Sunday School | The Summary of Luke

How many of you guys have a paper Bible? Like a printed Bible actually, like here with you? Okay. I want you guys to do something for me as we get started. Go look at your Bible and go to Revelation 22 and figure out the page you gotta do a little bit of math here. Figure out your page number for the very end of the New Testament, Revelation 22, and then keep your finger there and go up to Matthew 1, the beginning of your New Testament, and figure out that page number. And then subtract the latter from the former. I want you to figure out how many pages is the New Testament in your copy of the Bible.

So it's going to be like 1236 minus, you know, something like 954, something like that. Matthew 1, Revelation 22. Page number of Revelation 22 minus the page number of Matthew chapter 1. Beginning of chapter 1, basically, how long is the New Testament in your Bible? How many pages?

Now, some of you that have an NIV study Bible have a lot of footnotes. You're gonna get a longer answer. Some of you that are reading a Bible that's just straight Bible, it's gonna be a little shorter. Anybody quick at math? 509, 670. Man, those study Bibles are junking it up. 243. So you got a straight Bible. 235.

Okay, so here's what's going on. Those of you that are reading a Bible that's just actual Bible, it's going to be about 250 pages. 230, 240, 250, somewhere like that. And then if you have a study Bible, bets are off. It's going to be 500 or 600 because there's so much double material.

The Challenge of Bible Reading

So here's what I want you to consider. With the straight Bibles that are just easy, without study notes, it's usually about 250 pages for the New Testament. So if you read your New Testament 10 pages a day, how long would that take you? About five days. Is that surprising? That doesn't sound that hard, does it? You can read the entire New Testament in less than a month if you're just reading 10 pages a day. It's not that burdensome.

Let's say you're like, "Well, actually, it is that burdensome." Okay, no sweat. We can be friends. Let's half it. So now you're not going to read 10 pages a day. You're just going to read five pages. How long is that going to take you? About 50 days. Less than two months.

What I want to encourage you guys is I think the single most important thing that you can do for your spiritual growth in Christ is to develop the habit that every day, every day, you're just going to read a chunk of Bible. And if you decided to do it, if you just read five pages a day, you could read through the entire New Testament in 50 days. That's not that hard. And then watch this. On day 51, you could do it again. You could read through the entire New Testament. What would that be like? Six times a year. Six times you could just lay it down.

Now, if you wanted to do the same thing with your whole Bible, which also I recommend, your Bible that's not a study Bible is probably about 1,200 pages long. And so the same thing. If you read 10 pages a day, you can read through the entire Bible in four months. If you want to say, "Well, that's a little bit fast for me," okay, sweet. Do it in half the reading twice the time. That'll take you eight months and you can read the entire Bible. And then you could bang out four New Testaments when you're done. It's just not that hard. It just really isn't.

The Power of God's Word

And if you were to choose to do that, if you were to say, "I'm just going to make a commitment that every day I'm going to read my Bible for fifteen minutes or twenty minutes or five pages or 10 pages," whatever your unit of metric is, layer by layer by layer, the word of God is gonna get hidden in your heart. And God promised:

He has given us everything you need for life and godliness through your knowledge of him who called you by his own glory and goodness. Through these, he gave us his very great and precious promises so that through these we could escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires, that we could participate in the divine nature. — 2 Peter 1:3-4

It is the treasure trove. And the biggest thing that I want to impart to you, really the secret weapon behind every class that we ever have in here, every sermon I ever teach, is a hope that I will incite in you a love or a deeper love for this book, that you would become convinced that it's filled with treasure and that you would believe that you can find it.

And if we can accomplish those things, if that can happen, or to the extent that it has already happened, or to the extent that it can be realized or manifest in a deeper level, the degree to which your life is gonna grow in Christ. Because all this good stuff, everything you need to become a wise and good parent, is hidden in the Scriptures. Everything that you need to survive life in a world as broken as this one is contained in the Scriptures. But it's not doing you any good if it's sitting there.

We want you to know it. We want you to become fluent in it, be familiar with it, love it, treasure it, and then be a conduit of it to others. That's what the whole thing is about—that this treasure will become deeply rooted in your own heart. And the best way to do it is not by coming to this class or sitting in there or listening to somebody's podcast. Those things are all helpful. My life has been deeply enriched by teachers. God gives us teachers. But I think the single most important strategy you can employ is the daily habit of just reading five minutes, ten pages, fifteen, twenty. Whatever it is. Just lay it down, lay it down, lay it down.

