I’ve been learning lately that I’m a real home-body. I kind of like staying home. As long as I have my computer and I can write, things are doing well.
In this epistle I’ve got some great stuff to share! I’m including the next session of Understand the Bible, which I’ve called “The Gospels – Good News of Jesus”.
More about that in a moment. I have another opportunity to share with you first.
A while ago I shared that I was getting close to done with a new devotional book. PSALMS OF OUR YOUTH – Remembering God through the Songs We Grew Up Singing. It’s now really close to the Finsh Line.
I grew up singing hymns in church. These songs have burrowed into my heart. I don’t sing them often these days, but when I do, they move me deeply.
In this book, I’ve compiled 52 great hymns of the faith. Their tunes immediately set my heart for worship. Their words are full of great truth and theology. This book looks at the lyrics and offers a short devotional about the great truths that these fantastic songs communicate. It’s a celebration of the Greatness of God and the Beauty of the Gospel. I was moved to write it and the editing process has been pure worship.
I’m looking for a handful of people to form an Advanced Reader Team. I’ll share an early version of the book and you’ll to read it and provide me feedback. This could range from what you liked to what you didn’t like to typos that got though all my other edits. I’ll have some prompts to help you organize your thoughts.
If you grew up singing hymns like me, I think this will bless you greatly!
If you’re interested, click here to go to the sign-up page. It’s free and has no lasting commitment beyond this book. I really appreciate your partnership in this!
Thanks for that, but now on to the Gospels!
There is so much information to share about the Gospels. Just when I thought I had said it all, I remembered something else that just had to be there too.
When I was in High School, my dad, who is a Pastor, got a Doctorate in New Testament. His dissertation was all about the life of Christ. I didn’t do any of the research. Zero hours at the library for me. But I got to experience all of his learning first hand. It came out in sermons. It dominated Sunday evening chruch and weeknight Bible Studies. It was discussion topics at the dinner table. I read the dissertation and we discussed what he was learning.
So it was a joy to return to what I learned in that period of my life and share it with you.
As always, I’ve posted it on my website. You can see the entire Understanding the Bible series here. I started in Genesis 1 and have worked my way through to the gospels so far in 8 articles. If you haven’t seen the earlier emails that included those topics, you can get caught up. It will change the way you read (and understand) your Bible.
The latest installment is longer than I want to put in this email. I’ll include the first part below, but there’s a ton of great material that you’ll need to jump over to the website to finish reading. The direct page for the Gospel article is here.
My recommendation is that you jump over the website right away. You’ll get the whole story there.
But if you have to read something right now, I’ve included the introduction here in this email.
Either way you go, it’s going to be good.
God bless you,
Dennis
As we journey through the Bible, we finally come to the Gospels. These are the books of the Bible that deal directly with the life of Jesus. Stepping back to look at the entire Bible, the Gospels fall into the generic category of “History.” In this respect, these four books are similar to Genesis, Judges, and 2 Chronicles. However, because of the criticality of the subject matter (Jesus), we group the Gospels into a special category of their own.
From a timeline perspective, the Gospels follow the Prophetic and Historical books of the Old Testament. Ezra and Nehemiah concern events of the fifth century BC. Malachi, the last prophet, received his messages from God in the fourth century BC. This means that there was a four-hundred-year span where God appeared to go silent.
This was the longest silent gap since the nation had been founded by God’s covenant with Abraham. Undoubtedly, there was some angst among the Jewish leaders, trying to understand why God had gone quiet. Had He forgotten them? Was He discarding them for someone else?
Into this silence came Jesus of Nazareth. God chose not to speak through a prophet, priest, or king as He had in the past. This time He sent His Son
We have four different gospel accounts in our Bible. They contain a lot of overlap. But each one was written to a different audience and communicated different aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry.
Three of the Gospels are called the “synoptic gospels.” These are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Synoptic means “same viewpoint” or “same view”. And as we read in our Bible we can see that these books all follow a similar historical narrative style of telling the story of Jesus. The gospel of John follows a different literary strategy and stands apart from the others.
Let’s take a brief look at each of these books:
Matthew
Written by Matthew Levi, the former tax collecting disciple of Jesus, this book is aimed at a Jewish audience. Matthew gives a lot of attention to matters that would have been of interest to his people. Much of the material in the book is intended to focus on Jesus’ fulfillment of prophecy and His claim to be the Chosen One, the Messiah.
Mark
John Mark was a friend of Peter, and possibly a part of the larger crowd of people who followed Jesus. During his account of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, he makes mention of a young man fleeing naked from the scene. Some Scholars believe that was an autobiographical reference to him.
Mark’s book was targeted at a Roman audience. To this end, he focuses on the main action. His account is the shortest of the four gospels and follows a literary style that is much more oriented around the action. The word “immediately” is used more than forty times in his book – emphasizing events happening one after the other.
Luke
Luke was a Greek physician and companion of Paul the Apostle. His gospel account was commissioned by a Greek named Theophilus (which roughly translates into Lover of God). Luke did not witness any of the events first hand but says that he very carefully researched everything he wrote and interviewed the people who were there. Correspondingly, his account is targeted at a Greek audience.
John
John, the beloved disciple of Jesus wrote a very different account of Jesus’ life. While his composition is unique, it agrees with and supports the other accounts. At the end of his book in Chapter 21, John describes his purpose in writing his account.
but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)
John’s gospel was written to convince people to believe in Jesus. He organized his work around seven major miracles, seven major discourses or talks, and seven major “I AM” statements made by Jesus.
A Harmony of the Four Gospels
A common way of studying the gospels is to lay them together to line up similar events and understand what might have happened between them. Where Mark might jump from one event to another in successive verses, Matthew or Luke might include details Mark omitted. They might even include events that Mark skipped that occurred between Mark’s two events.
As we build this composite picture of Jesus’ ministry, it helps us see His actions and His message more clearly. Of course, we have to remember the initial audience for the biblical authors and use that to understand what each said in the context of their purpose.
This process of lining up the gospels is called “harmonizing the gospels”. This is not forcing a harmony that isn’t naturally present, it’s just working with that harmony to organize the texts in a way to make the harmony more obvious.
What is a Gospel?
The word “gospel” simply means “Good News”. It could be good news of any kind. “The ice cream truck is in the neighborhood and is giving out free samples” could be considered good news if you like ice cream and the day is warm. But in this case, the Good News centers on God sending Jesus to pay the price for our sin and redeem us back to God.
When it comes to scripture, the term Gospel is reserved for the four books who tell the story of Jesus. Jesus Himself is God’s good news come down to us. He is the fulfillment of the promise God made back in Genesis 3 telling us that Satan’s power would eventually be broken. He is the ultimate Passover Lamb, completing the picture that was started in Exodus. He represents the perfect Prophet who can speak on behalf of God. He is the perfect Priest, offering the sacrifice that would forgive sins once and for all, not just cover them. He is the ultimate King, of the line of David, who will one day sit on the throne and rule forever. He is the author of the New Covenant, replacing the covenant of Law with a covenant of Grace.
All of the Old Testament was looking forward to the coming of Jesus. Whether the writers or the people they wrote about knew it or not, Jesus was the one who would make everything right with God. Their faith was a confidence that God would do something someday that would address the issue of sin and make permanent all the temporary cover-ups that they had to do.
For this reason, we call these four books the “Good News.” For they tell us of the greatest news of all.
Jump over to my website to read about fourteen key elements of the Gospels.
