Hey folks. Happy Saturday and welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hey, special shout out to one of my favorite leaders from back in Elisa Viejo. Mr. O, he just turned, oh, I don't know if I could say his age. I dunno if it's a, if it's a gal thing. Gals don't typically like that their age or their weight. He just turned an age. He just turned an age that was, and in my mind, pretty significant. So happy birthday to Mr. O. Does he listen in California? Does he says he listens most days. Okay. Many days I think. I can't say what, I can't remember whether he said many or most, but I was texting him the other day just saying, Hey man, I miss you and I appreciate you. I was thinking about him recently because. I was talking to somebody about leaders and being good leaders and good, anyway, I was talking about him because he was one of my best in that he kept contact with almost every student that he had go through his small group. And so he had guys that had graduated for years after the fact, still reaching out to him saying, Hey, can you meet up about this or that? Yeah, so he just really did a great job connecting with people and I admire that about him. He did so well and some, sometimes many times don't tell the students who were in his group. We sent a lot of the challenging kids his way. cause he was just so good with them. He would just melt them and make them love him. And suddenly these guys who were, a little hardened towards some of the things that we were saying, they would come because they love Mr. O. They knew that he loved them and he just really set a great example for others to see. So anyway, shout out to Mr. O, miss you hope you and them misses are doing great. That's awesome. That's great, man. Hey, we're getting into some territory, as I alluded to at the end of y last yesterday's episode where we're gonna see some redundancy in the gospels here, where we're gonna read about the appearance of John the Baptist, and that we're gonna read about it again in a different account. What do we do with that? It's one thing when that's. The book of First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles. There, there's differences there, different details given different points of emphases e even perspective, right? You're dealing with a post exilic and the Chronicles you're dealing with pre-ex iic, obviously in the Kings with the gospels. You and I were talking right before we hit record. There is a little bit of a downside to this approach of the chronological reading because the gospels weren't designed to be read chronologically. That's right. And so unpack that for us, if you will, a little bit as far as the gospel writers each wrote with a purpose in mind. So briefly. Each gospel is intended to be read as in a unit by itself. Now they assume, I think that you have access to the other gospels. In fact, John for sure knows that you have access to the other gospels 'cause he is writing far later than the other guys. But Matthew, mark, and Luke are called the Synoptics because they write about the same topic. They share a lot of the same material and sometimes they share a lot of the same language. Almost as if they're borrowing from one another to put their gospels together. Now, why would they do that? Because they're, they're using common sources, it seems and they're using. One another probably. But on top of that, they have different reasons for their writing. And so even though they share a lot of the same content, some of the structural components, and even some of the places where they put. Certain events seem to be moved for the purposes of their gospel, and so you have to discern as you read the gospel. What's Luke's point? What's Luke trying to do for me? How is Matthew intending for me to understand this? There's similar content, yes, but even some of the similar content we're gonna read. Are we reading this today? Matthew four. Is that today? That's, no, that's tomorrow. Yeah. Okay. So Matthew four. Luke four, they both talk about the temptation of Jesus, but there's a critical difference between the two of them. A significant difference, I should say, not critical. And that significant difference shows you at least a part of what they're highlighting in their gospel. And so the downside to a. A reading plan like this one is that we blur that line a little bit. We make it less clear what the individual point of that gospel is intending to communicate. Now, I'm not saying that we're doing it wrong by any stretch. We're doing it differently than what they intended. So you should know that as you read the Gospels, it's best to read the gospel as a unit by itself and say, what's this gospel intending for me to see? And as you do that, it's far easier to. To get a sense of what they're doing, but as we're reading it, we're doing it chronologically, which gives us a slight disadvantage when we're trying to interpret the whole to help our people because I've heard it and I know there's differences in opinion there. But for example, Matthew wrote to show that Jesus was king of the Jews. Right, right. Largely Jewish audience there, not only Jewish, but that was his intent. We talked about that with his genealogy, beginning with Abraham, and so that's gonna be a lot of his thrust there. Mark is writing. With a different intent. Mark's writing to show Jesus even as he begins there as Son of God. At the beginning, in, in Mark chapter one Luke is writing, I think with a gentile audience in mind that's what's assumed. Yeah. Yeah. Son of man. And then you've got John, who is the most theological of all the gospel writers. And that's why he's not one of the synoptic gospels. He's got a different approach to it entirely. Understanding those things is important for us to understand why they included