WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:03.480
<v Speaker 1>You've been reading four books about Jesus your entire life,

2
00:00:03.879 --> 00:00:06.719
<v Speaker 1>and nobody told you the whole story. The man who

3
00:00:06.719 --> 00:00:09.759
<v Speaker 1>wrote the most Jewish gospel in the New Testament was

4
00:00:09.800 --> 00:00:13.759
<v Speaker 1>a government collaborator, his own people wanted dead. The man

5
00:00:13.839 --> 00:00:17.079
<v Speaker 1>whose gospel is the most urgent, most raw account of

6
00:00:17.199 --> 00:00:22.000
<v Speaker 1>Jesus ever written, ran away from Jesus twice. The man

7
00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:26.559
<v Speaker 1>who wrote the most compassionate gospel never met Jesus, not once,

8
00:00:27.039 --> 00:00:31.399
<v Speaker 1>not a single miracle, not one sermon. And the youngest,

9
00:00:31.719 --> 00:00:35.000
<v Speaker 1>the one who wrote the deepest theology in history, was

10
00:00:35.079 --> 00:00:39.200
<v Speaker 1>probably seventeen years old when he watched Jesus die. A traitor,

11
00:00:39.439 --> 00:00:43.159
<v Speaker 1>a deserter, an outsider, and a teenager. Those are the

12
00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:46.840
<v Speaker 1>four men God chose to carry the most important story

13
00:00:47.039 --> 00:00:51.000
<v Speaker 1>in human history. And it gets stranger. The early Church

14
00:00:51.079 --> 00:00:54.799
<v Speaker 1>almost voted one of those gospels out of the Bible entirely.

15
00:00:55.479 --> 00:00:58.840
<v Speaker 1>There was a document circulating among the very first followers

16
00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:02.280
<v Speaker 1>of Jesus before any gospel was written, that had no

17
00:01:02.399 --> 00:01:08.120
<v Speaker 1>birth story, no resurrection, no cross, just his words and

18
00:01:08.159 --> 00:01:11.439
<v Speaker 1>the two birth stories the whole world blends into one

19
00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:15.799
<v Speaker 1>Nativity scene every December. They are not the same story,

20
00:01:16.439 --> 00:01:20.000
<v Speaker 1>not even close. What each one is actually saying, is

21
00:01:20.040 --> 00:01:24.079
<v Speaker 1>something the comfortable combined version has been covering up for

22
00:01:24.200 --> 00:01:28.040
<v Speaker 1>two thousand years. This is the complete history of the

23
00:01:28.079 --> 00:01:31.439
<v Speaker 1>Four Gospels as you have never seen it. By the

24
00:01:31.560 --> 00:01:34.640
<v Speaker 1>end of this video, you will understand why they were written,

25
00:01:34.879 --> 00:01:37.680
<v Speaker 1>who they were written for, and what was at stake

26
00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.760
<v Speaker 1>for every man who put his name on them. You

27
00:01:40.799 --> 00:01:43.239
<v Speaker 1>will hear what John one one actually said to a

28
00:01:43.319 --> 00:01:47.640
<v Speaker 1>Roman citizen living under Caesar. You will find out why

29
00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:52.280
<v Speaker 1>Jesus kept commanding people after the most spectacular miracles anyone

30
00:01:52.319 --> 00:01:58.120
<v Speaker 1>had ever witnessed. To tell absolutely no one, Every difference

31
00:01:58.159 --> 00:02:02.439
<v Speaker 1>between the Gospels is intentional. Every tension between them is

32
00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:05.599
<v Speaker 1>not a flaw in the Word of God. It is

33
00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:09.800
<v Speaker 1>the fingerprint of God before we go deeper. If something

34
00:02:09.879 --> 00:02:13.639
<v Speaker 1>is stirring in you, that is the spirit. This is

35
00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:17.120
<v Speaker 1>why Deep Bible Stories exists, not to give you more

36
00:02:17.159 --> 00:02:20.919
<v Speaker 1>information about God, but to help you draw closer to Him.

