The four Gospels offer distinct yet complementary portraits of Jesus Christ, revealing his multifaceted nature. While initially perceived as simple, closer study shows their profound depth, with John's Gospel often considered the most profound. Each Gospel—Matthew (the King), Mark (the Servant), Luke (the perfect Man), and John (the Son of God)—presents unique aspects of Jesus' identity and ministry, emphasizing his divine royalty, humble service, perfect humanity, and divine sonship. Understanding these varied perspectives, including their specific audiences and literary styles, is crucial for a balanced and comprehensive appreciation of Christ.
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Ricky, welcome this evening as we commence another week of meditation upon the Lord Jesus. We have been following a very beautiful pattern, I think, that the Lord Jesus is in all of the scriptures, and from different parts of our Bible, we have been looking for him. Last week we were exclusively in the Old Testament, and this week we turned to the new. and tomorrow evening we want to look for him in the Acts of the Apostles and then on the following evening we see him in the Epistle to the Romans then in the Epistle to the Hebrews and then in the book of the Revelation we hope that you'll come back as often as you possibly can there are so many aspects and different facets of the Lord Jesus and I trust that you are finding it encouraging to know that He is indeed in all the scriptures, just like he said, and that the Lord will bless us this evening as we look for him in the Gospels.
We make you very welcome and hope that you'll come back again if you can in the will of the Lord. Now, we want to look then tonight, please, at the four Gospels and their presentation of the Lord Jesus. And I'd like to read just from the end of the Gospels, the Gospel by John, and perhaps... a verse or two from chapter twenty and then from chapter twenty one firstly from chapter twenty and at verse thirty and many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Chapter twenty-one, and reading just the last verse, twenty-five. And there are also many other things which Jesus did. to which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. And the Lord will bless those short readings from his work. Now, personally, I find the Gospels fascinating. and I constantly have to drag myself out of them as far as personal reading is concerned.
And I trust that maybe after we have looked at them this evening, that some of you will have the same problem. I trust that we'll be able to introduce you to this lovely problem of being completely intrigued by the Gospels. Now, there is a kind of a little pattern, almost a principle among us, that when we are just saved, just newly brought to Christ, we somehow think that the Gospels are the simplest part of our Bible. And I suppose that if a young believer comes and says, I just got saved, where will I start to read? Well, I suppose that usually we would give that advice that you begin to read in the Gospels.
And not only that, but if someone says now there are four Gospels, which of them in particular should I study? We generally say, well, now the simplest of them, of course, is the Gospel by John. And perhaps you ought to begin there. And indeed, if someone comes to us who is not saved at all, and they want scriptures to read, we would feel very happy about giving to them a copy of the Gospel by John. And the Gospel by John has a very simple vocabulary, and somehow we imagine that even boys and girls can read it and appreciate and in some measure understand that Gospel. So our first reasoning then seems to be that the four Gospels are the simplest part, and of the four Gospels the simplest is the Gospel by John.
Now we begin to read on a little bit and some of us thought we had graduated when we left the Gospels and we went to the Epistles and began to study there and discover new things in the Epistles. But I want to promise you that eventually everybody comes back to the Gospels. And then having read the Epistles for a while, when you come back to the Gospels, you begin to realize now that these four Gospels are not just the simple books that one time we thought they were. And when you study them a little bit more closely, you find then that the Gospel by John, far from being the simplest of the four, is perhaps the most profound of them all, so that in fact, what might be perhaps the simplest book in all of our Bible has now taken the form of the most profound.
Now, that's a strange pattern that seems to be consistent among us, that now we have come to realize that the real deep things of the New Testament are in the Gospels. Now, there's a very simple reason for that, and the reason is that in these four Gospels, We are actually following, literally, the footsteps of the Lord Jesus. And if He is all that we knew Him to be, well, then, of course, we are following the footprints of infinity here in these four Gospels. And if that be so, and it is so, well, then, of course, it's obvious that they cannot be the simple pamphlets that one time we thought they were.
I want to try to show tonight... something of the beauty and of comparing and contrasting these four lovely Gospels, and I hope that we'll be attracted to them in the way that they present the Lord Jesus. Now, sometimes I think it is an amazing thing that such a small book, as for instance, say the Gospel according to Mark, should have such profound things in so few pages. And sometimes I think that if some of our brethren were to write a book like this today of this size, we would hardly say that he had written a book. We would call it a pamphlet. We would say he has written a booklet.