what they included. None of them were leaving things out for nefarious intent. None of them were including things for nefarious intent. Right. They were just all writing with a specific audience in mind to try to get the gospel, the good news out there to that audience. Absolutely. And if I could encourage you to read a textbook, oh, I know no one wants to do this, but man, this is one of my favorite books that I read in seminary and I think it'll be well worth. In addition to your library, even if you just read a little bit at a time, you don't have to read the whole thing, but it's called Four Portraits One Jesus by Mark Strauss. I'm not sure what edition they're on right now. I think I have the fourth one or the third one. Anyway, it's called a Survey of Jesus and the Gospels. That's the subtitle and it's awesome. He does a really great job helping us to understand the role that each one plays and what they're trying to. Highlight in the gospel. Yeah. So I would recommend that to you. Four portraits. One Jesus, a survey of Jesus and the Gospels by Mark Strauss, one of my favorite books. Awesome. Let's jump into our DBR today. We're in Matthew chapter three. We are in Mark chapter one, and Luke chapter three. So Matthew three. Mark one. Luke three Matthew three introduces the ministry of John the Baptist here for us. And this is the ministry that we often think of when it comes to John. In, in John chapter one. John the Baptist is on the scene quite a bit but not in this way. This is the traditional way. Here it is. Here he is he's in the Jordan River. He's baptizing people and his message is Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. He's preparing people for the arrival of the Messiah, the arrival of the king. Now, John, and we talked about this. In our study of the Gospel of John, because John looks at Jesus and says, behold the lame of God who takes away the sins of the world. I think John often spoke better than he understood but John was nonetheless doing what God had called him to do and delivering the message that he was called to deliver. And so people are coming out to. In obedience of him be baptized and what's interesting is they're being baptized for the forgiveness of their sins too. So they understand that the cleansing nature of this as well, even though they don't fully wrap their lives around, neither does John, how Jesus is gonna bring about this cleansing and that is gonna come through the death of Christ. That's gonna come through the cross, a different kind of a baptism. But some of those that come out to John are the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And man John is a bold voice here, and that's one thing that we can appreciate about John, among many others, is he was not afraid to confront the hypocrisy of these. Pharisees and Sadducees, they come out and he calls them a brood of vipers and he says, you need to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. It's easy to talk, it's a different thing to walk. And so John is basically saying, you're out here presuming to be righteous and to presume to be that the leaders of the people of God. And yet you need to. Repent and you need to humble yourself and you need to show the genuineness of your relationship with him through bearing fruit. And he says in verse 10, even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees, every tree, therefore that does not bear good fruit, is gonna be cut down and thrown into the fire. The tension between the religious leaders and Jesus is actually already beginning to be stoked. Not by Jesus even at this point, but by John the Baptist. Jesus is just going to continue it. Yeah. How important to note here is that this baptism is not a Christian baptism per se, correct? Not the one that you wouldn't. Do today if you repent of your sins and put your trust in him. This is more like a preparatory baptism. It's a symbolic baptism to say, look, we are in need of repentance in response to the Messiah's coming. That's why he quotes here prepare the way the Lord make straight his paths. It's, in other words, a way to signify that the Messiah is on the road. He's coming let us be prepared for his arrival and. And that our reception is worthy of his arrival, so they're turning from their sins in preparation for the Messiah. This is not the same thing as a Christian baptism. In fact, not only is he on the way, but this is a even a reference beyond the water baptism act to the future spiritual baptism that's gonna take place. In verse 11, he says, I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is coming after me is mightier than I am. Who sandals I'm not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with. The Holy Spirit and fire. So there's a double meaning here. First the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I think is a callback to the new covenant. And the idea that the, that Christ is going to be the bringer about, of the one that is gonna fulfill the new covenant. We believe that's a partial fulfillment at this point for us as the church and gonna be a full fulfillment in the future. But that new covenant relationship where the spirit of God is placed within us and then. The second element here, I think the baptism of fire is gonna be the baptism of judgment for others. That there are gonna be some that are baptized ba with fire in the sense that they're gonna be, they're gonna suffer. And that's verse 12. His winnowing fork is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. So we're gonna talk about tomorrow morning. The fact that it all comes down to what we do with Jesus, that there is a dividing line in human history over whether or not people repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins or not. And that's what John is saying here right now