From the Wilderness to Galilee: Jesus' Judean Ministry

Luke 4:14-15

     It was just a few weeks ago, really, that I was in Scotland.  I was in that beautiful city of Edinburgh.  I was busy involved in a pastors conference there, along with some of the other men from the church and the seminary.  I had a few hours one afternoon, so I walked down from the old hotel where I was staying up by what is called The Royal Mile, near the Edinburgh castle, down to the famous Princes Street.  And I walked along Princes street headed for the Scottish National Art Gallery.  I was going to spend my few hours looking at the art in this world famous gallery.

     I reached the building that was supposed to be the National Art Gallery and I circled the building and had difficulty finding the door in, normally that's not the way it is when you go to something as formidable as an art gallery, it's fairly easily marked.  Well maybe I wasn't paying very good attention but I had a little difficulty finding the entrance.

     Finally I saw someone headed that way in a rather resolute fashion so I just kind of got behind him and he went to the door and I followed in.  It was a rather small door for what was a fairly austere building in sort of a Roman kind of style with great columns and pillars.  I went through the small door and to my surprise I found that when I went in the small door and through the little small foyer, I walked into a huge, huge room just completely dominated by this magnificent art hanging everywhere.

     The door in no way indicated what was behind it.  There were historical paintings.  There were portraits by very well-known and famous European painters.  There were biblical paintings, many of those.  There was a sequence of magnificent paintings of the passion week of Jesus in a special location all to themselves done in the eighteenth century.  There were pastoral scenes which I love.  There were seascapes.  There were paintings of kings and paintings of soldiers and, of course, there were paintings of Jesus.  In fact, I was able to spend the next two hours just wandering around there from painting to painting and location to location, occasionally sitting briefly for a few moments to contemplate particularly the paintings of the passion week of Jesus which I found to be so fascinating.

     I'm telling you that because the text for this morning is a bit like that door.  Open your Bible to the fourth chapter of Luke.  Looking at the two verses that are before us is no indication of what we're about to enter upon.  Our text is one of those texts that every expositor, in a sense, dreads because you look at the two verses that come next in the text of Luke and you wonder if there's anything there to build a sermon on.  The verses are verses 14 and 15 of Luke 4.  We have completed the first 13 verses, dealing with the temptation of Christ, His conflict with Satan.  We come to verse 14 and it says, "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit and news about Him spread throughout all the surrounding district and He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all."

     Now because this is the Word of God, because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, because we deal with all of the text, we're going to look at these two verses.  But I want to do is to have you look at these two verses as if they were somewhat of a small door, like the door that I went through to enter the Scottish National Art Gallery.  They are not very imposing, and neither was the door that went in, but going through the door of these two simple verses this morning is going to offer us some wonderful scenes.  We're going to step, as it were, into the gospel art gallery and we're going to be able to see various scenes that are very, very important and some are very, very familiar to any student of the Bible.

     Just to kind of get you up to where we are in the narrative text of Luke's gospel as he writes what is essentially the life of Jesus Christ, Jesus has been born and has been living for 30 years in obscurity in the town of Nazareth, the town up in Galilee, a very unimportant town.  He has been there with His mother, Mary, and His father, at least His legal father, Joseph, who was a carpenter, and He has been working in His father's business for 30 years.  The 30 years have been completed and Jesus has begun to initiate the ministry that He's been waiting for.

     He has gone down to the Jordan River, as you know, and there He has asked to be baptized by John the Baptist, not because He's a sinner, in fact John didn't want to baptize Him which attested to His sinlessness.  But he did it in order to fulfill all righteousness to do what God asked all His people to do.  So Jesus' 30 years of waiting are over, the baptism has been done.  Jesus has been identified thereby as the Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased.  After that baptism, Jesus then in the first thirteen verses of this chapter recorded went into 40 days in the wilderness, the Judean desert and there in that rough area just from the slopes of the plateau of Jerusalem descending down to the Dead Sea, that very, very dangerous area, He spent 40 days in conflict with the devil and was completely triumphant. 

