Please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of according to Luke. This month we're going to look at the Gospel of Luke, particularly the first two chapters. That's where the Christmas story is found there. Luke's Gospel is written by Luke, the beloved physician, the companion of Paul and Paul's missionary ventures. Luke is a Greek. The Gospel, according to Luke, is just the first half of Luke's writing. He continues his writing in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. The book of Luke tells us about the kingdom of God and the gospel in the coming of Christ and his suffering, death, burial and resurrection. And the book of Acts tells us about how the good news, the gospel of that kingdom of Christ, was spread from Judea to Samaria to the outermost parts of the earth. It's written in the mid-60s toward the end of the lives of those who witnessed what Jesus did and who heard Jesus' teach. And Luke is concerned to put together an orderly account of all the testimonies of Jesus' work and ministry. And he tells us that in our verses for this morning.
The person addressed in these verses is someone named Theophilus. And he addresses most excellent Theophilus. That means he's probably a Roman official or a noble man. He's certainly not Jewish, but of Greek or Roman descent. We know from his name, which means by the way God lover or lover of God. Over the next five weeks we'll be looking at these first two chapters in particular, but the whole of Luke's Gospel in general. So you'll be well served if you take time in your family devotions or in your private devotions to read the first two chapters of Luke in particular. And if you get really industrious to read Luke and Acts together. And I think it will give you a good picture of what the coming of the kingdom in Christ meant for Luke and his audience. But we want to look at the first four verses of the first chapter of Luke this morning, although we'll make reference to others. Here the first four chapters are first four verses rather from God's Word in the Gospel according to Luke. In as much as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word have handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well. Having investigated everything carefully from the beginning to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent theophilus. So that, and here you get an indication of the purpose of the whole of Luke and Acts together, so that you might know the exact truth. Some of your translations might say so that you might know with full conviction about the things you have been taught. Let's pray and ask God to help us to understand and apply His Word. Father, I pray that through your Word inspired and through your Word preached that the Christ of history may arise before us, so that we might worship Him this morning as He comes in human form. As the divine Son of God is joined in separately and perfectly with human nature, so that we might not only know Him and worship Him, but that His kingdom might come to reign in our lives. I pray that you would help me to know nothing except Jesus and Him crucified, and we pray to you in His name. Amen. My senior year in high school, I was coming to the end of my career in organized sports. I was a sprinter, but at one of our practices, the coach told us that after we did a certain number of drills, then to run a quarter mile to finish up our practice, and he would time us in that quarter mile. I finished with the extra things pretty quickly, and so I began my quarter mile, and athletes sometimes talk about being in the zone. That is when everything just comes together in a perfect way so that the athlete performs at a level that he's never performed at before. It was something about the temperature that day, the wind, the condition of the track, and just something in my body that day where everything worked together perfectly, and I completed that quarter mile in what I was sure was less than 60 seconds. Now, that's not a world record time, it's not even a school record time where I went to school, but it's a pretty good time, especially for somebody who usually doesn't run that long of a distance. And as I crossed the finish line waiting to hear my time announced from the coach, he looked up to see me and he said, be sure and run that quarter mile, Glotto. He had missed the whole thing. Probably the best quarter mile of my life without doubt the best quarter mile of my life, and I ran it in practice and nobody even saw it. Sometimes we feel that way about Christmas. It's something that we read about or we've heard about, but it just doesn't seem to be real because we weren't there, because it wasn't such a distant time, because it took place in a place so far away. Daughters say quite confidently it never happened. It's like one of those cultural festivals where people combine strands of things they like in order to invent a celebration of some kind that is supposed to bring out the best in human nature. That's how many people look at Christmas. Or many people say, well, I wasn't there and I didn't see it so it doesn't make that much difference to me. In fact, it doesn't make any difference at all. Those are the kinds of things skeptics might say. But even Christians, even believers in what's reported