[Steven Britt] Well, the 4th of July is coming up, so I thought I might give you a little bit of a historical talking point for your 4th of July party. I'm going to talk about something that happened on July 25th, 1776. If you were to pick up a newspaper, from that date, July 25th, 1776, if that newspaper where the New England Chronicle, it would tell you about something that happened in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. From the balcony of the Old State House at 1:00 p.m before a cheering crowd, it would tell you that Colonel Thomas Crass, publicly read the Declaration of Independence for the first time, in that city.

Now, if you picked up another publication from the same date, say if you picked up The Continental Journal, from July 25th, 1776, it will tell you about what would seem to be the same event taking place the same date, the same place, the Old State House in Boston, at the same time, 1:00 pm, same cheering crowd with one little difference. Rather than being read by Colonel Thomas Crass, The Continental Journal says that it was Sheriff William Greenleaf, who publicly read the Declaration of Independence for the first time that day.

Now, this is an interesting conundrum right in history, because no living person can testify about this. And no sources from that time will tell you one way or the other. If you go back and look at other newspapers from that week, that month, that year, they'll tell you much the same story, but you'll find more evidence in support of one or the other, no resolution to tell you what actually took place. So what does that mean for us looking at this as amateur historians? Does that mean we throw the whole thing away and say, "Well, none of this took place. There's no such thing as a Declaration of Independence if these people can't agree."

That's the view that is often taken regarding the Bible, when minor differences in the texts come up, they end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. “Well, that's absurd.” Of course, we have two newspaper accounts, telling us very similar things. There's something a little different that maybe we don't understand yet. Why do we believe in the Bible? What reasons do we have? You know, there's all kinds of evidence out there. We can look to external evidence, things outside the Bible. We can look at science and creation itself and start to understand about how God created the universe.

Romans 1:20 tells us that the works of God are evident from the creation. We can go to other external sources like secular history, and archaeology, all of those things, even geography, comparing with the Scriptures. And you know what they can't really prove the Bible, they can confirm a few of the details. But the Bible is a much richer source of information than those are in fact. They can tell us that well, yes, they had camels at this or that time in history, and this or that place, but beyond that, they can't really verify the story. So they're limited.

We can even look at fulfilled prophecy, we can look at philosophy, there's philosophical arguments and logical arguments, even probabilistic arguments out there, all kinds of external things we can look at. But there's also internal evidence. Within the Bible itself, you can show how it validates itself. In fact, the Bible proves its own reliability and credibility as historical truth. And it does that much the same way that all other historical documents do so. So today, we're going to take a look at the Gospels. And we're going to come back to this, what I'll call the Declaration drama, and fill in the rest of the story and observe a few things there.

But we'll look at the Gospels today because it's the unique point within Scripture. It's some of the most exciting and important and interesting narrative of the entire Bible. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, great miracles He did, great wisdom He spoke, and all the things that He did for the fulfillment of tremendous prophecies. I mean, earth-shattering things. The entire Bible rests on that story and understanding it as history, not just a story. And we have four separate accounts of it, and that's critical. We can use that, in fact, to critically verify and evaluate their truthfulness as witnesses.

So we'll talk about first what are the Gospels and why were they written. So if you've got your Bibles, so go ahead and turn to Acts 1:8. You're given the importance of what the Gospels cover, I mean, we have to know, we have to know for sure, with absolute certainty that what we are reading is history. This is what our faith rests on. Acts 1:8 Christ is appearing to the disciples after He has been resurrected, He's about to depart from them, and they're told to wait for the Holy Spirit.

So Acts 1:8, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." So Christ did something important here, He charged them gave them responsibility for being witnesses, to go out and tell what they had seen and what they had heard. So that's what they did. They went out and they told people verbally because that's how you do it, right? You go and you tell people.

Well, over time, as we know, we read through the book of Acts, the disciples, and eventually, the apostles started to be persecuted. Their voices were being silenced under threat of death, and many of them were put to death. And then if they escaped, that, eventually they got old, right, they got old and started dying of old age. So what do you do in that situation, when the living memory of an event is starting to pass away for whatever reason? You write it down. So that's why we have the four Gospels, they were written in response to this problem. The problem of carrying on their testimony, carrying out this charge from Jesus Christ forward for all generations, however long it might be, until Christ would return.

So the four Gospels are what remains of their witness testimony for us today. And that's for us to judge the truthfulness of as witnesses. And witnesses have always been an important part of judgment, something that the Bible deals with, in many different ways. God gets a lot of instruction on judgment. In Deuteronomy 30:19, God says, "I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you.” Well, God can do that. He can call heaven and earth and they've been around they've seen everything, perfect record, unbroken.

You and I can't exactly ask heaven and earth about the truthfulness of things, we have to evaluate the words of men. And we have to use the tools that God gave us to do that, reason, intellect, observation, and even studying into the word of God to verify if these things are true. Come with me to Deuteronomy 19. We'll start in verse 15. We'll see some of God's instruction on dealing with human witnesses. When you deal with human witnesses, it's a little different than dealing with the heavens and the earth as witnesses, you have to evaluate their truthfulness.

