General Introduction to the Gospels, Part 1

Prayer for Illumination and Introduction to the Gospel Series

0:04 This sermon was preached on Sunday morning, June 12, 1983, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now let us again seek the face of God in prayer. Our Father, we bow again in your presence, because at least to some degree you have taught us, some of us, by bitter experience, that when our Lord Jesus said, Without me you can do nothing, he was speaking reality.

0:49 We confess our utter impotence rightly to understand your word, unless you send your Holy Spirit upon us as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of yourself. Grant us then to know your Spirit's ministry, not bypassing our own conscious, diligent, intellectual endeavors, but as we concentrate all of our faculties upon your truth. O Lord, give us light. May we be taught of you.

1:25 With David we cry, Open thou our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Come to us, O Lord, and so meet us this morning, that our hearts will be drawn out in new dimensions, of love and adoration and worship and praise, and that the fruit of that new devotion will be a life of more diligent obedience to your beloved Son. Hear our cry as we approach you in his worthy name. Amen.

Justification for Introductory Sermons on the Gospels

2:10 Several Lord's Day mornings ago, I announced to this assembly that we would soon begin a series of expositions in the gospel according to the Bible. To Mark. Now, the time to begin to fulfill that promise has come. However, I'm not asking you to turn to Mark chapter 1 and verse 1 and to follow as I read the first paragraph, but rather what I propose to do is to direct your minds this morning and then, God willing, next Lord's Day morning into some general considerations regarding the gospel records in general, that is, some perspectives, some specific introductory perspectives on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

2:53 and then on the third Lord's Day, to give you some specific introductory perspectives on the gospel according to Mark itself, and then, God willing, on the fourth Lord's Day, we'll start in with Mark 1 and verse 1. Now, you have every right to ask, Pastor Martin, why spend three Lord's Day expositions setting the table before bringing on the first course. Is that fair to us? Well, that's a legitimate question, and it deserves an honest and, I hope, a convincing answer.

3:26 And the first part of the answer is simply to say that the analogy is not altogether accurate. You see, setting the table is not wasting time, nor is it irrelevant to the eating of a good meal. One of the things setting the table does is give you the tools with which you can properly eat the meal and enjoy it, as well as profit from it. It would be rather difficult, at least with any degree of social decency, to eat a steak without a knife and a fork.

3:55 And so we will be setting the table, but we'll be doing more than that. I hope we'll be bringing some appetizers that will get all of your juices flowing and cause you to appreciate all the more the first full course or the first part of the main course when we actually come to Mark 1 and verse 1. But now, leaving all imagery of meals aside, there are basically two reasons why we must consider this introductory material. One relates particularly to me, and the other relates more particularly to you.

4:31 As a public teacher of God's Word, 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15 is a passage that I cannot ignore. It says, Give diligence to present yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth. I have a solemn obligation in seeking to expound the gospel of Mark to give diligence to present myself, first of all, a workman who is approved unto God, who has no just cause to be ashamed

5:12 of how I handle the gospel according to Mark. In other words, the gospel of Mark is not a nose of wax to be pressed into any shape that I desire to press it. It is the word of truth, and my responsibility is to handle it aright, that is, to cut a straight course in seeking to open up the truth of the gospel according to Mark. And it is impossible for me to do that unless I have before me in my exposition and application of the contents of the gospel of Mark

5:55 these broad introductory perspectives that I will lay before you this morning and, God willing, over the next two Lord's Day mornings. But then, from your standpoint, if you are to render an intelligent, believing response to the gospel of Mark, these introductory perspectives, if not absolutely essential, are certainly greatly helpful. And so, for you as the people of God, this introductory material is not irrelevant. It is my desire in teaching you the scriptures not only to open up a given passage, but to furnish you with the tools,

6:39 the principles by which you can intelligently study the word of God on your own. And the most profitable preachers and teachers are not those who may give at any moment the most lucid explanation of a given passage of the word of God, but those who, over the long haul, furnish you, the people of God, with the tools for intelligent, believing study of the word of God on your own. And it is that pastoral concern which pressures my own mind and spirit to spend this time setting the table over the next few weeks.

Question 1: How Did the Gospels Come to Us?

7:23 Well, then, we come this morning to what I will entitle a general introduction to the gospels. That is, that portion of the word of God beginning with Matthew and concluding with the book of John. And the way we will think our way through these introductory materials is to ask, and then to answer, certain fundamental questions. Hopefully, we'll ask and answer three of them this morning, and then, God willing, two more next Lord's Day morning.

