But Luke writes to open his gospel, but he says, inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theopolis, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. The title for the message today would be Finding Certainty. Finding Certainty. Many struggle with doing that. Probably ourselves in certain ways and even now today there's probably things in your life that you would like to have more certainty about. That you'd like to be more confident of. I want to begin today and just ask a couple of questions to start for you, and you're the only one that can answer these questions for you. What is true? What is true in life for you? How are you certain of it? How are you certain? If you're going to base your life on something, And for those of us who know the Lord and are striving in our life to live a Christian life, to try to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, to try to emulate Him as best as we can in our fallen conditions, if we're going to base our lives upon the things that He has said to us in His Word, And we certainly want to add, through the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit might communicate to our hearts, if we're going to base our lives on these things, on the Scripture, upon the Word of God, how is it that we can be certain of them? How do we find certainty? Certainly we live in an uncertain world. Unknown drones flying over New Jersey. There's a new president coming in. There's geopolitical things going on that in some ways are new and yet old. Been going on forever. But how can we find certainty? How can we live lives of certainty? About what can we be certain? What should we expect to be certain about? Are there things that we need to acknowledge we will never be certain about? How do we balance these things? How do we find a footing in our life about the things about which we are certain? That's the phrase that leapt out to me in this opening sentence of the Gospel of Luke. That Luke wrote to this man, Theophilus. Some have speculated whether this was just a title for many people. Theophilus means loved by God or lover of God. But I believe, as As was read this morning, I do tend to believe that this is a particular person that he's writing to. And he writes to him again in the Book of Acts. He addresses that to Theopolis as well. How is it, and as I read this, and as Luke wrote this to this man, Theopolis, he says to him in the final phrase of that opening sentence, that you may have certainty. that you may have certainty. I pray, I believe that everyone here has had some sense of an understanding of what it means to be certain about the Lord. And yet you may have people in your life that are not, or you may struggle with it as well. So what I want to speak to you today about is what Luke says to Theophilus about finding certainty. And I want you to remember that when Luke writes this in the 60s A.D., it's been some three decades since the Lord's death and resurrection. A lot has happened. Many of the events of Acts have already happened, if not all of them. And Luke is writing, and it's been 30 years since the things about Christ and His death, His resurrection, that these things have happened. And so time goes by, Theophilus has heard, apparently, certainly he has, because Luke says to him that he can be certain about the things that he has been taught, and we'll say more about that later. But Luke wants him not only to know these things, he wants him to be certain. He wants Theophilus to be able to look people in the eye, be able to look himself in the eye as he looks in a mirror, and be certain. of what it is that he knows about the Lord, about God, about himself, about his life, about eternity, about what his human nature is. And so he writes to him, and that's his point. That's the whole point of everything else he's going to write in this Gospel. Theophilus, I write this for you to be certain. And he gives reasons for the certainty already in this first sentence. We have reasons to be certain about our Christian faith. Our Christianity is not a religion based upon blind belief. It is a religion, if we want to call it that, it is a path of life, it is a knowledge that we have within us that we know. we are certain about. And Luke writes to Theophilus and he says to him, even in this first sentence, that there are many reasons for him to be certain. First thing that I notice in this sentence is that the gospel message is coherent. It is reasonable, rational. It is Coherent. It is a story that can be told. It is a narrative that we have heard again and again. And at this time of year, we read the second chapter of Luke, the birth of Jesus. And rightly so, we might say, to remember the setting of the birth of Jesus. But the message of the Bible is a coherent message. And we gather this from the way that Luke talks about it. He said that he intends, and in this, in his gospel, he is compiling a narrative. He is pulling together the narrative of the life of Jesus Christ, upon which all of human history rests. And Luke says, I'm going to compile this, Theopolis. I'm going to lay this out for you, so that you might be certain. He says later in this sentence, he wants this to be an orderly account. It's now been 2,000 years today since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior. It's been 2,000 years. But we can yet be certain. The Bible remains a coherent book with a narrative that holds together as a single revelation of God to man. The Bible is not a disjointed, contradictory story. It is a coherent story with many subplots, but a single plot line that runs from the opening