Transcription
Matthew really poses the words of Jesus, and Mark the works of Jesus. Luke says he tried to set things in order, that they were to be, uh, at least thematically, if not chronologically, in order. And so, the four boxes or four parts of, of Luke's gospel are what we're going to examine today and see if we can't pull together really what Luke was trying to say.
Luke has a theme. Uh, Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." That is the theme verse. And Luke 19:10 really pulls together what he's trying to say. I want you to know God came on the planet. I want you to know that Jesus started out with the intent to reach that which was lost. I want you to know that man is lost, and I want you to know that God is reaching. Amen. And so, the whole idea of this gospel is that there's an anticipation of hope. This is not about the failure of man in the garden. This is about the, the power of Jesus in the resurrection garden to undo all that had been done. So, let's look for a moment at the gospel.
Now, here's what's interesting. Um, internal evidence alone leaves us to the place where the Gospel of Luke is anonymous because Luke doesn't sign it inside the book. However, if you look at external evidence, the external evidence of the second century with people like Irenaeus, or Clement of Alexandria, or Tertullian, or Origen, all of them uniformly ascribe The Gospel According to Luke as Luke's. And Luke, the physician, that's mentioned in Colossians 4:14. Luke, who is the Gentile writer of scripture, writes, if you put Luke and Acts together, 28% of the New Testament. Luke, actually, as a Gentile writer, wrote more than Paul did. Add up the number of words, and Luke has the largest number of anybody. So, this Gentile doctor, companion of Paul, who is very obviously traveling along, not having been a part of the original, uh, group of disciples, become apostles, but now a, a sidekick to the Apostle Paul, becomes almost like a 13th Apostle because, in a very real way, he challenges people with the message of Jesus.
It's interesting to me because the book of Acts begins with Theophilus, but so does, uh, the beginning of the book of Luke. And so, we, we think that in Acts 1, when it says, "In the first book, I tried to say this, and now I'm going to say this," that Luke is, in fact, the first part of maybe a trilogy. It's at least two books, but it looks like it stops in the, and because it stops and leaves you hanging at the end of the book of Acts, it looks like maybe there was a third book intended. We, we don't know. What we do know is that the Gospel of Luke tells the story, and it's probably all written with the background of something like this: Theophilus, you're probably wondering how a five-foot, balding Jew by the name from Tarsus by the name of Saul, uh, and a doctor from Macedonia ended up sitting here, uh, waiting to be seen of the Emperor Nero. While it all started back in a place called Bethlehem, and he goes back and draws out one whole story. It, it appears to me that the tone, the style, the syntax, and the grammar between Luke and Acts are the same, and they match very well. And so, the end of the Gospel of Luke seamlessly sort of begins with the beginning of the of the book of Acts, and it leads us to believe they are the same author.
Luke alone referred to Jesus's appearance before Herod Antipas. He's the only one of the gospel writers that picks that up. Why is that important? Because in Acts 4:27, that's going to get picked up as a feature of something that happened. And so, the same writer appears to be the Gospel of Luke's writer as the book of Acts writer. The author of Acts was a companion. How do we know that? Because in the book of Acts, there are a whole bunch of "we" portions. You go to chapter 16, or chapter, uh, 20, or chapter 27, and it says, "And we traveled, and we did this, and we did that." So, the author of Acts is clearly a companion of Paul. Colossians 4 says Luke, the physician, was a companion of Paul. And it appears as though Luke is, is getting his information, at least partially from Paul, a backbone of it, and then he goes out and collects up information.
It should not make you uncomfortable that The Gospel According to Luke was a collected set of accounts. Luke wasn't there when these things happened. The Spirit of God superintended his life to go and do a series of interviews with people. And so, Luke gives you details that the other gospel writers don't give you because the person who was involved in the exchange told the story themselves to Luke, and Luke, like a good reporter, collected up a lot of details. Don't let that bother you. Matthew wasn't trying to give you the details. Mark was racing through. Luke is actually saying, "So, tell me, uh, and then what did Jesus say to you? And, and, and where were you standing? And, and how many people were there? And who else was in the room?" And so, he's going to add details.
The other thing that Luke does that tells you he's a doctor is the other disciple apostles write, "The man was sick." Luke defines the sickness, tells you what was wrong with him, what was his technical diagnosis, because Luke is very interested in things that, frankly, Matthew and Mark didn't even know how to pronounce. So, as a result, what we know is he appears to be a Gentile. And, and by the way, in, in Colossians 4, he's lumped with the Gentiles away from the Jews. So, there are two groups in Colossians 4:10 to 14, and he's put with Epaphras and Demas and others among the Gentile sect. He's called simply Luke, the Beloved Physician. I, I think that that it was kind of, um, well, I don't even know how to say it nicely. If, if you're traveling with Paul, you better have some medical knowledge. Let's put it that way. Uh, Paul ends up in the middle of many a scrape. And, you know, Silas was a good guy, and Barnabas was a good guy, but encouragement is not what you need when you've just been pummeled by stones. You need a good doctor, right? So, Luke, uh, joins in. And, and what's interesting is we know in the "we" sections that the other people that are identified who are companions of Paul, including Silas and Timothy, so Aristarchus, Secundus, and Gaius, are all elsewhere mentioned. So, it's got to be Luke that's the other guy who's traveling with him. Now, that's just some walking around the evidence.
