Well, the central theme of Luke really reflects those last songs. It's the verse that says that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. And I'm gonna read from Luke 15, one through seven, which is one of the parables about that. Luke 15, beginning at verse one. Then all the tax collectors and the sinners drew near to him to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes complained, saying, This man receives sinners and eats with them. So he spoke this parable to them, saying, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, which was lost. I say to you that likewise, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. Amen. Father, we thank you that you even tell us about this joy in heaven. We thank you that your heart is so fixed in a way of compassion toward us. We are utterly undeserving of the least of your mercies, and yet you pour them and bestow them upon us day after day. Thank you. We bless you for the privilege that we have of studying your word, and I pray as we dig into it that we would not only have a better understanding of the book of Luke, but that we would be in a position to better apply it in our families. We pray for your continued blessing as we continue to worship you, in Jesus' name, amen. Well so far, as we've been going through the Gospels, we have seen that Matthew portrays Jesus as King, Mark portrays Him as the Servant of the Lord, and specifically, as Gary mentioned earlier, the Servant of the Lord as described in Isaiah 40 through 53. And each of those two Gospels is crafted with a very specific audience in mind. Matthew was written by a Jew to a Jewish audience with Jewishness all through it. It's the very, very Jewish book. Mark, on the other hand, even though it's written by a Jew, was crafted very deliberately for a Roman audience with Roman timing and idioms and language. It's very obvious just from the language of Mark that he wrote that to a Roman audience. Now we would expect Luke to be similarly crafted to perfectly meet the needs of the recipient, and on my view it is. It very much is crafted in that way. On the three alternative views, it is not. There are major conundrums on those views. So if, as some people assume, it is a purely Jewish book written to a general Jewish audience rather than to an individual, then there is a lot in this book that does not make sense. On the other hand, If it was written by a Gentile to a Gentile general audience or even to an individual, there is far more in the book that does not make sense. There is a lot that is puzzling. And so the issue of audience and writer has been a puzzle to many people. And it is such an important puzzle that I'm going to spend half of the sermon delving into this. We're going to go on a sleuthing mission, see if we can figure out what this is, because I think the book opens up in a marvelous new way when you understand this issue a little bit better. So the first 25 minutes or so is going to be taken up on this introduction. First of all, let me start by listing the four theories that you will likely run across. The first theory is that Luke is a Gentile who writes to some unknown Gentile civic officer. The second theory is that Luke is a Gentile who writes to the Gentile church at large, not to an individual. The name Theophilus is just used as a code. It means friend of God or loved by God. And so they say, well it refers to any person who is a friend of God, any Christian. The third theory is that Luke is a Jew who is writing to a Jewish church with the same idea, that it's to any friend of God who is Jewish. And then fourth, my view, and it's the view of a growing minority of scholars, is that Luke was a Jewish Levite who was writing a defense of Christianity to the well-known former high priest Theophilus. Some of those who hold to this theory do not believe that Theophilus was saved at this point. I am one of those who says, no, he was already saved, converted to the faith, and would hopefully use his position And in the book of Acts, to use Luke and Acts to defend Christianity. But let me eliminate the alternative views and we'll see why this makes such a huge difference. Exegetically, two of the views are simply not possible. You cannot take the audience as being anything other than a literal individual civil officer by the name of Theophilus Luke 1 3 I think makes that clear because the title most excellent Is a very technical title First century readers would have only one meaning in their minds when they saw Oh excellent most excellent of Theophilus So that rules out the two views that make it the audience of a church at large But what about the majority view? The majority of scholars believe that Luke was a Gentile and that Theophilus was an unknown Gentile civic officer, likely a Greek but possibly a Roman. They base this primarily on the fact that Luke is written with superb Greek. It really is amazing Greek, approaching the level of the classical Greek of the scholars. Second, Luke is missing a handful of Semitisms that are used by other authors of the New Testament. I think this is really a weak argument because there's plenty of other Semitisms that Luke uses. Third, some of them still hold to a misreading of Colossians 4, 10-14 where they at least used to think that Luke was excluded from the list of the circumcised who worked with the Apostle Paul, but John Wenham David, Alan, quite a number of people have said you really cannot hold to that view without initiating all kinds of impossible contradictions, irreconcilable contradictions. I think that's been completely disposed of, that third reason, which means that the main reason to hold that it was a Gentile who wrote this book is that it is written with the most polished Greek of the New Testament in places approximating the classical Greek of the scholars. This has made the majority of scholars still assume, and it is an assumption, it is only an assumption, assume that it must have been written by a sophisticated Greek scholar to a sophisticated Greek audience, and Luke being a physician, Colossians talks about that, would qualify as a sophisticated scholar. Now others point out, hey, Hebrews is written with exactly the same polished Greek, and nobody, absolutely nobody, thinks that Hebrews was written by a Gentile. In fact, I've got a book, a 400-page book, 87 pages of small print are devoted to showing the linguistic parallels between Hebrews, Acts, and