“Now Jesus began to go all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” - Matthew 4:23 “Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness.” - Matthew 9:35
If someone asked you to describe Jesus’s ministry on earth in a single sentence, what words would you use to describe it? A single sentence from the book of Matthew answers this question. I suppose it’s actually two sentences, but it’s the same one stated twice: Jesus taught in the synagogues, preached the good news of the kingdom, and healed many people in the towns and villages in and around Galilee. Matthew wants us to know lots of things about Jesus’s ministry, but he really wants us to know these three things. How do we know this? Because verses 4:23 and 9:35 serve as repetitive bookends that each 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 primary elements of Jesus’s mission, but we will soon find that Matthew never intended for us to settle for a summary.
He wants us to immerse ourselves in the details. To sit on the verdant hillside listening to Jesus’s wisdom, to be bowled over by the astonishing good news of His kingdom, to follow Him through a sea of hurting people for whom He had come to 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, or you’re emotionally spent because of deep loss or ongoing pain. Or you might simply need some direction, a bit of guidance. Or maybe you’re just desperate for an encounter with Him.
No matter why you’re here, you’re in the right place, for we can’t linger in the presence of Jesus and not be changed. Not be renewed.
So let us step into first-century Galilee, a region in the northern countryside of Judea. Let’s brush up against the Jewish people 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, some of whom were considered outcasts and expendables.2 Let’s nestle beside them in the grassy field and listen to Jesus because He first announces His kingdom to precisely 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 in the Jerusalem courts of the religious elite. Or perhaps He might seek an audience with the wealthy minority or the Roman emperors. His best bet by a mile would be to approach any number of these powerful waterheads of the fastest moving streams where big news travels fast.
But Jesus is no politician. His kingdom is not of this world.
How unconventional for Jesus to deliver His otherworldly ethic—the truths about how we’re to live and who we can now be as new people—on the side of a hill to a noninfluential gathering of the downtrodden. When we’d expect Him to go where the power is, He goes to where the need is. Here we discover that the good news of Jesus Christ will not go from the top down but from the bottom up, or perhaps I should say bottom out, to the ends of the earth.
What hope-filled days we have ahead, and what a gift Matthew has given us! A curated collection of Jesus’s words and deeds; a peek into the struggles of His primary followers; a detailed record of what He deemed most important about how we’re to live the precious lives we’ve been given; a collection 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; rather his pen is purposeful and passionate.
What is your need? What are your longings? Carry them into the presence of Jesus and hear what He has to say.
And if you feel undeserving, or unspectacular, or ordinary . . . If you identify 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