Verses 1-25
Chapter 4
Step by step Matthew unfolds the story of Jesus. He begins by showing
us how Jesus was born into this world. He goes on to show us, at least
by implication, that Jesus had to perform faithfully his duties to his
home before he began on his duty to the world, that he had to show
himself faithful in the smaller tasks before God gave to him the
greatest task in all the world.
He goes on to show us how, with the emergence of John the
Baptist, Jesus knew that the hour had struck. and that the time had come
to enter upon his work. He shows us Jesus identifying himself with a
people's unprecedented search for God. In that moment he shows us Jesus'
realization that he was indeed the chosen one of God, but that his way
to victory lay through the Cross.
If any man has a vision, his immediate problem is how to turn
that vision into fact; he has to find some way to turn the dream into
reality. That is precisely the problem which faced Jesus. He had come to
lead men home to God. How was he to do it? What method was he to adopt?
Was he to adopt the method of a mighty conqueror, or was he to adopt
the method of patient, sacrificial love? That was the problem which
faced Jesus in his temptations. The task had been committed into his
hands. What method was he to choose to work out the task which God had
given him to do?
4:1-11 Then
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the
devil. After he had deliberately gone without food for forty days and
forty nights he was hungry. So the tempter came and said to him, "If you
really are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread." He
answered: "It stands written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word which proceeds through the mouth of God.'" Then the devil
took him to the holy city, and set him on the pinnacle of the Temple.
"If you really are the son of God," he said to him, "fling yourself
down, for it stands written, He will give his angels orders to care for
you, and they will lift you upon their hands, lest at any time you
should strike your foot against a stone.'" Jesus said to him, "Again it
stands written, 'You must not try to put the Lord your God to the
test.'" Again the devil took him to a very lofty mountain, and showed
him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory, and said to him, "I
will give you all these things, if you will fall down and worship me."
Then Jesus said to him, "Begone, Satan! For it stands written, 'You
shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone you will serve.'" Then
the devil left him alone, and behold, angels came and gave him their
service.
There is one thing which we must carefully note right at the
beginning of our study of the temptations of Jesus, and that is the
meaning of the word to tempt. The Greek word is peirazein (Greek #3985).
In English the word "tempt" has a uniformly and consistently bad
meaning. It always means to entice a man to do wrong, to seek to seduce
him into sin, to try to persuade him to take the wrong way. But
peirazein (Greek #3985) has a quite different element in its meaning. It means to test far more than it means to tempt in our sense of the word.
One of the great Old Testament stories is the story of how
narrowly Abraham escaped sacrificing his only son Isaac. Now that story
begins like this in the King James Version "And it came to pass after
these things that God did tempt Abraham" (Genesis 22:1).
Quite clearly the word to tempt cannot there mean to seek to seduce
into evil. It is unthinkable that God should try to make any man a
wrong-doer. But the thing is quite clear when we understand that it
means: "After these things God tested Abraham." The time had come for a
supreme test of the loyalty of Abraham. Just as metal has to be tested
far beyond any stress and strain that it will ever be called upon to
bear, before it can be put to any useful purpose, so a man has to be
tested before God can use him for his purposes. The Jews had a saying,
"The Holy One, blessed be his name, does not elevate a man to dignity
till he has first tried and searched him; and if he stands in
temptation, then he raises him to dignity."
Now here is a great and uplifting truth. What we call temptation
is not meant to make us sin; it is meant to enable us to conquer sin.
It is not meant to make us bad, it is meant to make us good. It is not
meant to weaken us, it is meant to make us emerge stronger and finer and
purer from the ordeal. Temptation is not the penalty of being a man,
temptation is the glory of being a man. It is the test which comes to a
man whom God wishes to use. So, then, we must think of this whole
incident, not so much the tempting, as the testing of Jesus.
We have to note further where this test took place. It took
place in the wilderness. Between Jerusalem, on the central plateau which
is the backbone of Palestine, and the Dead Sea there stretches the
wilderness. The Old Testament calls it Jeshimmon, which means The
Devastation, and it is a fitting name. It stretches over an area of
thirty-five by fifteen miles.
Sir George Adam Smith, who travelled over it, describes it. It
is an area of yellow sand, of crumbling limestone, and of scattered
shingle. It is an area of contorted strata, where the ridges run in all
directions as if they were warped and twisted. The hills are like dust
heaps; the limestone is blistered and peeling; rocks are bare and
jagged; often the very ground sounds hollow when a foot or a horse's
hoof falls upon it. It glows and shimmers with heat like some vast
furnace. It runs right out to the Dead Sea, and then there comes a drop
of twelve hundred feet, a drop of limestone, flint, and marl, through
crags and corries and precipices down to the Dead Sea.
