The Gospel Of Luke — Luke 1

0:00 If you would bless our time today, we would be very grateful. How we seek to learn about the your word as presented here. And we just ask you to to guide us, direct us, lead us, keep us keep us on track. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

0:19 Amen. Okay. Here we go. So, we're going to start study this week of the Gospel Luke. We've been talking about that for quite a bit of time and you know, the first thing that we consider ourselves with is it it is the gospel of Luke, right?

0:38 But but when you think about it, you say, well, wait a minute, it's not the gospel of Luke per se. You know, it's not about Luke. Although, he's part of it. It's the gospel according to Luke. The reason we call it the gospel of Luke is because Luke wrote it, right?

0:53 We attribute that. There's nobody really that that that questions that. You know, all of Christendom and all the study I've done, the the it's it's not disputed. He's considered to be the author. Okay?

1:08 So so that's an important thing as we start but it's not Luke didn't make it up. Okay? This is not a story that Luke wrote. Right? When you have an author, frequently he makes up what is written.

1:19 Right? It's from his mind to the paper, from the paper to us. Right? That's not the case either. It's really about what Luke recorded.

1:29 Okay? And that's important that this distinction today and we're going to we're going to develop that a little bit more as we go forward. Okay? And and so, it's really a gospel as recorded by Luke. Okay?

1:41 Important to remember that. Foundation, let's start there. That's where we're going. So I'm going to give you a little... I'm going to give you a preview of what we're going to do and where I hope to get to.

1:51 Okay? You're going start with knowing where we're going. Okay? It's a little bit of a specialness of the book of Luke. Okay?

1:59 Now, we call it a book. It's really a document. I don't know if he wrote it as a book. I don't think they bound it up. It might have had, you know, rolled up in a scroll.

2:08 I don't know but we're going to call it the document. We call it a book but we're going to examine that by taking up four verses there in the beginning of Luke. Luke chapter one one through four. We're going all the way through verse four today, and then Ray will pick it up at verse five. But then we're gonna look at the author a little bit, the author who we call Luke, okay?

2:28 And look at it here in Acts chapter one verses one through three. We're gonna pick that up a little bit there, see how they relate, talk a little bit about that. Then we're gonna talk about the subject of Luke. That's the most important part, but if we don't have the first two right, we don't understand the subject well or we may not understand it well. We're going also take a little bit of time to talk about a bridge from where we have been.

2:51 You know, we we kind of spend a whole bunch of time over here on the wall, right? In in the prophets time and and the historical aspect and how it it it ends up being over here. Build a bridge to what we talked about for the New Testament. Okay? That's our purpose today.

3:06 What we hope to accomplish is this. Can you trust it? Okay? That's the important part. Can you trust what we're going to study here?

3:14 We're going spend a lot of time on this. We don't even know how long it's going to be, but we intend to study Luke, and it'll take quite a while. Can you trust the book? Can you trust the author and the subject matter? Okay?

3:26 That's really important basis for us to start. Let's start there before we start to study. So on we go. I told you we'd start these four verses, okay? And I'm just gonna read them here as they're up there.

3:40 It says, in as much as many have taken into hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered to them. Or deliver... The word delivered them to us. It seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. So this is how it starts.

4:14 Not every book, not every epistle, not everything that we read in the Bible starts with such a sound introduction, I'll say. And so I think I thought it was important to just start with the introduction. What did the author mean? What did he intend? Okay.

4:28 So let's talk a little bit about what he said. The first thing they start with, and I, you know, I tried to get away from this, but he starts off with this word, in as much as. How many of you use that in your daily conversation? Oh, Jim does all the time. Okay.

4:44 In as much as. So, you know, I I looked through all the English translations, you know, you can do that on Bible Gateway. And and they use it as much as in like 75, 80% of em. You know, that must be the best translation but essentially, what we're trying to say is since or seeing that this has happened, okay? That's what it is much as means.

5:05 Okay, that's that's we'll get started there. It says, many, okay, this is not the only one and we know that from our own Bible, right? That there are four gospels, right? One of them is attributed to Luke. This is the one we're going to study.

