Synoptics Section 308 to 311

Okay, once again, we're in the synoptics, so there are a few of them on the floor over there if someone would like to pass them out or share them or do whatever you wish to do with them.

For those of you who remembered yours or have one, it's been a very long time.

Some of you who have them, the covers used to be blue, now they're white because you left them in your car, all sorts of things like that.

Then we have the smaller harmonies that are not as scholarly looking, but easier to carry if you don't want to have such a burden.

We are in section 308, Preparation for the Passover, which is Matthew 26, 17 -20,

Mark 14, 12 -17, Luke 22, 7 -14. I'll read through Mark here, and on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed

Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.

Follow him wherever he enters. He is, say, the householder. The teacher says, Where is my guest room where I am to eat the

Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready there. Prepare for us.

The disciples set out and went to the city and found that, as he had told them, when they prepared the Passover, and when it was evening, he came with the twelve.

Pretty much the same story here. Here, the only real question, you see here some sort of miraculous event.

I'm certainly not a naturalist, but at the same time, it strikes me that the disciples don't go,

Wow, how did this happen? This is amazing. There's no expression of any of that outside of Jesus' knowledge of someone carrying a jar of water.

I suppose it's miraculous, but when it says,

Where is my guest room, that's a little bit different than what you have in Luke 22.

Where is the guest room? And again, differences like this, I attribute to the oral traditions, not from literary dependence.

When you utilize the literary dependence theory, you have to sit here and go,

Okay, well, there is something embarrassing about Mark saying,

Where is my guest room? So I'm going to change it to just the guest room.

That kind of constant speculation, while rampant in, again, most of the commentaries that you'll pick up in the

Christian bookstore today, or school, wherever else it might be, strikes me as raising more questions than it actually answers.

But you have the preparation for the Passover, and obviously, the

Lord's Supper that is going to be narrated beginning in section 311, the

Last Supper, exceptionally important in Christian history, and certainly here, it is seen as the focus of Jesus' specific and personal preparation.

In other words, what's going to happen in the Last Supper is not just, Oh, by the way, you might want to, you know, since we're having the

Passover, I think I'll do something special here. Something like that. No, there is intention on the

Lord's part, and though we'll get to it here in a moment, it does that when we look at especially what

I would call conservative, evangelical, whatever path, it is appropriate at times to recognize that there has been a massive reaction on our part against Roman Catholicism.

And there's very good reason to do that in so many areas. Rome has a false gospel.

Rome has overthrown the supremacy of the scriptures. Rome has done so many things.

But at the same time, there are unhealthy imbalances going the other direction.

And one of those is that there are, especially in what would be entitled, properly titled, fundamentalist churches today, a tremendous de -emphasis upon the

Lord's Supper. It is there. You'll have the ubiquitous table down front in remembrance of me.

But there are some churches that only have the Lord's Supper once a year.

And I've ministered in a lot of different churches over the years that have a lot of different traditions.

A number of churches will have the Lord's Supper every Sunday. Many will have it once a quarter.

We have the Lord's Supper every month. That is really a decision to be made by the local congregations.

But certainly there is a dearth of meaningful teaching in many, many churches amongst even good

Reformed folks as to the nature of the Supper. And we'll get to it here in just a moment.

But, well, I'm not sure if it's just a moment, but we'll probably get there today.

We'll see. It is important, I think, to note that it does hold a rather central place in the

Gospel narratives. It's placed within that context of the final night of Jesus's.

And so if we were to attach an importance to it based upon its centrality to the

Gospel narratives, it would be very, very important and certainly worthy of more thought than I'm afraid a lot of people give to it.

And part of the reason, not the whole reason, but part of the reason for that,

I do believe has to do with a, you know,

I've often used the analogy of the playing tug -of -war. When you're on one side, balance is not your concern.

Your concern is to pull as hard as you can the opposite direction that force over there is.

