Matthew 4: The Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand

Leading up to this point, Jesus has been born. He’s been safely carried through all of the threats to His life.

All of those things, Matthew has pointed out in one way after another how Jesus has fulfilled all of these prophecies that God gave to the Old Testament prophets about this coming Savior.

He says, “I am going to send a Savior who is going to radically redeem and restore this world. I am going to send a Savior who is going to put away your sin and who is going to heal and fix and restore everything that you have broken in this world. He’s going to put the world right again, and He’s going to break down the wall between humanity and God. He’s going to restore your relationship with God. He is going to make you into God’s children again. He is going to bring you into God’s family again. He’s going to naturalize you into God’s kingdom again. He’s going to make you into God’s people again.”

And so this coming Savior that God promised is going to redeem humanity and restore the world.

Remember those two things.

The mission of God’s Savior and God’s mission in the world from the very beginning, since the fall, has been to redeem humanity and restore the world.

And He promises in Genesis 3 that He is going to send a Savior who will crush the head of the serpent, who will destroy the devil and the forces of darkness, put the world right again, and redeem all of us from our sin and our brokenness.

The coming Savior is going to undo the fall and is going to undo all of the terrible effects of the fall in the way that it broke the world and broke us and broke our relationship with God.

That is what is hanging in the background of the Gospel of Matthew, and that is what is hanging in the background of the entire story that the Bible tells.

But as we open up Matthew chapter 4, all of that is hanging in the background.

“This Is My Beloved Son”

You might remember from your reading that Jesus goes and He is baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist.

And when He comes up out of the water, the voice of the Father comes down from heaven and says:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
—Matthew 3:17 (WEB)

He’s saying, “This is that promised Savior that you have been waiting for.”

And then the Holy Spirit descends from heaven onto the shoulders of Jesus.

That is the Spirit saying, “Look, I am resting on this man, just like the prophets said I would on the coming Savior.”

So the Father says, “Look at Jesus. He is the Savior.”

The Spirit says, “Look at Jesus. He is the Savior.”

Jesus is that promised Savior that God’s people have been waiting for since Genesis chapter 3.

And because that is true, Jesus has to go and be tested.

The Savior Must Be Tested

God has declared that Jesus is that promised Savior, so now He is led to the wilderness so that He can be tempted by the devil.

He has to be tempted to see if He is a worthy Savior.

This is unbelievably important.

The Savior has to be sinless.

Why does the Savior have to be sinless?

It’s because the Savior is going to save us by taking our sin.

Jesus saves us by taking your sin and my sin onto His shoulders and then going to the cross and being punished for our sin in our place.

Jesus took the punishment that our sin deserved.

Jesus took the just wrath of a holy God that our sin deserved.

When Jesus went to the cross, He was not being killed for anything He did. He was being killed for what we did. He was having the wrath of God poured out on Him for you and for me.

And now when we place our faith in Jesus, His righteousness is placed on us. The goodness of Jesus is put on our shoulders, just like the sin of you and I was put on His shoulders.

So Christ is punished for our sin, and we are rewarded for His goodness.

We are rewarded for His obedience.

We are rewarded for His holiness.

Christ was punished in our place, and we are rewarded in His place.

That is how He saves us.

He is a sacrifice for us.

God Himself came down from heaven and took the righteous wrath that belonged to His people onto His own shoulders.

Just to be clear, this would be like if you committed a major crime, a death penalty crime, and you were convicted by the courts, and then the judge was handing down your sentence, and he said, “The sentence is death, but I’m going to sit in the electric chair, and you are going to go free.”

The judge takes the penalty for the defendant.

This would be like if your kids did something terrible and you said, “Okay, now I have to punish you, but instead of grounding you for a month, I’m going to ground me for a month. I’m going to take away your penalty onto my own shoulders.”

The Savior saves us by taking our sin onto Himself.

So He can only do that if He Himself is sinless, because if the Savior is a sinner Himself, then He needs to be punished for His own sin.

If the Savior is sinful Himself, then when He goes to the cross, He’ll deserve it.

But if the Savior is sinless, then when He goes to the cross, He has nothing to be punished for. There is no wrath on Him, and so He can take your sin and my sin.

And when He is sacrificed, all of our sin goes away.

All of the wrath that is hanging over us is satisfied fully and completely and perfectly in this sinless Savior.

Everything Is at Stake in the Wilderness

Why am I talking about all this?

It’s because that means that absolutely everything is at stake when Jesus goes into the wilderness.

