The Message For All; Book Of Luke — Luke 23-24

0:00 Okay. So good morning. It's great to be with you. Really great to be with you. So we're gonna look at the Gospel of Luke.

0:08 I've been told that you've been going through the Gospel of Luke the last few months. And so I was asked to kind of give a brief overview of the book of Luke, as well as deal with some specific issues regarding the Gospel of Luke and the Gospels as a whole. And as we're thinking about this question of looking at the Gospel of Luke and what it teaches us and why the Lord has led the author Luke to write this Gospel, we have to kind of think of the question of why do we have four gospels and not like one giant mega gospel? Like, why didn't we have... Why didn't Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get together and just have like mega gospel?

0:59 Why do we have four? Because really when we think of the scripture, the scripture as a whole, having four gospels is more complex than having one. If we just had one, life would be a little bit simpler as we read scripture. But here we have four, which complicates things because there seems to be some differences between these different these different texts. So what we're going to see here in looking at the Gospel of Luke and looking at these four gospels, it really comes down to what is a gospel.

1:37 And that's kind of the question here. What is a gospel? And when we think of the gospels as a whole, of them as a genre, the gospels each have their own sort of perspectives, their own emphases, their own themes, and the way that they are telling the story of Jesus. There's one Jesus, one life of Jesus, but there are four presentations of his life. And so what we'll see here in looking at what is a gospel, when we think of its type of genre, we have maybe different perspectives of what a gospel is.

2:18 And as we'll see here in a moment, that there is... When the original readers of the gospels, they would have been familiar with this type of text because there were other texts similar to it. But when we look at the gospels as a genre, they have kind of four features, if you will. And when I think a lot of times we boil the gospels down to just one or maybe two of them, and we prioritize just one or just two, and that's it. And I think when we do that, we start to run into trouble of trying to piece the different gospels together, and then also seeing what the gospels individually are doing by themselves.

3:03 So the gospels as a genre are historical. They are claiming to be... To give historical information. They're talking about real people in real places who did and said real things. And I think sometimes when we think of the gospels, that's all that we think of them as.

3:20 Like, here's like the history of what Jesus did and said. But if we only read the gospels as history and nothing else, you're gonna have problems because the Gospels don't always agree in exactly how Jesus words things or says things or what order he does things. So if we're just reading it as kind of like newspaper or historical, like some guy with a monocle, I don't think historians actually wear monocles, but like this is how we're going to do it, then we get ourselves in trouble. But they are telling us history. They are historical documents and they are actually the earliest documents that we have for the life of Jesus.

4:01 They're also theological. They're trying to teach something about who Jesus is, about how we relate to God, and what that means for us in our own lives in living. So there is a theological component to these as well. There's, to put it kind of bluntly, they have an agenda. The gospel writers are not neutral, writing neutral history.

4:26 They want to lead you somewhere to believe and to do something. So they're also theological. Sometimes we'll hear of different different scholars will say like, oh, well, the gospels... You can't trust the gospels because they're religious documents and they have their own agenda. Everybody has their own agenda.

4:46 And that's real... Like, even all the historical documents that we utilize to reconstruct history, to reconstruct Roman history have their own agenda, have their own theological, historical, political biases that doesn't automatically mean that the gospels are thus no longer unreliable. So they are historical, are theological, and they are also narratival. PowerPoint says this is not a real word, but I think it is. So it's my PowerPoint.

5:16 Narratival. It means that the gospel writers are trying to tell a story. Right? They're creating a narrative. And so they are spending much time and effort into shaping how they're going to arrange the story.

5:33 That is going to yield what their particular purposes, themes, and emphases that they want to bring out in their overall text. Like they're not just giving you, here's what Jesus said. They're giving you what he did. And they're presenting it in various ways, and they're creating different ways of highlighting different characters and emphasizing things to that narrative end. And then finally, and I think all of these are crucially important, but many times we forget this final one, that the gospels are also there for virtue formation.

6:08 They are there not to just impart information, to not just tell you what you should believe, or what actually happened, or to entertain you for a good story. It's meant to lead us somewhere in how we live our lives in this world and before the Lord. So when we think of the Gospels, each of the Gospels have these four elements within them. And this relates to why we are going to have different Gospels such as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because they have same story of Jesus, but they have different theological, narratival, virtue forming, and historical ends that they're trying to get to. Additionally, with this, the New Testament Gospels are a genre, are utilizing a genre that would have been familiar within the Roman world.