7:55 The first question is this. How did this portion of the word of God come to us? How did this portion of the word of God come to us? When we open up to the first of the gospels, we read the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

8:17 And then, lo and behold, we are immediately confronted with this list of begats. And we ask the question, how did this gospel, according to Matthew, come to us? What were the circumstances in which someone by the name of Matthew sat down and wrote the book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham? Now, it's interesting, and I've done a little survey over the past few days.

8:47 If you ask the average Christian who's been in a gospel-preaching, Bible-teaching church for even a relatively short time, how did the letters of the New Testament come to us? Most Christians are pretty clear in their answer to that question, at least with regard to many of the letters. They will have understood, in reading, say, 1 Corinthians, that Paul, the apostle, had received some information from the household of Chloe, that there were problems in the church at Corinth, and so the letter to the Corinthians was precipitated by the acquisition on the part of Paul of this knowledge of certain problems, and 1 Corinthians came to us by way of an apostolic response

9:31 to a first-century church problem, and likewise with regard to other of the epistles. But it's been interesting, when I've asked the average Christian, and some not so average, and some who've been part of this assembly for many years, how did the gospels come to us? It's very interesting what the responses have been, and generally speaking, there is widespread ignorance with respect to that question. Now that ignorance is not something that is very culpable, it's not something we need to go around and bat people on the head with and say you ought not to be ignorant of it, but it will greatly assist us in properly understanding the content of the gospels if we are able intelligently

10:16 and biblically to answer the question, how did this portion of the word of God come to us? Did it come to us as a result of a man named Matthew sitting down one day saying, you know, I think it'd be nice to have a written record of what Jesus Christ did and what he taught, and therefore I'll ask God to guide me, and I will write the record, and when I'm done I'll put a PS, saying more to follow in a year. And then he shoots off a note to a man named Mark saying, look, I've promised people another installment in a year, so you better get together some facts and some information and write a life of Jesus from your perspective. Is that how the gospels came to us?

10:58 Or did they come to us when a small group of men got together and said, now look, you had some first hand exposure to Jesus of Nazareth, I had some, now let's get together and write a four-fold biography of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Or did four individual men get caught up in some kind of ecstasy in which God spoke to them audibly and said, write the following words. And then they sat there and wrote the book of the generations of Jesus. How did they come to us?

11:33 Well, you see, if they came to us in any of the ways I've suggested, those ways would basically be artificial, they would be marked by contrivance and woodenness, but rather these books had come to us as all the other books of the Bible came to us, namely in the actual history of God's mighty saving activity in the midst of His people. You hear quite frequently in this place the term, the history of redemption, and that's just a term by which we attempt to express that God throughout history has been doing a work of saving His people.

12:15 And in that work of saving His people He has given to them in various periods of that history written documents in which to embody the record of His saving acts and of His saving purposes. And that's precisely how the Gospels came to us. They did not come to us in an artificial or contrived way, but in the actual history of God's saving activity amongst men, they were given to us. Now what are the major facts of that history?

12:52 Now think with me as I try to outline it, and I'm going to stick very close to my notes, it's taken me hours and hours to reduce this material to a few minutes, and I don't trust myself if I get away from my notes, and so I will be almost reading for the next four minutes or five minutes or so, but this is for your benefit, and there are some things you can't get any other way than by putting on your thinking cap and grasping them, so I make no apologies for what I'm about to do. For many centuries God's gracious saving purpose is focused on one nation, the nation of Israel. Settled there in Palestine for many, many centuries,

13:35 and from the settlement in Palestine, their development as a nation into a kingdom under David, and then under Solomon, and then because of their sin sent into captivity, God's dealings with men focused upon that nation. And then after they were sent into captivity, a remnant was brought into the land, and for about 400 years, the years called the silent years, God sent the no prophet. No one appeared in Israel who could say, thus saith the Lord. And at the end of those 400 silent years, during which time the nation had come under Roman rule,

14:20 along with the rest of the then known world, suddenly in the wilderness of Judea, a strangely dressed but magnetically powerful preacher appeared by the name of John. And this man began to call the nation to repentance, and called them to a ritual signifying their obedience to that call to repentance, that ritual being baptism. And while all the region of Palestine was electrified by his preaching and his influence, he continually announced that he was but the forerunner of that one who would baptize not in water,

15:04 but in the Holy Spirit. He pointed to this individual one day and called him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He identified him as the Son of God. And on a certain day, in the midst of the ministry of this man, John the Baptist, this person to whom he had been continually pointing came to be baptized by John in the River Jordan.

