In Jason Dohm's sermon titled 'The People Who Sat in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light,' he discusses Jesus' strategic move to Capernaum in Galilee, emphasizing its prophetic importance as foretold by Isaiah. Dohm highlights Jesus' ministry as a fulfillment of prophecy, bringing light to those in darkness, and calls for repentance as central to the Kingdom of Heaven. The sermon outlines the process of discipleship, where Jesus calls ordinary fishermen to follow him, promising to make them 'fishers of men.' Dohm underscores the transformative power of Jesus' teachings, healings, and his role in overturning the curses of disobedience. The sermon also explores the concept of light as a symbol of divine intervention and guidance, and challenges listeners to reflect on their devotion to Christ, urging them to forsake all for the sake of true discipleship.

Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he departed to Galilee. And live in Nazareth, he came and dwell in Capernaum, which is by the sea in the regions of Sebulon and Naphtali, that it may be fulfilled what was spoken by Sayyid the Prophet saying the land of Sibyllon 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 of shadow and dead, light has dawned. From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishermen, fishermen, fishermen.

They immediately left their nets and followed him. Going on from there he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people. Then His fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted by various diseases and torments and those who were demon possessed epileptics and paralytics and he healed them Great multitudes follow him from Galilee, from and from the Capulets, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan.

Heavenly Father, I pray that we recognize the time and the moment and the magnitude of our calling and that we, like the Apostles, may be ready and willing to obey. And I pray that in His name. So, the Bible doesn't know Mother's Day, but it does know mothers. And it does know the honor of mothers. So regardless of what Hallmark may desire to impose upon us on this day, it is right and good and fitting that we would take a minute just to honor our own mothers today and especially the mothers who are among us here.

And so I just want to take a minute to do that on behalf of myself and particularly Janet by name, but on behalf of all the husbands and fathers in the room, just to take time and express that we know how precious the work that you do every day and week and month and year in our homes with the lives that God has given us together, how precious that work is, and how often it's thankless work to our shame. But today it's not thankless. Today we take the opportunity to publicly honor you for the work that you're doing. And just acknowledge together how central motherhood is to how God wants to order our homes and how He wants our homes to be centers of worship and where children are brought up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. And how on many, many days the fathers and husbands here have thought that your work is so much closer to that mission than what our work sometimes is.

And just to exhort you, not to grow weary in doing good, particularly in the work of motherhood, it would be very easy to grow weary because there are times of intense value surrounded by a lot of the mundane, dishes and laundry and meals in a never ending cycle. And every mother in the room knows exactly what is being described there. But, regardless of how easy it would be to lose sight of the value of the work that gets done and all these mundane things, I just want us to reflect on, for all of us adults, how pivotal our mothers have been to us, for good or for ill. They've been very important. And I just want to Read the closing verses of Proverbs 31.

Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her. Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and Let her own works praise her in the gates.

And so these are moments where we just acknowledge that the women who are here that God has joined us to are women who fear the Lord and are worthy to be praised. And we want you to have the fruit of your hands that your own works would praise you in the gates. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for our own mothers who have poured out much for us, undoubtedly all imperfect, and yet having laid down their lives in so many ways we thank you for them. And God we thank you for the wives here, the mothers here, and that you are doing something so significant that they've passed up many things that might bring them more outward approval, consideration, pay.

All these things have been set aside by these wives and these mothers to train up a generation in the training and admonition of the Lord and the fear of the Lord. And we thank You. We thank You for this. And we pray, Lord, that You would bless the work of their hands, that You would help them not to grow weary in doing good, for in due season they will reap. They will reap a harvest of righteousness.

God, we pray that You would establish the work of their hands and bless them. And we give You thanks for them in Jesus' name, Amen. So hopefully you've got your Bibles still open to Matthew 4. This week we complete Matthew 4 and then we'll be going into the Sermon on the Mount spending a number of weeks there. Three chapters with nothing but red letters, nothing but exactly what Jesus said, except for the last two verses of those three chapters.

So that will be a blessing. Last week we saw that Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And there were really two main thrusts to that passage. The first was that the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by the devil is in a stream of conflict that starts way back in Genesis 3 where the devil comes and tempts in a very similar way the first Adam. And though Adam was in the garden in the middle of all this perfection, he fell, but then now Jesus, the second Adam, overthrows the failures of the first Adam.

And whereas all would die through the first Adam, Life actually is restored and offered again through the second Adam. And then the second thing that we saw was that there's a template offered to us for how to handle temptation. And actually there's a couple of templates. One is the template of the devil, which is a well-worn path that has to do with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. When we go back and look at the garden and see the three justifications for Eve taking the forbidden fruit, it was the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

And then when we looked at the temptations in the wilderness, in the first part of Matthew 4, we saw that it was the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. So the devil has a template. And it's well worn and he finds it works splendidly. And so if we are to be wise in understanding how our enemy will attack us, then we should understand what the template of the devil is. There is also another template that we should be very familiar with.

It is the template that Jesus Christ used to ward off and deflect these temptations and defeat these temptations and emerge victorious from these temptations. That is that the Word of God would be known, that the Word of God would be spoken, and that the Word of God would be obeyed. This is what Jesus used to triumph in these temptations. So that was last week. Now Jesus having been baptized, having been tested, begins His public ministry.

And that's what we see in the text that's before us today. It's really easy to divide this text into its component parts. There's really three clearly marked out sections. The first section is verses 12 through 16. And this is Jesus returning to Galilee.

And we see that His return to Galilee has a prophetic significance. So Matthew takes us back to Isaiah where we've already been a bunch of times before, and he takes us back there again to see the prophetic significance of what Jesus is doing when he returns to Galilee. The second section is verses 17-22, where Jesus is beginning to call disciples. And this week we'll see him call four, two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John. And then the third and final section is verses 23-25, where Jesus begins His public ministry in earnest and He's teaching, preaching, and healing.