37
00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:24.840
<v Speaker 1>Full video, lessons and ebooks on all four Gospels are

38
00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:30.280
<v Speaker 1>linked in the description below. We have also covered Romans, Ephesians, Isiah,

39
00:02:30.479 --> 00:02:34.960
<v Speaker 1>the Psalms, and more, all waiting for you. Like this video,

40
00:02:35.479 --> 00:02:38.159
<v Speaker 1>share it with someone who needs it, and let's get

41
00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:42.599
<v Speaker 1>back in God chose four completely disqualified men to write

42
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:49.400
<v Speaker 1>the story of Jesus, not humble, ordinary, disqualified, scandalously, permanently disqualified,

43
00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:53.759
<v Speaker 1>and he chose them anyway. Matthew was a tax collector,

44
00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:57.120
<v Speaker 1>a Jew who contracted with Rome to extract money from

45
00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:00.680
<v Speaker 1>his own people. His name was spoken with contempt in

46
00:03:00.759 --> 00:03:03.960
<v Speaker 1>every synagogue. He was not simply a sinner, he was

47
00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:06.960
<v Speaker 1>a traitor, and God chose him to write the most

48
00:03:07.039 --> 00:03:10.240
<v Speaker 1>Jewish gospel in the New Testament, the one that makes

49
00:03:10.280 --> 00:03:14.520
<v Speaker 1>the most systematic legal case for Jesus as Israel's promised king.

50
00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:18.280
<v Speaker 1>God took the man his people most despised and made

51
00:03:18.319 --> 00:03:22.240
<v Speaker 1>him their most articulate defender. The traitor became the witness

52
00:03:22.599 --> 00:03:27.280
<v Speaker 1>that is not irony, that is resurrection logic. Mark is

53
00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:30.599
<v Speaker 1>widely believed to be the young man in Gathsemone who

54
00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:34.240
<v Speaker 1>fled naked into the darkness the night Jesus was arrested.

55
00:03:34.759 --> 00:03:38.800
<v Speaker 1>He later abandoned Paul on the first missionary journey, a

56
00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:44.360
<v Speaker 1>deserter twice. Luke never met Jesus, a Greek physician who

57
00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:48.400
<v Speaker 1>researched and compiled testimony, and John was almost certainly a

58
00:03:48.479 --> 00:03:53.479
<v Speaker 1>teenager at the crucifixion seventeen years old, watching his Lord die.

59
00:03:54.039 --> 00:03:57.360
<v Speaker 1>God did not choose the qualified, He qualified the chosen.

60
00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.919
<v Speaker 1>If that does not speak to your own disqualifytions, nothing will.

61
00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:06.120
<v Speaker 1>The men who wrote these gospels were not in comfortable studies.

62
00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:09.639
<v Speaker 1>They were writing under threat of death in the aftermath

63
00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:13.919
<v Speaker 1>of catastrophe for communities, asking the most desperate human question,

64
00:04:14.759 --> 00:04:18.279
<v Speaker 1>where is God in all of this? In sixty four

65
00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:21.759
<v Speaker 1>A d Nero blamed Christians for the burning of Rome.

66
00:04:22.199 --> 00:04:26.199
<v Speaker 1>Men and women were arrested, tortured, thrown to wild animals,

67
00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:30.240
<v Speaker 1>and some Nero had them set on fire, used as

68
00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:33.879
<v Speaker 1>living torches to light his garden parties at night. Peter

69
00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:39.199
<v Speaker 1>was crucified upside down. Paul was beheaded. That is the

70
00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:43.839
<v Speaker 1>world in which Mark was written. Six years later, Rome

71
00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:48.879
<v Speaker 1>destroyed Jerusalem, the temple burned, over a million people died.

72
00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:53.600
<v Speaker 1>Matthew wrote his Gospel in the silence that followed for survivors,

73
00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:57.759
<v Speaker 1>asking whether God had abandoned them entirely. When you read

74
00:04:57.839 --> 00:05:02.240
<v Speaker 1>the Gospels knowing this, they sto not being ancient religious texts.

75
00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:05.240
<v Speaker 1>They become letters written by people who may not have

76
00:05:05.279 --> 00:05:10.439
<v Speaker 1>survived to see them, delivered written in blood, preserved by grace.

