The yellow footprints you see are scattered all over our Marine Corps Recruit Depots in San Diego and in Parris Island. In the early stages of a Marine recruit’s time at the training base, these footprints show the young Recruits where to go, where to stand, and what to do. And after following these steps during their training, these young men earn the title of United States Marine.
The Bible tells us in I Peter 2:21 that Jesus left us an example to “follow in His steps.” Jesus did not leave us yellow footprints to follow on the ground like at those Marine bases, but He HAS left us His example in His word. We just saw a couple of weeks ago in our study of Matthew 4:18-22 that Jesus calls us to follow Him, and we saw that that means that we are to follow Him by doing the same things that He was doing in the world. If that is so, then one of the most important questions we can ask is: “What was Jesus doing in the world, so that we may imitate it?” Now, there is SO much that Jesus did, recorded for us the Gospels. Is there a way that we can “condense” or “summarize” it, so that we can get a handle on it and imitate it? As a matter of fact, the Lord did provide for us just such a summary, here in Matthew 4:23 and again later in this book. Let’s look at verse 23, and its summary of Jesus’ ministry to people:
“Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23)
Here the Bible give us Jesus’ ministry in a nutshell. In fact, if you turn to Matthew 9:35, you will find this EXACT verse repeated again — word for word — as a summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry to people. In between we find many of the instances of healing and teaching that Matthew records. It is like these two verses (Matt. 4:23 & 9:35) put a “parenthesis” around the earthly ministry of Jesus, saying, Here is the summary of Jesus’ ministry here on earth; here is what He did while He was here: He was “teaching” in the synagogues; He was “proclaiming the gospel” of the Kingdom; and He was “healing” sicknesses among the people. Continue reading
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