And this will really be the hallmarks of his public ministry all throughout. He'll be teaching, he'll be preaching, and he'll be healing and doing miraculous signs and wonders. So, right into the text then. There are three parallel passages that really help illuminate this. So you can jot them down if you want to.

We'll be sporadically pulling from these parallel texts. But the first one is in Mark 1, 14-45. Lots of overlap between this and Mark 1, 14 and 45. The second is Luke 4, verse 14 through chapter 5, verse 11. So Luke 4, 14 through 5, 11.

And then the last one is John 1 versus 33 through John 4 versus 42. So John actually has a lot of content, and a lot of that content actually is not to be found in Matthew, but it's things that we need to be aware of that actually provide a really helpful background for what we see in Matthew. So those are the parallel texts. The first section in today's passage has to do with Jesus' return to Galilee, verses 12-16. And prior to this, if all you had was Matthew, you would think that the temptation happens and then Jesus comes out of the wilderness and he immediately goes back to Galilee.

That's how it reads in Matthew. But when we look at the text in John, we see that there's actually a gap of time between these two things. And most of the commentators think that it's around a year, based on the time markers that you see in here. Between the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness to the time where His public ministry is launched in Galilee is probably about a year. And I'll tell you the things that happen that we learn from John during that period of time that is completely uncovered by Matthew, but is recorded by John.

So there's a preliminary encounter with Peter and Andrew. We tend to think when we get to the calling of Peter and Andrew that this happens out of nowhere. They've never seen Jesus before. And he just calls them out of their boat and they leave their nets. And that's not true.

The first encounter between Jesus and Peter and Andrew actually happens in John 1 and probably happens a year before this passage. And then in John chapter 2, we see the wedding in Cana, which is a city in Galilee, near Jesus' hometown of Nazareth, and there's a wedding and they run out of wine and Jesus produces wine. It's his first miracle. So that happens during this gap. Also in John chapter 2, Jesus goes to the Passover in Jerusalem and he drags out the merchants in the temple and he says, Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise.

And of course that stirs up all sorts of trouble that is recorded in John chapter 2 as well. Then in chapter 3, Jesus has the encounter with Nicodemus the Pharisee, where Nicodemus comes under cloak of darkness to ask questions of Jesus and Jesus tells him, you must be born again. That happens in this interval as well. Also in John chapter 3, Jesus is baptizing in the wilderness. And in John chapter 3 verse 24 we see this, for John had not yet been thrown into prison.

And that's how we know it happens in the Gap. This is our time marker, it's John 3.24. For John had not been thrown into prison. And our text for today says that John's been thrown into prison. So we know that it happens in the gap there.

And then John chapter 4 records Jesus' actual return from Judea to Galilee. And to get from Judea to Galilee you have to go through Samaria And Jesus encounters the woman at the well. And she says, I don't have a husband. And he says, boy are you right about that. You've had five husbands and the man you have now is not your husband.

So that's that encounter. And that has happened on the way back to Galilee. So, enough of John, but anyway, all that to say, there's a gap between last week's text and this week's text. And quite a bit has happened. And quite a bit that we're very familiar with has happened.

But if all we did was spend our time in Matthew, you wouldn't have any sense of that. So I bring it up for that purpose. And to say it's relevant background that really helps us understand this week's text. So in verse 12, the first verse of this week's text, we learn that John has been put into prison. He's in trouble because Herod has an unlawful marriage to Herodias.

We won't talk about that in detail because when we get to Matthew 14, weeks and months and maybe a year from now, we'll be looking at it in detail. But John's in trouble because he spoke out against the sin of the civil magistrate where they are. And he gets thrown in prison. And Jesus' response is that He departs to Galilee, or He withdraws. That's an alternate translation there.

He withdraws to Galilee. Depart or withdraw is a Greek word that's used multiple times by Matthew. And in every single instance, it's a response to conflict, or it's a response to something bad that's happening. And so that's the sense of it here as well. John gets thrown into prison, and It's not yet Jesus' time to go to the cross and He's departing.

So the sense of it is that as John the Baptist said, I must decrease and He must increase, That has come to fruition. John is done decreasing. In fact, he'll be martyred very soon. And Jesus has been through this time of increasing. And now John departs the scene and Jesus' ministry is in prime time.

That's really what this is indicating. In the parallel passage in Luke, in Luke 4, 14, it says, then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. So This is not Jesus tucking tail and running even though He is withdrawing because it's not His time yet. But He's actually returning in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. And this actually fulfills prophecy.

And so we shouldn't see this as a retreat even though he is withdrawing to Galilee. We'll see as we go through the course of the text. This is no retreat. He is overthrowing the works of the devil. He is preaching repentance.

He is teaching in the synagogues. He is healing the sick, casting the devil out of people. And he is waging war against the devil. So this is no retreat. This is more of a victory march.

In verse 13, Jesus is in Nazareth, but he leaves Nazareth to dwell in Capernaum, which is right on the Sea of Galilee. Both Nazareth and Capernaum are in the region or the district of Galilee. And Nazareth is a ways off of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum is a much larger town than Nazareth. So Jesus is going to really more of a population center.

And it is right on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. What Luke records, but Matthew doesn't, is that the reason for leaving Nazareth was that he's been teaching in the synagogue and he's gotten himself in trouble there. He reads the book of Isaiah, for the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor. And he sits down and they're all looking at him and he says, today this is fulfilled in your presence. And they say, Isn't this the carpenter's son?

And he essentially says this is just the kind of stiff neck attitude that causes God to take His mercy to the Gentiles. And they can't stand that and they're ready to stone him. And this is that passage where they take him, they're not ready to stone him, they're ready to throw him off a cliff. And This is that passage where they take him, they're not ready to stone him, they're ready to throw him off a cliff. And this is that passage where they take him to the edge of the cliff and then he just inexplicably just walks through the crowd because it is not his time and God is protecting him and so something supernatural happens.

That makes for kind of a humorous read, honestly, because you're thinking, what is that? What happens there? But it's not explained to us. The Sea of Galilee in other gospels is actually called the Lake of Tiberias or Lake Gennesaret. And so, Sea is a little bit of an overstatement.

