Matthew 4 is kind of strange. Jesus gets baptized by John the Baptizer at the end of Matthew 3, and then he gets called out into the woods to fast for forty days, and then after forty days he starts getting a bit hungry, so Satan comes and tempts him, Jesus resists, angels come and take care of him, and that's the first half of the chapter. In the second half of the chapter, he goes from being someone who no one has heard of (and who just now almost starved to death) to being the next big pop star in the Galilee traveling rabbi circuit.
Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a pretty dramatic shift.
What exactly do you think caused things to happen so quickly?
And what is that darn "gospel of the kingdom" he keeps referring to, and what does it mean for it to be "at hand"?
1 comment:
All good points, but there is still a really dramatic jump, whether it is a dramatic historical jump or just one in Matthew's narrative. Either way I think it's kind of interesting.
In a (potentially) unrelated matter, when Jesus begins to preach, Matthew sums up Jesus' message as, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." If this is the main message of Jesus, if this is what Jesus talks about, it might be important for us to figure out what it is, especially in light of the fact that next week we are diving into Jesus' biggest recorded sermon.
I'd like to get the thoughts on this matter from everybody who is reading this.
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