to have happened at Christmas, can feel like it doesn't make much difference where they live. I don't know about you, but sometimes it's hard for me to imagine what it was like and to see how it relates to my present life. Well, Luke begins his account of the gospel to address just that kind of sense, just that kind of sentiment. He wants us to understand how the Christ child came in history and his result of that he wants us to see him and receive him as God's Messiah come to save his people. I want to show you that this morning from these firsts and I want to do it in three parts. The first thing I want you to see is that because of this connection with the prophets, we've mentioned already this morning because God's prophets spoke in history, we must see God in his rule over history. Now, you've heard about prophets, many of you. Most of you, when you think of Christmas and the prophets, you think of the many predictions of Christ's coming that are found in the prophets of the Old Testament. And while it's true that the prophets of the Old Testament did declare that a day would come when God would send his anointed one or his Messiah, it's more than that. The prophets of the Old Testament did not merely predict the coming of the kingdom of God in the Messiah but the prophets of the Old Testament represented the presence of God among his people. So it's not just prediction, it's presence. Now, we could talk about different Old Testament prophets who spoke of Jesus and is coming. But we've got one right here in the opening chapters of Luke. We've got the last prophet of the Old Testament that is John the Baptist. In the verses that follow the ones I read this morning, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist is told that John will be born to him in Elizabeth. And Luke writes of that in verse 16, he says, and he will turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. And he continues in verse 17, and it is he who will go as a forerunner before him, before God, in the spirit and power of Elijah. Now, what Luke is referring to here is that Malachi, the last Old Testament prophet, the last time God had spoken and inspired and inscribed way to his people, that he wrote in Malachi that God in the last days before the day of the Lord, he would send Elijah the prophet of the Old Testament. He would send a person in the office of Elijah to prepare the way for God. And in that sense, John is the last of the Old Testament prophets because he is the fulfillment of God's promise to send Elijah. And we see later on in the book of Luke a key to understanding all of what Luke wrote when he says that until John, the prophets preached the law. But since then, the gospel has been preached in the coming of Jesus Christ. That's a hermitical and interpretive key to the book of Luke, to know that until John, the law was preached, but in the coming of Jesus, the gospel, the good news is preached. And so we see that the coming of Jesus is the fruition of all the God sitting would do through the prophets of the Old Testament. And it not only tells us that God predicted the coming of Jesus, but it tells us something even more profound, that God was present among his people in all those times guiding history, working time toward the point in which he would bring in his kingdom through Jesus. Paul says that this way in Galatians 4.4, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son. That time from its beginning has been directed toward a goal and a purpose. In an order for God to direct history toward a goal and a purpose, God must be the Lord of history. God must be able to do what he says he will do. And so the Christmas story tells us that that God has been present in history, that God is the Lord of history, and his presence in the prophets leading up to the coming of Jesus tells us that. What difference does that make for us? Well, when you look at your own lives and you look at your own circumstances, you are to be reminded from these verses that God is the Lord of history, that God is the Lord not of ancient history, but of now history. In the first verse of Luke's gospel, my translation refers to Luke making an account of the things accomplished among us. But there's really a better way of translating that, the things fulfilled among us. God fulfilled his purposes in the coming of Christ and his Lord of history, continuing in his reign over history, his fulfilling his purposes in your life. Regardless of your circumstances, regardless of what you may see when you look around you. You've got some great examples to follow in these books. Several times when the angel of the Lord gave your comes to different people to Zechariah, to Elizabeth, to Mary. The first thing he says is fear not. Well, to Mary would have looked like a disastrous episode in her life, apart from the divine perspective, given the divine perspective on history, becomes an event where she says, may it be done to me according to thy will, O Lord. You can look at your circumstances, and you can say whatever they are, may it be done to me according to your will, O Lord, because through the prophets leading up and announcing the coming of the kingdom of God, you have evidence that God is the Lord of history, not just of ancient history, but of now