Introduction: Welcome to Expound our verse-by-verse
study of God's Word. Our goal is to expand your knowledge of the
truth of God by explaining the Word of God in a way that is interactive, enjoyable, and
congregational. Skip Heitzig: Good evening. Great to be with you tonight outside. [cheers and applause] Now is the time to have
a seat. Now is the time to turn off Instagram and
Twitter and Facebook and open your Bibles, even if it's on your phone or iPad, open it
up to the gospel of Luke, chapter 1. I'm at a disadvantage. I wish I could see you all a little more clearly
than doing this. Hi, guys, how are you? And I wish I had eyes in the back of my head,
but, hey, how you doing back there? It's great to see all of you all out tonight. The first chapter of Luke has seventy-nine
verses, so we're not going to be able to cover them all. It's not going to suit our purpose. And we're going to do more or less an introduction
looking at the first few verses, the first, perhaps, twenty-five verses, and we're going
to take the Lord's Supper in this place. I love the fact that our children's ministry
has taken over our sanctuary. They do this once a year. They put on such a great VBS. It is over the top. It is so good. [applause] And so I gladly give it to them
because of the all the energy, all the love, and all the results that happen because of
it. And so we get to meet outside tonight. We get to go through the gospel of Luke, at
least in part, and take the Lord's Supper. And I always love doing outside, and here's
one of reasons: I feel we're getting back more to what it was like at the time of Jesus
with his disciples. He didn't have an air conditioned auditorium
when he met with his men, and when he taught, he was outdoors. And those that have traveled with us to Israel,
we always go on site and we meet outdoors, and sometimes it's hot. Sometimes in Galilee it's well over a hundred
degrees. And it helps us recreate the setting of what
it was like when Jesus was around teaching. He was teaching in settings that were outdoors. When he was in Jerusalem, he taught in the
temple. And the temple was a big structure. It had Solomon's porch. We also have Solomon's Porch, though a little
bit different. But we're in Luke's gospel. Let's pray before we get into it. Father, thank you for the opportunity that
you've given us. Thank you, Lord, that we do experience and
are changed by your presence. There were two songs where we mentioned that
tonight in our praise. And you said in a special way wherever two
or more gather, you are in their midst. Lord, be in our midst tonight as we gather
for the purpose of being instructed in righteousness, the words of Paul himself, "instruction in
righteousness." I pray that we would grow. I pray that you would give us the ability
to have full attention upon what Dr. Luke tells us, in Jesus' name, amen. Somebody once said that a pastor sees people
at their best, a lawyer sees people at their worst, and a doctor sees people as they are. The gospel of Luke was written by a doctor. He was not a Jewish eyewitness like the other
gospel writers were. He was a Gentile, he was non-Jewish, and he
was the only Gentile author that we have in the New Testament, the gospel of Luke written
by Dr. Luke. Though he was not an eyewitness, you will
see in the first four verses of his book that he utilized eyewitnesses. They were very important. He was very exact in getting the message out
in a form that was reliable, inspired by God, but he put everything he could into the exactness
of these writings. Now a little bit about Dr. Luke. We don't know a whole a lot about him. According to a couple of the early church
fathers, one by the name of Eusebius, the other by the name of Jerome, Luke was born
in a place called Antioch. Now, that can be confusing, especially if
you're a Bible student, because there's not one Antioch, there's a few of them. So up in Syria, that Antioch just north of
Israel where the early church began to headquarter itself, from that Antioch is where Luke came
from, which is interesting because Luke not only writes the book of Luke, but the book
of---what?---Acts. It's a two-volume work, volume I and volume
II: volume I is Luke, volume II is Acts. So much of the book of Acts centers on what
goes on in his hometown, the hometown of Luke, raised in Antioch, heard the gospel and was
transformed. We know that he's a doctor because in the
book of Colossians, the fourth chapter, in the fourteenth verse, the apostle Paul writes
his audience and he says, "Luke the beloved physician and Demas give you greetings." So we know that he was a physician in the
early church. It seems that he met Paul just about before
and during his first missionary journey. If you remember the book of Acts, Paul begins
in Antioch on his first missionary journey. Luke does not join him then, but he must have
met him then and then joined him subsequently on his second and third missionary journeys. In the book of Acts, volume II of Luke, Luke
writes in the third person. He writes about Paul and he writes about Peter
and he writes about "they" and he writes about "them," until we get to chapter 16. In chapter 16 he changes the way he writes. He doesn't say, "They went there," "They did
that," he says, "We went there," "We did that." So, evidently, from chapter 16 onward Dr.
