Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Become a Christian | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Today we're beginning our series on the Gospel of Luke. For a long time in my Christian life, if you would have asked me who wrote most of the New Testament, I would have looked at you like you were a fool because the answer is obvious, isn't it? It's the Apostle Paul. I mean, think of all the letters, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Coliseans. and more and more and more it goes.

Starting point is 00:00:37 I was pretty shocked when I learned that that was the incorrect answer, that the answer that seemed obvious to me turned out to be obviously wrong. The person who wrote most of the New Testament was Luke. So the Gospel of Luke and then the Book of Acts combined to make the most written material in the New Testament by any one author quite a bit more than the Apostle Paul. So Luke is a person that has a huge influence on the New Testament and on our faith, but he's someone that we don't know a lot about. One thing we do know about him is that he was associated with the Apostle Paul. So Luke wasn't one of the first followers of Jesus, not one of the earliest disciples, probably never saw Jesus before he was crucified.

Starting point is 00:01:24 And yet he was a traveling companion to the Apostle Paul. We learn in Colossians 414 that he was a physician. and we see his name pop up as part of Paul's missionary band a few other times in the New Testament. So it's kind of interesting that Luke is associated with Paul, and yet the attention goes to Paul and not to Luke, not to the Gospels. Yeah, I definitely would have been in the same boat as you thinking that Paul wrote most of the New Testament. And for me as a Christian, again, especially early on, I kind of thought of Paul as the person that really serious Christians. read, that if you were serious about Jesus, if you were serious about theology, then you were going to spend a lot of time reading Paul. And that was the case until I went on a retreat with a bunch of

Starting point is 00:02:11 friends of mine. And the speaker there, I was talking with him one-on-one, and he kind of read me pretty quick and he goes, look, you seem like a theology guy. You've got lots of ideas. But how much time do you actually spend with Jesus? I'm like, well, you know, I try to pray every day. And he goes, no, no, no, that's not what I mean. That's really good. I'm glad you do that. What I mean is how much are you actually reading the Gospels? How much are you actually trying to learn how Jesus lived, how Jesus walked through life? And I had to be honest. I thought, man, I haven't read through the Gospels maybe in a few years now.

Starting point is 00:02:44 And so he challenged me. He said, for the next year, I just want you to focus on reading the Gospels and the Gospels alone. And I don't know if that's an advisable challenge, but I took it. And that's all that I read for the next year. And it was one of the best things that I did. I felt like I got to know Jesus in a way that I hadn't gotten to know him before. If you think about what we focus on about Jesus, it kind of centers around two major holidays, Christmas and Easter, and then Easter's kind of unappreciated stepchild, Good Friday.

Starting point is 00:03:16 And so you think about Christmas, what we just came through and you think, okay, that's the incarnation, the virgin birth, and how important that is to our faith. And then you think about Good Friday and Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and obviously that's important. Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead. But what about everything in between? What about Jesus's life? Why do the Gospels go to tell us so much about how Jesus grew up or about his ministry and his public teaching and his miracles and all that extra stuff? Why is that in there? I mean, couldn't have just skipped it? Don't we just need a Jesus who is born of a virgin and then a Jesus who died on a cross to pay for sins?

Starting point is 00:04:04 Why do we need to know all that other stuff in between? It's a great question. And again, I think if you asked me early on in my faith, you said, what do you need to know about Jesus? I would have said, well, you know, he's God incarnate. He died on a cross and he rose again. And I would have probably left out that center section the exact same way. So it's a really good question to ask. Why?

Starting point is 00:04:23 why does the gospel of Luke, for example, spend the majority of its time not on those three events, which again are incredibly important and spends the majority of its time on Jesus's life, telling us how Jesus responded when his enemies critiqued us, telling us how Jesus responded to people who were outsiders in his society, whether that was sinners or poor people or women or Gentiles? Why does Luke spend so much time telling us what Jesus taught his disciples in the form of parables, in the form of parables, in the form of, of teachings. Why give us all this stuff? And I think there's probably a number of answers that we can talk about on this podcast. But maybe the first one is precisely because we're supposed to be students of Jesus. We're supposed to be apprentices of Jesus. We're supposed to be shaping our lives after Jesus, how he lived. And I just don't know any way to do that unless you actually know how he lived, what he did in his life. Think about what Jesus told the first followers. He didn't say, leaving me. He didn't say, ask me to be your Savior or pray to receive me into your heart. What Jesus said to them was, follow me. There's kind of a disconnect by the way we talk about how somebody begins