history. So whatever may be happening in your life, you know that God is Lord, and to seek His purposes in whatever is happening to you. You might say, well, there are some very terrible things happening to me, but what could be more terrible than being a teenager pregnant out of wedlock for Mary? What could be more terrible from a human perspective than the Son of God coming to redeem his people and being killed by sinners? As the irony of God's history, that the very worst things, the very worst thing in the history of the world, from God's perspective, is the greatest thing in the history of the world. So when you come to Christmas, and when you see God as the Lord of history demonstrated through His prophets, you see Him as the Lord of your history right now. You also see God as the interpreter of history. Through the prophets, God interpreted what was happening in the world. You might look around you, you might pick up the newspaper, you might wonder, what sense is there to be made of my world? What order can I detect? What order can I make out of this chaos that makes up my life? But you see, as the God is the interpreter of history, He interprets things truly. He tells you the significance of things, and we know that in the Christian life, for instance, suffering is a very significant thing because it makes us into the shape of Christ. It conforms us to His image. It leads us to the lap of God so that we might find shelter and seek comfort in Him, so that we look at things different in our world. Well, because God spoke in the prophets in history, we see God as the Lord and interpreter of history. But it's not only in that that we see the God of history, we see that Jesus comes to us in history and that we should look to His sacrifice as a reality of life. John, I mean, Luke here writes about certain people, if you look at verse 2, those who were from the beginning eye witnesses and servants of the Word, and how they had handed down their testimonies to Luke and others. He says at the office, he says, you've been taught these things, the great verb there is the word from which we get categorized today. You've been instructed orally in these things. Now, I'm just writing to you in an orderly account the things which you have already heard from eye witnesses and from servants of the Word. These things really happened. What are these things that Luke is recounting? Well, if we were to read the whole gospel of Luke at one sitting, we would see some connections. We would see a flow and a continuity. We see Jesus as a certain figure known as the Son of God. John was called a servant of the Most High, a prophet of the Most High, but Jesus is called in these chapters the Son of the Most High. We see Jesus as better than the prophets. In Luke chapter 9, Jesus appears in the amount of transfiguration with Moses and Elijah and the glory of God covers the mountain and when the cloud disappears it's Jesus and Jesus only. And this told the three disciples who were with Jesus that Jesus was a better prophet than Moses. He was a better prophet than Elijah because he was the Son of God himself. Jesus is God's final word to us. But it's not just that he's God's final word to us. It's what he is that's God's final word to us. In Jesus we see the Son of God, the eternal Son of God coming from heaven to take upon himself sinful human flesh. Although he himself did not see it, he took upon a body just like we have. He joined himself inextricably to human nature. He became eternally a human being. This incarnation that we read about in Luke's opening chapters is the same person, the same Jesus who finds himself on a cross at the end of this book. The incarnation is the beginning of a road toward the crucifixion. Jesus said in Luke 24 when he talked to these downcast disciples on the road to Emmaus. They didn't recognize him and they were discouraged about Jesus having been crucified. And Jesus said, oh foolish and slow to believe all of the prophets have written that the Christ must suffer and die. You see Jesus said the prophets said that the Christ must suffer and die. And it said beginning with Moses and all the prophets he explained that to them all the things concerning himself. Jesus is a fulfillment of the prophets message. And this fulfillment begins in the incarnation. It really happened. God took upon himself a real human nature. Now I have a relative that likes to read the national inquire. And she told me something a while back about the OJ trial. There was kind of a striking revelation. And it seemed kind of doubtful to me. And I questioned the truthfulness of this report. She had read and she said, well, if it wasn't true, they wouldn't print it. And I asked her did she also believe that Demi Moore was carrying an alien love child. There is a popular appetite for information, not just in the national inquire, but with news. We have a preoccupation with current events because somehow they are more real to us. But you see the writer Luke here tells us that the incarnation of God is a real thing. It happened in history. It really did happen. I witness in servants of the word reported to us and everybody knows about it. And you see this throughout the book of Acts where Peter is in the household of Cornelius and he says, these things