Adventuring Through the Bible: New Testament: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Testament

By Ray C. Stedman

We live in an imperfect world where there seems to be no absolutes and no easy answers. And yet one ancient book still holds truth that is just as relevant today as when it was written. The Bible. And if you want to understand the historical background and spiritual message of this holy book, Ray Stedman's Adventuring through the New Testament makes a great companion.
This easy-to-understand, one-stop guide brings Scripture to life and helps you explore God's message of faith, love, and hope from Matthew to Revelation. It's loaded with full-color charts, maps, timelines, images, and creative commentary that explains how it all fits together. You'll find outlines, themes, and applications for each of the New Testament books of the Bible to help you see the big picture of Scripture.
This eBook edition of the 1977 classic, Adventuring Through the Bible, written by Ray Stedman will instruct, awe, and inspire you as you adventure through God's Word and understand that His message to you applies to every generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Our Daily Bread Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781572935334

Book preview

the cover for Adventuring Through the Bible: New Testament, published by Discovery Housethe cover for Adventuring Through the Bible: New Testament, published by Discovery Housethe title page for Adventuring Through the Bible: New Testament, published by Discovery House

Adventuring through the Bible: New Testament

Copyright © 1997 by Elaine Stedman

Revised and Expanded Edition © 2012 by Elaine Stedman

Discovery House is affiliated with Our Daily Bread Ministries, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Requests for permission to quote from this book should be directed to: Permissions Department, Discovery House, P.O. Box 3566, Grand Rapids, MI 49501, or contact us by e-mail at [e-mail]

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever including photocopying, scanning, digitizing, recording, or any form of information storage-and-retrieval system, without written permission from Discovery House with the exception of brief quotations in articles or reviews.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. To share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you were given this book or it was shared with you and you did not purchase it, please go to www.dhp.org to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting our copyright.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Timelines for each chapter developed by Dr. Dick Sterkenburg.

ISBN: 978-1-57293-533-4

Second eBook edition in August 2016

Contents

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Part One

:

A Panorama of the Scriptures

Timeline of Biblical and World Events

1. God Has Spoken in These Last Days, The New Testament

Part Two

:

Jesus: The Focus of Both Testaments

2. Between the Testaments, The Apocrypha

3. Jesus and His Church, Matthew through Acts

4. Behold Your King! Matthew

5. He Came to Serve, Mark

6. The Perfect Man, Luke

7. The God-Man, John

8. The Unfinished Story, Acts

Part Three

:

Letters from the Lord

9. Letters to the Church: The Epistles of Paul, Romans through Philemon

10. The Master Key to Scripture, Romans

11. The Epistle to the Twenty-First Century, 1 Corinthians

12. When I Am Weak, I Am Strong, 2 Corinthians

13. How to Be Free, Galatians

14. The Calling of the Saints, Ephesians

15. Christ, Our Confidence and Our Strength, Philippians

16. Power and Joy! Colossians

17. Hope for a Hopeless World, 1 Thessalonians

18. Holding Back Lawlessness, 2 Thessalonians

19. How to Build a Church, 1 Timothy

20. Sturdy Christians in a Collapsing World, 2 Timothy

21. Hope for the Future, Help for Today, Titus

22. A Brother Restored, Philemon

Part Four

:

Keeping the Faith

23. All about Faith, Hebrews through Jude

24. The Roll Call of Faith, Hebrews

25. Faith in Action, James

26. Living Stones, 1 Peter

27. Faith in the Face of Falsehood, 2 Peter

28. Authentic Christianity, 1 John

29. The Vital Balance, 2 John

30. Believers and Bosses, 3 John

31. Contending for the Faith, Jude

Part Five

:

Signs of the Times

32. The End—and a New Beginning, Revelation

Bible Reading Plans

Note to the Reader

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Ray Stedman (1917–92) served as pastor of the Peninsula Bible Church from 1950 to 1990, where he was known and loved as a man of outstanding Bible knowledge, Christian integrity, warmth, and humility. Born in Temvik, North Dakota, Ray grew up on the rugged landscape of Montana. When he was a small child, his mother became ill and his father, a railroad man, abandoned the family. As a result, Ray grew up on his aunt’s Montana farm from the time he was six. At age ten he came to know the Lord at a Methodist revival meeting.