Starting point is 00:05:36 a relationship with Jesus and how Jesus actually talk to people. We make it about this moment of asking Jesus to be our Savior, but that's not the way Jesus talks. Jesus invites people into a relationship in which they follow him and become more and more like him. In Luke 640, Jesus says, the student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. And I think what Jesus is saying there is that when we live our life to the fullest, when we are fully trained, then we will become more and more like him. That's what a disciple is, a learner, a follower of Jesus. So how did Jesus forgive? How did he treat his enemies? How did he deal with the pressure was on. How did he handle conflict? These are all things that we need to know if we're

Starting point is 00:06:25 going to become more and more like him. Yeah, and this tells us that following Jesus is a kind of apprenticeship, right? If you wanted to learn, you know, back in ancient days how to be a blacksmith, you had to spend time with a blacksmith learning his trade. And in the exact same way, we've got to spend time with Jesus to learn how to walk and live like him. And I actually think that's really good news, because sometimes I get this sense that to follow Jesus, I've got to be a special kind of person. I've got to be a really good person. I've got to really have my act together. And Jesus doesn't seem to expect that at all. He says that anybody can be his disciple. Anyone can follow in his life patterns. It's a skill that we learn precisely by walking with him and learning from him, no matter where we start.

Starting point is 00:07:11 And that invitation that's open to anyone is really seen in the gospel of Luke in a powerful way. One of the things that Luke does that the other gospel writers don't do as much of is focuses on people who would have been the outsiders. It focuses on women, the poor, Gentiles. And it really communicates this message that the gospel of the kingdom is open to everyone, regardless of gender or socioeconomic status or ethnicity. And so there's really this heart in Luke for the outsider. So let's go back just a second and examine the question we asked earlier, and that is why in the church is there so much focus on the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus? And why is his life to some extent overlooked, or at least we don't know the purpose of it? And I think it comes down to what we think Jesus came to do.

Starting point is 00:08:05 What we think Jesus came to do was to die on a cross for our sins so that we could go to heaven. And if that's the case, then it makes complete sense that what we would be. need is a virgin birth and then that Savior to die and be resurrected. But what if Jesus came for more than that? Not less than that. In other words, of course he came to rescue sinners. But what if he came for more than that? What if he came to reestablish his kingdom?

Starting point is 00:08:33 See, that's why we have the life of Jesus because it teaches us about the kingdom that Jesus has come to establish. It teaches us that Jesus is the true king who is now ruling. over the earth and that one day his kingdom will be fully established here. But until that day, it teaches us how to live and follow King Jesus. And when we read the Gospel of Luke that way, it makes a lot of sense. It actually means that the Gospel of Luke fits into the bigger story that the Bible is telling, because the Bible is precisely a story of God as king creating all things. And then humans, rebelling against him, establishing their own kingdom, their own way of doing things.

Starting point is 00:09:14 And then God's saying, you know what? I haven't given up. I'm going to be faithful to my original purposes and my original plan. And he picks a family, the family of Israel, through whom he's going to reestablish his original kingdom. And that's exactly the story that Luke is picking up because Jesus is that faithful Israelite who is going to reestablish God's kingdom on earth as in heaven. So again, if we look at the bigger picture, why do we need Jesus's life? Not just his birth and his death and his resurrection. And of course we need those too. Why do we need it? One, because we want to be apprentices of Jesus. Two, because Jesus came to do more than forgive sins. He came to announce that God had returned on earth as in heaven to rule and to reign and to reestablish his kingdom.

Starting point is 00:10:00 And maybe the third reason why we need Jesus' life is because it's not make-believe. This is real history. These things really happened. And Luke in particular has a special focus on that idea, that these are real historical events. In fact, Luke opens up his gospel in this way, and he explains his purpose in writing all of this. He says this in verse one of chapter one. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. So let's just pause there. Luke is saying that he and others have undertaken to record the events of Jesus's life. But these aren't made up events.