And Deuteronomy 19, is where we find God's instruction on doing that. Deuteronomy 19:15 says, "One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established." So that's the very first safeguard, right. It had to be the integrity of the people, maybe one person would come forth and lie and try to get somebody in trouble for something they didn't do. They would have the audacity within, you know, the nation of Israel, where God was really their king, to do a sinful thing like that. But to get two or three, hopefully, you wouldn't be able to find that many worthless people without the integrity, to tell the truth.

But if you did, there's more to it. "By the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established. If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, both the men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days." So they would have to come into court. Verse 18, "The judges shall make careful inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness, was testified falsely against his brother, you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; and so you shall put away the evil from among you."

So this was a serious matter sorting out truth when a matter was brought before the judges. And what they did we read over in verse 18, that they should make careful inquiry. Make careful inquiry. What kind of things do you look for within witness testimony? So today, I'm going to give you four self-validating characteristics of the Gospel's testimony taking cues from how we evaluate the testimony of witnesses in a court.

So our first point, it's a simple one, but a critical one. So the Gospels are distinct from one another. They're different, the Gospels are distinct from one another. Why does that matter? We just read it, one witness, is not enough. Okay, well, what if you have two people, but they're telling you the exact same thing? Well, that's not much different than if I had two copies of The New England Chronicle, it doesn't add any information. It doesn't really give me any more witness than just one copy, because it's a copy.

So even though two people can show up and tell you the same story, even if they tell you in different words, if they only include the exact same level of detail, right, they can both tell you that the man got into white a van and sped away. But neither one can tell you for sure whether or not he was wearing a ski mask, neither one saw. They can't tell you if it's raining, but they can tell you the license plate number. All right, they come in with the same level of detail, you ask them questions, then what happens?

If you make a careful inquiry, one of two things will probably happen. Either they will shut down, clam up, stick to exactly the script they had. And you won't get the level of detail that a real-life account would have, or they can answer a basic question relevant to just existing on an everyday basis about the situation. Or one of them will kind of fudge something along the way add to the lie to seem more credible. And then it all unravels because then the other person isn't in on it anymore. And you can spot the differences.

So a careful inquiry drives that looking for the independence of witnesses, all right not just having more than one person, but having truly independent witnesses. So for example, today, a way that a lot of the news reporting goes on The Associated Press is the one who actually does the reporting there, the actual witness, and then, you know, 10, 15 news organizations pick up the story run with it write it a little bit differently, put their own spin and interpretation on it. But the main facts are coming from just one witness. And they all trust it, but if that one witness wrong, it doesn't matter how many other "witnesses," are put behind it.

Now, when you have separate reports, though, from different sources, truly different sources that include and omit different facts and emphasize maybe one piece of the story more than the other. So give a little more detail while this one emphasizes something a little different, they end up validating each other and doing so strongly. To the point where the main facts even if you can't quite reconcile every word that they said, the main facts can be thoroughly established and trusted.

So we can ask the question are the Gospels really distinct from one another? Let's go to Luke 1:1-4. Luke, in fact, gives us a little bit of a preamble to his gospel, where he explains a little bit about what he's doing. And it's helpful for this discussion. Luke 1:1, Luke says, "Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which has been fulfilled among us." So many have already taken in hand to put this narrative together. Luke says other people are out there writing about what has happened. Verse 2, "Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us." So he's saying he's not necessarily an eyewitness, but he's heard from eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, people entrusted with this information. "It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things which you were instructed."

That's our goal today also to know the certainty of these things by putting it together. So Luke put together an orderly account, he's claiming his independence in compiling his gospel right here. That's what this amounts to. He's saying that he used sources. His sources were the eyewitnesses he talked to, and the ministers of the word, eyewitnesses and people who had talked to them, who went about preaching. He got the story from all the sources that he could. Could those sources have included by this point, the gospels of Matthew and Mark? Possibly, but they're not the only sources. There are definitely not the only sources. Of course, we believe that the gospel of John was not written until considerably later by a number of decades. There's a reason for that we'll talk about.

So I want to give you a few facts on the content. I can hardly get through a message without giving you some statistics. So all four of the Gospels contain at least some exclusive content. Okay, I'll give you the numbers on these. When I say exclusive content, I mean, a passage for which there is no parallel passage, to tell it from a different angle in another gospel.

The gospel of Matthew, 35% of Matthew is exclusive to that book. gospel of Luke, similar percentage, about 35% of Luke. These, of course, will vary slightly by exactly the people doing the research or comparisons. But for Matthew and Luke, both hover around 35% having unique content. The gospel of John, 90% of the gospel of John is unique to the gospel of John. That's a big number. That's impressive. I left Mark for last, what's it going to be, 3% of Mark. Now before you “Aww” the 3% of Mark is not found detail for detail elsewhere. But that means that 97% of Mark is validated by the other three gospels in some way.

