Thru the Bible - Questions & Answers

Host: We'll continue our series on why four Gospels today, looking at the Gospel for the religious man and the Gospel for the strong man. Stay with us to find out more.

Host: This is the Questions & Answers program, a ministry of the Thru the Bible Radio Network, with our Bible teacher Dr. J. Vernon McGee. Before we get to the third of our four-part series on why four Gospels, we'd like to start today's program with a question or two. The first comes from a listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, who spends some time on the issue of a thousand years being like a day. He asks, "Could this mean that creation took 6,000 years?"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: And I have a notion that's what he was getting to all the way through—a day as a thousand years and thousand years of creation. And I personally take the 24-hour day of creation, but to attempt to date those days, that's the problem. I don't think anyone can date those days at all.

And very candidly, we've been told very little about creation. Moses was not interested in giving us a lesson in geology or a lesson on science. He just is giving us, actually, the religious history of mankind. He doesn't go into a great deal of details—very frankly, that we as human beings might like to go into—about what did Adam do during the week? I mean, did he have a program set out for him? What did he do on Monday?

We're not told anything, really, about Adam. I don't know how well Adam slept at night. I take it he did all right. I'm not sure he slept at night. A great many things we're not told, and all we could do would be just speculate. So I have come to the conclusion that all of this scientific endeavor today to try to determine, actually, the origin of life and the origin of this universe is really a waste of time.

But fortunately, as man has attempted to explore all of this, he's come up with some little side benefits—there's been some spinoffs from it that have been very helpful, I think. So let the scientist alone; let him keep playing in his laboratory, both the Christian and the non-Christian. They get some good spinoffs every now and then, but they don't know when life began or how it began.

The only place in the world you're going to find out how it began is in the first chapter of Genesis, in fact, in the first verse in Genesis: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And I haven't read anything better than that at all.

Host: We turn now to a question from a listener in Los Angeles, California, who writes, "What does a person have to do to have contentment in the heart or peace of mind—that is, to get rid of that feeling of insecurity?"

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now if you want peace of mind, the scripture's very clear on that: "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now that's a present benefit that is yours if you can see that by faith that you're saved and that God by His grace has extended grace to you—not because of merit, but because you have a need. You can't save yourself, and He's agreed to do it.

Now if you can enter into that and rest in Christ, believe Him, then you can have peace of mind. But now if you mean by that that you're going to go through this world wrapped up in cellophane or packed in cotton, you're just entirely wrong about that. Because when you get on a plane, for instance, and you get in a storm and it begins to wobble up and down, you'll be a very strange individual if you don't lose a little of your peace and become a little concerned about the situation.

And that would be true if you're in a house that's on fire. If you don't get a feeling of insecurity, you're entirely without feeling. So that you can have that deep peace of mind only through Jesus Christ.

Host: Now let's get to our series on why four Gospels.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Now we are dealing with a large question: why four Gospels? in order to answer many questions. And one of the questions is: why does the Gospel of Matthew have the genealogy of Christ? Now I've come to that today to deal with that in particular. And it opens with these majestic words: "The book of the generation," or the genealogy, "of Jesus Christ, the son of David."

And that ties into everything God promised David and his line, and that is the thing that God had promised to Abraham. He promised to make him a blessing to all people, and now that one is come, the Savior of the world. That genealogy was never challenged. That's who He is. The Jew would say, "Sure, if He's the son of Abraham, if He's the son of David, I'll listen."

Matthew wrote for the Jew. And then the genealogy is given to explain why Joseph could not be the father. Actually, the value of the genealogy is not to show how He could be born of a virgin, but how He could not be born any other way. Because Matthew makes it very clear that Jechoniah is in that genealogy, and those that knew the Old Testament were aware that there had been a curse pronounced upon that line, and no one in that line could sit upon the throne of David.

How can Joseph have a son to sit on the throne of David? He can't. However, he can be the husband of Mary, who is also in the line of David through another route—through David's son Nathan. And by being her husband, Joseph can give to Jesus the royal rights and the legal rights to the throne of David. Israel needed to know that, and Matthew wrote for that reason, and that's the reason the virgin birth is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew.

That makes it all-important, friends, and I hope that you see that there is a movement here and it is slanted to the religious man. For instance, the Sermon on the Mount is to be the law of the kingdom. It's to be the law of a people that are going to be regenerated and live in a kingdom that's coming here on this earth, and that law would be pretty hard to put into force today, and it's impossible for any unregenerate man to live by it. This is given to the religious man. This is given to a peculiar people to meet a particular need.

Now I can't go into all of that because I need to move now to the Gospel of Mark. That's written, as we've said, for the strong man, directly in that day to the Roman and today to those that come in under that classification. Now let's look at it. When the founding fathers came to our shores, they did not come on an invasion. I think that's remarkable to see. They did not come to make war. They did not want to fight the Indians, but they tried to make peace with them, and they did at the beginning.

