The Four Gospels
THE FOUR GOSPELS
I have in my Bible here the keynotes to the four books of the New Testament. I will give you my idea of a few of them. Matthew, when he wrote about Christ, writes of Him as the Son of David. He writes from the standpoint of a man that had belonged to the government. If you want to find out about Christ as the Son of David, you will have to turn to Matthew. These four men, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, wrote from different standpoints. Matthew brings out Christ as the Royal Son of David, as the Heir, as Abraham's successor, or from the line of Abraham to take the throne of David. Mark takes Him as a servant. You will find Him going here and there as a servant doing His master's will. Luke brings Him out as the Son of Man, as coming in contact with man; and then we find in the Gospel of John he brings Him out as the Son of God. Luke and Matthew and Mark do not go and trace Him back as John does. John goes past Adam and Abraham and Zachariah and Malachi - sweeps past them all, and brings Him out of the bosom of the Father; and he has with one stroke of the pen settled the question of the divinity of Jesus Christ. No one can read the Gospel of John and believe it, and still doubt the divinity of Jesus Christ, and believe Him to have been a mere man. He spoke of Him as the Son of God, a stranger starting out in the world alone. All through John, He was meeting sinners alone. He met Nicodemus alone, and the woman at the well. I have been interested, some time ago, in taking up for study the characters that had personal interviews with the Son of God. There were nineteen. Peter had two such interviews. No one knows what they said. Take up the history of these nineteen persons and see how they were blessed, unless, indeed, they rejected Him, as Pilate did?