Here's what I want you to know. The date of Luke's gospel, in my view, is, for those of you who were here this morning as you were following Paul's life, when Paul is sitting in a jail in Caesarea, that's when I think Luke is getting written. I think Luke has done everything he can to be with Paul and support Paul, but Paul's basically sitting in jail for a couple of years between the time he saw Felix and the time he saw Porcius Festus. And for those couple of years, Luke runs around and collects up interviews and puts together the Gospel of Luke. I think he started it then. He may have finished it in Caesarea. He may have even finished it in Rome when he got on the boat with Paul. And I got to wonder why Luke still got on boats with Paul. I mean, with Paul's record in boating, I would think that the one thing that Luke should do, if he's a man of any amount of intelligence, is book a separate boat and meet him when he gets there, if he gets there. Now, I think it's during the Caesarea imprisonment, you know, Acts 27 in Caesarea when Paul is imprisoned, and if you've been following our Paul story, you know what I'm talking about. That's a "we" section. So, Luke is in Caesarea when Paul is there. Luke doesn't come from there. He comes from the, the part of Greece that we would call today, uh, Macedonia. Today, it's actually called Northern Greece. And the important thing about him is he's there. What's he doing? I think he's collecting up the interviews for this gospel. I think that, uh, Mark is probably written earlier than Luke, and I think that Matthew is written from another country, and by the time it arrives to him, he knows that there are others that are working on presentations. And that's why Luke opens up with, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out to you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught."
It appears to me that Theophilus is a Gentile. It appears to me that Theophilus is the recipient of the letter. And many scholars believe that Theophilus is, in fact, the lawyer they've hired in Rome, that he's sending sending him letters to tell him what happened with Jesus, what happened with Paul, so that by the time Paul gets there, his advocate will be up to speed with what he should know about Jesus. It sounds like in those third and fourth verses of chapter one, Theophilus may well be a believer, or at least have some background instruction on who Jesus is. But by the way, in the first century, lots of people heard about Jesus. Lots of people that didn't believe in him. There was a lot of buzz. People began to be converted. Lots of other people were reacting and responding to what they were hearing. So, as what I can tell you is this: Theophilus apparently is a person of rank because "most excellent" is a title you give to somebody like a governor or a commander. I think maybe he's just trying to be very nice to his advocate or his lawyer.
And one of the unique parts of Luke's gospel, if you're familiar with this gospel, is it mentions prayer more than any of the other gospels. I, I found it interesting as I went through the pouring through the book, that 19 times in the book of Luke, prayer is talked about, mentioned, or instructed. 16 times in the book of Acts, prayer is talked about, instructed, or accompanied some manifest presence of God. Now, why is that important? Because nobody writes more about prayer than Luke. He doesn't, maybe, have the deep well of Levitical law in his background, but he's got, he knows how to bend a knee. And after all, that's what was important in his time.
Luke has a, a special sensitivity to a Gentile emphasis because his readers were Gentiles. He's the one who explains all the localities in Judea and in Galilee because many of his readers will never have been there. They won't know anything about it. Why is that important? Because Luke helps us know where things happened. Matthew and Mark often say, "He went into a village." Luke tries to identify the village or sandwich it in some way so that we know where that village is. His genealogy in chapter 3 goes all the way back to Adam. Why is that important? Because if you're not Jewish, knowing that Jesus came from a king of the of the Jews and was of the line of David doesn't necessarily get you as excited as it would to know that all humankind was addressed in the coming of Jesus, not just the Jewish thing. Now, you know me, and you know how much I care about the Jewish thing, but I wasn't born part of them. So, how did God want to deal with the rest of us? And that's one of the exciting parts of the sensitivity.
It's also interesting to me that Luke dates everything by Roman Empire emperors and Roman rulers. Uh, he, he is very Roman in his thinking. And so, he's not going to walk around telling you things about high priests and the third year of that high priest. He's going to tell you what year of what Roman emperor because that's what's going to matter to his audience. It's interesting because Luke doesn't seem to know Hebrew or Aramaic. He learned everything you read of the Old Testament inserted into the Gospel of Luke came from the write about the things that Jesus accomplished, uh, among the people and how that got started. And the second one was he wanted Theophilus to know the exact truth concerning what he had been told. I think that the exact truth he's talking about is the false accusations that had been made against Paul and Luke. I don't think he's just saying, "Hey, I want you to really know about Jesus." I think he does, but I actually think what he really wants to do is, "I want to tell you the exact truth." And so, watch in Luke's gospel, Jesus will have one problem after another with Pharisees, Sadducees, people on the Temple Mount, but he will precious few times ever have a problem with a Roman. Because the whole attack for which Paul was being put under a light chain was, "This guy is ruining the Roman world." And Luke's point is, "No, he's not. This is a debate between Jews about the resurrection, and the Roman authorities got sucked into it. And I'm just here to tell you the exact truth so you can represent us well or advocate on our behalf."
