13 Why Jesus Started His Ministry in the 'Wrong' Place (Matthew 4:12-25)

Krisan Marotta: You're listening to Wednesday in the Word, and I'm glad you are. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the 13th talk in our series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we'll study Matthew chapter 4, verses 12 through 25. Lecture notes for today's talk, which contain links to everything mentioned in the talk and an outline of the main points, are on my website. You can find those by clicking on the link below the podcast or go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 1 3. Glad to have you along. We're going to finish Matthew chapter 4 today. Chapter 4 finishes the first unit of the book, which functions as kind of a prologue. We're going to pick up in 4.12, and this is where Matthew tells us about the ministry of Jesus. Everything we've seen in his gospel up to this point has been introductory material. Matthew has told us about the genealogy of Jesus. He's told us the story of Jesus' birth and his upbringing, mostly from Joseph's perspective. He told us about the ministry of John the Baptist and then about the baptism of Jesus and his temptations in the wilderness. And let me remind you of two themes that we've seen so far from these events. First, Matthew is steeped in the Old Testament. Almost everything he says draws on background knowledge of the Old Testament. He expects us to know the story of the nation of Israel from its birth with the calling of Abraham through the Exodus into the promised land in the exile. He expects us to understand the promises that were given to the descendants of Abraham and the promises given to the descendants of David. He expects us to know what the prophets have said about the coming Messiah who will inherit David's throne. And when he says Jesus is a son of Abraham and a son of David, he expects us to understand how significant that is. In these early chapters, we've seen Matthew frequently say something in Jesus' life fulfills something in the Old Testament. And as we've talked about, he's not claiming that these Old Testament passages are predictive prophecy in that they were predicting a particular event in the life of Jesus, but rather something in the life of Jesus is the fullest expression or the epitome of this Old Testament theme or idea. Jesus is the fulfillment in that he is the fullest picture of the idea. Another striking theme we've seen so far is the contrast between glorious events and humble events. On the one hand, Jesus' early life is filled with glory. He's miraculously born of a virgin. As a child, he is supernaturally protected through the intervention of angels and dreams. Great magi from the east come to worship him as a king. As an adult, the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends on him, and the voice of God declares him to be the Messiah. And when he's tempted, Jesus prevails against the schemes of Satan. On the other hand, Jesus is not living the sort of life you might expect for a king. He was in danger of being rejected as an illegitimate child until Joseph agreed to adopt him. Joseph has to flee to Egypt to save Jesus' life and a number of Jewish children died at Herod's hand as a result. When Joseph brings Jesus back from Egypt, he doesn't live in Jerusalem, the capital or even the region of Judea. He is raised in Nazareth in Galilee, which is considered a backwater. Jesus humbles himself to be baptized by the prophet John, and he submits to wandering without food in the wilderness in order to follow God. Matthew gives us this mixed picture of glory and humility. Matthew shows us a Messiah who is at the same time exalted and humble, and even so he is the fulfillment of the promises and the hopes of Israel. Now here at the end of chapter four, Matthew introduces us to Jesus' ministry proper. I'm going to read chapter four verses twelve through seventeen. The he in this verse refers to Jesus, and the John is John the Baptist. Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region a shadow of death, on them a light has dawned. From that time Jesus began to preach saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let me start with a bit of geography. If you have a map of the New Testament in your Bible or on your phone, you might want to pull it out. Or if you're at the lecture notes, you can click on the link to the map in those lecture notes. In the Gospels, we're largely concerned with four regions. The first region is Judea. Judea is in the south, this is where Jerusalem is located, and Jerusalem is of course the capital city of Israel. The temple was located there and the Davidic kings ruled from the city of Jerusalem. To any Jew of this time, Jerusalem is the center of the Jewish religion and the Jewish nation. The second region is Samaria. Samaria is north of Judea. The Samaritans were mixed race Israelites who lived in the area of the former Northern Kingdom. They broke with the Jews around the time the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom, and they had their own temple and their own priesthood at Mount Gerizim. We don't know a whole lot about them, but we do know that there was a fierce animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews. The third region is Galilee, and Galilee is north of Samaria. There were many Jews living in Galilee, but they were looked down on by the Jews of Judea. They spoke with a different accent, and they were considered tainted by their proximity to the Gentiles and to the Samaritans. Nazareth, which was Jesus' hometown, is in Galilee. Capernaum, the town that functions as his home base for his early ministry, is farther north than Galilee. It's on the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. The last region is the Decopolis. The Decopolis is a district which is on the east and