The Difference The Gospel Makes

What would you do if you had a blind man behind the wheel of your car and he kept wrecking your car? Here he goes into the ditch. There he goes into the other lane. And again he collides with inanimate objects. And yet again, he goes through the stop sign. What would you do? Would you say, “Oh, my car just needs a new coat of fresh paint.”? Or would you say, ‘My car needs a tune up”? Or maybe even, “My car needs a new set of tires?” For most of us, the answer would an emphatic and irrevocable “NO”! Most of you would say, “My car needs a new driver.”

Let me rush to say that many of us keep crashing in life. If we are honest with ourselves, we keep making the same mistakes. We keep rolling into the same ditch. We keep trying and failing. And sometimes we may come to the beginning of a New Year, and we say, “I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution. I’m going to patch things up. I’m going to get a new start. I’m going to apply a new coat of fresh paint on my old car.” But what we really need is a new Driver behind the wheel. And the new Driver we need is Jesus Christ. And that is essentially the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Luke 5:33-39, we see that the gospel begins with a new start; it births a new self and it builds a new structure; it brings in a new seat.

I. THE GOSPEL BEGINS WITH A NEW START

London businessman Lindsay Clegg told the story of a warehouse property he was selling. The building had been empty for months and needed repairs. Vandals had damaged the doors, smashed the windows, and strewn trash around the interior. As he showed a prospective buyer the property, Clegg took pains to say that he would replace the broken windows, bring in a crew to correct any structural damage, and clean out the garbage. "Forget about the repairs," the buyer said. "When I buy this place, I'm going to build something completely different. I don't want the building; I want the site." (Ian L. Wilson, sermonillustrations.com) Compared with the renovation God has in mind, our efforts to improve our own lives are as trivial as sweeping a warehouse slated for the wrecking ball. When we become God's, the old life is over (2 Cor. 5:17). He makes all things new. All he wants is the site and the permission to build.

Luke is pre-eminently the gospel of the individual. It is full of real stories about real people. In Luke’s gospel we see Jesus dealing with a tax collector up a tree and with a prostitute who washed his feet with her tears. We see him with the rich young ruler who went away sorrowful and with the woman who touched the hem of his garment. We know that Luke was a physician. It has been said that a minister sees men at their best, a lawyer sees men at their worst, but a physician sees men as they really are. Luke saw men as they were and loved them all. His gospel is the story of Jesus written by a kind and compassionate family doctor. To my mind, he has given us the most appealing picture of our Lord. If you want to see Jesus as the Messiah, read Matthew; if you want to see Jesus as the powerful Savior, read Mark; if you want to see Jesus as the Son of God, read John. But if you want to see Jesus as the man for all men, read Luke. It is little wonder that someone called Luke “the gospel of the underdog.”

Luke chapter 5 presents Jesus as the God of close encounters. He shows us that He is not just the God Who is some distant Deity way off in cosmic space in the celestial heavens; but that He is a God Who is up close and personal. And this is good to note because it touches down with the heart of the gospel. In showing forth the gospel in its uniqueness, Dr. Luke shows Christ not only in His deity and divinity as God, but also in His humanity as a man. And you will find that in Luke we are given a clear view of the heart and mind of Jesus Christ; and the heart of God in the gospel. Luke gives to us a picture of Jesus, not only as the Teacher; and not only as the storyteller; but Jesus Christ as a man among men and the masses. And it is in Luke, more than any other gospel writer that we see Jesus Christ up close and personal.