15:33 And while he was there in the water, the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove, and a voice spoke out of heaven saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And immediately, after a period of forty days of wilderness temptation, this person, Jesus of Nazareth, began a public ministry of teaching, of preaching, of healing, which became the dominant focal point of religious concern wherever he went in all of Palestine and in all of Judea. However, the rising tide of his popularity witnessed a rising tide of opposition

16:18 from the official religious leaders of Israel. And this opposition reached a climax in the midst of his fourth year of public ministry resulting in his being executed as a common criminal, crucified under the rule of Pontius Pilate. He rose again from the dead on the third day, and for the next forty days appeared to select people confirming the reality of his resurrection and giving directions to them for their future responsibilities and continually promised them that he would send from heaven the promise of the Holy Spirit. After forty days

17:03 he did ascend to heaven, and ten days later the Holy Spirit came upon a gathered group of a hundred and twenty in Jerusalem. And they immediately began to bear witness to the facts of which they had been eyewitnesses, the facts concerning the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. As they did, many came to embrace their witness and the Savior who was the focal point of that witness. As people did, they were baptized and formed communities of believers called churches.

17:44 And the preaching about this person, Jesus of Nazareth, spread through all the parts of Palestine and then on out into the Roman Empire until within the space of one generation the then known world had been confronted with the message of eyewitnesses concerning the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Now that is a brief history of what God was doing in the situation into which He gave us the Gospel records. Now several points need to be underscored

The Oral Apostolic Witness as the Foundation

18:28 and brought into sharp focus. Number one, the Apostolic Church was founded by the oral apostolic witness to the doings and the teachings of Christ. When Peter stood on the day of Pentecost he didn't have the Gospel of Matthew in his hand. He didn't have the Gospel of Mark or Luke or John.

18:49 When Peter stood on the day of Pentecost he didn't even have the Old Testament in his hand. He had much of it in his heart and in his mind by memory. And he had an illumination concerning the Gospel and an illumination concerning its true meaning through the ministry of Christ and now of the Holy Spirit. But when Peter stood on the day of Pentecost you remember that he spoke as an eyewitness concerning the facts pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth.

19:22 We read in Acts chapter 2 and verse 22 You men of Israel hear these words Jesus of Nazareth a man who was moved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him. And then he goes on to interpret Old Testament scriptures that bear upon the events in the life of Jesus. Verse 32 This Jesus did God raise up whereof we are all witnesses and they were witnesses in the strictest sense of the word. When a witness is called

20:06 into court and put on the witness stand he has no business being there if there is not something that he witnessed. He is to bear witness to what he has witnessed. He is to testify concerning that which he saw and heard with his own eyes. And in the outworking of the saving purposes of God the Apostolic Church throughout the entire Roman Empire was founded by the oral witness of the doings and teaching of Christ.

20:42 An oral witness by those who had been eyewitnesses and ear witnesses of the doings and the sayings of Christ. And that is exactly what the Lord commanded them to do and to be. In Luke chapter 24 we have another clear example of this. In Luke chapter 24 and verse 44 Jesus said unto them that is his apostles these are my words which I spoke unto you while I was yet with you that all things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law

21:27 of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me then opened he their mind that I was born and born from the dead the third day that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all the nations beginning from Jerusalem you living apostles are witnesses of these things and so our Lord clearly marks them out as the eyewitnesses of these Apostolic church was founded by the oral apostolic witness to the doings and teaching of Christ.

The Oral Witness as Basis for the Written Witness

22:11 Second thing we need to bring into focus is this. The oral apostolic witness was the basis of the ultimately written witness to the doings and the sayings of Christ. The oral apostolic witness became the basis or the foundation of the ultimately written witness to Jesus Christ. Look at Luke's gospel chapter 1.

22:42 Luke is writing to a man by the name of Theophilus.

22:47 Notice what he writes. For as much as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative, that is to write, concerning the...

22:58 In those matters which have been fully established among us, even as they delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word? You see which came first?