with Jesus' arrival, the Messiah's arrival is going to mean either you're gonna respond. Favorably to him. And then you're gonna be baptized with the spirit. Or if you reject him you're gonna be baptized with fire and judgment. And that's what John talks about right here in verse 12. Jesus shows up after this then to be baptized. And John initially says, this is, what are you doing here? I should be baptized by you. And Jesus makes this rather enigmatic statement where he says, let it be. So for now, verse 15, for thus, it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And a lot of people have wondered. What that was about. Jesus is not being baptized for the remittance of sins 'cause he had no sin. Rather, I believe what's going on here is what we read about in Hebrews two 17, that Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every respect. So this is Jesus choosing to identify with his people by. Submitting to the baptism of John. And so he's coming out to identify with his people who are also going out to be baptized by John. And this is part of his qualification, to be the Messiah, to be the one that represents them. And we know the rest of the story. The heavens open up and God says, this is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased, and Jesus is anointed with the Holy Spirit, which is gonna be significant for the power of his ministry from this time forward. All right, let's jump over then to Mark chapter one. Mark chapter one. Mark's gotta be one of my favorite gospels. I know we only have four to choose from, and I preach John, but I just, I love the rapid fire pace of mark y. You'll note there's no birth account in Mark. He just jumps right into it. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, and he jumps straight in. He talks about John the Baptist here. We just read about this account in Matthew chapter three, but this is John baptizing the wilderness. Again, repentance and forgiveness of sins. He references Jesus again here in verse eight. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Again. The new covenant language there allusions back to Ezekiel. And then you have the baptism of Jesus. From Mark, which again, mark is just condensed. A lot of the same material just condensed down, and so here's the baptism of Jesus, the affirmation that he is indeed the son of God from the Father and with you, I'm well pleased. Then though we get into the temptation, and so this is Mark's account of the temptation. Beginning in verse 12, it says, the spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness, and so we'll talk more about this in the longer treatments of the temptation of Christ, but notice that this is God's will, that Jesus would go out and be tempted. We'll talk about why in the longer selections of that, but he's in the wilderness. Again. Mark's given a condensed version for 40 days being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild animals and the angels. End up ministering to him, following his temptation. He comes back and begins the ministry. He's gonna begin the ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. Just like he was led into temptation by the Holy Spirit. He's gonna begin his ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit, and he's gonna begin his ministry by preaching. And that's the thing that I want you to see in John in the rest of Mark chapter one. He's gonna do a lot of amazing things. He's gonna be teaching. People are gonna be amazed at his teaching. He's gonna be doing some miracles. In fact, he's going to eventually. End up at Peter's mother-in-law's house for the night because he rises her and heals her. And then all the people keep bringing all the sick and the lame to him, and he stays up late into the night healing all of them and casting out demons. And then he gets up very early the next morning, he goes to pray and the disciples can't find him and they go find him finally. And. They say, Hey, you need to come back because there's another line of people that need you to heal them. And Jesus says something that's pretty remarkable that we need to pay attention to. He says, let's go to the other towns. 'cause I need to preach there too for that is why I have come out. So Jesus's mission, we often think about his miracles and we often think about the cross. But a huge portion of his mission and why he was here for three years of earthly ministry was the preaching of the good news, the preaching of the gospel, preparing people to follow him as their Lord and savior. And so we have some of that. We're gonna get to some of that in the Sermon on the Mount. There's the sermon on the plane, there's the olive discourse, things like that. But there was so much more of Jesus' preaching and teaching that I would've loved to have known more of what the content of that was. Absolutely. Yeah. Mark's gospel is unique because of all of the rapid fire, almost, not dismissive, but he's just covering a ton of territory that where the other gospels Luke and Matthew really take their time on. And so one of the things that you're gonna notice that's. Pretty typical of Mark's gospel is the use of the word immediately. In fact, you're gonna read it nine separate times. Yeah. In just the first chapter alone. He uses that all throughout his gospel. That's a pretty common word for him, and he's, all he's doing is just keeping the narrative moving along. Very action packed, very cliff notes. He's, he condenses a lot of it. You've already mentioned some of those things. But perhaps one of my favorite parts of this gospel, especially chapter one, is what is, what's happening In verse 35 and following, he highlights Jesus' prayer life, verse 35, and rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed, went out to OD desolate place, and there