This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's open our scriptures to the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke. If the Lord is willing, we have about two to three years worth of sermons now ahead of us. So, uh, The gospel of Luke. We'll be picking up in chapter one and verse one. This is the reading of God's word. In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been fulfilled 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 Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. This is reading of God's word. Let's open in prayer. Our Father, we pray you bless us this afternoon. Make us strong, clear the distractions, give us energy to stay awake and do justice to the words you have given us to be blessed by, to be convicted by, to be built up by. We pray that the time in the gospel of Luke would be well used by all. We pray that you would show us much and grow us much. And we ask this all not because we deserve it, but because of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So we get to start a new book, a new book. And in trying to figure out what to preach, it's really, there's no science to this. Part of me is attempting to not preach something that Brian preached, which after 20 years of preaching is fairly difficult. I looked on Sermon Audio, which only contains, I think, maybe the majority, but a fraction of his sermons, and he's preached roughly 2,000 times more than me. So there's a lot of things he's preached. And the Gospel of Luke was something that seemed blessed in that way. It was also part of the consideration was to have something that was New Testament, since we all know we're going to be in Genesis for a long time. And so to maintain that balance, and partly then there's just the heart of the preacher, isn't there? Because I sit around and I think, well, that sounds great to me, and then there's no one else in the room, so one vote and it passes. I was just really looking forward to and excited about, I want to do a gospel. I want to talk about Jesus's life and ministry again. And Luke just seemed like a great option for that. This sermon will be in part introing the book, which is actually nice because Luke actually introduces his book. Luke is a very orderly man and you're gonna see more out of that. And we're also gonna just discuss big picture, why bother? Why bother with a gospel? And so with that, you start with this preface. Verses one through four are the preface of Luke's gospel. He talks about what he's here to do. And Luke makes it clear, he believes that he is contributing to an existing body of knowledge. He doesn't think he's the first, doesn't think he's the only. He knows he's contributing to a broad body of knowledge. The beginning of that testimony came through the apostles, through the eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ's ministry on earth. And then he even references that many others wrote. I think that's something we lose sight of. And it makes sense, right? If the Messiah comes, dies, rise from the grave, ascends, a lot of people are going to be interested in writing something about him. We're still doing that. And of course that was going to be going on in the first century as well that others were writing. Luke wants to provide then his own contribution to this body of knowledge. And one of the things he's setting out to do is, I want to give you an orderly account, he says. And so we start out, just we'll go bit by bit through some of these details, authorship. This is traditionally, unanimously been held to be Luke, not an apostle, but a companion of Paul. You see him popping up in Philemon 24, Colossians 4, 14. You see these important figures in the early church, though we don't have books from them, you see them mentioned, and you see how much they mattered for the early spread of the church. He was known to be a physician, and like I said, he apparently went a few places at least with Paul. And Luke is also the same author of what we're reading in our scripture reading, Acts. In fact, when you look at Luke and Acts, you realize that these are two volumes of one story. It's not just that Luke wrote more than one book. Luke wrote these books with an understanding that they go together. That's something we lose sight of, right? Because it goes Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you just have your gospel chunk, and then Acts. But these are actually so united that people will just call them Luke-Acts. Luke-Acts, the two volumes of the one story, they go together. And when you look at these two works, it turns out Luke is actually, by quantity, the most prolific writer of the New Testament. Did you know that? Often, who do we think it is? Paul, because Paul wrote letter after letter after letter. Paul was clearly so influential. But in terms of just quantity, it's about 27% of your New Testament comes from Luke's pen. It's been said, Luke is the only gospel that has a sequel. The only gospel that has a sequel. He intended there to be a sequel. And see, sequel is kind of a dirty word for us. That's what Hollywood has done to it, right? There are these other kinds of sequels that