Starting point is 00:10:48 He says, I've gone around and I've spoken to not just people who heard what happened about Jesus, but people who were eyewitnesses, people who saw it with their own two eyes. Let's continue, verse three, with this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning. Again, look at Luke being the careful historian here. I, too, decided to write an orderly account for you, Most Excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things that have been taught. This Theophilus that Luke is writing to could be a historic person. It could be a pseudonym meant to protect a real person.

Starting point is 00:11:25 The fact that he's called Most Excellent might mean that it's a person of status, power, wealth. Some have speculated that Theophilus is a Roman official. some have speculated that Theophilus was a person that was funding Luke and ministry and perhaps had even contributed to the Apostle Paul's ministry. We're not really sure exactly who Theophilus is. All we know is that Luke seems to say, look, I went and I talked to all the eyewitnesses, and I gathered all the information, and I looked at all these sources that were out there. And I am putting together an account that is accurate so that you theophilus, whoever it is, you are exactly, so that you can understand who Jesus is and why all these people are following him.

Starting point is 00:12:14 Here's what I find interesting about this. If you watch the history channel, you're probably never going to see a historical expose on various world religions or world philosophies. Because the ideas behind those religions, the ideas behind those philosophies, they're not rooted in history. They're just abstract concepts. They're just principles for life. But if you watch the history channel, you are going to see things that talk about the history of Jesus and the true story of Jesus. And whether or not those are really accurate, reliable accounts of what happened is beside the point. Here's what matters. No one doubts that Jesus was a real historic person. And no one doubts that what Jesus did during his real historic life has had worldwide repercussions,

Starting point is 00:13:01 No one doubts that there's probably never been a more important historical figure than Jesus of Nazareth. And so when Luke introduces us to Jesus, he's not just saying, hey, let me give you some abstract ideas, some abstract principles, some nice ideas about how you can live. Now he's saying, I want to tell you about real world historical events that have literally changed everything. Yeah, I just don't think we can make too big a deal out of that, that Christianity is rooted in history, that the gospel of Luke and the, other Gospels, too. And Paul, for that matter, will mention real rulers. It'll mention places. It will mention governors. It will mention years that they ruled and reigned. And it's therefore testable. In other words, historians can go back and look and say, well, does the gospel of Luke do a good job of accurately portraying what was happening at this time in this place? And I think historians, although

Starting point is 00:13:59 though they'll still argue, we'll by and large say, yes, the New Testament is very accurate. And therefore, if we can trust it in this area, in this arena of history, then we can trust it in all the things it teaches us. One further thing to add to that idea. When we look at the amazing changes that Jesus' life and his teachings and what he did ended up causing, not just in the Roman Empire, but in the rest of the world, we have to have, an explanation for how that happened. Why in the world was a peasant Jew from Galilee able to eventually, in the span of only 400 years, topple the Roman Empire? What was it about

Starting point is 00:14:42 Jesus that actually changed the world? And I think the single best explanation out there is that these stories are true, in particular that Jesus really did rise from the dead. There were lots of Jews and Judea who were crucified in the time of Jesus. There were lots of would-be messias who were killed by the Romans. Jesus was a lot like some of those guys, just if you look at the bare facts. But there was one single difference. He's the only one who came back from the dead. And that event, him coming back from the dead is the watershed moment in history. It's the best single explanation for why Christianity exploded and why his followers lived the way they did. And so if that's something that interests you, whether it's the historical end we've been talking about,

Starting point is 00:15:29 or maybe it's this idea of the gospel of the kingdom, or just how do I apprentice Jesus? How do I follow Jesus in my life? I think that this series is going to be really helpful for you. So Patrick, I hope we've set the stage for the devotions that we're going to be doing, the 10-minute Bible talks in the future episodes. We really hope that these are helping you connect with Jesus throughout the week. and we hope that these specific episodes through the Gospel of Luke will help you learn to follow Jesus more wholeheartedly. He's the great king. He's the one that we all want to follow with our life.

Starting point is 00:16:05 If you want to go deeper in Luke, we will include some books in the show notes. And if you ever want to go even deeper than that, please feel free to reach out to us and email us. We'd love to have a conversation. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe. Subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually.

Starting point is 00:16:34 If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Become a Christian | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.