If you take the pages of Mark's Gospel sometime and put them between your finger and thumb, you'll find that it's not really a very big book after all. And yet you can spend a lifetime in the study of these four Gospels. Now, when you come first of all to the Gospels, I think that the first question that needs to be asked and answered is, why four Gospels? Why did God give us four Gospels like this? And could he not have given to us? And if he could, why did he not give to us one consecutive life of Christ? That is an important question that needs to be asked and answered as to why we have four Gospels and not just one.
You know that some dear brethren, some scholars, some students, they have gone to great trouble and they have produced for us what they call a harmony of the Gospels. And they have gone to very great pains to try to produce a life of Christ so that we can sit down and read right through and get all of these incidents together. in their proper setting and in chronological order. And I'm sure that that must be very interesting. But I never sit down to read a life of Christ, but I think to myself, why did God not give it to us like this? It would have been as simple for him to have given us one life of Christ as to have given us the four Gospels that he has done.
and therefore there must be a very important reason and that question I repeat has got to be answered why four Gospels well now again the answer to that is fairly simple that such is the greatness of the Lord Jesus that it really does take at least four aspects of him four views of the Lord Jesus to properly begin even to understand him and so we have from four entirely different aspects we have a look at the Lord Jesus and this gives to us as much as we can have it down here it gives us a full orbed and a universal four-fold view of the Savior and without any one of these views we will be very poor indeed but with the four of them we have a fairly balanced sight of this blessed one and so four Gospels are given to us and we have a full-orbed universal aspect of the Lord Jesus now someone has said that this is a little bit like viewing a building you come to see perhaps an historical or a beautiful building in some town
or city that you're visiting and your friend who's showing you around he knows that you're interested in architecture and in buildings and so he brings you to the front of the building maybe naturally first of all and you have a little look at the building and maybe you take a picture or two and you have a look at the building from the front but then if he knows your interest in the building and in architecture he'd say now you must come around to the rear of the building because there are things there you know that are peculiar and unique and that you can't see of course from the front And he takes you around to the back, and true enough, there are things there that are beautiful that you didn't see at the front at all, but it's the very same building. And then he would say to you, now, we must go around to the eastern aspect, and then he'd take you to the west of the building, and from every side, true enough, you can see things that you didn't see from the other sides, from the other aspects.
and you feel that perhaps you would have been the poorer if you had missed out on any one of those aspects of the building. Now, we must be very careful then that we don't get an imbalance as we come to view the Blessed Lord. It might be a very easy thing for some of us to dwell a lot in John's Gospel, but we mustn't do that to the exclusion of looking at him from Matthew's point of view. And again, we must not be in an imbalance and get occupied with the royalty and the dignity of Matthew and forget the loneliness of what we have in the Gospel by Mark. And again, of course, there are beauties in the Gospel by Luke.
And if you really do want this universal view of the Lord Jesus, you have got to apply yourself to each of these four Gospels. Now, the four portraits of the Lord, they are entirely different, as most of you will know. And I speak tonight to the young believer who comes new, perhaps, to the Gospels and comes to study as a young Christian. And I remind you that each of these Gospels is very different the one from the other, and really to get this full view of the Lord Jesus, you'll have to read the four of them, and you'll have to compare them. And if I could give you a little exhortation, and indeed to my older friends as well, my suggestion is that whatever you read at any time in any one of the Gospels, Never study it as an island.
Never study it in isolation. But always go to the other Gospels and find if that incident is recorded there. And if it is, compare them. See what the differences are. See how they compare and how they contrast. and you'll find that every incident, every parable, every miracle, every story will take on a new meaning when you compare the one gospel with another. Sometimes, of course, you'll find a thing in only one gospel. Sometimes, you'll find a thing in two, and sometimes in three. And there are not many things that you find in four Gospels, but there are a few incidents that are recorded in all of the four.
And so you've got to compare and contrast and never study a thing in isolation. And you'll find that each of the Gospels is completely different, the one from the other, and yet there is this lovely comparison in a sense between them, because each of them is speaking about the same Lord Jesus. Now, some time ago, I thought I saw this illustrated. A few years ago, my father died. And when I went back home again, after a few weeks, I noticed one of these little boxes sitting on the mantelpiece, one of these little plastic boxes, a plastic cubicle photo frame.
You know where there's a little picture, a photo in each of the six sides. And I found when I went back again that in four of these sides, there was a picture of my father. And I saw on the first side that here he was, and he was dressed, you know, and he had a Bible in his hand like this. And he was obviously leaving the home, leaving house to go to a meeting. And there are people who look at that, you know, and they say, that's just him. That's just how I remember him. But when you turn that little box around, the very next picture, you know, it seems to be an entirely different man. He's dressed very casually. I would assume that it was taken on holiday somewhere.
