Synoptic Sections 313, 314, 315

Let's press on in our synoptic study, make a little more progress someday.

Well, let's see, there's only, let's see, page 341, we're on 287, so we're nearly there, but the toughest work is yet to come,

I'm afraid, so. Lord willing,

I should be here next Sunday morning. My flight,

I don't think, is until the afternoon or evening to London, and from there up to,

I can't even pronounce the name in Norway. It's actually not all that cold there.

It's, the past, I've been watching the weather, it's 30 to 40, 41, 42, so a little bit colder than here, but the wind has been consistently 25 to 35 miles per hour, so it's just like, ooh,

I can imagine it freezing, a 35 mile an hour wind is probably, ooh.

So, could be interesting if I try to go outside and run or something. As long as I'm going with the wind, it'll be great, but problem is, you have to come back, so that's the tough part about that.

But anyway, the big part, of course, is gonna be the fact that there's only like six hours of light the whole day, and that'll be the interesting part.

Anyway, I'll only be there six days, and then go into Georgia and stay in with Summer and Thad for a few days, getting a little more

Clementine, and that'll be nice, so.

Anyway, we are in section 313. We don't have the official keeper of notes here, but section 312, if I recall, was a comparison of section 310, which we already looked at, and we looked at the

Lord's Supper, Judas, all the things there. If you haven't been with us, we've been studying through the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, we threw

John in for the fun of it, and so we've been in the Gospels for many, many years, and someday we will complete the study, but we're getting into some of the more difficult material.

When I say difficult, we have, of course, struggled with various texts in the past in regards to the relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, how they record the words of the

Lord, and things like that. It has been a number of years since we have specifically taken time to discuss issues such as telescoping and so on and so forth, but especially when we get into the

Crucifixion and Resurrection narratives, and especially in the Resurrection narratives where Mark is not there,

Mark does not give us that material, you have a number of the most challenging questions to be raised and answered at that point, and unfortunately, a large portion of New Testament scholarship has just basically thrown in the towel on this subject, and what theories you bring to the relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in particular, the dates of the authorship, audiences, so on and so forth will very much determine where you go, and in the vast majority of seminaries today, the one thing you're not allowed to do in the writing of papers, in discussion, in class, whatever else it might be, is to allow for harmonization.

The idea that there is a reason why the

Gospels address things the way that they do, that in fact, it enriches our understanding of particular aspects of the

Gospel narrative, that just doesn't come up, I can tell you, that doesn't come up in the vast majority of theological education.

Instead, especially the differences, the challenges that we probably already know are lying ahead of us are seen as troubles, difficulties, certainly for me as an apologist, some of you may recall

I spend quite some time, and maybe if something comes up to where Brother Callahan and I are gone at the same time, which certainly is a possibility, especially as I look at this next year,

I've got Norway, Zurich, and South Africa, especially

September, October, I'm just hardly gonna be here at all. The Pope's coming to Philadelphia in September, and we're working on setting up a debate at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, and that's gonna be right between Zurich and South Africa, and that may be the longest period of time away from home

I've ever had, I don't know, we'll see. But maybe possibly during one of those time periods when

I'm gone and Brother Callahan's taking dominion over the earth, and providing for his family, and elk stew, antelope, hot dogs, whatever,

I don't know, Josh tells me stuff that he eats over there, and I just go, really, wow, okay, all right.

But maybe we'll resurrect or show a couple of the debates that we have not shown in the past, but if you do recall from a number of years ago, the debate that I had with Shabir Ali at Biola, you know that it was interesting, one of the primary areas of discussion between now

Dr. Ali and myself had to do with one of the specific synoptic issues that we had studied only a matter of months earlier here in class, and so especially for me as an apologist, issues of synoptic harmonization come up constantly.

In fact, I'm a little surprised. How many of you heard about the Newsweek article, the hit piece on the

Bible in Newsweek? How many of you heard of it other than my having responded to it?

Okay, good. By the way, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to mention this, but my friend,

Michael Brown, contacted the editor of Newsweek, and they're gonna allow him to write an equally long article in response, so that's good.

But tomorrow, for those of you that are interested on the Janet Mefford Show on Salem, which is on KPXQ here in Phoenix, I don't even know what time,

I've gotta look. I think it's around one our time, I think, I don't know. Gotta check my calendar in the morning.

But I'll be on with Janet Mefford for at least an hour debunking that particular article.

Again, I spent three hours on the dividing line doing that. Well, not quite three hours, because Clementine showed up for about 10 minutes of that, so that didn't really count, though it was more fun than the rest of it.