23:18 Eyewitnesses delivered these things. Now, he says, many are beginning to commit them to writing. Luke says, Having had the opportunity, to trace the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee, not in order, a better translation would be with method, that you might know the certainty concerning the things wherein you were instructed. You see, the instruction came by the oral proclamation of eyewitnesses, the written body of witness, followed.

23:58 The oral apostolic witness was the basis of that which ultimately became the written witness. Now, I hope that will help you. When you turn to Acts 2, you read, Of the early believers, they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching. What was the apostles' teaching?

24:18 It was the very material that later on came to be embodied in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It was a declaration of...

24:28 What they had seen and what they had heard. They were eyewitnesses of his glory. They had heard his very voice. And so the oral apostolic witness became the basis of that which was the ultimate written witness.

The Gospels as Tried and Proven Evangelistic and Didactic Testimony

24:45 And then thirdly, this written witness, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, took the form of tried and proven evangelistic and teaching or didactic, testimony. This written witness took the form of tried and proven evangelistic and teaching testimony. Now, follow closely. And I don't know of any way but to ask you to think.

25:13 And I've labored for many, many hours to reduce it to the simplest form possible. And if you don't get it, it'll be because you don't think. I don't know how to lay out the truth any clearer than this. Follow closely now.

25:26 Quoting an author, addressing himself to this principle, the apostolic preaching was chiefly historical. It was a recital of the wonderful public life of Jesus of Nazareth and centered in the crowning facts of the crucifixion and resurrection. The story was repeated in public and in private from day to day, from Sabbath to Sabbath. The apostles and primitive evangelists adhered closely and reverently to what they saw and heard from their divine master, and their disciples faithfully reproduced their testimony.

26:02 At the first, the need of an authoritative written record did not exist. The facts of Christ's life and his words were fresh and vivid in their memories. Living words were sufficient for the present needs of believers. But the church grew, and soon included those who had no personal knowledge of these facts and words.

26:25 The wide growth of the church furnished them with the knowledge of the gospel. With an adequate motive for adding a written record to the testimony of their living words. And the very form of the gospels was only determined by the experience of teaching. The work of an evangelist was not the simple result of divine inspiration or of human thought, but the complex issue of both when applied to such a selection of Christ's words and works, as the varied phases of apostolic preaching had shown them best suited to the needs of men.

27:05 The gospel was, so to speak, proven in life before it was fixed in writing. Now what the author is saying is simply this. As the apostles would bear witness orally to Christ, and would select certain events in the life of Christ, certain sayings that they had heard, it was in the actual experience of presenting the doings and the sayings of Jesus with a view to winning converts to Christ, and establishing converts in the faith of Christ, that the body of what they conveyed began to take a peculiar shape and form.

27:46 And that peculiar shape and form, as we shall see, finds its permanent embodiment in the richness of the form, Four gospel records in which Matthew has a perspective that obviously is different from Mark's. Matthew again and again says, this is written, I'm sorry, this happened that it might be fulfilled, which was written, that it might be fulfilled, which was written, that it might be fulfilled, which was written. You turn to Mark and you don't find that language at all. Well, how come?

28:20 Now, was the same event different in the purpose of God, so that in one case we can say this happened, that it might be fulfilled, and in another case it's simply reported? Well, you know, I'm sorry, it's not that the purpose of God was different, but in the actual conveying of those facts, one of the gospel writers, in the experience of communicating the gospel to a primarily Jewish community, found that when he could relate those facts to their Old Testament prophecies, it became a much more convincing and powerful evangelistic tool.

29:01 Whereas in Mark's case, he's presenting the gospel to a different class of people with a different background and perspective, that would not really mean anything to them to say, this happened that it might be fulfilled, and so the same event is reported from a differing perspective, and those differing perspectives... are not artificial, nor are they arbitrary, but they grew out of the fact that the gospel was communicated orally, both evangelistically and with a view to teaching the people of God before they ever were found in permanent written form.

29:39 As we proceed in our studies, I think you will see more and more how vital that perspective is. Well then, I've tried very briefly to answer the question, how did the gospel...

29:51 how did the gospel records come to us? Well, they came to us when after the church was founded under the superintendence of God the Holy Spirit, the need for written records was continually set before the apostles, and in response to that need, approximately from somewhere around 50 A.D. to 85 A.D.,

30:16 these four gospel accounts were deposited in... the apostolic church and have become the possession of the church ever since.

