This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back to week one, day three of our look through the New
Testament, one book a day. We've looked at Matthew and Mark, now we're looking
at Luke. And just a reminder, the four gospels, same story, different stories in
it, but the same major story, but from four different perspectives, because God
wanted four witnesses.

So in Matthew, you have Jesus, the sovereign King, in Mark, you have Jesus, the
servant, in John, you have Jesus, the son of God, and in Luke, which we're
looking at today, you have Jesus, the son of man. Matthew's first concern, he
begins with the genealogy, was the Jewish genealogy of Jesus. When you open up
to the book of Luke, he begins with the genealogy too, but you see that his
first concern is the human birth of Jesus.

Because Matthew gives the genealogy through Joseph, through the father, making
sure that the Jewish mind understood that Jesus came from the right lineage to
be the Messiah. Luke gives the genealogy through Mary, showing that he also has,
through Mary, the right lineage to be the Messiah, but also, well, Matthew goes
back to Abraham, Jesus is a Jew, Luke goes back to Adam, and he shows that Jesus
is a man. John goes back to, in the beginning, he's going to show that Jesus is
God.

The emphasis is different. Matthew's emphasis is on what Jesus said, Mark on
what Jesus did, Luke, his emphasis is on who Jesus was, on Jesus himself. And a
key verse in the book of Luke is Luke 19 10.

The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke is very
concerned about that which was lost. Now he tells us, like the other gospels
don't, his method, he talks about in chapter one, verse three, that he's sitting
down to do an orderly account.

So it's a well-organized life of Jesus that he's talking us through. Now Luke,
we know some things about Luke, this author, that he was a doctor, Colossians
4:14 tells us that. He makes frequent references to illnesses and diagnoses
throughout his books, but he wrote both Luke and Acts.

He alone, for instance, refers to the healing of Malchus' ear, the high priest's
servant's ear, in Luke 22 51. He was a friend of Paul, and out of that
friendship, God did some awesome work. They traveled together sometimes in
missionary journeys.

He was a Gentile, most likely. We see this in Colossians 4:14 when he's included
in the list of other Gentiles, which means he's the only Gentile writer in the
New Testament, that God used Jews for the rest of the writing of the New
Testament, but he used Luke as a Gentile writer in the New Testament. He worked
with Mark, he knew him well, Colossians 4:10 tells us, Philemon 24.

So wait a minute, Luke knows Mark, he's also a friend of Paul. Just imagine with
me for a second, you've got Luke and Mark and Paul in the same room, which
certainly happened with their friendship. These are the writers of half of the
Gospels, and two thirds of the letters in the New Testament sitting together in
the same room, not maybe knowing at that moment how God, how dramatically God
was going to use them.

The focus of the book of Luke. What does God want to say to us through this book?
Well, Luke focuses on the life of Jesus in three particular ways I want to talk
about.

First, he focuses on the human life of Jesus. Jesus is God and Jesus is also
man. He's 100% God, 100% man, 100% of the time.

It's not like he's one or the other, he is both God and man. That is the mystery
of the deity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus. He became, God became a man.

And Luke focuses on the man part of Jesus, helping us to understand what it
meant for Jesus to be a man. In Luke alone, you get some of the stories of
Jesus' early life and childhood. Luke's account of Jesus' early days is four
times as much as Matthew.

Luke tells us about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Luke tells us that he sweat
drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He helps us to see the humanity of
Jesus.

Now, Luke is a doctor, so as we look through these focuses that Luke has
throughout the book, one of the questions I have is, what's the prescription for
my life, for your life? The prescription here is to recognize the humanity of
Jesus. I found that before we become followers of Christ, it's hard for us to
recognize the deity of Jesus, that he's God.

But once we become followers of Christ, it becomes more difficult to recognize
the humanity of Jesus, that he's also man. And sometimes you need to remember
he's both God and man. Recognize the humanity of Jesus, how deeply he cares, how
much he's shown you he can relate to what you're going through.

He came into this world, he went through the temptations that you and I go
through. He went through the suffering, and even greater than you and I face. He
understands, he cares, he knows, and he's shown you that he knows.

That's the human life of Jesus. A second major emphasis in the book of Luke is
the welcoming life of Jesus. You see in the book of Luke, this is interest that
Jesus has in the sick, and the helpless, the poor, and women, and children, and
social outcasts.

You see it in the other gospels, but nowhere like Luke. Let me just walk through
a couple of those. His interest in women.

In the culture of the New Testament, women were often ignored. They were
certainly not empowered. Women, those who were often ignored in New Testament
times, they are the heroes of the gospels.

They're the ones who stayed beside Jesus at the cross. They were the first to
discover that Jesus was resurrected. That's one of the ways, by the way, that we
know that these gospels are written by God and not by man.

