Hello and thank you so much for joining us at the very beginning of Word Online. There are 184 videos, set in 14 series in the Word Online teaching materials and they are available for you. They cover the whole life of Jesus and we are taking all the material from all the four Gospels, using parallel passages where the same story or teaching is given by different Gospels. They are all mentioned as we go through; it is a massive journey.

My aim is to tell the story of Jesus freshly, looking into every detail, not missing anything out, to give you and everyone who hears or views these videos, a much more comprehensive understanding of who Jesus is. You might be an enquirer from another religious background. You might be a secular person. You might be a committed Christian. You might be coming back to faith. You might be wanting to develop your own Christian discipleship. You might be a Christian leader. You are welcome. Word Online is a unique project to support and develop discipleship. The materials are designed to be used where English is understood - not just as a first language but maybe a second or third language. We hope in days to come that we will translate the material into other languages. 

The Four Gospels

We are going to start today by looking at Luke's opening statements at the beginning of his Gospel. In fact, in the first three episodes we have got three different starting points for the life of Jesus; from Luke's point of view, from John's point of view, and then from Matthew's point of view. Three fascinating and different approaches to the same event. That is one of the wonderful things about studying the Gospels; you have four writers looking at the same event and viewing it slightly differently, giving a different emphasis, and sometimes different information, with different stories, different teaching, and different reflections. It is a really rich and wonderful resource that we have got in the four Gospels and my feeling is, it is underused by the Church. It is the biggest section of the New Testament, if you put the four Gospels together - much bigger than the book of Acts, which tells the story of the Early Church. It is bigger than all the letters , written by all the Apostles and their associates put together. It is bigger than the book of Revelation. We are going to look into it in great detail, with great excitement, during the 184 episodes that are before us. You can dip in at any point to just look at one particular episode if you want. You can look at a particular series, or you can follow the journey all the way through, taking as much time as you need to, and I hope some of you will do that, as you are starting with us today at the beginning.

Luke's Introduction

Luke has a small introduction, which we are going to read Luke 1: 1 - 4,

‘¹Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, ²just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. ³With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, ⁴so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.’

Luke 1:1-4, NIV

This is the sort of passage you can pass over very quickly when you want to get on to the story. Immediately after this, Luke goes straight into telling us about the birth of John the Baptist and then that leads very quickly on to the birth of Jesus. This opening section is incredibly important. 

The first question that comes to mind is, ‘Who is Theophilus, who is mentioned here? ‘most excellent Theophilus’. Interestingly, the Greek words that make up that name mean ‘lover of God’. We don't know who he is exactly, but here are some possibilities: he could be someone who is enquiring about the Christian faith that Luke actually knows; it could be a disciple or a follower of Jesus who wants to get deeper into the story; or thirdly, and I think this is most likely, Theophilus may well be someone who is a patron for Luke, someone who is financing him to do his research project. It is a Greek name, so he is probably not a Jew. He is coming from the Gentile, or non-Jewish nations, and Luke is writing with them very much in mind. Theophilus may well be the person who is financing Luke to do this work.

That raises another question: ‘Who is Luke, and how does he fit into this story?’ He appears in the book of Acts, as an associate of Paul, and he appears occasionally in Paul's letters. We know that he is a Gentile. He is not Jewish. We know that he has a medical background and has worked as a doctor. We know that at times Luke travelled with Paul, when he went on his missionary journeys in areas like modern-day Turkey and Greece, going from city to city, planting churches, and supporting those churches. At times Luke was actually present with Paul. He wrote the book of Acts as the second book and a companion to the book of Luke. So, he is a travelling companion with Paul. He is very close, therefore, to the apostolic message. He understands what is going on. He sees the work of God, and the power of God, in the planting of churches in the decades after Jesus' death. That is who Luke is. He appears to be quite a literate man. He has got a great interest in history, and a historical way of thinking, which I find very interesting.

