Gospel Bookends

Luke’s Prologue and the Historical Reliability of the Gospel

Our lesson this evening will be taken from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1. The Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 1. Once again, as we open God's Word, let us ask Him to bless our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, in these few moments we have, we ask that You would once again enlighten our hearts, that You would give us clarity of thought, expression, and understanding, that by Your Spirit, Father, You would glorify Yourself during this time.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. How you begin and how you end. The older you get, the more you start thinking about the second part. There's not much we can do about the first. How we begin our lives, what situation we're in, the parents that we have.

I don't have any control over any of that. It is amazing in our society that we are taught to have an attitude of a victim always. It's very popular today to blame your parents for everything. Well, I was born on the wrong side of the tracks.

I didn't have all the opportunities somebody else did. I don't remember ever being taught it, but somewhere along the line, my parents communicated to me that you don't complain about things like that.

You don't look back upon your life and say, well, I've just been given a bad hand. No, I think God gives us what He intends to give us. And then we are responsible for what we do with that. And there are two kinds of people in this world.

Those who choose to be unhappy about that and those who choose to be happy about that. The folks over on the happy side tend to be more fun to be around in the long term too. But when it comes to how we end, well, that's much more a part of our faithfulness to God.

And the older you get, the more you start thinking about that. When you're a young person, you don't think much about that. That's just so far down the road.

It's not as far as you think, believe me.

But as you get older, you start thinking about that. The beginning and the ends. That's something you really want to be able to look back toward the end and say, I did what was right with what God gave me.

In the same way, when you are writing something, you're trying to tell a story, the beginning and the ends are very important. If you don't do well at the beginning, people may put the book down, put the story down, not even finish.

I've certainly discovered that especially when you're speaking, when you're making a presentation, very often what you say at the beginning, what you say at the end is what people remember. Stuff in the middle, not so much.

My opponents in debates often forget about that. They don't bother to even try to wrap up or to make a point, give something memorable so that people are listening. I've always found that to be a very odd thing.

It's interesting when we look at our Bibles. There are times when you can see very clearly that the author is thinking about the beginning and the end. Sometimes the literary term that is used is bookending.

You know those bookends. I don't know why we have horse heads as bookends. Does anybody else have horse head bookends? I have these things and they're supposed to hold your books up. They don't do a really good job unless they're really, really heavy.

Sometimes they fall over too. But when you start building a library, you've got to have these bookends. They hold everything up and they hold everything together. When you think about it, for example, in the Gospel of John, in the prologue, John 1, 1 -18, you know that there is what's called bookending there.

The author, John, in John 1, 1, tells us pretty much the same information as John 1, 18, but in different words. And so they function as bookends to sort of frame that portion of the text and say this is the lens through which I want you to see the rest of my book.

That's called bookending. Well, sometimes it goes all the way across an entire book. And looking at the Gospel of Luke, it seems that Luke, who is clearly a very educated man, the language he uses is the highest, Luke, Acts, and Hebrews in the New Testament, the most difficult to translate because it's at the highest level, very complex at times.

This man clearly wants to communicate something in his Gospel. And so he has, in a sense, provided us with a bookend technique. And that bookend technique tells us something that I think is very important for us, something that I think is very important in this day and age to look at.

And so I want to look at just the first few verses of Luke 1, and then we'll look at the end of the Gospel of Luke. That's called covering an entire... We will cover an entire book in one sermon. Now, that is probably unorthodox and illegal for Reformed Baptists, but we're going to take a shot at it.

Anyways, Luke 1, verse 1, 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, 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 for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

Now, this is called the prologue, the introduction to the Gospel of Luke. And I think a lot of folks tend to just go zooming by the introductions to epistles and sometimes the introductions to some of the Gospels.

And you don't do that with John, because immediately it's in the beginning was the Word, was with God, and things like that. But especially in the epistles, you know, you have Paul and Timothy or Paul and Silas to the church and the elders.

And it's sort of like, yeah, yeah, I know. There's often some tremendous theological insights to be gathered there. But this, especially for some folks, might be one of those texts where it's just sort of like, okay, he's writing to someone named Theophilus, which, by the way, means lover of God.

Theophilus means a person who loves God. And so that may even have been a term just simply for anyone who was interested in knowing the truth of the Gospel rather than a particular person. But it might have been a specific individual as well.

But the point is, you know, okay, Luke's saying, I've done my duty. I've done a fair amount of work. And here's what has happened amongst us. But I think there's much more to it than that. In fact, many scholars have found these first four verses to be a goldmine of information concerning the attitude of the Gospel writers and the fact that the Gospel is not just some mythology, some story that people cobbled together to try to make the world a better place.

