Dive into the foundational narratives of the early Christian church as we explore how the New Testament was first composed. This episode takes you back to the earliest days post-resurrection, painting a vivid picture of the apostles and disciples’ lives, their interactions with Jesus, and the crucial moments that shaped Christian doctrine. Discover the fascinating journey of how eyewitness testimonies evolved into the gospels we now hold dear, and understand the cultural and historical contexts that immeasurably influenced these texts.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
The New Testament is really an amazing set of documents. It’s only logical to ask how it got written in the first place. We’ve already talked about how it was transmitted to us. We talked about how they were copied, how the texts were scattered all over the Middle East, how textual critics have studied it to find out what the original text really looked like. But we left open the question of its original composition until now. One of the best ways of getting at this is to take a look at what things looked like, what the church was like, what was happening in the earliest days of the Christian church. Jesus Christ had died, been buried, rose from the dead, and appeared to his disciples. And one can forget that it was about 40 days that he was with them after his resurrection from the dead. He had a lot to tell them in that period of time. The only person that really gives us a good feeling for this, I think, and at least for all of it, is Luke. When he sits down in the book of Acts and says to a gentleman named Theophilus, I wrote you that former treatise of all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day that he was taken up after through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles he had chosen. He showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, seen of them by 40 days, speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom of God. So in these early, early days of the faith, a handful of people had access to Jesus Christ He talked to them of things concerning the kingdom of God and began to fill them in on questions that had been left open all during the time of his normal ministry. He assembled together with them and told them that they should not leave Jerusalem, which normally, after Passover, they would go away, go home and come back maybe for Pentecost. He said, don’t leave. Wait for the promise of the Father which you have heard of me. Now, all they knew was something was coming. To really have an idea of what that would have been was a little beyond their horizon. Jesus said, John truly baptized with water, but you’re going to be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence. So when they all get together, one of the last occasions they were with Jesus, they had a question. And they said, Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? Now, this is a very revealing question because the disciples had an idea of what the kingdom of God was going to be like that was a somewhat at variance from what Jesus’ intent was. They were thinking in terms of a restoration of the Israelite kingdoms. going all the way back to David, who was, of course, the really dominant figure, not the first king of Israel, but the second and the dominant figure in all their kingdom’s history. They knew how the kingdom had come apart after that period of time, how it had been divided into two, how the other nations had gone into captivity, only to come home finally and rebuild. But still, the promise of the prophets of a kingdom of God being established had never happened, not to their satisfaction. And they knew he was the Messiah, and the natural assumption was that the restoration, the drawing together of the house of Israel, the house of Judah, the reestablishment of the kingdom of God as a gem among all the nations, still had to be done. And they wanted to know, are you going to do it now? They had no idea yet. of the plan of God, the scope of it, and certainly not of the time it was going to take before it happened. And Jesus said to them, It’s not for you to know the times or the seasons the Father has put in his own power. I guess it makes sense that he would not have told them, look, boys, it’s going to be at least 2,000 years before we get around to that. You’re going to grow old. You’re going to die and get buried in the ground, and other people are going to carry on the work. I just don’t think it would have been very helpful to them to have told them that story on that day. Imagine for yourself, you know, where does your sense of urgency go if you think, well, they’re going to be around 2,000 years. We’re going to grow old and die, and we’re going to function with all this way, but we’ll never see it. You know, we can find it in our heart to be faithful. But the urgency, I don’t think, would be there. Whatever the reason, he said, it’s not for you to know this. But you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you’re going to be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria. That last was probably very unexpected because the Samaritans were, well, they were the poor neighbors to the north. You’re going to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, not expected, and even more unexpected, unto the uttermost part of the earth. And this, for some reason, seems to be something the disciples had a very hard time getting their minds around, as becomes evident as you make your way on through the book of Acts. Well, after he had spoken these things, as they were standing there looking at him, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of his sight. And while they stood there looking steadfastly to heaven as he went up, I am sure with their mouths hanging open, there were two men standing by them in white apparel. And they said, you men of Galilee, what are you standing here for gazing up into heaven? The same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go to heaven. Now, this is really fascinating. They were standing on the Mount of Olives, and he went. And then we think about this. There are prophecies that suggest that when God comes back, his feet are going to stand on the Mount of Olives. Not only is he going to come back in the same way he went, he’s going to come back to the same place he left from. So they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey. And when they would come in, they went to an upper room. There were a number of them who had actually been living in this area. And they all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brethren. Now, in those days, they had some unfinished business to take care of. One very important thing had to be done. Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, the number of the names together being about 120. Now think about this. After three and a half years of Jesus’ ministry, with all the thousands of people that came to hear him, wandered up and down the streets of Jerusalem and Galilee and followed him everywhere he went and came and heard the Sermon on the Mount and came to hear him up in Galilee when he fed 5,000 people at one time. All that later, all these years later, three and a half years, 120 disciples remained. Peter said, men and brethren, there was a scripture that had to be fulfilled concerning Judas, who was a guide to them that took Jesus. He was numbered with us. He had obtained part of this ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity and fell down therein, burst asunder, all of his bowels gushed out, and it was known to all the dwellers in Jerusalem that that field is called in their tongue, Akeldama, the field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, Peter quoted, Let his habitation be desolate, let no man dwell there, his bishopric, his office let another take. So, of all these men who have accompanied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us. Now, get the picture of the scope that they’re asking for. All the time, this person had to have seen everything. It had to begin with the baptism of John till the same day he was taken up. Must one be ordained, appointed to be a witness with us of his resurrection? Now, it seems to have been very important, and the reasons for that could be discussed, that there had to be twelve apostles. Twelve who were not merely apostles, but they were witnesses of the work, the ministry, and in particular, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, they appointed two apostles. And the implication of this, I think, is that there really were only two men there that fit the requirement entirely, who had been there the whole time, had seen everything, and were qualified to be witnesses. One of them was named Joseph, called Barsabbas, surname Justice, and a man named Matthias. They prayed and said, You, Lord, know the hearts of men. Show which of these two you have chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Matthias. He was numbered with the eleven apostles. Now, this is all very important for reasons that may become apparent later to us. The insistence on twelve because of the abundance of witness that they would be able to give to the things that happened. Now, in Acts 2, something very important happens. They’re all gathered together in one place. The Holy Spirit falls on them with power. There are tongues of fire. Everyone begins to speak in tongues. And in that one day, when they preached that wonderful sermon on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were baptized. What happened after that? What did the church do? day by day, week by week, in the time that followed. I’ll tell you what that is and the implications of it for the New Testament. But first, grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you a message, and then I’ll be right back.
SPEAKER 02 :
Could Jesus Christ return tonight? Well, He could if He wanted to. But aren’t there things that have to happen first? If you would like to know what these things are, request the free booklet, Could Christ Return Tonight?, Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
SPEAKER 03 :
After Peter delivered that sermon on the day of Pentecost, the people were really smitten in conscience and they said, what shall we do? Peter said, repent and be baptized and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Well, those that received Peter’s word gladly on that day were baptized. And the Scripture tells us in Acts 2, verse 41, the same day there were added to them about 3,000 souls. That’s awesome. You know, one day you’ve got 120 disciples. The next day you’ve got 3,000. The effects of this were, you know, on that group of disciples were pretty profound. But it says, and of course you might ask, okay, well, what were they doing then? How did they work with these new disciples? How did they ever get trained, taught, or brought along? Verse 42 tells us, they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. It’s easy to see what they would do. I mean, you’re newly baptized on the day of Pentecost. You would want to spend every minute you possibly could with one or more of these 12 men who had seen, heard, experienced, touched Jesus Christ. You could ask them the questions, all those things that to this day may bother many of us, and we want to know. We wish we could know things about him, and we could have asked, and they would have answered. So it went on daily in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. That’s just being together and partnering together in breaking of bread, eating, and in prayers. They came together in people’s houses. Fear came upon every soul. There were wonders and signs done by the apostles, and everybody that believed were together. They had everything common. They sold possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. Now, this thing is really awesome what they were