The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - The Jewishness of the 4 Gospels, Part II

[0:00] Gospel of Matthew, chapter 10. So if you would please turn there. And in Matthew 10, we'll be looking at verses 1 through 15.

[0:20] Verse 13.

[0:50] And Andrew his brother. And James the son of Zebedee. And John his brother. Philip and Bartholomew.

[1:03] Thomas and Matthew the tax collector. James the son of Alphaeus. And Thaddeus. Simon the zealot.

[1:15] And Judas Iscariot. The one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them.

[1:27] Do not go in the way of the Gentiles. And do not enter any city of the Samaritans.

[1:38] But rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

[1:54] Heal the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. And cast out demons. Freely you received. Freely you received.

[2:06] Freely give. Do not acquire gold or silver or copper for your money belts. Or a bag for your journey.

[2:19] Or even two coats or sandals. Or a staff. For the worker is worthy of his support. And whatever city or village you enter.

[2:33] Inquire who is worthy in it. And stay at his house until you leave that city. As you enter the house, give it your greeting.

[2:47] If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace.

[3:00] Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet.

[3:11] Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

[3:29] We are currently engaged in an extensive series relating to the Jewishness of the Bible. And today we're going to focus on the Jewishness of the four Gospels, which of course is something that many people are not aware of.

[3:46] Even many Christians are not aware of the Jewishness of the four Gospels. Because there is a natural tendency among Christendom to think that the Old Testament is all about the Jews and the New Testament is all about Christians.

[3:58] And that is not the case at all. While it is true the Old Testament is about the Jews, so is the New Testament. In fact, it is only a minor part of the New Testament that is actually what we would call Christian or Gentile.

[4:15] And we will see that more clearly when we get there. We got just a hint of that in the passage that was just read where our Lord told the Twelve, Do not go in the way of the Gentiles.

[4:31] Well, who are the Gentiles? The Gentiles were the pagan, the heathen. They were people who were not Jews. The Bible has two classifications for humanity.

[4:42] One is Jew, one is Gentile. Everybody who has ever lived, well, no, let me qualify that. Everybody who is living today is one or the other. There was a time when there were no Jews or Gentiles, just people.

[4:57] Because what we think of as the Jewish people didn't actually come into existence until they derived a national identity, and that was born in Egypt when Moses led them out.

[5:10] There they became a nation. Cohesive. Actually, there were Hebrews before that in that they were children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But when you get into Genesis in the earlier portions, what we think of as Jewish people didn't even exist, or Gentiles didn't even exist.

[5:30] What were they? Just people. That's all. Just people. The distinction didn't come to be made until actually Genesis chapter 12, and that's when God singled out Abraham and designated him for all practical purposes as the number one Jew.

[5:50] That's where Jewishness really began for all practical purposes. So, the Jew has been a key figure for not only the Old Testament, but for the New Testament as well.

[6:05] And yet, at the same time, there is no group of people that have been under so much vilification and persecution and ostracism and everything else as the Jewish people.

[6:19] Largely, this is due to the ignorance of the Gentiles, and they just simply do not understand, and we are going to try to clarify some of those misunderstandings. We owe a debt to the Jew that is far greater than you could imagine.

[6:33] In fact, it was Christ himself in talking to the woman at the well when he said, salvation is of the Jews. And, of course, that all points to the Savior who was a Jew and is a Jew and will always be a Jew.

[6:55] We have devoted this entire series with the thought of trying to correct an age-old record as regards the Jew. And I don't know to what extent we will succeed, but I can promise you this, it's already been immensely enlightening to me.

[7:12] So much so that it has given new meaning to me that verse in Genesis 12, when God said to Abraham, in thee and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.

[7:27] Well, there can't really be any question at all that the principal fulfillment of Abraham's seed is the person of Jesus Christ, who will be a direct descendant of Abraham.

[7:43] But the Jew has contributed a great deal besides that. No doubt about it, Christ made the greatest contribution of all when he, as a Jew and as the God-man, suffered that death on the cross for the sins of the entire world.

