Introduction to Luke
Download MP3Invite you to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1. We are gonna read the first four verses. And as much as many have And 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 eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seems 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. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Lord, no one needs to hear from me tonight, we need to hear from you. So I ask that you would speak. That the spirit who is already working would take the words we have just read and would write them on our hearts. I ask that my words would fall to the ground, blow away, and not be remembered anymore. And the Lord, let your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Tonight, we're are starting a series on the book of Luke and Acts that is going to take us at least 2 to 3 years, to get through. We're studying Luke and Acts together because, Luke intends them to be seen as a single unit. And, if you study church history, you know that when those books traveled around, they always traveled around together.
Joel Brooks:They are meant to study together. They both shed light one on the other. Luke writing them both. Now 2 to 3 years, seems like a really long time to to dedicate to studying a book or 2 books, but it's really not, considering the amount of material we have to study. There's 52 chapters.
Joel Brooks:One of my favorite pastors, Doctor. Martyn Lloyd Jones, it took him 13 years to go through the book of Romans. 13 years, and I calculated it. I had a little extra time on my hand. At that pace, it would have taken him 966 6 years to preach through the entire Bible.
Joel Brooks:Now given my health record, my accident proneness and things like that, we're we're not gonna go at that pace. Martin Lloyd Jones once preached an entire sermon, not on a word, but on one letter, o. And he preached for 45 minutes on the letter, o. I I can't go that slow. I I I I just can't do it.
Joel Brooks:I don't know how many years it would take if we did that, But we are gonna try to tackle this huge task before us, in 2 or 3 years, maybe a little bit longer. And so we need to ask a couple of questions. One, why? I mean, why are we going to do this? Why go through studying a book, you know, verse by first walking through this?
Joel Brooks:And also, not just why study it, but why Luke? I mean, there's a lot of other books, 65 other books to be exact. Why are we why are we taking time to study Luke? And so let me answer the first one. Why are we going through this?
Joel Brooks:Going through a book of the Bible, line by line, verse by verse, it takes a whole lot of time. It takes a whole lot of energy, and so it needs to be something that we are committed to do. If any of you have read our church vision statement, which I'm pointing in that direction, I realized I didn't set it out. Pretend with me. If any of you read our church vision statement, you'll you'll notice it says that we are committed as a church to expositional preaching, and although we might study a topic from time to time, we're normally gonna be going through a text.
Joel Brooks:We believe this to be very important. This means that it is never my task as a preacher to tell you what I think or what I think other people think. My job as a preacher is to always point you to a text and not to come up with some great new idea. My ideas are not that good, and so you don't need to listen to them. I was trying to think through some of my ideas and and, one came to me last week that I did had an idea I had when I was a child.
Joel Brooks:I climbed up on the back of our sofa, and I jumped off, and I held my my feet behind me because I wanted to know what it felt like. It was a bad idea. And the re the reason I remember this is because Natalie did the same thing last week. And we both came to the same conclusion, that it hurts. I had another one of my great bad ideas last night during the storms.
Joel Brooks:Tornado sirens going all off everywhere, and so I'm trying to tell Caroline and Natalie they don't have to be scared. I'm trying to tell them stories, and so I say, well, you know, actually a long time ago in London, they used to they used to do sirens not because of tornadoes, but because of bombers were coming. Bombers would come, and so my kids were terrified. Now they're thinking, bombers are coming. And I said, no.
Joel Brooks:No. No. No. No. That that's not for bombers.
Joel Brooks:You know, we don't get attacked here in the US. So what we did get attacked like 8 years ago in the US, but it wasn't a bomber, it was somebody driving a plane straight into a building. Have any of y'all been to our house? My you know we're in the direct path of the Birmingham airport, that every plane flies 100 feet over our house. And so now, yes, they're not thinking of tornadoes, but every jet that is now coming towards our house, they're thinking we're at war.
Joel Brooks:I'm like, bad idea. Bad idea. And so but at least they're not thinking of tornadoes. But but you don't need to listen to I I occasionally have a good idea, but it's not scripture. It pales when we go through line by line and verse by verse.
Joel Brooks:And my task is to go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, and point you to the text. I don't want you to give a rip of what I'm talking about if it's just me, and that includes right now. You should be thinking, well, Joel, that's great. You just told some great stories about your kids, how you're an idiot, and all that thing, but point me to the Bible. You're just telling us how great expositional preaching is, but where's the text?
Joel Brooks:Where is it? And I had a hard time landing because it's all over the Bible. So I thought I would do as broad of a shot as I could. The Apostle Paul, in every letter, he begins his letter with grace to you. Every letter you look at it, grace to you, which you think is not a big deal because you don't think much when you write like dear so and so, but you're not an apostle.