Then we ask ourselves the question: ‘When and how did he do all the research, that is implied here?’ He ‘investigated everything from the beginning’ carefully. That is what it says in this text. He spent some time working on this. Obviously he isn't working as a doctor at this point; he is not travelling with Paul at this point, probably. What opportunity would Luke have to investigate this, particularly as he puts an emphasis on eyewitnesses? Most of the eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry lived in Israel, because that is where Jesus ministered, where he lived and where people would have met him. Luke didn't live in Israel. He travels with Paul in areas like Turkey and Greece, as mentioned. There is an interesting fact in the book of Acts which might provide the clue to explain this. Between Acts 21 and Acts 26, Luke describes a visit that Paul made to Jerusalem after one of his missionary journeys. He describes some very traumatic and complicated events that happened as soon as Paul arrived in Jerusalem. There was a riot. The Jewish people were very strongly opposed to him and his message. He was nearly killed in the riot. He was rescued by the Roman military who then took him to their military capital, Caesarea, where he was interrogated by the governor. He was put in prison for two years. We know that Luke travelled with Paul to Jerusalem and immediately after that, Paul was stuck in prison in the country for two years. The question arises: ‘What did Luke do during that time?’ We don't directly know the answer to that question, but it is very reasonable to suggest the following scenario. Luke stayed in the country of Israel. It wasn't his country, but this is where the eyewitnesses were, and he got to know the churches; he got to know, perhaps, some of the Apostles themselves; and some of the church leaders. He travelled round the country meeting people who had been healed by Jesus, who had heard Jesus teach. This was about 25 years after Jesus had died. If someone had been 20 when Jesus had died, they would now be 45; if they were 30, they would be 55. There would be plenty of people around in the country who vividly remembered Jesus, and many of them were converts who had become Christians. They would have every reason to think about the experiences they had had with Jesus. It is even possible that Luke may have had access to Jesus' own biological family, to Mary perhaps, and to some of Jesus' half-brothers and other more distant relatives, and people living in the Galilee area. That is a very distinct possibility. We find later on that Luke recounts the story of Jesus' birth entirely from Mary's point of view, whereas Matthew recounts it from Joseph's point of view. One wonders: ‘Where did Luke get the material from?’  - lots of very close detail about Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, about the visitations from angels, and about all sorts of things that happened at that time. He was looking for eyewitness information. He would have had access at that time to members of Jesus' biological family and their close associates. That is maybe where he got that information from. Eyewitnesses and servants of the word were the people that were the source for Luke. He has done a thorough job.

An Orderly Account

He has written what he describes as ‘an orderly account’, in verse 3. This is an interesting expression and it implies, though it doesn't state categorically, that an orderly account is a chronological, orderly account - putting events in the right order chronologically. As someone who wasn't involved in any of the events, he started with a clean slate, as it were, when he came to this. He started afresh. He looked at the evidence, he got eyewitness information, and he pieced together the chronology and he describes this as an orderly account.

He also says that he is not the only person to have written a life of Jesus - not the only person to have written a Gospel account. We know that there are four Gospel accounts that have been authenticated by the Church, as being accurate historically, and written by authoritative people, such as Apostles themselves, for example John and Matthew, or their close associates such as Luke and Mark. We have these four Gospels which the Church considered authoritative and historically accurate. They are very important documents for us. 

An interesting question arises: ‘In which order were these Gospels written?’ Luke implies here that he is not the first person to write, and all the evidence suggests that that is exactly true. The most likely order of events, in terms of writing is that Mark wrote first. That is what most scholars believe. We can't prove this for certain. Mark's account is the shortest; it has a number of indicators of being written first. Then probably Matthew's account came next, Luke was the third writer, and the fourth one is John. We are going to talk a little bit more about John later in a different episode, because he is a slightly different writer and he approaches things from a different perspective. These other three, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are closely integrated; there is a close connection between the three accounts. They are called the synoptic Gospels, because they look at the same events in a very closely integrated way.