     All of that is past.  The waiting is past.  The baptism is past.  The affirmation of the Father is past.  The conflict with Satan is past.  It is now time for Jesus to step on to the stage of full public ministry.  And as we come to verse 14, for the first time Jesus is indicated to have engaged Himself in His ministry.  He returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.  News about Him spread throughout all the surrounding district.  He began teaching in the synagogues and was praised by all.

     So finally we get past all the preliminaries, all the credentials...and remember, everything up to now has been to spell out the credentials of the Messiah, whether it's His genealogy, or His conflict with Satan, whether it's the attestation of the Father from heaven, whether it's the descent of the Holy Spirit, whether it's the word of Gabriel the angel, whether it's the testimony of Zacharias, Elizabeth, John, or Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna, all of that that's gone before is to attest that this is indeed the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the promised Messiah. 

     Now we come to verses 14 and 15 and He engages in His ministry.  Now what these verses describe is His Galilean ministry.  Verse 14, "He returned to Galilee."  There were a number of phases in the ministry of Jesus.  Really there were only two places where He could minister essentially.  One is in the north which is generally the area of Galilee.  The other in the south which is the area known as Judea.  And those were the two areas in which Jesus conducted His ministry.

     Here Luke moves immediately to Jesus' ministry in Galilee.  The Galilean ministry of Jesus lasted about a year and a half, give or take a few weeks or months.  And starting right there in verse 14 and going all the way through the fiftieth verse of the ninth chapter of Luke's gospel, that entire section focuses on His Galilean ministry.  In Luke 9:51 Jesus sets His face to go to Jerusalem, which is in the south, and embarks there on a Judean ministry, a ministry in the southern part of the land of Israel.

     So the Galilean ministry lasts for about a year and a half before Jesus makes a final move to the south.  If you look at chapter 8 verse 1 it tells us the nature of His Galilean ministry.  "He began going about from one city and village to another proclaiming and preaching the Kingdom of God. And the Twelve were with Him."  So that is the nature of the Galilean ministry.

     Now historians tell us there were about 240 towns and villages in the area known as the Galilee, the northern part of Israel.  For a year and a half Jesus traversed those 240 towns and villages, along with His disciples and some other women who are noted there in the eighth chapter as well in what is the Galilean ministry.  And when you come, as I said, to chapter 9 verse 51, the scene shifts to the south.

     So Luke moves right from Christ's temptation to His long ministry in Galilee.  And, frankly, Jesus blanketed Galilee in that year and a half.  And that wouldn't be hard to do.  Galilee is not a large area.  You can walk around it.  It's not a significantly large area.  And He could have touched all the little places and the larger places there in that period of time.  Some scholars have suggested, interestingly, that in Acts 1:8 Jesus said to His disciples that when the Spirit comes upon you, you're going to receive power and you're going to be witnesses of Me in Jerusalem, in Judea area, in Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth.  And He never referred to Galilee at all and some have suggested that maybe that was because He did such a thorough job Himself.  May be a stretch, but it's certainly a thought.

     As we consider Luke's account, now again Luke jumps immediately to the Galilee ministry and Jesus is basically ministering in Galilee in a continually similar pattern.  And that pattern is given to us right here in these two verses.  It is in the power of the Spirit, it is teaching in the synagogue.  I mean, that is essentially it.  That was the nature of His ministry.  He was a teacher.  He was a preacher.  And the place that He would typically go to teach and preach was in a synagogue and He ministered fully in the power of the Spirit.  The response was, "News about Him spread throughout all the surrounding district," and it was a positive reaction so that "He was praised by all."  That was how the initial response to the Galilean ministry went.

     So we're given these two verses really to define sort of the substance of the nature or the pattern of Jesus' ministry.  Now remember, we're still looking at this door here, it's a relatively small door.  I noticed on the door when I entered the Scottish National Art Gallery it had some minimal decoration and I guess you could say these two verses give us a minimal decoration, just a few things that we can know. ]

     We find the place of His ministry.  Galilee.  We find the power of His ministry.  The Holy Spirit.  We find the popularity of His ministry.  Spreading throughout all the surrounding district.  We find the priority of His ministry.  Teaching in the synagogues.  And we find the praise of His ministry, as people responded to Him.  That's what's on the door.  And that just gives us a definition of the ministry of Jesus.

