We are in hour 15 of Learning the Bible in 24 Hours in which we're going to address the gospels. Obviously, we've finished Unit 1, the Old Testament. We've had an introduction into the New Testament, but now we're jumping right in and we're going to attempt in this hour to summarize the gospels.
That's in itself an ambitious task, but that's what we're up to. So the question is, we speak of the canon. That's from the Greek word meaning rule or basis. the canon, the Bible.
Is it complete? The Old Testament ended with unexplained ceremonies, all those sacrifices we went through. It also closes with unachieved purposes, the covenants and so on. We have in the Old Testament unappeased longings. And of course we have unfulfilled prophecies.
So the Old Testament by itself, the Tanakh, as our Jewish friends would call it, is incomplete in the sense that it leaves you dangling. It's incomplete. What completes it?
The New Testament. Jesus gave us the key in John 5 verse 39. He says, Jesus Himself said, search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of Me. I want you to remember when you read the New Testament, when they present Jesus Christ from the Scriptures, which happens several times in there, the Scriptures, the term there refers to the Old Testament. The New Testament is in formation at that time. So one of the challenges I put forth to you is can you Present Jesus Christ to your Jewish friends using just the Old Testament.
That's what they did all through the New Testament. Think about it. There's an incident that occurs in Luke 24 where Jesus greets them on the Emmaus road.
He gives them a seven mile Bible study. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But there's an interesting verse there.
He says, and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, Jesus expounded unto them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Notice that. Beginning at Moses.
Who wrote the Torah? Moses. It says so many times all through the scriptures we reviewed.
Beginning at Moses and the prophet, he, Jesus, expounded them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning who? Himself. And so that's what we're about.
Now in the Old Testament there are hundreds of prophecies. I thought we'd go over each one this evening. No, I'm kidding. Okay. Let's just make a quick glimpse at those Old Testament prophecies that are quoted just in the Gospels.
That he was to be of David's family. That he'd be born of a virgin. That he'd be born in Bethlehem. That he would sojourn in Egypt.
He would live in Galilee, in fact in Nazareth. He would be announced by an Elijah-like herald that would occasion the massacre of the Bethlehem's children that would proclaim a jubilee to the world. His mission would include the Gentiles. His ministry would be one of healing. He would teach through parables.
And there are lots of others of course too. These are the ones that are directly quoted as fulfilled in the New Testament text. And then there's a whole bunch of just the last week.
You make a triumphal entry. entry in Jerusalem, betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of silver, be smitten like a smitten shepherd. He would be given vinegar and gall.
They would cast lots for his garments. His side would be pierced. Not a bone would be broken. He would die among the malefactors.
His dying words were foretold. He would be buried by a rich man. He'd rise from the dead on the third day.
And the resurrection would be followed by the destruction of Jerusalem. All these things are mentioned in the Old Testament and expressly... indicated as fulfilled in the New.
And the references are all there. They'll be in your notes. So the New Testament consists, of course, just like the Old Testament open, it has five historical books. Just like we have the Torah, the five books of Moses. In the New Testament we have the four Gospels and Luke.
Luke volume 2. Luke is in two volumes. Luke and Acts, which is like Luke 1 and Luke 2, if you will. But five books. Then we have the interpretation of those historical books in 21 interpretive letters. The formal term is epistle, just a word for letters.
Paul's epistles are 14 of them if I count the book of Hebrews, which I do. Some scholars feel that Paul may not have written the book of Hebrews because it's unsigned, but there's some reasons for it being unsigned. We'll deal with that when we get there. But 14 I'll call Paulian epistles and seven, for lack of another word, I'll call the Hebrew Christian epistles written by Jews to Jews and so forth. And then of course the final book, the Apocalypse, the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Notice that word is singular. It's not revelations plural. whenever I hear someone say that I know they haven't been to any of our Bible studies it's singular and we'll obviously deal with that especially when we get there and so okay it's interesting ...that the Old Testament presents Jesus Christ in prophecy. The Gospels will present Jesus Christ in history, as it actually happened. The book of Acts will present Jesus Christ in the early church.
And the epistles will express Christ in the experience. And the apocalypse, of course, in His coming glory. So the Old Testament says, in effect, behold, He comes. The Gospel says, behold, He dies.
And yet Acts says, behold, he lives. And the epistles say, behold, he saves. And of course, behold, he reigns. So that's a snapshot of what we're up against, of how he shall glorify me. The Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus Christ.
Taking another snapshot of the New Testament another way, we've got the historical books, the four Gospels and Acts. We have then, following that, the epistles from Romans to Philemon. And following those we have the Hebrew epistles from Hebrews through Jude, and then of course the prophetic books. And we're going to focus right now, of course, on the gospels. We'll take these four gospels.
We'll talk about each one, what makes them distinctive, and then we'll try to summarize what they all say in a singular geographically based profile. And that will give you a quick exposure to it. One of the things that you want to be sensitive to is the gospels are designed.
They're designed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. First of all, Matthew being a Jew presents Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Mark presents Jesus Christ in his role as the suffering servant.
Luke, being a doctor, he emphasizes Jesus Christ as the Son of Man. And John presents Jesus Christ. as the Son of God. And what's interesting, once you recognize that, you'll discover that every detail of the Gospels support that mission in some surprising ways. For example, the genealogies.
Matthew, being a Jew and presenting Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Mashiach Nagid, starts his genealogy at Abraham. Abraham called, in a sense, as the first Jew, if you will. And he gives the legal line of...
Jesus'genealogy. Mark presenting a servant, we don't worry about the pedigree of servants. So he's the only one that does not have a genealogy in it.
