Daniel Simmons

Sam Choi

Theo Sandberg

Daniel Simmons

Ross Tenneson

Ross Tenneson

Amanda Sandberg

Luke Intro: Eye-Witness Certainty

Ross Tenneson / General

The Gospel of Luke / Assurance / Luke 1:1–4

Summary

Exegetical MP: Luke writes an orderly account about Jesus so that Theophilus (and all people who want to know Jesus) may have certainty about Jesus and the Scriptures.

Sticky: We have great reasons for great confidence in Jesus.

Connection (Me)

•     Overview of the gospel of Luke (the big picture).

As a church we will spend the next several months walking through the first part of the gospel of Luke. This series will cover verses 1:1 through 9:50. 

Each Gospel has its own unique characteristics. Luke has a special focus on the plan of God. We can see the heart of that plan in 19:10 (which some people characterize as the theme verse of this gospel), “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” All throughout this gospel we can see Jesus overturning people’s expectations. Jesus shows a concern for the downtrodden and outcasts: the poor, tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, Gentiles, and women[1] so much so his opponents even call him a “gluten and drunkard and a friend of sinners and tax collectors” (Luke 7:34).

Jesus comes and introduces what many call an “upside-down” kingdom where the poor and the marginalized find acceptance in him and the rich and privileged who reject him find themselves rejected. The cross and how one responds to Jesus’s crucifixion is the great dividing line. No matter who you are or where you come from, your response to Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection determines your place in his kingdom (or even if you get to be a part of it!).

•     Personal Story

Now, I would like to turn our attention specifically to the first four verses in Luke. For the rest of the sermon, I want to focus on specifically what God wants us to learn from these four verses. Let me begin with a short reflection on my own life:

Sometimes I struggle with doubt and unbelief about Christianity. It happens especially when I am depressed or discouraged. This was the case last week. After a long trip, I was emotionally and spiritually drained.

I know I am not supposed to admit this as a pastor, but sometimes I found myself thinking, “I don’t feel like Christian” or “Is Christianity and God real?”

Tension (We)

Maybe you have moments like these. This should lead us to ask, where can we turn at these times— or even all the time— to find certainty for our beliefs?

You have heard it said that Christianity is a leap of faith. Do you have to check your mind at the door and take a “blind leap of faith” to follow Jesus (is that what I am supposed to do?) or can you have reasonable certainty that you believe the truth?[2]

And if you are a person who is not yet a follower of Jesus here today, you will hear what I believe are great reasons for you to trust the Bible and put your hope in Jesus. 

Also, I want to ask, can we trust this book with our lives? The Bible makes some pretty heavy demands on us, so I want to ask, can we trust it?

Exposition (God)

•     The Author:

In verses 1-4, the author, Luke, writes a brief introduction to his book.  Luke was probably a gentile (a non-Jew) who had never met Jesus in person. We know from Colossians 4:14 that Luke was a close friend of the Apostle Paul and that he was a physician. Why is that relevant?  We can see a great amount of detail and orderliness in his book about Jesus. The book unfolds as if someone with a carefully trained medical mind set out to write a well-researched account about the life of Jesus. We read about his method in verses 1-3,

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus

I want to make two quick comments on Luke’s methods:

(1) First, he mentions that many others had written down accounts about what had happened in the days of Jesus. Likely, Luke is not criticizing these accounts and trying to do a better job; instead, these other accounts are likely inspiring Luke to write his own (Pillar Edwards). Also, he sees his account as a “fulfillment” of OT promises. We can speak more about that on the podcast.

(2) And second, since Luke never met Jesus in person, he spent considerable time and energy interviewing the eye-witnesses who did. What a scene: Luke the physician scouring Jerusalem and the surrounding area talking to the Likes of Peter, John, and James, asking them anything and everything about Jesus. Just think of Luke sitting down with Peter, who would then have probably been an old man. Luke maybe was sitting across a table from him, parchment and ink in hand: “tell me Peter, about Jesus.”

A whole thirty percent of his gospel includes new information we don’t find in other Gospels.[3]

What a gift God has given us through Luke! Praise God this man devoted months, even years of his life, to capture and preserve the life of our savior Jesus on these pages. This book has nurtured so many generations since the time of Christ to repentance and faith in Jesus, and now I pray it will do the same for our church at this moment in history.

