Some 103 verse 13 As a father shows compassion to his
children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear
him. For he knows our frame.
He remembers that we are dust. 1st 17 The steadfast love of the
Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear
him and His righteousness to children's children.
Let's pray together, Father. Gratefully, we draw near to you.
We thank you that you are a faithful Father.
We thank you that as your children saved by your grace,
save by precious blood, we can draw near to seek you.
We thank you for the Good Shepherd who gave his life for
the sheep, and we, in our weakness and our frailty, turned
to you this morning to receive Your word, to open our hearts,
and to give thanks to you for your provision for your blessing
through another week. We pray for each heart here.
We pray for each home represented.
We know that You know all about us, Lord.
You know our tears, You know our size, You know our pain, and You
know our struggles. But we also know that you love
us and Your mercy never fails. And so we thank you for that.
Thank you for your heart of love.
Thank you for your provision. Thank you for your grace and
mercy to us today, Lord, as we bring you our offering and we
bring this with gratitude. We thank you for your provision,
thank you for your blessing, and we bring you this gift of money
as an act of worship to you. We thank you for your word and
as we've sung, these are ancient words, yet ever true.
So we pray that you're blessed Dan, as he brings you the
message, brings us the message and help us as we receive that
and open our hearts and ears to that.
We pray for the sun and school Lord, that you're blessed.
The teachers and the children encourage each one.
We pray, we give thanks for this time together in Jesus name,
Amen. Well, good morning.
Hey, very good to have you here this morning.
It's great to worship God together, isn't it?
We are starting a new series this week.
Billy was going to launch out on this.
He was very excited about it and had put a lot of work into it.
And unfortunately the the Hannah family been struck down with a
stomach bug this week. So I've sort of dipping in here.
So this may not be quite as polished as we like these things
to be, but that's okay. God said as I-55, my word will
not return to me. Void.
In other words, when God's word goes out, it always has the
effect that he wants it to have when it goes out.
And so we're gonna starting this new series looking at the Gospel
of Luke. Alright, the Gospel of Luke.
The word gospel means good news, but it kind of carries a strong
connotation of really important good news that needs
proclaiming, needs publishing because, you know, we get news
all the time. But, you know, sometimes when
you're watching the news and all of a sudden it'll say breaking
news and, you know, thing comes up and and they'll go to
something else and they'll say this news is more important than
the other news you were listening to.
That's kind of the connotation of the word gospel has that this
is news, that good news that's so good that it really needs
talking about. Back in 1911, there was a guy
named Joe Hill and he wrote a song.
He was kind of mocking the Christian preachers of his day,
and it was sung to the tune of an old hymn about heaven that
was called The Sweet By and By, and Joe Hill's version was
called There Will Be Pie in the Sky When You Die.
That was his kind of take on what he was being told.
The good news was, and I think a lot of times, even as Christians
says, as followers of Jesus Christ, we can fall into that
same, same kind of trap that Joe Hill did.
And we can start to think that we think of the gospel as this
idea that the good news is that when you die, you'll go to
heaven. But the truth is, the gospel is
packed with so much more good news than even that, much more
than even that. Yes, it saves you from being
separated from God in in a place of the Bible calls hell, but it
actually credits you with the righteousness of Jesus Christ so
that you are now acceptable and commendable to God, which is
amazing to think about. But it doesn't even stop there,
right? Because you could look at that
and go, yeah, OK, cool. So, you know, I've been made
acceptable to God and I'll be with him in heaven one day.
Now just, you know, back to living I go.
But justification is a means to usher in something even greater.
Romans 5 talks about that. The gospel, the good news
introduces us to a relationship with God himself who who
delights in his children, the good news of Jesus dying for our
sins and that if we turn from our sins and we ask for
forgiveness, we repent, we connect with him.
That kind of starts this relationship with God and helps
us understand what Christianity really is all about.
It's not just avoiding the punishment that I deserve
because I've asked forgiveness. It's it is that, but plus I get
to know God and God's gonna know me.
That's the essence of kind of what Christianity is all about.
Now we have 4 books in the Bible that we refer to as the Gospels,
the good News, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
These four separate accounts of the life of Jesus tell us like
who he was, what he said, what he did, and what that all means.