5:18 He says many have done this narrative. A narrative is a written down accord of what happened, okay, or something that happened. In this case, it's a true written accord, okay? And that's what we're talking about. A narrative, many had done it, and he decides it's his turn to do this one.

5:38 Okay? It came from eyewitnesses and ministers. Okay? People that had actually seen what he recorded here were eyewitnesses. And then people that had taught him that were ministers of it.

5:49 They delivered it to him and taught him and others, in this case, in particular, this guy Theophilus, who we'll talk about in a second, he says, they delivered him to us, what people had seen, and and that's what I'm going to put down here, okay? Says, it's good to me to write an orderly account, and that's going to be something we'll talk a little bit more about too. It's an orderly account. Luke made a specific effort to say, hey, I think this should be done in this way. Okay?

6:20 He he he had some forethought to it. Okay? And it's a very orderly account, I think you'll find. Okay? Most excellent Theophilus.

6:44 Or it could be Theophilus is translated lover of God. Okay? So, it might be written to all of us, right? That we all those who love God. We could look at it either way.

6:58 Nobody really knows who this guy is. Okay? But it's written that way, and it's as if he's saying, look, you can now count on what I'm writing or I want you to be able to count on what I'm writing here. Okay? That's Luke's Luke's purpose, and that's where he starts.

7:15 Okay. Let's move on just a little bit to this last sentence. It says, I'm writing to you. Why? He says, I'm writing to you that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.

7:31 That you may know the certainty, or with certainty, that you may know that what you have been struck and instructed in is true. So he had been instructed, apparently, or there was instructions out there. There's this this oral history, right? The oral activity that was happening to say, I was there when Jesus was crucified. I was there when this happened.

7:54 I was there when the 5,000 were fed. Right? And over and over again, the apostles would say this. Others who were there would say, I was there too. I remember that.

8:03 Okay, so this had happened for, you know, if put the death of Christ and, you know, His resurrection and then His ascension, He left the earth, let's call it A. D. Thirty three, Okay? Somewhere around there. Alright?

8:17 At 30 some years old, he leaves the earth, but there's others that are saying for a long time, this is what happened. But now here we are about thirty years later when Luke's writing and he says, hold on. It's time for us to write this down. I'm not the only one either. Several of us have taken into account to try and write it down.

8:39 And so here we are thirty some years later, and they're coming to this realization. We don't know exactly how, but we have to believe the Holy Spirit was leading them to say, look, there's folks that these eyewitnesses are leaving the earth. They're gone. And even though we had this ready expectation, the Lord that went into heaven, ascended into heaven, is coming back soon, it may not be. It may not be tomorrow.

9:02 It may be later. And you know what? We better write this down so that we do have an accurate account of what happened. Okay? And so here's Luke saying, others have done it.

9:13 I'm going to give you an orderly account. You know, and we'll talk a little bit about Luke and why his is special in that way. So he has a purpose there, but you can't listen to this particular purpose, if you will, without hearing an echo, right, or another purpose. Remember John would say this in chapter 20 verse 31, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So so here we have two writers.

9:48 One an apostle, one not, but you know, in and around the apostles will talk about that. And they both in later years, Luke, thirty years after the the Lord's gone, and in in the case of John, sixty years. Maybe the the the probably the last living apostle at that time, an old old man, right? Quote unquote, and and is reflecting and thinking, this is important. I see that this is important now.

10:16 So these two, both have Gospels here, have have this in mind. It's important that you know. It's important that you believe. Okay? And and here they've now recorded this.

10:45 There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias of the division of Abijah. His wife was of the daughters of Aaron and her name was Elizabeth. Now, what do you see in that right off the bat? History. History.

11:04 What else? Accuracy. Accuracy. Anything else? Lineage.

11:13 Names. What was the other thing? Lineage. Lineage. Right?

11:20 Explaining the time frame. History and time frame. You're absolutely right. So incredible amount of detail. Right?

11:27 This is a characteristic of Luke. We'll see later. Luke is mentioned as a physician. Likely a very learned man and a very orderly man and the way he writes. The way he writes is in a Greek style.