Okay, so when I say a parallel passage, they're not exactly the same in word, you know, it's not that 97% of Mark is a quotation from somewhere else. It's not even that it's found detail for detail somewhere else, it's an independent witness. Okay, so even… we'll see some examples of verses where we'll read it in Mark, and we'll read about the same even in one of the other Gospels, and they don't give the same level of detail. Now, if I flipped Mark's number around, I have to flip John's number around, that means that only 10% of John's book can be corroborated by the other Gospels. What do we make of that? Why is it that way? We'll get there.

It turns out that these Gospels are not just different in the details and the information they share, but also in their tones of perspectives. And they differ in very specific manners that bring us to our second point. The second point is that the Gospels are authentic. The Gospels are authentic. And if we're going to clarify our terms, to be distinct means are written by different authors. To be authentic means they are written by genuine authors, the people that they are ascribed to that they actually are written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who lived in that time and place.

So if we make a careful inquiry here, 2000 years later, we have to evaluate based on what we know from the Scriptures, from the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament are these people who they say they are. And we'll find that, in fact, they're distinct in specific ways that confirm their authenticity. I thought it was an interesting point when I learned this because I guess, never paid attention to it. But the authorship of these four books is not claimed in the texts explicitly. Luke never comes out and says, "Hello, my name is Luke. I'm a physician. And I'm here to tell you this."

John never says, "I, the apostle John and writing this to you." No, simply their names were at the top of the book, the Gospel according to Luke, no personal statement from the author explaining who they are. And so this authorship is considered traditional, there's no challenge to it within early Christian history as far back as can be traced. You can go all the way back to the earliest manuscripts, right around 100 AD. And they have these names already attached to them at that early point, still within living memory of the events.

And it's important also to notice at the outset here, that they were on separate scrolls, they didn't have books on nicely bound together like this, like you and I do, we had all four Gospels in one shot. Your congregation might have the gospel according to Matthew, and that was the only one it had, or this one up here in a Gentile area might have just the gospel of Mark. And another might be really fortunate to have both Luke and John at their congregation. Archaeologically, that's what's been found at early Christian sites.

Now, a few decades later in the history, you start consistently finding all four Gospels in every congregation because they got the idea, we want all the information, we want the whole story and they shared them. It makes sense. So we have no reason to believe that anyone other than these authors… there's no legitimate challenge to that within the Christian tradition. But you know, you wait a few hundred years and skeptics start raising this issue. Well, these people might not even exist, these could just the forgeries. Well, we can validate and we'll go through all four the Gospels, just briefly to validate that, who they say they are matches what they wrote.

Let's start with the gospel of Mark. You know who exactly is Mark? It's not obvious from reading his gospel, but traditionally, it's ascribed to John Mark, a man who interacted with Peter, Paul, and Barnabas. John Mark, you can find a little bit about his interaction with Peter in Acts 12:12. It's where Peter had just come back from visiting the Gentiles seeing that God poured out His Spirit on them. And that the way of salvation was open to them as a massive revelation to the Church, you could say that Peter had these Gentiles on the brain thing going on when he stayed at the house of Mark's mother, right after that trip, where God sent him to the Gentiles.

So Mark would have probably met Peter at that time if he didn't know him already and would have heard from him. Now, Mark would have gotten a little bit of his gospel information from Peter certainly, that way. If you go to Acts 15, that's where you find that he's the person who also worked and traveled with Paul and Barnabas. In fact, they had a disagreement over him that's why he comes up. Who did Paul and Barnabas preach to? Again, the Gentiles. The Gentiles. So Mark's specific background, whether he was a Gentile or not, we don't really know explicitly he's not talked about. He's a pretty minor person to pick out. If you're going to just make up a gospel, why ascribe it to this guy of all people.

But if it is this Mark, we might expect his gospel to be more focused or tailored to Gentiles, just based on what we read in the book of Acts, nothing based on the claims of Mark itself, because it makes no such claim. Come with me to Mark 7:2-4, we'll see an example of how Mark treats certain information in his gospel. Mark 7:2, so some of the Pharisees and scribes came together to Jesus, and “they saw some of His disciples eat bread with defile, that is, with unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands in a special way, holding the tradition of the elders."

Okay, so it seems like he's told us enough, you and I probably know what he's talking about. But Mark doesn't stop there, he really has to get this point across, says, “When they come from the marketplace, ‘You're not going to believe this guys, they do not eat unless they wash. There are many other things which they have received and hold, like the washing of cups, the washing of pitchers, copper vessels, guys, they wash their couches.’” This is the way Mark's telling it, that, you know, it's not good enough for him to just say, oh, they accused them of eating with unwashed hands and move on with the story. Because to his readers, that wouldn't make any sense culturally.