So we're going to be looking at Luke's gospel, Luke's good news
story about the life of Jesus. But before we get into that, I
want to just kind of step back for a minute and and think about
the four gospels as a whole. Back in the Old Testament there
there's the book of Ezekiel. And Ezekiel was a prophet of
God. So he was God's spokesman and he
was God's spokesman to Jewish people who were living in a
captivity. So the, the country had been
invaded, most of the people have been killed and, and then a
whole bunch of them have been taken into captivity in Babylon.
And, and Hazel was God, God spokesman to those people.
And the book is full of these kind of God gives Ezekiel lots
of dreams and visions of different things.
And some of those are actual things and some of them are kind
of symbolic in order to teach God's people different things.
So one of the most, most famous ones is the valley of the dry
bones. And so in, in this vision, God
gives Ezekiel this vision of this kind of valley that is full
of skeletons and, and, and, and bones of people that are all
dried out, right. They've been there for a long,
long time. And then in this vision, all of
a sudden, the skeletons all sort, all the bones start to
connected together and the skeletons start forming into,
into full skeletons. You know, the old, there's old
African American spiritual song, the leg bones connected to the
knee bone and the knee bones connected to the thigh bone.
And well, that's what that song is about.
And so he sees these sort of skeletons come together and then
all the, you know, organs and, and veins and, and muscles and
all that. And then the skin comes on them
and they, and these skeletons turned back into actual people
and start walking around. And and so God tells you, you're
going to think you're the US, the Jewish people are going to
think that Israel is, is dead and gone.
It's, it's hasn't been a nation for a long time.
It's well, well gone. It's well dead, dry bones.
But I am going to miraculously bring it back as a nation.
It seems like an impossible thing, but I'm going to make it
a nation again. Long term fulfilment of that.
In 1948, when it seemed like Israel could never be a nation
again and hadn't been a nation for, you know, hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of years, it was reformed as a nation.
In fact, there's probably some people sitting here that that
happened and inside their lifetime.
So that's pretty amazing thing. So, so booking Azuka is like
that, right? Lots of these visions and
pictures telling stories. But in chapter 1 of Ezekiel,
Ezekiel has this this vision of these living beings in heaven
and they kind of look like people, except that they have
four faces. They have face of a man, a lion,
an ox and an eagle. And in the in, in the Book of
Revelation, there's a very similar vision.
God gives John a very similar vision in Revelation chapter 4,
same kind of thing. And he sees these beings with
four faces. And in his case he says a man, a
lion, a calf and an eagle, some kind of deal.
So very early on, Christians began to realise that these four
things are kind of different aspects of the character of
Jesus, but not only that, that they these kind of aspects of
Jesus character sort of map onto the gospels, onto the four
gospels we have, we haven't had a guy Irinas, he, he lived, he
wrote a book in 177 AD, so long, long time ago and he wrote about
this and said it's, it's just amazing how these facets of
Jesus also met onto the the four gospels we have.
Let's talk about the four gospels for a second.
So we start with Matthew, Matthew's gospel, because each
of these gospels really was written to a slightly different
audience, slightly different group of people.
Matthew's Gospel was primarily written to Jewish people.
Matthew Levy was a tax collector, Jewish tax collector.
If you remember, you know, tax collectors were hated by the
populace because they were seen as Roman collaborators.
They also, you know, they would go with the Romans and to
collect the taxes and keep a lot for themselves.
So they made themselves rich off the by oppressing their own
people. So, so, so that was Matthew
Levi. Matthew abandoned his previous
way of life and he followed Christ wholeheartedly right to
the end. Since he wrote primarily to
Jewish people, he quotes the Old Testament a lot.
He's trying to make this the connection that commits his
audience of this continuity between the Old Testament and
the new. And so he's constantly will say
things like, and so then Jesus did this.
And if you remember, there's this passage back in the Old
Testament that says this, and you can see how that's kind of
prophetic. And he makes all these links all
the time back to to the Old Testament because his Jewish
audience would would have understood that stuff.