And in some respects, it's a different person. And yet there are people who look at that. And they say, isn't that very good? That's just how I remember him. and then you turn again and you see him sitting and he's at home and again perhaps he's dressed casually and he's got a grandchild on his knee and well there are people who look at that and say that's how I remember him and yet each of these pictures is different but each time it's the same man but it's a different view of the same person and that is exactly so when we come to the Gospels we have four entirely different views and yet the person is always the same.
Now, someone has used another illustration. If you go down to some of the booksellers and you want to buy a biography, the story of some of the great men, even of our own day, for instance, if you went down to buy the story of Mr. Churchill... your bookseller if he knows his books he might well ask you which particular aspect of the man you want to read about because you see you could buy a biography that might tell you all about him as a politician but it might not mention anything about what he's like as a father in the home or what he was to his near friends but you can buy a biography that will tell you that but it's a different story of the same man And then, of course, there's another book, and it will tell you about his early days, and it will tell you about his time as a correspondent during the war, and maybe give you a little idea, a little insight into his military activities.
And you might well think it's a different man, but it's the same man, but it's the story written from a different aspect. and so again if you really want the full and complete view of the man you would nearly have to read them all and this is exactly so with the person of the Lord Jesus now another thing it's a wee bit like the veil you know that we were speaking of one evening the veil in the old tabernacle here was a very beautiful veil and it was actually draped over four pillars and those four pillars were of shittim wood and they were overlaid with gold as you know and here was this beautiful veil of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen and we talked about it one time at an earlier meeting and it seems as if here are the four Gospels and this lovely veil of the flesh of the Lord Jesus is being hung over these four pillars well this is what is happening now and as we come in by the opening chapters of each of the Gospels we are actually entering by the beautiful gate and we come into the outer court and we walk around and we view all these things
that bring him to us but each time we are seeing a different viewpoint a different aspect but it's always the same blessed Lord so I trust that you'll be attracted and draw on to a study of each of the Gospels and a comparison of the Gospels, and that you'll see that you need all of them really to appreciate in fullness the person of the Lord Jesus. Now, our brethren often tell us, quite rightly, that while there is a little bit of overlapping, generally speaking, the Gospel by Matthew is the story of the king. I'm sure we all agree with that. It is the Messiah, the king. It is what we call his official glory, primarily that we get in the first gospel.
In the second gospel, that is, of course, the gospel of the servant. I don't think there's any problem there, and we'll prove that in a moment or two, that Matthew's is the gospel of the servant. These things are very well known. When you come to the gospel by looking It is the story of a perfect man, a dependent man, and all those lovely moral features of the Lord Jesus are brought out in the Gospel by Luke. But when you come to John, well, even a casual reader will observe that somehow there is something different about the Gospel by John, that if Matthew, Mark, and Luke are different the one from the other, Nevertheless, there is a kind of sameness there, but the gospel by John is very different.
Now, that explains a term that sometimes preachers use. And they talk about the first three as being the synoptic gospels. Now, that big word synoptic, it simply means seeing together. You see the word optic in it there, and it means that we are seeing from the same point of view, seeing synonymously or seeing together, and we say synoptic. And while those three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are different, nevertheless you can see that they do overlap quite a bit, and they talk about the same things. And so we call them the synoptic Gospels. But when you come to John's Gospel, you find that he's speaking about the Son of God in a way that the others don't.
and you find that his portrait of Christ is altogether different and the things that he records are different and you'll find that about maybe ninety-five percent of the gospel by John you just can't read anywhere else ninety-five percent of John is not to be found anywhere else in any of the other gospels that makes it a very special and a very different gospel the gospel by Mark is in reverse because ninety-five percent of Mark's Gospel you can read in the other three Gospels only about five percent of Mark is peculiar to Mark but how much we would lose if we hadn't the Gospel by John because you see we never would have the great that great opening in chapter one that's all peculiar to John We wouldn't have the story of the turning of water to wine in Cana of Galilee.