And given the fact that in the Roman Catholic system, the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, the

Eucharistic sacrifice, is such a horrific flight upon the finished work of Christ, it's easy to see how many pulling the other direction while affirming the sufficiency of the cross of Christ, at the same time end up de -emphasizing that which the

Lord gave to us, which reminds us of his sacrificial work. And hopefully that is not the case amongst us.

We have a confession of faith that speaks clearly to this. And I don't know if we'll have the time, but it might be worth our effort, even though we keep allowing so many things to get in the way of finishing this synoptic study.

It might be worth our effort to at least read through the confession at that point to remind ourselves of some of these issues.

But I mentioned this just in passing that clearly Jesus has supernaturally, naturally made sure that that context of that supper is going to take place so that he can establish, as we see, that supper for his people.

And hence, I think we need to look at it as just as important. Section 309, we've already covered because we did

John 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. But here you have just the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet, the situation with Peter, so on and so forth.

But we covered that. You have the story, which is found in John 13 as well, in the foretelling of the betrayal by Judas yet once again, reading

Matthew's version, Matthew 26, 21 to 25. One of you will betray me.

And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, Is it I, Lord? He answered, He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me.

The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

Judas who betrayed him said, Is it I, Master? And he said to him, You have said so. Now, a quick note for all you theological students, which is all of you.

But especially those of you who are specifically engaged in those areas.

It's difficult for me to begin to understand the origins of this outside of, well, it's just what happens when you embrace some of the fundamental concepts of liberalism, which is so common in New Testament studies today.

But there is confusion on the part of many as to the

Son of Man is. Some of you have heard the name Bart Ehrman. You know that some of you,

I think. Did we ever did we ever show my debate with Ehrman in class? Don't think so.

That's interesting. I sort of fallen off doing that for a long time. I would do that and come back from the debate or something like that as long as I had a video,

I'd show it. We're so far behind. We're just starting to catch up now. We're so far behind on even posting.

I'm just rich, just, you know, threw his hands up in the air and gave up.

And then, of course, for a long time, many of the debates were only available on VHS.

Yes. You've been debating that long, huh? Yes. Yes. I have been debating that long.

VHS tapes. I remember the first time you put it on DVD. What's wrong?

I used to watch VHS. Love VHS. Yeah. All right. That's adorable.

That's been my experience in trying to pull it out in the tape stuck around the head.

That's not so durable to me anyway. Yeah, we've been we've been at this for a very, very long time.

And so we're we're getting we're getting some of them caught back up after years.

I don't know how many we posted for debates. I've never been there before.

So keep an eye on our channel. You might see some stuff you've never seen before. This next trip,

I leave a week from tomorrow for Johannesburg via Heathrow.

And a couple of the debates are going to be down in Durban. Because the the level of militancy and radicalness amongst the

Muslims in South Africa, Johannesburg least, Durban middle,

Cape Town most. So the last time I was just in the Joburg area, this time we're going to Durban.

And your prayers would be would be appreciated for for this trip.

But anyway, this trip will put me, I think, around 142, 143 debates.

And one of those was with Bart Ehrman. And it's just it's amazing to me that that Ehrman, the son of man is.

Ehrman is as to why in Mark chapter four, quotes from Psalm 110, chapter seven, and apply these things to himself, son of man being presented before the ancient of days and his followers worship him and all the rest of the stuff.

The Jewish leadership responds by going, you've heard, do we need any money?

You've heard the blasphemy for yourself. And and Ehrman's like, I wonder why they're doing that.

And it's all because he has this idea. The son of man is this other person than Jesus.

And my Muslim friends pick up on this. When I debated Shabir Ali at Pretoria University of South Africa last year, this is one of the things that came up in the debate was, you know, do you really think

Jesus identified himself as the son of man? Where? Well, this one's fairly clear. Talking about the betrayer sitting at the table with him, he says, the son of man goes and is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the son of man is betrayed.

