This morning, we'll look at Luke. Luke wrote almost 27% of the New Testament when you combine the Books of Luke and Acts. He was a Gentile physician, meaning he was a doctor back then and the only non-Jew writer in the New Testament. All the others had a Jewish background. Luke was writing to the Gentiles. It emphasizes Jesus' prayer life, the role of the Holy Spirit, and hymns of praise. Everyone reads Luke 2 around Christmas time, "In the days of Caesar Augustus, he sent out a decree..." Luke contains some unique parables. There are more parables in Luke than the other Gospels. Out of 23, 6-8 of them are unique (e.g., the Good Samaritan). I hope to have time this morning to get to the parables of contrast in Luke. You're going to walk out of here with your head spinning.

The early church writers give us clues as to the sources Luke used to write his book. There is a consensus that Luke primarily used research for his material. He was not an eyewitness. The other Gospel writers were eyewitnesses: Matthew, Mark, and John. Luke got a lot of his material from Paul. We'll see that they hung out together in Acts. When you get to Acts 16 or 17, the pronoun use changes from "they" and "them" to "we" and "us." Luke probably joined Paul on his missionary journeys. Luke's other source of material was Mary, the mother of Jesus.

One of the things that makes reading Luke enjoyable is just how orderly and methodical he is.

He's saying that other people have written some things. He's probably referring to Matthew and Mark. John hasn't been written yet—it comes later.

Theophilus was a friend of his. He wanted Theophilus to know what was going on and who Jesus was. We'll see Theophilus again over in the Book of Acts.

So this is why Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke. When we get over to Acts, Luke says, "I continue this story."

Verse 2 says, "they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants." Those are interesting Greek words. One of the things that distinguishes Luke's writing is that he used a "better" Greek, if you will. He knew Greek very well and that speaks for him being a physician, a trained, educated person. The word he uses for "eyewitnesses" is where we get the word "autopsy," which means to look deeper and find out what's going on. It's a medical term that means "see for yourself." This is an example that reinforces the fact that Doctor Luke, Physician Luke wrote this book. The early church fathers agreed.

Some of your Bibles may not have "servants." It may say "ministers." That Greek word is used to describe a person who is rowing at the bottom of a boat, the under-rower. They were the ones at the bottom of the ship doing the hard labor. That's the word Luke uses. He's saying, "These are the people doing the hard labor, the eyewitnesses who saw this, servants of Jesus Christ." I mention this because if you know a little more about the original Greek words, do you see how these words mean more to you. "Eyewitnesses" means more than just "I saw something." It's like someone performing an autopsy, examining every, single thing about it. And the "servants" are the under-rowers.

I’ve already mentioned that this is always read around Christmas time. In fact, one year we all went to Disney World and attended a "Candlelight Procession" at Epcot. We didn’t really know what we were getting into. We were delighted. There was a 32-piece orchestra, men on the sides with old-English-type long horns, etc. Guess what they did? <Blew them? Ha ha.> Alfie Woodard stood up and read chapter 2 of Luke. She read a few verses, stopped, and we all sang traditional, Christian, Christmas carols. We were floored. I mean, this is at Epcot, Disney World!? They didn’t sing "Jingle Bells" or "Frosty, the Snowman." It was unbelievable!

Luke is known for his hymns of praise. A lot of what we sing at Christmas comes from Luke. This Christmas, we will cover the birth of Christ in Luke 2 in detail.

Let’s skip to chapter 4. The beginning of chapter 4 is the Temptation in the Wilderness again. We studied that in Matthew. A fascinating Bible study would be to compare and contrast this event in Matthew and Luke. I could show you some unbelievable things.

Don’t forget to get a Bible and highlight "Spirit" so that you can really see the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s life.

Jesus is on the "positive side" right now. He’s a great teacher. Everybody is praising Him. He’s teaching with authority.

Can you picture this? Back then, they had different scrolls of the Old Testament. This one was Isaiah. It was common for a male Jew to get up and read from God’s Word. That was part of the worship service in the synagogue. So they handed Him Isaiah. Stay with me now—this is one of those things that shows you the whole connection of the Bible (from Genesis to Revelation).

He read that from Isaiah 61. We are on the other side of the cross, looking back. What does this sound like? It’s the prophesying of the Messiah. We can look back and say, "Yeah, that’s Christ." We know it. He preached the good news to the poor, proclaimed freedom, and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor.

This is where it starts. What did He just say? I am Him. You know the story: all of them say, "Wait a minute. This is great. This is amazing. But isn’t this Joseph’s son, though?"

I want you to turn to Isaiah. He read this from Isaiah 61. Isaiah is in the Old Testament—some of you haven’t been through the Old Testament yet.