All right, time to look at the book itself. And you know already that the book actually breaks out into four parts. You know that because there are four parts on the board behind me, and you're at least that observant, so you probably got that down. The first one really does, in chapters 1, 2, and 3, deal with what I'm calling pre-ministry narratives. That means how Jesus, uh, came, how he was born, the early life narrative. But here's the interesting thing: it's actually a story that has a little prologue in verses 1 to 4 of chapter 1, and then the rest of chapter 1 all the way to chapter 3:38 is actually seven prophecies concerning Jesus. And if you follow them, take a look in your Bible. In chapter 1, 1:5 to 2, Zechariah and Elizabeth get a message from God. That's really what this is about. It's a prophecy concerning the forerunner, which is invariably a back door prophecy of the fulfiller, which is Jesus. And, and if you go on to chapter 1, verse 26-38, you'll find that Mary gets a message from God. So, we have the Zechariah-Elizabeth story, then we have the Mary story, and Mary getting a message from God, and then the third story with it, which is Mary's visit to Elizabeth, and you see the response, both of John the Baptizer, still in the womb, and you see the response of Elizabeth helping to pick up and lift Mary. "You can trust what you were told." And again, in the whole prophetic scheme. Then, by the time you get to Luke chapter 2, this is the very famous story of the birth. The end of Luke 1, by the way, carries The Magnificat, which is the, the song of Mary, a very beautiful song, but a very nationalistic song, because Mary saw the Savior as the one who was going to save her nation. She was not a universalist. Luke now applies that and says, "He didn't just save the Jews, he's saving the world." But Mary lived in her own little world. Mary was a, a young teen and didn't see the wide frame. She saw what she saw. And here's a note at the end of Luke 1. Here's a note: God can use your life even if there's lots of people in the world you don't know about, lot of lots of cultures in the world you don't know anything about. Even if your little world is your little world, God can still profoundly use you because he did it with Mary.
Now, in Luke chapter 2, you get the unfolding of the Nativity and the shepherds' visit in Luke 2:1-20. And, and it sort of sets up that night. Remember, I remind all of my students when I'm standing in Bethlehem, the angels were not there to be an, uh, choir. The Heavenly Host, "Sabaoth" is the Hebrew word for armies. They were there for one thing: guard duty. They happened to be good singers, so they also sang, but that wasn't the whole thing. They were guarding what was happening as God made an invasion on the planet. By the way, the enemy didn't know which one was Jesus. So, there were other babies running around. He didn't know. And it's not until God signals later on at the baptism which one it is that is his son. The enemy is running around looking for him. A lot of babies died because they could have been him, but they weren't. And if you follow the story, what you see is that the, that there's a Temple visit that comes at the end of chapter 2, from chapter 2:21 all the way through to the end of chapter 2. He goes up and he visits, and there you see Anna, and you see Simeon, and you see God giving to these elderly people the completion of their life. "Now I can die. I've seen the Messiah. Now I've got what I was here for."
Now, what's interesting to me is by the time you get to chapter 3, you really have two stories in chapter 3. One of them is John's ministry and Jesus's baptism, and the other one is the genealogy. It's a weird place to put the genealogy, isn't it? But the point of the story is that Jesus's ministry begins, his public ministry begins, according to most scholars, with the baptism by John in the Jordan. Why? Because it's there that the Spirit of God will descend upon him, God will speak from heaven, and now the sign just went on. "I'm here for the years of growing up." Until that point, he was blended into to the society. He had made his way to Egypt. He has made his way to Nazareth. Now he's down in the Jordan River, and God says, "This is my beloved Son." And spiritual entities everywhere took note. And that's the beginning of his ministry because from that moment on, there will be confrontation in his life, and the confrontation will always be underlying spiritual, sometimes manifest in the physical.
So, by the time you get to chapter 4, we open up with the second of our sections. Pre-ministry then gets you all the way to baptism. And from the baptism of Jesus, you have the Galilee ministry. And it's offered in two parts. I found these interesting, the way Luke constructed his writing. The first part in chapters 4, 5, and the first half of 6 is actually seven early confrontations of Jesus. So, almost immediately, there's a series of confrontations that come right out of the gate. So, 4, 5, and 6:1-11 is a series of confrontations. Let's see if we can take these off really quickly. In chapter 4:1-13, a confrontation is with Satan in the wilderness, and you're familiar with that one also from Matthew chapter 4. In chapter 4:14-30, there is a conflict with his own clan back in Nazareth because they don't want to see him exceed beyond his station. They want him to do exactly what they tell him to do. And so, so you see that he comes, and when he gets to Nazareth, he reads to them, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has called me to preach the gospel to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to set the captive free. Today, these things are happening in your midst." And the people's response to that was not as thrilling as you would have thought. They, they would have said, "Wonderful." The problem is, they wanted to control his message. So, he went from a conflict with the enemy to a conflict with his own, uh, family and friends and connection community.
You go on to the end of chapter 4 and you get to chapter 4:31 down to 44, and the very end of that. And now he's in a series of conflicts with demoniacs. One of them's in a synagogue, one of them's in Simon's house. But now there's open season. Demons coming after him, shut the ministry down, confuse the people, cause difficulty. And he's getting it, not only from Satan directly, not only from his family, but now he's getting it from every place he goes. Demons pop up. You get to chapter 5, and in the beginning of chapter 5, he gets into another conflict. This is a different kind of conflict. Now, it's a story of the very first disciples. And in the first 11 verses, it's the "beta boys," the guys from the north side of the Sea of Galilee, from the Zebedee Sons Fishing Company, Incorporated. And what they're doing is, they're, they're fishing, but they don't catch any fish. And so, Jesus tells them, "Put out into the deep water, let down your nets for a catch." And, and the confrontation here is, "Are you going to listen to me?" And they're saying to him, "But you're a stonemason, and we're fishermen." And he said, "Are you going to listen to me?" Because we all have good reasons why we think Jesus doesn't know as much about our situation as we do. We all have those. And guess what? We're wrong every time. So, Jesus says, "Just listen to me. Do what I'm asking you to do." And what's interesting to me is you can see James and John, the sons of Zebedee, in verse 10 of chapter 5, and you can see him turning to Simon and saying, "So, not fear. From now on, you will be catching men." You think, you think you're scared because I could tell you where the fish were? I'm about to tell you where the men are. And if you think you're afraid now, hang on to your hat, Simon, 'cause we're just getting started. And, and so, you see the conflict even as he tries to get the trust of the men early on.
