If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Luke chapter 1. You can find that on page 855 in the pew Bibles as we begin a study in Luke’s gospel tonight. And we will start with this preface or introduction that is found in verses 1 to 4. Luke chapter 1.
Sometimes when you are at the grocery store, the questions there may be urgent, but they’re rarely very important. Questions like, “What brand of oat milk am I supposed to buy? Do I get sweetened or unsweetened? Organic or not?” And, “Is this avocado ripe? Is it too ripe? Will it be ripe by Wednesday? How can you even tell?” Or questions like, “What sort of hipster grocery list is this anyway and what have I become?” The most urgent question, of course, is the one you find at the end, and that is, “Which line will be the quickest?” Someone has said that you can diagnose “hurry sickness” if you go and you look at each cart in the different lines to see how many items are in each cart to pick the line that’s going to go the fastest. But you really have it if you pick the line that you think is going to be the fastest but you still look at the other line that you didn’t choose to see which line is going to go the fastest and if you, in fact, won to check out quicker. Again, these are questions that may be urgent at the moment, but they’re not very important.
But a few weeks ago I read a question at the grocery store that is the most important question that we could ever be asked. It was on the cover of a magazine at the checkout line. It was, in fact, the slower of the checkout lines, but that doesn’t matter. It was the question that Jesus asked to His disciples. It is a question that has been recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It’s this question – “Who do you say that I am?” Who is Jesus? And what do you say and believe about Him? It is the most urgent and the most important question that could ever be posed to us. Do you know Him? Do you trust Him? Do you love and follow Him? Because Jesus is our life and our salvation. He is the focal point of the whole Bible. He is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises. He is the foundation of everything we do and teach in the church. Who is Jesus? “Who do you say that I am?”
People take up the name of Jesus for all sorts of reasons, don’t they? People may take up the name of Jesus for everything from merely trying to feel better about themselves, to advocating a certain social cause or supporting a political agenda. People have all sorts of ideas and thoughts and opinions about who Jesus is. But as we turn to this gospel tonight, and for the next several weeks, this is Jesus. This is the story of His life and His ministry. This is the message about Jesus that is radical. It’s history making. It’s life changing. This is the good news of salvation. And so we’d better know it and we’d better love it and we’d better be certain about what we believe. That’s why we have this gospel. That’s why we have the gospel of Luke. It’s to be certain about the things that we have been taught concerning the good news about Jesus.
And so tonight, we will look at the context into which this good news was delivered, and we’ll also see the certainty which the good news provides. So the context and the certainty – those will be the two points that we’ll look at tonight. Before we read the passage and study it, let’s ask God that He would help us and He would make His Word fruitful and effective in our lives. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we give You thanks for Your Word. We thank You for the promises in Your Word, that Your Word will not return in vain, it will not return void, but it will accomplish the purposes for which You have sent it. And so we ask, Father, that You would do Your work by Your Spirit and provide to us as we study Your Word, certainty about the things that we have been taught, certainty about the things of Jesus, and in that certainty, that You would send us out with boldness and joy. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Luke chapter 1 verse 1:
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
The Context of the Good News
Well at first glance, there’s really nothing very special it seems about the opening lines of the gospel of Luke. This is the usual way to start a historical document in the Greco-Roman world. In fact, one writer says that Luke chapter 1 verses 1 to 4 is a “historic prologue of classic construction.” But this prologue tells a story, doesn’t it? It tells us that the message about Jesus lands squarely in the context of the Greco-Roman world. This message about Jesus doesn’t come and land on neutral ground. No, it comes to a people who are influenced by and who think and act in a certain way because of the culture of their day. People like Theophilus. Theophilus is the first name mentioned in the gospel of Luke. As a matter of fact, Theophilus is also the first name mentioned in the book of Acts. And that should tell us something. Well it tells us, for one thing, that Luke and Acts go together. By the way, that makes a good piece of trivia, perhaps for Jeopardy. The answer? “The physician who is credited with writing more of the New Testament than any other writer.” “Who is Luke?” That’s right. It’s true.
