Alright. Well, thank you for being part
of this class. This is the first lesson in the series "The Life of Jesus in
Chronological Order". One of the more popular forms of
books has been the biography formula, where we tell the story of a person, of
their life, beginning with their early life all the way till the time of their
death. And we love to read about the intimate details and the early lives of
the rich people and famous people or those who have made perhaps
significant contributions to our society. It seems that by reading about
their lives we measure our own lives. A lot of times we're inspired to change
or to try things because we've seen the example of another person by
reading about their lives. Biographies also give us insights into
the forces and events that shape the person. And they help us to understand
the world of the past and how these influences shape our own lives today
all by reading about the life of an individual in the context of their
history and their society. So it would seem natural then that the studying of
the life of Jesus would benefit us in all of these ways and also help
establish a true standard for living, since we're looking at the life of
not just anyone but we're looking at the life of the Son of God. Now usually
when we study the gospels we're looking at the teachings of Jesus and what they
mean. We're looking at how we can apply these things to our lives.
We rarely study Jesus Himself. In other words, we rarely study His life in the
order that He actually lived it because we were reading through the gospels and
the gospels, each writer is emphasizing different moments at different times and
they're not always in the same sequence. Now, the reason for this, as I said, is
because the gospel writers each record a variety of incidents in Jesus' life
sometimes not recorded by the other writers. So when you read the four
gospels one after another you're not always sure how the events flow. I mean,
in general they flow from beginning to end, but you're not sure
which event happened at what time. They each tell the story from His
birth to His death but the details in between are not always explained in
chronological order so you can get a sense of how one event naturally leads
into another event. So this class will have several objectives. First of all,
I'll present to you the life of Jesus in chronological order. In other words, what
He did and where He went from the first to the last in a step-by-step direction.
Secondly, we're going to help you prepare a notebook where you will have among
other things, the event in Jesus' life listed in order, event number one, event
number two, all the way down to the final events of His death and His resurrection
and His ascension. You'll also have parallel scriptural references for
these events also listed in chronological order. When I say scripture references, I'm going to also give you the event and then which of the
four gospel writers talks about the event and the particular scripture
reference for that event. So for this I ask you to get a notebook, preferably one
that will hold an eight and a half by eleven paper. Your notes will look a
little bit like what you see here in the overhead that's above.
You'll have a number and then you'll have the event in the comment and then
you'll have all the references in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So by the end
of this course you'll have a notebook with a complete biography of Jesus'
life, His ministry, His miracles, the passion, all of it listed in
chronological order. Now you don't have to take notes obviously, but if you're
going to take the course it would be handy if
you took these notes because by the end of the course you'll have all of this
information in chronological order and you can use it for class or for personal
study. I think it's a very handy thing to have. Okay?
Thirdly, I will select certain events to explain and enlarge upon or you may stop
and ask any question about an event or teaching for class discussion.
We're gonna stop sometimes at some events because sometimes
we say to ourselves, I've always wondered about such-and-such about a
certain event, why He did this or how this is connected to that. So hopefully
by discussing the various events, giving you some insights, you'll understand some
of the reasoning behind what Jesus did. And I also find one thing about this
course that's very handy and that is when you know how one event leads into
another event, it kind of gives you a perspective, it gives you a real
perspective on the activity of Jesus' ministry. Now if we move quickly
we'll be through in one quarter. But if our class begins to have a lot of
questions and discussion maybe we'll have to lengthen it, but our goal is to
finish it in thirteen lessons. So since most of you don't have notebooks at the
moment, I'm going to start with an overview of Jesus' ministry with a
handout that you can put into your notes. So we're going to move on to some
of the larger events, the kind of overview of His ministry. Now, when
Jesus was born the world kept time according to the Roman
calendar. Yeah, there we go. Now the Roman calendar was based on the
year that the city of Rome was founded. Now, I'm kind of talk about this because
before we start with the events we have to kind of put into context the
timeframe when Jesus lived here on this earth. So we're gonna talk about the
calendar. So when he was born the world had a Roman calendar and this
Roman calendar was based on the year that the city of Rome was founded.
With this calculation Jesus was born in the year 735 because the city of Rome
was said to have been founded seven hundred and thirty five years previous
to the year of His birth. So if we kept with it we'd be in the year 2746
Roman time as of the year that we're actually making this class. In addition
to this, some people of that era kept time according to the years that a
certain king or an emperor was in power. In Luke chapter 3 verse 1 it says that
John's ministry is set to begin in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
Caesar. So they had different ways of pinpointing the accurate time, the Roman
calendar, how many years since the city of Rome was founded for
the specific time, what year in the reign of a king, for
example. So this particular calendar was used and continued to be used even
past Jesus' life. In the Middle Ages the Christian calendar was introduced using
the birth of Jesus as the zero point. When calculations were made and
calendars were produced and distributed it was noted that there was an error
that was made and the birth of Jesus was actually four years prior to the zero
date that had previously been calculated and so there was a problem here. Because Christianity was the dominant religion
at that time. They figured well, let's get rid of this Roman calendar, Roman
calendars based on paganism, the city of Rome and so on and so forth.