Luke joins the evangelistic team of Paul the apostle and travels with him where he goes. I can only imagine that Luke and Paul hit
it off. They were like-minded. And let me tell you why I think that is: Paul,
the way he writes, what he knows, his ability to speak to the men of Athens, the great philosophers,
and the great erudite philosophical minds of the time was very compatible with Luke. Because when you read the book of Luke, if
you've ever studied Greek, you know that Luke is a difficult book to read in the Greek language. It would have been exact, as I said, it is
very polished, and it is more in a classical Greek style. It is one of the most beautiful writings ever. In fact, one of the French critics of Christianity
named Renan said that the gospel of Luke was the most beautiful book he had ever read. So it's in a high kind of a Greek, a polished
kind of a Greek. And being a physician, being studied, he would
have had a mastery of the language and the ability to communicate. So I say that Paul and Luke must have hit
it off. If you remember in First Corinthians, the
first chapter---and it has become my life verse. He said, "You see your calling, brethren,
how not many mighty, not many noble after the flesh, are called. For God has chosen the foolish things of this
world to confound the wise." I say that's my life verse, "God as chosen
the foolish things of this world." When I read that verse, I thought, "He's writing
about me. What a perfect description of me." There's not many mighty, there's not many
noble, but God principally chooses just ordinary, run-of-the-mill people like you and I. However, he didn't say there are not "any"
that are noble. He said there are not "many" that are noble. There are exceptions to that rule, and I think
Luke and I think Paul was exceptions to that rule. I think that they were noble. I think they were brilliant men. They were erudite. They were perspicacious. They had great insight into language and culture
and people. And I think they tracked with each other and
they formed suitable traveling companions. I mentioned that Luke is analytical in his
writing. He is very pedantic, he's very exact, and
he's very analytical as you'll see just in the first few verses we read, if and when
we get to them. But back in the 1800s in England, when there
was sort of a wave of criticism against the Bible and against Christianity, and there
were men who had been influenced by the higher criticism of Germany and Western Europe, that
filtered into England partly as a blowback to the Victorian era in England, which is
a greater era, by the way. But what happened after the Victorian era
is you had people who looked at the values and the morals of Victorian England and said,
"Oh, that was so narrow-minded. It was so stilted." And there was a brilliant scholar of that
ilk by the name of Sir William Ramsay. He was an historian and an archaeologist. He did not believe that the Bible was accurate. That was his presupposition. He never studied it really in depth, but he
believed that the Bible had to be just a book put together by human beings, filled with
flaws, really, really inaccurate. And so he decided that he would take the two
most historical New Testament books to prove that, those two books, the gospel of Luke
and the book of Acts, both written by Dr. Luke. And the reason he chose those two books to
attack is because they contained so many geographical references. And he said, "Because there's so many geographical
references, all I have to do is go to the archaeological digs of those places and see
if these accuracies are indeed intact or if they're fallacious." So he began to study the background and the
history of the New Testament. He went to some of the archaeological digs
and he wrote after his findings as an atheist, and then he moved toward being an agnostic. And then he eventually moved to being a born-again
Christian, because he said that the gospel of Luke does not have---neither does to the
book of Acts have one single historical inaccuracy. He said, "Luke as an historian is first rate
and should be classified with the great historians of the day." Sir William Ramsay became not only a born-again
believer, but an apologist, one who defended the Christian faith against attacks like he
had previously. So that is the book, at least in part, that
we are dealing with. Now I mentioned Luke was a doctor, and as
a doctor Luke will write like a doctor. When he describes miracles, he's going to
use medical terminology. That's one of the reasons I'm attracted to
his writings. Did you know that Luke uses more medical terms
in his writing than Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used in all of his writings? So, it's very inclined toward medical terminology. Now, if you don't mind, tonight because of
the setting, and as I mentioned, we're not going to go through lots of verses, I want
to just paint the picture of the New Testament. And since we've been in the Old Testament
for quite some time in the book of Numbers, I want to sort of refresh your memory as to
what we're dealing with in the New Testament. We have four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. What we have is a fourfold picture of Jesus
Christ as if from different angles. I like to think of the Holy Spirit as a director
on a movie set, and he commissions four camera angles to pick up different realities of the
same setting. And so one camera is focused on one group,
another camera is focused on an individual and how they react to it, or what another
person's or group's actions are, all in the same setting, no contradiction, but they are
complementary one to another. Or if you're a musician, think of it as a
string quartet. You got two violins, a viola, and a cello,