Luke, demonstrating, in I think a superb way, that it had to be exactly the same author who wrote all three books. It's stunning evidence. Now I, along with John Calvin and many others, have held because of other biblical presuppositions that Luke wrote Hebrews. But in the last decade or so, there has been unearthed such a volume of information on this that I think it is just overwhelmingly certain, in my mind at least, that Luke wrote Hebrews. But there still is the puzzle of audience, because this book is almost like a mixture of Matthew and Mark. When we get to John, we're going to see that there's a very logical order to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I'm just going to deal right now with the first three. Every detail of Matthew and Mark was tailored to their respective audiences, and you would expect the same to be true of Luke. And on my view, it is. On the other three views, as I've said, it is not. If this book was written to Jews in general, like Matthew was, here are five very troubling questions, at least for many commentators. Why does he use sophisticated scholarly Greek that most Jews would stumble over, would have a hard time reading, and most Christian Jews would stumble over as well? Now if he's writing to a scholarly Jew, no problem, that's my view. But if he's writing to your average Jewish Christian, as this view holds, then there is a problem. Second, why does he trace Christ's genealogy back to Adam? The writer is showing Jesus to be the promised seed of Eve and is restoring everything lost by Adam. There seems to be at least some Gentile focus there. Third, why does it emphasize Christ's conversion of Gentiles, just like the book of Mark does? There's a real emphasis there. Fourth, why does it show Christ's worldwide focus of the good news? And fifth, why is Christ presented as the Son of Man in every chapter? That phrase, Son of Man, occurs 25 times, a very key phrase. Now, in my view, this is going to be very, very easily answered. But it is a conundrum if you believe it was written to the Jewish church. Now, there are far more serious questions if you think that this book was written by a Gentile to a Gentile audience. And I think this is fairly easy to dispose of. Whereas Mark, which was written to Romans, is crafted word by word for the Roman audience. It uses, for example, Roman timing all through the book of Mark. Luke does not use Roman timing, which would have been extremely confusing to any Greeks or any Romans who were reading the book of Luke. Like, what is he talking about on this time thing? It wouldn't make sense to them. Luke leaves all kinds of idioms and customs that Gentiles would not have understood totally unexplained. In fact, his Jewish explanations of certain things presuppose a Jewish audience. Let me just give you one example out of many that could be given. In Acts 112, he refers to the distance traveled as being a Sabbath day's journey. Okay, he's not quoting somebody. This is luke the author explaining to his reader Hey in case you don't know how far that is It's a sabbath day's journey. Now if he's writing to gentiles, they wouldn't have a clue what he's talking about It would have no explanatory power whatsoever But if he's writing to a jew instantly, they would know exactly the distance that he is talking about and there's dozens of examples like that So those are the first three theories that don't make sense. It doesn't make sense to say that luke was written to jews in general or to Gentiles in general, and it doesn't make sense to say that it was written to a Gentile civic officer. In your notes, you will see that the fourth solution is to say that Luke was a Jewish priest, specifically a Levite, who was writing to the former high priest Theophilus, who had been a very pro-Roman Sadducee, but who later got converted and still had huge influence amongst both the Jews and the Romans. So this explains both the pro-Roman emphasis that some commentators see, as well as the pro-Jewish emphasis that other commentators emphasize. And we'll see other evidences that fit perfectly. But I want to first of all prove that Luke was a Jew. First argument that people use is Romans 3, verse 2. I honestly don't think this is the strongest argument. I think this could be explained way easily, but Romans 3, 2 says that God had entrusted the writings of all Scripture to the circumcision. To them was entrusted the oracles of God. So the argument that they use here is that The circumcised descendants of Abraham, and Abraham's the focus, so even Job would not be an exception. The circumcised descendants of Abraham are the only ones who were entrusted with the scriptures, and so Luke would not be the one sole exception. Again, I don't think this is necessarily a really strong argument. Dr. Sarfati thinks it is. There's a number of other people who think it's a pretty cogent argument. But second, I think this is much more significant. Ramsey and others proved from the ancient papyri that Lucius and Luke are names that are interchangeably used of the same person. It's sort of like one is the formal name, the other is the informal name, sort of like Robert and Bob, or John and Johnny. And so, this discovery has made commentators recently realize that Paul's mysterious associate, whose name is Lucius in Roman 1621, is not an unknown, mysterious associate at all. He's just Luke. And if this is true, then it is a slam dunk that Luke was a Jew because Luke 1621 clearly identifies Lucius as a Jew. Now there are a couple of confirmations of this interpretation. First, there is no evidence of a different Lucius that was an associate of Paul. But second, and more significant, the list of names in Romans 16, 21 is parallel with the list of names of the men who traveled with Paul in Acts 20, 4 through 5. So when Paul gives the list, he mentions Lucius as being among them. When Luke gives the list, he leaves out Lucius, but he includes himself with the word us. So it's clear that Luke thinks of himself as being Lucius. If that interpretation is not accepted, then it's very mysterious that Paul would leave Luke out of his list of companions who were with him when Luke was clearly there. Very mysterious. So Alan Ramsey and others give a lot of other exegetical details to say, no, here is an infallible statement. Luke is a Jew. I think that's sufficient evidence, but I'm going to give you some more evidence to back this up. Third