Latest / Dwelling Place: The Bible for Moms / #193. The Word Became Flesh: Finishing the Old Testament & Beginning the New Testament!! Congrats!!

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#193. The Word Became Flesh: Finishing the Old Testament & Beginning the New Testament!! Congrats!! · Dwelling Place: The Bible for Moms

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  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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  He was in the beginning with God.
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  All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything that was made.
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  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
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  He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.
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  He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
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  He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.
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  He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.
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  But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
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  but of God The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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  This is The Dwelling Place from Entrusted Ministries, and I'm Stephanie Hickox.
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  This episode will be just a little different We're celebrating completing our reading of the Old Testament Rejoicing that we get to study the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus Christ That we've seen along the way that he was actively involved in
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  the Old Testament And John's gospel confirms it.
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  He was there at the beginning.
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  He was part of creation.
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  He was working as part of the triune God But we rejoice, That he laid down the glories of heaven and came to earth fully God and fully man This idea of God making His dwelling place with us, of
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  Jesus Christ being Emmanuel, is unheard of, unmatched, unparalleled in other religions And to celebrate and recognize all that you've studied and who Jesus has been in every book of the Bible, I'm going to read a poem called Name
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  Above All Names in Entrusted, we have an incredible Bible study method called Get the Word Out It's a study utilizing 18 different tools that help you develop your own devotional lifestyle, it's utilizing several of these tools that have
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  led to my love and knowledge of the Word of God one of these tools is Jesus the Living Word if you're on our Dwelling Place reading plan, I'm including this as a congratulations gift to you for making your
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  way through the Old Testament.
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  And if you joined us partway through, we still wanna congratulate you for prioritizing God's Word, If you sign up for our newsletter late, just fill out a contact form on our website And I'll send that your way As
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  we've gone through all 39 books of the Old Testament What stood out to you?
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  How did you notice Jesus working?
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  maybe in Genesis you were entirely impacted by Hagar's encounter with the God who sees her.
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  And so maybe in Genesis you would say, In Genesis, Jesus is the God who sees me I'm going to read through the Old Testament portion of this Name Above All Names poem In Genesis, Jesus is the ram at
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  Abraham's altar.
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  Exodus, Jesus is the Passover lamb.
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  In Leviticus, He is the high priest.
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  In Numbers, He is the cloud by day and the pillar by night.
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  In Deuteronomy, He is the city of our refuge.
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  In Joshua, He is the scarlet thread out Rahab's window.
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  In Judges, He is our judge.
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  In Ruth, He is our kinsman redeemer.
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  In 1 and 2 Samuel, He is our trusted prophet.
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  In Kings and Chronicles, He is our reigning king.
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  In Ezra, He is our faithful scribe.
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  In Nehemiah, He is the rebuilder of everything that is broken.
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  In Esther, He is the Mordecai sitting faithful at the gate In Job, He is our Redeemer who lives forever.
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  In Psalms, He is my shepherd and I shall not want.
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  In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, He is our wisdom.
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  In the Song of Solomon, He is the beautiful bridegroom.
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  In Isaiah, He is the suffering servant.
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  In Jeremiah and Lamentations, Jesus is the weeping prophet.
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  In Ezekiel, He is the wonderful four-faced man.
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  In Daniel, He is the fourth person in the fiery furnace.
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  In Hosea, He is my love that is ever faithful.
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  In Joel, He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit.
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  In Amos, He is our burden bearer.
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  In Obadiah, He is our Savior.
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  In Jonah, He is the great foreign missionary taking the gospel to all the world In Nahum, He is the avenger.
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  In Habakkuk, he is the watchman ever praying for revival.
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  In Zephaniah, He is the Lord mighty to save.
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  In Haggai, He is the restorer of our lost heritage.
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  In Zechariah, He is our fountain.
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  And in Malachi, He is the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings today, instead of beginning our New Testament reading plan, I would love for you to print this out and think about how God's character and the
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  presence of Christ has impacted you as you've studied the Old Testament And the last thing I wanna do in our episode today is talk a little bit about the intertestamental period.
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  You might be thinking, "The inter what?"
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  Well, Malachi was written in the 400s BC, and then Jesus Christ wasn't born until somewhere between 4 to 6 BC What happened in all of that time?
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  Well, as we study the Book of Daniel, God revealed a lot of what was to come.
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  And it's astounding the accuracy with which all these prophecies were foretold.
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  for those of you that might be a little sleep-deprived right now, I'm just gonna hit 10 key events or details that will help you move forward in understanding for the New Testament and then finally in this episode, I'm
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  gonna talk briefly about the four Gospels, and why they're different and what each of their focus is in revealing Jesus Christ the Savior to the world Betsy Corning, our executive director and founder, says the Gospels are like four
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  exclamation points saying, He's here.