all tuned beautifully together, all making beautiful music together. We have that kind of a portrait of Jesus Christ. So, we have the gospel of Matthew. Matthew, just to refresh your memory, writes
about Jesus Christ as the sovereign Messiah, the King of the Jews. He's writing to Jews about the sovereign kingship,
Jesus the King of the Jews, the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. That's why Matthew loves that phrase, "as
it is written." He'll say, "This happened because it was written
. . . ," and he quotes the Old Testament text. So he's writing about Jesus as the sovereign,
and he's writing to the Jews. When we get to the gospel of Mark, which we've
already covered as well, he writes about Jesus as the servant or in particular the "suffering
servant." And Mark likes the word "immediately," or
"and": "and . . . ," "and . . . ," "immediately . . . ," "then . . . ," "then . . . ." It's
like when you read Mark, you go [panting], "Hah-hah-hah-hah." You're sort of out of breath after just reading
a chapter, because he just keeps it going. He keeps it moving. He is portraying Jesus on the move as a servant
going to the cross. Mark writes, not to the Jews, but to the Romans. Then we come to the gospel of Luke, and Luke
is writing to the Greeks. And he writes, not about Jesus as the sovereign,
not as Jesus as the servant, but Jesus as the Son of Man, the perfect man, the ideal
man. Then John speaks about Jesus as the Son of
God. For years the Greeks had an ideal, a picture---and
it's mentioned in several of their writings---of perfect humanity, the ideal man, ideal physically,
ideal emotionally, spiritually, perfect humanity controlled by deity. They wrote much about the ideal man. And so Luke, being a Gentile, writing to Greeks
offers Jesus as the ideal God-man, God in a human body, the ideal man, the perfect man,
the one that the world longs for, the fulfillment of all their dreams and ambitions. One of the reasons I love the gospel of Luke
is that he gives the fullest description of the birth of Jesus Christ more than any of
the other gospels. The nativity scene in the first couple of
chapters is unparalleled, and it's the go-to Scripture at Christmastime. Check out the Christmas cards, check out sermon
titles, and the passages we often refer to will be in the gospel of Luke because he gives
so much literary real estate to the nativity of the Christ. Luke will write about parables, stories that
Jesus gave. Some that are not included in the other gospels. He'll write about miracles that are not included
in the other gospels. There are eighteen parables in Luke that are
found nowhere else. There are six miracles of Jesus Christ that
are in Luke that are found nowhere else. Some of the most famous: the parable of the
prodigal son, the parable of the good Samaritan, both included in the gospel of Luke. Here's something else about this book: Luke
is a book filled with praise, worship. He gives the worship songs of Christmas that
none of the other gospel writers give. Mary's song of worship and praise that we're
going to find---not tonight, obviously, but next time---called the Magnificat of Mary. "My soul doth magnify the Lord," she said,
and there's a beautiful song that Mary gives. Then there's the song of Zacharias. We're going to be introduced to him, God willing,
tonight in these first few verses. He gives the Benedictus, another song of praise. Luke includes that. Luke will also include what the other gospel
writers do not include, was the words of the angels at Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, toward men of goodwill," that beautiful Christmas anthem
mentioned only in Luke. Then Luke writes one of my favorite stories
in all of the Bible. It's one of those stories that every time
I read it wish it would have been tape recorded or---not tape recorded, that's old technology,
but MP3'd. Somebody with an iPhone could have been there
and captured it on video or panorama, something. And that is in Luke, chapter 24, the story
of the two disciples going from Jerusalem to Emmaus when Jesus walks up alongside of
them incognito. They don't know it's him. He's risen from the dead. He engages in the conversation. They still don't know it's him till he finally
reveals himself and he blows their mind. That's included in the gospel of Luke. Let's look at the first four verses. I know we can at least get through that. "Inasmuch," writes Luke, verse 1, "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 eyewitness and ministers
of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having 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.' " Four verses, one single Greek sentence. It's a long sentence. I would have been---I'd have points taken
away by my English teacher if I would have tried that. But he's not writing in English, he's writing
in Greek, and it's classical Greek. And what you notice in those first few verses
is that Luke reveals himself as a historian. He gives away his methodology. He talks about his sources. He has interviewed eyewitness. And he has followed a certain method to give
an accurate account. Now, who was it that Luke would have interviewed
as eyewitness? Who were the eyewitness who were with Jesus? Mary---anybody else? Apostles, right, the disciples, the earliest
apostles, they were with him. So Luke would have interviewed primary sources. The primary sources that we know were already
written at that time were Matthew and Mark. John had not been written yet. So Luke must have had some access to the writings
of Matthew the apostle and Mark the friend of the apostle Peter. And it would have been personal people that
he could interviewed to get what really happened and compare their stories to write it down
for a guy named Theophilus. Also, since Luke traveled with Paul, Luke
