Introduction
Do you like change? Some people do; they enjoy new experiences and find unpredictability exciting.
If you’re a regular here, think about where you’re sitting right now. Is it pretty much where you always sit? Probably yes.
You see, many of us are creatures of habit and we are naturally resistant to change. We don’t like upheaval. We feel more comfortable when things are just like before.
Moving house, starting a new job, getting new, inexperienced colleagues to work with, facing new challenges, and dealing with things you’ve never had to deal with before have all been shown to increase stress.
And I say all this because our passage from Matthew today finds Jesus facing every one of those changes I just listed, all at the same time.
Gone is the familiarity of the family home with mum’s cooking; Jesus is moving from Nazareth to Capernaum.
Gone is the security of a settled job as a skilled joiner. Jesus is starting work as a preacher with no regular income.
Gone is the safety net of his dad’s experience and expertise in the workshop. Jesus, the teacher, has 4 new assistants, all of whom have only ever known manual work on a fishing boat.
And gone is the quiet life where he can go around unnoticed. Jesus now cannot go anywhere without hundreds of needy people desperate to get a piece of him.
But Jesus is going to handle all that stress amazingly well, not least because, as we saw last week, his preparation in the desert has made him exceptionally tough and resilient.
Let’s pick up where we left off last week in Matthew’s Gospel, immediately following Jesus' baptism and testing, and read to the end of chapter 4.
When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali - to fulfil what was said through the prophet Isaiah: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles - the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.
Prayer…
This is the start of Jesus’ public ministry and it begins with Jesus having to absorb the ominous and disturbing news about his cousin John has got into a scrape with King Herod and is now behind bars.
John is a victim of cancel culture. We think of this as a 21st century thing, but actually it’s always been around in some form.
Cancel culture is how powerful elites treat those who say things that they deem unacceptable, or taboo. Anyone who does not toe a party line has to be muted, shamed, shunned and tainted.
Our self-righteous society judges and cancels people all the time for their perceived wrongdoing but Jesus never cancels anyone. Instead, he cancels only the wrongdoing of those who come to him in faith.
And then, he restores them, he puts them back together, and he makes all things new. That’s grace. Isn’t it beautiful?
Well, I see four things in this passage of scripture for us and I’m going to call them obscurity, simplicity, community and authority.
1. Obscurity (4.12-16)
Firstly, obscurity. If you’ve ever been on holiday to Israel, you probably spent a week in Jerusalem to the south and a week in Galilee in the north.
Jerusalem, now as in Jesus’ time, is a noisy, bustling, crowded and claustrophobic place with ancient walls, dirty streets, busy market places and political tensions.
Jerusalem was then, and is now, where all the culture is located, where the big religious sites are, where all the power is concentrated and where all the money is.
But Galilee, then as now, breathes a different air. It is quieter, more scenic and more rural. Many people live there, but it’s a much larger area, so it is noticeably more sparsely populated.
The mindset in Jerusalem is narrow and nationalist. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus will be hated and opposed down south, but very popular in the more cosmopolitan and mixed north. That’s why they called it, a bit contemptuously, Galilee of the Gentiles.
No one prominent or famous ever came from Galilee; it had no real cultural, historical or religious significance. In fact, there was nothing noteworthy about Galilee at all.
But around 750BC, the prophet Isaiah said that one day something of unparalleled magnitude would happen in Israel.
Isaiah 9 is about the depressing spiritual darkness that for centuries had choked the life out of God’s chosen people the Jews. Isaiah said that this heaviness would one day be lifted. “A child will be born,” he said. “God will give a son to his people.”
And it won’t happen where everyone expects it to; Jerusalem. It will come to pass in Galilee, the very last place in Israel an Orthodox Jew would think of. This dazzling light, this bright new day, will dawn in the back of beyond
To put this in terms we can understand, think of London; our vast, world-class capital city with its Buckingham Palace, its Westminster Abbey, it’s Parliament, its Harrods, its Royal Albert Hall, its National Gallery, its West End, its Old Bailey, its BBC Broadcasting House, its Mayfair, its Wembley and its Wimbledon…
Imagine a prophetic word over our nation where God says, “A bright new dawn is coming; for a great and mighty ruler will arise… and behold he shall come from Barnsley.”
The Bible says that God purposely chooses what we see as foolish, weak, lowly and despised over what we see as wise, strong and impressive.
If ever you feel unimportant, or unimpressive, or insignificant or worthless, or written off, if you ever say to yourself, “who am I that God would take a look my way?,” remember that he chose the unimportant backwater land of Galilee for Jesus’ public ministry to change the world.
2. Simplicity (4.17)
Secondly simplicity. Verse 17 contains the first words Matthew records of Jesus’ public ministry. 9 simple words in English. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
There’s a story about a vicar and his longsuffering congregation at the end of a service. They’re all filing out and shaking hands, until someone stops and says, “I want to thank you for that sermon vicar; I’ve never understood that subject and I still don’t – but now I don’t understand it at a much higher level!”
