Christ in 03 in the Gospels — Jim Flanigan

I'll make you welcome this evening as we commence another week of meditation upon the Lord Jesus. We have been following a very beautiful pattern, I think, that the Lord Jesus is in all of the scriptures, and from different parts of our Bible we have been looking for him.

Last week we were exclusively in the Old Testament, and this week we turn to the New. Tomorrow evening we want to look for him in the Acts of the Apostles, and then on the following evening we'll see him in the Epistles of the Romans, then in the Epistles of the Hebrews, and then in the book of the Revelation.

We hope that you'll come back as often as you possibly can. There are so many aspects and different facets of the Lord Jesus, and I trust that you are finding it encouraging to know that he is indeed in all the scriptures, just like he said, and that the Lord will bless us this evening as we look for him in the Gospels.

We make you very welcome and hope that you'll come back again, if you can, in the will of the Lord. Now, we want to look then tonight, please, at the four Gospels and their presentation of the Lord Jesus, and I'd like to read just from the end of the Gospels, the Gospel by John, and perhaps a verse or two from chapter 20, and then from chapter 21.

Firstly from chapter 20, and at verse 30. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.

Now, chapter 21, and reading just the last verse, 25, and there are also many other things which Jesus did, to which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

The Lord will bless those short readings from his work. Now, personally, I find the Gospels fascinating, and I constantly have to drag myself out of them as far as personal reading is concerned. I trust that maybe after we have looked at them this evening, that some of you will have the same problem.

I trust that we will be able to introduce you to this lovely problem of being completely intrigued by the Gospels. Now, there is a kind of a little pattern, almost a principle among us, that when we are just saved, just newly brought to Christ, we somehow think that the Gospels are the simplest part of our Bible.

And I suppose that if a young believer comes and says, I just got saved, where will I start to read? Well, I suppose that, usually, we would give that advice, that you begin to read in the Gospels. And not only that, but if someone says, now there are four Gospels, which of them in particular should I study?

We generally say, well now, the simplest of them, of course, is the Gospel by John, and perhaps you ought to begin there. And indeed, if someone comes to us who is not saved at all, and they want scriptures to read, we would feel very happy about giving to them a copy of the Gospel by John.

And the Gospel by John has a very simple vocabulary, and somehow we imagine that even boys and girls can read it, and appreciate, and in some measure, understand that Gospel. So our first reasoning, then, seems to be that the four Gospels are the simplest part, and of the four Gospels, the simplest is the Gospel by John.

Now, we begin to read on a little bit, and some of us thought we had graduated when we left the Gospels, and we went to the Epistles, and began to study there, and discover new things in the Epistles.

But I want to promise you that eventually, everybody comes back to the Gospels. And then, having read the Epistles for a while, when you come back to the Gospels, you begin to realize now that these four Gospels are not just the simple books that one time we thought they were.

And when you study them a little bit more closely, you find then that the Gospel by John, far from being the simplest of the four, is perhaps the most profound of them all, so that in fact, what might be perhaps the simplest book in all of our Bible, has now taken the form of the most profound.

Now, that's a strange pattern that seems to be consistent among us, that now we have come to realize that the real deep things of the New Testament are in the Gospels. Now, there's a very simple reason for that, and the reason is that in these four Gospels, we are actually following, literally, the footsteps of the Lord Jesus.

And if He is all that we know Him to be, well then, of course, we are following the footprints of infinity here in these four Gospels. And if that be so, and it is so, well then, of course, it's obvious that they cannot be the simple pamphlets that one time we thought they were.

I want to try to show tonight something of the beauty and of comparing and contrasting these four lovely Gospels, and I hope that we'll be attracted to them in the way that they present the Lord Jesus.

The Four Gospels as Four Views of Christ

Now, sometimes I think it is an amazing thing that such a small book as, for instance, say the Gospel according to Mark, should have such profound things in so few pages. Sometimes I think that if some of our brethren were to write a book like this today of this size, we would hardly say that he had written a book.

We would call it a pamphlet. We would say he has written a booklet. If you take the pages of Mark's Gospel sometime and put them between your finger and thumb, you'll find that it's not really a very big book after all, and yet you can spend a lifetime in the study of these four Gospels.

Now, when you come, first of all, to the Gospels, I think that the first question that needs to be asked and answered is, why four Gospels? Why did God give us four Gospels like this, and could he not have given to us?

