You coming to throw me out? Let’s just start with a short prayer. Please bother me the words of my lips and the thoughts and the contemplations and the intentions of all our hearts. Confirm, conform to your will and to your word. Amen. Well, good morning. Yesterday I talked with Josephine and I asked her, I said, tell me what you think of the sermon.
Yeah. So she’s, she’s off, she’s going, uh, sailing today, but the pressure’s on, she’s going to be listening to this, and so it’s, it’s gotta go. Well, unfortunately, she won’t see my fancy slides. I, I’ve been given this, uh, you know, in the last couple of weeks. Uh, we, we got to set, sit down during the gospel because the gospel reading, ’cause it was so long, and today we have something a little bit shorter.
And so I’m sitting [00:01:00] there and I’m going through this and it’s kind of like going through an antique store. You see this and you see that, you think, oh, that would be nice, but where would we put it? And you know, I would keep going back and forth. And finally I found one little thing in this antique store and I would like to bring you along on that little.
On that little journey. Yeah. So I wanted to start with who this guy, Luke is. This is a rather modern picture, but he was, he was a physician and we know that from the, the words that he uses, he was a gentile, he was an outsider. And for those of you who are going to be doing the, the courses that are coming up, any kind of apologetics, one of the pushbacks you’ll get is yes, but you know, you only have writings in the Bible that are from the apostles, like the Apostle Luke, and you’re like, well, wait, wait a minute.
Luke was not an apostle, you know, he was this gentile outsider and he was, he was coming in from more of a Greek [00:02:00] viewpoint to write what he called an orderly account. So that you may believe, and in other words, we kind of took one of those books and we incorporated into, into the Bible. You’re welcome.
Yeah. Very nice, uh, perspective. He’s got here and he’s writing to a guy by the name of Theophilus. I think you may have heard this before, Theophilus. It could be a name, but it’s. Theo God and Phil Phileo, and that’s lover, a lover of God. So, you know, was he, was he writing to a man or was he writing to sort of a concept like all of you?
The Theophilus, you know, the, the lovers of God. You could do it with my name too. You could say I’m writing to Gillis. Yeah. And my name in, in, um, uh, in Scottish Means servant of Jesus. Now, are you writing to this servant of Jesus or are you, are you writing to just generally servants of Jesus? We don’t really know.
Maybe [00:03:00] both. A lot of parallels, if you read this a lot of parallel, he thought, Hey, I read that in Matthew one time. You are right. Yeah. The parallels with Matthew are sometimes almost word for word, and that is worth a study in itself. And there are many wonderful things that we’ve seen last couple weeks here in the book of Lou, last couple of weeks.
Uh, Daniel was, was preaching on this and last week, if you remember, uh, do you remember sort of the point he was making about Father, how, how amazing this was that we can address the God and creator of the universe’s father? Yeah. That very intimate address, uh, the, the, uh, theologian. Um, Charles Welsh was, was in hospital in the early 1960s, and he related the story about how he was, you know, laying in his hospital bed and, and he, he was just so overwhelmed by this fact that he would start his prayer Father, [00:04:00] that’s about as far as he could get, you know, uh, that this idea that you could just come right up to the God of the universe and address him in this intimate way.
But this week’s reading, if you go and I don’t know, I don’t know if Grant does this, but I go online to see what are other people preaching about and get ideas, and I found out that they all preached on the same thing. Be ready. Yeah. And I can say to you, be ready and I’ll bet a sermon already kind of comes up in your head.
Yeah. You’re already thinking. Be ready as either be alert, be watchful, uh, all that kind of stuff. You know? I kind of think here Ooh, the 10 virgins. Yeah. I think I remember something about the 10 virgins. Yes. And you gotta be prepared. You gotta be watchful. So that’s the sermon. Yeah. And you already know it, so I’m not gonna do that one.
You have the wise manager. Again, it’s about doing the right thing. Even if your master is delayed. There’s a [00:05:00] piece here about Jesus brings peace. No, not peace. He brings a sword. You mean, you know they have, we have to have this idea of Jesus as sort of a shampoo model. I grew up with a picture of Jesus as a shampoo model.
His hair was beautiful. He was absolutely Aryan. You know, his fingers had his hands, had never had a day’s work in his life. That is not the Jesus that is out there. This, Jesus brings a sword, he makes a difference. You’ve got to choose a side.
But Luke is a Gentile, so I’m on, I’m all going through my antique shop here and I’m looking up all kinds of stuff. And you know what I found out? I, I found out that there’s a pretty good chance that Paul and Luke were besties. They were best buddies. If you go all the way to the end, Luke is there with Paul.
He’s one of the only, he’s [00:06:00] one of the ones that never deserted Paul through his whole ministry. He left Paul, uh, while he was in in Philippi for a little while. But, you know, Paul kind of laments this a couple of times in his writings. All in Asia have left me for good reasons and, and, and for bad. But Luke was there the whole time.
He remained with Paul to the end. Now I got stuck on that and then I got stuck on this word about treasure. I wanted to know more about this treasure. What is that all about? And can I combine those two and understand it even better? And it turns out I could. I wanted a clear definition. When you talk about treasure, what should we understand?
I asked my mother a stupid question when I was about 12 years old. I was into World War I stuff and, and I said, mom, when I get to heaven, you know, will, will, will, will, will I be able to get one of those German Pickle Gruber helmets up there? [00:07:00] And she said, well, I guess if that’s what makes you happy, you’ll probably get that in heaven.
I, I think she was just trying to get out of the conversation. But you know what, what is, what is Paul? The, the apostle to the Gentiles. So he’s coming right at us. And Paul’s buddy Luke, the gentile writer of the gospel. What do they have to tell us about this? What did they discuss on their journeys? Now if you notice something, and, and Grant very helpfully read this, when, when, uh, we, we, we didn’t, we didn’t talk about that.