Luke, because he's presenting Jesus as the Son of Man, he starts the bloodline from Adam and he takes it through and we'll examine that more closely here in a little bit. John has a genealogy but most people don't recognize it. The first three verses of the Gospel of John are in a sense the genealogy of the pre-existent one, God Himself. Now one of the things we talked about when we were in Jeremiah is the blood curse that was pronounced on the royal line. By the time you get to Jeconiah, God has really had it with the line of...
kings and Jeconiah to him. He said, Thus saith the Lord, write this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting upon the throne of David and ruling anymore in Judah. Well not only was Jeconiah the last of the kings before the Babylonian captivity, but this is a blood curse.
This is a curse on the royal line. And I should point out that Jeconiah and Jehoiachin and Coniah, all names for the same guy. But I always visualize, just by way of review, I always visualize when I read this that there must have been a celebration in the councils of Satan. Because from Satan's point of view, it would seem that God has defeated his own plan, shot himself in the foot, as we might say.
Because the Messiah was to come from the line of David. But here we have a blood curse on the line of David. How can that be?
And as you ponder that apparent enigma, I always visualize God turning to the angel and saying, Watch this one, okay? So, the genealogies, okay? We have Matthew takes his genealogies.
genealogy from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and so right on down through to David. Straightforward enough. Luke, being a doctor and oriented to Christ's humanity, the Son of Man, he starts his genealogy, in effect, from Adam.
And from Adam to Noah, we reviewed when we went through Genesis 5, remember those 10. And from Noah on to Abraham, he fills it in with Shem, all the rest of them, anyway. And so when... When Luke gets to Abraham, down through David, obviously, Luke and Matthew are identical if you examine them carefully.
But that takes us to David. Get to the house of David. Matthew takes his genealogy through the first surviving son of Bathsheba and down through Jehoiachin down to Joseph. Now Jehoiachin is where the blood curse is announced on the bloodline of Jehoiachin. You come down through that bloodline, you come to Joseph, the legal father of Jesus Christ.
But he was not the blood father of Jesus Christ, therefore the curse that was pronounced in Jehoiachin or Jehoiachin does not descend to Joseph. In contrast to that, Luke does a different thing. When he gets to David, he takes a left turn.
He doesn't go through Solomon. He goes through a second surviving son of Bathsheba, Nathan, and down through ultimately to Heli, the father of Mary. And we could go through some of the details in this. There's a number of them that are blotted out because of third and fourth generation issues.
And I won't go through all of the technicalities. They'll be in the notes that accompany this. But the main point is what most people have not done their homework about the daughters of Zelophehad in the Tanakh.
In the Torah there's an exception on the rules of inheritance. Zelophehad had five daughters, no sons. He went to Moses and asked for a special dispensation.
Moses went to prayer to the Lord. The Lord says, give it to him. So in Numbers 27, we have this recorded that if he has no sons and the daughters marry within the tribe, they will inherit. That's the basic idea here. When you get to the days of Joshua, these five daughters come to Joshua and say, hey, check the record.
We got an exception. He says, indeed they do. So in Joshua 17, this is recorded. What happened when this occurred was a that the father of the bride adopted the husband as his own son.
And so the son-in-law became a legal son of the father of the bride. Do you follow me? To make the inheritance. That occurs in Ezra 2. Nehemiah 7, Numbers 32 and other places.
And so what happens, what you discover is all this anticipates the lineage of Jesus Christ. This exception in the Torah anticipates our Messiah. See, Joseph was, in addition to being the son of his father, he's also the son-in-law of Heli, Mary's father.
And that's so stated in Luke chapter 3 verse 23. Many people don't notice it because in the Greek the word is nomizo, which means reckoned as by law. In other words, he's the son-in-law. But that way the inheritance flows to Jesus Christ through Mary. Thus end running, if you will, the curse that was pronounced in Jeconiah.
I mention this, it's important in a Messianic sense, but it also is a lesson to realize that every detail in the Scripture, Old and New Testament, is there deliberately by design. And as you discover that, when you find what appears to be an extraneous detail, if you'll be diligent and dig into that, you'll discover it's relevant and it almost always will point, of course, to Jesus Christ. So that's the virgin birth. It was hinted at in the Garden of Eden, the seed of the woman in Genesis 3.15 we notice. It was prophesied in Isaiah, in Isaiah 7.14, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.
And the end run of the blood curse in Jeconiah. So there's three allusions, if you will. to support the virgin birth issue.
When you get to John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glories that only have we gotten the Father, full of grace and truth. So we see that same title, the Word, that John uses the Word of God as his title of Jesus Christ in the opening of it all through his gospel. But he also used it in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 19 we see, I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse and he that sat on him was called faithful and true and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. That's the title of Jesus Christ. One of the most interesting definitions for truth is when the word and the deed become one.
And Jesus Christ's incarnation is a fulfillment of all those Old Testament allusions to the Redeemer, the Messiah, the Savior that would come. Well, so we... that's one of the design of the Gospels. The Matthew being... presenting Jesus Christ to the Messiah, emphasized the one Jesus said.
Matthew took shorthand. We know that because he was a tax collector. It was a job requirement to have stenographic skills. So he was able to write shorthand and that's one reason Matthew's Gospel is the longest because he has the discourses written down verbatim. If you take the...
Discourse is out. Mark is longer than Matthew. Matthew is a larger gospel because the discourses are verbatim.
Mark emphasizes his servanthood. And so he emphasizes what Jesus did. Now he's actually the secretary for Peter. And Peter was an action guy. Peter, we all know, we all love Peter.
He was ready, fire, aim kind of guy, you know. But the only time he took his foot, the only time he changed feet was when he took his foot out of his mouth, right? Anyway, but that was Peter in the Gospel period.