[8:02] That's, without question, the greatest blessing the world has ever seen or ever will see. But the Jew has been a blessing in a lot of other ways.

[8:13] I remember referring to you just not too long ago how that the Jew comprises two-tenths of one percent of the world's population. And yet, the Jew is responsible for twenty percent of the Nobel Prize winners throughout the world.

[8:32] That is amazing. How do you explain that? How can you rationalize that? It just would appear that there is something of an unusual supernatural order that is taking place there on behalf of the Jew.

[8:48] And yet, as I've said, the Jew has been roundly, soundly persecuted and vilified throughout the centuries. And most of that, probably ninety percent of it, has come from ignorance on the part of those who were doing the persecuting.

[9:05] And still does to this day. Many really do not understand what is involved. So, my indebtedness to the Jew and to the nation of Israel has grown over the years.

[9:16] And by the way, somebody asked me, you're Jewish, aren't you? The name like Wiseman? And I said, no, no, actually I'm not Jew. In fact, I was mistaken to be a Jew by a Jew when I first met Arnold Fruchtenbaum.

[9:33] He was our guide when we went on this six-week geographical, historical tour of Holy Land in 1990. And it was just indescribable.

[9:46] Absolutely. And I won't even try to go there, but indescribable. And when we met, he said, well, with your name Wiseman, he said, I thought that maybe you were a Jew. And I said, no, I'm not Jewish.

[9:57] I said, but I have been mistaken for a Jew because of my name and because of my profile with my nose. And he laughed and I said, actually, I got my Jewish nose as a result of a fight.

[10:13] And he said, well, we got ours that way too. So, he could identify. Beginning next Sunday, in your bulletin, I am going to put in the first of a series that we will probably run for an entire year.

[10:33] and I'm calling it the Jew of the Week. And you would never guess, don't you tell them, Marie, you would never guess who we are going to lead with next Sunday.

[10:51] The Jew of the Week. It will be something that you can anticipate and you will find it very interesting and in some regards, you'll find it surprising when you read.

[11:01] You say, I didn't know he was Jewish. I didn't know she was Jewish. Oh yes, there are many of them. And many of them, many Jews, have changed their names so that they don't sound so Jewish because it could be a detriment.

[11:22] It could eliminate you from a job possibility or from a contract or from a connection or from something or other. and they sometimes did it out of necessity where they changed their names so they wouldn't be so Jewish sounding.

[11:35] You are going to be in for what I trust will be a very profitable education in regard to the Jewish people and of course we owe this, this book to the Jew.

[11:55] To the God who inspired the 40 plus writers over 1500 years who compiled these under inspiration of the Spirit of God and to the best of our knowledge every human contributor to this book was a Jew.

[12:20] And even the likelihood of one possibly not by birth would be Dr. Luke. We don't know this for sure. But even Dr. Luke was in all likelihood a proselyte to Judaism.

[12:37] He was probably born a Gentile and converted to the Jewish faith later. So virtually all of the authors of this book Old and New Testament are Jewish.

[12:51] We became somewhat involved in our last session about the compilation of the Bible and the connection between the Old and the New Testaments and I'd like to address that for just a moment and by the way there may be more Q&A this morning and we'll do our best to treat that.

[13:09] But we have a Bible because of the desire of the Creator to reveal Himself to His creatures made in His likeness and in His image.

[13:24] That's why we have a Bible. The whole purpose of it is to communicate. God can be generally known because of creation. That is things made by God can be known just by looking and witnessing the heavens and the seas and the mountains and reason and logic tells us that somebody is responsible for this.

[13:52] This stuff didn't just happen. Someone was behind this and that's what we refer to as general general information or general revelation.

[14:06] Anybody can see it and by the way it is on the basis of general revelation that the apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 1 that all men are without excuse because God has put it into the hearts of men the ability to use reason and logic and make deductions and process information and we can see all of the things that are made and we know we know we can't make those things we can't do that somebody did how and when who is that someone and Paul reminds us that God is known through the things that are seen and understood that he exists.

[14:49] It is in the heart and mind inherently that there is a God regardless of what the atheist or others may tell us. So that's general inspiration but there is inspiration via the written word the Bible and incarnation via the living word as in Christ.