77
00:05:10.879 --> 00:05:14.079
<v Speaker 1>There is a pattern in Mark's Gospel. Most pastor's skip

78
00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:17.959
<v Speaker 1>because it is too uncomfortable to explain. Scholars call it

79
00:05:18.040 --> 00:05:23.480
<v Speaker 1>the Messianic secret. Jesus heals someone, a leper, a paralyzed man,

80
00:05:23.800 --> 00:05:26.800
<v Speaker 1>a twelve year old girl raised from the dead, and

81
00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:29.639
<v Speaker 1>then he says tell no one. In Mark five, p.

82
00:05:29.759 --> 00:05:33.439
<v Speaker 1>Forty three, after the most spectacular miracle a human being

83
00:05:33.480 --> 00:05:36.879
<v Speaker 1>could witness, he strictly charged them that no one should

84
00:05:36.920 --> 00:05:40.480
<v Speaker 1>know this. Why this is not the behavior of someone

85
00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:46.480
<v Speaker 1>building a platform, cultivating an audience, monetizing a miracle. This

86
00:05:46.680 --> 00:05:49.879
<v Speaker 1>is the opposite of everything the religious influence a playbook

87
00:05:49.920 --> 00:05:54.839
<v Speaker 1>has ever recommended. The first century world wanted a warrior king,

88
00:05:55.480 --> 00:05:58.800
<v Speaker 1>a new David, who would drive Rome out by force.

89
00:05:59.480 --> 00:06:03.360
<v Speaker 1>Every time time someone tried to make Jesus king, he withdrew.

90
00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:07.240
<v Speaker 1>He refused to be reduced to what people wanted from him.

91
00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:10.240
<v Speaker 1>Only at the cross, when the man who raised the

92
00:06:10.279 --> 00:06:14.160
<v Speaker 1>dead hung broken between two criminals, did a Roman soldier

93
00:06:14.319 --> 00:06:17.839
<v Speaker 1>say what the whole gospel had been building to? Truly,

94
00:06:18.279 --> 00:06:21.920
<v Speaker 1>this man was the son of God. The confession that

95
00:06:22.040 --> 00:06:25.639
<v Speaker 1>mattered most came from the most unlikely mouth at the

96
00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:29.839
<v Speaker 1>bottom of everything, not the Messiah who dazzles. The one

97
00:06:29.839 --> 00:06:33.959
<v Speaker 1>who descends the church is still struggling to accept him

98
00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.360
<v Speaker 1>on those terms. Reading Matthew without knowing what happened to

99
00:06:37.399 --> 00:06:40.040
<v Speaker 1>the Jewish world is like reading a letter to a

100
00:06:40.079 --> 00:06:45.079
<v Speaker 1>grief stricken widow without knowing her husband just died. The

101
00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:50.879
<v Speaker 1>words make surface sense, the full weight is lost. Matthew

102
00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:54.720
<v Speaker 1>wrote after Rome destroyed Jerusalem. His readers were survivors of

103
00:06:54.759 --> 00:07:00.040
<v Speaker 1>a theological catastrophe. The temple was gone, the priesthood was gone.

104
00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:03.319
<v Speaker 1>And the question driving every page was not tell me

105
00:07:03.399 --> 00:07:06.120
<v Speaker 1>about Jesus, and it was did God break his covenant?

106
00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:10.279
<v Speaker 1>Were we wrong about everything? His answer is not comfort first,

107
00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:13.920
<v Speaker 1>it is evidence. He opens with a genealogy of forty

108
00:07:13.959 --> 00:07:17.879
<v Speaker 1>two generations to a modern reader boring to a first

109
00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:23.040
<v Speaker 1>century Jewish survivor, a life raft. The line did not break.

110
00:07:23.519 --> 00:07:26.920
<v Speaker 1>Then he deploys a formula fourteen times this happened to

111
00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:29.720
<v Speaker 1>fulfill what was spoken through the prophet. He is not

112
00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:33.360
<v Speaker 1>decorating his story with scripture references. He is building a

113
00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:37.360
<v Speaker 1>legal case. This was planned. God did not abandon you.