It may be surprising though, but Luke and Acts make up more verses of the New Testament than the contribution of any other writer in the New Testament, beyond what Paul or John or anyone else writes. Luke and Acts make up a significant chunk of the New Testament. And I think in some ways you could say that instead of calling them Luke and Acts, based on what the titles of other New Testament books are, you could almost call these two books First and Second Theophilus because both of the books are written to Theophilus. He is the primary receiver of these books. And yet, we don’t really know that much about Theophilus. His name means “lover of God” or “friend of God.” And Luke calls him, “most excellent Theophilus,” so most likely Theophilus was someone of prominence. He may have been in a position of nobility and he may even have funded the writing and distribution of the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts.
But here’s what we do know about Theophilus. Theophilus lived in a messy culture. He lived in a world full of ideas and religious options. Theophilus lived in a world that prized tolerance and open-mindedness. It was a world that was shockingly immoral and corrupt. One writer says that homosexuality and heterosexual promiscuity, divorce, abortion, slavery, sacred prostitution, all of those things were far more prominent and accepted in the time of Theophilus in the Greco-Roman world than they are even now in our deteriorating, Western world. And one contemporary, Seneca, said about his own times, he says that, “The world is full of crimes and vices; more are committed than can be cured by force. There is an immense struggle for iniquity, a fight for iniquity.” He says that “innocence is not only rare, but it is nowhere.” Now that is not to say that everything about the Roman culture was bad. There were redeeming qualities about the Roman culture and about the technological advances that happened during that time. And yet we can say that distractions and temptations and competing worldviews were everywhere around Theophilus and around the first audience of this gospel.
Do you remember what it says in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 17, about the time when Paul was in Athens? It says that the people there in Athens loved to hear about and to talk about anything new, about any new idea or anything that seemed to be new at the time. It was fun to talk about personal opinions and beliefs. It was good to talk about those things, but to say that it was the truth, well maybe not so much. And you could have one message among others, but to say that this is the message above all others, well there really wasn’t a place for that. That kind of talk didn’t fit in this day. And so it made the audience of this first letter or this first book to Theophilus, it made the recipients stand out as odd and unusual.
And we could say that Theophilus belonged to a misfit people. He’s called “most excellent” and yet he’s about the only one who can be considered most excellent in the book of Luke. Much of the attention in Luke’s gospel is directed towards the overlooked and the mistreated. It’s the people who Jesus encountered, the ones to whom He ministered were those who were outcasts. They were the lepers and the tax collectors and the Samaritans. It was the blind and the lame and the beggars. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor.” He says that, “The last will be first and the first will be last.” And the thing that makes Theophilus a part of that group, the thing that makes Theophilus unusual, is that he was a Gentile. It’s really jarring. Look at the next verse in Luke’s gospel, verse 5. It says, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah.” Isn’t it jarring that the very next verse after this introduction to a Gentile man, Theophilus, is all about the Jewish people and places and things. It’s all about Judea and a priest and the temple and incense. It’s all about the Jews and the people from whom and to whom Jesus came. And this story about the Jews, that has to do with the Jews, is written to a Gentile. And yet the Jews and the Gentiles did not mix. And the division between Jew and Gentile, the division between Jew and non-Jew was almost as old as time itself. It was a volatile combination, almost as volatile as we think of it today in the relationship between Palestine and Israel.
And yet from the start of this book, from the beginning of the gospel of Luke, it’s clear that this message about Jesus is for Jew and Gentile alike. In fact, it is a message that is for Jew and Gentile together, together as one group. And those divisions were not going to be healed, those barriers were not going to be overcome simply by talking about tolerance and coexistence. And there were not many natural connections between the Jews and the Gentiles, and for that matter, there were not many natural connections between the rich and the poor and between the sinner and the self-righteous. And yet for all these things, those groups are the target audience of this Gospel and they are brought together as one people in the Church. They are brought together as one people who are also going to be facing, or maybe have already been facing persecution for their belief and promotion of the message about Jesus.