All of God’s redemptive work on our behalf through all of history is at stake when Jesus goes into the wilderness.

If Jesus fails in the wilderness, everything is lost, and we cannot be saved.

If Jesus gives into temptation in the wilderness, then everything is over, and we cannot be redeemed, and the world cannot be restored.

God has made Himself radically vulnerable here because if Jesus doesn’t succeed at rejecting the devil’s temptation here in the wilderness, then all of God’s plan and purpose and work throughout all of history to save humanity and restore our world is lost.

It’s been nullified.

So Jesus goes into the wilderness, and He has to succeed.

The First Temptation: Personal Gain

So what happens in the wilderness?

First things first, the devil tempts Jesus in a really specific way.

Actually, he tempts Him in three very specific ways.

Number one, the devil tempts Jesus to use His power as the Messiah, His power as the Son of God, for personal gain.

He says, “You’ve been fasting out here for a very long time.”

It says 40 days and 40 nights, but actually, in the ancient Near East—that is where all of this takes place, that is when all of this takes place—they would use the number 40 as, like, a catch-all term to say a lot.

So if they said, “I was gone for 40 days and 40 nights,” they were just saying, “I was gone for a long time.”

Could have been two weeks, could have been two months.

They’re just saying, “I’ve been gone for a long time.”

It’s like if I said, “Man, there are thousands of reasons you should not date that girl.”

Am I literally saying that there is upwards of 1,000 reasons?

No.

I’m just saying there’s a bunch of reasons you should not date that girl.

In the same way, He goes out there for a long time.

We don’t know exactly how long He was out there, but He was out there for a long, long time with nothing to eat.

So He was starving.

Which, one, just real quick, that’s important.

Jesus was hungry.

Who gets hungry?

Humans get hungry.

Fully God and Fully Human

There are people out there who preach and teach that Jesus never really became human.

Know what I’m talking about?

There are people out there who preach that Jesus was just kind of a spirit that people saw, that He looked like a human, but He wasn’t really a human.

They say that Jesus was God pretending to be a human.

That is not true.

Jesus is God Himself who came down from heaven and took on human flesh and human nature.

Jesus became a real human in absolutely every way, except as a human He consistently resisted temptation, and He never, never once gave in and sinned.

The book of Hebrews chapter 7, and I believe chapter 4 as well, they both have some version of this.

It says:

“For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.”
—Hebrews 4:15 (WEB)

So He is a sympathetic high priest for us.

He knows exactly what it is like to be us.

He knows exactly what it is like to be human.

Jesus knows what it’s like to suffer.

He knows what it’s like to experience depression.

He knows what it’s like to be tempted.

He knows what it is like to experience the full range of human nature.

Jesus got sick.

He got hungry.

He had to use the bathroom sometimes.

He probably got dysentery or food poisoning and spent the entire day on a first-century toilet, which was way less convenient than modern-day toilets, and so on and so forth.

Jesus was a real, live, honest-to-God God-human.

The way that the old-time theologians put it is that He was fully God and fully man, fully God, fully human.

Becoming human did not make Him any less God, but being God did not make Him any less human.

He wasn’t a little bit God and a little bit human.

Jesus was fully God and fully human.

And as human, He experienced hunger.

He experienced struggle.

He experienced sickness.

And He experienced temptation.

So there was a legitimate possibility that Jesus could give into that temptation and destroy all of God’s redemptive plan and purpose.

Everything is at stake here in the wilderness.

And so the devil comes and he says to Jesus, “Hey, You’re the Messiah. You’re the Son of God. You are God Himself come down from heaven to live as a human, and You’re hungry. Why don’t You use Your power as God to turn some of these stones into bread and eat?”

He is tempting Jesus to use His power as the Messiah, not for God’s good plan and purposes, but for His own selfish desires and gain.

He is tempting Jesus to be an unworthy Savior.

But Jesus says no.

He resists temptation number one.

The Second Temptation: Abuse Your Authority

So the devil moves on to temptation number two.

The devil tempts Jesus to abuse His authority as Messiah, as the Son of God.

This is similar to the first one, but just a little bit different.

He tempts Jesus to abuse His authority.

He says, “Go up to the top of the temple and throw Yourself down, because I know You are the Savior. You are the Son of God. You are God Himself come down from heaven, and that means that the angels are not going to allow You to hit the ground and die. So why don’t You do that? Why don’t You go prove that You are who You say You are? Why don’t You go do that?”