As a young man Ray moved around and tried different jobs, working in Chicago, Denver, Hawaii, and elsewhere. He enlisted in the Navy during World War II, where he often led Bible studies for civilians and Navy personnel, and even preached on a local radio station in Hawaii. At the close of the war, Ray married Elaine in Honolulu, whom he had first met in Great Falls, Montana. They returned to the mainland in 1946, and a few years later Ray graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1950. After two summers interning under Dr. J. Vernon McGee, Ray traveled for several months with Dr. H. A. Ironside, pastor of Moody Church in Chicago.

In 1950, Ray was called by the two-year-old Peninsula Bible Fellowship in Palo Alto, California, to serve as its first pastor. Peninsula Bible Fellowship became Peninsula Bible Church, and Ray served a forty-year tenure, retiring on April 30, 1990. During those years, Ray authored a number of life-changing Christian books, including the classic work on the meaning and mission of the church, Body Life. He went into the presence of his Lord on October 7, 1992.

The original edition of Adventuring through the Bible (published in 1997) combined two sermon series Ray preached in the 1960s, Panorama of the Scriptures (1963–64) and Adventuring through the Bible (1964–68). For this expanded and updated edition, we have gone back into Ray’s sermon archives to bring out even more of his rich and practical insights from God’s Word.

This edition of Adventuring through the Bible is more reader friendly than ever before. Almost every page has been revised for greater readability and accuracy. We have provided new resources and study helps, including:

Bible reading plans (through the Bible in one or two years)

Timelines of biblical events

Lists (such as Spiritual Gifts)

Study and discussion guides for every book of the New Testament

Personal application questions

Images, maps, and charts

More than ever before, Adventuring through the Bible is an indispensable Bible study aid for both individuals and groups. Most important of all, these books transform the study of God’s Word into the adventure of a lifetime!

So turn the page and prepare to be instructed, inspired, and awed as you adventure through the greatest book ever written, the Holy Bible.

—Discovery House

Part One

A Panorama of the Scriptures

Jordan desert outside Jerusalem

Jordan desert outside Jerusalem

Timeline of Biblical & World Events

an image of Mount Arbel

Mount Arbel

Chapter 1

The New Testament

God Has Spoken in These Last Days

Chapter Objectives

This chapter provides a thumbnail overview of the entire New Testament, the channel by which God makes the living Lord Jesus real to our hearts. The New Testament answers all the questions raised by the Old Testament. This chapter deals with such crucial issues as: Who is Jesus, according to the Gospels? How did the church begin? What is the purpose of the Epistles (the letters of Paul and other apostles)? What is the purpose of the book of Revelation?

There are two ways of learning truth: reason and revelation. Which is more important? That’s like asking which blade of a pair of scissors is more important. It takes both. It’s impossible to gather a complete and balanced understanding of biblical truth without using both reason and revelation.

Some people would throw out reason and rely on revelation alone. The result is fanaticism. If we decide that our God-given faculty of reason has no value at all, then we will behave irrationally.

I once read of a man who decided that the solution to every problem could be found in the Bible. When gophers began eating the vegetables in his garden, he took his Bible out in the yard and read the gospel of John in the four corners of his property. Somehow, he figured this would solve his gopher problem. It didn’t. Reason would suggest that the best way to rid one’s garden of gophers would be to set out gopher traps. By relying solely on revelation without applying reason and common sense, this man ended up behaving irrationally.

But what if we throw out revelation and rely on reason alone? The result would be equally disastrous. Reason has given us many scientific insights and technological advances, but reason alone has never shown us how to change the human heart; how to end war; or how to eliminate crime, poverty, drug abuse, or racism. In fact, our technological advances have actually rendered the future more dark and frightening. We can never begin to solve our social and human problems as long as we set aside God’s revelation and rely on human reason alone.

The Word and the Spirit Together

What is revelation? It is simply the truth that cannot be known by reason. It’s what Paul called God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden . . . none of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:7–8). When Paul spoke of the rulers of this age, he was not necessarily talking about kings and princes. He was talking about leaders of human thought in every realm. And he said there is a body of knowledge—a secret, hidden wisdom—that is imparted by God to human beings, which none of the rulers with all their cleverness and wisdom could understand. Had they known this, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory.

