The Story of the Son of Man

The Story of the Son of Man
Luke 1:1-4
June 23, 2024

Everyone likes a good story:

• Perhaps this evening you will turn to the guide on your TV and scroll for a good movie to watch.
• Maybe this week you will finish that blockbuster novel you’ve been reading; it’s not really great literature, but it’s a fun and entertaining story.
• If you have small children in your home, you will hear multiple times this week: “read me a story…tell me a story…tell me the story about when I was born…”
• If you visit an elderly friend or parent you will likely ask them, “can you tell me about the time…?”

We like stories.  It’s engrained in us by our creator:  “Story is a great gift from a great storytelling God.”  [Mike Cosper]  Of all the stories that God has told, the greatest story is the story of Christ.  You know the story; you have heard it every Christmas and Easter, and perhaps you have read the Bible enough times that you feel familiar with Jesus’ biography.  Over the next months (years), we are going to look at His story again, told by the historian, Luke.  No matter how familiar we are with the story, we need this story. 

We need this story because the world is opposed to us.  Our flesh is opposed to us.  And Satan is opposed to us.  George Whitefield observed the fundamental way Satan works against us:  “…this is the policy of the tempter, to make you have low and dishonorable thoughts of the blessed Jesus; and so by degrees he works upon your minds so that you are careless and indifferent about Christ.”  Satan wants us to forget Christ; God wants us to be preoccupied with Christ, because He is our only hope in this world.  So today we begin a series on the Gospel of Luke — the Story of the Son of Man; as we look at the opening verses, we will find…

Luke tells the story of Christ so that we will be confident in Christ at all times.

Luke painstakingly researched Christ’s life to supplement what was already known about Christ, so that his readers would not only know the story of Christ, but that they would be assured of its validity and confident in the person of Christ and His work for them — particularly His work as the Son of Man.  This morning, as we examine the prologue of the book, let’s observe four aspects of the unique telling of Christ’s life by Luke:

1. The Sources of the Story (vv. 1-2)
2. The Author of the Story (v. 3a)
3. The Content of the Story (v. 3b)
4. The Purpose(s) of the Story (v. 4)

Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 1:1-4.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.

Papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Luke (Papyrus 97), Chester Beatty Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.