He’s tempting Jesus to abuse His authority as Messiah.

Once again, he is tempting Him to be an unworthy Savior.

But Jesus says no.

“Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’”
—Matthew 4:7 (WEB)

He resists temptation number two.

The Third Temptation: Take the Kingdom Without the Cross

So the devil pulls out one last temptation.

He says, “If You will bow down and worship me right now, I will give You all the kingdoms of the world.”

A tiny bit of background that we need from this.

The book of Hebrews, once again, refers to Satan as the prince of this world. The book of 1 John refers to the devil as the lowercase-g god of this world.

That doesn’t mean that he’s all-powerful.

It just means that in this world, he has been given a certain degree of authority and power.

When we rebelled against God in the beginning, in Genesis chapter 3, when we disobeyed the Lord, when we rebelled against God’s kingship and authority, we broke this world.

We followed after the devil.

In a sense, you could say we crowned the devil king here in this fallen and broken world in a temporary way.

And the Lord said, “Okay, in this fallen and broken world, the devil can have a temporary rule.”

And so the devil actually has some kind of limited power and authority here in this world.

He has a sort of limited power and authority over the kingdoms of this world and the rulers of this world.

We see that all throughout the Scriptures, and we see, I think, examples of that all throughout history.

So the devil says, “Hey, with this power and authority that I have here and now in this world, I will actually just give it back to You.”

He says, “I’ll just—I’ll just give the world back to You if You’ll just, right here, right now, bow down and worship me.”

He says, “You don’t have to go to the cross to get this world back. I’ll just give it right back to You if You bow down and worship me right now. You don’t have to suffer and die for humanity in order to get this world back from me. I’ll just give it to You right now. All You have to do is bow down and worship me.”

Satan is tempting Jesus to claim the kingship of this world that is rightfully His without going through the suffering and rejection and grief and loss that comes with the cross.

He is tempting Jesus to abandon God’s redemptive plan to redeem humanity and restore the world.

Essentially, he’s offering Jesus a cheat code.

But there is no cheat code.

So Jesus says no.

“You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.”
—Matthew 4:10 (WEB)

He rejects temptation number three.

Jesus Succeeds Where Adam and Eve Failed

And that means Jesus passed the test.

Jesus is a worthy Savior.

He is a sinless Savior.

And specifically, Jesus succeeds where Adam and Eve failed.

Adam and Eve were tempted by the devil in a garden where everything was perfect, and they had everything they could possibly need at all times.

But Jesus rejected temptation in a wilderness where He was starving and weak and tired and hungry.

He rejects the temptation of the serpent.

So Jesus has confirmed that He really is exactly who God the Father declared He is and exactly who the Spirit rested on His shoulders to demonstrate that He is.

Jesus is that long-promised Savior we’ve been waiting for.

And He is a worthy Savior, and He is a sinless Savior, so that He can go to the cross in our place and take all of our sin onto Himself.

Jesus Begins His Ministry

So He leaves the wilderness.

He’s passed the test, and He begins His ministry.

John has been arrested, so the ministry of John the Baptist is over, and Jesus has taken up the baton.

So John was there to prepare the way for this coming Savior, Jesus, and now Jesus is there.

So John says, “I’m all done.”

He is arrested by the rulers in Israel, and Jesus says, “Now I’m getting started.”

And Jesus heads out to begin His ministry as Savior.

But He does not do what all of Matthew’s readers would assume He’s going to do.

Because if you were a first-century Jew, a first-century Israelite reading this story, you would say, “All right, now He’s going to go to Jerusalem. He’s going to declare Himself the King. He’s going to get all the religious leaders on His side, and He is going to take up His role as the true King of Israel.”

And that is not what Jesus does at all.

Instead, Jesus does something that would have pissed off every single person reading this story in first-century Israel.

He does not go to Jerusalem.

He goes to Galilee.

Galilee of the Gentiles

Why does that matter?

It’s because Galilee in the first century was absolutely packed full of Gentiles, of lepers, of prostitutes, of tax collectors, of sinners, of outsiders, of unworthy people that everybody thought God didn’t care about.

Jesus avoids Jerusalem, where all the rich and powerful and insiders and elites lived, and He goes straight to Galilee, where all of the foreigners and outsiders and rejects lived.

And He says, “I’m doing My ministry as Savior here.”

He goes to the outsiders.

He goes to the people rejected by the world, rejected by the religious leaders in Israel, rejected by the powerful.

