The Mission, The Call, The Work

Text: Matthew 4:12–25 ESV

Review & Introduction

We have been working through the gospel of Matthew since before Christmas, and we are just finishing up chapter four this week. Up to this point, in chapters one through three, Matthew was laying the groundwork of Jesus’s origin—introducing us to this long-awaited Savior—his family history, his birth, his family travels, his coming on the scene in his baptism. It becomes very obvious, very quickly that Matthew is writing for a largely Jewish audience. He makes many assumptions about his audience and what they already know that makes us believe he had a Jewish reader in mind. 

That already leaves you and me at a disadvantage. Sadly, American Christianity has always dwelled largely in the New Testament. We love a good gospel, a pastoral letter. They are easy to read, easy to understand, and have a very easy application. We may dip into Revelation every now and then as our challenge, but we rarely float to the Old Testament, except for some encouragement from a Psalm or some witty wisdom from a Proverb. 

Don has been taking us through Zephaniah—a prophet to the people of Judah exhorting them to repent from their wickedness, to seek the Lord, that they may avoid the judgement to come on the ‘day of the Lord.’ It is these types of prophecies, this type of history, that Matthew is assuming his readers have. He consistently takes two very distinct routes in this gospel to remind us—his readers—of the very Jewishness of Jesus and the expectations that come with the Messiah.

On the one hand, Matthew constantly brings us to the prophecies that Jesus is fulfilling. He repeatedly says the phrase, “this fulfills” a certain prophecy. Fulfillment language. He quotes Isaiah 7:14 and reminds us that this baby, born of a virgin, was promised long ago. He points to Micah 5:2 and the promise that this baby, lying in a manger, living amongst villagers until wise men appear, was meant to be in the small town of Bethlehem. John the Baptist, a new type of Elijah, is promised to appear before him making a path for him in the desert. 

Some of the prophecies stand with one foot in Matthew’s goal of connecting Jesus to the prophecies he fulfills, and another foot in his other goal—showing us how Jesus fits into the history of Israel and how he becomes the true son, the son who lives rightly. We have Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1 showing us how Jesus is also called out of Egypt like Israel was. We see how he uses the lament of Rachel weeping for her children taken to exile to connect Herod’s killing of the infants as a sign that Israel is still in exile, waiting for their Savior. 

We see this second category—that Jesus is the true Son of God, the true Israel—in other ways in addition to Matthew’s use of “fulfillment” language. Matthew gives us a great genealogy in Matthew 1:1 that shows how Jesus is in the line of Abraham, the promised heir in whom Abraham's seed would number as many as the stars. He is the greater David, the true King that even David bows down to. 

We see this in Jesus’s own words and actions. At his baptism he takes his place as the true Israel, the true Son, conforming to and accepting God’s will and his plan. In his temptation he responds as the true and trusting Israel, the Son who trusts his Father, when he looks to the Word of God and God’s will instead of complaining or not trusting his good Father.

Jesus fulfills the prophecies promised about the Messiah, and as the Messiah Jesus is the true Son and the true Israel (also called in other places in the New Testament the second Adam)—he does what they failed to do. 

In Matthew 1–3 we see how this is true through Jesus’s birth and early life. In Matthew 4:1–11 we see a hand-off of sorts. The ministry is moving from John’s preparation to Jesus’s ministry. Today, in Matthew 4:12–25, we see the very start of Jesus’s ministry. Matthew is using this section as a summary of everything we are going to see in Jesus’s ministry going forward. We are going to see three distinct aspects of Jesus’s ministry:

• The People of this kingdom that Jesus ministers to.

• The two-fold Proclamation the king is making.

• The very Presence of his reign as his kingship is seen and known.

The PEOPLE of this kingdom

As we start in Matthew 4:13, we see the very people that Jesus is ministering to:

“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 and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.’” (Matthew 4:12–16 ESV) 

We don’t know how long it was between Jesus being baptized by John and John being arrested by Herod. We hear more about the story of what happened to John the Baptist in Matthew 14. It seems like Jesus was waiting to start his ministry until John’s was finished. We will see this more next week in Matthew 5, but John the Baptist has been imaging Moses—getting the people to the promise—while Jesus (Yeshua) is more of an image of Joshua—the one taking them into the promise.