pages of Genesis to the last page of Revelation. This belief that we have, this Christianity that we follow, this is a coherent, story. This is a narrative that can be collected and then in an orderly way described. And you might say, why is this such a something to point out? Why is this so notable for us? And I would say to you today because Christianity then is unique among all other religions of the world in many ways. The Christian message is a coherent story about the man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin Mary 2,000 years ago. And there are names and there are places and there are historical facts that are verifiable that Jesus Christ did live, that these people did see him. And we'll say more about that in a moment. But you can be certain, we can be certain today, because we don't believe a string of fairy tales. That is not the Christian religion. That is not what Sunday is about. That is not what our faith is based upon, some string of lightly connected poetry, or lightly connected moral things that might sound good to the ear. This is a story of a man who came from God, born his son in the world, lived a life of perfection and holiness before his father, and satisfied the law, went to the cross, died there, shed his blood, and paid the penalty of sin for all who will repent and believe, was raised again three days later, is now at the right hand of the Father and tells us in Revelation, I'm coming again. The Bible, Luke is telling Theophilus, you can be certain about these things. I'm going to collect an orderly, coherent account of Jesus Christ's life for you. Why? Simply to be a historian? Just to note some good things? Just to keep a diary and a journal? No. so that you can be certain. That's why in the Bible you can trust this. It is coherent. And we'll just take a moment. Genesis 1.31. God has created all that we know in the world. He's created everything. And it says in verse 31, God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good, including man. And there was evening, and there was morning, and it was the sixth day, and we know that He rested on the seventh. This is the opening of the story. God revealing to us the story, the message, the coherent plot of the story of the Gospel in its first pages. God said, I created it all and it was very good. But then you flip over a couple of chapters and things change, don't they? Genesis 3, verses 6 and 7, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and thought that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed thick leaves together and made themselves loincloths the fall." Where man became a sinner, and you and I inherit that sinfulness today, and every child that has come save Jesus Christ has inherited that sin. But then Genesis chapter 3, just later on in that very same chapter in verse 15, we have the proto-evangelium, the beginning of the gospel as God himself tells us. I will put enmity between you, God says to Satan. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel. God says there's one coming that's going to fix all that you have ruined. So from the opening pages of Genesis there is a prophecy of one who would come. And the Old Testament is just one long story of the fallenness of man and how he is a creature given to stubbornness and given to rebellion against God and sin and is just ever-present and And there's yet within that pictures of a sacrifice that must be made to make things right again. And all of the Old Testament, of course, would take us far too much time here today to recount all of those things. But the entire Old Testament was a picture pointing forward to this one that God had from the beginning, pages of Genesis, said would come. Malachi is closed, the last words of the last book of the Old Testament, and 400 years of what have been called the silent years then proceed. 400 years of nothing, no sign, no prophet, no new written oracle of God. Just silence from heaven. And yet they had the account of the Old Testament, they had that with them, the law, the prophets, the wisdom literature, and then all of those things that they knew were coming and they were expecting and waiting, 400 years pass, and Luke chapter two, that silence is broken when the angels come. And the angels say in verse 11 of chapter 2, unto you this day is born in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. This one that had been foretold for 4,000 years had come. And then we close the New Testament in Revelation chapter 22 and Jesus says to us, I am coming soon. bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done." From Genesis to Revelation, this message that we bring Luke is saying to Theopolis, and I know it's beyond perhaps the exact scope of which he was saying in that moment, but at the same time we can say today what he said. I want to bring to you an orderly, coherent account of the truth that you can be certain of. You know this from Genesis to Revelation, this book that's been written over 1,500 years by around 40 different men, No explaining it in my mind outside of divine providence and divine authorship of this book that we hold in our hands today. The most valuable earthly possession you own. And you can go to the Dollar Tree and buy it for a dollar. This is a coherent message. The Christian faith is a coherent message. Not only this, Not only that, is reasons. And again, I'm giving you reasons. And I want you to hold with me through my remarks today, if you can. And I hope you'll listen and lean in to what God is trying to tell us today a little bit. But we need to set some things up first. And that first