would have been in Caesarea when Paul was in jail for two years. Caesarea is in Israel. Most of the apostles were in that area still. He could have had access to the other apostles
while Paul was in prison for two years in Caesarea. We know from Acts, chapter 21, that Luke met
Philip and no doubt got his account. He was one of the primary sources. We know from Luke chapter 8 verse 3 that there
was a woman who followed Jesus named Joanna, the wife of Chuza, who was the steward of
Herod the Great. She was also one of the sources who was around
as a disciple of Jesus, and somebody who had access to Herod to get information from. It could even be that Luke had access to the
apostle John. After all, Paul traveled throughout Asia Minor
and maybe was able to go into Ephesus and meet with John and some of the others. But all of that was compiled together for
the gospel of Luke, these two volumes, which brings up an issue: Why is it that we claim
the Bible is the inspired Word of God, when here you have a guy who said, "I belabored
getting the accurate story of what really happened in the life of Jesus by examining
and writing down eyewitness testimony of people who were with Jesus and heard what he said"? Well, I'm glad you asked. Because the fact that there is a human being
who is that smart and who researches and puts effort into something does not negate the
doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture. It's just one of the means the Holy Spirit
used to bring us the inspired text. "All Scripture is inspired." I believe that. Second Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is inspired
by God." The Greek word theopneustos means God-breathed. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction of righteousness, that the man of God may
be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." I believe that. But I also know and I believe that God used
the personalities of the authors or the methods of this author. It wasn't like dictation. It's not like they fell into a trance and
went, "Um, I'm getting a message from God," and they wrote it down like he was dictating
something. So the follow-up question you should be asking
is: If that's true, if the Bible is the inspired Word of God using the human personalities
that be. How? How did he do it? And to make it short, because we do want to
get through a little more, Peter gives us the best answer, wraps it up in a nutshell. In Second Peter, chapter 1, he says, "No prophecy
of Scripture was given by any private interpretation, but"---listen---"holy men of God spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit." The word "moved" means carried along. It was a word used of sails that are put up
and the wind carries the ship along to the destination determined by the direction of
the wind, as well as the one who's controlling the sails. It goes to its predetermined designation. So look at it this way: the men who were writing
Scripture hoisted their sails and God breathed into it, so that the destination, what they
wrote, was exactly where God wanted it to go, what God wanted them to say, even down
to the very words that they used as individual according to written personality as they were. That's really the best view of inspiration. Every word, every letter is inspired by God,
but it also takes into consideration the personality of the one who writes. God used that as well. So that's Luke's methodology; he interviewed
eyewitness. Now, go back and notice in verse 2, two words,
one is "eyewitnesses," but they're both medical terms. He says, "Just as those who from the beginning
were eyewitnesses and ministers." The word "eyewitnesses," listen to it, it's
a Greek word, autoptai. Some of you already know where we get---what
English word we get from autoptai. Any guesses? Autopsy. Autopsy, autoptai means somebody who has seen
something with his or her own eyes: "I've examined it personally. I've autoptai." Those are the people who have seen something. The second word in the same verse is "ministers,"
upēretai/hyperetai. Upēretai means under-rowers, like in a boat,
the guys who are manning the oars to get the ship going, the under-rowers. But when used in medical terminology it means
an intern, a student. So listen to what he's saying. He's saying, "Here's my method of writing
the account of the life of Jesus Christ: I've interviewed those who have autopsied the lifestyle
of Jesus Christ. They were interns of the Great Physician. They were learners and students. That's the firsthand testimony that I've gotten." That's how Luke phrases the opening words
of his book. Okay, I mentioned that Luke is volume I of
a two-volume set; the sequel is the book of Acts. We know that because of the person he writes
to. He writes to Theophilus, "most excellent Theophilus." We don't know a lot about Theophilus except
that he's---well, "most excellent." [laughter] That's about all we know is what
you read, "most excellent," or a better translation, "your Excellency." He's thought to be some Roman dignitary, but
it's the same person that the book of Acts is also written to. Listen to how Acts begins: "The former account
which I made to you, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until
the day he was taken up," written to the same person. Now, some people sort of mess with this verse
and they think that Theophilus---because "Theophilus" means literally lover of God. Isn't that a great name? Lover of God or friend of God, theos phileó:
one who loves God, or one who's the friend of God. So some people believe that it's written to
just all friends of God. No. I believe that Theophilus was an actual person. In fact, the way it seems is that Luke was
writing to his master. Luke had been a slave and as a slave he is
