Living With Luke

"Living With Luke"


Introduction


The book of Luke is an interesting read for the person who would like to know who Jesus is and who He was when He walked in His earthly ministry. It starts off with the great examples of faith expressed by the mother's and families of Jesus and John The Baptist, paints a complete picture of the adult life of Jesus and describes His crucifixion and ascension into heaven.

In this book we will also touch upon issues such as wealth and poverty, essential requirements for the salvation of our soul, healing the sick and other miracles, the humanity of the apostles and how we see our reflection in their incompleteness. In regards to the salvation message of the book of Luke, we will find that it is quite specific with no room to play spiritual "hide and seek". God is specific in His word and that word must be believed.

It is important to agree on several things in order to appreciate this or any book of the bible:

First, we must agree that the bible is the true word of God. Sounds simple enough? The problem is that in our world, most of the Christian churches don't believe this. The Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches subscribe to a theology of replacement when it comes to the bible and it's prophetic word. They don't take the bible literally and deny what the bible says about Israel and the prophecies related to end times, explaining it all away as something that has already happened in the first century. Man is constantly trying to rewrite what God wrote and make it bend toward man's sensibilities and not God's. God used the Jewish people to be His historians and keepers of the word because they showed a consistency for keeping details alive in both oral and written form through generations. It seems to irk these churches (over 60% of all Christians belong to these churches) that the very people that had a hand in the murder of Christ should have the special place in God's plan at all. As I have mentioned in a previous book, members of these churches would be very surprised to know that their foundations of belief are closer to the Mormon church than to the Baptist's or other bible based Christian Church's. I say this from the standpoint that the Mormon's believe that they are called to replace Israel as God's chosen people, negating much of the old testament prophecies.

There is an example in the book of Genesis that details the abiility of God's people to maintain His word. In Genesis 50:25, Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold into slavery by his brothers and later became a great leader in Egypt, made the sons of Israel promise that when they left Egypt they would bring his body with them. Some 400 plus years later, it is recorded in Exodus 14:19 that Moses took the bones of Joseph with him when he led the Israelites out of Egypt, fulfilling that promise made long ago. There was no blessing attached to this promise and the actual bones of Joseph had no mystical or magical value to Moses and the sons of Israel but instead the value of this example is how that promise remained intact and how it was fulfilled by God's people.

To put this time frame into perspective for you, in the same period of time registered between the death of Joseph and the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, it was 400 years ago that 144 men set sail from England to establish a colony in Virginia. It was just over two hundred years ago that, George Washington, perhaps one of our greatest American patriots lived and died. Our society has done its best to minimize his (and others) great efforts to establish this wonderful country, to the point that his birthday is now nothing more than a reason to have a sale at a department store. By the time four hundred years rolls around, he will hardly be remembered at all by future generations. From the earliest days of the founding of America to present day, how many promises both big and small were broken and forgotten. In a very small example such as the legacy of Joseph, God shows the veracity and consistency of His word.

A larger example of how God kept His word intact is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls found a half of century ago. When these writings were discovered, a copy of the book of Isaiah was found and those who don't believe in the accuracy of the King James bible thought they had a chance to discredit this translation from the original text. This prophetic book of the bible has been under attack ever since it was written and those critical of it claim that it is the result of multiple authors and should not be taken at face value. Critics are not comfortable with this prophetic book and would have loved to discredit it and the King James as being innacurate. The finding of this complete book gave an opportunity for it's detracters to compare the original text to the current translation and no significant differences were found. The enemies of God's word retreated when faced with this reality.

I remember going to a weekly bible study with friends that I had known for years. I would have bet money on the fact that they were all solid Christians until one day God put on my heart to ask everyone at the study if they believed the bible to be the true word of God. To my surprise, five out of the eight said that they had doubts about the bible. They pointed out that they believed in most of the bible but felt that there were other books and writings that have an equal value in truth with the bible. I must have had a pretty stupid look on my face because they were aghast that I actually believed the bible to be true. In, fact, the bible study ended after this discussion and never met again.