Overview of New Testament Books

And so what we're gonna do in here for the next, I don't know, maybe a year or something, is I wanna give you guys an overview of every book in the New Testament one at a time. Okay? So a couple weeks ago, three, four weeks ago, in the sanctuary, I preached on Titus. Who was here when I did it? It's embarrassing. Nobody's like, I have no memory of this, but maybe I was there. But some of you might remember that I taught on Titus.

Anybody remember the two secrets of Titus? Or one of the two secrets? This is the scariest question I ever ask people. Do you remember anything I said? Titus, anything strike you? It's dark. Okay. Suzanne, rescue my soul. He's not talking about God's word. Yes. Right. So over and over and over again in Titus, Paul calls Christ Savior, and he never calls him Lord. That's weird. Two hundred fifty-seven times Paul uses the word Lord in all of his letters. At least a half a dozen, even the shortest little thing of Philemon. But he never calls him Lord in Titus. That's number one.

What's the second clue to Titus that helps you unpack the book? Do good, do good, do good. Do what is good, do what is good, do what is good. Then we juxtapose these two things. He's trying to help people to live good lives, and his focus is on Christ as Savior rather than Lord because it is not the threat of punishment that motivates us to obedient lives. It's the reality of grace. If you understand those two secrets, then Titus will give up its secrets to you.

So what we did there for Titus, I want to do for every book in the New Testament one at a time. We're going to start with Luke, and that's today. And the reason we're going start with Luke is this. I would suggest to you this: that when you read—if you take me up on my challenge to just make it a point, read through the New Testament in twenty-five days or read it in fifty days. I don't particularly care. But if you go through it, here's what I suggest you do for the order. You jot this down if you want. You can go to the table of contents of your Bible. That's a great little tool that we often neglect.

I would consider something like this. Here's the Tim Henderson Through the New Testament in Fifty Days Challenge. I'll give it to you at a high level, then I'll be a little more specific. I recommend you read a Gospel, and in particular I recommend you read—I'll just give it to you in order. I recommend you start with a Gospel, and in particular Luke. Read Luke. If you go Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, it's going start to feel redundant, and your eyes are going to get glassy. Don't do that. Okay? So pick one Gospel. I recommend Luke. And it'll give you a history of the life of Christ, a biography of Jesus through a beautiful lens, which we're going look at a little more deeply today.

But we're going to start our series here in Luke. Then after Luke, I would read Acts. Because Acts—do you know what Acts is? It's the sequel, baby. It's Luke part two. And if you read Luke and then you read Acts, you're going be like, Oh, I get it. It's the same dude. You're the same dude. There's all this we'll get to Acts when we get there. But I would read Luke and I would read Acts, and then I would read Romans.

Because Romans is the most important thing ever written in the history of the world from this day to the end, forward and backward. Okay? If you read Luke, then Acts, then Romans, then you're going to have this magnificent foundation: the story of Christ, His life, insightful for what our lives are, and then the first thirty years of the history of the church that is so insightful for what our lives are supposed to look like, and then Romans kind of lays out the Gospel in the most thorough sense.

We will talk about Luke today, and then we'll cover Acts. We'll cover Romans.

Once you've done that, circle back and pick any other Gospel you like. You might read Matthew, John, Mark—whatever you want. Read a Gospel, and then pick any letters you like. Just read three, four, five, or six of Paul's letters, Peter's letters, John's letters. Be flexible. If you want to feel ambitious, read 2 John. It'll take you one minute. It's super short.

When you're doing this, I recommend using a paper Bible. A paper Bible is superior to a digital one for reading through the Bible. I would really recommend you just read it like an actual book that you can smell, like a real book. In the table of contents, make a check mark: "I got Luke done. I got Acts done. I've got Romans done." Then randomly choose Mark. You're curious about Ephesians, so read that. Read 3 John. Read James. I don't care what you do—just pick whatever you want and read it.