This was a misfit people and their survival as a people would not have been humanly possible. But the surprising thing about the trajectory of Luke’s gospel and the surprising thing about what unfolds in the book of Acts is that not only did this group survive, but it thrived and it spread. And we could say that the message to Theophilus that we find in Luke’s gospel is a message to the world. There is this familiar Greek word in verse 4 when it talks about “the things you have been taught.” That word for “taught” or “teaching” is the Greek word, “katēcheō.” It’s one from which we get the word “catechism.” It’s what we have already done here tonight. It’s one of my favorite parts of our Sunday evening service when our children come down to the front and they are catechised; they go through the catechism of question and answers, of teaching the things we know about Jesus Christ. Catechism. Catechize. It means “to instruct, to teach, to pass along.”
And Theophilus had been catechized. He had been taught in the way of faith in Jesus Christ and that teaching was part of a process which one person passes down to another what he or she had learned and believed. And that teaching was meant to be shared. It was meant to be replicated. It’s what we call discipleship. It’s what Luke is doing in this gospel. He’s taking what eyewitnesses had told to him and passed along to him and now he is putting it in an orderly fashion to pass along to Theophilus and others as well. In fact, spreading the message about Jesus shapes the overall flow of Luke and Acts together. You see that where the book begins with this introduction to this Gentile man, Theophilus, it’s a Greco-Roman prologue even, and yet from there we move through the book of Luke and it comes down and Jesus is going to Jerusalem. He’s headed to Jerusalem. And what is He going to do in Jerusalem? He is going to die. He’s going to suffer and He is going to die and He is going to be raised from the dead and He will give His commission to His followers and He will ascend into heaven. And at the beginning of the book of Acts it’s in Jerusalem, and yet where does the message go? It goes out; it goes out from Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. And so what began to a Gentile man, Theophilus, in the book of Luke, at the end of the book of Acts we find Paul teaching in the heart of the Greco-Roman world and Rome itself and the Gospel is unhindered.
It’s clear from this message that the message about Jesus does not stop with Theophilus. It’s intended for a wider audience. And yet that audience will, for the most part, as this message goes out, that audience will be sometimes uninterested. They will be unbelieving and maybe even hostile to the message about Jesus. And these are all part of the challenges that are facing Theophilus as he reads this gospel from Luke, at the outset of this account or narrative about Jesus. These are the challenges that are facing Theophilus. It’s a messy culture, a misfit people, and a message for a world in opposition.
And that’s not all that different, is it, from the challenges we face with the Gospel. It’s not all that different from the challenges we face with the message about Jesus. In fact, one of the areas of concern in the broader church today is what some people see as a rise in the number of people in the church who are questioning the Christian faith. It’s not that it’s anything new, but it just seems that it now has a more or a public or even a viral quality to it. And so there are podcasts and there are YouTube channels and TikTok posts about deconstructing the Christian faith. And people are finding a community, they’re finding a platform for rethinking and even distancing themselves from the Christian faith. There are a bunch of reasons that have been given for these kinds of things. It is the shifting, moral standards of our culture. It’s social pressures. It’s conflict within the church or maybe a shallow understanding of the Bible. And all of those things could be contributing factors.
And the truth is, I’m not that familiar with what kind of discussions are happening online and on social media, but aren’t these the same kind of questions that we’ve always asked and talked about and thought about? Things like, “How can I be sure of what I believe? Where can I find the boldness to share with someone else what I believe? And will our kids, will our children’s faith be sincere? Is it sincere? Will it be secure? Will it last when they leave the home? Will our own faith stand up to the pressures and the disappointments and the sufferings and the conflicts that we all face in this life?” These are the questions that we have always asked and the issue in all of those things is certainty. Can we have certainty? Can we have certainty concerning the things we have been taught?
The Certainty of the Good News
Well that’s the whole purpose for Luke’s gospel. The reason why he wrote to Theophilus and to the rest of his audience, including us – that’s why we have this account recorded for us tonight – it’s so that we may have certainty concerning the things that we have been taught about Jesus. And that word that’s translated as “certainty” is the Greek word, “asphaleia”. It’s from which we get the word “asphalt.” And if we lived anywhere else other than Jackson, when we heard the word “asphalt” we would think of something that is solid and sturdy! As it is, what do we think about when we hear the word “asphalt”? We think about potholes in roads that are undriveable! So we might need to use our imagination here a little bit, but “asphalt” – that’s the word that means “certainty.” It means “strong, sturdy, reliable.” It’s certainty. And certainty is literally the last word in this preface of Luke’s gospel. This is one long Greek sentence, and at the very end of that sentence is the word, “certainty.” It’s for emphasis. It’s for emphasis, this is why Luke is writing this gospel.
