“Now Jesus began to go throughout Galilee, teaching of their synagogues, preaching the excellent news of the dominion, and healing every disease and sickness among the many people.” – Matthew 4:23 “Jesus continued going around to all of the towns and villages, teaching of their synagogues, preaching the excellent news of the dominion, and healing every disease and each sickness.” – Matthew 9:35
If someone asked you to describe Jesus’s ministry on earth in a single sentence, what words would you employ to explain it? A single sentence from the book of Matthew answers this query. I suppose it’s actually two sentences, but it surely’s the identical one stated twice: Jesus taught within the synagogues, preached the excellent news of the dominion, and healed many individuals within the towns and villages in and around Galilee. Matthew wants us to know numerous things about Jesus’s ministry, but he really wants us to know these three things. How can we know this? Because verses 4:23 and 9:35 function repetitive bookends that every declare what Jesus did on either side of Matthew showing us what He did (scholars call this literary device an inclusion).
This doubly stated sentence is the summary of the first elements of Jesus’s mission, but we are going to soon find that Matthew never intended for us to accept a summary.
He wants us to immerse ourselves in the small print. To sit on the verdant hillside listening to Jesus’s wisdom, to be bowled over by the astonishing excellent news of His kingdom, to follow Him through a sea of wounding people for whom He had come to the touch and heal. Matthew wants us to experience Jesus.
Are you languishing? Is your hope waning? Perhaps your mind is unsettled, or your body is fighting disease, otherwise you’re emotionally spent due to deep loss or ongoing pain. Or you would possibly simply need some direction, a little bit of guidance. Or perhaps you’re just desperate for an encounter with Him.
No matter why you’re here, you’re in the best place, for we are able to’t linger within the presence of Jesus and never be modified. Not be renewed.
So allow us to step into first-century Galilee, a region within the northern countryside of Judea. Let’s brush up against the Jewish individuals who were plodding along under Roman occupation, mostly as struggling farmers, fishermen, or subsistence laborers.1 A population that by modern standards lived in poverty, a few of whom were considered outcasts and expendables.2 Let’s nestle beside them within the grassy field and take heed to Jesus because He first declares His kingdom to exactly this group.
This, all by itself, is cause for us to lean in.
The Son of God. The incarnate One. The “late in time” Messiah for whom Israel had long been waiting had finally come! It would stand to strategic reason, even basic common sense, that Jesus would leak the breaking news of His kingdom within the Jerusalem courts of the religious elite. Or perhaps He might seek an audience with the rich minority or the Roman emperors. His best bet by a mile can be to approach any variety of these powerful waterheads of the fastest moving streams where big news travels fast.
But Jesus is not any politician. His kingdom will not be of this world.
How unconventional for Jesus to deliver His otherworldly ethic—the truths about how we’re to live and who we are able to now be as latest people—on the side of a hill to a noninfluential gathering of the downtrodden. When we’d expect Him to go where the ability is, He goes to where the necessity is. Here we discover that the excellent news of Jesus Christ won’t go from the highest down but from the underside up, or perhaps I should say bottom out, to the ends of the earth.
What hope-filled days now we have ahead, and what a present Matthew has given us! A curated collection of Jesus’s words and deeds; a peek into the struggles of His primary followers; an in depth record of what He deemed most significant about how we’re to live the dear lives we’ve been given; a group of specific people He cleansed, touched, healed, challenged, called, and poured compassion on. In all these ways and more, Matthew has clearly not left us haphazard memories from his morning journal; slightly his pen is purposeful and passionate.
What is your need? What are your longings? Carry them into the presence of Jesus and listen to what He has to say.
And for those who feel undeserving, or unspectacular, or odd . . . If you discover as burdened . . .
The anxious.
The bottom dweller.
The non-pious believer . . .
Do not despair. He has come for you.
Excerpt taken from The Blessed Life by Kelly Minter, B & H Publishing Group, Nashville TN. Copyright © 2023 Kelly Minter. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Bohdan Bevz
