Luke:  The Doctor of Theology

Luke 1

We need to learn about Jesus.  To know Him is to love Him.  And to love Him is to be changed by Him.  To learn about Jesus will help us learn about ourselves.  We are sick.  We have an underlying condition.  It is genetic.  It is also environmental.  It is deadly.  We cannot survive this way.  We need an appointment with the Great Physician, who will reveal our diagnosis, and give us a prescription and the cure.

In the gospels we learn about Christ.  We are about to learn from a very unique perspective as we learn about Jesus from someone who knew Him very well, even though he never met Him in person.  Luke was not an apostle, but he was a follower of the Lord.

His perspective is most unique.  He was a doctor, and he introduces us to the Great Physician. 

Luke, apart from the apostle Paul, was the most influential force in writing the New Testament.  In fact, the writings of Luke come in two volumes — volume one is the gospel of Luke, volume two is the book of Acts — they add up to fifty-two chapters.  The gospel of Luke is the longest of all the gospel narratives and therefore it's the most thorough and complete. The total of fifty-two chapters make Luke the author of one-third of the New Testament. His friend and companion, Paul, is author of another third of it. So, together the two of them penned two-thirds of the New Testament.

So I say, next to Paul, Luke is the most powerful writing force in the New Testament, and yet he is basically unknown.  His historical narrative spans over sixty years.  It starts with the conception of John the Baptist and it continues until the end of the book of Acts, with the gospel being preached at Rome, which means the gospel has extended to the world. 

Luke never once refers to himself.  He lets the majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the theme of his writing, dominate. 

vv. 1-4     These four verses, in fact, are one, long, unbroken sentence, written in the polished style of literary classical Greek.  It’s obvious that Luke was highly educated.  If it didn't tell us in the Bible that he was a physician, we would assume that he had had some kind of high level education because of his handling of the classical form of Greek.

Luke was with Paul from the time of his second missionary journey, the time when he was at Philippi recorded in Acts 16, to the end of his life. 

Colossians 4:14

Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.

The ‘beloved’ aspect just indicates to us that he was an endearing man, that he was a man who had charmed the heart of the apostle Paul and come to be a close friend.  Obviously if he left his practice to be a missionary and travel all those years with the apostle Paul, we can assume that he continued to be Paul's personal private physician.  And for the oft ill and oft injured Paul, that was some luxury.  And to have a man who was not only a physician but also a friend was a double blessing.  And isn't it interesting that as often as Luke must have ministered to Paul, he never ever mentions that he did that?  Again you see the heart of this man is a heart of humility.  So he was a beloved physician. 

When you study the gospel of Luke you see Luke's interest in those matters that are physical, those healings that Jesus did. 

There was a woman who came to Jesus with a disease and one of the other gospel writers says, "She had suffered many things at the hands of many physicians."  Luke leaves that line out.  So, that will give you the idea that he viewed things maybe a little uniquely.  But he gives high profile to Jesus' healing ministry. 

We should take great comfort that Jesus wants to heal us, both spiritually AND physically.  He is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.  He cares for what we are going through.  He created our bodies, fearfully and wonderfully, in His image.  He made us an incredible machine with an amazing ability to take care of itself.  And when it fails, He still works miracles of healing, and when that’s not in His will, He works miracles of grace to get through it.  [Testimony from our resident doctor]

You can see the heart of a caring doctor as he tells us about:

• Elizabeth being barren and very old, and yet God opening her womb.
• That baby, in utero, John the Baptist, leaping when he heard the good news from Mary that she, a virgin, had conceived the Messiah.
• How the Holy Spirit filled that not yet born, but very much alive, human boy, John, as well as his parents, and how his father’s mouth was restricted from speaking for a while.  It’s a doctor’s understanding that humans are not just physical and emotional beings, but also spiritual.
• How Mary gave birth in a place that wasn’t sterile, and wrapped up God’s gift to mankind.
• He makes a point of telling us how Jesus grew physically, intellectually, socially, and spiritually – very complete.
• Then, it was important to him to tell us about Jesus in the temple with the doctors and lawyers.
• He gives great detail about Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness.
• He’s the only writer to tell about the healing of the 10 lepers, and several other healing accounts.
• Only Luke tells about hemathydrosis, or bloody sweat, of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.
• While the other gospel writers use lay language when addressing medicine, only Luke uses the technical medical terms when describing fever [Peter’s mother in law], dysentery [Publius’ father], fluid retention [man suffering from dropsy]
• In chapter 13 he tells us of a woman loosed from an infirmity, using terms for curvature of the posture and how she was straightened out.
• In his recounting of the good Samaritan, he alone mentions the application of oil and wine…the alcohol for its antiseptic qualities and the oil as a protective coating.
• When Jesus healed the woman with the issue of blood Luke tells us that her condition ‘stanched’, which is the technical medical term for the stoppage of a bodily secretion.
• He tells us of apoplexy in a person who had a sudden stroke.
• He uses the term atrophy when telling us about the man with the withered hand, and points out, unlike the other gospel writers, that it was his right hand, as if that matters to us! [Tom’s thumb]

Here is the last thing Paul ever wrote.  He was about to be martyred for the cause of Christ.  He was executed in Rome. 

2 Timothy 4:11, "Only Luke is with me." 

Boy, that's sad.  Down in verse 16 he said everybody deserted him…everybody.  Why?  Nero had cranked up the persecution to a high level and Christians were paying with their lives.  And frankly, many believers had fled from Rome.  And, you know, they might have had a reasonable motive to do that, to carry on the preaching of the gospel.  It's not that they were all just cowards.  But Luke didn't go.  Everybody left.  And there was a lot of desertion.  Demas left him because he loved the present world, verse 10 says.  And you do get the idea that some of the rest left in desertion from verse 16, but he says, "May it not be counted against them."  But not Luke, loyal, faithful, brave, long-term friend, fellow worker, companion to Paul over thousands of miles of walking. 

Paul was a Roman citizen, so he had a right to a Roman trial when the authorities were trying to put him to death.  So they put him on a boat and they shipped him to Rome.  You remember the story in Acts 27?  Well Luke was on the boat too.  Remember the terrible storm, and the shipwreck?  Luke was there.  They ran aground on the little island of Melita, and as Paul was laying down sticks for a fire a poisonous snake bit him, and it is Dr. Luke who tells us about how everyone expected him to die, and said God is judging a wicked sinner, but then when it never swelled up and he was fine, they said, “He’s a god!”

And when he finally got to Rome, Luke was there when he became a prisoner and when he was just about to be martyred he said in 2 Timothy, Luke is still with me.

Quite a remarkable man, this Luke, and we didn't know much about him when we got here today, but all of a sudden he sort of comes alive, doesn't he? 

As an educated man, he was also an ideal historian.  Luke was personally acquainted with apostles, with firsthand eye witnesses of the events of Christ's life.  He must have known Mary because, after all, when those two years when he was in Caesarea there right near Jerusalem, he must have interacted with the church in Jerusalem and he would certainly have met this wonderful Mary, the mother of Jesus, and could well have heard the birth of Jesus story from her.  It’s the famous Christmas passage of Luke 2. 

There must have been a lot of folks whom Jesus had healed, right?  Or who had been there at some of the moments of His teaching and His miracles.  And so there were all kinds of accounts. Luke had undertaken to compile an account of the things. 

The gospels, all four of them, are salvation history.  And the book of Acts is salvation history.  As the church begins, 3,000 people are saved and thousands more are added and pretty soon there are twenty thousand.  And the gospel leaps beyond Jerusalem and it goes into Judea and then it finds its way into Samaria and it finds its way into the uttermost part of the earth.  It's salvation history.  It is the story of God saving sickly sinners.  That's why it's the greatest story ever told. 

And now I have my story and you have yours.  It’s still being written.  Perhaps today will be the day that you get saved!

[w/ helps from Dr. John MacArthur]