Question 2: What is the Precise Nature of the Gospel Records?

30:28 Now then, the second question to which we must address ourselves this morning is, what is the precise nature of the gospel records? Believing that we take into our hands a record of the doings and teaching of Jesus, Acts 1-1, that's how Luke describes his gospel, the things that Jesus began to do and to teach, believing that these records are derived from the oral apostolic testimony, believing that they are records which came to first century, the believers who were gathered in communities called churches, what are the gospel records?

31:11 What is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? What are they? Well, let me state what they aren't, and then what they are. First of all, they are not...

31:22 They are not four attempts to give a bare, factual, chronological, balanced history of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. If you pick up the gospels and say, well, Matthew says this is going to deal with Jesus, who is son of Abraham, son of David, now I'm going to expect a factual, chronological, balanced history of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. You're going to be terribly disappointed. Because you do not read long before you recognize that whole segments of our Lord's life are passed over in total silence.

32:04 Or years are compressed into one sentence. Jesus grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and man. That summarizes his whole life from age 12 to age 30. That's not a balanced biography.

32:17 It tells me nothing about the influences that shaped him as a teenager, nothing about the influences that shaped him as a teenager, nothing about the influences that molded him as a young man. I want to know more about that whole period. You do not find a bare, factual, balanced, or proportionate history of the life and ministry of Jesus. In fact, if you read carefully, you'll notice that a third to one quarter of every one of the gospel records focuses on the last week of our Lord's life.

32:47 Well, that's not a balanced biography, is it? A third to a quarter focusing on the last week? Think of a man's life when it passes over decades in total silence. Well, the gospel of Mark starts right out with him as a full-grown adult, age 30.

33:05 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. And then John points to Jesus, and Mark, as it were, dumps the full-grown Christ before us and says, Here is the gospel. So if we come to the gospel records expecting a bare, factual, chronological, proportionate history of the life and ministry of Jesus, we'll be disappointed because that's not what they are, and that's not what they are because that's not what God intended them to be. As one has recently written, reduced to writing, the gospel message constitutes a new type of literature.

33:46 Although it is rooted in history, it is not pure history, for the allusions to contemporary events are incidental, and the gospels do not attempt to develop them. They contain biographical material, but they cannot be called biography in the modern sense of the word, since they do not present a complete summary of the life of Jesus. So they are not that. Secondly, they are not for attempts to give an exact court record or court transcription of select sayings and actions of Jesus.

34:20 And listen carefully, or you may be vulnerable, you may be vulnerable, you may be vulnerable to doubts that can come from the one who said in the garden, yea, hath God said. The gospels are not for different attempts to give a court record transcription of the sayings of Christ and of the actions of Jesus. You see, when the scripture says Jesus opened his mouth and he taught them, say, is Matthew telling us that if we had tape recorders back then, we could have put one on, when Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, given that recording to a secretary and she could have transcribed it, and what we would have is what we find in the Sermon on the Mount? No.

35:05 How do we know that's not so? Well, all you need to do is read what Jesus said in Matthew and read the parallel passage in Mark, and they're not found word for word the same. You take the parable of the sower. In Matthew 13, 1 to 9, you have Matthew's account of the parable of the sower.

35:22 In Mark's Gospel 4, chapter 4, verses 1 to 9, you have Mark's account of the parable of the sower. And you, if you just sit down and read them, will see certain words are different. Certain phraseology is different. The same concepts are there.

35:40 But you do not have a wooden reproduction of words within quotation marks. And likewise with the events in the life of Jesus. You compare passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you find the same. The same event described from differing perspectives.

35:59 Sometimes even different numbers of people. Two of the Gospel records tell us of the healing of a certain man named Bartimaeus who was blind. And it tells us the circumstances of his healing. One of the Gospel records tells us that two blind men were healed in the same circumstances.

36:17 Well, is there contradiction? Didn't the fellows know that eventually people would compare what they're doing and one testimony would be true and the other false? Well, if you view it as a transcription of a court record, then you'll find the Gospels full of, quote, contradictions. But the Gospels do not purport to be four independent attempts to give an exact transcription of the sayings and actions of Jesus.