I love it that Jesus didn’t go around with a complex message that only intellectuals can understand. Jesus is straight-talking and unpretentious.
As we’ve just seen, it’s a very dangerous time to go around saying the sort of things that John the Baptist said.
But compare 3.2, which summarises John’s preaching, and 4.17 which summarises that of Jesus. It is - word for word - exactly the same.
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Jesus starts his public ministry, utterly fearless, and totally unfazed by threats. He is completely unconcerned by the real and present danger of arrest and imprisonment.
There are over 80 different instances in the Gospels where Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God.
It means God’s way of doing things. When Jesus says it has come near, he is saying that, with him around, the powers of heaven are breaking in and shaking everything up. It’s like two giant tectonic plates colliding and causing a spiritual earthquake.
There is though one thing required of us in response. “Repent.”
Repentance is a misunderstood word. It means much more than feeling bad about what you’ve done. It means more than saying sorry. It even means more than being sorry.
It is a decision we make to start thinking differently because we are not going to go on as before. That’s what this word means.
We are going to have to, first of all, acknowledge that our natural disposition is rebellion against God and, secondly, radically change course. There needs to be a shift in thinking and a change of direction.
Maybe someone here today is feeling in their heart right now that today is the day things are going to change. New thinking. About turn. New direction.
I did this when I was 17. I abruptly changed the course I was on, pointed my life in the opposite direction and began again. It was the best thing I ever did. Not once since that day have I regretted giving Christ the keys of my life.
3. Community (v18-22)
Obscurity, simplicity, and then community.
If anyone was ever qualified to operate as a one-man band it was Jesus. He is the Son of God, perfect in every way, and easily the most amazing figure in human history. Anyone else joining his team is only going to make it worse.
But isn’t it wonderful that Jesus makes it crystal clear right at the outset that his way is to work with and through others. You get to be on the team!
And when you do, everything changes. Jesus says “leave your nets, forget fishing. Join me in fishing for people instead.”
Over the years, so many new Christians have said to me, “All my values have changed since I started following Jesus. Material things have become less important. And people have become more important.”
So Jesus calls out to these four guys. “Who wants to be on my team?” and without hesitation, they all leave everything behind – their jobs, their security, their homes and they say, “I’m in.”
When you read Matthew on its own, you get the impression that this is the first time Jesus meets these men, but when you read it alongside John’s Gospel, you realise that they had already met before around the time John was baptizing.
This isn’t a brainwashing cult. Peter, Andrew, James and John have already seen Jesus at work. They’ve weighed it up, and they have concluded that he is the real deal.
We know Peter was married because in chapter 8 Jesus heals his mother-in-law. It seems Peter leaves everything to follow Jesus without even consulting his wife. I wonder what she thought about that?
Ladies, those of you who are married, what are you thinking when your breadwinning husband comes home and tells you that he has decided to jack in his job and start walking round the country with this guy he spoke with that morning?
But it seems she is an amazing woman of faith too and she joins the travelling band of disciples herself.
Because Paul mentions her, and many other women actually, as part of a wider group of disciples in 1 Corinthians 9.5. “Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife,” he says, “as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Peter?”
I know a guy called Marc, who is from Paris. At the time I first met him he was Deputy Director of Acquisitions and Mergers at a major international bank in the City of London. And it’s while he was living in London that he signed up for an Alpha Course. It changed his life.
A few years later, he left his very highly paid executive job to become Director of the Alpha Course in France. Now, was that a sign of madness or a proof of faith?
His colleagues were in no doubt. They thought he had lost his mind. To quit a lucrative career in high finance to go and build up a Christian ministry in the land of atheist philosophers like Voltaire, Diderot and Sartre, where organised religion is in rapid decline – it’s irresponsible. It’s bordering on lunacy. It’s career suicide!
But God blessed that step of faith. Under his leadership, in his first 5 years alone, the number of registered Alpha courses in France grew from 30 to 350, in all denominations and in every region of the country.
Humanly speaking, to achieve such a rate of growth, under God, Marc had to work really hard and make himself sacrificially available, taking no salary or even expenses, travelling the length and breadth of the land.
That’s not easy to do when you have a growing family with three young children and a mortgage.
Someone once said, “Ships are never safer than when they are in a harbour. But that is not what ships were made for.”
Marc, like many people before him, heard the voice of the Lord say to him, “Follow me!” And he stood up to follow Jesus without looking around him or behind him.
I cannot think of a single example anywhere in the Bible where God asks someone to do something easy. But God never lets you down.
The Lord provided for all Marc’s family’s needs and he blessed that step of faith multiple times over.
Sometimes, God’s call comes slowly and is like a faint whisper. Other times it is sudden and clear like it seems to have been here.