He says, “I’m going here, and I’m doing My ministry here,” just like Isaiah chapter 9 prophesied He would.

In Isaiah chapter 9, it says:

“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
toward the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sat in darkness saw a great light;
to those who sat in the region and shadow of death,
to them light has dawned.”
—Matthew 4:15–16 (WEB)

As our Savior, Jesus goes to the people living in darkness, and He brings the light to them.

He brings the light to people like you and me who are lost and broken and hurting and struggling.

He brings the light to people like you and me who are failures, people like you and me who cannot get it together, people like you and me who are constantly screwing up, constantly falling short, constantly on the outsides of the margins.

He says, “God’s heart is for you.”

So He goes and He starts His ministry there in Galilee with all the rejects and the outsiders, and He says:

“Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 4:17 (WEB)

The Kingdom of Heaven Is at Hand

Why does that matter?

He says the kingdom of heaven has come near.

What does that mean?

He’s saying God’s rule and God’s reign is breaking into our world.

When He says the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is at hand, He’s saying God’s rule is breaking through the heavens and into our fallen and broken world.

We live in a world that is fallen and broken and twisted and distorted because of the way that we rebelled against God in the beginning.

And because that is true, injustice reigns.

Poverty reigns.

Sickness reigns.

Evil reigns.

That is the world that we live in.

We live in a world where the weak rule over the poor and drag them around by the collar.

We live in a world where the powerful crush the powerless and grind them into a pulp.

We live in a world where there is always one group of people crushing everybody else and enslaving everybody else and oppressing everybody else.

That is the world that we live in, a world of injustice and wickedness and poverty and sickness and disease.

We live in a world where literally our bodies just start to break down as the years go on.

We live in a world where horrifying diseases tear through the population and bring us to an early death.

We live in a world where there is constantly famine.

We produce more food than our world’s population could possibly ever eat, and yet at any given time, one-eighth of the world is starving to death because they don’t have access to that food that we produce.

We live in a world where, at any given time, so many of the people are servants or slaves or victims of human trafficking and so on and so forth.

We live in a fallen and broken and twisted and distorted world because we live under the rule of sin and death rather than the rule of our good and just and righteous and holy God.

But Jesus says that is coming to an end because the kingdom of God is at hand.

The rule of God is breaking into our world.

And all throughout His ministry, the core message of the ministry of Jesus is about how God’s rule and God’s reign and God’s will and God’s ways are breaking through the hard rock of our fallenness and brokenness and breaking into our world and taking over, so that one day, by the end of the story, there will be a renewed heavens and a renewed earth, and every tear will be wiped away, and all injustice will be undone, and everything that is wrong with this world will be made right, and everything that is broken in this world will be fixed.

So death will be no more.

Crying will be no more.

Pain will be no more.

Grief will be no more.

Sickness will be no more.

Injustice will be no more.

Everything will be good and right and beautiful and holy and perfect again, exactly the way that God made it to be.

Jesus said that process has begun here and now with Me.

So the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Repent

How do you get in on that process?

He says, “Repent.”

Repenting is turning away from our old lives and our old ways and saying, “Jesus, I want You to be my King. I want You to rule me. I want You to be my Lord. I want You to be my guide. I want You to be my Savior.”

Repenting is giving up your old citizenship and embracing your citizenship in God’s kingdom with Jesus as your King.

He says, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven is near.”

God’s rule is breaking into our fallen and broken world.

Disciples of Jesus

And because that is true, Jesus starts gathering disciples.

He starts gathering students.

He starts gathering followers.

These are not just people who like what Jesus has to say.

These are not just people who agree with what Jesus is talking about.

These are not just people who believe in Jesus in some theoretical sense.

These are people who are following after Jesus, sitting at His feet day in and day out to learn from Jesus, be trained by Jesus, be taught by Jesus, to grow and learn how to be like Jesus and be a part of His kingdom work as God’s rule breaks into our fallen and broken world.

And that is what you and I are.

We are disciples of Jesus.

We are learning from Jesus very specifically so that we can join into the kingdom work of Jesus.

We are learning from Jesus so that we can join Jesus on His mission.

That is the purpose of our lives as disciples of Jesus, and that is the purpose of our churches.

A church is a collection of disciples of Jesus joining together so that they can work together on the mission Jesus has given us, on His kingdom work.

You and I are disciples, and as we read and study God’s Word together, we are being discipled by King Jesus for His kingdom work and mission.