doing here, because with what had just happened on the day of Pentecost, what they had seen, what they had heard, what they believed about the resurrection of Jesus, they were all, all of them on fire. Nobody wanted to go home. Nobody wanted to go back to his job. So they were almost in a college of the apostles for these days. They went up to the temple for prayer, and then every day they sat and listened to the apostles. They shared their food. They shared their prayers. And there they were in this person’s house, then in that person’s house, as they listened to the story being told. Every Sabbath day, as the custom was, all these people would have gone to the synagogue to hear the Scriptures read. Then they went to houses to get the teaching of the apostles and for fellowship together with one another. Now, you have to remember, these people were entirely Jewish. Also, you need to remember this. No one had Bibles. There were no church buildings. The habit of synagogue attendance was strong. So was the habit of Sabbath observance. Not one word of the New Testament had been written. The only holy scriptures they knew were those of the Old Testament. And the only place they could hear them read were in synagogue. And so these Jewish Christians continued to go to synagogue as they had all their lives on the Sabbath day to listen to the Scriptures read. Now there were the twelve apostles who could teach these new converts, which they did day after day, week after week. Once you’ve gone to the synagogue to hear the scriptures read, you could return and gather in someone’s house. And people would bring food and we would eat together and sit there and listen to Peter. or Andrew, maybe James, John, Philip, Bartholomew. We could have even heard Doubting Thomas tell his story. Matthew would have been there, another James, Thaddeus, Simon the Canaanite, and, of course, Matthias, the twelfth, the last. What did they learn from these men? And of course, they were taught probably not only by those men, but also by the 120 of the disciples of Jesus that had been there at the beginning on that day of Pentecost. We know quite well what the people heard. This is something, you know, a question we can answer. What did they learn from these men? It’s all crystallized in the four Gospels you have right there on your coffee table. You know, if you can put yourself in their shoes for a moment, it’s not hard to imagine what one of those in-home fellowships would have been like. Coming late on the Sabbath after going to the synagogue, they’d share a meal together provided by the host of the family and by others who brought food. Then Brother Matthew sat where everyone could hear him, and he related the Scriptures to They had heard to the story of Jesus. This afternoon we heard, read from the prophet Isaiah, and he would then cite from memory what was told of Isaiah. And then he would relate all that to the story of Jesus, which he was telling them again and again. The group would surely have been informal, and you could have asked questions about Can you imagine that, being able to ask questions of Peter or Matthew or James or John? It’s an incredible thought. Now, this process was invaluable in two directions. One, for the people to be able to hear and to learn. But you also have to realize memorization was an important skill in those days. Hardly anyone had books. All books had to be hand-copied onto papyrus and then rolled up on a scroll. So systematic memorization was a familiar practice, and they had techniques for doing it. It’s been said that the human memory has gone downhill ever since the invention of printing, and that’s easy to believe, considering my memory. It’s hard, really, to overstate this simple difference between that culture and ours. But it was this simple process of repetition of the story and then refining the story by question and answer that actually had the effect of creating an oral gospel in the early church. When you think about it, it’s impossible that it would have been otherwise possible. The habit of memorization of Scripture, the habit of memorization of stories as a part of their means of transmitting their culture from generation to generation, was so strong that it simply picked up the Christian story and carried it along. Scholars have postulated the existence of a source for the gospel accounts that they call Q. That’s the letter Q. It’s my theory that there was a cue, but that this was the oral gospel that developed over time and heavily influenced the final written gospel. How did it work? How did it actually come out in practice? Well, there’s an interesting story in the eighth chapter of Acts that I think illustrates it very effectively. It turns out, verse 26, the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip and said, Get up and go down to the south by the way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza in the desert. Didn’t tell him why to go. Just get on down there. So he got up and went. There he encountered a man of Ethiopia. He was a eunuch of great authority under Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. He had charge of all of her treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship. This man, like so many early converts who were not Jewish, was a God-fearer. A God-fearer was an uncircumcised Gentile who had committed his life to serving the God of the Bible. He was on his way back, and he was sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah the prophet. And the Spirit said to Philip, Go on over and join yourself to this chariot. So Philip ran over, and he heard him reading. So he was reading out loud from the prophet Isaiah. And he said, Do you understand what you’re reading? And the Ethiopian replied, Well, how can I except somebody who could guide me through this? Come on up here and sit with me in the chariot. Now the place where he was reading from the Scripture