Walk With Me
Christian discussion of biblical topics, and a dose of daily application. Yes the Bible is still relevant, and we find out more and more each day how relevant it has always been.
Walk With Me
Do Not Grab The Elephant By The Tail
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Welcome Back And How To Reach Me
SPEAKER_00Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of Walk With Me. I am your host, JJ. It's so good to have each and every one of you here. So good to have all you people who I call preferably, I lovingly as walkers, to be back at the show. I know I've been off a little while. I've been um exploring this new uh I guess I can announce it now. I've been exploring this new co-pastor position, and um and each time I I wanted to come back and I took a little hiatus because it's also been a very eventful summer. But I thank you all so much. Thank you so much. I still get the notifications uh that you guys are watching and listening, and I really, really, really appreciate it. Uh, and um if you have any questions before I forget, please feel free to email me or comments or encouragement, or if you want to try to beat me up, okay, that's fine too. Walk with me Bible study at gmail. Walk with me Bible study at Gmail. I love each and every one of you. Thank you all so much. Thank you all so much. Um, and I love each and every one of you, even the ones that you that don't like me. And um, yeah, that's just gonna be please understand I love you, and that's just how that is, and that's not gonna change. That's why I do this podcast, right?
Why A Bigger View Of Jesus
SPEAKER_00So we are going to uh go on into a little bit of a kind of a deep dive, as you would. And the reason why we're going into the deep dive, because a lot of people ask me about Jesus Christ, and when you ask someone asks you about Jesus, they ask you about one specific thing, and they ask you about this one specific thing or that one specific thing, and it leaves out so much, so much that Jesus intended for us to know. Okay, and it's important that we get a full viewpoint of who Jesus was and why what happened was so important, why the crucifixion was important. Okay, so and this is exemplified.
The Elephant Story And Perspective
SPEAKER_00I have a I had a my first pastor, great uh Leonard Westburg, he's he's gone on to be with the Lord. He used to say, Listen, um, this is kind of like four blind men going to see an elephant. And I would always laugh at that, and but never have I um really grasped that until lately. He said it was four blind men going to see an elephant. He said one would grab the elephant by the leg and he said the elephant like a tree, and then another one would grab the elephant by the tail, which I highly remand recommend you do not do. He said, No, man, the elephant's like a rope. Another blind man would grab the elephant by the trunk and he said, Oh man, the elephant's like a snake. But the fourth one dropped his cane and was went walking wandering around and ran smacking to the side of the elephant and said, Oh man, this elephant is like a wall. And the lesson behind that is that all of these people, because they are blind, will get a lot of different opinions and will you know conflate them to be facts about the same thing while that same thing having an aspect of all these things is greater as the whole. In other words, yes, the elephant can be like a wall. If you walk into it, you will find out. If you grab a an elephant by the tail and he goes and walk off, he will pull you just like a rope. Again, I suggest you don't do that. If you grab an elephant by the leg, you will you can wrap your arms around him like you can a palm tree, and that tree will not move, that leg will not move unless the elephant wants it to move. And that trunk, if you put something there and that elephant decides he wants to pick you up with it, he will wrap around you like a snake and pick you up with it. But the elephant is so much more than those parts, and this is where a lot of people get uh kind of bogged down in the words. We look at one little thing and we say Jesus is like this and Jesus is like that, and but we don't take a bigger uh view of what Jesus was really about, what his goal was, what his life was about. So that's what this is about, okay?
