Thru the Bible - Questions & Answers

Guest (Male): The first four books of the New Testament each tell a different story about Jesus. These Gospels were written with a different audience in mind. But what were they attempting to communicate and to whom?

Guest (Male): This is the question and answer program with Dr. J. Vernon McGee, a ministry of the Thru the Bible Radio Network. Before we continue our second of the four-part series, "Why Four Gospels", let's hear from a listener in Huntington, West Virginia, who has two questions for us. The first is, "Do you think that Job 41, Isaiah 27:1, and Revelation 12:7 are references to the devil?"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: I'm of course not going to be able to read all of Isaiah or all of Job. I'll answer it like this by saying no, I do not think that in any one of these do we have a reference to the devil. Job is talking about the leviathan, God's creation, and I don't think that we have that much of an emphasis as you've seen. I think that probably the best thing I should do is to read one verse from each one of these and then that would bring other listeners right up to date what we're talking about.

It says, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?" He's talking about the monsters of the deep, the whale. And apparently there've been some big ones out there that probably may be a little bigger than we know anything about today that are in the ocean and the oceans of the world. And he's talking about that. He's not talking about Satan at all. I don't think that you could bring that even into the picture.

I must then turn to the 27th chapter, verse one of Isaiah. "In that day, the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, even leviathan, that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that's in the sea." So I think that we're talking about sea monsters and we're not talking about Satan here at all.

Now your reference, of course, in the 12th chapter of the book of Revelation, definitely it refers to Satan because it says that it does. There was war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels. And it's clear there that we're talking about Satan, and he's given the name of the dragon. That's one of the many names that are given to Satan.

Guest (Male): The second question by the same listener is, "Since Jesus fulfilled the law, wouldn't it be scriptural to say that Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath rest as indicated in Matthew 11:28?"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And I must say that you're entirely accurate in that. But if you want to further develop this line of thinking, go over to the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and you'll find an entire chapter that's given over to this Sabbatic rest. And we read here, and I'm just going to lift out one or two verses for you, verse eight of chapter four of Hebrews: "For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day? There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from his."

So you see the very definite analogy is made between the Sabbath in the Old Testament and the rest of redemption that we have in Christ today, that we cease from works and rest in Christ. Now I recommend that you make a study of that.

Guest (Male): Now let's get to Dr. McGee's four-part series on why four Gospels.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And last time we attempted to answer the big question, the major question: Why four Gospels? There remains just one thing, and that is to prove it, to try to show it from the Gospels and to answer some of these other questions that relate to this major question. Now all you have to do is to walk down the streets of a great throbbing metropolis in our country and you'll find all four groups that I've mentioned.

The religious man is among us today. And if all you have is a religion, not Christ, you're lost. But if all you have is a religion and don't have Christ, well, you'll never be satisfied. That's for sure. And you'll never be saved. He is the Savior. And then there is the strong man. He's among us today. Most of them young executives. Every one of them is sure of himself. They're on the way up. They do not think they need a Savior. They want strength in every department.

Now you may be that strong man and you're saying, "Preacher, you're not talking to me. I have what I want. I have a bank account. I have a fine family and I don't need Christ." And I say to you, you do. You don't rule the world. The Roman did, and he needed Christ. And then there's the thinking man today. And many of them are trying to find out the origin of life. Dr. Mortimer, he suggested the big question and he asks it: What was here when there was nothing?

Now if you can tell us what was here when there was nothing, then you're prepared to begin to tell us about the origin of not only life, but the origin of the universe. And you may be a man that thinks you've got all the answers you need. You have a high IQ. You're going to think your way through life. And I have news for you: You're not going to think your way through life. The Greeks put up a civilization that was intellectual and it came tumbling down. It has no answer and it stands in ruins today.

Then there's the wretched man that we talked about last. He's in our midst today. He may even have a few dollars in his pocket because we saw that there was out there in the Orient, there is untold wealth and right beside of it, poverty. And neither one of them have the answer. And it's the Lord Jesus who spoke to that group and said, "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. Give his life a ransom for many."

Now I hope you see your need of him today. Because if you do, I'm here to tell you that he can meet your need, whatever it is. And most of all, he can save your soul. God had you in mind when he gave mankind a written record. He prepared one of the four Gospels specifically for you. I don't know which one you fit in, but whichever you do, it'll meet your need. Now I'm going to turn to Matthew and see if Matthew was written for the religious man.

Several years ago right here in Southern California, one of the most brutal crimes of the century, and that was the mass murders that the news media has labeled the Sharon Tate case. It's one of the most shocking and sensational crimes in this age of crime. A group of young people, some barely out of their teens, even girls participated. It was a cold-blooded, wholesale slaying from what looks like a passionless and senseless orgy of blood.