That's very popular today to have that perspective. But that doesn't fit with what Luke says. So note what he does say. It seems that by the time of this writing, and when was that? Well, unfortunately, there's not a time stamp on this anymore.

We get an email from somebody, and it says 9 -11 a .m. on such and such a date in such and such a year. And so we can know pretty much exactly when it was they wanted to communicate with us something.

It doesn't quite work that way. I mean, Luke does give us a lot of information about what happened during Jesus' life, and this happened during this reign, and this person was governor in this place, and things like that.

But as to when he himself is writing this, well, we don't know. And scholars have different guesses, because that's the best we can do. I mean, one of the best theories that I have ever encountered is that, remember, we're looking at Luke Acts.

They are written together clearly. I would suggest that the best explanation I've seen is that Luke wrote this sort of as an amicus brief. Do you know what an amicus brief is? It's something you submit to a court as a friend of the court, and it's basically trying to give the court further background understanding of a particular case, normally from one perspective or the other.

And if Luke is traveling with Paul, and as Acts seems to indicate, is with him there at the end, there in Rome, then this may well be the account that he has put together and submits to the court in the sense of, here is evidence that what we're doing, God commanded us to do.

We're not trying to overthrow the Roman Empire. We have had constant accusations, false accusations from those people that are pursuing Paul and have placed these charges before Caesar and so on and so forth.

And here's the real story of what has happened in this life of this man, Jesus, and what God has done in him, and then how he's founded the church. And if that's the case, then that would put Luke somewhere in the early 60s, around the time when Paul is imprisoned at that point in time, somewhere around a few years, one direction or the other.

Now, he specifically does say that many others have attempted, have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us. Many others? Most scholars today, anyways, hold to what's called the Mark and Priority view, that Mark was first and Matthew and Luke had Mark.

I don't prefer that perspective myself. I think that the tradition of the church is much more likely the source. I don't think Matthew was just sitting there and he had Mark in front of him. He's going, well, I like that, but I don't like this, and so I'm going to change that.

I have some major problems with that. But there are a lot of people who think that's exactly what was going on. But it says many have undertaken to compile an account. And is that to be taken only as a written account?

Or were there oral stories that were collected? I think that's probably more what he has in mind here. Because it says, just as they were handed down to us by those who, from the beginning, were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word.

So there has been a handing down of the Gospel story. There has been this passing on. It's exactly what Paul says. He says, I have delivered to you what has been delivered to me. And it wasn't that someone sent him a FedEx letter or something like that.

There was a passing down of the story during the time when the eyewitnesses, those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, there were still eyewitnesses in the church for many, many decades.

And so while they're still around, and while they are still recalling and retelling what they themselves have experienced, frequently not just one, but in groups. And how often when we tell stories about something that has happened, I know that, again, as I get older, for example, sometimes Rich and I will sit around.

And we've been in ministry together for like 25 years now. And once in a blue moon, I'll remember something better than Rich does. Normally, I admit, it's the other way around. But we'll be sitting there.

And I remember when such-and-so did such-and-so. And he'll tell me something, and I'll go, oh, yeah, that's right, I'd forgotten that. And then I'll say something, oh, I had forgotten that. And by having more than one witness, the testimony is verified and things like that.

Now, of course, if Roxy had been one of the early eyewitnesses, we wouldn't need any of the Gospels because we just have, that's the way it is. And there would be no questions, and that would have been really nice.

But she wasn't around back then. So notice I said you were not around back then. I wanted to emphasize that particular statement. So it would have been nice, but that's not the way it worked out. But there were these eyewitnesses.

And so during that time, they have passed down. And people started collecting these things. And, you know, maybe someone collected specific information about Jesus' ministry in Galilee. And somebody else who lived in Jerusalem was specifically interested in what Jesus had done in Jerusalem.

And so they were gathering these stories together and things like that. Well, there's been a desire on people's part to have more of an official version of the story. And maybe Mark has already written by this point, but he's in a different place than Luke is.

I mean, during those first few decades, you know, we think we are so used to the information age that we think everybody would have known what everybody else was doing. You know, everybody whipped out their cell phone.

Hey, Mark, have you finished your chapter yet? You know, it doesn't work that way. Someone could write a book, and you might not know about it for years. Depending, especially during periods of persecution, you don't advertise.

Hey, you want my Christian book? The Romans are trying to burn me for this, but would you like a copy? It doesn't work that way. And so Luke says, it seemed fitting for me as well. Now, some people really don't like that.

