“That You May Have Certainty”
Luke 1:1-4
River Community Church
28 September 2025
How do you live with certainty in an uncertain world? Is it even possible to have certainty?
We live in a postmodern age, where truth is in trouble. Fundamental creation order realities such as the distinction between male and female are denied or called into question.
Objective reality, objective moral norms and standards are upended or cast off as truth is relativized.
Our postmodern age champions doubt as a virtue. Doubt is characterized as virtuous because it signals perpetual open-mindedness.
Certainty is considered to be narrow-minded, arrogant, oppressive, or simplistic.
There is good news this morning.
Certainty is not arrogant; it is a gift of God. Certainty is a gift from God that is grounded in his Word.
By all means, bring your doubts and questions. But remember that the gift of God’s Word is the is only sufficient ground for certainty in a rapidly changing world.
That’s what we find in our passage this morning in the gospel of Luke. As a church, we’ve been reading through a chronological reading plan, and this week we are getting into the New Testament.
Last week, Terry gave an overview of the book of Malachi, which is the final prophetic book of the Bible, whose last prophetic message is fulfilled as Jesus identifies John the Baptist as the one coming in the spirit and power of Elijah preaching a message of repentance before the coming of the Lord (Mal 4:1–6; Luke 1:16–17).
The New Testament is not a clean break with the Old Testament, but a continuation of the story of the unfolding eternal plan of God to redeem a people for himself.
Our passage this morning is Luke 1:1–4. This is known as the prologue or preface to the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke is unique in comparison to Matthew, Mark, and John because it has a sequel—the book of Acts.
Luke-Acts is a two-volume work, but we should rightly understand it as a single unified literary work.
In this prologue, Luke tells us his purpose, which is to assure believers of the certainty of their faith.
Listen as I read, Luke 1:1–4.
1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Here’s the main idea of our passage in one sentence:
God’s Word nourishes the faith of his people to stand with certainty on the promises of God.
The sermon has three points summarized in three words.
- Fulfillment
- Reliable
- Certainty
1 Fulfillment
Luke begins his prologue by acknowledging that he is not the first person to write on this subject.
Luke is following the literary conventions of his day for writing works of history. It was common for writers to acknowledge what others have written on the same topic.
This, as no surprise, is still the custom of academic writing today. I just recently finished the first draft of my dissertation––and first chapter is almost entirely what we call a “literature review” or “survey of literature.” You introduce the topic, and then you have to demonstrate your familiarity with what has been written on that topic already. And then, you have to talk about what your unique contribution to that conversation.
That’s essentially what Luke is doing in vs. 1.
In this sense, we should understand Luke as a church historian—a Christian historian. He is giving us a credible and reliable historical account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Because Luke is following the literary customs of his day for writing history, we should assume that Luke is expecting a wide readership.
It’s important to see that Luke is not merely writing a narrative sequence of events about Jesus; he is providing an authoritative interpretation of those events.
You see, the Bible is God’s Word written. In theology, we refer to the Bible as a Word-Act revelation. This means that God reveals himself in words and in actions/events in history. The Bible is a written record of God’s mighty acts in history; and it also provides the authoritative interpretation of those mighty acts.
The Bible not only records the historical events of the flood, the exodus, the incarnation, the resurrection, etc. The Bible provides us with the authoritative interpretation of the significance of those events.
Luke, under the power of the Holy Spirit, writes a historical account of Jesus’ life, giving us God’s own interpretation of those events. How does Scripture itself interpret the events surrounding the life of Jesus?
Vs. 1: “things that have been accomplished among us.”
That’s how the ESV renders it. But here, I think the CSB captures the Greek better.
CSB: “the events that have been fulfilled among us.”
There’s the interpretation. They are not just events that have happened. They are events that are the fulfillment of something.
Luke, then, is interpreting the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of all the promises of God. He is giving us the interpretation to truly understand the significance of Jesus’ incarnation.
You must understand Jesus against the backdrop of the Old Testament. Here’s a helpful way of summarizing the relationship between the OT and NT: promises made, promises kept.[1]
The Bible is a single story; it is a rich tapestry with a single storyline about God’s plan to save and redeem a people centered on and finding fulfillment in the person of Christ. You cannot understand the NT apart from the OT.