The religious rulers who demanded the crucifixion of our Lord were a body of learned men who boasted that they, more than anyone else, could recognize truth when they saw it. But when the incarnate Truth stood before them, they neither recognized Him nor received His word. They crucified Him because they had thrown out revelation and were clinging only to the power of their own reasoning.

Revelation, in the fullest sense, is Scripture interpreted by the Holy Spirit. We have the Bible, given to us by God, as Paul told Timothy: All Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Scripture did not originate with human beings. Rather, certain chosen human beings became channels through whom God delivered His Word.

As Peter wrote, Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). The writers of the New Testament wrote letters just as we would write them today, expressing their feelings, their attitudes, and their ideas in the most natural and uncomplicated manner. But in the process, a strange mystery took place: The Holy Spirit worked through the New Testament writers to guide, direct, and inspire. The Spirit chose the very words that would express God’s thoughts to human beings.

The hidden wisdom of God cannot be discovered in a laboratory experiment, yet His wisdom is essential to the kind of life God intends us to live. This wisdom is revealed in the Bible—yet it is worthless to us if we are not instructed by the Holy Spirit. It’s possible to know the Bible from cover to cover and get absolutely nothing from it. You can go to any bookstore and find dozens of books filled with extensive information about the historical, archaeological, and literary content of the Bible; yet some of the authors of these books may be hardened atheists.

So revelation is not found merely by reading the Bible. The Bible must be illuminated, interpreted, and authenticated in our lives by the Holy Spirit. The Word and the Spirit must act together to bring us to a saving knowledge of God.

A Book of Fulfillment

Did you ever wonder why Jesus came to the Jews? Why didn’t He come to the Aztecs? or the Chinese? or the Inuit? There’s a simple, commonsense answer to this question: He came to the Jews because they were the nation that had the Old Testament. The Jews, for this reason, were uniquely prepared to receive what God offered in Christ.

Certainly, not all Jews received Him. But for the first few years of its existence, the early church was overwhelmingly a Jewish church. The Jewish nation was qualified to receive the Messiah because it had been prepared by the Old Testament to receive Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

This is why many people today who read only the New Testament can go only so far in grasping the fullness of Jesus Christ. Their hearts are not adequately prepared. Our lives are always shallow and limited if we try to grasp something we are not ready to receive. That’s why we need the ministry of the Old Testament in our lives.

If the Old Testament prepares, then the New Testament fulfills. God designed the New Testament to meet the needs stirred up and expressed by the Old Testament. How does the New Testament meet these needs? By revealing to us the One who is the answer to all our needs. Jesus said, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink (John 7:37). If anyone eats of this bread [referring to Himself], he will live forever (John 6:51). Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (John 8:12). All the needs of the human heart are met in Him.

The New Testament is a channel by which the Holy Spirit makes the living Jesus Christ real to our hearts. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews tells us, In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways (Hebrews 1:1). In other words, the Old Testament has given us an incomplete message, not the final word. But in these last days, the passage continues, he [God] has spoken to us by his Son (Hebrew 1:2). The New Testament is the answer to the yearning the Old Testament stirs within us.

When the corrupt religious leaders tried to trap Jesus and destroy Him, He replied, You diligently study the Scriptures—that is, the Old Testament—because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me (John 5:39). It’s true. The Old Testament testifies about the coming Messiah, and the New Testament testifies of the Messiah who has come.

The New Testament answers the questions of the Old Testament because the New Testament makes plain what the Old Testament speaks of in symbols, prophecies, and veiled references. Once we have met the Christ of the New Testament, we are able to see Him plainly throughout the Old Testament as well.

In both the Old Testament and the New, Jesus stands out on every page.

an image showing the divisions of the Old Testament. Genesis through Deuteronomy shows the five steps to maturity - origins of the universe and humanity. Joshua through Esther shows the message of history - perils that confront the walk of faith. Job through Song of Songs shows music to live by - praise and protest of the human heart. Isaiah through Malachi shows the promises of God - truths for living.

The Divisions of the New Testament

Every division of the New Testament is particularly designed to set forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the answer to the needs of our lives.

