When Jesus began his first sermon, the one we know as the Sermon on the Mount, or, the Beatitudes, the attitudes that we need to have in our lives, Matthew tells us that he sat down upon a hillside to speak to the crowd that had been following him. To set the background, the last of chapter four in Matthew’s gospel, says that people were coming from all over in hopes of receiving a healing for various and sundry diseases and sicknesses. After Jesus had called his first four disciples, two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John, Matthew tells us that He set about going all over the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and preaching the good news of the kingdom of heaven, as well as healing every disease and sickness among the people. The result was that people started coming to him and following him from all over Galilee, the Decapolis, or ten cities area, from Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan River, bringing to him friends, relatives, and people in their own families, people who were suffering from intense pain, various diseases, paralytics, and those who were possessed with demons, and he healed them all.
Now think about that. If someone today were going about healing people from all kinds of diseases and truly preaching the Word of God, don’t you imagine that crowds would come from all over hoping for that person to do miracles among them as well? Sure they would! So these were people who were searching for miracles, but now they needed to be taught the Words of God. Miracles without solid teaching will soon fade away, but miracles with true teaching behind them would tend to last a lifetime.
And like any rabbi would do, Jesus sat down and had the people to do the same so he could see them as he taught them from the Scriptures. One of the phrases that spoke to me was “then he began to teach them.” As true believers in Jesus Christ, this is what we are to be doing as well, sharing the word of God with all those who come around us so that they too, can hear and receive the word of Salvation that Jesus has to give. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” And just before he said that, he gave these words of comfort, “Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. But I am going to prepare a place for you and when I come again, I will receive you unto Myself, that where I am, you may be also.” And if he had wanted to, he could have repeated that first line again, “So be not troubled, nor afraid.”