And so he mentions Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah and David as
he shows that Christ, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the
living God, the expected of the nations, the the Messiah, the
Jewish people. But he very much focuses on the
humanity of Jesus. His whole gospel starts off with
the genealogy linking Jesus back through people in the Old
Testament. So his gospel kind of matches up
with that face of a man that you see in in Ezekiel gospel, in
Ezekiel's vision and in John's vision.
So then we come to Mark. Mark was the youngest of the the
gospel writers. His mum was a prominent follower
of Jesus and Acts 1212 tells us that her house in Jerusalem was
used as a meeting place for the church family.
Mark was a close friend and follower of Peter.
And so a lot of information from Peter is incorporated in Marks
Gospel and he's primarily writing to Romans.
And so he doesn't make a lot of reference to the Old Testament
because the Romans wouldn't have known a lot about that stuff.
He also uses a lot of Latin words that was the, you know,
language of the Romans. And so he uses a lot of words
like legion and and things like that in his gospel.
He emphasises a lot what Christ did rather than what he he he
said or thought. And so most gospel has this very
kind of concise, action oriented kind of style on it, focusing on
Jesus ministry and death and resurrection.
At the time. It would have been a very, very
helpful book to Christians going through persecution to see this
kind of stuff. And he focuses a lot on the idea
that Jesus is in charge. No matter what's going down,
Jesus is in charge. And he focuses on Jesus kind of
kingship and royalty. And that sort of matches up with
the the idea of a lion, that face of a lion, you know, Jesus
as the lion of Judah. The lion office often signifies
kingship and royalty. You know, throughout history,
that's kind of been the case. So let's give Lucas.
We'll come back to him in a second.
We'll talk about John. So John was one of Jesus
disciples and he was a witness to Jesus death, burial and
resurrection. This is the last gospel written.
John wrote this as an old man. Probably written from a mixed
audience of Jewish and Gentile Christians who were living kind
of around the area of emphasis around 100 AD, give or take.
John's gospel is very different to the other three because the
other 3 gospels, what they do is they just kind of build up a
story. They, they tell you what Jesus
did and, and, and, and who he was and what he said.
And they slowly kind of build this picture up for us so that
by the time you get to the end of it, hopefully you come to the
same conclusion as the centurion at the cross and go, truly this
man was the Son of God. Kind of build that up.
John's Gospel is like a gospel on its head.
He just kind of starts with that.
He says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God
and the Word was God. So he just starts off saying,
look, Jesus was God and then he, he's the living word and he was
God. And then he kind of works
backwards from there. So his main, main focus is on
the idea of Jesus being God. The technical term for that is
his divinity, the divinity of Jesus, the fact that he was God.
And that's kind of symbolised by an eagle flying, soaring eagle
in Ezekiel and and in John's vision.
Then we come to Luke. When we come to Luke, Luke's
Gospel has a huge emphasis on Jesus service and sacrifice for
others. That's what he he really, really
hones in on. That matches up with Ezekiel and
John's vision of the face of an ox and ox was often used as a
metaphor for being a servant because ox is pulled the ploughs
and things like that for being a servant.
John refers to it as as a as a calf and asks was also the the
largest animal that was used in sacrifices in the ancient world.
So it's very strongly connected to priesthood and sacrifice
these things as well. And so there's a lot of detail
about Jesus compassion and his ministry to outcasts and
marginal marginalised people in in the Gospel of Luke.
So let's get into it, Luke chapter 1.
And let's sort of look at the we're just gonna look at Luke's
intro here and kind of pick it apart a bit and see what we can
learn. It says this Luke chapter one
verse #1 in as much 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 eye witnesses and
ministers of the word, I 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 that you've been taught.
Okay, so we will come back to this.
Keep a finger there. Just go into the book of Acts,
the start of the book of Acts, Acts chapter one verse #1
scissors in the first book. Ohh Theophilus, I have dealt
with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he
was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
And then he picks up the story and carries on.
So you can see that it's written by the same guy to a guy called
Theophilus. So the Book of Luke is really
volume 1 of A2 volume set. So volume 1 is about Jesus and,
and who he was, what he did, what he said when he went all
all those kind of things until and and covers until he returns
to heaven after the after the resurrection.
And then the book of Acts picks up the story from there and
talks about deals with everything that happened after
that to the apostles and the the followers of of Jesus.