That's peculiar to John. We'd never have heard of Nicodemus. We'd never have heard of the woman at the well. We'd never have heard of the man at the pool or the blind man of chapter nine or the woman taken an adultery in chapter eight. We'd never have had the shepherd discourse of chapter ten. We'd never have heard of Lazarus. In chapter eleven, we could go on and on at ninety-five percent of John is peculiar to the gospel by John. Well, that means then that we have the gospel of the king, the gospel of the servant. We have the gospel of the perfect man and the gospel of the son of God. Now, if you like alliteration, and if you find things easier to remember when we use alliteration then what you say is this that in Matthew we have the story of the sovereign and in Mark we have the story of the servant in Luke we have the story of the Savior and in John we have the story of the son now if you want to say all that in a different way and still preserve the alliteration you can say that in Matthew It is a story of his lordliness.
In Mark, it is his lowliness. In Luke, it is his loveliness. And in John, it is his loftiness. And those are the four great themes of these Gospels. Another thing, and still preserving alliteration in a sense, you can say that in the Gospel by Matthew, you have things prophetical. And no doubt there are more Old Testament scriptures quoted in Matthew than in any of the other Gospels. It is the prophetical gospel. But when you come to Mark, it's the practical gospel. And the Lord Jesus is very busy there as a servant. When you come to Luke's gospel, it's the moral gospel, and it's the moral features and character of the Lord that we get in Luke.
That's why sometimes you get a little thing in Luke that seems to be out of order. Don't worry about that. Luke's not interested in what we call chronology. He's not interested in maintaining chronological order. He's putting in moral features and moral order. And so you don't worry too much if you see Luke putting a little thing in a different place to the other Gospels. It's in keeping with the theme of his Gospel. But when you come to John's Gospel, it has been called the spiritual Gospel. I don't misunderstand that word. What we mean by it is this. that John is not just interested in telling us what has happened, but he's interested in explaining why things happen and what they mean and giving us the spirit of them, and so we call his the spiritual gospel.
Now, again, of course, these gospels have been written with different types of people and views. And again, we must be careful that we don't put them into watertight compartments because there is a certain overlapping, and we must be careful about that. But broadly speaking, you can say that Matthew has Jews in mind. You can say that Mark has the Romans in mind, that could be proven from the text of his gospel. You can say that Luke has Greeks in mind, and that John has Christians in mind. And so, again, you see the differences there. And if you want to say that same thing, again, perhaps in an illiterated fashion, you can say that in Matthew, it's the nation, in the singular.
In Mark, it's the nations, in the plural. You can say that in Luke, it is the world, and in John, it is the church. And if you want one word to write right across each of these Gospels, then I suggest that across Matthew, you write the word majesty. Across Mark, you write the word ministry. Across Luke, you write the word beauty. And across John, you write the word glory. And these are the great themes of the four Gospels. So all that I'm asking is that you remember that they are very different and still remember that they are all about the same person.
And remember that they must be contrasted, but don't forget that they must be compared. you say it's getting very complicated very complicated these are the deepest parts of our Bible because we are actually following the footprints of God incarnate and why should books not be profound that are tracing the footsteps of God amongst men so four Gospels we have then and notice another very interesting thing and maybe this is a little bit more practical And it is that God, with these things in mind, has also divinely chosen the authors for these four Gospels.
Now, it seems an Irish kind of thing to say, but God did not choose Matthew to write the Gospel by John. He didn't choose Mark to write the Gospel by Luke. No, no. Matthew has written Matthew's Gospel. and John has painted his own portrait and these men have been divinely chosen and what wisdom there is in the choice of the men now you remember Matthew Matthew he sometimes called Levi you don't worry about that either all these little things that are sometimes pointed out as being discrepancies there are no discrepancies in our Bible there are no mistakes or contradictions And if there are little things that the world doesn't understand, don't you worry about it.
There's an explanation somewhere. And this is one of the things they point out, Matthew and Levi. And little things like this, they get on to them as being somehow, no discrepancy here at all. You see, Matthew was a Galilean, but he also was a Jew. And because he was a Jew, he was Levi, and because he was a Galilean, he was Matthew. You see, Galilee was largely the country of the Gentiles. Galilee of the nations, they called it, Galilee of the Gentiles. But when a Jew lived in Galilee, then he was sure that he had a Jewish name living in Galilee of the Gentiles. and so Matthew is Levi and Levi is Matthew Matthew is the Galilean and Levi is the Jew but it's the Galilean Jew it's the same thing so we come to the gospel by Matthew and you remember who Matthew was Matthew was a publican Matthew was a tax collector And being that, he was actually an employee of the hated Roman Empire.