I want everyone to see this. This is God’s Word at its best. This is where you can’t say that men wrote this without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit could have put this together.

Does this sound familiar? That’s where He stopped, isn’t it? Does everybody see that? Look what’s next.

You may ask, "Well, what does that have to do with anything?" We see the coming of Christ and the cross. He says, "I am here. I am God among man here on this earth. I will be crucified to pay for your sins. I am coming for that reason: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. The Lord’s favor is the forgiveness of sins through Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It is the Lord’s favor (His grace, His mercy, and His forgiveness) through Jesus Christ.

He stopped there, though. He could have kept reading Isaiah 61, "and the day of vengeance." That’s the second coming of Christ. What happens at the second coming of Christ? That’s when the judgment occurs. We’ll talk about this in depth when we get to Revelation. It’s mentioned several times in the Gospels. Matthew 24 and 25 talk about the End Times and the Second Coming. I wanted to point out that even very early in His ministry, Jesus says, "I can read about the day of the Lord’s favor but it is not time for the day of vengeance." When He stopped reading and sat down, what did He say to them? "This has been fulfilled." If He had read about the day of vengeance, what would He have said? "Half of this has been fulfilled."

That’s an amazing thing about reading God’s Word. God’s Holy Spirit wrote in the Bible what we read. How could man have ever gotten to the point of saying, "Well, let’s let Him stop here at God’s favor because the day of vengeance won’t have occurred yet." That’s an amazing thing to me. That’s another thing that ties the whole Bible together…just that one, little phrase in Luke. God’s Word is so rich.

Let’s skip to chapter 10. We’re going to do more in Luke. Trust me. There are 4-5 lessons during the "40 Days of Purpose." We’re going to study Mary of Bethany, the Holy Spirit, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector Praying, etc. We’ll be all over the Gospels during the next three months.

I have asked you to think about the disciples. They were spending time with Jesus and learning from Him. In this case, Jesus gave them power to perform miracles in His Name. They are coming back with joy. Remember the lesson about the bread: bread for food vs. the "yeast" of the Pharisees. The disciples are growing, just like us. You are growing in the Lord as the disciples are growing in the Lord. The disciples have not "become a new creation" because Christ has yet to die on the cross. We are on the other side of the cross. We see the cross and the forgiveness of sins.

We’ll talk about the fall of Satan later, but do you see what Jesus is saying there? I want you to understand "authority" here. This is what we talk about a lot but don’t apply to our lives. God has authority over everything. He is in control of everything. He allows Satan to do things in this world right now because He says, "OK. Satan is the prince of the air for right now." There is coming a time when that will not be the case. We’ll be talking about this. We are in enemy-occupied territory as Christians. Satan is ruling this world but God has the authority.

When Jesus came to earth, Satan’s power and God’s power clashed. We see it clearly at the time of the cross. Before the resurrection of Christ, who was celebrating? Satan and all his demons. They said, "Hey. We defeated the Son of God! He’s dead and buried. We got Him. We wiped Him from the face of the Earth."

We’re reading in Luke right now. At this point, who has the authority on Earth? Jesus does. He said, "I saw Satan fall and I have given you the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions." That’s a kind of cliché for anything that’s bad, evil, dirty, or wicked in this world. He said, "I have given you authority to overcome everything in this world." That’s what Jesus did. Even before His death, burial, and resurrection, He was giving this authority out to the disciples.

I want you to see that there is a victory here. But what did the disciples see? You have to look deep into this. How did the disciples view this victory? "Man, what power we have!" Do you hear them? Can you picture the buttons on their shirts popping from their chests swelling up? "Look who we are! We’re Supermen." How did Jesus respond to them? He said, "I gave you this authority but what should you be excited about? "Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Do you see the significance there? Where was the disciples’ brain again?

Where were their brains? Where was their thinking? Down in the "World" again, wasn’t it? "Look what we did. Look how we did this." What did Jesus say to them? "Get your brain off of the World, off what you see, and off what you know. Put it in the heavens. Change your mind, set your eyes, and fix your focus on those things which are above, not on the things of the earth." That’s what Jesus was saying to them.

Do you see that again? How was Jesus full of joy? Through the Holy Spirit. How are you full of joy, as a Christian? Through the Holy Spirit. You have the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23 – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) because the Holy Spirit dwells in you, just like Jesus.

Does that speak volumes to you as an adult? As an adult, we think everything has to be spelled out, every "i" dotted, and every "t" crossed. It has to be lined up, analyzed, rational, reasonable, etc. What does a child do? Just trust. A child jumps right to the trust and the faith. That’s what God challenges us to do.