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  He's here.
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  He's here.
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  He's here."
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  And I feel it, don't you?
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  Even though I've loved walking through the Old Testament, I am so ready to look at Jesus.
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  There won't be any questioning, Wait, are we supposed to follow that?
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  You know that everything Jesus did was fully righteous.
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  We know that He is a model for us.
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  Instead of reading through these narrative stories and think, "Wait, am I supposed to be like that guy right now or not supposed to be like him?"
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  And digging in and praying for discernment And lining it up with the rest of scripture, now we know all that Jesus did and said was perfect and holy and worthy of imitation and hopefully we have more of a
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  historical Context for who he was and the time period that God had him born into.
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  Okay, fact number one about the intertestamental period At the close of the Old Testament, with Malachi and Nehemiah 13, the Medo-Persians were in control.
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  They had given the Jews a lot of religious freedom, and they had allowed many to return home.
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  But most Jews did not return home after the exile.
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  They were comfortable where they were.
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  This is called the diaspora, the dispersion of Israel.
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  It began when the Assyrians took over Israel, and then when the Babylonians took over Judah Fact number two, the Medo-Persians controlled The Jews For about 200 years But then Darius III The king of the Medo-Persian Empire was defeated
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  by Alexander the Great Alexander took over all of the lands of the Persian Empire, which included Israel, and this happened, and this occurred in 332 BC over 300 years before Jesus Alexander the Great was not as supportive of
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  these nations worshiping their own gods He believed the Greek way of life, known as Hellenism, was the way to go and the Jewish people lost a lot of their religious freedom as the Greeks began to take over.
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  However, some truly monumental benefits were provided by this prideful young man because he wanted Hellenism to rule the world, he forced all the nations and all the lands that he conquered to learn the Greek language Alexander was personally
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  tutored by Aristotle and was well-educated.
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  And as he conquered these lands, he had them learn to read and write Greek Praise the Lord, what did that do for Christianity?
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  It allowed the gospel to be spread and scripture to be translated into a unified language That brings us to fact number three, the Septuagint Around 250 BC, there were seventy-two scholars that were assembled by Ptolemy Philadelphias And in
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  72 days, they translated the Old Testament into Greek Septuagint translates to 70 in Greek and that's how it got its name this gave everyone who spoke the Greek language access to the word of God Probably not the goal
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  that Alexander the Great was after.
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  Okay, number four Alexander the Great died mysteriously in 323, he had no heir to the throne, and after some fighting, his lands were divided up into four generals just as Daniel prophesied two of these lines became much more
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  powerful and the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties were at war with each other for the foreseeable future and this takes us from 301 BC to 198 BC We're getting much closer to the time of Christ.
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  And under the Ptolemaic rule, the Jews, had a good amount of religious liberty Fact number four, from 175 to 164, this was the abominable reign of Antiochus IV of Epiphanes, and I'm gonna read this description straight out of
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  the MacArthur commentary antiochus desecrated and plundered the Temple of Jerusalem in 170 BC.
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  In 167 BC, Antiochus ordered a Hellenization in Palestine and forbade the Jews from keeping their laws, observing the Sabbath, keeping festivals, offering sacrifices, and circumcising their children.
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  Copies of the Torah were ordered destroyed.
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  Idolatrous altars were set up, plus the Jews were commanded by Antiochus to offer unclean sacrifices and to eat swine's flesh.
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  Antiochus was the first pagan monarch to persecute the Jews for their faith This abomination of desolation It was horrific Fact number five, eventually there was an elderly priest named Mattathias.
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  He had five sons, they decided to stand up to Antiochus Epiphanes Their revolt is called the Maccabean Revolt One of these sons was Judas Maccabeus They battled for about 24 years, but were finally able to become independent from
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  the Seleucids in Syria.
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  And this is because the Romans had entered, and the Seleucids had to worry about dealing with them as well Fact number six, unfortunately, even after all that battling to be able to serve the Lord according to His Word,
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  One of the descendants from the Maccabean line founded the Hasmoneans, even though they weren't from the line of Zadok they controlled the position of the high priest.
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  Unfortunately, they followed the Greek patterns and did not honor God's commands for the temple This lasted until 63 BC when the Roman ruler Pompey defeated them at this point, Judea passes to Roman rule a ruler from the line
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  of Esau is set over the land of Judea.
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  His name is Herod the Great, and he is the ruler on the scene at the time that Jesus is born Fact number seven there were several reasons God gave for the Babylonian exile But many knew that they couldn't
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  follow God's word without knowing it they became scribes and rabbis who helped the people understand what God was calling them to Fact number eight with this rising up of scribes and teachers of the law, they needed more places
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  Where they could worship and learn about the Lord.