From north to south it's about 13 miles, and from east to west at its widest point it's about 7 miles. This is a big lake. It's called the Sea of Galilee, but in other places it's called a lake. So Jesus goes to live on a population center at this lake, at the Sea of Galilee. It's really just a base.

The foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. That's Matthew 8 verse 20. And What we're going to see during the course of today's text is that Jesus is traveling all around. He is all over Galilee. Actually, Josephus, the historian, says that there are about 200 towns and cities in Galilee.

There are about 3 million people. This is no little area. There are 200 towns and 3 million people here according to the estimates of Josephus. And so Jesus is all over that place. One of the steady Bibles that I read said it was just doing the math.

It says if Jesus is at two towns a day preaching, then He couldn't get through all the towns in Galilee in three months. So this is Galilee. And this is how Capernaum fits into Galilee. In verses 14 through 16, The prophecy of how this fits into Jesus' life is quoted. So read this with me, verses 15 and 16.

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 of the shadow of death, light has dawned." And so Matthew again is writing to his Jewish audience and he's saying, this that you see in Isaiah 9 verses 1 and 2 is what's happening. When Jesus returns to Galilee, it's that a light is dawning in Naphtali and in Zebulun. What I'd like to do now is just to take us to Isaiah 9. And the purpose of this is to see Isaiah 9 in its wider context and see all the areas of intersection between the life of Jesus and the larger context of what's being quoted here. So if you go to Isaiah 9, of course Isaiah has already been quoted liberally by Matthew.

We've already had Isaiah 7, 14. The virgin shall conceive and give birth, and he shall be called Immanuel. Then in Isaiah chapter 8, 14, He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. So Isaiah 7 talks about Jesus, Isaiah 8 talks about Jesus, and now we're at the end of 8 and into 9. And we'll actually be starting in Isaiah 8 and reading into 9.

So we're going to start at Isaiah 8 verse 16. So definitely follow along line by line here. And I'll try to point out the intersections as we hit them. Isaiah 8-16. Bind up the testimony.

Seal the law among My disciples. So here we have a mention of the disciples and the law being sealed up among them. And that absolutely intersects with our passage today. And I will wait on the Lord who hides His face from the house of Jacob. And I will hope in Him.

Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me. We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells in Mount Zion." And so This is actually words that Jesus quotes. Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me. And we see that Jesus and the people who are around Him are actually for signs and wonders to prove that He is the Messiah. And we're going to see signs and wonders in our text today.

Now verse 19. And when they say to you, seek those who are mediums and wizards who whisper and mutter, should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and the testimony, if they do not speak according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them. They will pass through it hard pressed and hungry, and it shall happen when they are hungry that they will be enraged and curse their king and their god and look upward.

Then they will look to the earth and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish, and they will be driven into darkness. And so what we're reading here explains the darkness that is on the land in the quote that Matthew is pulling forward into His Gospel. That the darkness is described as one that comes when people throw off the Word of God in favor of other counselors. You know, we all choose our counselors. And many of our counselors contradict each other.

Have any of you noticed that? The counselors out there often are contradictory. And many, many of the counselors that are out there actually contradict the Word of God. And so we're left with a choice. Do we believe the Word of God or do we believe those who whisper and mutter?

That's the contrast that's being set up in Isaiah 8. And what's being said here is that the people of Israel have chosen the whisperers and the mutterers. And as a result, they are driven into darkness. Because that is The only thing that can happen to people who reject the Word of God is that instead of the light, the illumination of the Word of God, they are plunged into darkness by choosing the other counselors out there. And so when we read to those who sat in the land of darkness, who sat in darkness in the land of the shadow of death.

That is what is being described here. A people who have thrown off the law of God in favor of other counselors. And this is the world that Jesus is entering when he returns to Galilee. He's coming into a place that although there is lip service, although there is a studiousness about the law of God, there's actually a rejection of it. And he's coming into a place that has been driven into darkness by God because people have not chosen God, but they've chosen other gods.

They've chosen to listen to the whisperers and the mutterers. So this brings us into Isaiah 9. And we'll just continue. Nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed. And so Jesus entering the scene is the nevertheless.

Even though this land has been plunged into darkness, nevertheless, Jesus will come to overthrow the darkness. Nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first he lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, Upon them a light has shined." And then skipping down to verse 6, "'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.

Upon the throne of David and over His Kingdom. To order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this." So a light is dawning. There's been a long period of darkness in Zebulun and Naphtali. And that's right where we are, right on the Sea of Galilee is where those two tribes are situated. And the darkness has been there a long time, but a light is dawning.

It's the first of the light. It's the first brightness of the light of Jesus Christ coming upon these people. And His government is coming. Look at verses 6 and 7. His government is coming.

God is bringing the government of God. And so when Jesus later in our text for the day shows up and says, repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. We're seeing the government of God just like it was laid out to us in Isaiah. So I thought it was important to go and actually look not just at these two verses, but again, to continue just to pull forward more context than Matthew pulled forward but that is so relevant to the text that we're in. So now, Back to Matthew chapter 4.

John 1-9 says this, Jesus was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. Jesus was the true light that gives light to every man coming into the world. So this helps us understand when we see that a light is dawning in this land, that Jesus is that light and He's the true light and He gives light to every man coming into the world according to John 1-9. There's two other texts that I think really help us understand the prophecy that Matthew points to and says Jesus fulfills this. The first of those texts is also from Isaiah.

And it's from Isaiah 42, 6, and 7 which says this, I the Lord have called you in righteousness and will hold your hand. I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people. So this is God the Father to His Son Jesus Christ. He says, I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people." So this is God the Father to His Son Jesus Christ. He says, "...I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.

Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. And so it's not just that a light is being dawned, but it's that prisoners are being set free. And this is the repeated message of Isaiah. And so rather than saying there are innocents sitting in darkness, what we really get from the context of Isaiah is it's not innocents at all. It's people who have imposed the darkness upon themselves, and they have imprisoned themselves, and yet Jesus Christ would come and show His mercy upon them, and would come and shine a light into the prison cell.

The other verse that really helps us is the prophecy of Zacharias. Not Zechariah, the prophet, but Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. The angel comes to him and tells him what's going to happen. And then when John the Baptist is born, he prophesies. And he prophesies about Jesus.

And here's what he says about Jesus in Luke 1, 77-79. What a whopper of a chapter to have 79 verses. And that's not all. But Luke 1, 77-79, Zacharias says this of Jesus Christ. To give knowledge of salvation to His people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God with which the day spring from on high has visited us to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace." Zechariah is saying almost exactly what Isaiah said in his prophecy.

That Jesus Christ has come to give light to those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. We see this term day spring there. Day spring just means dawning. It's the spring of the day. It's where the day springs from.

It's the dawning. So Jesus Christ is a dawning of a light that has been extinguished for a long time. And then here comes Jesus Christ to release captives, to give light to those who sat in darkness and who live in the land of the shadow of death. We also see the term here, Galilee of the Gentiles. Well, what is that all about?

This is within Israel. How does this relate to Gentiles? In 2 Kings 15, the king of Assyria comes and He takes all of Galilee and Naphtali into captivity. So all the Jews are removed from Galilee. I forget the name of the king of Syria and I remember not being able to pronounce it so it's just as well and I forget it but but he comes and he actually take all of Galilee into into captivity and he replaces them with people of his own kingdom it's a it's a people swap and that's often how conquering kings would assimilate people.

They would empty the land out and bring them into their own nation. And so they took the people of Galilee and he put them into Syria and he took people from the Syria and he put them into Galilee. And actually the Jews had to create policies to bring Jews back into Galilee even when they regained control of it. There were so many Gentiles that were already living there. They had to create policies to bring Jews back into that land.

So at the time when Jesus is here, it really is Galilee of the Gentiles. There's a lot of Jews and there's a lot of Gentiles and there's a mixed population. So there's 3 million people here and I don't know what the mix were, but there's a lot of both Jew and Gentile. In verses 17-22, Jesus begins calling disciples. So this is where the text gets really exciting.

Enough of this stuff about geography and towns and populations and things like that. Jesus is calling disciples. And Jesus came to call disciples. If you said, what's Jesus' primary work? That wouldn't be the thing that would pop out of your mouth.

You would say, He came to die. He came to go to the cross to purchase a people, to pay for the sins of the people. And yet, that is His work. That is absolutely His primary work. But there's a mechanism that is attached to His work that will actually spread the news of His work, spread the influence of His work, spread the geographical range of His work, and that is making disciples.

And so the work of Christ on the cross is never separate from making disciples. Jesus actually comes to earth and He executes a plan, putting a mechanism in place for the Gospel to go forward. And it is the making of disciples. And we have to see this as so central to the Great Commission. That disciple making is at the heart of it.

And it's been at the heart of it since Matthew 4 when Jesus began calling the first of His disciples. Here's what Peter says in 1 Peter 2.9. And this actually might be a summary of the whole passage. 1 Peter 2.9 is incredibly critical to understanding what's here. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." So you see how this fits with this passage.

Peter is talking about a people who have been called out of darkness into His marvelous light. And he says, You're that people who have been called out of darkness. You've been called out of darkness into light. You are a chosen generation. You're a royal priesthood.

You're a holy nation. And that has a purpose. And Peter tells us in this verse what the purpose is. That you may proclaim the praises of Him." And so this is the Great Commission. There is a God who is worthy of praise, who takes people who sit in darkness in the land of the shadow of death and He shines light on them.

He liberates them. He takes them out of the prison. And He makes them a holy nation who weren't even a people. And it is that they would proclaim His praises. So discipleship and the Great Commission are just hand in hand.

The Gospel and making disciples are inextricably linked. Now, verse 17 starts with a phrase that's really important, and I didn't know it was important until this week. But the phrase is, from that time. You say, well that's an innocuous enough phrase. From that time, what's the big deal with that?

It actually occurs twice in Matthew. Here, and in chapter 16 verse 21. So here it says, from that time, well, let me not do it from memory. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And this is signaling the launch of Jesus into His public ministry and says a summary statement of what he'll be saying throughout that public ministry.

Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And so this is a dividing point. From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say. Now when we get to chapter 16 verse 21, we see the same phrase again. From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things and be killed and be raised the third day.

So this time when we say from that time, it's a line of demarcation that says Jesus is going to be preaching this message. This will be His public ministry. This is what the following chapters are about. From that time Jesus began to. And then when we see it again in 16 v.

21, from that time Jesus began to, then it shifts from public ministry, the preaching to actually the work of the cross. From the time of 16 v. 21, Jesus' ministry shifts into the final phase where He'll actually be talking a lot about what must happen to the Messiah so that a people could be purchased. So when we see the phrase in 17, from that time, it's really significant because if we were just dividing Matthew along the simplest lines, we would say, chapter 1 verse 1, to hear, from that time is a section. And then There's another section, the public ministry of Jesus, and then the final section which is about His death and resurrection.

Verse 17, Jesus begins to preach and to say, Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And he's using exactly the same words that we saw John the Baptist use in chapter 3. It's a message of repentance. And preaching is central to what Jesus is doing. Preaching is central to it. Romans 10, Paul says this, starting in verse 14.

Romans 10, 14. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard. And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things. But they have not all obeyed the Gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So then, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And the point that Paul is making is that the Gospel is not spread by magic. That the Gospel is given very specific means for its spread.

And it is preaching, and as we'll see, it's also discipleship. But how shall they believe if they haven't heard? And how shall they hear if there's no preacher? And so preaching has always been central. Will always be central because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

And so God in all ages puts men in place to preach the Word of God so people will hear, so that faith can be born within them through the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul, when he's exhorting Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, says, preach the Word in season and out of season. Here's what J.C. Ryle says about the message that Jesus is preaching, repent. J.C.

