Nathan E. Lewis

From Advent 2008 through June 2009 Nathan Lewis is preaching the texts unique to Luke’s Gospel. To listen to his sermons go to Audio Sermons. You can read his sermon scripts here.

“An Orderly Account”
Luke 1:1-4

Luke was Paul’s personal physician, a member of Paul’s church planting team. He was not an eyewitness of Jesus and so he gives reason in the preface of his Gospel for his writing of it. Matthew and John were disciples and apostles. Their Gospels are eyewitness accounts. Mark was one of the 120 disciples of Jesus, and so, his Gospel was also a first-hand account. The question arises, “Why would it be necessary for Luke to write a Gospel?” In (1-4) he supplies the answer to this question. He gives his reason so politely that some readers might miss the gravity of the situation.
Luke tells us that a good number of writers had produced Gospels, that is, accounts of the life and work of Jesus, who claimed to be the Christ, the Messiah of the heavenly kingdom. This is not surprising in light of the stir Jesus of Nazareth had caused in the Roman state of Judea-Palaestina. Mark, Matthew, and John wrote their Gospels as eyewitnesses with apostolic authority to preserve in the first generation of the followers of Jesus an accurate account of his life and work. Luke, a member of the second generation of followers of Jesus was compelled to preserve the accuracy of the original Gospels for his generation.
The Apostle Peter in his Second Epistle wrote: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Peter refers to the erroneous “Gospels” published and circulated in his lifetime as ‘cleverly devised myths.’ He testifies to the apostles writing and preaching as “eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Peter also explains that God is the primary author of the Holy Scripture. The human authors, though they be prophets, eyewitnesses and apostles, are nevertheless instruments of God, “carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Luke was one such man carried along by the Holy Spirit to produce a second generation Gospel to preserve the life and work of Jesus.
In (2) we learn that the first generation Gospels were written by “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.” What is significant about being an eyewitness? The importance is two-fold: An eyewitness has actually observed and experienced the content of his testimony making him a credible witness. Secondly, an eyewitness testifies to someone and spectacle beyond himself. A true Gospel is focused upon Jesus Christ, the Son of God come to earth to save God’s people from their sins. Some of the spurious “Gospels,” like “The Gospel of Judas,” (read it for yourself), focus upon Judas more than upon Jesus. But the true Gospels are not written by navel gazers but by “eyewitnesses of his majesty.” As the Apostle John wrote in the preface to his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.”
These eyewitnesses are also “ministers of the word.” This title describes one who serves by delivering God’s message to his people. Luke uses this title to describe Matthew, Mark, and John as those who delivered a divine message. While each of their personalities, language crafting, and character quirks color the text they are mere messengers of the divine word. Here’s the lesson: Luke chooses to describe the human authors of the Gospels in terms that move us to consider the divine author and subject. After all, a Gospel is God revealing to us his divine Person and work invading the world for our eternal good.
As a second-generation follower of Jesus, Luke is moved to write a fourth Gospel. The first generation of Christianity was predominantly Jewish centered in Jerusalem. The second generation was a mixture of Jews and Gentiles spread through out the Roman Empire. Luke was Greek, representative of the second generation. The first generation leaders, like Peter, were largely uneducated. Remember the time Peter and John testified before the Sanhedrin, the court marveled at them. Luke writes in his Acts of the Apostles, “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” The second-generation leaders, like Paul, were well educated. Luke was a physician, representative of the second generation. Don’t miss this important point: From generation to gener- ation we change but the Gospel does not change. It is the good news for every generation, culture, and person. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” He does no violence to one generation improving upon another but rather is the source of joy, peace, hope, and comfort for all of us.
It is Luke’s intent to write “an orderly account” of the Gospel. In writing this he is not critiquing Matthew, Mark, and John’s Gospels as sloppy. Rather, he finds them to be orderly accounts in a sea of sloppy Gnostic gospels. Several years ago Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, stirred up interest in the Gnostic gospels but in the end, non-Christian scholarship has found them once again to be fallacious, tampered documents, forgeries and scams. This does not bode well for Christian scholars, like Elane Pagels at Princeton University, who has staked her career on mainstreaming the Gnostic gospels placing them on the same level as the four Gospels in the Christian Bible. Luke intends to write an orderly account that would help his second generation embrace the three orderly accounts of the first generation. His Gospel would agree with and reinforce the writing of Mark, Matthew, and John. The second generation would readily recognize Luke’s Gospel to be an orderly account by its standards. Luke’s Greek is written at a higher level than John’s Greek. Peter’s Greek is rife with Hebraisms, which means that Peter meshes Hebrew with Greek to created colorful words that bring together the Old and New, the Jew and Greek. But Luke writes a pure and polished erudite Greek. New Testament authors write in Koine Greek, but Luke writes the first four verses of his Gospel in classical Greek. Luke makes impressive use of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the work of 70 Jewish scholars working between the third and first centuries BC. This allowed him to produce an orderly account of Old Covenant prophecies fulfilled in the coming of Christ.
Luke has produced for us an accurate history of longer span than the other Gospels and with more references to contem-poraneous events and individuals so that we can place the life of Jesus into its larger setting. His attention to precise detail is indicative of his second generation. In Tim Keller’s NY Times Bestseller, The Reason for God, he builds upon C.S. Lewis and Richard Bauckham’s observations that the literary form of the Gospels is too detailed to be legend. Luke’s orderly account certainly contributes to this impressive preservation of selective details displaying the gentle kindness and remarkable authority of Jesus Christ.
William Hendriksen in his Commentary on Luke observes that in writing the word “orderly account,” Luke uses a Greek term, which means that there is a reasonable relationship between episodes as opposed to a strict chronology. While Luke’s Gospel is for the most part ordered chronologically, this chronology is not the main purpose or grid for the details of each episode. Luke describes his orderly account by the careful research he has undertaken of the first generation Gospels. John Calvin rightly brings attention to the Greek phrase in (3) “having followed all things closely,” as a common metaphor of “walking in the footsteps of others, that nothing might escape them.” In doing so, Luke has produced an orderly account of the person and work of Jesus. We are the better for it.
That Luke would write this orderly account, this carefully crafted Gospel for one person is perplexing to many a modern person. Should not a Gospel be written and broadcast to the largest audience possible? Luke writes his Gospel to “most excellent Theophilus.” No one knows for sure who this person is. The name, “Theophilus,” means “beloved of God,” and could be the name of an actual individual or it could represent all those countless people loved by God. “Most excellent,” is used as a title for a governmental official but it is also used to address a patron or a member of a class higher than the one the speaker occupies. It can also be a general description of one’s personal value and dignity. Is it possible that Luke, who pays careful attention to detail, has purposely clouded the identity of his Gospel’s recipient?
Far too many people have speculated that Theophilus must have occupied a prominent and influential position. Luke must have written his Gospel and given it to Theophilus who would be able to disperse it widely and influentially. But this misses the point, namely, that when it comes to the Gospel, the focus is upon Jesus, rather than upon the human author or the recipient. The Gospel proclaims Jesus to every person and it is good for any common person who may or may not hold high office or an influential position. The Gospel is good for the President of the United States and it is good for the Downs Syndrome child. It is good for Bill and Melinda Gates and it is good for you. It was good for my father; it was good for my mother and it’s good enough for me. Most likely Theophilus was an actual individual and his name beautifully calls each of us as individuals to consider the depth of God’s love for us. Be assured today, beloved of God, this Gospel is for you.

