All right, let's look at Matthew
chapter one. I'm really not gonna go into
the book of Matthew per se, verse by verse today, but I just wanna
read this first verse of Matthew chapter one, where it talks about,
verse one, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David,
the son of Abraham. And of course, that's talking
about the humanity of Christ. Because in his person as God,
God, he has no generation. He didn't come, he has no beginning
and no end. And so we understand how that
our Savior and our Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, is
both God and man in one person. But he did, according to God's
purpose and will, have a beginning in his humanity. And that's what
the book of Matthew stresses there. But let me just go through
it this way. The gospel in the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are what we call the four
gospel narratives. Four gospel narratives. Each
emphasizing some particular aspect of the person and work of Christ.
Now, when we talk about a particular aspect of the person and work
of Christ, we're talking about everything that Christ is as
our savior, as our Lord, as our keeper. I often say it this way,
our surety, our substitute, our redeemer, our preserver, and
the one who will bring us into glory. And all the aspects of
his person and work can be found in the book of Matthew, All the
aspects of his personal work can be found in the book of Mark,
Luke, and John. But each of these gospel narratives
emphasizes one particular aspect. In other words, it seems like
one particular aspect of that is brought out more in Matthew
than in Mark, even though you'll find it in Mark also. So understand
that. The reason I call this lesson
The Gospel in the Gospels is this. There's only one gospel. And that's the gospel of God's
grace through salvation by His grace in and by the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I repeated that in your lesson
here. Listen to this. The one gospel
message that's revealed throughout the Bible is the word of salvation
for sinners by God's free and sovereign grace, conditioned
on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God manifest in the flesh,
that is God-man, and who is as the surety, the substitute, and
the redeemer of God's chosen people, what did he do? He, in
his obedience unto death, he fulfilled every condition required
for our salvation by his obedience unto death, whereby he secured.
He didn't make salvation possible. He didn't make it a possibility,
but he secured the actual full salvation of all for whom he
lived and died, was buried and died and arose again, and now
seated at the right hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession
for us. And of course, the affirmation
of that was his resurrection from the dead and his ascension
unto glory. Now that's the one gospel. It's
the gospel wherein the righteousness of God is revealed. And so it's
important, it's necessary that we understand that term, the
righteousness of God. I wrote a whole book on it. You
know, what is the righteousness of God? Well, that's the entire
worthiness or merit or value of Christ's obedience unto death
that he accomplished in his obedience unto death for the salvation
of his people. So the one gospel is the message
of the forgiveness of all the sins of all of God's people,
those people who were given to Christ before the foundation
of the world, it's the forgiveness of their sins by his shed blood
alone, his death on the cross. And it's the message of the righteousness
of God accomplished by Christ for his people. And that's the
righteousness that God has imputed, charged, accounted to his people
for our justification. And from that ground, we have
spiritual life in the new birth. You must be born again. Now all
of these things together are gospel truths. that come out
from that one gospel, but there are four gospel narratives, and
that's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are stories, histories,
records, you might say, of the life of Christ when he spent
his time here on earth doing the will of his father. Now,
the first three gospels, the first three narratives, Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, they're called synoptic gospels. Now, I've got
that in your lesson. What that means is these first
three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're very similar in their
plan, in their layout, in their structure. They follow the historic
narrative of the life of Christ from his birth to his resurrection
and ascension. And that's what they do. Now
John's a little bit different. It's not a synoptic. John is
a more theological or doctrinal narrative. In fact, he starts
out, you know how the book of John starts out, in beginning
was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
And so we have that, there's a little bit of difference there.