The meaningless, empty words, if Jesus is not who? The son of man.

So keep that in mind. It's one of many. The self -identification of Jesus as the son of man is is just obvious, but I know of an entire book written recently by Christian scholars simply on the subject of who was the son of man in the

Synoptic Gospels. And it had to be written simply because so many people are going, well, actually, this is someone else.

And it's to us, where you read the

Bible as completely off balance, when you leave this context and attempt to have theological discussion with people who do not share foundation, and you need to be aware that we are in the minority.

And that's not a bad thing, given the prevalence of apostasy, a minority in the way we handle the text of scripture, not the minority as far as the history of the church is concerned, but the minority of the current expression of what calls itself

Christianity, which is why I've said repeatedly, we will see such a tsunami of collapse upon the biblical teaching and over just the next number of months, not have a solid foundation as far as your bibliology is concerned, your understanding of what you will not be able to stand up against the pressure that comes against you.

So, point number one, son of man. Secondly, I have this, in the synoptics, rather vague statement that one who dips with me, in other words, one of the twelve, and I'm not going to go through the whole thing, mainly because I couldn't,

I haven't spent a whole lot of time studying it. But if you do, and be careful, I know there's a lot of churches that do the

Passover Seder stuff, and oh, this is this, and this is, we're not a hundred percent certain as to exactly what the

Passover would have involved at this time in history, a clear understanding of a couple hundred years later, but that gives us a lot of insight.

And sure, there's all sorts of things in Mishnah that were the same 250 years earlier, but there are things that weren't.

So, there's some real neat presentations out there about the

Passover and everything that would have been on the table, and some of that would be accurate, some of it isn't, it all depends.

But what we can know, even from the biblical narratives and then from what history will help fill in, is that the items that were prepared by the

Jewish people for this Passover, surely, by this time, come to have very specific symbolic meanings.

Everything on the table had in scripture or tradition, and by experience, the people of Israel have been connected to some element of their story as a people, and in fact, would take on more significance as their national experience continued as a people.

So, you had the bitter herbs representing the suffering of the people under slavery, and then, of course, after the destruction of Jerusalem, then that takes on even more meaning as the continued suffering of the people of Israel over time and things like that.

And so, it has evolved down through the centuries. But the point is, at that particular time, we really don't have any question that to sit at the table for the

Passover was to be in a situation where every action had a specific symbolic meaning attached to it already.

That is the context of the establishment of the Lord's Supper. Why is this important?

Well, it seems rather clear to me that just as in the

Supper, there would be the explanation of the unleavened bread, and this represents this, the

Lord commanded us to do this, and the bitter herbs represent to us this, this means this, that means that,

Jesus holds up the bread, this is, the disciples aren't all of a sudden going to slam on the brakes, throw in the clutch, jump out of all the symbolism and go, transubstantiation.

Eh? What? Yeah, that Aristotelian stuff, we don't know anything about yet, but a thousand years from now, we will, isn't that cool?

No, what, what are you, and yet that's what we are told by so many folks is that all of a sudden, instead of the symbolism representing that, and all of a sudden, that stops, and I just became a priest and transubstantiated the bread into my body and blood that has not yet been sacrificed, but will, and so, which, you're sort of going,

Rome actually teaches that the miracle of transubstantiation took place before the cross?

Unless, yes, yeah. Exactly, part of the argument for the priesthood, in fact, one of the, one of the debates, which we posted this week on YouTube, was the debate

I did sometime in the 2000s, 2000, yeah, about 10 years ago, somewhere around there, with Mitch Pacwa on the priesthood, and so if you want to hear some of the arguments for how you can come up with an entire office that the

New Testament knows nothing about, what's the, the celibate sacramental priest, we're given absolutely, isn't it fun, extensive discussions, and Timothy, as to the qualifications of a deacon, but no clue, the qualifications of a priest, who is an alter

Christus, another Christ, let alone, then, the sacramental bishops and cardinals and all the rest of stuff that has developed in Roman Catholicism since that time, one of the arguments for the establishment of the priesthood is the idea that since Jesus told the disciples, this do in remembrance of me, and Jesus had just performed the miracle of transubstantiation, therefore there had to be a sacramental priesthood passed on through the disciples to the next generation so that they could perform the miracle of transubstantiation that Jesus had just performed.