114
00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:41.000
<v Speaker 1>He was working. If your world has ever collapsed around you,

115
00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:44.720
<v Speaker 1>Matthew was written for you, not for the comfortable. For

116
00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:48.839
<v Speaker 1>the survivors. Luke's Gospel is the most socially radical document

117
00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:52.240
<v Speaker 1>in the New Testament. Not radical in the trendy sense,

118
00:07:52.759 --> 00:07:56.319
<v Speaker 1>radical in the original Latin sense. Going to the route

119
00:07:56.839 --> 00:07:59.680
<v Speaker 1>and what it cuts to the root of is something

120
00:07:59.720 --> 00:08:04.600
<v Speaker 1>most religious institutions have a vested interest in leaving undisturbed.

121
00:08:05.079 --> 00:08:07.480
<v Speaker 1>In Luke, the birth of Jesus is announced not to

122
00:08:07.560 --> 00:08:11.839
<v Speaker 1>scholars or priests, but to shepherds, men whose testimony was

123
00:08:11.879 --> 00:08:14.839
<v Speaker 1>not legally valid in a court of law. The lowest

124
00:08:14.839 --> 00:08:18.560
<v Speaker 1>status workers in the region. Heaven chose them first. That

125
00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:21.839
<v Speaker 1>is not a detail. That is the architecture of everything

126
00:08:21.879 --> 00:08:26.399
<v Speaker 1>that follows. The people Luke elevates as primary carriers of

127
00:08:26.439 --> 00:08:32.960
<v Speaker 1>divine revelation are consistently the ones religion had already written off. Women, Samaritans, lepers,

128
00:08:33.039 --> 00:08:35.960
<v Speaker 1>tax collectors, the poor, the foreign I want to be

129
00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:39.440
<v Speaker 1>honest here. The parable of the good Samaritan is usually

130
00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:44.879
<v Speaker 1>preached as inspiration. We assume we are the Samaritan, but

131
00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:48.559
<v Speaker 1>most of us, if we are honest, have been the priest.

132
00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:52.120
<v Speaker 1>We have seen someone on the side of the road

133
00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:55.080
<v Speaker 1>and we crossed to the other side, not because we

134
00:08:55.080 --> 00:08:59.360
<v Speaker 1>were evil, because we were busy. Luke does not let

135
00:08:59.480 --> 00:09:02.639
<v Speaker 1>us stay in the comfortable version of this story. If

136
00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:07.000
<v Speaker 1>God consistently shows up first among the people, religion overlooked,

137
00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:10.639
<v Speaker 1>whose witness are we dismissing today that heaven has already

138
00:09:10.759 --> 00:09:14.480
<v Speaker 1>validated In the beginning was the word, and the word

139
00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:17.559
<v Speaker 1>was with God, and the word was God. You have

140
00:09:17.639 --> 00:09:21.399
<v Speaker 1>heard this so many times its strangeness has worn smooth.

141
00:09:22.039 --> 00:09:24.600
<v Speaker 1>Read it as a first century Roman citizen, and what

142
00:09:24.679 --> 00:09:28.159
<v Speaker 1>you find is not devotional poetry. It is a declaration

143
00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:32.080
<v Speaker 1>of war. Augustus Caesar was called the Son of God

144
00:09:32.159 --> 00:09:36.320
<v Speaker 1>in official inscriptions across the Empire. His birth was celebrated

145
00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:40.279
<v Speaker 1>as the beginning of the Gospel Euangelian. The same Greek

146
00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:45.600
<v Speaker 1>word Caesar was called Savior of the world. Lord. Imperial

147
00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:50.519
<v Speaker 1>theology was on every coin, every temple, every monument inescapable.

148
00:09:51.159 --> 00:09:54.279
<v Speaker 1>When John wrote in the beginning was the word, every

149
00:09:54.399 --> 00:09:58.639
<v Speaker 1>Roman reader knew exactly what he was doing. Caesar is

150
00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:01.840
<v Speaker 1>not the son of God. Caesar is not the Savior.

