Luke 1:1–25

0:00 . silence is excruciating, isn't it?

0:38 It's just excruciating. That was 30 seconds, just 30 seconds, half a minute of me standing up here and saying nothing and you feeling incredibly awkward. Here's the way it works, you know. For about the first 10 seconds, you're okay with it because you're just thinking, well, maybe Greg is praying, maybe he's just gathering his thoughts. You know, it's not a big deal. You hit about second 20, though, and there starts to set in a bit of panic. What has gone wrong?

1:09 Is Greg sick? Is Greg resigning? What's happening? And then you see me look up, and you see me grin, and you kind of know I'm up to something. But it's excruciating. It's excruciating when I do that to you for 30 seconds. It's also excruciating in other ways, too. And normally what we try to do when there are moments of silence is fill them as quickly as possible. I mean, we Christians do that with worship services, right?

1:40 I mean, there's a little bit of panic that sets in even when there's a bit of a lag between, say, the end of a song that we've just sung and somebody walking up to the pulpit to read the scriptures. We just don't like that silence, and we want to fill it somehow. I read a study the other day that was describing how we as human beings are basically incapable of asking a question and then just letting the other person think about it and answer. We want to fill the silence. We want to ask our question and then after half a beat we want to fill up that silence with some explanation of why we're asking the question in the first place or some answer or some thought that we have about the question.

2:19 But we're incapable of just asking a question and then being quiet. The person who wrote the article or wrote the study suggested that what we ought to do actually is ask a single question of someone and then quietly on the side of your thigh or whatever, just stop talking and draw a question mark very slowly on your thigh to force yourself to just sit in the silence. But we don't like to do that. And yet, silence is a big part of what we're going to be talking about today in the very first chapter of Luke.

2:57 Take a Bible, if you have one, and turn over to the book of Luke. It's the Gospel of Luke. It's the third Gospel in the New Testament. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles like the one I've got here, you can find it on page 855. That's where Luke begins. We're actually beginning today what is going to end up, Lord willing, being a fairly long series in the Gospel of Luke. In fact, it's probably going to take us something like, I would say, six to seven years, I would imagine, to get through the whole thing. Now, don't be too scared about that. We're not going to do it all at once. It's not like we're going to do, you know, what, 450 sermons or whatever it is just on the book of Luke.

3:31 Probably it's going to end up being just in the late spring, early summer, maybe through the summer. Each year, we're going to return to it every year for six or seven years. And in the meantime, we'll be bouncing back and forth between New Testament and the Old Testament, getting the whole counsel of God. I'll tell you the truth. I did not initially, when I sat down back in October or November to do the preaching calendar for this year, I did not intend to do the book of Luke. It just wasn't on my mind. What was actually on my mind was to do the book of Acts in this kind of slow way that I've done some of these other series, like John or Matthew or Romans. I wanted to go to the book of Acts. But then I just sort of realized that that would be sort of like dropping into the middle of the story and probably what I needed to do instead was work through Luke before I worked through Acts. So as one does, I just postponed the Acts series for the better part of a decade so that we could make our way through the book of Luke. But why is that? Why do we need to study the book of Luke before we come to Acts?

4:30 Well, if you're a student of the Bible, you already know why we have to study Luke before we get to Acts. If not, then it's really simple. It's because Luke and Acts are really just two parts of the same story they're really kind of one book or you can think of it as two a two volume story where this guy luke i'll tell you more about him in a few minutes the author of the books tells his readers basically about what's happened from the months just prior to jesus's birth so you're you're just you're the story starts about a year and three months or so prior to jesus's birth and then the book of acts runs all the way up to what for him would have been the present day so by the time you get to Acts 28, you're at the present day, Luke is writing the story, and the reason it doesn't go any further is because, well, those things hadn't happened yet. Everything just kind of stops where Luke writes the story. And in the process of telling this whole thing, Luke gives us one of the most extraordinary pieces of historical writing in the history of the world. It is an incredible book, and we're going to spend a few months all told studying it together. The book of

5:36 Luke, Acts, as it's sometimes called, was probably written sometime in the early 60s AD. So you're talking, you know, 2,000 years ago, a little less than 2,000 years ago, early 60s AD. It's not worth going into much detail about how we know how to date these books, but a big part of it, I'll just give you a little snapshot of how we do this sort of thing. A big part of the reason we think it was in the early 60s comes actually from the way Acts ends. Acts ends with Paul still alive and still under house arrest in Rome. Now we know that Paul was killed, he was martyred, in about AD 67. And we know that before he was martyred, before he was killed by the Romans, he got out of house arrest in Rome after the end of Acts. And he did some more traveling around to Ephesus. He may have even made it to Spain at some point. He wrote the three pastoral epistles during that time. And finally he was killed in AD 67. So what we know is that Luke-Acts had to have been finished before Paul went to Ephesus, maybe to Spain, and before he got martyred in AD 67. It's got to be before that. And so what

6:38 we do in order to just sort of give it all some time is back it up just a little bit, and we say, yep, our best guess is that it was probably something like AD 63 that Luke, Acts was written. Now, in terms of who wrote the thing, neither Luke nor Acts actually says who wrote it. You ever notice that, right? There are some books of the Bible who right up front will tell you who wrote them. I am Paul, and I am writing this book, or, you know, I am John. You know, sometimes they'll tell you exactly who wrote them. Others of the books of the New Testament don't tell you who wrote them, and sometimes we don't have a great idea of who it finally was, like the book of Hebrews. We're not exactly sure who wrote that. Other times, you can do some historical sort of sleuthing to figure out who wrote those books. So the Gospel of John, for instance, is one of those, but there are little clues in the Gospel of John that make us think, ah, okay, this is John the apostle, the beloved apostle who wrote this book. Well, the same thing happens with Luke and Acts.