he prayed. I love this because it highlights very early on that Jesus was not just operating from this wellspring of energy and self-empowerment. Although he could have, he's a second member of the Trinity. He sets an example for us in showing his dedication to his communion with God the Father. And therefore he now has clarity. He has power. He has the ability to navigate through some of these complex situations on earth because he's tapped into that relationship with his father. And I think that's really instructive for us. We ought to be the same kind of people who make time to pray because we need that. Jesus shows us the priority of his prayer life very early in the gospel, and I love this. Let's turn over. I guess last section of Mark chapter one. There, we're gonna see this repeated a couple times. The same interaction here and it's another commendable element of what we see from Jesus here. He encounters this leper who obviously is in great need. Leprosy was a horrible disease at the time that isolated people from community, isolated people from loved ones, no contact because it was a communicable disease when somebody touched a leper, they could contract it themselves. So this leper comes up to Jesus and wants to be healed and Jesus doesn't just. Say you're clean. Go. He reaches out and touches him in all of the gospel writers who record this event, record that interaction that Jesus touched the leper. And I think that's so important. It's so significant. 'cause it shows the compassion of Jesus. Who knows the last time this man had been touched by another human being and Jesus chooses to touch him out of an act of compassion, but also out of a flex to show that the disease could not be. Transferred to Jesus but Jesus's healing powers we're gonna overcome the disease. And so here we see some of his deity, even in the fact that this physical touch didn't defile Jesus, but rather overwhelm the defilement of this man in cleansing his leprosy. And so just a really cool, compassionate, super cool view of Jesus there. Yeah. If Mark is the condensed version, Luke is the expanded version. And that's where we go next in Luke chapter three. The opening is gonna be focused in on John the Baptist. Again, much like we read about in Matthew chapter three and Mark's gospel, mark was very brief. Luke is gonna expand upon what Matthew records. In fact, Luke's gonna say that John the Baptist is fulfilling more than just Isaiah's prophecy. He's also going to point Isaiah 40 verse three, I should say three other passages in Isaiah that he's gonna list here. That point to the. The fulfillment of who John the Baptist is and what he was doing. By the way, if you're reading your Bibles, especially in the ESV and you note a little letter or a, sometimes it's a number. Check those at the bottom of your Bible or look for the center column, which where it is in my Bible, because those are helpful. Inputs there. They tell you what these Old Testament verses are and you can look at them, you can look them up yourself. You can read them if you want there. But remember chapter and verses weren't a thing when Luke was recording his account of this. So Luke wasn't gonna write in Isaiah chapter 40 verse three, we read this and this is the fulfillment. He's just gonna say as Isaiah the prophet wrote, or as it's written in the scriptures. And he's gonna give the citation there. So the ESV provides some help on that. Luke is gonna record a longer section of John the Baptist preaching to the Pharisees. And the sad, he's gonna have the same thing about bearing fruit and keeping with repentance. He's gonna have the comment about the Bruta vipers, but then he's also gonna have this interaction between Luke and between John and the crowds. When the crowds are saying what should we do? What does bearing fruit look like for us? And he goes through and he gives very practical application about, this is what you should do, and this is one of the reasons why we do that from the pulpit today. Because we see it modeled for us in scripture. John is preaching and he's saying, here's what practical application looks like. Some people believe preaching is just unpack all the details of the scriptures and back the dump truck of exegesis up and dump it on us, and then let the Holy Spirit sort everything out. I don't think we see that in scripture. I think we see the application of this is what it looks like to live it out. Even in, in the letter to the Hebrews, he's writing to them very specific application. Hey, don't neglect meeting together, but spur one another up towards love and good deeds. That's a Sermonic letter. That's why I bring up the letter of Hebrews. John the Baptist is doing that here as well. Luke is gonna record that John the Baptist is gonna be imprisoned, which is significant because that launches really Jesus's public ministry when Jesus, when John is in prison, Jesus. Picks up the torch and Jesus begins going that same day. And then the rest of Chap Luke, chapter three, which we can touch on in a second, is the genealogy of Christ from Luke's perspective. But anything on Luke, which John the Baptist here. No love everything that you just said. Awesome. Can we clip that and Nope. Use that over and over again. Nope. No. Okay, so strike it from the record. Luke's genealogy here is gonna go back. We talked to that Matthew's genealogy went all the way back to Abraham, or I should say, started with Abraham and went down to Jesus. Luke is gonna start with Jesus, and we know that Jesus was 30 because of Luke's testimony here, that he was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. And he's gonna trace it all the way back. To Adam, the son of God. And again, this is where we go back to the different audiences that we were talking about. As we open this