October 3 Sermon: What Was Accomplished
Consider these questions as we look at Luke 1:1-4:
1. Why does the author emphasize the importance of keeping minutes in a meeting and how does this concept relate to the recording of the Gospel of Luke?
2. What is the significance of Luke compiling the narrative of Jesus' life and why is it important to have an authoritative account of these events?
3. How does the author address the issue of certainty in the message of the Gospel of Luke, and why is this certainty crucial for individuals facing mortality and seeking salvation?
Transcript:
We’ve all been a part of a meeting where minutes were being kept. I can remember learning about the order of meetings back when I was in 3rd and 4th grade when Laura Schmidt was my teacher. We would have monthly meetings and I have absolutely no idea what the meetings were about but I remember her going through how a meeting works and the importance of taking good minutes. If you are anything like me you have gotten to the point of the reading of the minutes at a meeting and you feel that it is all tedious and maybe even a little bit of a waste of time. But we know that they are vital records that help us know what was accomplished at a meeting. It is easy to get some time behind us and forget important decisions that were made. Without a record of what happened people could easily twist the purpose of some decisions that were made because the exact statements or intentions would not be on record. You can expand this to so many areas. If you were to ask me who was at a family celebration, I could likely list off a significant portion of the people who were there but if I have a photograph of all of us together with faces visible I can easily see all who was there. There is a good and clear record.
Today we are kicking off the first part of the gospel of Luke. We are only going to be looking at the first four verses today and we will be thinking together about the significance of the gospel records that we have and coming to an understanding of not only why the gospels were written down but also thinking about the message that they are centered upon. We will not be breaking the passage down into two or three points as we normally do because it is such a short passage and so let’s start digging into what we read this morning and start looking at why Luke wrote this gospel. It is important that we understand not only why he wrote it down but also consider what the message is that comes through in the text. What is the big picture of the story that is going to be told here?
It is just four verses but I think it is important for us to consider here the idea that is set forth in this short paragraph. Luke is writing down the story of Jesus so that there is a record of what Jesus did. You notice that it says that many have undertaken to compile the story. Now, this certainly would include Mark’s gospel as we are pretty certain that it was the first gospel and it may also reference the gospel of Matthew. Chances are there were other documents that perhaps Luke used as research that have been lost to time. Now, we don’t know exactly when the gospels were written. As awesome as it would be we don’t find ancient manuscripts and they have a time stamp with the date according to our Gregorian calendar on them. The calendar and dating system we use wasn’t in effect until well into the protestant Reformation under Pope Gregory in 1582. What we do know from the evidence available is that Matthew, Mark, and Luke would have been written and in circulation prior to the destruction of the temple in the year seventy. We can actually see this from the internal evidence of Luke and Acts especially. Luke wrote both Luke and Acts and at the end of Acts Paul is still alive. Paul died sometime after the fire in Rome in the year 64 and before Nero died in 68. So, think about that time frame. If Paul would have been martyred the book of Acts would have told us the story and if the tribulation during the time of the destruction of the temple in the year 70 had taken place, it’s likely Luke would have brought it up in Acts as well.
The point I want us to see here is that the books of the New Testament are early documents. They are an account of something that occurred within the lifetime of a significant number of people who would have been around when the events happened. We also can understand why there would have been a significant concern to write down the events of the life of Jesus. Three things are going against the early church here. The first is time. The apostles are getting to be older and there is a desire to have the story formally chronicled before they die off. The other issue is persecution. If time won’t get the apostles, the persecution will. Third, and you see this more in the second century than in the first, you have to worry about false teaching creeping in. You’ve probably heard of the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. You can see how different ideas can infiltrate the churches. With an authoritative account of the life of Jesus they are able to determine what is true and what is false regarding the teaching of the life of Jesus. There are many documents that spring up long after the biblical gospels that claim to be written by Apostles but they are dated too long after the apostles lived and if you read them you find that they don’t match with the teaching of the new testament. I did a research paper on them for my undergrad church history class and bought a book that had a bunch of these false gospels in them. You can tell immediately that they are not anything like the New Testament. While they are trying to pass themselves off as authoritative they just don’t pass muster compared to what is in the biblical gospels.
And so, we are blessed to have this researched and account that has stood the test of time and we see something important here that Luke has to say about what he is doing. He is compiling the narrative of what was accomplished. There is something implied in that statement. The Greek word our ESV bibles translate as accomplished has the idea of fulfillment. What has been accomplished is the unfolding plan of redemption that God promised from the very beginning. That’s the story here. Luke is not simply saying that Jesus was a wise guru who said some cool sayings and now we should try and style our lives after them. Luke is telling us that the story that he is about to tell us about Jesus is that he is the savior. The promised one who was to come and crush the head of the serpent.