That doesn't sound spiritual enough. There needs to have been an angel that came down and said, Luke, do this, or something like that. But it seemed fitting for me as well. And, you know, sometimes the Lord just uses what is fitting as guidance in our lives.

It seemed fitting for me as well. Having investigated everything carefully from the beginning. Having investigated. He has studied. Luke engaged in scholarship. He studied sources. He cross-checked things.

Evidently, given how much he emphasizes the women in the ministry of Jesus. He talked to them. And he interrogated them. He asked them questions. What do you remember about this? What do you remember about that?

And in fact, this investigation results in an orderly presentation. I don't necessarily think that Luke is saying, I've done everything in a chronological order. But it's in a consecutive order. Presentations can be in consecutive order by basis of topic.

By basis of what's most important and what's not important, etc., etc. But he has put together and written out for Theophilus an investigated, carefully analyzed story of what has been accomplished amongst the people of God by God himself.

And so Luke admits he's used sources. He's interviewed people. If there were pre-existing written sources, he would have been happy to have used them. Luke, we know, for example, uses really weird terminology.

We don't normally note it in just reading through. But he will, especially in Acts, Paul will be traveling through some place. And he'll mention a person who had a particular official title. And it always had sort of befuddled scholars as to why Luke would use such a wide range of terms that seemed to be synonymous to us until archaeological discoveries have showed us that Luke had an incredibly accurate penchant for knowing exactly what someone was called in a particular place.

You know, for example, you go down south and you don't have counties, you have parishes. And law enforcement officers can be called all sorts of different things in different places. You've got, you know, I lived back in Pennsylvania.

And you had townships back there and things like that.

But a sheriff?

I mean, that's from the old, you know, 1940s Cowboys movies until we moved out here and found out that that was still going on. We still have sheriffs and constables and all sorts of stuff like that. And we discover that Luke is very accurate.

He obviously was there and remembered, oh, those folks there, they called their governor this. And so he uses that kind of terminology. So, he has investigated things. He's used his mind. He's used the tools that God has given to him.

He's used quote-unquote scholarship. Clearly from his language, he is an educated man. And he's used those things. And so he's created this orderly account. And it has a purpose. So that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.

So that you may know the exact truth. Now, I think it is vitally important for us, especially in a day and age like ours, to realize that the biblical writers are not like they are so often portrayed.

If you go to the local university, the local community college, they're going to tell you that these folks, you know, they were just trying to tell a parable. As Dr. John Dominick Crossan, who I debated a number of years ago, just a world-famous scholar, he had the line, It's a parable, dummy.

It's all meant to be a parable. It's all just a story. It didn't really happen. It's just told in that context to make it sound like that. Well, look at all the myths and fables of the Greeks and things like that.

Don't you see? They put it, they said that this happened at a certain place and so on. It's all just myths and fables. Well, actually, when you look at those myths and fables, they're not like what we find in the New Testament.

They don't say this happened during the reign of such and such a person. You can go check and go ask this person. No, that's not what they did. They did not ground it in history. They might have said, well, it happened on Mount Olympus.

And there is a Mount Olympus, so therefore, no, big deal. But it's another thing to say it happened on such and such a mountain, and it was this many days before a feast when such and such a person was governor, and there's this many people that were there, and you can still go ask folks about it.

That's a completely different thing. And so the Gospel writers place what God did in bringing about our redemption in history in the very reality of time and space and God's creation itself. They don't give us any reason to believe that this is just some myth, that if you believe it, it will make your life a little bit better.

That is not anywhere near what the New Testament message is. And in fact, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. And so there was teaching. There was teaching of God's truth.

And now here, Luke is giving the grounding of that. You've heard the message of Jesus. You've heard the message of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Now let me tell you the whole story about what happened.

And I've investigated it, and I've laid this all out. And here it is in consecutive order for you to be able to read and to understand and to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so here you have Luke starting off.

And for us, what we're thankful for is he's saying, I'm not just making this up. This is something that I have studied. This is something that God has given me the time and the ability to put these things together.

Here is my accounting of what has been accomplished by God, the things accomplished amongst us. So he's speaking within the community. He's speaking as an eyewitness of many of these things, not so much during the ministry of Jesus, but certainly in the book of Acts in regards to what happens in Paul's life at that time.

And as I've said, there are some people that find this to be somewhat dry. Oh, okay, so Luke's telling us that he's done his homework, and okay, that's fine. But for us, there's excitement here because the investment of our time and our effort and really our lives in studying these words really wouldn't amount to much if all we were reading were the words of some guy who had some particular thoughts about God.