But if we go to the same story in Mark, the parallel passage in Mark 15. Sorry, Matthew 15. We won't find a parallel for Mark in Mark, but in Matthew 15, we see the same story played out very differently. Well, with very different details. The main facts are still the same of what happened, of course, that's the whole point. Matthew 15:1-2, So again, “The scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus saying, 'Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? But they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.'" And Matthew moves right on with the story.

Okay, Mark does this in many other places. He tailors his message for Gentiles, he explains Jewish customs. Matthew doesn't? Why would Matthew do that? We can move on to Matthew since we're in his book, who was Matthew traditionally? He was one of the disciples, he was a Jew from Galilee. A Jew from Galilee. They were known to be simple people, but religious people. So he grows up hearing prophecy, his entire life about the coming Messiah. Then he meets that Messiah and gets to pal around with Him, be one of His disciples, one of His closest friends. We're also told he's a tax collector.

Do you know that the book of Matthew contains the most Old Testament prophecy quotes of any Gospel? Thirty-one percent of Matthew's entire gospel are quotes of Old Testament prophecy. Does that fit the context of who we're told Matthew as a disciple was, that he was a Jew from Galilee? Well yeah, it absolutely does. This is the long-awaited fulfillment of the prophecy he's learned about his entire life. It's incredibly exciting, he goes through it meticulously point by point wherever he can emphasize how it fulfills that prophecy.

And in doing so, along the way, as we just saw, he takes a Jewish cultural background for granted in ways that's not obvious, even to us. You know, we read and study about that background, but not being part of it, it's things we don't always pick up. I mentioned, he was a tax collector, we'll talk about that in a little more detail later. But if you go to Matthew 17, since we're close by, Matthew 17:24-27. This is part of Matthew's exclusive content.

Matthew 17:24, what kind of stuff did he think to include that the other gospel writers didn't? "When they had come to Capernaum, those who received the temple tax came to Peter and said, ‘Does your Teacher not pay the temple tax?’” And you can read the rest of the account there through verse 27. You know, Jesus felt that He didn't have to pay the temple tax, but to satisfy them not to cause offense, he performed a miracle and they pulled the coins out of a fish. Now, the tax man or supposedly the tax man is the only one who remembers the story where Jesus paid His taxes.

It fits. It was relevant to his background. You know, another point on that if we go to Matthew 27, Matthew 27:66, we won't read a whole lot from there. I don't want to get bogged down in the story, but just the detail that Matthew recorded. Matthew 27:66, after Christ had been taken off the cross and was put into the tomb, says, "They went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard." He's very careful, in fact, gives you a whole narrative there that none of the other Gospels give about protection against fraud. What do tax people deal with all the time? Fraud, he was primed by his profession to notice those kinds of things.

Now, if that sounds a little bit out there, considering the fact that both of those are exclusive to the book of Matthew, if you were a forger, some clever forger trying to think of how to really sell this story, would you remember that level of detail to only include those things in Matthew, because he's supposed to be a tax man. And to make sure very carefully to leave them out of the other three Gospels? That sounds a lot more outlandish to me.

All right, let's go to Matthew 1. Matthew 1 is where we find a little bit more of the cultural element. So in verse 2 of Matthew 1, we find the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and we know that there's another genealogy in Luke, and we know that they're a little different from each other. Now, the way that I knew they were different is different from the way I'm about to tell you now, this was new to me. So Matthew, 1:1, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob…" sounds like pretty standard fare for the Bible, right? This is the way all the genealogies in the Old Testament are done.

This is the Hebrew way of expressing a genealogy even starts with the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, just like many of those in the book of Genesis begin. The book of the genealogy of Noah, etc. Well, if we come to Luke 3… well, before I go there, we'll notice this. What's particular about this? Well, what is culturally a Hebrew tradition in this, is it just it matches the Old Testament? What's the novelty? It's that it begins at a distant point in the past, Abraham begot Isaac, and it works its way down to Jesus Christ, but Luke 3:23.

Luke 3:23 is where we find the beginning of Luke's genealogy. Now, we already read the preamble to Luke, where he's writing to a guy named Theophilus, a Greek. His writing his account for Greeks, and he does his whole book very much in the style of a Greek history. In fact, the whole preamble that he did, in Luke 1, was much like the beginning of other historical books written in Greek. But Luke 3:23, "Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, son of Heli", working backwards in time from Jesus all the way back to Adam. So he zips right past Abraham, he goes all the way back to Adam. It's the Greek style of doing genealogy goes from the present back. Whereas the Jewish or you know, before the Jews, even the Hebrew style of doing genealogies was from distant past down to present. It's interesting. It's not the most important thing in the Bible, but it shows us some consistency about who these people say they are.

So now, we've talked about Luke a little bit, where we've already gotten to him. He wrote an orderly account for Greeks in the style of a Greek history. He tells us that he's not necessarily an eyewitness at that point, we know that later. He travels with the apostles and preaching the gospel. And so he writes the book of Acts, and many points firsthand. But much of his gospel comes from eyewitness accounts, and he goes outside of simply the disciples in getting that. He includes unique events and details that had to come, in fact, from outside of the 12 disciples, and we'll see a little bit of that.

