Four men with pens and parchment
Set out to do the Master’s bid,
Moved by the Holy Spirit
Exactly as they were told they did.
Out of this came four pictures
Though of cameras, they had none,
In the Bible, we have the evidence
Of Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John.
Two were primary reporters
Of what they had witnessed and seen,
Two were not far from the action
And wrote the account as streamed.
Matthew and John
were disciples
And had walked beside the Christ,
They received his teachings firsthand
Without conditions or price.
Mark and Luke were followers
And most likely knew Christ’s disciples
But they all had the Spirit’s guidance
And in such a recording, there is no rival.
Way back in the Old Testament
The accounts were given their themes,
Two prophets had declared them
Long before Christ came on the scene.
These were Isaiah
and Zechariah
And they, led by the Spirit of God,
Penned these themes in their books
And preached them to one and all.
They were not completely au fait
With all that these themes had meant
But simply declared the word
As the messengers that God had sent.
In Zechariah
chapter 6 verse 9
There we read, “Behold
the man”,
This was pertaining to Christ’s advents
And his work re the redemption plan.
The next declaration comes from Isaiah
As recorded in Isaiah
42 verse 1,
“Behold my
servant” is the theme
700 years before Christ was born.
Zechariah is back: chapter
9 verse 9
“Behold your
King,” he declares,
“Riding upon a colt the foal of an ass,”
Prophetic of that first Palm Sunday.
The 4th is recorded in Isaiah 40 verse 9
And that theme is, “Behold your God,”
A clear indication of the deity of Christ
And this to all would be spread abroad.
And so with eyes as roving cameras
And ears completely tuned to the Spirit
These four wrote as the Spirit led
Ever conscious of their God-given remit.
Behold Your King
Matthew, though the first as presented,
Is really the second journal penned,
A study of this account would reveal
“Jesus the King,”
as Zechariah declared then.
As a king, his genealogy was presented
Making him an heir to David’s throne,
Starting at the first verse of Matthew
By verse 16 this
is clearly shown.
In Matthew 5
he came to fulfil the law
Regarding its spirit and not its letter,
The liberty to do what is righteous
And not by its rule to be fettered.
Murder was anger for a brother
Adultery was committed in the heart,
Swearing of an oath was forbidden
And to love our enemy we should start.
As a King, he was greater than Moses
And over the Sabbath he was Lord,
He showed his authority over demons
As demonstrated in the Word.
He was much wiser than Solomon
And far greater than Jonah,
At birth and death, he was called a king
And showed his authority over nature.
Behold My Servant
Matthew to Mark
was a quantum leap
From king down to “Jesus the Servant”,
No genealogy was required in this case
But key persons were used as a reference.
First a testimonial from John the Baptist
Re: coming after but preferred before
And God Himself
was a reference,
Tell me, who could ask for more?
The Holy Spirit testified of him
This occurred at the baptism of John
And Jesus himself said he came to minister
As a reference, he must be accepted as one.
In one encounter with a blind man
He requested of him what to do,
No doubt he knew what the man required
But his was a servant’s point of view.
When questioned regarding the end
He indicated that was in the Father’s hand
He knew quite well a servant’s place
And stuck to the Master’s plan.
Behold The Man
He carried a two-fold nature
Not two natures as some may suggest,
Luke presented him as “Jesus the Man”
And as a man, he passed the test.
In Luke
there is another genealogy
That goes all the way back to Adam
Luke chapter 3 verses 23 to 38
Definitely shows that he was a man.
He identified with each one of us
He showed complete dependence on God,
Even in the wilderness when tempted
By the sinister devil, that fraud.
In Luke his
humanity is prominent
Even from the recording of his birth,
His compassion and sympathy were evident
As he reached out to all the earth.
Once as he stood overlooking Jerusalem
He looked down on the city and wept,
How he longed to gather them to himself
But for him, they had no respect.
His humanity was shown in Gethsemane
In that agonizing session
As he prayed in earnest to his Father,
O how he revealed his human passion!
There his sweat was like drops of blood
As he prayed the more earnestly,
Demonstrating again his humanity
As he previewed his pending agony.
Behold Your God
Matthew, Mark and Luke most may believe
But not John’s
account of “Jesus as God”,
A perfect human or the archangel for some
But as God, they would never applaud.
Jesus’ use of I
AM incensed the Jews
That claim was reserved for only God,
Such was their anger that they angrily declared
Jesus was a blasphemer, liar and fraud.
Yet John
stated in the beginning was the Word
And the Word was God
And that the Word became flesh
John also spread it abroad.
At his arrest, Peter didn’t know the man
Though he had acknowledged him as the Christ,
But Thomas referred to him as Lord and God
When he saw the evidence of his sacrifice.
Jesus had not only come from God Himself
But God Himself who had come,
The Son of God means God Himself
The Son in the Father and the Father in the Son.
Behold a virgin shall be with child
And she shall bring forth a son,
And they shall call his name Emmanuel
Meaning, God Himself, with us has come.
He who has the Father accepts the Son
Along with the Holy Spirit these three-in-one,
God was in Christ reconciling the world
And through the Holy Spirit, the work is done.
Stewart Russell © April 2018