Matthew was a man who worked for a kingdom that had suppressed and subjugated his own nation. He was a traitor to his own nation. He was a man who had turned his back on his own kingdom and was working for another kingdom. He was working for another emperor. He was in the employ of Caesar and the Roman Empire. What wondrous grace that one day the Lord Jesus met him. And from the side of the road, from his receipt of custom, the Lord Jesus called him. And what a wondrous thing is this. that the man who was a traitor to his own kingdom and had turned his back upon his own nation and was in the employ of a foreign power has now been lifted to become the biographer of the king.
I think that's wondrous grace. Who better could God have chosen to write the story of the king than the man who had turned his back one day upon that kingdom? Well, that's wondrous grace, and we'll see how Matthew weaves that into his gospel in a moment or two. Now, John Mark, who wrote the second gospel, you know, we remember bad things about people when we don't remember good things. And if we ask any of our brethren, what do you remember about John Mark? Oh, they say he was the servant who turned back. Nearly everybody says that. That's the sort of instinctive, immediate reaction when we ask about John Mark.
He was the servant who went so far and then he turned back. Some know that, who don't know this, that afterwards he became very profitable. And Paul refers to him in one of his letters later on when he writes to Timothy and he says, take Mark. He says he's profitable for the ministry. And that was after he had been recovered. But John Mark, we usually remember, as the servant who failed. Who better to write the story of the servant who never failed than John Mark, the servant who did fail? And again, what wondrous grace is this. and John Mark is the one who writes the gospel of the servant now what about Luke well Luke is chosen we don't know much about Luke and in some respects we know a lot about him in another way we don't really know very much about Luke but we know this about him that he was a physician he never mentions his own name not anywhere he writes the Acts of the Apostles and he writes the Gospel by Luke but in all of those he never mentions his own name but his name is mentioned three times in the New Testament and we know this about him that he was a physician
the beloved physician and being a physician I think we might all agree that Luke was very close to human nature. Who better than a physician to study and understand human nature? And who better to write the story of a perfect man than the beloved physician? And so Luke is chosen. And you think of some of those details that we have in the early chapters of Luke's Gospel. You know, humanly speaking, those details could only have come from Mary. There are things there at the beginning of Luke's Gospel that only Mary herself could have revealed.
And who better to confide in than the doctor? And isn't it lovely and very human that Luke should be the one in whom Mary confides and to whom she gives these interesting details that are now involved in his gospel. And so the man who understands human nature is the man who writes the story of the perfect man. Now you come to John's gospel. And of course, if we ask, what do you remember about John? I think most of us would immediately say he was the disciple that Jesus loved. And another thing we'd say about him, you know, he was the disciple who leaned on the bosom of Jesus in the upper room on that night.
And you remember, too, that he's the disciple who writes about the Lord Jesus in the bosom of the Father. And that, in fact, is the whole theme of John's Gospel, that the Lord Jesus is the Son in the bosom of the Father. Who better to write the story of the Son in the bosom of the Father than that very disciple who lay on the bosom of the Son? And so you see that God has so wisely and sovereignly chosen the very penman to write the Gospels, and in every sense... I think these are intriguing Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John.
Now, Matthew's Gospel, as we have said, is the Gospel of the King. Now, the time runs out, and it wouldn't be possible to go all right through this Gospel, but it would be interesting to look at the beginning for the King's person. That's how the Gospel begins. And then to leave that and to see the king outlining his policies in what we call the Sermon on the Mount. And then immediately after he does that, to see the king's power in the great big middle section of the gospel where he demonstrates his power. And we remember an Old Testament scripture which says where the word of the king is, there is power.
And we see that in evidence in the middle part of this gospel. In that great chapter thirteen... You have the king's program. He outlines his program and gives us the parables of the kingdom. Then, of course, we have prophetic predictions in another sermon on another mount in chapter twenty-four and twenty-five. And we have the king's passion at the end of the gospel and before the gospel closes. We hear the king saying, all power is given to me in heaven and in earth. And it really closes with the king's preeminence. And that is at the very end of the gospel. But what I want to point out just before we leave the gospel by Matthew is this interesting genealogy at the beginning in chapter one.
Now, when I was a young believer, I'll make the confession for all of you tonight now. I tell you what I did. I thought I must read this right through, you see. And I began to read it verse one. The book of the generation of Jesus, the Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. I think I read verse two. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas, and his brethren, and then the names became strange. I didn't know them anymore, and I confess that I thought. What's the point in it all? I couldn't understand it. So I went away down to verse eighteen, and I began there. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, and I could understand this now.