southeast side of the Sea of Galilee. It contained ten cities, which was where it gets its name, and it was chiefly inhabited by Greeks and Gentiles. Matthew tells us that Jesus began his early ministry in Galilee, and I think that's significant. Jesus chooses to begin his ministry in Galilee. That's not just a minor geographical detail. Matthew highlights this fact by the way he's organized his gospel, which I talked about in the introductory podcast. Just to review briefly, you'll recall that in John's Gospel, John tells us that Jesus traveled back and forth between Judea and Galilee several times. Every time there's a major feast, Jesus travels to Jerusalem where he stirs up trouble and then he returns to Galilee. Matthew, Mark, and Luke omit these excursions to Jerusalem. Instead, they tell the story of Jesus' ministry in two parts, his early ministry in Galilee, and then his travels to Jerusalem where he is arrested, crucified, and resurrected. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there is a turning point. All of them have the same turning point. Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is, and Peter answers, You are the Christ. At that point, Jesus begins to prepare them for the fact that he is going to Jerusalem and He's going to the cross. The first half of the story then in each of the three synoptic gospels is his ministry in Galilee. The second half of the story is his journey to Jerusalem and the Passion Week. Matthew highlights this two part view by telling us here in chapter four that Jesus chose Capernaum in Galilee as his base of operations, and he quotes a prophecy from Isaiah about Galilee. He tells us Jesus chose Galilean fishermen to be his disciples, and he tells us people from all over came to Galilee to see and hear Jesus, and that Jesus traveled all over Galilee. He tells us in four seventeen, from that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Notice this language from that time. This indicates this is the beginning of the Galilean phase of Jesus' ministry. Matthew's going to use this phrase again at the turning point of his gospel. This is when Jesus asks his disciples, Who do you say I am? Peter says you're the Christ, and then Matthew says in 1621, from that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And then the rest of the gospel is about how Jesus moves toward Jerusalem. Now I mentioned this before, but let me just repeat, I don't think Matthew and John are contradictory, I don't think they conflict in any way. Matthew is not showing the chronology of Jesus' ministry, he's showing the logic of it. For his purposes, he didn't need to mention these side trips to Jerusalem. John, for his purposes, wanted to include them. That's what authors do. They organize the material for the point they're trying to emphasize. Now let's look at the quote from Isaiah, which also emphasizes the Galilean nature of Jesus' ministry. Let me read Matthew four, thirteen through sixteen again. And leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulum and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. The land of Zebulum and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death on them a light has dawned. And that's the end of the quote. This is from Isaiah nine. Isaiah is a writing at a time when the kingdom of Israel is split into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Jerusalem is in the southern kingdom, but most of the tribes of Israel are in the northern kingdom. The region of Galilee is in the northern part of the northern kingdom. The throne of David is in the south, but the northern kingdom has rejected the rule of the Davidic king in Jerusalem, and they have their own king in the north. In Isaiah seven, which Matthew quoted earlier, we see Isaiah going to King Ahaz, who is a southern king in the southern kingdom. Ahaz is afraid because the northern kingdom has joined forces with the kingdom of Aram and they're planning to attack him. And in that context, Isaiah tells Ahaz, this is seven fourteen, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. Now we talked about that verse earlier in chapter one when Matthew referred to it, and I'm not going to go into all that again. But just to review, Isaiah is telling Ahaz, don't worry about the northern kingdom attacking you, because soon the Assyrians will attack and destroy the northern kingdom. The first wave of the Assyrian attack starts in Galilee, in the northernmost part of the northern kingdom. And further, the Assyrians will attack the southern kingdom as well, and they will almost destroy it, but they won't at this point. And this is the context that Isaiah is writing in. And we see that Galilee is in tough shape. They've rejected the Davidic king, and Assyria is about to attack and level them. The Jews in Galilee are about to be taken into exile, and this is why Isaiah nine is kind of surprising. Isaiah is a prophet in the southern kingdom. He's talking to a southern king. His primary concern is warning those in the south what's about to happen in the north and urging them to avoid the same fate. But then we get to chapter nine and Isaiah says this. And as I read this you'll hear the names Zebulum and Naphtali. Those are two of the twelve tribes of Israel who settled in Galilee in the north. So this is Isaiah nine, I'm going to read verse one through seven. But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulum and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shone. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy, they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil, for the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Isaiah nine, which is what Matthew is quoting here, is an announcement that the Messiah, a son of David, is going to come and set everything right. And in this section, Isaiah talks about how the Messiah is going to restore the people of the Northern Kingdom. And you'll recall the Northern Kingdom has rejected the Davidic throne, they abandoned God, and they have been destroyed by the Assyrians. And yet, in Galilee, God is going to begin blessing his people again. The light of the Messiah will dawn in Galilee. So we have this kind of happy irony. Galilee is in darkness. They've been rejected by God, they've been taken into exile, they've rejected the Davidic throne, they have been destroyed, and yet in Galilee the Messiah will shine a great light and begin to bless the people again. That happy irony carries over into the life of Jesus. At the time of Jesus, Galilee was cut off from Judea by the region of Samaria. Galilee was ruled by a different ruler than the region of Judea. It was despised by the Jews in Judea the way New Yorkers might despise those from the backwaters of, say, Mississippi. Galilee was in darkness at the time Isaiah wrote, and in a sense it is still in darkness at the time of Jesus, yet it is there that Jesus chooses to base his ministry. Isaiah has the surprising announcement that the Messiah, the son of David, will choose to shine his light in Galilee, and Matthew tells that same surprising story. Jesus, the son of David, has chosen to concentrate his ministry in the despised and rejected region of Galilee. It's not a geographical accident. It's a picture of the mercy of God. Isaiah says the light will dawn for those who in the past have been treated with contempt, and Jesus starts his ministry in the outskirts in the backwater of Galilee, which is treated with contempt. Matthew says that Jesus fulfills what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. And up till now, when Matthew has used this term fulfill, he has not meant something predicted has come to pass, he has meant that a theme has reached its fullest expression. This passage I think is different. Isaiah 9 is clearly a prediction about the Messiah, and Matthew says this has come to pass in the life of Jesus. Matthew is telling us how this prophecy has been fulfilled. Jesus, the Messiah, has chosen to live and minister in the region of Galilee. Okay, let's move on to the calling of the first disciples. This is Matthew chapter four, eighteen through twenty two. While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen, and he said to them, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him, and going on from there he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Now if you only read Matthew's gospel, you might think that Jesus walked up to four apparent strangers, said follow me, and they did, but that's not the entire story. John's gospel gives us a little more detail on how these disciples were called. Let me read John chapter one verses thirty five through forty two. The next day again John and this John is John the Baptist. So the next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, Behold the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What are you seeking? And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? He said to them, Come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which means Christ. He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon, the son of John, you shall be called Cephas, which means Peter. So one of the two disciples in question here is Andrew, Peter's brother. I suspect the other of the two who are following John the Baptist is the apostle John, the author of this gospel. John never names himself in his gospel, and that's probably what he's doing here. The story goes on, this is John one hundred forty three. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Bethseda, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him of whom Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, Come and see. John gives us this picture that Andrew, Simon Peter, and John met Jesus outside of Galilee, and that they were introduced to each other by John the Baptist. Then they find Philip and Nathaniel, and they all return to Galilee. So is this a contradiction? Are John and Matthew in disagreement? No, I don't think so, because if we bring in the gospel of Luke, we get even more detail. This is Luke chapter five. I'm going to start in verse one. On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God that he here is Jesus, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from land, and he sat down and taught the people from the boat, and when he had finished speaking he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets. And when they had done this they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord, for he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to the land, they left everything and followed him. Now as you compare Matthew and Luke, you'll notice that Luke gives us a lot more detail to the story of the calling of Peter and Andrew. That tells us that Matthew didn't intend to include every detail of the events. That's not his purpose. For his purpose, he wants us to know that Jesus began calling his disciples, and first up were Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and that all of them were from Galilee. If we only read Matthew and Mark, we might be tempted to think that Jesus walked up to two strangers and said, Follow me, and they did, but we know from Luke that it was a little more complicated than that. There's more to the story. When we read all four Gospels together, I think the reality is something like this. John the Baptist was preaching outside of Galilee, and he pointed out Jesus to Andrew and probably the apostle John, who were disciples of John the Baptist at the time. Andrew goes and gets his brother, Simon Peter, and they start to follow Jesus. They see a few miracles, they hear him teach a bit as they travel back to Galilee, but you