7:36 We've got to piece together the authorship of the book from different clues that show up inside the book itself. So how then did we get to Luke? Well, if you read Paul's letters throughout the New Testament, there are 13 of them. And if you read them, Romans, Corinthians, all the rest of it, It turns out that Paul tells us at various times in his letters who's traveling with them. So he'll name them off. He'll say, greetings from this person, this person, this person. These are the people who are with me at this particular point in time.

8:08 And several times in those letters, Luke is mentioned as one of those people who is traveling with Paul. In fact, Luke is mentioned as the very last person who was with Paul before he was martyred at the end of 2 Timothy. So Luke is like the best friend of Paul, the most trusted companion. And Luke is mentioned as one of those travelers several times. So you take that information. Here's all the people who traveled with Paul, and we can kind of piece it together on a timeline. And you take that, and then you look at the book of Acts, where the stories of all those travels is told.

8:41 And two things happen as you read the book of Acts. First of all, you recognize that those stories of the travels are told in the form of we, not they. Does that make sense? So instead of saying, Paul and his companions, they traveled, or they went to Iconium, or they went there, the book of Acts is written in the first person. It says, we went, and we had this happen to us, and this happened to us. So the author of that book was a part of those travels, so probably he's one of these people that Paul mentioned as being travelers with him, right?

9:16 So now we've got the whole thing narrowed down to a smaller set. Then what happens? well you read Acts some more and you realize that oh every single one of the people who Paul names as his fellow travelers is named in the book of Acts so it's like we were traveling along and this person did this and that person did that and you start to check them off okay well it's not that guy and it's not that guy it's not that guy and once you do that with the book of Acts you find out that of that set of travelers there is only one that's not named in the book of Acts and that's Luke. And so you go, ah, okay, it's a we, and he doesn't talk about anyone. He talks about literally everybody else except this one person. So our best guess is that it was Luke who wrote it.

10:00 So who was this guy, Luke? Well, again, you kind of have to piece it together. We don't know a ton about Luke, the author of this book, but you piece it together from what's said about him in various places in the New Testament, and here's what you get. He was apparently a well-off, well-educated guy who was not himself an eyewitness of Jesus but became a Christian through the testimony of the apostles. He didn't see, he wasn't an apostle himself, he didn't, he wasn't an eyewitness to Jesus, he never saw Jesus, he doesn't claim to be an eyewitness, in fact he explicitly in our text today disavows that, I'm not one of them, but he heard the word of the gospel from the other apostles, probably Paul in particular, that's why he was so close to Paul, and he believed it. He was also, kind of surprisingly, a Gentile. He was not a Jewish person. He was one of those from outside the Jewish community who heard the gospel and believed it. And interestingly enough, he was also a physician, which is interesting because as he tells the stories of Jesus's miracles and Jesus's flogging and Jesus's death, he'll actually insert these little medical details in there that

11:04 a normal person would not have been expected to know. It's a doctor who's looking at these things and figuring out what's happening in each one of them. From what we can tell, the fact that he was a physician, the fact that he was a Gentile, the way that he writes this book and the way he's got this facility with words, it tells us that from everything we can tell, it put him in a high social position in Roman society. And Luke, in his writing, uses that status to call people to believe in Jesus Christ.

11:36 In the book that he wound up writing, Luke acts, the whole thing put together, is just absolutely majestic. Luke, it turns out, is an incredibly skilled writer. And the work that he did in compiling all these stories about Jesus and putting them in a logical order, it's just literally magnificent. I mean, you read through it and you think, this is a guy 2,000 years ago writing about this, and yet he's written a work of history that rivals any work of history you're going to find in the ancient world. In terms of the structure of the thing, the overarching structure of the book is pretty simple.

12:10 It's geography-based. That's how Luke's gospel unfolds. And it basically happens in three parts. So from chapters 1 to 9, you've got the infancy and childhood narratives. That's first. But then the bulk of chapters 1 through 9 is Jesus in Galilee. So in his sort of home area. And you've got all kinds of stories about what happened in Galilee. From chapter 9 through 19, you actually have a journey that Jesus is taking with his disciples from Galilee to Jerusalem. So in the middle of chapter 9, you have this shift where it said, And Jesus set his face like flint toward Jerusalem.

12:46 Meaning he was determined to go to Jerusalem even though he knew what was going to be happening there. And the whole of, you know, 10 chapters, 9 through 19 basically, is telling us what happened as he was journeying from Galilee to Jerusalem. Well, then in chapter 19, in the middle of 19, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. And then the whole rest of the book, all the way through the end, is about what happens to him, including his death and resurrection there inside Jerusalem. So it's geographically based. As all that's unfolding, Luke has a few goals. He's got a few things that he's trying to accomplish by writing his book.

13:19 The first of those goals is what he tells us right at the beginning of the book. So look down at verses 1 to 4. And we're just going to look down at 1.4 for now. We're going to look at it in more detail later. But look what he says is the purpose of his book. All of this stuff that I'm doing, he says in verse 4, is so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. So part of Luke's purpose for writing this book is that he wants his readers to know. He wants his readers to have confidence that these stories about Jesus aren't just legends.

13:55 They're not just fables. They're not just things that people have made up as sort of bedtime stories for their kids. They're not myths. They're true. And he wants you to understand as a reader of his book, the reason he wrote the thing was so that you'll trust him and know that he's checked them out and verified them and therefore we can stake our lives on them. That's one thing that he's doing. Another thing that he's doing in his books, and you'll see this play out over the course of the whole thing, is that you remember Luke is a Gentile, right? Luke's a Gentile. He's not part of the Jewish nation.

14:26 And so naturally, the promises of the gospel, it seems like they shouldn't be for him, right? I mean, it seems like the promises of the gospel through the prophets and the patriarchs and all the rest, it ought to be for the chosen Jewish nation. And Luke is kind of looking at it going, is it actually true that God has taken those promises of the gospel and opened them up to me? And one of the purposes of his book is actually to take the story of Jesus and look at it very carefully and trace out. is it actually true that this gospel is also for me?

