Christ is Life Podcast

The Christian life, I believe, can really be summed up from three or in three phases. Phrases, not phases. Jeez. Words are hard, evidently, in 2025
Alright, life in Christ, life with others in life expressed. I mean, there's a lot of things written in Scripture, a lot of things that Jesus said, a lot of things that the Holy Spirit inspired these writers to write about. But I think when you look at it as a whole, you can really boil it down to those three things. You go, what is the Christian life all about? How does it impact me and my life? It's these three things, life in Christ, life with others in life expressed. What are we talking about when we say these things? Well, life in Christ, the moment you put your faith in Jesus to forgive your sins based on his finished work on the cross, Jesus comes to dwell in you, and you enter into this spiritual union with Him. As a matter of fact, the apostle Paul even wrote in Galatians 220 from his own experience, saying, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. We see a couple of things there. Not only did Christ come to dwell in him, but the old him, the person that he once was, has been crucified, is dead, buried and gone, and he's been raised up to someone new, this new life in Christ. This isn't the only place that we see that in Scripture, of course, we see it in a number of places. Jesus shares it with Nicodemus. You know Nicodemus in John chapter three, where he tells Nicodemus, you have to be born again, to enter the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus is going to say what you know, how does that even work? But he's not talking about physical birth. He's talking about spiritual birth. I must enter in you and come to into a spiritual union and bring you this new life. You exchange your old life for a new life, and that new life comes in Christ. John clearly says this in first John 512 whenever he says, Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Most of us spend the majority of our lives looking for life. John says, Well, you have it if you have Jesus, that new life in Christ comes with an abundant and real life, one where you get to rest and you can quit striving and chasing after love and chasing after acceptance and peace and trying to find fulfillment through all the things you're doing or achieving in this world, because all of those things have now become yours, simply in your union with Christ. So that's the first thing that this whole Christian life really is about a new life that we receive and experience in a spiritual union with Jesus. But that new life in Christ then leads to out of that new life flows a life with others. We looked at this verse during our Christmas season or Christmas series, but John says in the opening chapter to all those who did receive Him, talking about Jesus, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God, you get born again, spiritually reborn, and born into God's family, so much so that you now share the same spiritual DNA of God. He didn't just get a certificate and say, All right, you're in the family. He had to birth you again into someone who's now carrying the same DNA, so that you're now part of the family. Now with that, you get a heavenly Father, and you get to be involved in a relationship with the God of the universe. But you also get brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters who are also in a spiritual union with Christ, which leads to then a life with others. We see this in the book of Acts. When the Holy Spirit comes, and all of these people, 3000 people, stand up after the Holy Spirit comes, and Peter preached and shared the gospel with them, and they all receive that new life in Christ. This is what we're told right after they get baptized, he says all of the believers were in common, or were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people, a new life in Christ. With that comes life with others, life with brothers and sisters in Christ, where we eat together and we open up our homes together, when we meet together, and we praise God together and we pray together. And we learn and grow and we serve together. It's a life with others. So that new life in Christ is one that we enter into. It that spiritual union leads to a life with others, but then, as I said, lastly, it also leads to a life expressed. What do we mean by that? Well, it's where Jesus comes to dwell in you. But he doesn't just sit there and then you just sit there and enjoy your life with others. He begins to express his life and his love through you, to impact then a lost and a dying world around you. The apostle Paul, in a prayer that he was praying for the Ephesians, even says at the end of his prayer to Him, referring to Jesus, of course, to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to what this is, how that's done his power that is at work within us. Jesus put his life in you to express his life and power through you to impact the world around you. This is what he does, and that life of Jesus gets expressed through us in our speech and the way we then talk to others. It gets expressed through us in our character, in these new behaviors and actions that he leads us into and then even so much so where that gets expressed into our actions, where we love and serve and share the gospel with other people. And so again, just when you boil it all down, I think that's what it is. What is this thing all about life in Christ, life that can only be found in him, which then out of that everything else flows a life with others, a place to belong to a family, to belong to people, to