Luke is saying that the things that Theophilus had been taught, the things that he is writing about Jesus in this book – they are true. They are dependable. They can stand up to the pressures of the culture. The Gospel overcomes the differences that divide people. And the word about Jesus, the word about the kingdom of God – it will not be stopped. You can stake your life on this message. You can rest all of your hopes, you can find your deepest desires and your greatest longings met by trusting in the One who is the focus of this message, by trusting in Jesus Christ.
How can we know that? How can we be certain? I think there are two things from this passage, two things that can give us certainty from the first four verses of Luke’s gospel. And number one is that Luke records eyewitness testimony. He says that the things that he writes, verse 2, “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.” You see, the things that Jesus said and the things that Jesus did, they were done in public. There were still people alive at the time this book was written who were there. They heard Jesus teach. They saw the miracles. They watched Jesus die on the cross. They saw Him alive again after three days. There were thousands of people who were witnesses to the events of Jesus’ life, to the things that He said and did. This was not the imagination of one man. Everything written here could be validated or discredited by those who were around at the time. And in fact, the eyewitnesses to what Jesus had said and done, they were willing to face persecution for the sake of the teaching and the truth of the things that they had seen.
Every one of the disciples, every one of Jesus’ disciples, except for one, according to reliable tradition, they died for the sake of the message about Jesus. They died because they wanted to tell others what they had seen and what they knew about Jesus. They died not as a group. They didn’t die as some big hoax. No, they died on their own, in different places around the world, when their lives could have been spared just by renouncing what they said about Jesus. But this is what they had seen. It was true. This is history. This is fact. We can trust what they said. We can trust what is recorded here in this gospel because there were eyewitnesses who gave testimony to it.
And then the second thing, the second thing that gives us certainty is that word “accomplished” in verse 1. Verse 1 says, “The things that have been accomplished among us.” Well that word could also be translated as “fulfilled.” We could say, “The things that have been fulfilled among us.” And so number two, Luke records the fulfillment of prophecy. And what Luke wants us to know is that the things about Jesus, they didn’t happen out of nowhere. No, these are the unfolding of the plan of God. This is the fulfillment of the promises of the Word of God. And Luke is careful throughout this gospel to emphasize that the things Jesus is doing, the things that happened to Jesus, they are the fulfillment of God’s plan and God’s promises in the Old Testament. When Jesus stands up in Luke chapter 4 and tells us about Him in Nazareth. He is in the synagogue and He reads from Isaiah 61. He says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” On the way to the cross, Jesus says in Luke 22, “I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in Me, ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about Me has its fulfillment.’” These things were written hundreds and thousands of years before they happened and yet they happened as they had been predicted.
We can have certainty about what the New Testament says about Jesus because of what the Old Testament says about Jesus. And Jesus says in Luke chapter 24 that all the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms have their fulfillment in Him, that nothing about Jesus’ life is accidental, nothing is a coincidence. We’ll see it over and over again as we study this gospel, that what we are reading here is the unfolding of the purposes and the plan of God. And it’s almost as if we can say that the Old Testament is a fact-checker for the New Testament in reverse. I remember watching a video years ago of a Jewish man and he had read Isaiah 53 and he said from a Jewish perspective, he said he was reading Isaiah 53 and said, “This is from the Christian Bible. This is New Testament stuff here.” But then to realize, he said, “No, this is our Bible. This is the Hebrew Bible. This is the Hebrew Scriptures.” That’s how close it is – that you can take Isaiah 53 and compare it to what is written about Jesus in the New Testament. That He is the fulfilling of all of those things that were foretold in the Old Testament. There is nothing else for us to say than that these things are true. They are reliable. They happened in a supernatural way; the supernatural outworking of God’s plan. We can have certainty concerning the things we have been taught because of the eyewitnesses and because of the fulfillment of God’s Word.
