Tag Archives: Gospel of Luke

Jesus’ Baptism

I told myself to post these notes over the weekend…but it didn’t happen.. =(    As such, today you are treated with my sermon notes from Easter (yeah, I’m a week behind). Note that the sermon itself ended up vastly different as Jesus changed everything about ten or fifteen minutes into the sermon. 😕

“Jesus’ Baptism” Sermon

Happy Easter!!  Jesus is risen!! Amen and Amen

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. -1 Peter 1:3-4a

We have freedom because the cross leads to the resurrection!

Public Reading: Luke 3:15-22

1.    John the Baptist

o    Who is he?

* Luke 3:15 it tells us that the people were waiting for the Messiah and wondered if John was he….
* The Gospel of John gives us a little more details about this line of thought (John 1:19-28)

19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

Continue reading Jesus’ Baptism

Walking It Out (Luke 3)

John the Baptist Byzantine mosaic (12th century) in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul

Here are my sermon notes from Palm Sunday (yeah, I’m about a week late..) – the day we celebrate Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem on a donkey with the crowd waving palm leaves. It was a day foreshadowing what would happen – i.e. the coming of the Kingdom of God through the dead, resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

In a similar manner, we talked about John the Baptist and his ministry in Luke 3 as he was a forebear of Jesus, proclaiming to the people that the Kingdom of Heaven was near (Matthew 3:2).

Public Reading: Luke 3:1-14

The Story

•    Imagine being a common farmer or tradesman in 1st century Israel
•    Under Roman rule with high taxes and the constant threat of pain at the hands of the armed forces
•    Jewish religious leaders constantly talked about purity and the Mosaic Law

o    You had to do this and that…
o    Each Saturday you had to remove all the yeast from your house…couldn’t work…no overtime…
o    Different rabbis had different rules and methods…

•    John shows up on the edge of the desert

o    Dressed in camel skins and eating locusts and honey
o    Preached that the Kingdom of Heaven was near
o    Perhaps justice was coming…perhaps this was the one…

•    You and your family decide to walk out to the desert to see this crazy guy…
•    When you get there you see John baptizing folks…

o    This is odd as baptism was reserved for Gentiles coming into the Jewish faith – and these were Jews getting baptized.
o    Yes, the Essenes, you had heard, washed multiple times a day for cleanliness…but John wasn’t telling folks to keep on washing…
o    It was a once time baptism…what was going on here?

•    Then John calls the religious leaders a “brood of vipers”
•    While that is good, you also see tax collectors and soldiers in the crowd..

o    You think that John is going to tear into them…
o    Only instead of judgment, John offers mercy
o    Don’t stop being a solider or a tax collector…just do what is right

•    The radical message of John

Continue reading Walking It Out (Luke 3)

Listening to God (Part Two)

Yesterday we talked about how each person who follows Jesus is able to hear from God themselves without going through a mediator. This is one of the benefits of the new covenant of God which was placed on our hearts of Jesus Himself.

We also looked at some of the ways in which Jesus talks to His followers – i.e. audibly, dreams, visions, gentle whispers, scriptures, etc.

Today we are going to talk a bit about the times in which we are not hearing God – or, should I say, the times in which we feel that God is far away. When this happens we must recognize that there can be many, many reasons for why we feel that way.

We could be in a period of spiritual warfare like Daniel in which the messenger of God was held up by a spiritual battle between the prince of the air and the angels of heaven (Daniel ch. 10). During these times we are to keep on keeping on; be persistent in prayer as Daniel was and you will break through and hear God once again.

There are other times when it feels like we are going through a ‘dark night of the soul’ like our brother Job. During these times it is important that we remember that it did come not because of sin or anything we did. They are just times in which we are to be faithful and to keep walking after God the best that we can. God, in His wisdom, has a plan to use to change the world around us and to share the light of His glory with us… and it should be remembered, that God did talk to Job in the middle of his ‘dark night’…

However while these two reason are valid for not hearing God, the main focus of this post is to look at the times in which the noise of our lives get in the way of listening to the Lord. These are times when the issue isn’t with God talking to us, but with us listening.

Continue reading Listening to God (Part Two)

Listening to God (Part One)

"The Meeting of Our Lord", Russian Icon (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

In Luke Chapter 2, when Joseph and Mary went to the Temple to be purified according to the Law of Moses, they met two heroes of the faith – Simeon and Anna. These two people were devout followers of God who listened to the Spirit and noticed an unassuming couple holding a little baby. They got to see the Messiah before anyone else because they listened to God!

As followers of Jesus, we too can hear God. All we need to do is simply open our ears and listen.

To that end, this post outlines part one of a two part mini-sermon series on listening to Jesus. You can listen to the first part online at the Payette River Vineyard Christian Fellowship website... the second part should be online something this week, but regardless of the audio file, I will be posting my notes from the second part tomorrow. So stay tune. 😀

Public Reading

Luke 2:21-40

Simeon

•    Here’s a man who was devoted to God
•    Waiting for the Lord to come
•    God told him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah

o    Can you imagine that?
o    Waiting for years, asking God each time a “messiah” figure showed up in they were the one
o    Now, out of the blue, he walked up to this baby…

•    Talk about a chance encounter

o    Simeon was not supposed to be at the Temple
o    But the Spirit promoted him to go…
o    What if he had refused?

* Too tired…
* Too old…
* Too busy…
*  Too whatever…

o    But he didn’t and as a result he got to see Jesus….

Continue reading Listening to God (Part One)

The Gospel of Luke Introduced

James Tissot, Saint Luke (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Three questions to ask before reading any book:

  • Who is the author?
  • When was the book written?
  • Why were they writing?

Answers concerning the Gospel of Luke:

Author: St. Luke

  • Traveling companion of St. Paul (“we” passages during the latter part of Acts)
  • Gentile follower of Jesus
  • Most likely a doctor
    • Medical language found within the Gospel
  • References of Luke by Paul
    • Colossians 4:10-14 – Luke is Paul’s doctor while he is in prison
    • Philemon 23-24
    • 2 Timothy 4:9-11

Date

  • “Luke the Historian”
  • Left ‘date markers’ in the text to date
    • Names of Roman and local governmental officials, events, etc.
    • The difficulty is that these ‘date markers’ are hard for us in 2012 to date as we don’t have all the details concerning that time period
  • Scholars have three proposed date ranges
    • 60-62 AD
    • 80-85 AD
    • The Second Century (100-199 AD)
  • Each have some difficulties, however the first date range has the least problems and is backed up by tradition and the early Church Fathers
    • It also allows for Volume Two (i.e. the book of Acts) to be written before the fall of Jerusalem

Continue reading The Gospel of Luke Introduced