do life and share life experiences with and serve together, when that life of Christ is expressed through us as individuals and us as a community together. And so sometimes, when we gather together in worship, and we do sermon series, we'll see all three of these reflected in whatever it is that we're studying in God's word. But sometimes we focus in on one of those. Sometimes we're really dialed into what are we talking about when we say life in Christ, when we talk about the old us is crucified and dead, buried and gone, and now we're someone new. What does that really mean? What is our identity, and all of those? So we're really focus in on that so that we'll know. Because if you don't really know that, it's hard to experience the new life that you have, you know that, right? It's possible to have new life in Christ, but not even experience the new life in Christ because you didn't even know you had it. You've been looking for that life somewhere else. When Jesus, all along is saying, you've got it in me, and until you know that and learn to rest in that, then we can't go anywhere. So sometimes we'll really zero in on that. Other times we go, Well, what? What does it mean to do life with others from a biblical perspective? What does that mean whenever we come to church and gather together in Sunday school or small groups, or for our youth group or our kids, or what does that look like whenever we come together in various settings, or we invite people into our homes? And so we'll look at those things from a biblical perspective. But then finally, there's other times where we look at this aspect of life expressed where the life of Christ is expressed through our speech and character and action, so that we can then come to know more about how he does those things through us, so we can look for his activity and then join him and participate with him in what he's doing to impact the world around us. And that is what we're doing, starting today, and throughout the next 10 weeks, really, we're going to be studying the Gospel of Luke, and we're calling this series just simply life expressed because we're going to be learning about the life of Jesus, and if he's the one who dwells in us, and we learn more about what he's doing in His earthly ministry, then we'll come to have much more of an understanding of what he's going to be doing through us. This is not the old slogan of WWJD. What you know would Jesus do? And then you just picture that and you try to imitate what he's doing. This is more What will Jesus do? He lives in you. He's going to do it through you, and the more we learn about him, we'll know what to expect him to be doing, and then be able to join in with him in those particular things. Again, he guides, he empowers. But we get to participate with the living God in things that really matter in this world, that make a difference in other people's lives and meet people's needs, and ultimately share Jesus with them in a way that can transform and change them for all of eternity. Now, today is just kind of an intro. Introduction to Luke, we're not going to study the entire Gospel. It's 24 chapters. Several verses would have to be broken up. Even within those chapters, it would take us a year to a year and a half to go all the way through the Gospel of Luke, doing it every single Sunday. And who knows, we may spend that long in one series at some point going through something like this. But that's not what we're doing with this series. We're going to focus in over the next 10 weeks, and we will go verse by verse, expositionally, through God's Word, through the section where Jesus enters into His earthly ministry in the first place. And then we really begin to focus on what that looked like. How did he serve people and love people, and what was he teaching and saying and then trying to again, find out what that means for us today. Now we'll see that in the introduction I asked you a minute ago, and we'll we're still not there, but we're about to get there. Luke chapter one, verses one through four, because he tells us how he wrote the gospel and why he wrote the Gospel, which will help us when we dive into what we start next week to understand where he's coming from. But even before we dive into those things, I just want to share with you briefly more about Luke, because then we even understand more about him and what it was that he was writing when we get to know him as a person, the first thing that I want you to know about Luke is that Luke was a Gentile, meaning that he was non Jewish, and that makes him the only person to write a book in the Bible that was not Jewish. Out of all the books that are in our Bibles, Luke's the only one that is a Gentile who wrote one of our books in the Bible, and then, being a Gentile, he was writing two Gentiles. Gentiles were his main audience. And you kind of see that come out if you begin to to read the whole gospel, how he highlights Jesus's ministry and compassion to Gentiles and two those who were lost, women, children, tax collectors, sinners, people who were often were regarded as outcast in Israel. John, even, John Luke actually even quotes Jesus in Luke 1910 and said, for the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost Gentiles and those who weren't fitting in the outcast. And then he highlights a lot of those things that we'll see as we dive into it. That's the first thing. Luke was a Gentile. The second thing about Luke, I want you to know is that he was a doctor. We we know that he was a doctor because Luke tells I mean, Paul tells us. So in Colossians four, Paul's writing a