know, business is business, they have to eat, so they go back to their fishing business on the Sea of Galilee. Then Jesus comes to them, and we have the episode Luke records with the miraculous catch of fish, and Jesus calls on them to make a decision to follow him. This is not the first time they've seen him. They know that John the Baptist thinks he is the Messiah, and they are somewhat familiar with what he's been doing and teaching, and at this point they decide to leave their business and follow him. That picture makes sense of all the details we have. By telling the story this way, Matthew is focusing on what happened in Galilee with these Galilean fishermen. And by telling it this way, Matthew is emphasizing that Jesus chose Andrew, Simon, Peter, John, and James. He went to them, he called them. John in his gospel gives us the further knowledge that this was not the first time these people had met Jesus. John emphasizes that they chose to follow Jesus, but Matthew emphasizes that Jesus called them, and he also emphasizes this new role that Jesus is calling them to. Jesus does not just say, Be my disciples and learn what I have to teach. Jesus tells them he will make them fishers of men. So using this wonderfully rich metaphor, he says, You've been fishermen all your lives, but up till now you've only been catching fish. Follow me and I'll give you something far better to catch. I will make you fishers of men. Finally, then Matthew highlights how Galilean the ministry of Jesus is. You might think that the new Davidic king would pick his cabinet, so to speak, from the religious elite of Jerusalem. He would seek out those who went to the best synagogues and studied with the best rabbis, but no, he doesn't do that. Jesus picks several poor Galilean fishermen who are quite literally fresh off the boat. Though they have surely been educated, they are not on the top of the social ladder. Matthew emphasizes then that Jesus chose his apostles. He invited them to join him in the ministry, and this whole thing is a very Galilean ministry. Then Matthew gives us a summary of what Jesus does in his ministry. This is chapter four verses twenty three through twenty five. And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures and paralytics, and he healed them, and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decopolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. Again, geography is important here. Jesus went throughout all Galilee. His fame spread through all of Syria, which is the region north of Galilee. Great crowds from Galilee followed him, and not only from Galilee, also crowds from the Decopolis, the region east of the Jordan, and even from Jerusalem and Judea in the south, and then beyond the Jordan in the south. But no matter where they were from, they traveled to Galilee to see Jesus because that's where Jesus was operating. This passage is an introduction to and a summary of Jesus' early ministry in Galilee. Jesus has spent some time outside Galilee in the area where John the Baptist was preaching, but when John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus returned to Galilee. Now perhaps the arrest of John the Baptist made the region too politically unsafe, or perhaps there was just no reason to remain since John the Baptist was in prison, we're not told. In either case, Jesus returns to Galilee where he grew up, and he sets up his base of operation in Capernaum. Capernaum was probably about four to five times the size of Nazareth. It's difficult to know exactly, but it appears to have been the bigger town. Capernaum was on the Sea of Galilee and fishing was the main livelihood. Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, John, and James, who were all fishermen in Capernaum. And then Matthew gives us the summary of his ministry. Jesus teaches in the synagogues, he preaches the good news of the kingdom, he heals many people of all kinds of afflictions, and his fame spreads throughout the region, and then people begin coming to Galilee from all over to see Jesus. Now Matthew's summary highlights two aspects of Jesus' ministry, his healings and what he taught. Because we're so familiar with the story of Jesus, I think we lose sight of what a striking thing the healing ministry of Jesus was. And notice how expansive Matthew's summary is. He heals people from every disease and every affliction in 423, and in case you miss the every, he gives us this further list in four twenty four. He heals those who are sick, those afflicted with diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, and those having seizures and paralytics. That's a pretty long list. Whenever I teach from the gospels, I get so excited by the parables and the didactic teaching passages of Jesus that I tend to forget that healings were a significant part of his ministry. Here is the Messiah. This is the man who will rule over all creation, to whom God has granted authority and dominion. And how does he spend his time? He spends a lot of time traveling by foot from town to town, finding people who are sick, afflicted, and oppressed from a wide variety of causes and healing them. I think that's significant for a number of reasons. First, it means he spent a great deal of time committing acts of compassion. A suffering person would come to him and he would take their suffering away. It was a specific act of compassion for that person. Here's a real person standing before Jesus, and Jesus the Messiah saves him from his present distress. But it also proclaims the message that God and his Messiah are concerned about the welfare of people. God and his messiah are compassionate toward people. And more importantly, it symbolizes a greater healing to come. We may need physical healing now, but our ultimate need is to know the gospel message. We know the gospel message is that we