Basics of the Bible - Lesson 4

 

In this lesson, we’re going to do a survey of the New Testament, and I’m going to keep the same format that we had with the Old Testament with the three boxes. But now we’re going to have three new boxes that will correspond to the Old Testament boxes.

As we review, let me just remind all of us. God created us for a relationship, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” That’s the thematic framework of the entire Bible. But as creation was damaged, it was damaged at the very start, and so what you have is a series of promises that God’s going to use to redeem his people. And all of those promises point to Jesus as the theological center of the Bible.

Remember, there’s blessing for those who are obedient to the covenant, and there’s punishment to those who are unfaithful. But despite it all, God will remain faithful and do what he promised to Eve, to Abraham, and to David. And in fact, all those promises do come to fulfillment now in the person of Jesus Christ. The difference now is that the New Covenant…the difference is that the words of the Law are written on our heart, and our hearts are now malleable. They can be affected by the Holy Spirit. They’re not just external rules, but they’re written into our very heart.

So the Foundational box, all right, we’ll start with that. This is the core teaching upon which everything else is based in the New Testament, and these obviously are going to be the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  We call Matthew, Mark, and Luke the “synoptics.” It’s just because they’re so similar in many ways. John is going to be a little bit different. We’ll talk about that in a second. But all four Gospels are written by people who were in a position to know Jesus and to accurately record what he has to say.

So let’s start with Matthew. Who is Matthew? Matthew was the tax collector, but he was brought in as one of the 12 disciples, the inner circle. Jesus had at least 120, at least at the end of Acts. We have 120 disciples. There always was a larger group of disciples, but there was this inner group of 12, and Matthew was one of those.

The emphasis of Matthew’s Gospel is the fulfillment of the Jewish hope. It’s a very Jewish book, and it’s why it starts with a genealogy, because you have the prophecy in Malachi that Elijah’s going to come, and he’s going to announce the coming of the Messiah, the fulfillment of the prophecy made throughout the whole Old Testament. So it’s a very Jewish book. 

In terms of notable features, we have a lot of information on Jesus’ birth. We have the Sermon on the Mount, which is certainly the most famous of all the sermons that we have. And we have the Great Commission. The Great Commission is very important to understand how things go. The last couple of verses in the book of Matthew, this is after Jesus’ resurrection, before he leaves. And he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The Great Commission actually gives us the framework for the expansion of the gospel out of Judaism. But more about that in a second. 

Mark, the second Gospel, probably written around the 50s, was certainly was the first of the four Gospels to be written. He starts out with Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. This is titled to his book. And what’s interesting is what Mark does to show that Jesus is the Son of God; is that he shows Jesus doing things that only God can do. So Jesus forgives sins. Only God can forgive sin. Jesus reinterprets the Law, only God can reinterpret the Law. So you have this book that is really showing the actions of Jesus, and we’re supposed to draw our conclusion from his actions. 

I think the most notable feature in the book of Mark is discipleship. In Mark, chapter 8, he says, “If you want to be my disciple, if you want to follow me, you must deny yourself” (deny your own ambitions), “and take up your cross. Live as one who is crucified to his own personal ambitions, and that’s how you follow me,” Jesus says. I think it’s the key verse of discipleship in the entire Bible; but a lot on discipleship in Mark. 

The third Gospel is the Gospel of Luke, and what’s different about this Gospel is that Luke never got to meet Jesus face to face. He’s a Gentile. He has no firsthand information of him, but he did his homework, and he was a very good friend and a traveling companion of Paul. And so Luke certainly knew what he was writing about. 

In fact, I want to read how Luke starts his Gospel. It gives you a good feel for the nature of what Luke is writing. He says, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us” (okay, so lots of different people writing stories of Jesus), “just as they were handed down to us by those who, from the first, were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word.” Okay, so they were reported to Luke. He didn’t actually get to see them. “With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (he’s an historian), “I, too, decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus” (probably the person who’s paying for everything). “So that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught.” Luke’s a term paper, is what it is. It’s a research paper. It’s a doctoral dissertation. He went out, he did his homework, and he wrote it down for us. 