My last example of why I believe the bible to be true is based on the people who wrote it and their pursuit of the unvarnished truth. All through the bible we read about the Godly men and women who carried out the word of God and they all had something in common. The common thread was that they were imperfect and all of their human imperfections are on full display in the bible. From Moses to David we are treated to a realistic view of just how flawed these people were and how much God used them to accomplish what He wanted to do. If it was me, I would have written the bible just the way that newspapers and magazines write today, put a spin on the story and make it serve my purpose and let the truth be secondary. Instead, the writers showed these people to be the murderers, liars, cheaters and sexual philanderers that they were and also displays the salvation and forgivness offered to sinners like us by our Creator. In short, I believe that God had His hand on the people who passed on and wrote these words and if He didn't, it would have been heavily edited to make the characters look better and the authors point of view would have changed by the page.

The second thing that we must believe and agree on is the fact that Jesus Christ is God. If we don't believe scripture, we can't really believe this to be true. In the book of John we find that after one of His greatest miracles, the feeding of the multitudes with the bread and fishes, that Jesus lost a large amount of followers because they could not accept that He was God. They asked the question, "Isn't this the Jesus, the son of Joseph?", "How can he say that he came down from heaven?". Thomas Jefferson thought that Jesus was a pretty good guy but he couldn't wrap his mind around the whole God incarnate thing, so Jefferson wrote his own version of the bible. The "Jefferson Bible" gives props to Jesus as a thinker and philosopher but concludes that anyone who hung around with the likes of the twelve apostles could not possibly be God on earth.

When we look at the life of Jesus Christ and read what He said, we can only come to one conclusion. He is what He said He is or he was a liar. There is no middle ground when it comes to who Jesus is. If He was a liar, He would have found a way to maximize His fame and notoriety, you know, party like it's 1999? He would have accumulated money, houses, fast horses, hung around with influential people, found ways to have things in common with the power elite and maybe build an army or security force to protect Him. Above all, He would have done or said anything to stay alive to enjoy His money and fame. The Jesus of the bible didn't amass a fortune, was at odds with the influential and elite, walked without worldly protection among His enemies who wanted to kill Him, didn't own even one house and when the proper time came, offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice so as to pay for our sinfulness.

The real power in the story of Jesus as Savior is reflected in the human lives of those who Jefferson had little regard for, the apostles. Before and immediatly after the death of Jesus, these twelve men and their families were huddled together expecting the enemies of God to come and kill them. They had seen the miracles up close, saw people raised from the dead and demons obey and run from their fallen leader but the time immediatly following the crucifixion found them to be as unsure of what they saw and experienced as they could possibly be. The bible records that when the apostles saw the resurected Christ, touched His wounds and conversed with Him, they believed. It was in that act of conquering death that Jesus completes His earthly ministry and with the blessing of the Holy Spirit made true believers of the apostles. They went into the world and started to preach the word of God without fear and all were willing and with the exception of John (who was boiled in oil but did not die) to give up their lives for their beliefs. All that it would have taken is one of them to say that it was all a joke and they would have been pulled from the fire, cauldren or cross and could have spent their whole life being paraded around telling the story of how Jesus wasn't who He said He was. It is in the reflection of these flawed people that I see the truth about who Jesus was and is.

When we, or anyone else, redefines who Jesus is, His example and message is dilluted and reformed to a convenient theology that serves man more than God. When religions attempt to make Jesus less than God and elevate man to some how speak for God, that religious train is on the wrong track. It seems to be man's earthly destiny to complete God's church all of the time believing that the Creator needs our help in regards to minute details or broad strokes. Whether it is flying an airplane into a building, defining who is the earthly voice of God, the improved and specific definition of sin or how many times we should bend a knee or make the sign of the cross, we constantly correct and define the rules of worship and faithful living. Good intentions or overt deceitfulness are the foundations for these beliefs and whether they are 2,000 or 200 years old, they are wrong. The message is very simple, easy to understand and hard to follow because it rubs our human nature the wrong way.