     But there are some things behind this door.  As often as the case when you do expository preaching, you look at a text and it opens up things before you.  And this is exactly what we're going to experience this morning. 

     But let's, first of all, just take the place, Galilee, in verse 14, "And Jesus returned to Galilee."  That comes as a rather benign statement, a very simple, straightforward statement.  But effectively that statement opens the door for us.  It allows us to step in to what is going to be a room full of magnificent scenes because with this statement Luke is referring to the full Galilean ministry, which, as I said, is described from here to chapter 9 verse 50.  I also want to add, Matthew describes the Galilean ministry in Matthew 14:13 to 18:53.  Mark describes the Galilean ministry in Mark 6:31 to 9:50, and so does Luke.  So Matthew, Mark and Luke give great space and detail to the Galilean ministry.

     Now it appears as you read this, obviously, that the Galilean ministry begins immediately after the temptation, because that's the way it flows in the text.  But you learn something when you study the gospels.  You have four of them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they combine to give us the full picture.  Luke by the design of the Spirit of God jumps immediately from the temptation of Jesus to His Galilean ministry.  That's what Luke did.  But that is not exactly what happened historically.  In fact, there was a rather lengthy ministry before He ever began His Galilean ministry.  Listen, He had a ministry of a year that has to fit between verse 13 and 14 here.  Okay?  And I'm just going to give you sort of what they call a synoptic or the synopsis of these things, bringing them together.

     Before He began His official Galilean ministry, Jesus had a ministry for up to a year in Judea and some have called it the first Judean ministry.  And I want you to understand that.  The Galilean ministry began about December of the year 27 and it continued a few months into the year 29.  But before He even began this formal and long Galilean ministry, there was a year or up to a year, maybe not a full year, of ministry that Jesus engaged in.

     In fact, Matthew 4:12 and Mark 1:14 tell us Jesus didn't even go back to Galilee to begin His Galilean ministry until John the Baptist was imprisoned.  Now Luke did refer to the fact that John as in prison back in chapter 3 verses 19 and 20, but not in chronological sequence.  So while Luke jumps from the temptation to the Galilean ministry, there is much that happened in between. 

     You say, "Well where do we find out about that?"  The answer is John records it for us.  John gives us what happened in that up-to-a-year before He actually began His Galilean ministry.

     Now normally I might not go into all that John says, but I'm compelled to do it because to understand that that ministry that John writes about that Luke omits because it is fully discussed in John, to understand that is to understand the nature of Jesus' preaching and the nature of His ministry.  And it's very, very important.  The main events of that interval are recorded for us in John 1, so let's turn to John 1.  This is going to be more like a sort of a lecture than it is a sermon this morning, but I want you to follow along.  And I'm going to do something that I find almost contrary to my being to do, that is cover large amounts of Scripture in a brief time.  This is almost impossible as well as distasteful to me and I'm going to make a running effort at this and only God knows whether we shall succeed.

     But I do want you to understand what happened in that year because it really is important to understanding the foundation of Jesus' ministry and the response of the people to His ministry.  What He did in that year or up to a year, maybe not a full year, really establishes His patterns.  It is a critical contribution to our knowledge of Jesus Christ and His ministry.

     When we come to chapter 1 and verse 29, "The next day, he...being John...saw Jesus coming to him and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'" 

     Now in chronology, this happens after the temptation. Some time has passed.  Jesus has been baptized, perhaps a few days after that He entered into the wilderness and there for 40 days.  And then, of course, after that the angels came and ministered to Him.  So it could be a couple of months have gone by.  And now He is back at the Jordan River.  John is still carrying on his ministry, remember the ministry of John and Jesus overlapped until John was imprisoned.  As John continued to call the people to repentance and point them to the Messiah who was actually beginning His ministry, John is still there pointing to the Messiah who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  And John goes into a further description of Jesus as the one whom he saw the Spirit descend upon in verse 32 and so forth, the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit in verse 34, I have seen and bore witness that this is the Son of God.  So John is continuing to give testimony to Jesus as the Son of God while Jesus is starting now to begin His ministry.