Notable features are a real emphasis upon historicity. This actually happened. This is where it happened, and this is when it happened. Luke is grounding the story of Jesus in history. More information on Jesus’ birth, but what’s interesting is that, probably as a Gentile, but again under God’s inspiration, he is really interested in non-Jews. He’s interested in those who are further down the social ladder. And so, in his birth narrative, the announcement of the birth is made to shepherds, the people who are right at the bottom of the social ladder. Jesus is visited by the wise men, Gentiles. If you are looking for verses and passages about women, you’ll probably find them in Luke. Those are the concerns that Luke brings to the table. He has a real heart for social outcasts in every shape, way, and form.

The fourth Gospel is John, and John was probably the last book written, 80 to 90 AD, somewhere in that frame. John is different because he has no need to simply repeat what the Synoptic Gospels say. They’re already out. He doesn’t need to waste his time saying the same thing over and over again. And John has had 50 years to reflect. What John is doing is taking what was implicit in the synoptics, what was implicit in Jesus’s teaching, and after 50 years of Spirit-inspired reflection, he is taking what’s implicit and he’s stating it as an explicit thing. 

The book is structured around seven different miracles and what are called the “I Am” sayings. The name that God gives Moses is “I Am, Yahweh”, and so you have Jesus saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world.” These are all ways to affirm his divinity. 

The notable parts of John is that it’s very, very global. It’s not so tightly tied to Jerusalem and Samaria and that area as the synoptics are, and there’s a real emphasis on the divinity of Christ. It starts out, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” I know the Jehovah Witness don’t like that translation, but that is the accurate translation. But if you want another passage, well, you have 10:10, “I and the Father are one.” That’s a rather strong affirmation. But in John 1, if you go on to verse 18, “No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son, who is himself God, and as in closest relationship with the Father has made him known.” No one’s ever seen God, but the only Son who is God is distinct from God. This is John wrestling with the Trinity; and he’s distinct from God the Father, but he lives in closest relationship to him. So you have those verses, and you have other verses where John is just really, really clear that Jesus is, in fact, Yahweh, that he is God. 

The other thing that you get a lot of in John is the interplay of belief and faith, and how all that works out. So lots and lots of good stuff in John.

Well anyway, that’s the foundational part, and so we move on to the second square, which is the Historical part, and this is the growth of the church, and this is primarily the book of Acts. You remember in the Great Commission that we saw in Matthew that the gospel message is to expand, and you’re going to see the same thing in the book of Acts. Where he goes out, he’s getting ready to ascend to heaven, and he says to his disciples, he tells them, “stay here, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you“ (this is Pentecost), “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” That’s the framework for the book of Acts and the expansion of the church and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

So we have three phases, and the first phase is still focused in Jerusalem. It’s the first seven chapters of Acts. The main person leading these discussions is Peter, and the church is still very Jewish at this point, centered in Jerusalem. We’re around 33 or so AD. Noticeable features in this part of Acts is the story of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit coming in Acts, chapter 2, and we get Peter’s great sermon that I referred to earlier on the Kerygma, and how the disciples, now the Apostles, talked about Jesus, what they said.

You have the rise of persecution, initially more Jewish persecution, but through the Roman control. Then you get the story of Stephen, and what’s important about Stephen is he’s a Gentile. And in chapter 7, you’re starting to see the shift that you would have a Gentile in a significant role in the church, and he goes on this rather long discussion, and what it’s about is “you have been unfaithful, and God is going to punish you, and reject you.” So you have, at the end of the Jewish section of Acts, this repudiation of Judaism. 

You then go into phase two, which is mostly the story of Samaria, what was left over after the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom we talked about in the previous lesson. It’s Acts, chapters 8 to 12. You get persecution, and Philip goes into Samaria and is preaching. We get the story of Saul’s conversion. Saul was a great persecutor of the church. God met him on the road to Damascus, and Saul became a Christian, and now he’s going to kind of fade into the background for a bit. He will come back. 

But the real notable feature in this part of Acts is Cornelius’s conversion. Cornelius was a Roman soldier. He was the one in power, and through a series of visions, Peter went, and what happened is that the Holy Spirit fell on, indwelt, these pure Gentiles. These aren’t Samaritans. They are Gentiles and only Gentiles. 

You see, the first real theological debate the church had to deal with is that you had to become a Jew in order to be a Christian. And so what you have at the end of this phase, again, is something that’s going to transition into the third phase, and that is you have a totally non-Jew receiving the Holy Spirit as evidence that he too was now a Christ follower. It’s a momentous event in the expansion of the church. 