They did not come to exploit others. They did not come to rape the land of its wealth. They truly came in peace to worship God. Now that was their mission when they came to this land. We find that the strong man had a different mission. The strong man was the Roman Empire, and for almost a millennium, the Roman brought peace to the world. They brought a peace that was obtained by a different philosophy from that of the men who founded our nation.

Their methods were contrary to ours and contrary to the word of God. The legions of Rome marched over the then-known world. Rome was part of the image that Daniel interpreted from Nebuchadnezzar all the way down to the feet of iron and clay, and it was typified by iron. Rome was hard as iron. The Romans were men of will and strength. They undertook the Herculean task of ruling the world, and they did it for 1,000 years.

They believed in power. They believed in human power expressed in law and order, and they would subordinate the individual to the state. They attempted to attain a universal state. They built highways over the territories that they conquered to give them ready access so that they might indeed rule the world. They promised those that they had conquered law, order, and protection, and the iron heel of Rome was put down on the neck of mankind.

They represented the idea of active human power in the ancient world. They embodied the idea in the state or empire as the repository of law and justice. They came in process of time to deify the state as the grandest concrete manifestation of power. With the consciousness of being born to rule the world, they pushed the idea of national power to universal power and universal empire.

Cesar Augustus, who passed the tax bill that moved Mary and Joseph down to Bethlehem, was actually a great-nephew of Julius Caesar. His name was Caius Octavius. He took the name of Caesar because it was a name that would stand against the world, but he wanted a title, and the Senate suggested many titles. He declined to be called king or dictator because neither title signified enough for him. He took the title of Augustus because it not only carried the connotation of politics but the connotation of religion.

That is what Rome presented to the world. Gibbon, who probably made the greatest study of the Roman Empire, said—and by the way, he was not a Christian—"The empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly."

Although Rome brought peace to the world, it was a frightful peace. Dr. Robert Culver wrote one of the most brilliant books on Daniel that I've ever read, and listen to what he had to say. He says, "Two millennia ago, Rome gave the world the ecumenical unity which the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization have sought to arrive in our time. The modern attempts are not original at all, as many of our contemporaries suppose, but are revivals of the ancient Roman ideal which never since the time of Augustus Caesar has been wholly lost."

And that's a remarkable statement, by the way. They were ruling the world when the Lord Jesus Christ was born. And in this connection, Dr. Gregory further states concerning the Roman: "He was to try whether human power taking the form of law, regulated by political principles of which a regard for law and justice was most conspicuous, could perfect humanity by subordinating the individual to the state and making the state universal. Its Herculean tasks and its universal empire furnished the highest expression of the human soul as the repository of the energy for shaping the world to law and order."

The Roman, as the man of power, was to attempt the solution of perfecting mankind and bringing a millennium here upon the earth. But my friend, is the awesome picture that is presented of the great empire that ruled in that day when Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Rome represented active human power in the ancient world. It led to dictatorship, and it led finally to worship when the power was vested in one man and the worship of that man.

At this time, Paul says, "When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under a law." Christ lived and died and rose from the grave in the Roman Empire. One day, a little Jew by the name of Paul hobbled into the city of Rome with a message that Gibbon said shook the empire to its foundation. Of this message, Paul had written, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; it's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."

God sent a message to that segment of the world. It was the Gospel of Mark. John Mark is the writer. This young man was evidently schooled in Roman thought. He himself apparently was a man of action, though he certainly was a coward at the beginning. You read Acts 13:13. But he made good finally. His Gospel is actually Simon Peter's account. Evidently, John Mark got the facts from Simon Peter.

Simon Peter was likewise a man of action. He liked action better than he liked logic. And this is the man that the Spirit of God chose to be the first one to go to a Roman centurion and preach the gospel. Now let's turn to that record, as it's rather important. Simon Peter had been coached by the Spirit of God regarding going to a Gentile, which he'd never done before. Listen to him: "Then Peter opened his mouth and said, 'Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he's the Lord of all.'"

But this is a new kind of peace. It's a kind of peace that you do not have to send an army to bring about—a kind of peace that comes inside of a man. It's not imposed by outside force. Another Roman centurion yonder in Philippi was startled when he found that all the doors of the prison were open. Supposing the prisoners had escaped, he knew nothing of the kind of power that could hold men without prison bars.

A centurion was a realist. He was a man of physical power believing only in that. Now, follow Peter as he continues his message to the Roman centurion: "Now, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good." That's interesting because that's what the Roman thought he was doing and believed in doing—going about and doing good. "Who went about doing good and healing all that was oppressed of the devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things that he did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and hanged on a tree."

