Have You Ever...?

Have you ever stayed up later than you should and then found yourself unable to go to sleep when you did go to bed?

That's what happened to me last night, so I decided to do something I hadn't done for quite sometime!  I decided to pick up the New Testament that is on my night stand and just start reading as if I had never seen a Bible before in my entire life!

Have you ever tried doing something like that?  If not, you're in for a treat!

Just pretend that you have spent your entire life on a desert island somewhere and had just recently learned how to read for yourself when someone hands you a copy of the book of Luke (for example).

I mention the book of Luke because that's where I opened my New Testament to last night as I began to read from the very first verse of the very first chapter!

By the time I got to the end of the first chapter, I had read enough to make me stop and think about things I had not thought about before in quite the same way!

Here was an old man, it doesn't say how old, just that he was old and had served in the temple for a long time!  His name is Zacharias.  And while he was doing what he was there to do, an angel came and talked to him face to face!


Have you ever talked face to face with an angel?  Are you sure?

You may answer:  "No, and I've never burned incense on an altar either!"

To which, I'd have to agree that neither have I and, to my knowledge, I've never talked to an angel face to face!

However, what I read does give us a strong indication that angels do exist, and if God chose to do so, he could send an angel to talk to me even though it would probably frighten the living day lights right out of me! 


Anyway, I did go to sleep with some fresh thoughts on my mind after I had read just that one first chapter.  With some of those thoughts on my mind when I awoke this morning I decided to do some extra study about what I read last night.


Here are some things that I learned:


In Colossians 4:14 I found that Paul spoke of Luke as the "beloved Physician" and since Paul included Luke in his salutation of that letter, we can safely assume that Luke was one of the Apostle Paul's traveling companions, and may have even been his personal physician!

In verse 11 of that same chapter, Paul spoke of some other men who were with him and said they were the only fellow workers for the kingdom of God who are of the circumcision.  Now we know that what that means is that they were fellow Jews or Israelites because they were the ones who were considered to be "of the circumcision"!

Since we know from verse 14 that Luke was with Paul and that he was not listed among these other men, it is safe to assume that Dr. Luke must have been a Gentile!

Here are the first four verses of Luke chapter 1 and that's about all I'm going to have time to write about today:

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Luke 1:1-4

       "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us,

2  just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us,

3  it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus,

4  that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed." (NKJV)

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We see that Luke wrote his account specifically for the "most excellent Theophilus"!


Theophilus is thought to be a recent convert to Christianity who was probably wealthy and well known.  While Luke addressed him specifically he, without doubt, had a much larger audience in mind.


According to those four verses I quoted above, Luke's purpose was to record in an orderly fashion what he had learned from the very beginning so that the Christian faith could be well established on a rock solid foundation, not only for Theophilus, but for anyone who is willing to read his account.


It is well established, among Bible students, that the book of Luke is the first of a two part work by Dr. Luke.  The second part, of course, is the book of Acts.


Dr. Luke acknowledged in verse one that there had been other eye witnesses before him who had undertaken to draw up an account.  He spoke of them as "ministers of the word" so its possible they were preachers or teachers of his day.


Those who have made a careful comparison feel that Dr. Luke got much of his material from the book do Mark while faithfully recording his own account.


We learn from verse two that Dr. Luke got at least some of his material from eye witnesses who were still alive at the time that he wrote!  Those eye witnesses would have had direct personal knowledge of Jesus and the development of His church from its very beginning!

Acknowlgement

Much of my study material was derived from my friend, 

Ted Johnston's, 

sermon series that he makes available to personal subscribers!

 

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Today's Devotion:

 If anyone says,"I Love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  1 John 4:20 NIV

There once lived a young girl whose perfect grace of character was the wonder of those who knew her.  She wore on her neck a gold locket that no one was allowed to open.  One day in a 
moment of unusual confidence, one of her companions was allowed to touch its spring and learn its secret.  She saw written these words:  "Whom having not seen, I love."  That was the secret of her beautiful life.

You all know what it is to be hungry for love.  Your heart seems unsatisfied until you can draw something more toward you.  There have been time when I had and unspeakable heart-hunger for Christ's love.  My sense is never strong when I think of the law; my sense of sin is strong when I think of love.  It is when drawing near to the Lord Jesus Christ and longing to be loved that I have the most vivid sense of unsymmetry, of imperfection, of absolute unworthiness, and of my sinfulness.  Character and conduct are never so vividly set before me as when in silence I bend in the presence of Christ, revealed not in wrath but in love to me.  I never so much long to be lovely, that I may be loved, as when I have this revelation of Christ before my mind.

Henry Drummond