Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels

I try not to break the podium today, unlike some people. Good to see all of you again.

Well, we have background since we have several visitors, several new people attending with us. I thought I would mention for several years now we've been doing a very detailed study of the Gospels. We've been using as a textbook, you might say, a Harmony of the Gospels, which is a Harmony of the Gospels. It takes the different accounts that we find and lines them up side by side so you can see them, and compare the accounts and see some of the details that one writer includes that others may not include. So going through this, it's all in chronological order.

In some places you'll see where, for instance, here one Gospel writer, in this case John, gives us a lot of detail about a particular incident, and then the others, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, give just a tiny amount. And actually we'll be talking today a lot about some of those details. And by the way, if any of you need a copy of this, Connie has a few extras today in case you did not bring yours, or in case you have not received one of these, raise your hand and she'll pass one to you. We have a few of those. Let's see, it looks like two of them, so yeah, keep your hands raised. And some of you may need to look on together. And please return those afterwards if you... Now let's see... Do you have any more, Connie? Okay, one more. Two more, okay.

All right. Okay, and in our studies, we might say that we've been looking at the gospels through two dimensions. Basically, we've been reading through them for what they say on the surface, but we've also been digging much deeper into the background, the culture, the history behind the gospels. I liken it to an archaeological excavation where if you just read on the surface what you see in the gospels, you're seeing just what is on the surface. Whereas if you start digging down through the culture, through the history, you find other deeper layers of meaning and understanding that God has preserved there for us in His Word. And today I would like to explore another dimension of the gospels, and that is how the gospel accounts intersect and interlock with one another in ways that prove that they are written by people who personally witnessed those accounts back in the first century, two thousand years ago. People who were personal eyewitnesses such as Matthew and John, who were two of the disciples or apostles whom Christ chose, or they were written by people who spoke to those who were personal eyewitnesses. In the case of the gospel of Mark, that is essentially the eyewitness account of Peter, as told by Mark, and then of course Luke, who tells us that he, you can read this in the first few verses of Luke, that he wrote up what others told him. He personally interviewed witnesses of these events and wrote that up in the gospel of Luke. So, what I would call this today, what we're going to talk about, is undesigned coincidences in the gospel. Now this concept or term sounds a little vague and maybe hard to grasp up front, but I'll explain as we go along and look at some examples. That's what will really make this concept clear to us. That's how we'll really begin to understand this idea of undesigned coincidences. But before we do that, I'd like to start today by introducing you to two well-known scholars in the world. The first one is Bart Ehrman. How many of you have heard of Bart Ehrman? A handful. Bart Ehrman is quite a well-known Bible scholar. He has written or edited more than 25 books, several of which have been bestsellers on the New York Times bestseller list. He taught for four years at Rutgers University and then at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the last 25 years. He has a master's degree in divinity and a doctoral degree from Princeton University. He recently served as both the director of graduate studies and is the chair of the Department of Religious Studies at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Bart Ehrman started his career studying to be a Christian minister at a Christian university, but over time he became an agnostic and, if anything, his beliefs probably lean more toward atheism at this point. Now his career, his scholastic career, his writing career is devoted mostly to arguing that the Gospels are forgeries that were written centuries after and had nothing to do with authors writing in the first century. Here's a typical quote from one of his more recent books, Jesus Interrupted, written in 2011 or published in 2011. And he says, some books, such as the Gospel, had been written anonymously, only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not write them. In other words, the apostles and friends of the apostles. So this is his view of the Gospels. That they weren't written in the first century but were written much later by people who attached those names, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to them.

Second scholar I'd like to introduce to you is Richard Dawkins. How many of you have heard of Richard Dawkins? Yeah, quite a few more, and that's understandable because he also is a best-selling author. He's written several books, not as many as Bart Ehrman. But Richard Dawkins, give you some of the background, received his master's and doctor's degree from Oxford University in England. And he taught there as a professor of science until he retired in 2008, after realizing he made much more money publishing books than he could on a professor's salary there.

So he is one of the world's best-known atheists and proponents of evolution. He's also a best-selling author, as I mentioned, and his most famous book, which sold more than 2 million copies, is called The God Delusion. I'll give you three guesses what that's about. It's his argument that there is no God, that evolution is God, and it's nonsense to believe in evolution. Here's a quote from that book. Here's his view of the Gospels. The Gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in the history of the real world. All were written long after the death of Jesus, and also after the Epistles of Paul, which mention almost none of the alleged facts of Jesus's life.

And another quote, nobody knows who the four evangelists, referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were. He's using this in the sense of who the authors of the four Gospels were, but they almost certainly never met Jesus personally. And both these quotes are from the God Delusion published in 2006. So here we see the opinions of two very intelligent guys, but do they know what they're talking about? Why do they come to those conclusions? We'll address that in the sermon today. And to disprove what they are saying, these opinions that they have expressed here, we need to look again at the subject of today's sermon, which is Undesigned Coincidences and the Gospels. Now, to give us a little more background on this subject, as we have been reading through the Gospels over the last few years here in our studies, you've no doubt noticed that some of the accounts are very similar. You can see that in your harmony. You can go through and look and compare them. And we read where Matthew, Mark, Luke, and in particular talk about the same events, and their wording is very similar. In some cases, it's word for word. They use the exact same phrases in several places. But what is going on here? And then we come to the Gospel of John, and you can see this just thumbing through the harmony as well, but John seems to deliberately avoid talking about the incidents that are recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He tends to approach things very differently and talk about subjects that aren't covered in the other Gospels. Now, because the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar in many places, they are called the Synoptic Gospels. That's a term we'll come across various times. Synoptic. What does synoptic mean? Syn means with. Optic, of course, means having to do with your eyes or vision. That's why you go to see an ophthalmologist or an optometrist with your eye problems. So what this means, they're called the Synoptic Gospels, which means they see with one eye. That means they essentially have the same viewpoint. They discuss the same topics in the same way. John's Gospel, however, is very different again. So he is not considered one of the Synoptic Gospels. When you hear this term Synoptics or Synoptic Gospels, that's referring to Matthew, Mark, and Luke because they see things the same way, essentially telling us the same story in their own words. But back to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why are they so similar? Why do they cover the same topics? Why do they use sometimes the same word-for-word phrasing there?

Well, Bart Ehrman and Richard Dawkins have a simple explanation for that. That they're forgeries.