You're going, wow, that's really tenuous, yeah, yeah, it's massively, that's the argumentation that's used.

Anyway, so, it is important to note these particular elements that we, context, for the establishment of the supper that was filled with symbolism.

One more thing concerning Judas, of course, and we saw the fact that Judas was pilfering from the money box because the disciples are going, is it

I? Is it I? Is it I? If it was obvious to them that Judas was the one who was the betrayer at that point, that he was pilfering, that he was a thief, then they all would have gone, mm -hmm, and got what they're doing and said, is it

I? Is it I? And, only in John do you have the clarity of the statement to Judas, because that's when

Judas tells Judas, what you're going to do, do quickly. Now, is that because John was the, again, just last night,

I don't know if I know one or two of you, how, is there anybody, this could be really embarrassing.

Does anybody in here follow me on Twitter? Sometimes I cross those things, but I had a interesting conversation with, ended up being three

Muslims, but initially started with just one Muslim on Twitter last night, which actually finished up this morning with somebody in Britain.

It can be broken up by the fact that they respond to you, and then they respond to you, and then you know it's sort of how that works.

But one of the issues with the Gospel of John and his dismissal of a text

I cited from John 14 in regards to the deity of Christ, because John is so late, and as he said, almost all scholars recognize that John has no historical core.

And one of the examples that would probably be used would be, well, look right here. If you compare

Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there's no specific identification of Judas outside of Matthew saying you have said so.

And you don't have in, for example, in Mark, all you have is, it would be better if that meant, but in John you have something very specific.

And I didn't use this as an example, I used, I forget what it was, what other example I gave, but if we take the presupposition that John is the last written, which

I would agree with, and if it is written at a later time, could there be, and I've mentioned this in the past, so if you've already heard this, this is a refresher for you, but could there be reasons why

John, knowing that the Synoptic Gospels already exist, or at least that the teachings of Jesus encompassed in the

Synoptic Gospels were already the possession of the Church, could there be any reason why

John might not just repeat everything that is found in the

Synoptic Gospels? I did ask him that. I said, well, the other

Gospels didn't mention this, so obviously, if Jesus had ever said this, the other Gospels would mention it. And I said, why do you say that?

Why does John have to repeat everything that Matthew, Mark, and Luke said? Wouldn't that just make John an appendage, something that sort of doesn't need to be there?

If he's writing at a later point, he knows those other Gospels exist. Might there be a reason why

John, upon the inter -ministry of Jesus to the disciples, writing at a later point in time?

Could it be that during the life of the disciples themselves, during the life of maybe some of the people mentioned in John that are not mentioned in the other

Gospels, there was a reason not to mention them in writing while they were still alive, but now they're not any longer, and so there's a freedom on the author's part to do that?

Or is it just simply the fact that it's time for this much more serious discussion that went on amongst the disciples to just simply go, well,

John says it and the others don't, but we can just reject it because they're historical. Is this upon a false presupposition?

Normally there's no false presupposition at all. They're just making it up. But if you try to explain what the reason is, the reason is found to just be an assertion that would require you to know all the purposes that John had in writing.

And you can't know them, but they're assuming that they know them. For example, in this situation, where is

John in the Last Supper? That, at least, we know.

We at least have that information. And it's not just because of da

Vinci's paintings and things like that. We're not dependent upon stuff like that. John is closest to Jesus here.

He leans back upon his breast. Remember, you didn't sit. You reclined at the table, which is why the woman could wash

Jesus' feet, because the feet were farthest away from the table. There may have been more than one reason why they did things that way back then.