The Gospels are the biographical section of the New Testament. There we learn about Jesus, who He is and what He did. Who is Jesus, according to the Gospels? He’s the Son of God born in human form for us. What did He do? He submitted to being sacrificed upon the cross. He burst forth from the tomb in resurrection power. He saved us from the penalty for our sins.

There was a time when, in the fullness of my ignorance after graduating from seminary, I thought the Gospels were hardly worth reading! I had heard that the Gospels were merely the story of the life of Jesus. There was certainly some value in them, but I believed the most important parts of the New Testament were Paul’s epistles. A few of my seminary instructors unwisely reinforced this notion, encouraging me to give my attention almost exclusively to the Epistles. They promised that if I would grasp the Epistles, my biblical knowledge would be complete.

In time, I discovered that I couldn’t understand the Epistles apart from the Gospels. As I read the life of Christ and saw Him portrayed in the four dimensions of the four Gospels, I discovered the secret that transformed my own life and ministry. The most radical, revolutionary statement ever presented to the human mind is revealed in the words of Jesus Christ, and is recorded in various ways in the Gospels: I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me (John 6:57). This statement explains the life of Christ—the miracles He performed, the sermons He preached, the parables He told, the work He accomplished, and even His death and resurrection.

Acts gives us the account of the beginning of the church. And the church is nothing more, nor less, than the body of Jesus Christ today through which He intends to keep on being who He is and doing what He did. He poured out His physical life in order that He might pour it into a body of people who would express that life throughout the world. The book of Acts is but the simple, straightforward account of how this body began, how it was filled with the Holy Spirit, and how it began to launch out from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria, and far beyond to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The ministry that belonged to Jesus during His earthly life now belongs to His body, the body of believers. Our task as His followers is to open the eyes of the blind, to set at liberty those who are held captive, to comfort those who need comfort, to be conduits for God’s transforming, life-changing power in the lives of men and women everywhere.

The Epistles are a series of letters written to individuals and churches in straightforward, uncomplicated language, conveying practical truths for Christian living. These letters are revealing, because nothing is as revealing as a personal letter. If I wanted to know what a group of people were like (short of sitting down and talking to them face-to-face), I would read their letters. The Epistles are letters written by human beings, under the direct inspiration of God. In them, we find revealed the personality of their human writers and the personality of their divine Author.

The Epistles represent a varied array of viewpoints. We find God’s truth expressed through the personalities of the writers of these letters. There is Peter the fisherman, always casting his net for the human soul. There is Paul the tentmaker and church builder, always laying foundations and constructing. There is John the net mender (that’s what he was doing when Christ first found him), and his ministry is one of repairing, restoring, and bringing us back to God’s original pattern.

In the letters of the New Testament, we discover the nuts and bolts of the Christian life, and we learn how to allow Jesus Christ to live His life through us. These letters are almost all composed in the same simple pattern. The first part is doctrinal, the second part is practical. The first part sets forth truth, the second part applies that truth to real life.

Truth must be applied. As the Lord Jesus said, If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31a–32). Until we begin to learn who He is and what He does and then apply it in the specific activities of our own lives and hearts, we can read our Bibles for years, yet be totally untouched by His magnificent truth.

Many people think that if anybody exemplifies what the Christian life should be, it is a pastor. It would seem to follow that if you could gather several pastors together, it would practically be heaven on earth! Let me tell you, it isn’t that way at all.

At one pastors’ conference I attended, there were ministers who were discouraged, confused, and soul-sick. In fact, some were so wounded and defeated that their very faith hung by a thread. Our speaker gave an excellent message on 1 Corinthians 2:16, where Paul says, We have the mind of Christ. After the sermon, we had a prayer meeting. To my amazement, pastor after pastor prayed: Oh Lord, give us the mind of Christ! Oh, if we could just have the mind of Christ!

Now, what does the passage say? We have the mind of Christ. If that is what God’s Word tells us, what kind of faith would pray, Give me the mind of Christ? Even many pastors, I’m sad to say, routinely ignore and misapprehend the promises of Scripture. We ask God for the things He has already granted us. He says to us, Here! Take! All this is yours! And in response, we stand and moan, Oh, if I only had the mind of Christ, what I could do!

As we adventure through the Epistles together, I pray you will open your heart to the straightforward truths presented there. I pray you will lay hold of all that God has given you, and that you will take these truths and apply them in your everyday life.