15:00 Now, for most of you, that's a burning question, right? Or at least it ought to be. I mean, I think most of us in here are Gentiles. There may be a few of you that have some Jewish descent, but most of us are Gentiles. We are not descended from the Jews. And yet we tend to take it for granted that the gospel is for us. Of course it's for us. Why wouldn't it be for us? It's a worldwide thing. That's what we talk about, right? And that's true. And yet it's good for us as Gentiles to sort of back up and say, and yet that is an act of grace. God could have done it such that all of his promises would have been given to the Jews and to the Jews only.

15:38 And Luke, for his part, didn't have the luxury of having 2,000 years of having thought about this and begun to take it for granted. To Luke, it was a very open question, and so he stared at it and said, is it true, based on what Jesus did and what the Holy Spirit did after the ascension, Is it true that I, as a Gentile, am included in all of this? Okay, that's a second purpose. A third purpose that he's got in his writing is to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that none of this was accidental.

16:10 As you read the book, what you see over and over and over is Luke sort of setting it up that God promised something and then bringing it to a conclusion that God fulfilled it. It's promise and fulfillment, promise and fulfillment, over and over and over again. None of it's accidental. None of it just happens. It was all a part of the purpose and plan of God right from the very beginning. Well, today, with all of that in mind, we're going to be looking at the first chapter, at least a part of it. Just the first 25 verses where Luke begins to tell the story of the birth, not of Jesus, it turns out, but actually of the very last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets.

16:50 So let's read it. Luke chapter 1, verse 1. In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministered to the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah.

17:25 And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Now, while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, He was chosen by Lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.

17:55 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. He must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.

18:26 And he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared. And Zechariah said to the angel, how shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. And the angel answered him, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. To behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place.

18:59 Because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. And the people were waiting for Zechariah. And they were wondering at his delay in the temple. And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them. And they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. He kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home. After these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived. And for five months, she kept herself hidden, saying, Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people.

19:34 Now, as beginnings go in the ancient world, this one is fairly typical. in that Luke has crafted it very carefully, as a good author will do, to immediately grab your attention. He wants you giving your attention to what he has to say, and so he uses literary structure and storytelling in order to grab you immediately and make you ask the question, what's going to happen now? So you've got this introduction in 1 to 4, and then this story basically of an old barren couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth, starting in verse 5, going all the down through 25. It's interesting, if you look at those two sections, 1 to 4 and 5 to 25, it's interesting if you compare them, because in 1 through 4, Luke is writing in a very elevated, highly academic form of Greek. But starting in verse 5, the style changes like on a dime, and it becomes this way more down-to-earth, gritty narrative style that ends up sounding very much like the Old Testament.

20:36 But why does he write it? Why does he start the story here? Well, Luke tells us in verse 4 that one of his goals in writing this book is to create certainty in our minds. And so he decides to start with a story that questions certainty. He starts with a story that's marked immediately and surprisingly by a shocking instance of doubt that seems to come out of nowhere. Here's the main idea of what I want to try to convince you of today.

21:10 God wants you, as a Christian, to be certain about your faith. He wants you to be certain about your faith in Jesus, but sometimes it is a long road to get there. He wants you to be certain about your faith, but sometimes it is a long road to get there. So I want to look at these verses in two points. Number one, a certain gospel, a certain gospel. That's looking at verses one to four. And then number two, a surprising doubt that seems to come out of nowhere. So point number one, a certain gospel.

21:42 Luke opens the book with this little section, verses one to four. It's actually just one long sentence in Greek. There are no periods. There's nothing like that. It's one long sentence as the best Greek writers would often do. People have kind of described these verses 1 to 4 as sort of an ornate entryway into a theme park, right? So it's like the last thing that you get from sort of the outside world before you enter into the story. And these verses do a few things. They tell you actually quite a lot about the author and what he's up to with his book.

22:14 So for one thing, these four verses with their highly academic, exquisite Greek style, they prove to the reader immediately. If you're a Greek speaker, they prove to you immediately that you're not dealing with some rube here who just threw together a bunch of fables. This is not somebody who has just gathered up a bunch of junk, a bunch of junk stories and thrown them together into a book. No, the high style of this thing, that really difficult vocabulary, it's got a three-fold parallelism to it. It's got this beautiful sort of cadence or rhythm in the Greek.

22:47 It all comes together to show you that you're dealing with somebody who is highly educated, who's well-read because he knows how literature is supposed to sound and work, and who therefore knows what he's talking about. He's not a rube. He's not gullible. He's not uneducated. He knows what he's doing. And the idea is that it immediately leads you to trust him. Okay, you can say after those first four verses, if you're a Greek reader, and I think even as an English reader, you can go, okay, I'm not dealing with some primitive person here, right?

23:20 If I set out, actually, to write whatever it is, 30-something Greek words or even English words that have the same kind of beauty and rhythm and cadence and parallelism and structure, it would take me several hours probably to get it right. So we're not dealing with some uneducated person here. And you can say, all right, I feel, Luke, having read your first four verses, I kind of feel like you're this kind of guy who would take pains to get this right. You're not just throwing it together. And if the whole thing didn't hold water, you kind of seem like the sort of guy who would tell me it doesn't hold water.

23:55 Like you can imagine Luke doing this whole study, this whole investigation of the life of Jesus and actually coming to a conclusion that it was all false or wrong or overstated and writing a book very similar to this where he tells the entire world it's all fake. That's not what he did. He looked at it, he investigated it, and he wrote this book to try to convince you to have confidence that it's all true. Well, the point of that long sentence in 4 is for Luke, basically, to explain to his original reader why he did this work.