Augustine said it like this: “The New is hidden in the Old; the Old is made plain in the New.”
Martin Luther similarly described the Old Testament as the “swaddling cloths” and manger in which Christ lies.
John Flavel (a Puritan) wrote that “the knowledge of Jesus Christ is the very marrow and kernel of all the scriptures.”
If you really want to understand who Jesus was, then you must understand that what God has promised is now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Paul says this explicitly in 2 Cor 1:20: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.”
The promises stretch all the way back to the Garden of Eden. God created the world and it was good. He created Adam and Eve in his image, to be his representatives on the earth and to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, and to have dominion over it.
But when they were tempted by Satan, they sinned by willfully rebelling against God and his commands and thereby brought sin and death into the world. As a result, all of us are born in sin—guilty and condemned.
But there is grace in the garden. The fall into sin is met immediately with a promise of grace.
We find this in Gen 3:15, where God curses the serpent. God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
This is known as the first promise of the gospel. There will be strife between humanity and Satan, until ultimately, one of Eve’s offspring will crush the head of the serpent though wounded himself.
That promise finds fulfillment ultimately in Jesus’ substitutionary death and resurrection.
Being truly God and truly man, Jesus died in our place on the cross, bearing the punishment that we deserve. Through his powerful resurrection, he crushes the head of the serpent by defeating the power of sin and death.
Here is the certainty of the promise of the gospel for the believer. If you believe in Christ by repenting of your sin and trusting in Christ for salvation, you will never taste death! (John 8:51)
Because of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, if you are in Christ, your sins are forgiven and you have eternal life.
If you’re not a believer in Jesus, you can get in on that promise! You can have certainty that you will never taste death.
Here’s how the writer of Hebrews describes the uncertainty of those who are not in Christ. He describes them as plagued by the fear of death. Hebrews 2:14–15 says that “through death he [Jesus] might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”
You can have certainty today, that you will not face death and judgement if you repent your sin and trust in Christ for forgiveness.
All the promises of God find their fulfillment in Christ.
When Luke writes about the things that have been fulfilled among us, he is understanding Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as God making good on his promise. These are events through which God is brining to completion. God is the one who planned his saving purposes in Christ; God is the one who brings it to fruition.
- Reliable.
The gospel is true, trustworthy, and reliable. God’s inspired Word gives us a trustworthy, reliable, historically grounded account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
In verse 3, Luke tells us what prompted him to write this account. If others have written about Jesus, why this one?
That’s what authors have to do with book proposals. Why another book on Churchill?
Luke is telling us what makes his account unique. There’s something about Luke’s account that’s distinctive—Luke’s account is inspired by the Holy Spirit.
At the beginning of verse 3, there’s the phrase “it seemed good to me.” This does not simply suggest that Luke woke up one day and had a eureka moment and decided to write a book.
That same phrase is used in the book of Acts to describe action prompted by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:22–28).[2] Three times in that passage, the phrase “it seemed good” appears. Through prayer, the Holy Spirit prompts the whole church and the apostles to choose men to accompany Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journey to Antioch.
When Luke uses that same phrase “it seemed good” for him to write his Gospel, he is not merely saying that he was acting on his own; that he had a wild hair.
Luke takes up the task of compiling this narrative about Jesus because he was prompted by the Holy Spirit to do so.
And the Holy Spirit didn’t stop there. The Spirit didn’t simply nudge him to write it and then left him to do the work on his own; no, the Spirit superintended the entire process of writing, so that Luke’s account is what God intended him to write. The Gospel of Luke is inspired by God, fully trustworthy and without error.
We can certainly talk about other factors that make Luke’s account historically reliable and credible. But it’s important to see that the reason Luke’s Gospel is ultimately reliable is because Luke’s account is the inspired, inerrant Word of God.
In verses 2–3, Luke tells us about his methods for compiling this narrative.
First, he goes to his primary sources. In academic writing, we make a distinction between primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources are books or literature about a particular subject. For example, a book about President John Adams is a secondary source. A primary source would be letters and writings from John Adams himself. The letters he and his wife Abigail wrote to one another are a rich treasure of primary sources.
