The Synoptic Gospels

Stephanie said if she had any questions, she'll message me.

Oh, okay.

Is she watching? Yes Well good, well good evening, I know some of you this is your first night But we are No, it's okay.

We're tonight.

This is your first night with us.

So I want to just sort of Mention what this is.

This is Sovereign Grace Academy and the Academy class is Built around the same model that I had when I was in seminary so these classes are based upon a syllabus that lasts for eight weeks and every class is Sort of builds upon the previous class and the survey of the New Testament course Syllabus is available.

I don't have the printout with me right now But I'll be happy to give it to you if you're if you decide that you want to continue I know you guys are first night here Ron.

That's your first night If y'all decide to stay and continue, I'll give you that that way you'll have the reading list We do have a required reading throughout the week and then we will have a mid-term Pop quiz test that'll come up at the fifth week and all it does is sort of just evaluate if you're picking up the material understanding it and Then at the end of the course if you want to earn the certificate that goes with the course you have to write a Paper you have to write a research paper.

So that is the structure of the class and Last week we looked at the chronology and dating of the New Testament Meaning that we looked at when the books were written and at what time they were written based upon our best Estimates that none of the by none of the books of the Bible had a date on them when they were written So everything when we talk about dating the books It's estimated dates at best just out of curiosity How many of you remember the what we likely consider to be the earliest New Testament book to be written? May remember that from last week James was most likely the earliest.

What was the earliest writing of Paul? Mm-hmm And we date the book of Galatians based upon the events of the book of Acts Because the book of Acts tells us that Paul preached in the Galatian region, which would have been the southern Turkey region of the modern day and in that in in those areas which were in Acts they're referred to as Lystra Iconium and Derby those of us if you remember reading and I think acts 13 talks about those cities Paul going through those cities and preaching and establishing churches there Shortly after Paul establishes those churches a group of men came in teaching Opposed to Paul's teaching they were known as the Judaizers that became such a big issue in the church Paul had to write them a letter that's called the book of Galatians the epistle to the Galatians and then by acts 15 An entire council of the church was convened in Jerusalem to deal with the issue of The contention that had been brought up by those people.

So this is how we date things we date things based upon events what the books are about and where we believe those books would have fallen in in regard to the content that is in the historical narratives versus the epistolary writings which are the epistles and and the letters So we looked at that.

We looked at the canon of the New Testament We talked about why we don't believe there's any other books that should be in the New Testament It's 27 books not 29 not 28 not 24, but we believe there are 27 New Testament books for Gospels one book of history, which is the book of Acts 13 books of Paul and then we have the general epistles Followed by the one book of prophecy, which is called the book of Revelation and so tonight we're going to be looking at what are known as the synoptic Gospels the synoptic Gospels refer to three of our four Gospels the synoptic Gospels are Matthew Mark and Luke the term synoptic Literally means to be viewed together synoptic Means to be viewed together and if you read Matthew Mark and Luke You will notice that each of them have a similar structure they have similar content and they have a similar tone and That is why they are referred to as the synoptic Gospels they tell the story of Jesus in A way that comes from pretty much the same perspective three obviously three different viewpoints But from a similar perspective There is a fourth gospel and this gospel we we define differently.

We call the fourth gospel be autophic gospel The autophic gospel is the gospel of John John is Much different than Matthew Mark and Luke not in that it tells a different Jesus It's the same Jesus, but the narrative is much different in fact One of the one of the big things we're going to learn because we're gonna spend a whole week on John next week next week We're going to spend one whole week on the autophic gospel And one of the things we're going to learn in that study is it's actually through John that we learned that Jesus's ministry was three years because if you take Matthew Mark and Luke Really? there's only about a year worth of material but it's in John that we see there were annual events that Jesus did in his life and We have three of those and therefore three years and John is the one who gives us that sort of three Yeah, because we talked about Jesus having a three-year public ministry that comes from gospel of John So tonight's lesson is only going to focus on Matthew Mark and Luke the synoptic Gospels before we go any further though.

Let's have a quick word of prayer father I thank you for the opportunity to talk about your word And I do pray that you would keep me from error as I teach Lord help me to give what you have for these people tonight no less and no more and I do pray Lord that everyone hears eyes ears and heart would be attentive to your word and Ultimately that your spirit would be the teacher who pray this in Jesus name Amen.

All right.

So here is the outline we do have screens for everyone who wants to take notes Here is the outline of tonight's study We have four parts.

This class takes an hour and a half.

We usually take a five-minute break right around the one hour mark So here are the four parts we're going to look first at the synoptic problem right over here I don't know if you can see it.

Okay on the TV We're going to look at the synoptic problem we're going Had to had to mess it up It's back The synoptic problem we're going to look at authorship and purpose We're going to look at theological insights and then we're going to discuss harmonization So that is our our lesson outline for tonight Mike I need you to install a cupholder on my pulpit I was looking at Andy this morning and I noticed the same thing.

He was picked up his coffee and he came over there and thought of something else to say.

And then he sat it back down before he first remembered to drink any coffee.

Yeah, I mean just a cup holder right here.

Yeah, or a little table.

Maybe that's that'd be better So let me ask you this question.

How many of you've ever heard of the synoptic problem? I mean I've had It was in the reading Good if you did the reading then you've heard of the synoptic problem good.

Okay.

So Mike since you did the reading explain it to us This this gospel says There was this many healings Blind person or something like that and this gospel says it was one and there there's a parent as a light read And Scriptural differences Yeah, absolutely absolutely so Simply simply speaking when we talk about the synoptic problem.

The synoptic problem is the fact that we have three Very similar narratives, but they have some significant differences We have three similar narratives with significant differences.

Very good.

All right, so let's just sort of break it down here One the Gospels were not written until several decades After the events which they recount Remember we talked earlier.

What's the earliest book you said it it was James Earliest books of Paul was Galatians and then probably Thessalonians and maybe Corinthians When did the Gospels get written? Yeah late 50s at the best Mid to early to mid 60s at the most conservative points Yes somewhere in there.

And so when did Jesus die and resurrect? Somewhere around 30 right 30 to 33, you know, if we count it somewhere around in that time, so we've got between the time of the writing and the time of the events or Reverse that flip it Okay, I can't make you work what's wrong, okay, see you did it use your phone She's telling us that there's no no live stream either we're losing it all Yes, and it should be live streaming according to that device over there The best I can do though is I do record this and I will post it later if it doesn't if it Yeah, yeah All right.