•     The Recipient:

Now I want to briefly mention the recipient. Luke says he wrote his letter to, “most excellent Theophilus.” We actually know next to nothing about Theophilus. We don’t know if Theophilus (which means “lover of God”) is his real name or not and if “most excellent” means he had considerable rank or if it is just a respectful way to address him.[4]

However, I do like what one commentator has to say, “if he is on the one hand a new Christian with a rudimentary knowledge of the faith, or on the other hand a non-Christian who is interested enough to learn what it is really about— this Gospel is written especially for such as him.”[5] Are you a new Christian or a non-Christian with interest in learning about Jesus? Pay attention: this gospel is especially for you. 

•     The Purpose

We have introduced who wrote the book of Luke and whom he wrote it to. Now, I want to discuss the purpose for which Luke wrote this book. He made it so easy! I love how he clearly says, “this is why I wrote this book.” Verse 4 says,

so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Luke wants the readers of his gospel to have “certainty” about Jesus and about the truthfulness of what is on these pages. He does not want us to feel unsure or go about doubting what we know to be true. I love how Luke’s approach is not “check your mind at the door” and just believe these things contrary to any evidence or good reasons. In this passage, he introduces the reasons he will present in his gospel about why we should have certainty in Jesus. 

So, how does he want to go about creating that certainty in his readers? What is Luke’s method of helping his readers gain a settled confidence, or certainty, in the things they know about Jesus?

I see Luke hoping to instill confidence in our hearts through two means that he mentions in these verses:

(1) the reliable testimonies handed down from eye-witnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry.

(2) Luke’s own investigation and the compelling account about Jesus that people would find persuasive.

•     The Reliability of the Eye-Witnesses

We still consider eye-witness testimony to be a highly reliable form of evidence today. In court cases, eye-witness testimony is often essential to get a conviction. In the ancient world, “eye-witnesses” were the most highly valued source of all.[6] Luke was laying out the most convincing evidence he could for his case. It is highly likely Luke delivered an accurate account because it was based on the testimony of eye-witnesses anyone could go and ask about the truthfulness of what he wrote![7] Who were these “eye-witnesses.” Based off of the phrase that they were “servants of the word” it is likely Luke is especially referring to the twelve disciples.[8]

Now, we don’t have access to these eye-witnesses today, so we can’t just go and ask them. However, we know how they lived and therefore if they are credible. There are certain people you trust more than others. You rightly trust those more who live with integrity and strength of character than those who don’t.

Okay, did the Twelve disciples live in a way we should believe what they said about Jesus?

Let’s review their lives. They began as ordinary laborers of no special significance. They spend three years with Jesus and were mostly scared and confused. Then, after Jesus ascends, they become instrumental in beginning a new religious movement. Not only did it survive intense (even murderous persecution), but eventually swept across the globe to people on every continent. Later in Luke’s book Acts, James the brother of Jesus died for his beliefs. Also, church tradition holds that Peter (the leader of the twelve) also received the death penalty for being a Christian. He was sentenced to crucifixion like Jesus. However, he did not feel that he was worthy to die the same way Jesus did, so he requested that they would crucify him upside down.

These are clearly not people who are making anything up. They are proclaiming what they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears. Someone could give no greater proof that their testimony is true than that they are willing to die for what they believe. No one dies for what they believe to be false, and the disciples would know more than anyone if Jesus was who he said he was and if he rose from the dead.

•     (Luke as Historian)

Now while in Luke’s day, eye-witness testimony was the best way to verify history, in our day we also have the discipline of archaeology to verify historical claims.

Does Luke’s gospel withstand the test of archaeology?

Luke uses writes with great detail concerning rulers who were in charge over certain places. For many years, archaeologists doubted that Luke was historically accurate in recording historical events. One example is scholars had thought that Luke incorrectly recorded that Quirinius could have been governor during the census around Jesus’s birth in Luke 2:2. However, an inscription discovered in Antioch revealed that Luke did actually correctly place Quirinius as governor during that time frame.[9] Over the course of the last 100 years, archaeological discoveries have overturned the scholarly consensus that Luke’s gospel is not historical.[10]

A renounced archaeologist named Sir William Ramsey lived in the 20th century. He was skeptical of Luke’s historical claims until he began to investigate them himself. Here is his conclusion:

“Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense; he seizes the important and critical events and shows their true nature at greater length, while he touches lightly or omits entirely much that was valueless for his purpose. In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.”[11]

Friends, we have a book that holds up to historical scrutiny. It is not a collection of merely subjective religious events that only happened in someone’s mind, they happened in history— outside of ourselves. Through many generations, this book has endured and held up under the attacks of those who would seek to undermine it. H.I. Hastings writes,

"So the hammers of [hostile unbelievers] have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago, Emperors and popes, kinds and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it: they die and the book still lives.”