Primary sources make for better scholarship. That’s a universal rule. The same is true for ancient writings.
Luke tells us in verse 2 that his narrative is informed by primary sources. Who were his primary sources? Eyewitnesses.
Luke’s gospel is informed by eyewitnesses and ministers of the word who were with Jesus from the beginning.
If you wanted to write credible history in the ancient world, you had to be an eyewitness yourself or have access to eyewitnesses. Luke is writing within the living memory of eyewitnesses. Luke’s account is directly handed down from eyewitness testimony.
Now, in the ancient world, eyewitnesses were the ultimate test of credibility and reliability for historical narrative.
In today’s world, there’s been a shift. Eyewitnesses are deemed unreliable…because of faulty memory and things like that.
But here, I think it’s important not to commit the sin of “chronological snobbery” as C.S. Lewis put it. Here’s what I mean. Today, eyewitness testimony is dismissed as unreliable, so the implication is that if those ancients thought eyewitness testimony was the ultimate standard of credibility, then they were just dumb.
That critique is too simplistic. There is great scholarship out there defending the credibility of eyewitness testimony in the ancient world.[3] If that’s a topic that interests you, I’d be happy to recommend resources.
Here’s how eyewitnesses function in the gospels. They serve as living sources, with whom readers could speak with and validate their story.
There is a wealth of good evangelical scholarship devoted to defending the reliability and integrity of the gospels. Serious minded Christians have devoted entire careers to answering the deep questions.
Deep questions require deep answers.
Youth in the congregation, don’t let your faith be shaken by a slick 15 second TikTok video of some claim against Christianity. If you have questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible or some of the Bible’s teachings, talk to your parents about them.
In addition to your parents, talk to your youth leaders or other pastors in the church.
For some of you, it’s simply enough to say “I may not have all the answers, but I know that really thoughtful Christians have sought to answer these, so I’m just going to trust God’s Word.”
I want you to know, that’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion. It doesn’t mean you are anti-intellectual. That is a gift of faith.
Certainty in our faith can be helped by outside resources other than the Bible. I praise God for that. But ultimately, the certainty of our faith rests on God’s Word itself as the Spirit gives us assurance to the trustworthiness of God’s Word. This is called the internal witness of the Spirit.
The Bible speaks of its own trustworthiness and the Spirit opens our eyes to see God’s Word for what it really is (2 Thess 2:13).
Look again at verse 3. Not only was Luke’s narrative drawn from the best sources available (eyewitnesses), he sought to write an “orderly account” as he “followed all things closely.”
He paid attention to the details. This is what we’d expect from a physician-historian (Col 4:14).
He consulted everything carefully and accurately and he wants to provide us with a coherent theological narrative about Jesus.
Friends, the Bible gives us a true, trustworthy, and reliable narrative of Jesus. The Bible is totally true and trustworthy. It’s a strong foundation to stake your life on.
I just heard the scholar Ryan T. Anderson recently say, “no one stakes their life on kumbaya.”
It’s a brilliant line. And he’s absolutely correct.
How is it possible that the disciples move from cowering in fear after Jesus’ crucifixion, to courageously willing to die for their faith?
It’s because the resurrection is true! No one stakes their life on kumbaya—they’re not going to die for their faith if they’re just making this up. These men died for their faith because the gospel is true. Jesus really did rise from the dead.
That is the best news in the world! The reality of Jesus’ resurrection actually provides the solution to the problem of death. He has decisively defeated sin and death itself. If you are in Christ, the promise of the gospel is that you will be raised with him in glory.
- Certainty
In verse 4, Luke tells Theophilus his purpose in writing: that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Who was Theophilus? Theophilius is a name that means friend of God. We don’t know much about him, but most likely he was a wealthy patron who commissioned this work.
Remember, Luke-Acts is a two-volume work, with each volume being written on rolls of papyri that could have been as long as 35 feet each.[4] This is an expensive project.
What else do know about him? He was a believer. He was someone who had received formal instruction in the faith. The word for “taught” in vs. 4 is where we get our word catechesis. Catechesis means instruction.