As we've seen, they take the position these were written many years later, sometimes centuries later, depending on the particular Bible critic you look at. And they're all simply copies of one another, or they're copies of an earlier document that itself was a forgery. That all of these stories are simply made up, so we don't need to pay any attention to them. They're nothing to guide our our life with there. So to address these questions or this issue, I'd like to explore two different questions up front. First of all, why are there four Gospels? Why not just one?

Why do we have four Gospels instead of just one? Well, if we had only one account, how would we know if that person was telling the truth?

To be blunt, if we just want to count, how would we know whether that person is accurately recording the events? There's simply no way to tell for sure whether he's telling the truth. He might be, he might not be, but there's no way to prove it one way or the other. It's one person telling the story, and maybe he's being truthful about it, and maybe he isn't.

We're all familiar. We've talked about this in our Gospel study several times, though, of the principle of two witnesses. We find that a theme throughout the Bible. We find it is one of the laws that was instituted back under Moses there and legal cases where you had to have two witnesses to establish a legal fact. Someone could not suffer the death penalty under the testimony of one witness. If there's only one witness to his crime, he would be set free. There had to be two witnesses to verify that, so you could be sure that the truth is being told. We've already seen several examples of that principle in the Gospels as well. We'll go back and go through those again. So, in having the four Gospels, God has given us double the number of required witnesses to verify something is truthful. He's given us not one Gospel, not two Gospels, not three, but four Gospels, four different witnesses to the accuracy of these events. Again, two of them are eyewitness testimony that of Matthew and John, and two of them are written by individuals who interviewed or wrote down the accounts of others. That being Mark, who is recording the Gospel from Peter's perspective, and Luke, who again, first few verses of Luke, you can read it yourself, he talks about how he interviewed and talked to eyewitnesses of these things and then wrote down those accounts. So, as we go through the sermon today, we'll see how these four accounts interweave with one another and interlock like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in a way that proves their authenticity. Now, a second question for us today is, can we tell by comparing two passages of Scripture with one another that both are authentic and are credible historical records of what they record there? For example, we can find passages where two different writers tell the same story, perhaps even in the same words, sometimes word for word, same exact phrases in some places. However, but what does that tell us? It means that one of the documents might have been copied from the other. For instance, if you hear something on the news and you want to verify it, how do you verify it? Do you go out and buy two copies of the newspaper and read them both to see if one verifies the other? Well, no, that doesn't make sense because they're identical copies of the same thing. If you want to verify it, you need to go to a different source for that. So, one of the documents may have been copied from the other one. But how can we rule out this possibility on the internal evidence that we see in the Gospels? And again, that gets us back to the topic of today's sermon, which is Undesigned Coincidences. And here's how this works. Sometimes we will have two works by different authors, in this case Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that interlock in a way that would be very unlikely if one of them were copied from the other or both of them were copied from a common source. And for example, or basically, excuse me, I had a little problem here. Yeah, basically what we have is that the two pieces have, one will have missing information in one, but you go to another Gospel and it interlocks and fills that hole with a piece that fills in the missing information there. And friction or fictions and forgeries are not like this.

For instance, if you're simply making up a story, as these two scholars believe the Gospels were made up, why would you leave loose ends in your story? After all, you're making it up, so there's no need for loose ends. There's no need to have holes there in your story that raise questions or raise issues or would make somebody reading it stop and think, well, now why doesn't he explain this? Why does he leave out part of the story here?

Forgers don't want to do that. And again, if it's a work of fiction, you can fill it out any way you want. So there shouldn't be any loose ends to tie up. No holes there in the story.

There's simply no reason to leave something that would make a later reader come along and say, you know, I don't understand this. This is puzzling. Why is this recorded this way?

And also, if the documents are written by different people and you have a hole in it, you can't control whether someone writing later may come along and fill in that hole.

There, you just have no guarantee that's going to happen. No reasonable expectation that that would happen. After all, why would somebody writing another account of those events later come along and fill in the holes that you left in your account there? That doesn't make any sense. But, like a jigsaw puzzle, we should expect to find such interlocking in authentic and detailed records of real events, as told by different people who knew what they were talking about.

So all of that may sound rather abstract, so let's look at some examples. Now, we'll first look at an example from an incident we have discussed in one of our previous studies several months ago, but I didn't make this particular point at that time. I wanted to sometimes skip over some of the things I could cover because I want to cover it in the context of a larger theme, as we're doing today. But this account we'll talk about first is regards the healings after Jesus healed the mother-in-law of Peter. We read about this in Matthew 8, verses 14 through 16.

And it says here, this is Matthew's account, now when Jesus had come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother lying sick with a fever. So he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she arose and served them. Next verse, when evening had come, they brought to him to Jesus many who were demon-possessed, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.

Now, what's puzzling about this passage? You see something glaring in here that isn't explained by Matthew. You probably know the answer because, again, we covered it in our earlier Gospel studies here. But the glaring question or issue here is if the people believed that Jesus could truly heal the sick, why did they wait until evening to come to him? You can read through Matthew's account. You won't find the answer. Let's turn back and read it again. Jesus had come into Peter's house, he saw his mother's, his wife's mother laying sick with a fever. He touched his hand, healed her, and when evening had come, all these people come to be healed by Jesus. Why did they wait? If you're sick, you need to get in to see a doctor, and you call your doctor and say, hey, I need to get in for an appointment, and they say, well, let's see, would three months from now be okay? Well, of course not! Well, what about two months? No, no, I need to get in and see the doctor. Well, what about one month? No, no, if we're sick, we're going to try to get in to cure what is ailing us as quickly as possible. So why would these people wait hours until evening came to be healed? Well, we know the answer. We know the answer from over in Mark. We find the explanation for this information that Matthew just simply leaves out. It doesn't give us the explanation.

And if you want to check, you can actually follow it in the Harmony on page 18 in the middle of that. You can look at that and compare these accounts side by side. But Mark says, beginning in verse 21 of Mark 1, then they went to Capernaum and immediately on the Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. Skipping down a view first is, it comes to verse 30, when but Simon's wife's mother lay sick with a fever and they told him about her at once. So this is still on the Sabbath day. So Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up and immediately the fever left her. Again, this is on the Sabbath. They've gone to Peter's house, which is very close to the synagogue there in Capernaum. And then we see verse 32, at evening when the sun had set, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were demon possessed.

As we've talked about before, the Jews were very puritanical at how they observed the Sabbath.