•     Luke’s Orderly Account

I have so far spoken about evidences outside of the book of Luke that confirm it’s authenticity. Luke seems to have another evidence in his mind of what should give his readers certainty about Jesus. He says he writes an “orderly account.” Now, by orderly account, Luke does not necessarily mean in strict chronological order: in other words, first this happened, then that happened, just exactly in the sequential order it happened. Rather, he arranges his material in a thematic order: he puts certain stories next to each other that fit together or develop a theme.[12] His goal is not merely to inform his readers, but to persuade them, by weaving the actual events together that happened in a way that will most compel and pierce the hearts of his readers.[13]

What does Luke want to persuade his readers about? Who or what is he organizing his material around?

In a word: Jesus. Luke wants to persuade his readers to have faith in and certainty about Jesus.[14] Throughout the gospel of Luke, we will encounter a man unlike any other. He is infinite in his holiness and power: he casts out demons, calms storms, and even raises the dead. Yet, he seeks after to save and rescue the broken and the sick. He does not just wait for them to come to him: he seeks them out. What kind of king is this? He does not sit idly on his throne to await his people coming to ask him for help, he steps off, comes down into their muck, and sacrifices his own life to gain them back. We see this at no place more clearly than the cross. There he hangs, the creator of the world, dying for his rebellious creatures and their sins. Yet, his death is not the failure of his mission, but its success. Through his death, he seeks out and saves all who put their trust in him. 

Luke arranges and writes his book so that we would come face-to-face with Jesus. He wants us to have a life-altering, personal encounter with him, and he labored to present Jesus in such a way that we would come into his presence and feel so compelled by who he is that we would bend the knee to him and believe. We would receive certainty from the person we see in the book of Luke.

•     True Certainty

Now, this leads me to talk about the word “certainty” and what I think Luke means by it. I don’t suspect Luke has in mind our late modern definition of certainty as “mathematical and scientific proof.” And when I am saying that I am not denying that there is strong scientific evidence for Luke’s gospel. I just want us to avoid us being detached from what we are confident in.

Here is what I mean: we often think of certainty as only a logical, in our heads ordeal. We read arguments and look at data and arrive at this persuasion that something is right and then stop there. We are certain about the thing but we are separated from the thing because it is only head knowledge. I think Luke is calling us to something different altogether in “certainty.” We see time and time again in this gospel that Jesus is calling his people to faith and responding to their faith. Faith is the response Luke is after. Faith is a certainty in what it hopes in. Yet, when you have faith in something, you don’t just stop with head knowledge, you put all your dependence and hope in the thing you believe in. It’s more in the realm of relational certainty like you have with your spouse that you trust that they are going to remain faithful to you.

Luke doesn’t just want us to have head knowledge that the evidence has convinced us the gospel is Luke is valid and Jesus is real. He wants us to put all of our trust and hope in Jesus. He wants us to have a real heart change where we start depending on Jesus for strength and hope at every moment. Jesus wants us to have a certainty not in a set of facts, but in a person. That certainty will look like dependence and trust in that person. We know this because the response Jesus refers to again and again in Luke is, “faith.”

Application (You)

What do I mean by this?

Please take a look at this stool over here. I could read the study they did on this stool’s sturdiness and have certainty that it would hold my weight and just stay standing over here and never rest on the stool. Yet, that’s not the certainty Jesus is asking us to have! He is not asking us to say, “I believe that this would hold me up but I’m not actually going to let it.”

On the other hand, my certainty could look like me going and sitting on it and letting it hold my weight up. This is the certainty we are supposed to have.

In other words, having certainty is not a detached conviction in our minds, it will look like real and tangible differences in the way we live in relationship to God and others.

The certainty that Luke is asking us to have is not mere head knowledge or ascent, but a real heart dependence on Jesus that changes the way we live. And one beautiful truth is that as we live with more confidence and dependence on Jesus and we see him come through for us, our certainty will grow all the more. The place to start is not waiting until we feel certain before we start living according to every word of Jesus, but to take him at his word and trust him to follow through in taking care of us. One saint has said, “I have tested the promises of God and found them true.”

I raised earlier in the sermon my own struggle with doubt and discouragement. I’m sure many of you have been there yourselves.

How do we deal with our own doubt and discouragement in light of the certainty Luke wants his gospel to give us? How do we fight for and arrive at this certainty?