So, um, we're just gonna forget about that for a bit I'll I will give the I'll give the class as if we didn't have screens because I don't even want to try to Let technology ruin our night So if the earliest New Testament books are written in the 40s and the Gospels are written in the 50s in the 60s We know that that's not when the church began the church began after the resurrection of Christ The New Testament Church began after the resurrection of Christ.

And so there was a church that was functioning for 30 years Without written Gospels that that has to be understood There was a church that was functioning for at least 30 years or at least 20 25 30 years Before there were written Gospels and it's clear that The church knew many things about Jesus before Matthew Mark and Luke wrote they were already worshiping Jesus as the risen King of Kings and Lord of Lords And so there's a body of teaching that existed prior to the writing of the Gospels now that in no way Discounts the value of the Gospels But it does put us into a new context when we think about the fact that when Paul is going through Iconium and Lystra and Derby's going through these places.

He's not going preaching Matthew Mark and Luke because it hadn't been written yet He's preaching about Jesus who died and resurrected He's preaching the Word of God through through the power of the Spirit, but he's not preaching the text because he didn't have the text Understand so when the text comes the text comes through three independent witnesses two of which are Or I'm sorry for independent witnesses two of which are Apostles Matthew is an Apostle John is an Apostle, but it also comes through two independent witnesses that are not Apostles we get the gospel of Luke which is the physician of the Apostle Paul and his One that worked alongside of him and we have the epistle or the gospel of Mark Which we understand was written from the perspective of Peter.

So when we come to the three synoptics We understand there's going to be times where they say the same things Because they're Speaking from the perspective of an event that actually happened and they're coming with the Holy Spirit But they're also coming from a body of knowledge that's been passed down for 30 years They're speaking from this Body of truth.

So let me let me cut maybe I can simplify this let us let's say somebody wrote a gospel and That gospel said Jesus rose on the sixth today Instead of the third day.

What do you think the early church would have done? They would have freaked out because all of them were still alive who saw Jesus raised and they knew he raised on the third day Right, so there's going to be some consistency because these truths were it wasn't like it took 30 years for these truths to be found Out these truths have been preached for 30 years that's the point I'm saying is there's a body of truth that pre-existed the writing and This body of truth was what was being preached by Paul and John and the other Apostles as they go out and preach and so when the Gospels are written down a lot of the information that they're writing down is is From the same perspective because they're telling the same stories the same stories.

The church has been telling for 30 years Does that make sense? You kind of get what I'm saying? Yes, and so the oral the oral transfer of information is what is how the church functions over the first three decades Because that's what they had for the information about Christ.

They did not have the written word, right? And so now That helps us with the things that are the same Why do they all say there's three days because that's what happened Why do they all say this because that's what happened where it becomes difficult is where they say things that are different Not where they agree Now some scholars argue about where they agree Because they say well the reason why they agree is because they copied one another.

I don't think that's necessarily true I just showed you why I don't think that's true.

There's enough body of information that's being passed down They don't have to copy one another Because they're able to draw from their own Matthew and John were there they can draw from their own Memory and the power of the Spirit, of course, I'm not discounting the power of the Spirit I'm just saying they're drawing from what they saw but also this body of information that's been passed down that they had So that's easy.

The hard part is okay.

Now you got parts that don't agree What do we do about the resurrection narrative you come to the resurrection narrative? And what do you find you find? independent stories that have difficulty with agreement for example When you read some of them it gives a list of ladies that went and then you go to another list Some of the ladies are in the list.

Some of the ladies are not in the list Then you go to another one and it's only one that's only one Mary Magdalene.

She's only one mentioned Okay, then in some there's an angel Outside the tomb and others there's two angels and then the others there's two angels in the tomb Right remember in John's gospel They go in the tomb and they see the two angels in fact John's gospel really throws a monkey wrench in it a lot because John's gospel tells us a whole narrative about She running to get John and Peter and John out running Peter and then him telling the world that I'm faster than Peter because he Says I made it first And there's this whole narrative section that that's not in the other gospels the whole part about Jesus Being the gardener and she's seeing him and thinking that he's the gardener none of that's in the rest of the Gospels None of that's in the synoptic Gospels.

And so it becomes an issue of wait a minute.

Why is there such this this vast? difference So that's the synoptic problem And I remember I taught this on Easter Sunday Probably 2008 ish 2009 and I was teaching Sunday school and our adult Sunday school class and I was teaching for Jack remember Jack used to have the class Pat I was teaching Jack's class on Easter Sunday for whatever reason he was gone and I I I just said well, I'm gonna teach the four the four gospel resurrection narratives and show the differences So I did and I wrote them all out I had this one has this many angels this has this many women This is the names here.

This is that I had it all over the board and I went through the differences Afterwards we had a visitor that day and he came up to me and he goes I never knew any of this.

I Never knew there there there was this much that you need to study.

I never knew any of this I never knew there was this many differences and my response I didn't say it out loud.

And again, I kind of feel bad because maybe in my heart I was being a little bit of a jerk, but I said can't you read like in my mind? I'm like you've never read this because just a cursory reading You come to this so the synoptic problem Now hopefully you understand I'm getting to the solution but the problem is there and like you said it even a basic reading it's it's right there and you have to deal with it and again, if you listen to the Unbelieving scholars they'll say well, here's why you shouldn't believe the Bible.

They can't even get the number of angels, right? They can't even get this right.

You can't even get that right.

Why are you gonna believe a Bible that doesn't know what it's saying? See why this is important you see why this is some of what we addressed in this class because these are the things if you were to go to Well, I have taken a course not I Watched through the course at Was it Yale Seminary no Princeton Seminary Princeton Seminary Has a course that you can take online So I took their New Testament course and the first thing the guy said was the Bible's full of contradictions There's no reason why anybody should believe it I mean it was maybe he didn't say it explicitly that way but basically just said it can't agree on anything Can't even agree on how many angels are at the tomb and That this is why I say these are the types of things that we need to address These are the types of things we need to be able to deal with because as Believing Christians We have to face these things too And if we never deal with them if we just sweep them under the we never say anything about them What's going to happen our children are going to go to college they're going to be faced by somebody like Bart Ehrman or some other Unbelieving scholar and he's going to hit them with this and just like that guy who came to church.

I didn't even know That's why I think these things are important Because I mean if you don't know that these are even an issue If you don't know that this is what the unbelieving world is saying and attacking the Bible with then you'll never know how to address them so What are some of the ways that we can address the synoptic problem One of the ways is called the common source theory I've kind of addressed this already and this is that all three synoptic Gospels are Dependent upon a common source or sources, which we no longer have this could be oral tradition which I already mentioned or an other gospel that we no longer have sometimes this is referred to as The Q source.

