The sermon, 'Knowing the Truth with Certainty' by Peter Allison, delves into the introduction of the Gospel of Luke, emphasizing its purpose and authorship. Despite Luke's Gospel not expressly naming its author, the sermon supports the traditional attribution to Luke, an accomplished Greek writer and companion of Apostle Paul. This relationship is evident in the 'we' passages in Acts, suggesting Luke's presence during Paul's missionary journeys. The sermon highlights Luke's classical writing style, common among Greek authors, and his aim to provide an orderly and detailed account of Jesus Christ's life, death, resurrection, and the subsequent establishment of the Church. Theophilus, to whom Luke addresses both his Gospel and Acts, is a figure of significance, possibly a civil magistrate, for whom Luke desires a more complete understanding of the Christian faith. The sermon underscores the idea that Luke's writings are not only a historical account but a demonstration of the fulfillment of God's plan and prophecies. The preacher encourages the congregation to view history through the lens of God's unfolding plan and to cultivate a similar concern for the spiritual well-being of others, as exemplified by Luke's dedication to Theophilus.

Please turn with me in your copy of God's Word to the book of Luke. I had said earlier that we would be alternating between this Luke and Proverbs, and rather than try to keep it on a time, I think it's going to be easiest to keep it on content. So we finished Proverbs 19, we will begin Luke. Luke chapter 1, I'd like to read the first four verses this morning. Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us.

It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. Thus far the reading of God's Word. Heavenly Father, we ask that you might write your word upon our hearts, that you would teach us this morning from it. May we behold Jesus Christ as he is presented and declared to us in this word. I pray that you would sanctify these sinful lips that through a vessel of clay, your riches and your grace and your excellencies might be proclaimed.

And may you be glorified in our midst. Through Jesus Christ we ask this. Amen. This is a very simple little passage, and so the message this morning is very simple. This is Luke's introduction to why he is writing this book.

The book doesn't say directly that it was written by Luke, as many of the letters of Paul say, or the Revelation, or other books clearly indicate the author. This book is not a letter as such, but it is meant to be a historical account. And so while there is no direct statement as to the author, there is no biblical reason to doubt it's anyone other than the one by whose name the book is called. Luke. Luke is also the author of Acts.

Both works, Luke and Acts, are written to the same person, Theophilus, and Acts, the beginning of Acts, references indirectly the Gospel account of Luke, calling it the former account that he wrote. So I think we have a very strong basis for tying these two together under one author, and as we'll see, it was meant as one account. We know this, though, about, we know a few things about Luke and about this author. He was a very accomplished Greek writer. There are over 200 Greek words in Luke that are not used anywhere else in the New Testament.

This introduction is a very classic way of introducing a work. It follows a very very similar pattern to what other classical writers, how they opened the works that they wrote. Luke is mentioned only three other places in the Scriptures, in Colossians, in Timothy and in Philemon. And he's mentioned by Paul as a way of giving or as Paul is giving or sending greetings. And So this is what we know about this gospel writer.

We know that he was a fellow laborer with Paul. We know that he was a frequent traveling companion of the Apostle Paul and that he was a beloved physician to Paul. In Acts there are several places where as the narrator is recounting The events that happened, the events of Paul's missionary travels, there are three places where the narrative shifts from third person, they, he, them, to the first person, we, us, are doing things. So clearly as Paul called Luke, a fellow laborer with him, clearly by the testimony of Acts, we know that Luke was a traveler with Paul. And that would be something that would be consistent with Luke being the author of Luke and Acts and a frequent traveling companion with Paul.

He would have been a firsthand witness to many of the events that are recorded there, though not all. So the wee passages where Luke is traveling with Paul occur, first one occurs in Acts 16. On the second missionary journey, Paul goes to the city of Philippi. It's where Lydia is saved and the Philippian jailer is saved. And their households are saved and their households are baptized.

And Luke, in his account in Acts, begins to talk there about we, we, we were this and us. And then it seems that Luke may have stayed in Philippi when Paul went on and then a long time later when Paul came back and revisited Philippi again in his third missionary journey may have continued to travel with Paul again and so the the second time we see Luke using these words, we, in his recounting of the narrative, is in Acts 20 and 21. All the events there where Paul visits the the events before he visits the Miletus and speaks to the elders of the Ephesian Church the sailing of there and the departure from there Luke is using the words we so chapters 20 and in first 16 verses of 21 and then finally at the end and then that's when Paul goes to Jerusalem you remember he's captured there taken prisoner The Jews are trying to kill him. He ends up being sent to Caesarea for his safety by night with a large Roman army as his guard. He's in prison up there for two years as they're waiting for some money from him to be released.