But these three synoptic gospels, there's no contradictions in
these gospels, in these narratives. A lot of people think there are,
but there are no contradictions. Now there's different points
of view of the same event, and it's described in different ways,
but it doesn't contradict. It's kind of like looking at
four people looking at the same event from the north, one from
the north, one from the south, one from the west, one from the
east. And so you'll see it may be different. There may be a
different time frame that this one person saw this. Matthew
and Mark and Luke and John, it's all the same, there's no contradictions. But somebody might ask the question,
well, why are there four gospel narratives? Well, think about
it this way. The most important thing that
we can study and bring forth out of these narratives, out
of the whole Bible, is the glorious person and the finished work
of Christ. That's what we're all about. That's what the gospel's
all about. That's what Christ's life on
earth was all about. And those subjects are, as far
as the volume of it and the depth of it, it's huge. Think about
that. This message that we have, this
gospel, salvation itself, it's all about who Christ is. It's
about him. I'm gonna preach today out of
Colossians 3 on Christ is all and in all. Well, that's not
just poetry. That's a reality of God's grace
and our salvation. Christ is everything. Paul spoke
of the simplicity that's in Christ in 2 Corinthians 11. And what
is that simplicity? Well, that word means the singularity. And it's as simple as this, that
everything in our salvation, it's not about us. It's not about
who we are, and it's not about what we do. It's all about Christ. And so that's a subject that
is deeper than the oceans. And then we speak of, secondly,
the finished work of Christ. Think about that, what he accomplished
in his obedience unto death, what he went through, his conception. by the Holy Spirit in the womb
of a virgin, his birth. We don't have much in the narratives
here, the gospel narratives about his early life. Luke, who was
the only Gentile writer that God used in the scriptures, Luke
is the only one who gives us any detail about his early life
before, as he grew up. I think one incident when he
was like 12 years old and things like that. But you think about
this, this person and this great work of redemption, they're so
profound and glorious that the whole of these subjects cannot
be contained in one book. And so we have the whole Bible,
66 books, we have all the four gospel narratives, and God determined
to use four gospel narratives with each one emphasizing, all
containing all the truth, but each one emphasizing one specific
truth. Well, what do they emphasize?
All right, well, let's look at this. Now, Matthew, he starts
out here in verse one, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, son of Abraham. Why is that important? Well,
everything in this Old Testament, specifically from Abraham on,
but even before then, everything in the Old Testament prophesied
and pictured that the Messiah, the Savior, the consolation of
Israel, the righteousness of God in his humanity would be
a descendant of Abraham and that he would come in the line of
King David and be the one rightful ruler of spiritual Israel. And that's Jesus of Nazareth.
So Matthew, the main emphasis of the Gospel of Matthew is Christ,
the true Messiah and King of spiritual Israel. That's what
Matthew emphasizes. It's a very Jewish Gospel. We
look at this and we glean from it. You think about the things
that we're gonna read in Matthew and that we have read. And we're
not, you know, I don't think any of us are physically descended
from Abraham as far as Jews, you know, we're not Jews, but
we're spiritual Jews. You know, Paul said that in Romans
chapter two, he said, he's not a Jew, which is one outwardly,
but he's a Jew, which is one inwardly. And he said, and circumcision
is not that of the flesh, but that of the heart. And that's
talking about the new birth when God brings us to believe in Christ. And that's the product of his
grace. It's not the product of our decision. It's not the result
of our free will, as they say. It's the result of God's power
and grace in Christ, the life of Christ. And so Matthew, he
wrote to a Hebrew audience, people who were somewhat familiar with
the Old Testament. When they hear the name Abraham,
they know what you're talking about. And they heard the name
David. They knew who David was. Abraham, the father of the faithful.
Abraham, the father of Israel, in that sense, in the physical
sense. King David, the king who was in the glory days of Israel. Under David and Solomon, that's
when Israel had its highest glory and power. And of course, it
wasn't a perfect time. There's no perfect time here
on earth. But Matthew was writing to a Hebrew audience and he took
great care to make sure that they understood that whenever
there was a prophecy of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah,
that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the one who fulfilled it.