7:30 Like there is narratival aspects to it. There is political agenda aspects to it, but it's a historical. It's not a novel. Like when people are writing bio, these ancient biographies, they're not there to write a novel of mythical events. They're there to tell about real people in real places.

7:49 And this should also help us as we're thinking of reading the gospels is that these are... We have different expectations for what constitutes history or how we should read these, the historical, narratival, theological, and virtue formation. And it needs to be not from our expectations, but from their expectations of what would have been appropriate within their particular culture. So for instance, I really like history and so I wanted to learn more about World War II and the Cold War. So I got an audio book, because there's no way I was reading this 16,000 page book on Harry S.

8:35 Truman. And it's, he's the guy who won the Pulitzer for it, and it's supposed to be a great book. But he spends hours of listening to it. It's like pages, like hundreds of pages. I don't know many pages, it's like it was long.

8:49 About Harry s Truman's grandparents. And I was like, that's great. I bought this book not because I was interested in his grandparents or his parents or his childhood. I was interested in World War two. That's why I bought this book.

9:02 Can we skip to page 500 maybe? But in like, in the way that we do history, and this is why it won the Pulitzer Prize, is that you have to give all that long drawn out detail in order for it to be considered good history. From a Greco Roman perspective during the time of the New Testament, you don't need all of that. Just jump right into the guy's life. A little comment about maybe his birth, his early years, and then jump to the main point of his life, and then his death.

9:29 That's it. And this is what we see in the gospels too. It's like why does four of our gospels not even mention Jesus' birth? It's like the Gospel of Mark, I love the Gospel of Mark. Luke's great too, but I really like Mark.

9:42 I'm partial to Mark. He just jumps to Jesus being baptized. That's it. And that would be very appropriate. That's good history within the Greco Roman world.

9:53 And additionally, this goes with the narratival perspective. Within telling good history, authors are free to move scenes, events around as it meets their kind of narrative purpose. That's not doing bad history to move something to emphasize. That's part of what it means to do good history. From our perspective, it's like, hey, what you doing?

10:17 That's not how we do good history. But from theirs, that constitutes good history and part of how we would read an ancient biography. We'll see how this comes into play in just a few moments. Now, as we read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have these four Gospels, three of which are called the Synoptic Gospels, which means that they're to be read together. And there's kind of two ways that we can read the gospels.

10:49 We can read them as we can see the lines here. This is... Stretch my education here. We can read them horizontally. I always get this backwards.

10:59 Right? Horizontally? Yeah. Okay. Good.

11:01 I'm getting some nods. Alright. Horizontally. Or we can read them vertically. When we read the Gospels horizontally...

11:09 Yep. This is going be a real struggle. Think hard, JC. When we read the gospels horizontally, we're reading them in comparison with one another. So we're looking at what Luke has to say, and how does Mark read that same story?

11:24 Or how does he change it? How is it slightly different? Or how does John do this? Or why does John not include this material? That's what it means to read it horizontally, with the other gospels.

11:39 To read a Gospel vertically is to only prioritize that individual Gospel. So we're going be looking at the Gospel of Luke today and his sort of emphases and themes that he has. So we're just going to be prioritizing the Gospel of Luke. That's vertical. We're just paying attention to Mark, or we're just paying attention to John.

12:03 And we're not really worried about what is Luke doing or what is Matthew doing, we're just looking at that individual gospel. Now, I think a lot of times the way that we read the gospels as believers is we tend to prioritize that horizontal reading over that vertical reading. And I think that there's a healthy way to read them in comparison with one another. But I think we end up creating that mega gospel. But God has given us four distinct gospels that are separate from one another, and so we need to really prioritize that vertical reading of what is Luke telling us.

12:46 Why is Luke unique? Why has the Lord given us the Gospel of Luke? So we'll look at that here in just a moment. And one of the ways that we can see how the things that Luke is trying to prioritize is also by comparison of what does he include or what does he change or what does he leave out from some of the other gospels, as we'll see in a moment. Now, if we think about Luke, our good old buddy Luke and his writings, this is actually, I did a Google search, this is my top research skills here.

13:19 This is apparently at the Cleveland Museum of Art, I

13:22 think that's the name of it. So this is

13:23 a leaf of a page with a picture of Luke, And I'm sure he looked just like that. But anyways, I thought that was kind of neat that I was coming here today. Okay, anyways, so Luke. Luke and his writings. So Luke, as you probably know, is known as a doctor, as a physician.