If Luke is the third writer, then he would have had access to Mark and Matthew, and he would have used some of their material perhaps, and put them into his own order of events as he developed his Gospel, and wrote it down. 

All these Gospels have different emphases. It is worth commenting on this at the very beginning of our study. Mark is brief; it is written in rather a hasty dynamic style. There is not much material about Jesus' teaching. There is a lot of focus on the events leading up to Jesus' death. It has an evangelistic feel to it. It is an appeal to people to follow Jesus on the basis of basically what he did for them on the cross. Church tradition has suggested from very early days, that Mark was the associate of Peter, the Apostle, and wrote down Peter's accounts of Jesus' life, perhaps when they were together in Rome, towards the end of Peter's life. That is Mark's Gospel, and you will notice, of course, that it is the shortest of the Gospels. 

Matthew is a much longer - a very substantial Gospel. It is written from a very Jewish point of view. It emphasises the fulfilment of prophecy in Jewish history on many occasions and there is a great deal of emphasis on teaching material - the opposite of Mark. There are very substantial blocks of teaching material in Matthew's Gospel, notably Matthew 5 to 7, Matthew 10, Matthew 13, Matthew 18, Matthew 24 and 25, and quite a lot of other material alongside that. W will talk more about that in another context.

Luke's approach is to try and get a very well- organised chronological account. He is emphasising the Gentiles. He doesn't have a Jewish focus. He is focusing on all the nations of the world as they come to believe in Jesus. This isn't surprising, since he is a Gentile, and he has been involved in the Gentile mission with Paul. Some other themes that come out in Luke are his focus on women, his focus on the poor, his focus on the Holy Spirit, and his focus on prayer. He makes many references, for example, to Jesus praying, and has a lot of material on Jesus' teaching on prayer.

John, if he wrote last as I am suggesting - and many scholars believe that to be the case - deliberately decided to write from a very different perspective, and most of his material is based around events that happened in Jerusalem where Jesus went very occasionally. Whereas the synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, focus their events mostly around Jesus' home area of Galilee, in the north of the country. John focused a lot on commenting on the identity of the person of Jesus, and recounting long discussions that Jesus had with people, in different contexts, which are often called discourses.

The Written Accounts

How did we get from the memories of eyewitnesses to the written account? Recent scholarship has suggested that the Apostles, and other associates, may have taken written notes at the very beginning. Previously people didn't believe that was likely, but more people in the academic world believe that is likely now. They may have written down some early notes but principally there was oral tradition. People remembered, recounted and spoke out and discussed stories and teachings, through a great capacity to memorise, which was a very strong feature of their culture - a far less strong feature of modern Western cultures where the capacity to memorise information, narratives, stories and teaching is far more limited, because we depend very heavily on other resources. You may come from a culture in which folk tradition, or family memories, are actually recounted by storytelling on a regular basis, and that really cements it in your mind. Some written notes, much oral tradition, and much literal eyewitness memory. Luke is absolutely clear one of his principal sources is eyewitnesses, people who actually saw things happening, and we know that to see things imprints it on the memory, especially dramatic events. Dramatic events are very hard to forget. Many of you can think of dramatic events in your own life that have really shaped your life. They are not easy to forget. You can quickly bring them to mind when somebody asks you about them.

The process we are taking with Word Online, is to create a harmony of the four Gospels. We have integrated the material, making the assumption that Luke is producing an accurate chronology of the running order of events, and adding in John's information as a later addition to the running order, on the assumption that he wrote a little bit after Luke, which is what most scholars believe. Therefore, the order of events in the 14 series that comprise this life of Jesus in the Word Online teaching programme, is based on the chronology given in Luke. You will see that as a foundation for the ordering of events. We have taken a judgement on what we think the most likely order of events is, on that basis. Some of these things can't be proved but what I think you will find, which I found tremendously exciting preparing the material, is how interesting it is - the way stories and teachings and events come to life, when you put them in the context of a running order of events. You get a feeling of Jesus' life developing. You get a feeling of the different geographical areas he worked in. When he was in Samaria, it was very different to when he was in Judea in the south, or in Galilee in the north, and there were other districts that he visited that I will discuss in much more detail later on as we come to that. Geography is important. The connection of events is important. That will provide one of the ways in which we can learn further about Jesus, and the significance of things that happened in his life, and things that he taught.