After in Acts on, you see him filled by the Holy Spirit. It's astonishing to see the difference in articulation. We see Peter in the Gospel period. He's clumsy.
He's always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. From Acts chapter 2 on, filled by the Spirit, you look at his sermons. Acts chapter 2, his first sermon. Acts chapter 3, his second sermon. They are astonishingly elegant, well organized to the point.
You see the Spirit at work. Well Luke of course emphasizing that his humanity, emphasized what Jesus felt. And John of course emphasizes who Jesus really was. So Matthew what Jesus said, Mark what he did, Luke what he felt, John who he really was.
Matthew's writing to the Jew, Mark to the Roman, Luke to the Greek, John to the church. Different focus, different emphasis. The first miracle. Being a very Jewish thing, the lepers cleansed because to a Jew the leprosy was an emblem of sin.
Both the Gentile emphasis, both Roman and Greek, a demon was expelled in Mark and a demon expelled in Luke. These are the first miracles. John picks for his first miracle to record the water turning to wine, a mystical thing. And emphasizing the deity of Christ in a different way altogether.
The last thing, Matthew the Jewish Gospel. in a sense, ends as a Jew would focus on the resurrection. Very focused on that.
Mark emphasizes the ascension. Luke emphasizes the promise of the Spirit and he in a sense is setting up his sequel for Luke volume 2, the book of Acts. The giving of the Spirit in the early church. John closes with the promise of the return of Christ and that sets up his sequel.
What's John's sequel? The book of Revelation. So you begin to recognize the evidence of design all through here.
Now remember when we were in Numbers we talked about the camp of Israel. The east... west, south and north, how they had different ensigns. On the east was the Judah, on the west was Ephraim, and the south was Reuben, and north was the...
these were the camps. Each camp of three tribes. And the...
of Judah the... The emblem was the lion and on the east was the ox, on the south was the man and the north was the eagle, if you recall. And how interesting it is that these four faces are the four faces of the cherubim and it's... they're also emblematic, if you will, of the four gospels. Lion of the tribe of Judah, the ox being the emblem of service, the emphasis on Mark.
Man being... son of man being Luke's emphasis and the eagle being emblematic, at least, of John. Very interesting. And there's also a different style because Matthew focuses on the groupings. Mark is like a snapshot.
It's like a shooting script and that was very characteristic of Peter's style anyway. And Luke is of course narrative, a very, very well documented narrative, easily checked out. And of course John is the mystical one as we'll notice as we get into the details.
But there's some anticipative pre-announcements that we should be sensitive to. In the upper room, Jesus says to his disciples, but the comforter which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father shall send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said to you. Here's a statement by Jesus Christ that anticipates and authenticates what they did in advance, that the Holy Spirit will be the one doing this. And he will...
bring all things to their recall. And so we believe that the four gospels, in fact the whole New Testament, very supernaturally super intended in its detail. Something else that Jesus says about the Holy Spirit is He says, Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. For He shall not speak of Himself, strange, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak and He will show you.
you things to come. Very interesting remark, the Holy Spirit will not speak of Himself. Now you may recall as you went through the Old Testament, we noticed several times there was a type, a typological anticipation in which the Holy Spirit was always represented by an unnamed servant.
We saw that in Genesis 24. When Eliezer is to gather a bride for Isaac, we saw that in the book of Ruth, that an unnamed servant introduces Ruth to Boaz. It's interesting, wherever we see the typological application, the Holy Spirit's always unnamed. Even when we know by doing some research what his name was. His name was Eliezer, the servant there, which means comforter. So it's interesting how consistent that is.
He doesn't speak of himself. He's sort of almost hiding in those... ...allusions. So we have the coming one, sometimes called the second Adam. He's a prophet like Moses.
He's a priest like Melchizedek. He's a champion like Joshua. He's an offering like Isaac. He's a king like David.
He's a wise counselor like Solomon. He's beloved, then rejected, then exalted son like Joseph. So we see the coming one anticipated even in a broad typological sense in the main players in the Old Testament.
And there are rhetorical devices like this that are delivered by the Holy Spirit. Remember when we were in Hosea, this is all a little bit of review here, where God God says through Hosea, I have also spoken by the prophets. I have multiplied visions and used similitudes by the ministry of the prophets. And indeed we've explored some of those. Allegories, analogies, metaphors, similes, similitudes, types.
There are over 200 Different kinds of devices in the Bible. And we've catalogued all of those and given you references and examples in the appendix to our book on the codes and so forth. And so, now there are types.
We looked at types. the covenants of type, the sacrifice of the brazen altar, the mercy seat in the sanctuary, the water from the rock, the manna from the sky, the brazen serpent lifted up. We've talked about all of these in the Old Testament as types. The Passover lamb is in a sense the ultimate one and the scapegoat.
These are all types from the Old Testament. Testament. Those are types. That's one form. There's metaphors.
The lion of the tribe of Judah is a metaphor. The good shepherd. The lily of the valley. The root out of a dry ground.
The fruitful branch. He had no form or commonness, yet he's altogether lovely. So we see these enigmatic allusions in a metaphoric sense.
Well moving on, we also notice that there's a lot of healings on the Sabbath. The demoniac in Capernaum, Peter's mother-in-law is raised. He cast out demons on a Sunday. They're not all done on Shabbat.
The impotent man in Jerusalem, the man with the withered hand, the woman bowed together, man with dropsy, man born blind. Many of these are done on... the ones that are recorded... they're probably done on many days, but the ones on the Sabbath are recorded, especially because that raises, of course, these tensions.