How does anyone come to Christ except that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit reveal that to him? I’ve told you and I still believe that the Bible says that God has done that for every, single, living, breathing person who’s ever lived. They have either accepted or rejected the revelation from the Holy Spirit. If they accept it, God reveals more. If they accept that, God continues revealing more. If they reject the first revelation, what does God do? Does He give up? I don’t think so—not when you read the Scripture. He waited 400 years for the Amorites to get right with Him. We saw that in the Old Testament. For 400 years, He kept revealing Himself and revealing Himself.

Do you know what He’s saying there? If you go back to the Old Testament, what did we see about Christ? He’s all over the place. The prophets and kings in the Old Testament said, "We see that there must be reconciliation between human beings and God." They said (through revelations from the Holy Spirit) that it can’t be done by man. It has to be done by God. Somehow or another, God has to present the ultimate sacrifice forever and ever for us to be right with God. They wanted to see it and they wanted to hear it. They knew it was out there but it was something in the future. Do you see that? When you read the prophets, that’s what you read about—the future. We look back and say, "It’s already happened." And even though it’s already happened, we have a lot of people who reject it and say, "It didn’t happen." But we know it did. That’s what He’s talking about.

That is one of those people who were interpreting the Mosaic Law. Looking back on it, they would say, "Well, here’s what it means… to work on a Sabbath, you can’t do this or that."

Notice the testing.

First of all, what was the expert’s motive? To test Jesus. Was he a "seeker"? Did he want to know something to help or change his life? No. He wanted to test and condemn Jesus.

Sometimes you all say, "Let’s stump Carlton." That’s o.k. But do you understand the heart and motive with which you should be asking questions? It’s not about what I know or don’t know or can’t explain. What is it? What should it be? It should be about what makes a difference in your life. That’s where the Holy Spirit will work with you. When you have a motive like that, God will work with you.

There’s another question. Remember I told you to highlight the questions of Jesus. It’ll knock your socks off if you’ll do that.

Isn’t that great? How would you feel? "I gave the right answer to Jesus! This is great!"

What was he trying to do? Justify himself and how he defined whom he was to love. Do you hear that? He hears and understands but does he know how to apply it? This is what Christians do. We can hear a sermon, sit in a Sunday School class, read the Word, and see and understand the principle behind what Jesus says.

Jesus said in Matthew 5, "If someone takes advantage of you, do twice what they ask of you." Back then, if a Roman soldier was tired, he was allowed by law to conscript you on the spot and force you to go one mile. Jesus said, "Go two miles. Don’t just do the minimum." That’s a principle. "Pray for those who persecute you." That’s another. "Bless your enemies." So there are spiritual principles that we hear and understand, but what do we do with the principle? We want to interpret it to fit our lifestyle. We say, "I understand this principle that will help me grow in Christ, but God, I have these other things in my past." Do you see that?

The expert already knew in his mind how he defined "neighbor." How do you think he defined "neighbor"? Fellow Jews, people who followed the Mosaic Law to the letter. "I don’t associate with people unlike me." Do you all hear that? "They have to be dressed a certain way. My neighbors are not the riff-raff. My neighbors are not dirty." What would he think of Samaritans? "No one associates with these people." So what does Jesus do but tell a parable. He always did this to say, "I want you to think about this. I don’t want to just tell you how to think."

I think we say that as Christians, "God, if you’ll just tell me how to think and act, I’ll do it." We want to make it just that simple and easy. I can hear God with a megaphone, "I’m not going to make you a robot. It’s not going to be ‘Jump, talk, now walk.’ I’m not going to make you a robot. You have to do things of your own, free will." That’s what God wants. Don’t look for a list of things that God says will make you fine and dandy. You live a life for and as Christ.

Do you all know this story, The Good Samaritan?

OK. On to chapter 12.

You all know this story. Does it make sense now with what we’ve studied before it? That’s what I wanted you to see. He told the parable. We’ve all heard and know the parable. But it was this expert of the law (a scribe) trying to test Jesus and justify himself. So Jesus told him a story. At the end of the story, who was his neighbor? Everybody.

Here’s another spiritual principle. God says that everyone is your neighbor. Here’s another tough one: some men came to Jesus and said, "Your mother and brothers are outside waiting for you." Jesus responded, "Wait a minute. You are my mother and you are my brothers. You are my family." There was this concept of everyone being family. Again, this is thinking spiritually.

Do you understand that when God has a human being, in flesh, no matter who that person is, no matter what they look like or what they’re wearing, no matter what, they are your neighbor. That’s what Jesus was trying to tell this expert of the law. He says, "They are your neighbor. There is no room for you to start putting judgments on other people." There is no one that you should not want to talk to, minister to, or help. That’s the thinking of Jesus. He healed the lepers. He associated with tax collectors and prostitutes. He went through Samaria and associated with the Samaritans. He even associated with Gentiles. That got some people upset. Do you understand me? That’s the point of this.

