Introducing Dr. Luke

And every Old Testament believer watching that display of power should not have gone home and thought, guess what we get to do now? We get to call fire down from heaven. Should we pray?

No. Now, I think we probably have a unanimous agreement in this auditorium that none of us can call fire down from heaven. Most of us would agree that just because the prophets did it doesn't mean we're to do it.

It's a lot more difficult, however, to stand before you and tell you what I happen to believe, and I'll try to reveal it as we study through the book of Acts in certain passages, is just because an apostle did it doesn't mean you do it. I'm glad you joined us today here on Wisdom for the Heart with pastor and author Stephen Davey. Today we go back to the archives of Stephen's early teaching ministry.

Its message is that we refer to as vintage wisdom. We're going to bring you Stephen's series from Acts called The Harvest Begins. Stephen preached this back in 1996, so if you notice some differences in Stephen's voice and the audio quality, it's because of how long ago it was recorded. But God's Word is timeless, and we know you'll enjoy hearing Stephen teach through this very important book of Acts.

So let's get started. Acts is the biography of a church, not in meditation, but in action. In fact, the word action is in the very title of the book, the action or the acts of the apostles. Now, before we begin a study into a large book such as this or any book in the Bible that does us well to pull back a little bit and take a bird's eye view, and if you have your notes, I think you'll find them helpful to you. You could memorize the one based upon Acts chapter 1 verse 8, where the Lord Jesus says you're to take the gospel and be witnesses in Jerusalem, and then you're to go from there into Judea and Samaria, and of course and then to the outermost part of the earth.

So you could outline, in fact, the interesting thing is the entire book by the fulfillment of that command. The first seven chapters you have the church originating in Jerusalem, then you have the church dispersing to Judea and Samaria from chapters 8 to 12, and then you have the church impacting to the ends of the earth in chapters 13 through the end of the book in chapter 28. Another outline that may be a little simpler for those of us who would like simple outlines to memorize, you just have simply the ministry of the apostle Peter, which is the focus of Luke as he writes the first 12 chapters of his sequel to his gospel, and then the spotlight of ministry changes and it focuses on Saul, who is turned, of course, changed into the apostle Paul, chapters 13 to 28.

A little more lengthy for those of you that are ambitious and like to get A's in class, you could memorize this outline by Charles Barkley. Now that's not the basketball player, this is a commentator who wouldn't appreciate the comparison, but at any rate he gives six progress reports of growth and development. You have the first one in chapter 6 verse 7, the word of God kept on spreading and the number of disciples continued to increase greatly. Then in chapter 9 verse 31 you read another progress report, so the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace being built up.

In chapter 12 verse 24 you have the third progress report. It's a summary, but the word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied and so on and so forth. You understand that the gospels ended with the disciples in no little shock that Jesus Christ had actually resurrected from the dead, as if He hadn't told them He would. The gospels end with little information as to what happened. If we went from the gospel by John and we didn't have Acts and we went right into the book of Romans, we would be terribly confused.

We wouldn't know how the church ever developed, or in effect what was the church, what are elders, how did believers end up in Italy? Acts shows us the expansion of this new message and this new organism called the church. The book of Acts serves as a bridge between the gospels and the epistles. The book of Acts is placed appropriately and historically between the last gospel and the first epistle.

It is the book of history. The gospels ended by giving us the life of Christ. Acts will give us the life of the church, Christ and His Holy Spirit invading this new organism, bringing it to life as it were, and then its propagation throughout.

It will serve as that bridge. Frankly, I happen to believe that there has never been more confusion in our generation to the ministry and power of the Holy Spirit than today in the evangelical church. Most of it is due entirely to a misapplication or a misinterpretation of the second book of Luke, the book of Acts, and a failure to understand it.

It is a historical transitional book explaining the explosive creation of something that up to that point had not been in existence, and explains the first few years as we move our way into the doctrine of the epistles. We are living, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, in what is called the third wave movement. What that means is supposedly the third wave of the Holy Spirit, many teach, has come to America.

The Spirit has fallen in this third wave. The key word for the third wave movement is the word power. You hear terms like power gospel, power evangelism, power signs, power preaching. The first wave historians will easily document, and what this movement considers the first wave, occurred at the beginning of the century around 1902 with the beginning of Pentecostalism and all of its beliefs as it relates to the Holy Spirit. The second wave began around the 40s and 50s with people like Kuhlman and Roberts, with the accompanying belief that you must have tongues and healing as true signs of authenticity that the Holy Spirit is involved in your ministry or in your life. The third wave, which is, I believe, most dangerous, believes that just as the Book of Acts experienced all that it did in its church life, so we today must experience it all. There must be not necessarily tongues or healing, but there must be some sign of power. There must be some display.