I mean ever how many of you ever heard of that? You've heard of Q Explain to us what Q is.

Okay, you heard it from me.

I don't know if that counts No What is it? You remember? Yeah, the idea is this you have you have Matthew You have Mark You have Luke.

All right within Matthew Mark and Luke there are areas of agreement Where all three of them agree then there's areas of disagreement Or all three of them Disagree, or at least tell the story differently when I say disagree.

I'm not saying contradiction I'm saying they tell the story differently, right whether it's one demoniac or two demoniacs These are these are the issues, right? And so you've got these two you've got agreement disagreement The argument is is that there's an additional source and it's called I think the word is quell Yeah, quell is German for source so Q just means source that there was a source document that Matthew Mark and Luke drew from and that's where all the agreement comes in and where the Disagreement comes in is when they added their own Experiences.

So the agreement comes from the Q the disagreement comes from their experiences now Where where's the issue with this well the issue with this in my opinion is There is no evidence for this There's no evidence that there has ever been another written gospel.

There's never been anything found.

There's never been anything unearthed There is no the only evidence we have is conjecture Well, this one agrees with this one and this one agrees with them.

These agreements had to come from somewhere Therefore there must be an additional source Now I've given you the option of thinking that there there could be reason for the agreement and that could be what? The oral tradition right oral tradition could bring about a tremendous amount of agreement but the one thing that this always leaves out and It's always when you're dealing with unbelieving scholars.

They always leave out the supernatural They always leave out God That's the part that they're always leaving out because they're trying to produce How could this be? But they're doing so with an anti supernatural approach They're saying they're saying we don't believe God was involved.

How would this happen without man? and here's the thing, let's say Rhonda and Cindy and Daisy all wrote a paper and you all handed me in your paper and I looked at it and there were portions of your paper that looked almost verbatim.

I would think Either you have all copied off of one another or you all copied from a single source Because that's the natural human way of Coming up with that if if you three handed in a paper, there were parts that were verbatim same word same everything I would think either copied each other Or you copied something Each of you all went to the same website.

You all cheated off the same website, right? And that's the way the humanistic scholars approach the synoptic problem They assume that God was not part of the equation They cut God out of the equation and by virtue of that they have to come up with another Way and they produce this idea of Q the source that has to be there But again by doing so they are they're leaving out God's Participation What does the Bible claim to be all of that's right claims to be the Word of God claims to be God breathed, right? And therefore if the Bible is what it claims to be which at this church we affirm it is what it claims to be It's the Word of God if the Bible is the Word of God, then we cannot assume that it came about purely by natural means But that there had to have been supernatural and divine participation in the production of these books So with that in mind The second theory this is the first thing we talked about was the common source theory and that's this the second theory is The interdependence theory now, I think this is more likely Again though this does not discount God's participation.

I want you to know what I'm about to say does not discount God's participation the Interdependence theory is the idea that one of these guys came first and the later writers reference what they wrote so the argument with that is either Mark or Matthew came first and Luke Has Access to Mark and Matthew and therefore some of his writing is based upon their writing that is called the Interdependence theory now you might say I don't like that because that means God's not involved not necessarily Everybody turn your bottles if you have your Bibles.

I'll show you something Turn to Luke chapter 1 Okay Luke 1 1 Now this is Luke writing so we know this is how he saw what he was doing in as much as many Somebody's here.

Hey, Billy Ray, come on in now.

You're fine.

Come on in have a seat All right, we're in Luke 1 1 if you want to when you get a second, let me get open your Bible.

Okay reading again in as much as Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us It seems good to me Also having followed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account for you Most excellent theophilus that you may have certainty Concerning the things you have been taught Notice what Luke tells us in just those four verses one.

He tells us that other people have written this down What does that mean? He's aware of Matthew and Mark we know Luke is third.

We know John is fourth.

We don't know whether Matthew or Mark was first I hold that Matthew was first, but that's a traditional argument.

That's not based upon My scholarly research.

It's just the traditional argument.

I tend to agree with it Matthew was first but it really doesn't matter what we do know is by the time of Luke He was aware that there was others that had written he references them here He says many have undertaken to compile a narrative.

You might say Wow, how many to that's how many that's the many of them It was to you might so that doesn't sound like a very many.

Well from his perspective.

That was many and he says Those Excuse me, just as those who were from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us What does that tell us it tells us that not only did they have written information? But they had witness testimony information and Luke is the consummate Historian he is saying this I am writing down an orderly account of what happened in the life of Jesus Christ and in doing so I am The I am third in line.

There have already been other writers There's already been eyewitness testimony I'm coming to provide an orderly account of all that's taken place so far I would argue this and I have and my doctoral dissertation because my doctorate was on the Gospel of Luke.

I Argue that Luke has the most Not only the longest gospel we know that More information.

In fact Luke wrote more of the New Testament than anyone Luke and Acts makes up more of the New Testament than even the writings of Paul Luke has as far as Greek word count Luke and acts is more and Luke has the most comprehensive view of Christ He tells more of the narrative.

He tells a longer narrative and again you say what you just told us earlier John tells us about three years Yes But it's still less less narrative Luke has the longest most comprehensive narrative about Jesus because he is a historian by nature He gives us a historical picture of the Lord Jesus Christ a biography based upon oral tradition and written tradition You said where's God in that God's all over that.

I'm not discounting God.

I'm just saying this is what Luke is It's a historical record the closest that we have to an actual historical biography because I would argue this Matthew Mark and John are not biographies Matthew Mark and John are theological treatises about Jesus There's a difference all for our Gospels But Matthew Mark and John are all intended to be theological treatises Matthew is teaching us that Jesus is the king of the Jews Mark Essentially is teaching us that Jesus is a suffering servant and John is teaching us as Jesus son of God but Luke tells us about Jesus the man and the life of Jesus the man and so that's a picture of what the four gospels Do and Luke is comprehensive in that and he's pulling in these These he's saying all of these things have been done.

And what am I doing? I'm coming along to give you an orderly account now who is Theophilus? There's a lot of argument about that I tend to think it was an individual but the term Theophilus means lover of God So that can mean the church can reference the group of the church It's it goes either way if you have a difference of opinion of me, you can be wrong.

It's okay but Whether or not it was to an individual or to the church.

He's writing it to give an orderly account He tells us that's what it's for.

So now we have to ask the question.

Well, which came first in Matthew or Mark? I really don't think that it matters from a scholarly perspective.

