24: The Life of Jesus: Ministry

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Episode 24. Today we’re talking about the life of Jesus by going through the acrostic, S.M.A.R.T. Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. It is time to get S.M.A.R.T.  Here we go.

[00:32] Stephanie: It’s time to get S.M.A.R.T., and our little Miss Kitty-cat is up in the window being adorable, so she might voice her opinions at some point.

[00:41] Marcus: I just take them all as amen.

[00:44] Stephanie: Amen! I love it. And we’re still together in Kentucky and it’s a delight.

[00:53] Marcus: It really is.

[00:55] Stephanie: Today, we’re talking about the five stages of the ministry of Christ by using the acrostic, S.M.A.R.T. How did you identify these five stages and where did this acrostic come from?

[01:06] Marcus: So the origin story is that I was asked to do a devotional for fifth graders and decided to do it on addressing an issue that bothered me when I was in elementary school. I wish I had had a big picture of what was going on in the life of Jesus, so I decided to give them one.

As I broke down the stages of the life of Jesus, I began looking for a single word that summarized what each stage was about, and I realized that I had S, M, A, and R. And I’m like, wow, I need one more. And I got T, and T is in the shape of a cross.

And it starts with the triumphal entry, so that was pretty smooth. So it just sort of created itself just by trying to come up with one word to summarize each of the sections. But where they came from specifically is that as I was studying through the Gospels, I realized what a strong connection there is between the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus.

There are triggers, actually for the first three stages of the life of Jesus that come directly from John’s ministry. So, for example, stage one is triggered by the baptism by John. So when he is baptized by John, it’s at that point that he receives the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s at that point that he receives the anointing of the SpIrit.

And Luke especially makes a great big deal out of this. The Spirit comes upon him, and the Spirit drives him out of the desert, and then the Spirit drives him to Galilee, and then he goes to Nazareth, where he reads from the Scriptures, ‘The Spirit is upon me.’ We’ll talk a little bit more about that, but that one was pretty clear that Spirit is the word. So that’s the S of S.M.A.R.T.

Then the second trigger is that John was put in prison. And when he was put in prison, it says Jesus moved to Capernaum. So that was when he established a headquarters. He goes, okay, now that John is in prison, it’s time to establish a headquarters, and he became much more focused about going from village to village to village throughout the region of Galilee.

And then the third trigger was the beheading of John. And we realize that when John was beheaded, it signaled something to Jesus. I personally think it was a reminder to him — I came to die too — it’s time to start preparing my disciples for the fact that I am going to die. And so once John was beheaded, Jesus took a retreat. He withdrew with his apostles, and then he went on a second retreat and then a third retreat. So there are three retreats associated with that third stage, which I use A for apostles to remember.

So we’ve got Spirit, ministry headquarters established, and apostles go on retreats. And then we get to that third retreat that ended at the Mount of Transfiguration. And this story is just hugely important because it was, as Peter says in his second letter, when he was an eyewitness of the glory of Christ.

Well, where was he an eyewitness of the glory of Christ? It wasn’t just in the miracles he did. He saw him transfigured into his heavenly glory up on top of this mount. So, it was a huge event because it revealed his identity once for all. And it’s also a turning point in the life of Jesus because from that point on, Luke says he set his face to go to Jerusalem. It was time to die in a sense.

So he leaves that, he goes on his final journey to Jerusalem, where then we get to that triumphal week, which honestly, most of the Gospels give half of their material of what happened in that final week of the life of Jesus. So that’s where it goes. And so that’s how we use S.M.A.R.T. and that’s where it came from. It’s spirit, ministry of the masses, apostles on retreat, the revelation of his identity and his mission at the Mount of Transfiguration, and his final journey into the triumphal week. So that’s S.M.A.R.T.

[04:59] Stephanie: Oh, there we go. We can just close up shop now.

[05:04] Marcus: That’s all five stages. We just dive into them a little bit more.

[05:07] Stephanie: Well, I would love, before diving into them, maybe to go back to John the Baptist.

[05:14] Marcus: Amen.

[05:14] Stephanie: I’m going to let her out or not. Okay. I would love to talk about John the Baptist in terms of his prophetic nature, especially since we just came out of our Messianic prophecy episode and how he prepares the way for Jesus.

[05:36] Marcus: Yeah. John the Baptist reminds me a little bit of Samuel in this regard, and that is that the story of Samuel takes place in the book of First Samuel, but he’s really the last judge. So his story connects to the book of Judges, but it’s not found in the book of Judges, but he is a judge.