Many people try to make the Lord Jesus out to be a wise sage or perhaps an enlightened hippie who had a bunch of good stuff to tell us about loving others but is not the savior of a people for his own possession. We must absolutely reject such patent nonsense. To believe and say these things is to spit on what Jesus accomplished and it throws out the precious work that was done to buy his bride the church. We do not gather here to get sage advise. Instead, we gather to celebrate that our salvation was accomplished. That is our hope. Our hope is not that the leader of our movement had the best moral teaching. Our hope is that God the Son fulfilled the promise made in Genesis. We trust that he is the promised seed of the woman who crushes the head of the serpent. He fulfills that promise by taking on our very own flesh and living the perfect life in accordance with God’s law that you and I could never live. He bears the wrath of God that we deserve for our sin in his sacrificial and substitutionary death. He defeats death by rising from the dead on the third day and now is seated at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. That is what was accomplished.
And so, if we are going to get the message straight we need this word from God that will let us know what was accomplished and Luke lets us know what he did to put together this book for the people of God.
Luke references eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered this. Luke himself was not an eyewitness and so he is going to those who were. The apostles attest to what Jesus did and we find that Luke as someone who has come to faith in the Lord Jesus has been following this all closely for some time. It would seem that his goal is to ensure that the story is chronicled so that people will know what the truth is. There is something significant about writing a book like this, right? There is a beginning and an end to it. It is written down and it is established. Early churches could receive it and know it was the account of the life of Jesus given by Luke and notice that it is sent to most excellent Theophilus.
Now, when you read this, you might be thinking that it is odd that Luke labored to write all this down for just one person. Well, this time a dedication to an individual such as this was common even if the book was intended for a much wider audience. There could be several reasons for this. One suggestion is that the person addressed might be the one who will fund the copying and distribution of the document. Remember, they didn’t have the printing press. This document was going to have to be copied by scribes and that would be an expensive undertaking.
One other point of note here is that the title most excellent Theophilus indicates that he is somehow involved in the Roman government hierarchy. He is a gentile who has come to faith in Jesus. And so, we can also understand from this that while the book of Luke is telling the very Hebrew story of the arrival of the Messiah as the fulfilment of prophesy Luke is telling the story to a gentile. The message of salvation is Christ is for all people regardless of ethnicity or background. All are called to repentance and faith in Jesus.
And as our passage for today closes we see that Paul desires his audience to have confidence and assurance in the message.
As we look at this, we see that the goal of this book is to give the reader certainty. Our modern sensibilities don’t like that much. Certainty about something like this. Spiritual and religious things are thought to be about personal preference and sincerity in what you believe. It is considered to be something internal and to claim an external truth is offensive in our culture. But Luke doesn’t have our modern mindset. He wants to give the truth about Jesus to Theophilus so that he can know for sure.
And isn’t this what we all not only want but need. As we consider our own mortality or as we sit at the bedside of a loved one who is facing the end, do we want uncertainty and speculation? Do we want thoughts of our own or do we want to put our faith and trust in something that has been accomplished?
I recently saw a video clip from a TV show where a man was sick, and he asked to see a chaplain and the chaplain who came didn’t speak in certain terms but instead said that it was whatever he thought would happen to him. The chaplain said that she thought it was up to each one of us to interpret what God wants. The man, facing his own mortality got angry with the chaplain and asked for a different one. A chaplain who believed in a real God and a real hell because he didn’t have much time left. It was powerful. I’m not usually moved to tears over a clip from a TV show but considering my personal experience with sentiments such as the ones being expressed by the chaplain in the clip, I was deeply moved. The man did not need platitudes about how he had been mostly good or that it was about what he believed on the inside about himself. He had real remorse for his sin and needed real forgiveness. He needed certainty because he was running out of time.
And that is what the gospel of Luke was written to give us. To give us a certainty of who Christ is and what he has accomplished to save us. The word of God comes to us and by the power of the Spirit gives us the gift of faith and we are saved by the grace of God. That is the message that the gospel of Luke gives to us and that is the message that we are to have confidence in.
How can we be certain that this is the purpose of the message? With conflicting opinions out there, why am I so certain of the purpose of Luke’s gospel being the salvation we have in Jesus? Look before us today and see the covenant meal spread out before us. We can fast forward to the twenty second chapter of Luke and read of the institution of this covenant meal and the Lord Jesus says that this is his body and that the cup is the new covenant in his blood. We do not remember the excellent moral teaching of Jesus as we come to the table. Instead, we feast in remembrance that his blood was shed to bring us into covenant with him.
And so, as we come to the table this morning may we come with certainty. That the body that was broken and the blood that was shed is able to save and the holy and sufficient word of God tells us that message that we might believe by faith and have a sure and certain trust in the eternal life that is promised. And may we step from here today, fully certain that it is not only sufficient to save but sufficient to grow us in faith as we depart from here fed at the table. May God’s word and the sacrament nourish us that we might depart from here in gratitude today equipped to love and serve our neighbor this week that the Lord Jesus Christ may receive all honor, glory, and praise for who he is and what he has done.
