Getting A Clear View

Kipp Campbell

You can always tell if you are riding in a car with a deer hunter, especially around dawn or dusk. He will be the one who has difficulty conversing at these times of day because he is busy scanning the edges of timber and field. He can’t help it. It is unconscious, but it is a fact nonetheless. I recall the first time I idly put my binoculars on a pile of stalks and weeds in the middle of a picked cornfield and that brown pile focused clearly into an antlered buck staring intently back at me. Cornrows have never looked the same to me since.

Getting a clear and focused view about things is important to us and sometimes not a little surprising when we suddenly see something we didn’t realize was there. The word of God is like that. Too many people think the Scriptures are boring and irrelevant to their lives because they’ve never really focused in. The Bible encourages us to look clearly at the facts however, and get the real picture of what is present. Nowhere is that more plain than where Luke describes the beginning of his writings in Luke 1:1-4. Notice 4 key terms that emphasize the clear focus of his scriptures and the confidence we can place in them.

In verse two he mentions that the ones who started this movement he writes were “eyewitnesses.” They were not idle gossips, talebearers, or rumormongers. This word is a term from the law courts. It has to do with a person who testifies, not to what he’s been told, but what he has seen with his own eyes. So Luke starts with the testimony of those who actually walked and talked with Jesus. This is quite a contrast with the modernist scholars (so called) of the last century who taken it upon themselves to critique the words of Christ. They are 1800 years too late.

In verse three Luke says that not only did he take the testimony of eyewitnesses, but then he investigated himself. He writes that he investigated everything. He investigated carefully. And, he investigated from the beginning. Luke’s credibility increases as we see the methodology behind his writing and his intention to present the truth of the matters about which he writes.

He also says that his presentation is in consecutive order. Thus Luke not only troubles himself to research the facts of the matter about which he writes, he determines to present them in an orderly fashion. Why would this be, except to make the truth easy to digest and understand? Our God is not a God of confusion. He wants men to examine and understand His revelation and thus come to an accurate knowledge of truth. The gospel is not a fathomless mystery. It is a presentation of evidence to be examined and believed.

Lastly, in verse four Luke refers to the things he writes and teaches as exact truth. The next time someone questions the Bible’s accuracy or derides the need to specifically follow God’s word this is the passage to remember. It is not a myth. It is not principles of generic good. The word of God is “exact truth” and it addresses the real needs of God’s creation in a clear, understandable way.

Don’t be taken in by the hazy ideas about truth that many people in the world possess. Take another look at the Bible and you may be surprised to find God’s word intently staring back directly at you.