In the same way, John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets, even though his story is in the New Testament. So we think of him as a New Testament prophet, but he’s actually the last Old Testament prophet. And you could even argue that he’s the last and greatest because he was tasked directly with introducing the Messiah to the world.

And John, in some circles, gets a lot of recognition. In other circles, he’s sort of forgotten. You know, he’s like an afterthought. Now, I know that if people are fans of The Chosen, they probably either love or hate the portrayal of John because he’s quirky and he’s different. But I look at this again, and the issue here isn’t really John’s personality. It is his mission, and he was given the task of helping people see their need for what the Messiah was going to do.

The baptism of righteousness for the forgiveness of sins was preparing people for the idea that the Messiah came to do something about their sin and not just something about their slavery to Rome. So it was a very important ministry that he had, and it’s no accident that each stage of Jesus’ ministry was triggered by something related to his life.

[07:13] Stephanie: That’s so cool. All right, so let’s go deeper into S.

[07:17] Marcus: Yeah, into S — the Spirit. So in Luke 4:18 and 19, Jesus gives what is sometimes called the kingdom manifesto. And that is where he is declaring his mission statement for what he’s here to do. And the mission statement is a quote from Isaiah 61, but it begins with these words: The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.

And so this raises the question, okay, well, when did you receive the anointing? Did Jesus come into this world with the anointing? Was he born with the anointing? Is it just on him because he’s the Son of God? But you go back and you realize very clearly that just a few paragraphs before he was baptized by John the Baptist, Heaven opened, a voice came from the throne room of God and declared him to be his Son, and then the Holy Spirit came upon him.

Well, in the Old Testament, we see two real common terms, and that is the Holy Spirit coming upon and the Holy Spirit filling. When the Holy Spirit came upon, I think of Samson. He’d be his average self, then the Spirit would come upon him, and he would become invincible. Well, the Holy Spirit coming upon people had to do with power to accomplish a task that they had been given.

So Jesus came to do the task of being Messiah. So he got an anointing I think that was different than anybody else’s. Occasionally you hear people say that we’re just like Jesus. He emptied himself, he got an anointing, and we are just dust, and we get an anointing. In that regard, yes, there’s some parallels, but Jesus got an anointing we didn’t get.

He got the anointing to be the Messiah, and none of us get that anointing. So each one of us gets an anointing, but his is unique because he is the anointed one. And in Hebrew that’s Mashiach from which we get Messiah, which means anointed one. And in Greek, Christos, from which we get Christ, which means anointed one. So this is his identity. It happened at his baptism.

And then Luke really drives that home by saying, not only did the Spirit come upon him, but then the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. The Spirit drove him up to Galilee. The Spirit was upon him. And even in Acts when Peter is preaching on Pentecost, he says God’s Spirit performed miracles through him among you, which is a very interesting thing.

And so this idea of him as the anointed one is directly connected to John’s baptism, to the coming of the Holy Spirit upon him, and it is a model for us of the fact that God wants us to live out of our anointing as well. But I just want to make sure we don’t take it too far. So he is the anointed one, and he is the Messiah, and that’s where it happens. So that’s where the whole thing launches.

[10:27] Stephanie: Excellent. And it launches into his ministry.

[10:30] Marcus: It launches into his ministry, so the M can be just ministry. So when John is imprisoned by Herod, it says that Jesus moved to Capernaum. Sometimes we think he was just always in Capernaum. But really when he moved to Capernaum, it was John’s imprisonment, when he began collecting his disciples and when he began calling the twelve specifically.

So it’s not that the twelve hadn’t been in his life before that, but he is making a point of saying, okay, I’m choosing twelve of you, and we’re going to go. So his ministry and the calling of the twelve to be his apostles begins right here with this imprisonment of John, the moving to Capernaum, and all of this becoming very more intentional.

And what he said was interesting, too, that Capernaum may have been the headquarters, but he didn’t come just to help Capernaum. He said, we must go to other towns also, because that is why I have come. And so this is the beginning of him traveling throughout Galilee. During this time, it appears that he took several trips to Jerusalem. You kind of have to read between the Gospels to piece it all together.

But this is that time of ministry. It’s also the time when he sent out the 70 and began preparing people. I love the image I heard somebody say about the ministry of the twelve and the ministry of the 70 and going out to these various villages, and they were to look for a house of peace.

And that means to find somebody who was receptive and open and just stay there. And so by staying in that one house, people got used to the idea of coming to that house for discussions and things related to Jesus. And so, in a sense, Jesus was laying powder kegs all across Israel.

[12:21] Stephanie: He was planting house churches.

