Have you ever tried to explain something that was so epically amazing that you couldn't quite put it into words? Sometimes I think that's what the Apostle John faced.
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What would it be like to be the mother of God? He was a perfect Son. That means He never sinned or did anything wrong...ever. How did Mary and Joseph feel when they sinned in front of Him? If they lost their temper at each other or the kids...if they wanted to waste a little money or gossip?
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The Spirit of the Lord had come to anoint the Son of God in a special and powerful way. After Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit led Jesus away from the Jordan and the bustle of ministry that surrounded John. Jesus was compelled to go out to the wilderness and to the silence of utter nature.
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After his baptism, Christ was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to face the temptations of Satan. Meanwhile, the counsel of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, the most powerful religious leaders in the country, sent more priests to question John the Baptist.
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As the Lord travelled to Galilee to begin His ministry there, He stopped for several days in Samaria. The people there had responded to His message of freedom and transformation with great faithfulness. Then the Lord journeyed to Cana.
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In the early days of Christ’s ministry, He spent His days preaching and teaching in the northern region of the nation of Israel around the Sea of Galilee. One day while Jesus was in Capernaum, He went for a walk along the edge of the water.
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How different were the people of Capernaum from those in Nazareth! They heard the words of Jesus and believed! Many were healed of their suffering. Can you imagine the excitement the people felt as they watched people being set free?
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As Jesus and His disciples were traveling to the cities and towns around Galilee, the Lord continued to do His work of teaching and miraculous healing. Crowds came from all over to follow this wildly popular young preacher.
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Jesus was out once again walking along the shore of the sea. What a beautiful view with the yellow, rolling hills that molded themselves around the blue, shimmering waters of Galilee. It was probably some time in the fall, but the nation of Israel is in a land where the weather is mild, even in the middle of winter.
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One of the ways a writer expresses what is important is by using a lot of repetition. You can tell what is important to them by the subjects that they bring up the most often and by what themes get the most volume in their writings.
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Jesus was doing massive amounts of healing and preaching to the multitudes. The Jews from Galilee and Judea that came to Him early on in His ministry were being joined by Gentiles from cities hundreds of miles away.
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As I prepare this blog, my heart trembles. I have never been called upon to truly suffer for my faith. One of the interesting things about blogging is that I can check every day to see how many people have read my posts and what countries they are from.
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Jesus preached the heart-wrenchingly beautiful qualities of a disciple as the opening poem of the Sermon on the Mount. Then He taught that the humility and dependence of His blessed ones would be like salt and light to the rest of the world.
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In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave some of the most beautiful truths every spoken or written. Each statement has infinite worth, and yet everything He says in His sermon hangs together like a beautiful golden chain. It helps to look at each part in depth.
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Let’s remember what we have read about in the Sermon on the Mount. As we look at each little section, it is important to remember how it fits into the big picture of God’s Kingdom. For example, when Jesus tells us not to worry, it could seem like a pretty heartless thing to say.
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Matthew wrote the Sermon on the Mount to show us all the things Jesus taught as He went about the countryside in Galilee. It gives us the big picture of what He said about life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of those ideas are also told in the book of Luke, but they are scattered throughout his book as Luke showed how Jesus was teaching those things along the way.
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As Jesus preached to the people throughout the region of Galilee, the powerful religious leaders began rejecting His message. But it wasn’t just the religious leaders that refused to hear the message of God through John and Jesus.
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Jesus and His disciples were in Capernaum, surrounded by the crowd. They were all packed into Peter’s house as Jesus preached. Religious leaders had come up from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus. The Lord had already cast out a demon and healed a man of blindness right in front of everyone.
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Jesus continued to teach parables to help his disciples understand how the Kingdom of God would work in the world as true believers waited for Him to return.
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You may have noticed on these blogs about the life of Jesus that the stories from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get a little mixed up. For example, when in the book of Matthew we read from chapter eight before we read chapters 5 through 7, which are the Sermon on the Mount.
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