proof given by those who hold this theory is not a single church father thought Luke was a Gentile. at least not in the print that we know of. And I think David Allen does a fabulous job of demonstrating that. The one possible exception that some have brought up actually proves to be the exact opposite. Fourth, the language, so basically the point there is we try to judge our interpretation of Scripture. Is it accurate by saying, is this something nobody else has ever thought about? No, this has been the historic interpretation. Fourth, The language of Acts 21-22 shows that Luke was an eyewitness of Paul's arrest in the temple. That's a problem if he's a Gentile, because Gentiles could not go into that part of the temple. And so if he's an eyewitness, he is there. And this is further confirmed by the fact that the reason that was given by the Jews when they arrest Paul is that he had brought a Gentile into the temple. Now, it's a false accusation, but they don't appeal to Luke. As their evidence that he brings a Gentile in, they appeal to Trophimus. Now, if he was a well-known Levite, as I believe that he was, then it would have been slammed. You know, they would never have picked on Luke. They would have picked on this unknown gentleman. Fifth, Luke's intimate knowledge of the temple and its liturgy are so detailed that many have not only assumed that Luke was a Jew, but that he was a Levite who had been working at the temple, and there is an ancient church tradition that Luke was a Levite. Actually, there's a lot of other evidence. When we get to Hebrews, I'll show you other evidence that he was a Levite. But if he was a Levite, then it makes perfect sense that he would have known Theophilus, the high priest. He would have, in the past, worked probably with him. Sixth, I've already mentioned that Luke uses explanations that only a Jew would understand, such as the Sabbath day's journey. Seventh, in my additional notes, I will show many Hebraic forms of speech known as Semitisms or Hebraisms that non-Hebrew Greeks would not be familiar with. Now, people who think that Luke was a Gentile, they have an explanation, they say, oh, well, Luke read the scriptures, you know, the Septuagint was a Greek translation and it had a lot of Hebraisms in it, and so just like those of us who grew up with the King James sometimes blurred out some King James language, that's what was going on here. Well, that sounds plausible, but recent scholars have shown that many of the Hebraisms do not occur anywhere in the Septuagint, which means he made them up himself. This writer thinks like a Hebrew. He is a Hebrew. The language shows him to be a Hebrew through and through. And David Allen's 2010 book, I think, is one of many new studies that I think are permanently burying the idea that Luke was a Gentile. I think that idea is going to go away like the dodo bird. You know, it's going to become extinct. A lot more arguments that I won't get into. It's common for Levites, for example, to specialize in medicine, you know, to become doctors. Likewise, there's an ancient church tradition that Luke was one of the 70 that Jesus commissioned in Luke 10. I don't need to get into those others. I think I've given enough to prove for sure that he was a Jew. Now that's currently a minority opinion, but more and more evangelical scholars are changing their minds because When you adopt this view, it completely answers some of the major conundrums that everybody has recognized. And who is he writing to? This is what really opens up the book, and I think you'll see that later on. Luke 1-3, Acts 1-1 tell us clearly. He calls the recipient, Most Excellent Theophilus. And the author expected You know, anybody who reads these documents that Theophilus is going to be distributing to know what he's talking about. Now let's parse this a little bit and narrow down the identification. The words most excellent show he was clearly either a ruler or a former ruler. Only rulers or former rulers had that phrase used of them. Well that narrows the candidates down very, very quickly because if you, and many people have done this, do a search through all of ancient literature, there are only two categories that had that phrase. It was Roman officers. Or it was high priests who were Sadducees appointed by Rome and working loyal to Rome and really ruling on behalf of Rome. Those looking for a Gentile candidate, they have searched and searched in vain for a civic officer by the name of Theophilus who wrote during this period. It just does not exist unless you date the book 100 years later. Okay, way, way later. But there was a high priest by the name of Theophilus who had this title. Josephus tells us a fair bit about him, and he fits the Theophilus of this book and of Acts perfectly, absolutely perfectly. His name was John in the Hebrew, Yohanan, and his Greek name was Theophilus, which means friend of God. Now Josephus uses his name, Theophilus, five times. He was in the office of high priest from A.D. 37 to 41, was part of the persecution of the church. He was deposed by King Herod from his office, and yet Josephus is clear, he continued to be a leader in Israel and have influence in Israel all the way up to A.D. 66, even led an army, which that latter point, by the way, shows that there was a permanent rift between him and the high priestly family. I believe that that rift was his conversion. I won't get into that this morning. But David Allen gives several lines of evidence to show that Theophilus became a Christian prior to this book being written, which is, to me, one of the sweetest testimonies of God's grace that this hyper-persecutor of the church would become converted And after his conversion, he continues to have connections to both Jews and Gentiles for nine years. He's in a very vulnerable spot, but it's a very influential spot. And throughout that time, it would have been the most natural thing in the world for people to address him as most excellent Theophilus. Any Jew of the first century would have immediately recognized who he's talking about. They would have had only one person in their mind. And since he is a Jew, Luke is a Jew, writing to a Jewish person with Jewish tinge, scholarly Greek, I think this is almost a slam dunk. And as a Levite, Luke would have had huge connections with Theophilus. Now, if this Theophilus is the same Theophilus, it seems probable to me, then it explains a lot. It explains