are not new to you. You know all these things in Acts chapter 10. When Paul appears before a grippa at the end of the book of Acts, he says, you know all these things. You have heard of all these things. These things didn't happen in the corner. What's he talking about? He's talking about Christ coming the Son of God, taking up to himself a human body, living life in a human body with a human nature, dying on the cross, rising from the dead. Well Paul is saying you a grippa, the gospel doesn't happen in a square room. It happened in a round room, right in the middle of a round room. And these things are well known to you. Jesus came in a real place. We have a pet in our house that still has trouble learning what it means to be housebroken. And so we have a special cleaner. And whenever we have an accident, I take this special cleaner and I go to the spot and I put the cleaner on the spot because to put the cleaner somewhere else and on the spot would be silly, would be useless, would be not helpful at all. But look, here is where the Son of God comes. He comes in the place where the spot is. He's born into the place that is into history, where the first man and the first woman decided to take up arms against God, where they decided to incite a revolution against the Creator, where we joined in them so that we died just as they died. Jesus comes to be born in the midst of the mess that sin created. In the midst of the mess where sin is, in the midst of our world. Jesus comes in space and time. If you had been there, you could have heard the cries of Mary as she gave birth. You could have heard the feet of the livestock as they shuffled back and forth. You could have seen the furloughed brown Joseph as he tried to help as best he could because it took the cradle where the cross begins. We can look at the cross and we can say it's a great tragedy that the Son of God had to give his life to save sinners. But is it any more tragedy that the Son of God had to die the death of the criminal than that he had to work diapers? Then he had to live for you and I live. Then that he had to leave heaven and leave the glory of his presence at the right hand of the father to come and live like you and I live. We are burdened with the necessities of life. We are burdened with the pains of life. We are burdened with the brokenness of life, the anger and the fracture nature of life. But this is the mess we made. Yet God in the Son of God, in the second person of the Trinity, comes and lives where the mess is so that he might redeem. That's what Paul says. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son, born out of a woman under the law. Why? That he might redeem those who were under the curse of the law. It was necessary in that God wanted to save sinners. It was necessary that he come and live as a human being. So right here is the beginning of the cross. Right here is the beginning of the Passion of Christ. Right here is the beginning of the humiliation that ended with, as it were, spays of dirt thrown over the dead body of the Son of God. It's in the manger. The prophets tell us that God is the Lord of history. The birth of Jesus tells us that God comes in history to redeem his people. But that's not where it ends. It could still seem like a far off event in a never-never land. Something in some place that doesn't have much to do with who and what we are. We see also that the gospel extends to us in history. If you look just at verses 16 and 17, I refer to them before. They're about John the Baptist. He will turn back many of the sons of Israel for the Lord their God. And it is he who will go as a four runner before him in the spirit and power of Elijah too. And then if you have the right kind of Bible you have all capital letters at this point which means the Old Testament is being quoted. What is this four runner going to do to announce the coming of the Son of God and announce the coming of the kingdom to turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children? This is just a small token. But it tells us what it means that Jesus came was born in history and died in history. It tells us that in history, in our history, that the death of Christ ought to mean something. It tells us that because Jesus came that fathers and their children can be reconciled to one another. That because Jesus came, if you look at Luke chapter 4 when Jesus announces that in him is the coming of the year. Do you believe that the the the broken hearted or mended that the blind see that the lame walk? You see that there ought to be a difference in our lives because Jesus came in history. I was in New Orleans most of last week and I had a 30th floor hotel I'm looking out of the Mississippi River. And I love the Mississippi River because I grew up in its lap and I have relatives who worked on the river. And I sat for at least a couple of hours a day just watching the ocean going ships going up and down on the river. It was hard for me to imagine that that was the same river that I grew up knowing and seeing and being familiar with. But then I saw something that assured me it was. I saw a little tugboat pushing down the river and I saw in front of it a whole fleet of barges piled with shining black coal. And I knew that only one place that coal could