The Gospels & The Acts of the Apostles - Bible Survey Part 3

The word gospel literally means good news.

And, of course, the good news that we're talking about is the good news of Jesus Christ. And the gospels begin with Jesus' birth and they end with Jesus' resurrection. And I think we all know that there are four gospel accounts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But it doesn't mean that there are four different good newses, if you understand what I'm saying.

There's only one good news about Christ. It's just that each gospel tells it from a slightly different perspective. And the last of the four gospel writers to die was John, who died in 95 A.D. Therefore, all four of the gospels were written before the end of the first century A.D., before 100 A.D. Now, let's talk about each one of them individually, shall we?

All right? How about the first one, the Gospel of Matthew? Well, the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew, one of the original disciples of the Lord. As a matter of fact, Matthew chapter 9 says that as Jesus came from Capernaum, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth.

And he said to him, Follow me. And Matthew got up and immediately followed Jesus. One of the early church fathers named Origen in 240 A.D. wrote, Among the four gospels I have learned by tradition that the first one was written by Matthew. It was directed at converts from Judaism and published in the Hebrew, that is, the Aramaic language. And then Papias from 130 A.D., another early church father, said, Matthew compiled the sayings of Jesus in the Aramaic language and everyone translated this as well as he could.

Now, these church fathers tell us three very important things about the gospel according to Matthew. Number one, that it was the first gospel written. Number two, that it was originally written in Aramaic and then later translated into the Greek copy that we have in the Greek New Testament. You say, what happened to the Aramaic original? We don't know.

Don't have a copy. And third, these church fathers tell us that the Gospel of Matthew was intentionally directed and designed especially for Jewish people. And when we read the Gospel of Matthew, we can see that. For example, Matthew chapter 2, Matthew says, Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, in the Old Testament, was fulfilled, saying, and then he goes back and quotes from Jeremiah. In Matthew 12, 17, Matthew says, In order that that which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, in the Old Testament, might be fulfilled, and then he goes back and he quotes from Isaiah. And more than any other gospel, we find this phrase in the Gospel of Matthew that it might be fulfilled which was spoken in the Old Testament, and the reason for that is just the way these church fathers said.

It's because Matthew wrote his gospel primarily to convince Jewish people that Jesus is the Messiah and that he fulfilled everything that the Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would do. You know, when I first met Bob Eckhart, the man, the street preacher in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that was responsible for helping me come to Christ, I was a student there in Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina. Any other Tar Heels here? What do you mean? That's the best you can do? Alright, well, there's two of us. Good.

What are we talking about? Okay, I was in Chapel Hill, and right after our first conversation, he gave me a Bible, and he said, Now, I want you to read the Bible. Will you promise me you'll read the Bible? Well, I'd never read the Bible. I didn't know anything about the Bible. So I thought, well, and some of you have heard me tell this story. I started at the very beginning in the book of Genesis, you know, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Alright, I can deal with that. And then, you know, it wasn't long before I got to so and so begat so and so begat so and so, and I was like, how long does this go on? And so I said, Why about switch to the New Testament? Because I knew enough to know Jesus was in the New Testament. And so not knowing anything about the New Testament, I decided to start at the what? The beginning.

Yeah. And so I opened the Gospel of Matthew, and I started reading. Wow, what a perfect place for a Jewish person like me to start. Because every time Matthew said that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken, I went back and looked in the Old Testament to see if it was really there.

And I began slowly getting the idea. Oh, my gosh, this person, Jesus, really is the Messiah that the Old Testament's talking about. So today, when I meet people who are seekers, they don't know the Lord, and they want to start reading the Bible. If they're Gentiles, I recommend that they start with the Gospel of John. But if they are Jewish, where do we put them? In the Gospel of Matthew.

That's exactly right. All right, now we move on to the Gospel of Mark, written by John Mark, the same one that deserted Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey. It's the shortest of all the Gospel accounts, and tradition says it was written by John Mark at the dictation of Peter while Peter was in jail, getting ready to be martyred in 66 A.D. Next we turn our attention to the Gospel according to Luke, written, of course, by Luke, the beloved physician, Colossians 4, that Paul talks about. Luke met the Apostle Paul, Acts chapter 16, in Troas, ancient Troy, just as Paul and Silas were about ready to cross over into Europe for the very first time. And then Luke accompanied the two of them and really accompanied the Apostle Paul for the rest of Paul's life. Now we need to understand something very important about the Gospel of Luke, and that is that it was the result of an intensive investigation that Luke conducted into the evidence regarding Jesus Christ. Listen to what he says, Luke 1. He says, many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, things that were handed down from those who were eyewitnesses of the Word. And notice the Word is capitalized because we're talking here about Jesus Christ.