But then I go to another conflict, and this is a conflict with the Pharisees in 5:12-26. And, and he heals a leper. And then, and then do you remember, right after that, there's a man that's lowered down into a room? And do you remember what the conflict was? He says to the man as he's laying there on his pallet, because his friends are up there having disassembled the roof and lowered him down, he says to the man, "Your sins are forgiven you." And then he goes on, and they start murmuring. And he goes, "Oh, you, oh, you wanted me to heal him? Which do you think is more difficult for me to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or 'Get up and walk'?" And every person, I believe, I have met in my life would have said, "Well, I know the answer is supposed to be 'Your sins are forgiven,' but I really think it's that you get up and walk." Because the confrontation is, the spiritual world is the real one. The physical world is not. And we put all our stock in the physical world. Good churches are building nice buildings. No, good churches are building good people. Amen. See, the problem is, you can't get people to give to things that are spiritual. They give to things that are physical. So, my, my dear old Baptist pastor friend, Jerry, used to say, "Whenever you're in trouble, build a new building, 'cause people will give to that." They love the physical things.
Then there's another conflict right after that. If you go to 5:27-39, the other conflict is, he has a, he has a problem with the, uh, scribes over eating with Levi. He's eating with a tax collector. And, and he's trying to get across to people that you are misunderstanding how God views people. That people all count, no matter what they've become, no matter what choices they've made, they all count to God. And finally, he has another conflict with them over the men picking barley in chapter 6:1-11 on Sabbath. And he heals a hand on Sabbath. And, and they're, they're mad because he keeps goading them because he wants to do good on Sabbath, and they want them to do good on the other six days. Jesus does me more healings on Sabbath in the Gospels than he does on the other six days of the week. And I think it's because it bugs them. And the bottom line here is, when you come out of this first section of ministry in these seven confrontations, I want you not to miss the big picture. What he's trying to get across to the earliest followers he has is that in my public ministry, demons need to clear out of the way, disciples need to learn to listen, and Pharisees need to get God's heart. And if you get that, then you got this whole section from chapters 4:1-6:11.
And then you move to the next section, from 6:12 all the way through chapter 9. And what you see is that he's beginning now to move from the popular ministry with the crowds. Luke doesn't really focus on crowd ministry. Luke has chapter 4, chapter 5, into the middle of chapter 6 on crowd ministry, and then really from the middle of chapter 6 all the way through the rest of the book, he's focused primarily on the disciples and an occasional crowd story. I think when we, when we look at the movies about Jesus, it's always about these thousands of people that are around. But in case in point, in Luke's gospel, most of the time that's not what it is. It's usually something like this: "We represent a number." It looks more like what Jesus was doing much of the ministry in the Gospel of Luke. And, and, and I take you to chapter 6, and I would tell you this: He calls the disciples and he gives them a sermon that is, I think, roughly attuned to what was in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and the original call of the disciples. But then a series of seven successful healings go on, and that's what I want you to see. There are actually eight healings, but one of them is a failed healing, and it gets a second shot. So, let me take a look at them for a minute.
The first one is in chapter 7:1-10, and healing number one is a, a centurion's servant who is healed. And do you remember that when the centurion comes to him, Jesus's reply in verse 9 is, "I haven't seen this kind of faith in Israel." So, again, Luke is a Gentile writing to the Gentile world, and so he highlights that Jesus was stunned by a Gentile who had better faith than the Jews around him. That's going to play well for his gospel. It's also a true story. Now, in 7:11-17, he's walking along the road near Mount Tabor. There's a little village, you can still see it today, the village of Nain. Nain means "beautiful place," and it's a contraction of the word "Naim." He's walking by Nain and he comes by and he hears a funeral dirge, and it's a woman who has lost her son, and she's a widow. And that means she's synonymous with poor. Her social security burned when her son died. There was nothing for her. And Jesus stops and raises the child in the exact same wording that you find in Second Kings when Elisha did a miracle on the other side of the same mountain at Shunem. He gave the child to the mother. A catchphrase. And what did the people say? They said, "One greater than the prophets is among us." Why did they say it? Because Elisha had done the same miracle on the other side of the same mountain. They were in the same area. By the way, that hill between them is called the Hill of the Teacher. Which teacher? Probably Elisha. So, the whole place is named after that famous miracle. And Jesus does one just like it, and people respond, and they get on board.
The rest of chapter 7, you'll find that there, John sends some, uh, uh, disciples to question Jesus, and Jesus answers some questions concerning that. And then in 7:24-50, uh, he, he gives a little message on John. And a woman begins washing his feet. And again, I, I just highlight for you, this is not one of the healing stories. There's a third healing story coming, but filled in in the middle of those stories are these little vignettes of people who would normally be on the fringe of Jewish thinking: a woman, a Gentile, a centurion. Watch for them because this is their gospel to get featured. Jesus was ministering to everyone. But Matthew is writing primarily to Jews, and they're not interested in whether women were, were in the picture or not. Luke is interested in that because these are marginal people in a patriarchal club-thinking society.