thing is a few things that Luke says, reasons that we have to be certain about what this Bible tells us. There's no other book like it. You have reason to be certain then. Luke says, Theophilus, I'm going to give you a coherent, thoughtful, carefully evaluated and examined history of the life of Jesus Christ. I'm going to lay that out in front of you so you can be certain. God has given us His Word so we can be certain. Maybe you're drifting into some uncertainty in your life. I would direct your mind and heart to the Word of God. It will bring certainty. One way or the other. It may not conclude the way you would like it to. It may not tell you what you're looking for, but it will bring certainty if you look deeply enough. Not only is it certain in that sense that we can be certain because it's coherent, Luke also says, look, many others are telling this story too. He says, look, inasmuch as many have undertaken to do this, I feel compelled, we might paraphrase for him, I feel compelled to do the same. You and I today, we have the record of Jesus' life from four divinely inspired men. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We know them, of course, as the Gospels. Each complete within itself, and yet together we have a confirmed record providing us with great certainty about the life of our Savior. In Luke, we have what we might call the divine compilation of the remembrances and writings of many others because he himself was not with Jesus during his earthly ministry. So Luke is compiled and that's what he's done. He's like a historian. He's speaking and interviewing. Of course, we know he spent much time with the Apostle Paul on his missionary journeys. But Paul also was not with Jesus in his earthly ministry. But Paul was with Jesus, we believe, those two years after being saved. And we could get into that as well. But Luke, we have one who's compiling the witnesses, the accounts of many others. And in this way, he serves as something of a historian for us. Why is this important? Why does this lend credibility? And why did this lend help us and move us in the direction of being able to be certain about what we read in Scripture? And I would say this about that, the Christian does not follow the testimony of one, but many, many. I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm going to say, and I wondered whether I would say something like this or not. I feel like I need to. Christianity, it does not stand on the word of one person. It stands on the word of many about that one person. And they, in their repeating of what that one person said, their words lend further reason for us to be confident. The message of the Bible is a message that has been given to us from many people. Be certain. It lends itself to certainty in that regard. Not only many people, but we're told Luke here, it says that it was from eyewitnesses. The Lord appeared in bodily form to a number of women on the day of His resurrection, as well, of course, as to many, if not most, if not all of His disciples on that same day, He appeared to them. But not only that, the Lord Jesus appeared to many others who became eyewitnesses of His resurrection. And we know this from 1 Corinthians 15, verse 6. Paul writes, He, that is Jesus, appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. Most of whom, he says, are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Have you ever noticed how the Bible is very careful and very meticulous in points, that it specifies names, and places, and dates? Remember even back in Genesis, so-and-so lived so long, and then he begat such-and-such, and so-and-so, and they lived so long, and then all of this, and in the New Testament you have the genealogical tables, and then you have things that are said like, oh, you remember it was Joseph of Arimathea, he was the one that helped Christ, specifically names people? You ever notice that? And you know, you and I may not know them, but those who were reading the Gospel of Luke first, they did. It would be something like this. You know Brother John Gravens. He said this about that. You'd say, well, yeah, I know John, and so I trust that that's exactly what happened. That's what's happening in the New Testament many times. Paul is saying, look, there were 500 brothers that saw Jesus alive after His resurrection. Some of them are still alive, and you can go talk to them. You can go get their testimony themselves. You can be certain about this thing. I know that we live in a day of conspiracy. Some of them likely true. Some of them gaining ground even in my own mind and heart where once they didn't. But listen, a conspiracy where over 500 people testify to the fact of having seen a man risen from the dead when they would have no reason to do so and would have gained them nothing except the ire of the Jews and likely ostracization from their families and their communities. For 500 people to say such a thing simply to me is beyond belief. The irony of it. Norman Geisler has a book and it's titled, I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. You know, I don't have enough faith to believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead. I know these are tricky things to say and hang with me, we're going to address some things and questions that might be forming in your mind, at least I hope to. But listen, Luke is writing to Theophilus. He wants him to be certain. And he says, look, many people have said this. I'm just telling you what many have testified to the truth of what I'm telling you about Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He is and was the Messiah. He did die that day and He rose from the grave. 