In that wilderness Jesus could be more alone than anywhere else
in Palestine. Jesus went into the wilderness to be alone. His task had
come to him; God had spoken to him; he must think how he was to attempt
the task which God had given him to do; he had to get things
straightened out before he started; and he had to be alone.
It may well be that we often go wrong simply because we never
try to be alone. There are certain things which a man has to work out
alone. There are times when no one else's advice is any good to him.
There are times when a man has to stop acting and start thinking. It may
be that we make many a mistake because we do not give ourselves a
chance to be alone with God.
There are certain further things we must note before we proceed to detailed study of the story of the temptations.
(i) All three gospel writers seem to stress the immediacy with
which the temptations followed the baptism of Jesus. As Mark has it:
"The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness" (Mark 1:12).
It is one of the truths of life that after every great moment
there comes a moment of reaction--and again and again it is in the
reaction that the danger lies. That is what happened to Elijah. With
magnificent courage Elijah in all his loneliness faced and defeated the
prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:17-40).
That was Elijah's greatest moment of courage and of witness. But the
slaughter of the prophets of Baal provoked the wicked Jezebel to wrath,
and she threatened Elijah's life. "Then he was afraid, and he arose and
went for his life and came to Beer-sheba" (1 Kings 19:3).
The man who had stood fearlessly against all comers is now fleeing for
his life with terror at his heels. The moment of reaction had come.
It seems to be the law of life that just after our resistance
power has been highest it nose-dives until it is at its lowest. The
tempter carefully, subtly, and skillfully chose his time to attack
Jesus--but Jesus conquered him. We will do well to be specially on our
guard after every time life has brought us to the heights, for it is
just then that we are in gravest danger of the depths.
(ii) We must not regard this experience of Jesus as an outward
experience. It was a struggle that went on in his own heart and mind and
soul. The proof is that there is no possible mountain from which all
the kingdoms of the earth could be seen. This is an inner struggle.
It is through our inmost thoughts and desires that the tempter
comes to us. His attack is launched in our own minds. It is true that
that attack can be so real that we almost see tile devil. To this day
you can see the ink-stain on the wall of Luther's room in the Castle of
the Wartburg in Germany, Luther caused that ink-stain by throwing his
ink-pot at the devil as he tempted him. But the very power of the devil
lies in the fact that he breaches our defences and attacks us from
within. He finds his allies and his weapons in our own inmost thoughts
and desires.
(iii) We must not think that in one campaign Jesus conquered the
tempter for ever and that the tempter never came to him again. The
tempter spoke again to Jesus at Caesarea Philippi when Peter tried to
dissuade him from taking the way to the Cross, and when he had to say to
Peter the very same words he had said to the tempter in the wilderness,
"Begone Satan" (Matthew 16:23). At the end of the day Jesus could say to his disciples, "You are those who have continued with me in my trials" (Luke 22:28).
And never in all history was there such a fight with temptation as
Jesus waged in Gethsemane when the tempter sought to deflect him from
the Cross (Luke 22:42-44).
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." In the Christian
warfare there is no release. Sometimes people grow worried because they
think that they should reach a stage when they are beyond temptation, a
stare at which the power of the tempter is for ever broken. Jesus never
reached that stage. From the beginning to the end of the day he had to
fight his battle; that is why he can help us to fight ours.
(iv) One thing stands out about this story--the temptations are
such as could only come to a person who had very special powers and who
knew that he had them. Sanday described the temptations as "the problem
of what to do with supernatural powers." The temptations which came to
Jesus could only have come to one who knew that there were amazing
things which he could do.
We must always remember that again and again we are tempted
through our gifts. The person who is gifted with charm will be tempted
to use that charm "to get away with anything." The person who is gifted
with the power of words will be tempted to use his command of words to
produce glib excuses to justify his own conduct. The person with a vivid
and sensitive imagination will undergo agonies of temptation that a
more stolid person will never experience. The person with great gifts of
mind will be tempted to use these gifts for himself and not for others,
to become the master and not the servant of men. It is the grim fact of
temptation that it is just where we are strongest that we must be for
ever on the watch.
(v) No one can ever read this story without remembering that its
source must have been Jesus himself. In the wilderness he was alone. No
one was with him when this struggle was being fought out. And we know
about it only because Jesus himself must have told his men about it. It
is Jesus telling us his own spiritual autobiography.
We must always approach this story with a unique and special
reverence, for in it Jesus is laying bare his inmost heart and soul. He
is telling men what he went through. It is the most sacred of all
stories, for in it Jesus is saying to us that he can help others who are
tempted because he himself was tempted. He draws the veil from his own
struggles to help us in our struggle.