Luke and Acts are like I say, it's a 2 volume set, Lucas Part
1 and Access Part 2 of that set. Does that make sense?
The big question is who was Luke?
He was a close companion of the Apostle Paul, and he accompanied
the Apostle Paul on several of his missionary journeys.
He became a member of the mission team that included Paul
and Silas and Timothy when they went into Macedonia.
He was with Paul right until the very end.
And in fact, Paul says us when he's writing to Timothy sick and
Timothy 411, Paul writes, Timothy says Luke alone is with
me, get Mark. So that's Mark of the gospel of
Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for
ministry. So we see there Luke's looks
with them right until the very end.
And in fact, when Paul was in prison and he was writing to the
church family at Colossi, he says this.
Look at the beloved physician greets you, as does Demus.
Luke was around there. Whether he was in prison with
him or whether he was just there, not, not sure.
But look was there right? Look at the beloved physician
greets you. So Luke was a doctor.
Language scholars say that Luke's Gospel has some tell tale
signs in it that show that it was written in Greek and not
translated into Greek from another language.
So when we look at Marks Gospel, he probably wrote it in Aramaic
and then it was translated into Greek so that it could be passed
around through the place. There's some, you know,
linguistic scholars can kind of pick stuff that's there, but
Luke Gospel was written in Greek, not translated and the
Greek vocab and it is huge, which kind of shows that it was
written by somebody who was very well educated.
Luke is this very well educated Dr. And it's interesting is
because if you're a doctor, even back then, I mean, obviously
there's some some big differences between being a
doctor back then and and being a, say, GP now, but a lot of the
the basics are the same. So somebody comes to you and
they say I'm sick and you go, okay, well, what's wrong with
you? And they tell you, you know,
what's what's been wrong. And then you have a look at, you
know, you try and look at the symptoms and you see if they've
got any, you know, rashes or whatever, you know, and you try
and figure out, okay, you try and diagnose them right.
I think this is what is wrong with you.
And then you prescribe them something, you know, to, to try
and make them better, hopefully. So in this day and age, that's
that's often a a medicine in some sort of tablet, say
something and you say, OK, go and you know, take one of these
OHH or whatever. Back in those days, it was more,
you know, eat this herb or, you know, make up this paste of
stuff. But same basic idea.
But as a doctor, often there are times where you just can't
diagnose them. You just can't figure out what's
wrong. Or even worse, sometimes there
are times when you can figure out what's wrong, you know
what's wrong, but you know, there's nothing you can do.
You can go. Yeah, look, I know you have this
issue. There is no cure for that, you
know, I think that must be one of the hardest things as a
doctor, you know, to to be in that position.
Luke is absolutely fascinated by Jesus ability to heal the sick.
He's absolutely fascinated by it.
He goes into huge detail when it comes to the miracles of
healing. There are 6 miracles listed in
the Gospel of Luke that aren't found in the other gospels.
Five of those are healings. And he also notes a lot of sort
of medical details that most of us would probably, you know, we
wouldn't give much thought to. But to Luke, Jesus ability to
heal the unhealable was kind of evidence that Jesus must have
been who he said he was because ordinary doctors cannot do this.
These are this is miraculous stuff.
And so he must, you know, only the Son of God could do this
stuff. But more than the physical
healings. Doctor Luke is awestruck by
Jesus compassion for people, the way that Jesus goes above and
beyond in service and sacrifice for the benefit of helping
people, no matter who they were. 1st century life was, you know,
pretty tough. We, we romanticise it sometimes,
but it was very stratified by, by class.
But also, you know, it's very sexist and very racist.
And there was all these kind of things that were built into this
society. But but Luke details on and on
and on again and again and again, Jesus compassion for
women and children, but also for the more kind of outcasts of
society, the tax collectors and the sinners, but also
foreigners, Gentiles and Samaritans.
And, and, and he gives so much detail on the way that Jesus
reached out to everybody. The fact that Jesus wasn't
turned off by the poor and the needy.
In fact, they were the primary focus of his ministry the week
in the damn trodden were really, really powerless in that society
to improve their lot in life. And Jesus came with this
message. We'll see that when we get to
Luke 10. The Kingdom of God is near you.