500 people have said so. More than that. But not only this, a further reason for certainty about the Scripture is this. It holds up to examination. The Bible holds up to examination. Thorough and deep, critical examination. And this is being written by Luke. Not only was he not with Jesus, who was a Gentile, but he was a physician A doctor, a man of science, we might say, in that regard. Because he says to him, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past. He says to Theophilus, look Theophilus, I've looked into this. I've followed it. We're not told the first moment when the message of the Gospel got a hold of Luke here. He doesn't talk about that, but he says, look, I've been looking into this. By the way, you that have looked into the Scripture and you've been studying it for decades of your life and know something of it, your testimony to others about what you found in the Word of God is a powerful witness. It's powerful. Because you can say, look, I've looked into this. I've examined it. Luke had spent much time, as we said with Paul, watching him, listening to what he said. Luke had put his scientific brain to work as a doctor and came away with the conviction that everything Jesus said was true. That Jesus was indeed the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies and was truly the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Have you that know the Lord read this book and absorbed it into your heart and into your life, and are you in a place of certainty, sharing with your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, your families. Look, I've looked, I've examined it closely. I've been following this now for some time, and I tell you it's true. You can be certain about this. You can be certain that what we're told is true, and I'm bearing witness to it. A deep investigation of Scripture will not ultimately lead to questions that lead to doubt, but doors that lead to greater understanding. Deep investigation of Scripture, in my experience, has been that way. It will not encourage us, a deep investment of Scripture will not encourage us to think of faith as being a leap in the dark, as we have said, but it will show us that it is indeed a leap into the light. Faith does not cause us, as we have said and written before, faith does not cause us to see things that are not there. It opens our eyes to see the things that already are. We're blind to it otherwise. Faith is not the absence of sight. It is not the absence of knowledge. It is not the removal of a dependence upon reason or thought or confidence or certainty about a coherent message. It is the light that turns on the truth of what's right in front of us. And that's what Luke is saying to Theophilus. I want you to be certain about this. Now, those are reasons, and there were some four of them that we listed. that Luke gives already, just in one sentence. Theophilus, you can be certain. I've looked at it. Many others have looked at it. There are eyewitnesses. It's coherent. This message is not a made-up fairy tale. But, and here's where it gets personal. Possessing certainty for ourselves. for me to be certain. Luke could say all of these things, and yet I not possess the certainty that he is talking about. Luke's motivation, as we've said, for writing his gospel, though, is that Theophilus would be certain, but his motivation is not merely to list the reasons Theophilus has to be certain, but so that Theophilus might in fact be certain. Luke's desire was that Theophilus would not just have what we might call Sunday school answers to the questions of life. And by the way, the unbelieving world will sniff those out really quickly. They recognize a Sunday school answer just about as quick as we do. Luke is not interested in Theophilus just having the right quote-unquote answer to give that you learned in Sunday school. Theophilus needs to hear from Luke's heart and his mind and his entire being. He knows it's true. He wants Theophilus to have that same measure of certainty. Luke wants Theophilus rather to have his own heart. and within his own heart a confidence and a certainty that the things he had been taught are true. Do you remember what we said last week? I think it was last week, quoting Lewis, C.S. Lewis, If the Gospel is either untrue and irrelevant and not important, or it is true and it is of utmost importance, what it can't be is of moderate importance. And I did not quote that exact, but you get and remember hopefully the point. Look, Theophilus, this is true. The Scripture is true. Luke wanted Theophilus to have that certainty in his heart so that his life would be guided by the certainty of the Gospel, that His decisions, His hopes, His expectations, that the truth of God's Word would be an anchor that held Him and kept Him safe through the storms of life that will come. And they come for us all. Luke desired that this certainty in Theopolis would be the map by which he could tell which paths to take in life and which ones to avoid. Luke wanted God's Word to be what David said it was. In Psalm 119, verse 105, a lamp to his feet and a light to his path. He wanted him to be certain about this. He wanted that light to be turned on in Theophilus' life. Luke did not want Theophilus walking through this cold and dark world without the warmth and the light of the Gospel to guide him. And I might say here that that is my desire as well, for those to whom the Lord sends me to preach, and that includes you, I want you to be certain, not because I say it, not because your mom and dad might have said