The tempter launched his attack against Jesus along three lines, and in every one of them there was a certain inevitability.
(i) There was the temptation to turn the stones into bread. The
desert was littered with little round pieces of limestone rock which
were exactly like little loaves; even they would suggest this temptation
to Jesus.
This was a double temptation. It was a temptation to Jesus to
use his powers selfishly and for his own use, and that is precisely what
Jesus always refused to do. There is always the temptation to use
selfishly whatever powers God has given to us.
God has given every man a gift, and every man can ask one of two
questions. He can ask, "What can I make for myself out of this gift?"
or, "What can I do for others with this gift?" This kind of temptation
can come out in the simplest thing. A person may possess, for instance, a
voice which is good to hear; he may thereupon "cash in on it", and
refuse to use it unless he is paid. There is no reason why he should not
use it for pay, but there is every reason why he should not use it only
for pay. There is no man who will not be tempted to use selfishly the
gift which God has given to him.
But there was another side to this temptation. Jesus was God's
Messiah, and he knew it. In the wilderness he was facing the choice of a
method whereby he could win men to God. What method was he to use for
the task which God had given him to do? How was he to turn the vision
into actuality, and the dream into fact?
One sure way to persuade men to follow him was to give them
bread, to give them material things. Did not history justify that? Had
not God given his people manna in the wilderness? Had God not said, "I
will rain bread from heaven for you"? Did not the visions of the future
golden age include that very dream? Had not Isaiah said, "They shall not
hunger or thirst"? (Isaiah 49:10).
Was the Messianic Banquet not a settled feature in the dreams of the
kingdom between the Testaments? If Jesus had wished to give men bread,
he could have produced justification enough for it.
But to give men bread would have been a double mistake. First,
it would have been to bribe men to follow him. It would nave been to
persuade men to follow him for the sake of what they could get out of
it, whereas the reward Jesus had to offer was a Cross. He called men to a
life of giving, not of getting. To bribe men with material things would
have been the denial of all he came to say and would have been
ultimately to defeat his own ends.
Second, it would have been to remove the symptoms without
dealing with the disease. Men are hungry. But the question is, why are
they hungry? Is it because of their own foolishness, and their own
shiftlessness, and their own carelessness? Is it because there are some
who selfishly possess too much while others possess too little? The real
way to cure hunger is to remove the causes--and these causes are in
men's souls. And above all there is a hunger of the heart which it is
not in material things to satisfy.
So Jesus answered the tempter in the very words which express
the lesson which God had sought to teach his people in the wilderness:
"Man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that
proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 8:3). The only way to true satisfaction is the way which has learned complete dependence on God.
(ii) So the tempter renewed his attack from mother angle. In a
vision he took Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple. That may mean one of
two things.
The Temple was built on the top of Mount Sion. The top of the
mountain was levelled out into a plateau, and on that plateau the whole
area of the Temple buildings stood. There was one corner at which
Solomon's porch and the Royal porch met, and at that corner there was a
sheer drop of four hundred and fifty feet into the valley of the Kedron
below. Why should not Jesus stand on that pinnacle, and leap down, and
land unharmed in the valley beneath? Men would be startled into
following a man who could do a thing like that.
On the top of the roof of the Temple itself there was a stance
where every morning a priest stood with a trumpet in his hands, waiting
for the first flush of the dawn across the hills of Hebron. At the first
dawn light he sounded the trumpet to tell men that the hour of morning
sacrifice had come. Why should not Jesus stand there, and leap down
right into the Temple court, and amaze men into following him? Had not
Malachi said, "The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple"?
(Malachi 3:1). Was there not a promise that the angels would bear God's man upon their hands lest any harm should come to him? (Psalms 91:11-12).
This was the very method that the false Messiahs who were
continually arising promised. Theudas had led the people out, and had
promised with a word to split the waters of Jordan in two. The famous
Egyptian pretender (Acts 21:38)
had promised that with a word he would lay flat the walls of Jerusalem.
Simon Magus, so it is said, had promised to fly through the air, and
had perished in the attempt. These pretenders had offered sensations
which they could not perform. Jesus could perform anything he promised.
Why should he not do it?
There were two good reasons why Jesus should not adopt that
course of action. First, he who seeks to attract men to him by providing
them with sensations has adopted a way in which there is literally no
future. The reason is simple. To retain his power he must produce ever
greater and greater sensations. Wonders are apt to be nine day wonders.
This year's sensation is next year's commonplace. A gospel founded on
sensation-mongering is foredoomed to failure. Second, that is not the
way to use the power of God. "You shall not put the Lord your God to the
test," said Jesus (Deuteronomy 6:16).
