When Jesus Began to Preach

Matthew 4:12-23

Our gospel lesson for today is about when Jesus began his ministry as a young man of around thirty years of age. It seems like a good occasion to start it off with a preacher story.   A new pastor went to visit a single mother who had started attending church with her little boy. He was sitting in the living room with her young son waiting for the mother to bring tea from the kitchen. He noticed a bowl of peanuts on the table. So he began to eat them. The little boy watched him eat the peanuts with obvious interest but did not say anything, and did not ask for any. It took a while for the woman to come back with the tea, and by the time she did the bowl of peanuts was empty. When the mother finally entered, the young minister apologized to her, "I hope you don’t mind that I ate all your peanuts. I skipped lunch and was a bit hungry." The little boy quickly replied "That's okay, I already sucked all of the chocolate off of them anyway."

Such are the trials of the pastor’s life. The trials of John the Baptist and Jesus were a bit more than soggy peanuts. Our gospel lesson for today is about Jesus beginning his ministry. The stories immediately before this are about his baptism by John the Baptist, followed by his temptation in the wilderness for forty days. The scripture says he was tempted by the devil. Time for another story. Struggling to make ends on a preacher’s salary at his first church out of seminary, a young pastor was upset when he found a receipt for a $250 dress that his wife had bought. "How could you do this?!" he asked her. "I was in the mall looking at the dress through the window, and then I found myself trying it on," she explained. "It was like Satan was whispering in my ear, 'You look fabulous in that dress. Buy it!'" "Well," the pastor replied, "You know how to deal with that kind of temptation. You say, 'Get behind me, Satan!'" "I did," replied his wife, "but then he said, 'It looks fabulous from back here, too!'"

The temptation in the wilderness was a time of soul searching for Christ. I see that solitary wilderness time as a period when Jesus integrated his new understanding of himself and his relationship with his Heavenly Father and his mission on earth. He had to decide whether or not he was going to go into ministry, and he decided in the affirmative. I have four points I would like to make about Jesus’ ministry.

1. The first is WHEN Jesus began to preach. According to Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus returned from his time in the wilderness he heard that his cousin John, who had baptized him, had been arrested by Herod. John, by the way was never going to get out of prison. He would later be executed in prison. When Jesus heard about John’s imprisonment, our passage says that he left Judea and began his ministry in Galilee.

My point is that he began his ministry in difficult times. We do not know what difficult times are like here in 21^st century America. I was reading recently about an American Christian named Kenneth Bae, 44, of Lynnwood, Washingtom. He has been sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp for a "crime against the state." He has been imprisoned for more than 14 months, longer than any American has been detained in North Korea. He is accused of planning to bring down the government through religious activities. The evidence against him was that he had a Bible and other religious literature on him. He was actually on his 15^th tour of the country trying to bring economic investment to that impoverished land. That is difficult times. You have heard me several times mention Saad Abedini, the American pastor imprisoned since 2012 in Iran for preaching the gospel. He is enduring difficult times.

 My point is that ministry by its very nature is done in difficult times. Jesus did not start out with a honeymoon period. As soon as he stepped out of the desert and onto the stage of his public ministry, it was difficult. In fact the Gospel of Luke say when Jesus preached his first sermon in his own home town of Nazareth, that the congregation dragged him out of church, kicked him out of town, and tried to throw him off the nearest cliff. His ministry in his home town crowd did not go so well. My point is that churches and Christians and ministers expect things to go well in ministry. They look for success and define success in the same terms that the secular world uses to define success. That is the impetus behind the megachurch movement and much of the church growth strategies. But if Jesus and his ministry are our guide, then we have to expect ministry to be difficult. Even the most difficult time is the right time. As both Jesus and the apostle Paul would say Now is the time. Today is the day of salvation. The Kingdom of God is at hand now.

2. My second point is WHERE Jesus began to minister. Jesus did not start off in Judea following in the footsteps of John the Baptist. He knew that if he stayed there in Judea, it would end with him sharing John’s prison cell. Our passage says, “Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum.” Jesus was no coward, but he also was no fool. There was no point in following John into prison in Judea, nor in flying off a cliff in Nazareth. So he made Caperaum on the shore of the Sea of Galillee, the center of his ministry. The gospel writer Matthew explains his choice as the fulfillment of prophecy. He says, “He came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying:

 “The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,

By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan,

Galilee of the Gentiles:

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,

And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death

Light has dawned.”

Jesus began his ministry, and spent most of his three years of ministry (except for trips to Jerusalem for the religious festivals) in Galilee. The area is called Galilee of the Gentiles. It was called that because there were a lot of Gentiles – non-Jews – there. Galilee means circle and it describes the land encircling the Sea of Galilee. Jesus made trips into the Decapolis, the Greek cities on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. He made trips to Caesarea Philippi and Tyre and Sidon in the north. Even though Jesus said he had a ministry to the Jews he spent an awful lot of time with Gentiles. His chosen place of ministry was Galilee of the Gentiles.