14:08 He has kind of unique things that he wants to to press on, and perhaps his identity as being a quote unquote outsider among many Jewish believers helps shape his understanding of who Jesus is and how he wants to present Jesus to others under the inspiration of Jesus. He's also a coworker with Paul, as you probably know. And so this leads into, when we think of his writings, this association with him with Paul, is this connection between Luke and Acts. See, what we've done in the order, the arrangement of our scripture is that we have Luke, then John, then the book of Acts. Right?

14:52 But really, Luke and Acts go together. That's why we have the hyphen here. It's not Luke and Acts, it's Luke Acts. And this is essential for understanding what Luke is doing in these two volumes. You have part one and you have part two.

15:08 It's not like Luke did really well with the gospels. Like, wow. It's flying off the shelves. This is just such a successful book. I guess I'll have a sequel and we'll do the Acts of the Apostle.

15:18 Like, from the very beginning, Luke has intentionally written these two to go together. So many of the themes, the structuring devices that he has in the Gospel of Luke carry over into the book of Acts as well. We see that Luke has a familiarity with the other gospels. He clearly knows of the gospel of Mark, and maybe he knows Matthew as well. And he also uses geography as a structuring device.

15:47 So geography is important. Where things are matter for how he's going to order and arrange the overall narrative of his gospel. Okay. So brief overview. Now we're gonna get into the good stuff about the gospel of Luke.

16:03 Thanks for hanging with me. So themes and structure. What themes and structure do we have in the gospel of Luke? Well, we have an emphasis on Jesus' innocence, that he is this righteous one, that he was condemned and to die unjustly, that he had done nothing wrong. There's a heavy emphasis on the spirit.

16:24 Like this is present in the Gospel of Luke as well as in the book of Acts as well. And then we also have the strong emphasis throughout the Gospel of Luke on repentance and forgiveness. That this is what is to be proclaimed to all the nations, and this is the right response by humanity to the Lord. And then we also have this emphasis, very, very strong emphasis of salvation is for all. And I think this is perhaps where Luke's identity as a gentile comes into how he's going to build and encode the narrative, is that he wants to show that this is...

17:06 That Christianity is not just for Jews. It's not just for one people, for one type of person, or just for the righteous. It is for all people. So he loves to tell stories of Gentiles coming to the Lord. He loves to tell stories of the poor finding healing, finding liberty from the Lord.

17:28 He loves to tell of women coming to the Lord and their inclusion, their full inclusion into the kingdom of God. So he loves to show that those that are in the margins, those that are the outsiders, those that are the outcasts are brought into, not in a second class citizen, but are brought into full unity within the body of Christ. So we'll see some examples of that here in a little bit. Now, there's different ways that we can understand what Luke is doing, how he structures his gospel. But I like this one.

18:02 This is kind of based off of the geography, as we mentioned earlier, of we have this initial prologue of the first two chapters. We know that that great... The Peanuts Christmas story where he tells them the days of Caesar Augustus. Right? And we know we're familiar with...

18:20 This is usually what shapes Christmas plays. So we're familiar with this passage. But then we also have Jesus in Galilee, then a journey to Jerusalem. If you notice just by the chapter markers, that this takes up the majority of the Gospel, is this kind of meandering journey that Jesus takes to Jerusalem, and then his time in Jerusalem itself. Now I want to just focus on this section, Jesus in Galilee here.

18:49 And we have, I think this is where you really begin to see some of Luke's emphases and a really key one in how he deviates from the other four Gospels and how he tells the story of Jesus. Here in Mark... Not in Mark, in Luke's gospel, he begins Jesus after his birth and this event when he's 12. You have this preparation of ministry in chapter three through chapter four, and then you have the scene here of Jesus' very first sermon in how Luke presents it. Now if we are just reading vertically, we see that this is like the very first thing that Jesus does in his ministry.

19:33 But if we read horizontally in comparison with the other gospels, what seems like it most likely happens historically is that Jesus, this event where Jesus gives the sermon in his hometown of Nazareth, this happens later in his ministry. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' ministry starts in chapter one, but then you don't get his sermon, which we're about to look at, in the city of Nazareth until like chapter seven. So much later. But Luke here has fronted this particular scene of Jesus' sermon, in his hometown of Nazareth because he wants us to see Jesus through this particular lens. This is the way he wants us to see who Jesus is in his gospel.

20:53 And it says this, the spirit of the Lord, and he's gonna quote, he's reading from Isaiah now. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim. And here, just note here, this is like the theme verse. So one of the theme verses the Gospel of Mark. Right?