the remarkable emphasis upon angels and resurrection in the books of Luke and Acts, because the Sadducees did not believe in angels or spirits or resurrection. It explains Luke's inclusion of the rich man and Lazarus story. He's the only one that includes that. Why? Because the Sadducees did not believe in a conscious afterlife. They for sure did not believe in a hell. It explains Luke's constant emphasis upon God's divine sovereignty in history, which they also denied. They didn't have a biblical worldview. It explains Luke's constant emphasis upon other things. For example, he proves most of his points from the Pentateuch. Okay, the Sadducees did not receive any of the other Old Testament books. They stuck to the Pentateuch. Now, he goes beyond that, but he's constantly showing how everything that he is saying from the rest of the Scripture is also said in the Pentateuch. That would have been a great apologetic, especially if Theophilus is trying to influence other Sadducees. This would have been a great apologetic tactic. In addition, as David Allen points out, Luke and Acts are perfect manuals to wash away every vestige of the Sadducean training that Theophilus had been brought up with and further ground him in the faith. If you take a look at verse 4, Luke 1-4, it indicates he's already been instructed in the faith. but he's going to ground him more thoroughly in that he says that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed now many scholars have shown that luke also has a purpose of providing court evidence to defend christianity and that acts had the added purpose of defending the apostle paul in court now granted most of those scholars who see all of this court evidence are saying it was court evidence used later to defend Paul from Roman persecution in Roman court. The problem with that is when this book was written there was no Roman persecution whatsoever. The only people persecuting Paul and Christians were the Jews. And the Language used is another problem that many people see here because if he's defending Christians, he's perfectly capable, because it's obvious he's trained in classical Greek, he would be perfectly capable of communicating without all of these Hebraisms. But he deliberately includes these Hebraisms in this court. So here's the point. The language used in Luke and Acts is not suitable for a Roman court. It would have puzzled many of the people that were reading it. But it's perfectly suited for a Jewish court. So it is court language, but it's a Jewish courtroom. Second, as I mentioned, Rome was not persecuting Paul when this was written. They were actually standing up for Paul in the book of Acts. It isn't until a couple of years after Acts is written that Rome began persecuting Christians. And Allen shows how the same evidence that those scholars used to point to courtroom kind of testimony could be used for a Jewish courtroom to defend Christians. The Sadducees and the leaders there, they were the chief persecutors of the church. And as an influential leader in Israel, Theophilus was well-connected. He could use those two books to help alleviate some of that persecution. This would also help to explain why over half of the individual conversions mentioned in the book of Acts were conversions of Roman political figures. Okay, the Sadducees were very pro-Roman, and this evidence of Roman government officials being converted to Christianity might put a little bit of fear of God into those Sadducees. They were trying to use Roman courts to persecute Christians, because their own courts, I mean, any time they were in their own courts, yeah, they were pretty successful. But they were also trying to use, and routinely in Acts, they're not successful in the Roman courts. So, knowing that there are more and more Roman government officials who are becoming Christians because Sadducees have their position at Rome's discretion, they don't want to offend any Roman governors. I think this is a brilliant apologetic tactic. This also explains why Luke acts can be argued to be both pro-Jew, as some commentators portray it, and pro-Roman, as other commentators argue. Both are true. Luke had an objective to show that Jesus was the Savior of both Jew and Gentile, and the Sadducean leaders uniquely bridged the gap between Jew and Roman. So you can see a natural progression in these Gospels from Matthew, which is purely Jewish, to Mark, which was written to the Roman church, to Luke, which is bridging both of those things, but it's a court document that's defending. And then John is a completely different kind of a document. It's a legal lawsuit against Israel. It's the last book to be written. By that time, Israel's treated as apostate. It's a covenant lawsuit. God says He's turning from Israel. He's going to the Gentiles. And some people say, well, John is anti-Jewish. No. He's just doing exactly the same thing that the prophets in the Old Testament did. So there's a very logical progression. And I know this is a long introduction, but hopefully it will help you to appreciate the beauty of Luke, Acts, and Hebrews. I won't have to do the introduction in Acts and Hebrews after this. But I think it's so cool that God provided a document that because of the way that court protocol had to work, all of the prosecutors, all of the defense, all of the judges had to read the evidence that they presented of the innocence of these Jews. They had to read Luke and they had to read Acts. This is a beautiful way that God opened up for even government officials to be introduced to the gospel. Now, let's start with Luke's bringing numerous witnesses who would have been very credible witnesses to the Sadducees who ran the temple. First, you have Luke himself. He's a learned Levite, showing that he's totally convinced by the evidence. Now, if he was a Levite, he had at one point worked at the temple. Verse 1 says that he's been documenting, putting together in orderly fashion everything that had happened. In verse 2, he claims to have interviewed eyewitnesses, that's court language. In verse 3, he claims to have perfect or more literally accurate knowledge of all of these things that he has put together. So he's basically saying, I'm promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And then because this writing is inspired, he tells Theophilus he can have an absolute certainty about these facts. Now, one side note, a lot of times you'll find