Reflections

As I bring this opening episode to a conclusion, let me reflect on a few things. By the way, we are going to have some reflections at the end of each episode, as a means of taking stock of what we have learnt, and thinking about what applications we can make. The first thing I want to suggest to you is that Theophilus is a very interesting and important character for us. We are, in many ways, like Theophilus. Many of us will be believers in Jesus - and if you are not a believer in Jesus you are welcome to listen to all these materials and join in the story. But if you are a believer in Jesus, you will share with Theophilus the experience that you believe in Jesus but you haven't seen him as an eyewitness.  We don't exactly know the reason Theophilus didn't see him - probably because he lived in a different country, and lived in a slightly different time frame. For us, obviously we are 2000 years later. We believe, but we don't have any eyewitness experience. How are we going to get closest to understanding the person of Jesus? The Holy Spirit reveals things to us. The theology of writers like Paul, reveals lots of wonderful things to us about the pathway to salvation and the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, the reality of his resurrection, the doctrine of eternal life, and all sorts of other things come to us that way. But, in order to understand Jesus as a person, we need the Gospels more than anything else and we need the eyewitness testimony that underlies all four Gospels. So, our need is a bit like Theophilus. Theophilus wanted to get the eyewitness testimony.

Why was Luke writing 25 years later after Jesus had died and writing all this down? One thing that was really important at that stage was the realisation that eyewitnesses were dying off! Time was passing and the Church was spreading to countries where there were no eyewitnesses of Jesus. There were far distant countries in all sorts of different places around the Roman world, and beyond into North Africa, and across into other parts of what we call the Middle East today. Many people were like Theophilus. They wanted more information. They wanted to know exactly what Jesus did, exactly why he did it, exactly what his connection to the Old Testament prophecies was, exactly what he taught, exactly what his parables were, exactly what happened at the time of the crucifixion, and exactly what happened in the resurrection appearances. These things really mattered to people like Theophilus. And they matter to us. We want to ground our Christian faith in the historical reality of everything Jesus said and did. It is important to understand the whole story of Jesus.

I would say that one of the most transforming things for me, as a Christian, has been the study of the Gospels. It was about 25 years ago, as a Christian pastor, that I set myself the task of studying the Gospels and piecing the chronology together. I wrote out a list of how I felt all the passages fitted together, and I went through it for the first time 25 years ago. It was absolutely thrilling to do that. I noticed there the strategic role that Luke plays in the chronology and the running order of events. I have been developing that way of thinking for all those years. Yet, more recently, I felt a sense, now is the time to commit this material to audio and video resources, and make them freely available, so that we can share this journey together. So, I am inviting you to share the wonderful journey of going through the life of Jesus.

Every one of the 14 series, represents a particular series of events, or phase of Jesus' life, or in some cases, particular teaching that he gave. For example, Series 4 is on the Sermon on the Mount. It consists entirely of teaching material in that series. As you look at the structure of the series you will see how the story unfolds, and how it moves essentially from Jesus in Galilee in the north of Israel, to the south to the capital city, Jerusalem, where the final events of his life on earth took place.

Welcome to Word Online. Thanks for joining in. Thanks for listening to this first episode and I hope that it will encourage you to stay with us on the journey. In Episode 2, I will be turning the pages over to John's Gospel, to John 1, where we find a completely different introduction to the life of Jesus. Then in Episode 3 I will be turning the pages again and looking at Matthew, who approaches it from another completely different angle. They are all valid; they are all important. It is all part of the journey and the journey has begun. Thanks so much for joining us and I hope I will see you again.