24:26 Now, why would I say it in the singular like that, his original reader? Well, it's because the original reader, it seems, was singular. Now, it's pretty clear from looking at the book that Luke intended for this thing to be read more widely than just this one guy. But probably this one guy commissioned him, maybe even paid him through all the months it would have taken to do this research. And he basically commissioned the work. And so it's written to this one particular man named Theophilus. So you can see him there in verse 3. It seemed good to me also, etc., etc., to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you can have certainty. Now, some people have suggested that this Theophilus character is just made up. He's a kind of stand-in for everybody. And the reason they'll say that sometimes is because his name literally means lover of God. So Theo would be God. Philos, right, would be love. So a lover of God, and so some people have said, well, Luke just made this guy up, and he's a stand-in for every man,

25:29 and if you're a lover of God, he's calling you excellent and wanting you to have certainty in your faith. Well, that may be true, right, as a kind of, you know, as a kind of implication of all of this, but Theophilus seems more to be a real guy. I mean, we know of other Theophiluses in the ancient world, so it wasn't a completely made-up name, and most every name, like even your name and my name mean something, right? When you get right down to it. So Greg, for instance, comes from the Greek Gregory, which just means I watch. And so what my name means is watchful one. Well, it would be ridiculous for somebody, you know, some years from now to say, well, that church had a pastor named Greg, but we know he wasn't real because his name means watchful one. And what they actually did was that they just took anybody who was watchful and they made them preach on Sunday anymore. It's ridiculous. Your name means something. My name means something. Theophilus's name means something, and yet we are all together real. And Luke treats him like a real person, not just an avatar of everybody. What we can pick up from Luke himself is that Theophilus was likely a Gentile,

26:36 like Luke himself. It's a Gentile name, Theophilus. It's in the Greek, right, not the Hebrew. So he's probably a Gentile, and he's also probably a high-ranking official of some kind, because the The little phrase there, most excellent, is something that you would say about an official. You don't just walk up to your, you know, friend and say, ah, most excellent so-and-so. You don't do that. You know, it's like Mr. President, right? You just, you don't use that unless you're using it of a high official. So that's what we think about him. Now, what is his state?

27:08 What is Theophilus' state? I mean, we know that Luke is writing to give the most excellent Theophilus certainty about Jesus, but it doesn't say whether he's already a believer or not a believer. People have made guesses throughout the centuries, but I think it's hard to say. I mean, he was either, though, somebody who's considering Christianity, and so Luke is writing for him, and he's commissioned this work. I need to know if it's all true, right? I'm considering becoming a Christian, and I need to know if it's all true.

27:39 So Luke, you did all this stuff with Paul, you go out, interview everybody, put it all together in an orderly fashion, bring it back to me. And Luke comes back and says, yep, it happened, you can be certain of it, my most excellent friend. That may be what's happening. Another thing that might be happening is that he is a Christian, but because of his high position and his high status, and because of his Gentile status, he's wavering in his faith a little bit. I mean, you've got to think about it. it's not a small thing for Theophilus, the Gentile high official, to become or even to be, if that's the case, a Christian.

28:14 I mean, at this point, in 62, 63 AD, Christianity is just still a small, disrespected little sect of Judaism. And Judaism was itself, in the Roman mind, this pitiful little religion that they had conquered. So for Theophilus, this high official, not only to step down to become sort of, you know, something that is a break off of the Jewish, you know, religion, but also to become a part of this tiny little thing within Judaism was a massive move.

28:47 In fact, it was potentially deadly socially. And as time went on, it could become quite literally deadly. So Theophilus is wavering. He's either not a Christian and he's looking for certainty or he is a professing Christian and he's looking for certainty. And Luke is writing to settle his mind, to sort of cement his conviction, if it exists, or to create it if it doesn't, that Jesus really is the Savior. And ultimately, as he gets to at the end of the book, the king of everything in the cosmos. That's what he's trying to convince Theopolis for, of.

29:22 You can see that phrase. We've already looked at it, that purpose in the very last phrase of for. Our Bibles, especially if you're looking at the ESV, read like this. That you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. That's what our Bibles say. It's actually quite a bit more emphatic than that in the way the Greek words are put together and ordered. It actually says something more like, so that you may know concerning the things that you have been taught, the certainty.

29:55 So that you may know concerning the things you have been taught, the certainty. It ends on certainty. So that's what he wants to do. And then the phrases that come before that, that are all stacked up in this one sentence, he tells us how he's going to do it. Okay, now let's pause right here. Have you ever given any thought to why you believe certain things that you read or hear and you disbelieve other things that you read or hear? How does that work in your own mind? You ever kind of put it together and figured it out or you just kind of trust your own mind to believe some things and not believe other things?

30:30 What is it exactly that causes some things or some reports or some writings or whatever it is? Why is it that some things win your trust? What is the key to trust? Well, if you start to think about it, I don't think it's that hard to figure out. It's a few things, right? You are going to be more likely to trust something and sort of allow it to be true in your own mind if it lines up with things you already know about reality. So if you know certain things to be true about reality and something comes in and slides into that same reality, you'll be like, yeah, that seems to fit.

31:02 That's going to win my trust a lot faster than something that comes in at a 90-degree angle and threatens to upend everything, right? Another thing. There's something about the author or the speaker, too. If the author or the speaker is trying to convince you of something and they just seem kooky, you're not going to be likely to listen to them very long. It's going to take longer for that person to win your trust. Whereas if they seem reasonable, if they seem put together, if they seem knowledgeable about what it is that they're talking about and not kooky, then that's going to win your trust.

31:41 The kind of evidence that's displayed. If somebody comes and says, well, you know, the reason that I believe this is because, you know, I looked into the sky and it came to me in this vision and now I'm absolutely, totally convinced that Puff the Magic Dragon exists or whatever. You're going to look at that and go, that is not good evidence. That's just not good evidence. But if somebody brings something else to you and it doesn't seem as ephemeral as that, it's going to win your trust more clearly. Well, that's what Luke is doing here.