If he could, why did he not give to us one consecutive life of Christ? That is an important question that needs to be asked and answered as to why we have four Gospels and not just one. You know that some dear brethren, some scholars, some students, they have gone to great trouble and they have produced for us what they call a harmony of the Gospels, and they have gone to very great pains to try to produce a life of Christ so that we can sit down and read right through and get all of these incidents in their proper setting and in chronological order, and I'm sure that that must be very interesting.

But I never sit down to read a life of Christ, but I think to myself, why did God not give it to us like this? It would have been as simple for him to have given us one life of Christ as to have given us the four Gospels that he has done, and therefore there must be a very important reason, and that question, I repeat, has got to be answered, why four Gospels?

Well now again, the answer to that is fairly simple, that such is the greatness of the Lord Jesus that it really does take at least four aspects of him, four views of the Lord Jesus to properly begin even to understand him, and so we have from four entirely different aspects, we have a look at the Lord Jesus, and this gives to us, as much as we can have it down here, it gives us a full orb and a universal fourfold view of the Saviour, and without any one of these views we would be very poor indeed, but with the four of them we have a fairly balanced sight of this blessed one, and so four Gospels are given to us and we have a full orbed universal aspect of the Lord Jesus.

Now someone has said that this is a little bit like viewing a building, you come to see perhaps a historical or a beautiful building in some town or city that you are visiting, and your friend who is showing you around, he knows that you are interested in architecture and in buildings, and so he brings you to the front of the building, maybe naturally first of all, and you have a little look at the building, and maybe you take a picture or two, and you have a look at the building from the front, but then if he knows your interest in the building and in architecture, he is saying now, you must come around to the rear of the building, because there are things there you know that are peculiar and unique, and that you can't see of course from the front, and he takes you around to the back, and true enough, there are things there that are beautiful that you didn't see at the front at all, but it's the very same building, and then he would say to you now, we must go around to the eastern aspect, and then he would take you to the west of the building, and from every side, true enough, you can see things that you didn't see from the other sides, from the other aspects, and you feel that perhaps you would have been the poorer if you had missed out on any one of those aspects of the building.

Now, we must be very careful then that we don't get an imbalance as we come to view the blessed Lord. It might be a very easy thing for some of us to dwell a lot in John's gospel, but we mustn't do that to the exclusion of looking at him from Matthew's point of view, and again, we must not be in an imbalance and get occupied with the royalty and the dignity of Matthew, and forget the lowliness of what we have in the gospel by Mark, and again, of course, there are beauties in the gospel by Luke, and if you really do want this universal view of the Lord Jesus, you have got to apply yourself to each of these four gospels.

Now, the four portraits of the Lord, they are entirely different, as most of you will know, and I speak tonight to the young believer who comes new, perhaps, to the gospels, and comes to study as a young Christian, and I remind you that each of these gospels is very different, the one from the other, and really, to get this full view of the Lord Jesus, you will have to read the four of them, and you will have to compare them, and if I could give you a little exhortation, and indeed to my older friends as well, my suggestion is that whatever you read at any time, in any one of the gospels, never study it as an island, never study it in isolation, but always go to the other gospels and find if that incident is recorded there, and if it is, compare them, see what the differences are, see how they compare and how they contrast, and you will find that every incident, every parable, every miracle, every story will take on a new meaning when you compare the one gospel with another.

Sometimes, of course, you will find a thing in only one gospel, sometimes you will find a thing in two, and sometimes in three, and there are not many things that you find in four gospels, but there are a few incidents that are recorded in all of the four, and so you have got to compare and contrast and never study a thing in isolation, and you will find that each of the gospels is completely different, the one from the other, and yet there is this lovely comparison in a sense between them, because each of them is speaking about the same Lord Jesus.

Now, some time ago, I thought I saw this illustrated, some few years ago my father died, and when I went back home again, after a few weeks, I noticed one of these little boxes sitting on the mantelpiece, one of these little plastic boxes, a plastic cubical photo frame, you know, with a little picture, a photo in each of the six sides, and I found when I went back again that in four of these sides, there was a picture of my father, and I saw on the first side that here he was, and he was dressed, you know, and he had a Bible in his hand like this, and he was obviously leaving the home, leaving house to go to a meeting, and there are people who look at that, you know, and they say, that's just him, that's just how I remember him.

But when you turn that little box around, the very next picture, you know, it seems to be an entirely different man, he's dressed very casually, I would assume that it was taken on holiday somewhere, and in some respects it's a different person, and yet there are people who look at that, and they say, isn't that very good, that's just how I remember him.

