“Our Savior, the Son of Man”
Luke 1-9 Summary
March 29, 2026
When you think about Christ, how do you characterize Him? What is He like? What does He do? How is He different from everyone else that has walked on earth so that we should believe in and follow Him? John Newton said that Christ is our all-sufficient Shepherd, our Husband, our Prophet, our Priest, our King, our Friend, our Lord, our Life, our Way, our End, our Head, our Root, our Meat, our Drink, our Portion, our Strength, our Hope, our Foundation, our Sun, our Shield, our Lawgiver, our Exemplar, our Forerunner, and our All. He is everything to us — when we have Him we need nothing else.
Similarly, Spurgeon said, “If you take Christ out of Christianity, Christianity is dead.…If you leave out Christ, you have left the sun out of the day, and the moon out of the night, you have left the waters out of the sea, and the floods out of the river; you have left the harvest out of the year, the soul out of the body; you have left joy out of heaven, you robbed all of its all. There is no Gospel worth thinking of, much less worth proclaiming, if Jesus is forgotten. We must have Jesus as Alpha and Omega…”
These men and countless others were overwhelmed by the character of Christ. Similarly, we want to be captivated by Christ and conformed to Christ. That’s why we are in the book of Luke. In the first nine chapters, we have seen the revelation of Jesus as the Son of Man. Luke is encouraging us to believe in Christ (if we don’t yet believe) and to delight in Him (if we already believe).
This morning we are going to revisit locations and stories we’ve already seen in these opening chapters and remind ourselves of the themes and purposes — has Luke done what he said he would do? What are primary realities of Christ that should be the foundation of our faith and give us hopefulness in Christ? To that end, we will revisit some of the broad themes in Luke that we talked about in the first sermon in this series, to see how Luke accomplished those in these opening chapters, including the theme of the book…
Luke tells the story of Christ so that we will be confident in Christ at all times.
As we are reminded of our Savior, the Son of Man, remember also that Luke wrote His gospel as something of a travelogue — he recounts the history and theology of Christ as Christ travels around Israel:
- The introduction and preparation of Jesus for ministry (1:1–4:13) — primarily Nazareth
- The Galilean ministry of Jesus (4:14–9:50)
- Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (9:51–19:44)
- Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem as the crucified and resurrected Son of Man (19:45–24:53)
- Summary…that we will be confident in Christ.
The outline —
- The Arrival of the Son of Man (1:1–2:40)
- The Introduction of the Son of Man (2:41–4:13)
- The Galilean Ministry of the Son of Man (4:14–9:50)
- The Purpose of the Account of the Son of Man (1:1-4)
Download the rest of this sermon on Luke 1-9.
The audio will be posted on the GBC website by Tuesday.
Words of Grace 