[12:23] Marcus: He was planting house churches all across Israel that would be powder kegs. Once the holy spirit fell at Pentecost, that was the fire that lit these, and all the powder kegs are already ready, and so it just took off. And so they were all ready to go, these churches in every community. And, you know, the Bible doesn’t just come right out and say that. But you get the impression here that Jesus was getting things ready in sort of a very under the radar sort of way.

[12:55] Stephanie: He’s good at that.

[12:56] Marcus: He is very good at under the radar. Yeah. Anybody who tries to follow God knows he’s really good.

[13:01] Stephanie: He’s good at under the radar. He’s good at preparation and preparing a place and doing it in such a way that you’re like, oh, that’s what you were doing.

[13:09] Marcus: Now I see what you were doing. Yeah, exactly. And that’s the challenge because sometimes when we’re in the middle of it it makes no sense to us. So this is the ministry time of his life, and it was triggered by the imprisonment of John.

And then we come to the third element. So the third stage was triggered by the beheading of John. And at this point it says after John was beheaded he took the apostles apart. The first place they went was Bethsaida. Bethsaida is a town on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. And he went there to get away with his disciples. But when he got there, there were 5,000 men plus women and children waiting for him. That’s where we have the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.

Finally when they’re all done, Jesus sends the apostles back across the water. He goes off and prays because he really needs to be alone with God and talk to his Father about the next stage of his ministry, because now that John’s been beheaded the final bell has sounded, so to speak. We are now ready to go towards the cross. I’m sure he needed some extended time with his dad about this.

So this is when, coming back in the middle of the night, he’s walking on the water and surprises the people, and Peter has his experience, the encounter on the water. And you look at all that and what’s happening is Jesus is beginning to prepare himself and his apostles to understand his true identity and the nature of his calling. It’s not enough for them to know he’s the Messiah, they have to know what kind of Messiah he is.

And so one of the reasons Jesus didn’t just go around saying, yes, I’m the Messiah is because everybody thought they knew what that meant, and it would have actually been misleading. And so he chose his own words, his own vocabulary so he could fill them with his own meaning.

There were three retreats. If you think about the letter A, there’s actually three strokes to it: up, down, and across. So I think about these three strokes as representing the three retreats he took with his apostles. The first one was this one at Bethsaida where the feeding of the 5,000 took place.

On his next one, he went up to Tyre and Sidon, which is really interesting because this is the home turf of Baal. And this one ends up with him feeding 4,000 people. I find it interesting that they both ended with feeding a mass of people.

And then on the third retreat, he takes them to Caesarea Philippi. Now, until you dive pretty deeply into the backgrounds of Caesarea Philippi, it seems pretty random, like an interesting detail. But once you dive into the background of Caesarea Philippi, you realize there is something with spiritual warfare going on here, because that town was located at the base of Mount Hermon.

That mountain, in intertestamental literature, was heavily connected to the idea of the fallen angels called the watchers. So the Book of Enoch says specifically that there were 200 sons of God who descended to Mount Hermon, and there they made a pact that they were going to intermarry with the daughters of men. And so given that this was such a strong tradition in that area, not only was Mount Hermon right there, but there was a cavern system that went deep into the earth that was called the gates of hell, and it was dedicated to the god Pan, who was a nature god of chaos and wildness and passion and abandon.

So when Jesus is there, he is looking at Mount Hermon in the background, he’s standing in front of the gates of hell, and he says to his disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’ Peter says, ‘You are the Messiah. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

Then Jesus says, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. Flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this to you but my Father, who is in heaven. Your name is Peter, which means stone or rock, and on this rock — Petra — I’m going to build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it.’ Well, he’s standing right in front of the gates of hell when he says this.

So there are multiple images going on here, and part of it is that Jesus wants them to know his true identity, and he wants them to know his true calling. And so this episode wraps up with him taking Peter, James, and John to a high mountain apart. Well, it’s almost certainly Mount Hermon because they’re right there, and Mount Hermon is the tallest mountain in Israel. It’s snow covered most of the time.

And he comes up there, and that’s where he is transfigured before them. And they see him as a heavenly realm being with this glowing and brightness, and they are overwhelmed, but there is no longer any question. This is not a carpenter from Nazareth with delusions of grandeur. This is a divine being from another realm. This is somebody unbelievable.

And then to make clear that we know which divine being, which heavenly being this is, God speaks once again: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him.’ (This may have been directed to Peter.) But it was directly stated right there, and then they come down. This is kind of the high water mark — this has all been building up to this.

And now Jesus has finally made it clear, and the law requires two or three witnesses, and we have Peter, James and John. He had his three witnesses, and they come back down, and now there’s no question who he is.