need a much deeper eternal kind of healing. We need to be healed from our sinfulness and our rebelliousness. We need to have our hard hearts replaced with soft hearts, and we need to be forgiven and restored to our relationship with our Creator. The real healing we need is the healing from sin and death and futility and corruption. And every time Jesus physically heals someone, it reminds us he has the power to heal us eternally. He has the power to rescue us from death. And then finally, his healing ministry is evidence that Jesus is who he says he is. Why should we believe that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the long-awaited Messiah? Why should we trust that what he says is true? Well, one reason is because he has the power to heal. By giving Jesus the power to heal, God is testifying that he is with Jesus and Jesus is his Messiah. A physically sick person or a demon-possessed person comes to Jesus and is made well. This is visible evidence, tangible evidence that a spiritually sick person who comes to Jesus can also be made well. God is verifying and testifying that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Messiah. Likewise, Matthew gives us a general introduction to the teaching ministry of Jesus. Let me read 417 again. From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And you'll notice that this is how Matthew also summarized the message of John the Baptist. Both of them preached the same message. Since we're going into the Sermon on the Mount next, I'm not going to spend too much time on this now, and we did talk about it a bit in chapter three, but I do want to cover it briefly. Let's review what does Matthew mean by the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. I'm going to tell you what it meant to the Jews at the time of Christ, and then I'm going to tell you how I think Jesus turned their understanding around a bit. To the Jews, the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, those two terms are synonyms, meant the reign of God as king, and there were two aspects to this. The first is that God is king of Israel as long as Israel obeys. God would rule as king of Israel and his rule would be in effective insofar as Israel obeyed and remained faithful. The rabbis talked about taking upon oneself the kingdom of heaven by submitting yourself unquestioningly to the law. So in that sense, the kingdom of God is a present fact. The second aspect of the kingdom of God is that God is king of the whole world, but his rule has not yet been established. In reality, God is more than king of Israel, God is king over the whole world, but the world doesn't recognize him. And Israel looked forward to the day when the kingship of God would be effective over the whole world. So in that sense, the kingdom of God is something in the future it is yet to be revealed. The second aspect of the kingdom of God then is that it's a future hope, and the Jews expected that when this reign was established, there would be judgment over all the wrong in the world, victory over the powers of evil, and for those who had accepted his rule by obeying the law a life of communion with God. And they expected that the Messiah, a Davidic king, would come and establish this rule, but for now they were to take the kingdom of God upon themselves by scrupulously obeying the law. Now Jesus comes along and says the kingdom of God is at hand, or sometimes the kingdom of God is near, or even more strange, the kingdom of God has come upon you. The Jews must have been confused by that kind of statement. Yes, the kingdom of God is at hand because the king, the Messiah, has come, but they could look around and see that the whole world was not bowing to God, wrong was not being judged, the powers of evil were not vanquished, and they weren't living in full communion with God. And even more confusing, Jesus made these kinds of statements to the unclean, to tax gatherers, to the sinners, not even the Pharisees or the people who seem to be scrupulously obeying the law. So what was he saying? Well another clue we have is that Mark uses the phrase the kingdom of God synonymously with the phrase eternal life. And now the phrase eternal life means the life of the age to come or the life of the age of ages. It doesn't point to how long you live or the longevity of existence, but a quality of life, the kind of life we will have in the next age when the Messiah has established his rule and all is set right and everyone bows to the God of Israel. When Jesus says the kingdom of God has come upon you, I think he does mean something in your present experience is changing. Something is happening now which has not happened before. God's rule is now effective in your life, not in the sense that you have scrupulously obeyed the law, as the Jews thought, but because the Messiah is here, the king has come and he is inaugurating a new covenant. Now God rules in your life because God has changed you by his power. God has given you faith, and through faith you are saved. And God rules in your life not because you earned it by keeping the law or not because you merited it somehow, but because God in his grace is choosing to save you, to grant you faith, to make you his child, and promising that in the age to come you will be like him, holy and righteous. The kingdom of God is at hand because with the coming of the Messiah, it is now possible in a way it was never possible before. The Messiah is inaugurating what we call the new covenant. Before we were under the law and we had to obey the law and keep the law to gain God's blessings, but we couldn't keep it. No matter what or how we tried, we were sinful, rebellious people with hard hearts. And God says, I'm going to fix that. I'm going to give you the kingdom of God as a gift, not because you deserve it, you don't, and not because you can do it all by yourself and earn it, you can't, but because I'm a loving, merciful, compassionate God, and I will have mercy on my people. So if you want to avoid God's judgment, if you want to find a place in the kingdom of heaven, if you want to experience these great blessings of the kingdom and eternal life, what must you do? Repent. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. There is a way to find it now that was not possible before. And that's the other part of his summary. Repent. Repent means more than being sorry or changing your mind. Repent means to turn around, to do a one hundred eighty. It means to return to God. We need to admit that we were wrong, that we were rebellious, that we were sinful, that we cannot save ourselves, and do a one hundred eighty to turn toward God and ask for His mercy and forgiveness. The arrival of the king forces the choice. The time to decide is now, and that's another aspect of this phrase, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The king is here, you need to decide who you're going to follow. The Old Testament makes it quite clear that there is a connection between faithfulness and blessing. If you want God's blessing, you have to follow and trust Him. You have to turn back from the direction you're going, return to God and say, You are my God and I am your servant. The prophets announced that one day God would spiritually transform his people, and what does transformation look like? It starts with repentance, turning back to God and following Him. If you want a place in the kingdom of God, you need to repent. Now I'm going to leave this topic there for now because we're going to talk a lot more about it in the coming weeks as we go through the Sermon on the Mount. So let me summarize what we've seen in the first four chapters. Matthew's gospel is steeped in the Old Testament. He expects us to know the Old Testament well and to understand the significance of the stories that are recorded in the Old Testament. He makes liberal use of the Old Testament without stopping to explain because he expects us to know what he's talking about. Another striking theme is how Matthew contrasts the glorious and the humble. On the one hand, everything about Jesus' early life is miraculous. God is actively engaged in intervening to keep the young Messiah safe. After four hundred years of silence, God sends a prophet, John the Baptist, to announce that the Messiah is coming. God publicly testifies that Jesus is the Messiah at his baptism. Then God sends Jesus into the wilderness to be tested and proves that he is worthy to be the Messiah and He is succeeding where the nation of Israel failed. On the other hand, Jesus appears to be no one from nowhere. Jesus is not living the sort of life you might expect a king to live. He was in danger of being rejected as an illegitimate child until Joseph adopted him. Joseph has to flee to Egypt to keep Jesus safe. Joseph brings Jesus back from Egypt and then takes him to the surprising backwater of Galilee rather than to Jerusalem or Judea. And Jesus humbles himself and agrees to be baptized by the prophet John and then submits to his Lord and follows him into the wilderness without food. So Matthew gives us this picture of glory and humility. He shows us a Messiah who is on the one hand exalted, and on the other hand he's humble, and he is the fulfillment of the promises and the hopes of Israel. Matthew emphasizes that Jesus deliberately begins his ministry in Galilee. That's not a geographical accident. For the first time we see Matthew reference a predictive prophecy in the Old Testament. Isaiah has this surprising announcement that the Messiah, the son of David, will choose to shine his light in Galilee, and Matthew tells this same surprising story. Jesus, the son of David, son of Abraham, has chosen to concentrate his ministry in the despised and rejected region of Galilee. Matthew highlights two aspects of Jesus' ministry, his healings and what he taught. Jesus spent a lot of time healing all kinds of people from all kinds of diseases. He spent a great deal of time being compassionate and proclaiming the message that God and his Messiah are concerned about the welfare of their people. But his healings also symbolized the greater healing that is to come. Every time Jesus heals someone physically, it should be a testimony, a reminder to us that he has the power to heal us from sin and rescue us from death. By giving Jesus the power to heal, God is testifying that he is with Jesus and that Jesus is the Messiah. The miracles confirm that Jesus is who he says he is. And finally, Matthew summarizes the teaching of Jesus the same way he summarized the teaching of John the Baptist. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The king has come, he's been announced by his herald. God testified to his identity at his baptism, and God testified through the miracles he can perform that he is the Messiah. He has fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah by starting his ministry in Galilee, and now is the time to decide to follow him. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but demonstrate how we figure it out. Your podcast feed may be limited to the last 20 or so episodes, but you can hear all previous episodes by going to my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There's no ads, no spam, only Bible study resources. If you want to thank me, please join the mailing list. Leave a positive rating or review where you listen to your podcast. And most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Heartstream music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite pieces in Reggie Coast of Heartfeltmusic.org. I invite you to listen to his other music, you'll be really glad you did. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.