Between the leadership at that time and our Lord Himself. Making the point, first of all, that He's the Lord of the Sabbath Himself in any case, but also He points out that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And that is one of the main themes that causes a lot of tension. But let's start focusing on the four Gospels, how they're specific. The Gospel of Matthew, of course, emphasized that Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
In the introduction we have the genealogy, the baptism, the temptations and so forth. Then Matthew focuses on primarily the Galilean ministry up north, up at Nazareth and around the Sea of Galilee and so forth. We'll find that it's a tenfold message.
There are ten miracles and there's ten rejections. Again this tenfold governmental emphasis. Matthew does pick up the climax of the ministry down in Judea, where he presents, when Jesus presents himself as a king.
And of course, we have the crucifixion and the resurrection in the Gospel of Matthew ending in its 28 chapters to give you an overview of that. this thing. Now, it's useful to understand the interval between the Testaments. In about 63 BC Pompey conquers Judea, the rise of the Roman Empire.
Herod Antipater is an Edomite. He's appointed to the throne of Rome. appointed the king of Judea. And I should mention something.
The Edomites obviously, as you may recall from Obadiah and the rest, were the traditional enemies of Israel. Herod was not Jewish. He was an...
not only was he not Jewish, he was ethnically linked to the traditional enemies of Israel. In 40 BC, the Parthian Empire, which is a rival to Rome, to the east. East, the vestige of the old Persian Empire, the Parthians conquered Judea.
And it's interesting that the Romans in 33 years later, regained Judea. Herod the Great succeeds Herod Antipater. And so in 31 BC, six years later, we have the Battle of Actium. That's where Octavian defeats Mark Anthony and the Republic becomes an empire.
He adopts the name Augustus Caesar in 31 BC. Now, This leads us to this issue of the Magi. You see, you need to understand that Judea was a buffer province between Rome and the rival Parthians to the east.
The Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire in that region were rivals. Rome grows later to be much, much larger, but at this stage they are rival empires struggling over this buffer state called Judea. It's not even...
Even though Herod was king, he was in Rome. It was too dangerous to be in Judea. See the Magi now in the Parthian Empire were the hereditary priesthood that was responsible for establishing the king. One of the jobs the priests had was to pick the next king. So the Magi were not kings, but they were very, very part...
that's where we get the term magistrate. They were a combination of religious and administrative role. They're hereditary.
They were always Medes in that area, or what we would call today Kurds. When the Magi come to Jerusalem, by this time it's deemed safe enough that Herod is in Jerusalem. But when the Magi show up, it isn't three guys riding camels as we now embody in our traditions. There was a group of... we always think there's three because there are three gifts that show up.
But that doesn't mean there are three. There might have been more. But more importantly, they would be... they would enjoy a military escort.
That's why the whole city is in an uproar because the Magi have arrived. They don't know why. Herod is really nervous. He doesn't know that whether, he doesn't know whether or not they're there to precipitate some kind of an incident between the Parthians and Rome. And when they arrive there and he receives the emissary there, the emissary says, where is he that's born King of the Jews?
That's a put down. Herod is not Jewish. He's appointed by Rome. These people want to know who's the one that's born to be king.
That shakes Herod up. There's a rival on the scene. He has the scribes check.
They check Mike. and find out it's supposed to be Bethlehem and they give thanks and they go over to Bethlehem to worship him. He shook up. As soon as they're out of town, he starts making preparations. He has all the Jewish children, two years old and younger, slaughtered because he assumes that he's going to nail that rival before it gets serious.
But the whole picture of the Magi is not understood because most people don't realize that was a cabal that was established, we believe, by Daniel. And Daniel was put in charge of the Magi five centuries earlier. And when Daniel is put in charge, a Jew, the Persian Empire puts a Jew in charge of that hereditary priesthood, you can imagine how that went over. They set up Daniel 6, the lion's den thing that we all know about.
So but apparently Daniel entrusted to a subgroup that he could trust a prophecy that they would know when the Messiah was coming. And people try to make the star that they're following something astronomical. No, I don't believe so.
I believe it was supernatural. That's why they were following it. In fact, it leads them to where they're going. they're supposed to go. And so people...
you see planetarium shows try to guess, you know, what star they were following. That misses the point. And so anyway, let's move on here.
Now in Matthew, now we do have that record which is important at the Christmas time and so forth. But we have the Sermon on the Mount which gives moral standards and motives. Critical, critical discourse. We also have this confidential discourse on the second coming of Christ. Christ, where four disciples come to Jesus for a private briefing.
And Matthew 24 and 25 record what they... it happened to occur on the Mount of Olives, so we call it the Olivet Discourse. And then we have this fascinating series of parables in Matthew 13, where Jesus gives seven parables that describe that which was not revealed in the Old Testament. People miss that. And what was not revealed in the Old Testament, Paul tells us in Ephesians 3, was the church.
And so we have this strange kingdom parable. parables in Matthew 13. We have the sower and the four soils, the tares and the wheat, the mustard seed, the woman and the leaven, the treasure and the field, the pearl of great price and these are... and then the dragnet. These are the seven kingdom parables.
And why does Jesus speak in parables? The disciples came in that chapter, verses 10 and 11. He says the disciples came and said unto him, why speakest thou to them in parables? He answered and said unto him, because it is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. but to them it is not given. Let's understand this.