And we need certainty. We all need certainty. When doubts arise in our hearts, when our faith is challenged, as we press on in the Christian life, we need certainty. And Luke is writing to give us certainty. I think that teaches us two things in closing. First is that certainty comes from God’s Word. Certainty comes from God’s Word. We need to know the stories about Jesus’ life. We need to know the things Jesus taught. We need to know how Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament. That’s why we’re studying through the book of Luke on Sunday nights. But we can’t neglect the rest of the Bible either. And the beginning of a new year, it marks a good time to start or to continue the discipline of reading the Bible and reading through the Bible. You don’t have to read through in a year, but find a Bible reading plan, find some option that works for you and works for your schedule, and make a commitment to read through the Bible and to see the way in which the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament and the promises about Jesus are brought to truth and to reality in Christ in the New Testament.
In fact, I’ve left one Bible reading plan in particular, it may not be the one for you, but on your way out if you want to pick one up there is one printed out in the back. Find one that works for you and make that commitment. If certainty comes from seeing how Jesus fulfills and accomplishes what the Old Testament anticipates, then our faith will be strengthened as we read and study the whole Bible as one story about God’s love for His people, about salvation in Christ.
And while we are talking about the word “catechesis,” catechism, let me just highlight again David Strain’s upcoming classes on Saturday mornings. These will be good opportunities for you, good opportunities for us, to hear and to ask questions and to learn about the basics of what we believe, the basics of the Christian faith, in order to grow and to have certainty concerning the things that we have been taught. There is a process that goes on in the church of catechism, of teaching, of passing on the things that we have been taught. Certainty comes from God’s Word. Do not neglect God’s Word in order to gain certainty.
Second thing, last thing is, certainty means sharing or spreading God’s Word. If we are certain about the things contained in this Gospel, that God, in his love for us as sinners, sent His Son to suffer and to die for us in our place, for our sin, in order to forgive us from our sin, if we are certain that Jesus rose from the dead to give us life and to give us every blessing of God that are found in Him for all of eternity, if we are certain that the good news is in fact good news, then aren’t we going to want to tell others about it – to tell our family and to tell our friends about Jesus and about new life in Christ that comes by faith alone? We’re going to want to equip others to do the same as well – to help others take the Gospel to other parts of this city and other parts of our country and around the world as messengers about Jesus, by praying and giving and sending them out with our blessing. We are going to want to participate in what we find here in Luke’s gospel, that what has been delivered from eyewitnesses can be taught to others, can be put in an orderly way so that it can be understood and distributed and go out around the world. Certainty, you see, brings boldness, brings boldness to us, and it propels the good news about Jesus outward. So certainty comes from God’s Word. Certainty means spreading and sharing God’s Word.
Let me close with this. I’ve told the story before. It’s about a visit to prison when I was in junior high school. It was just for an afternoon, for a few hours, and it was a visit with a Bible study group to a prison chapel meeting. And while we were there, as an eighth grader or whatever it was, one of the inmates asked me, he said, “If you died today, would you be in heaven?” And I very casually said, “Yeah, I think so.” And what he said next I’ll never forget. He said, “You can’t just think so. You need to know for sure. You need to be certain.” And he was right. And God put him in my life at that moment to help me grow, to help me grow in the certainty of the things that I had been taught; to help me grow in the certainty of the things I believed about Jesus.
So I’ll ask you that question as well, “Do you know for sure? Are you certain?” Of course it’s okay to wrestle against unbelief. It’s okay even to have your doubts, but these things in the gospel of Luke and the whole Bible have been written to us so that we may have certainty – certainty concerning the things that we have been taught. So let’s give our attention to Luke’s gospel over the next few weeks and ask God to give us certainty through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we give You thanks that You are so patient with us and You are so good to us, that You do not leave us wondering, You do not leave us groping in the dark, but You have given us a clear message – a clear message about Christ and about Your love for us. We oftentimes say, like the man in the gospel, “I believe; help my unbelief.” We pray that tonight as we go out from here, as we begin a new year. We believe; help our unbelief. Would You help us as we give our attention to Your Word, as we submit ourselves to what You have unveiled to us about the mystery of the Gospel and about Your love for us? We ask that You would give us a certainty and a confidence and a boldness and a courage to live these things out, to follow Your Word, and to make it known to others. We pray that You would add Your blessing to it, and we ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.