Ryle says this, let us notice the first doctrine which the Lord Jesus proclaimed to the world. He began to say, repent. The necessity of repentance is one of the great foundations which lie at the very bottom of Christianity. It needs to be pressed on all mankind without exception. High or low, rich or poor, all have sinned and are guilty before God and all must repent and be converted if they would be saved.

And that is what Jesus is beginning to do. He's beginning to press on all mankind the message of repentance, that all are guilty before Him, and that rich and poor, high or low, all have sinned. And if they are to be converted, they must repent and turn away from their sins and turn towards God, trusting in Jesus Christ. In Mark, When Mark quotes the preaching of Jesus, he says, repent and believe the Gospel. So Mark's account of this actually adds, and believe the Gospel.

And that's really just the beginning of an exposition on repentance, isn't it? Repentance is a turning from something and a towards something else. So in Mark, Mark just goes a little bit further. And he begins to give the exposition that Jesus was giving that the turning from something actually meant turning towards Him and trusting in Him. In verse 18, we see Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee and He sees two fishermen who are brothers.

And it's Simon and it's Andrew. Simon is actually a Jewish name. And Andrew actually is a Greek name. And this is such a perfect picture for what we see in Galilee, this mixed multitude in Galilee. It's Galilee of the Gentiles where one brother might have a Jewish name and another brother might have a Gentile name.

And there they are living with seemingly no contradiction. And these two men we learned from Luke's account were actually born in Bethsaida. So they're in Capernaum now, but they were born in Bethsaida, which is just right around the lake. Maybe a quarter turn around the Lake of Galilee from Capernaum is Bethsaida. And Bethsaida is actually, if you were to just translate, if you were to transliterate the word, it would be fish town.

So here's two brothers from fish town. Literally, house of fish. House of fish. Here's two brothers from Fishtown. And this is what they know how to do.

And this is what they're doing. And In verse 19, Jesus calls them to be disciples. He says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Now I want us to go at this point to turn our Bibles to John 1. Because I was mentioning earlier that this is not their first encounter with Jesus.

And that's right, it wasn't. So in John 1 starting in verse 35, we get the history of Jesus and Andrew and Peter. And actually the history extends to Andrew before it extends to Peter as we'll see. But this is the first time that they met. John 1 starting in verse 35.

Again, the next day, John the Baptist stood with two of his disciples. So here we have John the Baptist and two of John the Baptist's disciples. And looking at Jesus As he walked, he said, Behold the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and seeing them following, said to them, What do you seek?

They said to him, Rabbi, which is to say when translated to teacher, where are you staying? He said to them, come and see. They came and saw where he was staying and remained with him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. Now when Jesus looked at him, He said, you are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas, which is translated a stone. So a year before Jesus calls Andrew and Peter to follow Him and come and live with Him and be His disciples, we have this encounter where Andrew, who is actually a disciple of John the Baptist, hears John the Baptist say, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And he's with this other person who's unnamed. The commentators say it was probably John. John's always leaving himself out of things in his own account. So it's probably him. Maybe it was.

Maybe it wasn't. But these two disciples followed Jesus because they've just heard John the Baptist proclaim that he's the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. And Andrew spends the day with Jesus at wherever it is that He's dwelling. And out of that experience, He goes to get Peter and says, we found the Messiah. And Jesus actually gives Simon a different name at this time.

And then, so a year goes by, how much contact do they have in this year? We don't know. Was it exactly a year? We don't know. But time has passed.

But this may come as a grave disappointment to some of you who just thought it was so miraculous that they just jumped out of their boat and followed Jesus, this man who they had never met before. Well, it's still miraculous, but maybe not in the way that we've long thought. And so these men who had had an encounter with Jesus previously are called to actually follow Him and to be His disciples. At that time, if you were going to be a disciple, it wasn't a classroom setting. There was no chalkboard and desk to put your gum under.

It was walk along, talk along discipleship. Follow Me literally means come behind Me. And That's what we see the disciples doing from the next whatever chapters. They're following behind Him. Now think about Galilee and what we know about Galilee.

Two hundred cities and towns, three million people. That is a lot of preaching. We're going to see He was all over Galilee as we work through the passage, we're going to see some really comprehensive language that makes us know that He was everywhere in Galilee. And there they are. They're following behind Him.

They're hearing him preach time after time after time. Probably very similar messages. That's my guess is he was preaching repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and other things as well. And yet the disciples are behind him and they're hearing him preach. And they're participating in the debriefs after the preaching.

Teacher, what did you mean by this? Teacher, explain this to us. And they're living with him. And they've become his trainees. Here's what Matthew Henry says.

It is Jesus Christ that makes them so. I will make you fishers of man. It is He that qualifies men for this work, calls them to it, authorizes them in it, gives them commission to fish for souls and wisdom to win them. Those whom Christ employs in any service for Him must be fitted and qualified for it. Those who would preach Christ must first learn Christ and learn of Him." So the last sentence there is the punchline.

Those who would preach Christ must first learn Christ and learn of Him. So this is what's happening. He is calling them to follow Him, and He's saying, I'll make you into something that you're not. You know how to fish for the slimy things with scales now, but I'll make you into one who knows how to fish for men. And again, see how this fits with the Great Commission.

Matthew 28, 19, and 20. Go therefore and what? And make disciples. Jesus is saying, He's calling disciples. He's saying follow Me, walk with Me, be with Me, hear Me.

And so the disciples have to understand when Jesus gives them the Great Commission at the very end that He's talking about the process that they've been engaged with for three years. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you." So what we're seeing here is the beginning of Jesus actually walking out the Great Commission and showing His disciples how to do it. That He's calling disciples, but He's also calling disciple makers. He hasn't called them to that yet, but He will call them to that in the future. In verses 21 and 22, we see a repeat.