Some even taught that it was unlawful to heal on the Sabbath day. So what we see here is that the sun goes down, the Sabbath ends at sunset, and everyone comes to be healed by Jesus.

So what does this tell us? How do these interconnect? Is Matthew copying from Mark?

Well, obviously not because we were copying from Mark. Mark has a lot more details that Matthew leaves out. That's not a plausible explanation. Is Mark then copying from Matthew? Well, no, he's not because Mark includes more details that Matthew leaves out. So one is clearly not copying from the other in this case. But a key bit of information that Mark includes gives us the answer to the question that naturally arises when we read Matthew's account there.

What I'd like you to do now is to... do you see how that interlocks there? Now Matthew gives us a story that leaves out a key detail. Mark gives us the same story and includes a key detail that fills in a piece of the puzzle in Matthew's account there. See how that works. We'll see more examples of that as we go on. But what I'd like you to do is, on your paper, write a... start drawing a little chart here. It doesn't have to be big, just maybe about two inches apart. And include the names of the four Gospels and four corners there.

And what I want to do here is help us to see this interlinking here. In this particular case, what we see, you draw a line from Mark to Matthew because Mark includes some details that explain that fill in this piece of the puzzle over in Matthew's Gospel. So draw a line there like this. We'll continue filling in this chart some as we continue along here. So this is just one example. Now maybe you could explain this away by saying that, yeah, Matthew is copying from Mark, but he just had a bad day or it was real late, and he decided, well, those details aren't important, so I'll just leave those out and summarize it and go on. Well, that is possible, but that's certainly not the way to bet on things there because the one detail that Matthew leaves out leaves us with a key question, which is, why did they wait until the evening to come to be healed by him? So strictly speaking, it is possible that Matthew just was in a hurry and left that out, but not likely. It's possible in the way that if you are playing cards with somebody and across the table, that person is consistently getting three or four aces every hand. You know, that doesn't have to happen to all before you realize something odd is going on. This isn't just odds here.

You have to wonder who shuffled the deck and whether the person you're playing cards with is being totally honest. So it's really not a matter of chance if the person you're playing cards with keeps coming up with three and four aces every hand there. So at some point, the mounting probabilities start to catch up and you have to say this isn't just a matter of chance. There is something at work here, something deliberate. And when this starts happening time after time, as we're going to see today in the Gospels, obviously something else is going on. And if we discover many of these undesigned coincidences like this, many examples of this interlocking between the different pieces of information we see in the Gospels, it simply becomes ridiculous to suggest that all these are simply accidental. It just doesn't work. It defies logic, defies reason, defies statistics and probability. So we have to eventually face the cumulative effect of this kind of evidence, which is that one in design, undesigned coincidence might be an accident. Like if you juggle around a box of jigsaw pieces of a puzzle and two of them that are unrelated just happen to fit together by accident. That could be just chance. But if we discover many undesigned coincidences crisscrossing and interlocking between the documents, it becomes ridiculous to insist that they're all just simply accidental there. So let's take a look at another example of this. We find over in Luke 9, verses 28 through 30 and 35 and 36. And this is the story of the Transfiguration. We haven't gotten there yet in our study of the Gospels. But to summarize this, Jesus takes three of his inner group of disciples, Peter, James and John, up into a mountain where he is transfigured into a glorified state before them. And then Moses and Elijah appear and start conversing with Jesus before them.

And then a voice comes out of heaven as we read here. Verse 35, a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved son. Hear him. And then what happens next? As Luke tells the story, verse 36, But they, Peter, James and John, kept quiet and told no one in those days of any of the things they have seen. In other words, they what? They see this miracle, series of miracles. They see Jesus transfigured there before him. They see Moses and Elijah stand there conversing with their rabbi. Then they hear this divine voice coming out of heaven saying, This is my beloved son. Hear him. And they don't tell anybody. Where's the sense in that? What's the missing piece of the puzzle?

Again, if you've read these accounts, you probably know the answer here. But why would Luke record it like this? It just makes no sense, especially when you think, what is the most common command we find in the New Testament that's routinely disobeyed? When Jesus tells somebody, don't tell anybody, and they go out and tell somebody. So here we see that, again, Peter, James and John see this, and they don't tell anybody. What's the explanation? What's the rationale for that? Why would they keep quiet about that? At the very least, this passage is quite puzzling. It just goes against human nature, defies everything we know about the way that people naturally react. But it becomes much less puzzling when we read the parallel account over in Mark, Mark 9 and verse 9.

And here Mark includes a detail that we didn't see in Luke.

And the story is essentially the same. But then Mark explains, verse 9, Now as they came down from the mountain, he, Jesus, commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen till the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

So here we see the answer to this. And you can turn to page 57 of your harmony again and compare the accounts if you'd like to. But do you see the interlocking here? Do you see the way one leaves us with a powerful unanswered question and the other provides the details? It explains why and fills in the whole and the other. What we see is that Mark gives us the command, but he doesn't say whether they obeyed the command or not.

Luke records that they obeyed the command but doesn't mention the command at all.

So between the two of them, they interlock and give us a whole picture there that shows that these are indeed two independent accounts. Is Mark copying from Luke? No, because he leaves out some of the details Luke includes. Is Luke copying from Mark? No, because Mark, because the other way around there, they each include key details that the other does not. So to our chart, it would then look like this. Then we have Mark explaining a big hole in the Gospel of Luke. He's answering a question that is raised in Luke's account, which knowing the story, you probably don't realize that. But if you're just reading the Gospels for the first time, you're going to read that and wonder why did they not tell anybody about that? So this is why we have four Gospel accounts and another example of how they interlock. And this undesigned coincidence is that we're talking about here. So again, here's another opportunity to draw a line here on your chart. So this again shows that we have two independent accounts, each with their own details. And now let's do an example that contains a pair of interlocking pieces of the puzzle like this. We find this in examples 3 and 4 in Mark 6, verse 31, 34 and 39. I'm not reading the whole account. I'm just going to skip through and hit the high points here. So we'll skip through some of the verses. This is describing the setting for one of Christ's greatest miracles, which is the feeding of 5,000 people. And so begin here in Mark 6, verse 31, Jesus said to them, to his disciples, Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile. For there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So many people in this area here, that Christ takes his disciples aside for a while, so they can rest because they didn't even have time to eat. They're interacting with so many people here. Skipping down to verse 34, and Jesus, when he came out, came out of this place where they were by themselves, apparently, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things.