Historically, a catechism is a teaching tool, usually in question-and-answer format, that teaches basic fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. The purpose would be to memorize the question and answer. In the Reformation period, several of these would have a long version and a short version. The shorter versions would be for children.
Today, some of you may be familiar with Tim Keller’s New City Catechism. There’s a long version and children’s version; also an app. I know some of you incorporate this in your family devotions. I think it’s an excellent resource.
For decades, up until he died, J. I. Packer’s central concern was the recovery of catechesis in the evangelical church. Today, the evangelical church desperately needs a renewed focus on the core teachings of our faith.
Ligonier Ministries in partnership with Lifeway conducts research among evangelicals periodically and provides a report known as the State of Theology.
The 2025 State of Theology was recently released. 64% of evangelicals believe everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. 53% affirmed that “everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” This reflects great misunderstanding on the Bible’s teaching about sin. We all have a sin nature and are guilty before God (Ps 51:5; Rom 5:12–21; Eph 2:1–3).
None of that means humans are as wicked as possible, but it does mean that all of us are guilty before the holiness of God, and it’s only through the atoning work of Christ that we can be reconciled.
This highlights the importance of basic instruction in the teachings of our faith.
Now, Luke’s primary audience then is not the skeptic, but the believer. No doubt, the gospel is applicable to the skeptic or person who is curious about Christianity. If that’s you, I’m glad you’re here. To the believers in the room, know that Luke’s primary purpose in writing is that you would have certainty in your faith.
Luke’s purpose in writing the gospel is to nourish the believer’s confidence in the reliability of Christianity.
It’s not restricted to intellectual certainty. This is deeper than that. It certainly includes it; but it’s not just certainty at the intellectual level, but at the personal-experiential level as well.
And I want you to see that this is not something restricted to Luke’s Gospel. This is one of the larger purposes of Scripture itself. This is why God gives us his Word.
Romans 15:4 says, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
God gives us the gift of his Word to nourish and strengthen our faith.
God’s Word nourishes the faith of his people to stand with certainty on the promises of God.
As we’ve seen in our passage, all the promises of God find their fulfilment in Christ. God’s Word is a true, reliable, testimony about what God has done in Jesus Christ to save us from our sin.
This is why it’s so crucial that we as a church are reading through the Bible together. That’s why it’s so important that as a church we have a regular diet of God’s Word from the pulpit as we sit under the faithful preaching of God’s Word.
God’s Word is what we most need to nourish our faith.
There’s been a lot of discussion in public conversation about revival in our nation. I pray earnestly for revival. I want to see many people come to saving faith in Christ.
I remain convinced that true revival is always accompanied by a love for and a commitment to the authority of God’s Word.
I recently read a book about revival by Ian Murray. Two quotes bear this out.
“The decline and demise of churches is inevitable where loyalty to Christ fails to include commitment to the upholding of his words.”[5] That’s demonstrably true if you look at mainline Protestantism.
“For this reason, a merely nominal Christianity always shows itself by the absence of any thrill in the Word of God.”[6] Nominal means in Christian in name only. Nominal Christianity is characterized by a disinterest and carelessness about God’s word.
All of us from time to time may feel like our quiet time is dull or lifeless…That’s not what Murray is talking about here. He’s saying, fake Christianity doesn’t really care about God’s Word. It’s more energized by numbers, emotions, feelings, and things like that.
I pray for revival in this country. Faith that lasts is faith that is nourished by God’s Word.
Let me pray for us.
May we be people in whom the word of God dwells richly among us (Col 3:16), and whose lives are deeply saturated with your Word. Your Word is a strong foundation to build our lives upon. I ask that we would be a people wholly surrendered and obedient to your Word as we seek to make the gospel known to a world that desperately needs certainty and hope.
[1] Mark Dever, The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006); Mark Dever, The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005).
[2] David E. Garland, Luke, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 54.
[3] The best scholarly defense of eyewitness testimony is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
[4] Garland, Luke, 28.
[5] Ian Murray, Pentecost Today? The Biblical Basis for Understanding Revival (Banner of Truth, 1998), 59.
[6] Murray, Pentecost Today?, 87.