32:11 In all of these phrases that pile up in these first few verses, he's trying to insert all those kinds of keys into your mind to try to unlock your trust before he even gets started. He wants you to look at him and look at the kind of project that he's doing in this book and go, yeah, that seems solid. That seems like something I can trust. Well, here in these four verses, he turns four of these keys, basically gives you four reasons to trust what he's about to say. So let me point them out to you. First thing he does, first thing he does is that he tells Theophilus that what he's going to say in this book has already been said by others. It's already been said by others. This will not come as a huge surprise to you, Theophilus. See that in verse 1? Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us. Many have done this. Many people have compiled a narrative of these things. The stories are flying. Everybody knows these stories. I mean, apparently there were even a number of books out there already which were starting to pull together

33:16 stories of Jesus, what he had done and what he had said. So that word there, many have undertaken. That word is literally set their hand to. So we're probably not talking about just oral tradition. It's a very particular word to set your hand to something physical, right? And so probably we're talking about books that are starting to be pulled together. We don't know exactly what those books are. I mean, likely the gospel of Mark was one of those books that Luke had seen. Maybe he had seen Matthew, that's possible. There might also have been a book where somebody had taken quotations of Jesus, not so much the events and miracles and all the rest, but quotations and pulled those quotations together. There's some evidence in the Bible of that. We don't exactly know, but whatever he's talking about, Luke wanted to take all of that stuff that's sort of floating around out there and take it further. He didn't just want to compile random stories together. He wanted to pull all that stuff together and look at it carefully and investigate it. In other words, go to the people who actually saw the things happen and ask them, look at this story that's written down right here.

34:18 Did this actually happen, Peter? Yes, it did. Yes, it did. Paul, did this happen? Yes, it did. Mary, did this happen? He wanted to pull it all together, investigate it, and write them down just as the eyewitnesses said they happened. Now, why is that important? How does that help to create certainty? Well, it's important because Luke doesn't intend to be saying anything new here. There's nothing coming out of the blue. He's not asking his reader to believe things that are just coming out of nowhere. No, he's just taking these well-known stories about Jesus.

34:49 He's checking them out, and he's saying, yep, I looked into it, and that's not just a legend. There are several people out there who say they were there when that happened. He's verifying these stories about Jesus so that they don't just mist up into legend and myth. Here's the second thing he's doing. He's basing that verification on the testimony of eyewitnesses. He's basing that testimony, or basing the verification on the testimony of eyewitnesses.

35:19 So you can see that in verse 2 there. Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses. Now the word eyewitnesses there translates literally as self-seers. Self-seers. Which is just a way of saying, I saw it myself. Right? If you're a self-seer, then you're the one who saw the thing yourself. You are an eyewitness of what happened. Now, just by the way, you need to understand that that is one of, but it is a critical one of, the unique things about Christianity.

35:55 Our insistence that these things really happen rests on the fact that there were people who were willing to go on record with their names, Like, even to the point of horrific deaths, saying, I saw it happen with my own eyes. Friends, that's unique in Christianity. That's what makes Christianity different from a legend. What makes you more likely to believe, for example, that Jesus got up from the dead, Then that, 1,200, 1,400 years ago, whatever, some weird, ethereal lady in the lake rose up and handed King Arthur a sword.

36:42 What makes one a legend in your mind and one the truth? Now, it's an interesting thing to think about. I think you could come up with several reasons, but I'll give you one just straight up. It's because no one in all of history, nobody, nobody, nobody, has ever been willing to go on record saying I was at the lake. I, Paul, I, Bohemond or whatever his name would have been. I was there, right? And I saw the lady with her arm come up with Excalibur and throw it to King Arthur. I saw no one in all of history has done that. And yet you have hundreds of people in history who would say I saw the resurrected Jesus and I'm willing to put my name and my life on it.

37:27 With King Arthur, it's just stories say. Legend has it. That is not the case with Jesus. At the time Luke was writing, in fact, hundreds of people were still alive who could have said either, yep, what Luke has written down right here that we're reading, that's right. And I know that it's right because I saw it happen. Or they could have said, no, none of that happened, Luke. You're wrong. It didn't happen like that. but nothing like that shows up anywhere in history it's just yes yes yes yes that's what happened he's using eyewitness testimony third thing he does to build confidence is that he's writing as one who has done the work he's done the work of compiling all of this and investigating it you can see it in that phrase there it seemed good also to me having followed all things closely for some time past. Now, there are a couple of details in there that are important. First of all, the word followed doesn't just mean watched, you know. Like, you can be a follower of the NBA,

38:30 for instance, and you can just, you can, you can watch it. That's not what he means by followed. It's more like following a string, right, that's been buried. So, so I've followed these things. Like, I have pulled them out. I've investigated. I've asked questions. I've talked to people. I have followed this, and I have become familiar with it. Second thing that's important is that He's done this for some time past. In other words, probably years that he's been following these threads and getting familiar with the Christian story and nailing it down in his own mind.

39:03 He's done the work. He's talked to the people who were there. He's asked the question. He's gotten the detail. He's become familiar with all of this. And now he wants you to become familiar with him. He's done what it takes. Fourth thing. He's put all this knowledge together in a way that makes sense, that's compelling, that sort of drives trust and belief and confidence. You can see that in his phrase when he says, I'm going to put together for you, most excellent Theophilus, an orderly account. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean chronological order.

39:36 That's not what it means. What it means is that what I'm going to give you is not just stream of consciousness stuff. It's not that I just, as I encountered these stories, I just wrote them down on a single sheet of paper so that it's just a mess. He's saying, I have thought this through. I've thought it through, and I'm going to present it to you in an orderly way so that it fits, so that you're invited to trust it. Okay, so all those things he says he's doing. He's trying to unlock your trust. What does that mean for us?