And skipping down to verse 39, Then he commanded them, to them, his apostles, to make them, the five thousand, all sit down in groups on the green grass.

Now, all four of the Gospels record this miracle, but all four are slightly different.

Mark includes two little details that we see here that there were many coming and going, and he tells them to sit down on the green grass. These details you don't find in any of the other Gospel accounts, which is a little surprising because Mark's Gospel is clearly the shortest of all of them. Yet there are a number of places where Mark includes more details than the other Gospel writers there. So notice these two details again. There were many people, and he tells them to sit down on the green grass. Now, the word green isn't a word we find much in the New Testament. We actually only find it four times, and we actually only find it once in the Gospels. One time does green refer in the Gospels, and it's this time right here.

How many of you have been to Galilee in Israel? Okay, quite a few. All right, yeah, that's good to see. How much green grass did you see? Probably don't remember because you weren't looking at the grass. You're looking at the scenery and other things. Let me show you a picture of a hillside in Galilee. This is what it looks like most of the year. How much green do you see? How much green grass do you see? Well, Tina probably saw some green grass, and she was just there in springtime a little while ago. But most of the year, this is what the hills around Galilee look like. Grass isn't green. It's brown. It's tan. It's brittle. It's dry because it hasn't been watered. Tina was there right after the end of the rainy season. The rainy season in Israel basically runs from around November up to April-May timeframe, about six months of rain and then six months of no rain. So most of the year, this is what the hillsides look like there. There's not green grass there. There's only green grass for a fairly short period at the end of the rainy season, which again is around March-April-May along in that timeframe. So this is an interesting little detail here that we read about here in Mark's account that the other gospel writers leave out. Now let's turn over to John 6. And again, to get back to what we're looking at is why were there many people going and coming? And this detail about the green grass because most of the year there isn't green grass there. So let's go over to John 6 in verse 3 and 4.

And we find the answer in the time of year. Mark doesn't tell us the time of the year, but John does in his account of this miracle. And Jesus went up on the mountain and there he sat with his disciples. This is them getting away to a private place that we read about in Mark.

And then John tells us the time of year. Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near.

So what do we see by John telling us this detail that it was just before Passover?

How does it tie in with the two incidental facts that Mark has recorded back there?

Well, the weeks just before and after Passover are the primary growing season in Israel, again, because of the rainfall. They've had six months during which it is rain there. And now it's about to enter the dry season. So this is the growing season. This is when the hillsides would be covered, to the extent that they are in Israel, with grain grass. So that explains that. It also explains the large number of people going and coming that we see in Mark's account. Because at Passover season, the roads there would be thronged with great crowds of people, hundreds of thousands of people, going along this area, traveling down to Jerusalem to keep the feast, as God has commanded there. So notice these interlocking details here.

Mark tells us there were many people traveling, but he doesn't say why.

Mark also tells us there was green grass, but he doesn't mention the time of the year.

John tells us this happened just before Passover, which explains the large number of crowds there.

And also, this is the time when the grass would be green. So what you can do then is draw another line on your chart here. You can see here, drawing a line from John to Mark, that John explains. These two little details there in the Gospel of Mark, which Mark simply fails to mention. Mark could have explained it just by saying it's Passover time when this happened, but he doesn't for whatever reason. So again, when it comes to copying, is Mark copying from John? No, because he leaves out this key piece of information. Is John copying from Mark? No, because John leaves out the fact that there were large numbers of people and that the grass was green that time of year. So you can start filling in your chart more and more here. Let's do another one. Let's turn to Matthew 14 verses 1 and 2. And this is a really interesting one here. This is one of my favorite ones. But here it's talking about Herod Antipas, Herod the the tetrarch, who is the ruler over the area of Galilee. He's got his palace there at Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And we read here in Matthew's account, at that time Herod the tetrarch heard the report about Jesus and said to his servants, this is John the Baptist, or John the Baptizer. He has risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him. Now we see from the tone of his comments here that Herod Antipas is rather freaked out. Why is he freaked out? Because he had had John the Baptist beheaded. He'd had him put in prison first and then had him beheaded. And now he hears of this great prophet, like John, who is doing a great work, whose disciples are baptizing, and great crowds are coming to him, and he's wondering what's going on. John is dead. I know! I saw him beheaded. I saw his head on a platter. What's going on? So that's one obvious question here. Actually, there's a couple of obvious questions that arise here in addition to that one. One is, why is Herod talking about this to his servants? Herod's the king. Does he talk to his servants about prophets and things like that? You know, the people who are serving his food, washing his feet, laying out his clothing, doing this kind of thing. You know, kings don't really talk to their servants about issues like this. They talk to their staff, their peers, the other royalty, other officials, Roman officials, things like that. You just don't discuss things like this with your servants. Just not the thing to do. And another one, also quite obvious, is how would Matthew know what conversations are taking place in Herod's palace?

Matthew is one of the disciples of Jesus. How is he going to know what is being talked about in Herod's palace? You ever wondered about that? How we have these conversations recorded in the Gospels about details like that? What's going on? How can we explain this?

Well, for somebody who believes, as Richard Dawkins and Bart Ehrman did, not a problem. They're all forgeries. They're fakes. They're made up, so you can make up any conversations you want. Is that what happened? Or is there another explanation, another missing piece of the puzzle that we find filled in in another one of the Gospels? Well, we do. The explanation we find in a totally different context, totally different setting over in Luke 8, verses 1-3.

Totally different setting. This is just a passing comment about the people who followed Jesus Christ and the disciples, which would have included Matthew, of course.

And it says here, He, Jesus, went through every city and village, preaching and bringing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him, including Matthew, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, from the town of Magdala, one of the port cities on the Sea of Galilee, out of whom he had cast seven demons. Then he mentions two more women, Joanna, the wife of Hootza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who provided for him from their substance. So we see here that one of the women who followed Jesus is Joanna, the wife of Hootza, who is Herod's steward, as it's called here. In modern terms, we would call this his business manager. That's what a steward was. He managed to care the finances, the household finances, that sort of thing. So what we see is that a follower of Jesus was the wife of Herod's key administrative assistants, or key staff, as we might call it today. So how did Matthew know what is being talked about by Herod and Herod Antipas in his palace? Well, because Matthew knew Joanna. They're both followers of Jesus. Joanna is the wife of Herod's business manager. She probably spends a lot of time with her husband there in the palace of Herod Antipas. And she probably hears things. She probably hears things at night when her husband comes home from work, and they talk over the events of the day. Let's consider another angle here, and that is Matthew. Who was he before his calling? He was a tax collector.