And then you turn again, and you see him sitting, and he's at home, and again perhaps he's dressed casually, and he's got a grandchild on his knee, and well, there are people who look at that and say, that's how I remember him.

And yet, each of these pictures is different, but each time it's the same man, but it's a different view of the same person, and that is exactly so when we come to the Gospels. We have four entirely different views, and yet the person is always the same.

Now, someone has used another illustration. If you go down to some of the booksellers and you want to buy a biography, the story of some of the great men, even of our own day, for instance, if you went down to buy the story of Mr. Churchill, you're a bookseller, if he knows his books, he might well ask you which particular aspect of the man you want to read about, because you see, you could buy a biography that might tell you all about him as a politician, but it might not mention anything about what he's like as a father in the home, or what he was to his near friends, but you can buy a biography that will tell you that, but it's a different story of the same man.

And then, of course, there's another book, and it will tell you about his early days, and it will tell you about his time as a correspondent during the war, and maybe give you a little idea, a little insight into his military activities, and you might well think it's a different man, but it's the same man, but it's the story written from a different aspect.

And so again, if you really want the full and complete view of the man, you would nearly have to read them all, and this is exactly so with the person of the Lord Jesus. Now, another thing, it's a wee bit like the veil you know that we were speaking of one evening, the veil in the old tabernacle.

Here was a very beautiful veil, and it was actually draped over four pillars, and those four pillars were of chitin wood, and they were overlaid with gold, as you know, and here was this beautiful veil of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, and we talked about it one time at an earlier meeting, and it seems as if here are the four Gospels, and this lovely veil of the flesh of the Lord Jesus is being hung over these four pillars.

Well, this is what is happening now, and as we come in by the opening chapters of each of the Gospels, we are actually entering by the beautiful gate, and we come into the outer court, and we walk around and we view all these things that bring Him to us, but each time we are seeing a different viewpoint, a different aspect, but it's always the same, blessed Lord.

So I trust that you'll be attracted and drawn to a study of each of the Gospels and a comparison of the Gospels, and that you'll see that you need all of them really to appreciate in fullness the person of the Lord Jesus.

The King, the Servant, the Perfect Man, and the Son

Now, our brethren often tell us, quite rightly, that while there is a little bit of overlapping, generally speaking, the Gospel by Matthew is the story of the King. I'm sure we all agree with that. It is the Messiah, the King.

It is what we call His official glory, primarily, that we get in the first Gospel. In the second Gospel, that is, of course, the Gospel of the Servant. I don't think there's any problem there, and we'll prove that in a moment or two, that Matthew's is the Gospel of the Servant.

These things are very well known. When you come to the Gospel by Luke, it is the story of a perfect man, a dependent man, and all those lovely moral features of the Lord Jesus are brought out in the Gospel by Luke.

But when you come to John, well, even a casual reader will observe that somehow there is something different about the Gospel by John. That if Matthew, Mark, and Luke are different the one from the other, nevertheless, there is a kind of sameness there, but the Gospel by John is very different.

Now, that explains a term that sometimes preachers use, and they talk about the first three as being the synoptic Gospels. Now, that big word, synoptic, it simply means seeing together. You see the word optic in it there, and it means that we are seeing from the same point of view, seeing synonymously or seeing together, and we say synoptic.

And while those three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are different, nevertheless, you can see that they do overlap quite a bit, and they talk about the same things, and so we call them the synoptic Gospels.

But when you come to John's Gospel, you find that he is speaking about the Son of God in a way that the others don't, and you find that his portrait of Christ is altogether different, and the things that he records are different, and you'll find that about maybe 95 of the Gospel by John you just can't read anywhere else.

95 of John is not to be found anywhere else in any of the other Gospels. That makes it a very special and a very different Gospel. The Gospel by Mark is in reverse, because 95 of Mark's Gospel you can read in the other three Gospels.

Only about 5 of Mark is peculiar to Mark. But how much we would lose if we hadn't the Gospel by John, because, you see, we never would have the great, that great opening in chapter 1. That's all peculiar to John.

We wouldn't have the story of the turning of water to wine in Cana of Galilee. That's peculiar to John. We'd never have heard of Nicodemus. We'd never have heard of the woman at the well. We'd never have heard of the man at the pool, or the blind man of chapter 9, or the woman taking an adultery in chapter 8.

We'd never have had the shepherd discourse of chapter 10. We'd never have heard of Lazarus. In chapter 11, we could go on and on, and 95 of John is peculiar to the Gospel by John. Well, that means, then, that we have the Gospel of the King, the Gospel of the Servant.