Now, the one thing that we know about Luke, I've already mentioned it, he was a doctor, a physician. How do you know that? Where did you get that from? I know somebody told me at some point, I just believe them. Well, the person who told that person might have been the apostle Paul. He tells us in Colossians 4:14 for 14, it's the only place that we find a reference to Luke being a physician. And Paul doesn't go out of the way to tell us this. And that's very important because it makes it more trustworthy. Paul doesn't go out of the way to tell us about my friend, Luke, who's a doctor, you need to know that he's a physician. He simply says, “Luke, the beloved physician,” in passing mentions, what his job was, what his profession was, it's mentioned nowhere else. And yet, if we analyze a few passages in the book of Luke, we find consistency with him being a physician. Okay, it's important within the gospel itself, he doesn't claim himself to be a doctor or physician. But lets the kind of unique medical details that he notices that no other gospel records.

Luke 6:6, this is an account of healing that occurred in all four Gospels. "Now it happened on another Sabbath also, that He entered the synagogue,” Christ entered a synagogue “and taught. And a man was there whose right hand was withered." Okay. None of the other gospel writers included which hand it was. And if you're a person who wasn't there, and you're a doctor, you might be inclined to ask which hand was it? Whereas the others were just telling the story. It was miraculous, the guy's hand was withered and he healed it. Which hand? Seems like a medical detail that a doctor might notice where others didn't.

Luke 22:44, another exclusive to Luke. I guess that story wasn't an exclusive, the detail was exclusive. In fact, that story has parallel as I mentioned, just not on that one detail. Luke 22:44, Christ suffering, before he was delivered up. "Being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. That His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." This is a medical curiosity. The other Gospels do not record this, a man sweating blood as a doctor, I've never seen that. Maybe how Luke felt about it. So he thought it was important to emphasize or to bring it out in his gospels, whereas the others didn't. It's not recorded.

Luke 22:50, since we're already here, is where one of them struck the servant of the high priests, we learn elsewhere that that was Peter, who “struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.” So all the Gospels tell us about this incident. But only Luke tells us that it was the right ear. Well, actually, I'm sorry, it was only in John that we find the other account of this. So that's where we find out it's Peter. But John doesn't tell us it's the right ear, only Luke tells us it's the right ear. So we see some consistency with the idea of Luke being a doctor writing this, not that he made that claim before writing it. But elsewhere from the book of Colossians were told he was a physician, and that matches, who were told wrote this book. That's pretty cool.

How about John? The gospel of John, traditionally, we understand this to be written by the apostle John, who was a disciple of Jesus Christ. One of the 12, and that it was written near the end of his life. So I told you a fact about the book of John, that 90% of his gospel is not found in parallel in other Gospels, right? There are common sense reasons for that, that fit who the author is supposed to be. There was no need to rehash the things that had already been thoroughly established by three witnesses if those three gospels had already been written by that point, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Additionally, near the end of his life, the story is dying off with the people who tell it. So he has a need to tell things that weren't told and preserve things that weren't told in those three Gospels. So that's why you have so much unique content. And one other fact, John refers to himself as the disciple that Jesus loved. And because of his special friendship, special relationship with Christ, he saw and heard things that no one else saw and heard. He was with Christ in places where the other gospel writers weren't with him, so he could report on it.

If we go to… just quickly, we go to John 1:43. I want you to know what kind of exclusive content John includes. Here's an example. "The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, He found Philip and said to them, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter." Okay, the calling of Philip, not recorded in the Gospels, and neither is the calling of Andrew, Simon, or Nathanael. These are important things to the people who were coming to believe, who wanted to know who these other disciples and apostles were, where they came from their origin story. And only John gives that, for those four, Andrew, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael. It's not critical information. But it gives a certain interesting background to people who would be interested in this at the beginning of our faith.

So if we go to Matthew 26, so I told you that he saw and heard things that nobody else saw and heard. And we could rely on John to tell us that, to tell us that he went away privately with Christ at some point or the other. But in Matthew 26 we see Matthew telling us that. So we get independent verification of that fact, from Matthew. Matthew 26:36, This is again, going out before Christ was going to be delivered over and put on trial, "Jesus came with him to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples, ‘Sit here while I go and pray over there.’ And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed." Doesn't name John by name, but if you look elsewhere, the two sons of Zebedee, were James and John.

So Matthew doesn't write about what they discussed, because Matthew wasn't there. But we get to the book of John, we have those beautiful chapters that we read around Passover, where John records what Jesus taught in those final hours. It makes sense, it fits what we're told about who wrote this book. Of the four writers, John was the only one present for certain key events, he had inside information.