Tax collectors. We have the... I'll talk about this in our in an upcoming study when we talk about the calling of Matthew. Matthew didn't work for the Romans. He worked for Herod Antipas, who is the ruler under the Romans. Herod Antipas collected... well, the tax collectors collected the taxes. They gave him to Herod Antipas. Antipas was then responsible for consolidating and sending that money to Rome, or to the Roman governor there. So, if Matthew is a tax collector for Herod Antipas, what does that mean? He's a tax collector. He deals with finances. Who is Hutzah? Hutzah is Herod Antipas' business manager. If Matthew is collecting taxes for Herod Antipas, obviously he's going to be interacting with Hutzah, his business manager. Who is Joanna? Joanna is the wife of him. So, probably you can make a very reasonable assumption in case that Matthew knew Joanna before either of them were called by disciples of Jesus. It would have been part of their natural business relationship there. Matthew is tax collector giving money to Hutzah, Herod Antipas' business manager there. And in the course of that, at some point, coming into contact with Joanna. So, they probably knew each other before they were ever, both of them, called to be followers of Jesus Christ. So, it's not surprising. And, of course, as we just read there earlier, that Joanna is one of the women who are traveling with Jesus and with the Twelve. So, Matthew and Joanna, probably knowing each other. If they didn't know each other before they became disciples, they certainly knew each other as they're walking around following Jesus Christ around Galilee.

So, again, Joanna would have been in a position to know this conversation that is taking place there in the Palace of Herod Antipas and passing that information on to Matthew, who later writes it down in his gospel there. Also, we see from this that Herod is probably discussing this question he hears of this great prophet who is attracting great crowds of people and whose disciples are baptizing people as John had. And he discusses this with his servants because he knows that they have connections with some of Jesus's followers. So, it makes perfect sense that this is why he would be discussing this quite sensitive topic with his household servants, because he knows they have connections with Jesus's followers, as exemplified through Joanna there. So, again, when we connect these, we can see a very logical explanation for why Matthew would have known the conversations taking place in the Palace of Herod Antipas. Now, critics of the Bible would just say, hey, he just made it up! But we don't have to resort to an explanation like that. There's a very good explanation because of this little detail that Luke records in a totally different, totally unrelated context that shows how Matthew could have quite reasonably learned about these conversations there. So, if you were drawing another line here, you can draw a line from Luke to Matthew here, explaining where Luke adds this little detail that explains this conversation that Matthew has recorded that otherwise we wouldn't have a clue as to how Matthew got that information.

Now, another obvious question here is, does it make rational sense that Luke includes this detail because he has read Matthew's account and realizes there's missing information there, so he includes this little detail in his Gospel. Makes no sense whatsoever. He goes, Matthew is giving us this detail in a totally different context, not even discussing this at all, and just mentions in passing. Hey, Joanna, who's the wife of Herod's business manager, was one of the women who followed Jesus, period, along with the other two they mentioned there. So, again, that kind of explanation just makes no sense. I think this helps us see that God did inspire these Gospels, inspired different writers to include little details that answer the questions that might arise from reading the other. So, we see that these Gospels interlock and they interconnect in ways that humanly make no sense, that defy explanation there. So, it is no mystery when we look at these different pieces. We have a perfectly rational explanation for these things. Let's take a look at another one here, Matthew 11 verse 21. And this is where Jesus declares woes on some of the cities in which he has done his work. He says here, "...woe to you, Corazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done entire in Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." Now, not to sound stupid, but what might he works? You can read through Matthew's account up to this point, and you find him performing miracles in Capernaum, but you don't see any miracles in Corazin or Bethsaida. None. So, why does Jesus say this? Why does he say, woe to you, Corazin, and Bethsaida, for if the mighty works which were done in you, past tense, had been done entire in Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. So, what might he works? Matthew doesn't give us a clue. He doesn't tell us about any mighty works.

So, why does he do this? Why does he say this? There's nothing that will do it to any of the other gospels help us to understand that. Let's hold that thought for a few minutes, and we'll get back to this. I'd like to do a mental exercise now, and let's say we're going to invent a gospel story.

We're going to invent a gospel story. After all, that's what the critics say the gospels are. They're just invented stories. So, let's invent one of our own, and let's see how hard it is to get the details right. So, here's what we're going to do. We're going to make up a story that involves Jesus and one of the disciples. It's going to involve two things that we encounter on an everyday basis. In this case, let's say it's going to involve money, and it's going to involve food. So, those two things, Jesus and a disciple, and money and food. Not terribly difficult.

Just four components there. So, let's start off the story then, and let's start the story with this question. Which disciple do you pick? The story about Jesus and the disciples, money and food. Which disciple do you pick? Anybody. What comes to your mind when you think of a disciple and money? Who comes to mind? Who? Matthew. Matthew, why? Why Matthew?

He's a tax collector. He's used to handling money. So, Matthew would make perfect sense to include in our invented gospel story. What about another disciple? Anybody else connected with money? Judas. Judas, why? He's the treasure. He's got the money. So, it would make perfect sense to, if we're inventing this story, to make it Matthew or Judas in there. You might also toss in Peter, because after all, Peter's the loud mouth.

He's the one who's interacting with Jesus more than anybody. So, any of those three would make perfect sense. So, if we're going to make a story, we would likely choose Matthew or Judas or Peter to interact with Jesus in this story that we're going to make up. But there's a real story like this. And let's notice what it says. John 6 and verse 5.

Then Jesus lifted up his eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, where shall we buy bread that these may eat? There's Jesus, a disciple, Philip, and money and food.

So, why Philip? Why Philip? You know, Philip is one of those interesting disciples. He isn't exactly the most popular, the most often mentioned of the disciples in the Gospels. After the calling of the disciples, Philip is mentioned only here and in two other places. That's all we know of Philip. He's not one of the inner circle like Peter, James, and John. He's just kind of one of the also-rands among the other disciples.

So, why Philip? Why Philip? Why does his name show up here in this account? Well, let's see if we can understand why Philip gets mentioned here in connection with bread and with money in this particular miracle that we're going to talk about here. Let's see what we can glean going back to Luke 9 and verses 10 and 11. And this also is about the miracle of the 5000 that we talked about earlier. I mentioned all four Gospel writers include this.