Then in phase three, we get to the ends of the earth, over Jerusalem, Samaria, to the ends of the earth, chapters 13 to 28. It’s structured around a series of missionary journeys that Paul had going through Asia Minor and in other areas, where he eventually ends up in jail. There’s a Caesarean imprisonment and then an imprisonment in Rome. 

It’s beyond the book of Acts, but what we believe happened is that Paul was actually released from that imprisonment, would have had a fourth missionary journey with Titus to Crete, and then was re-imprisoned and was eventually beheaded in AD 67.

The notable features of this part of Acts is the persecution and God’s faithfulness to Abraham. Remember what Abraham’s promise was? That God’s promise to Abraham was that he would create a nation and through that nation he would bless the world. Acts is a story of God blessing the world. So that was the historical part of the New Testament. 

We then move into the third, again, see how the New Testament and Old Testament are kind of working out the same way in broad stroke. We go to the instructional part of the New Testament, and these are 22 basically letters (Revelation’s not really a letter), but basically 22 letters that were written during the historical phase.

You start with Paul’s 13 letters, and what Paul is doing in his letters is addressing very specific concerns that have come up in the different churches that he’s planted. And let’s do this really quickly.

The book of Romans was written to the church in Rome. It is core doctrine stuff. Much of what we believe, put it that way, much of what we believe comes out of the book of Romans. And in fact, the heart of Romans is in chapter 3, and it’s verse 22 and following. Paul says this is the gospel. He’s just finished talking about how there is no salvation apart from Christ. Everyone is a sinner. And then he says, “The righteousness” (being right with God), “the righteousness is given through faith; it’s in Jesus Christ, to all who believe.” And then since the Jew-Gentile issue just simply would not go away, he says “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are therefore justified freely, not by earning things, but as a gift. They are made right with God; they are declared not guilty of their sins” (they are justified), “freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” So that’s the essence of Romans. 

1 and 2 Corinthians is a highly dysfunctional church, real lack of sanctification, and Paul writes about that.

The Prison Epistles are Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. They were written while Paul was in jail. They’re about that salvation is by grace, and not only do we enter into a relationship by faith, but we live in a relationship of faith. Jew and Gentile breaking down the wall of hostility to forming one new humanity; thankfulness to the Philippian church for their graciousness to him. Colossians, among other things, talks about the divinity of Christ.

Then you have 1 and 2 Thessalonians that are written to a brand new church. I love these because if you want to know what Paul preached to young Christians, look at 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and also Titus. 

Then you have the Pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. 1 Timothy is largely about leadership issues, and 2 Timothy is this really personal letter. I think Timothy was Paul’s best friend, and it’s about Paul wanting to see Timothy again before he dies. 

Philemon is about a slave called Onesimus who ran away, which is a capital offense, went to Rome, became a Christian, and Paul has to send him back. What happens in this letter is Paul is planting the seeds for abolition. It’s a very important book.

Then you have what are called the General Epistles, and they’re called general because they’re not addressed to any one particular church.

You have the book of Hebrews, again which we don’t know who wrote it, but it’s about the superiority of Christ over anything Jewish, and some of the most damning warnings in the Bible that if you do not live in a relationship with God, just like the Old Testament, you too will be cursed. James is full of practical wisdom. 1 Peter is about living in the midst of persecution. 2 Peter and Jude are about how to deal with false teachers. 

1 John is a wonderful book about love, but it does talk a lot about the necessity of obedience, that if you don’t love your brother who you can see, you cannot love God who you can’t see. The fact that you love your brothers and sisters and the fact that you live in obedience is the assurance that you are, in fact, a Christian. If you don’t live in love, then you have no assurance that you’re a Christian. 2 and 3 John are two very short letters, very very personal to two specific churches. 

Then Revelation is the book about the end of time. It’s probably the most debated book in the Bible, but the message of Revelation is very clear. God will win. He is going to return, and are called to be faithful in the midst of persecution. 

So that’s the New Testament. Again, in summary, God created us for a relationship with him. “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Sin separated us from that relationship, and God’s promise is being fulfilled. God’s promise to redeem his people is being fulfilled through Jesus Christ. Because of who Jesus is and because of what Jesus did, we are able to enter into a relationship through faith. So live faithfully and receive the blessings of the covenant.