Joel Brooks:You're just a person. This is Paul. He puts great thought in it. It's intentional, grace to you. He also ends every letter with grace be with you.
Joel Brooks:So he starts every letter with grace to you, and he ends every letter with grace be with you. Now, John Piper, a couple of weeks ago, he pointed that that last part out. He said it only took him 50 years of being a Christian, and finally for it to dawn on him that Paul ends every letter with grace with you. Paul doesn't casually say these words. And and what you need to do is picture the scene.
Joel Brooks:Paul sends a letter and it goes to the church and this is the authoritative word of God because this is from the apostle And he holds it up, and the reader says, grace to you. And he reads the letter. And after they've finished reading it and they're chewing on it and they're thinking on it, he says, now grace, now go with you. He's talking about the grace given through the word of God expounded. The word of God taught every letter.
Joel Brooks:Somebody yell out of a book of Paul or a letter of Paul. Yell it out. Somebody, It's not that hard. Philemon. Philemon.
Joel Brooks:Great. Turn turn to Philemon. I was gonna make you turn there. Turn to Philemon. Where the heck is Philemon?
Joel Brooks:Everybody's turning it. Yeah. And you read right before. I'm in Jude. Alright.
Joel Brooks:Smallest book in the Bible. I had to choose it. Look at this. Verse 3. Grace to you.
Joel Brooks:Verse 25, the grace of Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Go back a book. Go to Titus. Preaching of the rise of Christ. Say go, I'm trying to find the grace in the intro.
Joel Brooks:Verse 4 to Titus, my true child in common faith. Grace and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our savior. Look at the end of it. Grace be with you all. Go back a book.
Joel Brooks:Go to 2nd Timothy. Verse 2. Grace, mercy and peace from God the father in Christ Jesus our lord. How does it end? The lord be with your spirit.
Joel Brooks:Grace be with you. Go to 1st Timothy. Verse 2, to Timothy my true child of faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God. The end of it. Grace be with you.
Joel Brooks:And so, Paul, he's saying every letter, every time they're reading this, grace is being communicated to you. Because of the word of God, and now as you take this in, and you chew on this, you say, now may that grace has has been given you, may it go with you. Go with you, but grace, life changing, sustaining grace comes to the expounding and the reading of the word of God. Paul understood this. He understood this crystal clear.
Joel Brooks:That's why we don't need to do topical studies as our meat and potatoes at a church. You don't need to do that because there's there's a great danger in that. Because a topic is something I choose and then I go try to find a text. But if you go through expositional preaching, you work through it, God raises the topics he needs to address. And it's topics that I would never even normally think of, and it's grace.
Joel Brooks:Life sustaining grace to you. Paul told a bunch of elders in Ephesus in Acts 20 as he was leaving them for the final time, he says, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. The whole council. The only way you can declare the whole council is if you'd study whole books, not just hit whatever topics suit your fancy. You need to always be going back to the text.
Joel Brooks:There's a lot of preaching helps that are out there. It's amazing, the stuff that I get in the mail, and it's all topical. There's nothing really expositional, and and, you I will get something in the mail that has a a sermon sermon titles, sermon outlines, all the PowerPoints, all the artwork, all the songs, everything prepackaged, and usually, it has to do with some TV show or some movie. You know, when Lost came out, I mean, they're like a Christian publisher's dream. They're like, Lost.
Joel Brooks:Okay. I mean, within 2 weeks, I'm getting stuff in the mail. It says, here's your series, lost. Here's your first sermon title. It's abandoned, you know, or stranded.
Joel Brooks:And it comes with all the or all of that and it's so topical and and some of it's biblical. I'm not saying that topical studies is not biblical, but you're gonna create your own canon. You're you're you're gonna create exactly whatever you want to study. God doesn't get to raise his topics. That's why exposition expositional preaching is so important.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I I did college ministry for about 10 years, and almost every single college bible study is about relationships. It's relationships and it's relationships and it's always topical, and then they go, you know, it's about how to date, how to date, how to date. And then they get married and they're like, what do we do? You know, my whole life, I always thought the Bible was just about dating. You got to teach people to read the Bible.
Joel Brooks:That's how grace is communicated is when we get into this book verse by verse, word by word. So then if I were to walk out of here and get hit by a bus or a tornado were to kill me or whatever, you guys know what to do. I don't have to worry about the church. You don't have to be thinking, gosh, who's gonna what what are we gonna do? You go to the word.