writing an account of the life of Jesus Christ to his master named Theophilus who had also
come to Jesus Christ and wanted to get down to the bottom, the nitty-gritty of the story. "Give me an accurate picture of what happened
with this Jesus." And so Luke the slave writes the account. Now, some people go, "Wait, wait, wait, wait---slave? Slave? You just told me Luke was a doctor. All the doctors that I know are not, or certainly
don't act like slaves." Two thousand years ago half of the Roman Empire
were slaves. And wealthy patrons often owned doctors who
were also conscripted into slavery. And that's what we believe Luke was. He was a slave who had been given freedom
by Theophilus and now he writes the story of Jesus. In fact, it's just my guess that it was Theophilus
the patron, the master, who bankrolled the ability to do all the research that Luke did
and he gives this account to Theophilus. Verse 5, "There was in the days of Herod"---and
we will get more about Herod in days to come. "There was in the days of Herod," this is
Herod the Great, "the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the division of
Abijah, his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth." I prefer the Hebrew pronunciation Elisheba. Anybody here named Elizabeth? Okay, your name in Hebrew, the original pronunciation
of your name, not the anglicized Elizabeth, is Elisheba. And Elisheba means his oath or the God of
the oath. So it's a beautiful name. Elizabeth was his wife. "And they were both," verse 6, "righteous
before God, walking in all of the commandments and ordnances of the Lord blameless. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was
barren, and both of them were well advanced in years." The name Zacharias means God remembers. As I mentioned, Elisheba, Elizabeth, means
his oath. Have you ever heard of the city named Beer
Sheva or Beersheba, "from Dan to Beersheba"? It's a place in southern Israel still in existence
today. "Beersheba" means the well of the oath. So Elizabeth is his oath. And you put Mr. and Mrs. Zacharias' name together,
listen to what it means: God remembers his oath. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you Mr.
and Mrs. God remembers his oath. That's what their name together meant. Again, a beautiful hint of what is to come. God does remember his oath. He's going to give them a son who will point
to Jesus Christ and his name will be John the Baptist. God remembers his oath. Zacharias was a priest. I find it interesting that Elizabeth, her
lineage was of the same family of priests or the family of Aaron. Now, here's the skinny on marriage 2,000 years
ago among Jewish priests: Jewish priests were required to marry a pure Jewess, a girl of
pure Jewish lineage. And it was even better, considered more meritorious
if she were of the same family, priestly family as that of Aaron. And that's what you have here, a godly couple
both from a lineage of the priestly family, the family of Aaron, married to each other. However, they're childless. To be childless 2,000 years ago, unlike it
is today, was a social disgrace, because of how beautifully the Old Testament writes about
children. Like Psalm 27, remember what it says? "Children are a heritage from the Lord, the
fruit of the womb is his reward." So the thought was God rewards people by giving
them children. If they're childless, they have not found
favor with God. It became a social stigma, a social disgrace. Some of the ancient rabbis even said this,
if you can believe it---again, not Scripture, just the tradition of the rabbis. One rabbi said there are seven people that
will be excommunicated from God and the list begins like this: a Jew who has no wife, and
a Jew who has a wife but has no child. So can you imagine Zacharias a priest and
Elizabeth, Elisheba his wife, when they were young the kind of grief they went through
and the kind of prayers they prayed? "O Lord, please, we want a heritage, we want
to pass this on to children. Give us a child." But many years had passed. Now Luke, being a doctor, doesn't just say
they're childless, gives us the reason behind their childlessness. She was barren. She was unable to conceive. Something a doctor would notice. And then to add to that, he shows the complication
of their story by saying that they were well advanced in years. So not only is she barren, not able to conceive,
but they're old. The old King James says "well stricken in
years." What a description, "well stricken in years." Last few weeks I've had a few visits to the
physical therapist just for some issues that come when you start getting to be well stricken
in years, [laughter] certain aches and pains and problems in different parts of the skeletal,
muscular anatomy. And the physical therapist, you know, I just
started realizing why. He goes, "What is that scar from?" I go, "Oh, that's from a mountain bike wreck." He'd go, "Okay." And then a few minutes later, "Well, what's
that cut from?" I go, "Oh, that was a snowboarding fiasco." And then last time I went he said, "You know,
I think your back is crooked, your sacrum and your coccygeal skeleton is a little bit
misplaced to the left. Any trauma that you can remember of why this
would be?" I said, "No, I really can't." And then I thought, "Oh, yes, it was that
time I fell really hard, while snowboarding, on ice and I felt it on my tailbone." And so I just started thinking of this. This was what happens when you become stricken
in years. The older you get, you start feeling the aches
and pains. Zacharias and Elizabeth were well stricken
in years for beyond any hope of having my child ever again. She's barren. They're old. "Ain't gonna happen," they think, perhaps. But it is going to happen. "They had no child, because Elizabeth was
