BOM-BITES Episode #702 – Matthew and Luke – powered by Happy Scribe
Hey, good morning, my friends. Derek here from BOMSocks with more BOMBites, where we feast upon the words of Christ one bite at a time.
So I’m excited this year to study the New Testament with you. Yesterday we went through that little Inner testamental period, leading you up to where we are at now in the New Testament. Now, this first half is referred to as the Gospels.
Okay? Gospel means good news. And this is basically four gospels that are testimonies of four different men, but they’re talking about the same thing from their different perspective. So a lot of it depends on who their audience is. A lot of it depends upon the time period they were speaking as well, this is one of the reasons why I love the various tellings of the first vision from Joseph Smith.
I know some people freak out about that. Some people, that’s been one of the reasons they struggle with their testimony. For me, it’s a testimony to see Joseph Smith sharing this with different individuals at different time periods. And I think we all do that depending upon who our audience is and what their knowledge is and all of that. So I think that’s just a normal thing that we all do.
So I’m personally grateful for that, and I’m grateful for the Gospels, this good news that is shared from four different individuals. You’ve got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, this week we are focusing specifically on Matthew and Luke. So with Matthew now, I love personally, this is just my own personal opinion on this. I love the way the chosen has portrayed Matthew.
Now, yes, I understand there’s probably some creative license there, but Matthew is a tax collector and he’s this individual who is very much detail oriented. His Gospel is the longest of all the Gospels, and I love how it shows him trying to understand the Old Testament history. And as he does this, it helps him explain his message. Well, like I said, he is a tax collector. He’s a publican, which is one of those occupations that came about during that intertestamental period.
So he was one of the Lord’s original apostles, and therefore he was an eyewitness to the many things that he described. He was well versed in the Old Testament. Like I said, he made many references to Old Testament passages in his Gospel. You’re going to see that often with Matthew. He frequently quoted Old Testament sources in an effort to help the Jews recognize the promised Messiah.
It’s just like, hey, this is the guy that you have been waiting for, as was said by the prophet Micah or Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Isaiah. Matthew does that a lot. He emphasized the Savior’s lineage through both Abraham and David and arranged the material so that the Jews could see a reflection of their history in the life of Jesus Christ. You see that in Matthew, chapter one, where you go through about the first 17 verses, and you see so and so, begat so and so. We make jokes about this all the time.
But this is Matthew showing the lineage of Jesus Christ so that the Jews can see exactly where he came from. And as he does that, he ties it into Old Testament prophecies. So I love that. Matthew does that. I think it’s awesome from his perspective.
Now, you get into Luke. Now. Luke. Luke’s. Name means lightgiver.
Matthew means gift from God, by the way, which I think both of those are great. So Luke was a Gentile with meaning a non Jewish physician. It says that he practiced medicine. He traveled. The evidence shows that he traveled primarily with the Apostle Paul.
He wrote his Gospel after the Savior’s death primarily to a non Jewish audience. So again, here’s where you got that different audience from a certain perspective. He testified of Jesus Christ as the savior of both the Gentiles and the Jews. He recorded eyewitness accounts of the events of the Savior’s life, and he included more stories involving women compared to all the other Gospels. Now, like I said, these are eyewitness accounts, but he most likely did not personally know the Savior, but he learned about Him from eyewitnesses.
For example, you go to Luke, chapter one. All you got to do is just click the very first footnote footnote a and it starts off with Luke saying, as I am a messenger of Jesus Christ, and knowing that many have, then you go back to this have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us. It’s almost like Joseph Smith starts off his history, and Joseph Smith history is like, look, there’s so much that’s been said about this. Let me give you from my perspective what has taken place. Verse two, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses.
Like I said, he focuses on these eyewitnesses, which we’ll talk about a few of them this week, and ministers of the Word. And again, I love this because this is my opinion on this, but I love the fact that we have four different individuals testifying of Jesus Christ. We get different parts from them. So we’re going to be doing this kind of simultaneously or in harmony. So during the same week, we’ll be talking about Matthew’s Witness, we’ll be talking about Luke’s Witness, or we’ll be talking about John’s Witness during that same week.
And we get to see their perspectives and I love that. So I’m grateful for the Gospels, and I’m grateful what they have each taught me about Jesus Christ. Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing, and thanks for sharing these messages. Are so grateful, as always, that you do that. Please go check out our amazingly comfortable gospel themed socks@bombsox.com.
And you guys have a great day and we’ll see you tomorrow. God speak. Bye.
Guest Author
dyejo