Now this, you see, is the way Peter gave the gospel to a man of action, a Roman. And he goes on: "Him God raised up the third day and showed him openly." Peter was a man of action. Most of the church fathers concur that Simon Peter's the one who gave the facts to John Mark. Let me give you just a couple of quotations to support that statement.

Papias, associate of Polycarp, heard the words of the apostles from those who were their followers. He writes: "Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote carefully down all that he recollected, but not according to the order of Christ speaking or working." And Tertullian, one of the great minds of North Africa—he was from Carthage—wrote that the Gospel which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was.

And Clement says there was a group of Roman knights that requested Simon Peter to leave in writing the things he had taught them, and that is John Mark who wrote for him. And again and again, this could be emphasized. The Gospel of action, and it suited for today.

Now somebody asks, "Well, why in the world don't we have here a genealogy if he's a man of action?" Well, when you hire a man to do a job, maybe it's an important job—maybe you're a big contractor, and you want someone that can put up a big steel scaffolding for a 50-story building. The man that comes to apply for the job, you don't ask him whether his ancestors came over on the Mayflower. You don't care about his genealogy. He may be descended from Queen Elizabeth, and how in the world would you want to fit that into the application for the job?

May I say to you, what you want to know: can he do the job? Does he have the power to do the job? Now when you go through the Gospel of Mark, it's the briefest Gospel. Jesus is a man of action, and you have miracle after miracle recorded. Jesus did this, and Jesus did the other thing. The Gospel of Mark is definitely a Gospel of action. It is adapted and directed to men of action, and the genealogy is not important at all.

Therefore, the virgin birth is not put in it. I've always felt that giving out the Gospel of Matthew, or giving out a New Testament to folks that know nothing about the Bible, is maybe not the way to begin. I've often thought that the Gospel of Mark was the one to give out. And during World War II, I think it was the Moody Bible Institute that gave out the Gospel of Mark. And I thought, "My, there's somebody up there that sure is smart, because they're giving out the right one."

A great many feel like they ought to give out the Gospel of John, and don't misunderstand me. We're going to see when we come to it, that's the wretched man, and there are a lot of wretched folks today in our midst. And they don't have to be poor to be wretched. Some of the most miserable people in this world are the rich people. They're the ones who commit suicide. But nevertheless, it's in that class—the wretched man.

And here in Mark, it's the man of action. So you find that Mark is recording the miracles the Lord Jesus Christ performed. I'd like to pick up and cite several of these things because I think they're very important. Now notice that the Lord Jesus, when He starts out, He's already marching.

And I come to Mark 1:14: "And after John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.'" Believe me, that's action, is it not? Notice what follows: "Now as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net in the sea, for they were fishers." And they came into Capernaum, and straightway on the Sabbath day He entered into the synagogue and taught. That's Mark 1:21.

Then Mark 1:22: "And they were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes." And He just keeps moving. Let's go down to Mark 1:30: "But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and straightway they tell him of her. And he came and took her by the hand, lifted her up, and immediately the fever left her." My, action everywhere He goes.

And we read on down at verse 32: "And in the evening when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased and those who were possessed with demons, and all the city was gathered together at the door." Literally, there were thousands of people in that country at that particular time that had had their eyes opened—the blind had had their eyes opened.

That's the reason that the enemy never did deny that He performed miracles. They were walking all over the place in that day. He was a man of action. This appealed to the man of action, and it should today. Are you a man of action, want to see things done? Here's someone that can do it. He can heal the sick, raise the dead, but that's not what He came to do.

His big job was to make a way of salvation for mankind, and He said He didn't come to be ministered unto, but to minister but to give His life a ransom for many. He was to lay down His life that He might provide salvation for man. And no Caesar could ever offer that. None of the wise men of Greece could offer that. None of the religious men of Jerusalem could offer that. He alone could offer life to mankind—life here, life everlasting.

How wonderful He is as you see Him go through the Gospel of Mark. And you know, He's put on the cross, and there's action there. Nine o'clock in the morning they put Him there. 12 o'clock darkness comes down. Three hours in light, three hours in darkness. First three hours man did his worst. Last three hours God did His best. In those three hours He made His soul a ransom for sin. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. And that cross became an altar on which the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world was offered.

That's the Gospel of Mark, friends, a Gospel of action. And that explains why He doesn't deal with the birth of a baby. There's no baby talk in the Gospel of Mark. There's the man of action that is there, and that will appeal to some today, whereas the baby would not appeal to many.

Host: Well, that wraps up our third in our four-part series on why four Gospels. An expanded version of this issue is available in a booklet by the same title. Or consider getting Dr. McGee's complete study on this subject, which is available on a single MP3 disc. To place an order for the book or CD or to ask for a resource catalog, just give us a call at 1-800-65-BIBLE Monday through Thursday, from 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM Pacific time.

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