One of the few things that all four Gospel writers talk about, but they all have different details. So, let's notice something here from Luke 9 verses 10 and 11. And the apostles, when they had returned, told him, Jesus, all that they had done. Then he took them and went aside privately. We read that earlier. They went aside away from all the crowds to a deserted place belonging to the city called Messiah. But when the multitudes knew it, they followed him. So, here we see the setting for this miracle.

Earlier we talked about how Mark mentioned the large number of crowds, people coming and going, and the grass was green. And then we saw from another Gospel writer from John that this happens at Passover. Now, we see another detail filled in by Luke who tells us where this is. That it's a deserted place, which basically just means an empty field or open area belonging to or very near the city of Bethziah, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, about oh, four or five miles from the city of Capernaum. There. So, this, now we see the setting of this.

And so, we're seeing the setup here again for the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. And also, remember what we just mentioned that Bethziah is one of the places that, as we just saw in Matthew, that Jesus pronounces woe on because they didn't believe the miracles that he had performed at Bethziah. But Matthew doesn't mention any miracles that happen at Bethziah. Or does he? Or does he? Okay, so what were the mighty works that Jesus did that should have made the people in Bethziah stand up and pay attention and realize, hey, this is the Messiah. This is the Son of God. So, continuing verse 11, but when the multitudes knew it, they followed him. So, the setting is this empty place, empty field, empty hillside near Bethziah. And you begin to see and you begin now to get an idea of what one of the mighty works was that was done in Bethziah.

Okay, let's put together another piece of the puzzle from John 12 and verse 21.

Totally different scene, totally different timing, totally different context, totally different place. This is happening several years later near the end of Christ's ministry when some Greeks want to come or Hellenists want to come and speak to Jesus. And it says here, they came to Philip who was from where? Bethziah of Galilee.

So, now do we see why Jesus asks Philip over there in John, Philip, where are we going to get the bread to buy 5,000 people, to feed 5,000 people?

Where's the closest Safeway? Where's the closest Panera bread to feed 5,000 people?

That account isn't mentioned there. It just shows that Jesus went to Philip and says, where are we going to buy bread? Doesn't mention that. We'd have no clue that Philip is from this town where this miracle is taking place if it weren't for this little detail that John mentions in passing. Totally different context, totally different place. Several years later, just mentions in passing, Philip is from Bethziah.

So that is why Jesus asks Philip. And of course, we know the rest of the story if we've read it. Jesus knew he was going to perform a miracle there. So I think he does this just to impress on Philip. I mean, after all, Bethziah is a fairly small town, maybe 1,000 people or something like that.

Where are you going to get on a moment's notice bread to feed a crowd of 5,000? That's men not counting women and children there. So again, we put these little pieces of the puzzle together, and it starts making sense. So on your chart, then, we can draw two more connection lines. Luke doesn't mention Philip in this context at all. John doesn't mention Bethziah as the location of this miracle.

So only by putting them together can we understand why Jesus speaks to Philip in John 6 and verse 5 and asks him where to buy bread. And also, this shows that the mighty works that were done at Bethziah included the feeding of the 5,000. So what we see is our network keeps growing here, these interconnections between the Gospels.

So you can now draw a line from Luke to John because Luke explains a detail that's left out of John, explaining, telling us where the miracle takes place that John doesn't mention. And you can also draw one from Luke to Matthew because Matthew mentioned the woes, pronounced the woes on Bethziah, but never said what the miracle was. And now we know the miracle, the feeding of the 5,000 there, which Matthew records, but he never connects it to Bethziah there.

So again, we have these interlocking connections between the four Gospels like this. So look at another one, Mark 14, verse 58 and 15 verse 29. Here Jesus is being accused before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. And notice this accusation that's made.

Maybe you wondered about this before. The first one is when he's on trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin. And the witnesses say of Jesus, we heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. And then later, after he has been crucified and he's hanging there, dying, different people are walking by and they're mocking him, making fun of him. And that's what we read in verse 29 and 30.

And those who passed by blasphemed him, or mocked him, wagging their heads and saying, aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. So on the face of it, this accusation is ludicrous. This temple we read elsewhere. I didn't include it in my notes. And John says the temple was being built for 46 years. And they accused Jesus of saying he's going to destroy it and rebuild it in three days? It's absurd. It's totally absurd. It's just ludicrous, as a matter of fact here.

But at the same time, for this charge to be repeated twice before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and then as he is dying on the cross, did they totally fabricate it? Well, a lot of times things that are outrageous have some basis in some fact or something that was said at some point earlier. So do we find that? Do we find that anywhere in the Gospels? We actually find this or a variation of it in all three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

There, I didn't write it down in my notes, which page of the Harmony gets on, but you can look it up yourself. But you can read throughout Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and you'll find no explanation for this. None whatsoever. There's nothing remotely like this in those Gospels that would give grounds for this ludicrous charge that Jesus said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.

You can't even find anything that could be twisted to remotely be construed as saying something like this. So where does this come from?

Again, this is at the end of Jesus Christ's three and a half year ministry. But where does it come from? For that, we need to look at John chapter 2. This is very early in Jesus Christ's ministry, John 2, verses 18 and 19. And the setting for this is what we just read. The charges are at the end of Christ's ministry as he's dying, as he's put on trial and being crucified. Now we go all the way back to the beginning of the Gospels, very early on in Christ's ministry, when he cleanses the temple. When he overturns the money changers table, makes a whip, and drives the animals out of the temple. He does this twice. Does it at the beginning of his ministry and at the end. This is at the beginning of his ministry. So Jesus has done this and noticed the reaction among the people there at the temple gathered around. So the Jews answered and said to Jesus, what sign do you show to us since you do these things, since you have overturned the money changers temple and driven the animals out? And Jesus answered and said to them, notice this, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Again, this is three years earlier than what we read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke at the end of Christ's ministry. This is recorded by John. No record of this in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. None of them mention this. None of them talk about it at all.