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  and this led to the creation of synagogues, both in Judea, and also for the Jews that were in exile in foreign lands There were two pivotal groups that formed during this intertestamental period.
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  Fact number nine, we have the Pharisees they most likely came from the line of the Maccabeans But they wanted to get rid of these Greek influences, so they were devoting themselves back to the word of God But they
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  didn't have the mercy and compassion that the Lord had.
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  they were very legalistic as they held to biblical tradition Number 10, the Sadducees.
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  The Sadducees also formed They were most likely from the line of Zadok, biblically they should have been the high priests But unfortunately, they only accepted the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, as being the word of
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  God, and they rejected the rest.
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  And they did not believe in the resurrection.
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  Okay, so maybe it's more of a history lesson than you wanted, but a lot was going on even though God was not sending prophets anymore he was actively working to fulfill All that he foretold would occur That brings
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  us to the Gospels the Greek word that we translate gospel is from evangelion, which means good news And truly, the Gospels do share the most important events that have ever happened in history, and impact everyone on Earth, whether
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  they care to acknowledge it or not these books focus on revealing theology and convincing us of the accuracy of the death and resurrection of Christ.
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  They're not full biographies.
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  In fact, there's at least 30 years of Jesus's life that we're given barely any detail about From the very, very earliest record that we have of the church, of church history, on- only four gospels have been accepted as
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  being the authoritative inspired word of God.
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  They were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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  There were other, there were other gospels written at this time.
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  Some were counterfeit But we hold, to these four as the authoritative word of God Of the four Gospels, three are what's known as synoptic This means that they share a common point of view.
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  Those are Matthew, Mark, and Luke These three focus on Jesus' ministry to Galilee, And are full of parables that Jesus told John, however, focuses on Jesus' ministry in Judea and does not contain any of his parables.
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  Each gospel has a different perspective, different purpose, and different audience We'll unpack this more as we read through, as we read through the Gospels.
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  Matthew was Jewish, and he was writing to the Jewish people saying, He's here.
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  Jesus is the fulfillment.
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  He's the Messiah.
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  All of those scriptures that foretold- The coming Messiah?
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  Jesus perfectly fulfills them In Matthew's genealogy, he focuses that Jesus is in the royal line of King David He quotes the Old Testament Messianic prophecies repeatedly he is the only gospel author, that enlists the phrase Kingdom of Heaven
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  Matthew is writing to Jewish Christians to strengthen and encourage them.
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  and if you have the opportunity to witness to someone of the Jewish faith Matthew would be the gospel that you would most wanna utilize.
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  Next, we have Mark.
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  Now Mark was not one of the disciples, And he was very close to the Apostle Peter.
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  Tradition tells us That Mark recorded much of what Peter told him.
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  And so it won't surprise you that this is the gospel of action.
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  One of the key words is immediately And, This gospel is known for its quick pace the focus is on Jesus as a servant who came to suffer for the sins of many.
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  And Mark's writing style Would have really appealed to a Roman audience Next.
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  the Gospel of Luke provides some of our most accurate historical and well-researched documentation.
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  Luke was a physician, very educated, and he's widely respected by even those in secular communities 26 times he refers to Jesus as the Son of Man He is the solution to the problems of mankind.
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  Luke is addressing all Gentiles and saying, Jesus is everything you need and everything you hope for And He came to seek and save you.
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  And finally, John, which is the last gospel that was recorded, was written by the Apostle John, and he focused on the fact that Jesus was fully God He was writing both to encourage believers, but also to convince non-believers
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  And His purpose is clear in John 20:31.
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  These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name."
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  There is a key word that's repeated over and over in the Book of John, and it was twice in that verse.
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  It's believe When we put these together It reveals that Jesus is fully God and fully man, that He came for the Jews and the Gentiles.
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  The Gospels convince those who have not surrendered their life to Christ and strengthen those that have He is truly the Word became flesh and dwelt among us And that fact impacts you and I every day.
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  Heavenly Father, we rejoice in your faithfulness we thank you for 929 chapters revealing your perfection, your glory, your patience, and your mercy thank you that you sent your Son to be the model of your character Lord, we pray
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  for eyes that would see, ears that would hear, hearts that would be soft and receptive to exactly what you wanna teach us as we open the pages of the New Testament I pray that even if we've heard these
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  stories our entire lives, Reveal yourself to us Remove Any deceptions or counterfeits that we've believed, and that our faith would be strengthened and transformed by every moment we spend in your Word And that the peace that Christ promised,
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  even in the midst of this fallen world would be the foundation upon which we live and would inspire and convince our children that you are exactly who you say you are, Jesus.
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  We love you And believe that will love you even more as we walk with you through your Word.
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  In Jesus' name we pray, amen