This, I think, is the final product of a society that boasts of its new freedom and its new morality and its abandonment of the Judeo-Christian ethic, as they've called it. And it's gone so far as to say that we should welcome into our society and our homes the homosexual, that he's just a nice guy after all. He's just a gay person. I never seen one of them yet that looked gay. They look very sad to me. We've dumped the Judeo-Christian ethic today.

And this is what happens when depraved human nature is free to do its thing. The antediluvians way back near the beginning engaged in great wickedness, evil corruption, viciousness, vileness, and violence. And Paul lists a catalog of things that would characterize the coming generation. Among them is this: He says the day is coming they'll be without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good.

And very frankly, that's a picture of our contemporary culture today. We have come to the time of truce-breakers. And certainly false accusers are abroad. Now it does look like we've arrived. The most offensive and disgusting factor to me is that the leader of this group of degenerates called himself Jesus Christ. The blasphemous assumption reveals that he was a religious leader operating a depraved and disgusting religion. And there are many like that abroad in our land today.

In another area of our culture, a current magazine reports that a writer and producer of off-Broadway films has turned out a smashing hit. And a hardboiled newspaper reporter in New York after he had seen it wrote this: "It's vicious and vile. The most offensive picture I've ever seen." The producer of that picture says that this one is tame compared to the next one he'll produce. He says it will truly be vile and offensive and it will also be blasphemous because he's going to portray Jesus Christ.

Now there are two factors I think emerge right now in our contemporary culture. One is that the Lord Jesus Christ is still a controversial person. Nineteen hundred years ago, he asked his disciples the question, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" They answered that people thought he was John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah, one of the prophets. But they all came short. The world outside didn't have the answer and it doesn't have the answer today, yet they're still talking about him.

Then the second factor is the filth, depravity, corruption, degeneracy, and sex have become a religion again. And that's not new because all of the pagan religions of the past were based on sex. The female principle in the deities of the pagan religions is well-known. Religion has always been the greatest curse of mankind. You doubt that? Look at India today. It's got religion. Look at Africa today. Africa has religion.

And the very interesting thing is that the United States of America is filled with religion. But religion has been a curse to mankind. And religion always deals with externalities. It deals with rituals, with liturgy, with forms, with rules, with regulations, with ceremonies, with law, with ordinances, with rights, with orgies and incantations. After all, God gave one religion. That's the Mosaic system. And Christianity is a person, as we've already indicated, and you either have that person or you don't have him.

And to have Christ is salvation. And that's not religion. However, God did give a religion, the Mosaic system, and he gave it to the nation Israel. And this nation represented religion in the day that Christ came to the Earth and Jerusalem was the religious center of the world. There are four major divisions of the human family and each Gospel is slanted in the direction of the one of these segments. The Gospel of Matthew was written primarily to the nation Israel and therefore to the religious man.

You need a background of the Old Testament to understand Matthew. Matthew is like a swinging door. It swings back into the Old Testament, gathering up more Old Testament prophecies than any other Gospel. And it swings into the New Testament farther than any other ones since only in the Gospel of Matthew is the church mentioned. It was written by an ex-tax gatherer to meet the need of his countrymen.

As a tax gatherer, Matthew had a great need although he was a rich man. When Matthew wrote about himself, he had very little to say. "And as Jesus passed forth from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office and he saith unto him, 'Follow me.' And he arose and followed him." That's Matthew 9:9. And that's all Matthew has to say. But Mark and Luke tell us that Matthew made our Lord a great feast in his house, invited in all of his friends for dinner.

Apparently he was a wealthy man. Matthew tells us particularly nothing about himself because he is presenting another, the Lord Jesus. Now the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in the Hebrew language. It's the only New Testament book that was written in Hebrew. How do we know this? Well, Papias, one of the early church fathers, bishop in Asia Minor who lived toward the end of the first century and into the second, turned to Christ under the preaching of Philip and Bartholomew.

He's the one who tells us that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew. And this is what he said: "Matthew wrote the oracles of the Lord in the Hebrew tongue, and everyone interpreted them as he was able." Eusebius, historian of the third century, wrote: "Matthew having in the first instance delivered his Gospel to his countrymen in their own language afterwards when he was about to leave them and extend his apostolic mission elsewhere, filled up or completed his written Gospel for the use of those whom he was leaving behind as a compensation for his absence."

And it is interesting to see that Irenaeus and Origen confirm this also. There were church fathers in whom we have great confidence. And then Jerome, who came along much later but lived in Palestine and is considered I think the most learned of the Latin fathers, he made this statement: "Matthew the publican called Levi who composed a Gospel in the Hebrew tongue for the special use of those Jews who had believed in Christ and no longer followed the shadow of the law after the revelation of the substance of the Gospel."