But did any of you see her waving at the, ah, this is so cute. Anyway, oh, it is,

I mean, come on, you know. That's right, you know, when you say, say hello, world, hello, world.

You know, it's just wonderful. But that'll be sometime tomorrow, and one thing that surprised me, if I recall correctly, is that was one issue that didn't end up getting thrown along with the kitchen sink into that discussion was to throw out the synoptics.

Though I'm sure, well, actually, I take that back. He did, he did, nevermind. There was a specific section on both the birth narratives and the resurrection accounts, yep, it was there.

So it's just a constant thing to be dealing with this subject, and so we've been working on it for a number of years now, going through at a far deeper level than,

I'm afraid, most of our critics do, but that's just the way it works. Section 313 next, then, is precedence among the disciples and reward of discipleship based primarily upon Luke 22, 24 through 30, which we'll read here.

A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest? And he said to them, the kings, the Gentiles, exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors, but not so with you.

Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader is the one who serves. For which is greater, the one who sits at the table or the one who serves?

He says, I'm not the one who sits at the table, but I'm among you as one who serves. You are those who have continued with me in my trials, and I assign to you as my father assigned to me a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table and my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

Now, once again, what you have here, we have in a number of the

Gospels in various ways an indication that even after the personal ministry of the

Lord to the disciples, on the very night of the very time period of Jesus' betrayal, in that entire

Passion Week, we're gonna have a number of instances where it is still very clear that the disciples do not have what we would call a mature understanding of their own calling.

And many people have found this very odd that the founding documents of the faith would cast such light upon the very individuals upon whose word so much of the weight of the veracity of the faith depends.

But we recognize that this continues in lines what we've seen in the

Old Testament. We have someone as great as David, and yet we know of David's faults, we know of David's sins.

The Bible is not like Islamic documents, which begin with the assumption of the, in some

Muslims' minds, sinlessness of the prophets, or at least the primary, at least not having any major faults.

This is what's required to be a prophet. This is certainly not the biblical perspective.

There is an unabashed recognition of the fact that sin is a part of the human experience and continues to be a part of even those who are called a friend of God or called men after God's own heart.

And certainly, without the presence of the spirit in their lives, in the sense of the indwelling of the spirit, exactly what's involved in this we'll have to look at when we get to Luke chapter 24.

But Luke specifically mentions that there is a point in time when the

Lord opens the disciples' minds to understand the scriptural testimony concerning himself.

There was, you know, we have that time period between Friday night and Sunday morning.

We have that dark Saturday where the disciples are lost as to what has happened.

And yet we look at the narrative and they themselves tell us, yeah, he told us. We just didn't get it.

Even our leader said, far be it from you, Lord. And Jesus had to say to him, get behind me.

You're minding the things of men, not of God. So there is a strong biblical testimony to the fact that the disciples were men of like passions, like unto ourselves.

They had traditions. And specifically, I think this lays a strong foundation for what we see in Acts.

When Peter is up on the rooftop and three times God has to send the same vision down to him to get him to even speak to Gentiles and to get through that traditional barrier.

And even then, it seems that after he did that, once men came from James and Antioch, he compromised that as well.

Never, ever, ever underestimate the power of tradition, including our own. It is, you know, we can talk about sola scriptura until the cows come home.

But the reality is, we have our traditions. And if we don't recognize them for what they are and purposefully place them on a lower level of authority than scripture, we will always end up elevating our traditions to the authority of scripture and end up twisting scripture in light of our traditions.

It's just, you know, it's easy to point at Rome and say, ah, see, because it's an obvious example.

Eastern Orthodoxy, the same thing. But we do the same thing. And we are hypocrites if we don't recognize it and don't seek to fight that.

And certainly, we see in the lives of the apostles. They live in the very presence of the

Son of God. They hear the greatest teaching ever. And yet, you know, at the ascension, they're still very confused as to what the nature of the kingdom is going to be and so on and so forth.

And it's not until the spirit comes. And even when they've been instructed by Jesus, and they're starting to understand the scriptural testament, it still takes time.

It still takes time. I'm afraid we have a lot of people in our world today that have the idea that you just get zapped by the spirit and boom, instant

Christian maturity. And yet, it took the late -born apostle

Paul to slap Peter upside the head in Antioch to show him that he was not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel when he drew aside from table fellowship with the

Gentiles. Well, Peter had heard Jesus' teaching. He had preached the truth.