evidentialists using this to say, ha, you can have certainty from evidence. No. The most you can have from eyewitness evidence is probability. What makes the certainty here is that these eyewitnesses' accounts are interpreted by God, put into the Scriptures by inspiration. It's the Bible alone that is absolutely certain. That's just as a side note. Now, for any Sad you see that Theophilus is seeking to convince having a fellow Levite narrating these events, and a very learned Levite at that, helps in establishing the testimony and then communicating it through Theophilus, who is a former persecutor of the church, a former high priest, adds to the credibility of this testimony. He would have been an incredible witness. The next witness that is brought to the bar is Zacharias. He and his wife were both of Aaronic descent, which allowed him to minister in the holy place. Okay, again, for a priest of this caliber to be brought to testify to the truth of these things is very impressive. He would be a credible witness, and detailed documentation about him is introduced because he's going to be the father of John the Baptist, who is the herald of the Messiah. By the way, just as a side note, if ADF uses us or uses some other church to sue the government, which may have to be in the future, they are very strategic in the way in which they do it. They're very strategic, which Church officers are gonna look at which judges they're going to pick what kinds of evidence they're going to to use when I've read through Luke I saw a lot of ADFs tactics written all over it. It's just really really cool now as another side note I'm gonna mention Luke's frequent mention of angels in the book of Luke and as well as an axe, is again to help to ground Theophilus, who used to not believe in those, that he needs to get used to thinking about angels in his day-to-day experience. An angel announces to Mary that she will be the instrument God uses, and her virginity is emphasized because Luke does not want, even though he's emphasizing the humanity of Christ, he does not want anybody to think that he's not divine. He emphasizes his divinity as well, or at least he shows his divinity. But that he is indeed fully human is shown right there in chapters 1 and 2. Just as Eve was miraculously made from Adam, Jesus will be miraculously made from Eve. He is the start of a new humanity. But since it's by adoption rather than by generation, He has to be connected to the old humanity through Mary. And so the favorite title that's used is Son of Man. Adam is the word for man in the Hebrew, so he's son of Adam. Since Paul and Luke have been working with Gentiles and defending that ministry, and since the Sadducees were pro-Roman, grounding their Gentile ministry in Scripture would have been a great apologetic tactic. Then in verses 39 through 41, we have the wife of Zacharias, the priest, she's convinced that he's the coming Messiah. In fact, she prophetically acknowledges that what is in the womb of Mary, in front of her, is her Lord. Her Lord. The only way that could even be true, for a baby to be her Lord, is for him to be divine. So, again, it's the God-man that is coming. So, these witnesses, they're strongly connected to the temple, which is what the Sadducees oversaw. Zacharias the priest then gives a beautiful prophecy about John's role in preparing the way for the Messiah. And since Rome's relationship to Christ is also an important theme of Luke and of Acts, you're going to see references to Rome all through this book, not just here in this chapter. You're going to see Roman centurions who are Converted and all kinds of other Romans who are converted in fact half I think I've already mentioned half of the individual conversion stories that are in acts over half our Gentile government officials, but if you take a look at chapter 2 verses 1 through 7 You will You will see here that Rome is brought into the question as part of this. The Roman census is a witness, so to speak. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus would all have been registered in the emperor's census files. And since the Sadducees were very, very close to the Romans, many times visiting in Rome, It would be hard for them to deny this. In fact, Theophilus, as a former leader of Israel, could get legal access to those records if he so chose. By the way, those records must have been available for centuries to scholars because you see references to them over and over again. Justin Martyr wrote a defense of Christianity to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. And he stated that Jesus was born in Bethlehem as you can ascertain from the registers of the taxing, unquote. He basically said, look them up. They're right there. They're right there in the registers. Also in the second century, Tertullian spoke of, quote, the census of Augustus, that most faithful witness of the Lord's nativity, kept in the archives of Rome. So they're still there in Tertullian's day. As late as the fourth century, John Chrysostom claimed that he saw and read the actual census tax records in Rome. And he said that they contained the names of Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus. So, too, did Cyril of Jerusalem in the fourth century. And he said his commission was to date the birth of Christ. And he dated the birth of Christ, quote, from the census documents brought by Titus to Rome, unquote. By the way, he said Jesus was born on December 25, just as a side note. But the point of Luke bringing up this documentation, he is grounding every fact in history. And for the Sadducees, this would have been a great witness. The temple shepherds and angels testify in chapter 2 verses 8 through 19. Now when I say they're temple shepherds, these are shepherds hired by the temple to year-round keep the flocks outside of Bethlehem. These are the flocks that would be continually used for sacrifices in the temple. So they too could easily be contacted by Theophilus, since he was a former leader of the temple. Sadducees had charge over those shepherds. The circumcision of Jesus testified to the fact he was a Jew. He isn't extending this kingdom worldwide because he's denying his Jewishness. This is a, even though it's a side note, it's a very important note because any Christians who are hauled into court, Luke is going to prove Jesus is a faithful Jew. This is not a rejection of their heritage. Likewise, Jesus did not ignore the