21:11 He has anointed me, the Spirit of Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then right after he does this in verse 20, and he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And so by Luke kind of bringing the scene to the front of how he's introducing Jesus in his ministry, he wants to show what type of Jesus do we have here.

22:03 What was like at the forefront of his thinking? It's this verse. I almost think of it like a song that's stuck in his head. You ever have a song just looks like constantly stuck in your head? It's like usually some stupid toothpaste commercial or something like that.

22:16 It's like, please no, no more of this. I can't sleep. I just like to go to sleep, but I can't. That's not how this is for Jesus. Like, this is the type of thing that it is constantly on his mind of thinking about bringing good news to the poor.

22:32 So many times we have this picture of Jesus as like, okay guys, you're doing everything wrong. Let me tell you how to actually do it and follow it to a t or you're all going to get fried. Like, never consciously say that. But sometimes I think we have that sort of view about Jesus. But Luke wants to highlight what type of Jesus, what type of God we have.

22:52 We have a God who is intimately concerned with all of our needs and is meeting all of our needs. To those that are well-to-do and those that are the downcast and the outcast, that is who our God is. And Luke wants to show us with this scene, and then what he's gonna do throughout the throughout the gospel is he's going to provide all these different scenarios that show how he loves to give good news to the poor. How he loves to bring liberty to the captives. Recovery of sight to the blind.

23:25 Like, this is not just like, hope you get better. Like he's actually going to fulfill these things. Liberty for the oppressed and the year of the Lord's favor. He is bringing his kingdom in, and he will make all things new. So we have this presentation of, this beautiful presentation of a Jesus who is intimately concerned about his people.

23:49 And this is not just true for those in Israel. The whole purpose that Luke is trying to give this is that teaching us as believers, this is the God that we serve. He cares for you. Isn't that beautiful? Like, he knows of our suffering.

24:06 He knows of our joys. He knows of our sufferings, and he wants to meet those needs. That is the type of God that we have. And that's one of the things that's unique here about how Luke tells the story. The other gospels, they tell a similar story, but Mark...

24:21 Excuse me, Luke just loves to emphasize this aspect of Jesus. Now if we look at another aspect, the second section, which is really the real... The core where Luke spends a lot of his time in the gospel, is this journey to Jerusalem, where again we're thinking about geography. We have him up in the North in his beginning of his ministry in Galilee, And then you have to get from Galilee to Jerusalem where he will suffer and die and be raised from the dead. And that in between part where he's traveling, where he's journeying, journeying, he was traveling, that he spends a lot of time.

25:05 And part of the way that he tells, that Luke tells the story of Jesus' travels here is this journey, but Jesus doesn't go like straight there. He has this kind of like long meandering. He's going this way, he's going that way. He's not taking the highway. Right?

25:22 Like he's not taking I 80 with the toll road and just like, zoop, there you go. He's taking the slow scenic route. Right? And Luke seems to use this idea of Jesus' historical journey and uses it as sort of a literary device to show the journey that Jesus is on. And this shows, this wandering sort of journey shows his resolve.

25:47 I love how this section in Luke chapter nine, and how this section begins when Jesus starts his journey to Jerusalem. It says this, in verse 51, when the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And then verse 53, but the people did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. Like his mindset is like, I am going to Jerusalem, nothing will dissuade me. And so as he moves through, he has this result, he is not just like, I don't want to go to Jerusalem, let's find everybody.

26:27 He is going to Jerusalem, he has made this decision to go to suffer and to die. And additionally to this, Luke also wants to play on this idea of the journey is that as Jesus goes on this journey to Jerusalem and revealing of his heart and revealing of who he is, he invites us as his disciples to also embark on that journey. Like this is not just something of, isn't this interesting of what it tells us about Jesus. Luke's purpose and all of the gospel authors, they're trying to do something with their text. And it's not just to inform, it's to lead us somewhere.

27:09 Right? Virtue formation. To form us as disciples. And as Jesus goes about on this journey, we, he desires and invites us to follow him. Because sometimes like our our way of following Jesus, sometimes it's very, very wandering.

27:28 But even in that, we can still follow him. He invites us to follow him on that journey as he goes. And through this section, Jesus loves to, or excuse me, Luke loves to pepper especially this section with the... What I call the gospel for the outcasts. Where he has all these different scenes where he he...