Finally, the book of Revelation. This is the only book in the New Testament that deals completely with prophecy. Here, in the form of a vision, God reveals to us not only a slate of future events, but the reality of who He is now and throughout all ages to come. Here we read the story of how the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, how He shall reign forever and ever, and how God’s people shall become His dwelling place, so that a multitude from every tribe and nation will triumph over sin, death, and hell.

Peace, Perfect Peace

The message of the New Testament is fundamentally simple. It’s the same message Paul states so eloquently in Colossians 1:27: Christ in you, the hope of glory. We do not have any hope if we do not have that. If Christ is not active in you, and you have not already begun to experience the mystery of His life being lived in you, then you are not a Christian and you have no hope—no hope of glory, no hope of fulfillment, no hope eternal life and eternal love.

But if you have placed your trust in Him, then you have every reason for hope. Thanks to God and His Son Jesus Christ, you have the greatest hope imaginable!

Hymn writer Edward H. Bickersteth puts it beautifully: Peace, perfect peace. But we cannot grasp the message of this hymn unless we notice its punctuation, because it has a rather peculiar structure. There are two lines in every verse. The first line ends with a question mark. The second line answers the question. The questions all concern life right now, and the answers are aspects of Christ in you.

Question: Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? Answer: The blood of Jesus whispers peace within.

Question: Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? Answer: To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.

Question: Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round? Answer: On Jesus’ bosom naught but calm is found.

Question: Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown? Answer: Jesus we know, and He is on the throne.

Question: Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours? Answer: Jesus has vanquished death and all its powers.

These are the questions desperately asked by the sin-sick, pain-wracked human race. And these are the answers found in the New Testament. Notice that each answer focuses on the name of Jesus! He is the focus of the New Testament. He is the answer to all our needs.

The purpose of the Bible is to point us to the living person of Christ. He is the One whose image is embedded in every page of the Bible. The New Testament was written in order that we may see Him—Christ in you, the hope of glory. In the pages of the New Testament, we see Jesus.

Part Two

Jesus: The Focus of Both Testaments

an image of the cave at Qumran

Cave at Qumran

Chapter 2

The Apocrypha

Between the Testaments

Chapter Objectives

This chapter answers the questions: What is the Apocrypha? And how can we know if the books of the Apocrypha are the inspired Word of God or not?

Four hundred years of silence.

That’s the period of time that separates the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, from the first book of the New Testament, Matthew. From a human perspective, four centuries is a long time. Entire civilizations rise, decline, fall, and are forgotten in less time than that.

Four hundred years is roughly the same span of time as the entire history of the United States of America—from the founding of the first colonies in Massachusetts and Virginia, through the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and right up to the present day.

During the four-hundred-year interlude between Malachi and Matthew, it was as if the heavens were silent. No voice spoke for God, no prophet came to Israel, no Scriptures were written.

This does not mean, however, that no Hebrew history was recorded in all that time. During the period from 400 BC to New Testament times, a body of literature was produced that came to be called the Apocrypha, from the Greek apokryphos, meaning hidden. From the earliest centuries of the Christian church, books in the Apocrypha have been accepted as Scripture, especially in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint.

a painting of St. Jerome, by El Greco

When the early church father Jerome (ca. AD 347–420) translated the Septuagint into Latin, for the Vulgate edition of the Catholic Bible, he expressed doubts about the validity of the Apocrypha. The high councils of the Catholic Church, however, overruled his doubts. As a result, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles contain the Apocrypha to this day.

The Apocrypha was never included in the Old Testament of the early Hebrew Christians and was not accepted as inspired Scripture by the Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther. It was also excluded from the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611.

As a collection of historical texts, the Apocrypha sheds interesting light on the period of Hebrew history during the gap between the testaments. Because this was the period during which Jewish culture was strongly influenced by Greek (Hellenistic) ideas, the Hellenization of Israel can be clearly seen in the works of the Apocrypha. In fact, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, is a result of the Hellenistic influence.

Interesting clues to certain Hebrew institutions during New Testament times, such as the Pharisee sect of Judaism that arose in the second century BC and the Sadducee (or Zadokite) party that arose in the first century BC, can also be found in the Apocrypha. Both of these groups are crucially important in all four gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. They also figure mightily in the story of that hardened Pharisee-turned-Christian-missionary, the apostle Paul.