However, the Lord speaks to you, you were made for adventure. Are you going to be audacious, take risks, stand up, push the boundaries, and follow wherever he leads?
Jesus is still looking for people who are ready and willing to step out in faith.
Three times in this short extract Matthew says that people followed Jesus; foreigners as well as locals, large crowds and individuals; men in their prime and everyone else leaving the past behind.
4. Authority (4.23-25)
Finally, authority. Jesus’ words about the kingdom are accompanied by works of power.
A few years ago, someone I know who was training to be a church leader in a major denomination posted the following status update on Facebook.
“Just had a lecture on missiology which included a very broad and incisive view of church and mission... The orientation themes were placed in a new context. We looked at… a view of critical correlation and the questions we need to bring to Scripture and the view we have of the world. Then we spent time with a social cognitive discourse analysis on the wonder of the hybrid person. We even looked at epigenetics and how the church can suppress who we truly are, yet in embracing our DNA, we can be freed to bring that part of our humanity to the light.”
Hands up if you understood any of that. Hands up if that’s what gets you out of bed and into church on a Sunday.
Good grief! Why are we training people to empty churches up and down the country? That is just hot air. It is pretentious, pompous garbage.
We should be training future church leaders to lead people to Christ, to shepherd straying sheep, to connect with ordinary people, to heal the sick, to drive out evil spirits and mobilise every believer in their care.
In Matthew 4.23-25, Jesus encounters people suffering with various diseases, some in severe pain, some demon possessed, some with seizures, others paralysed.
These are serious, even hopeless, conditions. Two millennia later there’s little or nothing advanced modern medicine can do to treat that kind of complaint. But when Jesus is around it just says, “He healed them.”
Was it perhaps his social cognitive discourse analysis about the hybrid person and epigenetics that made such an impact?
There’s a church in West Yorkshire that grew out of a few people coming to faith at a foodbank and it became a spiritual home to homeless and marginalised people, recovering addicts, ex-offenders and the like. They baptized about 100 people in one year as the Holy Spirit fell in power on them.
One evening, a Wiccan High Priestess visited that church. She was standing at the back as people sang “This is Amazing Grace”, and she found she couldn’t move, she was physically rooted to the spot while waves of love and grace washed over her.
She met with the living God that day, she immediately renounced her life as a Wiccan (that’s repentance) and she started to follow Jesus. She actually became a key staff member there.
Another Sunday, it all started kicking off; phones kept ringing with distracting ringtones, a group was talking loudly among themselves and a fight was all but breaking out in one corner. All this during the worship time.
Prompted by the Holy Spirit, they stopped everything mid-song and explained that they needed to pray against a spirit of distraction. As soon as that had happened, the Holy Spirit came in power.
The worship time that followed was electric. At the end of the meeting, they discovered that a visitor had given his life to Jesus and another man was healed of lung cancer which was later verified by doctors.
That’s what it looks like when the kingdom of God comes near.
This is what Jesus does not just a long time ago and a long way away. This is Jesus’ authority in England. In the 21st Century.
Pray we see it more and more. There’s literally a line in the Lord’s Prayer that asks that we will; your kingdom come.
Ending
True story to end: a British agriculture student was researching efficient farming methods around the world. How do you get the best out of the soil? How do you maximise yields? How do you cut costs? How do you farm more sustainably? And part of his research took him to Australia, home to one of the biggest farms on earth.
There’s a sheep farm in the outback about the size of Yorkshire. His staff have to travel up and down the farm by helicopter. How on earth do you manage the logistics on a farm as vast as that? How can you keep an eye on even half of what’s going on?
When he got there, to his astonishment, he found that there are no
fences or hedges on this farm! So, you’ve basically got an 12,000 km2 open
sheep pen. He asked the people on the ground there, “how do you stop your
livestock from wandering off?”
The Australians just laughed. They said, “We don’t need fences. The sheep always gather around the watering holes. They never move far from where they drink. All we need to know is where the wells are. That’s where the sheep will be.”
I want to say that Jesus is like that farm. And any church with faith and life is one of the wells. You’re at a place this morning where you can drink.
Come to him - the surprising one who turns up in obscure and surprising places. Like Galilee. And maybe like a converted carpet warehouse in a scruffy part of Darlington. The Lord is here.
Come to him - the one who speaks a simple but life-changing word that God is doing a new thing so it’s time to reformat your life so you don’t miss out.
Come to him - the one who is calling individuals and crowds alike into
his new community.
Listen! He is calling you right now - to follow him. Is today the day you do that for the first time? Or is today the day you turn back, having drifted away.
Come to him – the one with authority to heal. Bring him now your broken heart, your broken mind, your broken dreams, your broken body, your broken family.
The kingdom of heaven has come near. The Lord is here.
Shall we stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 16 July 2023
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