Work your way back and forth between the Gospels and letters until you've finished the New Testament. I would recommend you save Hebrews and Revelation for the end because they are the strangest and most difficult. If you're new to reading the Bible, I remember reading Hebrews and thinking, "Holy cow, what is happening?" I had no idea what I was reading. So save those for later.

Here's what I suggest: read five to ten pages a day, and you'll get through the New Testament in a month or two. Start with Luke, then Acts, then Romans. After that, it's a free for all—pick a Gospel, a few letters, a Gospel, a few letters, a Gospel, a few letters. But save Hebrews and Revelation for the end. Does that make sense?

Our Approach Together

We're going to follow that same sequence here. I'll pick a Gospel, pick some letters—you can follow mine, but it's really just whatever strikes my fancy. The order isn't terribly important. We're going to start with Luke and then Acts and then Romans, for sure.

You could do this if you want. Luke has 24 chapters. If you read three to four chapters a day, you'll be done by the time we get back together.

We're going to make a decision and maybe experiment a little bit in this group. I might teach every book twice, or I might not. We'll see how it works out. We'll cover Luke today, and then if you choose to, you can read Luke this week. We might look at Luke again from a second lens—now that you've got it freshly in your mind—and do a Q&A time on it. Maybe. I don't know if we'll do that. Then Acts, and then reread Acts, and then we'll talk about Acts.

We'll probably experiment as the year goes on because some books are long and some are short. I'm committed to not turning this into a twelve-week series on Luke. At most, we'll do a couple weeks on any given book. But the Gospels are long, Romans is long, 1 and 2 Corinthians are long, Hebrews and Revelation are long. So we might give those a couple weeks.

The Goal

My goal is to give you the key to Luke. Here's the secret: when we go through this together, I hope that if you choose to read it, you'll be like, "Oh, there it is. I see it. It makes sense now." Maybe you've read Luke eight times, and that's great. But it's probably the case that we'll discover something together in this room that will change the way you read it. You'll be like, "Oh, I never noticed that before."

You know this phenomenon. If I ever watch a movie endlessly, I'm a plot guy—everything's overt and concrete. But then my wife Kelly says, "Did you notice this?" And I'm like, "No, I never see that." And then I look at it, and it's like, "Oh, now I see it."

What I hope to do here for you guys is catalyze that moment. You're like, "Oh, I see what he's doing. I've read that before, but I never noticed it was significant." That's the plan. Good enough?

Alright, if you have notes, pass them out. They're strategically located throughout the room.

We're gonna pass these out, and this is gonna be our guide to the Gospel of Luke, which if you choose to read it, is filled with treasure, and you can find it. Now while these things are passing out, let me tell you a little bit about this document that you have. This is something that Gina and I made last week or two weeks ago. It took forever. It took me forever to do the research. It took me forever to decide what content I wanted to include in this thing, and then sweet Gina, like, hammered out the formatting for me. And I want to make 27 of these. I want to make one of these for every book in the New Testament. I think it would be an incredibly magnificent, wonderful library edition, but I'm not making any promises because this thing took forever to do. I hope to do it, and I hope to keep doing it. It's one of the things that makes me want to do two weeks on any given book because it buys me a little more time. So we'll see.

If you look at it, it unapologetically reflects me. And as much as it's a lot of words, a far better, more creative person would not just have so many words. I know, but I think in words. I do everything in language, and I'm not remotely artistic. So I apologize that it's so word heavy. It's not the kind of thing that you would hang on your wall, but it contains all kinds of information that I think would be helpful to you. So I will use it here as information.

Understanding the Gospels

When we talk about the Gospels, a couple of things first. The Gospel is simply a biography of Jesus. It's a story about his life. But like every biography, every story ever told like this, the author has a point. It's not raw data. He's organizing his material and he's framing his material. He's saying things in a particular way that will be meaningful to you. He has a point. He has an agenda. He has a purpose.

When we look at the Gospels, there's a couple of things that would be useful as we start with this study of Luke. We divide the Gospels into two sections. There's one and there's three. Do you guys know what that is? What are the three Gospels and what's the one Gospel? Matthew, Mark and Luke is the set, and then John is the single. That's correct. What do we call the set? Synoptics. What does that mean? Sin is same. Optic is see. So they look the same. You might say that they resemble each other, or you might say that they see from the same vantage point. And indeed, there's a huge amount of overlap in material. If you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke together, you'd see all kinds of material that's in here and that's in here and that's in here. And then when you read John, it's completely different. Overwhelmingly different content. So Luke is one of the synoptic Gospels inasmuch as it has a lot in common with Matthew and Mark.