barren, and they were both well advanced in years."So it was," verse 8, "that while he
[Zacharias] was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to
the custom of the priesthood, his lot fell to burn incense when he went into the temple
of the Lord." Every single male who was born from the family
of Aaron was automatically a priest. At the time of Jesus Christ there were, we
believe, upwards of 20,000 priests. Posed a little bit of a problem. There was only one temple. Twenty thousand staff members in one temple
is hard to manage. So they never really worked together, except
for three times a year they had peripheral duties: the Feast of Passover, Pentecost,
and Tabernacles. Other than that they just sort of hung out
in their towns wherever they lived, except for two weeks a year. Every priest of those 20,000 for two weeks
per year were chosen to come and work in the temple. One week and then six months later another
week, from Sabbath to Sabbath, then six months off, and then Sabbath to Sabbath. Pretty good job, right, two weeks a year? Because there were 20,000 priests there were
good chances that you would never be selected to be the one who goes in to burn the incense
like Zacharias does. It was something you would always hope would
happen, but you were never guaranteed that because there were so many priests. And when you would report for duty, you would
select a lot, and the lot would tell you where you're going to serve and what you're going
to do. And he happened, by God's providence, to pick
the lot that said he's going to burn incense in the temple. Now, do you mind if I just give you a little
temple background so you can get the whole picture? Let's say you and I were walking toward Jerusalem
right now. And let's say it's not the evening, but it's
the morning. And we're about thirty miles outside of Jerusalem,
three-zero, thirty miles away. Josephus the Jewish historian said on a clear
day you could see the shining gleam of gold on the top of the temple from thirty miles
away. So we see it in the distance and we go, "Hot
diggity dog! We're almost there. Thirty more miles by foot, in the sun, hallelujah!" And so we make it there and we see the structure,
the structure of thirty acres with different buildings. And right in the center is the magnificent
temple built in grand scale, even grander and more expansive than Solomon's temple,
built by Herod the Great. There are courts: there's the court of the
Gentiles, anybody can hang out there; there's the court of Jewish women, Jewish women and
men can hang out there; then there's a court of the Jewish men, only Jewish men can hang
out there, women can't, Gentiles can't. Then you go closer and there's a special little
inner sanctum called the Holy Place. In the Holy Place the priest would go. There's yet another room that only the high
priest can go once a year. But in the Holy Place the priest would go. Why? Because in the Holy Place when you would walk
in, there would be an altar, a little golden altar right in front of you, if you were the
priest, where incense was burned. That's the altar where Zacharias will serve. To your left as you enter the Holy Place,
if you were a priest, you would see a large, golden candelabra, a seven-branched candlestick
called the menorah. To your right there would be a special table
with loaves of bread on it, twelve loaves, one representing each of the twelve tribes
of Israel. And if you were chosen like Zacharias---again,
his heart just swelled with gratitude. And he walked in and here is what would happen. Do you remember from our study in Numbers
that every single day in the tabernacle, and later the temple, every day two lambs had
to be killed, morning and evening, morning sacrifice and evening sacrifice. So every day a male lamb, one year old, was
killed and offered on an altar. That's the sin offering. Second, there was a meal offering or a grain
offering: flour mixed with oil. And, third, there was a libation offering,
a drink offering of wine that was poured out. Then the priest would walk in and put a pinch
of incense in the altar and walk out. And when he'd walk out, he would address the
crowd and he would give them the blessing of Aaron out of Numbers, chapter 6. "The Lord bless thee, the Lord keep you, the
Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace," you know, that blessing of Aaron. That's what he would do when he walked out. Well, not on this day, because when he walks
in, he sees something, someone he did not expect with a certain message for him, which
caused him to have a delay. It says, "He went into the temple of the Lord." Verse 10, "The whole multitude of the people
were praying outside at the hour of incense. Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him,
standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled,
and fear fell upon him. But an angel said to him, 'Do not be afraid,
Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elisheba will bear you a son, and you
will call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many
will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord,
and he will neither drink wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit,
even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel
to the Lord their God." "And he will also go before him in the spirit
and the power of Elijah, 'to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,' and the disobedient
to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Looking at the time before we pass out the
elements, let me say it this way: the gospel of Luke is the most natural segue from the
Old Testament into the New Testament by virtue of what you have just read. Because the Old Testament closes with a promise,