151
00:10:01.919 --> 00:10:05.679
<v Speaker 1>Caesar is not laud There is another. And those three

152
00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:10.080
<v Speaker 1>words could get you killed. John wrote them anyway, two

153
00:10:10.120 --> 00:10:13.240
<v Speaker 1>thousand years later. Every time those words are read aloud,

154
00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:17.000
<v Speaker 1>the same claim is made against every Counterfeit Lord that

155
00:10:17.159 --> 00:10:22.320
<v Speaker 1>demands ultimate allegiance. It has never stopped being radical. We

156
00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:25.960
<v Speaker 1>have simply stopped hearing it that way. Before any gospel

157
00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:30.039
<v Speaker 1>was written, scholars believe a collection of Jesus's sayings was

158
00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:34.639
<v Speaker 1>already circulating among his earliest followers. They call it Q,

159
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:39.759
<v Speaker 1>from the German Quell, meaning source. No copy has ever

160
00:10:39.799 --> 00:10:43.879
<v Speaker 1>been found, but its probable contents can be reconstructed from

161
00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:47.200
<v Speaker 1>material Matthew and Luke share that is absent in Mark

162
00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:52.240
<v Speaker 1>roughly two hundred and thirty five verses, the Beatitudes, the

163
00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:57.759
<v Speaker 1>Lord's prayer, Love your enemies, do not be anxious. What

164
00:10:57.960 --> 00:11:02.679
<v Speaker 1>Q apparently did not contain No birth story, no crucifixion,

165
00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:07.720
<v Speaker 1>no resurrection. The earliest layer of Jesus tradition may have

166
00:11:07.759 --> 00:11:11.399
<v Speaker 1>been nothing but his words. That means the very first

167
00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:16.600
<v Speaker 1>communities gathered around a voice before they gathered around a theology.

168
00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:21.039
<v Speaker 1>They preserved what he said, before they codified what he

169
00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:24.919
<v Speaker 1>did at Calvary. Every time you read the Sermon on

170
00:11:24.960 --> 00:11:28.320
<v Speaker 1>the Mount, you are hearing the oldest layer of testimony

171
00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:35.799
<v Speaker 1>to who Jesus was. Not interpreted, not theologized, just the words,

172
00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:40.960
<v Speaker 1>doing what they were always doing, changing people. Every December,

173
00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:46.159
<v Speaker 1>billions arrange the same Nativity scene, Shepherd's wise men, the Star,

174
00:11:46.360 --> 00:11:51.519
<v Speaker 1>the Manger, beautiful Beloved, and a harmonization of two accounts

175
00:11:51.879 --> 00:11:55.639
<v Speaker 1>that were never meant to be harmonized. In Matthew, the

176
00:11:55.679 --> 00:11:59.159
<v Speaker 1>birth is surrounded by terror. A king orders the massacre

177
00:11:59.240 --> 00:12:02.639
<v Speaker 1>of every male child under two. In Bethlehem, the family

178
00:12:02.679 --> 00:12:06.639
<v Speaker 1>flees to Egypt in the night. They are refugees, sheltering

179
00:12:06.679 --> 00:12:09.879
<v Speaker 1>from a government that wants their child dead. The sound

180
00:12:09.960 --> 00:12:13.840
<v Speaker 1>in Matthew Chapter two is not angels singing, It is

181
00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:19.480
<v Speaker 1>mother's weeping. Matthew is telling his post Jerusalem survivors. God

182
00:12:19.919 --> 00:12:22.399
<v Speaker 1>did not wait for the world to be ready. He

183
00:12:22.559 --> 00:12:25.919
<v Speaker 1>arrived in the middle of devastation, the same kind you

184
00:12:25.960 --> 00:12:29.360
<v Speaker 1>are living in now. In Luke, shepherds received the announcement

185
00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:32.720
<v Speaker 1>with joy, and the Lord of everything is found sleeping

186
00:12:32.759 --> 00:12:36.000
<v Speaker 1>in a feeding trough, not a cradle, not a palace,

187
00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:40.000
<v Speaker 1>a feeding trough. Luke is showing you a God who

188
00:12:40.200 --> 00:12:42.960
<v Speaker 1>enters the world at the bottom, not because he had

189
00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:46.240
<v Speaker 1>no choice, but because that is where he chose to be.

190
00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:49.799
<v Speaker 1>Is the God revealed in these two accounts some one

191
00:12:49.840 --> 00:12:53.399
<v Speaker 1>you actually know, or have you been worshiping a Christmas card?