The apocryphal books in the Septuagint (not included in the Scriptures of the non-Hellenistic Jews) were:

Tobit, which recounts the life of the righteous Israelite named Tobit who lived in Nineveh during the time of the exile (a book of edifying historical fiction);

Judith, the story of an Israelite heroine who kills an Assyrian general (a book of edifying historical fiction);

Wisdom of Solomon, a wisdom book similar to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes;

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), another wisdom book;

Baruch, an add-on to the book of Jeremiah, supposedly written by Jeremiah’s assistant;

First & Second Maccabees, two epic historical works describing the revolt of a Jewish rebel army, the Maccabees, against the oppressive Greek Seleucid occupation during the period from 175 to 134 BC.

Also included in the Apocrypha are fragmentary texts that are appended to accepted, inspired Old Testament books—these include additions to the book of Esther (which appear in the Septuagint and Roman Catholic versions as Esther 10:4–10), the Song of the Three Young Men (inserted at the end of Daniel 3), the story of Susanna (which appears as Daniel 13), and the story of Bel and the Dragon (which appears as Daniel 14).

The Apocrypha makes interesting and informative reading, but a careful examination of these books, comparing them with the accepted books of God’s Word, strongly indicates they do not belong in the canon of Scripture, because they do not fit with the overarching themes of God’s Word.

If you work your way through the Old Testament, book by book, as we have been doing, you see clearly that every page of every book points clearly to Jesus, the coming Messiah. You do not, however, see Jesus clearly, if at all, in the Apocrypha.

Perhaps that is one reason Jerome felt compelled to question the validity of the Apocrypha so many years ago. In any case, I am persuaded, as are virtually all other Protestant Bible scholars, that whatever historical or literary value the Apocrypha contains, they are not the inspired Word of God.

an image of the ruins of a first-century Synagogue

Ruins of a First Century Synagogue

Chapter 3

Matthew through Acts

Jesus and His Church

Chapter Objectives

In this chapter, we take an orbital overview of the first five books of the New Testament, the books of New Testament history. This chapter answers the questions: Why do we need four gospels? Why isn’t one gospel enough? Why do we need the book of Acts? And why does Acts end so abruptly? Here again we see profound evidence that these books, written by four human writers, truly spring from the mind of a single Author.

The Old Testament was shadow. The New Testament is sunshine.

The Old Testament was type and symbol. The New Testament is reality and substance.

The Old Testament was prophecy. The New Testament is fulfillment.

In the Old Testament, we must piece together a complex mosaic of Christ. In the New Testament, Jesus blazes from the page in three-dimensional realism.

Though the Old Testament speaks of Jesus, it does so in shadows, types, symbols, and prophecies that anticipate His advent. He appears on almost every page in the form of symbols, shadows, types, rituals, sacrifices, and prophecies. You cannot read the Old Testament without being aware of that constant promise running through the text: Someone is coming! Someone is coming!

But as we open the gospels, it becomes clear that the long-awaited moment has arrived. The promised and prophesied Someone has arrived—and He steps forth in the astonishing fullness of His glory. As John says, We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Here, in the form of a living, breathing human being is the one who satisfies and fulfills all the symbols and prophecies found in Genesis through Malachi. As we move from the Old Testament to the New, we find that Jesus of Nazareth is the focal point of both Testaments.

To me, the Gospels comprise the most fascinating section of the Bible because they provide eyewitness accounts of the life of the one around whom the entire Bible revolves. In the Gospels, we see Christ as He is. The gospels confront us with the fact that Jesus may not always be what we think He is or what we would like Him to be. His actions are sometimes startling. His words astonish us. No matter how many times we have read the Gospels before, He continues to challenge our assumptions about who He is.

We encounter this man, Jesus Christ, through four separate portraits—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Many have asked, Why is it necessary to have four gospels instead of just one? Why couldn’t one of these writers have gotten all the facts together and presented them for us in one book? Well, that would be like trying to use one photograph of a building to adequately represent the entire structure. One picture could not possibly show all four sides of the building at once.

