Monday, October 31, 2011

Story - New Testament Gospels

We've started a new sermon series this week on the New Testment books. A "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" review of the New Testament in four weeks. It will be just enough info to hopefully wet your appetite and get you interested in pulling out the Bible while you are at home!

There are Four "gospels' in the New Testament. The word "gospel" is taken from the Anglo-Saxon word "godspel" which means a 'good story'. This in turn was substituted for the original Greek word euaggelion which came to mean 'good news'. Using the word "gospel" was short hand for describing the first four books of the New Testament as good news for our lives.

I have always been glad that there are Four gospels because they give us a different perspective on the same events. Just as two bystanders will give different accounts of the same event, so did the four gospel writers give us slightly different accounts of Jesus' ministry. The Gospel of John, is the only gospel that is different in any major way from the other three. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because they 'see (optic) together (syn)'.

Having four different gospels gives us the author's unique perspective on Jesus and his ministry, allowing us to view Jesus from four slightly different points of view.

If you have never ready any of the Gospels all the way through, I encourage you to just pick one and read it this week. Reading it the whole way through will give you a very different perspective and understanding of Jesus than the bits and pieces you hear read in church on Sunday morning.

Don't forget to incorporate BELLS into your week this week:
Bless 3 people (do something nice for someone in your church, outside your church, one extra)
Eat with people at 3 meals (or a coffee meet) that you go to looking for ways to be positive and share the love and joy of Christ.
Learn - Take time to read anything that is uplifting or edifying (doesn't have to be specifically Christian )
Listen - Spend one hour in silence listening for God's direction in your life.
Sent - review each day looking for where God sent/used you or where God tried to send/use you but you refused His call.

CS

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. - John 3:16-18 (The Message)

1 comments:

Anonymous November 1, 2011 at 10:59 AM  

I'm wondering - how is John different from the other 3?