Luke, Beloved And Faithful

"Luke, Beloved And Faithful" – Colossians 4:14 “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.” One verse, two names, and between them all the distance there is between finishing the race and abandoning it. The study sets Luke and Demas side by side: the one who stayed to the last day in the prison at Rome, and the one who preferred the world. Of Luke it studies everything that was not in his favor —he was a Gentile from Antioch of Syria, a physician and an educated man among fishermen, and he never once saw Jesus— and how even so he left us a gospel and the book of Acts. His method is in Luke 1:1-4: to investigate diligently, person by person, day after day, to verify the accuracy of every source, to discard whatever did not edify, and to write it in order for a friend named Theophilus. All of it inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is the one who has kept and protected those Scriptures to this day, because no man on earth keeps them. The study closes in 2 Timothy 4:11 —“only Luke is with me”—, with Paul asking for his cloak and his books hours from being beheaded, and with the question it leaves the people: who are you in the church, Luke or Demas?

I. Where courage shows is in the Word.

A. There is no greater enchantment than a man or woman who loves the Word and reads it.

1. It is hard to find a brave one today, because the Word is the only way to grow.

2. Everything else passes: what fills you today charges you interest tomorrow.

3. What you think will make you happy today brings you a betrayal tomorrow.

B. Nothing on earth stirs any fragility in my being.

1. If no one had come today, and I am already here, I would come alone.

2. There was a time of great brokenness; but climbing these stairs, the burdens stayed behind.

3. Those Scriptures were building me up, and that is why I can stand today.

4. Our toenail hurts and we are already gravely ill; four drizzles fall and it is a flood.

II. Luke and Demas: how the race is finished.

A. The difference between disciples lies in how you finish the race.

1. The race runs from the day you were converted to the day you die.

2. How you are received in heaven depends on how your race went on the earth.

B. The church does not save: in it you are taught, but salvation is in how you choose the road.

1. To be half-hearted is cowardice; the brave carry much away.

2. What is won in heaven is how much we loved Him, served Him, and wanted His will.

3. Demas preferred the world: to come to church and share in the world is very ordinary.

4. For people it is normal; for heaven, no; for eternity, never.

III. The beloved physician.

A. For Paul to call him that, Luke’s love came out of his very pores.

1. He had served him bodily and spiritually in sickness, persecution and imprisonment.

2. They slept on the mountain, under a tree, with hunger attacking them for days.

3. Paul asked that the offering be brought halfway: nothing interrupted his march.

4. That is why one needs character: what we are, what we are for, and whose we are.

B. He was a physician and could tend Paul’s stripes.

1. Forty stripes save one, without food, among rats: how sweet to heal those wounds.

2. And the remarkable thing: from Paul we hear no complaint, no grumbling, no excuse of illness.

3. We hear of the thorn, not of ailments. My ailments can become a triumph: I have overcome them.

IV. Who Luke was.

A. He was from Antioch in Syria; a Gentile, with no Hebrew blood.

1. He was a physician: intellectually trained, a brilliant mind among fishermen.

2. He did not live under the law, but with great soundness and a desire to serve.

3. Whoever desires to serve, serves until he is spent, until it hurts.

B. It was on Paul’s journeys that Paul won him for the Lord.

1. He joined the mission with all his heart, and so he came to know Jesus.

2. “Paul, why persecutest thou me?” To the ground, Paul: he fell flat.

3. At conversion, arrogance, presumption, vanity and recklessness must fall.

4. The earth is full of people who produce no effect at all.

V. Luke’s method (Luke 1:1-4).

A. The others were disciples of Jesus and had what their eyes saw; Luke did not.

1. He was never with Jesus, nor always with Paul: he went on gathering.

2. “Who went with Paul on this journey? I will go and visit him.”

3. If someone forgot, he drew it out of them, because he wanted to write it.

B. “Having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first.”

1. Diligence is with great care; and to write it unto thee in order.

2. He asked for no copies of Matthew or Mark: that is why some have what others do not.

3. He verified the accuracy of his source and discarded what would not edify.

4. In order does not mean chronological: it means confirmed, pure, not “what I think and suppose.”

C. So life ought to be: when we teach and when we speak, in order.

1. Let us not pour out so many words: go to the point, leave this one and that one out.

2. And we can know Jesus more clearly because a man chose to learn and leave it as an inheritance.

VI. Inspired by the Holy Spirit.

A. Of the many who wrote, the rest vanished: they were not inspired.

1. Which means Luke was a man completely filled with the Holy Spirit.

2. He would guard those writings as his own life, and more than his life.

3. To rebel against the Holy Spirit is blasphemy: a sin that is not forgiven.

B. Scripture is kept and protected by the Holy Spirit Himself.

1. No one has been able to destroy it or alter it; no man on earth keeps it.

2. Do not seek it to make a show: seek it to learn and to educate yourself.

3. He uses “the Word” as a name of Christ, as John does in his gospel.

VII. Theophilus.

A. He was no Jew: he was a friend of Luke, and his name means “friend of God.”

1. His title “most excellent” suggests an official of the Roman empire.

2. “I send it to you so that you may be steeped in what I was steeped in.”

3. The purpose was to confirm the worth of all he had been taught of the Lord.

B. And he did not take it only for himself, but to leave it to all of us.

1. The written message would give a fixity preserving it from error and from lies.

2. Each one speaks from a pulpit as he pleases; but Scripture is sought exactly as it reads.

3. What the earth has is disappointment, bitterness and lies.

4. He had to make the history himself; and when we speak of Jesus, it must be our own history.

VIII. “Only Luke is with me” (2 Timothy 4:11).

A. 2 Timothy is Paul’s last writing: he is in prison, and there he will be beheaded.

1. He did not ask for something because he was freezing: he asked for the cloak and the books.

2. Who alone was with him in his last days? Luke.

3. Seeking nothing for himself: if Paul is left in prison, I will stay with him.

B. A witness of journeys and of dangers.

1. He went with him to Jerusalem, through his arrest, and through the shipwreck bound for Rome.

2. He also wrote Acts: the growth of the early church, centered on Peter and Paul.

3. A precise style: an interest in data, dates, places and medical descriptions.

4. Tradition says he died at a great age in Boeotia, without martyrdom, and satisfied.

IX. Who are you in the church?

A. I want to be Luke: that is why I read the Scriptures, because it takes effort.

1. Knowing produces faith, and faith leads us to knowledge.

2. Knowledge is to know heaven more than earth, and to loathe what is worldly.

B. When you do not raise your children in the gospel, they are subject to a thousand passions.

1. What you do not fight for becomes tomorrow’s shame: things are shouted from the housetops.

2. Watch your children, and see that they are being lost in your own hands.

C. We must not live merely to live.

1. How useful was this day? What seeking did you do with God?

2. Today everyone lives comfortably: nothing stirs, nothing troubles, there is no effort.

3. If Luke labored for this gospel, it was for our good: let us do something for it.

4. Tears and pain you will have; but gain we will have. And if we boast, let it be in the spiritual.