temple laws. He started following the temple laws to a T from the time that he was a baby. This is one of the criticisms that the leaders brought up against Jesus, that he blasphemed against the temple. That's a false, an absolutely false accusation. And Luke brilliantly shows how Jesus was the true temple law keeper, and it was the Sadducees who blasphemed against the temple by doing what? allowing the banking and Tyrian coinage and all of this buying and selling their courts in there. They were the ones who were violating the temple. We won't get into that today, but anyway, Christ's presentation to the temple in verses 22 through 24 is just one of many examples in Luke. Now, I'm not going to do this kind of a detailed outline of the whole book, But you could do that. Commentators have shown that the whole book is a legal apologetic to protect Christians in a courtroom before government officials. So no wonder it had to be written to a government official in very formal Greek. Simeon's testimony is also verifiable, credible witness to anyone connected with the temple. I think it's also a rebuke to Sadducees who did not believe in ongoing prophecy after Moses. They thought all prophecy ceased with Moses. Even though Luke is going to emphasize the Pentateuch, he's going to demonstrate over and over that later prophecies of the Old Testament were also foretelling of these days. and Simeon's prophecy will prepare the reader already for Christ's death. Why is that an important point? Simeon's going to say Jesus was born to die to be raised and to rule. Well, the Sadducees are going to argue in court, if he's the king of Israel, as God had prophesied, God would not allow him to die. And what Luke is doing using the scripture is saying the exact opposite. No, he had to die in order to fulfill the scriptures. So it really is marvelous apologetic. And I'm just barely going to give you an introduction to it today. Then comes Anna, another temple worker. Her testimony was heard by many in the temple. Verses 39 through 40, important witnesses to his manhood, main theme of the book, his humanity is not an illusion. His humanity is as central to Christ being a mediator to represent man to God as his divinity is to represent God to man. Then you have the testimony of the Levitical scribes in verses 41 through 50, and they are blown away, absolutely blown away by the knowledge that Jesus had at age 12. He's able to debate and dialogue with the greatest of minds there. So again, these are all witnesses that Theophilus and other Sadducees would not be able to discount. He picks witness after witness associated with the temple that the Sadducees oversaw in order to demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jesus is who He said He was. And the last testimony in this section is His growth in favor with God and man. Now, in the next section, what He does is He goes back to John the Baptist, and He carefully dates the event in chapter 3, verse 1, showing which Roman rulers were in power. In verse 2 he mentions that Theophilus's dad, Annas, was in power, and he also connects John the Baptist with the same John that was the son of Zacharias, okay? So this John claims to be the fulfillment of Isaiah 40, when he heralds the coming of Jesus. But what he does is he is introducing judgment themes that are going to now be riddled throughout the book of Luke. Basically, it's a sub-theme that says, if you guys continue to persecute the church, Jesus is going to wipe you off the face of the map. And Jesus gives a similar prophecy in Luke chapter 21. And John, being a priest, was fully authorized to baptize Jesus into the priesthood. John was of Aaronic lineage. Jesus was from Judah. So this would be a different priesthood, but Theophilus cannot miss the connection that Jesus is being set apart according to the law of God. the only part of the law of God that would have a 30-year-old having to be baptized is every priest had to be baptized into the priesthood at age 30. Then comes the genealogy of Mary. Now, this is quite different from the genealogy in Matthew. Matthew records the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus. As an adoptive father, Jesus was a son of David, could sit on the throne. But if Jesus had been the actual descendant of Joseph, he would have been disqualified because Jeremiah prophesied that no descendant of Jehoiakim or Jehoi, excuse me, Jehoiakim or Jeconiah, that's Jeremiah 36, 30 and Jeremiah 22, 24 through 30, No descendant, literal descendant, could sit on the throne. Well, Joseph traces his line through Jeconiah and Jehoiakim. So if he had been an actual son, he could not sit on the throne, but as an adoptive son, no problem. Now, Mary traces her line through a different son of David, not through Solomon like Joseph did, but through Nathan. And I want you to notice in verse 23 how that's worded. The only change I'm going to make is where to end the parentheses. In the New King James, they don't put the parentheses end bracket properly. Now, Jesus himself began his ministry at about 30 years of age, being, parentheses, as was supposed the son of Joseph," end of parentheses, and notice that this is the only occurrence of the phrase, son of. Okay, the later phrases in the New King James, son of, son of, son of, they're all in italics, which means they're not in the Greek. There's a reason for that. People wrongly supposed he was the son of Joseph, but in reality he was of Heli, of Mathath, of Levi. Because he was of Mary, he leaves out the phrase son of, because that would imply patriarchal lineage. That's not what he is after. So he's an actual descendant of David through Nathan and Mary, but an adoptive son of David through Solomon. And notice that the genealogy doesn't end with David or even Abraham. It traces Christ's ancestry back through Shem, Noah, Methuselah, Mahalalal, Canaan, Enosh, Seth, Adam, and then to God. Even though Jesus was a Jew, Luke will be emphasizing his humanity and his relationship to Adam. He is the son of man. And the word Adam means man, the son of Adam. And as the son of Adam, he came to seek and to save everything that was lost in Adam. What was lost in Adam? It was more than just the garden. He lost everything in creation, the whole world. And Christ's atonement will flow far as the curse Is founded so the ministry of paul and luke is a ministry justified by the whole teleology of scripture Now, of course the first