6th July 2011

Luke 1:1-4 – Introduction.

• “Investigate!”
• Luke introduces his story.
• He writes to Theophilus. We do not know for sure if he was a real person or if Theophilus meaning ‘lover of God’ was a generic name given to all the saints who would read his letter.
• At the beginning of this book, Luke tells us that many similar books have been written.
• Yet only four made it into our Bible.
• Why?
• There are many reasons for this but sticking to this passage let me suggest one in particular.

• “Since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning”.
• Those whose words stand the test of time are those do not accept things lightly. Luke it seemed [being a doctor] researched and checked out his facts.
• The bigger the questions we have, the deeper we will dig. The deeper we dig the stronger the foundation of our faith.
• This is the benefit of doubt that is driven by belief.
• I wrote about this on June 13^th.
• “In fact I think that [doubt] is its purpose; it is used to make us dig deeper and so discoverer truths we may have previously skipped over. At the end of the process, we can become more trusting than others who never had any doubt in the first place. But the process of doubt requires belief.”
• If we want our words to matter – then we need to allow ourselves to ask the difficult questions. We must investigate our faith. We must probe, consider and explore.
• It seems to me that those who act the most defensive of their faith are often those who seem the most insecure about their faith. They don’t like debate or conjecture. Maybe because they are worried about what they might find?
• “Blessed is he who does not see but believes” is not a call to blind faith but an encouragement to those like Luke – those who had seen, believed but investigated for the sake of passing their faith on to others.
• The digger the foundation, the bigger the building and the more people can be invited into it.
• Praying today that God will put questions in my mind and the desire to investigate all His promises.