40:06 Why is it so important that Luke would put all this stuff right up front in his book? Well, it's important. I mean, it's very easy. It's important because Luke wants you to trust him. He wants you to trust him, to listen to him for just a minute while you're reading his book to give him the benefit of the doubt. He wants you to know that what he's about to tell you isn't just accumulated legend. It's not buried in the mists of time so that we can't really get at it like King Arthur's sword. It's not just a confused and confusing tornado of unattached stories and fables and made up stuff that you can never really get to the bottom of and nail down.

40:43 No, Luke is saying, trust me. I looked into it. I worked through it. And I'm telling you, it's true. Now, you can listen to that. You can listen to his plea right there in those first four verses. And you can say, no, no, no. I'm not going to believe you. I'm not going to trust you. I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not going to go with you into this. But Luke isn't going for sort of watertight proof here.

41:17 I mean, you could look at him if he said all this to you, and you could say, Luke, you haven't proved it. You haven't given me mathematical certainty that what you're saying is true. And you know what Luke would tell you at this point? He would say, I know that. I know that, and that's not what I'm asking you to believe right now. What I'm asking of you is to give me a chance. Give me a chance to convince you. Don't just lock the door on me before I even start talking. You know, there are a lot of people, a lot of people, who just lock the door on Christianity without giving it a chance.

41:57 They don't ask the questions. They don't look into it. They don't investigate it. They don't think about it. They just say no. Now, why is that? well there can be a lot of reasons for it there can be a lot of reasons for it I mean it could be some hurt that someone has done to you in the name of Christianity and that's all the proof you need that the whole thing is false my friend if that's you what I would what I would tell you is that the truth or falsity of Christianity does not rest on any one of its followers behavior we christians know that we're sinners and so when you tell me well somebody who was a christian hurt me or a church hurt me i i go join the club every christian knows what that's like and yet we don't base our faith on the behavior of the people who claim jesus we base our faith on the truth of the resurrection of christ you know there are other motivations for shutting the door i think sometimes

43:01 the motivation for just shutting the door and saying no without giving Christianity a chance is fear. I think it's fear that if you look into it, if you ask the questions, if you do the investigation, it will turn out to be true. And then that will put pressure on you to change. If that's you, that's a hard thing to admit. But if somehow you can kind of come to the end of yourself and realize, yep, that's kind of me. I am scared to death that if I really start looking at the resurrection I'll find out I'll find out that it's true and once I find out that a guy got up from the dead my life kind of has to change if you can come to the end of yourself and admit that and friend what I would tell you is don't be motivated by fear there's nothing to be afraid of it's like saying you're afraid of the best possible thing that could happen to you in all of your life don't be afraid of that go into it ask the questions here's another thought about this if you're a Christian already, it should cause you to rejoice right down to the very bottom of your

44:01 heart that the nature of your faith is something this trustworthy. Nobody is asking you to believe ridiculous stuff. And every other religion in the world does that. Christianity doesn't ask you to believe ridiculous stuff it asks you to believe eyewitness testimony of people who were there things that are real i remember a few years ago i took a trip to me and mar and as i was at a speaking event we were up on the second floor of a seminary and the the host that was with me pointed out across this field that stretched out to this little shack this little hut way way out in the field the tiny little dirt road that ran from you know out into the field to the shack to the to the main thing and right beside the dirt road there was there was a crate it must have been you know about this about this big and the the host that was with me said you see that little crate next to that next to that house he said that crate has been there for 25 years and

45:02 it has not been moved and I said what what are you talking about what why and the guy said well 25 years ago a Buddhist shaman or whatever Buddhist priest whatever came came to this family and told them that he had had a vision that a hole in the ground next to the road was a doorway to hell. And he had put a box, that crate, over the hole and told that farmer or whatever and his family that if they didn't keep the box on that hole, all the demons of hell would come out to torment them.

45:33 And the guy said, for 25 years, the purpose of this man and his family's life has been to make sure that that box doesn't come off that hole. Now, on the one hand, that sounds just like Satan, doesn't it? To so convince somebody of some absurdity that they absolutely waste their life on it. But at the same time, at the same time, why did the guy believe that?

46:06 Why did he believe it? There's no reason to believe that. There's no good evidence to say that that box was covering up the doorway to hell. Christian, you should rejoice that nobody is asking you to believe nonsense. You're being asked to believe realities. We have a certain gospel. That's Luke's goal. He wants you to be certain of what you believe. So it's actually incredibly interesting then that he starts his book with the story of a surprising doubt.

46:41 a surprising doubt believe it or not looking at verses 5 to 25 now believe it or not there are certain places in the Bible that are supposed to be funny there are jokes in the Bible there are funny situations there are places that as you're reading through it they're meant to make you laugh or at least kind of crack a little grin as you read them now I think most of the time we tend to miss the humor in the Bible because we tend to approach it as if every single word of it is supposed to be read in solemn pomp and circumstance but this little story is actually one of those it's supposed to be funny at least it's supposed to be amusing or entertaining and if you were reading this in the greek you'd feel it almost immediately because starting in verse five luke's style changes from this high exalted academic greek into something that sounds pretty much exactly like he's mimicking the stories of the old testament so samuels and kings right it's like it's almost like you go you go through this grand greek entrance, right? And then the screen or whatever shimmers a little bit and all of a sudden you're in Old Testament times, right? And all the music is Old Testament and the language is Old Testament

47:45 and everything changes. Luke takes us back into the times and feel of the Old Testament. Now that's an interesting thing because that's different from any of the other three Gospels. The other three Gospels all begin immediately with Jesus. So it's like the turn of the age happens and we're in it. So Matthew starts with the genealogy. John starts with in the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh. Mark starts immediately, and Jesus started preaching, right? It is right there, not Luke. Luke gives us a bit of a running start. He gives us about a year and three months of still being in the Old Testament era with everything that went along with that, and we get a running start into the breaking in of the new era.