He meant this; there is no good seeing how far you can go with God;
there is no good in putting yourself deliberately into a threatening
situation, and doing it quite recklessly and needlessly, and then
expecting God to rescue you from it.
God expects a man to take risks in order to be true to him, but
he does not expect him to take risks to enhance his own prestige. The
very faith which is dependent on signs and wonder is not faith. If faith
cannot believe without sensations it is not really faith, it is doubt
looking for proof and looking in the wrong place. God's rescuing power
is not something to be played and experimented with, it is something to
be quietly trusted in the life of every day.
Jesus refused the way of sensations because he knew that it was
the way to failure--it still is--and because to long for sensations is
not to trust, but to distrust, God.
(iii) So the tempter tried his third avenue of attack. It was
the world that Jesus came to save, and into his mind there came a
picture of the world. The tempting voice said: "Fall down and worship
me, and I will give you all the kingdoms of this world." Had not God
himself said to his chosen one, "Ask of me and I will make the nations
your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession"? (Psalms 2:8).
What the tempter was saying was, "Compromise! Come to terms with
me! Don't pitch your demands quite so high! Wink just a little at evil
and questionable things--and then people will follow you in their
hordes." This was the temptation to come to terms with the world,
instead of uncompromisingly presenting God's demands to it. It was the
temptation to try to advance by retreating, to try to change the world
by becoming like the world.
Back came Jesus' answer: "You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve him and swear by his name" (Deuteronomy 6:13).
Jesus was quite certain that we can never defeat evil by compromising
with evil. He laid down the uncompromisingness of the Christian faith.
Christianity cannot stoop to the level of the world; it must lift the
world to its own level. Nothing less will do.
So Jesus made his decision. He decided that he must never bribe
men into following him; he decided that the way of sensations was not
for him; he decided that there could be no compromise in the message he
preached and in the faith he demanded. That choice inevitably meant the
Cross--but the Cross just as inevitably meant the final victory.
4:12-17 When
Jesus heard that John had been delivered into the hands of the
authorities, he withdrew into Galilee. He left Galilee and came and made
his home in Capernaum, which is on the lake-side, in the districts of
Zebulun and Naphtali. This was done that there might be fulfilled that
which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, when he said, "Land of
Zebulun, land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee
of the Gentiles-- the people who sat in darkness have seen a great
light, and a light has risen for those who sat in the land and in the
shadow of death." From that time Jesus began to proclaim his message and
to say, "Repent, for the Kingdom of the Heavens has come near!"
Before very long disaster came to John. He was arrested and
imprisoned in the dungeons of the Castle of Machaerus by Herod the king.
His crime was that he had publicly denounced Herod for seducing his
brother's wife, and making her his own wife, after he had put away the
wife he had. It is never safe to rebuke an eastern despot, and John's
courage brought him first imprisonment and then death. We shall come
later to the details of that story which Matthew does not tell until Matthew 14:3-12.
For Jesus the time had come when he must go forth to his task.
Let us note what he did first of all. He left Nazareth and he
took up residence in the town of Capernaum. There was a kind of symbolic
finality in that move. In that moment Jesus left his home never again
to return to live in it. It is as if he shut the door that lay behind
him before he opened the door that stood in front of him. It was the
clean cut between the old and the new. One chapter was ended and another
had begun. Into life there come these moments of decision. It is always
better to meet them with an even surgical cut than to vacillate
undecided between two courses of action.
Let us note where Jesus went. He went into Galilee. When Jesus
went into Galilee to begin his mission and his ministry, he knew what he
was doing. Galilee was the most northerly district of Palestine. It
stretched from the Litany River in the north to the Plain of Esdraelon
in the south. On the west it did not reach the sea coast of the
Mediterranean, because the coastal strip was in the possession of the
Phoenicians. On the north-east it was bounded by Syria, and its eastern
limit was the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Galilee was not large; it
was only fifty miles from north to south, and twenty-five miles from
east to west.
But, small as it was, Galilee was densely populated. It was by
far the most fertile region of Palestine; its fertility was indeed
phenomenal and proverbial. There was a saying that it was easier to
raise a legion of olives in Galilee than it was to bring up one child in
Judaea. Josephus, who was at one time governor of the province, says,
"It is throughout rich in soil and pasturage, producing every variety of
tree, and inviting by its productiveness even those who have the least
inclination for agriculture; it is everywhere tilled; no part is allowed
to lie idle, and everywhere it is productive." The result of this was
that for its size Galilee had an enormous population. Josephus tells us
that in it there were two hundred and four villages, none with a
population of fewer than fifteen thousand people. So, then, Jesus began
his mission in that part of Palestine where there were most people to
hear him; he began his work in an area teeming with men to whom the
gospel proclamation might be made.