192
00:12:53.799 --> 00:12:56.559
<v Speaker 1>The Gospel that came closest to being excluded from the

193
00:12:56.600 --> 00:13:00.440
<v Speaker 1>Bible was John. Not because it's said too little, because

194
00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:05.080
<v Speaker 1>it said too much. A movement called Gnosticism, which believed

195
00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:09.200
<v Speaker 1>matter was evil, the body of prison and salvation meant

196
00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:14.759
<v Speaker 1>escaping the physical, loved John's gospel. They used its cosmic

197
00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:19.000
<v Speaker 1>language about the divine word to argue that Jesus never

198
00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:23.600
<v Speaker 1>truly became human, that the incarnation was an appearance, that

199
00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:27.399
<v Speaker 1>the cross was not real suffering because the divine Christ

200
00:13:27.480 --> 00:13:30.919
<v Speaker 1>had no actual body to suffer. In. A group called

201
00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:35.240
<v Speaker 1>the Allogoy rejected John entirely. There was a real debate

202
00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:38.320
<v Speaker 1>in real councils about whether it belonged in the Bible

203
00:13:38.360 --> 00:13:41.919
<v Speaker 1>at all. The Church kept it because the same gospel

204
00:13:41.960 --> 00:13:47.399
<v Speaker 1>gnostics quoted to deny Jesus's humanity contains the most emphatic

205
00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:51.679
<v Speaker 1>affirmations of it. John one fourteen does not say the

206
00:13:51.679 --> 00:13:56.159
<v Speaker 1>word appeared to become flesh. It says the word became flesh.

207
00:13:56.279 --> 00:13:59.679
<v Speaker 1>And in John eleven, Jesus does not perform a detached

208
00:13:59.679 --> 00:14:03.759
<v Speaker 1>soft in resurrection. He stands at the tomb and he weeps.

209
00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:07.200
<v Speaker 1>God weeps. God is not afraid of matter. He did

210
00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:12.519
<v Speaker 1>not send a representative. He came himself. That truth, pressed tested,

211
00:14:12.840 --> 00:14:16.159
<v Speaker 1>nearly lost, is the one John gave his life to preserve.

212
00:14:16.639 --> 00:14:19.720
<v Speaker 1>All four Gospels arrive at the same hill, and when

213
00:14:19.720 --> 00:14:23.399
<v Speaker 1>they do, each writer sees something the others leave in silence.

214
00:14:24.200 --> 00:14:28.360
<v Speaker 1>In Mark, Jesus dies crying, my God, My God, why

215
00:14:28.399 --> 00:14:32.960
<v Speaker 1>have you forsaken me? Not triumphant, desolate. Mark's cross is

216
00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.000
<v Speaker 1>for the person who feels completely abandoned right now and

217
00:14:36.120 --> 00:14:39.159
<v Speaker 1>is too exhausted to say it out loud. Jesus was

218
00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:42.960
<v Speaker 1>there first. He knows that cry. He made it. In Luke,

219
00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:46.360
<v Speaker 1>Jesus speaks three times from the cross, every word for

220
00:14:46.399 --> 00:14:49.960
<v Speaker 1>someone else, forgive them to day you will be with

221
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:54.679
<v Speaker 1>me in Paradise. Father, into your hands. The last person

222
00:14:54.799 --> 00:14:58.039
<v Speaker 1>Jesus saved was a convicted criminal with no time left

223
00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:02.879
<v Speaker 1>to prove anything. Just a request, remember me. Jesus said, yes.

224
00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:08.120
<v Speaker 1>That is Luke's Cross. In Matthew, when Jesus dies, the

225
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:12.559
<v Speaker 1>earth shakes, rock split, tombs burst open. The temple veil

226
00:15:12.720 --> 00:15:15.720
<v Speaker 1>tears from top to bottom, not from the bottom up,

227
00:15:15.720 --> 00:15:18.759
<v Speaker 1>as a human hand would tear it from the top.