podcast, Matthew's concerned to show Jesus as the king of the Jews. Luke is concerned to show Jesus as the son of man, as the one that is for all of the people, for all of the Gentiles. So that's why he goes all the way back to Adam in order to show, hey, Jesus is the son of Adam. This is traceable all the way back. And because of that, he is the savior of the world and not just the savior of one group of people here. Yeah. Notice here in verse 23, he's called the son as was supposed of Joseph. So even though Luke identifies Joseph as Jesus legal bio or legal father, he's not his biological father but he traces that line all the way down, verse 38, to being the son of God. And so he's making a connection to Jesus, not only being the son of David, which in verse 31, but also having universal application as the son of God. Everyone comes from Adam and Adam comes from God. And so he's trying to show that Jesus is not just a savior for the Jews, he's a savior for the whole world. Yeah. A lot of people think this is actually, even though he says, he mentions Joseph there, that the line that he's tracing is actually Mary's line in Luke. Possible. We can't say for sure, and that's where I was gonna, I was not gonna mention it, but since you brought it up. Okay. There are multiple ways to approach the two different genealogies that Jesus has. He has one here in Matthew, or one here in Luke, and one in Matthew, and they're different. And one way to approach it is once. Joseph's one is Mary's, but one of the challenges here is, as you see in this text, this one says Joseph. Yeah. And the other one is also considered Joseph's as well. So you could say this as Mary's, but then he is, you have the question. Why is he mentioning Joseph here? He could have mentioned Mary, that he's not, in fact, Luke is okay. With including women in the gospel story. Yeah. He does it quite frequently and it seems like he's doing it on purpose to showcase the fact that Jesus was not, he was not opposed to utilizing women in his ministry. In fact, some women were supporting his ministry and they were traveling with him in some capacity. What that looks like, how he, I don't know, but that's what Luke says. So I think if it were Mary's line, I think Luke would've been okay. With saying this is Mary's line. I don't think that would've been an issue. So I, I don't know. I don't know where to fall on this. I just know that however you slice it there's challenges either way. Yeah. In fact, Bible Knowledge Commentary is looking at, it says. This on it, it says both of those views that it's Joseph's or it's Mary's have their problems. Yes. Which are difficult to answer. Yeah. It says not the least of which is the fact that the two genealogies meet at she LTL and Abel and then split a second time only to come together again at Joseph and Jesus. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, what do you do with that? We have questions that the text isn't answering for us, which means that either A, God deliberately did not give us that information, or B, we just haven't figured out how to put the pieces together yet. And given that we've had 2000 years to take a crack at this and nothing has been preserved to really resolve these things in a satisfying way. Okay. God's doing something that, okay. He doesn't want us to know. That's fine. I can live with that. Yeah. Yeah. So this shouldn't shake our faith. Absolutely not. In fact, the very opposite is true. Both. Matthew and Luke are writing for the express purpose of Inspiring Faith. And so just because we don't have answers to how something works doesn't mean that the answer isn't there. We just dunno how it works yet. And perhaps there's gonna be some kind of, I don't know, some archeological dig that helps shed some light. I don't know. We just don't know. We. What I do know is that so far I've been able to trust everything. The genealogy is a relatively small piece of the puzzle for me. If I look at the whole picture of all that God has done in his word and through his spirit, man, I don't struggle with this. I'd like to get it answered, make no mistake, but I don't struggle with it in the same way. And I think it's telling also, and I know we gotta wrap up as we're a little bit longer on this episode, but I think it's a. It's telling also that some of the main challenges to Jesus' claim to be the Messiah. I don't find a lot out there from the Jewish camp saying he wasn't of the line of David. That's true. Yeah. That's true. Even there, it shows that they were accepting of his lineage and the connection back to the line of David, which would put him back in, in keeping with the rest of the genealogies here. So that's a great point. Let's let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. Lord we're grateful for the detail that you do give us in the scriptures. We're grateful for Luke's attention to detail as a physician. We're grateful for Mark's passion to condense and give us all the fast pack to action of what took place in the life of Christ. And we're thankful for Matthew showing us that he's the king of the Jews. Lord, we're grateful for the different perspectives that we get in these four accounts. Help us as we read the gospels this. Season Lord, not to glaze over a passage because we've just read the similar account in another gospel, but help us to take it in and to think, and to think about the unique perspective of the writer and what he was trying to accomplish in writing it the way that he did. And Lord, maybe we never grow bored with the life of Jesus, with the life of our Messiah, with the life of our Savior. And so we pray this and ask this in his name. Amen. Keep your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you tomorrow. Bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said