven. They've gone out working, and Luke meets and knows these individuals. He sees the notes they've written down, and he interviews them, and he investigates it, and he studies it. These are the counts, the eyewitnesses that stand behind the facts that he's written down. He doesn't just write them down, he investigates it himself. He squares all the stories up. He does his own study of the facts. He says, I did this because I want this word that I'm writing to you to be secured for you. I know that memories can be faulty. I know that records that people write can be changed. I know that tradition can creep in. I know that it can be passed on. And if you keep passing it on, the story can change. And so I'm going to go back to these first persons. I'm going to secure for you the story and writing. I'm going to write it all down for you. More than this, though, not only is this done by his own investigation, but Luke tells us something here that would indicate that he knows that God is inspiring the word he's writing. The God is the one that's behind it, crafting it and putting it all together, securing it so that it's perfect. It seemed good to me, he writes, having had a perfect understanding. That sounds kind of arrogant, doesn't it? Of all things from the very first. Well, let's go back at this and look at it, maybe it won't seem quite as arrogant. The word there from the very first is the Greek word anothen. It's a word that can be translated from the very first, but is more often translated in the New Testament as from above. Some individuals had a hard time writing from above because they said they make the comment that none of the writers of the gospel ever made their own personal declaration that their word was inspired. Not exactly true, but with that prejudice in mind, they decided they couldn't translate it as meaning from above, they translate it from the very first. But anathon in Greek means from above. You find it used in John chapter 3 verse 31. There's where Nicodemus comes to the Lord Jesus and Jesus tells him he must be born again. And Nicodemus says, well, how can I be born again? I can't reenter my mother's womb. And Jesus says, you must be born again from above. Anathon has to be something that's bestowed down upon you from heaven itself. James writes about it in James chapter 3 verses 15 and 17. James talks about the wisdom that is from above. The wisdom, he says, that actually comes down from above. It's from heaven. That's the meaning of the word, and I think it is. Then what he's saying is I have a perfect understanding of all things from above coming to me from above. God is the one who's inspiring and directing me in what I wrote. By the way, Paul understood that. Paul, when he was writing to the people in Corinth, at one point in time says, now listen, I say this a bit of advice to you. This is not God. This is me saying it to you. And he gives a little bit of advice about how young men ought to treat marriage. But it's not the Spirit. It's me saying this. That's interesting. Why would Paul have to say that? Can you imagine if I said that to you? Now look, this is just me talking here. It's not God speaking to you. It's me. It's kind of arrogant, unless Paul knew that what he was teaching and saying was the inspired Word of God. And Paul did. In 1 Corinthians 14, verse 37, Paul says this to the Corinthians, God's Word. So, Luke understands the same thing. Listen, these are the facts that have been fulfilled among us, and we have fully believed them, not without our own investigation and consideration. And now we are servants of it. And I have myself gone back and explored these things and studied these things and investigate myself following the example of the early apostles. But also, you need to know something where other men were just writing down their accounts and trying to get together all this information. I had help. God from above was communicating truth to me. He was confirming it and bringing it all together so it fit in one beautiful orderly account. This is God's word, most excellent Theophilus. Consider it as you read it and know that all this is written to secure this word for you. It's secure. That's what it means by you may know with certainty. I think Theophilus already knows with certainty. He's just saying, no, it's secured now. It's been written down for you. So what is this all for? It's so that Theophilus may know that this word has been carefully passed on to him and so that we may know the same. Luke says, as you read this account, be comforted in knowing that it's been secured for your consideration by eyewitnesses through careful analysis, by their careful investigation into the person of Jesus Christ, by my own careful investigation and study, and most importantly, by God's own guiding hand. This is his word brought forth by his spirit. These are not just the facts. These are the facts God, by spirit, wanted to be known by you. Now, with that in mind, take up this book and read it. With that in mind, take up the Christmas story and consider it. See it pulsating with fact, with life, with reality, a reality that you and I celebrate. It is the very simple history of Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads and let's pray.