And I must confess, as many of us do, that for a long, long time, I never, never, ever read these names and this genealogy. I confess that I neglected a very interesting portion of the gospel by Matthews. You see, the problem, if it was a problem, was that I, of course, was not a Jew. I had a Gentile mind. And I didn't understand the reason for Matthew's genealogy until, of course, later on we learn a little bit and somebody points it out to you, and we can see how important is this genealogy because Matthew's writing the biography of the king. He's writing the story of the Messiah.
And if our Lord Jesus really is the Messiah, if he really is the King, then the genealogy is of infinite importance. And to a Jew, this was a very special piece of Matthew's Gospel, where Matthew was actually tracing and proving the genealogy, proving the lineage of the Messiah. If Jesus is the Christ, as Matthew says, And if Jesus, the son of Mary, is really entitled to the throne, then it must be proven beyond all doubt that he's got a royal connection, that he's linked with the tribe of Judah, that he has a link with David.
And this is how Matthew begins. And he goes further back than that. And he goes right away back to Abraham. But then how interesting is this genealogy? We know now, of course, that we can see the mind, the orderly mind, the intelligent and orderly mind of the accountant, the auditor, the text collector coming out here. Because this is not just a jumble of names that Matthew has given to us. He has actually given us forty-two names. And he hasn't given us just forty-two names just like that. He has divided them into three. And as someone has suggested, like the auditor, like the teller, like the text collector, he actually arranges them in three neat little piles of fourteen in front of him, as perhaps he used to arrange the little piles of coins when he sat at the side of the road.
And here he is, and he says now, from Abraham to David, fourteen generations, and there they are, and they're very important. From David to the carrying away into Babylon, fourteen generations, and there they are. And from the captivity, from the carrying away into Babylon, until Jesus, until Christ, fourteen generations again. And in a very beautiful and yet orderly way, he gives us fourteen, fourteen, and fourteen generations. And in a very, very orderly way, Matthew has divided the story of Israel into three parts. He has given us the story of Israel's mourning from Abraham to David.
He has given us the story of Israel's high noon from David to the carrying away into Babylon, and the story of Israel's evening from the carrying away into Babylon until Christ comes. And then when the evening comes, And when the story of the nation has reached a sad and a low ebb, then, of course, the days spring from on high had visited us. And he introduces the king. But you see how beautifully he introduces the rights, the legal rights of the Lord Jesus to the throne. Now, here's a very important thing.
We have, in black and white, as we say, We have the established legal rights of Jesus of Nazareth to the throne of David. Now, say someone argues that he is not, after all, the Messiah. And if someone eventually does come and claims that he is the Messiah, how can any future alleged or pretended Messiah prove his genealogy? Because, you know, all the records were destroyed in AD-seventy? When the city and the sanctuary was destroyed in AD-seventy by the Romans, all the archives and all the registers and genealogy, and all of those were destroyed.
There is no one today who could prove his genealogy, who could establish his rights and prove his lineage. But we have a savior, and his lineage is established, and his rights and his connections with Abraham and David are established here for us in writing and how glad we are then that Matthew did begin like this and give us an orderly genealogy of the king but now you study it a little bit more and you say Matthew is all right but if you do have to give us a genealogy if you must as a Jew give us all these names You say, Matthew, you've done a strange thing.
You've included the names of women in the genealogy. Surely that was never done. And did you say, if you do have to include the names of women, Matthew, couldn't you have found different women to these? Couldn't you have found women, say, like Miriam and Deborah and some of these great women of the Old Testament? But you have chosen four here. Apart from Mary. You have chosen four. And you know, it's questionable. If any one of these women was even a Jewish. Questionable. Here is Tamar. And here is Rahab.
Spelt with a C here. But is Rahab alright. And Rahab is hardly ever mentioned. But she is Rahab the harlot. The story of Tamar? You could hardly read Tamar's story in public. It's a story of shame and deceit and adultery. A terrible story. And Ruth, well, Ruth was an idolatrous and a Moabiteist. And you know that old law would have excluded her for ten generations from Judaism, and yet her name's in the genealogy. And though her name is not mentioned, yet she is referred to who was the wife of Uriah, and that is Bathsheba.
And we know the story of Bathsheba too. You say, Matthew, why the names of women? Why the names of women like these who are Canaanites and Hittites and Moabites? Matthew never forgot the grace that lifted him. And the grace that lifted Matthew is the grace that reaches out to these. And someone has said about that grace, and here it is very interestingly put like this, that grace brings salvation to a sinner like Tamar.