So what's going on here? Well, obviously what we see here, we know from reading the Gospels that they just didn't get it. Because people who heard these words thought mistakenly that Jesus is referring to the physical temple. After all, this is where this takes place. Overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out the animals there. Christ says, my house and my temple shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers and thieves. So this is where that takes place. But they thought he was talking about the physical temple, which is where this takes place, and don't realize he's talking about the spiritual temple of his body. That you destroy it, you can kill me, you can destroy this body, this temple, but I will raise it up in three days. Referring, of course, to his resurrection later on here. So what we see in the interlocking of these different accounts here is that John gives us the original statement of Jesus back three years earlier there, but he doesn't, at the end of his Gospel, refer to that statement being used as an accusation against him. The synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on the other hand, give us the accusation at the end of the Gospel, but don't say anything about these words that Jesus gave at the beginning of his ministry there. So do you see how these interlock like that? Now John explains the accusations recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke give the accusation, but don't mention anything about the original basis for that accusation there. Who's copying from whom? Is John calyping from Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Of course not. Or Matthew, Mark, and Luke copying from John? Of course not, because both of them have holes in their stories that we only fill in when we compare those accounts in this way. So what we see is the network keeps growing. For a second time here, we see John explaining details here in Mark. Not just Mark, but also Matthew and Luke as well.

I just did the lines from one Gospel writer to another at a time, rather than across Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well, although if you wanted to fill those in that way, you certainly could. So again, we see this network of interconnected details between the Gospels, proving that these are truly independent accounts. They're not copying from one another. Let's look at another example here. We're starting to get close to the end of this. John 21 in verse 15. I have a dozen of these, by the way, that we're going through.

This is really interesting because it's an entire chapter that is devoted to the interactions between Jesus and his disciples after his resurrection. Now, why would that be key? Why is that important? Take note that the whole setting of what we're going to talk about now presupposes, takes for granted, that the resurrection has taken place. What we read is based on this. It's predicated on this. It assumes as fact the resurrection is taking place because it's describing Jesus Christ after his resurrection, interacting and talking with his disciples up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So if we see this interconnection here between the Gospels, this is powerful evidence that if this connection is true, if it is an eyewitness account, then obviously the resurrection did take place because you don't have a dead man standing up there in the Sea of Galilee conversing with his disciples. So keep that in mind as we read through this. It isn't just any historical event. It is a historical event that takes place after Jesus has been crucified and raised from the dead. So if this account is true, then the miracle of Christ's resurrection from the dead also has to be true. So look here at what Jesus says to Peter. So when they had eaten breakfast, this is after Jesus was cooking a meal on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and Peter is out fishing in the boat, they see and recognize it's Jesus. So they bring the boat to shore and they eat breakfast there. And then Jesus says to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? You love me more than these?

What he's saying here is, do you love me more than these other disciples do? Not, do you love me more than you love these other disciples? Do you love me more than these other disciples love me, is what the meaning means. Now, Jesus is often pretty blunt, as we know, reading through the Gospels, but he's not needlessly cruel in what he says. Why would he say something so pointed to Peter, something it must have been, had to have been very painful to Peter, Peter, do you love me more than these other disciples do? Why would Jesus say that? Why doesn't he just say to Peter, do you love me, Peter? And leave it at that. Or do you love me as much as these other disciples love me? Why does he say, do you love me more than these other disciples do? Why does Jesus do that? Again, Jesus is pushing it. Why the emphasis on more? And he doesn't just ask a question once, he asks it three times of Peter, very pointedly. What's going on? What's the explanation for that?

Nowhere in the Gospel of John do we find the answer. We don't see any reason for Jesus asking Peter this question. But we do find it in the Synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, particularly in Matthew. So again, why does Jesus ask Peter whether he loves him more than the other disciples do? We find the answer in Matthew's account of the last Passover with the disciples. We find it there. So let's read this, and Peter, we'll see here, starts boasting during this last Passover. Notice what he says.

Peter answered this, breaking into the context, and said to Jesus, even if all of the other disciples, the other apostles in the context, are made to stumble or fall away, depending on the translation you look at, because of you, I will never be made to stumble, or I will never fall away, I will never abandon you, even if all of the others do.

What he's saying is, Jesus, I love you more than all of the others, because even if all of them fall away, I will never abandon you. I will never fall away. What's he saying? He's saying, Jesus, I love you more than all of the others, and I'll never leave you.

First, we know how that turned out, don't we? We know how that turned out.

So what's going on here? Matthew, we see here, records something that John doesn't. Matthew records Peter's both that he was the most faithful of the disciples, that he was the one who loved Jesus more than all of the others, and would never abandon him. John doesn't record that.

John doesn't mention that at all. So what we see here is another connection here, another interconnection between these. So we can draw another line on our chart where Matthew explains these very pointed questions that John asks here. So we have another line to fill out here. We actually have a twofer in this account, a twofer, two undesigned coincidence here, because at the same time Jesus is asking Peter this, notice he asked him the same question three times.

Let's review this, John 21, 15 through 17. We'll just continue on. When they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? We just read this. Peter said to Jesus, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my lambs. Then Jesus said to him a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?

And Simon said to Peter, said to Jesus, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. Verse 17, Jesus said to Peter the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?

Again, pointed, pointed questions. And we see here, Peter was grieved. He's heard. He's deeply wounded by Jesus's words here because Jesus said to him the third time, do you love me?

And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. And Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. So why did Jesus ask Peter three times if he loved him more than the other disciples did?

Well, because, again, you can read through John. You won't find an explanation.

No explanation for why Jesus says he's very painful, very stinging words of rebuke to Peter. No explanation just comes out of blue, apparently. But then you read the synoptics and you understand because the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all record that Peter did something three times, which is what? He denied Jesus three times. So why here in John does Jesus ask Peter three times, do you love me more than the other disciples? Because Peter had denied him three times. Let's, yeah, we won't go through that, but yeah, you can read that on your own there. So yeah, actually, actually I did. Yeah, let's go ahead and review this very quickly. Matthew 26 verses 69 through 75. Now Peter sat outside in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him saying, you also were with Jesus of Galilee. There's another undesigned coincidence we don't have time to read. Undesigned coincidence we don't have time to cover today, but how did the servant girl recognize Peter and know he was a follower of Jesus? We'll talk about that later.

But verse 70, Peter denied it before them all saying, I do not know what you are saying. And when he had gone out of the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow also was with Jesus of Dazareth. But again, Peter denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And a little later, those who stood by came up and said to Peter, surely you also are one of them for your speech betrays you. He had a Galilean accent, in other words. Then Peter began to curse and swear saying, I do not know the man. And immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the words of Jesus who had said to him before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So he went out and wept bitterly.