are just sad. They're sad in terms of literary intent. They're sad in just the brazenness with which Hollywood's trying to make money. Did you know there was a Cinderella 2? And they lived happily ever after. Oh, and then the next day they had to pay their bills and clean the house and do their chores. It's just terrible. Apparently it made like $120 million or something. It's just awful. Then there was a Cinderella 3. Seriously, Brian told me all about it. Ask him what he thinks of Cinderella 3. No, I was Googling these things, I know, what do you know? There's a third Cinderella, just awful, right? Some sequels are just sad, unnecessary, poorly done things. I don't want you to think that about Luke Axe, because Luke wrote Luke intending for Axe to come. There's another kind of sequel that's not just your sad money-grubbing type. There's a type where it really matters for the development of the story. You know, I think of Christian's favorite author to reference, Tolkien, right? And you think, what if Fellowship of the Rings was just the end? Well, I sure hope that hobbit does okay. Well, that's all you've got then, right? You've got no resolution to the story. You don't know what's gonna come of it. That book needed sequels. The story intended to move forward through volumes. Likewise, Luke is intended to be viewed in light of Acts. If ever you study Luke, you're gonna find that at least some level you were studying Acts. That's how closely they go together. Two volumes of one story. The gospel of Luke is building a foundation that acts then will build on top of again. This is the way it works. Now Luke is likely a Gentile, meaning he's not Jewish, right? Luke is probably a Gentile writing for other Gentiles, Gentile Christians, that is. You're gonna find in his writing that he's commonly making a point to address Gentile needs. You see his writing, his writing is more natural for a Gentile. And you're also gonna see in his content, he's trying to bridge the gap sometimes. Because while it's expected that his audience is familiar with more Jewish concepts in the background of the scriptures, they might not always be fluent in these things in the same ways that a natively Jewish person would be. So you're gonna see Luke bridging those gaps for his audience, and it seems to reveal a Gentile writing for Gentiles. He's expecting these people to be familiar with Christianity. He's not writing to a hostile audience. He says, you know about Jesus. This has been so important in your life. I want you to have certainty about this. So I'm going to contribute to this. He's writing to a friendly audience in this. And you see this, this interesting spot. He's writing to what appears to be a man named Theophilus. Now, we keep having kids in this church and it's wonderful, but I just don't hear of anyone naming anyone Theophilus these days. Did I forget someone? Is anyone named Theophilus in this room? What a good name though. Just hang on to that one, you are still having kids. God lover. What else do you want out of your kid, right? Theophilus, he writes it to a guy named Theophilus. We think it's this person. You don't actually know much about him. He's referenced here, he's referenced in Acts. And you don't know much except that Luke feels that it's appropriate to address the letter to him. To you, most excellent Theophilus. The best guess is that this is a person of some means and that possibly he was like a financial patron to Luke. Which, again, we're inferring a little bit here so this isn't any kind of certainty but it's actually a pretty reasonable suggestion to think that it is Theophilus' support that makes the gospel of Luke possible. And in that way you think, I'm grateful for this brother. And I think it's such a wonderful testimony too, because we believe and we'll say these things with missionaries. There are those who are sent and there are those who send. They don't happen independent of each other, right? You need someone to send, and the sender needs someone to send them, or else they're not going anywhere. The mission's work isn't going to happen. And I look at this and I think, what a fantastic contribution to the spread of the gospel Theophilus made, if that's the case. You picture he meets this physician, Luke, clearly an intelligent man, clearly involved in the spread of the gospel, and they put their heads together and think, we can put together a gospel. And here we are, so many years later, reading and being blessed by this gospel. What a testimony of the importance of the one who sends. I'm grateful for this guy. I'm curious what he's like. I hope to meet him in eternity. Theophilus, the one the letters address to. So then there's the actual composition of the letter. Date-wise, it's actually hard to come down on an exact date. Some letters, we have a great amount of specificity. This one's a little harder. And I'll tell you the basic camps are this. Some people want to hold a date in the early 60s. And the big reason, as I see it, is that there's a lot of big events in the life of the Church that are not mentioned. You get to about the year 62, and that's actually the end of Acts, you get