How The Gospels Were Preserved
SPEAKER_00So in order to get into this, we gotta understand that there are uh when we study the life of Jesus, we are kind of limited to four small books, and we call those books the gospels, and they were written in Greek, and they were not written in in Hebrew, they were written in the Greek, they were written in Latin, don't let anybody lie to you, they were written in Greek, they were later translated to Latin, but that's another topic. And one fact should be borne to mind that when we approaching the Gospels, the church had got along for years without this even being written down. It wasn't like Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John were carrying a notepad or an iPad or was texting these things to themselves while these things were happening. They were literally, they told everything that happened verbatim, they rehearsed it to themselves, they rehearsed it to themselves, and then they were they would pass these things on to new disciples who were then inspired by God to write them down. That's how we started coming up with the gospels because if you really look at it, Paul was actually the first person who wrote anything that can be considered Christian literature, Paul, and that was around AD 60 or AD 65. Everybody wants to argue about which is which, but that was about the time Paul started writing letters, and that was the first Christian literature. Now, so what is the gospel? The gospel is actually an Anglo-Saxon word. Yep, you won't find that in the nope, no, you won't. It's an Anglo-Saxon word, uh, and it means God story or God spell or or or you can literally boil it down or transliterate it to be good story or good tidings. Now, of those gospels, there are three what is called synaptic gospels. No, I'm sorry, synoptic gospels. What was I thinking? Synaptic is a different word. Synoptic gospels is what is a record of the same or parallel accounts of the life and work of Christ. So these three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were known as synoptic gospels, and they were basically designed to um just kind of focus on the life and the miracles. Okay, I'm just boiling it down a little bit further. Basically, the life and the miracles of Jesus Christ. However, the fourth gospel, the gospel of John, this is why you will see things in John you will not see in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel of John was about focusing on the words of Jesus. Okay, so it's it's cool because nothing in John will contradict Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Nothing in Matthew, Mark, and Luke will contradict John. That's just how it was. Now, in order to give you these aspects or these viewpoints, um, it's important to understand that these were written by the people who were there. When I say written, I mean conceptualized. Remember that we didn't write them down. And the reason why you didn't write them down was because you had two groups of people that were instantly your your mortal enemies. You had the Jews who were instantly trying to kill all of you, um, because they because they had this whole thing about blasphemy and yeah, let's stone you and whatever. And then you had the Romans who would also look at this Christ king, as it says in in Zechariah 9 and 9. If this would be a threat to their power structure, so instantly, you didn't write these things down because instantly they were coming for you. Alright. So let's look at um, let's go into with the limited time we have left, let's start going into Matthew.
Matthew And The Jewish Messiah Case
SPEAKER_00Okay, I hope that's I hope that introduction didn't bore you. Uh but um let's go into Matthew. Now, Matthew, um, we all know he's one of the disciples, but he was also called Levi. Now, why was he called Levi? Hmm. Okay, and I'm gonna let that rock right there. He was actually a publican, actually, and he was a tax collector for the Roman government, and as a result, remember I just said he was hated by everybody. This guy was the embodiment of being hated by both sides. He was he was hated by the countrymen because he was working for the Rome, he was hated by Rome because Rome looked at him as a conquered piece of trash, like a collaborator. And so um they kind of looked at him as kind of like the worst of both worlds, but even this despite that, Matthew was actually quite rich, and and and we could kind of see that he was rich because um it was shown that he was having great feasts at one point, and he was accustomed to being able to keep the money and keep accounts, and and he were he were often right from a businessman's point of view, very short, very succinct, very direct. Um, and this would also kind of cause him to be a little bit of an outcast because people even back then people like to have the word sugarcoated. Matthew was not this way. So, um, and I there's some scripture references that we're not gonna have time to go into today. Um, Matthew 10 and 3, Mark 2, 14, and Luke 5, 27 through 29. Remember, these three gospels are going to mirror each other, maybe not word for word, but for thought for thought. Okay. So who wrote the I mean, what was the uh the gospel of Matthew? What was that written to? Who was that written to? That was written to the Jews, and this is addressing the fact that there was a lot of references, about 60 or so, that was written to Jews that uh kind of referred back to Jewish prophecies, and there are 40 quotations from the Old Testament. For instance, here's one of the scripture references that kind of start telling you what's going on. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Matthew 10 and 6. Matthew was literally, he literally made sure that he put these things in there because he knew that there had to be some references to the Old Testament. I am sent not unto the lost sheep, but unto the house of Israel. I'm sorry, I'm sent not no. Let me not let me get this right. I was not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Again, referring back to the house of Israel, not the world, not that, not at that point. Matthew 15 to 24. He's literally addressing these words to the Jews, and Matthew is writing this down. Now, remember I said earlier that the church got along very um well without Christian literature. As a matter of fact, uh another, this is another one of these great biblically scholarly debate arguments. The um Matthew was not written until around 80 60 or 80 70. And then again, the the when it was written is sort of not exactly um important, but just the mere fact that the church got along from 80 33 to 80 60 or 70 without anything being written down. It was all rehearsed, it was all it was all spoken from one person to the other. Now, the purpose of this gospel was to show that Jesus of Nazareth was the kingly Messiah of the Old Testament prophecy. That's why Matthew kept referring back to the house of Israel, the house of Israel, the house of Israel. This picture of Jesus was that of that king that was foretold in the Old Testament. So, and here's some of the key words that you will see in Matthew. You'll see things like fulfill. This word is repeated constantly to indicate that the Old Testament has said this was going to happen and this happened. And the word kingdom, and this is where a lot of Jews kind of got led astray a little bit in their minds, because in the book of Matthew, you're gonna see that word kingdom for uh like 50 or 51 times, and this was basically to um let them know that um that Jesus was his king, or was going to be king, is king, and and I'm saying this because at the time they probably were thinking that Jesus was going to restore the kingdom of Israel, and you'll see that um toward the end of um toward the end of the gospel right before he's crucified. They are still thinking that Jesus is not God in the flesh to um bring about the kingdom of heaven, but to restore the kingdom of Israel. So, um, and you will but even still Matthew still wrote extensively about the quote-unquote kingdom of heaven, and that's also found in the book of Matthew several times. I can't remember exactly how many. So you you have that, and I want to quickly jump to Mark only because it's important to understand how Matthew and Mark are similar.