There must be some vision. There must be some extra biblical knowledge to inform the church how to live and how to operate. Now we'll study in detail a lot of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which is an exciting study which does not need to be ignored or feared, as you understand the word. But the basic belief that we're living under here in this so-called third wave movement is that everything in the Book of Acts should be happening in the church today. Since the church was created and in its creation, there was the accompanying signs and wonders and powers, so the effectiveness of the church today must have accompanying signs and wonders and powers.

The leading ecclesiastical body promoting this third wave movement is called the Vineyard Movement or the Vineyard Church. We were studying the life of Elijah, you remember, some time ago, and we came to that passage where he prayed. He was with those 750 false prophets of Baal on the mountain, and he prayed and God sent fire from heaven. You remember how that fire consumed the water around the altar, the altar itself, the burnt offering, proving undeniably through that sign of power to those prophets of Baal that someone very important lived up there? So you slaved over that grill on the deck, you know, you couldn't get the charcoal lighted, lit. I would never suggest you stand back and say, okay, Lord, torch it.

They would call the squad. Just because a prophet did it doesn't mean you do it. And every Old Testament believer watching that display of power should not have gone home and thought, guess what we get to do now? We get to call fire down from heaven. Should we pray?

No. Just because a prophet did it doesn't mean the body at large did it. Now, I think we probably have a unanimous agreement in this auditorium that none of us can call fire down from heaven. Most of us would agree that just because the prophets did it doesn't mean we're to do it. It's a lot more difficult, however, to stand before you and tell you what I happen to believe, and I'll try to reveal it as we study through the book of Acts at certain passages, is just because an apostle did it doesn't mean you do it.

Just because an apostle experienced it doesn't mean you experience it. And we'll study what we'll call the apostolic community and the supernatural signs and wonders that accompanied that community as God brought to life this new creation, the New Testament Church. You need to view Acts then as a transitional book, a book of new beginnings. Decisions that you see made in here, experiences that you see experienced in here does not necessarily mean that's the pursuit that we're to go out and begin to pursue. We need to be very careful to keep walking across that bridge as the church is created, developed, expanded, and ultimately in the epistles, taught. And we will talk about how to apply and principles of interpretation as we go through this wonderful book.

But you say, Stephen, you know, now look, we're talking about the book of Acts. I want to experience it all. And you can turn on your television at any time and you can hear some preacher or teacher say, you can experience it all.

Okay, let's experience it all. Let's immediately disband and have a meeting, get our calendars out and discover a way we can begin meeting every day of the week. Shall we vote on that one? Let's immediately dispel the board of elders, including myself, disband with them, and let's create an entirely new board by the casting of lots, like they did in Acts. It means we would immediately need to readjust our missions budget so that it reflects the priority of the Gospel to the Jew first. In fact, all the way through the 11th chapter of Acts, in fact, when the church is dispersed, the Bible tells us that they were scattered and went everywhere carrying the word to only the Jew.

What does that mean? You pull that verse out of context and our ministry priority should be to the Jewish nation and not to the Gentile. If you put it into the context of being a book in transition as the Gospel is developed and the church is developed, then you have a good understanding of what that might mean.

Let me show you another one and then we'll stop this line of reasoning. Look at chapter 4 verse 32. And the congregation of those who believed, this is the church, right, were of one heart and soul, sounds great, and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them.

And with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all, for there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the equity or the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet and they would be distributed to each as any had need. I love this passage. Let's go apply it. You want to vote?

I doubt it. We love verse 33. With great power the apostles revealed that this new creation was indeed the Church of God. Great signs and wonders. We love that, but I don't like verse 32 before it and I don't like verse 34 after it.

That's what we call selective literal application. I'll select verse 33, that's for me, but not verse 32 or verse 34. You see the danger? I just wonder, ladies and gentlemen, how many power preachers, how many prosperity preachers, how many television and radio and pastors and evangelists would be willing to give up everything they own to a community pot where they share equally with the people they have been in the process of systematically robbing. I happen to believe that many of these are deceiving prophets who parade about with supposed healing power and miraculous power and if you will simply tag into what I am doing then God will bless you, super conduits of supernatural power. I think they will be among those that stand before the Lord as Matthew records of the judgment and they say to him, Lord, did not we cast out demons in your name? Did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not perform miracles in your name? And the Lord's response will be what?

I never knew you. What I find interesting in that passage is that Jesus Christ never invalidated what they claimed to have done. He never once said, no, that wasn't a miracle, that was a sleight of hand.

That wasn't prophetic. No, what he in effect is saying is you were empowered by someone other than me. You were informed by someone other than my spirit.

