Okay, Luke’s gospel is where the kingdom rubber meets the worldly road. Literally. Jesus goes on the road; He’s on a mission; and He’s got a deadline.
If I drop out the duplicate references to the kingdom from Matthew and Mark, this is what is left for me to do and be a part of it:
- Preach the good news of it, like Jesus (Luke 4:43)
- Proclaim the good news of it, like Jesus (Luke 8:1)
- Preach the kingdom, like the disciples (Luke 9:2)
- Speak to others about it, like Jesus (Luke 9:11)
- Proclaim it, though grieving (Luke 9:60)
- Go preach, and don’t look back (Luke 9:62)
- Preach it when you’re not welcome (Luke 10:11)
- Seek it (Luke 12:31)
- Receive it (Luke 12:32)
- Preach it, like John (Luke 16:16)
- Recognize it within yourself / among yourselves (Luke 20:17-21)
- Accept it (Luke 22:29)
If I’m not mistaken, that’s more than the number of total citations I found in Mark (12-11). These are all unique to Luke; they don’t even count the duplicates.
Did you sense a recurrent theme? (What’s that “p” word again?)
Can there be any doubt that Luke is the “preach”-quel to Acts?
Blog In My Own Eye 
Our last quarter at church, we studied the Hard Sayings of Jesus….our teacher was one of my favorite elders and he always referred to the books as Luke-Acts. Every single time he referenced either of them. Tells me that they are linked.
Random unrelated question – could you send me the coding for how you make the date tag in the comments include both date and time? I’ve tried to make mine display that way and so far have come up empty. You can get my email through the link to my profile. Thank you!!!
Keith, this is convicting stuff. I’ve seen you drop by my blog a couple of times. Thanks for your comments. I’ll be stopping by your place more often, but just wanted to say “hello” and thanks for pushing me.
Preach-quel…that cracked me uo, Keith! Luke does rock my world, rock my heart. It’s such a people book, too.