He had had visions. And yet, there still was a process of bringing him through to that position of maturity.

So I think it's important to keep that in mind. We certainly see this here in Jesus' rebuking of the discussion amongst the disciples with who's gonna be the greatest.

And it makes perfect sense. If you've got 12 men and they've been told that they are going to judge the nations and so on and so forth, the natural question's gonna be, yeah, well, who's gonna get to be the real preeminent one?

Who's gonna get to be the one who really has the biggest chair?

We all understand how that worked. And we all probably know that that conversation was pretty much at the back of the apostolic train.

The people are right up near Jesus. The guy in the back where they don't figure he knows what's being said, they're the ones going, well,

I don't know. He once did, well, yeah, but then he did. Well, he'd cast out 17.

Well, he cast out 18. And you can just see Jesus doing the divine eye roll at the whole thing and turning around and rebuking them and recognizing what their dispute was and speaking directly to it.

And of course, the rebuke that he gives of this internal dispute amongst the disciples is, of course, that which is based upon servanthood.

I am among you as one who serves, though you call me master and Lord, and such

I am. Yet, I am among you as one who serves. So if you want to know what greatness is, greatness in my kingdom is going to be defined by service.

Greatness is going to be defined by having, well, again, it's the Carmen Christi, Philippians 2 .5

through 11. What's the illustration that Jesus gives? He's exhorting the Philippian church to unity of heart and mind.

What is the greatest way to maintain unity in the body of believers, but to lay aside your own rights and serve others, to give yourself in service of others?

Don't sit there thinking, well, the pastor better say something about me from the pulpit. If he mentions anybody from the pulpit, it better be me, because I've been teaching them rugrats for the past 14 decades.

And I need to get the pat on the back. What's the whole point of Paul's exhortation and here following after Jesus' exhortation?

Service, I am amongst you as one who serves. And fundamentally, the only one you're concerned about knowing about your service is your

Lord. In fact, you don't want to hear about it from the pulpit. You don't want to have your deeds paraded before men.

You want this to be in the sight of the Lord and the Lord alone. And so, when

Jesus says, and I assigned you as my father assigned to me a kingdom that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

Yes, you all are going to have a great position of authority but you need to recognize that it's not like the world views authority.

It is, the authority in the church is a serving authority, not a ruling authority.

And I gotta admit, anybody else been to the

Vatican? Anybody here been to the Vatican? Okay. I took some serious lumps back in, what was that?

05, I think it was, yeah, I think it was 04 or 05, somewhere around there.

When I went to Italy that one time, almost starved to death. But anyway, that's another story. And Italians eat very oddly.

But I visited the Vatican and they actually let me in. It must have been a bad day for security.

And actually, the guys who work at the White House were working at the Vatican that day. And so I, only a few of you got that, but those who've kept up on current events.

And I'm just, Kelly and I are walking through, just looking at these mausoleums to these popes and stuff.

And we're standing in front of this one particular one. Everything's marble -y. I mean, there's Michelangelo's stuff over here and Leonardo da

Vinci over here. And I mean, it's pretty impressive. Up at the top of the cupola is the

Petrine Promise from Matthew 16 in solid gold and this kind of stuff. And we're looking at this one crypt of this one pope.

And it's just massive. But it's really dark and gargoyle -y, if that's a description.

Gargoyle -y? I think it communicates pretty well, gargoyle -y. And we're just going, man,

I mean, and you just cannot be helped but be struck by the just complete opposite of this attitude here.

It's just so gaudy and ugh. And we're standing there and all of a sudden, while we're standing there, this part of the front of the mausoleum goes, bzzzzzzz.

It starts opening up and we're like... And out comes these two guys in a golf cart.

Out they go, and around the corner, and it's like, oh, this is an interesting place. I bet you there's some real, you know,

Knight of the Museum, Knight of the Vatican would be much more interesting. Wow. Wild stuff going on there.

So, anyway, it just, I remember blogging from Italy the few times

I could get on because people kept blocking my connection attempts. You weren't supposed to be in Italy. Go away.

But I remember blogging about just how gaudy and literally ugly so much of the stuff was there because it was just so ornate and so overblown.

And, oh, so many people were, oh, I just can't believe you. You just utterly lack all culture. Well, sorry.

I was looking at it through biblical eyes. Do forgive me for doing that. But certainly this is the answer that is given by Jesus is that greatness here will be a greatness that is one that is involved in servanthood.

Then, for some reason, there is an insertion of a section of John 13 here.

