5th January 2025

New Testament Heroes 1 – Luke – 05/01/25 (Martin Mowat)

Readings: Psalm 66:1-9 and Acts 1:1-5

During the second half of 2022, I preached a series of 10 messages entitled “What is Church?”.  The series that I’m starting today, about some of the heroes of that church in its earliest days, weeks, months and years, may inevitably cover some of the same ground, but from a different standpoint, from different sources, and focussing, of course, on some of its heroes. 

An American Presbyterian minister and author, called Richard Halverson, who lived from 1916 to 1995, and who served as the chaplain of the United States Senate, once wrote, somewhat cuttingly it seems to me, that Christianity began among a handful of fully devoted followers of Jesus of Nazareth. It first spread to Greece where it became a philosophy, then to Rome where it became an institution, after which it spread to Europe where it became a culture. In due course it reached America where it became a business. 

Ouch ! Whether or not that is true, the church as a whole is a very different beast in 2025 than the one it was 2000 years ago. In some ways it has adapted to best meet the needs of our age, but in others it has both stagnated and compromised, but that’s another matter.

It’s a true saying that a river is purer at its source than at its mouth. The Acts of the Apostles is the story of Christianity at its source, and it’s something that we do well to reconsider on a regular basis. 

Many of the people who participated in the events of that time were heroes. Some were people who could have remembered the contours of Jesus’ face and the sound of his voice. But one of the huge heroes that I want to start talking about today had done neither of those things.

I’m talking about a man who began his career as a doctor, who, when he became a Christian, also became a missionary working with the Apostle Paul, after which he devoted his life to becoming an author, writing more of the New Testament than anyone else.  Paul wrote more books, but this man wrote more words.

His first book was the third gospel, and the second was the historical account of the early church that I was just talking about.  His name, of course, was Luke.

Luke was a hero, not just because he gave up a well-paid career job to serve the church, and not just because he was a remarkable author, but because, in order to write those two books, he had to do a very considerable amount of work to gather all that information, and with no internet to refer to, no mobile phone to ask people questions.  

What’s fascinating about his gospel is that it contains numerous things that the other three, written by Jesus’ actual followers, forgot, or didn’t see fit to include.  I’m thinking of things like Mary's Magnificat that we read here on Christmas Day, any knowledge of the manger, the swaddling clothes, the shepherds ‘keeping watch’ in Bethlehem, or the angels appearing above it. We would know nothing of Jesus’ childhood, his amazing the scholars in the Temple, and we wouldn’t have heard some of the great parables such as the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.

He wrote his two books to help a man called Theophilus, but we don’t know who he was. 

-       Was he a friend who was just inquisitive about Christianity? 

-       Was he already a Christian and Luke wanted to lead him further in his faith? 

-       Was he perhaps some benevolent wealthy sponsor?

-       Or was he not actually a real person at all?  Was ‘Theophilus’, perhaps, a sort of pseudonym that he used to mean something like “God studier”, meaning that he was aware that he would have a much wider audience than just one person. 

Many theologians are confident that Theophilus was an actual historical figure, almost certainly a Roman citizen, but given the sheer volume of Luke’s writings, and the work involved, I prefer to think that he didn’t just do it for his friend, he did it for us. 

However, it’s not who he was writing to, but what he had to say, to him, or to them, that’s perhaps more important.

Apart from what I’ve told you, we know very little about Luke as a person, but there are two important things that we can discern.  Firstly, he was selfless.  Secondly, he was inspired by, enabled by, powered by, fascinated in, and even besotted with the Holy Spirit.  That is something we will see again and again as we study his accounts of those early church heroes. 

What that means is that what he wrote under the Spirit’s inspiration has to be a true and relatively comprehensive record of what God wants us to know about the early church, and about the history of the Christian faith as it spread from Jerusalem to Rome in the First Century. It is worthy, therefore, of our closest attention. 

If Luke’s gospel gives us all sorts of insights that we wouldn’t otherwise have, the book of Acts certainly does too. If we didn’t have it, where would the church be today? Further proof, perhaps, of its divine inspiration.

So, let’s at least read the first verse before we close. Acts 1:1. In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

“… all that Jesus began to do and teach”??  That’s intriguing!  

Luke seems to be inferring that his gospel, comprehensive as it was, was woefully incomplete, a drop in the ocean, so that there was much more that needed to be said.  

But Luke’s also saying something else, I think. He’s saying that Jesus continued to “do and teach” and to act in the lives of his followers after his ascension. There’s just so much more I need to tell you, Luke’s saying.

We can be fairly sure that during those 40 days that Jesus spent appearing to different people, and to the disciples in particular, before the resurrection, he would have had tons and tons to say to them. I so wish that we knew more about those precious days. But there’s also a sense in which, AFTER the resurrection, Jesus continued to teach His Body, the Church, from His throne in heaven. 

Jesus acts in and through the Church, as believers attend upon His Word, surrender to His will, and depend upon His Spirit. And that’s what Luke’s second book, Acts, is all about.