Intro: In the Gospel of Matthew, God spends almost four chapters
doing prep work. That's easy to understand, because out in the
fields you need to do a lot of prep work: sowing and fertilizing and
everything that goes a long with that. The prep work goes before the
big work of the harvest, but both are needed. Well, from chapter 1
to chapter 4:16, Matthew does a lot of work to answer the question of
who Jesus is – a genealogy, his birth, the work of John the
Baptist, Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, his temptation by the devil in
the wilderness, and the first part of today's reading. So after
that, you see Jesus getting down to work, but because of the prep
work you clearly see that his work is to bring you from death to
life.
Jesus does the prep work, and this is revealed in God's Word. Part
of the prep work is how Matthew shows Jesus fulfilling the words of
the Old Testament. In today's reading we hear that when Jesus moves
from Nazareth to Capernaum in Galilee, this fulfills the words of the
prophet Isaiah. But he also fulfilled the Scripture in moving to
Nazareth, as we heard a few weeks back.
Jesus brings his promises to pass, proves them to be true. And the
one he fulfills today is very good. We hear, “ "The
land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond
the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles-- 16
the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for
those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has
dawned." ”. This
prophecy was given through the prophet Isaiah because the land of the
tribes of Zebulun and Napthali were in the north of Israel, so when
the Assyrians invaded from the north, guess who got hit first? The
people in the north. And what's worse, when they had conquered those
lands, they deported the landowners and brought in very many people
from other nations who hated the worship of the one true God. So
it's very easy to call that part of the land a place where the people
dwell in darkness – of sorrow and also unbelief, and the sorrow of
being surrounded by unbelief.
The Lutheran Confessions show how deep the darkness of unbelief that
dwells in your heart is when they say that the Law, the 10
Commandments, that you have those so that you as Christians may not
start self-created forms of worship. That's amazing. Without the
Law, you would create a worship to try and make yourself righteous
before God. This is exactly what the Israelites did in the Old
Testament, only it ended up being exactly what all the other nations
were doing – bowing down to idols! And even today, you can watch
videos of people speaking in tongues that look like videos of Hindus
in ecstatic trances. Or you can look at videos of liturgies that
look like music festivals.
So the Lord lays the prep work for you to hear of his big work on
the cross. And he does this in three ways. This starts, as we
heard, with John's arrest. John was there to prepare the way of the
Lord, so when Jesus appears, John's work is done, so that when John
is arrested, that's when Jesus gets to work. Secondly, Jesus goes to
a place that the prophet Isaiah had already called dark, dark in such
a way that Jesus is light. But Jesus has to go to that place. He
has to go to where sin and unbelief is. In being born in this
sinful, fallen world he has also done this. And thirdly, he goes to
a place where both Jews and Gentiles live, to do the prep work of
showing that his mission through the Church is to both Jew and
Gentile, so that his Church is made up of both Jews and also Gentiles
of every land and every tongue, together according to faith and not
culture or nationality.
And this prep work is done so that you would not be misled about all
that Jesus would do and say in the rest of the Gospel. In this
beginning section Jesus is clearly shown to be the Son of God (the
voice of the Father says it), and yet that is where the devil tempts,
that Jesus would show himself to be the Son of God in any other way
than humble obedience to his Father. Angels then attend him, and he
moves to Galilee of the Gentiles. Well compare this to the end of
the Gospel of Matthew – Jesus is arrested exactly because he claims
to be the Son of God, and the crowds that mock him on the cross use
the devil's own words “If you are the Son of God. . .”. But he
remains the humble Son of God and wins the victory for you. And when
he is risen from the dead, angels appear not to serve him but to
announce that he is risen. And then he tells his disciples to meet
him where? In Galilee, so that he may tell them to go and make
disciples of all nations (meaning including the Gentiles). The prep
work makes you ready for the big work of the cross, and keeps that
before your eyes as you hear everything that Jesus goes and does.
And Matthew tells us what Jesus goes and does! “From
that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand."
” and “he
went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and
proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and
every affliction among the people.” He gets
to work!
And part of that work is calling four disciples who would be
apostles: “While
walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is
called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for
they were fishermen. 19
And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of
men." 20
Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21
And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of
Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father,
mending their nets, and he called them. 22
Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”.
But their previous vocation was fishermen. So Jesus wants them to
compare their old job to their new jobs when he sends them out as
apostles. Fishermen know that when you go out on the water, you can
do all the right things, but you might not get any fish. It's not up
to you. And these fishermen used nets, which in a lot of ways is
simpler than rods. You just throw out the net and bring it back in.
The net does the work (of course that doesn't mean it's easy enough
for you to just pick up and do, but you get my point). Otherwise,
just keep the net in good shape. So as apostles, they knew that
whether people became believers wasn't up to any person; it was up to
God! He does the work by the net which is the Word!
But this text does show you that it is surely Jesus who calls
disciples, calls Christians. That's the thing about disciples. All
the rabbis had disciples, but the difference is that those disciples
went and found the rabbi and asked to be disciples. This is like
choosing and applying to a school, you have to make the choice. But
not so for Jesus and his disciples. He chooses them. They don't
choose him. They don't have anything in them that can do that. It's
the same thing with self-chosen worship. You don't have any ability
to improve on the gifts that God has given you in Word and Sacrement
where he serves you. Only the Scriptures can give direction to the
praise of the Church. This is Christ's work, just as he calls
Christians to be Christians through his Holy Spirit. It's just like
we learned in the Small Catechism: But the Holy Spirit has called me
by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me
in the true faith.
We don't have to guess what Jesus did: he preached, taught, and
healed. When he does that, he beats back the devil meter by meter,
by calling believers (preaching) and by rescuing from the fallout of
the devil's lies (healing). Both of these point to the cross, point
to heaven where this victory is clearly seen, but Jesus carries them
out on earth because he must first win the victory which is your
rescue from sin, death, and the devil.
So if Jesus does the work, that means he brings you from death to
life. There's a goal and purpose to his prep work and his work, just
as there is in the field and in any job: to bring you his kingdom and
bring you into his kingdom and out of darkness. It's just like we
confess in the Lord's Prayer in the Small Catechism: God's kingdom
comes when our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that by
his grace we believe his holy Word and lead godly lives here in time
and there in eternity. The explanation ends not with darkness, but
with eternal life.
This life is the Lord's Supper (which is the center of everything
because it is Christ's body and blood to eat and drink for the
forgiveness of sins). This life is praise (not something you invent
but something you receive that joins you to the Church of all times).
This life is the Church (and what she believes on the basis of God's
Word), so that your faith would be in Christ's righteousness alone, a
steadfast and immovable faith that abides unto life everlasting.
That's the life. What more do you want? Especially because that
faith which the Lord brings about does make people sit up and take
notice, that here's a lowly sinner that can only point to Christ for
every good and needful thing. It's a faith that doesn't look at good
works but at what the neighbor needs. It's a faith that walks the
road that leads back to the altar for the Lord's Supper.
Conclusion:
That's the life. That's the work. It is Christ's work, and it does
you a lot of good.
Jesus lays the prep work for the work of bringing you from death
to life (by giving you forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and
salvation). Amen.
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