I never knew you. That's why I want to take some time here at the outset of this subject because it's more than some simple innocent misunderstanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as revealed in the book of Acts. To not understand Acts as it stands contextually, as it stands historically, as we interpret it as we ought to interpret it could mean that you could be vulnerable in being led away by a false prophet who simply displays some unusual power that you cannot understand and therefore you declare him authentic.

And I want to warn you. The tragedy of that, however, is to pursue all of these other things means that you and I would ignore who? The Holy Spirit. We would be seeking to embrace experiences that the Spirit would not be giving, thereby we would be ignoring him.

Now, having said all that, you're probably thinking, well, boy, this is going to be fun. I guess our pastor doesn't believe in divine miracles. Well, I do. I do not believe in miracle workers. And we're going to study miracle workers in action. Authentic miracle workers with undeniable miraculous power.

We're going to understand why they did what they did. You probably say, well, you know, maybe our pastor doesn't believe in divine healing. I do. I do not believe in divine healers. And we will discuss divine healers and we will see divine healers in the apostolic community. I do want to say this, too, as I've talked about the Pentecostal movement and those involved in the signs and wonders, I think that for the most part we're talking about brothers and sisters in Christ. All right. I just happen to be a lot harder on the preachers and the evangelists because I believe James makes it clear that those who teach will incur a stricter judgment. They infuriate me. And I'm so saddened because I know that there are people by the thousands who are being led astray, who truly love the Lord. Well, we're going to dive into a lot of that later.

All right. That's just a little bit of an introduction to make you upset with me. Now, let's introduce the instrument of divine inspiration. His name is Luke. Now, if we could put all the clues together, we would discover that Luke was a medical doctor. He met Paul, evidently, in the seaport town of Troas.

Troas was a thriving hub of commerce. It was a great place for a young doctor to begin his medical career. Now, we're not told how Luke met Paul, but we do know, as F.B. Meyer, a great commentator of old, suggested, when Paul arrived in Troas with his son in the faith, Timothy, they had just completed a long, arduous journey. Paul, with his frail nature and his many ailments, by the time he reached Troas, evidently was in need of who?

A doctor. Evidently, the doctor they found by the providence of God was a Greek unbeliever named Luke. Undoubtedly, their conversations would lead to the gospel. Somewhere along the line, Luke trusted in this risen Lord that Paul declared to him.

But that wasn't all. Luke was eventually challenged and confronted with this challenge of taking his medical skills, as it were, on the road to accompany Paul himself. He eventually reached a decision where he had to decide between a lucrative medical practice in Troas or a long, difficult journey with this itinerant missionary named Paul, who desperately needed the things he had in his medical bag.

But history was made because, we know, Luke chose to go. In fact, in Colossians chapter 4, Paul refers to Luke as my beloved physician. Now, let me give you – you might add these to your notes – four ministries of Luke.

If we put it all together, this is just an introduction by way of overview. First ministry is that of precise author. Let's start by looking at the first words that Luke penned. You got to go back to his gospel. Look at Luke chapter 1, would you?

Luke chapter 1, verse 1. In asmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word handed them down to us, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught. This medical doctor was fitted to his task of writing with precision. He might catch his passion for precision with some of these phrases.

He must have been an outstanding doctor, by the way. Look at the word compile. You might underline that in verse 1. Or in verse 3, the word investigated in consecutive order. The words in verse 4, exact truth.

Pentecost in his commentary says that Luke did not write Theophilus to convert him, but to convince him that the way he was following was in effect, in fact, the exact truth. It's interesting how Luke, though inspired by the Holy Spirit, was given freedom to use his medical language as he wrote. The word investigated in verse 3 is the word used only by doctors as they investigated the symptoms of a patient. Another illustration of his use of medical terminology appears in chapter 4 of Luke.

We won't turn there, but it's where the demon-possessed man is thrown to the ground and under the control of that spirit. Luke is the only one of the Gospels who uses the correct word, medical word, for convulsions. The interesting display, I think, occurs in all three synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where they all three tell the story of the camel passing through the eye of a needle, as we're taught about how difficult or impossible that would be. Matthew and Mark employ the traditional word for a household needle.

Luke alone uses the technical word for the needle of a surgeon. Let me suggest a second ministry of Luke. That was the ministry of a dedicated missionary. Would you turn ahead again to the book of Acts? We're flipping back and forth here, I apologize, but I want you to see something interesting in chapter 16. Acts chapter 16. Luke is going to change the pronouns as he writes, from him or he to we and us. One of the most interesting and enlightening passages about the passion of Luke occurs in chapter 16 verse 9.

Look there. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A certain man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us. And when he, Paul, had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them.

What an enlightening chapter into the character of this doctor. Who'd God call, Paul, to Macedonia? Luke and me. You see, Luke viewed himself not as a medical tag along, but as a member of a medical or a missionary team. He was convinced that as God had called Paul to preach, he called him. Now we have no record of a sermon by Luke. One commentator suggested that he preached with his hands.