But not only was Galilee a populous district; its people were
people of a certain kind. Of all parts of Palestine Galilee was most
open to new ideas. Josephus says of the Galileans, "They were ever fond
of innovations, and by nature disposed to changes, and delighted in
seditions." They were ever ready to follow a leader and to begin an
insurrection. They were notoriously quick in temper and given to
quarrelling. Yet withal they were the most chivalrous of men. "The
Galileans," said Josephus, "have never been destitute of courage."
"Cowardice was never a characteristic of the Galileans." "They were ever
more anxious for honour than for gain." The inborn characteristics of
the Galileans were such as to make them most fertile ground for a new
gospel to be preached to them.
This openness to new ideas was due to certain facts.
(i) The name Galilee comes from the Hebrew word galiyl (Hebrew #1550; compare Hebrew #1551 and Hebrew #1556)
which means a circle. The full name of the area was Galilee of the
Gentiles. Plummer wishes to take that to mean "heathenish Galilee." But
the phrase came from the fact that Galilee was literally surrounded by
Gentiles. On the west, the Phoenicians were its neighbours. To the north
and the east, there were the Syrians. And even to the south, there lay
the territory of the Samaritans. Galilee was in fact the one part of
Palestine that was inevitably in touch with non-Jewish influences and
ideas. Galilee was bound to be open to new ideas in a way that no other
part of Palestine was.
(ii) The great roads of the world passed through Galilee, as we
saw when we were thinking of the town of Nazareth. The Way of the Sea
led from Damascus through Galilee right down to Egypt and to Africa. The
Road to the East led through Galilee away out to the frontiers. The
traffic of the world passed through Galilee. Away in the south Judaea is
tucked into a corner, isolated and secluded. As it has been well said,
"Judaea is on the way to nowhere: Galilee is on the way to everywhere."
Judaea could erect a fence and keep all foreign influence and all new
ideas out; Galilee could never do that. Into Galilee the new ideas were
bound to come.
(iii) Galilee's geographical position had affected its history.
Again and again it had been invaded and conquered, and the tides of the
foreigners had often flowed over it and had sometimes engulfed it.
Originally it had been assigned to the tribes of Asher, Naphtali and Zebulun when the Israelites first came into the land (Joshua 9:1-27
) but these tribes had never been completely successful in expelling
the native Canaanite inhabitants, and from the beginning the population
of Galilee was mixed. More than once foreign invasions from the north
and east had swept down on it from Syria, and in the eighth century B.C.
the Assyrians had engulfed it completely, the greater part of its
population had been taken away into exile, and strangers had been
settled in the land. Inevitably this brought a very large injection of
foreign blood into Galilee.
From the eighth until the second century B.C. it had been
largely in Gentile hands. When the Jews returned from exile under
Nehemiah and Ezra, many of the Galileans came south to live in
Jerusalem. In 164 B.C. Simon Maccabaeus chased the Syrians north from
Galilee back to their own territory; and on his way back he took with
him to Jerusalem the remnants of the Galileans who were left.
The most amazing thing of all is that in 104 B.C. Aristobulus
reconquered Galilee for the Jewish nation, and proceeded forcibly to
circumcise the inhabitants of Galilee, and thus to make them Jews
whether they liked it or not. History had compelled Galilee to open its
doors to new strains of blood and to new ideas and to new influences.
The natural characteristics of the Galileans, and the
preparation of history had made Galilee the one place in all Palestine
where a new teacher with a new message had any real chance of being
heard, and it was there that Jesus began his mission and first announced
his message.
Before we leave this passage there are certain other things which we must note.
It was to the town of Capernaum that Jesus went. The correct
form of the name is Capharnaum. The form Capernaum does not occur at all
until the fifth century A.D., but it is so fixed in our minds and
memories that it would not be wise to try to change it.
There has been much argument about the site of Capernaum. Two
places have been suggested. The commonest, and the likeliest.
identification is that Capernaum is Tell Hum, which is on the west side
of the extreme north of the Sea of Galilee; the alternative, and the
less likely, identification is that Capernaum is Khan Minyeh, which is
about two and a half miles to the south-west of Tell Hum. In any event,
there is now nothing but ruins left to show where Capernaum once stood.
It was Matthew's habit to find in the Old Testament something
which he could use as a prophecy about every event in Jesus' life. He
finds such a prophecy in Isaiah 9:1-2.
In fact that is another of the prophecies which Matthew tears violently
from its context and uses in his own extraordinary way. It is a
prophecy which dates back to the reign of Pekah. In those days the
northern parts of Palestine, including Galilee, had been despoiled by
the invading armies of the Assyrians; and this was originally a prophecy
of the deliverance which would some day come to these conquered
territories. Matthew finds in it a prophecy which foretold of the light
that Jesus was to bring.