Most of us presume, and many commentaries encourage the idea that Jesus spoke in parables to make certain things clear. They make it clear to those that have the Spirit. They're actually designed so that only His own will understand.
understand them. They're designed... these are given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. Because he goes on and he quotes from Isaiah actually, for whosoever hath to him shall be given and he shall have no more abundance, but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore I speak to them in parables because they seeing not, they seeing see not and hearing they hear not, neither do they hear.
do they understand. And that's actually an echo of what's in Isaiah chapter 6 and so on. In other words, what happens at the end, before Matthew 13, the last few verses of Matthew chapter 12 is where they confront him and they accuse him of doing his miracles by Satan. And that causes a shutdown, a whole different...
style of ministry. From that time on, from the end of Matthew chapter 12 on, Jesus only speaks publicly in terms of parables because he's intending those truths to be constrained, confined to his disciples. And he gives us these interesting seven parables in Matthew 13. The sower and the four souls, the tares and the wheat, the mustard seed, the woman of the eleven.
And we want to, in this brief survey, we don't have time to develop all these except to point out that they are internally consistent. The idioms continue throughout to be consistent. What's interesting is when we get to the book of Revelation, we have seven churches, seven letters to seven churches, where the same person, Jesus Christ, who gave the seed, the seven parables to disciples dictates seven letters to seven churches.
And we'll discover when we... we'll look at that in depth when we get to Revelation, but we'll discover that they parallel these four... these seven churches parallel the seven kingdom parables in detail. Well, let's move on to the Gospel of Mark. Mark has no nativity narrative or genealogy because he's dealing with a servanthood.
His is longer than Matthew if you exclude the discourses. It's a graphic perspective. perspective of an eyewitness.
There's names, there's times, there's numbers, location. When he sits on the grass it's green grass and so forth. And so you'll discover the details are there like a shooting script.
He is Peter's amanuensis, or what we might call a secretary or a stographer. And there's evidence that it was translated from the Aramaic. And so the gospel, again it's the four, there are four voices that are announced.
There's the mighty works, the twelve are selected and sent. And then he focuses on the coming climax. Acts, the transfiguration, the final week and so forth. And then he has a finale of the resurrection and the ascension in his gospel. Gospel of Luke, again he was a doctor.
It's the most complete narrative. There are over 20 miracles, six of which you're unique to Luke's gospel. There are 23 parables in Luke, 18 of them unique to Luke. So Luke is broader in scope, in a sense, than the others, in a sense of speaking. He is an authenticated historian and writer.
Sir William Ramsey, a skeptic, set out to discredit Luke and did his research and was astounded to discover, he was just astonished to discover that Luke had done his homework. And the details of Luke prove out to be confirmable in history. And so Luke emerges very much vindicated and Ramsey becomes a believer.
He's a Gentile, he's a physician, and probably a slave as was common in those days. And Luke is in a sense in two volumes. Volume one is the gospel.
possible, Luke 1 I'll call it, and Luke 2 is what we call the book of Acts. He apparently got sponsored by a very high official who's called here Theophilus. That could be a title, it might be his name.
He obviously is the one that has made it possible for Luke to accompany Paul in the document at all. There are scholars that believe, and there's support for this view, that the documents of Luke are the required documents to Caesar in an appeal. When someone appealed to Caesar as Paul's son, he was the one that appealed to Caesar.
Paul did, the law required that all the history precede him to Rome of all the background. And that was an expensive thing to do in those days and Luke's doing it. If you study Luke carefully from that point of view, it seems to be supportive.
You'll notice in Luke there's always an emphasis when there's an uprising that was the Jews that stirred up the uprising. You'll also notice then in Luke the centurions are always good guys. There's always... if you profile centurions as they show up in Luke, they are a great bunch of guys. So, he's the beloved physician.
There is more mention of healing in Luke than in Matthew and Mark put together. There are more technical terms in Luke than in the writings of Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician. More medical terms. Hippocrates, the father, he was known as the father of medicine.
And included, interestingly, are obstetrical details of the nativity. And he also probably was along with Paul. Paul to treat Paul's eye problem. Paul apparently had an ophthalmic malady of some kind.
And that may be part of Luke's support and service to Paul. So and you know it's interesting. I love what Harry Einstein said of Luke. He says, the religion of Israel could produce only a Pharisee.
The power of Rome could only produce a Caesar. The philosophy of Greece could only produce an Alexander, who in a sense was an infinite heart. It was to this Greek mind that Luke wrote, he presents Jesus Christ as the perfect man, the universal man, and the very person the Greeks were looking for.
I think that's provocative. Very interesting. Very interesting. It's astonishing to me to see how many people publishing books in the public marketplace have no concept of who Jesus Christ is. They have no, people who present themselves as experts in the Bible or whatever have no grasp.
of who he is. And this is a question of doing your homework. Luke of course focuses on the incarnation. There are two annunciations. There are two elect mothers and there's two anticipated births.
Luke also focuses on the Galilean ministries. the teachings, the miracles, and the twelve being sent. He also focused on the journey towards Jerusalem. And he talks about the heir being executed, presented riding a donkey, Passover, Gethsemane, and Golgotha, and so forth. He focused on the seven crises of Christ.
His birth of course, His baptism, His temptation, His transfiguration, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and His ascension. This is the analysis by G. Campbell Morgan. And I think it's very valid.
Seven major milestones in the... the ministry of Christ. The Gospel of John.
He has a prologue, The Word Became Flesh and Dwelled Among Us. And John talks about the public ministry to the Jews, the signs, the declarations, and the conflicts. Then he talks about his private ministry to his own people, to his own disciples, as John would.
John was on the inside, wasn't he? The presages, the anticipations, the departure, the coming of the Spirit. And then he focused on the tragedy and the triumph, the apprehension, the prosecution, the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection. It's interesting.
It's interesting to realize that virtually more than a half of the book is on the last week of Christ's ministry. John gives us a lot of that detail. And there are eight miracles that make up the Gospel of John. Turning the water to the sea, Water and wine is the first one. What a strange one.
