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Category: 4 Gospels + Good News of the NEW Testament

What are the Gospels?

FOUR Gospels:

GOOD NEWS! (That’s what Gospel means.)

Matthew, Mark, Luke & John begin the New Testament proclaiming the Good News of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah and talk of JESUS Christ.

The four Gospels are first hand witness + proclaiming GOOD NEWS

  • by two Jewish Apostles of the Messiah JESUS, Matthew & John
  • Two gentile (non-Jewish) followers of THE WAY of Jesus Christ, Mark & Luke, who proclaim the GOSPEL recorded from witness of Peter, Paul and other Apostles and disciples of JESUS in the first century.

READ the Good News of the Messiah and Savior Jesus from accounts of His twelve Apostles & others witnessing the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the four Gospels of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

SHARE the Gospel

  • with your Christian friends and those who do not yet believe in JESUS CHRIST.
  • Comment on a Talk of JESUS post and SHARE in your social media world.
  • A Flicker of Faith

    A Flicker of Faith

    Proverbs 24:20 For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out.

    Beloved brother; dearly beloved sister:

    I know you have been ‘lukewarm‘ in your belief in Christ. You have been lukewarm in your faith in Jesus. You have been cold in your heart for His church and unthankful in your daily life.

    Your offering has been stingy (if you have even returned any of what is already His).

    And your prayer?  … Probably as infrequent as my prayers so often become.

    The flame of His light dimly flickers in the fruit of your witness. You resist the fire of His Holiness each time the Lord calls you to repentance.

    Yes… at times, we are lukewarm for the risen Lord, Christ Jesus. At times, we fail miserably in our Christian… our christian… our not-so-Christlike mortal life.

    The Light in You

    Luke 11:33 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light.

    34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.

    36 If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”

    John 1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

    5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

    Has the Lord’s light left your heart?

    OR do you answer our risen Lord’s voice at the door of your heart saying: ‘Repent, beloved?’

    Jesus seeks the lost. He welcomes the return of the prodigal christian.

    For to the church at Ephesus, the risen Christ also revealed through John:

    Revelation 2:5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent…

    7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

    To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

  • On Earth, As It Is In Heaven

    On Earth, As It Is In Heaven

    You know the words:

    “…Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven…” in the olde King James Version of the Bible.

     This is Jesus’ prayer of how to address GOD in prayer.

    ‘Thy will be done on earth.’ (This is my prayer.)

    Fear God! Yes, certainly. For God is our Creator. God IS. God is powerful.

    Yet IF you are a humble servant of the Living God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, you have a relationship – a relationship that crosses the line of His Holiness in communication.

    Communication of a child of God to our Father in heaven is prayer.

    Have you talked with your Father in heaven today?

    You cannot be two places at once. You cannot be ‘in heaven’ while your words are ‘in earth.’ Yet we live here… on earth. The heavens and God seem so distant, so vast, so unfathomable.

    We cannot comprehend a God who IS, let alone a God who will listen to us as a father listens to his child. We cannot begin to imagine how Almighty God can love us… how Almighty God does love me… how God our Father wants me to pray and communicate my every heartfelt need and desire.

    (Father, this is what I want. Is it what YOU want?)

    We cannot imagine how overflowing God’s love is for those who love His Only Son, Christ Jesus, who IS the very love of God sacrificed for us.

     We cannot imagine a heaven so filled with the love of God from an earth so filled with hatred until we feel the embrace of God’s love given to us by Jesus.

    What is God’s will for a child of His family? What is God’s will for a follower of His Son, Christ Jesus?

    The measure of God’s will for our lives is found throughout Scripture.

    The Holy Bible separates Christians to God’s Holy will (on earth, as it is in heaven).

    Did you READ God’s will for you in your Bible today? Did you pray about what you have read? Do you pray? Do you listen to God… to His will and His answer through Scripture?

    In an earlier post: A Love Letter from John, I emphasized the love of God for us as expressed in 1 John. Turning to the Gospel of John, hear of God’s love and will for us directly from Jesus Christ.

    John 14
    English Standard Version (ESV)
    I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life

     “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me… 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…

    13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

    15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

    Because I live, you also will live.

    20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

    “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words…”

    Do you pray: THY will be done (on earth, too)?

    Do you even pray at all to the Living God?

    OR do you think: I will not keep Jesus’ words.

    OR in NOT thinking about Jesus & His words is it now time to REPENT?

    May HIS will be done on earth (and in your heart), as it is in heaven.

     

  • Above the Golden Rule

    Above the Golden Rule

    Jesus said: “This is the great and first commandment.”

    Do you know what it is?

    You do not have to be a Christian to know the golden rule. We have heard it quoted by unbelievers as a standard of behavior that we should love one another.  But do not fall into the trap of the world in giving a commandment of God and an emphasis of Jesus a misplacement in your priorities.

    In fact, that is the trap the Pharisees and Sadducees often tried to bait with their questions to Jesus. Whatever His answer, they had a better one… or so they thought. In fact in this instance they probably had the Ten Commandments in mind.

    Matthew 22

    The Great Commandment

    34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

    36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

    37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.

    39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

    What is Jesus saying here?

    In context of the Ten Commandments, the first four Commandments relate to our obedience to and worship of the Living God. These are the MOST important, yet even Christians have a tendency to overlook their importance.

     Deuteronomy 5:

    6“‘I am the Lord your God…

    7 “‘You shall have no other gods before me.

    8 “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them…

    11 “‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

    12 “‘Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God…

    The second is like it… The ‘golden rule’ is a summary of Commandments IV – X, which all relate to how as God’s family we must love one another; yet first: You shall love the Lord OUR GOD!

    Matthew  22:36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

    37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment.

    Worship God with ALL your heart, soul, and mind!

    What does this “greatest Commandment” mean to followers of Christ Jesus who have a personal relationship with the Living God?

    Understand what Jesus tells us about our worship of the Lord here:

    • Heart -‘ kardia’ – ‘denotes the centre of all physical and spiritual life’
    • Soul – ‘psychē’ – the breath of life; the seat of the feelings, desires, affections, aversions (our heart, soul etc.); the soul as an essence which differs from the body and is not dissolved by death (distinguished from other parts of the body)
    • Mind – ‘dianoia’ – the mind as a faculty of understanding, feeling, desiring; way of thinking and feeling; thoughts, either good or bad

    Does JESUS mean to say that GOD should be the center of our physical and spiritual life? Does our ‘lord’ mean to say that the seat of our feelings, desires, affections ought to focus on God? Does Christ imply that a Christian should think first about God and what God desires for our life?

    Yes. Yes. And yes.

    “You shall love the Lord your God

    with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

    This is the great and first commandment.