36:47 And therefore we must not come to these records imposing upon them our notions of what they ought to be and what they ought to be. And we must not come to these records imposing upon them our notions of what they ought to be and what they ought to be. What they ought to say, they are not these things. Well, if they are not four attempts to give a bare factual, chronological, balanced history of the life of Jesus, they are not four attempts to give an exact court record transcription of select sayings and actions of Jesus, what in the world are they?

The Gospels as Portrait Galleries and Collected Sayings of the King

37:21 Well, let me try to explain it this way. They are four divinely inspired, independent narratives of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. They constitute what we may call two things. Portrait galleries of the king and collected and collated sayings of the king.

37:46 Now try to picture with me, if you will, four independent artists. Each one with...

37:54 With his own artistic sensitivity, his own peculiar use of colors, perspective, shading, and all of those things that make up what we might call the individual identifying marks of a given artist. Those of you who have studied art at all know that there are certain characteristics to Rembrandt's paintings that are qualitatively different from the dominant characteristics of another painter or artist. Well, try to picture, if you will, four long picture galleries.

38:29 And at the head of one of them, it says Matthew, the other, Mark, Luke, and John. And as you walk into the picture galleries of the king, you will notice these pictures of Christ in Matthew's gallery. And when you compare them with Mark's, and with Luke's, and with John's, you come away with two distinct convictions. You come away...

38:56 You come away with the conviction that Matthew did not simply copy Mark's work, or Mark, Luke's, or Luke, John's, or John, all three, or any one of the two. That each artist worked independent of the other in giving expression to his own artistic sensitivity in painting these pictures of Jesus of Nazareth, the king. You come away with the conviction that what is hung up in Matthew's gallery is not identical to what is hung up in Mark, Luke, or John's gallery. But you also come away with another equally unshakable conviction.

39:37 They are all galleries of the same person.

39:41 That when all is said and done, when you come to the end of Matthew's gallery, and gather up all the impressions, and compare them with what you sense at the end of Mark's gallery, there's no way you could ever conceive that they were painting two different people. They were painting...

39:57 They were painting one glorious person. They are four independent picture galleries of the king. And every representation is true and divinely inspired, and there is no contradiction. But it does not mean that Matthew uses exactly the same combination of colors that Mark uses.

40:23 That he highlights the same incident in the same... That he highlights the same incident in the same way.

40:30 And where Matthew was concerned to take a given incident and say, this thing came to pass, that Jesus might be proven to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, because his gallery is to be peculiarly attractive to the Jew. Mark will take the same incident, and he won't say anything about that incident fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, though it did. But he will add little details to that incident, that give it peculiar attractiveness to the active, energetic Roman mind. Same incident, same Christ, same reality, but different colors used from the palette.

41:13 Different highlights. Different places to which the eye is drawn as the focal point. All with a purpose. All under the inspiration of the one and the same Spirit, who is God and cannot lie, and who will not contradict himself, so we come away with that conviction of the independence, the uniqueness of each of the gospel records, but the fact that they set before us the one glorious Christ.

41:44 Some of God's servants who have wrestled with this subject and have tried to present it in written form for others have written very helpfully. Listen to one man who has written the following. In their memoirs of Christ, the four evangelists were guided in the selection of the materials, brought into their records, by the purposes which they had in view in writing, as well as by the ultimate purposes of the inspiring Holy Spirit. Each one writes from his own standpoint, and we have in reality four different pictures of our Lord delineated by four different artists

42:22 as his wonderful personality appeared to their respective minds. And then, in what is, has become a classic work on some of these matters, a man by the name of Bernard, who spoke to a group of theological students many years ago, or delivered papers to them, writes as follows. It is plain that the four histories are modified by their own instinctive principles of selection and arrangement, which do not indeed announce themselves and almost elude our attempts to ascertain them, but yet, result in giving four discriminated aspects of their common subject,

43:07 as the royal lawgiver in Matthew, the mighty worker of Mark, the friend of man in Luke, and the son of God in John. Four aspects, but one portrait, for if the attitude and the accessories vary, the features and the expression are the same. So we have then, if you may, if you find this imagery helpful, I do, not just four portraits, but four portrait galleries of the King. That's what the Gospels are intended to be.

43:39 And then, they are intended to be collected and collated sayings of the King. Luke says, the former treatise I made concerning the things Jesus began to do and to teach. And John says, if all of his doings were to be written, the world could probably not contain the books that would need to be written. So you have collected, and collated sayings of the King.