Now, what's interesting is that in chapter 8:1-3, if you're not aware of this, ladies, mark it down. The only people who give financial support to Jesus that we know of by name in the Gospels are women. We know of no men who gave anything to Jesus to support them. We're not saying they didn't. We're saying that God only named the women, and they're found in 8:1 through 3. So, that's his support team. In chapter 8:4-21, he tells the parable of the sower. And then he ends with the story of the lamp, just like he does in Matthew 6. He comes back and he says, "I want you to know," in 5 through 7 of Matthew, he explained it. He said, "I want you to know that a city set on a hill cannot be hid, and nobody gets a lamp and hides it under a bushel. And if you're going to follow me, people are going to know you are." Well, just about that time comes Miracle number three. They get out on the storm on the sea in chapter 8:22-39. And they not only get out in the storm on the sea, and he hushes the storm on the sea, but they get off as he comes onto the east side of the sea where there's a demoniac who's coming out. And the, and the, uh, disciples are worried that Jesus is going to take the guy home. And what you have is a quick story where he casts the demons away from the man and then tells him, "Go tell your neighbors about this." This, don't come back to my side, the kosher deli side of the, of the place. Stay over here and tell your neighbors about that.
What I find interesting is in chapter 9, you open up with, now he's very private. He sends out the 12, and the 12 return in the first 17 verses of chapter 9. And when they get back together, they're tired, and he wants to get them alone. So he takes them over to the other side of the sea, and a crowd shows up. And that's the background for the feeding of the 5,000. Exhausted disciples, hungry people, compassionate Jesus. By the time you get to the middle of chapter 9, 9:18-36, there's the final exam questions: "Who do men say that I am? Who do you say that I am?" Followed by three of the disciples seeing him transfigured, and they see the glory of Jesus Christ in, in, in a garb of heaven, standing together with Moses and Elijah. What's interesting is when they come back down from the transfiguration, nine of the disciples didn't go up. Only three of them went up. And the nine were trying to do another healing. So, the last of the healings here was a failed healing. A guy said, "I brought my kid to get healed, and your guys can't do it." And Jesus did it. And they're standing there, sort of not really sure why it didn't work. And then he takes them for a walk. And he walks them down toward the area of Samaria. Now, again, talking about marginal people, Samaritans are half-breed Jews, and disciples don't like half-breed Jews. So, in 9:51-56, the Samaritans this time don't respond because Jesus had been there earlier in his ministry in the other gospels, and he doesn't call, he doesn't write, he doesn't come back. And so, the, the Samaritans have no time for him the second time he visits. And so, what did the disciples say? "Why don't you call down fire and make them toast?" Why? Because we don't like them anyway. And the prejudice of the disciples is highlighted in the backdrop of Jesus's compassion for the Samaritans.
Look, the second part of this ministry, this second box, here's what I want you to hear. If you got this, you got the second part. All the way up to chapter 9, it was, it was really focused on Gentiles can understand the faith. A centurion can be let in. A hopeless woman can find the power of God. And, and a powerful God is in your boat. I think he's trying to get them to see that that a woman whose bleeding can come and, and, and have a healing occur. And, and see, they need to learn to see the crowd with the eyes of Jesus. They need to learn to see people. See, in the first part, as it's the pre-ministry, you don't really get the sense of ministry. And the second part, when you're in the popular ministry and the discipleship training ministry, here's what I want you to get: Jesus is working on the disciples to get them to see what he sees when he looks at people on a hillside. And the truth is, 2,000 years later, the church still isn't that good at it because we get more excited about rich people coming to Jesus than poor people. We get more excited about Jesus about people coming to Jesus when they're clean over when they're dirty, when they smell good over when they smell like a brewery. And Jesus was trying desperately to get them to see that the story was about people on the fringe and how needy people will find help in Jesus, no matter what their background is. That's really what it's about.
All right, let's move to the, the third box. Don't get scared. There are 22 stories in the third box. I'm not going to do them all, but I do want you to just get a flavor for what happens in chapter 9, verse 57 to chapter 19, verse 27. This third box is what is called by scholars Luke's special section. It's largely in an area called Perea. Perea is the Florida of ancient Israel. There's a mountain cap all along a ridge that goes along Central Israel. But during the rainy, cold season, which is just really coming on, by the way, they had more rain last week in Jerusalem than they normally get in an entire season. Water was gushing everywhere in Jerusalem. The place was just absolutely loaded with water. Here's the thing: it's rainy and it's cold, and you live in stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. You have never felt cold like that cold. It may not get down below freezing often. You may not get that much snow, but you will never be colder in than you are in those damp buildings that are all stone. Now, here's what I want you to know. Just in the middle of that time, people would go near the Jordan River because it's below sea level, and it's east over toward the deserts. It's Florida. The snowbirds would literally leave, leave during the winter time and go to Perea. So, Perea is our section. Floridians, it's the section that's all about the, uh, people. Here's what they would do. They would go down and camp along the Jordan River and they would get some cucumbers, tomatoes, and bread, and be fine for weeks. You could live on pennies down there. The weather was, was beautiful. And, and here's what would happen. Bible conference speakers would come and preach, and people would gather by the thousands to listen to them. One was a guy by the name of John, you may have heard of him. Another one is a guy named Yahoshua, Yeshua, Jesus. And they begin to get crowds down. Well, Jesus spends six months making his way in box number three to Jerusalem. And during that time, he has largely finished the bulk of his, uh, popular ministry. He's honing the message with the disciples. Let me tell you some stories that come up in that time. Uh, 9:57-62: A man comes to him and says, "I want to follow you, but I want to bury, bury my father first." His father's not dead yet. And by the way, in Jewish terms, it's going to take 18 months to bury his father because you bury the father, then you go back and open the supper, and you actually take the bones after they have deteriorated and gather them and put them in with the father. It's 18 months. In other words, this guy comes and says, "I really want to follow you, and in two years, I'll be ready." And Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead. You follow me." Now, there's no time. The urgency that he knows, the other guy doesn't know. The disciples are going along like, "Oh, don't know, we're starting a kingdom." They have no idea that he's going to be gone in a short time, but he senses it.
