Matthew 4:17

Main Thought: This statement comes very soon after the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and right on the heels of his 40 days fasting in the wilderness, followed by the three temptations of Satan. The first thing then that we see Jesus doing in his ministry is to preach the Gospel. Many people who are only vaguely familiar with Jesus will extol the social aspects of His ministry, like healing the sick, feeding the thousands and washing the feet of His disciples. However, if they really understood the Jesus of the Bible and what His true initial ministry was, they wouldn’t be so fond of that Jesus. You see Jesus was not just a social example, but he was a preacher of The Gospel, a message that for the most part lost men and women do not want to hear, that identifies all as having sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). Jesus knew perfectly well that the world He came to more than anything else needed to hear the Gospel, and part of that Gospel message was that men needed to repent of their sins. The truth is that a message of the Gospel without repentance is really not the Gospel at all, for men need to know of their sinfulness against God and then repent from it before being saved. When Peter and the apostles preached the Gospel following the ascension of Jesus back to the Father, they did not preach a Gospel without repentance, but the Gospel where repentance was necessary (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22), with Paul also later on proclaiming in Athens on Mars Hill to the pagan idolaters “the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). What Jesus was proclaiming, and what still must be proclaimed, is that repentance from sin is still necessary for salvation. As we look around us, as in Jesus’ day, we see a world of men and women who need to hear the Gospel and still must repent. May we be faithful as God’s people, out of love and compassion for the lost, to proclaim this Gospel to them, and may we pray earnestly that God will move upon many of them by His Holy Spirit to bring about repentance and salvation.