to the end of 62 and nothing else is mentioned. The death of Paul. You know, Paul plays a big role in Acts. Why don't we talk about him? Why don't we talk about, you know, in 70 when Jerusalem falls? Why don't we talk about the death of James? Really big events in the life of the early church just go unmentioned. And out of someone like Luke, there's just kind of a feel like, wouldn't you say something about that if you were writing after those events had happened? So in that case, people want to land on the side of it being written in the early 60s. There's a lot of other reasons as well. If you are the textual critical type, the dating and scholarship type, there's a ton to read about Luke, Luke and Acts, and the Gospels in general. So if you want to do that, please go ahead, but we're going to go a little faster for the sake of just time. The second camp is a date somewhere between 70 and 90. And there's a bunch of reasons here as well, but I will give you the one that stands out most to me, and that's it. We'll talk about this later. The way the gospel was written, the gospel of Luke, there's a pretty good case that it used the gospel of Mark. Luke acknowledges that he's using other sources, and it seems that one of them was the gospel of Mark. So in that case, Luke has to follow Mark, right? And so if Mark is written somewhere in the mid to late 60s, Well, you have to date Luke sometime after that, right? There's other reasons as well, different views of the government in light of persecution that was going to come and such as that goes, but you find on both sides some pretty compelling reasons, and actually I felt no reason to come down hard on when this was dated. Just wanted you to be aware there are two pretty distinct camps here saying either early 60s or later, 70 to 90 range, that period. Now Luke's writing itself, what's really interesting is something you would never notice once it's been translated into English. Luke is apparently a good writer. And the reason you see that, these first four verses are actually written in what's considered good classical Greek. And good classical Greek is different from the koine Greek, the common Greek that we're used to dealing with. And so, when you're looking at these verses, Brian and I sometimes will sit down and we'll try and read our Greek and our Hebrew, and these first four verses are really hard. I mean, are any of the Greek students here? Couple of you, go look at Luke one through four and just see how it treats you, it's rough. It's really a kind of sophisticated writing. Robert Stein describes this literary introduction, and it is that, it's a literary introduction as being among the best Greek literature of the first century. Again, you never know it in the English, but that's the case in the Greek. Well, he writes that way at the start, but then chapters 1 and 2 he shifts, and actually he starts writing much more like a Semitic person would. You're gonna find him writing less classical polished stuff and more like someone who's sort of speaking their second language. Chapters one and two are a lot like that. Then he goes and shifts again. Chapters three and all the way following, you're gonna find him writing, it's like a Hellenistic Greek. It's gonna sound a lot like the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. And the point being, if anyone is competent enough to write in multiple styles, you start having an esteem for their writing ability. So if I told you that there was someone who was out there and they were writing research papers, child's literature, and lyrics to songs, you may not like any of the things they're doing, but you recognize it takes some level of skill to be able to shift between those kinds of writing. And that's what we see Luke doing. I mean, if ever you needed an illustration of why you should be a good writer, look at Luke. Luke was actually very engaged in what made for good writing in his culture. And so that's what you see in these opening chapters, that Luke knew how to write. And he sets out, and in his own words, he says, I'm here because I want to give you an orderly account. An orderly account of all these things that were fulfilled among us. And orderly is exactly what he delivered. It's such a long book, and so it can be hard to figure out how exactly it's organized, but it breaks down really clean. Five sections of this gospel. First section, there's an intro to John the Baptist and to Jesus. Second section, there's the preparation for Jesus's ministry. And then third, it gets really easy. There's his ministry in Galilee. Fourth, there's the Galilee to Jerusalem journey. Fifth, Jerusalem. That's the whole gospel. It's a long book and it is well done. It's been done in an orderly manner. Luke clearly accomplished what he was trying to do. He's trying to give us his orderly account. For example, in contrast, sometimes when I was preaching John, you remember that a while back? John is hard to follow sometimes because he kind of does these loops. He goes and he hits a topic, goes somewhere else, comes back around, hits the topic again, and moves on. It's actually not that orderly for my brain