[15:11] So those are three vehicles of revelation. Number one creation in general. Number two the incarnation of Jesus Christ because he came for the express purpose of making known the father and he came to do those things that please him.

[15:28] He came to reveal the father to man. And then the third basis of information and revelation is what we have in the Bible the written word. these comprise man's opportunities and availabilities to know something about God.

[15:48] And they are inseparably linked to the issue of authority. We won't go there but I'll just briefly give you the 2nd Timothy 3 16 and 17 all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

[16:02] That means it is God breathed. When you and I talk we breathe as we are talking. We inhale and we exhale and when we utter words we are exhaling we are breathing out.

[16:17] That is exactly what the word of God is. It is the breath of God and it is breathed into these human instruments so that we do not have any human authors of the Bible.

[16:30] We have human writers we have human vehicles we have human pen men but we don't have any human authors. The only author is divine that is God.

[16:44] He breathed into men that which he wanted recorded and they faithfully recorded what he inspired them to write. That is the meaning of inspiration.

[16:56] Let me just say this while we are talking about it. In my estimation this is the greatest area of difficulty and misunderstanding as regards the issue of authority and the very being and existence of God.

[17:12] Inspiration suffers from so much misunderstanding and this is another reason by the way for the birthing of Christianity Clarified because inspiration whether or not it is valid absolutely everything is hanging on it.

[17:28] Everything. Are these books we have in the Bible that we refer to as 66 independent books are they given by inspiration are they really from God or are they just people writing about their philosophy and their understanding of life and values?

[17:46] It is the latter which probably most people understand it to be and that is woefully deficient. It is God's word. It is the breath of God and he has seen fit not only to inspire it but to preserve it and the question that comes to mind sometimes and I've dealt with it a number of times with people and perhaps you have too how do we know that we have all of the Bible and how do we know that there aren't things in the Bible that maybe we shouldn't have?

[18:16] Didn't Martin Luther have problems with the book of James and thought maybe it shouldn't be in there because it seemed to contradict what Paul had said about justification by faith? And isn't James talking about justification by works and how do you reconcile those things?

[18:31] If the Bible is the word of God you can be certain there are no contradictions. God does not speak out of both sides of his mouth. If the Bible is a compilation of just human authors who over a period of time sit down well let me see I think I think I will write.

[18:57] Always wanted to be a writer. What shall I write? Let me see. See how this grabs you. In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.

[19:14] And the earth was how am I doing so far? Is it you know some people actually think that's the way it happened. You know that's the way it came about. If God did not take deliberate steps to guard and guide the insertion of the books that he wanted to make up the Bible, Old and New Testament, if he did not super intend that affair so that we don't have anything missing and we don't have something in the Bible that shouldn't be there, if he didn't take steps to do that, do you not see how the whole purpose of inspiration is defeated?

[19:56] Or if it is partly written from God and partly written from man, how in the world can you distinguish which is which? Who should decide that? So it always comes back to this one issue, authority.

[20:12] I have said in the 40 plus years I have been with you and I am not changing it now. It seems to be more profoundly true now than it was then and that is the issue is authority.

[20:25] Always has been, always will be. What will we accept as our final authority? For the Christian, it has to be the word of God.

[20:39] No, of course we don't understand everything in it. Of course there are puzzling things in it. Of course we have not plumbed the depths of this book. Actually, you shouldn't expect to.

[20:52] If this is a product of the infinite, eternal God, you think you're going to get it all? We haven't scratched the scratch on the surface. An infinite God has provided an infinite kind of book.

[21:05] This book has depths to it, the likes of which we can't even imagine. And one day we will know better. Much better than what we know now. But it always comes down to this, this book.

[21:19] And when these men were raised up of God to author these books in the Old Testament, you know who they were? They were farmers and herdsmen and priests and occasionally a king thrown in and laborers and slaves and just ordinary run-of-the-mill people.

[21:41] Fishermen. None of them probably would have even had a chance being admitted to Harvard or Princeton. These are the people that God used to pen this book.