It is actually the language here and Matthew’s use of Isaiah 9:1–2 that is meant to bring us back to Moses, Joshua, and the people entering the land of Israel. If you remember, when Israel got to the promised land each tribe was given territory and was told to go and remove the Canaanites from the land. It is meant to be a picture of God’s perfect people—God’s perfect Son—removing sin. We see in the beginning of the book of Judges that the tribes all failed. While at the beginning we see the tribe of Judah removing much of the sin—the people—from their territory, they stop short of the Jebusites in Jerusalem. From there, it gets much worse. By the time we get to Zebulun and Naphtali we see this:

“Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron, or the inhabitants of Nahalol, so the Canaanites lived among them, but became subject to forced labor.” (Judges 1:30 ESV)

“Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth-anath, so they lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and of Beth-anath became subject to forced labor for them.” (Judges 1:33 ESV)

By the time we get to the later tribes, the book of Judges no longer tells us of their successes, it just assumes all we need to know is they failed. It is into that failure that Jesus walks by going to Galilee. Many centuries have passed since the people of Israel first came into the land. They have been exiled, and different countries have come through and established empires and been defeated. Israel is now back under Roman rule. Yet Matthew wants us to remember that this place where Jesus starts his ministry was and should be known as “Galilee of the Gentiles—the people dwelling in darkness.”

Whereas Judea was a small, very-Jewish part of Israel, Galilee was not. A scholar I read said, “Judea was the road to nowhere, Galilee was the road to everywhere.” It was an incredibly diverse and very non-Jewish region. For a small period in the early 100BCs a small group of Jewish rebels created their own kingdom. They were called the Maccabees and their empire was called the Hasmonean Dynasty. They were ruthlessly Jewish and despised anyone who was not. In fact, in 104BC they took all the people from this area—Galilee—brought them to Jerusalem, and forcibly circumcised all the men. They were going to be Jewish whether they liked it or not! This was less than 150 years before Jesus, so it was a fresh memory in their culture, both for those in Jerusalem like the Pharisees and Sadducees, but also for the Galileans.

This is likely how Jewish people of Jesus’s day, especially those in Jerusalem, would have felt about Galileans. They were the ones sitting in darkness, people to be despised. Matthew is probably using the quote from Isaiah 9 because it is also in Isaiah (Isaiah 8:14 and Isaiah 57:14) that says Jesus would be a stumbling block because of his care for the Gentiles. He starts here, and the prophecy says these people “have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” (Matthew 4:16 ESV)

The glory of Jesus’s reign, his earthly ministry, begins amongst a despised people. It didn’t just begin here and move on—its rise and glory begins to shine here and moves out across the entire globe from then to today. John got the people right up to the moment of the dawning of the kingdom, but like Moses, never enters into the promised land with everyone. Jesus is the one who takes up the ministry here like Joshua. Jesus, like the tribes of Israel, walks right into a land full of sin and does what they were supposed to do, and begins to shine the light of the glory of God in a land full of darkness. 

The PROCLAMATIONS of the King

In General: Repent

It is in this backdrop, with these people, that Matthew summarizes Jesus’s ministry message in two proclamations. The first shows the continuity between Jesus and John the Baptist:

“From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’.” (Matthew 4:17 ESV)

Matthew summarizes Jesus’s ministry in exactly the same way he summarizes John’s ministry:

“In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” (Matthew 3:1–2 ESV)

These are identical proclamations, and Matthew wants us to see them that way. We talked about this before, but it is worth repeating here. Repentance is simply this idea of orienting yourself to a particular way of living, thinking, or feeling. In Greek it is used for any alignment—good to bad, bad to good. In Christianity, repentance takes on a very specific alignment to Jesus and his reign. The “kingdom of heaven” is not speaking so much of a place, but a reign, the rule of the king. It is this reign and rule that the people are supposed to align to. 