Finally, Matthew gives us a brief one-sentence summary of the
message which Jesus brought. The King James Version and Revised Standard
Version both say that Jesus began to preach. The word preach has come
down in the world; it is all too unfortunately connected in the minds of
many people with boredom. The word in Greek is kerussein (Greek #2784), which is the word for a herald's proclamation from a king. Kerux (Greek #2783) is the Greek word for herald, and the herald was the man who brought a message direct from the king.
This word tells us of certain characteristics of the preaching
of Jesus and these are characteristics which should be in all preaching.
(i) The herald had in his voice a note of certainty. There was
no doubt about his message; he did not come with perhapses and maybes
and probablys; he came with a definite message. Goethe had it: "Tell me
of your certainties: I have doubts enough of my own." Preaching is the
proclamation of certainties, and a man cannot make others sure of that
about which he himself is in doubt.
(ii) The herald had in his voice the note of authority. He was
speaking for the king; he was laying down and announcing the king's law,
the king's command, and the king's decision. As was said of a great
preacher, "He did not cloudily guess; he knew." Preaching, as it has
been put, is the application of prophetic authority to the present
situation.
(iii) The herald's message came from a source beyond himself; it
came from the king. Preaching speaks from a source beyond the preacher.
It is not the expression of one man's personal opinions; it is the
voice of God transmitted through one man to the people. It was with the
voice of God that Jesus spoke to men.
The message of Jesus consisted of a command which was the
consequence of a new situation. "Repent!" he said. "Turn from your own
ways, and turn to God. Lift your eyes from earth and look to heaven.
Reverse your direction, and stop walking away from God and begin walking
towards God." That command had become urgently necessary because the
reign of God was about to begin. Eternity had invaded time; God had
invaded earth in Jesus Christ, and therefore it was of paramount
importance that a man should choose the right side and the right
direction.
4:18-22 While
he was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon,
who is called Peter, and Andrew. his brother, casting their net into the
sea, for they were fishermen. He said to them 'Follow me, and I will
make you fishers of men:' They immediately left their nets and followed
him. He went on from there and saw other two brothers, James, Zebedee's
son, and John, his brother. They were in the boat with Zebedee their
father getting ready their nets for use. So he called them. They
immediately left their boat and their father, and followed him.
All Galilee centered round the Sea of Galilee. It is thirteen
miles long from north to south, and eight miles across from east to
west. The Sea of Galilee is therefore small, and it is interesting to
note that Luke, the Gentile, who had seen so much more of the world,
never calls it the sea (thalassa - Greek #2281), but always the lake (limne - Greek #3041).
It is the shape of an oval, wider at the top than at the bottom. It
lies in that great rift in the earth's surface in which the Jordan
valley runs, and the surface of the Sea of Galilee is six hundred and
eighty feet below sea level. The fact that it lies in this dip in the
earth's surface gives it a very warm climate, and makes the surrounding
countryside phenomenally fertile. It is one of the loveliest lakes in
the world. W. M. Thomson describes it: "Seen from any point of the
surrounding heights it is a fine sheet of water--a burnished mirror set
in a framework of rounded hills and rugged mountains, which rise and
roll backward and upward to where Hermon hangs the picture against the
blue vault of heaven."
In the days of Josephus there were no fewer than nine populous
cities on its shore. In the 1930's, when H. V. Morton saw it, only
Tiberias was left and it was little more than a village. Today it is the
largest town in Galilee and steadily growing.
In the time of Jesus the Sea of Galilee was thick with fishing
boats. Josephus on a certain expedition had no difficulty in assembling
two hundred and forty fishing boats to set out from Tarichaea; but
nowadays the fishermen are few and far between.
There were three methods of fishing. There was fishing by line.
There was fishing with the casting net. The casting net was
circular, and might be as much as nine feet across. It was skillfully
cast into the water from the land, or from the shallow water at the edge
of the lake. It was weighted with pellets of lead round the
circumference. It sank into the sea and surrounded the fish; it was then
drawn through the water as if the top of a bell tent were being drawn
to land, and in it the fish were caught. That was the kind of net that
Peter and Andrew, and James and John, were handling when Jesus saw them.
Its name was the amphiblestron (Greek #293).
The drag net was used from a boat, or better from two boats. It
wag cast into the water with ropes at each of the four corners. It was
weighted at the foot so that, as it were, it stood upright in the water.
When the boats were rowed along with the net behind them, the effect
was that the net became a great cone, and in the cone the fishes were
caught and brought into the boat. This kind of net is the net in the
parable of the dragnet; and is called the sagene (Greek #4522).
