'From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18. And Jesus, walking by the sea of
Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his
brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 19. And
He saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.
20. And they straightway left their nets, and followed Him. 21. And
going on from thence, He saw other two brethren, James the son of
Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father,
mending their nets: and He called them. 22. And they immediately
left the ship and their father, and followed Him. 23. And Jesus
went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and
all manner of disease among the people. 24. And His fame went
throughout all Syria: and they brought unto Him all sick people
that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which
were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and
those that had the palsy; and He healed them. 25. And there
followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from
Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judæa, and from beyond
Jordan.'--MATT. iv. 17-25.
In these verses we have a summary of our Lord's early Galilean
ministry. The events are so presented and combined as to give an
impression as of a triumphal progress of the newly anointed monarch. He
sweeps through the northern regions, everywhere exercising the twofold
office of teaching and healing, and everywhere followed by eager crowds.
This joyous burst of the new power, like some strong fountain leaping
into the sunshine, and this rush of popular enthusiasm, are meant to
heighten the impression of the subsequent hostility of the people. The
King welcomed at first is crucified at last. It was 'roses, roses, all
the way' in these early days, but they withered soon. There are three
points in these verses: the King acting as His own herald; the King
calling His first servants; and the King wielding His power and welcomed
by His subjects.
I. In verse 17 we have a striking picture of the King as His own herald.
The word rendered 'preach' of course means, literally, to proclaim as a
herald does. It is remarkable that this earliest phase of our Lord's
teaching is described in the same words as John's preaching. The stern
voice was silenced. Instead of the free wilderness, John had now the
gloomy walls of Machæus for the bound of his activity. But Jesus takes
up his message, though with a difference. The severe imagery of the axe,
the fan, the fire, is not repeated, as it would seem. Sterner words than
John's could fall hot from the lips into which grace was poured; but the
time for these was not yet come. It may seem singular that Christ should
have spoken of the kingdom, and been silent concerning the King. But
such silence was only of a piece with the reticence which marked His
whole teaching, and was a sign of His wise adaptation of His words to
the capacity of His hearers, as well as of His lowliness. He veiled His
royalty by deigning to be His own herald; by substituting the
proclamation of the abstract, the kingdom, for the concrete, the King;
by seeming to careless hearers to be but the continuer of the
forerunner's message; by the simple, remote region which He chose for
His earliest work. The belief that the kingdom was at hand was equally
necessary, and repentance equally indispensable as preparation for it,
whoever the King might be. The same law of congruity between message and
hearers, which He enjoined on His followers, when He bade them be
careful where they flung their pearls, and which governed His own
fullest final revelations to His truest friends, when He said, 'I have
yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot carry them now,' moulded
His first words to the excited but ignorant crowds.
II. The King's mandate summoning His servants. The call of the first
four disciples is so told as to make prominent these points: the
brotherhood of the two pairs; their occupation at the moment of their
call; the brief, authoritative word of Christ; His investiture of them
with new functions, which yet in some sense were the prolongation of the
old; their unhesitating, instantaneous obedience and willing abandonment
of their all. These points all help the impression of regal power, and
do something to explain the nature of the kingdom and the heart of the
King. Matthew does not seem to have known of the previous intercourse of
the four with Jesus, as recorded In John 1. His narrative, taken alone,
would lay stress on the strange influence wielded by Jesus over these
busy fishermen. But that influence is no less remarkable, and becomes
more explicable, on taking John's supplemental account into
consideration. It tells us that one brother of each pair--namely Andrew,
and probably John--had sought Jesus on the Baptist's testimony, and in
that never-to-be-forgotten night had acquired the conviction that He was
the King of Israel. It tells us, too, that Andrew first found his own
brother, Simon; from which we may infer that the other one of the two
next found his brother James, and that each brought his own brother to
Jesus. The bond of discipleship was then riveted. But apparently, when
Jesus went up to Jerusalem on that first journey recorded only in John's
Gospel, the four went back to their fishing, and waited for His further
call. It came in the manner which Matthew describes. The background,
which John enables us to fill in, shows us that their following was no
sudden blind impulse, but the deliberate surrender of men who knew well
what they were doing, though they had not fathomed the whole truth as to
His kingdom and their place in it. They knew, at any rate, that He was
the Messiah and that they were called by a voice, which they ought to
obey, to be His soldiers and partisans. They could not but know that the
call meant danger, hardship, conflict. They rallied to the call, as
soldiers might when the commander honours them by reading out their
names, as picked for leaders of the storming-party.
Was this the same incident which St. Luke narrates as following the
first miraculous draught of fishes? That is one of the difficulties in
harmonising the synoptic narratives which will always divide opinions.
On the whole, I incline to think it most natural to answer 'no.' The
reasons would take us too far afield. But accepting that view, we may
note through how many stages Jesus led this group of His disciples
before they were fully recognised as apostles. First there was their
attachment to Him as disciples, which in no degree interfered with their
trade. Then came this call to more close attendance on Him, which,
however, was probably still somewhat intermittent. Then followed the
call recorded by Luke, which finally tore them from their homes; and,
last of all, their appointment as apostles. At each stage they 'might
have had opportunity to have returned.' Their vocation in the kingdom
dawns on them slowly. They and we are led on, by little and little and
little, to posts and tasks of which we do not dream at the beginning.
Duty opens before the docile heart bit by bit. Abram is led to Harran,
and only there learns his ultimate destination. Obedience is rewarded by
the summons to more complete surrender, which is also fuller possession
of Him for whom the surrender is made.