at least. And it was really challenging sometimes. Luke is just going to be like point by point by point by point by point. It's actually really helpful as a preacher. Luke was also known as the historian. You see, what he's doing here is he's not just trying to write a letter of his opinions. He considers himself bound by the things that happened, by the things that happened in reality, the real events, the real facts. That is what he's trying to report. And Luke is generally, though not universally, he's recognized as a pretty reliable historian. meaning he accurately records facts, he accurately records events. Now, I don't want to mislead you. As a historian now, we would expect them to strip themselves out as much as possible. They shouldn't be present at all. Luke has an agenda. We don't have to deny that. He clearly sees that these facts and these events, they are all part of a bigger story and he wants you to see that. He wants you to understand that these facts and events that happened around Jesus Christ plug into something bigger, namely the redemption of man by God through Jesus Christ. He does have an agenda, but the things that he can be checked on, what he's reported as an event or a fact, he generally checks out. He's generally considered a pretty reliable historian by the standards of the time. But he is trying to show this is the fulfillment of God's plans. And this is something I hope we all recognize. Jesus isn't just some random chapter. Jesus showing up is as important as it gets. Jesus is the fulfillment of this incredible plan stretching back year upon year upon year upon year upon century upon century upon century. Incredible things have led up to this and then this is God's crowning touch. Jesus Christ shows up. The covenant people have God coming for them and then the Gentiles are being brought into the ranks of the covenant people. This is the big picture of what's going on. Now, when you study the gospels, particularly the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're called synoptics because for the word same view, you'll see that the synoptic gospels have a ton in common and not just like casually in common, like really closely in common. You come to what's called the synoptic problem. And I wanna put this out for you, again, not in a ton of depth, but you should just know what's out there so that you're not surprised if someone says, oh, you're studying the Gospel of Luke, what about the synoptic problem? And they look at you all snooty, right? This is what you got, okay? Synoptic problem is just this, what is the relationship between Matthew, Mark, and Luke? There clearly is a relationship, but what exactly is it? See, generally, and again, not universally, but generally it's thought that Mark wrote first. They think Mark wrote first, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources. Okay, this is one of the hypotheses of trying to explain why they have so much in common. Now, I say that, and again, there's nothing to be scared about. We can acknowledge that there were sources used here. There's no problem there. But I don't want you to think either that Luke didn't do any of his own work, that there's nothing distinct about Luke. Let's just read Mark, because that's the only one that matters, right? I mean, Luke has actually some really famous parables, and they're only found in Luke. None of the other Gospels. You see things like the Good Samaritan, only in Luke. the prodigal son, the unrighteous manager, which thankfully I have 16 chapters to think about before I have to preach to you guys, the rich man and Lazarus, and there's a total of 11 of these parables that are unique to Luke's writing. So clearly he was doing his work and gathering in these sources, but there is a ton of overlap between the synoptic gospels. And I'll just give you examples, okay? I just pulled out two different chunks of text to show you just how closely these are in line. These are the kinds of things that you might notice in your reading thing, saying, wow, that sounds a lot like, you know, whatever, but here, just side by side. Mark 10, verse 18, and Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. compared to Matthew 19, 17. And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. Luke 18, 19. And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You seeing the pattern here? They sound a ton alike. Here's another example for you. Mark chapter two, 10 and 11. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home. Matthew 9 verse 6. But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then said to the paralytic, rise, pick up your bed and go home. Luke 5 24, but that you may know that the Son of Man, are you getting this? That the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home. Now we could do this over and over and over again. There's a ton in common with these Synoptic Gospels. And again, Bible-believing Christians, we've got no problem with this. It's clearly the case that they have a lot in common. And so, it doesn't have to be a point of dogma, but the point seems to be that Matthew and Luke were written a little bit later, and in their studies, as they were looking into Jesus, they probably had a copy of the Gospel of Mark, and they used that as one of their sources. Again, no problem with that. I think sometimes we hear about these kinds of studies and we fear that it's just kind of a, you know, one of those liberal plots, oh, the real Jesus, let's talk about the historical Jesus, because we've just been all talking about myths the whole time. It's not like that. I'm not really worried about that in this way. So, the synoptic problem then goes on to say, though, that Matthew and Luke seem to have another source that just they shared. Okay? Matthew, Luke, not using Mark this time, but using someone else. And the reason we say that is because Matthew and Luke have about 250 verses in common with each other that are absent from Mark. So that's when you get into, if you've read about these things at all, this source scholars will call Q. Q to stand for the German word that just means source. So you'll hear people talking about Q. And thus far, people come up with a hypothesis they call the two-document hypothesis. And what they mean is that Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels using two documents, Mark and Q. That's that hypothesis. You can then kind of bump it up all the more and talk about the four document hypothesis. And in that case, Matthew and Luke have sources that just they had, particular to just Mark or to Matthew, particular to just Luke. And so they're mixing in at least one other, if not multiple other sources into this mix. And that's how they wrote their gospel. So if you're getting the feel, it's very complicated. It's very debated. And really, trees and trees and trees have died to talk about this point. And if you want to read about it, if you want to read about it, you can. And if you want to study about it, you certainly can. And what you're going to find, this is my hypothesis for you, you're going to find that you can come up with some very educated guesses but certainty doesn't seem really likely in our times, okay? Certainty about exactly how the gospels used each other and didn't use each other, it's actually, I don't think it's a hill to even fight on, much less die on, because in the end, what you're going to find is that we're describing what Luke said in his opening preface, that he is compiling a narrative using various sources. Right? So in some ways, if you're really academically inclined, you might find this really interesting, but it's practically speaking, what we care about is what Luke delivered. The process that went into it and every little nuance and who knew who and who got a copy of what, it's actually, it's just not the point. The point is what we have that Luke actually wrote for us and delivered to us. This is the gospel we're gonna study. We're not gonna try and, you know, peek underneath and see if we can discover a little something of the real Jesus or something like that. We are good with the gospel that Luke gave us. This whole two document, four document, 16 document thing can go whatever way and we don't have to be real worried about it. What's most important is what we have here. So, brings us to just kind of your big picture idea, why bother? Why are we studying this gospel? I mean, you zoom back and you have to realize that there is no New Testament without Jesus showing up. There is no Christian faith without Jesus becoming a man and doing the things that the gospels tell us that he did. There is literally no event more important in history than Jesus coming to earth. No event, not a single event is as important as the son of God deciding to take on human flesh and come to the earth to save his people. Everything was leading up to this. And everything was not just leading up to Jesus showing up, it was to the whole of his life, to what he taught, to then why he died, to that he died, to then that he rose from the grave and then that he ascended. It's the whole enchilada that we want. This is of critical importance. This is a profound event if ever there was one. And so we want to know about that, don't we? If I said there is one event that's the most important in all of history and it affects every human being to this day, is that like the definition of the kind of thing you want to be familiar with? So we want to be familiar with who Jesus Christ really was. And that brings us to actually Luke's theme here. Verse four is that he says, he's writing this that you may have certainty. Certainty concerning the things that you have been taught. He wants the people of God to be certain about who Jesus was and about what he did and about what it meant. And he wants them people to have certainty, not just because they've heard about Jesus, but he wants them to be certain in the Jesus that they have trusted in. I have a heart, I think, particularly for our young people. You might be in the camp where you have heard much about Jesus. and you know all kinds of things about Jesus. My prayer for this time in this gospel is that sooner rather than later, that would become personal to you. You wouldn't just know about Jesus, you would know him personally. You would know him as the savior