There's two more brothers. And Jesus calls them to be His disciples and they follow Him. And in the first instance it was Andrew and Peter. In this instance it's James and John. And they're actually in the boat with their father Zebedee.

And in Mark 1-20 we learn that they're in the boat also with hired servants of the boat. And in Luke 5 verse 10 we learn that actually Andrew and Peter are partners with James and John. So these are not disconnected men. These are actually business partners. So look it up if you want to.

Luke 5.10 says that James and John are partners with Andrew and Peter. And Mark 1.20 says that they actually have hired servants in the boat with them and their father Zebedee. So these are not ignorant men who are fishing for their next meal. You have the picture. These are businessmen who have hired people to help them in the fishing, and they have business partners.

So it might not be a sophisticated business. And They might not smell as good as some of the businessmen that you know because of their occupation, but these are men who are actually running a business and this is their occupation. Jesus says this in Luke 14 verse 26. If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. And Jesus is making a call for them to leave everything.

When we get to Matthew 19, Peter's going to say, we left everything, what do we get? And Jesus actually, instead of rebuking Him for that question, says, you'll get a hundred fold even in this life for following Me. And so Jesus is actually making a call that they would leave everything. And they actually do it. They leave everything.

And this is the call of Jesus Christ. That our allegiance to Him and our devotion to Him would be so intense that these other relationships which are also called throughout the whole counsel of God to be valued, to be honored, to be attended to, like the relationship with your mother and father, like the relationship with your spouse, that those devotions would have such a gulf between them that one would be considered hatred, even though it's not really hatred. And this is what Jesus calls His disciples to. And we need not think that the call to Peter and Andrew and to James and John are so fundamentally different than the call that Jesus has for us. The call of a disciple is a call to forsake all and to consider all other allegiances as hatred compared to our love and devotion to Him.

Do we have that, brothers and sisters? Have we understood the nature of the calling of a disciple and that we are called indeed to be his disciples. That we are called indeed to be willing to give up everything and to count all of the other things that we hold dear as nothing compared to having Christ. So Andrew and Peter and James and John are like Abraham. He went out not knowing where he was going.

And so are these men. They're not given any guarantees or promises. They're just called to follow Him and told that they'll be made into something that they're not through the training and discipleship that Jesus will provide. Notice this. In both cases, here's verse 20.

They immediately left their nets and followed Him. And in verse 22, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him. How many godly examples have we had of a prompt, cheerful obedience? We saw it with Joseph and Mary in the early chapters. They would be told something by God and immediately they would get up in the middle of the night and do it.

And this is a similar obedience. This is the obedience of Mary and Joseph. This is the obedience of Andrew and Peter. This is the obedience of James and John. And this should be the obedience of us.

That we offer it immediately. That we offer it freely and cheerfully to our Lord. Here's John Calvin's motto. And it was his motto so much that it became a seal. If you got a message from John Calvin, he would put his seal on it.

Wow, that woke some people up. He would put his seal on it, and here's what his seal said, My heart I give you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely. My heart I give you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely. Did John Calvin make that up? No, he got it from Mary and Joseph.

No, he got it from Peter and Andrew. No, he got it from James and John because they were people who said, my heart, O Lord, I give you promptly and sincerely. This should be our motto and our seal as well. Two final points on Jesus Calling Disciples. And for the first one, I want to take us to 1 Corinthians 1.

So turn to 1 Corinthians 1 please. 1 Corinthians 1 has such a bearing on what's happening with Jesus calling the disciples. And we're starting in verse 26. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 26. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, Not many mighty, not many noble are called.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty and the base things of the world and the things which are despised, God has chosen. And the things which are not to bring to nothing the things that are. That no flesh should glory in His presence. What If you were charged with putting together a team of twelve to take over the world, to turn the world upside down, would you be looking for fishermen?

Would you be walking along the sea? But Jesus does. And God is casting down the wise things of this world. He did not go to the scribes and Pharisees to find the most well-educated, although we do find him calling Paul later. But we see that he is no respecter of backgrounds and that he'll take men who are faithful in the things that they've been given to do that are industrious and working at things.

Here's why Jesus does this. Because He knows He can make them into something else. Jesus Christ can make us into something else. And so if we've been called by God, this might not be so flattering. Because it might very well be that He's taken the weak things of the world, the despised things of the world, the foolish things of the world, because He knows He can bring glory to Himself by taking them and making them something that they were not.

By taking the things that are and casting them down and raising up the weak and foolish things of the world. May it be so among us. May we be weaker still, more foolish still, more despised still, So that we would be useful in the hands of our God so that He could come among us to make us something that we never have been and never could have been without the hand of God upon us. Follow me and I will make you fishers of man." Here's what Matthew Henry says, Diligence in an honest calling is pleasing to Christ, and no hindrance to a holy life. Moses was called from keeping sheep, and David from following the use to eminent employments.

Idle people are more open to the temptations of Satan than to the calls of God. Idle people are more open to the temptations of Satan, to the calls of God. And so Jesus finds these men. They're doing what they had been given to do. They're being faithful with a few things.

And He's about to give them much. Much to do. Diligence and an honest calling is pleasing to Christ. So whatever God has put before us to do, we should be faithful in it. Trusting that He'll give us more as we prove ourselves faithful for these things.

And not despise that we have a job that's as mundane as fishing. But that our call is to worship Him through faithfulness in the things that we've been given. And being content with the things that we've been given. All right, verses 23-25, The last section. Here we find Jesus teaching, preaching, and healing.

Verse 23, Jesus went about all Galilee. So about all these towns and cities. Among all these 3 million people, Jesus is everywhere. And think about the great itinerant preachers. Think about George Whitfield and the schedule he kept.

And just wearing himself out, think of John Wesley and his circuits where He would go preaching from town to town to town to town. Jesus preceded them in this. They were not the first mighty itinerant preachers. Jesus was a mightier, maybe more itinerant preacher. He had nowhere to lay His head.