Chapter 10 says that he sent out 70, and they come back. And afterwards, he gets into a discussion with a lawyer in 10:25-37. And the lawyer has a way of, you know, lawyers have a great way of simplifying things by making them more complicated. And, um, the lawyer says, "How do I get eternal life?" And Jesus explains it to him, and then rolls right into the Good Samaritan story and says, "I know that you're a lawyer, but I might need to help you on the definition of who is a neighbor. Exactly who should you see? Who should you help?" When I, when I'm talking to you about allowing my eyes to go in your head and see it the way I see it, who should did you see? Only those who are part of your sect? Only those who are part of of your clan? He says, "No, the neighbor is the one who sees them all." He comes to visit Mary and Martha in chapter 10, and you know the story very well. Martha is quick on the move, Mary is heavy in the ear, and there's a little spat between the two of them that Jesus has to settle. And by the time you get to chapter 11, first half of chapter 11, he's giving instructions on prayer. He not only does that, but right after that, you have a casting out of demons, and, and people come to him. And in 11:4-36, some men are coming, and they're saying, "Show us a sign." He just cast out a demon, but they want signs the way they want them, when they want them. "Jump through our hoops." And here's the thing: Jesus doesn't jump through hoops. When you've created the universe, you don't jump through people's hoops. And so, he then goes on, chapter 11, chapter 12, first part of 13, long sermon. And he gives a series of five woes to the Pharisees. "Woe, boys." And he's not saying, "Stop." He's saying, "Boy, are you in trouble. Boy, are you in trouble. You are in trouble." He warns the people, "Watch out for the scribes and Pharisees." And then he turns, and a guy asks him, "You know, my brother's cheating me on the inheritance. Can you do anything about that?" And Jesus said, "I'm not the advocate for that situation. Why are you asking me?" And then he turns to his disciples and says, "Watch out for greed." No matter how it shows up, he cuts it right through to the actual problem. The guy's greedy.
It's interesting because he addresses not only greed, he also addresses worry and he addresses readiness. And by the time you get to the beginning of chapter 13, he makes a statement that sets people back on their heels. "Do you think the guys, the Galileans who got killed when the Tower of Jerusalem fell on them, you think that they were bad people?" See, he's trying to get the disciples to see. "Bad things happen to somebody you know or know of. Do you think it's because you're good and they're not? Is that how you think it works? Because it doesn't work that way." He's trying to get them to see. And so, in the middle of chapter 13, there's a, a woman who's bent over and she can't stand up straight, and he has compassion on her. And then he says, "I want to tell you a story about a man who goes and plants a weed in the middle of his garden so birds have a place to live." He said, "Here's the problem: I'm answering questions you're not asking." By the way, "The Kingdom of Heaven is just like a woman who takes starter dough and sticks it into her her loaf. Guess what? You're not going to stop this." And what's interesting is then he turns to the people in 13:22-30 and says, "I want you to strive to find the narrow gate." You know what he's saying? "Most people aren't going to get it, and I need you to get it. I need you to see what I'm trying to show you."
Chapter 13:31-35 is probably the emotional low point of the book. Jesus goes out, he stands over and sees the city of Jerusalem, and he cries because he recognizes that they're just not seeing what he's seeing, and they're not ready to have him as their king. Rather, they are ready to brutalize him. Chapters 14, 15, 16, and 17 actually all happen on one Sabbath. It's all one Sabbath afternoon. And in that Sabbath afternoon, it starts off with him healing a man, uh, who had dropsy. But because he had buried the men who argued with him about Sabbath healing a few chapters ago, he turns and says, "Anybody got a problem with me healing on Sabbath?" And you can hear crickets in the background, 'cause nobody's going to open their mouth this time, 'cause he buried them on the last exchange. Instead, he's invited. He comes to a house, and he's reclining around a triclinium, a three-sided reclining table, and they're having a meal together. And out in the gallery are people standing in the atrium watching, because that's what they did. The poor watched the rich eat so they could hear the Bible conference speaker. So, everybody's over there going, "So, tell me about that theological concept." And that guy's kind of rambling on, and people are out there going, "Oh, amen, amen. Maybe one of those apples will fall off the table and roll this way. Amen." And Jesus is talking, and he says, "I don't think you guys understand what I see. The people out here in the gallery, they're not your footstool. When you invite people next time, invite them. Don't invite people who can help you. Don't invite people who can give anything back." The crowd in the gallery is going, "Amen, hallelujah. Invite us next time." And, and Jesus is playing it up with the crowd, and the crowd is having a real difficulty because they understand that Jesus sees them. The other men around the table don't even look in their direction.