On the ground of redemption, as seen in Ruth, On the principle of faith as seen in Rahab. For a position of glory as seen in Bathsheba. Wondrous grace. And the grace that reached out to these women is the very same grace that reached Matthew and lifted him and made him the biographer of the king. And the very same grace has reached us too. Because the king of Matthew's gospel has reached right out to us by his death. and even in his ministry, and all flesh, all flesh, Jew and Gentile alike, eventually come under the sway of Matthew's king.
How interesting to stay with Matthew, but the time is short and one or two little things that I want to mention just about the others. Mark's is a beautiful little gospel. I have a problem with Mark's gospel. And it is that I can't remember it. I think I can get the story of Matthew into my mind. And I think that Luke's gospel is fairly easy, and we can remember the contents. And, well, John's, of course, I think we can fairly well remember the contents of John. But Mark's gospel, I find very difficult to get the contents of Mark's gospel into my mind.
I've come to the conclusion that the reason is this. that it is such a busy little gospel. You know, the late Mr. Harold Sinjin, he wrote a lovely commentary on the gospel by Mark, and the pattern that he used was this. He divided it into one hundred paragraphs. Now, there's no stretching of the imagination there. There are very obviously one hundred paragraphs in the gospel by Mark. Now, you can well imagine then that one hundred paragraphs that almost seem to be disjointed, the Lord is moving all the time, always busy, never resting, and it's very difficult to get a hundred paragraphs of busy ministry into your mind.
Well, that of course is because it's the gospel of the servant. Well, we spoke one evening before of the perfect servant, the Lord Jesus. And we saw how that even in the first chapter of the Gospel by Mark, he is so busy, from the river to the desert, to the seashore, to the synagogue, into the home, out of the city, back to the desert again, and he moves from one place to another. And that's even before you leave the opening chapter, how busy the Lord is. But one very human person. and very very interesting thing that i must point out about mark's gospel before we leave it and it's this there's a little word in mark's gospel tiny little word and if i had used it as often as mark used it when i was at school well i would literally have had my knuckles wrapped i think of some of the the teachers that i had and they'd have literally wrapped my knuckles if i had used this word as often as mark uses it and i would have been told Take the one half of those out.
How about you when the fool stops? Don't you know what a capital letter's for? Take those out and finish the sentence and start again. And I was warned, never ever, it was absolutely against the rules to start a sentence, to begin a paragraph with this little word. Yet Mark does it again and again and again he does it. Now, sometime you have a little look. You open any chapter of Mark's Gospel at random. And you look down for the tiny little word and. And you find how many times Mark uses it, the little word and. Now, you speak to a little boy and you say, this little word and, what kind of a word is it? And before a little fellow, before he can say conjunction, he'll tell you that and is the joining word.
And that's exactly what AND is in the Gospel by Mark. And Mark uses it over and over and over again. Eleven chapters out of sixteen begin with the word AND. Oh, find it especially in connection with the sufferings of Christ. Read down that chapter fifteen and find how many times that word, I tell you, you'd be amazed how many times you find this little word AND. Now here's the reason for it. Here is a busy servant. And it seems that when one thing is done, there's another thing to be done, and another thing, and another thing, and another thing, and still another thing, and the surface of this servant is never finished.
Everything is joined to something else, and Mark deliberately defies the rules of grammar, and he uses the joining word just to show you that here is a servant who never rests. it's quoted strangely enough in matthew's gospel i think sometimes how fitting it would be to write across mark's gospel the son of man hath not where to lay his head because he seems to be completely restless in this gospel it is the gospel of the servant so you say mark that's why in what Sixteen chapters.
You have given us eighteen miracles. Eighteen miracles in sixteen chapters. How busy the Lord is. And all that ministry after that. And he's teaching and preaching and healing and praying. And he never rests. It's the gospel of the servant with a superabundance of the joining word in all that he does. So what a lovely gospel is the gospel by Mark. And if in Matthew's Gospel, we have official and royal dignity and glory. In Mark's Gospel, we have the lowliness of the servant. And that, of course, is why Mark does not give us a genealogy.
My brethren often point that out, and I leave it. You've got someone coming, and they're hoping to be your employee, and they're looking for service with you. You don't ask them, you don't say, now tell me what's your pedigree. You don't ask them for a genealogy. You might ask them for character references or something like that, but you're interested in what they are and what they can do, not in who they are and not in their pedigree. Oh, no, that's not. So Mark doesn't give us a genealogy. It's the gospel of the servant. Now, the gospel by Luke, I want to say one lovely thing about it, just and then leave it. The gospel by Luke is the gospel of the perfect man.