We also say that each of the Gospels looks at Christ from a different perspective, a different vantage point. John portrays Christ through a lens of divinity. The divinity of Christ is seen very clearly in John's Gospel. And the opposite of God is man. Which Gospel portrays Christ as man? Luke. Luke's primary vantage point is to see the humanity of Christ. Mark portrays Christ as servant. And the opposite of servant is king. And that is Matthew. So we say that Matthew portrays Christ as king, Luke as man, John as God, Mark as servant.

That's lovely, but you might say, "Says who?" Like, on what basis do you make that kind of a claim? How do we do this? That's the sort of thing that I want you to see. When somebody says Luke portrays Christ as human, I want you to be able to prove it. This is the proof. We're gonna look at that. This is actually real, and it's present in the text. What we want to try to do is squint at the text, put a couple of filters in front of it and be like, "Oh, I see what you're doing there." That's the kind of stuff that we're gonna do.

Now what's peculiar about Luke's Gospel? It's odd in a particular way that differs from Matthew and Mark and John. It's written by a doctor. Yes, this is true.

This is strange. How do you know he wasn't there? Al is correct. Luke tells it from the perspective of a lot of people—it's like there's no way he's there.

In your Bible, go to Luke. Look at Luke chapter one. Matthew is there. Mark is actually—you know what's weird about Mark's Gospel? It's Peter's Gospel. Peter was there, and John, of course, was there. Luke was not there.

Take a look at Luke one. He admits that he wasn't there. He's a researcher. Listen to this:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and investigated everything from the beginning. It seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. — Luke 1

What Luke is telling us right there is, "I wasn't there, but I've talked to the people. I have carefully researched. I've traveled around Israel. I've traveled around the Middle East, and I have investigated everything from the beginning directly. I've interviewed Mary."

When you read the birth account, the reason we tend to like Luke's Gospel account of the birth—the Charlie Brown Christmas takes place in the Gospel of Luke, by the way—it is because Luke has interviewed Mary, and he's getting the most intimate front-row seat to this tender story.

So Luke is a physician. He's a researcher, and he sits down to create an orderly account of the whole thing. We're gonna see more of this when we get to Acts, which will either be next week or the week after. When we look at Acts, you're gonna see a very similar beginning, and we'll unpack that there. But Luke becomes a believer, and he travels around, he knows the Christians, and he researches all these things. And then he sits down to say, "Hey, let's just clean this thing up. Let's make a tight, orderly account of the things that have happened." And that's what we're gonna find in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke's Focus on Christ's Humanity

But when he does, his orderly account is not just the story of the life of Christ, but it's the story of the life of Christ through a very particular lens. The thing that maybe is most broadly known about Luke is that it is the Gospel of Christ the human being. Now, his particular focus is on the humanity of Christ. He's not denying his divinity, by the way. Nobody thinks that Mark doesn't agree that Jesus is king or John doesn't agree that Jesus is man, but his particular focus is on the humanity of Christ.

Has anything surfaced in your reading to support that claim—Christ as man in the Gospel of Luke?

Suzanne is saying he has a focus on things like his birth, like his childhood. In fact, look at this: his nativity, his childhood. This stuff is all particularly in Luke. He's a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger. His birth is a very strong focus in Luke.

There's the story of Jesus ditching out his parents and going back. Take a look at Luke two:

After the feast was over while his parents were returning home, the boy stayed behind in Jerusalem. The child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, the grace of God was upon him. — Luke 2

And then this one—we almost struggle a little bit theologically with the humanity of Christ:

He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. — Luke 2

You're like, "How is any of that possible? Was he not an omnipotent, omniscient three-month-old? Did he grow?" These are strange things directly. This is Luke. Luke is saying, "No, no. We have a tendency because of our understanding of his deity to discount his humanity. And Luke's saying, 'No, no, no. Don't do it. He was human just like you.'"

Birth, nativity. What else? Kevin mentions that scripture that says he learned obedience by the things he suffered. That's a man. Yes, right? These are more language, which is a great point because it's not as if our full understanding of the humanity of Christ is only contained to Luke, right? It actually permeates the scriptures, but it's in there.