He had this one base that He would return to occasionally in Capernaum. And yet, he was throughout all Galilee. And he's going to them. And he's going to them where people who say they have some sort of an honor of the Scriptures are already appointed to gather. He's going to them and He's teaching to them in the synagogues.

And what is He saying to them? He's proclaiming to them. Sometimes we get hung up on the word preaching. If you need to just sub that out for proclaiming to make it sound like any of us can and should do it, well then let's do that. Preaching is definitely an authoritative proclamation.

And maybe we all won't be given a preaching ministry, but preaching at its heart is a proclamation. And we all have a duty to proclaim the goodness of God. And He's proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. I ran across a verse that I don't remember. I know I've read it in the past.

But one of the commentators, I think it was Calvin, actually referenced this in Revelation 14, verses 6 and 7. And it talks about an everlasting Gospel. Now if there's a passage that talks about an everlasting gospel, I want to know what it says, doesn't it? If it's a gospel that won't pass away? And so this is what is spoken of in Revelation 14, 6, and 7, an everlasting gospel.

Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come, and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water." You say, well, that doesn't have anything about Jesus and dying on the cross. How can that be the Gospel? Well, it is calling to a worship of the true God. And so, would we say that is the whole Gospel? That's all that there is to the Gospel?

Or that this is some sort of a different Gospel than the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection? No. It's just that this is a great summary statement of the Gospel. Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water. So it's a call to worship the one true God.

And that wrapped up in that is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it's not a separate Gospel at all. In Matthew 24, verse 14 it says, and this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. So we have a promise that the Gospel that Jesus was preaching is an everlasting Gospel, and it's a Gospel that would be preached to every tribe, tongue, and nation. And then the end will come.

What we also learn about this teaching is that it's a different kind of teaching. It was not run-of-the-mill teaching by the scribes at the time. The people, clearly, in a couple of different places we see this, the people were used to a kind of teaching and Jesus was not doing that. I mentioned that the Sermon on the Mount is three chapters full of nothing but red letters except for the last two verses of the three chapters. And in those last two verses, we learn that the people were amazed by His teaching because He taught as one having authority and not as the scribes.

So Jesus is showing up at these synagogues and it's not run-of-the-mill teaching. He's coming and actually teaching with authority. So the scribes have been teaching about God, educating, it's law, it's whatever they were saying, it was not the authoritative preaching that Jesus was bringing. So people are refreshed by it. People are amazed by it.

And they recognize that There's something very different here. In verses 23 and 24 we see that Jesus is healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. So the phrase all kinds is used repeatedly here. There's no sickness that Jesus is encountering during this period of time that He can't heal. In fact, there are none that exist that He can't heal.

But that's what's being indicated here, that all kinds of sicknesses and all kinds of diseases. And then they are itemized. Various diseases and torments are being healed. Demon possession is being healed. Epileptics.

Actually, in the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible, it says those which were lunatic. I think epileptics might not be a helpful translation in this sense because a lunatic definitely is a more literal translation and has a different connotation. And so the point from the text is people with body problems are coming and being healed by Jesus. People with spirit problems, the demon possessed, are coming to Jesus and being healed. People with mind problems, the lunatics, are coming to Jesus and being healed.

And so Jesus is healing mind, body, and spirit. He's healing paralytics. And then this serves as a great summary section because we know what Jesus is doing and that He's healing. And that's wonderful. But we miss the human element here.

We miss that it's actual people coming with various torments. These are the people who have been tormented with things that are coming to Jesus and being released for the first time. How long? The woman with the issue of blood, how many years was it? It was years and years as she spent all her wealth.

And so we get the summary statement here. But thankfully as we go through Matthew, we actually begin to see individual instances where people whose lives have been ruled by sicknesses and demon possession and being out of their mind are actually healed by Jesus. Actually, before too long, we'll see that He healed Peter's mother-in-law. And so this even extends to the families of the disciples. Seeing these descriptions of the sicknesses made me think back to our time in Deuteronomy and the curses.

Because you have this itemization, right, it's various diseases and torments, it's demon possessions, it's those which were lunatic, it's paralytics, And this just triggered something in my mind to think, wow, we saw these things in the curses in Deuteronomy 28. So I just want to read the parts of this that overlap from Deuteronomy 28. And I'll go fast because we're running low on time. But I just want you to see, Jesus is overturning the curses. When Jesus comes and He preaches a gospel of repentance that people should turn towards Him, and He begins to heal people, Jesus is beginning the process of overthrowing the curses of Deuteronomy 28.

Deuteronomy 28 verse 15. "...But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And if you missed it, because we've been going a while and you just weren't paying attention, if you missed it, this is us. These are people who do not obey to observe carefully all the commandments and his statutes. This is us.

We do not carefully obey all of his statutes. That's you and that is me. So here's what pertains to us as a result of that. Verse 22, The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever. They shall pursue you until you perish.

Verses 27 and 28. The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab and with the itch from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. Verse 35. The Lord will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head." Verses 58-61.

If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God. Then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues, great and prolonged plagues, and serious and prolonged sicknesses. Moreover, He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they shall cling you. Also, every sickness and every plague, which is not written in the book of the law, the Lord will bring upon you until you are destroyed." And so in Deuteronomy 28 we have the Lord will strike you. The Lord will strike you.

The Lord will strike you. The Lord will bring upon you. Do you remember being in Deuteronomy 28 and just being terrified by the thought that us not giving careful attention to every commandment of God brings this upon us. And you know what? It's the righteous judgment of God.

God is not wrong to do that. God is right to do that. He made you. He has a claim upon you. He has sent a Redeemer.

He is right to bring the curses, to bring all these things upon us, to strike us in our wickedness and our disobedience. But Jesus Christ came to be a curse for us. The curses of Deuteronomy 28, as right as they are, as righteous as they are, that God would bring this upon a rebellious people, those curses are overthrown upon Jesus Christ who came to be a curse for us. Galatians 3.13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. And so as we see Jesus come onto the scene and begin to heal, We should understand that this means that He has overthrown the curses of the law becoming a curse for us.