44:05 Now, it doesn't trouble us when we find that certain events, as well as certain sayings, are collected and collated in one order in Matthew, and a different order in Mark, and a different order in Luke. Nowhere does Matthew say, I'm giving an exact chronological record of all of the sayings and doings of Jesus. Mark never says he's doing that. Luke never says he's doing that.

44:32 And when unbelieving minds say, oh, look at the Gospels, full of contradictions. This happened here in Mark. It happened over here in Matthew. Look at it.

44:40 It's a whole jumbled mess. No, it's not a jumbled mess. Because they never purport to be a court transcription under oath that everything happened in precisely this way and in this order and in this relationship to other events. Matthew had a reason for gathering certain discourses together in the way that he did.

45:02 Luke had a reason. Mark had a reason. And all of it under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit. And so what are the Gospels?

Question 3: Why Were the Gospels Written?

45:11 They are these portrait galleries of the King in which we behold the incidents in His life set before us. They are collected and collated sayings of the King. Well, we come to the third, and this I hope will be evidently much more practical. The others, just material, you've got to grasp.

45:32 Why? Why were they written? We've asked the question, how did they come to us? What precisely are they?

45:39 Now, why were they written? And from the Gospels themselves, we discern at least three basic reasons as to why they were written. First of all, they were written for confirmation. Luke chapter 1 and verse 1.

45:54 Luke 1 and verse 1. For as much as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative, we've looked at this earlier this morning, even as they delivered them unto us who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order or with method, most excellent Theophilus, and in the Greek, this is the way it would read, that you might know concerning the things wherein you were instructed, the certainty, you see, for emphasis,

46:38 the Greek can throw something to the front of the sentence and put it out of its normal place, or it can hold it to the end. And that's what Luke did in masterful Greek. He holds the whole point to the end. Oh, Theophilus, he says, I have written concerning the things in which you've been instructed, and my purpose in writing is that you may know with respect to these things, the certainty.

47:04 You already heard them. You've believed them. You've embraced them. But I want you to be confirmed in your understanding and conviction regarding these things.

47:17 Now, why is that so vital? Because our salvation from sin and death rests down upon fact and history. If Jesus of Nazareth did not do what is claimed of Him, and if He was not what He claimed to be, we have no salvation. And so it is essential for us as the people of God to be confirmed with respect to what Christ has done and what He has said.

47:52 In the language of Peter, are we following cunningly devised fables, or are we not? Or are we receiving the testimony of eyewitnesses, a testimony that cannot be set aside without one being guilty of sin? A guilty of the worst form of blatant unbelief and refusal to accept credible testimony. Well, they were written for confirmation.

48:18 People, remember, had not had the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They had had eyewitnesses preach to them, saying certain things about Jesus, who He was, what He did, what He said. Now Luke says, Theophilus, I write, not because you doubt these things, you've already received them and you believe them, but I write that you may know concerning them the certainty, confirmation. Secondly, they are written for instruction.

48:47 They are written for instruction. Instruction regarding the person and work of Christ as the basis of faith.

48:56 There had to be instruction. If faith is to have a solid foundation with regard to Christ's person and work, there had to be the facts on which faith rested. And so the gospels were written to provide that framework of instruction with respect to the person and work of Christ, but instruction regarding the commands and precepts of Christ as a framework of obedience. You remember what He told the apostles?

49:24 Make disciples, baptize them, teach them to observe whatever I command you. Paul could write to Timothy and say, If any man consents not to wholesome words, even the words of the Lord Jesus. Well, how were those words to be constantly before that? That church, it had spread throughout the entire Roman Empire.

49:43 How was that church to observe everything Christ had commanded? It needed a written record. As the living witnesses, as it were, out-preached the sphere of their influence. And as the living witnesses would one by one be taken from the scene, how could the church to the end of the age observe everything Christ commanded unless what He commanded was embodied in writing?

50:09 And so the gospel, the gospels were written for instruction. Not only instruction regarding the person and work of Christ as the basis of faith, but instruction with regard to the commands of Christ as the framework of obedience. And thirdly, instruction in His pattern of life and as an example for His own. The scripture says, He that abides in Him ought to walk as He walked.

50:32 Well, how can Christ be my pattern as a believer if I don't know how He walked? How did He relate to the sick and to the needy, to the needy, to the needy, to the needy, to the needy, to the needy? To the destitute, to the downcast, to the outcast? How did He relate to religious hypocrisy?