     Verse 37, we are reminded here that two disciple...verse 35, "The next day John was standing with two of his disciples, looked upon Jesus as He walked and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God.'"  You can see that John said that very often, that was his title for Jesus, apparently almost every time he saw Him he called Him that.  "And two disciples of John heard Him speak and they follow Jesus and Jesus turned and beheld them following and said to them, 'What do you seek?'  And they said to Him, 'Rabbi,' which translated means teacher, 'where are You staying?'  And He said to them, 'Come and you will see.'  They came therefore and saw where He was staying, they stayed with Him that day.  It was about the tenth hour."  Tenth hour by Jewish calendar would be six o'clock,,,or four o'clock in the afternoon, I should say, late in the day.  "One of the two that heard John speak and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.  He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, 'We've found the Messiah.'  He brought him to Jesus.  Jesus looked at him and said, 'You are Simon the son of John, you shall be called Cephas.'"  So He's beginning now to collect His disciples.  This is sort of an unofficial group of followers, not the official followers of Jesus, but sort of the unofficial.  They later became official.  The actual affirmation of their apostleship comes at a later time.

     But simply on the testimony of John the Baptist, these men began to follow Jesus.  So Jesus is beginning His ministry.  John has identified Him.  John is telling others that they need to follow Jesus, they're doing it.  So here comes Andrew and here comes Peter and here comes, later on in this text as we shall see, Philip and then comes Nathanael and Jesus begins to collect the men around Him who will be what we know as the apostles.

     Now they all knew that John the Baptist was a prophet.  Everybody knew that John the Baptist was a prophet and they knew therefore that when he pointed to Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, that he was in fact telling the truth.

     Now at this point in the gospel of John, John focuses on Jesus Christ in very clear ways.  This is what I want you to see because it's very foundational.  John, first of all, introduces us to His person...to His person.  We learn from the text of John about the man Jesus, person of Jesus.  Quite interesting.

     Back in verse 42 of chapter 1 it is indicated here that Jesus looked at Simon, just looked at him and said, "You are Simon."  How did He know that?  Not only are you Simon, but you're the son of John, or Jonas, as it's sometimes translated.  How did He know that?  He knew that because He knew everything. 

     Later on in this same section it said in verse 47, "Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, being brought by Philip, and He said of him, 'Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.'"  How did Jesus know that this was a pure man?  How did Jesus know this man had no deceit?  How did Jesus know this man had integrity? 

     "Nathanael said to Him," in verse 48, "'How do You know me?'  Jesus answered and said to him, 'Before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree I saw you.'"  Wait a minute, this is supernatural.  How does He know who this man is that He called Simon?  How does He know his father's name is John?  And why does He change his name to Cephas which means "rock"?  Because He knows who he is because He knows everything.  How does He know Nathanael is a man with no guile?  How did He see Nathanael sitting under a fig tree before Philip ever brought him?  That's because of His omniscience.

     The first element of the person of Jesus Christ that John introduces to us is His omniscience.  He is God.  He is deity.  He possesses divine attributes, one of which is omniscience.  And, of course, Nathanael understood.  Verse 49, "Nathanael answered Him, 'Rabbi, You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel.'  Jesus answered and said to him, 'Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?  You shall see greater things than these.'"  It's as if He said if you were wowed by omniscience, wait till you see omnipotence.  That's nothing compared to what you're going to see.  And what he saw, the dead raised, the blind given sight, the deaf were able to hear, and the lame were able to walk.  Jesus created food out of His command, walked on water, you know the rest.  But John wants us to see the Son of God and so He introduces us to Him as God, possessing omniscience.