man failed the test that satan brought him And in order for jesus to be a second adam, he not only had to fully keep god's law But he had to pass the same tests that satan brought to the first adam. So the next section that's chapter 4 Verses 1 through 13 shows this testing now. Let me just back up a bit first john Says that the first Adam Adam was tempted in three ways by the lust of the flesh lust of the eyes and the pride of life So Jesus is tempted in exactly the same three areas that the first Adam was tempted in after fasting for 40 days and being very hungry, Satan tempts him to have slight deviation from God's law by turning stones into bread and to eat them. This would be the lust of the flesh. Jesus resisted as we should with the word of God. Then Satan tempted him with the lust of the eyes. He took Jesus up onto a high mountain and he promised to give Jesus everything that he could see with his eyes. So there is the lust of the eyes, everything he could see if he would worship Jesus. Jesus again responded as we should get behind me Satan for it is written. You shall worship the Lord your God him only you shall serve Then Satan tempted him with the pride of life While everybody's watching you, jump off the top of the temple and watch God's angels catch you. Isn't that what the scripture promised? His angels will bury you up. And just think of how this will advance your career. You know, it's the pride of life that he is appealing to. And Jesus quotes scripture and says, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. So all through that section, they're powerful witness to the fact that Jesus is indeed the victorious divine son of man that Daniel 7 prophesied. it's the next section that really puts flesh on the bones, so to speak, on the nature of his person and work. And he starts in Galilee of the Gentiles, because Luke is not simply presenting him as a Jewish king, but as the Son of Man, the Savior of the world. All of chapter 4, verse 14 through chapter 9, verse 50, shows Luke meticulously documenting the kind of ministry Jesus engages in is exactly what was prophesied to happen. First reactions are not positive. He declares himself to be the Messiah in his own synagogue, and they try to kill him. Well, this is the demonic attitude that the nation had toward Jesus all the way up to the time that Luke was being written, But Luke writes it in such a way that it clearly seems irrational and demonic. And indeed, the next miracle that he performs is against demons. You look through this book, you see an interlocking of these themes that is very intricate and beautiful. So Jesus casts out the unclean spirit, chapter 4, verses 31 through 37, and people testify, wow, this has never been done before. Jesus then heals Peter's mother-in-law, which, by the way, if you ever get into a debate with Roman Catholics and they say that Peter was the first pope. say, well, how come Peter was married? You know, Peter didn't have any problem with being married, nor did any of the other apostles. And by the way, I can prove even Paul was married, and he was quite a bit older when he started his ministry. In the next major section, we have a lot of teaching about the Son of Man's kingdom. And contrary to the Sadducean ideas that commoners were to be scum to be avoided, Jesus called the most unlikely men to be his apostles. He then touched untouchable lepers and healed them. In verse 27, following we have a tax collector being called to be an apostle. I mean, talk about, from Jewish perspective, scum of the earth. But Jesus had no problem criticizing the rulers of Israel and their false man-made traditions. Here's the thing, Luke's not going to be apologetic about Christianity's differences with the leaders of Israel. In fact, he's going to be emphasizing those differences in court and showing how we line up with the scripture, you do not line up with the scripture. And so he shows how the traditions of the rulers are incompatible, as incompatible with the kingdom as a new cloth being patched onto an old cloth, or new wine in old wineskins. So yes, Jesus deliberately broke Sabbath laws, but not laws of Scripture. They were additional laws that the Scripture had never authorized. such as you can't eat an egg that a chicken has laid on the Sabbath. I mean, they just got hundreds and hundreds of these Sabbath laws. Jesus held a very limited view of civil government. The government had no authority to command him to do things, even though he would not be in sin to follow some of these things, they had no authority to command him to do those. So, he went out of his way to break the the civil Sabbath laws that were unbiblical. Why? Because they had no authority in his mind. I think this answers the whole question that's been coming up even in our denomination. When is it lawful for you to disobey the government? You only do it when you are personally in sin? No, I think you can go beyond that. Jesus never broke any biblical Sabbath law or he could not be our Savior. He had to fully keep the law of the Bible but he was under no obligation to keep or obey man-made ungodly laws that were actually destroying the spirit of the Sabbath. Now in this section, Jesus preaches a sermon on the plain where Matthew had a sermon on the mountain. Some people say, oh, it's a big contradiction. No, it's clearly a different time, a different place. He came down off the mountain. He's trying to say, okay, Jesus is re-preaching a sermon. By the way, there are differences in it, different applications. Is it okay to re-preach sermons? Yes, Jesus did. I probably ought to do it more often if I'm going to be like Jesus. Anyway, he repeats his ministry of healing and compassion over and over again. He heals a centurion's servant, saying that that Roman had more faith than the Jews did. He raises the dead, heals the blind, says to a prostitute who had put her faith in him, shockingly, she's better off than the Pharisees were. And by the way, look at the back of your outlines. The number of women that Jesus ministered to or women who ministered to him is just astonishing in the book of Luke. This is in the middle of the page, it's number three. It says, women have a special place in Luke. Consider the number of times the following words occur. Her, 68 times. She, 41 times. Women or woman, 32 times. Wife or wives, 20 times. Daughter, 11 times. Widow, 9 times. Womb, 9 times. Virgin, 1 time. Now, you