“The Continuity of Redemptive History”
Luke 1:5-25
As a second generation follower of Jesus, Luke wrote his Gospel to support and to expand the three Gospels of the first generation. Luke respected and honored the eye-witnesses of Jesus. He considered Matthew, Mark, and John to be Apostles of Jesus and he received their Gospels as the very words of God. Luke was not compelled to correct their testimonies and he believed them to be credible and complete accounts of the Person and work of Jesus. Nevertheless, any Gospel is selective history and testimony with a particular perspective and purpose. Luke was “carried along by the Holy Spirit” to write an “orderly account” of Jesus. Luke’s particular purpose is clearly stated in (4), “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” His primary recipient, Theophilus, apparently had be taught about Jesus. Luke’s desire was to fortify this man’s assurance of faith and understanding. For his second generation Luke wrote his Gospel in the polished erudite language of his community. He presented the life of Jesus supplying the historical detail and context his generation would have required. He paid particular attention to the continuity between the history of the Old Covenant prophets and the final and great Prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, “worthy of more glory than Moses.”
Luke gives to us the expanded narrative of the birth of John, the last Old Covenant prophet announcing the coming of the Christ. Matthew, Mark, and John include narratives of the prophet John, the voice crying in the wilderness calling Israel to repentance, to baptism in the River Jordan. John appears in these three Gospels as a grown man, a prophet at the height of his ministry. John speaks the very words of God, just like the prophets of the Old Covenant. In this sense all the Gospel writers provide continuity between the Old Covenant and the New. Even more so, Luke supplies his readers with an expanded presentation. He includes the narrative of John’s miraculous birth. As a physician Luke might have been fascinated with the Old Covenant stories of the barren woman miraculously giving birth. In his Gospel, he sought to make the connection between these miracles in producing the redemptive line of Israel with the miraculous birth of Jesus the Christ. As Luke writes, our first discovery is that