But Paul Duffer pays for that. And at the end, the Jews want to get him back to Jerusalem, and he appeals to Caesar. And so in Acts 27, he's picked up the account of the journey then to Rome and that's when Luke again picks up the narrative with the first person. We, Luke is then apparently on this journey, all the boats, the shipwreck and continues with Paul it would seem from the way the Acts account is recorded, when the first person would seem that Luke stayed there with Paul in Rome. And so that would make sense then if Paul is writing, I know there's a lot of opinion, different, different, some different opinions about whether Paul is released.

Most people tend to think he was released and was recaptured and re-imprisoned in Rome a second time. But we know that he wrote some of his letters, like Philemon and the second epistle to Timothy, where he is mentioned, where Luke is mentioned as being with Paul, and greetings are sent from Luke, that those were written from when Paul was in prison in Rome. And so it fits then that Luke is with these wee narratives in the end of Acts fit with him being with Paul in Rome during his imprisonment. So Luke then is somebody who is close to Paul. Paul calls him beloved, his fellow laborer, he's an eyewitness to many of the events that he writes about, and Church history also.

We go outside of the Bible what what Christians have written also confirm that Luke is the author Eusebius, the well-known early church historian from the early fourth century writes that Luke was an Antiochian, a physician by profession, and had long been a traveling companion of Paul and had more than a casual acquaintance with the rest of the Apostles. He says in two God-breathed books, namely the Gospel and Acts, he left us examples of the art of soul healing which he learned from them. And we'll see that in this opening introduction, this art of soul healing. Luke, we don't know, but I think was probably a Greek himself. We say that because there is in Timothy a reference to those who are of the circumcision and that no one else, there was no one else of the circumcision except these people.

And then in a verse later it talks about Luke being, you know, being this beloved and fellow laborer, which would not make sense if Luke was a Jew, but it would make sense if Luke was not a Jew, but rather a Greek. And so that's why Paul makes that reference to only and doesn't list Luke. He's speaking only of the Jews, only of those of the circumcision. And then Luke was in a separate category. He was a Greek.

But we don't know that for sure. So you have Eusebius, other church historians, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, each earlier historians all attributing Acts and the Gospel to Luke. And Then we get to Irenaeus in the late second century, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a first-generation disciple of the Apostle John. He writes that Luke, also the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. Luke, a companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him.

Luke, a companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. So in a sense, Luke then this physician, this fellow laborer with Paul, is You could say the very first medical missionary, doctor, who is traveling with Paul and his acts relates, he is the us. He is one of those who is preaching Jesus Christ and preaching the gospel. And it is in this vein then that we come to his opening introduction where he tells us his purpose for writing his purpose for writing as a medical missionary he had this great concern for the spiritual well-being of a man named Theophilus. He says he has taken in hand, he has undertaken the task to set in order a narrative of those things that had been fulfilled among us.

So he's putting himself there as a first-person witness to the things that have been fulfilled in their midst. And what is he talking about? He's talking about the establishing of these churches, these people hearing of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, hearing of his ascension, hearing of his coming, his death, and believing on him, and turning to the Lord, turning away from their idols, burning their occult books as we read in the Ephesian church did, turning whole cities upside down because of their believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the Messiah. Luke saw this happen time and time again as they went to a new area, as they preached to the Jews, as they preached to individuals like Lydia, as they preached to crowds, people believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

They heard of his resurrection, they heard of his death and resurrection and ascension, and they believed. And it changed their lives. And Luke is writing this. Now this word fulfilled, if you have the King James, your Bible might say things that are believed by us. And the word can mean either one.

Typically when it's referring to things, it has the reference, It has the idea of being brought to pass, events being accomplished. When it's used to refer to persons, it has the meaning of being fully persuaded or convinced of something. So it could mean to believe, but when it's referring to a thing, it can refer to an event being accomplished, something coming to pass. And so in this sense, it's often used to describe the fulfillment of prophecy. I think since this is talking about things that have come to pass, The better way to see it is that he is talking about things that have been fulfilled among us.

And he wants to declare them. He wants to make them known. These things that have been fulfilled, that were spoken about Jesus Christ, He wants to make them known. I have undertaken to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled in our midst. He saw history.

He saw all these events that were happening as the fulfillment of God's plan. He looked at this history that he was a witness to, and he saw in there the fulfillment of God's plan. It's not just a series of random events. It is not just what people are doing. Yes, certainly history is made up of what people are doing, but he saw that what people were doing, either in rejecting the gospel or in receiving the gospel, he saw that what was happening was a fulfillment of what God had prophesied, what God had said.