50:46 How did He relate to religious decadence? I'm to walk as He walked, but I can't frame from my own imagination how Christ would act in any given situation. I must have some concrete record of how Jesus conducted Himself in every relationship of life. Then He can become my pattern as He has become my Savior.

51:10 And so I have the record that He lived the life I did not live. Died the death I should have died. And that record of His life and death is the basis of the faith that is unto salvation. And then it brings me into the framework where I want to obey Him and I turn to the written Word for all things whatsoever He has commanded.

The Gospels Written for Persuasion

51:30 And when I want to see those commands fleshed out in the livingness of human experience, I turn to the same records and I see my Savior and I say, Lord, help me to be like Him. So the Gospels were written for confirmation, for instruction, and then they were written for persuasion. John chapter 20, verses 30 and 31. They were written with a view to persuasion.

51:56 Notice the language of John. Many signs, other signs, did Jesus in the presence of His disciple, which are not written in this book, John 20, 30, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John says, I have deliberately selected my materials with a view to persuading men concerning who Christ is and then with a view to their coming to faith in Him. And so as we sit here this morning, the Gospels, as it were, bridge the time gap between the actual life history of Christ

52:40 and the claims of that life upon us. In the Gospels, Christ comes to us in all the livingness of His power and He stands before us performing those miracles before our very eyes as we read the record. Why? It's the record of eyewitnesses.

53:00 And we read, not as it were to look back over our shoulder with a historical interest, but we read with a view that that Christ may become to us all that He has ever been to His believing people. And in preaching through the Gospel of Mark, you see, that will be one of my great concerns from the standpoint of preaching, not merely to set before you accurately what Mark says about the doings and the sayings of Christ, but that beholding Christ, you may be persuaded to embrace Him for what He is, to embrace Him as your Savior, further to trust Him to trust Him as your Savior

53:42 and to obey Him as your Lord. So these are the purposes then for which they were written. Confirmation, instruction, persuasion, and we shall by God's grace keep those purposes before us as we study together. Well, this has been pretty heavy stuff, hasn't it?

Summary and Concluding Prayer

54:01 Well, if you think it's been heavy for you, I'll clue you. It's been a lot heavier for me. Days of reading hundreds and hundreds of pages trying to distill, technical material into simple layman's language without sacrificing accuracy. And dear people, there are some things aren't very devotional, but they're needful.

54:22 And I hope that you will see in the days to come that what I've given you this morning, though it hasn't raised you to rapturous heights of spiritual ecstasy, it's been needful for your spiritual well-being. I hope you leave this morning with at least some grasp on the general framework in which the Gospels came to the Church. A Church established by apostolic testimony, well-grounded in the oral tradition of the Apostles concerning who Christ is and what He had done and taught and what He had performed on behalf of needy sinners. It came to that community.

55:00 It came to them not as a transcription, verbatim quotes of what He said, but we have these four beautiful picture galleries of the King. We have these four collections and collations of the sayings of our Lord Jesus. And they are set before us that we might be confirmed, instructed, and persuaded. May God be pleased to accomplish many of those blessed ends in the days to come as we study together one of these portrait galleries of the King, that in which He is set before us as the mighty worker, the one who is able by His own sovereign power to save the neediest of sinners.

55:44 Let us pray.

55:56 Our Father, we thank You this morning that in grace and kindness You have left to the Church this rich deposit concerning Your beloved Son. We think of how impoverished we would be did we have no record of eyewitnesses to His mighty works, to the words that He spoke, to His dealings with men in all of their need. We thank You for these portrait galleries of our gracious and sovereign King. And we pray that You would give us a new sense of appreciation

56:39 for all that You have given to us in this portion of Your Word, that we may with renewed zeal seek to walk up and down those galleries and drink in the manifold, humbled glories of our Lord Jesus Christ. O our Father, may the Holy Spirit so shine upon Christ in His glory as He is set before us in the Gospel of Mark that many of us will look upon this time together as a time of unusual blessing in beholding our Lord Jesus Himself. Write His own words upon our hearts. We would be a fresh,

57:23 bound to Him in terms of all that He has commanded. O Lord, may those who are yet in their sins be persuaded to leave their sins and to embrace Him who is set before us in His own Word. Seal then Your Word to our hearts and answer the cry that together we bring into Your presence in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.