     Secondly, He possessed transcendence.  Jesus was human but He was not just human.  And His transcendence is indicated in verse 51 in a quite interesting passage.  "And He said to him," still talking to Nathanael who was indicating his belief, of course, Jesus says you're going to see greater things than these.  "Truly, truly I say to you, you shall see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

     Wow, what He is saying is you're about to experience what it's like to be with someone who is transcendent.  The point is this, that I am going to give you access to heaven, that through Me heaven is going to come down and earth is going to go up.  I am going...I am the mediator between God and man, that's essentially what He's saying without taking the time to go into all the details.  You're going to see heaven open wide, just like sort of parallel to Jacob's ladder, you remember, by which he could go up and come down.  Jesus says, "I am the ladder, I am transcendent, I transcend this world, I open heaven and on Me angels come and go."  This is not just another man, "I am the one who has opened heaven to man.  I am the one who has the Son of Man brought down the righteousness, brought down glory, brought down salvation and will lift up sinners to the very throne of God.  I am the one who literally has broken open the veil, as it were, and given sinners access to the Holy of Holies.  I am the one who brings God and man together."  He's transcendent.  Free access to the Father, open angelic ministry is now available and the angels, according to Hebrews 1:14 are sent for the ministry that they have toward the saints. 

     Heaven is opened.  Heaven is near to us.  Heaven is as accessible to us as a prayer, isn't it?  In fact, it's even more accessible than that when you realize heaven is open and God has come down and dwells in us.  God is ours and we are His, that's why I love that hymn, "I am His and He is mine."  The holy angels are His, the holy angels are ours.  The ladder from earth to heaven is the Son of Man and He gives us access and communion and fellowship.  This is transcendence.

     So John is telling us that this Son of God is both omniscient and transcendent.  Thirdly, omnipotent.  John wants us to know about the power that He bears which is the power of God.  And so in chapter 2 he tells the story, a wonderful account of a wedding.  And I want you to notice this.  "The third day there was a wedding in Cana."  Third day after Jesus' meeting with Nathanael, Philip, Simon and Andrew.  Third day, Jesus was back in Galilee.  Now listen carefully to what I say.  After His temptation, apparently Jesus did go back to Galilee briefly.  He went back there.  He met these disciples and attended a wedding.  That is not what Luke is talking about in chapter 14, or in chapter 4 verse 14.  In chapter 4 verse 14 Luke is writing about when Jesus went back to Galilee and was going through Galilee teaching in the synagogues.  He didn't do that on this first brief visit.  He left the area of the devastation, the area of the temptation, went north into Galilee, just briefly enough to have this encounter with the disciples, briefly enough to attend a wedding, generally lasts about a week long, then He went back down to Jerusalem where He remained for that greater period of time until John the Baptist was imprisoned and He then went to Galilee to begin His official ministry in Galilee.  This was a very brief and temporary visit to attend a wedding.

     It was important though because it was at the wedding that Jesus did His first miracle.  The first miracle of His entire life, and I think it's very important for us to recognize that this was His first miracle.  Verse 11, "This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee."  So if anybody tells you that He was doing miracles as a little boy or in the 30 years of His obscure ministry in Galilee, it is not so.

     Here's the miracle.  "The third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, third day after meeting with the disciples, the mother of Jesus was there."  Weddings were seven-day events and, you know, they didn't consummate until the seventh day when the friend of the bridegroom handed the bride over to the groom and everybody left and they consummated the marriage.  But it was a week-long feast.  The family of Jesus must have known these people. 

     Cana is a little village just outside of Nazareth.  You can easily walk there.  It's very close.  And so, no doubt, there was familiarity with the people in this family and the family of Jesus was invited to be guests.

     So, they went to the wedding, Jesus also being invited and His disciples along with Him.  They were people from that same area and perhaps knew the family also. 

     The wine gave out, which is not good because that's embarrassing for the host.  "And the mother of Jesus said to Him, 'They have no wine.'"  Now she knew who He was.  She doesn't go beyond just saying "they have no wine," she brings the problem to His attention.  One could speculate that He was the greatest problem-solver any mother ever had in her house.  Growing up He would have understood every problem perfectly and known the solution to everything.  And in this case it would be very natural for her now in His adulthood to say they have a problem and we're very confident that You can solve it.