So all together, we can see the traditional identities fit the perspective, style, and type of information that we would expect, based on the analysis of their gospels. And the support for their authenticity is found in this mundane level of detail, right. Not the big picture, narrative events but in these tiny details, like which hand was cut off. It has that ring of truthfulness in it, right, it fits a real historical account. We also see that it's important that none of these men came and make some grand claim about who they are to bolster their own authenticity.

Our next point is that the Gospels are humble. The Gospels are humble. They had no need to claim the authority of who they were, they simply wrote their books and distributed them to the Church. So the Gospels are humble, in a couple of key ways. In fact, they are humble in ways that diversify their accounts supporting the first point, and also supporting their authenticity. We'll see examples of both of those. So we're going to go back and talk about Matthew, the tax collector, how he wrote about himself, versus how the other gospel writers write about it. It's always tricky to write about or talk about yourself.

But in Matthew 10:3, we see an example. Matthew 10:3, in fact, if I start in verse 2, Matthew is giving a list of who the disciples were, who the 12 were. "Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector." Like it's part of his name. We're not told anybody else's profession in this list but Matthew points out, “I'm Matthew, the tax collector.”

Okay, what's the big deal about that? If we know some of the historical and cultural background here, tax collectors were not favorably viewed in their society. They were seen as almost criminals, traitors to their own people. Their job was to collect a certain amount of money for the Roman government, and they were free to squeeze whatever else they could out of the other people. And so, you know, they were seen as very corrupt people. So Matthew freely admits I was a tax collector. And not only that, he doesn't just freely admit it, he goes out of his way here, in a list that's not about what their professions were, it's pointed out. In fact, this is the second time he's telling us. The second time he's telling us. We'll see the first time is a chapter earlier. What did the other gospels say?

Out of respect for his character, Mark doesn't say outright he was a tax collector. Mark says "That he was sitting at the tax booth." Okay, so he was sitting at the tax booth, doesn't go out and say, and he was a tax collector doesn't say that. John doesn't mention Matthew's profession at all. Not at all. So you got to be wondering now with bated breath, what does Luke say about Matthews profession? Let's look at Matthew 9:9-10 we'll see the parallel of Luke, where Luke outs Matthew as a tax collector, let's see how he does it.

Matthew 9:9 "As Jesus passed on from there,” so this is the calling of Matthew as a disciple, "He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office." So I guess Matthew thought that wasn't explicit enough. So later, he went out and said, “I was a tax collector,” lists himself as Matthew, the tax collector. "And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he arose and followed Him. Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.” The table in the house. Well, whose house is it? Come to Luke 5:27.

Luke 5:27, we see the calling of Matthew, the tax collector. "After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi." That was the other name for Matthew was Levi. "Saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office." So, you know, we paid attention to the language of Matthew a little bit, I mean, this is really calling it out. It's not just saying he's sitting at the tax office, he was a tax collector at the tax office. "And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he left all, rose up, and followed Him."

So Luke points out his profession, and then points out that he left his profession and left everything he had to follow Jesus, he no longer was a tax collector at that point. He went out of a job for at least three and a half years. Don't know exactly what he did for money afterwards, probably preaching the gospel, it would seem. But Luke sure tells us he's a tax collector but tells us with respect that he left all of that, whatever money he had gained. And then he tells us, verse 29, "Levi gave Him,” gave Jesus “a great feast in his own house." Is that a different story that Matthew told us?

Matthew said, "As they ate at the table in the house?" Well, Luke, let's us in here that Matthew was being modest about himself. He was being humble. He didn't tell us, “then I threw Jesus a big party because I was so great.” But in fact, he threw Him a great feast in his own house, and there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. Only the man himself would choose to be humble on a point like that. Only true witnesses would talk about the man this way, people who knew him to show respect and deference. Especially in their culture, where tax collectors were so hated.

What about John, you know, John referred to himself as “the disciple, that Jesus loved.” Is that humble? You might not think so, right? Except that, you know, to the Greeks in Greek wisdom, just being loved by this man didn't necessarily imply any kind of status. If you read through John's gospel, and it's not unique to John's gospel, all the Gospels, there's no whitewashing at all of the disciple's deficiencies. You can go through Peter's denial of Christ three times. It's a pretty awful story you know, for this person's character will take a lot of humility for the gospel writers unless if it's really dogging Peter, but it doesn't stop at, Peter. How about James and John? How about the sons of Zebedee? What else are they called the Sons of Thunder? Where's this disciple that Jesus loved or, sometimes called even by us today the disciple of love because it talks so much about love. Where was all that love when he wanted to call down fire and kill people in a Samaritan town just because they wouldn't give them a place to sleep? And Christ rebuked them.