And you really won't understand that unless you understand what water was used. It wasn't just some handy water that happened to be in the household where this wedding was taking place. It was the water of purification.
Cana is up in the north. What they had for ritual purposes down in Jerusalem, they used the ashes of the red heifer to create water of purification. And that was then in the presence of the priests that were in the various Levitical cities and wherever.
And so it was the water of purification. that were in these jars that they used. It also was not public.
The only people who knew what was going on were the disciples. But he was demonstrating to the disciples by that miracle, turning that water into wine, that he was the Lord of the Torah. Hora, Lord of the Bible, Lord of the...
that he was the Lord. That would be very significant to a Jewish mind. It wasn't just water and wine.
It was that water that he would presume to use. He also healed the nobleman's son, the curing of the Bethesda paralytic. He fed the 5,000.
Then he walked on the water. Gave sight to the blind man, the raising of Lazarus, and the draft of the fishes. These are the main... Each one of these give rise to an I Am statement. I'll come to this.
One of the... key verses in the Gospel of John. Now it's obviously John has the most famous verse of all in chapter 3. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever will even should not perish but will have everlasting life.
Probably the most quoted verse in the entire Bible that comes out of John. But there's another verse that I think is also a very key verse to understand and that's John chapter 1 verse 11 and 12. He came unto His own. But his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become what? The sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. When we were in Genesis chapter... In chapter 6 we made a big point of the fact that the B'nai Ha'Helohim phrase in the Old Testament always refers to a direct creation of God. And in the Old Testament it's generally, it's used, except in one place, it's used of angels.
The other one that it... The only other thing that's a direct creation of God is Adam. Adam was a direct creation of God. You and I are not.
We're sons of Adam. There's a difference. And unless we're born again, see, to them who received Jesus Christ, to them gave He the power to become a direct creation of God, a son of God.
That's the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. But that term is used very precisely that way. So you and I are not sons of God unless we're regenerated. Until then we're a son of Adam.
Adam was a son of God, but he blew it. You and I are not sons of God. and I are sons of Adam unless we receive Jesus Christ in which there's a second experience.
That's what Jesus is going to deal with when he meets with Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Very key concept here. How many did receive him? See that's introduced in John.
He goes on then to talk about eight people that receive him. Peter and Nathaniel and those guys will occur before the end of that chapter. Nicodemus emerges as a key player in chapter 3. The woman at the well in chapter 4, Sychar 1. The man born blind in chapter 9. Mary and Martha at Bethany in chapter 11. The 11 apostles are dealt with in 13 and 14. Mary Magdalene in chapter 20 and then Peter in chapter 21. So we find this progression of the 8 that did receive in various ways, under various circumstances, each with its own lessons to be learned as you investigate it, did receive him. In retrospect, see Matthew presents the promised one.
He says the promised one is here. See his credentials. Matthew emphasized his credentials, his genealogy legally and all of that.
Mark says this is how he worked. See his power. Mark emphasized his credentials. the power of Jesus Christ.
Luke, this is what he was like. See his nature, his humanity, how he felt, he wept, and so forth. John, this is who he really was. See his Godship.
Each one has its... If you're seeing Jesus Christ... and quadraphonic, if you will.
Four different views, four different emphasis. There's a confrontation and I get... going through, trying to pick a few highlights each one is a tough thing because there's so many precious things, but I really have to include John chapter 8 because they're really at it.
There's a very, very nasty exchange between the Pharisees and Jesus Christ and they call Him a bastard. That's not the way it's translated in the King James. We are not sons of fornication.
See they're alluding to the fact that Mary was, that he was illegitimate. It was the illusion. And so he's, I'll tell you a little bit about your background. And he goes on.
It is an incredible confrontation. But as your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, he saw it and was glad. That shakes him up. Then said the Jews unto him.
The word, when John used the word Jews, he's alluding to the leadership of the Jews. Not Jews in general, but he's speaking to the leadership that was speaking. And that's been a subject of misunderstanding through the centuries.
Then said the Jews unto him, thou art not yet 50 years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, I love this, verily what I said unto you before, Abraham was, I am. Now as a Gentile, we don't pick up on that because we don't realize what he's saying. They understood what he was saying. He claimed to be the voice in the burning bush in Exodus 4. See, whenever we have a chance of missing something, the Pharisees...
He's come to our rescue. They took up stones to cast at Him. Why? Because they understood He was claiming to be God.
He claimed to be the voice of the burning bush. They took up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid Himself, went out of the temple, and going through the midst of them, and so passed by. What does that mean?
I have no idea. Somehow He just slipped through. And I think that's interesting.
But John 8, you want to... I am that I am. He said... When Moses asked God, who shall I say?
Who shall I say sent me? I am that I am. The Ichyacha Sher Ichyach phrase.
Jesus lays claim to that. He says, I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world.
I am the door of the sheep. Anyway, it comes in by me as a thief and a robber. I am the good shepherd.
I am the resurrection of life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. And I am the true vine.
Now it's interesting that Each... there are a series of miracles. Each miracle gives rise to a discourse. Each discourse includes an I AM statement. And you begin to realize that John's gospel is very, very intricately organized.
And it's worth understanding that. The tabernacle furniture, when we went through that back in Exodus, each one refers to Jesus Christ. The brazen altar, the brazen laver, the table of showbread, the lampstand, the altar of incense, the golden altar that is, the ark of the coven, the mercy seat.
And they each speak of an aspect of Jesus Christ's ministry. The atonement, the brazen altar, the regeneration of the laver, the living bread, the table of showbread, the light of the world from the lampstand or the menorah that's there. The altar of incense, the intercession, the incense is the prayers of the saints.