letter to the church at Colossae. He's writing kind of some greetings at the very end of it, and he says, Hey guys, our dear friend, Luke. And then he says, the doctor in parentheses, and Demas send greetings. And so we learn from Paul that Luke was a doctor. That means that he's well educated, and you even see that in the way that he writes. Whenever we get into the gospel, especially if you knew Greek, then you would even see some of the medical terminology that comes out. And then also the way he wrote in the Greek language, which was unique compared to the rest of Scripture. Which leads me to my third thing about Luke. Luke was known as and is known today as a brilliant writer and historian. The reason so is because he writes in more of a polished in a classic style of Greek and kind of being educated, had a mastery of the language where he was able to communicate what he was writing in just a unique and beautiful way. As a matter of fact, there was a French historian and a critic of Christianity. He was not a Christian. His name was Ernest Renan, and he actually
called the Gospel of Luke the most beautiful book that he had ever read. I mean, think about that, out of all the books that he had ever read in his entire life, and he's going and I'm not even a Christian, the gospel of Luke is the most beautiful book I've ever read. And so Luke was a guy who had a great education and a mastery of words, and you'll see that even as we dive into it a little bit later as well. The fourth thing that I want you to know second to last about Luke is that he was not an eyewitness of Jesus. He wasn't one of the apostles disciples. He didn't get to witness Jesus during His earthly ministry and the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection and ascension and all of those kinds of things. He uses eyewitnesses to write his gospel, and we'll see that in verses one through four. But he himself was not an eyewitness. Now he came to know Jesus. Later on, he became a believer in Jesus, and then he received that new life and began life with others. And then, well, Jesus began. To express his life through him. How well Luke became a missionary. He joined Paul in his missionary journeys. As a matter of fact, we believe that Luke is from Antioch, and Paul, on one of his missionary journeys, was in that area and shared the gospel. And Luke must have been one of those who came to know Jesus and then joined in after that new life in Christ to a life with others. And then went, Hey, how does Jesus express his life through me? And Paul goes, well, you can join me and become a missionary with me and go tell other people about Jesus. And that's what ends up happening. And we see that in the book of Acts, which is the last thing I want you to know about him is that Luke is also the author of the book of Acts. It was kind of like a two volume set. Luke was volume one, and then acts was volume two. He's telling people about Jesus's earthly ministry in the Gospel of Luke, and he's talking about how Jesus expressed his life through the apostles in the book of Acts. And here's the deal. When he wrote the book of Acts the first 15 chapters, he keeps using the language they and them. He's like they went here and shared the gospel. And I mean, he's talking about Paul, I mean all the disciples and the Apostles and what it is that they were doing. But when you get to Acts chapter 16, he switches from they and them to we, we sailed here or we sailed there. We shared the gospel with others. And so what you see is he joined in there was this time where he came to know Jesus joined in that life with others. And then was going. How does Jesus express his life through me? Oh, he wants to send me to tell others about Him, along with these guys. And so that's what we know about. Luke. He was a Gentile. He was a doctor, brilliant, masterful writer and communicator. He was not an eyewitness, but he interviewed eyewitnesses, as we'll see. And then finally, he also wrote the book of Acts, which is always good to study together then. So let's quickly just run through these first four verses, because again, he tells us how he wrote the gospel and why, and that'll help really set the tone for where we're going the next several weeks in verse one of Luke, chapter one, he says many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us. And so what we notice here is that Luke says there are many people who have undertaken to write about Jesus, an account about Jesus's life. He's probably referring to Matthew and Mark, at the very least here, because we believe that those two gospels were written before Luke wrote his. But he says many, and so he's probably even referring to more than that, and ones that we may not have a record of today. But the thing that I also really want you to see about this verse is that when Luke says that many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been he uses this word
here, fulfilled among