Later on, Jesus is called to go, and he has a, a meal with publicans and sinners. And the Pharisees in chapter 15 are all upset because he's doing that. "How could he hang out with those people and eat with those people?" And Jesus just, uh, told a simple parable. He said, "Which one of you, if you had 99 sheep and you lost one of them, wouldn't leave 99 and go and find the one that was lost? And when you found it, put him on your shoulders, bring it back, and have joy." And he says, "There was a man who lost sheep." Then he says, "And then there was a woman who lost a coin." And then there was a father who lost a son who went away and wasted his substance righteously." You know what he's doing? He's getting them, the men, and the women, and the parents. He's telling a story to knit people together. And the end of that story was, "When that which is lost is found, joy should be the result." And if you're not joyful, something's wrong with you. And I'm here with this Pharisee, and I am overjoyed that he wants to have a meal with me, and you're over there going, "Bah, humbug." Something's wrong with your heart.
In chapter 16, he says, "By the way, I want to tell you about a shrewd steward." This very shrewd man who, who was caught in a situation 'cause he was about to get fired, and he went out and figured out a way to deal with this problem in a very wise way. And because of his wisdom, his boss kept him on. "The people in this world are more shrewd than the people of the Kingdom of Light." 'Cause they may love God, but they don't know how to, they don't know how things work in this world. And I need you disciples to know, I'm not always going to be here to guide you. You can't get ripped off every time you go to the fish market. I need you to learn how to do this. And then he goes on and talks about divorce and, and the story of the rich man and Lazarus, very famous stories. And he ends by talking about a story of
Forgiveness in chapter 17, verses 1-10. He, he, he helps them to understand that what he really wants them to do more than anything else is learn what forgiveness is. But the, the, the, the instructions of forgiveness are so very, very difficult. They're finding it so hard that the apostles cry in 17:5, "Lord, increase our faith!" I think it's interesting that of all the things Jesus taught, the one that they asked for extra faith for was forgiving each other. I just think that's an interesting fact.
Now, the rest of chapter 17 tells the story of 10 lepers. Do you remember how many of them said thank you? One comes back and says thank you. But, but 10 of them are all cleansed. And then he goes on for the rest of the chapter, and he sits with the disciples and he says, "I want you to know something. There's coming a time when the Son of Man is going to come back in a second coming." And he explains it very carefully to them. And the end of each one of his careful explanations is either stated or implied: they don't get it. So he tells them more, and they still don't get it. So he tells them more, and they still don't get it. And he tells them more, and still don't get it. And that makes me feel like I'm not such a bad teacher, because what happens is, you can teach and teach and teach and make it as clear as you can. If the disciple doesn't hear it, doesn't hear. My father used to say, "It's not what I say, it's what you choose to hear."
Um, I, I will tell you this, that by the time you get down to chapter 18, you move into the stories that are, are related to Barabbas and Zacchaeus and some Jericho stories into chapter 19. And he rounds out chapter 19 by giving the parable of the talents and says, "What I've given you from heaven, I've given you so that you might actually use it in stewardship, not bury it." Now, if you trust me, then take what I gave you. Don't bury it and hang on to it. Use it. Put it out there and let's see what we can do with it.
All of that gets you all the way up to the last box. See, all those stories knit together. And here's what, here's what I want you to hear. That third box, that, that time of, of the Pharisee ministry, that time in the ancient, uh, equivalent of snowbirds in Florida. This is what he was saying: "I'm trying to prepare you guys for when I leave. I, I'm trying to get you to understand that that I'm not always going to be here. The time is urgent. You need to understand that eternal life can be granted to anyone. Prayer is going to be absolutely essential. Spiritual leaders are going to have to understand that that that, um, you can't trust the people who call themselves spiritual leaders. They're bankrupt. They're not to be trusted."
I want you to look very carefully. They classify people. I want you to look with compassion on people. Luke's gospel drips with Jesus trying to get his disciples over and over to see people the way he sees them. And he made clear that they needed to turn from the classification of people and rejoice when broken people respond. He led them to recognize that God invests in us so that he can use us because he wants us to steward the things he's given us. Believe it or not, when God gives you more, it's because he has expects more out of you. "Unto whom much is given, much will therefore be required."
We come into the last part of it, and this is a very familiar part because it begins with a triumphal entry. And it starts off in chapter 19:28-44 with the triumphal entry. And when you get to 19:44, I want you to listen to what Jesus said. He said, "They will level you to the ground and your children with you. They will not leave in you one stone upon another." Why? "Because you did not recognize the time of your visitation." If you have your Bible and you put notes, write Daniel 9:25 right next to verse 44, because in Daniel 9:25, God told them exactly when Jesus was coming. "173,880 days from now, from the start of the building of the wall of Jerusalem, I will be here." If you count it out, it's that day. He said, "I told you when I was coming 173,000 days ago. What were you thinking? You need skywriting. You weren't ready for the day of visitation because you didn't take my word seriously."