Kelly mentions chapter four, when he goes back to Nazareth, his hometown, and he goes into the temple and reads from the scroll of Isaiah. There all the people are amazed and asked, "Is this Joseph's son?" And he says this fulfills him. They're like, "You're gonna kill him because you can't claim to be God. You're just a man."

So what Kelly's saying is that when Jesus goes into the temple in Luke 4 and reads the scroll from Isaiah and says, "Today, this is fulfilled in your presence," everybody's offended and scandalized. God when he's clearly a human being—they're scandalized by this potentially normal person who is making these outrageous claims for himself.

So we get stuff like his birth, nativity, the human growing process. What else? Things that make us think that Luke has a peculiar focus on his humanity. At the other end, during his crucifixion, Luke's account is probably more biologically graphic and accurate than any others. It was a human body that was being ripped up, and Luke goes to pretty great lengths to make that clear.

It's in Luke alone that we'll get a couple of things. This is interesting because Luke, a physician, has a peculiar interest in the human body. So it is only in Luke's Gospel that we see what happens in the garden—only in Luke—he sweats blood. This is a medical phenomenon in which someone under extraordinary duress, their blood vessels will dilate and they can literally bleed out through their skin. Luke as a physician and Luke as a person who's interested in the human being's terrible suffering relates these things.

The Genealogy

Other things that establish the humanity of Christ in Luke: it contains a genealogy. Now this is interesting. Luke contains a genealogy, but so does Matthew. What is it about Luke's genealogy that is distinct from Matthew's genealogy? Mary.

So this is interesting. Matthew traces Christ's line through the kings of Israel. Matthew organizes it in sets of 14, and Matthew shows that Christ is the descendant of David. Matthew takes him back to Abraham. Why would Matthew be interested in tracing him through the kings to Abraham? Because he is the Jewish king. Matthew is written to a Jewish audience, so he's interested in establishing that Jesus is Jewish. Matthew is very interested in showing Christ as the Messianic King, so he shows that he is in the bloodline descent of the kings, in particular of David.

Luke, however, is showing that Jesus is a human being. So where does his genealogy go? Noah. It goes all the way to Adam. All these things start to stack up. He's a descendant here through the nation of Israel. But Luke is saying, He's one of us. He's one of us. Like all you Gentiles, you're not related to Abraham, but you're a human being. Jesus is a human being. Luke is very interested in pointing that out.

The genealogy goes through Mary. Generally speaking, the understanding here is that Luke is actually tracing his human line through Mary. Luke gives us a clue in this in chapter three. Look at what he says in Luke 3:23:

Now Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matheb, the son of Levi... — Luke 3:23

When he says that little line, "so it was thought," he's saying, okay, let's be honest. He did not have Joseph's eyes. We understand this, right? So the general understanding is that what Luke is giving us is: yes, he is thought to be the son of Joseph, but in fact, his blood descent traces through Mary, which is why we have a different line from Luke's Gospel than we do from Matthew's Gospel.

Now, anything else about this? There's more, but why do we think that Jesus is a human being? Or why do we think that Luke was particularly interested in persuading you of this?

What we want to be careful about—I'm not at all saying that Luke would deny the deity of Christ, but rather he is trying to make a particular theological point about his humanity.

When we see these guys come from a particular purpose, God chose Paul to write Romans, and before he wrote Romans, he brought him through these experiences that would make him well suited to write Romans. And before John wrote 1 John, he spent three years hanging out with Jesus and learning about the magnificence of his love, and he was therefore well equipped to write 1 John from his direct experience. If you'd asked Paul to write 1 John, if you'd asked John to write Romans, they wouldn't have been suitable for the task. They were ready for it.

Luke had been prepared by God through his life experiences to produce this particularly meticulous, historically anchored narrative so that we would know the certainty of the things that we've been taught. There's brilliance to this design.

The concern that Jesus has for the outsider, the people that were kind of pushed aside, shows the humanity of his care. We're going to see some of the evidence of this.