And how about those same two disciples jockeying for power position, just before Passover no less. Or the way that all the disciples routinely failed to understand Christ or maybe even failed to believe Him, when He told them, "I'm going to be given over to the Jews, I'm going to die, I'm going to be resurrected." He laid it out very clearly in certain points, and they just didn't get it. Would someone who was writing this as a fake account bent on selling a new religion just put down and undermine its own authority figures, the guys who are supposed to now become the apostles? It doesn't seem likely, it doesn't. The humility of the Gospels adds to bolsters their credibility. They don't taut their own authority, they only claim the authority of being a witness to what they saw and heard as Christ charged them when we started out.

So let's return to our declaration drama for a moment. What if I told you that both The New England Chronicle and The Continental Journal accounts were true that two different men were the first to publicly read the Declaration of Independence to a cheering crowd at 1:00 p.m on the same day, in the same place, the statehouse in Boston. How is that possible? Well, we do have a little bit more testimony. It's not from that actual time, though. It came 65 years later, from a man named Daniel Greenleaf. Now, remember, the two people involved were Colonel Thomas Crass, according to one newspaper, and according to the other, Sheriff William Greenleaf. So now we're hearing from Daniel Greenleft, 65 years later, he said the following. "The Declaration of Independence was read by William Greenleaf, my father, the sheriff." Okay, so now we have additional testimony. Is that just case closed? Is that all there is to it?

"My father was so proud of that proclamation, that he had the paper from which he read it framed and glassed and hung it over his parlor fireplace." Likely story, this person is making this up, how would I be able to stop him? How would I know? "As his voice was rather weak, he requested Colonel Thomas Crass to act as his Herald. They stood together at the front of the balcony, and my father read a sentence, which was immediately repeated by Crass, and so continued to the end when was the huzzah."

It's pretty amazing what makes that feel so true just reading it? What makes us trust this person now? Well, I have four things. The three of them are my main points so far, and the fourth is my next point. First is distinct, it's another eyewitness account. Second, it's authentic comes from the man’s son who was there. It's a trustworthy source. There's humility. He didn't make his father out to be some larger than life person. "Dad had a weak voice, he was still so proud of the thing he hung it over his parlor fireplace."

But more than that, a fourth point is that the Gospels are interlocking. He shows how these two separate accounts were both true, that they fit together like puzzle pieces in the way that only truthful testimony can do. No one lied. They weren't trying to hide anything but in the course of telling the truth, they told slightly different stories, told it from different perspectives, different angles. This happens in truthful testimony all the time. And it happens throughout the Gospels.

Not that the Gospels contradict, but they can seem that way until we put it together carefully. The truth ends up fitting together, not in some big, ostentatious way with grand claims. But in a way that's really difficult to fake. Really difficult to fake with these tiny little details. And remember, as we go through this, we're going to talk about the feeding of the 5,000. And we'll look at that story and a few of the different gospels, three of them we'll pull details from, and see how they fit together. And we remember that these were on four separate scrolls. And in most of the cases at that early point, a single congregation wouldn't have all four scrolls, they'd have one or two of them.

So let's talk about the feeding of the 5,000 and see this in action. Go to John 6:4-6. So I mentioned one of the exclusives to John was the calling of Philip. And I even read through it, John 1:44 that Philip was from a town called Bethsaida. Now in John 6:4-6, we get the lead into the feeding of the 5,000. "Now Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. And Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do."

So out of all people, Phillip is a minor character. He turns to Phillip up and asked him where to buy bread. Why would He do that? You know, you could say maybe John remembered this because he had Philip on the brain. He wanted to say things about Philip, people had been asking about Philip. Okay, that's fair maybe he just remembered something that Philip had done. But that alone doesn't really verify anything. That's just conjecture, that's speculation in context, there doesn't seem to be any reason why Philip would be the person that they asked where to find bread for 5,000 people.

We go to Luke 9:10 gives us another element of the events that day. Luke 9:10, "The apostles, when they returned, told them all they had done. Then He took them and went aside privately into a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida." Luke never told us that Philip was from Bethsaida. Luke never told us that Philip was the guy that Christ asked where to get bread. John tells us he's from Bethsaida. But John doesn't tell us they were in Bethsaida. And that's why I asked him. It fits together just like puzzle pieces. In a way that would be very difficult for anyone to fake. But we're not done there's a lot more to the feeding of the 5,000.

And since we're in Luke, look at verse 14. It says, "For there were about five thousand men." Of course, we know it is the feeding of the 5,000. “Then He said to His disciples, ‘Make them sit down in groups of fifty.’" Have you ever paid attention to how the people were sat down on that day according to the Gospel accounts? Well, we're about to learn if you haven't, I didn't know so I looked into it. They sat down in groups of 50 according to Luke, what are the other gospels say? Well, Matthew and John don't mention rows at all, they simply say there were 5,000 people there. Okay, well, what about Mark? Let's go to Mark 6. Mark's account is in Mark 6. We'll look at verses 39 and 40. So according to Luke, they were commanded to sit down in groups of 50. And Mark 6:39, "He commanded them to make them all sit down in groups on the green grass." Okay, so they were going to sit in groups on the green grass. "So they sat down in ranks in hundreds and in fifties."