Listen carefully. Jesus will over and over question, "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? Will people take my word seriously?" And what I think is interesting is that, uh, he goes in, and in the beginning of chapter 20 and all the way through chapter 21, he begins to, it starts with the cleansing of the temple at the end of 19. And then in 20, he walks in and he starts teaching in the temple. And the very first thing they do is say, "What? By what authority do you walk in here? And turn over everything? We've been on double overtime working to clean up this temple, and you just, you just sent animals everywhere. We're going to be working through the night. Who told you you could do this?"
And he told them a very famous parable, the parable of the vineyard of a man who went away to a far country, owning a vineyard, and finally sent his servants, and eventually sent his son. And the people who worked the land killed him. They tried to trap him. They brought a coin. "Fine. We're not going to do anything to you. We'll get the Romans to do this. Should you pay tribute to Rome?" The crowds are sitting there because half of them believe you shouldn't, the other believe you should. This is sure to divide him. Are you a Republican or a Democrat? What exactly are you? Jesus masterfully answers it and leaves them befuddled.
And at the end of it, it's interesting because they think, "Okay, we, we lost him on the taxation. We'll get him on resurrection." And they tell a long story about a people who married and died and married and died, and who will they be married to in heaven after having multiple wives on Earth, or multiple husbands on Earth? Who are they married to in heaven? And Jesus said, "Don't you know how to read your Bible? That's not how it works in heaven." And he explains very carefully that there's no marriage in heaven and there's no need to, because the real marriage is there. The illustration is done away with.
Finally, he ends up in chapter 20 and he says, "Beware of these leaders. Be careful of what they're teaching you." And then in chapter 21, in comes a woman with a small amount of money, and she walks in and drops her mite. And Jesus looks and says, "Take a look at that. With all this nonsense, there's real worship going on here. And people who don't matter to anyone else matter to me. And I see real worship, no matter what you've been given." And he walks out. And as he's leaving in chapter 21, for the rest of the chapter, they say, "Lord, look at these beautiful buildings." They're impressed with the buildings. He was impressed with the mite. Note that he saw the small thing and the elderly woman. They saw the big thing and the gold cornice and huge buildings. How much like us they were. Amen.
And he goes out and he sits down on the side of Mount of Olives and he gives the Olivet Discourse. And he says, "Look very, very hard, because it's not going to look like that forever." And he explains it to them in chapters 22 and 23. They go from a plot of Judas through the time of the Last Supper in 22, and finally end up in Gethsemane. And you remember he's arrested in Gethsemane. Judas steps forward and and and, uh, identifies him with a kiss. He's taken to the high priest's house. And there's a wonderful story in chapter 22 of Peter's denials. Peter, who was going to die for you, and yet he's denying Jesus right away. Well, by the end of chapter 23, he is now carrying the cross in the streets. And you see in 23, in the beginning of 24, the crucifixion, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus.
The end of chapter 24, the final chapter of the book, is to tell the story of Jesus. And it, it, it prolongs this story. And it's a strange story to stick at the end of the book. It's a story about a bunch of guys who are walking kind of beveled and broken, looking down as they're leaving Jerusalem. And a stranger comes up to them and says, "Why are you so downcast? You have to be the only one who hasn't heard that that that the one who was called Jesus of Nazareth was, was crucified, died, and killed." And he said, "But let me show you from the scriptures why it has to be that the Son of Man came and the Son of Man suffered."
See, in the final segment of the Gospel, Luke made clear that Jesus was challenging the leaders of the temple openly. They had no choice. He was standing. He wasn't challenging the Romans. And that's what Luke was trying to say. This was an inter-temple fight. It wasn't a Roman fight. He evaded trap after trap. But in the end, he was arrested and passed over in a mock trial, and he ended up being given over to his Roman appeasers, who ended up nailing him to a cross. And what Luke wanted Theophilus to know was, there was no violation against Rome. There was no big uprising. There was a quiet group of leaders who outplayed political games, handed them over to an appeasing Roman governor who didn't want problems on his hand. That's how Jesus went to the cross. His death was brutal, but his resurrection was powerful, and his Ascension was beautiful. And the end of the whole thing, he says, "And we watched him go up." And there's this wonderful crescendo of all of the story. Luke 24 ends not with a defeated Jesus, but with a victorious King.
Here's what I want you to know. In the end, there are four parts to Luke's gospel: pre-ministry, popular ministry largely in Galilee, the preparation of ministry largely in Pera, trying to get the disciples to see what he sees in people, and the parting ministry all the way through the passion and through the Ascension. I want to finish this by suggesting to you that I love that Luke brought a special flavor to the presentation of Jesus. Luke is sensitive to Gentiles, to women, to Samaritans, to outcasts, anybody who's blind, anybody who's short, anybody who's anybody that nobody else cares about. Luke puts him in the story. He majors on the people that no one else would put in. I love that he emphasized the need and the power for prayer. I, I love that he recognized the religious darkness was as big a challenge to Jesus as demonic darkness. And by the way, they're two forms of the same thing. He showed Jesus serving tirelessly, teaching passionately, and avoiding traps constantly. He showed Jesus as a man who knew he was God, not a God who was awkwardly trying to put on a human body. Jesus, in the final analysis, was a friend of sinners, but he dreaded religious sticks-in-the-mud. And he loved, he loved, he loved to present the kingdom of his Father with joy, with anticipation. 24 chapters, four sections, one word: "See what I see when I see broken people, because the Son of Man came to seek and to save not the people that were okay or thought they were, but the people who are broken and knew they were." I don't have an offering to bring to you.