Jesus as a Human Being Dependent on the Spirit

Let me show you. Jesus is a human being. The nativity, the child—we've hit that. He's descended from Adam to be a man—we've hit that. Here's a peculiar thing in Luke's Gospel: Jesus is depicted over and over and over again as dependent on the Spirit. Just look at this:

The Holy Spirit descends on Him. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, did this. Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. At that time, Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit. And in Luke 12, "For the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say."

The Holy Spirit is a major focus in Luke's Gospel regarding Christ, and he shows this. This is so interesting. We all think that sure, Jesus did this, that, or the other thing. He's God. He's cheating. But Luke endlessly depicts him as a human being just like you, dependent on the Spirit of God who lives in you. That's one of Luke's primary purposes—to show the dependence of Christ on the Spirit of God.

This might not surprise you that Luke is going to write Acts, because who is the star of the book of Acts? The Holy Spirit. And so the sequel, he's setting up the sequel to show that just as Jesus was dependent upon the Spirit because he was a human being, so also you human beings who are dependent on the Spirit can do great things. It is a major motif of Luke, and it sets up what human beings are going to do in Acts, what we human beings will do.

Jesus' Dependence on Other People

Not only is it dependent on the Spirit, this is a strange thing. You wouldn't necessarily notice this on a casual reading, but Luke has a strange way of focusing on Jesus' dependence on other people. Jesus is constantly having dinner at somebody else's house. All the time. I don't want to say that Jesus is a mooch because he is the Lord of heaven and earth, but he is the reality of others.

I point this out every year to my fellows. Kelly and I raise support for our work with Blue Ridge Fellows, meaning there's a team of people that support us financially every month. We've been raising support for thirty years, depending on the kind generosity of a team of partners. We train the fellows how to raise support to come and be a fellow. And generally speaking, everybody is terrified to raise support. Nobody wants to do this. Nobody wants to be dependent on others. Nobody wants to ask for money. Everybody gets creeped out by it.

Ground zero for me when I try to teach our Fellows, and even as I was taught as a crew staff member, is this astonishing fact: Did you know that Jesus Christ raised support? He actually did. Look at Luke 8.

After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Some women, Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna, and many others, were helping to support them out of their own means.

Isn't that crazy? Think about this. The cattle on a thousand hills are his. He owns the universe. He has the ability to drop an unbaited hook into the water and pull out a fish with a coin in its mouth. He can take a fish and multiply it. He can make bread out of bread. And yet, he made himself dependent on a group of women that were writing checks every month to support his ministry. Isn't that extraordinary?

He's a human being, and he did not tap into his divine powers, but he lived as a dependent person, and thereby gave a model for us, that it's okay for us to be dependent on others. It is okay for us to have a meal at somebody else's home. Whenever in our pride and our arrogance we're like, "No, no, no. I'm a self-made man. I'll do it myself." It's madness. We are dependent people, and Jesus lived dependently. And Luke is really strong at pointing that out.

So you see, his nativity shows his dependence on the spirit, dependence on others. We also see this particular focus. You get more of this in Luke—you might say John. I'll give John second place on this, but Jesus' dependence on prayer is a major motif. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. He went to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying. And once while Jesus was praying in private, and as he was praying, one day Jesus was praying. He withdrew to a stone's throw beyond the garden and prayed, and in anguish he prayed.

This is a particular focus because, of course, he's praying. Why is he praying? Because he's a human being, dependent on his father, and he needs to commune with him. Luke wants us to see in Christ the one to whom we can relate. I'm needy. I don't know what to do. I'm dependent on the needs of others. I live on the generosity and hospitality of others. I'm allowed to do all those things because my Lord was all of those things. And it frees us from the arrogance and the presumption that "I don't need nothing." Jesus himself lived as a dependent person. Making sense?

Jesus' Radical Inclusivity

Okay, Christ is human. Now, Fetzer, you said something insightful. Open the book. I want you to see this. This is kind of where Andy was going. Not only in Luke's Gospel is Jesus a human being, but he is unbelievably inclusive. Christianity is a funny thing, you guys, because we are simultaneously unbelievably exclusive and perfectly inclusive. The Gospel is for everyone. It's for you. It's for those that are near. It's for those that are far off. It is for the Jews. It is for the Gentiles. It is for the righteous—that is, the self-righteous—and it is for the unrighteous—that is, the rest of us. It's for everybody. And Luke is really, really strong about showing the absolute inclusivity of Christ.