'The word of a king is with power.' Christ's call is authoritative in
its brevity. All duty lies in 'Come ye after Me.' He does not need to
use arguments. From the very first this meek and lowly man assumes a
tone which on other lips we call arrogant. His style is royal. His mouth
is autocratic. He knows that He has the right to command. And, strangely
enough, the world admits the right, and finds nothing unworthy of His
meekness--a meekness of which He was fully conscious, which is another
paradox--in this unconditional claim of absolute submission to his curt
orders. What is the explanation of this tone of authority? How comes it
that the kingdom which is liberty is, from its very foundation, an
absolute despotism? That same peremptory summons reaches beyond these
four fishermen to us all. They were the first to hear it, and continued
to hold pre-eminence among the disciples, for they make up the first
group of the three quaternions into which the list of the apostles is
always divided. But the very same voice speaks to us, and we are as
truly summoned by the King to be His servants and soldiers as were they.
Their prompt self-surrendering response is the witness of the power over
their hearts which Jesus had won. The one pair of brothers left their
nets floating in the water; the other left their father with the mesh
and the twine in his old hands. It was not much wealth to leave. But he
surrenders much who surrenders all, however little that all may be; and
he surrenders nothing who keeps back anything. One sweet portion of
their earthly happiness He left them to enjoy, heightened by
discipleship, for each had his brother by his side, and natural
affection was ennobled by common faith and service. If Zebedee was left,
John still had James. True, Herod's sword cut their union asunder, and
James died first, and John last, of the twelve; but years of happy
brotherhood were to come before then. So both the surrender which
outwardly gives up possessions or friends, and that which keeps them,
sanctified by being held and used as for and from Him, were exemplified
in the swift obedience of these four to the call of the King.
'I will make you fishers of men.' That shows a kindly wish to make as
little as may be of the change of occupation. Their old craft is to be
theirs still, only in nobler form. The patience, the brave facing of the
storm and the night, the observance of the indications which taught
where to cast, the perseverance which toiled all night though not a fin
glistened in the net, would all find place in their new career. Nor are
these words less royal than was the call. They contain profound hints as
to the nature of the kingdom which could scarcely be apprehended at
first. But this at least would be clear, that Jesus summoned them to
service, to gather in men out of the dreary waves of worldly care and
toil into a kingdom of stable rest, and that by summoning them to
service He endowed them with power. So He does still. All whom He
summons to follow Him are meant by Him to be fishers of men. It was not
as apostles, but as simple disciples, that these four received this
charge and ability. The same command and fitness are given to all
Christians. Following Christ, surrender, the obligation of effort to win
others, capacity to do so, belong to all the subjects of Christ's
kingdom.
III. The triumphal progress of the King. Our evangelist evidently masses
together without regard to chronological order the broad features of the
early Galilean ministry. He paints it as a time of joyful activity, of
universal recognition, of swift and far-spreading fame. We do not
exaggerate the impression of victorious publicity which they give, when
we call these closing verses the record of the King's triumphal progress
through His dominions. Observe the reiterated use of 'all,'--all
Galilee, all manner of sickness and all manner of disease, all Syria,
all that were sick. Matthew labours to convey the feeling of universal
stir and wide-reaching, 'full-throated' welcome. Observe, too, that the
activity of Christ is confined to Galilee, but the fame of Him crosses
the border into heathendom. The King stays on His own territory, but He
conquers beyond the frontier. Syria and the mostly heathen Decapolis,
and Peræa ('beyond Jordan'), are moved. The odour of the ointment not
only fills the house, but enriches the scentless outside air. The
prophecy contained in the coming of the Magi is beginning to be
fulfilled. From its first preaching, the kingdom is diffusive. Note,
too, the contrast between John's ministry and Christ's, in that the
former stayed in one spot, and the crowds had to go out to him, while
the very genius of Christ's mission expressed itself in that this
shepherd king sought the sad and sick, and 'went about in all Galilee.'
Observe, too, that He teaches and preaches the good news of the kingdom,
before He heals. John's proclamation of the kingdom had been so charged
with threatenings and mingled with fire that it could scarcely be called
a 'gospel'; but here that joyous word, used for the first time, is in
place. As the tidings came from Christ's lips, they were good tidings,
and to proclaim them was His first task. The miracles of healing came
second. They were not 'the bell before the sermon,' but the benediction
after it. They flowed from Christ in rich abundance. The eager
receptiveness of the people, ignorant as it was, was greater then than
ever afterwards. Therefore the flow of miraculous power was more
unimpeded. But it may be questioned whether we generally have an
adequate notion of the immense number of Christ's miracles. Those
recorded are but a small proportion of those done. There were more
grapes in the vineyards of Eshcol than the messengers brought in
evidence to the camp. Our Lord's miracles are told by units; they seem
to have been wrought by scores. These early ones were not only
attestations of His claim to be the King, but illustrations of the
nature of His kingdom He had conquered and bound the strong man, and now
He was 'spoiling his house.' They were parables of His higher work on
men's souls, which He comes to cleanse from the oppression of demons,
from the foamings of epilepsy, from impotence as to doing right. They
were tokens of the inexhaustible fountain of power, and of the swift and
equally inexhaustible treasures of sympathy, which dwelt in Him. They
were His first trophies in His holy war, His first gifts to His
subjects.
Thus compassed with enthusiasm, and shedding on the wearied new hopes,
and on the sick unwonted health, and stirring in sluggish souls some
aspirations that greatened and inspired, the King appeared. But no
illusions deceived His calm prescience. From the beginning He knew the
path which stretched before Him; and while the transient loyalty of the
ignorant shouted hosannas around His steps, He saw the cross at the end,
and the sight did not make Him falter.