If a human being had written the gospels, in that culture, in that time, there's
no way they would have made a woman the hero. But God told the truth, and God
honored women, lifted up women, and Luke is a great reflection of that. In Luke
alone, you see Jesus forgiving the woman who was a sinner in Luke chapter seven,
or healing the woman who had been sick for 18 years in Luke chapter 13, or
telling the women not to weep for me in chapter 23.

In Luke alone, you get the story of Elizabeth and the story of Anna. Now, many
people think that this indicates one of the eyewitnesses that Luke talks about
when he says, "I put this down from eyewitness accounts," was Mary, the mother
of Jesus, and I believe that. I believe they knew each other, that they talked
with each other because they were together in the early church, and that he
wrote down some of her eyewitness accounts.

I love the fact that the good news of Jesus Christ lifts up every person, and in
that day, lifting up women was lifting up a group of people that no one cared
about, that everyone found easy to ignore. Also, throughout the book of Luke,
you see him lifting out the obviously outcast from society. Women were ignored,
but there was also another whole group that was outcasts, that was separated,
that, because of the hurts on their lives, nobody wanted to be close to them.

This is the all-inclusive ministry of Jesus. You see it in the parables that
Luke records of debtors and Samaritans and the great supper for those who had
been ignored. You see it in the parables of the lost coin and the prodigal son,
which are in the book of Luke.

You see it in the way that the Spirit leads Luke throughout the writing of this
book to focus on the outcast, the publican, the prodigal. There are all kinds of
outcasts, by the way. Only Luke tells us the story of Zacchaeus, who was a
wealthy outcast.

As a Jewish tax collector, he would have been hated and shunned by his own
people. He had money, he had some semblance of power, but he was an outcast. In
Luke chapter 19, verses one to five, Jesus entered Jericho and was passing
through.

A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was
wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short, he could not
see over the crowd.

And so he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore fig tree to see him, since Jesus was
coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and he said,
"Zacchaeus, come down immediately. "I must stay at your house today.

" Zacchaeus is often told as a children's story. I don't know, maybe because he
was short and children can relate to that. But it's one of the most adult
stories in the entire New Testament.

Here's a rich man who couldn't get to Jesus. There's a lot of people who feel
that way, that because of their wealth or their past or whatever, their
outcasts, they can't get to Jesus. And it's put in the New Testament to let you
know there's a way for you, Jesus welcomes you.

Now, it's interesting, a few chapters later, chapter 23, you see Jesus
ministering to an entirely different kind of outcast, someone who was poor,
someone who was condemned to die, the thief who died beside him on the cross,
Luke 23, 39 to 43. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at Jesus.
"Aren't you the Messiah?

"Save yourself and us. " But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear
God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence?

"We are punished justly, "for we are getting what our deeds deserve. "But this
man has done nothing wrong. " And then he said, "Jesus, remember me "when you
come into your kingdom.

" And Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, "today you will be with me in
paradise. " That picture of Jesus saying to that thief, "You're going to be with me
today in paradise," the outcast is welcomed in. Luke tells us that the lost will
be found.

He tells us that the outsider will be welcomed. He tells us that the thief can
be in paradise. So what's the prescription?

What does the doctor prescribe for your life, for my life, from this truth? Who
is it in your life that could be easily ignored that God is challenging you to
love? 'Cause he loves the outcast.

We see the welcoming life of Jesus, the human life of Jesus, but we also see in
the book of Luke, like none of the other gospels, the prayer life of Jesus.
Jesus has shown praying in Luke more than any of the other gospels. So sometimes
Luke is called the gospel of prayer.

There's teaching on prayer throughout Luke, as well as the example of Jesus'
praying throughout Luke. Let me just read you a few places where you see this
teaching of prayer. Luke 11, nine to 10.

"So Jesus said, 'I say to you, ask, "'and it will be given to you. "'Seek and
you will find. "'Knock and the door will be opened to you.

"'For everyone who asks receives, "'and the one who seeks finds. "'And to the
one who knocks, the door will be opened. '" Luke 18, one.

"And then Jesus told his disciples a parable "to show them that they should
always pray "and not give up. " Or Luke 21, 36, "Be always on the watch "and
pray that you may be able to escape "all that is about to happen "so that you
may be able to stand "before the Son of Man. " So what's the prescription with
this one, the prayer life of Jesus?

How do you, how do I need to follow Jesus' example and teaching about prayer?
Well, let's start by praying. Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we want these things in our lives. We want to remember that you are not
only all God, but also all man, and to remember how deeply you care and have
shown us that you can relate to what we're going through right now. We want to
remember that you welcome in the outcast.

Maybe we feel like the outcast, or maybe there's someone we know that feels
outcast. And we want to remember the importance of prayer in our daily lives.
Thank you for these reminders in the Gospel of Luke.

And I pray that today you'd help us to live out these truths. In your name,
amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look together at the Gospel of John and what it
means to truly believe.