11:39 Okay. It's a it's a well executed document. Many people would say this is one of the most well preserved writings of antiquity. Okay? He gives history that can be matched other places.

11:53 You go to the book of Josephus or you go to other places where history was recorded, we can find that there was this guy named Herod, and he reigned for a period of time in Judea. We can go to the Old Testament and we can see, I think it's one Chronicles 24, where they divided the different sons of Aaron for their divisions, and one of those divisions... I'm sorry, I went too fast. One of those divisions was the division of Abijah, okay? Elizabeth was a daughter of Aaron.

12:25 So, they were both from the Levitical priesthood. It's you know, the the lineage of that that we we heard somebody say too. So a lot of detail. Okay, this is I'm not going to teach on this. Ray's going to talk about the details of this, but that's a very important characteristic of the book of Luke.

12:43 Watch for it as we go through. The details are important and that he put them in there on purpose. Okay? Another most important thing was if you look at the different gospels, there's such a thing terminology and I I'm trying to stay away from terms. Chris had problems with this mic and now I'm having trouble with it.

13:03 But the different terms of of, you know, I'll call em religious study terms, okay? But but we're going to you'll tip on em a little bit. Okay? This one's called the harmony of the gospels. If you match up all the gospels together, you know, and lay em side by side, there's a harmony to them.

13:22 Okay? Some portions of the or subjects will put it that way. Portions of subjects of scripture in Matthew were included in Mark. Some were also included in Luke. Some are unique to each one of them.

13:36 Okay? And John John has a lot of that too, but then he has a much different gospel. Okay? The the the the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered the synoptic gospels, gospels, meaning they are synopsis of the story. John wrote from a different perspective and and it's much different, okay?

13:56 So, that's just something to realize but if you look at this harmony and I I put it up there, this is from the blue letter Bible. I I pulled it off of the internet. You can see the different, you know, columns, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? So, this is a comparison. Look, here's a passage that's in all three of them, okay?

14:13 And but we might look at Luke and figure out that there are a few things that are unique about Luke, okay? One of the things is details. One of things is the things he included that nobody else did. So you might want to look for those things as we're walking through here. Here's one of them.

14:29 Okay? The parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the prodigal son. Now, how many of you know the story of the prodigal son? Does anybody not know it? The prodigal left and he came back and his father welcomed him.

14:44 He was in the pigsty. Tough times. Now, is there anybody that wishes that wasn't part of scripture? What a story. How much can it teach us?

14:56 How much does it change our hearts by listening to this parable that the Lord told? So we're glad that Luke has this in there. And so we can say, that's that's something we can make sure we pay attention to as we study Luke, okay? And if I, here's here's just my way of looking at it. You know, I I took these numbers and did some counting and you know, there's all these thoughts that are duplicated and then some of em are unique or subjects for a total of these.

15:24 I I would say that Matthew has 7% of his subjects. If you just add them up this way are unique. And then, you know, Mark is probably the one that is the least amount, right? Certainly, because most of what's in Mark is included one of the other gospels. You know, Luke's pretty unique.

15:45 There's quite a bit in there. It's a longer gospel. So, you know, a lot of unique activity and then John as well. So, it would be easy for us to say, look at this. Here's Luke.

16:00 He's got a lot of detail. He did a really good job, Right? He's very unique. He included some things that nobody else did. Right?

16:10 And so therefore, I think Luke is best. Okay? I think Luke is my favorite. Well, now that's okay. We can say that.

16:23 And when we look at things that he's written uniquely about, it's okay to say, yeah, Luke told us that. Luke taught us that. But we have to be careful that we don't cross the line here. Okay? We don't cross the line and say, Luke is right.

16:37 Everybody else is wrong. Or Luke has the right way of saying this. We don't have to worry about how anybody else says it. We want to take the full counsel of God. Okay?

16:47 And and so when when there's something that's written in Luke that we don't understand and we go someplace else to make it understand. We use the Bible to interpret the Bible. Okay? We use the Bible to help us understand the Bible. And we believe that this book was written by God.