There's only one way to be saved. It is only through him. He is exclusive. He is the only bridge across the chasm. But everybody can cross the bridge.

Just take a look at the groups. If you just kind of let your eye scan around this. In Luke's Gospel, there's a particular focus on the outcasts, beginning, of course, with his birth. What is the first hint of Jesus' love of outcasts in the Gospel of Luke? Right there, what is it? His birth. Why? What's the connection there, Helen? The remedy. He was an outcast. So there's always this tendency to associate the rich, the powerful, the privileged. But Jesus identifies right out of the gate—there's no room in the inn. I don't know, maybe some of you may have had a birth as lowly as his. Possibly. But it's a pretty lowly birth. And right out of the gate, he shows up and is like, "Yeah, there's no pretense around him."

Have you walked into a room where you feel underdressed? Nobody ever felt that way around Jesus. People wanted to be with him. He was one of the outcasts. The people that he draws to himself are tax collectors. Everybody hated those guys. They complained about him because he welcomed sinners.

Even the other criminal rebuked him, "Don't you fear God since you're under the same sentence?" And then Jesus says to him, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," and Jesus says, "Today you will be with me in paradise." — Luke 23

His whole life, from his birth in a lowly manger to his death on a criminal's cross, his whole orientation to the world is, "Come to me. Come to me." And he casts no one aside. He loves the losers, which is good news.

Not only that, but look at the left side—the widows—and on the right side, the women. There's a huge focus throughout Luke's Gospel. Writers focus on Christ's love of women, his welcoming of women, and not just women, but women outcast women, prostitutes, people that are off on the side, widows that are alone, that have no one on whom they can depend.

This is a good example, though, that it's not unique. This is a focus of Luke's, but of course, John 8 is a woman, one of the outcasts, on the edges of society. Luke 4 is the Samaritan woman. So Luke is not contradicting the others, but he just gives more weight than anyone else to Jesus' love of widows and women.

John, did you want to say something? You just stretched in? Okay, great. Not only the widows and the women, but the poor, the Gentiles.

If you just let your eye follow through this, you'll see Jesus loves poor people. He tells stories that show up in Luke's Gospel that show up nowhere else of his love for everyone. Look at the Gentile column. Theophilus is a Gentile. Luke was written to a Gentile. Jesus came for all the people.

Luke 2 — It's in the Gentiles that he's a light of revelation. All of mankind will see his salvation.

Luke 3 — It's in Luke's Gospel that Jesus talks about the widow in Zarephath who would be a Gentile and Naaman the Syrian who is a Gentile.

There's a centurion who doesn't only receive the love of Christ, but he's commended. A Roman centurion is like the occupying military force. Just imagine—we've got, I don't know, who's gonna overtake the United States? Whatever country comes in and overtakes the US, their soldiers are here, and Jesus is speaking well of them. Extraordinary gracious.

The Uniqueness of Luke's Parables

If you choose to read through Luke this week, you're going to see a couple of weird things. In Matthew, what's the opening tag for the vast majority of parables? The kingdom of God is like. The kingdom of God is like. The kingdom of God is like. Of course he does because in Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as king. But in Luke, Jesus, who's a human being, all of his parables are about a man. Over and over and over again.

A man building a house. In reply Jesus said, a man was going down from Jerusalem, and an evil spirit came out of a man. And he told this parable, a man had a fig tree.

They're very normal. They're just about people. They're just about some dude because he was some dude. So if you go through and you read Luke's parables, notice it's not the Matthew language of the kingdom of God is like. You're not gonna find that in Luke. Instead, you're gonna see human beings.

All of these parables are unique to Luke. The parable of the Good Samaritan? That's Luke. Of course it's Luke because he loves the Gentiles, and Samaritans are Gentiles. Luke 15—the parable of the lost coin, the prodigal son—that's all unique to Luke's Gospel.

Here's a surprising fact. Look at these key terms: the word savior does not appear in Matthew or Mark or even in John. It's only in Luke. Salvation, only in Luke. Redemption, only in Luke. So there are certain things that you're gonna get if you choose to read through Luke.

What I would invite you to do is to maybe read through this and then read Luke's Gospel. And when you do, you're gonna start to notice, oh, there it is. There it is. There it is. It's all true. Hopefully it will help certain things pop and you'll begin to recognize what are the things that is unique about Luke's biography of this extraordinary man.