But at this point, not only does he reveal his identity for sure, but he reveals his mission, that is, yes, I’m the Son of God, but I didn’t come to save us from Rome right now. I came to be betrayed, to suffer, to die all according to the Scriptures. So I’m thinking he’s got Isaiah 53 in the back of his mind, plus some other passages.

It says in the book of Luke, he sets his face like flint now to head to Jerusalem. So he starts this final journey to go towards his destiny. And having told them that he came to suffer and die, he now heads to Jerusalem, knowing he’s going to suffer and die there.

[20:15] Stephanie: And so now we come to the triumph, the final letter, appropriately in the shape of a cross.

[20:21] Marcus: Yes. T is for triumph. T is shaped like a cross. It brings all this together. In fact, we’re going to have a couple of podcasts in the future about what actually happened at the cross and what actually happened with the resurrection. And I’m not going to get into the whole debate about the chronology of when things took place, on which day, and that sort of thing.

The point here is it was confrontation time, and Jesus went. In a sense, he picked a fight. He went and turned over the tables in the temple. He went and he did not go and hide. He went, and he provoked them. He gave answers to questions, and he told them that the sign that he was the Son of God, that he was the Messiah, was that the temple would be destroyed in this generation. That was the sign he gave them.

He also told them that if you kill me I’ll rise again in three days. He said, ‘I’m giving you two signs — my resurrection and the destruction of the temple in this generation — so you know that who I say I am is true.’ And this is kind of the theme for the whole thing, who is Jesus?

So you go back to the anointing with the Spirit. This is my Son whom I love. He’s the anointed one. He’s the Messiah. You go out into his ministry to the masses, and people are like, who can do this? Who can just speak, and demons leave. Who can just speak, and things happen like this?

And you go to the apostles and their retreats, and he wanted the apostles to know, this is who I am — the revelation at the Mount of Transfiguration. This is who I am. And now he comes, and he basically makes it clear to his enemies, this is who I am. And he leaves them with only one of two choices. You’ve either got to kill me or you’ve got to serve me, because this is who I am. And so we know which way that went.

Paul says if they had known who it was, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But they were blinded, and he went to the cross, and he was betrayed. And so all this started with the triumphal entry, and Jesus’ offer to them to be king. So when he came, he basically said, ‘I’m the king. Do you accept my rule or not?’ And then he said, ‘I am the prophet clearing the temple. Do you accept my word or not?’ And he said, ‘I am the Son who has come to require fruit from the stewards. Do you acknowledge who I am or not?’

And all the way through, he was just rejected, rejected, rejected, but he gave them opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. And so we see that when Jesus rose from the dead and when the temple was, in fact, destroyed in that generation, those two signs were fulfilled, giving confirmation that Jesus was who he said he was.

So the triumphal week begins with the triumphal entry, and it ends with the triumph of the resurrection. And that’s the life of Jesus in a nutshell.

[23:27] Stephanie: Hey, so helpful. And I love how simple you make it. It gives us good anchors, and I love the John the Baptist anchor points. I think that’s really helpful.

So next week, we’re going to be looking at the teachings of Jesus. But for now, any closing thoughts for the episode?

[23:51] Marcus: Well, it helps me going back through this again and again, because this is the anchor of the faith. It’s the life teachings and the finished work of Jesus. His life is what we are to learn from. We are disciples to learn from our master, so we learn from the way he lived. And it helps us to know who it is we’re following.

Next week, we will look at the teachings — that’s the other part of being a disciple. We need to know what he taught and how he expects us to live. And then in the episodes after that, we’re going to look at what he actually accomplished when he died on the cross and rose again. So these are the foundations of the faith, and this is really huge.

And one of the things it reminds me of is somebody you know who was a missionary to Muslims. And one of the things he found was that when evangelizing, in that context, it was best to start with the life of Jesus and not start with [telling them to] choose to leave that religion and join this religion. But it was, let’s look at Jesus, because your religion honors him too.

And let’s look at who Jesus was, what he did, and what he said. And I think it’s just really important for us to be grounded in this and have a really strong handle on who Jesus is, what he did, and what he taught. And this is why we try to live the way we live.

[25:16] Stephanie: It’s so practical to multiple areas of life or different kinds of people that you talk to from different philosophies or religions to just introduce people to Jesus. Jesus is very good at speaking for himself and defending himself. Just introduce people to Jesus. So, yes, good word.

Thank you, Father, and thank you all for joining us on the trail today. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk podcast and share with your friends. You can find more at our website, deeperwalk.com.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.