Hold the presses, have we got a contradiction on our hands here? Did they sit down in fifties or was it hundreds and fifties? Who can tell us? Well, there were 5,000 people, right. And it says, if we pay attention, “they sat down in ranks, in hundreds and fifties.” So if you imagine rows of 50, and maybe 100 rows like that, how many people is that? You know, I had to put more math in 5,000 people. Fifty rows of 100, or 100 rows of 50 you can look at it either way. Now, to someone who is set against believing in the Bible, they would look at that, and they would say there's a contradiction there, that Luke says one thing, and then Mark says another. In fact, they're describing the same thing in different ways. They are in groups of 50 if there's 100 groups of 50, it's still true.

So while we're in Mark, let's look at verse 31. Back up just a little bit. Mark 6:31, "He said to them, ‘Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’ For there were many coming and going, that they did not even have time to eat." Okay, so he's telling us that they were in a rush, and there were many people coming and going, so it was hard to go and get food to eat. Well, he doesn't give us any indication of why that might be the case, can read all of Mark. In fact, you can read Matthew and Luke as well, and they won't tell you why it was so busy.

Mark also included another detail that I glossed over in verse 39, we read it. I tried to say it with emphasis because I knew I was going to talk about it. They sat down “in groups on the green grass… the green grass.” Now I'm going to ask you to do something difficult. Think back to what John said in John 6 because we weren't reading for this, but he said that it was Passover. I lived in Israel for a couple of years guess what the only narrow window of time you get green grass in that country is? Starts raining in November, you don't get green grass shows up until about the end of February. And you know what happens about the end of May? It turns brown over the span of like a week, it's crazy to see.

So from about March to April is the only time in this place that you can find green grass. And what happens between March and April every year? Passover. Passover does. Mark doesn't tell us the grass was green because it was Passover season, and we always have green grass that time. And John doesn't say that it was busy and that that was the reason they couldn't find bread. John doesn't tell us anything about the color of the grass. But telling us from totally different perspectives, emphasizing totally different details, they accidentally tell us the same story.

So how unlikely would that be for someone to make up? Are these the kind of details that a forger would pay attention to, and be able to even keep track of altogether and get this level of interlocking. Now the more likely case is you just have two different men or four different men here telling the truth from their perspective. We don't find some deliberate agenda oriented whole filling from one Gospel to the other, where they feel like they have to really fill in some missing pieces of the story in large details. No, you find it down in these tiny things, the color of the grass, the time of year it was, the way they sat down. Was it in rows of 50, or rows of 50s and 100s in ranks?

If they're only a handful of these things, even just the things I've shown you today, maybe that wouldn't be enough for some people, there are dozens if not hundreds, things that could fill much more time then we have for probably the rest of the year worth of sermons even in Cincinnati with double services. Nobody could fake this level of intricate, consistent, complex interlocking detail. So if we find that kind of detail in the small points, what can we say about the work as a whole? I mean, should we doubt that 5,000 people sat on a hilltop listening to a man named Jesus preach? They all agree on that.

They all agree they did undeniable miracles literally everywhere he went, that he was betrayed, tortured, killed, resurrected. So altogether in our courtroom setting, what's the verdict? The truth is confirmed in the most subtle, meticulous, even boring details, it's done without art, it is effortless for people to tell the truth. That's what we observe here. And with our careful inquiry, we've seen that we have independent witnesses, not people who colluded, or coached, or thought about what one writer the other had said, we see that their authentically unique each one of them has its own voice depending on who the writer was. Whether they were a Jew or Gentile, or whether they were a physician or a tax collector.

And who they wrote to whether they were a Jew writing to Jews, like Matthew, or whether it was John writing to the Church, the things they would need to know after he dies at the end of his life, having seen the Church grow. We see that they're humble in character seeking to tell their own story with no other agenda, no element of trying to build themselves up as the leaders of the Church. And we see this interlocking with the puzzle piece like details. And altogether adds up to one big mountain of internal evidence. It was something that no rational thinking person ought to be able to deny if they're being honest.

If we're only judging the Gospels with the tools of intellect and reason, we'll be forced to conclude if they were true based on the evidence. In fact, you and I have far more than that. We just had Pentecost, we know that we have the Spirit of the living God within us, that convicts us, that changes our lives. We can see the evidence of God working with us today. We don't necessarily need to go through this level of detail. But we do, the Spirit teaches us all things. We have experienced through faith and interaction with God, it teaches us about Him.

But we can also rest assured that this book is true. That there is no legitimate challenge to the authority and truthfulness of the Bible. Well, we looked at the Gospels, but in fact the entire Bible, this can be done and all of it, in fact, rests on the Gospel stories. They're the center of the entire events of the Bible. So what should we do with that information? Well, we should serve God. We should serve God with conviction that's firstly founded in our faith and love, our relationship with God that brought us here to begin with, but also grounded firmly in reason and truth.