Intro to the Gospel of Luke

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Today, we're going to begin a new study in the Gospel of Luke. And if you haven't been watching up until now, let me give you a little idea of what we're doing.

Every day, we look at a new chapter of the Bible, and this is part of a Bible reading program that we're doing in the New Testament at Sovereign Grace Family Church. We have this available for you to go and download if you would like to read along with us every day, there's a new chapter.

Luke’s Place in the New Testament Reading Plan

And the way that we're going through the books is we're going through them in the order that we believe they were written. So we have now come to the Gospel of Luke. And for me, this is a very important and something that's very close to my heart, because the very first book that I preached verse by verse, and as many of you know, that's my method for preaching.

I preach verse by verse through books of the Bible. The very first book of the Bible that I preached verse by verse was through the Gospel of Luke. And in fact, when I was going for my doctorate at the seminary, Jackson Baptist Theological Seminary, I wrote my doctorate as an exposition of the early chapters of the Gospel of Luke.

So it's gonna be really difficult for me to not to really want to dive into the particulars of this particular book, because this book has such an important history with me as both a pastor and as a student in seminary.

Luke the Historian and Physician

So what I'd like to do today is I'd like to just talk about who Luke is. I'd like to talk about the first chapter and what the first chapter goes over. And I wanna do this in just a few minutes because I try to keep these in a really short amount of time.

Again, just as much time as it takes you to have your morning coffee and have a little devotion in the word. Remember who Luke is, first of all. We have four Gospel writers. We have Matthew, who we know was a Jew and a converted tax collector, a person who converted to Christ out of his tax booth, came and followed Jesus.

We have Mark, which we believe Mark was actually, we know that he was one who had gone on a missionary journey with the Apostle Paul. He later became a missionary partner with Barnabas. And we know who Mark is, but we also believe that he is writing from having had Peter sharing with him.

And so we see a lot of Peter's influence in Mark's Gospel. At least that's what a lot of people believe. And I would tend to agree. And we know who the Gospel of John, the writer of John, and John is actually written much later than the first three Gospels.

But the order in which they were written is sometimes contested. Some people argue Matthew was written first. Some people believe Mark was written first. But the truth of the matter is, we know Luke was the next to the last or the third that was written.

And Luke even mentions in his opening paragraph that he sought to compile a narrative of the things that he's writing. Luke is a very intelligent man. He is a physician. We know this because the Scripture calls him that and tells us that he is a physician.

But we also know that he is a historian. He is one who is concerned with accuracy in his writings. And we see a tremendous amount of accuracy in what he says. Of course, the Bible is 100 true. It is all the Word of God.

But we see the particulars of Luke's Gospel, him seeking to be very particular about places and names and things like that. And so we're thankful for his amount of detail. And remember, it is Luke who also gave us the Gospel or the Book of Acts.

So we have the Gospel of Luke, which we could call Luke part one. And then we have the Book of Acts, which really is the continuation of the Gospel of Luke going into the Acts of the Apostles and the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

Theophilus and Luke’s Opening Purpose

Now, Luke chapter one begins by referencing a person called Theophilus. And this is often something that causes people questions. Who is Theophilus? And the answer is we actually do not know for certain who Theophilus was.

But based on his name, we could make some assumptions. The word Theophilus is the combination of theos, which means God, and philos, or love. And so this is a person who is loved by God. And so some people have said, because it's written to Theophilus, what it's written is this is generic to all the church, all the beloved of God.

Some other people think Theophilus was an individual. This is actually written to somebody who was a person of notoriety. And so it's being written to him. And really, we don't have enough information to make a hard and fast understanding.

But we do know that his name is mentioned here. It's also mentioned in the Book of Acts, because this is the way that Luke opens up his writings. And he goes on to tell us about the birth of John the Baptist.

And then he goes on to tell us about the birth of Jesus. And we have the most expressive narrative of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. In fact, when we go tomorrow and look at, or in our next episode, which I think will be Monday, we're actually gonna look at the birth of Christ in chapter two in much more detail.

But chapter one mentions it as well. Talks about how his birth is foretold. Talks about Mary and Elizabeth, her cousin, and the situation that happened between them. It has the song of Mary here. Again, a lot of detail is in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John Compared

Now, as we begin to draw this episode to a close, this introduction to the Gospel of Luke, I wanna talk about Luke's relationship to the other four Gospels. I've already talked about the order that they were likely written in.

But now I wanna talk about the purpose. Because when you think about the four Gospels, it really is four perspectives on the life of Christ. All of them accurate, all of them 100 true, and yet we get four perspectives about Jesus.

The first in the Gospel of Matthew shows us Jesus as King of the Jews. Matthew goes to a great amount of time to show that Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies that were made of him. And Matthew does a tremendous job of going back to the Old Testament, saying, see, this is how he fulfilled this scripture, this is how he fulfilled that scripture, and he is, in fact, the King of the Jews.

Mark, on the other hand, shows us a picture of the suffering servant. And we see a focus on Jesus's service and on his suffering and on what he came to do as the suffering servant, the one who was talked about in Isaiah, the one who would bear our griefs.

And so we see that in the Gospel of Mark. But then when we get to Luke and John, it's almost like Luke and John are parallel in one respect. John focuses a lot on the divinity of Jesus Christ, and Luke focuses on the humanity of Jesus Christ.

And Christian theology and biblical theology teach that Jesus is both. He is fully God and he is fully man. And so when we go through the Gospel of Luke, this, again, is the reason for the focus on his birth, focusing on the fact that though he was born of a virgin, though he was miraculously conceived, he was, in fact, born as a man.

He didn't come into the world, he didn't appear out of the ether, he didn't conjure up out of thin air, he wasn't born out of a cave or some mystical cloud, he was born of a woman, and as the Apostle Paul says in Galatians, he was born of woman, born under the law, that he could redeem those who were under the law, and we, through him, might receive the adoption as sons.

Why Luke’s Humanity Theme Matters for the Gospel

And so we are beginning the Gospel of Luke. I wanna encourage you, again, remember on YouTube there's something called The Bible Project, and The Bible Project gives overviews of every book of the Bible in a little short video, and I think they're very helpful.

So if you want something to accompany this study and you want to go and watch something, I would encourage you to go watch, go look up The Bible Project, look up the Gospel of Luke, and watch their introduction and outline to the Gospel of Luke.

I think it'll be very helpful for us and for you in the days to come. I hope this has been helpful for you, I hope this has been an encouragement to you. Again, my name is Keith Foskey, this has been Coffee with a Calvinist.

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Again, thank you for watching, and may God bless your day.