A lot of the debate says Mark came first Based upon how the structure of Matthew and Luke structure stories like they were drawing from Mark That's sort of the argument that the drawing seems to be more from Mark to Matthew rather than from Matthew to to Mark I I honestly have never been compelled to believe that but Ultimately what we have to understand is just because a writer is Are you hot? Okay Okay.

Okay.

Well, it's okay.

I just saw you I don't want you to pass out on us just because a writer references Oral tradition or written tradition does not mean they're discounting the input of the Holy Spirit That's that's my whole point for pointing to Luke 1 just because a writer references or tradition or written tradition Doesn't mean he's discounting the work of the Spirit because it is the work of the Spirit that is ultimately Inspiring this book to be written in the first place and it is according to first Peter Rather maybe is the second Peter since the Peter says that Holy men of God's wrote as they were carried along by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is carrying them along as they're writing Ensuring that God's Word is being written down properly and correctly that's what we believe by the doctrine of inspiration that God is breathing out his word through these men and Ensuring that what we need is what we get and that he is and he is giving us what we need So later, we're going to talk about the subject of harmonization What do we do about the areas of disagreement We'll get there.

I want to stop with this right now because I'm going to move on to the next part but ultimately just understand this we talk about the synoptic problem the issue of disagreements and agreements within the text We have three Gospels all three of them tell much of the same story Luke admits to knowing about the previous Gospels as well as oral tradition and These two Gospels predate Luke We just don't know by how long nor which one came first, but all of these are 30 years after The the events that they wrote about so God is intervening to ensure that what we get is correct That that clear feel like I was all over the map there Okay, as long as we're good as long as y'all are good.

I'm good.

I want to read a quote to close this portion This is a quote from a website if you've never used this website got questions.org is a tremendous website You've never used it before.

It's very good.

I Share it with a lot of my friends who asked me Bible questions I'll often send them articles because the articles are very well written.

Here's what it says about the synoptic problem it says ultimately the synoptic problem is not as big a problem as some try to make it out to be the explanation as to why the synoptic Gospels are so similar is that they are all inspired by the same Holy Spirit and are all written by People who witness or were told about the same events.

Yeah eyewitnesses and oral tradition the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew the Apostle one of the twelve who followed Jesus and was commissioned by him the Gospel of Mark was written by John Mark a close associate of the Apostle Peter Another one of the twelve the Gospel Luke was written by Luke a close associate of the Apostle Paul Why would we not expect their accounts to be very similar to one another each of the Gospels is ultimately inspired by the Holy Spirit Therefore we should expect coherence and unity So the synoptic problem is huh? Yeah, the synoptic problem is not a biggest as big a problem But understanding this is where the the issue comes in the argument comes from I think is helpful especially when you're being faced with the Unbeliever who's trying to say you don't need to believe your Bible because of X Y & Z Understanding more about it just gives us more more firm You know ground to stand on when we're making our making our stance All right moving on now, let's talk about the authorship of Oh, by the way Brother, you weren't here the four parts tonight.

The first is a synoptic problem I had it on the screen, but my TV went cuckoo on me.

Number two is authorship and purpose number three is theological insights And number four is harmonization So let's go to authorship Okay Who wrote Matthew I Just argued Matthew did okay Here's something that we need to we're going to step back for a moment and and and just mentioned none of the Gospels Actually named their writers though The closest one is John when he talks about the beloved disciple We assume he's referring to himself because he refers to himself as the one who wrote the gospel at the end of the book So that one's that one's pretty much the only one that has a signature The other ones don't have that the Gospels the gospel according to Matthew doesn't say Matthew wrote it Okay.

So the reason why I'm pointing this out is because the earliest Sending out of these letters Did have the names Attached to them, but it wasn't part of the inspired writing So the best we can say is the early church believed it was written by Matthew Mark Luke and John and I believe that I'm Not in for a second discounting that I'm just saying you may at some point run into somebody who say well You don't even know Matthew wrote Matthew because it didn't say he did that's true.

It doesn't say he did how do you answer that? The earliest copies had it attributed to him.

That's best we can say is the earliest copies attributed to him there's no reason to deny that it came from him and Why does this matter well because there's other Gospels out there don't remember last week we talked about the gospel who Thomas why don't we believe Thomas wrote the gospel of Thomas if we believe Matthew or the gospel Matthew That's it that's a super question let's let's stop those camp out there for a second I would argue That we have every reason to believe Matthew wrote the gospel Matthew But why do I say there's no reason believe Thomas wrote the gospel of Thomas? partially Yes, the earliest the earliest the gospel of Thomas was likely written now some people push it into the first century But the at best I believe it's a second century work Which would put it well outside the time of Thomas being able to write it We know Matthew wrote the gospel of Matthew it is a it is it in the sense of time It's well within the range of the time that Matthew would have written But Thomas is well outside the time of when Thomas could have written like for instance Did you know there's a gospel of Mary Magdalene? You look it up go online look up the gospel of Mary Magdalene know when it was written The 300s guess when Mary Magdalene wasn't alive the 300s right so so it doesn't count Right so right away you can begin to look at these extra extra biblical Gospels the gospel of Judas Iscariot the gospel of Mary Magdalene the gospel of all of these odd books that people say oh Well, this was written back.

No, they don't fit within the time frame at all But there's another point as well is content The gospel of Thomas is so different than the four Gospels That it doesn't tell the same Jesus or give the same narrative at all It's so odd remember I talked about last week Jesus came out of the tomb and the cross followed him and the cross was walking and talking The gospel Matthew or the gospel Thomas is weird It literally ends with the phrase of Peter asking Jesus about Mary Magdalene How will she get saved and Jesus says she must become a man to get saved Read it go home and look up the gospel of Thomas.

It's not even a gospel It's a set of it's it almost reads like Proverbs.

It's just little short sayings over and over and over It's in some of the sayings are from the other Gospels It's obviously some of it was taken from the Gospels But a lot of it wasn't and the whole thing about Mary Magdalene becoming a man That wasn't from the other Gospels But there's dating and content So we would say internal and external evidence that would say Thomas.

No way wrote the gospel Thomas We have every reason to believe that Matthew wrote Matthew Mark wrote Mark and Luke wrote Luke Now that's the authorship now.

Let's look at purpose Anybody want to take it I mentioned it earlier what is the purpose in a sense the overarching purpose of the gospel of Matthew as as in distinction of the others The gospel of Matthew is written primarily to the Jewish people to prove that Jesus is the king of the Jews and And you say why why? You start with the gospel of Matthew and you start reading you'll notice that Matthew has a genealogy The genealogy of Matthew goes back to one individual.