us. Now notice that he didn't say an account of the things that have happened among us. He said fulfilled. That is key language there that helps us see that Luke is saying when we're writing about these accounts of Jesus in his life, we are not just talking about things that happen. We're talking about things that were planned. We're talking about things that were written about in the Old Testament and prophesied about. We're talking about how God has been moving things along in the world towards a certain destination, towards a certain purpose, and it was fulfilled through the coming of Christ. You and I, when we look out in our world today and see all the craziness that's going on, can just be reading along and see things like this, and it should remind us that God is at work even when we don't see it. The people of the Old Testament didn't see it. They didn't know what was going on, but God had been at work, moving it along in some way to fulfill His plan and purpose, and that should bring us hope and encouragement the same way that it did to Luke and these guys and why they were writing about it there. Now he says this about how many have undertaken to write these accounts that have been fulfilled among us. And then he continues in verse two, and says just as just as they were handed down to us by those who, from the first were eye witnesses, there's what we talked about earlier, and servants of the word. So Who's he talking about? Here, these eyewitnesses and servants of the word, the word here the Greek word logos that we talked about in John when we were in there, which is a reference to Jesus, servants of the word, or the the. Disciples, and certainly referring to the 12 apostles, but then also those disciples that followed Jesus and were eye witnesses. He's saying these things were handed down from first hand accounts. What is Luke trying to communicate right here, right off the bat, the reliability of what is being written about Jesus? He's saying, make sure you understand this. These are not like cousin Larry, who passed it down to cousin Bob and somebody else. And then seven people later, they'll so and so said this about Jesus, and they had said this about Jesus. He go, no, no. These are first hand accounts. These are people who saw Jesus with their own eyes. They heard his teachings with their own ears, first hand accounts. These are reliable things that are being written about Jesus. Now he sets this up in the first two verses, and he's really still talking about these other accounts that have been out there, right? But now he finally turns his attention to his account and what he's doing based on what he said here. So he says with this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you. Most Excellent Theopolis. Several things to highlight here, he says with this in mind, with these other accounts that had been written, He since he's carefully investigated everything, and notice that he says from the beginning, and he really does mean from the beginning. If you know the Christmas story and where to go to read about the Christmas story and the birth of Jesus. This is where to go, the gospel of Luke. You can also read about it in Matthew, and we did a little bit in John. But if you really want to know the full account of it, you'll see more about the Christmas account here than anywhere else. Why? Because Luke investigated it from the beginning, went all the way back and talked to Mary and those who were there now again, carefully investigated those things. He thoroughly did his research before writing and talking to eye witnesses, and then, based on those things, notice this, he said that he wrote an orderly account. Well, what does that mean? He didn't just say, I wrote an account. I wrote an orderly account. Well, could mean several different things. Probably doesn't mean chronologically. I mean Luke is arranged generally, chronologically, but not real specifically, and so most likely being a Gentile, writing two Gentiles, he had a certain audience in mind where he investigated all of these things and then wrote them in an orderly way to help us see and understand more about who Jesus really was and what that means for us today. And when we look at that and we see what he's saying here, one of the other things that I think we could take note of based on how this is played out throughout the years is that Luke is regarded as an incredible historian whenever he uses this language, carefully investigated and wrote an orderly account. He was not kidding. I've mentioned earlier how he was a great writer, and it was based on the Greek language and all of those other things. Well, there was a British scholar named Sir William Ramsay, and he was not a Christian. He honestly thought the Bible was probably filled with flaws and inaccurate information. Didn't buy it, and so he just, I'm going to set out to disprove it once and for all. And because he was a scholar and he was a historian and archeologist, he thought, You know what, I'm just going to study Luke and I'm gonna study acts, because they have the most geographical, you know, language and connotations in them about the places that we see. And you go, you know what? I'll go and I'll do some archeological research, and I'll just prove that it's totally inaccurate, and then people will quit buying into this whole Christianity thing. Well, what happened was that as Sir William Ramsay began to read Luke and Acts, and whenever he began to study a little bit more and go on these archeological digs, what he found was that Luke was incredibly accurate. As a matter of fact, he even wrote that the Gospel of Luke and the books of the book of Acts don't have one single historical inaccuracy, and that Luke as a historian, he says, is first rate and should be classified with the great historians of the day. So that adds even more validity and reliability to the things that we are talking about. Here is a matter of fact, Sir William Ramsay didn't even just say that, but because this is what he found, God used it to open up his heart to see who Jesus really was, and he became a born again Christian as well, and then an apologist, and was a starch defender of the faith and defended it greatly, all because of Luke. An incredibly accurate historian.