So Jesus was walking by the lakeside; and as he walked he called
Peter and Andrew, James and John. It is not to be thought that this was
the first time that he had seen them, or they him. As John tells the
story, at least some of them were already disciples of John the Baptist (John 1:35).
No doubt they had already talked with Jesus and had already listened to
him, but in this moment there came to them the challenge once and for
all to throw in their lot with him.
The Greeks used to tell how Xenophon first met Socrates.
Socrates met him in a narrow lane and barred his path with his stick.
First of all Socrates asked him if he knew where he could buy this and
that, and if he knew where this and that were made. Xenophon gave the
required information. Then Socrates asked him, "Do you know where men
are made good and virtuous? "No," said the young Xenophon. "Then." said
Socrates, follow me and learn!"
Jesus, too, called on these fishermen to follow him. It is
interesting to note what kind of men they were. They were not men of
great scholarship, or influence, or wealth, or social background. They
were not poor, they were simple working people with no great background,
and certainly, anyone would have said, with no great future.
It was these ordinary men whom Jesus chose. Once there came to
Socrates a very ordinary man called Aeschines. "I am a poor man," said
Aeschines. "I have nothing else, but I give you myself." "Do you not
see," said Socrates, "that you are giving me the most precious thing of
all?" What Jesus needs is ordinary folk who will give him themselves. He
can do anything with people like that.
Further these men were fishermen. It has been pointed out by
many scholars that the good fisherman must possess these very qualities
which will turn him into the good fishers of men.
(i) He must have patience. He must learn to wait patiently until
the fish will take the bait. If he is restless and quick to move he
will never make a fisherman. The good fisher of men will have need of
patience. It is but rarely in preaching or in teaching that we will see
quick results. We must learn to wait.
(ii) He must have perseverance. He must learn never to be
discouraged, but always to try again. The good preacher and teacher must
not be discouraged when nothing seems to happen. He must always be
ready to try again.
(iii) He must have courage. As the old Greek said when he prayed
for the protection of the gods: "My boat is so small and the sea is so
large." He must be ready to risk and to face the fury of the sea and of
the gale. The good preacher and teacher must be well aware that there is
always a danger in telling men the truth. The man who tells the truth,
more often than not takes his reputation and his life in his hands.
(iv) He must have an eye for the right moment. The wise
fisherman knows well that there are times when it is hopeless to fish.
He knows when to cast and when not to cast. The good preacher and
teacher chooses his moment. There are times when men will welcome the
truth, and times when they will resent the truth. There are times when
the truth will move them, and times when the truth will harden them in
their opposition to the truth. The wise preacher and teacher knows that
there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.
(v) He must fit the bait to the fish. One fish will rise to one
bait and another to another. Paul said that he became all things to all
men if by any chance he might win some. The wise preacher and teacher
knows that the same approach will not win all men. He may even have to
know and recognize his own limitations. He may have to discover that
there are certain spheres in which he himself can work. and others in
which he cannot.
(v) The wise fisherman must keep himself out of sight. If he
obtrudes his own presence, even his own shadow, the fish will certainly
not bite. The wise preacher and teacher will always seek to present men,
not with himself, but with Jesus Christ. His aim is to fix men's eyes.
not on himself, but on that figure beyond.
4:23-25 Jesus
made a circular tour of Galilee, teaching in the Synagogues, proclaiming
the good news of the Kingdom, and healing all kinds of diseases and
ailments among the people: and the report of his activities went out all
over Syria. So they brought to him an those who were ill, those who
were in the grip of the most varied diseases and pains, those who were
possessed by demons, those who were epileptics, and those who were
paralysed; and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from
Galilee, and from the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea,
and from beyond Jordan.
Jesus had chosen to begin his mission in Galilee, and we have
seen how well-prepared Galilee was to receive the seed. Within Galilee
Jesus chose to launch his campaign in the synagogues.
The synagogue was the most important institution in the life of
any Jew. There was a difference between the synagogues and the Temple.
There was only one Temple, the Temple in Jerusalem, but wherever there
was the smallest colony of Jews there was a synagogue. The Temple
existed solely for the offering of sacrifice; in it there was no
preaching or teaching. The synagogue was essentially a teaching
institution. The synagogues have been defined as "the popular religious
universities of their day." If a man had any religious teaching or
religious ideas to disseminate, the synagogue was unquestionably the
place to start.