27:51 Jesus meets these Gentiles, these sinners, these various individuals that are socially like, I don't want anything to do with that person. And Jesus meets them, welcomes them, and brings them in. So you have this welcoming of sinners. You have numerous passages here, and there are many more in the text and a couple that we'll look at. But just in this section, like notice lots, like this is a major theme that Luke wants to emphasize here.

28:20 And for many of these people, if we look at Luke chapter 15, in Luke chapter 15, I think this helpfully shows this. Luke 15, we know very well because it's got these three parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and then the lost son. Right? The prodigal son. And we know these stories of Jesus that Jesus tells of something being lost and then someone going and finding them.

28:51 But notice of how Luke introduces these stories of Jesus in Luke chapter 15 verse one. Now the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to him, to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them. So here we have a conflict. Here we have a problem between Jesus and the Pharisees.

29:19 These tax collectors and sinners are coming to Jesus and the Pharisees and he's welcoming them. And the Pharisees are going, uh-uh. No. This guy... This shows this guy is bonkers.

29:30 I'm sure they actually said that. But it shows that this guy is not the true prophet of God because of his actions. Because in their perspective, they were concerned and they were worried about that if you got too close, whether physically or just in your interactions with someone, if you got too close to undesirable, to a gentile or someone who is spiritually unclean, that that uncleanness would transfer onto that individual. So they're not dealing with germ theory, but it's almost like spiritual dirt that gets on them. And that as that...

30:06 As someone would go through life, whether through sin or through normal aspects of life, that they would accumulate spiritual dirt. And you had to go through all these different means to get rid of that spiritual dirt, that ritual impurity or uncleanness. And this is contagious. Some groups were super vigilant about maintaining their ritual purity. And the Pharisees are one of these groups.

30:29 They want nothing to do with these people. Because they're concerned about obtaining their uncleanness. But what we see is so beautiful about Jesus. He's not worried about obtaining these individuals, the tax collectors, the sinners who are like the highest on the list of the most unclean people in the Pharisees eyes. Though they're the worst.

30:55 Jesus is not worried about gaining their uncleanness. He's worried about them gaining his righteousness. I love, there's a book by Craig Blomberg. He calls it this contagious holiness. And so here, he tells these stories in verse three.

31:13 Like he has the scene of his welcoming the tax collectors and sinners. And the Pharisees and the scribes, they're not on board with this. They think this is just really terrible. And he says, so he told told them this parable. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son.

31:33 About how the Lord goes out and rescues those that are lost. Luke is the only one that gives us these parables. Right? And the other gospels play with this idea of this contagious holiness, but Luke loves to emphasize how Jesus extends and goes beyond those bounds to bring them into himself, to bring them to that true purity of heart, that contagious holiness. He's concerned not of gaining their impurity, but of giving them his purity.

32:08 That's a beautiful Jesus. We have a reversal of outsiders and insiders. You think of the story in Luke 18 of the Pharisee who's I've done all this great stuff. And then you have the tax collector who doesn't even raise his head up to heaven and says, I am... Let's just read it, because I'm going to botch it.

32:30 I already did botch it. Let's just read it. When the inverse 13, but the tax collector standing far off would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this is what Jesus says, I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. So there you have this reversal of the one who is humble, the one who submits before the Lord, no matter their outward status, can find salvation in the Lord.

33:04 But those that exalt themselves and don't seek the Lord will not be exalted. And then we have this kind of climax here at the end of this section of this journey in chapter 19 of Jesus' interaction with Zacchaeus. And he was a little man, and a little man was he. Okay. Thank you.

33:26 Thank you. Somebody recognized that that was... Okay. This is my Sunday school education paying off. Alright.

33:52 Zacchaeus. Like when you listen to that song, we little man will see, it sounds cute. This guy is like arch villain number one. He is not only a tax collector, but is a chief tax collector and was rich. That's how that's how Luke describes him.

34:10 So it's like, All these like qualifications that are like, no, this is not a good dude. And then you just have this playful scene of him, he wants to see Jesus, but he can't see Jesus, so he climbs up into this tree so that he can see Jesus. And Jesus doesn't look at him and just go like, what a loser. There's probably other individuals that are looking at this wealthy, like wealthy guys, tax collectors are not going and climbing sycamore trees for fun. Like that's not part of the social function in that social position.

34:45 This is a weird scene. And there are people probably laughing at this guy, and Jesus doesn't laugh at him. Notice his response. It's kind of a weird scene. Right?

34:55 For many reasons. But Jesus' response is kind of weird because he says, hey, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house today. Which seems like, you can't just invite yourself over to people's houses, Zacchaeus. That seems slightly rude. But it is a sign of Jesus welcoming in Zacchaeus.