women ought to take real encouragement from the book of Luke. It is so pro-female. Actually, the whole Bible is pro-female, right? But this is undeniably so. I mean, it's just rich in documentation of that. And for any Jew who was scandalized by his politically incorrect ways, he demonstrated, really, it was the Jewish leaders who were abandoning the light of the Scripture, chapter 8, verses 16 through 18, who were rejecting membership in God's family, 19 through 21, who were missing out on His power over demons, disease, even nature itself. And chapter 9 makes clear, no one can be His disciple unless they take up their cross and follow Him. But illustrating the doctrine of total depravity, the majority still rejected Jesus. And in chapter 9, verse 51, Through chapter 19, verse 27, there is increasing hostility to Jesus, which we won't have the time to cover. Of course, Luke points out, this is not unanticipated by the Old Testament or by Jesus. They knew this was coming. But in chapters 12 through 19, Jesus gives detailed instructions how to handle this rejection and persecution. all the way through. It's just so rich in information about spiritual warfare, leaven of sin, the leaven of the kingdom, forgiveness, bitterness, joy during persecution, prayer, faith, duty, other themes that would sustain the church during persecution and hopefully would make any prosecutors who were reading this information jealous of the gospel, wishing that they had what we have. But from the time of his triumphal entry in the cleansing of the temple, the leaders try to trap Jesus in his words and get him to say something that they can prove he is a fake. This is just powerful, powerful court evidence against the Jewish leadership. Very powerful. They are proven to be the lawless ones. Every single time the leaders deceitfully try to trick Jesus, they are stumped, and Jesus is proved to be the law-abiding, sinless Son of Man. So even though there is honesty about the leadership's opposition to Jesus, the very description of these clashes is more court evidence in favor of Jesus. There are more and more quotes from Scripture that the Bible anticipated this very apostasy and opposition. So basically what he's saying, hey, this is no reason to oppose Jesus. This is the reason to believe in the scriptures, to repent of your persecution of Christians. Even Christ's betrayal, suffering, and crucifixion were predicted in the Old Testament. and is proof that He is who He says He is. So all of those chapters, I think, we don't have time to get into, but they bolster the central theme and the purpose for writing this to Theophilus. But it's the last chapter that punches home the resolution. The blindness of the leaders that they've been seeing in the previous chapters is understandable, given the doctrine of total depravity, when you realize that even the disciples were blind and lacked understanding. And he gives examples of this blindness by Christ's own followers. So this is an encouragement. God can forgive those who oppose Jesus in blindness, just like Saul did. Remember, Saul gets converted in the book of Acts, just like Saul did when he was commissioned by the high priest. I mean, there's lots of things in here that would have so vividly struck home to the heart of Theophilus. The women were perplexed not seeing the body of Jesus, and they have to be rebuked by the angels, 24, 5 through 8. When the women then tell the apostles, the apostles say, nah, that can't be. They act like they're just fibbing. They're telling fairy tales. And why would he even mention that? Because many in the audience are probably skeptical, too. It's helpful to know that the apostles were skeptical. Then there is the unbelief of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Let me read Christ's rebuke to them, Luke 24, 25 through 27. O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Now when those then, they believe, they later tell the apostles, the other apostles are also unbelieving until Jesus appears in their midst and he says, you have anything to eat? I'll prove I've got a body here. So it was skeptics who were turned into believers who begin to turn the world upside down in the book of Acts. And in the book of Acts, Luke is going to pick up where he left off in the gospel. Acts will be reversing the general flow in terms of geography anyway because in Luke you start with Rome and you're working down through Galilee and Judea down to Jerusalem and the crucifixion, the resurrection, the ascension. Acts starts in Jerusalem, the ascension, resurrection, goes into, where is it, Judea, Galilee, you know, the Gentile world, and finally ends with Rome, where the gospel is striking the foot of the image in Daniel, Rome itself, and invincibly advancing the gospel. Now when both of those books are read together, it is a marvelous, very compelling picture of the kingdom of the Son of Man beginning Christ's rule in the midst of His enemies. And I think we can take encouragement from that as well. If His kingdom flourished right in the midst of these ruling enemies that were persecuting the church, then there are no enemies today that can stand up against Him successfully. We ought not to worry that there's enemies and say, oh woe is me. There's always been enemies, right? and yet he is able to convert enemies to the gospel. If he could convert this horrible, persecuting Theophilus, the high priest, who was engaged in much of that persecution in the beginning of Acts, and turn him into an advocate for the gospel, there is nobody that is too tough for him, even among the political leaders of today. May we put our trust in the divine Son of Man, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Amen. Father, thank you for your word. Even when there are things that are initially hard to understand because others have thrown bad presuppositions at us, we thank you that you can open up the scriptures and make them real to us and help them to transform us. And I pray that we would have a confidence in your gospel and that we would also have a confidence it can stand up against any courtroom that might try to persecute, whether that's in China or whether that's here in America. We need not fear the enemy. Your word can triumph. May it triumph in our lives, first of all, and triumph through us as your living waters flow from our hearts out into this dead world. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.