We have the Gospel of the perfect man, and the Gospel of the Son of God. Now, if you like alliteration, and if you find things easier to remember when we use alliteration, then what you say is this, that in Matthew, we have the story of the Sovereign.

And in Mark, we have the story of the Servant. In Luke, we have the story of the Savior. And in John, we have the story of the Son. Now, if you want to say all that in a different way, and still preserve the alliteration, you can say that in Matthew, it is a story of His lordliness.

In Mark, it is His lowliness. In Luke, it is His loveliness. And in John, it is His loftiness. And those are the four great themes of these Gospels. Another thing, and still preserving alliteration in a sense, you can say that in the Gospel by Matthew, you have things prophetical.

And no doubt, there are more Old Testament scriptures quoted in Matthew than in any of the other Gospels. It is the prophetical Gospel. But when you come to Mark, it is the practical Gospel. And the Lord Jesus is very busy there as a Servant.

When you come to Luke's Gospel, it is the moral Gospel. And it is the moral features and character of the Lord that we get in Luke. That is why sometimes, you get a little thing in Luke that seems to be out of order.

Don't worry about that. Luke is not interested in what we call chronology. He is not interested in maintaining chronological order. He is putting in moral features and moral order. And so you don't worry too much if you see Luke putting a little thing in a different place to the other Gospels.

It is in keeping with the theme of His Gospel. But when you come to John's Gospel, it has been called the spiritual Gospel. I don't misunderstand that word. What we mean by it is this, that John is not just interested in telling us what has happened, but he is interested in explaining why things happen, and what they mean, and giving us the spirit of them.

And so we call his the spiritual Gospel. Now again, of course, these Gospels have been written with different types of people in view. And again, we must be careful that we don't put them into watertight compartments because there is a certain overlapping, and we must be careful about that.

But broadly speaking, you can say that Matthew has Jews in mind. You can say that Mark has the Romans in mind. That could be proven from the text of his Gospel. You can say that Luke has Greeks in mind, and that John has Christians in mind.

And so again, you see the differences there. And if you want to say that same thing, again perhaps in an alliterated fashion, you can say that in Matthew it's the nation, in the singular. In Mark it's the nations, in the plural.

You can say that in Luke it is the world, and in John it is the church. And if you want one word to write right across each of these Gospels, then I suggest that across Matthew you write the word, Majesty.

Across Mark you write the word, Ministry. Across Luke you write the word, Beauty. And across John you write the word, Glory. And these are the great themes of the four Gospels. So all that I'm asking is that you remember that they are very different, and still remember that they are all about the same person.

And remember that they must be contrasted, but don't forget that they must be compared. You say, it's getting very complicated. Very complicated. These are the deepest parts of our Bible, because we are actually following the footprints of God incarnate.

And why should books not be profound that are tracing the footsteps of God amongst men? So, four Gospels, we have them. And notice another very interesting thing, and maybe this is a little bit more practical, and it is that God, with these things in mind, has also divinely chosen the authors for these four Gospels.

Now, it seems an Irish kind of thing to say, but God did not choose Matthew to write the Gospel by John. He didn't choose Mark to write the Gospel by Luke. No, no, Matthew has written Matthew's Gospel.

And John has painted his own portrait, and these men have been divinely chosen, and what wisdom there is in the choice of the men. Now, you remember Matthew. Matthew, he sometimes called Levi. You don't worry about that either.

All these little things that are sometimes pointed out as being discrepancies. There are no discrepancies in our Bible. There are no mistakes or contradictions. And if there are little things that the world doesn't understand, don't you worry about it.

There's an explanation somewhere, and this is one of the things they point out. Matthew and Levi, and little things like this, they get on to them as being somehow, no discrepancy here at all. You see, Matthew was a Galilean, but he also was a Jew.

And because he was a Jew, he was Levi, and because he was a Galilean, he was Matthew. You see, Galilee was largely the country of the Gentiles. Galilee of the nations, they called it. Galilee of the Gentiles.

But when a Jew lived in Galilee, then he was sure that he had a Jewish name living in Galilee of the Gentiles. And so, Matthew is Levi, and Levi is Matthew. Matthew was the Galilean, and Levi is the Jew, but it's the Galilean Jew.

It's the same thing. So, we come to the gospel by Matthew, and you remember who Matthew was. Matthew was a publican. Matthew was a tax collector. And being that, he was actually an employee of the hated Roman Empire.