And so this is, again, what Luke is saying here. And then the final thing I want to just point out is that he addresses it to this guy named Theophilus. Now we don't really know who Theophilus is. People take educated guesses at different times, but no one can really prove with certainty. The best guess is that, because of his title, that he was some kind of Roman dignitary who had become a believer, and he was writing it to him, or kind of dedicating it to him, he may have even been the guy that helped kind of fund what it was that Luke was was doing here, this whole project of writing an orderly account. And he tells us why, though he's writing it to him or dedicating it to him in the last verse that we'll look at today, he says, I'm writing this to you, most excellent Theophilus, so that here's the purpose, you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. And so again, Theophilus, most likely, was a new believer. And Luke was writing these things to encourage him to affirm his faith, to affirm his new life in Christ, his new life with others that he now had, and this new life where Jesus was going to express his life through him. And the thing is, is, even though it was addressed or dedicated to him, that we need to take note of today is that this still applies to us. And when we read the Gospel of Luke, it will help us to also know the certainty of the things that we have been taught. And so I'm so excited to dive into this with you. Next week, we're going to dive into Luke chapter four, where Jesus launches his earthly ministry. He meets with some Jewish leaders in a synagogue, and he pulls out the scroll and reads from an Old Testament passage about the Messiah who was to come. And he stands up and says, Today this Scripture is fulfilled. It's this dramatic moment where Jesus is announcing to everyone that I'm the Messiah, and this is what my ministry is going to look like, the life of Christ, the Messiah. And so I can't wait to dive into that, because it's going to even show us how it relates to us with Jesus's ministry and him now living in us, and what he continues to do 2000 years later, because it's going to be similar to the things that we saw him doing at that particular time. Now, the last thing that I just want to highlight before we go today, because I don't want you to think, Okay, well, there's nothing for me in this today. Well, there is. We've learned a lot of different things about this, and I would hope that maybe you'd go on, first and foremost, to start reading the Gospel of Luke and just allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal to you and affirm the certainty of the things that you've been taught. But even beyond that, since this is kind of an introduction and a scope to the whole thing, I want to show you what many people regard as the key verse in all 24 chapters of Luke. And it's this where he quotes Jesus as saying for the Son of Man, which was a reference to Himself, Jesus came, this is the whole reason that he left the glory in the riches of heaven and was born into this world and grew up as a man was to come and seek and save the lost. And so if we know that this is what Jesus said he came to do, and then he puts his life in you to express his life through you, then guess what Jesus is going to be doing through you, seeking and saving the lost. And that's all the time. You don't have to wait for me to get into Luke Chapter Four next week. You can just be asking the question, Jesus, if you came to seek and save the lost and you express your life through me, then who this week are you seeking through me? Who is it that you're wanting me to invite to church? Who is it that you're wanting me to share the gospel with this week. Who is it that you want me to love and serve? So it'll open up doors to be able to tell them more about Jesus. Again, Jesus will do it, but he's going to do it through you. Paul says that he is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine through his power that does at work in us, and so we make ourselves available to Him as His instruments with this new life of Christ, and He expresses that life through us to lead other people to come to know it and make real change and impact in our schools and our businesses and neighborhoods And in this community and all beyond Tyler and Texas and United States and around the world. So let's pray as we close out this time together today, and we will ask the Lord to continue to speak to us this week through this text.