From Darkness to a Great Light

“The people which sat in darkness saw great light: and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death lights is sprung up.  From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Matthew 4:16-17

The time of this passage is after John the Baptist was imprisoned for charging Herod with adultery.  Prior to that time, in John 1:19-28 the Jews had sent priests to John, who had been baptizing as people repented of their sins, to find out exactly who he was.  He answered that he was merely a messenger who was preparing the way for the Lord.  Later, John pointed out Jesus as “the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29-34).  Upon His introduction by John, and also after John was imprisoned, Jesus began to call twelve men to be His disciples.  When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been imprisoned, He went forth into Nazareth in Galilee.  John’s mission was complete.  Had he not been locked up and had been allowed to continue his ministry, he could have become a rival to Jesus, and that would have caused confusion among the people.  Which one do we follow?

Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah 61:1-2.  He sat down and began to prophecy how that the people in His own hometown would not accept Him.  That made the people so angry that they ran Him out of town, plotting to kill Him, but He escaped (Luke 4:16-30) and journeyed to Capernaum, located on the coast of the Sea of Galilee and near the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali.  Matthew Henry wrote, “Christ will not stay where He is not welcome”.  The people in Capernaum received Him gladly.  His visit there was also a fulfillment of prophecy (Isaiah 9:1-2).  The people of Zebulun and Naphtali had been included in the captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria many years before Jesus’ time on earth, but it was foretold by Isaiah that the Messiah would preach to the people of those lands.

What was it like before Jesus Christ came to bring His message to them?  They were “sitting in darkness”, but they were not groping around, seeking a way out into the light.  They were contented to remain in sin’s dark valley.  They were spiritually dead and eternally condemned until Jesus came and shone His light upon them.  They weren’t looking for Him, but the Light came to them.  Paul is an example of one who was not looking for Jesus, but Jesus was looking for him.

The message that Jesus preached was exactly the same content that John had preached in the wilderness of Judea:  “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  Jesus could have come with lofty words and phrases that would have impressed the most highly educated people of His day, but it would have intimidated the common people, giving them an excuse for ignoring His message.  At that time, the message was basically one of repentance for Jesus had not yet died to pay for man’s sins nor had been resurrected to provide eternal life.  Repentance of sin has always been a requirement for reconciliation with God.  Matthew Henry also wrote, “The doctrine of repentance is right gospel doctrine.  Not only the austere Baptist (John), who was looked upon as a melancholy, morose man, but the sweet and gracious Jesus, whose lips dropped as a honeycomb, preached repentance; for it is an unspeakable privilege that room is left for repentance.”

Since we are the natural born recipients of the sin nature, that is, we didn’t have a choice to not be born in sin just as we didn’t have a choice to be physically born, God has graciously given us the privilege of repentance so that we can have a relationship with Him.  Both Jesus and John preached their messages with a sense of urgency: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  Why the urgency?  It has been around 2,000 years since the gospel was first preached and several thousand years since the gospel was prophesied.  Many generations have come and gone.  Jesus has not yet returned.  It may have been 2,000 years since the gospel was first preached, but we have a much shorter time to prepare, some less than others.  Each day that goes by is one less day to prepare.  So, yeah, the call to repent and believe in Christ is an urgent one.