it, not because of anyone else's convincing, but because of your own. You would be certain. and that you would dig deeper and deeper certainty into the knowledge that you have of the Word of God. The sermon that a preacher gives, if given rightly, is not intended to be merely academically accurate, though we hope it is. But that's not all. In fact, some have said and wondered, what is the difference between teaching and preaching? And I think there is a difference. I think there's teaching and preaching, but there's not always preaching and teaching. I think there's a difference. I think it is this, not just want to present to you academic facts and figures and names and dates and put it all together. That's wonderful, and it's important. And we're going to see in a moment, it's actually necessary to get to certainty. But in this moment, what I want to say to you, it's not just about academic accuracy. It's about your hearts. Certainty. It's not just about giving academic facts correctly. Such a sermon, as we've said, might give some light, but it will be a light with no warmth. The world's not only dark, it's cold. I wonder how many frozen Christians are in rooms full of light today. The light of truth all around them. but none of it providing any warmth to their heart. The sermon the preacher gives is not intended merely to stir your emotions either, by the way, without truth and accuracy. Such a sermon might provide some temporary warmth artificially, but without the light of the truth, the coldness and uncertainty will return. I wonder how many zealous Christians have burned through one temporary preacher after another, through one temporary phase and fad of Christianity. They've burned through them over and over, one attempt after another, and one temporary moment of heat and warmth after another, yet remaining in darkness all the while with true certainty, always just out of reach. Because there's no accuracy, there's no light. Luke writing to Theophilus, he's clearly already certain. He knows, he's convinced of these things, and he's not saying these things for his own benefit, but for the benefit of Theophilus. I want you to be certain, Theophilus. I'm taking this great effort to compile for you an orderly account of all that has been accomplished among us, and I do this, Theophilus, so that you can be certain. Don't walk out the doors, we might say to our Christian brothers today and to those who might be unbelieving today, listening to a sermon, listening perhaps to these very words even now. Don't walk out the door uncertain. I want you to be certain. I want you to be built upon or established on the rock of Jesus Christ and certain no matter what storms may come. I want you to know that. I had that. I know this to be true for me. That doesn't make me better than one who doesn't. It makes me blessed and it makes me one who desires others to have this same thing. But we do want to say this before we move on. The teaching is necessary, is it not? Isn't that what he said? Luke says to Theophilus, I want you to be certain of what? The things you've been taught. Look, you can't be certain about the gospel unless you know it. and know it rightly and accurately. An obstacle to certainty for many is a lack of knowledge and correct understanding. The reason many people are uncertain of Christianity because they don't know it. They don't understand it. They've not been taught it. They've not had someone like Luke in their life come and say, look, I'm going to give you an orderly account of the things that have been accomplished in my own heart and in the lives of those that I know that are my brothers and sisters in Christ. I want to tell you about this. I'm going to give you an order. I'm not going to make up fairy tales for you. I'm not going to give you some emotional high. I'm going to tell you the truth, and I want you to be certain too. That's what I want for you. That's what I want to tell you about the Lord. So that you can be certain. A lot of people are uncertain of the Gospel because they've not been taught the Gospel. And by the way, there are many things that religion has added to Scripture that confuse the issue as well. One, in Paul's day, in the New Testament era, one may have been certain. I'm certain, Paul, we are not supposed to eat meat offered to idols. Somebody else comes up and says, no, Paul, I'm certain. It doesn't matter. It's just meat. There are no such things as idols. A lot of people are certain about a lot of things. Maybe they don't have any business being certain of. Missing the point of where they should be certain. I'm certain about this particular tradition of our people, that's the right way. And I'm not going to list them because I don't want to get anybody in trouble, most of all me. But listen, a lot of things have been added to the Gospel and added to the Scripture that are not there, and it leads to a lack of clarity about the Gospel. And the problem with a lack of clarity about the Gospel is that it does not allow anyone to be certain of it. That's the point. A lot of religion is added to Scripture. If that's true, I think a lot of the world is removed a lot from Scripture. There's no truth. There's no right and wrong. God's made up. We're all cosmic accidents of evolution. There's no meaning. It's all science and no heart. The confusion these additions and subtractions have created is why Jesus said, we are not to add to the scripture or take away from it in Revelation chapter 22, verse 19. He said, look, I've said what I've said, don't add, don't take away. It's my word. That is what you can be certain