The Kingdom of God is near Luke is is fascinated by this.
So let's go back to Luke chapter 1 and this number one, and we'll
start to kind of pull this apart a little bit.
He says, inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a
narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.
So Luke is aware that other people have written down, you
know, have written down what Jesus did, accounts of Jesus
ministry and, and all of that. And in fact, we, we just saw
right that Luke was with Paul when Paul's running to the, the
Church of Colossi, he says, you know, Luke, Luke, the the
beloved physician greets you. So Luke's there and he says,
bring mark with you. Mark as the guy that wrote the
gospel of Mark. You know, John Markey wrote the
gospel. Mark.
Most scholars think that Marks gospel was written first.
So you know, Luke was probably aware of that.
Mark had a had written some stuff down, so other people had
written this down and Luke was aware of that.
And he says this just as those who from the beginning were eye
witnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.
It seemed good to me also having followed all these things
closely for for some time past to write an orderly account.
It's probably important to say here that some people point out
that it doesn't actually say at the beginning of Luke or Acts
that Luke wrote it. So how do we know that it was
Luke that wrote it? There's kind of two ways really.
One of them is it's just always been accepted that he did right
from the right from the beginning.
The oldest copy of Luke that that we've found, just found in
the last couple of years, they used about 175 AD and it says at
the start the Gospel according to Luke, right?
It's just been always accepted that that was the case.
But also there are some hints in the text itself that let us know
that. If you look in the X16, it talks
about Luke's talking about the mission team of Paul and, and
Timothy and Silas. And he says, and they did this
and they went here and they did this and whatever.
And then about halfway through the chapter, it's Paul realised,
you know, God's telling him we need to go to Macedonia.
And Paul says, look, we need to go to Macedonia.
And Luke says, so we left and we went to Macedonia and, and they
changed us to wear that spot because Luke joined the team.
And that matches up with other things, that inscription.
So there's lots of, lots of things like that little hints in
the text that let us know that Luke is the author.
Luke had never met the actual Christ, but as a Christian he
obviously has a huge interest in everything that happened in in
Christ's life. And in Luke's time there were
eye witnesses who were still alive who had been there.
They had seen the actual Jesus. They had been with the actual
Jesus. They saw the stuff with their
own eyes. So Luke interviews as many of
them as possible to put together what he calls an orderly account
to give you an orderly account. This is really interesting
wording, and this is something very interesting about the
Gospel of Luke in the Eastern world.
And it's still like this right across much of the Eastern
world. When they make lists of things,
they tend to make lists in order of importance.
In the Western world, we tend to make less in order of
chronology, a timeline. So we lived in the Far East for
a while and it's quite interesting how this plays out
sometimes. So if you ask someone from the
Far East, tell me what you know about Apple computers, you know,
the company. So they might say something like
this. Well, they, they are the people
who made the iPhone and that's, you know, kind of
revolutionised, you know, the world and, and how we do things
and whatever. Before that, they had made this
computer that was really sort of graphical.
And so that was quite different. They also had made a music
player, you know, iPod that, you know, that changed the way music
was done. And, and they would go like
that. If you ask a Westerner same
question. Tell me what you know about
Apple computer generally runs like this.
What was started by two guys in there marriage and they made
this computer and then they after a while they made a bit of
computer. And then after a while they make
they did a this music player, you know, and, and, and it very
quickly goes into a timeline. Much of the Bible is written
from an Eastern mindset. So when things are talked about,
they talked about an order of a port importance rather than in
chronological order. You get in the book of Ezra,
man, he's like, he talks about one thing and he jumps back in
time to talk about something else.
Then he jumps forward again and it's all over the place.
But he's listening things as they come up in order of
importance. It's far more like if you were
sitting around a campfire going, hey, remember when Jesus did
that thing? And everyone goes, yeah, yeah,
that's right, did this and did this.
What about when he did that thing?
So it's not necessarily in in time order, but Luke's gospel is
a lot more time ordered. Not, not exactly, but far more
than the others. He does a lot more of that kind
of stuff. Here's a good example.
Actually, Lukes Hospital has a lot more of these things, like
on the next day and then on the next day, these kind of time
markers. But have a look at this example.