48:26 So in these five or 20 verses or so, he's dealing with events that happened only a little over a year before the birth of Jesus. And he opens by introducing us to this old Jewish couple, Zechariah, and his wife, Elizabeth. Now, at first in the story, as you're reading it, Zechariah and Elizabeth, they just sound delightful. They sound like wonderful people. Zechariah is a priest. Elizabeth also is a descendant of Aaron, the priestly line. So you've got sort of double priestliness, right, which wasn't rare, but it was considered a special blessing if your entire family was descended from Aaron.

49:01 They were highly respectable. Well, not only that, verse 6, if you look at it, tells us that they were godly and righteous people. They were good people. It doesn't mean they were sinless in that way. It just means that they were blameless in their service to the Lord. They wanted to obey God. They wanted to do what they needed to do to be faithful servants of God. So, I mean, what's not to like about them? They're this old, righteous, godly, priestly couple doing what they needed to do. It just sounds amazing. But there was a problem. they were childless. Elizabeth was barren, and now to make matters worse, both she and Zechariah had gotten so old that having children was an impossibility. Now, if you've read much of the Bible, as you read about this barren couple, all kinds of things ought to be sort of hitting in your mind, right? Your mind ought to be kind of lightened up like a casino. There's a lot going on here. One of the things that ought to be lightened up is a sense of shame, because in the Old Testament, if you were barren and everybody knew you were barren, that was understood to be

50:01 a punishment of God. It was considered a shameful thing to be barren. But also the other thing that ought to be lightened up in your mind is a sense of great hope. Because over and over again through the Old Testament story, God uses the barrenness of a woman and sometimes her husband also to push the story of redemption further on. He did this with Sarah in the birth of Isaac. He did it with Hannah and the birth of Samuel so the sense of expectation is high okay so the story goes on and basically what's happening is that Zechariah is doing his appointed priestly service in the temple in Jerusalem he probably didn't live in Jerusalem there were more priests it turned out than they actually needed to do the service so they would let the priests live outside the temple precincts outside the the city even and twice a year the various divisions there were 24 of them The various divisions would come in twice a year for one week in order to do their service.

50:59 So that's what Zechariah is doing. Now, one of the things that would happen is that every day you would have morning incense or prayer offered. And then you would have evening incense offered. So morning and evening. So 14 of the several hundred priests in the division of Abijah would have been chosen to do one of those two prayers. And to be chosen to do one of those prayers was an extremely high honor. They did it by lot. In other words, they just tossed dice to see who was going to be picked. And 14 of them every time got to do it out of hundreds.

51:30 So if you got picked to do it, this was considered the high point of your priestly life. It was God calling you into his presence to offer prayers. And it was huge. In fact, the rules were that you could only do it once in your entire life. You could only offer the prayer once in your entire life. And it was a massive, massive thing. So Zechariah comes in for his week of service. The lot falls on him and he's to go into the temple probably for the evening prayer, we think. And so he walks into this magnificent temple. It's one of the biggest buildings in the world.

52:02 He walks into it and in front of him is this exquisitely designed curtain that separates the outer parts of the temple from the Holy of Holies. And it's purple and red and thick and 40 feet high. And it's got cherubim knitted into the fabric. he looks at it and he knows that behind that curtain is supposed to be the place where God himself dwells. And so he walks in with all the solemnity that would have come with all of that and he parts the curtain all by himself and he walks in and he begins to offer the incense on the altar to burn it so that the smoke goes up and fills God's nostrils as he was thinking about it.

52:47 And then all of a sudden, Zechariah looks, and over here to the right is an angel. This gigantic, shining, supernatural person standing there in the Holy of Holies. And it's no surprise that in verse 12, it says Zechariah was troubled when he saw this guy, and fear fell upon him. And then the angel speaks to him. Don't be afraid, Zechariah. And then he says this, your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you shall call his name John.

53:18 People have argued a little bit about what the prayer that has been heard was. So some people have said, well, why would Zechariah at the high point of his career when he's supposed to be offering incense for the entire nation of Israel, why would he go into the Holy of Holies and say, Lord, give me a child? Seems kind of selfish, doesn't it? And so people have argued, well, that's probably not what was going on. Probably what was going on is that he was praying for the deliverance of Israel, right? And so Gabriel comes and says, your prayer for the deliverance of Israel has been heard, and here's how it's going to happen.

53:52 That may be right. Other people have argued, well, that's probably happening, but clearly Zechariah had also in the past at various times been praying for a son. And so Gabriel comes in and just sort of answers it all at once, right? All these prayers for a son, for the deliverance of Israel. It turns out they're kind of going to be one and the same thing. And so your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a son. He says a lot of things about this son that Zechariah is going to have. He says he's going to be great before the Lord.

54:23 In other words, he's going to be one of these unique figures that moves redemption history forward. He says he's not to take any wine or strong drink. In other words, he's supposed to be wholly devoted to the Lord. It was a particular vow in the Old Testament that a certain group of people would take. They were called Nazarites, and they would take this vow not to have wine or strong drink, and they were wholly devoted to the Lord. He was going to be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth. This is God taking total and immediate control of this situation. Remember, one of Luke's purposes is to show that God always accomplishes and fulfills his promise as well.

54:54 Here's one. God's taking the stick on this one right from the very beginning. 16 and 17, if you look at that, he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. Basically, 16 and 17 is summarizing or paraphrasing the very end of the prophet Malachi. That's what he's doing there. All of these phrases that Gabriel is using are the prophet Malachi. Now, that's incredible if you know the story of the Bible because Malachi was the last of the prophets of the Old Testament for 400 years until this angel shows up and does a little bit of prophecy again, right?