of, what I have said. And I know my time is moving along, but I want to carry through with some very important things that I feel compelled to tell you and to share with you today. Certainty comes only when we first understand the truth of Scripture. In four decades of being saved and more than three decades of preaching, I have not discovered anything in the Scriptures to be untrue. I haven't. I have of course misunderstood, misinterpreted, And after more than a thousand some sermons, I have absolutely no doubt that I have said things that are just flat wrong. But I have never found God to be a liar. I found me to be lacking, my ability to comprehend what he has said lacking, of course. But that's why we don't listen to the word of just one. It's why we, we ourselves dig in to try to understand more about God. It's about Him and you and me individually. Dig as deep as you want. Study as much philosophy, science, or history as you will. You will not find God unfaithful to what He has said in His Word. I believe many are uncertain and even doubt Scripture because they've been taught things that simply are not in Scripture and they're told that they are. This is where, of course, the false prophet pays his bills. Come to Christ, life will be a bed of roses. He's gonna bless everything. The three-car garage is yours. Money's just gonna expand like you can't believe. Just give to this ministry and God is gonna bless your life like you can't imagine. And a lot of people then, they doubt Christianity. They don't have certainty about it because they proclaim or they try to follow a path of Christian life and you know what they find? Life is still hard. Life is still difficult. There is still loss and grief, but guess what? It's exactly what the scriptures say it will be. God didn't lie. Life is difficult? Yeah, God said it would be. This world is empty and void of meaning? Yeah, that's exactly what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes. Under the sun, there's emptiness and vanity of vanities. All is vanity. A lot of people have the wrong, have been taught the wrong ideas about what Christianity is and what God has said in the Bible and things that he's never said. And now he's accused of lying when he never said what they claim that he said. And so you must first know what the Bible says, at least to some degree. Of course you can be saved knowing very little, but your certainty will grow as your knowledge of the Word grows. Beyond these things, and this is important for us I think as well, certainly is for me, beyond what we've said, all the things that we've said to this point, I think it's important for us to think for a moment the reality that faith is necessary for certainty. Faith is necessary for certainty. Hebrews 11.1, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In our day, the idea of accepting anything by faith is frowned upon, isn't it? It's frowned upon. If you want to be in the circles of what people might consider serious academics, to base anything on faith is frowned upon. Yet, I would say to you, doing so, basing your life in some sense upon faith, I believe that's an essential part of life in the human experience. Unavoidable. And the reason is, there's simply no way for any one of us to know the future, and we are thus required to live our lives with faith in something. because we don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. Some, we exercise, many of us, or we would like to if we can't now, we exercise faith in our financial security. I've got enough money in the bank, it'll be fine. Well, one life-changing, life-altering health diagnosis later, and you're ruined. you're exercising faith, you're making your decisions today, I would bet you on some degree of faith that your bank account tomorrow is gonna be somewhat similar to what it is today, maybe a little bit more. Or you're basing your life on the faith that you have in relationships, or even in yourself, or your job, faith and stability, even in the security and the existence, we might even say, of our nation. You're living your life and making decisions and going through your day all the time on faith. Just don't think about it. But then all of a sudden, when you say that I have faith in God, all of a sudden that's taboo. Oh, well, that's silly. Really? Is it? As human beings, there isn't a day in our lives where faith does not have a dramatic impact on the decisions we make and therefore the course of our lives. We believe the company we work for will pay us. I don't know about you, my company pays me after I work for them for a couple of weeks. I'm trusting they're going to. Of course I've got track record, they've paid me every time so far. But I don't know that they're going to, do I? You say, well, you're being silly. Am I? I know this, the company I used to work for, I had already moved on to another place, but a company I did work for, my colleagues there showed up to work one day and they said, we're closed. A thousand people worked at this organization. They all showed up one day and said, we're closed, go home. I don't know that that's not going to happen tomorrow where I am now, but I'm exercising, am I not, some degree of faith in that, that that's not going to happen tomorrow. You might say, well, you're splitting hairs, you're being silly. The point I'm trying to make is faith is an essential component to certainty. But certainty comes only when faith is in that that can be certain. It hadn't come to me that way before. No way I don't think I could say it again, but I think that is what God's trying to say. Our faith is only