and Luke only begins with that promise, so I say it's the most natural. Now, what promise am I referring to? I'm referring to the book of Malachi, chapter
4. If you have your Bibles, just turn two blocks,
three blocks to the left. You'll pass Mark and then Matthew and then
you'll find Malachi, chapter 4, the last page of the Old Testament, the last two verses. Listen, I'll read it. "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to
the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and [smite or]
strike the earth with a curse." That's the close of the Old Testament. Then we open the New Testament. Between the Old Testament and the New Testament
there are 400 years. They are called by scholars "400 silent years." Why four hundred silent years? Not that they were inactive years, they were
very, very busy years; four hundred silent years because God said nothing after the close
of Malachi. He was done. When the pages of the Old Testament close,
when the prophet finished his message, it was over. There was no more voice from heaven for 400
years. So we open the New Testament, we come to the
gospel of Matthew, and we open it up, but suddenly things are different. In the Old Testament the kingdom of Persia
was in charge; we turn to the New Testament, Rome is in charge. What happened there? Where did they come from? We look at the Old Testament and we have a
Hebrew version of the Scriptures; we turn to the New Testament and they're not reading
the Hebrew Old Testament, they're reading the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament. So, again, in the next few minutes, if you
don't mind, I just want to bring you up to a little historical speed. I think it will help in the rest of gospel
of Luke. So here's what happens: Medo-Persia in the
Old Testament was in charge. They're the big dogs. They're the guys that control the world. They had taken over the world, or they had
taken over the west from a guy named Philip of Macedon, who was the father of Alexander,
who became Alexander the Great. Medo-Persia expanded their empire. Alexander, when he grew up, wanted to take
revenge for his father's death. To make a long story just a little bit shorter,
he conquered the Medo-Persians and effectively the whole world at the time in ten years. In ten years' time Alexander made the world
a Greek-speaking world, with Greek culture imposed and Greek ideology spread everywhere. But when he was in Babylon at age thirty-three
he died. Just before he died they came to him and said,
"Okay, you're going to be dead any minute, who's going to be in charge of the kingdom?" He said, his words, "Give it to the strong." And the kingdom was divided into the leadership
of four of Alexander the Great's generals: Lysimachus, Cassander, Ptolemy, Seleucus. You will not be quizzed on this next week,
don't worry. But those last two generals are of significant
importance. Ptolemy took Egypt. Seleucus took Syria. What is between Syria and Egypt? The land of Israel. So as years went on and these two kings fought
each other, the king of the north and the king of the south, Israel got the brunt of
that fighting. It became really bad when the eighth king
of Syria, the Seleucid king---who hated the Jews more than any other previous king. His name was Antiochus the IV. Antiochus Epiphanes "the Illustrious One,"
he called himself. That's what Epiphanes is: God made manifest,
God incarnate. The Jews called him Antiochus Epimanes, which
means the Beast, because of he butchered thousands of Jews, stopped the Jewish Sabbath, forbade
circumcision, burnt copies of the Law, etcetera, etcetera. And he put in the place of the worship of
Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, he put a statute to Zeus in the temple in Jerusalem. Butchered a pig, very unkosher, as you know,
at the altar of the sacrifice, sprinkled the juices all over the temple. And there was this horrible oppression for
years until about 250 BC, roughly, a group of Jews called the Maccabeans, they were Hasmonean
priests by the name of Mattathias and his son Judas who rebelled against them. And when they drove them out of the temple
and the feast lasted for eight days, they called that Hanukkah, Hanukkah the celebration
of lights. That was the celebration of moving the enemy
out of the temple. I'm trying to shorten it as much I can. They were in charge for years until 63 BC
when Rome took over. Pompey conquered the world and now the Romans
rule the world, and Herod the Great is placed in this part of world. When we pick up Luke next time, we're going
to read a lot about Herod and what he did and why he was called the king of the Jews,
and how much he hated the idea that somebody like Jesus would be one who would compete
against him. So all of that happened those four hundred
silent years. God wasn't speaking until now. And all of that backstory happened, when you
open the New Testament, all of this stuff is in place. So, "Zacharias said to the angel"---after
the angel said you're going to have a son, listen to what Zacharias said. "Zacharias says to the angel, 'How shall I
know this?' " That's gotta be one of the funniest verses
of Scripture in all of Scripture. Here an angel appears to you, you're scared
out of your wits. He tells you something, you go, "How-how do
I know that? How-how can I be sure that's true?" Uh, when was the last time you saw an angel
Zacharias? An angel appeared to you for goodness' sake. You see him, like you go, "Whatever. Okay, what he said." But he said, "How-how will I know this is
true?" "And the angel answered and said to him, 'I
am Gabriel.' " Uh-oh, He gives his name. There's only two angels in Scripture that
we know the names of, Michael is one, Gabriel is the other. And Gabriel, Gabriel has special interests
with the Messiah. It was Gabriel who said to Daniel, "Seventy