This is the right view that we need to have of history, of the events that are happening around us. Do you see them as what God is bringing to pass? Do you see them as the fulfillment of His Word? The application of His Word? And so When we do, then we can praise the Lord for what he brings to pass, and we can pray to the Lord that what he would bring to pass is in accordance with his word, in accordance with his promises and what he has said he will do And he has said that he will reign To his put all enemies under his feet as we read in Revelation that is the praise of his Saints That are in heaven of the angels of the hosts of the elders They are praising God as grabbing to him the position as the king above all other kings the Lord above all other lords That in his hand are the nations of the world even today the heart of kings is in his hand.

And so we should be looking then, we should look to see history, the events that are unfolding before us as the fulfillment of God's plan and the accomplishing of His purpose. That should motivate our prayers. That we pray more fervently, your will be done. Your will be done. Your kingdom come.

That is how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Pray in this way. Pray that you would have your needs supplied, but pray for my will to be done on earth and pray for my kingdom to be advanced. Luke saw these things that were happening, this narrative as events that were the fulfillment of what God had said would come to pass. We live in the same time.

The things that are coming to pass are the fulfillment of what God is doing, His plan, that He is working to accomplish the bringing of all things, everything under His feet. Others had already set in order, or others had already undertaken to do just as, he says, inasmuch as many have undertaken, so others had undertaken to do this as well, but he thought it was fitting for him to do. And he is separating himself from those who were eye witnesses, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us. So, inasmany as many have undertaken to set in order a narrative of these things, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word just as they deliver them to us I'm undertaking to do to do like them But he has in view here An entire history because things have more things have happened Many more things have happened after Christ's ascension. And so he has in view to give a complete history from the very beginning, which is beginning with John the Baptist who came as the messenger of the covenant, the one who came to prepare the way for Christ to come, to make ready the way in the wilderness, He starts there and goes all the way through the culmination, the high point of the history of the world, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that's where he ends the Gospel of Luke, the resurrection and ascension of Christ. And Then he picks up exactly there in Acts, Acts of the Apostles. He picks up exactly with the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ. He saw this as the high point. All of Luke, all of the gospel is looking forward to this and then all of Acts is flowing forward from that point.

In Acts C he begins, the former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach unto the day in which he was taken up, after he through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom he also presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible proofs." So he's going back and tying this account of the Acts of the Apostles, tying it right into Jesus' resurrection. He presented himself alive after his suffering by many infallible Proofs being seen by them during the 40 days so he sees in this this event as this centerpiece of history This is the point in which his two works, you know up to it And then after it and so he wants to He's saying here that he wants to give this full account, this detailed account of the life of Christ, of his death, of his resurrection, and then the establishment of the church around the world. And he separates himself from those eyewitnesses of Jesus' life because he came later Came into this later He wants to write an orderly account He wants to set things in order.

It seemed good to me having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very beginning to write an orderly account. He values the proper understanding of details. And we see that this in Luke, that he is a very detailed historian, that he gives details that other writers leave out. He tells which hand it was. And he tells that the fever was very high, not just a fever, but it was a high fever.

So we see this very careful detail. And he wants to set things in order. He wants to set things down in a logical way. It's not always necessarily in a chronological order. There are other ways that you can order things.

So many times it is a chronological ordering of the events. This book also has, he's maybe following a logical order or a topical order where he's covering a topic or there's some logical connection in his thought. But he's setting these things out in an orderly way because this is important. It's important for our understanding that we have things laid out in an orderly way. They are not just random bits of information.

Rather, he has taken all this, researched it, studied it, put some effort into it, and organized this account of the life of Christ culminating in His death and resurrection and ascension, and then the establishment of the church, He's put this in order as a historian, so that we can understand it more easily and profit from it, so that we have a more exact knowledge. See, academic study is not to be despised. It's not the end all and be all, certainly, but it's not to be despised. Knowledge can puff up, but Peter also says, add to your faith virtue and knowledge. Luke has a concern for Theophilus that he have a more complete understanding.

See, he says, so that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed. And he calls him most excellent theophilist. That's a title that Luke uses elsewhere in Acts to refer to Festus and Felix who were civil magistrates. So It could mean that Theophilus is a civil magistrate, or he could be just a person of eminence that Luke is writing to. But Luke has a concern that he has a more excellent knowledge, that he would know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.

He's writing there in the second person to him. So Theophilus has been instructed in these things. He has some knowledge, but Luke is writing so that he has a more exact knowledge, a more complete and thorough knowledge, so that he may know the certainty of these things that he's heard. He wants to give him more foundation. He wants to show him how these things that have happened are what has been prophesied by Christ, or by the Old Testament prophets, And that things that happened in Christ's life happened so that it might be fulfilled what was written about him.