Joel Brooks:You go there. That's where our roots are. Luke thinks this extremely important. He understands this. In Acts chapter 17, Paul preached to a bunch of Bereans.
Joel Brooks:A lot of you know this story. Let me just read to you 17 verse 10. It says, the brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thesalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Joel Brooks:So the Bereans, they hear Paul preach, and they said, that's great Paul. You know, we we we received this, but we're not believing it until we see it here. We're not we're not believing it until we actually see it in the text. We don't give really a rip what you say. You pointed us in this direction, now we got to see it for ourselves and that's what I want us for a church to do.
Joel Brooks:You guys should not give a rip what I say. Anything that you think is really profound go, well, that's really profound. That's great. Now let me see it here. Let me see it here.
Joel Brooks:This is the only place where life changing and sustaining grace comes from. So I need to always be pointing to the text. Alright. That was expositional preaching. Now why are we gonna look at Luke?
Joel Brooks:Why look at Luke and not the other gospels or the other 65 books? Well, for 1, Jesus tells us in the great commission in Matthew 28 that we are to teach people to observe all that I have commanded you. To teach all that I've commanded you. Well, the gospel of Luke has more teachings of Jesus than any other book in the Bible. So it's natural that we would turn there.
Joel Brooks:It's not my favorite gospel, if you're allowed to have favorite. I hope that's not, you know, heretical. My favorite is Mark. I love Mark, probably because it's short and I can read it. But if you read through Luke, you're gonna get 60% of Mark, verbatim almost.
Joel Brooks:It's in there. It's a good gospel for us to study. And there's all these unique stories that are just found in Luke. There's the long birth narratives that are in there. There's the story of Jesus as a child, the the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, There's the road to Emmaus.
Joel Brooks:There's the penitent thief on the cross. There's the prodigal son. All of those are unique to Luke. Something I'm looking forward to studying. Luke wrote more of the New Testament than any other writer, more than Paul.
Joel Brooks:There are also some things about Luke that I just I love. I think it's gonna be great for our church to hear. He's often called the theologian of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit appears in the gospel of Luke more often than any of the other gospels. He is always there, especially in Acts later, but all throughout Luke as well.
Joel Brooks:And the first couple of chapters of Luke actually read like a musical. You know, go through, read read Luke this week. It's like a musical. Everybody's singing. Everybody's praying.
Joel Brooks:Everybody's doing poetry. I mean, it's just great. It's it's full of joy. And sure enough, Luke uses the word rejoice more than all the other Gospels put together. He's constantly saying, look at this.
Joel Brooks:Rejoice. Sing at what God's doing through his Holy Spirit. May you have joy. It's all throughout there. I want that for our church.
Joel Brooks:I want that. The other reasons we're gonna study Luke can be found in these first few verses. So let let me reread them. And 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 eyewitnesses and ministers of the word had to 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. Let's work backwards.
Joel Brooks:Luke gives us the person, the name of the person that he wrote to, Theophilus, which I don't think is metaphorical. It does mean lover of God, but I think this is a real person because he uses the title most excellent Theophilus, and this is a term that Luke uses, several times throughout Luke and Acts to, it's an official title for a Roman official. They are most excellent so and so. And so this is a Roman official. It was also common when people would write that they would have a patron who would pay for them to write a book.
Joel Brooks:You know, Luke is doing a lot of traveling. It's taking him a whole lot of time. He's gotta have somebody to finance this, and it is likely Theophilus because people would dedicate a book to their patron who is financing everything. So Theophilus, we know he's a Roman official. He's a Gentile.
Joel Brooks:He's likely a believer. He just wants certainty to concerning the things he he has been taught. And so Luke Luke writes this gospel in order to give this man certainty. And so the audience for Luke is an educated, intelligent, gentile convert who is somehow removed from the events but has come to believe, which I think describes us pretty well here. You could say that Luke in many ways is written for people like us.
Joel Brooks:Intelligence debatable for for some of us. We're educated. And you can see this throughout, Luke and Acts that this is his aim. Now let's look exactly how Luke goes about writing this gospel. Says he does so with careful research.
Joel Brooks:He's carefully examining these things. He is following all things closely to present an orderly, and that doesn't mean chronological, but he is ordering events so we can really understand them. He's an investigator. Luke went and he investigated things. He he heard, okay, you know.
Joel Brooks:We know Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Well, why is it that Luke has a much more detailed birth narrative than any of the other gospels? It's because Luke said, okay. I'm going to Bethlehem. I'm gonna investigate this.
Joel Brooks:He goes and he finds people. Any eyewitnesses? Shepherds. Okay. And so shepherds, he goes and and he likely interviews them, and that's why we have the story about shepherds and we have angels is because he's investigating.
