Heritage Baptist Johnson City

The substance of this even is to point all people to the greatest miracle of all; the spiritual resurrection. Everyone is dead in sin and without the Lord Jesus providentially bumping into us during our funeral procession we would remain that way to the grave and then to Hell. But God, being rich in mercy had compassion on and interrupted our procession.

In chapter 7, Luke returns to the evidence that prove Christ’s claim to be God incarnate and turns his attention to an event of particular interest to himself and Theophilus, Jesus’s interaction with a Gentile.

Jesus’s sermon began with the contrast between beatitudes and woes. It ends with the contrast between two types of people who construct two types of homes. In both situations, people heard the word. The difference was in the response. But the point of the story is the foundation. The foundation changes everything.

As we have seen, Jesus and the disciples are now being persecuted by the Jews. The fun and games are now over. It’s down to “Who’s following and who’s not.”

The Jews worked all week to rest on the final and 7th day, the Sabbath. That was a picture of their spiritual journey. They were looking for a Messiah in whom they could rest. Christians rest on Sunday, the 1st day of the week, and then work/live out of that rest. This is a picture of our spiritual journey. We have a Messiah in whom we do rest.

Gospel fidelity requires that the church take Jesus’s John 14:6 statement – “I am the way, the truth and the life” seriously and proclaim Jesus as the only way to Heaven.

When Jesus calls sinners, He is calling all of us. There is a cure for your pride, lust, greed, unhappiness, depression, isolation, for whatever is making you sick of life and yourself. It ’s Jesus.

At the end of Luke’s Gospel, two disciples are walking with a man whom they have yet to identify as Jesus and note that he was “a man, a prophet powerful in deed and word before God and all the people” (24:19). This, and more, is Luke’s aim in writing to Theophilus; to present Jesus as the man-God through the stories he tells about Jesus.

In this account, Jesus touches the untouchable. Leprosy is communicable. Above all other diseases, it most represents sin to Israelites. Normally, when something clean touches something unclean, the clean becomes unclean. And yet when Jesus touches the man, he is not infected, but the man is cleansed.

Peter and his friends had been watching Jesus. They had seen him heal Peter’s mother-in-law and had heard about his miracles throughout Galilee and Judea. Now, confronted by his personal call, they abandon everything but him.

Jesus knew that people could be temporally cured of immediate pain but still face an eternity separated from God, so he kept the main thing the main thing.

But in this passage, Luke gives us the first details about Jesus’s miraculous ministry. In many ways, it is a preview of Jesus’s claim that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). Is it? Let’s see.

The Gospel is serious and somber. It is nothing to be toyed with. It is to be received on God’s timetable as God presents it.

Since beginning the gospel of Luke, we have walked through Jesus’ infancy narrative, his baptism, and his genealogy. In chapter 4 we arrive at the next confirmation of Jesus’ identity as the Son of God.

God promised David that he would raise up one of his sons to be a king that will rule an eternal kingdom. This king will be the king of all kings and the government shall be upon his shoulder. He will be the Prince of Peace. He will rule with justice and righteousness. This prophecy found its temporary fulfillment in King Solomon but it found its final and ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus. G...

Mary and Joseph had to look for a long time before they found Jesus in the temple, but what they really discovered was an important truth about his relationship to his Father.