Now these are indeed remarkable statements and I've taken time to give them to you to let you know how much the Gospel of Matthew was slanted toward Israel. I underscore the fact that Hebrew is the language that the Jew would've accepted and he wouldn't have accepted any other. You'll recall that when Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, the mob was ready to stone him to death. But he was rescued. Then he stood on the stairs and while the mob still milled about ready to take him, he began to speak to them in the Hebrew tongue.

And he quieted them down just as the Lord had quieted the waves on the Sea of Galilee and they listened to him. And after all, that's the language of religion. You remember what the Lord Jesus said to the woman at the well? He said, "Salvation is of the Jews." That's John 4:22. And Dr. Kurtz, the great German historian has written: "Judaism prepared salvation for mankind and Heathenism prepared mankind for salvation." Also Dr. Gregory writes: "The world religion has been delivered to them."

Isn't it amazing that though the other religions of the world are slanted to a particular group of people, the Gospel given to a small group in that day is a Gospel that's for all mankind? They were to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. That's something that ought to cause the critic to think twice. Now God had prepared these people over the long haul. Two thousand years before Christ came, there was a man living down in Ur of the Chaldees in idolatry, for the whole world had gone into idolatry.

And God called this man, Abram, and said in effect, "Leave this and come to a land which I'll show you." And God made certain covenants with that man. He promised him a land. He promised him a nation. Promised that he'd be a blessing to the nations of the world. Because after the flood and the Tower of Babel, he had to bid goodbye to the human family. But he said to them, "I'll be back because I'm going to prepare salvation for this world."

And so he prepared the descendants of Abraham, drew them aside from the stream of humanity, segregated them, put them in a place where he could school them and train them and then scattered them throughout the world for a purpose. There is purpose in what our God does, you can be sure of that. Three dispersions are predicted in the Bible. Also it predicted that they would be regathered three times.

Up to today, all three dispersions have taken place but only two regatherings. I disagree with those who say that the present nation of Israel is the third regathering. You haven't read the Old Testament if you come to that conclusion, my beloved, because those prophecies concerning that third regathering have not been fulfilled. The first dispersion took place at the time of Jacob and his family. Seventy people went down to Egypt with Jacob.

When they came out, they numbered probably a million and a half. Jacob went down to Egypt at God's direction and there in the brickyards God forged in the fires of slavery these people into a nation. Then he took them out into the wilderness and there he gave them the Mosaic system, a religion. He kept them in that wilderness 40 years to train them and give them the experience of the 40 years with the law.

Then at the end of it, Moses wrote Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is not a repetition of the law, but it's the interpretation of the law with 40 years experience. And God gave to them for the ancient world a doctrinal statement which most theologians say is the greatest doctrinal statement in the Old Testament. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." Deuteronomy 6:4. Or let me translate it a little differently: "Jehovah our Elohim, our plural God, our triune God, is one Jehovah."

God was saying through the Hebrew people to a world of polytheists: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." And these people bore that witness. Now they had an influence. When Homer was writing about the gods upon Mount Olympus and the wars at Troy, David the sweet psalmist of Israel was singing praises to God. It's recognized today that they so influenced the Greeks that many intelligent Greeks repudiated the gods on Mount Olympus and became monotheistic. Socrates wrote that way and Plato wrote that way.

Out yonder in the Far East, there arose after the Babylonian captivity Zoroastrianism, modern Parsism, and out of the ancient world they testified to the oneness of God. Where did they get it? They got it from Israel. "Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our triune God is one Jehovah." Then Israel went into Babylonian captivity because they did turn to idolatry in spite of what God had said. For 70 years they were down yonder in the land of Babylon.

Then by the decree of Cyrus, king of Persia, Israel returned to their own land. During this period, Jesus was born. Our Lord said after his rejection, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Matthew 23:38. "There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." Matthew 24:2. "When?" his disciples asked. He said when you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies. And in AD 70, Titus the Roman came and surrounded that city.

He breached the wall and his hordes marched in. Never has there been a slaughter that compared to that. As a result these people were scattered throughout the world and they took the synagogue with them to every corner of the empire. That synagogue became the springboard by which Paul and the other apostles preached the Gospel in the cities of the Roman Empire. Invariably they were thrown out of the synagogues, so they took the Gospel to the Gentiles.

And friends, the Gospel of Matthew is particularly slanted to them and as we're going to see next time, the Gospel of Matthew presents a King. And the reason that you have the virgin birth of Jesus in Matthew in his genealogy is because he's a King, and that's very important.

Guest (Male): We hope that you're finding this series enlightening. If you'd like more information on this topic of "Why Four Gospels", then we suggest that you get Dr. McGee's booklet by that title or consider getting his four-part sermon series on four CDs. We continue Dr. McGee's five-year study through the whole Word of God on the Through the Bible radio program heard each and every weekday on this station.

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