We already looked at John 13, so we will skip over that. And begin some of the challenging material, and that is section 315.

I don't know that we'll get through all of it. But Peter's denial predicted.

Now, there are a number of things that we will need to be looking at here.

Let's first look at Matthew and Mark who track the closest together here.

Matthew 26, 30 through 35. And so said all of the disciples.

Now compare Mark's version, Mark 14, 26 through 31.

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, you will all fall away.

For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

You will notice that almost identical between Matthew and Mark.

Peter said to him, even though they all fall away, I will not.

And Jesus said to him, truly I say to you this very night before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.

Notice the addition of twice in Mark. But he said, vehemently, and vehemently is not found in Matthew, if I must die with you,

I will not deny you. And they all said the same. And so then we go to Luke.

And Luke places the transition to the Mount of Olives earlier.

At 22, 39, he came out and went as it was his custom to the Mount of Olives. The disciples followed him.

And then 22, 31, 34, you don't have the citation of the

Zechariah passage that you have in Matthew and Mark. Instead, you have a direct statement to Peter.

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you. He might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren. And he said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.

He said, I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day until you three times deny that you know me.

Then we'll go ahead and add in, because it is here that we do have a parallel in John.

John chapter 13, verses 36 through 38.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered, where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you shall follow afterwards.

Peter said to him, Lord, why can I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life?

Truly I say to you, the cock will not crow until you have denied me three times. Now, it's interesting that John likewise has the issue of the cock crowing.

And by the way, we get all into the, well, how many times did the bird utter a particular fowl statement?

Fowl as in F -O -W -L, not F -O -U -L. And was the bird facing north or south?

Was this before sunrise or after? It's a common terminology for sunrise.

You didn't have, for the break of day, you didn't have your iPhone or your

Android to wake you up. For me, I didn't have an up band to vibrate on my arm at the exact time

I tell it to. Or even the idea, you got to understand, the idea of an alarm clock, the idea of actually getting up at an exact point in time, that was a big deal in the ancient world.

And in fact, would require a great deal of work. I mean, you'd have to have people who were staying awake, observing sand hourglasses and other means of keeping watch at night to actually get somebody up at a specific point in time.

And the accuracy of our timekeeping now is a very, very, very, very modern innovation.

And so, there were phrases that were used in a general sense in the ancient world that made reference to the beginning of a day or halfway through a day or the end of a day.

And even today, it's pretty obvious that a lot of folks have different understandings of, for example, when you're supposed to turn your car headlights on.

Ever notice that? I mean, I'm one of those folks that has my headlights on pretty early.

And that's probably because I am a cyclist. And therefore,

I always figure I'm invisible even when I'm in my car. It's just the way that I drive.

I just assume having had a motorcycle for years, I still have a little, you know, little 50cc things that I go to the office on every once in a while.

It gets 112 miles a gallon. And when I'm on that, I know

I am invisible. I just assume anyone around me doesn't even know that I'm there.

So, I need to be ready to dive for cover at any second. And certainly, when I'm riding my bike, that's the same thing.

But that just ends up traveling into going into my driving. So, it just drives me insane when

I see people long after the sun's down. They're still, yeah, there's still a little light over there. And there they are going down the road, black as pitch.

You know, I don't know how they don't realize it. I guess they don't care. They can't see what's in front of them. But, you know, there they go.

And so, obviously, people interpret the beginning of the day and the end of the day in different ways.

Thankfully, every once in a while, the cops help you with that interpretation and help you to understand the nature of that interpretation.

But we have, you know, even when we use terms like sunrise, there is a specific meaning of that.

But have you noticed that the specific time of sunrise is almost never when the sun actually hits you?

Because of mountains to our east and things like that, the actual time when the sun comes over the horizon will vary depending on where you are, where you are in a time zone, you know, all sorts of interesting stuff like that.

I've certainly noticed that, and I noticed this primarily during the summer, that there's about a nine minute difference between when my

GPS devices will say sunrise is at 528 this morning.

That means I'm probably going to get hit by the sun at about 537 approximately, unless I'm moving eastward toward the mountains and I've got even more time in the

And so even today, when we know, you know, we can use GPS and stuff like that and it'll give us exact things.

We use, you know, we talk about sunrise and that's a general time period. And you pretty much know when you start to, you just start to see a little of that light.

At first you looked, you didn't see it. Now you're seeing it. Well, is that the beginning of the day? Is it when the sun comes up?

Different cultures, as we will see, measured time in the ancient world in a very different way than we do.