And this is a foreshadowing of His work on the cross that He overthrows the curses that God would rightly bring upon a people that would resist Him, that would rebel against their own Maker. What insanity that we would rebel against our Maker. And yet Jesus Christ has come to be a curse on us. And we saw this already in Matthew 1-21. You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.

And to be saved from your sins also means being saved from many of the consequences that go along with that. Now does that mean that Am I preaching a health and wealth gospel that now that we're in Jesus that we'll never encounter sickness or anything? No, but I'm just saying that there's more to being saved from your sins to just saying you get to go to heaven. Although that's the most glorious thing And that's the thing that we should cling to with the most tenacity that many other of these curses that ought to be upon us. It's not a surprise that people are sick.

It's a surprise that people are well. It is the sign of the mercy of God that we're all not sick like this. Because if we look at what we deserve and what we have, we say there's something that has bridged the gap for us and it is Jesus Christ. We also see that these are not sideshow miracles. In the temptations, Satan says, throw yourself down off the pinnacle of the temple to prove that you're the Son of God.

That would be a sideshow miracle. Just show that you're mighty. And yet these are actual acts of mercy. They're not gratuitous miracles. But they are acts of mercy on people because Jesus has mercy.

Because Jesus is full of mercy. So you say, oh, it must have been wonderful to be in Capernaum during this time. All these signs and miracles, all this wonderful preaching with authority that we never saw out of the scribes. How wonderful. And yet, as happy as the thought is, for many, for most of these people, it was not happy.

Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 11. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. These are towns in Galilee. This is right where Jesus is preaching and doing these miracles.

For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment and then for you. And you Capernaum who were exalted to heaven will be brought down to Hades." So this is where Jesus went to dwell in Capernaum. It says, you were exalted to heaven, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.

But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you." The reality is When the light comes and dawns on a region, it comes with a responsibility. Jesus Christ was this light. And it was wonderful. And it was redeeming for those who had been given eyes to see. But Light is not good for the blind.

Light does not help the blind. And there were many in these places that actually it increased their judgment to have these miracles done among them. And this should make us sobering. This should make us sobering. We who have the Bible and can buy one for $3 and know what Jesus Christ has done and have the full testimony of God that all the saints from time past would have loved to have known what we know.

And there's a great responsibility. And Jesus says, woe to you, woe to you, woe to you. If the signs and wonders that have been done in your midst were done in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. In verse 25 we see, Great multitudes followed Him from Galilee and from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan." His fame spread far and wide. That's what that means.

And in the parallel passage in Mark, we see that Jesus cleanses a leper, and he tells the leper, shh, don't tell people. And here's Mark 1.45, However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city but was outside in deserted places. And they came to him from every direction. So this is Jesus in Capernaum. He heals a leper.

He says, be quiet. He won't be quiet. He speaks freely of the matter. And the crowds become so intense that he can't stay in Capernaum anymore because he's recognized and everybody wants to be there. And so he has to go out into the deserted places and people are coming out to him there.

And then right after that in Mark 22, we have this account where it's so crowded in the house that these men who bring the paralytic can't get in the door so they lower him down in the roof. This is that period of ministry. And this is really the backdrop for the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus, His preaching is so amazing, His teaching is so amazing, and He's healing people and He's doing miracles, and his ministry is so much on the rise that he can't even stay in Capernaum. And this is the context of the Sermon on the Mount which we'll start into next week.

A couple of applications. The people of this time were a people who sat in darkness, who dwelt in the land of the valley of the shadow of death. And Jesus says in John 3 that men love darkness. That is the condemnation. Well, here's John 3.19.

And this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. And so the application is we should be pleading with the Lord to show us the areas where we still love darkness. Where we've rejected the law of God and God has actually driven us into darkness. The pangs of your conscience are very sharp at first. And then we dull them through repeated disobedience.

And there may be areas of your life where the pangs of conscience are way beyond sharp. They haven't been sharp in years in certain categories in your life. Because of repeated disobedience, you have blunted the sharpness of your conscience. And we need for God to find us in that category, huddled up in darkness, and to shine the light again. We have banished the light because we love darkness instead.

We wanted it instead. We need God to come and shine light where we have brought darkness upon ourselves. The second application. Follow Jesus. Jesus made them fishers of men because they followed Him.

They were just there. They were at His feet listening. And We build our lives around so many routines. And routines are good. By all means, have routines.

Have the best routines out there, but don't get lulled to sleep by your routines. As if having The routines are the same thing as following Jesus. They're not always. They can help you follow Jesus. But it's very easy to become sterile and mechanical in these things so that it stops being about following Jesus and it starts being about a life that you envisioned or something else.

And we ought to be following Jesus. We ought to have our eyes upon Him, the author and perfecter of our faith. And lastly, consider the curses that we deserve. And consider that Jesus became a curse for us. God is so merciful that we lose sight.

Often we lose sight because His mercy is great. Because we're not sick every day. But when we read Deuteronomy 28, I think we just need a Deuteronomy 28 refresher maybe once a month or something like that, to cause us to realize what we deserve if God would give us what we deserve. And how abundant His mercy is toward us that He doesn't treat us as He has a right to treat us. We deserve the curses.

Jesus Christ came to become a curse for us, to deliver us from the curses of the law. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that You have come to a people who sat in darkness. We thank You that You make disciples.

We thank You that You preached and healed. And we're so full of mercy in Your time on earth, we pray that You would make us like You. You would help us to follow after You. Not just to order our lives after a routine that would be acceptable to the people around us, but to really press into knowing you. God, I pray that You would free us from a dead religion that makes us acceptable to our friends.

But all the while, our hearts are cold within us. God, we know this. This is a trend that happens over and over again. We need You to come and refresh us and revive us and call us back to us. I pray, God, that Your Spirit would be free among us to call us back to following You.

That our hearts would be Yours promptly and fully and cheerfully. God, we thank you for your Word, in Jesus' name, Amen.