He fit the bill. And that's what Matthew's all
about. His goal was to inform his fellow Jews that the words
of the prophets concerning the Messiah were realized and fulfilled
in the person and work of this man who came out of Bethlehem,
who came out of Nazareth, named Jesus. That's what he wanted
them to know. So more than any other gospel
narrative, you'll see the word fulfilled in Matthew. And I got a list of verses there. Look down at Matthew 1 in verse
22. Now this is the genealogy, this whole chapter, and I'm gonna
deal with this next week. This whole chapter is the genealogy
of the humanity of Christ. And it's amazing when you see
this genealogy. You know, one of the reasons
that you see so many genealogies in the Old Testament was for
this reason, God had determined to keep the nation Israel intact
until the Messiah come, especially the tribe of Judah. Because you
remember he said the scepter would not depart from Judah until
Shiloh come, until Christ come. But look at verse 22, well let's
read verses 21 through 23. And she shall bring forth a son,
and thou shalt call his name Jesus, and that name means this,
for he shall save his people from their sin. He's not gonna
try to save them. He's not gonna make an attempt.
He's going to save his people from their sins. And that's just
exactly what he did. And they're all gonna be called
into the kingdom by the power of the Spirit. Now look at verse
22. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken of the Lord by the prophets saying, Verse 23, behold, a virgin
shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall
call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with
us. That's a quotation from Isaiah chapter seven. Isaiah 7, 14. Now picture this, especially
back then, when they didn't have written Bibles, printed Bibles.
If you went to a Gentile audience and said, now all this was done
so it would be fulfilled what Isaiah, they wouldn't know who
Isaiah was, the Gentile audience, unless they'd been converted
to Judaism. So you see what I'm saying? Now the Jewish audience,
they know, yeah, I know who Isaiah is. I know who Abraham is. I know who King David is. You
see, they've been familiar with that. And so this is what Matthew's
trying to do. He's emphasizing that Jesus of
Nazareth is the fulfillment of all these prophecies. He's the
king that God promised to send for the salvation of his people.
Christ the king. We talk about the offices of
Christ, his mediatorial offices. He's our great prophet. He's
our high priest. He's our king. And that's what
Matthew is emphasizing. And so he shows here that Jesus
of Nazareth is the seed of Abraham, and therefore he's the legal,
spiritual, eternal heir of the throne of David. Not an earthly
throne, but a spiritual throne. The kingdom of God that is established
upon the righteousness that he accomplished. His scepter is
a scepter of righteousness. He's the king of peace. He's
the king of righteousness. And that's what we'll see going
through the gospel narrative of Matthew. And there's the gospel,
the personal work of Christ, the accomplished, the accomplished
work that determines and ensures the salvation of all whom the
Father gave to him before the foundation of the world. That's
our assurance. Well, let me give you just a
rundown of the other three gospel narratives, just to put it in
perspective. The book of Mark emphasizes Christ,
the perfect servant of Jehovah. And Mark's a very, it's a shorter
narrative. I've got quoted here, Mark 10,
45, for even the son of man came not to be ministered unto, that
is served, but to, not to be served, but to serve himself
and to give his life a ransom for many. Now, as the people
of God, There's absolutely no doubt that we're called to serve
the Lord. We serve him. That's what we're
to do. Serve the Lord with gladness,
the scripture says. Serve him in his grace and his
power. But when he made that statement,
he came not to be served, he wasn't talking about our relationship
to him as the people of God. He said he came to serve. He's talking about his commission
to do the work that the father gave him to do as the servant. And you can read about that in
passages like Isaiah 53. the suffering servant of the
Lord. What does a servant do? He does
what his master tells him to do. Well, Christ was doing in
his service what the Father commanded him to do. Now, that doesn't
mean he's unequal with the Father in deity. But in office, he took
a submissive, subservient role for what purpose? To save you
and me. we who know the Lord. Back over
in Philippians chapter two, for example, it is a beautiful description
of it. I'll just read a little bit of
this to you, where it says, verse five of Philippians two, let
this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being
in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God. but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of
a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. And because of that great
work that he accomplished and did as the servant, it says in
verse nine, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given
Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow of things in heaven, things in earth, things
under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Now, as God absolutely
considered, He was already Lord of all, Lord of the universe,
He created it. In beginning was the Word, the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. And it was created with
Him, nothing was created without Him. He had the preeminent, it
was created for Him. But as man, as God-man, He had
an earned position of Lordship. Because He did the work that
the Father gave Him to do. And that's what the book of Mark
emphasized. The book of Mark is mainly aimed
toward Gentile believers, but obviously it's very useful to
Jewish believers too. There's no genealogy in Mark.