was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before her shearer, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch said to Philip, Will you tell me, who is this man speaking this way about, of himself or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, beginning at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. Now, you have to think about this for a moment. You try to do something like this in the modern world, and what you would do is you’d flip open your New Testament, and you would read out of Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, and you’d be able to make the relationships between the epistles of Paul. You’d use all your New Testament skills to try to make it clear to God, this man, what you’re talking about. There was no New Testament. Not one word, not the first word of the New Testament had been written at this time. So how was Philip able to do this? Well, he knew the story. He’d heard it again and again. And by the way, this Philip is not one of the 12. This is one who was ordained later as a deacon. Philip, you know, was a guy who had internalized and memorized the story of Jesus. How did he do it? Because he’d heard it again and again and again at the mouth of the apostles, and he’d had a chance to clarify his questions. So he had it nailed. As they went on their way, they came to a certain water, and Enoch said, “‘Oh, look, here’s some water. What hinders me to be baptized?’ And Philip said, You believe with all your heart, you may. He answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. So they stopped the chariot, went down to the water, baptized this man. Philip was taken away, later found in Azotus. Passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea. Now, this had been the pattern for a long time before this, or Philip would not have been able to have actually accomplished this. Think about that for a moment and listen to this message, and I’ll be right back with more.
SPEAKER 02 :
For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Introduction to the New Testament, No. 6. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344. For a long time before Philip encountered the Ethiopian,
SPEAKER 03 :
The gospel, the oral gospel, if you will, was becoming well-established in the church and among all the disciples. But there was still no written gospel, and there would not be for some 30 years after the ascension of Christ. Two questions naturally rise. One, why did they wait so long? Two, having waited that long, what finally motivated them to write the account down? Part of the answer lies in that short question they asked Jesus before his ascension. Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? The question is crucial. It betrays their expectations about the kingdom Jesus kept talking about and their expectation that it wasn’t going to be very long. They expected the return of Christ and the establishment of the kingdom in their own lifetime. For years, there was no thought of any need for a written gospel. All the 12 apostles were there. 120 of the disciples were going all over the place. There were 500 people who had seen Jesus alive after his resurrection, and they were available in all different parts of the world. But two things happened that began to change the way they thought about this. In Acts 12, there is this statement. About that time, Herod the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church. And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to arrest Peter. Now, someone once said that the knowledge you are going to be hanged in a fortnight has a way of marvelously focusing the mind. And so for the first time, it became apparent that all of the apostles were not going to survive until the return of Christ. The other important thing that happened was the breaking out of the gospel into Gentile countries. This was delayed, really, for a surprising number of years, but maybe it was necessary that the church have that period of time in which to solidify the gospel, to clarify all the questions, and to basically begin to really understand their own story in ways they hadn’t understood it before. One could almost conclude that God felt everybody had waited long enough to take the gospel to the world outside of Judaism, and he took action away from Jerusalem. The story is in the 13th chapter of Acts. It was the church in Antioch where there was a group of people gathered together, prophets, teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, several others, and Saul, whom we’ve come to know as Paul. And as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And so when they had fasted and prayed and laid hands on him, they sent him away. And they sailed out by the Holy Spirit, departed to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. And thus begins the story of the Apostle Paul. who wrote the very first books that we now have in our Bibles, Galatians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. They returned from this journey with quite a story. They had baptized Gentiles all over the place, and the Gentiles were outnumbering the Jews by a wide margin. Well, that all set very well in Antioch. It didn’t sit so well with some of the people who came to visit them from Jerusalem, who said, if you’re not circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. What follows on the heels of this is the Great Jerusalem Conference, where the home church and the original apostles were forced to face up to the question of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER 02 :
You have heard Ronald L. Dart. If you would like more information, or if you have any questions, write to BornToWin.com. Post Office Box 560. White House, Texas 75791. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And visit our website at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app. This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android app store to download it for free today.
