River Valley Church New Testament Soap Sprint Sample

Luke sets out to collect eyewitness accounts of the lives of Jesus and His followers for a patron named Theophilus. Ultimately, Luke compiles the information he gathered into a two-volume work, which has become the books of Luke and Acts. He begins by presenting the story of Jesus as a fulfillment of what Israel’s prophets had written in the Hebrew Scriptures about a divinely-promised savior for their nation. 

Strangely, Jesus isn’t born into an honored family as one would expect of Israel’s savior king. Rather, He’s born to a young virgin named Mary and quietly matures and grows in wisdom. He begins His public ministry as an adult after being baptized and subsequently spending 40 days in a Judean desert wilderness, experiencing and overcoming intense temptation. He begins performing powerful healings and miracles for the infirmed and outsiders, even upsetting Jewish religious codes and cultural norms by performing these miracles on the Sabbath day of rest. He says that God blesses the poor, powerless, and sorrowful, and tells people to radically “love their enemies.” 

Luke’s story begins to unveil more of who Jesus is. He shows Him claiming to have the power to forgive peoples’ sins, and performing incredible supernatural acts like calming storms, driving out evil spirits, healing chronic illness, and raising a girl from the dead. Even more unexpectedly from a traditional Jewish perspective of their savior king, He did all of this far away from Jerusalem, sometimes for the benefit of people who weren’t Jewish.