Joel Brooks:We don't know, the whole story about Mary. He likely went to Mary. Okay. It says that you, know, you you have the child of God. We believe that.
Joel Brooks:How'd that happen? Luke writes it. He interviews her. You probably asked her, now, I know it's gotta be awkward raising the son of God. Slightly awkward, a little intimidating.
Joel Brooks:You know, did you teach him? Did he teach you? What what was it like? And so she tells him, it was awkward. You know, they're I mean, when he was 12, we went to the temple, he just disappeared.
Joel Brooks:We I wanted to be mad at him, but yet, here he is teaching in the temple. What am I to do? Do I yell at the son of God? Yeah. I I mean, we get those stories here.
Joel Brooks:He investigated carefully. He followed every lead. He also says that he looked at the eyewitnesses. This gospel was written very early. Eyewitnesses were still alive that remember Jesus.
Joel Brooks:It's probably one of the reasons that Luke felt an urgency to write things down. People actually preferred oral traditions. This is probably written between 60 and 70 AD when there was the Jewish wars going on and the communities were being decimated, witnesses were starting to be killed, and so Luke probably thought it very important, I need to go ahead and record this stuff now. We actually need to put this to paper before the oral testimony is lost forever. But he goes after these eyewitnesses.
Joel Brooks:Now if if I told you guys that this past, you know, Saturday, I went up to the 4th floor of my office, and I jumped off and I just started flying around Birmingham. And I'm telling you this fanciful story, and I said, but but Dwight saw it all. Dwight, he was there. He saw it. What's the first thing you're gonna do?
Joel Brooks:Beeline it to Dwight, ask what I was smoking or or whatever it was, but but I can't make up a story when there's an eyewitness that is still living. I'd have to kill Dwight and then tell the story. It's the only way. But here, yeah, these witnesses are around. Luke can't make the claim unless it's so.
Joel Brooks:They know who these people are, and he's giving an accurate, detailed account of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is not like King Arthur that can't be verified. Final reason we're studying Luke, gotta wind up here, short introduction. It's simply because I like Luke. He's a stud.
Joel Brooks:Any of you guys have man crushes on somebody? You know, everybody's looking at their shoes right now. It's like, it's getting awkward. I got a man crush on Bono. I'm not ashamed.
Joel Brooks:The guy's cool. There's no denying that. It's it's not subjective. It's an objective fact. And, I got a man crush.
Joel Brooks:I also got a man crush on Luke, and I want you guys to all get a man crush on Luke. He's worth it. He he he's mentioned several times in scripture. Colossians 4, Paul calls Luke the beloved physician. And Philemon, which we all had a hard time finding, thank you Benjamin Smith.
Joel Brooks:Paul calls him a fellow worker, which he certainly was. He was with Paul for much of Paul's missionary journeys. When you get to the book of Acts, you're gonna start noticing that it switches the first person instead of third person. It's we traveled here, we did this, we experienced this. Luke is with Paul.
Joel Brooks:He was a fellow worker. My favorite reference to Luke is found in Paul's last letter in second Timothy. It's at the end of his life, and it's at the end of the letter as well. Paul writes this and he says, at my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. After a lifetime of service to the Lord, at the end of Paul's life, there is nobody except In verse 11 he says, Luke alone is with me.
Joel Brooks:Everybody left him, except Luke. I mean, what a comfort. I mean, Paul has been through war, you know how bad that guy had to hurt? All the beatings, everything he had, and now he's in his old age, and to have the beloved physician next to him during all that. I mean, what a comfort.
Joel Brooks:But Luke was a stud. He had incredible faith, and I want us to have faith like that. Faith that is so strong that no matter what comes along, we're gonna stand firm. A faith that remains when everybody else has fallen away. We still have faith.
Joel Brooks:That's why we're gonna study Luke, so that we might have certainty concerning the things that we are taught, that we might have a faith that is unshakable. I love to think in that, those last moments in Paul's life, you have Paul and you have Luke, who wrote almost all the New Testament. Mark later joins him, so you have the writer of the gospel of Mark. Peter later comes there. Peter and Paul were in prison together at the very end.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you have those 4 people there who wrote almost the entire New Testament. It just makes me wonder what they were talking about at this time. But you have Luke only who remained. May we have faith like him. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:But I hated having to do such a short introduction to such a long, great book, but may it sink in. May we have certainty through your spirit as we study this book. May we have certainty concerning the things that we are taught so that we will be a rock immovable. So the gospel will be real to us. I ask that you would make that so.
Joel Brooks:In the name of Jesus, amen.