17:27 The church holds it as authoritative these 27 books. Okay? These 27 books authoritative. Okay? Meaning we believe that they should be read in the churches.

17:41 They are accurate representations of what happened. They are accurate representations of who the lord was and what he did, okay? So, we look at that and we we then we start calling these scripture, okay? Important for us to make sure we understand it. There's another big word, canon.

18:00 Okay? The the books that are in the Bible is are called the canon, and people would regularly believe that these 27 should be there. Okay? And and we should take the full counsel of god. Don't get too far down the line of saying this is my favorite, and therefore I I I base all of my understanding on one verse or one book.

18:21 Okay? Alright. Let's move on. Let's move on to Acts chapter one verses one through three. Okay?

18:30 The former account I made, oh Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day in which he was taken up after he, through the Holy Spirit, had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his sufferings, after suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during the four... During forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Another introduction. Now, a lot in there as well. But if we look at this, what do you think the chances are that there's another Theophilus that they're writing about?

19:08 And what do you think the chances are that, you know, he says the former account I made. The point is these two books get linked together by their author. We believe that Luke wrote the gospel of Luke and he wrote the book of Acts, okay? And he's saying, look, I wrote that former account and now I'm writing this account. It's just, it's a continuation of the story.

19:30 In some ways, it's a break between the lord Jesus being present on Earth and the the Holy Spirit being present on Earth, okay? And so, this is what we're we're talking about and it's important to to some ways link these together and I'll tell you why I think that's important. Okay? It says that Jesus had given commandments to the apostles, okay? We believe the apostles were here on Earth chosen by the lord and given a special or a special mission, okay?

20:04 To establish the church here on Earth. They were the inspiration, if you will, having been inspired, if you will, by the Lord and then through the Holy Spirit, they wrote the scriptures or they inspired. They they were they were the source of the scriptures, okay? The source of the teaching that was happening at that time, okay? So, but Jesus give the commandments to the apostles.

20:29 The apostles gave the teaching. The teaching is now written down, okay? That's the order that we have here. Sorry if I stumbled through that a little bit. And and it it does say that he presented himself alive.

20:42 Now, that's having been dead. He then was alive by many infallible proofs. You know, Luke would say, I'm about the details. We we saw that a little bit before here. And he's saying, look, it's infallible.

20:54 You you can't debate this in his personal opinion. Okay? And if you go back and search the rest of the scriptures, there's many that would have this opinion. They even say that 500 people would have that opinion that that he was alive after having been dead, okay? Just important details.

21:36 One that treated the body and and help people that were ill, that kind of thing. One that had a mind like that as well. First or second Timothy four eleven, Luke alone is with me. It's a very special, I think, rec rec or recording of his relationship with Paul and that we would believe that second Timothy was the last book that Paul wrote. Very near the end of his life, you know, A.

22:00 D. Sixty seven, sixty eight, somewhere in there. And who's with him? Luke. Luke alone is with me.

22:09 Meaning, you know, he stuck with him. He was there all... Not all the time, but he spent a lot of time with him. And then in Philemon, when he writes this letter, he says, In Luke and my fellow workers, there were others with him as well, but Luke was with him at that time as well. A very constant, beloved, important companion of Paul, the Apostle Paul.

22:33 Okay, if you look into the book of Acts, there are certain portions where the writer of the book of Acts turns the point of reference around to say, we did this. They did this to us, we saw that, we went there. Okay? As opposed to they did this and they did that. So while he's recording the things that happened during these periods of time in the book of Luke and in the book of Acts, he turns it a little bit and says, we did this.

23:04 They did this to us. So what does that say about the author? He was there. He was there. Okay.

23:12 He was an eyewitness of some of these things. Okay. So let's see what he was eyewitness of. Well, if you look at Acts chapter 16, we're not going to read all this. He picks up Luke or he picks up Paul.

