We’re on the second half of Matthew chapter 4 today. Last week in the first half of this chapter, we looked at this period of time that Jesus went out into the desert, into this placed called “the devastation”. There He was tempted, He was tried, Satan went so far as to try to cause Jesus to bow down and worship him, but Satan failed in all of his attempts. Jesus weathered the physical, mental, and spiritual difficulty of weeks and weeks of isolation, hunger, and Satan’s attacks out there in the desert. And through all of this, He left for us an example of how to face these things, but also an understanding that He actually knows what it’s like when we go through these things and so we can go to Him in the midst of our struggles because He gets it. Which is a great comfort for us.
That’s where we came from last week, but as I said we are continuing on to the end of chapter 4 today, so let’s read this.
Read Matthew 4:12-25
Last week when we looked at Jesus out in the desert, we talked about how there was really no time lapse between Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3 and then His time out in the desert in Matthew 4. But today when we see the break from the desert in verse 11 to the things happening in Galilee in verse 12, there is a lapse of time between these passages. We don’t know exactly how long this time is, but at least the second half of John chapter 1 probably all the way to at least some of John 4 happened between these two verses.
And in this time Jesus had already called Philip and Nathanael to follow Him, He turned water into wine at a wedding, He went into the temple with a whip and overturned tables telling people that God’s house wasn’t a place to be turning a profit, He had a great conversation with a man named Nicodemus who will eventually be one of the guys that helps prepare Jesus’ body in the tomb after the crucifixion, and then literally on His way towards Galilee, where we will be at this morning, He stops in an area called Samaria and has an incredible conversation once again with a woman helping Him get water from a well. This woman as a result of their conversation starts telling people about Jesus and people start believing in Him and then Jesus joins in the movement she is starting, and more and more people believe, and it says over the course of just two days that many people came to believe in Him. In their own words in John 4, they said “we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
It’s crazy how a little pitstop when Jesus was making His way back to minister in Galilee, turned into this powerful outreach moment, and it was really started by this woman first and then Jesus backed it up. But Jesus and the disciples that He had at this point after two days in Samaria hit the road again and make it to Galilee. That’s where we pick up in Matthew 4.
So, as we just heard, Jesus had been out in some other areas for a little while, but what brought Him back here?
Well verse 12 starts by letting us know that Jesus had heard that John the Baptist had been put in prison.
Read Matthew 4:12
John had been imprisoned for publicly calling out King Herod and some of Herod’s sin concerning his wife and his brother’s wife. And so, Jesus hearing these things headed back into the area from where He had been in Judea and Samaria. He went through the town Nazareth, where He had grown up as a youth, it sounds like He was probably just there briefly, and then He ended up in Capernaum. And Capernaum is interesting, because this town becomes kind of like a hub of Jesus’ ministry. Several of the disciples and their family members were from this town or really close nearby, they had houses here, it’s believed that Jesus commonly stayed at a house probably of one of His followers in this town during parts of His ministry, Jesus actually calls Capernaum “His own city” at one point, basically like “that’s where my home is”, and many of the stories from the gospels of healing and interactions and like the guy lowered through the roof by his friends to see Jesus all happened in this town. This town which is a fishing village on the north end of the Sea of Galilee.
And again, as we have talked about before, Matthew writing to a Jewish audience first, connects this moment to the prophecy of Isaiah. Matthew was always looking for the opportunity to connect Jesus to the Old Testament and relate Him to the Jewish people that would understand these things. Let’s read verses 13-16 again.
Read Matthew 4:13-16
This passage that Matthew quotes from Isaiah is verses 1 and 2 of Isaiah 9, it’s actually only a few verses later in verse 6 where we get the prophecy:
6 For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
So, this is clearly about Jesus and those first verses even give some logistics of Jesus’ location and movement and it does as Matthew points out, align perfectly with what actually happened. Isaiah talked about the land of Zebulun and Naphtali and how Jesus moved through these areas in relation to the sea and the river. Israel at one time was divided up by the 12 tribes and Zebulun and Naphtali were two of those tribes and if you were to look at a map, if Jesus was traveling from Judea, through Samaria like we talked about, He then likely would have crossed through the land of Zebulun, and then ended up in the land of Naphtali because that is where Capernaum is located. So, it all makes sense and it’s why Matthew is relating this prophecy. It just once again shows God’s power as world history unfolds hundreds of years later, just as He said it was going to happen, even in the small details.