Now that is some hard teaching. Who is "he" who can throw you into hell? Who is that? Satan? No. It’s God. What did Jesus say? How does he view the killing of the body? That’s on Earth. What did Jesus say again? "Don’t think about the World. Think about the eternal, Spiritual." When you read the Gospels and read what Jesus said, you’ll see that people came to him with the earthly and worldly just like we do, trying to justify ourselves down here. Jesus said, "Nope. It’s all about the spiritual." When we live the spiritual life, others see Jesus in us without us trying. We’re just doing what God has told us to do.

I’m giving you a lot of principles this morning because they are truth. Let me give you another one. This is good. I like this one. Do you agree with the concept, "Everyone is innocent until proven guilty"? That’s what our court system is based on. Do you agree with that? No. How about, "Everyone is guilty until proven innocent"? Yes. Let’s compare the worldly view with the spiritual view. Everyone’s heard "innocent until proven guilty." What’s the godly principle? We’re all sinners so we’re all guilty until proven innocent through Christ. Do you see the contrast? I’m not saying to run out and tell the courts they’re wrong. Jesus said, "I didn’t come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. I came to make your life more abundant." We focus on death and guilt and innocence down here.

Do you understand that when you start thinking about spiritual things and nail down these spiritual principles, your life will change? You will react differently. You will not have the same doubts, questions, concerns, and fears because you are thinking heavenly. You know what God has done for you. Without even trying, you will be a different person. It will happen. You don’t have to try to be a different person. You will. You’ll start thinking on the spiritual plane. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty.

Don’t curse your enemies. Bless them. If someone takes advantage of you, what does the world say? "Seek revenge. Or avoid them. Or write them off. Or don’t forgive them." How about the forgiveness? What does the world say about forgiveness in an extended family situation? "Write him off. Don’t visit. Don’t call him. Don’t have anything to do with him. I know he’s family but you shouldn’t have anything more to do with him." Satan loves for you to act like a worldly person, "Just keep doing it." Because you’re not glorifying God. You have to be different.

Let’s move on to chapter 16. In chapter 16, there is a lot said about rich people. This is one of those that might step on your toes. A lot is said about money, material possessions, etc. Here we go again. What does the world say about money and material possessions? "Get all you can. Can all you get. And sit on the can. Don’t let anybody have any. Bury it in the backyard." Jesus is going to talk about that. He’s not going to say that being rich is bad—it’s how you treat what God has given you. This is a very interesting one. We may have to continue this one next week. This will really get your brain going.

You’re fired. I’m getting rid of you. You didn’t keep the books well. On and on. Can you see the master, the rich man saying that to the manager?

Listen to this. "My hands are not calloused enough. I don’t know which end of the shovel to use." Do you see all those things he’s saying?

"I can’t go out and beg. I can’t wash windows for a nickel."

OK. Do you hear that? He’s going to do something. You’re reading ahead, aren’t you? You really get into these stories, don’t you? I wish you’d do this at home, on your own.

Anyway, he has a rich man who’s mad at him. The master has asked to see the books. In between this time, the manager’s thinking, "What am I going to do? I can’t do anything else but this. This is what I’ve been trained to do. This is my whole life. If I lose this job, what am I going to do? I have to get people to welcome me into their homes. I have to get into favor with some people who may give me a job later. Do you see that thinking?

"I have to do this fast. I have to fix the books. Come on, give me a check." 50%! Half off! Isn’t that great? Isn’t that something?

He must not have liked him as much as the first guy. It’s only 20% off. The other one was 50% off.

Now wait a minute. What’s the first thing to jump into your mind? The master commended the dishonest manager! He’s already told him that he would fire him. The manager cuts a few deals. The rich man hears about this and what does he say? "Good job. You did well. That’s fantastic." What’s wrong with this picture? He got some back but he didn’t get all of it. Who owed him anyway? Who was dishonest, the people who owed him 800 gallons or the manager? The manager.

I don’t want to get into hypotheticals but the manager could have had 400 gallons of olive oil to make up the difference. He could have had 200 bushels of wheat. He could have. But what probably happened here is that the master saw in the manager some of the same things that the master did for him to get rich. Do you understand me?

If you’re in a corporate society and it’s a dog-eat-dog world down here, what happens to you when you try to make money? I was in a situation one time where I was asked, I was told that unless I started padding my expense reports, everyone else was going to get mad at me. In other words, "You have to lie, cheat, and be dishonest on an expense report." My expense reports were half of everybody else’s. But I thought you were supposed to report what you spent. I didn’t know you were supposed to pad them.

You know who the "people of light" are. That’s you. The word is, "The people in this world can do a better job of managing than you can."

Think about that. What did Jesus just say? Think about what He said.

We’ll talk about this next week and then get into John.