Luke chapter 3, verse #1 Have a look at this.
This is in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.
Pontius Pilot being the governor of Judea.
And here it being Ted Track of Galilee, and his brother Philip.
Chitrak of the region of Etruria, and Trigonitis and
Lasaniya, tetrarch of Abilene during the high priesthood of
Anniston. And clarifies the word of God
came to John the son of Zachariah in the wilderness
detail much? This is you.
That's a doctor's mine, isn't it?
That's a doctor's mine right here and and times and dates and
places and people. And this kind of characterises
Luke's gospel as well. Okay, back back to Luke 1.
There's #3 Alex says, look, you know, I know, I know other
people have, have, have, have written about this, but you
know, there's lots of eye witnesses around.
Wanna talk to them? He said.
It seems good to me. Also, having followed all things
closely for some time past. Obviously this stuff's really
important to Luke as a Christian, you know, to, to
understand this stuff, to write an orderly account for you.
Most excellent Theophilus that you may have certainty consider
concerning the things that you have been taught.
Both Luke and Acts are written to Theophilus, which brings this
question up. Who was Theophilus?
And the short answer is we don't know, but there are maybe some
hints here in the text, the name of the Orpheus means friend of
God. So some people wonder if it's
more of a nickname than an actual name.
But actually it was a really common Roman name in those days.
It pops up all over the place in in kind of ancient documents.
There was a high priest in Judea around this time that had that
name. So people, some people have
wondered about that possibly, but the phrase there is most
excellent, Theophilus. And that that phrase, most
excellent is a really interesting phrase because it's
usually used to address Roman governors.
It's kind of a title, you know, a bit like, you know, when
people in court and they, they refer to the judges, your
honour, you know, that that that kind of thing often used to
address Roman governors. So it's quite likely that
Theophilus was some kind of Roman official or lawyer.
Imagine that, right? Imagine being some kind of Roman
official living in the Greek speaking world, following a God
and believing in a God attached to the Jewish people, right?
How does a Gentile fit in with a Jewish religion?
You would feel quite out of place, wouldn't you?
You'd feel a lot out of place if it felt out of place.
Ever felt out of place? If it felt like an outcast, what
about as a Christian right? If it felt you have a struggle
with, you know, being different to those around you.
We talked about that a bit last week, didn't we?
You know, it's, it's really hard sometimes.
It's really hard to, to be the one on the outfit, to be
different to everybody else, to have different, a different
worldview to everybody else, to believe in a God that other
people don't believe in. It can be really hard, but what
about being around other Christians?
You know, they seem different to me.
My personality is different to the cushions around me.
My situation is different. Yeah, that could be hard commit.
I remember, you know, when I I was kind of struggling with the
idea of of God wanting me to to preach and pastoring.
And part of the issue was every part of that I knew was a
certain personality type. They were all kind of like type
a personality, you know what I mean?
Just driven and they felt things very deeply and very academic
and understood, you know, and read a lot of books and
understood a lot of things. And, and I just wasn't like that
when I was a photo journalist and I, I was just people
personified and, and, and I didn't know any passes that were
kind of, that weren't that certain personality type.
I remember going to a conference and it was just all these
pastors there got to the conference and it was in another
town and I, I had forgotten to bring my notebook.
So I thought, ohh, man, I need to, I need notes.
I hadn't. So I had a pencil.
And so I had the menu from breakfast.
I remember sitting there in this conference and I had my menu
there and I was really take my notes and the speaker came out
and everyone went to get ready and I just heard all these
briefcases clacking clack, clack, clack, clack, clack.
And these guys were getting, getting their stuff out.
And the guy sitting next to me, I remember, you know, getting
the stuff out and organising all his pens and pencils and
different highlighters, you know, and, and different spot
orderly account, you know, this sort of stuff doing.
And I just looked around and I thought, there's no one here
like me, right? I was like, I'm not sure about
this. And So what happens is you start
to doubt, you start, you start to go, yeah, I understand this
Christianity thing, but I think I'm a little bit different.
My circumstance is a little bit different, my personality is a
little bit different, and you feel a little bit like you're on
the other. Here's what Luke said to
Theophilus. This number 4, he says that you
may have certainty concerning the things that you have been
taught. That you may have certainty
concerning the things that you have been taught.