Who is it? Abraham Why focus on Abraham? Because that is the father of the Hebrew people the father of the Jewish people and Jesus has to be a son of Abraham Matthew has more Quotes from the Old Testament than any other gospel Because again, the argument is to prove Jesus is the Jewish Messiah So Matthew over and over as it is written in this prophet or that prophet proving Jesus is the son of Or rather the the the Jewish Messiah.

Well, the women are mentioned what I mean I Don't I I know what you're I know that the women are mentioned in the genealogy.

I don't understand They would have been more familiar with those stories certainly But if you're referring to the matriarchal position of the Jewish people that so that's not that that that is actually a later Event The Jewish people now Trace their heritage through the mother's line It's called a matriarchal society, but that is not as it's always been that is a relatively recent development as far as historically It's not always been that way So I'm not I would if that's what you're referring to I wouldn't I wouldn't connect that but no they certainly would have been more calm they would have been more connected to the stories of Who Rahab was who Ruth was who? The other huh Well, I don't remember I'm just gonna say I don't remember I I know who they are but a Tamar Judah and Tamar Ruth Rahab the prostitute and Bathsheba.

Okay, that's the four.

That's the four four women mentioned.

All right So let me just read this real quick Matthew did not directly state his purpose in writing so all attempts to describe Excuse me all attempts at describing our references This is typed incorrectly.

I apologize.

This is a quote from introduction to the New Testament from written by Douglas Moo Matthew did not directly state his purpose in writing.

So all attempts at describing our references come from I Can't even do it.

It's it's incorrectly typed.

So that is my mistake But he goes on to say since Matthew's dominant themes are Several and to some extent disputed it's difficult to delineate a single purpose.

So he's saying it's not just that but the over arcing Perspective is that Jesus is writing about the promised Messiah to the Jews now.

He also Gives us a few other things.

I'll just give you I'll give you a few thoughts here He also gives us the failure of the Jewish leaders we see this a lot in Matthew particularly Matthew 23 and 24 Jesus speaking to Pharisees The coming of the kingdom of God the messianic reign of Christ and the fulfillment of the Old Testament hopes These are all things that we see in the gospel of Matthew Now if we said Matthew's gospel is to present Jesus as the king of the Jews.

What would Mark's gospel be? What is Mark's purpose? Well, as I said earlier, I believe Mark's gospel is to present God present Christ as a suffering servant Why do I believe that well because Mark's gospel? And I don't know how much I know all of you.

Hopefully have read the Bible hopefully you've read the New Testament, but I don't know how many of you have read the four Gospels as Independent of one another one narrative one story and how this fits the gospel of Mark is Essentially a Passion narrative with an extended introduction.

It's almost all about Jesus's cross and the work of the cross It sets Jesus up as a miracle worker from chapters 1 to chapter 8 But then chapters 8 through 16 is all about his suffering So we see him being presented as the suffering servant So really Mark's gospel is in a sense of fulfillment of Isaiah 53 because what is Isaiah 53? The suffering servant Jesus would come as a suffering servant and Mark is it's essentially presenting a fulfillment of that This was another reason why some argue it came first because it focuses on the fulfilling of that particular prophecy Now I do want to make another quick note here I Said earlier that Mark's gospel comes from which Apostle remember Yeah, Mark's gospel likely comes from Peter I'll give you a Historical reason for this Papias who was bishop of Hierapolis in 130 All right.

He was bishop until 130 made three claims About the gospel of Mark Again, this is a guy within one generation in a sense of the last Apostle dying because the last Apostle dying was John He died probably at the end of the first century So this guy is ministering and living at a time where he was one generation removed from the the the last Apostle This is what he says.

Number one.

He says Mark wrote the gospel associated with his name So he does affirm Mark as the author number two He says Mark got his information from Peter and number three, he says Mark's gospel lacks rhetorical or artistic order reflecting the occasional nature of preachers of Peter's preaching that ultimately Mark was writing from Peter's sermons That this was Peter's preaching again.

If you read Mark it is Probably the least narrative of the four gospels It does come out as if it's presenting Jesus almost in a sermonic way rather than a Biographical way.

This is why I say three of the four gospels are theological treatises more than they are Historical biographies.

I think Luke is more of a historical biography All right.

So just an interesting little Side note, I think it's always interesting when you can go back in history and see somebody who actually answers a question Specifically.

Okay.

This is why we believe Mark wrote this because of these reasons All right.

Now there's one other thing about the gospel of Mark that For the sake of time.

I don't want to get into too much but there is some argument about how Mark's gospel ends and this is addressed as From textual criticism.

This is not part of this class.

I can't get into it much but there's a question about whether Mark's gospel has the Appearance of Jesus after the resurrection because some manuscripts include that and some manuscripts do not and the manuscripts that include that in fact if you have your Bible just It doesn't matter what Bible you have whether you have the King James or the ESV open it up to Mark 16 and go to verse 8 Okay, so in verse 8 it says and they that is the women went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them and they said nothing to anyone for they Were afraid now if you are holding an ESV at that point There are brackets which say some of the earliest manuscripts do not include verses 9 to 20 Now if you're holding a King James Bible, it probably does not reference that but it might mark a mark Mike.

I know your name Do you have it is yours a study edition or any But does it mention it even in the study notes? Okay.

All right.

Now the reason for that is because there are two families of manuscripts that have traditionally come down the families of manuscripts One family is called the Byzantine manuscripts and the other are known as the Alexandrian manuscripts and the particular Manuscripts that the King James is based upon are the Byzantine manuscripts and those unilaterally contained that ending portion of Mark the Alexandrian manuscripts have been discovered later But are of an earlier source and they do not include the ending of Mark And so that's why it has been considered over the last hundred fifty years to be one of the three main disputed texts There's several texts that are disputed But there are three primary disputed texts the longer ending of Mark the pericope adultery and the Kami Ohanian That's the three passages that are mainly disputed in the New Testament as to whether or not they are to be included within the actual Text.

However, if you do end at this point of the mark at this portion of mark One of the things that you notice is you end without a resurrection So that does leave you in a precarious position with the gospel of Mark.

It leaves the women not knowing essentially what happened so That does create somewhat of an issue like I said I'm not going to argue tonight for or against but if you were going to study mark as an independent source and you were going To be getting out in the picture But if you were doing an independent study of the gospel of Mark When you got to this portion and you began to study the textual history of this portion This would be a portion of the text that would be debated as far as the historicity of this writing Interestingly enough just just just throwing this out there If this portion of mark is What Mark wrote if this if the ending of market this is correct This is where the people get the snake handling.