The same is true of Jesus. His life, His character, and His ministry are so rich and multifaceted that a single view cannot tell the whole story. God deliberately planned for four gospels so that each would present our Lord in a unique way. Each gospel presents a distinct aspect of Christ, and our understanding of who He is would be much poorer if even one of these Gospels was lost to us.

The Fourfold Image of Christ

The Old Testament is filled with pictures of the coming Messiah that correspond to the portraits of Jesus that have been painted for us in the four gospels. First, Jesus is pictured in many prophecies—particularly those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah—as the coming King of Israel. For obvious reasons, the people of Israel have loved the image of the Messiah as the king of Israel. That, in fact, is one of the reasons Israel rejected Jesus when He came: He did not look like the king of their expectations. But Matthew, in his gospel, emphasized the kingly aspects of Jesus and His ministry. Matthew, then, is the gospel of the King.

Second, Jesus is portrayed as the suffering servant. We see images of the suffering servant in the book of Isaiah and in the book of Genesis through the life of Joseph, who is seen as a type of the One who would come to suffer and serve. The Hebrews found these two images of the Messiah confusing—the ruling Messiah-King versus the suffering Messiah-Servant. Many Jewish scholars concluded that there must be two messiahs. They called one, Messiah Ben-David (Messiah the son of David, the kingly messiah) and the other Messiah Ben-Joseph (Messiah the son of Joseph, the suffering messiah). They couldn’t imagine that the king and the servant could be the same person. Mark, however, understood the humble servant nature of Christ, and that is the aspect he presents to us in his gospel.

Third, we have frequent Old Testament pictures of the Messiah coming as a man. He was to be born of a virgin, grow up in Bethlehem, and walk among human beings. He was to be the perfect human being. That is the image presented to us by Luke in his gospel.

Finally, we have the Old Testament pictures that speak of the Messiah as God, the Everlasting One. For example, Micah 5:2 predicted that the Messiah would come out of the small town of Bethlehem Ephrathah (where Jesus was, in fact, born) and that His origins would be from everlasting (that is, He is eternal and is God). This description fits with the picture of Jesus found in the gospel of John, the gospel of the Son of God.

So all of the Old Testament prophecies and pictures of Christ can be placed under these four gospel headings: king, servant, human being, and God. It’s significant that in four places in the Old Testament the word behold is used in connection with each of these four pictures.

In Zechariah 9:9, God says to the daughters of Zion and Jerusalem, Behold, thy King cometh (KJV). This prophecy was fulfilled when our Lord entered Jerusalem in triumph.

Then in Isaiah 42:1, God says, Behold my servant (KJV). Notice it is not thy servant but my servant. Christ is not the servant of humanity but the servant of God.

In Zechariah 6:12, the Lord says, Behold the man (KJV). This is a passage regarding the Messiah.

And in Isaiah 40:9 we read, Say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! (KJV).

Four times the word behold is used, each time in connection with a different aspect of Christ. So we can clearly see that God has woven a marvelous and consistent pattern into His Word, in both the Old and New Testaments. This pattern reveals the many facets and dimensions of Jesus the Messiah.

Unity, Not Harmony

It’s fascinating to notice all the techniques, details, and nuances used by each gospel writer to paint a comprehensive portrait of Jesus Christ.

In Matthew, the gospel of the King, we see many evidences of Jesus’ kingship: The book opens with Christ’s genealogy, tracing His royal line back to David, king of Israel, and to Abraham, father of the nation Israel. Throughout the book, Jesus speaks and acts with kingly authority: Moses said to you so-and-so, but I say to you such-and-such. To the Jews, Moses was the great authority, so for Jesus to supersede the authority of Moses was to act as a king.

Jesus demonstrated authority to dismiss evil spirits and to command the sick to be healed and the blind to see. With kingly authority, He passed judgment on the religious leaders of the nation, saying, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! The key phrase Jesus uses again and again throughout Matthew’s gospel is the kingdom of heaven—which occurs thirty-two times. In Matthew’s account of the Lord’s birth, he states that Christ was born King of the Jews; and in his account of the crucifixion, he says that Jesus was crucified as King of the Jews.

Mark, the second gospel, pictures Christ as the Servant. As you might expect, Mark does not provide a genealogy for Christ. From a human perspective, who cares about the genealogy of a servant? Nobody. In Mark’s gospel, our Lord simply appears on the scene. Again and again in this gospel we encounter the word immediately. That is the watchword of a servant, isn’t it? When you give a servant an order, you want it carried out immediately. So again and again we read, Immediately, Jesus did so-and-so.