Why did Luke compile this gospel?
I I've seen copilot right? Cause he interviewed all his eye
witnesses, put the put it all together.
What had happened? Why did he compile it?
So that we can have certainty about Christ.
Luke shows us Jesus compassion and Jesus how much of A servant
he was and how compassionate he was.
But he also shows that it wasn't just to one specific type of
person or one specific group of people.
He was the saviour of the world and Luke is very much about
that. There is an emphasis of on
outsiders in this book. If you've ever felt like an
outsider, this book is for you. This is the gospel for you
because it shows the lengths that Jesus went to for people
who are on the fringes. So that's the first thing,
right? So we can have certainty about
Christ, but also I think it brings us out what we believe is
not a fairy tale. You know, I used to have a guy
that I was a tick with and he used to kind of make fun of me
all the time. And he would say, he would say
to me, and you might have heard this before, this is kind of a
common thing because he said, ohh, yes, said I believe in the
invisible flying spaghetti monster.
And he said, I have this invisible flying spaghetti
monster above my head. He says you can't prove that he
doesn't exist. He just exists.
And he's trying to poke fun and say you say you believe in this
God and kind of, you know, make out that it's a fairytale that
we believe in. But Luke's Gospel is an orderly
account based on the testimony of multiple eye witnesses with
times and dates and people and places.
And the more archaeology we do, the more other documents we dig
up, we go, ohh, that matches up. When he said that so and so was
in charge at that time, Turns out he was.
Look at this, we've got this official document and these
things just continuously prove this is a very real thing.
This is not something that was made-up.
You can have certainty about the things that you've been taught.
And the good news about this is that it doesn't just impact, you
know, this good news, this gospel doesn't just impact what
happens after you die. It impacts your life right now
because you have the hope that most people don't have.
You have a sense of purpose. It's hard to live life without
purpose. You have a sense of direction.
Amazing how many times you know, it talks about, you know, Jesus
looked out on the crowd and he's and, and with compassion.
He was moved with compassion because they were like sheep
without a shepherd. They had no sense of purpose, no
sense of direction. They were just kind of wandering
around and and Jesus, you know, that really got to him.
He was moved with compassion. That Greek phrase, one word
which which means I'll be stirred up in the pit of your
stomach. The good news impacts your life
right now. It makes such a difference to
the here and now. It's not just pie in the sky
when you die like Joe Hill thought.
And I think the the last point is this.
As followers of Jesus, let's follow the example of Jesus and
bring the good news of salvation to the spiritually poor and
needy, whoever they are. People who don't have this good
news are in need, who haven't connected with this good news
are in need. The Kingdom of God is near,
right? Let's reach out.
Let's do what he asked. So and the next long period of
time, we will be going through the book of Luke.
We are gonna break it up into chunks and do some other things
in between and then we'll come back to to Luke again.
One of the things we're changing up a little bit is in the school
holidays. We'll do it.
We'll do different messages. We'll break from our series
during the school holiday break. So some feedback has been people
say, ohh, I was really getting into this and then I'm going to
be away for a couple of weeks, you know, the holidays and
whatever. So we'll change that.
But we will be going through the book of Luke and we will see
this oddly account of Jesus and who he was and what he did and
what he said, the death and the Bureau and the resurrection and
what impact that had on his followers and what impact it has
on us. There is so much really cool
stuff to to pull out of that. All right, let's pray and then
I'll I'll hand. Father, we stand in awe of you
as, yeah, there's so much detail and in these books, but also so
much just the way everything's connected together back to, you
know, the Old Testament of the New Testament and different
books and Ezekiel and Revelation and all of these things and how
you've connected all of these because of your your great
wisdom, because of who you are. Lord, we thank you for the good
news. We thank you for Luke's gospel.
We thank you for the chance to be able to get an orderly
account of everything that happened.
And Lord, you, you've wanted us to know this stuff because you
love us and you care about us and all.
We thank you for chance to connect with you despite our
sinfulness. Lord, we thank you for your word
and thank you for Jesus, the living word.
We thank you for these things. Pray in Jesus name, Amen.