weeks are determined for your people." And he laid out the Daniel beautiful prophecy
of the seventy---the backbone of prophecy, seventy weeks. He says, " 'I am Gabriel, who stands in the
presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and bring you glad tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able
to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words which
will be fulfilled in their own time.' And the people waited for Zacharias and marveled
that he lingered so long in the temple." You know, they're looking at their little
hourglasses and he's not coming out yet. "But when he came out, he could not speak
to them; and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple, for he beckoned to
them and remained speechless." "And so it was, as soon as the days of his
service were completed, that he departed to his own house. Now, after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived;
and she hid herself five months, saying, 'Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when
he looked upon me, to take away my reproach among people.' " And then the following verse is the birth
of Jesus Christ, which we'll get to next time we meet. Don't you think it's interesting that God
hasn't said anything for four hundred years, and when he finally speaks through an angel,
he gives the message to a man who can't speak for nine months. That's so amazing. Zacharias goes home, for nine months he can't
talk to his own wife, which means---and, perhaps, he was used to doing all the talking---he
had to listen to his wife talk for nine months. [laughter] God remembers his oath and heaven speaks to
mankind. John is going to be born. The name John means gracious or God is gracious,
the one that Luke introduces, God is gracious. The Old Testament is law; the New Testament
is grace. "The law came by Moses, grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ." The last final word of the Old Testament,
we read it. I read it to you. Do you remember what it was? Curse. That's the last word of the Old Testament,
curse. "Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse." It's the last word of the Old Testament. Among the last words of the New Testament
are these: "And there will be no more"---say it---"curse." There will be no more curse. And it ends by saying the final words: "And
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." How to you go from curse to grace? Insert Jesus Christ. Insert the One that John would see when he
grows up and say of him, "Behold the Lamb of God." I like to translate it: "Check it out! That's God's Lamb. He's the one that's going to take away the
sin of the world. Check it out." You insert Jesus Christ into the curse that
is on this earth because of sin, and you get grace, unmerited, undeserved favor. So that's the introduction of the gospel of
Luke. We will get well into it next time. We've only covered twenty-five verses tonight. But we're going to pray, and we're going to
be passing out the communion elements, and we're going to meditate on these things, and
take these elements together. Let's pray. Lord, though Luke was written to an individual,
we believe, named Theophilus, we also know that your Holy Spirit has used his words,
you've inspired him to write. You filled his sails with the breath of God,
inspiration, and so that what he wrote, the destination he reached, the shore he landed
on in this literary work is exactly what you wanted to portray, what you wanted to say
from that camera angle, so that the Greeks would see the ideal, the perfect man in Jesus
Christ, the God-man. And as Luke introduces in the first opening
stories the coming of John, an Elijah-like forerunner who would point the way to Jesus
Christ, point the way to the Lord, making straight the ways of the Lord. We understand this Jesus would be the one
whom John would say, "This is God's Lamb. This is the one who will be sacrificed for
the sin of the world. And we take these elements, Lord, tonight
reminiscent of that fulcrum moment, that hinge moment that turned a curse into grace because
of the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son shed for us. Why don't you peel the very top of---Oh, they're
not all passed out yet? We will wait till you get them all. I was under the impression that you had them
already. In the meantime, while we pass them out, we'll
sing together. [worship song plays] In holding this bread
in your hands, we remember what Zacharias and Elizabeth together means: "God remembers
his oath." He made a promise of a new covenant in the
Old Testament, one not based upon law or works or religion, but upon relationship with the
One he would send. And the last oath was that one would come
who would be his forerunner. Luke is here to say that promise has come
true, and if John is born, then Jesus the Messiah will also be born. The One that God sent to take away my sin
and yours is the One we celebrate with this bread. It represents his broken body. And as you take this and put it in your mouth,
you are obeying what Jesus told his disciples when he said, "Take this, eat it, and do it
often, and as you do, remember me." So we remember his sacrifice and we're grateful
for his broken body. Let's take the bread together. As we hold the cup, we remember that the name
John means God is gracious and God can be gracious because of what the Bible also declares,
"the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses a man from all sin." God can be gracious to you. He can pour out favor to you because Jesus
took the brunt, took the punishment, and his blood shed gives us access into his presence. So we take this together as brothers and sisters. Let's take. If you've missed any of our Expound studies,
all of our services and resources are available at expoundabq.org.