of mankind like Luke tells us he was. Really, sooner rather than later, make that relationship personal for you. But where we are today too, we want certainty because the world has made up a million stories about who Jesus was. And unfortunately we've contributed to that also. Just consider all the versions of Jesus that are out there. It didn't take me long to put together a list, not long at all. And I think we could go on and on. Because we have Jesus the buddy. I want a really friendly Jesus. I want a Jesus that I would wanna have over for dinner. It just strikes me, I mean, I won't make as much commentary on each of these versions, but I'm just gonna say this real quick. That's just so dumb. Just to say it frankly, I mean, it reminds me of how we pick presidents. People will have this stat in their head, they're like, well, I wouldn't really wanna have a beer with that guy. Who cares? I mean, frankly, your chances of ever having a beer with the president are like non-existent. And is that what you're paying him to do? Is that what you're hiring the man to do? To go and have drinks with the constituents across the country? I want a president who's competent to make policies and negotiate big important things and who's gonna have the nuclear codes sitting around. I will never have them over for dinner, it really doesn't matter, okay? So we have these standards for Jesus, like, oh, I really want a comfortable aw shucks buddy Jesus. You're like, where'd you get that standard? Who says that the son of God himself should be comfortable? Okay, moving on, other versions of Jesus. I actually said this one at the men's breakfast, Jesus the genie. If you were there, we're talking about that. Jesus is really just there to hopefully make all your dreams and wishes come true. That's the Jesus I know and trust. Jesus the positive life coach who just sits around, he's in your corner, you can do it. What a positive guy that Jesus, I love when he's around. He just makes me feel good about myself. Doesn't matter if I'm off doing things that are sinful and totally contrary to the glory of God. He sure is positive. Then there's Jesus, the inspirational religious guy. And it's like his sole purpose was to give us quotes that we could put on bumper stickers and on Facebook. And anytime you were looking for some transcendental wisdom or something like, transcendent wisdom, you can just turn to that guy, Jesus. There's Jesus, the liberal progressive, because he's the one who supports every new development of society. Regardless of how he and his disciples spoke about it during their lives, he supports everything we do because it's all progress. But then there's Jesus, the faithful member of the GOP. This Jesus was just so thrilled to delegate his authority to our elected officials so that Christians need not read their Bibles anymore. They can just listen to their politicians. I hope some of these sting because I think they are prevalent throughout our culture. Like I said, this list took very little time to come up with. I think there's gotta be at least two, three dozen more of just versions of Jesus that we have come up with and what you want is you want to be grounded in who Jesus really was and who he really is. Every other Jesus that's not the Jesus that these gospels are talking about, they are false gods. They are idols and we are churning them out faster than Israel ever could churn out golden calves. Those Jesuses are not the real God. And when it comes to the salvation of our souls, only the real thing will do. Only the real Jesus Christ will do. And so we must be grounded in who he really was. And I want to encourage you, don't be distracted by what the world says about who Jesus was. Don't be distracted by their opinions. The truth is that the world doesn't save anyone. Jesus does. So we must be grounded in who he really was because there is no figure more important than Jesus Christ of history. And you must decide, believer and non-believer alike, where you stand in relation to him. Will you follow the real Jesus? Will you follow somebody else's version of Jesus? Will you outright reject him? There is no decision more important than deciding where you stand in relation to the man who called himself the son of God. So may each of us, may each of us be certain that we trust in the Jesus who really lived, died and rose again. Let's pray. Our Father, we pray that you would give us the certainty that Luke sought out to give us. Give us certainty of who Jesus Christ is and was. Give us certainty about what he did and what it meant. And give us certainty about where we stand. Lord, in this room, there are many who are on the fence. They haven't quite made up their mind. I pray that you would give them the faith to make up their minds. I pray that this entire room would be filled with people who have trusted in the real Jesus Christ. Lord, we dedicate all the time that we're gonna spend in this book to you. We pray that you would be pleased with the time we spend, with the way we spend it, and we pray that you would be pleased to shape us and change us and grow us. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.