228
00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:23.519
<v Speaker 1>God reached down. The barrier between heaven and humanity was

229
00:15:23.519 --> 00:15:26.759
<v Speaker 1>not removed by human effort. It was torn open by

230
00:15:26.799 --> 00:15:30.879
<v Speaker 1>God himself. In John, Jesus does not cry out, he

231
00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:35.720
<v Speaker 1>declares it is finished tetelustie, a debt paid in full.

232
00:15:36.320 --> 00:15:38.440
<v Speaker 1>John's cross is for every one who needs to hear

233
00:15:38.519 --> 00:15:44.200
<v Speaker 1>one more time, finished, done paid, not pending, four angles,

234
00:15:44.240 --> 00:15:47.240
<v Speaker 1>one infinite event across, still doing its work in you

235
00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:51.399
<v Speaker 1>right now, bother. We came into this video carrying assumptions

236
00:15:51.759 --> 00:15:54.759
<v Speaker 1>that we already knew these books, that the differences were

237
00:15:54.799 --> 00:15:59.840
<v Speaker 1>problems to explain away, and you dismantled those assumptions gently,

238
00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:04.320
<v Speaker 1>because now we see that every tension, every silence, every

239
00:16:04.399 --> 00:16:07.200
<v Speaker 1>difference is not a crack in the foundation. It is

240
00:16:07.240 --> 00:16:11.360
<v Speaker 1>a window, and through every window is more of you.

241
00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:15.639
<v Speaker 1>We pray for everyone who came carrying grief, the grief

242
00:16:15.679 --> 00:16:18.519
<v Speaker 1>of watching everything you built your life on fall apart.

243
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:24.039
<v Speaker 1>The answer is Matthew, the line did not break, The

244
00:16:24.120 --> 00:16:27.879
<v Speaker 1>covenant is intact. He is still here. We pray for

245
00:16:27.960 --> 00:16:32.279
<v Speaker 1>everyone who feels too disqualified, too much like Matthew the traitor,

246
00:16:32.600 --> 00:16:36.559
<v Speaker 1>too much like Mark who ran. The answer is Luke.

247
00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:40.559
<v Speaker 1>The first witnesses were the one's religion had already dismissed.

248
00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:43.960
<v Speaker 1>God is still in the habit of choosing the unqualified

249
00:16:44.279 --> 00:16:48.639
<v Speaker 1>and qualifying them by His presence. We pray for everyone

250
00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:53.159
<v Speaker 1>who feels abandoned, the answer is Mark, Jesus made that

251
00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:57.000
<v Speaker 1>cry before you did. And for everyone who just needs

252
00:16:57.039 --> 00:16:59.879
<v Speaker 1>to hear it one more time, the answer is jo

253
00:17:00.759 --> 00:17:03.600
<v Speaker 1>it is finished. Lord, give us a hunger for the

254
00:17:03.639 --> 00:17:09.319
<v Speaker 1>whole Jesus not the safe harmonized Christmas card version, the dangerous,

255
00:17:09.359 --> 00:17:14.480
<v Speaker 1>descending cross bearing, tomb breaking Empire, confronting outcast, welcoming son

256
00:17:14.519 --> 00:17:18.359
<v Speaker 1>of God who refused to be what religion wanted and

257
00:17:18.519 --> 00:17:23.039
<v Speaker 1>chose instead to be what humanity actually needed. In the

258
00:17:23.160 --> 00:17:26.400
<v Speaker 1>name of the one who was, and is and is

259
00:17:26.440 --> 00:17:32.359
<v Speaker 1>to come, Jesus Christ, the Living Word. Amen. If something

260
00:17:32.440 --> 00:17:35.359
<v Speaker 1>opened in you to day, do not let it stop. Here.

261
00:17:36.160 --> 00:17:40.559
<v Speaker 1>Our complete gospel video lessons, ebooks and deep Bible Stories

262
00:17:40.599 --> 00:17:44.400
<v Speaker 1>Bible study journal are all in the description. If you

263
00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:47.359
<v Speaker 1>feel called to share the Word in your own voice,

264
00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:50.599
<v Speaker 1>we are building a community to help you launch your platform.

265
00:17:50.680 --> 00:17:54.440
<v Speaker 1>Step by step, Jesus said, go. The link is in

266
00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:55.039
<v Speaker 1>the description