55:32 And then John the Baptist is going to be the last of the prophets. But there's 400 years of silence from Malachi to John the Baptist. And it's incredible that when heaven goes silent with the words of Malachi, when prophecy starts up again in the words of these angels, he just picks up right where it left off. Let's go back to Malachi chapter 4 and we're going to pick up right from there and keep going. The silence is broken with exactly the words that had come before. you know what that teaches us it teaches us as christians that sometimes we have to have a patience that is longer than life sometimes we have to have a patience in god that is longer than life in 400 years the prophet stopped speaking for 400 years that's like 20 generations of people who lived and died and lived and died

56:34 without having the promises of God fulfilled. I think a lot of times we like to think that every single one of us is our own self-contained story. That yes, we'll go through certain hardships, but in the end, at some point or another, before we die, God will bring it all to a resolution. The book will be brought to a beautiful, happy ending. Friends, that's just not the case. It's just not the case. God will fulfill his promises, but he may not fulfill them while you are still alive.

57:09 You have to have a patience in God that is longer than life. And yet a patience that is as solid as rock. Now, here's where the whole thing gets kind of amusing, because look at verse 18. Zechariah just doesn't believe him. He just flat doesn't believe what this shining, majestic angel is telling him. He sort of gives him the side eye in verse 18 and says, how am I going to know this? How am I supposed to know that what you, oh shining one, are telling me is actually the case?

57:48 He asks for a sign and the angel, it turns out, isn't very happy about it. Look at 19 and 20. The angel answers him. He kind of bows up at him, right? He's like, I am Gabriel. Well, who are you? I stand in the presence of God and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news and you're not believing it. This is not bad news for you. You don't have any reason to disbelieve this. This is good news and I've been sent from the throne room of heaven down to you to tell you this good news and you're going to disbelieve it.

58:21 So he strikes a mute and probably deaf also until the word of the Lord should be fulfilled. But here's my question. why didn't Zechariah believe the angel? Why didn't he believe the angel? I mean, think about it. He had every reason in the world to believe this angel. He knew the Old Testament stories, so he knew that God could overcome barrenness and often does overcome barrenness. He was in the temple worshiping in the Holy of Holies. He had prayed for this very thing. And now, above all, here was this obviously supernatural being standing before him in the Holy of Holies, and his response is, I don't know if I can trust you.

58:58 why is that well i think the answer is we don't know i mean the bible doesn't tell us it just it just tells us that at the moment of truth zechariah for all this preparation for all this education for all the ways the whole thing was set up for him to believe it just didn't i mean unbelief and doubt are stubbornly persistent things the bible tells us that as human beings we are bent toward unbelief so in some form or another all of us will wrestle with doubt for all of our lives until we stand with Jesus and sometimes for for some of us that doubt is right in our faces we just have a hard time believing that these things are true and it's right there in our faces for for others it's more sinister it's it's hidden down underneath because if we were asked we'd say absolutely I believe that these things are true but when the rubber hits the road when we when we worry when we get angry when we forget and follow the things of this world, what we're saying is that there actually are cracks in our confidence

1:00:01 that these things are true. I think there are a couple of things to learn from that. A couple of things to learn from even the fact that Zechariah doubted. Here's one thing. Christian, don't be shocked when you have doubts arise in your mind. And don't think that you are alone in that it is not the case that all 646 other members of third avenue are absolutely sure of every detail of their faith it is just not true even somebody as godly and righteous as Zechariah can find themselves in that position you are not the first Christian to go through a season of doubt and you will not be the last.

1:00:49 Another thing, it's tightly related. Never, ever, ever take pride in the fact that you're not doubting right now. That is a gift of God. You are utterly dependent on him and your heart, if you're in a season of believing this and believing it with all your heart, your heart ought to be filled up with gratitude and humility to him because of it, not pride. So what brings him out of it? I think this is interesting. What brings Zechariah out of it?

1:01:21 By the end of the story, he obviously believes. I mean, he can't talk, but somehow he finds a way to tell Elizabeth. And once she becomes pregnant in 25, she praises God for it. So she knows what's going on here. So by the end, both of them finally believe what Gabriel told them. But what brings Zechariah to that point? What brings him from not believing to believing? Well, the story doesn't tell us much. But one thing that I imagine helped him a lot was this long season of enforced silence.

1:01:55 I imagine it helped his belief to be in this season of enforced silence. For more than nine months, Zechariah couldn't talk. He could only listen and think. And that probably helped. I think a lot of times we fuel the flames of our own doubt, fuel the flames of our own certainty, because we want to talk more than we want to listen. We want to lodge our objections more than we want to listen to the answers. We want to talk about how sorry we feel for ourselves because of our doubts, rather than just listening and meditating on what is true.

1:02:38 And friend, if you're struggling with doubt, whether you're a Christian or not, Maybe, maybe one of the things that you need is a season where you just quiet your objections. Often when we stop talking, when we stop trying to make ourselves heard, that's the moment when truth crystallizes. You know, it's not just me, right? One of the things that the Bible says is, be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am God.

1:03:14 There are times when questions are exactly right. There are times when what your heart needs more than anything is to ask a question and have somebody answer it. And those are good and fine times. But there are other times, friend, when what needs to happen is for you to just be still and know that he is God. That may not be the answer to your particular problem right now. But I think it was for Zechariah. And I think it is for many people.

1:03:46 But that kind of silence, that kind of quieting of your own thoughts, that kind of quieting of your own objections and just submitting to God is excruciating. And you're going to have to do it for more than 30 seconds. But friends, we serve a God. We serve a God who often speaks in the stillness. Elijah, the prophet, learned that. That it wasn't in the roaring wind, it wasn't in the earthquake that God spoke, it was in the still, small voice of the silence.

1:04:19 That's what Zechariah learned. It's probably a good lesson for us too. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you and we praise you that you are a good and faithful God. We thank you that you're a God who speaks in the silence when our minds are full of the cacophony of everyone and everything speaking into us and yelling at us from all different directions, Lord. You're the one who can cut through all of that, who can set our minds quiet and help us to know what it is that truly, truly matters and truly grounds our faith in you.

1:04:54 Oh, God, we pray. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to remember these things, that you would give us times of quiet before you just to be still and know that you are God. We pray this in Jesus' name and always to his honor and glory. Amen.