And so, Jesus is in this area, just like He is supposed to be, and verse 16 speaks of people sitting in darkness that now get to see a great light, that for people that have been sitting in the shadow of death, that light is now dawning. Such incredible visual analogies for what is going to happen, he is saying that the Son of God is like the sun rise into death’s darkness. It’s incredible.
And Galilee is no small insignificant area, one of the historians at that time recorded that Galilee had at least 204 different villages and each had at least 15 thousand people. That’s over 3 million people and Galilee was located along several major travel routes to the rest of the world.
And so, as Isaiah says, as that light dawns, as that sun rises, it’s rising on a lot of people and there we find the very Son of God preaching a very familiar message.
Read Matthew 4:17
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
That is word for word, exactly the core message that John the Baptist had already begun preaching. John was in jail, Jesus had heard, Jesus came back to the area and continued the ministry that John had already begun. Again, a continuation of the example from chapter 3 where we saw Jesus and John working together to get the message out and set an example for the people around them. That’s why Jesus had John baptize Him even when He didn’t need to do that, it was cooperative effort for the cause and we’re seeing it again. Jesus will obviously say and do so much more, but he picks up right where John had left off, John was working to prepare the way for Jesus and Jesus is taking that baton so to speak and running with it.
Of course, like we have said so many times, Jesus didn’t need anyone else, to do whatever He wanted to do, He is God, but He chose to involve people in the cause to set an example and to set a precedent for all that was to come later. He wasn’t going to be physically staying here forever so He was starting a movement to carry His mission forward until the time when He will come back again a second time. We’re right in the middle of that movement still happening and need to understand that. That’s why these examples are important for us.
So, as I mentioned earlier, Jesus already has a few disciples at this point, He has begun preaching in the region of Galilee, but right now He is in this fishing village by the sea and He takes a walk down to the sea shore.
Read Matthew 4:18-22
There’s actually a little more to this story that is available to us over in Luke’s gospel, so I want to go there and look at I guess “the extended cut” together.
Read Luke 5:1-11
The Lake of Gennesaret and the Sea of Galilee were two names for the same place. This is the very same event happening in both accounts. And as we read this, it might seem odd how Jesus engages with these guys, I mean He just jumps in Simon’s boat and asks him to push off the land a little so He can teach people from the boat. I think if someone jumped in our car and said just drive slowly while I talk to these people outside the car, that might not go over so well. But remember earlier when I said there was a gap between last week’s passage and this week’s verses? Well in John’s gospel, in that in-between time, it actually talks about Simon Peter and his brother meeting Jesus for the first time and them coming to understand at that point exactly who He was. Andrew was the one that met him first and it talks about how he ran to find his brother and John 1:41 records that he told his brother: “We have found the Messiah” and he took Peter to meet Jesus.
They knew who Jesus was already in Luke 5, so that’s why it wasn’t an issue when Jesus jumps in the boat, that’s why Peter calls Him “Master” in his response in verse 5, that’s why they did exactly what He told them to do when they casted out the nets. But maybe, and just maybe, maybe it hadn’t completely sunk in yet, maybe Peter realized that yes Jesus really seems like He is the Messiah, but maybe the information was still in his head and hadn’t really reached his heart yet. Because when Peter sees the miraculous, remember they had been fishing all night for nothing, but Jesus is just like, “just cast out the net one more time” and the boat’s, TWO BOATS are literally sinking now with how much fish they have caught, with just that one cast of the net. Peter understands that this is a miracle, Peter understandings fully at this moment that God is standing in front of him on his boat. And in this moment, in verse 8, of absolute understanding, Peter looks at Jesus and is like “I am a sinner, and You should go away from me!”
But Jesus doesn’t go away. Jesus came to save sinners and not just save sinners, invite them to His cause. Peter wasn’t a perfect man, he knew that, just like we need to know clearly that we aren’t perfect people. Just like we need to understand that there is no worthiness in us that deserves to be in the presence of Jesus. That’s why Peter told Him to go, because he didn’t feel like Jesus should be in the presence of a lowly sinful person like Him. But like I said, Jesus didn’t go away, and Jesus had other plans.
Peter and his brother Andrew, and James and John were all part of this miraculous event, and we know from Matthew that Jesus looked at all of them and said “FOLLOW ME” and the end of verse 11 here says that “they forsook all and followed Him”.
