People Of A Great Purpose

Turn in your Bible to Luke Chapter 1. Now I want to explain to you what we’re about to do. We are about to start a journey through the book of Luke. We’re probably going to be in this book until Easter. Probably for the next five months, we’re going to walk through the book of Luke, talk about the stories, the ideas that Luke captured.

So let me a give you a little background. We really don’t know who wrote the book of Luke. Obviously, it was a guy named Luke, Captain Obvious, but it was a guy named Luke. But we don’t know which Luke. There’s a Luke that Paul mentions three different times in his writings. In fact, in 2nd Timothy, Paul said that only Luke was with him and quite possibly the reason Luke was with Paul was because Paul was sick and Luke was a doctor; at least that’s my thinking on it. But Luke the doctor, the one who followed Paul, may have written the book of Luke and a lot of people think that he did. But there was another Luke; Luke the Evangelist that some people believe wrote the book. So we really don’t know. We’ll find out when we get to heaven. But it was a guy named Luke. And the thing that I like about Luke is that Luke was not an insider. Luke was an outsider who was invited in.

Luke was not a disciple of Jesus. He was not one of the 12 disciples. In fact, we’re going to find in just a minute that Luke probably did not personally witness anything that he wrote about. He was simply capturing stories and he did his own investigation, and put together this long letter to a guy named Theophilus, and explaining to him what Jesus did when He was on the earth. So Luke was a guy that was on the outside who got to come into the family.

Now I don’t know probably what the percentage is, but most of us sitting in this building this morning, we’re also outsiders who got invited in. In fact, probably 99% of us were Gentiles, and Jesus was Jewish. And the scriptures say that we as Gentiles were grafted into the Faith; that we were outsiders looking in and we were invited into the family. And that was the perception, the perspective of Luke. In fact, throughout the book of Luke, if you’ll read it, you’ll always see that he is inviting the outsiders into the family. If you look at the genealogy of Matthew, it stops at Abraham. But if you look at the genealogy of Luke in I think Chapter 3, it goes all the way to Adam because he was a guy that was welcoming everybody into the experience; everybody into the journey.

Another thing that I like about Luke is that he was a very detailed person. If it was Luke the doctor then obviously he had classical training and Luke talks about very detailed things, especially when miracles happen, when Jesus performed miracles, Luke mentions a lot of real specific things that the other writers of the other 3 Gospels don’t mention.

Also, the book of Luke is the only book that mentions the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan. Those stories are only found in the book of Luke. So Luke was fascinated by the things of Jesus and he has a perspective on the teachings of Jesus that I find really fun to look at. So that’s what we’re going to do in the next five months. And the reason I’m telling you that is I want you to read along with me. I want you to open up the Bible on a daily basis. I want you to read with me. We’ll probably be in Luke Chapter 1 again next week.

So at some point this week, I want you to open it up, maybe with your family, and just read through the first chapter of Luke together and talk about it. What are the things that pop off the page at you? And this is the way I’m studying for the series. I simply … this is very simple. I just open up the Bible, normally around Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, I just open up the scriptures and say, “God, what are You saying?” And I try to read it, like it’s the first time I’ve ever read the story. And I want you to read the book of Luke like it’s the first time you’ve ever read it and ask God, “God what are You saying to me, as I read these familiar passages in these familiar stories?” All right?

All right, Luke Chapter 1. This morning I’m going to talk to you about people of a great purpose; people of a great purpose. We’re going to start in verse 5. If you read those first four scriptures, he’s talking about, you know, “I was not an eye witness, but I’ve come up with all these stories because I’ve done my thorough investigation.” He’s writing the letter to a guy, possibly named Theophilus although some people believe Theophilus means, “lover of God, friend of God,” and so some people believe he’s writing it to whoever loves God; so that’s one idea about who that person is Theophilus.