The road to Emmaus is Luke 24. That's only in Luke. This amazing story. Do you guys know the road to Emmaus? Jesus is walking down the road with a couple of B team disciples. They're not members of the 12, and the two are just all mopey and sad because Jesus is dead. They don't know, they don't realize that they're with Jesus. And Jesus is just talking to them: "Hey, how are you doing?" They're like, "Oh, we're sad." "Why are you sad? What are you talking about? You don't know?"

And they have this bizarre conversation. And in it, it's so beautiful because Jesus is present but hidden. He's right there with them, and they don't know it. And he uses that moment while he is present but hidden to explain to them that he has been present but hidden all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Every time you've read this book, it was always talking about me. Well, actually, it was always talking about Jesus, and you didn't know it. You couldn't see him. And then the lights come on and they realize, oh my gosh, it happened right now. He was right here with us. He was present with me, but he was hidden and we couldn't see him. Amazing.

The Turning Point

Here's the last thing I want you to see. This is really, really important. Luke 9:51. I didn't give myself enough time for this, so I gotta rush this. In Luke 9:51, it is the most important turning point in Luke's Gospel. So when you get through it, when you get to 9:51, circle it, highlight it, underline it. What happens in Luke 9:51 is that Jesus sets his face like flint for Jerusalem. Everything after this, he's kind of been teaching.

Things have been happening that mattered before Luke 9:51. But in Luke 9:51, Luke portrays Christ in the language of the servant of Isaiah. In Isaiah, chapters 42 to 53, there is this section about the Messiah, and he's known as the servant. Something that the servant does in Isaiah is he resolutely sets his face like flint. He's determined to go accomplish the redemption that God has sent him to do. Luke 9:51 pictures Christ as that servant who decides, I am marching to Jerusalem and nothing will deter me.

Now what awaits him in Jerusalem, of course, is a cross. He's going to suffer and die terribly to accomplish the redemption of his people, and he knows that this is what's happening. So in Luke 9:51, he's like he takes a deep breath and he's like, nothing will take me off my game. And from that point on, you'll see—I included not all but many of the instances—Luke constantly reminds us we're on our way to Jerusalem.

But the people didn't welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem. Those 18 who died and the Tower of Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than those living in Jerusalem? Jesus went through the towns and villages teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. I must keep going today and tomorrow for no prophet can die outside Jerusalem. Now on his way to Jerusalem. We're going up to Jerusalem. He was near Jerusalem.

Luke, we get it. You're on our way to Jerusalem. Here's what's extraordinary, absolutely bonkers. We know, if you've read the story, you know that what waits in Jerusalem is his deep agony. He's going to suffer and die. He's going to take upon himself the wrath of God against all of humankind's collective wickedness. He's going to suffer and die.

And when he finally gets to Jerusalem, the place of his agony, where is his focus? Look at it. Look at this.

And as he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now is hidden from your eyes." — Luke 19:41-42

Jesus knows that in 70 A.D., in forty years, Jerusalem is going to get wiped out. They're going to suffer terrible things. And when he gets to the city, to the place that he will be crucified in a week, he is more captivated by Jerusalem's suffering forty years hence than his own agony that's a week away. Isn't that insane? He loves you. He cares about people. Like, any normal person would be focused on their own agony, but he is focused on theirs even though it's forty years in the future. This is who we worship. This is the one who loves you and gave himself for you.

Luke's Portrait of Christ

And what Luke has given us here is a portrait, a very sympathetic portrait that you might be able to relate to him. The fact that he was made like you, that he is a brother of yours, he's not ashamed to call you a brother or a sister. He's not ashamed to identify with the poor. He's not ashamed to identify with the outcast. He's not ashamed to identify with the losers, to be dependent and needy. He has all of those things so that we will not stay far off, but will come crowding into him and find in him everything we need, all of it, within himself.

That's Luke in a nutshell. You've got 24 chapters. You can read it in a week. Then we'll either talk about it more next week. I've got to decide how we're going to do that. I'm not sure. But we're going to Luke, Acts, Romans, in that order. You want to get cracking and have at it—it's full of treasure. You can find it. Thank you for coming.