And so we see, for example, at the time of Pentecost, in Acts, that Peter is giving a sermon. And Luke, in his summary of that sermon that Peter delivers at Pentecost says he says Peter he points out how Peter goes back and how Peter goes back and shows that this is a fulfillment of what Joel had prophesied in Joel 2. Luke had a deep concern for the spiritual well-being of theophilists. And he didn't separate this into spiritual and intellectual and emotional, but rather it is the spiritual well-being of the entire person, body and soul, mind, emotions, will, intellect. All of these comprise our person.

In having a deep spiritual concern for the well-being of theophilus, Luke takes pains to write an account of Christ's life in the establishment of the Church, and recording all of the wonderful acts that God did, and the miracles that he performed in the establishment of that church in order that Theophilus would have more certainty in what he knew. He wanted to address himself to his mind as well as to his heart and to his emotions. New Luke calls these people who delivered these eyewitnesses, he calls them ministers or servants of the word. These accounts were delivered by the servants of the word. That's an interesting phrase, servants of the Word.

Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ. But when he's speaking here of the messengers and the word that they bring, he calls them servants, ministers, That's what a minister is, a servant, a servant or a minister of the Word. See, the text, the Word of God must be preeminent. That's what we are serving. What we are serving.

Our work must be to serve the Word, to explain it, to exemplify it, to live it, and to make it known. Every other task that a minister of the gospel does must be subservient to this task. To be a servant of the Word of God means that the focus of the sermon is to explain the Word of God, is to make it clear. The focus of our lives is to serve the Word of God, to exemplify it, to live it, to walk in obedience to it. And that's the responsibility not just of me as a preacher, but of you as God's people to provide for the preaching of the Word of God that serves the Word of God.

You have a part in that. You have a big part in that. That is your responsibility as God's people to ensure that the preaching of the Word serves the Word, that it's not there for your entertainment. It's not there to gather a large crowd, but it's there to open the Word of God, to explain it, to apply it, to live it. Of course that word testifies of Jesus Christ.

It testifies of his incarnation. It testifies of his death, and testifies of his resurrection, that he has defeated sin, that because he has risen we have peace with God, and that we can be confident that we too will rise and that our bodies will not stay in the grave either. So that is Luke's purpose in writing, is to make known the wisdom of God. His concern arose as a medical missionary, his concern arose for a particular person, this theophilus. We don't know what his relation to him was, but he had a big enough concern for him to know and for him to be certain about what he had been taught.

That he went to all the work to write the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, to set in order all of these things for one man. And more broadly though, this book was to instruct all new believers who didn't have the Old Testament history that was common knowledge to many of the Jews. So It served to correct erroneous views that came up through ignorance. But its ultimate purpose is to reach all the nations for Christ, even Samaritan nations. Even Samaritan nations.

So the question this morning that we can ask ourselves from this introduction that Luke wrote, do we have a concern for the spiritual well-being of those who are around us, like Luke did for Theophilus, That he was willing to go to this great length, this work, this labor, in order that Theophilus might be better instructed and more certain of what he knew. Do we have that kind of burden that those around us may know Christ, may have a more certain knowledge of Jesus Christ. Do we have that kind of burden that we might be servants of the word as Luke sought to be. Those who live to make Christ known, those who live to declare through our lives that we are accepted in the beloved not by what we do but because of what Christ has done. Is that our burden?

Is that our concern? Is that what occupies our prayers? Is that what occupies our work? I know too often it doesn't mine, but it should. This introduction to Luke shows his heart, And the work that he was willing to go to so that one man Might have a more certain knowledge And in that he he is an example to us of A Christian one who is known as a follower of Christ.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that It is not by our works that we gain favor with you, for Lord, we know our works are but as filthy rags, except you sanctify us, except you set us apart as vessels for your service. Father, we ask that you would give to us a heart such as Luke had, a burden that others a burden that others may know of you more exactly. That others may rejoice in your death, and in your resurrection, and in your ascension and in your victory over sin even as we do and That we might Lord love you with a deeper and more fervent love with with a more constant love that is not so easily enamored by the lusts and the pleasures of this world. Father, may we know more experientially the greatness of our salvation and the depth of your love for us in Christ.

In Christ. Father, we ask for a love of your Word. We ask that you would give us a more exact understanding of it as well. That we may be led to greater thanks, greater gratitude, greater devotion, an adoration of you, and a greater zeal for the advancement of your kingdom and for your will to be done here on earth as it is done in heaven. We ask in Jesus name, amen.