So, when John baptizes people into this message, it is not removing their sin, it is not cleansing them from their sin, it is indicating their desired alignment with the reign and rule of God. This is how we understand baptism today as well—it doesn’t deal with our salvation by removing our sins—the cross does that—but it does indicate our identifying with the reign and rule of Jesus. For Jesus, when he comes to John’s baptism, he identifies with his people as the true Israel, the true Son, the one who is already walking on this path. He is already oriented correctly and will always stay oriented correctly. And he is identifying with his people knowing that for them to be properly oriented it will cost him dearly—and he loves them, wants this for them, and will walk all the way to the cross to purchase it for them and for you and me.

That is why the call stays the same: ‘Come! Be aligned to the reign of the King and be about his rule!’ For Jesus, this never meant needing to repent to realign or to remove sin—he never sinned. He was walking on a straight path that perfectly aligned with the reign and will of God the Father, because he is the perfect Son, the God-Man. For you and me, repentance and right orientation always means we have to let go of sin. By our nature we are always wandering, sometimes exactly 180 degrees away from God’s stated path and direction. We have to let go of our other idols, the other kings and queens in our lives and follow THE King—Jesus.

Jesus’s call is more than John’s. He gives more clarity to this kingdom and this reign, but it is definitely not less than what John was calling the people to. This is the general proclamation Jesus is giving to all people, but it comes with a more specific proclamation to some.

In Specific: Follow Me

“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.” 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.” (Matthew 4:18–22 ESV)

We see amidst this general proclamation a specific call to some that says, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” We see here the call to the three most prominent disciples: Peter, James, and John (sorry Andrew). It seems that Jesus already knew them somewhat, but it was from amongst these people of Galilee—sinners, sitting in darkness—that Jesus calls specific disciples to follow him. 

We see here the beginning of a process. There is a call, a response, and a discipleship. Jesus calls these men specifically, and we are meant to assume this is the same type of call all the disciples receive. It is specific, but odd. “Fishers of men” doesn’t really have any precedent in scripture prior to this, nor in Jewish or Greek culture. At the very least we can assume that fishing for people sounds better than fishing for fish. It comes with an action—to follow the king and let him change them. 

Their responses then come very emblematically—they leave immediately. Peter and Andrew drop what they are doing and follow Jesus. James and John leave their father. This doesn’t mean they don’t care about their work and family. We see later in Scripture that Peter still has a house in Capernaum, and many of the disciples return to their boats and fishing after Jesus’s death. They didn’t necessarily forsake everything for a hermit lifestyle in the desert with no possessions. But they definitely treasured Jesus and the chance for relationship with him over their business, and over their possessions. There was a cost and they counted it. 

In doing so, these disciples enter into a discipleship relationship with Jesus. He becomes the one guiding them into the real reign and kingdom of God, and that is what he proclaims to them again and again through the rest of Matthew’s gospel. 

The PRESENCE of his reign

It is with these people, the Gentiles of Galilee, normal Jews who were still with the Gentiles and sitting in darkness, that Jesus proclaims his message of repentance to all, and a message of discipleship to some. It is here that we see the presence of his reign begin to enter into their life in astounding ways. 

“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 Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.” (Matthew 4:23–25 ESV)

Matthew summarizes his ministry with three words: teaching, proclaiming (or preaching), and healing. 

It is no small task that Jesus is going throughout all of Galilee. Josephus, an early Jewish historian, said that this area had over 204 villages and more than 3 million people. This area is approximately 70 miles long by 40 miles wide. For comparison, all of Rhode Island is 37 miles wide and 48 miles long with a population of about 1 million. Though Josephus is likely exaggerating on population, it definitely would have taken Jesus his entire three years of ministry to reach these people.

As amazing as the scope of this ministry area is, it is the people who come to Jesus. It says people from “all Syria…crowds from Galilee and the Decopolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.”

Syria was likely the entire region they were in, but perhaps was talking about the country of Syria to their northeast—both areas have the same names. Of the Decopolis, all but one of those cities was east and south of Israel. Jerusalem and Judea were more than a day’s walk away from Galilee, and obviously beyond the Jordan speaks of even further than the Decopolis cities. Jesus’s teaching and preaching was not a small deal. People were coming from all over to hear and see what he was doing. 