Because honestly, if that's all there is to it, a lot of people have had thoughts about God. And if you were to read everything that everyone has ever said about God, all you would be is confused. You'd be well-read, but you would be a confused, well-read person because, well, men's thoughts about God don't actually reveal much about God to us.

We want to know what God reveals about Himself. And so Luke tells us at the beginning of his Gospel, this story is rooted in history itself, and there is an exact truth about the things you have been taught, and you can know it.

You can know it, despite how many people today would like to tell us,.

No.

No one can know any exact truth about things religious. And in fact, you are being arrogant, and you're being hateful if you think there is an exact truth. This, indeed, is another place, as so many places in the New Testament, where the great heresy of Christianity is seen in talking about objective truth.

There is objective truth.

Most of us live our lives assuming there is, but much of the philosophy today would undermine that greatly. So there's the beginning. I have investigated these things thoroughly. I'm laying this out for you.

There is an exact truth that you may know about the things you've been taught. There is the beginning. But I said beginning and ending.

The End of Luke and the Fulfillment of the Scriptures

So let's go to the end of the book, Luke chapter 24.

And we'll go to about verse 44, just toward the end. And I'm not going to read the whole thing. I don't have time for that. But I would like to look at the encounter of Jesus with His disciples. He has appeared to them.

Remember, He has walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He has eaten with them. Then their eyes are opened. They realize it's Him. He disappears. And they come back, and you have the meeting of the disciples together.

And He eats in their presence once again to demonstrate the reality of the fact that He has conquered death, that He is the resurrected Messiah, the Savior of the world. And so in verse 44 we read,.

Now He said to them,.

These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

And He said to them,. And thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things. Now, we immediately sense the connection. Because back at the beginning,.

It talked about eyewitnesses.

It talked about those who had seen these things. It talked about those who had experienced these things, and the things that had been accomplished among us. And so there's a personal element. It's not just what I heard from somebody who heard from somebody who heard from somebody.

This is first-hand testimony. And here at the very end, these themes are being brought together again. Jesus identifies these men as witnesses of these things. And yet, what you now have at the end is one of the things that some people seem to feel is missing at the beginning.

The spiritual element. Jesus has accomplished everything that the Father has given Him to do. And what does Luke feel it is important to record for us from what the Apostles had told him, from what had been handed down.

Of all the things when Jesus meets, I mean, if we were to put together a list, we'd like to know the following from Jesus. These are the questions that we would like to ask of Jesus the first time we encounter Him after the resurrection.

That would be an interesting list of questions. And maybe sometime we'll do that in Sunday School. I'll ask you to all submit your list of questions.

That you would have asked the Lord.

After you got over your shock and your amazement and after you see Him eat a piece of broiled fish and you finally had an opportunity to say something and you could get your tongue unloosed.

What would you ask?

I obviously think the disciples who had walked along with Him, having just gone through that really dark time and now seeing what the truth is and their minds have been opened, maybe they wouldn't ask anything because they'd just be beating themselves about the head and shoulders for having been so slow to have understood.

I mean, Jesus did. That's one of the first words He said to the disciples.

Slow of heart, slow of mind.

Don't you see that the Scriptures said these things? It's almost a rebuking attitude there. But what does Jesus say? What does Luke record for us? But the supernatural ministry of the Son of God in opening the minds of His disciples.

Men who have heard more Christian preaching, that is the teaching of Jesus Himself, than anybody else has. They have listened for years to the very Son of God preaching. And they still need to have their minds opened.

They still need to have a spiritual ministry to understand the Scriptural testimony to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so He says to them, these are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you.

It's not like I never told you about any of this.

I did.

But in fact, when we got into the heart of those things, we know, for example, in Matthew 16, when He starts talking about the fact that He's going to be betrayed in the hands of the sons of men, and so on and so forth, what's the response from Peter?

No, no, no. May it never be, Lord. So much so that the Lord says to him, get behind Me, Satan. You're buying the things of men, not of God. And so He had spoken to them. He had begun to reveal these things that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Now, I don't have time this evening, but just note the threefold form of the Scriptures there, the recognition of the existence of the Old Testament in the form that we have it today.

You have the Torah, the Law,.

And you've got the Nevi 'im, the Prophets, and the Ketuvim, the Writings, including the Psalms and other things like that. Jesus uses the same language here. And what He's saying is, all of it, all of it testifies of Me.

All these things are written about Me in these divine Scriptures. And then, having made that statement, He says, then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. Now, a lot of people struggle with this.

Because on the one hand, at the beginning of the book, I did interviews.

Checked my facts.

I compiled things together.

I put it in a decent order. It makes logical sense.

We read the book,.