And his sermon notes were kept in his medical bag. Another part of Luke's legacy is that of faithful comrade in 2 Timothy chapter 4. Paul in prison writes these words, Demas having loved this present world has forsaken him. Cretans has gone to Galatia. Titus has gone to Dalmatia. And then he writes, only Luke is with me. No wonder he called him his beloved doctor. One more thing about Luke's ministry. He remained the anonymous servant. Did you know that nowhere in the Gospel of Luke or in the Book of Acts did Luke ever write his own name?

It never appears. You have to derive the authorship from all these clues that we have looked at together and there are many more. It's as if Luke is saying, look, don't look at me. Don't put the spotlight on me. In my Gospel, I want to spotlight the life of Jesus Christ. In the Book of Acts, Theophilus, I want to turn the spotlight onto the life of the Holy Spirit through the lives of people dedicated to him.

I want you to see that, and that only. Now, with the time remaining, let's go back to Acts chapter 1. Acts chapter 1, there's another man we know little of.

This is the man Luke is writing to. Perhaps you've picked up by now that both books of Luke and Acts were written to this same man named Theophilus. All we have time for is the first phrase of Acts chapter 1, the first account I composed Theophilus about all that Jesus began to do and to teach.

I wrote to you the first time in effect about all he began to do. Now I'm writing you this letter, Theophilus, about all he's continuing to do through the ministry of this new creation, the Church. Now in Luke's Gospel account, Luke referred—don't go back—Luke referred to Theophilus with the preceding words, Most Excellent Theophilus. As we try to figure out who Theophilus is, those words are significant because that's a title given only to Roman officials high up in the power of the Roman Empire. From that we derive perhaps the truth that Theophilus was an official who roamed the corridors of power somewhere in the Roman Empire. He is the student of Luke who's writing to him. Another possibility of who Theophilus was revolves around the fact that wealthy men in the first century would often finance the writings of books and then the author, and some of the ancient historians did this, they would attribute or they would dedicate their book to that individual in the first paragraph. In fact, Theophilus was a wealthy man who had financed the writing and the printing, the copying that is of these books, and Luke is addressing it to him as it were, but really dedicating it to him, and in effect writing to the entire body of believers.

Possibility. Another possibility is that Theophilus is not a real name at all. He was a name, or it was a name created by Luke by simply combining two Greek words, Theos, which is what? God. Theos or Phileo, which is to what? To love. Those who love God. Lover of God, or better put, deeply devoted friend of God. Now if you were to ask me which option I like, I gotta tell you, I like all three.

I like all of them. I happen to believe that it is to the high Roman official because of the words most excellent, which are specifically used in the New Testament only to speak of Roman officials, but I happen to think that God is trying to communicate to us a message here. There's an irony in His name. It's as if the Lord is telling us, whenever you go to this book, you in the 20th century, you having received Jesus Christ, to you, friend of God, this book is given for you to know God better and deeper. It was written to Theophilus, it was written to us. So when you put the clues together, you actually discover two remarkable men, don't you? One named Theophilus, a Roman official high up, somehow surviving in the political system of Rome.

In fact, I find it interesting that as Paul finishes his epistle to the church at Philippi, which was a Roman colony, he says specifically, send greetings, I send greetings to those who are of Caesar's administration. I wonder if he had in his mind this believer named Theophilus. The other man we've just been introduced to perhaps for the first time was a doctor, an author, a dedicated missionary, a man that can become for us a model. He wasn't perfect, but he was extremely passionate in his desire to communicate the exact truth of the ministry of Jesus Christ and now the ministry of the Holy Spirit in this new organism we call the church. He was also an unselfish teacher.

Think about it. What do you think was the most significant contribution of Luke? If you had asked Luke, he probably would have said, well, you know, I'm traveling with the apostle Paul. We're traveling all over the known world giving the gospel, but you know what? To us is his most significant contribution, the fact that he was dedicated to spend enormous amounts of time for just one man named Theophilus to write these two lengthy volumes so that Theophilus, one man, could come to know and serve God. Here is a man that I hope you add to your list of heroes, for without ever intending to, he, like the apostle Paul, finished his race too.

This is lesson one in Stephen Davies' series entitled The Harvest Begins. This is a series through the Book of Acts, and it's part of our Vintage Wisdom Library. We've gone back to the archives, back to 1996, when Stephen first preached this series to the church he pastors.

Stephen was 37 years old at the time, but the truth of God's word is timeless. I know you'll enjoy this series, and we'll get back to it on our next broadcast. We look forward to having you again with us next time on Wisdom for the Heart. Thank you.