23:23 I'm sorry. In Troas, they go to Philippi, right? In the middle of that, Paul has this vision to go to Macedonia, sees the first conversion in Philippi of Lydia, the seller of purple where she's baptized, a slave girl who's demon possessed before she she's the demons cast out. She calls them servants of the god most high or I think I got that exactly right and so, Luke was included amongst that, right? And Paul and Silas get beaten.

23:55 They get imprisoned. The Philippian jailer about kills himself until he realizes Paul hasn't left prison but he's still there. He gets converted because of that, okay? So, Luke was a eyewitness to all this, alright? Then, in Acts chapter 20, he, Philip, Philippi to Troaz eventually on to Miletus, he sees Paul's preaching.

24:17 He's under Paul's teaching regularly. Uticus, this dude, a young man falls out of the window. I think from the 3rd Floor, they they think he's dead. Paul revives him, heals him. He comes back to life.

24:32 He saw that. The Ephesian elders meeting and exhortation. This is one of the most beautiful portions in scripture in my opinion where Paul goes and calls the Ephesian elders to him at Meletus and gives him this farewell address and exhorts them in a certain way. It it's a beautiful portion but Luke was either in the room or immediately there of he was with Paul at this time. Then, on from Miletus to Tyre and Caesarea eventually to Jerusalem along the way to Jerusalem.

25:04 Paul gets warned two times. Hey, don't go to Jerusalem. There's trouble waiting for you in Jerusalem, right? He sees the Philip, the evangelist, and and two of his daughters that are prophesying and then he meets this guy named Nathan. I think Mason, you spelled your name wrong.

25:20 Should be... Should have an n in it. But but so... No. There's a specific mention that this guy, Menason or however you say his name, was an early disciple.

25:32 So it sounds like he'd been there quite a while with with the lord. He meets James, one of the apostles and then the elders at Jerusalem. He's there when Paul gets arrested. He dresses the mob and then he's there as he's imprisoned for a couple of years and held. He eventually goes from Jerusalem by ship to Malta and on to Rome.

25:55 Guess who was with Paul during that time? Luke was there. Luke was shipwrecked. Luke experienced the salvation out of of doing that, okay? He saw the miracles at Malta.

26:08 He saw the serpent bite Paul and Paul didn't die, right? He saw Paul's house arrest there in Rome and he was there when Paul exhorted the Jewish leaders in Rome. A lot of stuff. Okay? A lot of things that he experienced personally himself.

26:39 Right? He had four. Luke was an accompaniment through three of them. Okay. Look at all the people he knew.

26:47 Lydia, Paul, Silas, the Philippian jailer, the Ephesian elders, Philip the evangelist, one of the seven. Okay. James, the elders. This guy Mason, the Jewish leaders. So he was, do I say rubbing elbows with a lot of the folks early in the church here.

27:07 It's important to remember that. Okay? He also was with Mark when he was, you know, the book of Philemon says that Mark was also with Luke. So he was an he was a, you know, acquaintance with Mark. And by extension, since Mark is related to Barnabas, I believe he probably knew Barnabas and we know Mark was you know, a close close to Peter and so, you know, you can go on from there.

27:34 He he was very acquainted with all these folks. If you look at chapter one and two of Luke, you'll see that there's things recorded there that only Mary could have known. Okay? And so Luke must have recorded them after having spoken with Mary or heard heard Mary's story. Okay.

27:53 He saw all this activity from visions to shipwreck to healings, all that. He experienced those things. And he was well traveled all around the known world at that time and where the church was planted, where the church was actually growing. So this was this is who Luke was. Okay?

28:15 This is not some guy that all of a sudden picked up a pen and said, You know what? I want to write a story. I'm gonna... Know, I I I heard this one day. No.

28:23 He was seeped in it. Okay? He actually spent time and knew about it quite a bit. He spent time with Paul just when Paul was in prison. Okay?

28:33 Maybe they, that's when they were writing. Maybe then, they were comparing notes. Maybe they spent a lot of time together, you know, putting things together and then, their their their relationship was almost twenty years long. You know, he picks them up in Troas here somewhere, call it AD fifty, thereabouts. And then, you know, he's with Paul when he writes two Timothy, call it AD sixty seven.