Mark And The Fast Moving Servant King
SPEAKER_00Now, we call the person we call Mark was actually named John Mark. Now, that was also the son of Mary, right? Um, not A, not the Mary, not Mary Magdalene, a different Mary. Okay. Now his Jewish name was John, but his Roman name was Mark. So what they would generally do is put the Jewish name first and then the Roman name. So that's why a lot of people will say, hey, why are the names in the New Testament different than in the Old Testament? A lot of people were given Roman names, like Saul and Paul. So there were a lot of um that you have a lot of people with um different names, and this was not also in somebody said, Why were there no last names in the New Testament? Oh, yeah, there was last names. This Barjona was a last name, so and I digress, right? So go to Colossians uh 4.10, and you will see that this John Mark was a relative of Barnabas. Now I just wanted to throw that in there because it's very important, uh, which means his mother was apparently a very prosperous woman, and and the reason why that's the case is because the church often met at her house. Um, if you look at uh Acts chapter 12 and 12, she was not the pastor of that church, but the church often met there. And Mark is considered uh to be somebody that Peter converted, who spoke as him as being Marcus. So, and I'm saying all this because you might look through the Bible and say, who's this Marcus guy? Marcus is John Mark, or as we commonly know, as Mark. Um, another tradition uh sort of certifies that that he was like Peter's brother, which is not exactly I kind of threw a little bit of assault on that one, but I'm just telling you the things that I've heard. Now, it is thought that Peter furnished much of the uh material in the Gospel of Mark and accompanied and Mark had accompanied Barnabas and Paul, and Mark decided that the way he was going to address his gospel, or the gospel that he was writing or he was dictating, as it were, um, was to the Roman Christians. With that being said, he was explaining a lot of Jewish words and the customs to someone who had not um known about these Jewish customs, so that means he had to be talking to Gentiles. That's where you you see like there's different explanations in the book of Mark that you don't see in the book of Matthew. So again, the date this was written, somewhere between 80, 50, and 60. A lot of people believe that was the first of the four gospels that was actually written on paper. Um, and both Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark's gospel. So now the theme of this is again the gospel of Jesus Christ being the servant. That was kind of the theme. That was kind of what Mark was looking at. And the key word in Mark's gospel is a lot of times you see the word straightway, like right away, like the air, go through it right now. And this his style was a little bit different from Matthew's in the fact that Matthew was very direct, very no nonsense. Mark's would be more vivid, uh, more action, more imaginative. No, in other words, instead of saying the wall was white, uh, then you kind of say, Well, the wall shimmered with the brilliant white of uh luster. You know, and I'm just throwing it out there because of how he described it, he's basically describing a white wall. He's just adding a bunch of words to it to make it more vivid, more full of action. And there are 19 miracles that are recorded in this book, in this book of Matt, uh Mark, that's showing power of a disease, uh, power of a nature, uh, power of demons, and even power of a death. There's actually two of them in there. So this is what Matthew and Mark were about.
Next Week Preview And Closing
SPEAKER_00Now, next week, and because I want you to, um, I don't have enough time to go into Luke and John, so I'm gonna go ahead and go into Luke and John next time. Uh, when you look at Matthew and Mark, please understand they were all there, they were all watching the same thing. And just like you and I, again, we can have we can see the exact same uh incident and have two stories, not completely different, but just very slightly based on where I'm standing or where you're standing. This is what you're gonna see in the gospels movie, and because what was happening was the the person's personality was also coming into the writing. So, in other words, Mark was a bit uh Matthew was a businessman again, short, direct to the point. Mark was more vivid, more actioning, more uh, he had, you know, he didn't embellish anything, he just described things in greater terms. Um, so that being said, we're gonna wrap this one. I want you, I really would like for you to go back and just kind of look at the gospels. We're gonna stay in the gospels for uh quite a while on this because I want to make sure we cover everything. All right. I love each and every one of you. God bless you. If you have any questions or comments, walk with me, Bible study at Gmail. Walk with me, Bible study at Gmail. And don't forget our sponsors, Two Barnes and Lyricists with the intro and outro and squizz of creations. Uh, there may be some changes coming soon. We will see. Keep praying. All right, God bless each and every one of you. Love y'all. Bye.