I think too often we base our sense of assurance too subjectively off of how we feel. We look inside of ourselves. We look for assurance and certainty based on:

(1) How much I feel God’s love for me at this moment

(2) How much of my love for God I feel at this moment

(3) Whether I have put my sexual sin (or another addictive sin) to death that I keep committing

(4) How good of a spouse or parent I have been lately

(5) How strong I judge my faith to be

Yet, in the gospel of Luke and in our passage, we never find Luke recommending we find certainty in here [indicate my own heart]. Instead, Luke gives as a carefully researched account of the life of Jesus.

God has given us plain and open historical record of Jesus coming that is plain for all to see.[15] This record is not reserved for a few special powerful people who alone have it and insist it is real. Rather, God has made it available plainly in the site of all and open to investigation and testing.[16] When we come to this book with critically thinking minds and we weigh the evidences of the eye-witness testimony and the record of archeology, the book of Luke (and the rest of the Bible) evidences itself to be the Word of God. Logical and historical evidence confirms this record. How much more freeing is it to depend on those clear, unchangeable things than on your own constantly changing feelings? (I want us to have a feeling of resting and confidence, but we do not find that feeling by focusing in here— that will destroy it— we find it by focusing on our Bible’s and upon our savior).

There is another more important and more personal test that I want  you to perform to this book. It is a test that you will actually perform yourself. As we turn through these pages, test the quality of that man on these pages. If he really is the son of God, he will meet the deepest needs of your heart for forgiveness, new life, and joy. We all have the heart-level need for the approval of a perfect father and freedom from shame and guilt. Does Jesus provide answers to these problems or not? We will find week and week again that he most certainly does and in a way no other can. Thus, we have confirmation and reasons for hope both within and without this book that are much greater than anything we can find within ourselves (Thabiti). We don’t need to look within ourselves for certainty, but outside of ourselves to someone higher than ourselves.

Now, I want to speak to those who do not yet follow Jesus (and also to everyone). The alternative to believing in Jesus is not to believe in nothing. Author Thabiti Anyabwili makes this observation:

We cannot live without belief of some sort… We may believe in God, or we may believe… in a material universe that has no meaning. In either case we are believers. There are no unbelievers in the world, just people who believe in different things.[17]

And if you are not yet receiving Jesus as trust and putting your trust and confidence in him, then the only alternative is to put your trust in some other belief system that seems appealing to your own thoughts.

Here is a convicting question Thabiti asks:

Do your beliefs offer you this kind of certainty?

That is, a certainty of reliable eye-witness testimony and the presentation of savior that meets and addresses the deepest desires of your heart. And if not...

"Do you really want to base your life and risk all of heaven and hell on your own thoughts?[18]"

If you would like to receive assurance that you belong to Jesus or would like to know more about him, then please come and talk to us after the service.

Glorification (Jesus)

 Friends, Jesus asks us to risk everything in following him. Yet, we never have to risk our eternal destiny or life if we come to him in trust and belief. We can be certain that we will be with God forever. Jesus’s death on the cross, that this historical document records for us, clearly demonstrates for us that we can have assurance and peace if we trust in Jesus that we belong to the Lord and he will forgive, save, and bring us to himself! One of the many gifts Jesus died to give us was the assurance and certainty that we are his if we come to him in faith.

Page .  Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:19 AM October 27, 2019.

[1] Stein, R. H. (1992). Luke (Vol. 24, pp. 49–50). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

[2] Anyabwile, Thabiti. Exalting Jesus in Luke. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2018, p. 11.

[3] Wright, Tom. Luke for Everyone. 2 edition. London : Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

[4] Wilcock, M. (1979). The Savior of the world: the message of Luke’s gospel (p. 23). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[5] Wilcock, M. (1979). The Savior of the world: the message of Luke’s gospel (p. 30). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[6] Timothy J. Keller, “The Bible and History,” in The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 2014–2015 (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2015), Lk 1:1–24:32.

[7] Ibid

[8] Stein, R. H. (1992). Luke (Vol. 24, p. 64). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

[9] Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, p. 86.

[10] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, ed. Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani, vol. 1, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009), 3–15.

[11] Timothy J. Keller, “The Bible and History,” in The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 2014–2015 (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2015), Lk 1:1–24:32.

[12] Stein, R. H. (1992). Luke (Vol. 24, p. 65). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

[13] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 33–46.

[14] Ibid

[15] Calvin, John. A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. Edited by David W. Torrance and Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Translated by W. W. Morrison. 1st pbk. ed edition. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Carlisle: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994.

[16] Anyabwile, Thabiti. Exalting Jesus in Luke. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2018, p. 11.

[17] Anyabwile, Thabiti. Exalting Jesus in Luke. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2018, p. 6.

[18] Ibid, 13.

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