Whereas both Luke and Matthew are filled with parables on many subjects, Mark, the gospel of the Servant, contains only four parables—and each is a parable about servanthood. The parables protray Jesus as the Servant of Jehovah—the suffering servant pictured in Isaiah 53. As you read through the gospel of Mark you will never see Jesus called Lord until after His resurrection—another mark of His servant role. Mark 13:32 is a verse that profoundly illustrates Jesus’ servanthood—and is a verse that has puzzled many. In this verse, the Lord speaks of His second coming: No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

How could Jesus be the omnipotent God and still not know the time of His own return? This is a mystery—at least until you understand the character of Mark’s gospel. Mark describes Christ in His role as the suffering servant of God. It is not a servant’s place to know what his Lord is doing—even when that servant is the Son of God Himself.

Luke shows us Christ as a human being. Here we see the perfection of His manhood—the glory, beauty, strength, and dignity of His humanity. As we would expect, Luke also contains a genealogy of Christ. If Jesus is to be presented as human, we want to know that He belongs to the human race. And Luke makes the case for Christ’s complete identification with Adam’s race by tracing His genealogy all the way back to Adam.

In Luke, we often find Christ in prayer. If you want to see Jesus at prayer, read the gospel of Luke. Prayer is a picture of humanity’s proper relationship to God—total dependence upon the sovereign, omnipotent God. In Luke, we see Jesus’ human sympathy most clearly—His weeping over the city of Jerusalem, His healing of the man whose ear Peter cut off when the soldiers arrested Him in the garden. No other gospel relates these two incidents that so powerfully show the sympathetic, human nature of our Lord. Luke relates the fullest account of Christ’s agony in the garden where He sweats drops of blood, so eloquently symbolic of the human being who fully enters into our sufferings.

John’s gospel presents Christ as God. From the very first verse, this is John’s potent, unmistakable theme. Many people fail to realize that John’s gospel, like Matthew’s and Luke’s, opens with a genealogy. The reason so many people miss the genealogy in John is that it is so short:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1).

That’s it! That’s John’s entire genealogy of Christ—two people, the Father and the Son. Why is this genealogy so short? Because John’s purpose is simple: to set forth the account of Christ’s divine nature. In John’s gospel we see seven I am declarations (I have listed them in Chapter 7). These seven declarations echo the great statement of the Lord to Moses from the burning bush, "

I am Who I am

" (Exodus 3:14).

In addition to these seven dramatic I am declarations, we read about an incident in the garden where the I am statement of Jesus has a powerful impact. It happens when Judas leads the soldiers to the garden to arrest Jesus. When the soldiers tell the Lord that they are seeking a man called Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus responds, I am he, and the force of that great I am declaration—a declaration of His own godhood—is so powerful that the soldiers fall back in stunned amazement (see John 18:3–8). John clearly states that his purpose is not to set down an exhaustive biography of the Lord but to inspire saving belief in the godhood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God:

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30–31).

Finally, before we move on to examine these four gospels individually, we should note that it is impossible to chronologically harmonize these accounts because they are not intended to be chronological accounts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not sit down to record a chronological biography of Jesus. They wrote to present specific aspects of the Lord’s life and ministry. None of these books claim to be a chronology of His life. The chronology of these events, of course, is hardly the most important information to be derived from the Gospels. Though we cannot precisely harmonize these events, it’s possible to obtain a fairly reliable sequence of events by comparing the Gospels, especially if we rely on John’s gospel, which appears to be the most chronologically precise of the four.

The Synoptic Gospels and John

Matthew, Mark, and Luke comprise what is called the Synoptic Gospels (synoptic means viewed together). Although all four gospels complement and reinforce each other, the style, theme, and viewpoint of the Synoptic Gospels differ markedly from that of John, which has a very different tone, style, and selection of details. When we read the Synoptics in parallel, they impress us with many similarities and overlapping detail, although each gospel has its own distinct atmosphere, voice, and emphasis.

Each of the four gospels is addressed to a specific audience. Matthew wrote his gospel primarily for the Jews,