[21:56] And God was pleased to use human instruments to do it. You know, he could have. Let the world at the time hear that voice from heaven just as it was heard when Jesus was baptized, God could have taken everything in this book, all of the Hebrew and the Aramaic and the Old Testament and the Greek and the New Testament.

[22:21] He could have penned it personally in heaven. He could have just created it. Just like he said, let there be light and there was light. Let the word of God appear. And there it is. Genesis to Revelation.

[22:32] Just like that. No human beings at all. And then he could have announced to the world, hey world, here's the Bible, plop, and it comes down just like manna from heaven.

[22:46] But he didn't do that. Why didn't he? Because one reason I know of is because God wants his word to have a human dimension to it.

[23:04] a human flavor. That's why he utilized human beings. He filters his word through their vocabulary, through their personality, through their writing style.

[23:19] So what you get in the writings of Moses, radically different from what you read in the writings of Daniel or of Solomon. The styles are different, but there is the human element.

[23:32] And God, graciously condescends to employ humanity in these efforts. He is condescending to do that.

[23:45] God is teeming with humanity. He loves to do that. He loves to involve his creation. And you know, he has done the same thing in the person of Christ.

[24:00] Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, existed from eternity past with the Father and the Spirit. He did not have his beginning in Bethlehem.

[24:14] His humanity began in Bethlehem. It was his deity in the form he existed and I don't know what that was, but in the form he existed before he was enfleshed, before he was incarnated, why didn't he just come that way?

[24:40] Why the manger thing? Why Mary? Why Bethlehem? Why didn't he just arrive on the scene and bypass all of the birth stuff?

[24:53] I think the answer is the same as we just gave. God is pleased to employ humanity in his plan, and he condescends to do so.

[25:04] Think of it, if you will. God, creator, sustainer of the universe, partners with his creatures. that should not only make us profoundly grateful, but profoundly humble as well, that God would be willing to do that.

[25:27] And 2 Peter tells us that the scripture does not come by any private means, or individual means, or it's not brought into existence by any individual human effort, but holy men of God spoke, or wrote, as they were born along by the Spirit of God.

[25:49] And the word for born along there is interesting because the same Greek word is used in the book of Acts in connection with Paul's shipwreck, and it talks about the ship being born along, sustained, moved by the waves, and it's the same word that is used, that God bore men along, sustained them, carried them, held them up, supported them, as they wrote his word.

[26:21] And the end result is, we have an infallible word of God. Now, realize, of course, we do not have the original autographs.

[26:32] What we have are copies. translations, and many different languages involved.

[26:43] I don't know how many thousands of languages the Bible has been translated in all over the world, and it's the only book that has enjoyed that kind of translation, and when you stop and think about the importance of it, it's the only book that is worthy of that kind of effort, and it has gone all throughout the world in just an imaginable number of languages.

[27:04] And yet, in those original autographs, and we have no idea where they are, or if they even survive, but copies were meticulously made from them, and if you had any idea, the painstaking effort that went into manuscript copying, no Xerox machines, had to do it all by hand, and the meticulous, minute details that they had to engage in in order to copy the word of God, it would forever put to bed the accusation that some people make, well, you know, the Bible's full of mistakes.

[27:44] I can't tell you how many people I've had tell me that when you try to give them a passage of scripture or say, this is what the Bible, well, the Bible isn't always right, is it? I mean, it does have its mistakes in it, doesn't it?

[27:57] Well, the Bible has got a lot of places in it where there appear to be problems that we're not always able to resolve. Most of them we have been able to resolve with enlightenment, archaeology, etc.

[28:12] But suffice it to say that when somebody tells you that, well, you know, the Bible's got mistakes in it, errors, etc. It was just written by man, etc. I never fail to ask him, you think it has errors and mistakes in it?

[28:29] I wasn't aware of that. I've been reading it for years. Here's my Bible. Could you point out just a few of them to me? Oh, well, I'm not a Bible scholar, but I know they're in there somewhere.

[28:44] Well, no, they're not. But they heard someone say, someone who was very intelligent, they heard them say, the Bible can't be trusted.