But having the feet away from the table, good idea. But if you were down there at the other end of the table, and Jesus is up here, he's going to have to speak with, you know, your,

I want everyone to hear me voice. But we all know there's the talk -to -the -person -next -to -me -pass -the -salt voice that you don't want someone across the table to hear.

Or maybe, you know, your wife said next to you, I can't eat this, can you take it?

It's possible that the reason John has more specificity in his recording is that he was the only one of the 12 that actually had that information, because he was the one that was right there.

You can't dismiss that kind of stuff, but in the vast majority of Christian education, you're not even allowed to raise such questions.

You're not even allowed to raise them. Liberals don't even discuss it, will not even allow it to be discussed, and will laugh at you.

Sadly, conservative folks, well, you know, we don't want that type of a mindset.

But it certainly strikes me, as I remember a sermon, a barn -burnin', stem -windin' sermon, years ago, before I, it has to be years ago, because I've been here a quarter of a century now, but years ago,

I came here, and the pastor preached on those four words in English, anyways, and it was night.

And, wow, it was a good sermon. Probably didn't have almost anything to do with what

John's actual intention was. But, it was, it was great, to the darkness of Judas's soul, and all the rest of that stuff.

Maybe John is intending to say something like that. That seems somewhat redundant, to say that it was because they were having the

Passover, and that's what you're supposed to do after sundown, anyways. Anyway, I do remember that sermon real well, and it was great.

Okay, with that, let's move to section 311. At least start a little bit on this particular subject, and that is the establishment of supper.

Now, the Last Supper was established within the context of the

Passover Supper. But, it is not the Passover Supper itself. There is something new to it.

It was not part of what was taking place.

There was a ... that is established here. And, of course, we see in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the same words, which we then have, interestingly enough, recorded for us in this chapter.

Now, don't let the significance of that misuse. Once again, as long as you primarily dialogue and interact within the context of believing

Christian faith in your life, there are going to be times where I'm going to bore you with some of the issues that I raise.

But, if you interact with a broader spectrum, either of the religious world or the unbelieving world,

I think some of you might already be able to give testimony that, you know, I'm awful glad you covered that because ...

And, here, I just point something out to you. That when we look at ...

if you're looking at section 311 in the Harmony, you can see that pretty much in a straight line across Matthew, Mark, and Luke, now they're eating,

Jesus took bread, and blessed ... eating, took bread, blessed, broke it. Then, you've got a little extra paragraph in Luke, and then verse 19, you took bread, and when you gave him thanks, he broke it, and so on and so forth.

And, he sort of ... But, you have these words, especially in Matthew and Mark, that we also find in Paul.

And, for us, that's easy. It's sort of a given, but you have to step back, and I want to point out again,

Paul is ravaged today in major portions of liberal

Christianity. I mean, oh, goodness.

There is such ... I was listening to a debate just yesterday morning while I was writing. It took place a couple of years ago.

An acquaintance of mine was debating an imam, and poor

Paul. Wow. Islam did not exist in his day, but now that it does, he is blamed for everything.

The Koran says that we have gone into excess, that we have gone beyond what is written, and the

Muslims blame Paul for that. And, of course, today, the liberals all like to say, well, you have

Jesus' religion, and then Paul comes along and turns into something completely different.

That is so common that I think it's important that you be aware of consistent drumbeat that is out there.

And, hence, as you're doing your own studies, as you're listening to the

Ministry of the Word here, as I'm teaching, as Pastor Fry is teaching, as Brother Callahan is teaching, that you have in the back of your mind sort of a category where you're always aware of the fact that to believe that Paul is truly an apostle of Christ, that he is truly speaking the truth about Christ, that he is not trying to pervert something, that he was used by the

Holy Spirit of God. And if you don't believe any of that, I don't even know how you can be a Christian. I mean, you get rid of the

Pauline writings, and you don't have Christianity in the sense that you've just taken out books from the

New Testament, and you're really up a creek without a paddle. But, as it may, there are so many that have that perspective, that as you're hearing teaching on these subjects, you should always be sort of filling in that notebook, shall we say, with notes, increasing your understanding of the relationship between Paul and Jesus, and the consistency of the teachings between the two.