This is the only part that talks about snake handling It's also the part where it would be the only place that Jesus talked about speaking in tongues Because this is the only reference that Jesus ever makes to speaking in tongues is in is in Mark 16 after verse 9 Any other reference to speaking in tongues is only in the book of Acts in 1st Corinthians So it's just interesting that these are the there's two two doctrines within this portion that are our I don't say disputable but our Yeah questionable.

Yeah, so it's a I think there's a lot to study here when we when we discuss disputed text and For those of you don't know Textual critical studies is a hobby of mine.

I'm I enjoy doing it.

I enjoy looking I have a lot of Materials that I've done studies on these and I have my own opinions on it But I'm not in this class to share opinions as far as that goes I'm not going to sit here and tell you what to think but But as far as the longer ending of mark, there are arguments for it arguments for against it arguments for and against it and I just wanted to bring it to your attention because some people again you're reading through the Bible.

You don't know you don't know That's there Here's what's cool our Bibles We are willing as Christians to put out where there are conversations like this You will never find this in a Quran If you picked up a Quran, even though there are textual variations in the history of the Quran They would never admit that because they won't admit that there has been anything within the text any form of question or possible corruption.

I Is Is on our side not on their side.

In fact, there was a wholesale change to the Quran that happened during the Uthmanic revision After Muhammad died a man by the name of Uthman Revised the Quran and destroyed all the previous manuscripts So we actually don't know what Muhammad actually wrote because what we have today called the Quran is actually the Uthmanic revision of the Quran There's no way of finding out what was actually written originally This is why I think textual criticism is important with the Bible because it means we're being honest with what we have We're being fair and true to what we have Do we believe it's from God? Absolutely.

Do we do we believe he's preserved it? Yes, I don't believe anything has been lost just to be clear But we can go to the text and we can have an honest conversation about really there's only a few passages where we say Okay, is this actually what Mark wrote? That's the question, right? It's not what what's in the King James or what's in the ESV or this it's what did Mark, right? We want to know that Again, I went off probably way farther than I should have but that's a this is an important conversation For a different class, I guess.

All right Last is the purpose of Luke the purpose of Luke as I've already said gives the certainty of the ministry of Christ That's what he says.

I want to write these things that you have an orderly account and you can be certain of what happened I just love that that he tells us his purpose in the first chapter And I want to read you a quote from The Christian hint Christian History Institute William Mitchell Ramsey Oxford University's first professor of classical art and archaeology Originally accepted the German scholarly thesis that the Acts of the Apostles was a second century work full of error He announced he would prove it However research in ancient literature and on the ground in Turkey forced him to recognize that acts was an accurate report written in the first century Dig after dig spanning 15 years.

He accumulated evidence supporting Luke's accounts, but none detracting from them Overwhelmingly his findings caused him to become a Christian He set out to prove Luke wrong Because remember Luke wrote Luke and acts, right? So he set out to prove Luke wrong and in the process of that he became a Christian.

I want to read just a little bit more The preface of the second edition of his famous book st.

Paul the traveler was dated March 25th 1896 it is from the second edition that we have taken the following assessment that disposes of some elaborate theories of Composition by multiple authors about which Ramsey's wrote in the later edition quote there is only one kind of cause that is sufficiently complex to match the many-sided aspects of the book and that causes the many-sided character of a thoughtful and highly educated man our hypothesis is that acts was written by a great historian a Writer who set himself to record the facts as they occurred a strong partisan indeed But raised above partiality by his perfect confidence that he had only to describe the facts as they occurred in order to make the truth of Christianity and the honor of st.

Paul apparent I Just love that quote.

So it's kind of long but get what he's saying.

He said he said all Luke did was give us the facts and That's enough to prove the truth of Christ and of course Paul who is the object of the latter half of acts All right, let's take a five-minute break and we'll come back and finish out the last 20 to 25 minutes.

Hey now I Need to go back and look I'm sorry after class.

That's true.

Let's look because I have my computer Okay, so our last two things we're gonna look at Is we're going to look at theological insights and harmonization so We've pretty much looked already at some of the theological insights but I want to just give you a few extra things to consider because we've already talked about Jesus being focused on G or Matthew being focused on Jesus as king of the Jews and things like that, but here are a few other examples of theological Insights or things that certain books address number one only two of the four Gospels mentioned the birth of Jesus and While both confirmed that Mary was a virgin Matthew focuses on Joseph's perspective While more Luke focuses on Mary's perspective both reference it as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy But Mark does not mention it at all I've always found that interesting That Mark doesn't mention the birth of Christ and none of them mentioned The events between the birth of Christ and his ministry except for one event when he was 12 years old second thing Matthew contributes strongly to the understanding of Christ fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies.

We've already talked about this in part But I want to reference this as a theological insight Matthew is fond of a single term of Jesus son of David He uses that term over and over But he also uses another term for Jesus Emmanuel what is the word Emmanuel mean? God with us In fact that title is used in Matthew I believe it says it in my notes and I'll double-check it later, but that that title is only used in Matthew Emmanuel this is only used in Matthew Mark's gospel is the shortest Much of what is contained in Matthew and Luke is In Mark, in fact, I'll give you the I'll give you the rundown 90% of what is in Mark is in Matthew and 50% of what is in Mark is in Luke.

I'll say it again 90% of Mark's gospel is also in Matthew and 50% of Mark's gospel is in Luke, which means there's only a small percentage of Mark's gospel.

That's unique to Mark Mark tells his story with minimal editorial comments, and he says nothing about himself or his audience He focuses on the sufferings of Christ as we mentioned earlier there's also focus on the miracle workings of Christ and he shows the The belief in Jesus as Messiah through a series of miracles Rapid series if you read the first half of Mark's gospel It's a rapid series of miracles pop pop pop pop showing Jesus is Messiah And then it goes right to the the passion and all of that pop and and that that's the focus Luke presents Jesus as a genuine human person.

We talked about this a little while ago His genealogy is different than Matthew's Anybody want to tell me how it's different.

That's right Matthew's gospel starts with Abraham, but Luke's gospel starts with Adam in fact Interestingly enough Luke's Luke's genealogy goes back to God Because it says this one was a son this one this was so this one this was so this one this one was the son Of Adam Adam was the son of God if you read the Luke Luke's Luke's It's funny because an Adam was the son of God Interesting the way he describes that there's something else about Mark's gospel.

I'm sorry Luke's genealogy though that that often becomes an issue for people and that is Luke's genealogy and Matthew's genealogy diverge at certain points and that has been a cause of consternation for certain believers because they've said why would one man have two Genealogies and the answer the traditional answer is that the reason why there are two genealogies is because Matthew is giving the genealogy from Joseph's perspective and Luke is giving the genealogy from Mary's perspective and while I think that is a satisfactory answer.