[28:57] It's not scientific. It's not up to date. It's got mistakes in it. And they go with it. Because this person has a Ph.D.

[29:09] And if you have a Ph.D., you are not to be questioned. And I can't resist saying this because it was a Ph.D. who told me this.

[29:20] He said, Marv, sometimes Ph.D. means piled higher and deeper. Sometimes it does. And don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for learning, for academia, and I think you should get all of the learning that you can possibly get because otherwise you don't have any idea how ignorant you are.

[29:41] But when you get a certain amount of learning, then you can appreciate your ignorance. And what that does is it spurs you on to more learning, and that's a good thing. So we're right back to this book, the Bible, and our indebtedness that we have to the Jewish people.

[30:00] These are the individuals whom God used to give us this book. And isn't it interesting, look at how so many of them have been thanked for it.

[30:20] By persecution, by death, by holocaust. That's the thanks that the Gentile world gives to the Jewish people.

[30:35] I want to close with one passage of scripture, and it is found in Romans. Romans chapter nine, it's a verse that you're familiar with.

[30:52] Paul says, I am telling the truth in Christ. I'm not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.

[31:11] for I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the temple service, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.

[31:51] So, Paul, earlier, as the Jew, Saul of Tarsus, now as a completed Jew, Paul the apostle, expresses his concern, and his prayer to God for his fellow countrymen, because he recognizes that at one time he was just like them, same place where they were.

[32:20] So, what's the upshot of all of this revelation business? Why are we given this information? What's it all about? It's for the sole purpose that we might be able to connect with the God who made us, so that we might be able to establish a connection to him, so that we might come to know him, and love him, and appreciate him.

[32:47] And you may be here this morning, hearing some things for the first time, and you're not even sure that what this preacher is saying is true. You're not even sure whether you believe this. Well, I can understand that.

[32:58] And no one wants to be naive, so in the name of intellectual integrity, would you be willing privately to search this out and to discover for yourself whether these things are so, to kind of be a Berean, you know, and follow the evidence wherever it leads you, because truth is the most worthy pursuit that you will ever undertake.

[33:27] and I would like to close with a word of prayer, and I want this, if you are in agreement, to be this prayer, to be your prayer, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if this is a position that you hold and you would like to voice it, would you pray with me, please?

[33:52] Living Father, I don't even know for sure that you are there. but I do know one thing for sure, if you are there, and if you are who and what the Bible says you are, you ought to be able to show that to me, you ought to be able to convince me, and I'm willing to be convinced, but I need evidence, I need more than what this man has said, I need more than what some other Christians have said, I need to be convinced in my own heart and mind, because I don't want to make a commitment to something that is just mere fluff, or just religious tradition, I want to be circumspectful about this, I want to weigh it and analyze it, I have to have a satisfied mind, and I am praying that if you really are who and what the Bible says you are, then I do want to know you, and I want to make myself open and available to truth that you have, and I'm asking you to reveal yourself to me however you choose, and I'll be able to recognize that when you do.

[35:09] Would you make that your prayer? It's just kind of like a prayer for truth or a prayer for honesty. No one wants to believe a lie, no one wants to believe a fairy tale, no one wants to stake their future on something that they really don't know for certain.

[35:28] So I trust that you will be willing in the name of intellectual integrity to follow this wherever it leads you, and that you will be as open-minded and honest as you can be in trying to obtain the truth.

[35:43] And Father, we do thank you for season of the year. Thank you for the word that you've provided. Thank you for the depths of it. Thank you for the simplicity of it.

[35:54] Thank you most of all for it giving a clear revealed record of the extreme length to which you went in order to buy back a fallen earth, to redeem mankind, and to make us possess the very righteousness that you have yourself, because we receive it as a gift from Jesus Christ.

[36:22] Thank you again for the season of the year, for minds and hearts focused upon Christ, as they perhaps are no other time during the year. We trust that you take full advantage of that.

[36:33] Thank you for the presence of each one here this morning. We believe no one is here by accident. May what we have heard be something upon which we can build for further truth.

[36:43] In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[36:59] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[37:09] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.