So here we see, recorded in the synoptics, why Christ asks Peter three times if he loves him there. So now we can draw another line here on our chart from Matthew to John, because Matthew explains again why Peter not just asks him once, do you love me more than these, but asks him three times. No explanation in John, but we do see that in the synoptics here. We're close to wrapping this up now, but I want to look at just two more here. And this is one of the most interesting ones, because it also is another case of two interconnected, undesigned coincidences. And this is recorded in Luke 23 verses 2 and 4.

Now to set the stage for this, the Jewish leadership has decided that Jesus must die.

There we won't go into the verses that talk about that, but they do so on what grounds?

What do they convict Jesus for when he's there before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin? What is the charge? If you remember it, it's blasphemy, because he makes himself the son of God. When he says, you shall see the Son of Man descending from the clouds of heaven. They say he's blasphemed. He's declared himself the Son of God. It's blasphemy. So therefore he deserves to die. But now we start reading where they bring Jesus to Pilate.

Now who's Pilate? Pilate's the Roman governor. He's the only one authorized to administer or give a verdict of death under Roman law there. So what happens? They change the charges.

They change the charges because why? Because Pilate couldn't care less about their religious laws. He couldn't care less because Jesus claims to be the Son of God or whatever, because after all, the Romans believe in dozens, maybe hundreds of gods. So they don't get involved in the religious issues like that. Pilate just simply couldn't care less. So they have to change the charge if they're going to have Jesus executed. So we read here, picking it up in verse 2, and they began to accuse Jesus before Pilate, saying, we found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, two charges, perverting the nation, forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king.

So they make several accusations that Pilate, being the Roman governor, can't afford to ignore.

They see that Jesus is perverting the nation or instigating rebellion, in other words, stirring up trouble for Rome. They say that he is encouraging people to not pay taxes, which is subverting Roman authority, and also that he is claiming to be a king. Three different charges here. Now, to the Romans, this would amount to sedition, rebellion, and treason, because only the Roman emperor can decide who is a king or who is not a king in the Roman Empire. So Pilate is answerable to the Roman emperor on issues like this of Roman law. Continuing verse 3, then Pilate asked Jesus, saying, Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered Pilate and said, It is as you say.

And verse 4, So Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowd, I find no fault with this man.

What? Let's go back and review the sequence of events here, as recorded in Luke.

The Jews come to Pilate, they make a grave accusation, three charges of rebellion against Rome. He's stirring up the nation, he's encouraging people not to pay taxes, and he's claiming himself to be a king. So they make these three charges, all of which are punishable by death in the Roman Empire. And Pilate then asked Jesus on this very point, Are you a king then? Is this charge that they are laying against you of being king true? And Jesus says, You said it. It is as you said.

So Jesus admits to the charge and then Pilate promptly declares Jesus to be innocent. He says, I find nothing wrong at all in this man. What's wrong with this picture?

Does this make sense in any way? Pilate had a little too much wine for breakfast that morning.

Is he a few French fries short of a Happy Meal? Here, this just makes no sense.

Again, they accuse Jesus of treason. Christ confirms, yes, he's a king. And then Pilate says, okay, he's innocent. Makes no sense. So what's the explanation?

Luke leaves us with a huge hole here in his account. To understand, just turn over to John 18 verses 33 through 38. What we see is that Luke has condensed the conversation and Luke, and John rather, records more of it and gives us the answer in this big hole, this big question. Then Pilate entered the praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? And then they dialogue a little bit. I didn't include that in here. And then Jesus answered Pilate, and he says, my kingdom is not of this world. Oh!

So you're not trying to stir up rebellion. You're not trying to establish your own kingship. Oh, okay. In other words, so then Pilate went out again to the Jews, verse 38, and said to them, I find no fault in him at all. So here we see is that Luke, again, just compressed the conversation between Jesus and Pilate into the very bare essentials there. We have to look at John 18 to get the more complete story. So this makes perfect sense now, Pilate's reaction with this additional detail, which Luke had left out, that Jesus said, my kingdom isn't of this world. If it were, my servants would fight. But it's not of this world. So Pilate says, okay, you're not a threat of Rome. I can see that these guys are bringing false charges against you. So nothing that Luke wrote is not true. He just simply leaves out some of the details, doesn't give us the entire conversation that happened there. He just simply doesn't give us all the details that John does.

And when we put that together, what we find in Luke, with what we find in John, we see Luke's narrative in a way that does make sense. We see why Pilate then proclaimed Jesus innocent, which is the key point that Luke is making, that Pilate did declare Jesus innocent. But without John's gospel to explain it and fill in that gap, we have something that looks very, very strange, very unusual there. So here what we have is two undesigned coincidences at once. In John's account, Pilate's question to Jesus seems to come out of nowhere. Are you the king of the Jews? In John's account, you don't see that charge being leveled. But you do see it in Luke's account there. Luke, on the other hand, gives the accusation made against Jesus, but doesn't give the full details of Jesus's conversation with Pilate. So John gives the full answer, but not the accusation. So which of these copied from the other? Did Luke copy from John?

Of course not! Different details. Did John copy from Luke? No. Of course not. Different details there. That clearly didn't happen. Did they both copy from somebody else? Well, no, because if they were copying from somebody else, the other source would have had all of the information in it, and why would they leave part of the accounts out in one gospel but not the other? So you have to be pretty desperate to make that kind of argument that they're copying from each other or copying from some other forger there in the face of this kind of evidence. There is a source, however, for both of these accounts. There is a source. It makes perfect sense. And that source is real life, real events, real history. And that's what real history is made of. That's the way real history is written. It's written honestly. It's honest testimony that is written down.

Doesn't include all of the details, but when you compare that with other accounts, yes, it all fits together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And it all makes perfect sense then.

And that's what we see in the gospel. So we can draw two more lines in our chart here going back and forth. Luke confirms questions that arise in John, and John confirms, fills in the details for questions that arise from Luke's account here. And there are more examples of this. There are several more. I didn't have time to fit in today, but there are examples of this, not just between the gospels themselves. There are other examples of this in other parts of the Bible. There are examples between the Gospels and John. Excuse me, the book of Acts, rather. There are details between the book of Josephus and the Gospels and the book of Acts. Many, many others like this in that way that we don't have time to cover, but we will cover those at some other point in the future. So again, let's see, we're a little bit early here, so I would like to hear your thoughts, any questions you have after our closing hymn and closing prayer. So if you'll just return to your seats for a few minutes after that, then we'll wrap up today's study after the closing hymn and prayer.