John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Who's John talking about? The Lord Jesus.

Right. That's who Luke's talking about. Now look at verse 3. So Luke says, I did a, say the next two words out loud, a what, a careful investigation of everything from the beginning and have written an orderly account of these things for you, O Theophilus. You say, who is Theophilus? I don't know. Nobody knows who he was. Friend of Luke's.

That's all I can tell you. So that, why did Luke write, watch, so that you, Theophilus, may be fully assured about the certainty of the things you've been taught about the Lord Jesus. Luke, like, held a senate investigation, if you will, into the events surrounding the Lord Jesus Christ's life because he wanted to make sure that he didn't write down something that was just a hoax. Something that was just a fraud, and so he checked everything out for himself before he wrote it, meaning when we read it, it should give us the confidence this is not a hoax or a fraud.

This man checked it all out in person. He wrote his gospel somewhere between 50 and 60 A.D. because it clearly predates the book of Acts, which we'll talk about in a moment. Finally, we have the gospel according to John, written by John, the beloved disciple of the Lord. John 21 is where that phrase is used, and written around 90 A.D., making it the last of the four gospels to be actually written down. And you know, John's gospel contains both a personalness and it contains a mass of little details that only someone who had walked with Jesus personally, everywhere he went, would have possibly been able to know. For example, do you remember the wedding where the Jesus turned water into wine, John chapter 2?

Look what John writes. He says now, there were six water jars made of stone there, each holding 20 to 30 gallons. Now how would you know that if you weren't there? The fact that they were made out of stone, the fact that there were six of them, and the fact that they held 20 to 30 gallons.

Hey, you know what? You had to be there to have all that detail. How about John 21, verse 11? It says that Peter pulled in the net to shore and it was full of large fish, 153 to be exact. This is when Jesus met the disciples at the Sea of Galilee after his resurrection and said, throw your net over here. And they said, there's no fish there. And he said, throw it over anyway. And there were so many fish they could hardly pull the net in. And you know what? If you weren't there and somebody said, hey, you wouldn't believe it, we threw this net in and we caught a bunch of fish.

You would estimate and say, well, you'd pick a round number if you were estimating 150, 200, 175. Who would pick 153 if you weren't there and part of counting those stinking fish right along with everybody else? You understand what I'm saying? Finally, one more. This is my very favorite. I love this. In John chapter 20, where Mary has come to Peter and John and told them the tomb is empty. And look what John writes. He says, so Peter and the disciple Jesus loved, meaning himself, John, were running to the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple, John, ran faster than Peter and got to the tomb first.

I love this. Everybody knows Peter. Peter is the macho man of the disciples. Peter is the guy who beats on his chest and said, these other yellow bellies will do.

I will never leave you. Peter hated to lose at anything. And so John, because he outran him, not only did he rub it in right there, but he wrote it in the Bible. So for thousands of years, everybody would know he outran Peter.

How great is that? You had to have been there to know who got to the tomb first, right? You don't think that's funny? That's hysterical. No? Okay. Well, maybe we should move on.

I think this is hysterical. Okay. Anyway, let's summarize. There are four gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And let me just say before we leave the gospels that the oldest copies we have of all four gospels together, the whole collection, come from the 4th century AD. We actually have two of these. We have one called Codex Vaticanus.

Don't let that scare you. Codex simply means something that's in book form as opposed to a scroll that's rolled up. Codex Vaticanus is in the Vatican. That's where it's located. That's where it was discovered from 325 AD. And the other one is Codex Sinaiticus, which is from 335 AD and was found in St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, but today resides at the British Museum. You can see it if you go there. But even though those are the oldest copies of all four gospels collected, the oldest evidence we have of any gospel comes from the Ryland papyrus. P52 is actually the name of it. It's in the Manchester University Library, Manchester, England. And it is from 125 AD, meaning we have a copy of a portion of John 18 that comes only 30 years after the original gospel was written. I think that's pretty awesome.

What do you say? All right, let's move on to the book of Acts, shall we? The book of Acts is not actually called in the Bible in the Greek text the book of Acts. It's actually called the Acts of the Apostles. It was written by Luke as a companion volume to his gospel, making Luke the only writer of any book of the Bible that was not Jewish.

Luke was a gentile. He wrote two books of the Bible, Luke and Acts, and he's the only gentile to have written any of the Bible, Old or New Testament. And I said it's a companion book to the gospel. Look what he says, Acts chapter 1.