Not the identity, in the sense that there are things that Jesus doesn't speak to, that Paul does.

Well, you'd expect that. I mean, as I point out to my

Muslim friend in my final response to what had come in overnight after I'd gone to bed, you can read the

Gospel of Mark in a very brief period of time. Do you think that's all Jesus said? You know, he was complaining.

Well, in the same way, unless you suffer from hyper -red -letterism, which is that dreaded disease that says that if it's printed in red letters, it's more inspired than if it's printed in black letters.

Hopefully, we inoculate you against that in this fellowship, but there are a lot of people who suffer from hyper -red -letterism.

And it really does give rise to the idea that, well, Jesus had to explain what it was, because it was written in red.

But he didn't. It was not his choice, or the

Spirit's choice, or the Father's choice, to use this to address the qualifications of the elders of the

Church. And yet, there are a lot of folks who really struggle with that, and basically create different levels of Scripture and different levels of canon, to where, you know, if it's in Jesus, then it's the highest level, and, you know, there's stuff difficult to understand in Paul, therefore, you know, it's a little bit lower.

And, man, you get down to something like Nehemiah or something, there'd be a lot of people wondering, what in the world are we doing on Sunday nights anyways?

Did you run out of stuff to preach on or something? And they'd really wonder what we're up to, but that all -Scripture -is -the -honest -of thing is sort of important for us.

And so, the issue here that I just raised for you, I guess, as we're wrapping up, is the fact that Paul, first of all, he's not going to reiterate everything that's already in the

Gospels. There are lots of times people say, oh, Paul didn't know anything about the historical G's, and he never talks about this, he never talks about that.

Why would he? I mean, that would be like taking this

Sunday School lesson, and saying that I know nothing about Peter, because what have

I said about Peter's writings in this Sunday School lesson? Almost nothing. Should I have?

Should I have to repeat everything that's in 1st and 2nd Peter in every Sunday School lesson to demonstrate that I know what's in 1st and 2nd

Peter? No, and yet you would not believe the number of scholars out there who will repeat the idea, oh,

Paul didn't know anything about the G's, and he didn't know anything about the historical G's.

Here's one example of it. Here, Paul can quote the very words of the Gospel without going, well, it's written in Matthew, it's written in Mark.

He got that directly from Peter and from the disciples, without any intermediary section.

And keep in mind that in 1st Corinthians, when Paul says, in regards to this aspect of marriage, the

Lord, not I, say, and then he repeats what Jesus taught in the Gospels. But then when he comes to something

Jesus didn't address, it says, I, not the Lord, say. That's a lower level of command.

That's just Paul's recognition Jesus did not address this in the Gospel tradition. Well, you've got to know the

Gospel tradition to know that, and it happens to be right. So there's a lot of evidence that Paul's perfectly aware of everything that's being taught.

But when you're writing letters to churches, you don't repeat everything you're already told to them.

I mean, this is such common stuff, but unfortunately it's not the stuff you get in a lot of New Testament scholarship today.

So anyway, with that, we are at the point of looking at the Lord's Supper. At least

I'll remember what it is. Though I don't think I'm teaching next week because I'm preaching, but we'll see.

And then I'm in South Africa the week after that, so we'll see when we get back to it.

But let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this opportunity, and we thank you for your

Word. We thank you for its preservation. We thank you that even to this day you place in our hearts a longing for it, a respect for it, an obedience to it.

We know this is the work of the Spirit. We pray that same Spirit would be with us now as we go into worship. We pray in Christ's name.