come from could only come from where I grew up. It was sure the same river that came from where I was born and raised, the same river that begins in Minnesota and flows down to the heartland and goes out to the Gulf of Mexico. Well these little verses here tell us that in the stream of history where the Son of God came suffered, died and was buried in rows. The same history in which the Son of God after he rose ate fish and warmed himself by a fire. In that same stream of history the gospel comes to us and it ought to make a difference. You see being reconciled to God through the death and burial and resurrection of Christ, being reconciled to God through the gospel of the kingdom means being reconciled to one another means being at peace with one another. It means being reconciled through ourselves. It means being free from the guilt of genuine real sin. It means being free from the power of sin. Paul writes in Romans 8 there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Freedom from the guilt of sin. Freedom from the power of sin. If the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you it will give life to your mortal bodies as well. Paul writes in Romans 8. Freedom from the power of sin so that you can see victory in your lives over the things that they set you. It is hard for me to remember what life was like without Christ because I was young when I knew that I needed him but I remember vividly the temper I had as a little boy and the temper that I thought I would never shake. The temper I saw in my father as good a man as he was. But to see how God by his grace has worked and worked and worked until that sharp edge of anger is just a dull thing in my life. To see how the God has reconciled me to people and you ought to chew to see in your lives the working of the gospel that the Jesus who died in history is working to reconcile you to other people to put you at peace with God to extend to you the benefits of Christ's death on your behalf. Now we have funny view of history in our times. We don't fly because of an airplane crash or we don't take a certain road because it's dangerous or we play the lottery because of the probability that we win and we live our lives according to probabilities which may or may not be wise but you see the gospel is a certainty for us on the testimony of eyewitnesses on the testimony of something done in the middle of the room of history that Jesus came died was raised again that the gospel for us is a certainty that it can work in our lives to change us to relieve us from the effects of the fall to cure in us the broken heart that our alienation from God brought. To turn the hearts of fathers toward sons to reconcile us to one another to free us from serving ourselves but to serve one another these are the miracles of Christmas today we see God as the Lord of history because to the prophets he guided and directed history to its outcome in the coming of the kingdom in Jesus we see Jesus coming in history and dying on the cross in history and cleansing the spot in which we live and we see the gospel coming to us in the stream of history because where we live today though geographically and chronologically distant is the same space and time for the son of God came so we see the gospel extending note to us in history that we can have hope that we can have freedom from fear freedom from guilt if we look to his sacrifice his living life under the law from his birth to his death and resurrection if we look upon it in faith as lived in behalf of us as a substitute for us Paul said good gripper for the king knows about these matters and I speak to him also with confidence since I am persuaded that none of these things escape as notice for this has not been done in a corner you see the coming of the kingdom in the coming of Jesus was in the center of a round room it takes place in the middle of history so that we might meet Jesus in history this morning so that we might encounter the Christ child as a Jesus of history Christmas really happened Christmas really matters and Christmas really makes a difference when the fullness of time came God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law in order that he might redeem those who are under the law that we might receive the adoption as sons let's pray father we pray that that distant and far event would reach across time to seize us this warning that we might know the Jesus not just to the cross but the Jesus of the manger the Jesus of the diaper the Jesus who was hungry the Jesus who endured the miseries of this life to redeem us from the curse we pray that we may see the reality of his working in our lives as we witness the kingdom come in him I pray father for those who are downcast who are discouraged those who are beaten down this morning that the reality of the finished work of Christ on the cross begun at Christmas my coming its fullness in their lives I pray father this morning that the Jesus of history would present himself to those here who have not believed in him that he might be as real as he is now in the heavens as real as he was at the manger that those who see him for the first time standing before him might receive him as the Lord we pray these things in the name of the Jesus of the manger and of the cross come in