28:59 Paul dies at 68. Know, then so close to twenty years they spent time together. Alright. So I said this that the Lord Jesus made commandments, right? And then He gave that to the apostles.

29:15 The apostles taught. Okay? We believe that those words were inspired by the Lord, by God Himself. Okay? And here's a guy that spent a lot of time in and amongst the apostles, the teaching of the doctrine, the debate of the doctrine, etc.

29:35 As the church was forming. Okay. So that's who Luke is. Alright? That's why I believe his or among other reasons why I believe that his writings were authoritative even though he wasn't an apostle.

29:49 Okay? All right. Let's move on. Hebrews one:one-three says, God, who at various times and in various ways spoken time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purge our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

30:23 We're looking at these different introductions because they mean something. It's easy to skip these and get to the meat, right? But let's not skip over the introductions because it's important for us to understand this. The writer of Hebrews would say that god spoke through the prophets. Now, you know, this time in history over here on our wall is the time of the prophets, right?

30:44 The time when, you know, the lord has spoke through Moses and then Joshua and then, you know, everything sort of everybody did a everything their own way and you know, in the time of judges and then finally, you know, he he establishes a kingdoms, the kingdom split, that things goes awry and he sends these guys, these prophets, right? Hey, look what's going on and then there's a period of time where the the communication kind of stops, Okay? And and we talked about, you know, all that area in there. And then we picked up some some studying over here in our character studies about folks in the New Testament. Peter, John the Baptist, Tabitha.

31:26 But what's between those things, right? We're gonna talk about that. But I want you to think about this. God spoke through the prophets. Okay?

31:36 Oops, wrong one. Said, Now He's spoken by His Son. God spoke by the prophets. God spoke by His Son. Okay?

31:50 And it says that He, the Son, also purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High. But there we are. We have the prophets, the end of the prophets, and then eventually we got the church. Right? What is the bridge between them?

32:12 Okay? And it is essentially a record of God speaking through His Son. Okay? God spoke through His Son. The Gospels are a record of how the Son spoke.

32:24 He lived his life, a sinless life, etc. He gave teaching. He trained the Apostles. He... On and on we could go.

32:35 That's how the Lord spoke to us. And Luke has provided a record for us in that speech, if you will. I'm going to give you a spoiler alert. Okay? I'm going to tell you what the book's about.

32:48 If you haven't read it, I'm sorry. I bet you have read it. So it's important to think about this from an overall perspective. Okay? Number one, it starts out with this story about a little baby who was born to parents who had a little bit of a sketchy marriage arrangement slash etcetera.

33:09 So so there there's a little bit of controversy there in some people's minds. Okay? But he was born in a barn, so he didn't have to... He could always leave the door open. Yeah.

33:18 Were you born in a barn? Yeah. I was, so I can leave the door open. Alright. So, it didn't work.

33:23 His name was Jesus. They called his name Jesus. He moved around a bunch. Spent some time in Bethlehem then Egypt, end up in Nazareth. So, not unlike some of us who moved around.

33:37 He was a smart kid. Kind of wowed the the folks in the temple at one point, right? But he was a son of and eventually a carpenter. Normal story about a guy, right? He became a teacher, Had a few disciples that stood around.

33:53 A matter of fact, more than normal. He had a bunch of people that wanted to follow him because of the teaching that he did. Did some amazing feats. Eventually, he was falsely accused of something he didn't do, was convicted of that in what some people might call several kangaroo courts, and was tortured to death. We have to say that's the way he died.

34:20 He was tortured till he died. He gave up his life, we would have to say. I don't want to go too far with that. But anyway, he was buried in a tomb. But then he was saw alive by many infallible proofs, Luke would say.

34:39 And eventually he ascended into heaven. Now, let's back up. If you see all this, a baby, smart kid, teacher, convicted. Probably a lot of stories with that. With all those facts in there.

34:57 Right? Nothing special there. But what about this one? He's buried in a tomb, and more than 500 people saw him alive afterwards. How's that possible?