Galilee was not an easy place of ministry. New Hampshire is not an easy place of ministry. I have heard Dale Edwards, our Baptist executive minister say on more than one occasion (including in his keynote address at our last Annual Regional Gathering) that the Baptist region of Vermont and New Hampshire are the two most unchristian states in the union. I have heard many of my colleagues refer to New Hampshire as rocky ground. They are not referring to the granite. They are referring to Jesus’ parable of the sower about the farmer trying to plant the seeds of the Kingdom of God. We do not live in the easiest place of ministry. You can trust me in this because I have ministered in several states, and this is difficult. That is why it is so wonderful. It is the same type of place that Jesus ministered. In fact we seem to have just as many rocks as Israel.

The Israelis have a myth about when God created the world that he sent an angel to scatter rocks evenly over the whole earth. But when the angel flew over Israel the bag of rocks ripped and deposited most of the bag’s contents in Israel. I personally think that the bag must have popped an earlier hole over New Hampshire, and especially over my back yard.

            Jesus sowed the seed of the gospel on rocky soil, and so do we. That is a good thing. Because the fruit that grows here – physical and spiritual – is that much sweeter. This is where God has planted us, and as the proverb says, “Grow where you are planted.”  God has put this church here in this community of Sandwich for a reason. That reason is to proclaim in words, but even more important in attitude and in action, the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ. My understanding of the mission of this church is to be the love of God in this time and place. To demonstrate God’s love in whatever we do and whatever we say. The Bible says that God is love. Jesus was the love of God incarnate. This church is to be the love of Christ incarnate – enfleshed in us – in this place.

            3. We have explored the WHEN and WHERE of Jesus’ start of ministry. The third point is WHAT Jesus began to preach. The gospel lesson tells us, “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” You have heard me preach on this before. This is Jesus‘ message in a nutshell, and I have cracked open this verse on a number of occasions.

            Jesus said, “Repent!” Normally this is taken to mean to feel sorry what we have done wrong and change your ways.  But you know that I do not like moralism and I especially do not like that smell of guilt. That is not what the word means anyway – neither the English word nor Greek word in the original NT. The English word “repent” means to rethink, to think again. The Greek word means the same thing – a change of mind. In his book “The Great Meaning of the Word Metanoia,” Treadwell Walden says that metanoia conveys the essence of the Christian gospel. He says that no word in the New Testament is greater than metanoia. But Walden says that the translation of metanoia as repentance is “an extraordinary mistranslation.” The great Greek scholar AT Robertson agrees. He says that a better translation is “change of Mind, a change in the trend and action of the whole inner nature, intellectual, affectional and moral,” “transmutation of consciousness.” Jesus is not talking about feeling sorry, regretful and guilty. He is talking about a spiritual transformation that happens from the inside out through the grace of God working in our lives.

Then he adds, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That has also been interpreted in many ways. Often Jesus is pictured as an apocalyptic preacher, telling people to get their act together before it is too late because the end of world is coming soon. I don’t think that is what he meant. If it was, he was mistaken, because the end of the world did not come soon. I don’t think Jesus was mistaken; I think we are mistaken in our interpretation of his words. I think he is saying that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, meaning that it is so close that you can reach out your hand and touch it. He is saying, “Rethink the way you see yourself. God, and this world. It is not like you think it is. The Kingdom of God is right here in our midst. All we have to do is open our minds to see it and open our hearts to embrace it.

The Kingdom of heaven was present in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus said on one occasion, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the Kingdom of God present with power.” (Matthew 16:28) This verse has caused great consternation to Christians who understand the Kingdom of God exclusively as a future event occurring in history. Such a kingdom did not come in the lifetimes of the people who heard Jesus speak these words. But when the verse is understood as referring to a person who sees the invisible Presence of God, the saying makes perfect sense. Jesus is simply saying that some of the people who were listening to his words would personally “see the Kingdom of God present with power.”

On another occasion Jesus was performing exorcisms, and he said, “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20 Clearly Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was already present, as evidenced in his ministry. Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21) An alternate translation of the verse reads: “the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” This is our message: that the kingdom of God is here now in the living presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ now.

4. Fourth, what happened when Jesus began to preach? Our gospel lesson tells us that people began to follow Jesus. Jesus preached by the shore of the Sea of Galilee and the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew began to follow Jesus. James and John, the sons of Zebedee began to follow Jesus. We can interpret what it means to be a Christian in many ways. We can interpret it in theological terms, defining people as Christians by whether they adhere to a defined set of beliefs established by Christianity over the centuries. We can define it in ecclesiastical terms, by whether they belong to the right denomination or the correct branch of Christianity. I define it simply by whether a person follows Christ and calls him Lord. When Jesus began to preach people followed him. When we preach Christ, people follow him.

And not only that, but our gospel passage goes on to say that healing of all kinds happened when Jesus began to preach. I pray that healing of all kinds happen when the gospel is preached here. Healing of heart and mind and soul. Healing of relationships, and most of all the healing of people’s relationship with God. This is what happened when Jesus began to preach. May it happen still today.