Fishers of People

So Jesus gathers up four disciples: Peter, Andrew, James, and John.

These are the first four.

He’s going to have 12 by the end.

But He gathers up Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and He gives them a very specific job.

He says, “I am going to make you fishers of people.”

This is like a pun.

He’s actually making a joke.

They were fishermen, and He says, “All right, you guys have been fishing for fish. I’m going to teach you how to fish for people.”

He says, “Follow Me. Become My disciple, and I will teach you how to fish for people.”

What does that mean?

It means that as disciples of Jesus, we are kingdom workers for Jesus.

And as kingdom workers for Jesus, we go out and we find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling, and we introduce them to this God who wants to redeem them and restore them.

That is what it means to be a fisher for people.

We go out and we find people who are lost like we were, who are struggling like we were, who are broken like we were, who are suffering like we were, and we introduce them to Jesus so that He can start His healing work in them, just like He’s been doing with us, so that He can do His redeeming work in them, just like He did with us, so that He can do His restoring work in them, just like He did with us.

We are fishers for people.

We are kingdom workers.

Jesus has brought us in on His kingdom work to find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling so that He can redeem them, restore them, heal them, and start to train them and guide them and grow them and mature them as His people.

A Foretaste of God’s Kingdom

So He gathers up His disciples.

He brings them with Him everywhere, and He starts to preach and teach, and He starts to heal people’s diseases and cast out demons.

Now, when Jesus heals the sick and He casts out demons, there are two things that are happening.

Number one is kind of obvious.

God is showing everyone that Jesus is the One they need to follow.

God is showing everybody looking on that Jesus is that Savior that He promised and they have been waiting for.

Number one, right?

You see Jesus healing the sick. You see Him casting out demons.

The first thing that’s going to come into your head is, “Maybe this is that Savior we’ve been waiting for. I need to go over there, and I need to listen to Him.”

That’s number one.

But number two, when Jesus heals the sick, He is showing everyone what God’s kingdom is like.

When Jesus casts out demons, He is showing everyone what God’s kingdom is like.

He’s saying, “In God’s good rule and reign, there is no sickness. There is no suffering. There is no poverty. There is no loss. There is no grief. There is no injustice.”

When He casts out demons, He says, “In God’s rule and reign, there is no oppression by the devil. There is no torment from the devil. In God’s rule and reign, the forces of darkness are not allowed to harm you. In God’s rule and reign, the forces of darkness are gone because I’ve crushed them. I’ve destroyed them. I’ve locked them away. I have consigned them to a lake of fire, to a prison cell where they can never harm you again.”

These healings and these exorcisms are looking forward to that day when Christ takes up the throne of this world fully and finally and forever in the end, and all grief and suffering and loss and death and injustice and wickedness is done away with forever.

He is saying, “Here’s what this kingdom that I am preaching about looks like. Here’s a tiny foretaste of what this is like, and one day this will be your whole reality.”

That is what awaits us as Christians.

That is the beautiful future that we are working towards.

Our Kingdom Work

But between now and the day that Jesus takes up the throne for good, we have kingdom work to do.

Whenever we go and we find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and we introduce them to Jesus so that He can redeem them and restore them, we are doing God’s kingdom work.

And at the same time, whenever we go and we help people who’ve been crushed by this world, we help the poor and we help the struggling, we are doing God’s kingdom work that He has given to us.

Whenever we help the sick and we care for them in their sickness and we help them afford their treatments, we are doing God’s kingdom work.

Whenever we find people who are oppressed by demonic forces—it’s rarer today than it was at that point in time here in the modern West, in modern scientific society, but, but, but it happens—whenever we help the demonically oppressed or demonically possessed, we are doing God’s kingdom work.

When we go out and we join into this kingdom mission of Jesus, we are fulfilling our role as His kingdom workers.

That is what God has called us to: one, as followers of Jesus, as Christians, and two, as churches.

And that means that we need to be in the business of going and doing the work of Jesus.

We need to be in the business of joining Jesus in His kingdom ministry.

What questions do you have about this passage?

What is confusing to you in this passage?

What are some things you don’t really understand in this passage?

What’s some stuff you need more information on?

What challenges you?

What really throws you through a loop, makes you scratch your head?

What convicts you?

What do you feel like the Lord is saying to you through all of this?

Keep reading.

Keep studying.

Keep wrestling with what God’s Word says.

Keep talking to God about what you read in His Word, and His Spirit will powerfully work in you, and it will transform you through the process.