And it was likely more about what they saw than what they heard—at least for many—that drew them to Jesus. Jesus’s teaching and preaching was helping people understand how to be aligned with the rule he was bringing, but his reign brought real changes. Matthew notes this change and calls it “healing.” He mentions three main types of sicknesses that are healed: demon possession, seizures, and paralysis. 

In Scripture, sickness sometimes comes from sin—we see this in places like John 5:14 and 1 Corinthians 11:30. We are also told that sometimes sickness is not a result of sin—like the man born blind and the disciples want to know if the man sinned or his parents. Jesus says neither. Regardless of how sickness occurs, it is always shown to be a result of living in a sinful world. Romans 8:19–21 says:

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19–21 ESV)

All aspects of creation were corrupted in the fall—this means sickness will continue until Jesus changes that. If we fast forward to Matthew 8:17, we see that Matthew says Jesus’s healings were part of prophecy as well:

“This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”” (Matthew 8:17 ESV)

Jesus as the true Son, the true Israel, the second Adam reverses the effects of sin at the cross for his people, bringing life, growth and beauty where only death, withering, and ugliness previously lived. This is the very presence of his rule coming now to his people.

Application

On one hand, I think we can quickly grab our application from this section, and many Christians do. We note that we, like all people, had to respond to the call to repent, to rightly orient ourselves to Jesus and his rule and reign. And many of us look back in our lives at that moment fondly and happily, but definitely view it as a past thing that has little bearing on our day-to-day life. We are so thankful that we are Jesus’s disciples, and we are thankful we can know more about him, but we think little anymore about the cost it comes with and the real life of a disciple. 

We see how Jesus starts his ministry amongst the Gentiles and we somewhat cheer on the idea that he is “sticking it to” the Jewish establishment. He’s not going to start in Jerusalem with the center of Judaism, rather with the Gentiles. Yeah—that will show them! And we come to his ministry amongst the Galileans and we somewhat lament and wish we could have been there, to see the miracle of his teaching and preaching accompanied with great healings. 

I think we can miss the beauty in this type of summary of Jesus’s ministry, not because we don’t want to see the beauty, but because we are unwilling to let the gospel take us to the depths we have to go in a section like this to finally see the beauty.

The PEOPLE of his Kingdom – Offensive

I don’t know about you, but more often than not I think too highly of myself. Not that I’m unaware of my sin, but in a culture that teaches us to write good resumés, to advocate for your positives so you will be appreciated in your work environment, I—and I’m presuming some of you—begin to think we really aren’t that awful. Sure, God can save convicted murderers, but he might be a little lucky to have a good son like me, or a good son or daughter like you. We make his life easier. 

That isn’t where Matthew 4:13 starts. The People of Jesus’s Kingdom are Offensive. We are offensive because of our sin. We are those who have sat in the darkness of our sin and God had to bring a great light into our lives. 

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”(Romans 5:8 ESV)

Jesus’s message can be offensive because he came and saved people like this. Like me and you.

In my sin I will offend you. If it hasn’t happened yet, just wait, it will. Your sin will offend me and others. Your family will see your sin and think you are a hypocrite. Your friends will wonder at Christians who can still sin and make mistakes like you. Letting the gospel remind us of our brokenness in sin is one of the hardest things for anyone. We so want to caveat, to explain away our struggles and our brokenness, but in doing so we rob the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

One of the most amazing things we can say is what Paul says:

“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing….Wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:19, 24–25a ESV)

You are right. My sin is utterly offensive. I am so sorry. I do not want to do that, but I keep doing it. But guess what? The one who saves me, even someone as awful as me, can save you as well.

We find that it is in our brokenness that the sweetness of the gospel of Jesus shines brightest (2 Corinthians 4:7). It is our Lord Jesus who shined on our hearts, softened them, and brought us to himself that he might save us.

Are you willing to go here? Are you willing to acknowledge that you and I, we are the offensive ones—those who brought nothing but received everything from our Lord and Savior?