He just came up and did it. So it’s, I’m, I’m, I’m grateful for that. But if you’ll notice, it says your heart goes to your treasure. And Daniel told me last week, he said, it came up to me and he said, but notice it doesn’t say the treasure goes to your heart. I thought, well what? What that does that mean?
Your heart goes to the treasure and I think it’s that your heart goes to the treasure that you perceive to be a [00:08:00] treasure. That treasure. You think, ah, there’s my treasure. Yeah. For example, if you are particularly successful as a lawyer. Yeah, and you go out and you win a couple cases and you win a few more, and then they invite you to come talk to the, to the legal students at the university.
And all of a sudden, you know, you, you, you’re, you’re more and more drawn to that because you’re getting a lot of treasure, getting attention. You’re, you’re, you’re building your, your knowledge. So it’s important to know what that treasure is. Now, if you look up the word here, it’s the sorrows. And for all you old people, you remember that you were trying to write that poem, uh, to, to your loved one, and you thought, what’s a different word for Lovely?
And so you would go to this big fat book called A Thesaurus, which is a treasury of words. Yeah. And you would find a, a different word. You would find the, the [00:09:00] correct word. It was a, it was all the words that you could imagine there Now. Matthew and Luke, why do they talk about it? They talk about your treasures in heaven.
Wasn’t clear enough for me. Talks about the treasures from a good heart. The treasure that a good heart. Well, that, that, that’s a, a treasure. What comes out of that? It talks about the treasure of an evil heart. I’m not really too sure about this and that we’re all pre crucifixion. It was all before the Death Barrel and Resurrection.
And this is an interesting division in scripture, so I thought, aha. Paul’s use of the word is a little different. Can see up here. This is if you want to nerd out, this is all the, this is all the Greek, um, this is all the Greek here and it’s all Matthew and Luke and treasures in heaven and treasures in heaven and treasures in heaven.
And you get down to. [00:10:00] Paul right down there at the bottom, and he’s using it in a slightly different way. He uses it in two Corinthians four, seven. He says, but we have this treasure, this treasure, we have this treasure in jars of clay or earth and vessels to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.
Ah, so this treasure is the gospel, the light of the gospel that gives this knowledge. It’s these, these. Clay pots are people. Yeah. ’cause we came from the earth. Yeah. And he’s saying this treasure, this treasure of the gospel, this treasure of who Christ is even. We can bring it as we are. And that’s gonna be important here as I close.
Colossians two, three. He says, my goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding. It in order that they may [00:11:00] know the mystery of God, namely Christ, Christ in whom are hidden, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And if you read through the gospels, you find out that not only does Jesus say I’m the way, the truth in the life, he is the embodiment of truth, but he’s also the embodiment of wisdom.
Wisdom is a person and I think that’s really significant. So. This explanation, it builds on, actually builds on, uh, Luke, uh, of chapters 11 and 12 and expands to be the wisdom and truth that is Christ. And Paul, if you notice Paul, he’s very often praying for us. He’s praying for those around him to what? To have riches, no, to grow in faith and knowledge is something about this wisdom and truth and knowledge and growing in the faith.
That is the treasure.[00:12:00]
But how will we really know what this wisdom is? What is the knowledge that we need to get? Well, it’s all in your Bible. The thing that should trump your TikTok feed or where you check six times a day how well your Bitcoin is doing. Yeah, that’s what, that’s what it should trump. It is a treasure beyond measure.
Something your heart should go to, if only you can recognize it again, back to your heart, goes to, to where the treasure is. And if you don’t recognize the treasure, if you haven’t gotten stuck into the treasure, if you haven’t understood what that treasure is, you, you might go to another treasure that you understand better.
Yeah. Like, like your career or, or getting money or having that car in your driveway that the neighbors ask, where does he get the money from?[00:13:00]
In closing, for those of you who don’t yet know Christ, your treasury can be filled with God’s treasure, the word and works of Jesus Christ. Even if you are a cracked clay pot, will you allow your heart to go to that treasure? Or you be content with the perishable treasure that we build up here in our lives.
For those of you who do follow Christ, recognize the great gift guard this treasure. Be, be a partner with God. I think it’s the partnership we have with God is maybe, maybe not talked about so much, but be that partner with God and say, well, how do I do that? And I would bring [00:14:00] out two Timothy two 15, which is up on your screen here.
Show yourself approved unto God. I didn’t know I need to show myself approved. I thought I was saved by grace through faith. Yes, absolutely. This is not about your salvation, but showing yourself approved. How do you do that? Be a workman. Yeah, a work. And so you gotta get the idea of a shovel and you get out there and you get stuck in, yeah, be a workman who is not ashamed.
And when we talk about apologetics, that’s kind of where I started apologetics. And someone comes up to you and says, what’s the gospel? Why do you choose to believe in the Bible? And you don’t really know, and you say something like this. That’s, this is not a case. P Peter also asked us to do this, but always be ready to give an argument and give it a reason for the hope that you have in Christ.
And part of this, you notice this Bible is. Frozen. And this is my, I, I, this is my idea. I have the idea that our Bibles are frozen and the only way we can defrost what is in there is if you open it and start to read it. Because it’s not gonna do anything. It’s not gonna jump off the shelf. It’s not, you can’t put it under your pillow and you know, so osmosis during the night, it’ll go into your head.
You’ve got to go in and this. Fantastic treasure that’s actually just frozen in our hands here. We’ve got to open it and read it, and in that way we can start to mine out the riches that are in it. Defrost your Bible when it comes to this treasure. Study it, understand it, tell the world, and finally spend generously.
Amen.