35:09 He was dead, and then he was alive. If that doesn't catch your attention, it should. It should. But if we go on, we would say that, you know, his parents were of a lineage, back to this idea of lineage. His parents was of a lineage that was forecasted in the Bible.

35:26 Okay? His birth was a miracle birth. He had no formal training and yet he was a smart kid and wowed everybody, right? And if you go back, nobody has ever accused him of sin. He grew up in a Jewish culture that had a huge amount of rules and law.

35:45 He's not accused of breaking one of them. Okay? These were nothing more than miracles, these amazing feasts. There's no way to explain how He fed the 5,000. But if you want to stretch and see if you can figure out a way, tell me how He raised Lazarus from the dead.

36:03 Nobody can explain that other than through a flat out miracle. It couldn't have happened without some act of God. Even the people that were there would say that. Okay? This death that he died was planned way ahead.

36:18 Okay. And it was a substitutionary death for me. He died as we talked about this morning. His blood was shed that I might be clean. Alright?

36:49 In and among us indwells us to lead as well. So, there it is. That's an amazing book. Okay? Add to it the fact that it was prophesied in the Old Testament.

37:05 Add to it the fact that there's many spots in the Old Testament that said, this is what's going to happen. This is what you will see. This is how you will know. And this is how we do know. He even quoted scriptures himself.

37:17 This is, you know, something that's important. You should remember this. All those kind of things. So the Old Testament prophecy is laced throughout this as well. History has recorded that the life of this man, of God here on earth, changed the world.

37:37 Not everybody believes that. Not everybody would agree with that. Not everybody likes the teaching. Not everybody... You know that.

37:42 But you cannot look at history. The two thousand years since this man, God, was on earth and not say that the course of history has not been changed. He changed the world. Question is, can He change me? Can He change you?

38:04 Alright. So we're back to reviewing. This is where I told you we're going to go. And now this is where we've been. Okay?

38:11 It's the Gospel as recorded by Luke. Alright? We took a look at the book and some of the unique special things about the book, right. So you can watch for those and make sure you understand them. We took a look at the author, okay.

38:25 And why Luke is a special guy, okay. Where he was and who he knew in order to write what he wrote. And then we talked about the subject, the subject of the book of Luke. And that's the most important thing. What is included in the book of Luke and why we should be listening to it.

38:45 Okay. The question is, and the question I asked you was, can you trust it? Well, I've only given you a taste of it. There's a lot of stuff written and there's more in the scriptures about it, but I would conclude that you can. Okay?

39:03 And as we go through, I hope if you're not convinced now that you can trust what's in the book, that you will go back and do your own study, and that you will convince yourself that it is trustworthy. That's important. And that's on every one of us to make sure we do that. Okay? Because the subject matter is too much to ignore.

39:25 You cannot read this book and not have to consider what does that mean for me? What does that mean? If this is true, what should I do? Okay. And I hope if you're going to listen to this subject that you can trust the author.

39:46 And I think he's trustworthy based on what we've read and what we've seen and all that we've talked about and much more. And therefore, this book study is going to be important to you and to me and to each one of us. Don't look at it as just the Sunday School version of Luke where we skip through in the prodigal and the you know, it's like the Sunday School version of David. You've take the whole book, the whole thing. Every day you come here, when we look at Luke, you have to ask yourself, what does that mean to me today?

40:20 How does that change my life going forward? How does that explain the way that I act? Luke is an important thing for us to study. It's always important for us to be here on Sunday to challenge ourselves to read the Scriptures if we believe this is the Word of God. Okay.

41:05 Will you trust that He has a sanctification that's yours to walk? Will you trust that the scriptures are from God? Will you trust that we all are trying to achieve that? So I hope I hope this is helpful to get us started, and I'm looking forward to the time as we go forward. Let's pray.

41:32 Father, we're so grateful that you've given us a recording of what happened Lord, and we're thankful we can trust it. Lord we pray that we would and that we can can teach that way going forward and that we can learn that way going forward as well. So take us Lord. Keep us safe. Keep us headed in the direction that you would have us to go.

41:54 It's in your son's precious name that we pray. Amen.