His PROCLAMATION of the King – Hope and Death

Hope

It is in this realization that we are the offense and the offensive that truly connects us to the proclamations of our King. These proclamations are what give offensive people hope and can bring hope to those offended by us. When we admit our state as those who are offensive as sinners, we affirm that we have to align with the kingdom priorities of our Lord and savior, and that ultimately, we need him to be the righteousness for us that we could never be. 

We can then offer up repentance to others. They don’t want to listen to me or you if we act like repentance is this minor issue in our life and theirs, or if we act like we did it once but really don’t need to repent any more. But if we acknowledge that our repentance happened surely one time as we bent our knee to Jesus but continues daily as we read his word, see his teachings and realize we still need to be more conformed to the kingdom he proclaims, then we agree with their observations of us. And we can call them to the same right-orientation to our Lord and Savior’s reign and kingdom. 

We find hope and we can bring others hope when we love our Jesus who has called sinners into relationship with him. 

Death

It is this same relationship that gives us hope that will also call us to death—death to ourselves. 

When we see our sins and begin to take part with the Holy Spirit to be conformed more to Jesus—when we hear his teachings and preaching and find ourselves lacking—we begin to realize what discipleship is going to cost. Everything. I am so quick to make peace with my sin. Like the Israelites, I see my sin and think, “It isn’t really that bad. I think I can live with this.” And instead of killing it I let it live. I think I can control it. The anger won’t be that bad nor come out that often, that lust is minor and won’t take over my mind, the drinking is just occasional and won’t alter and consume me, and on and on and on. 

But to be a disciple means to leave everything, especially our sin. We are to die to it. To leave it like our nets and come and take part with Jesus on this mission of fishing for other men. To let my sin point to Jesus’s goodness and grace the beauty of his gospel, and to pray that my holiness can grow and demonstrate his goodness as well. 

I could challenge you on what you struggle to leave that is good: your desire for a family, your desire for a good job, a prayer for encouragement and friendship. Those are hard to give up for the sake of Christ when necessary. But I think it is even more difficult for us to give up our literal death grip on sin. To realize that we love our sin and often have no desire to do what is necessary to kill it. To truly follow our God and let him grow us. 

The PRESENCE of his reign – A Miracle of Sanctification

When we see the offensiveness of our sin and the magnitude of Jesus’s grace and love for us, we also begin to see both hope in Jesus’s proclamation of repentance and the death that comes with following him. And with that we can recognize that we see the miracle of the presence of God’s reign in all of our lives. Every. Single. Day. 

If you and I are really pretty good, not that offensive, and those who maybe, sort-of, deserved salvation, then who would be surprised that we do good things each day. But if we are those in darkness who only know light because of Jesus, then the good that we do must be because of the glory of God in us by his Holy Spirit. 

We may not always see people healed physically. I have seen people healed miraculously right in front of my eyes, but not every time. I still pray for it always, but you and I have something even more amazing to show others who want to see the reign of God physically—our changing lives. For those who know me, the only way that I am going to grow is if God miraculously is healing me from my sin. He is working in me—as light driving out darkness—and to him be all the glory. 

Jesus is making rounds in my life and your life. Like visiting 204 villages with 204 different idols he comes preaching and teaching—his word saturating our lives through our time in Scripture, sitting under preaching and teaching, and letting friends point us back to him—and he heals us from our sin. This is the very presence of his kingdom, the miracle of sanctification, occurring in me and you. 

Conclusion

At the start of Jesus’s ministry we see the people, the offensive and sinful people, that he has come to save. It is you and me. And we see his message of repentance and fellowship and know that it comes with hope and death—hope in a king who would come to his people, and death to let go of all we value, especially our sin. And we get to experience the presence of his reign in our life as he kills our sin and conforms us more to his very image daily by the power of his Holy Spirit. This is the Savior that we See and Savor in Matthew. This is what we will continue to unpack again and again throughout the rest of Matthew. A loving king come for an offensive people, giving hope, and calling us to follow and die to ourselves, that we might see his miracle at work in us through his reign in the Holy Spirit. 

If you do not know this God, this God who knows your offensive sin and the darkness of your soul, come to him today and repent—align with his kingdom. Look around, he was Lord enough to save many people here.