In my former book, O Theophilus, he says, what's his former book? The Gospel of Luke, yeah. In my former book, he says, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until he was taken back into heaven, meaning at the ascension, having given orders to the apostles whom he had chosen. And then the rest of the book of Acts is Luke explaining to us how the apostles carried out the orders that the Lord Jesus gave them. And what orders did the Lord Jesus give the apostles? Well, in Mark 16, 15, he said, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every person. In Matthew 28, 19, he said, go and make disciples of all nations. In Luke 24, Jesus said, preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations beginning in Jerusalem. Hey, I think it's pretty clear what the orders Jesus gave them, don't you? And the book of Acts is all about the actions that the apostles took in carrying out these orders of Jesus, therefore the title, The Acts of the Apostles. Got it?

Okay. The book of Acts begins with the ascension of the Lord Jesus back into heaven, 33 AD, and it ends with the apostle Paul in jail in Rome for the first of two times in 62 AD. Therefore, the book of Acts covers about the first 30 years of the history of the church, and the book of Acts can be pretty neatly divided into two sections. The first section, chapters 1 through 12, is about what all of the apostles did. It memorializes what they did in carrying out the Lord's orders before any of Paul's missionary journeys. And the second half of the book of Acts, from chapter 13 to 28, memorializes the impact on the world that the four missionary journeys of the apostle Paul had. Now, for the sake of completeness, before we close this up, let me simply say that according to church tradition, Paul got out of jail this first time that he was in jail in 62 AD. We find this in Eusebius, the great church historian from the fourth century. Eusebius said after defending himself, Paul was again sent on the ministry of preaching until he was put in jail a second time in Rome, suffering martyrdom under Nero.

This was in 66 AD, the very same year Peter was killed, Nero killed them both at the same time in Rome. You say, well, Lon, if Paul got out of jail, how come the book of Acts stops? I mean, how come we don't know what happened between 62 and 66 AD? I mean, why isn't there an Acts chapter 29 and an Acts chapter 30? Folks, I don't know. I mean, if you care about it that much, the best thing I can say is if you know Jesus, when you get to heaven, ask him.

That's the best I can tell you. I don't know why the book of Acts stops there, but it does. Now, that's as far as we're going to go in the treatment of the Gospels and the book of Acts.

That is the fastest Bible survey you will ever get on the Gospels and the book of Acts. But did you all stick with me? We okay? You all stayed up. All right. But we still have our most important question to answer, don't we? All right.

Are you ready? You know what it is. All you guys on the Internet watching, all of us here. Here we go, nice and loud.

One, two, three. So what? You say, Lon, you know, dude, man, a lot of information there. But knowing about the Rylance Papyrus P52 in the Manchester Library, I mean, what difference does that make to my everyday life tomorrow morning?

Well, maybe it doesn't. But these books that we've talked about, the Gospels and the book of Acts are chock-a-block full of things that do make a difference in our life. So why don't we, for time's sake, just pick one, one thing that is in these books and talk about the impact that it should have on our lives. Sound okay? Okay?

All right, good. Let's talk about, we said earlier that the book of Acts can easily be divided into two major sections. And we said that the fulcrum point for those two sections is the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Paul coming to Christ and the ministry of the Apostle Paul. And I think it's a fair statement to say that the Apostle Paul coming to faith in Jesus Christ is one of the seminal events, not just in the Bible, but in all of world history.

Let's remember together who this guy was. The Apostle Paul was raised in a strict Jewish home in Tarsus. He was then sent to Jerusalem to study under the most eminent rabbi of the day, Rabbi Gamaliel II.

He says in the Bible that he was advancing in Judaism faster than all of his contemporaries. He had a hatred, a furious hatred for Christianity in the church. And if you remember, he was a one-man wrecking machine when it came to the early Christians. He arrested them. He tortured them.

He put them in jail. And in Acts chapter 9, after ravaging the church in Jerusalem, he heads off for Damascus to take any Christians he can find there into chains and bring them back to Jerusalem to do the same thing. And while he's on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter 9, the heavens open and the risen Christ appears to him. And he sees the risen Christ with his naked eyes, and he suddenly realizes that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and he falls on the ground and gives his life to Christ.

Okay, now it's what happens next that I want us to see. Acts chapter 9 verse 20. Now, when we pick up here, remember the apostle Paul has been a believer in Jesus maybe 48 hours, okay?

Maybe. All right, here we go. And the verse begins, what's the next word?

Say it loud. Immediately. And immediately, Paul began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues of Damascus, man, would I have loved to have been there, saying he is the Son of God.