There's nothing in light of prophecies of the Old Testament. Mark wrote
of our Savior working, doing, Always on the move, always on
the go, healing, feeding, and then mainly doing his great work
of salvation on the cross. And that's what Mark is about,
Jehovah's faithful servant. He's the servant of the covenant,
the servant of the Lord. Now what about Luke? Well, as
I said, you remember Luke is the only human writer that is
a Gentile in the Bible. Remember, Luke is called the
physician. He was the beloved physician in Colossians 4. He
was an evangelist. He was a companion of the apostle
Paul. And he wrote both the gospel
of Luke, he wrote the gospel of Acts. There are a lot of people
who think Luke was the human writer of Hebrews. I believe it was Paul, but it
doesn't matter. It's the word of God, so it doesn't
matter. But there are a lot of people who believe that because
of the language, Luke was the human writer of Hebrews. But
the emphasis in the gospel narrative of Luke is Christ, the perfect
son of man. And that term is used over and
over again. He's the perfect man. His gospel is written mainly
to Gentiles too, but he emphasizes the humanity of Christ And his
genealogy's a little bit different than Matthew's. Matthew starts
with David and Abraham. Luke's genealogy goes all the
way back to Adam, and he traces it backwards. And he emphasizes,
he doesn't deny or ignore the deity of Christ, but he emphasizes
that not only is Christ the son of God, Christ is the son of
man. And Luke is kind of like a meticulous
historian. And you'll see a lot of things
in Luke you don't see in the others. But he wrote to a man
named Theophilus, who was apparently a Gentile of some stature, but
he had a Gentile audience in mind. But mainly showing us this,
what we already know. Christ had to be both God and
man in one person. Because if he wasn't God, he
couldn't create or give life. And if he wasn't man, perfect
man, he couldn't die a death that would produce a perfect
righteousness that would enable God to be just and justify the
ungodly. And then the Gospel of John,
the main emphasis of the Gospel of John, as you know, is Christ,
the deity of Christ, Christ the eternal son of God. In John 20
and verse 31, he says, these are written that you might believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing
you might have life through his name. And so he doesn't begin
his gospel with a genealogy. He begins with time before time
began. In beginning was the Word. The
Word was with God. The Word was God. He doesn't
deny the humanity of Christ, the word was made flesh and dwelt
among us, but his gospel narrative is a little bit more doctrinal
and theological than the others. The others are more historical,
but they all contain the one gospel, the gospel of God's grace. So we have those four distinct
and yet equally accurate accounts of the life of Christ on earth. I've got in your lesson here
at the end, One interesting fact that you might want to notice
is there's a close connection between these four gospel narratives
and what they emphasize. And back over in Ezekiel chapter
one, you remember there's the four faces of the cherubim recorded
there in Ezekiel one, six, and 10. And it's repeated over in
Revelation four, seven, four faces. And one was of a lion. The other was of a calf or an
ox. One was of a, let's see, the
face of a man. And the other was the face of
an eagle. And that's represented here in
these four gospel narratives. Christ, think about it this way.
Christ is the lion of the tribe of Judah. The power of God. accomplishing, the royal one,
the king, you know the line they say is the king of the jungle?
Christ is the king of kings. Mark emphasizes the strong ox,
the calf, serving, doing the work, accomplishing righteousness
for his people. Luke emphasizes Christ as the
sinless man in whose face the glory of God shines, the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And then John emphasizes the
Son of God high above the earth like the eagle soaring, the majestic
eagle, the deity of Christ. Okay.