certain when our faith is placed in that which is certain. And the only thing that's certain is God. Everything else is changeable. unreliable, and ending. But we, in all of these things, need to also be aware and consider carefully what exactly the object of our search for certainty is. About what specifically are we to be seeking certainty? And I will close soon. But I want at least these thoughts to be with you as you consider these things. About what am I supposed to seek certainty? If you want me to find certainty, about what am I to be certain? What am I looking for certainty in? That's also the problem. One problem with being certain in what the gospel says is we've not been taught it. We don't know it well enough. We haven't been grounded in it to know what it is that we're being certain about. The deeper grounded in that, the more certain that we can be. That's one problem. Another problem is we're seeking the wrong certainty. Many of us want to seek a certainty that my life is going to go the way that I want it to go. That's what I want. I want certainty that my life is going to go the way I want it to go. Well, no such certainty exists. Not even from God. He's not told us. that life is going to go the way we want it to go. We don't have such promise of certainty, and so I say to you that such a search as that is a fool's errand. Go look for certainty in what your life is going to bring. Those of you who we won't call old, will call us experienced, How much of your life has transpired the way you thought it would? How much pain have you gone through you never expected to? What joys did you experience that you never expected to? We don't know. We cannot be certain about that. It's a fool's errand to seek it. That our nation or our economic prosperity that we enjoy now, that it will continue? I want certainty in that. Fool's errand. That any of us have identified every nook and cranny of the truth and have, for all practical purposes, reverse-engineered God, making us able to see and understand everything the way He does? Is that the certainty we're trying to seek? Fool's errand. That's the mind and the providence of God. that the christian worldview in the west will survive the assaults of secularism islam and paganism and all of which that are gaining a stronger and stronger foothold that with each passing year as they gain that somehow we're gonna withstand that and that the west will continue to be a place with a at least somewhat christian worldview is that the certainty we're seeking? it's a fool's errand don't know that Can't be sure of it, but this I can be certain of. I can know God. I can know Him. I can know Him myself, and that despite all of the things in my life that will continue to be uncertain, I can be certain of Him, of His existence, His words, His love for me. and the rest of the fallen world. I can be certain of this. All of the other stones of uncertainty fall to the ground while this wall of certainty remains in my mind and heart. Uncertain things of life do not shake the things about which I am certain. I am certain God saved me. He gave me peace. He was a witness within my heart. Not only was it light and truth. As I heard that day that Jesus died for my sins, it wasn't just light that day, it was warmth because it went to my heart and it became true. He died for me. And I repented and believed the gospel, and he saved my soul, and I know that today. I have known very little of the things that have happened past that point, but I know him and have known him through it all, and about him I am certain. It's somewhat like a marriage. Sarah and I got married. We didn't have any idea what the next 30 years were going to bring. Close to it now. But despite my failings and hers and as human beings, we've faced them to this point together and don't know what's going to happen in the future, but we'll face them together. In a similar way and more impactful way, I might say, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but I know God. Right? I don't need to know tomorrow, I know the One who's going to make it. I don't need to know where my home will be in this life, I know the One who has prepared a place for me within eternity with Him. So I don't need to know the next average course of life, less than 30 years in front of me. I don't need to know. I know the One who has prepared eternity for me." What are you certain of? What are you seeking certainty for and about? God inspired Luke to write so that Theophilus, and by extension you and me, in preserving it over these many years, we can be certain about the things God has told us about the world, ourselves, His Son, Himself, and eternity. Certainty about the details is not possible, but certainty about these things is. I pray you have it. I pray you have this certainty in your heart and in your life. And if you don't, that you'll seek it. That you won't seek the certainty that are fool's errands to seek. That you'll dig deep into the Word of God, and deeper and deeper as the years go by, settled more and more of the certainty of God is who He said He is. He's said exactly what He has said, and it is true, all of it. Finding certainty, that's not a fool's errand. Don't give up on it. The world wants you to. The world wants you to give up on certainty because when you give up on certainty, you've given up on God. That's really what the enemy is after. Find certainty. Theophilus, I hope, found it. It's the whole reason Luke wrote to him. And maybe today we can be a benefactor of this advice and this one sentence from Luke to Theophilus a little less than 2,000 years ago.