I'm not sure that there's not more to it than that I'm not sure that it's Mary specifically or if it's a There there's some arguments from certain scholars that that it was a That they diverge the way the way they diverge is different and it's not like it's two different people It's just the way that they diverge.

It's it I Probably shouldn't even open up the can of worms.

That's always nice to be careful but I'm gonna shoot off into like a long story or something the Some believe it has to do with in-laws Like, you know like if you if you traced my genealogy you could trace my genealogy through my mother You could trade and that would take you to Algonac Michigan because that's where my mother's people are from Algonac, Michigan If you trace my genealogy through my father, you would trace it to a couple of Georgia Immigrants one of whom won a land lottery and he became the Foskey his Durant Foskey who became the Foskey that was the ancestor of my side of the family and that because they got the land and the money and all that he won a land lottery and And that's how he was able to have a family and all the things that went with it.

So that's two That's two genealogies, but also What if you trace my genealogy through Pat? Pat is my stepmom Now I understand that wouldn't be the way this is but there are times when in-laws could be included in a genealogy and that would Totally diverge thing.

So like I said, I think the traditional answer is satisfactory, but I'm not sure it's the complete answer I think there could be more to it is all I'm saying Hey, there could be because if you read them both there's there's some places where they like they get on track with each other Then they diverge again.

It's like that they get together and then go away again It's just really kind of cool like I said one day my goal is to do a complete harmony of the Gospels and That's gonna be years To do it the way I want to do it because I because I have this really I want to do it Like every verse and that's gonna take me probably a decade to do what I wanted to but anyway Hope that wasn't weird.

Sorry a little weird Uh One of the things about Luke's gospel that's very important is Luke Luke includes Many things that we wouldn't know if it were not for his writings for instance, there are several parables that only come to us in the gospel of Luke The God Good Samaritan only found in the gospel of Luke Story of the prodigal son only found in the gospel of Luke.

I had a list here.

I can't see in my notes where my list is Yeah, yeah, it's just it's just Luke is Just so much more information about Jesus is teaching In fact, we have a second version of the Sermon on the Mount from Luke We have the Sermon on the Mount which is Matthew 5 through 7 and in Luke's account Jesus is not on a mountain he's in a valley or a plain and he gives the I Don't believe it's the same sermon.

Some people believe it's the same sermon from two perspectives.

I don't I literally think Jesus gave a similar sermon in a different place and it's called the Sermon on the Plain and Luke's gospel is his his his rendition of the Sermon on the Mount much different because I Think it's a different sermon.

And so And that's Luke 6 17 through 49.

It's much shorter.

It's it gives us almost a When it comes to the Beatitudes because it does begin with a beatific statement, but the attitudes have have Like blessed of the poor in spirit like he adds these sort of spiritual connotations So it's very different from the sermon again, not contradictory just likely a different audience different time And I mean could Jesus have preached the same sermon more than once or a similar sermon.

Absolutely.

I do it all the time there's nothing nothing saying I mean Jesus is giving one message right ultimately and The Sermon on the Plain is is like that All right.

So those are just a few theological insights probably the most important theological insight is the well, there's two the Inauguration of the kingdom of God Jesus said the kingdom of God is upon you right? It's here it's because the king is here the inauguration the kingdom of God and the inauguration of the New Covenant Which he says is what in his blood right? This is the New Covenant in my blood the New Covenant was promised in the Old Testament and The kingdom of God is the purpose of all of this Alright last but not least We're going to talk about harmonization now earlier we talked about why the why the Synoptic Gospels get so many things similar But now we're going to talk about some of the places where they are Dissimilar and how do we harmonize places where there are dissimilar statements? Because Most people would claim the Bible at the dissimilar parts are Contradictions.

Are you familiar? I'm asking are you in all of you? Are y'all familiar with? What is known as the law of non-contradiction? anybody Or Darcy's role talk about it.

Well, that's good I mean, I'm I'm following a very good teacher that if you're if you're hearing the same words out of my mouth That's his that makes me feel good What is the law of non-contradiction Caleb explain it to us don't know Okay, the law of non-contradiction is is one of the one of what is referred to as the laws of logic and the law of law of non-contradiction says something cannot Be and Not be At the same time and The same Relationship law of contradiction states that something cannot be and not be Something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.

So for instance Cindy You are here You're not not here Because you can't be here and not be here at the same time and in the same relationship Now you could be here in body and not in mind you could be thinking about something else And you could say well, I'm not really there But that's a different relationship.

That's where the term relationship comes in, right? for instance, if I said that animal is black and Then I said that animal is white Well, if I'm talking about a zebra, I haven't contradicted myself because that animal is both black and white I didn't say he wasn't black.

I didn't say he wasn't white I just made a statement about his color.

Does that make sense? Because he can't be and not be at the same time in the same relationship So time and relationship is very important when we come to the concept of contradiction Because when something says when someone says something is a contradiction that means it has to violate time or relationship That makes sense and When we say the Bible does not contain any contradictions.

I believe that I believe in my whole heart The Bible contains no contradictions, but I do believe it contains differences what's the difference a difference does not necessitate that a Difference does not necessitate a contradiction Because I Think I gave this example last week, but I know some of you weren't here if I said Today, I got up came to church.

I preached a sermon about Joseph and then I had Mexican food with my friend Matt All of those things are true But I also didn't say This morning.

I got up.

I put on my tie.

I taught a class on the existence of God to teenagers and I had dinner with my friend Matt and his wife and my wife and our children Notice the second story is different, but it's still true None of it contradicts the first story.

It's just two different accounts of the same event neither one violates the other but they are two accounts of the same event and So if I were in the responsibility of harmonizing my story The first thing I would do is I would say well what part in the first one agrees with the second one What part in the second one did you get got repeated from the first one and they're automatically I start begin to harmonize The narrative and that's what has to happen Here's the here's the funny thing If we only had one gospel, let's say we only had the Gospel of Matthew.

This would never be an issue Because you don't have to harmonize one narrative But God gave us multiple Testimonies to his son Jesus In fact, the Bible says the truth of something is verified on the basis of two or three witnesses God gave us four witnesses three of whom give the same story with the synoptic this from a similar view Two or three witnesses God God fulfills his own demands when the demand is two or three witnesses He provides two or three witnesses, but those witnesses just like witnesses on a stand Tell their stories from their perspective and those stories have to be harmonized we must harmonize the stories of the Bible Sometimes that's not hard, but sometimes that is hard and I'm going to leave you tonight with a head scratcher Open up your Bibles to mark chapter 5 verses 22 and 23 Now I'm not leaving you with this to cause you to have questions about the veracity of the scriptures Hopefully I'll be able to explain it to you.