And He talks a lot about history and things that took place and this and that and the other thing. That sounds a lot like how a historian does history. So, what's this necessity to open their minds? Well, this really, I think, it's very important for us to understand.

Because it's one of those times where you've got the straight path and then it falls off very fast either direction on either side. I don't know if any of you saw the picture that I posted while I was up in Colorado.

But I wrote up what's called Loveland Pass. And I wrote up the side that I was scared to death to write up. I had to do it. I had to defeat. I'm terrified of heights. Pastor Fry, to this day, he still nudges me about once he wanted me to go up on the roof to do something when we lived here.

And I'm sort of like,.

Really?

Right now?

I got a helicopter? You know, something like that. And that's when he found out. Oh, I don't like stuff you can fall off of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

So, if I can fall off of it, I don't like it. And I put a picture up there. And you can see, even at the top where it started to widen out, off to the one side, it just goes right off into thin air. And it is thin air.

It's 12 ,000 feet above sea level.

And there I am on my little bike,.

You know, woo-hoo,.

Going up this thing. And then going down, it's even more fun because you're going a little faster than when you're going up it. But it's two sides. And the gradient is steep. And it's a matter of balance again when it comes to being balanced.

And some people fall off on the side of the spiritual side of Scripture. You know, they're the ones who... I can't do this with an iPad, so I'll do it with a... You know, they're the ones who... Lord, I need to know what to do.

Ah, it says, hmm... Therefore, behold, the days are coming, it says the Lord, that they shall no longer say,.

As the Lord lives,.

Who brought up children of Israel from the land of Egypt. So, I shouldn't have kids.

You know, and that's how they do it.

This spiritual thing. It's almost the Ouija Bible. You know, just move my hand around.

There it is.

It's all the spiritual stuff. And I'm just going to read a few verses, and I'm going to contemplate it for a while, and something will come to me. That's the one side over here. There's another side too.

And there's people who just, you know, you just read the words, and they have a certain meaning, and all you worry about is the context and the history. And anybody can really understand this. And so you've got the naturalistic view, and you've got the spiritual view, but it doesn't have any connection with history.

You don't have to worry about the grammar. You don't have to worry about the meaning. Those are the two fall-off points. And we always have to stand right on the ridge. Right on the balance point. And recognize that this Scripture is rooted in history.

It tells us the truth. That God used men. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. He used their gifts. They had different gifts and different talents. Luke isn't much of a poet.

Doesn't try to be one.

I'm glad David was.

I mean, the Psalms would not be nearly as good.

If Luke wrote them.

You know?

He used them in the context that they lived, at their time.

And yet,.

There is the spiritual aspect. The natural man does not understand the things.

Of the Spirit of God.

And there is a need for the ministry of God in the person's heart to open up the mind to understand the Scriptures. That's why I've said many times, when I hear someone who has professed the name of Christ, and they find the Scriptures to be insufficient as a guide to their relationship with God and the nature of the Gospel, I struggle with that person ever having truly been made a child of God.

Having been renewed in their mind. Because I see such a consistency in the testimony of Scripture to its own authority that someone who would be willing to question that, I don't get it. I don't understand that.

That doesn't fit. Both are right there. In one book, the author tells us, I examined these things. I searched these things out.

And yet,.

It's absolutely necessary that the minds of men be opened to understand the Scriptures. It's right there. Book ends.

Not contradiction.

We have to hold these two truths together. Because without the one, the other will be emptied of its true meaning. The reason it's important that the Gospel is grounded in history.

Is because God really did these things.

It's not just a myth. At the same time, we must be and are dependent upon the ministry of the Spirit of God to open our hearts and minds to understand. When you present God's truth to someone, when you explain the Gospel to someone, maybe an intelligent person, and maybe you did the best you could do, you thought that was one of the best presentations you ever made, and there's just an absolute blank stare back at you.

Just no connection at all. No resonating nothing. Was it all your fault? You should never feel like, if you've accurately spoken God's truth, you should never feel like you've wasted your time. God is glorified in the proclamation of His truth, both in its acceptance, as well as its rejection.

If you've been faithful, God has been glorified. But it's not just a matter of your presentation. There has to be the spiritual aspect as well. The Holy Spirit has to grant understanding. It's right there in front of us when we look at the whole message as very clearly presented to us.

So I hope you'll consider these things and note that the Scripture sometimes reveals things to us in very interesting ways. Beginnings and the ends. I've thought of a couple of other examples of this that maybe in the future we'll take a look at where an author communicates something to us by having a beginning theme and the end theme, and how he works those two together can often tell us something about the overarching message that he has to deliver to us.

This evening, Scriptures communicate to us the exact truth of what we've been taught,.