Further, the synagogue service was such that it gave the new
teacher his chance. In the synagogue service there were three parts. The
first part consisted of prayers. The second part consisted of readings
from the Law and from the Prophets, readings in which members of the
congregation took part. The third part was the address. The important
fact is that there was no one person to give the address. There was no
such thing as a professional ministry. The president of the synagogue
presided over the arrangements for the service. Any distinguished
stranger could be asked to give the address, and anyone with a message
to give might volunteer to give it; and, if the ruler or president of
the synagogue judged him to be a fit person to speak, he was allowed to
speak. Thus, at the beginning, the door of the synagogue and the pulpit
of the synagogue were open to Jesus. He began in the synagogue because
it was there he would find the most sincerely religious people of his
day, and the way to speak to them was open to him. After the address
there came a time for talk, and questions, and discussion. The synagogue
was the ideal place in which to get a new teaching across to the
people.
But not only did Jesus preach; he also healed the sick. It was
little wonder that reports of what he was doing went out and people came
crowding to hear him, and to see him, and to benefit from his pity.
They came from Syria. Syria was the great province of which
Palestine was only a part. It stretched away to the north and the
north-east with the great city of Damascus as its center. It so happens
that one of the loveliest legends passed down to us by Eusebius
(Ecclesiastical History 1: 13) goes back to this time. The story goes
that there was a king called Abgar, in Edessa, and he was ill. So, it is
said, he wrote to Jesus: "Abgar, ruler of Edessa, to Jesus, the most
excellent Saviour, who has appeared in the country of
Jerusalem--greeting. I have heard of you and of your cures, performed
without medicine and without herb; for, it is said, you make the blind
to see and the lame to walk, you cleanse the lepers, you cast out evil
spirits and demons, you heal those afflicted with lingering diseases,
and you raise the dead. Now, as I have heard all this about you, I have
concluded that one of two things must be true; either, you are God, and
having descended from heaven, you do these things, or else, you are a
son of God by what you do. I write to you, therefore, to ask you to come
and cure the disease from which I am suffering. For I have heard that
the Jews murmur against you, and devise evil things against you. Now, I
have a very small but an excellent city which is large enough for both
of us." Jesus was said to have written back: "Blessed are you for having
believed in me without seeing me. For it is written concerning me that
those who have seen me will not believe in me, while they who have not
seen me will believe and be saved. But, as to your request that I should
come to you, I must fulfil all things here for which I have been sent,
and, after fulfilling them, be taken up again to him who sent me. Yet,
after I am taken up, I will send you one of my disciples to cure your
disease, and to give life to you and to yours." So, the legend goes on,
Thaddeus went to Edessa and cured Abgar. It is only a legend, but it
does show how men believed that even in distant Syria men had heard of
Jesus and longed with all their hearts for the help and the healing
which he alone could give.
Very naturally they came from Galilee, and the word about Jesus
had spread south to Jerusalem and Judaea also, and they came from there.
They came from the land across the Jordan, which was known as Peraea,
and which stretched from Pella in the north to Arabia Petra in the
south. They came from the Decapolis. The Decapolis was a federation of
ten independent Greek cities, all of which, except Scythopolis, were on
the far side of the Jordan.
This list is symbolic, for in it we see not only the Jews but
the Gentiles also coming to Jesus Christ for what he alone could give
them. Already the ends of the earth are gathering to him.
This passage is of great importance because it gives us in brief summary the three great activities of Jesus' life.
(i) He came proclaiming the gospel, or, as the King James and
Revised Standard Version have it, he came preaching. Now, as we have
already seen, preaching is the proclamation of certainties. Therefore,
Jesus came to defeat men's ignorance. He came to tell them the truth
about God, to tell them that which by themselves they could never have
found out. He came to put an end to guessing and to groping, and to show
men what God is like.
(ii) He came teaching in the synagogues. What is the difference
between teaching and preaching? Preaching is the uncompromising
proclamation of certainties; teaching is the explanation of the meaning
and the significance of them. Therefore, Jesus came to defeat men's
misunderstandings. There are times when men know the truth and
misinterpret it. They know the truth and draw the wrong conclusions from
it. Jesus came to tell men the meaning of true religion.
(iii) He came healing all those who had need of healing. That is
to say, Jesus came to defeat men's pain. The important thing about
Jesus is that he was not satisfied with simply telling men the truth in
words; he came to turn that truth into deeds. Florence Allshorn, the
great missionary teacher, said, "An ideal is never yours until it comes
out of your finger tips." The ideal is not yours until it is realized in
action. Jesus realized his own teaching in deeds of help and healing.
Jesus came preaching that he might defeat all ignorance. he came
teaching that he might defeat all misunderstandings. He came healing
that he might defeat all pain. We, too, must proclaim our certainties;
we, too, must be ready to explain our faith; we, too, must turn the
ideal into action and into deeds.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)