The gospel of the absolutely perfect man. Now, you know that the ministry of the Lord Jesus, the story of each of these gospels, largely speaking, is taken up with miracles and parables. Miracles and parables. Now, sometimes count them. Parables are hard to count because... It's sometimes hard to decide whether a thing is a parable proper or not. But if you can count them, you count about roughly thirty-five parables. And you find, of course, that there's a different relation, a different proportion of parables and miracles. In each of the Gospels, you'll find more parables here than miracles or more miracles here than parables.
You go to John's Gospel, you get eight miracles. We don't get any parables. Not one parable in John's Gospel. And where once you get the word in chapter ten, it's not the usual word for parable. So strictly, there are no parables in John's Gospel. But when you come to Luke's Gospel, here's the lovely thing. There are twenty miracles and twenty parables. an absolute balance now if i can say that the parables are what he taught and the miracles are what he did and when luke comes to write his second book the book of the acts of the apostles he says you remember my earlier book in which he says we talked about the things that jesus began both to do and to teach perfect balance of what he did and what he taught here's a balanced man because he is a perfect man miracles and parables in equal numbers now remember we mentioned that in matthew's gospel chapter one in that genealogy there are forty-two generations forty-two now count them sometime you'll find that to
get forty-two again there's no mistake there's no there's no discrepancy But to get forty-two, you have to include the name of Joseph and then the name of Mary also. Now, in a normal genealogy, that would not be, because that would be reckoned as one, you see. He would either be the son of Mary or the son of Joseph. But this is not ordinary. It's not ordinary. So he's the son of Mary. he's the son of Mary he was born of Mary born of Mary but Mary was married of course to Joseph and so both of their names are included and that's you must include those to get the forty-two now here's the interesting thing the forty-second name in Matthew's genealogy is the name of the Lord Jesus he's called there Jesus the Christ that's the forty-second name in Matthew's genealogy now did you ever notice that Luke's gospel is the forty-second book in our Bible.
We have thirty-nine in the Old Testament. Then we have Matthew, Mark, and now Luke is the forty-second book. And it makes it easy to remember that the forty-second book in our Bible is the story of the forty-second man of Matthew's genealogy. Here's the story of that last name in the genealogy. Luke says the story of a perfect man because of that there is so much in Luke's gospel that you don't get anywhere else you know of course that it's only in the gospel by Luke that he raises the only son of a widow the widow of Nain it's only in Luke that he weeps over Jerusalem it's only in Luke that he walks on wounded feet to Emmaus and I think there are seven instances of our Lord Jesus praying in the Gospel by Luke that you don't get anywhere else.
You see, he's the dependent man in prayer in the Gospel by Luke. And there are so many other things that mark it out as a very special Gospel. Now, you come to John's Gospel and John's is the story of the Son. It's one lovely thing that must ever be remembered about John's Gospel. that is in perfect keeping with the theme of his gospel and it's this the ordinary word for prayer or praying whether it be noun form or verb form the ordinary usual word for prayer is never found in John's gospel that's interesting never found it looks gospel there in abundance but it's never in the gospel by John and yet to someone I read of the Lord Jesus praying.
What about that that we call the high priestly prayer of John seventeen? Ah, well now, that might be a prayer all right, using the word in a very broad sense. But tell me, you've listened to our brethren pray. You've heard, do you ever hear any of our brethren pray like this? Listen to the Lord now. And here's what he says as he prays. He says, Father, I will. I will. Father, I will. Oh, no, you say, the brethren, don't pray like that. What do they say? Oh, the brethren say, if it be thy will. If it be thy will. That's the right way for us to pray.
But the man of John's gospel doesn't pray like that. The one of John's gospel says, Father, I will. I will. I will. Why is that? the reason is very simple yet very profound that in John's gospel it is a son on equal terms with a father and he has a right to say father I will sonship is not inferiority sonship implies equality as far as the Jew was concerned they said he calls himself the son he makes himself equal with God and that's exactly what that title meant equality with the father that's the one that John writes about and everything in the gospel by John is just to prove to us that the man of Galilee was really the very God of the heavens come down amongst us and that's the reason for the writing of the fourth gospel so You remember then that these Gospels are intriguing, fascinating, four
different portraits of the same blessed and glorious person. I hope you're attracted to them. And while we have a human natural weakness that might perhaps result in you being attracted to one and me being attracted to the other, nevertheless, may the Lord help us to strive for balance and find this glorious person in each and all of the Gospels. May our appreciation of him be increased, shall we pray.