Matthew was a man who worked for a kingdom that had suppressed and subjugated his own nation. He was a traitor to his own nation. He was a man who had turned his back on his own kingdom and was working for another kingdom.

He was working for another emperor. He was in the employ of Caesar and the Roman Empire. What wondrous grace that one day the Lord Jesus met him. And from the side of the road, from his receipt of custom, the Lord Jesus called him.

And what a wondrous thing is this, that the man who was a traitor to his own kingdom and had turned his back upon his own nation and was in the employ of a foreign power has now been lifted to become the biographer of the king.

I think that's wondrous grace. Who better could God have chosen to write the story of the king than the man who had turned his back one day upon that kingdom. Well, that's wondrous grace. And we'll see how Matthew weaves that into his gospel in a moment or two.

Now, John Mark, who wrote the second gospel. You know, we remember bad things about people when we don't remember good things. And if we ask any of our brethren, what do you remember about John Mark? Oh, they say he was the servant who turned back.

Nearly everybody says that. That's the sort of instinctive, immediate reaction when we ask about John Mark. He was the servant who went so far and then he turned back. Some know that who don't know this, that afterwards he became very profitable.

And Paul refers to him in one of his letters later on when he writes to Timothy. And he says, take Mark. He says he's profitable for the ministry. And that was after he had been recovered. But John Mark, we usually remember as the servant who failed.

Who better to write the story of the servant who never failed than John Mark, the servant who did fail. And again, what wondrous grace is this? And John Mark is the one who writes the gospel of the servant.

Now, what about Luke? Well, Luke is chosen. We don't know much about Luke. And in some respects, we know a lot about him. In another way, we don't really know very much about Luke. But we know this about him, that he was a physician.

He never mentions his own name, not anywhere. He writes the Acts of the Apostles and he writes the gospel by Luke. But in all of those, he never mentions his own name. But his name is mentioned three times in the New Testament.

And we know this about him, that he was a physician, the beloved physician. And being a physician, I think we might all agree that Luke was very close to human nature. Who better than a physician to study and understand human nature?

And who better to write the story of a perfect man than the beloved physician? And so Luke is chosen. And you think of some of those details that we have in the early chapters of Luke's gospel. You know, humanly speaking, those details could only have come from Mary.

There are things there at the beginning of Luke's gospel that only Mary herself could have revealed. And who better to confide in than the doctor? And isn't it lovely and very human that Luke should be the one in whom Mary confides and to whom she gives these interesting details that are now involved in his gospel?

And so the man who understands human nature is the man who writes the story of the perfect man. Now, you come to John's gospel. And of course, if we ask, what do you remember about John? I think most of us would immediately say he was the disciple that Jesus loved.

And another thing we'd say about him, you know, he was the disciple who leaned on the bosom of Jesus in the upper room on that night. And you remember, too, that he's the disciple who writes about the Lord Jesus in the bosom of the Father.

And that, in fact, is the whole theme of John's gospel, that the Lord Jesus is the Son in the bosom of the Father. Who better to write the story of the Son in the bosom of the Father than that very disciple who lay on the bosom of the Son?

And so you see that God has so wisely and sovereignly chosen the very pen men to write the gospels. And in every sense, I think these are intriguing gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. Now, Matthew's gospel, as we have said, is the gospel of the king.

Matthew’s Gospel and the Genealogy of the King

Now, the time runs out, and it wouldn't be possible to go all right through this gospel. But it would be interesting to look at the beginning for the king's person. That's how the gospel begins. And then to leave that and to see the king outlining his policies in what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

And then immediately after he does that, to see the king's power in the great big middle section of the gospel where he demonstrates his power. And we remember an Old Testament scripture which says, where the word of the king is, there is power.

And we see that in evidence in the middle part of this gospel. In that great chapter 13, you have the king's program. He outlines his program and gives us the parables of the kingdom. Then, of course, we have prophetic predictions in another sermon on another mount in chapter 24 and 25.

And we have the king's passion at the end of the gospel and before the gospel closes. We hear the king saying, all power is given to me in heaven and on earth. And it really closes with the king's preeminence.

And that is at the very end of the gospel. But what I want to point out just before we leave the gospel by Matthew is this interesting genealogy at the beginning in chapter 1. Now, when I was a young believer, I make the confession for all of you tonight.

Now, I tell you what I did. I thought, I must read this right through, you see. And I began to read at verse 1. The book of the generation of Jesus the Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. I think I read verse 2.

Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas, and his brethren, and then the names became strange. I didn't know them anymore. And I confess that I thought, what's the point in it all?

I couldn't understand it. So I went away down to verse 18. And I began there. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. And I could understand this now. And I must confess, as many of us do, that for a long, long time, I never, never, ever read these names in this genealogy.

I confess that I neglected a very interesting portion of the gospel by Matthew. You see, the problem, if it was a problem, was that I, of course, was not a Jew. I had a Gentile mind. And I didn't understand the reason for Matthew's genealogy until, of course, later on.

We learn a little bit, and somebody points it out to you. And we can see how important is this genealogy. Because Matthew's writing the biography of the King. He's writing the story of the Messiah. And if our Lord Jesus really is the Messiah, if He really is the King, then the genealogy is of infinite importance.

And to a Jew, this was a very special piece of Matthew's gospel, where Matthew was actually pressing and proving the genealogy, proving the lineage of the Messiah. If Jesus is the Christ, as Matthew says, and if Jesus, the Son of Mary, is really entitled to the throne, then it must be proven beyond all doubt that He's got a royal connection, that He's linked with the tribe of Judah, that He has a link with David.

And this is how Matthew begins. And he goes further back than that. And he goes right away back to Abraham. But then, how interesting is this genealogy? We know now, of course, that we can see the mind, the orderly mind, the intelligent and orderly mind of the accountant, the auditor, the tax collector coming out here.

Because this is not just a jumble of names that Matthew has given to us. He has actually given us 42 names. And He hasn't given us just 42 names just like that. He has divided them into three. And as someone has suggested, like the auditor, like the teller, like the tax collector, he actually arranges them in three neat little piles of 14 in front of him as perhaps he used to arrange the little piles of coins when he sat at the side of the road.

And here he is. And he says now, from Abraham to David, 14 generations. And there they are. And they're very important. From David to the carrying away into Babylon, 14 generations. And there they are.

And from the captivity, from the carrying away into Babylon until Jesus, until Christ, 14 generations again. And in a very beautiful and yet orderly way, he gives us 14, 14, and 14 generations. And in a very, very orderly way, Matthew has divided the story of Israel into three parts.

He has given us the story of Israel's mourning from Abraham to David. He has given us the story of Israel's high noon from David to the carrying away into Babylon. And the story of Israel's evening from the carrying away into Babylon until Christ comes.

And then when the evening comes, and when the story of the nation has reached a sad and a low ebb, then of course the days spring from on high have visited us. And he introduces the king. But you see how beautifully he introduces the rights, the legal rights of the Lord Jesus to the throne.

Now, here's a very important thing. We have in black and white as we say, we have the established legal rights of Jesus of Nazareth to the throne of David. Now, say someone argues that he is not after all the Messiah.

And if someone eventually does come and claims that he is the Messiah, how can any future alleged or pretended Messiah prove his genealogy? Because you know, all the records were destroyed in A .D. 70.

When the city and the sanctuary was destroyed in A .D. 70 by the Romans, all the archives and all the registers and genealogy and all of those were destroyed. There is no one today who could prove his genealogy, who could establish his rights and prove his lineage.

But we have a Savior and his lineage is established and his rights and his connections with Abraham and David are established here for us in writing. And how glad we are then that Matthew did begin like this and give us an orderly genealogy of the king.

But now you study it a little bit more and you say, and Matthew is all right, but if you do have to give us a genealogy, if you must as a Jew give us all these names, you say, Matthew, you've done a strange thing.

You've included the names of women in the genealogy. Surely that was never done. And then you say, if you do have to include the names of women, Matthew, couldn't you have found different women to these?

Couldn't you have found women say like Miriam and Deborah and some of these great women of the Old Testament? But you have chosen four here apart from Mary. You have chosen four and you know it's questionable if any one of these women was even a Jewess.

Questionable. Here is Tamar and here is Rahab, spelt with a C here, but it's Rahab all right. And Rahab is hardly ever mentioned, but she is Rahab the harlot. The story of Tamar, you could hardly read Tamar's story in public.

It's a story of shame and deceit and adultery. A terrible story. And Ruth. Well, Ruth was an idolatress and a Moabitess. And you know that old law would have excluded her for 10 generations from Judaism.

And yet her name's in the genealogy. And though her name is not mentioned, yet she is referred to who was the wife of Uriah and that is Bathsheba. And we know the story of Bathsheba too. You say, Matthew, why the names of women?