From elsewhere in scripture we know that Peter was married, his family had a home or homes in this area, these guys were part of a fishing business that they were all partners of, James and John who were partners in the business as well had their father there actually sitting in the boat fixing their nets right then, and not to mention that they had just brought in this massive haul of fish that would have probably been huge for their business and their finances. They just hit the fish jackpot, but even in light of other life, family, business, a potential windfall of finances, in light of all of that, Jesus says, “FOLLOW ME” and these guys all follow IMMEDIATELY.
And then at the end of this chapter, Jesus continues on about His Father’s business and Matthew kind of gives some of the bullet points in verses 23 through 25. And we’re not going to really dive into this as many of these things will be dealt with throughout the book, but let’s read this again.
Read Matthew 4:23-25
Jesus got to work, the message, the Gospel was getting out, He was doing the miraculous, and His fame was spreading throughout the region, and the crowds were following Him to see Him work and hear Him speak. And like I said we’re going to see a lot of this is greater detail later, so we won’t camp on it right now, but I want to consider just a few more things in regard to Jesus calling His disciples. It’s really our main point of application today.
I think in the culture of the church for the last few generations really that we haven’t really done a good job of talking about what it means to really follow Jesus. We haven’t done justice to the gravity of His call to FOLLOW ME. This wasn’t just a call to these guys to come hang out with Him once a week for a little while and then go do whatever else the rest of the time. Jesus’ call was very dramatic, and the response of these men was very dramatic as well. Like I said this wasn’t, just give me a time slot, this was drop everything, walk away from everything, this was a whole new life and new life purpose, a lot of it completely unknown to them at this point. It was just follow Me and find out really.
And for us, the picture is clearer, we kind of live on a different side of this equation. These guys were happy that the Messiah was there, but He hadn’t even died for them yet and they were still following Him. We live now in light of the incredible truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again to save sinners like us and that’s no small thing. Let’s go to Romans 12 together for a minute.
Read Romans 12:1-2
This is a heavy passage and it’s passages like this that maybe we haven’t taken seriously enough for a while now in the church. Paul is talking to the Roman church and he is like I beseech you, or I urge you, or I even compel you by the mercies of God, the mercies of God that we now know in a greater way, but I urge you to give your life as a sacrifice to God, and notice the statement that follows. “Which is your reasonable service”. When we really and truly recognize the weight of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sin, when we recognize the mercies of God, then the only real and reasonable conclusion that we should come to is that He deserves this life of mine, and He deserves all of it.
These men in our passage today understood that, and they didn’t even know everything that we know yet, and they still dropped everything in their life and followed Him. And we can be like, “oh well they were special, and this is different, etc, etc”. But not really. Does the call to follow Jesus carry less weight now than it did then? Have we acted like it does? Is the message of gospel and the purposes of the Kingdom any less significant now then it was then? Or have we just not taken it as seriously? Was the gravity of people dying without God heavier then or have we maybe lost some of our love, our empathy, our compassion at the levels that maybe some before us have had? Are we even looking at the world and the purpose of life in Christ the same way anymore?
Are we raising children and making disciples with only the hope that they are just successful through life? Or are we raising children and making disciples that are Kingdom builders, that are really following in step with Jesus. Do we just want to exist until death, or do we want to get to the end of this life and hear “Well done good and faithful servant”?
I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want, and it’s what I want for you, and it’s what I want for my kids, and I believe in a God who is absolutely worth giving EVERYTHING up for, because Who He is and what He has done for me makes that the least that I can do for Him. I’m not perfect, but I’m still working on it. These guys dropped everything to follow Jesus. Maybe we need to take stock this morning and ask if there is anything that needs to go, or give, or change in our lives to help move us forward in following Him too.
Because we should be following Him in everything. How we walk, how we talk, how we treat people, how we love, how we serve. Every purpose in life, everything that we have, every day that we live, every question, every step, every life decision, our finances, our lives, our time, our children, everything, literally everything, should be laid down before Jesus and then listen to His word, to Him and follow Him with every single one of those things exactly where He would take us with it. It won’t look the same for all of us, the specifics of life might end up very different, but the purpose will always be the same … to broadcast Jesus (which means to make Him known), to make disciples (which means helping others follow Him too), and to make sure He gets all of the glory in it.
These guys were in for it, they answered the call, my prayer is that we will too, wherever that leads us. That will likely require some sacrifice, but He’s worth it.