But this is a head scratcher And 23, all right, I'm gonna read it now this is the ESV but we do have Brother Mike who will correct me if there's anything that is that is not kosher with King James Now I do want to know though.

This would be one of those times I'd want to know if there is a difference because I don't think there is but but I just just to clarify Mark 5 22 says then came one of the rulers of the synagogue Jairus by name and Seeing him he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying my little daughter is at the point of death Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live All right, so right there, you know the story Jesus is out He's doing his miracles a man by the name of Jairus comes to him and says my daughter is sick Come to her and heal her so that she may live right Now Go to Luke 8 verse 41 Luke 8 41 and there came a man named Jairus who was a ruler of the synagogue and Falling at Jesus's feet.

He implored him to come to his house for he had an only daughter about 12 years of age and She was dying as Jesus went the people pressed around him.

Okay, so we're giving a little more information here What what one specific thing are we told in this that we weren't told in the last? Her age 12 I wasn't mentioned before I don't think right.

Yeah, and what we're going to find out also in the story of Luke's narrative There's a woman who touches Jesus same same situation She touches Jesus's garment was healed for her issue of blood which had been going on for how long? 12 years interesting that both of these Luke references the 12 year old girl and the 12 year issue of blood in the same same context So Luke gives us more information because there's a context he's focused on now Let's go to Matthew's gospel.

This is where the head scratcher comes in Matthew chapter 9 verse 18 only one verse All right, Matthew 9 18 while he was saying these things to them Behold a ruler came and knelt before him saying my daughter has just died But come and lay your hand on her and she will live What's the difference In the other two narratives he came and said my daughter is dying But in this narrative he says she's already dead now from just the perspective of Without taking into account.

We trust the Bible and all that taking a step back.

That sounds like a pretty big difference.

Would you agree? And we need and she either dead or she ain't dead.

I ain't asking you if the Bible's true I believe the Bible's true.

I'm asking if I'm right.

It's a head scratcher.

You know, it is don't even sit over there like Don't even pretend Daisy This is one of the ones that's difficult He thought it mattered Okay Now it says in the King James.

She's dead, right? Okay, so this is not just an ESV translational issue This is okay the reason why I bring this one up is because this is one of the times where if you go to the websites that say The Bible has a thousand and one contradictions and here's one of them.

This will be one of the ones that they reference Because one of them says she was dead and one says she wasn't Daisy you got to get with me on this Hang with me Daisy I'm not Admitting a contradiction.

I am saying there's a difference here that has to be harmonized This see the harmonization of how many angels are at the tomb.

That is that's can be a little tough Ones like this are harder and so we begin to have to step back and we begin to have to understand Narrative flow from the perspective of the individual writers and each individual writer has certain particular methods that he employs in telling stories and One of the things that Matthew does in his narrative writing is he does what is called telescoping? Telescoping a story is when you take a story that's longer and make it shorter Now you would think Mark would do that because Mark's gospel is shorter But actually Mark does it less when Mark tells a story he gives more details Matthew however tells more stories with less details and he telescopes the stories So as to put more in in less space and we see this in multiple times in Mark's gospel.

I'm sorry Matthew's gospel and So what Matthew is doing is he's making the longer story short Though the the man's daughter did die and if we read the narratives in the other texts He actually does say to Jesus she's dead.

But if you lay your hands on he does but that's actually later and Matthew is bringing those like it take a telescope and push the two ends together He's taking the two ends of the story and pushing them together and essentially eliminating the middle just like I did earlier when I talked About going to lunch with my friend I left out the whole part about us putting together the soundboard because we did that before we ever went to eat I left that whole section out of both stories We spent an hour working on the new soundboard and I didn't mention that at all.

I telescoped the story Putting the end in the beginning together without the middle and that's what Matthew's done so Understanding that and understanding that's how the narrative is is being put together helps us understand.

This isn't a contradiction But having all three narratives helps us to see the full picture So understanding the content in by the way Gospel writers are not the only ones who telescope stories all Writers at some point when they're putting together a narrative will telescope and and will and we'll put things together eliminating unnecessary portions or shortening things for the purpose of brevity in the narrative so Is that helpful or scary some people get real nervous Y'all wanna do huh? Oh, yeah, you're new.

Yeah, you were like what so you were ready I forgot you were here before and that's why you're not so worried Daisy.

You were here last time, too Okay, you know that is good yeah, we're gonna have an answer These are important things to know There's another one you don't have to go there just real quick.

I'll read them to you They're just short verses, but this is a fun one Luke 22 34 Jesus said I tell you Peter the rooster will not crow this day until you deny me three times Matthew 26 34 Jesus said to him truly I tell you this very night before the rooster crows you will deny me three times mark and Immediately the roaster crew rooster crowed a second time and Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him before the rooster crows twice Who the thought this? You will deny me three time Neither one of the first two gospel writers mentioned the second crow Only mark mentions that there were two crows But only mark is writing from Peter's memory Peter is the one giving the narrative and he would have been more apt To remember the details of his betrayal That's right But it's interesting that only that one gospel mentioned there were two crows the only and again, it's not a contradiction They didn't say there weren't two crows.

They just said the rooster crowed, right? Peter remembers it and gives a specific account.

I think again to me.

This is fun.

I Don't doubt the veracity of the Bible don't doubt it So when I go to text like this, I can begin to really dive in and dig It's like the story I always said I said if I came home one day And I pulled up to my house and a man walks out of my house, and I know my wife's there I Would not for a second think that my wife's cheating on me or anything like that because we got 23 years of fateful marriage There's I would I would wonder did a pipe break did somebody break into my house? I would think everything else before I thought my wife is cheating on me because there's nothing in her that has been unfaithful And therefore why would I doubt her faithfulness? Same way about the Bible when I read something in the Bible that I look at I say boy That's a head-scratcher.

I don't doubt the faithfulness of the Bible I just begin to ask questions and dig a little deeper knowing that the answer is there.

It's just got to be found That's all so we trust the faithfulness of the Bible Even when it causes us to go I don't get it.

That's okay.

Hopefully that was helpful.

Let's let's end with a word of prayer Father I thank you for your word.

Thank you for your truth.

I pray Lord that we'll continue to want to study and Show ourselves approved unto God workmen who need not be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth in Jesus name.