Hey, Paul for Jesus? I mean, are you kidding? This is like pita for fur coats. This is like green peas for whale oil.

This is like vegans for McDonald's. You understand what I'm saying? This is like, this is like makes no sense. And even the people in Damascus couldn't believe it. Look at the next verse, it says, and all those who heard him there in Damascus were, say the word, astonished. And they said, look what they said. They said, isn't this the man who in Jerusalem destroyed those who called on Jesus' name and who came here to take such people in chains back to the priests in Jerusalem?

What's up with this guy? But Paul kept increasing in spiritual strength, confounding the Jewish people in Damascus by proving to them from the Old Testament that this Jesus is the Messiah. Now, they couldn't out argue him, the Jewish people there, and they couldn't out theologically debate him, so they made up their mind instead they were going to kill him. And as a result of that, the disciples in Damascus had to take Paul by night and lower him over the wall in a basket so he could get out of town. And where did he go?

He went back to where? Jerusalem. And it says, and when Paul came to Jerusalem, he was moving around freely, speaking out, say the word, boldly for the Lord Jesus.

You say, okay, Lon, so what's the point? Hey, friends, the point is what George Duffield said in his very famous hymn, stand up, stand up for Jesus. Here's a guy who from day one of his salvation is doing exactly that, standing up for Christ. Being a soldier of the cross, a person who did not fear to own Christ's cause and did not blush to speak his name. And standing up for Christ, Peter did it, John did it, James did it, Stephen did it, the Apostle Paul did it, and folks, the point of all this is if we know Christ today, now it's our turn to do this. And what's it mean to stand up for Christ?

It's not complicated. It means when God opens the door for us to own his name and speak his name, that we do it. You know, I was on a flight not too long ago from here to San Francisco going out to a Jews for Jesus board meeting. And when I'm on an airplane and I got a long flight like that, I do not eat a meal, I do not watch the movie, I don't listen to music.

I tell you, I work on my message because I get five hours without being interrupted by the phone, by email, by faxes, by nothing. It's heaven, really it is. So I had my laptop out, I had my Bible out, I had my notes out, and I was drinking coffee, so I was caffeine up, and man, I was flying on this message. And as I had to go to the restroom, so as I went back to the lavatory, and I'm standing there, because you know they're always occupied, you know, somebody's already in there. So I'm standing there waiting my turn, and the two flight attendants were there. And one of the flight attendants says to me, she says, sir, she said, what do you do for a living? She said, I don't mean to pry, but I noticed you had a Bible out. And I said, well, yeah, I mean, when you take a Bible out on an airplane, the chances are somebody's going to notice it.

I said, I'm a pastor of a church. She said, oh, okay, that's interesting. And then there was this totally awkward silence.

You know what I'm saying? And the guy comes out of the lavatory, it's my turn. And I had this enormous crisis hit me, because you see, basically, I'm a coward.

And I stood there and I said to myself, now, you know what, I could walk in the lavatory, use the lavatory, go back to my seat, sit down, go back to work, never say another word, and it would be fine. I mean, I could get away with that. And that's really what my flesh wanted to do. Can I be honest with you? Really, because I could feel the blood. You ever had this kind of coming up into my face, you know, blushing a little bit?

And my armpits were getting like a little squishy. You know what I'm trying to say? And you have the cotton ball thing in your mouth. You know what I'm trying to say?

And I was standing there and there was this flight attendant, the other flight attendant, a couple passengers waiting in line, and about eight people in the seats pretending like they weren't listening. You know what I'm saying? And so I thought, oh, Lord, I don't, you know, I mean. And so I felt the Spirit of God whisper to me, oh, no, you don't.

No, no, no, no. You remember, you made me a promise, Lon. I did, folks. You know, I let God down so many times in my early Christian years where He would open a door for me to stand up for Him and I wouldn't do it. I just, I would just slink away that a while back I made Him a promise that I would never do that again in my life if I could help it because I was so embarrassed at how much I had done it. And He said, you made me a promise.

You remember that? I was like, doggone it, Lord. I did, didn't I?

He said, you sure did. And what would, by the way, He said, what would Paul do here? See, I memorized a verse of Scripture that says imitate me. Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ. See, that's the problem with memorizing Scripture.

It comes back at you. And I memorized it and I thought, what would Paul do here? Paul would not slink into the lavatory and slink back to his seat. Paul would talk to this flight attendant. So I said, all right, here we go, Lord.

Squishy armpits, blush face, here we go. And I said to her, ma'am, I said, you know, I'm not just a pastor of a church. I said, I'm also a Jewish person that believes in Jesus. She said, what?