Even in my lifetime, how we measure time has changed a good bit.

I still wear watches because I really like watches, but the next generation isn't much into watches because they have their cell phones.

And if you want to know what time it is, you just glance at your cell phone and there it is. And why should you strap something around your wrist and worry about changing batteries and setting the crazy thing and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But even then, when I was a kid, oh man, oh man, first grade,

I hadn't thought about this for a year. I got the coolest thing when

I was in first grade. Man, I'm going to have to look on eBay for one of these things. That's how when you get old and you didn't get something when you were a kid or it broke when you were a kid, now you're old enough to go on eBay and find it and buy it.

I think it was first grade, I wanted this thing so bad. My parents did get it for me, but unfortunately it broke.

But it was this, it was one of these watches where it was a luminescent, it had the glow in the dark thing.

But what it was, was the second hand was one of the Apollo space capsules with a guy doing a space walk that would go around.

And it glowed in the dark. So I could put my head under the pillow and just watch that going around and around.

And oh man, that was awesome. And you know what happened to the watch. The little dial fell off inside.

I love the expression you just made. That's exactly how I was.

It was just one of those childhood things that makes you.

Some people would blame going postal and shooting people up in the post office. Well, when I was in first grade, the dial fell off my watch and killed everyone.

No, I didn't turn out that way. But I remember, and the problem was, how did you keep those things going?

Had to wind it. And if you've got to wind it, oh well, you need to find some other way.

Now we've got watches with five year batteries. I love solar watches. You just stick them in the window and get all charged up.

You got the ones we got. Every watch I've had that you had to charge it like this, I had to sit around doing this every once in a while.

Oh, automatic, right. Okay, yeah, I'll get that wound up eventually. But we have all sorts of different ways of doing it now.

And so even back then, time was a sort of a range type thing.

But now I've got apps on my phone that hook up to the atomic thing.

And I've got all sorts. I love the watches. I didn't happen to wear one today, but I love the watches that are tuned to the radio frequency of the atomic clock up in Boulder, Colorado.

In fact, I had a watch. I gave it to a good friend of mine in Ukraine. But I had a watch that was tri -band.

So it worked in the United States, Japan, and all of Europe. It would tune to whichever one of those atomic clocks and set itself.

I could set it in my window in Ukraine, and the next morning I got up and it was spot on with where I was in Ukraine.

Or if you've got a GPS watch now, you let it get one fix. When you land, boom, you're on.

It says, oh, you're now in Ukraine. The time there is, boom. And it's just incredible. That's all really, really, really, really, really modern, really, really, really new.

And why am I stressing all this? Well, because part of the issues that we're gonna be dealing with, especially in the crucifixion event, well, what's one of the primary allegations that is made about contradiction in the crucifixion narrative?

What time it happened? John says one thing. Mark, Matthew, and Luke basically all say the same thing, but they say something different.

And I was in Durban a few months ago, and during the

Q &A at the end of a debate on the crucifixion, I've got Muslims standing down there going, how can we trust what the

Gospels say about Jesus' death on a cross when they can't get the times right? And that's the kind of thing you'll also find in Newsweek magazine.

You know? And it's not that these things have not been discussed and answered fully since the early church, but it just seems that lies move a whole lot faster and have longer lives than truth does.

And so, as a result, all of us need to know why it was that John, for example, uses a different timing method than Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And he does. He's using the Roman method. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are using the Jewish method. And there is a difference between the two.

And it accounts, and once you adjust for that, they're saying the same thing, but why would

John do that? Well, maybe when John was written and to whom he was writing might be a good indication, for example, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all pre -AD 70, pre -destruction of Jerusalem, despite all the people who say otherwise.

It might be just one of those little internal indications that they're much earlier than people thought they were.

We don't necessarily have to wait for the results of the big project going on right now where they've found scraps of papyri inside an

Egyptian mummy mask, which they're dating to the first century of gospel manuscripts and things like that.

Maybe these indications were there all along if we just would have listened to what they were saying. But the point is, that stuff's out there.

And we need to keep that in mind, especially as we look at this particular thing. So, we'll pick up with Peter's denial and the number of times that roosters crow in the morning and that kind of thing next time around.

So, let's close with a word of prayer. Once again, our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we have been given this time to study your word.

We would ask that we would find this time to be precious. Lord, we know that there are many in this world that would seek to take away from us the privilege to meet in freedom and to consider these things.

But Lord, we would ask that you would continue to extend this grace toward us. May we be good students of your word and may we present your truth to others around us.