35:16 Because you don't go and have a meal... To go and have a meal with someone in the ancient world was a sign of fellowship, of friendship, and togetherness. And so by Jesus initiating this, he recognizes that Zacchaeus is looking for this, and so he initiates this with him. To create that bond and that fellowship. And then it has at the end here, it says, he says this about Zacchaeus, verse nine.

35:42 Today salvation has come to this house, since he is also a son of Abraham. Then notice verse 10, which is maybe like the key verse to all of the Gospel of Luke. For the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. That is who Jesus is. He has come to seek and to save the lost.

36:06 Not the righteous, not everyone who's got it all together because no one's righteous, really. And no one's got it all together, really. He has come to seek and save the lost. He's not looking for perfection. He's not looking for performance.

36:23 He's looking for us to come to him, and he comes and finds us. I love that scene. It's probably, I doubt it's historical. I love that scene in that movie Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce. There's a scene in there where his butler or something like that asks him like, Sir, have you found God?

36:43 And William Wilberforce says, I think he found me. And this is such a great line because at the heart of the gospel, it's not us trying to meet God. Here's all these great things that I've done. Here's all the performance. Here's all like, it's him coming and meeting our need.

37:00 In the moment of our salvation and throughout our entire lives is going to him, submitting to him, and having him work in our lives on that way of that journey of discipleship. Then we have this as well in Jesus while he's in Jerusalem, and we see that the same themes that we've had throughout the Gospel of Luke of forgiveness, of repentance, of of the outcast, all converge together at the cross. And so what we see here, these are unique Gospel of Luke, they're unique to Luke. Luke is the only one that provides these for us. If you look at Luke 23 verse 34, let's just read verse 33 for context, and it says this, And when they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.

38:50 Forget this, I'm done with all this pain. Like to think of a crucifixion, it's the most horrific way to die physically. It's state torture. It's actually a super inefficient way to kill someone, but it's a super efficient way to torture someone. And it's spectacle.

39:13 The whole point of a crucifixion is to create this spectacle of mockery and shame, of destroying a person's psyche and persona and image in the world. That's what a crucifixion was. And that's what they're doing to Jesus. And his response in light of that is, Father, forgive them. His heart goes out, not just to those that are accepting of him, but those that are crucifying him, who have placed him there, that have betrayed him.

39:42 That is where his heart is. That is who our God is. We also have this scene here in verse 43 with the thief. Both thieves are yelling and mocking Jesus, but for whatever reason, one thief has a change of heart. When he says this in verse 42, you probably know this passage well, and he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

40:13 Verse 43, and he said to him, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. The most unlikeliest of individuals, today. There's that theme of today as well. We saw that with Zacchaeus, today salvation has come. You have that in chapter four, today salvation year.

40:33 Today is the year of the Lord's favor. Here at the moment of Jesus' death, today salvation is here. You have Jesus' innocence with the confession of the centurion. Man, truly this man, is innocent. And then you have his physical resurrection as well in '24.

40:56 There's so much here that, like just giving such a brief cursory overview of the Gospel of Luke. But Luke wants to show us, he gives us some of the greatest details of the resurrection. The fact that Jesus is not raised just as a spirit, but he's been raised physically, one that eats and that has flesh and bone, just as we have as well. Then the gospel concludes with this, with Jesus' final teaching as Luke records it in the Gospel of Luke before he moves on to part two of the book of Acts. He has this in verse forty six and forty seven.

41:36 When he says, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer on the third day, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. So here you have this emphasis, again, of the converging of all of those themes that Luke has laid out in the life and actions and heart of Jesus throughout the gospel, converging again in Jesus' final words to conclude the gospel of, he suffers and dies for us, for the outcast, and that we need to turn to him, this repentance, and find that repentance and forgiveness in him. And that this should be going out and shared by us. Something for us to adopt, for us to take. He is our Lord, and we go and share that with others.

43:08 We thank you Lord for this book of Luke and what it describes of the heart of your son. Father, we just pray that we would have the right picture of who you are. That you are not a vindictive type of God who just wants this pound of flesh. That you are a God who takes on our suffering. That your son has taken on our sin.

43:36 That we may have your holiness. We thank you so much, Father, for who you are, your love and your mercy towards us. And we pray that we would follow you. That we would live for you, and that we would share you. We love you Father and we ask all these things in your son's name.

43:53 Amen.