She said, I never even heard of such a thing. I said, well, there are a few of us around and you're talking to one. And I said, as a matter of fact, I have a CD with me that tells all about the story of how I came to Christ that I'd be, I'd love to give you. I said, and I have another CD with me that talks about how you can know for certain you're going to heaven. It was a CD about Nicodemus. What did God say to Jesus?

He said, Nicodemus, you must be born again, right? I said, if you wait right here, I'll run and get the CDs for you. Now, and I got one for the other flight attendant. She didn't even ask for them, but I got one for the other flight attendant and I figured a few other people would want them.

So I let the next guy use lavatory and went back to my seat and everything, came back, gave out CDs and everything. And the lady, the flight attendant who started the whole thing said to me, she said, you know, and she got tears in her eyes. She said, you know, I just had a really good friend who I lost in death, she meant, not too long ago. And she said, man, I really need to hear what's on these CDs. She said, you have my promise.

The minute I land and get to my car, I'm putting these in and I'm listening to them. Then I went to lavatory, went back to my seat. But folks, listen, I knew what my responsibility was standing there.

My responsibility was God had opened the door, I needed to go through it. Was I excited about going through it in the flesh? No. Was I thinking about slinking away? Yes. But you know, it doesn't matter what you think about, it matters what you do, right? Matters what you do. And you're as big a coward as I am, right? Right? Don't, don't kid you, we're all cowards, aren't we?

Yeah, of course we are. Look, not only is it our duty, not only is it our responsibility to stand up for Christ, but I want to tell you, friends, it's also our privilege to stand up for Christ. I was coming in here today, and with this I'm done, and every Sunday morning when I drive in, I listen to Elvis sing gospel. Y'all guys ever listen, y'all ever listen to Elvis sing gospel?

Yeah, it's on channel 19, Sirius radio, Sirius radio, XM radio, and so Elvis sings gospel as I come in on Sunday morning. And he sang a song today that I hadn't heard in a long time, but it's just one of my very, very favorite songs. It goes like this, shackled by a heavy burden, neath a load of guilt and shame, then the hand of Jesus touched me, and now I am no longer the same. He touched me, and oh, the joy that floods my soul, something happened, and now I know he touched me and made me whole, but wait a minute, he's not done yet because he goes on to say, since I met this blessed Savior, since he cleansed and made me whole, I will never cease to praise him, I'll shout it till eternity rolls. My man Elvis, all right, now listen, Elvis has nothing to fear, we all just heard that from me, but listen, I was this guy, I was the one shackled by shame and by guilt. I was the one carrying a heavy burden. I was the one whose life was an absolute mess, and Jesus Christ took my life and made my life worth getting up for in the morning, changed my life. I mean, what does the song say? It says, I will never cease to praise him until eternity rolls.

Hey, come on now, some of us here, you know what I'm talking about, you were there, your life was there, Christ changed your life. Hey, you know what? The blood in your face will go away, and if you get squishy armpits, you wash your undershirt.

It's just that simple. And the cotton balls in your mouth, as soon as you start talking, they leave. Come on, what kind of price is that to worry about when we've got everything the Lord Jesus Christ did for us, huh? What's wrong with us? What's wrong with us? These guys didn't tell people about Christ, Peter, James, John, these guys didn't tell people about Christ because they felt obligated to. They told people about Christ because they were thrilled to tell them.

What about us? Well, let me just say, I made God a promise years ago that I was so ashamed of myself for how I had shrinked away so many times in my early years that if he would help me, I'd never do it again. And I didn't on that airplane because I'd made that promise. I want you, if you really know Jesus, to seriously consider making him that promise and say, Lord, blood in the face, squishiness in the armpits, cotton in the mouth, it don't matter. You open the door, and by the grace of God, I promise you the rest of my life, Lord, scared or not, I'll go through it. What a great promise to give the Lord.

I hope you'll do that. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we are all cowards, as we said.

I'm sure that Peter was and Paul was in their flesh, but I thank you, Lord Jesus, for the power of the Spirit of God in our lives, who can take cowards and turn us into men and women who are willing to step up and stand up for Jesus. So do that for us, Lord. And I pray you would motivate every one of us here to make you that same promise, that we're embarrassed how we slinked away so many times in the past.

But that is not going to be how the future is anymore. We're not doing that. And Lord, use us then as an army of evangelists here in this town to see thousands of people come to Christ, because we are willing to stand up when you give us that opportunity. Thanks for talking to us today. Change our life, because we were here. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, and what did God's people say? Amen. Amen.