The Ark of the Covenant, the covenant access. Notice that the mercy seat is a separate element of furniture, even though we look at it as the lid of the Ark of the Covenant. It's a separate piece. It's made differently. The Ark is made out of wood covered with gold.
The mercy seat is solid hammered gold. And that speaks of the propitiation. And as you know from some of our materials, there is a possibility that the mercy seat will be the very throne from which Christ rules in the millennium. Of course, let's talk a little about the chronology.
There's a lot of confusion. Tiberius was appointed in 14 AD. As a matter of fact, because Augustus died on August 19th.
14 AD. We know that the ministry started in the 15th year of Tiberius. Now be careful Careful with that.
That's year 14. It's during the following year. In other words, the 15th year. It's not the 15th. It's not AD 15 yet.
It's AD 14 plus some months. You follow me? So it's in the 15th year. And you know, I had fun with one of our beloved staff members who's such a loyal...
He always travels with me and we were at the Studio of the Mind of America conference. Big 3000 thing. And he was...
many of the book tables. It happened to be his birthday. 50th birthday.
So I said to the whole audience, I want you... get a chance, I wish Gordon a birthday. He's entering his sixth decade. And, gee, he must be 60. He doesn't...
they go up to him, gee, you don't look 60. I'm not 60. I'm 50. So I was playing with him that way. But see, if I'm in my 71st year, I'm 70 years old plus. So understand the 15th year... within the 15th year of Tiberius means it's AD 14. So If you, if it's 14th year, if it's the 14th year and he came to power in the 14th year, that means the ministry began in 28 AD.
14 plus 14. You with me? Not 29, 28. And that means the fourth Passover, which is when he was crucified, thus becomes April 6th of 32 AD. And this is Sir Robert Anderson's dating. I mention this up here because this is what we happen to believe.
It doesn't mean we're right, but I want you to know the basis we're using. There are many good scholars that have different approaches to the chronology. that are defendable.
But many of them I tend to reject because many of them try to justify a Friday crucifixion. And from three passages in the Scripture it's clear to me that it could not possibly have been on a Friday. And that causes me to dismiss some of these other reckonings. This one is in the Scripture, easily defended, and it's also the one that Sir Robert Anderson has excellent background on. So whether you agree or not, at least you know where we're coming from on our chronology and you'll see why I want to get into this.
Let's go to Autum. The autumn of 28 AD begins at Nazareth, where he grew up, as you realize. And then he goes down to Bethabara, where he gets baptized in the Jordan, where John the Baptist is baptizing. And from there he goes up to the Mount of Temptation and back up to Salim, which is up, and then from there up to Cana. And that was Nathanael's hometown.
And that's where he gets baptized. He gets his first disciples, John, Peter, and Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael. This is all in John chapter...
this is all in the first chapter of John, if you will. That brings us to the spring of 29 AD, the first miracle, the wedding at Cana. That's again up in the Al-Ghali area. Then he moves to Capernaum, the village of Nahum actually.
And he sets that... he apparently sets himself up there as a base of operation in the Galilee ministry. He will go down to Jerusalem and purge the temple. And that was one of several, incidentally. And that's...
That's also where he has his visit to Nicodemus and so forth down there. He tarries for a while, gets baptized then, and then we have John the Baptist's last testimony in John chapter 3, very early in the things. And that brings us to the winter of 29 AD from which we go up to Sychar, the woman at the well occurs in John 4. And then up to Cana where Jesus heals the son of the royal official there.
And back down in Jerusalem there's a healing at the Pool of Bethesda. Brings us to the spring of 30 AD in Jerusalem. That's where John the Baptist about this time is imprisoned.
And this also begins his public ministry in Galilee. He goes up to Nazareth, makes his formal announcement at the synagogue there, quoting from Isaiah 61 verses 1 and 2. And they try to throw him off a cliff, but don't succeed obviously. And so he uses his mandate, he declares it from Isaiah in Matthew 4 and also recorded in Luke 4. He's driven out and they try to throw him off a cliff. He heads over to Capernaum, calls four disciples in Matthew 4. We have Peter's draft of fish there, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, the healing of the leper and so forth. That brings to the summer of 30 AD at Capernaum where he heals a paralytic.
And there we hear Matthew's call to service, if you will. And that where, remember they go, they pick the ears of corn on the Sabbath. We have that whole confrontation in Luke chapter 6. The man with the withered hand in Luke chapter 6. chapter 6. And his fame, of course, starts to spread throughout the Galilee region.
And that's also about the time we believe it was the Sermon on the Mount. That's also in Luke 6, but also detailed for you in Matthews chapter 5, 6, and 7. And in which Jesus reinterprets in effect the Ten Commandments and others, putting them to a much higher level. One of the heart, not just one of actions. And as a standard that is God's standard. Then we have the healing of the centurion's servant and so forth.
around We have around Nain we have the widow's son raised there. We have John's question. John the Baptist is in prison. He sends an inquiry team to ask some questions.
You may recall he dines at Simon's house and then returns home. That brings us to the autumn of 30 A.D. and we're in Capernaum as his headquarters.
The blind and dumb man are healed. That's where they accuse him of doing this by Beelzebub. And that ends, that's when from that point on he speaks only in parables.
We have the seven kingdom parables I alluded to. And if you look at the Galilee area, he's on his way from Capernaum across the sea to Gadara which is on the eastern shore. And there's a storm in route there that is prominent of course in Matthew 4. That's where the demoniac is healed. Very very important passage because we learn a great deal about the spirit world from that encounter.
And so he heads back and we're now at winter of 38. AD in Capernaum. Jairus'daughter and the woman with the issue of blood. Both of these strange events occur there and the Holy Spirit links them together.
Because Jairus'daughter, who was raised from the dead, is 12 years old. The woman with the issue of blood has had that issue for 12 years. Are they connected?
Maybe not directly in one sense, but clearly in the mind of the Holy Spirit. As we look at those two, we see a very interesting thing. Jesus is on the way to heal a Jewish daughter when the woman by faith is healed.
And it's... It can be viewed as a model of both Israel and the church in some interesting ways. So I'll let you get into that and see what you see there.
There's two blind men healed, men dumb and possessed. All this is going on up there. At Nazareth then people take offense in Mark 6. The apostles are sent out in pairs in Matthew 10 and Mark 6. It's about this time that John the Baptist is executed and that's a major milestone. Jesus comments on that and then returned to Capernaum.
That brings you to the spring of 31 AD at Capernaum. We have a return of the 12 that were sent out and he then retires to Bethsaida. They've just, by the way, discovered Bethsaida.
It's surprising because it's very much inland. See the shore was much higher in those days. So Bethsaida, we know it's on the shore, but it was on the shore in their days.
It's actually quite a ways from the shore today, but it is being excavated. It's relatively new. It's kind of interesting to get into all of that. This is where he feeds the 5,000 and then returns to Capernaum. Jesus walks through the water.
He walks on water in this area on the way back to Capernaum. And here we have the sermon of the bread of life and all of that. We're eating with unwashed hands and he comments on that in Mark 7, I should say. Summer of 31 AD, coming from Capernaum.
He actually takes a summer cottage at Tyre. Many people don't realize that. And that's all in Mark 7. And then he helps the Canaanite woman.
And then he's in Gentile country again at Decapolis. And this is where we're going. where deaf and dumb men are healed, feeding of 4,000 there.
Then he heads to Magdala, and which is a town on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee, up near the north, the northwest corner. And that's an area where there's two tall mountains and a valley between that creates a venturi effect and the source of many of these very violent storms on this relatively small lake. We would call it a lake. But here's where the Pharisees demand a sign.
They're always demanding signs. Back at Bethsaida we have the leaven of the Pharisees and the inquiries of Herod and so forth. But in autumn 31 AD we have a journey northwards to Caesarea Philippi.
And we have the famous declaration in Matthew 16. And we talk about on this I'll build my church. The transfiguration, many scholars have different estimates of what, which was the mount the transfiguration took place on. It's my suspicion, can't prove it, but suspicion that it was probably Mount Hermon.
That's the highest mountain in the area. But in any case, it's right there by the way. Caesarea Philippi in a sense, it's just a little further north.
But there's many, many other scholars have slightly different conjectures on that. There's where a possessed boy is encountered and so forth. Back in Capernaum we have the tribute many question, the whole idea of finding the coin in the fish and so forth.
Many people misunderstand that parable by the way. It's not a parable, it's an incident. That was a tax they were not required to pay. They paid it anyway.
They asked for a tax and Jesus said, is it for us or for strangers? For strangers, we're not strangers. But go pay it anyway.
Find a coin in the fish. It's an interesting lesson about that. And also that's the contest of who is the greatest and so forth that all occurs there, up there.
Then we head down to Jerusalem. We're heading towards the climax now. He goes down there to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, which is in John 7. Jesus is the living water was his point there as they were celebrating that.
That's where the woman was taken in adultery. He deals with that. That's where he also announced that he's the light of the world in John chapter...
John 7 and 8 is rich material. Then he turns back up north to the Galilee. in the winter of 31 AD Now, the Samaritans reject him and he goes down to Perea, which is on the East Bank, as we might call it.
And that's where he encountered the issue of the Good Samaritan, the Unrighteous Steward, the Rich Man and Lazarus, all these parables. The 70 are now sent out. Again, this is Luke, and it's from the Perean ministry there.
Over then we pop back to Jerusalem. He heals the man born blind, the Good Shepherd discourse, which incidentally, in which he alludes to Hanukkah. which our Jewish friends celebrate at the time that many of us are celebrating Christmas. The Hanukkah is an important feast. Like all the Jewish feasts are important to understand, Hanukkah is the key to understanding Daniel 9. We've touched on that already.
He tarries at Beth-Abarah and that brings us to the spring of 32 AD. We're getting near the climax now. He heads from Beth-Abarah to Bethany and Lazarus is raised from the dead.
They have a plot to kill Jesus. He moves to the village of Ephraim, which is up north a little bit and then en route to Perea. He encounters ten lepers. He heals all ten, but only one comes back to thank Him. You remember that interesting thing in Luke 17. And then we have the parable of the persistent widow.
We have the Pharisees and the publicans, the rich ruler thing in Luke 18. And then the vineyard workers and the request of the mother of sons of Gentiles. Like a Jewish mother she wants her sons to be at his right and left hand. He tries, he straightens her out on that. But then he goes from Perea to Jericho.
This is important. There he meets, he is blind, Bartimus, and then he has Zacchaeus in the tree, the young guy, and the pair of the ten talents, etc. Now an incident occurs here I want to just highlight. From Jericho, the six days before Passover he goes from Jericho to Bethany.
That's more than a Sabbath day's journey. So six days before Passover could not have been a Shabbat. Which means that Passover that year could not be on a Friday.
It's one of three reasons, but I just pointed that out to you. This is one of the reasons that we hold with those scholars who believe that the Passover I believe it was either Wednesday or Thursday. We think Wednesday for a number of reasons, but it's, clearly it was not Friday.
That's a church tradition by, born of some misunderstandings. So that's a quick snapshot. We'll leave the final week for the next session to get into detail. But the final week we call the Agony of Love.
Six hours in eternity. And those six hours are far more that happen, could happen in six hours, but we'll deal with that in our next session.