Let's have a Christian calendar and instead of the zero point being the
the founding of the city of Rome let's have the zero point be the
birth of Jesus and so they did this and they announced it throughout
Europe and so on and so forth. And they had the calendars made and the
calendars were distributed and everybody was working with that and
they discovered that they had made a mistake in their calculations and the
true year of Jesus' birth was not that zero point that they had established but
was actually four years before that zero point. And so even after the mistake was
noticed they figured well, it's too late now we'll just have to go with what we
have. This is how it came to be that when pinpointing the calendar date of Jesus'
birth scholars tell us that He was born in 4 BC. If you've ever read some
scholarly material about the birth of Jesus they'll say Jesus was born four
years before Jesus was born so it doesn't make any sense but that
historical note helps you to understand why they say this is the year of
His birth. Now we also know that he died when He was 33. Luke chapter 3 verse 23
says He was thirty years of age when He began His ministry and then when you
review His ministry event by event you see that He lived through three annual
Passover celebrations and He died during the celebration of the fourth. So if He
was born around 4 BC and He died at 33 years of age it means the calendar date
of His death is approximately 29 AD and so Pentecost happened in 29 AD.
Those churches whose cornerstone... You ever see those churches? You go by a
church and it has a cornerstone in its building and it says this church
established in 33 AD. I agree with the the spirit and the doctrine
of that because the church was established on Pentecost Sunday
after Jesus' birth and so on and so forth. But 33 AD is not the correct date.
The correct date would be 29 AD. So even by New Testament standards 33 was still
a young age to die. The normal lifespan at that time was about 50 to 55 years of
age. Today normal lifespan a man made perhaps 79, 80 years of age, a woman three
or four years older. But in those days lifespan was much
shorter 50 to 55. But even taking that into consideration dying at 33 was still
relatively young. Okay? So that's a little bit of history about the date,
if there was ever any confusion about the date when you read about Jesus being
born 4 BC, that kind of explains why it is in that way.
Alright let's change gears here and talk about the seven periods of
Jesus' life. Now we're gonna break that down, those seven periods. I'm gonna
break that down into individual events starting in our next lesson but for
today we're going to look simply at the seven periods. So period
number one... There we go. I showed you the Pentecost... There we go.
Period number one would be the boyhood of Jesus from zero to twelve years. These
include incidents and prophecies that led to His birth and the little
information we have about His childhood. We don't have a lot of information in
the Bible about His childhood. Now, there have been a lot of books written about
this time that showed Jesus doing miracles, again, not in the Bible.
But whenever there's a lack of information it seems that men have to,
they feel compelled to fill in the void. And so a lot of books were written
supposedly about His boyhood. Some of them say just fantastic things
like he was working with His father Joseph. Joseph was a carpenter and once
they had to build a table and the board wasn't long enough for the table so
Jesus miraculously stretched the board to make it long enough to create that
table. This kind of fantastic type of writing you find in there. Or some writer
said He lived in the desert with the monks, the Athenians for example, where He
was trained. But these are fables. They're stories that were circulated about Him
in the very early years of Christianity. The only information that God has
revealed about His childhood is limited and contained
in a few passages of Matthew and Luke. And we'll be looking at those
when we start next week in chronological order. So first general
period of His life, the boyhood, zero to 12 years of age. Second period of His
ministry or life is the beginning of His public ministry. At the age of thirty
Jesus leaves His obscure life in Nazareth and Capernaum. Nazareth
is where He lived as a boy. Capernaum is where He lived as an adult. This is in
the northern region and He travels south to begin His public ministry in and
around Jerusalem. And this debut of course is spectacular and it includes
His meeting with John the Baptist. We'll talk about that when we get to that part
of His life. Third session or a period of His life is the first Passover to the
second Passover, first Passover to the second. Most of the information for this
period is found in the book of John, it does most of it. Most of His ministry
during this first Passover time is in Jerusalem and then He departs from
Jerusalem, which is in the south of the country and returns home in the
North. Fourth period of His life would be the second Passover to the third Passover. 36 events make up this section where most of the action takes place in
Galilee the northern part of the country where Jesus originally grew up. So we're
always assuming, many times, when we read the Bible, that a lot of things are
taking place in Jerusalem, because that's the key city but that's not so. Many
of the incidents that we're going to look at take place in Jesus' hometown
and in and around the Sea of Galilee. Fifth period would be the third Passover to the final week. This is the longest section in the New Testament.
There are 61 events mentioned in this period and all four writers describe
this period in detail. During this time we see Jesus going back and forth
from the north, the northwest to the southern capital of Jerusalem. I want to
show you a little map here. There we go. If you can take a look at, this is a
map of Jesus' area of ministry. And I just want to point out a few things that
I want you to look at. First of all, Bethlehem is in the south. If you find
Jerusalem you can find Bethlehem just south, just go down one dot there and
there's Bethlehem. That's where he was born. Nazareth is where he was raised. So
if you go, just follow between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee
at the top, if you go down towards the left-hand side of the screen
you'll see Nazareth. That's where he was raised.
Interesting thing, between Jerusalem and Nazareth about 70 miles. So whenever they
are saying he's going home and he comes back, that's a trip of 70 miles.
They didn't take the train. They didn't ride on horseback. They walked it. They walked. And so a lot of Jesus' ministry
was walking and it was during these walks, this up and down between Nazareth
and the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem where they camped, where they stayed in
homes, where Jesus was teaching His disciples during these travels. Another
city I want you to look at is Capernaum. And if you go to the Sea of Galilee in
the north and just near the top of the Sea of Galilee there is Capernaum where
Jesus lived as an adult. There is also a synagogue there. It says on the
Sabbath He would go into the synagogue and teach in Capernaum. And if you go to
Capernaum archaeologists have found that synagogue, have found obviously, the
walls are not there, but the base is still there, the doors are there, the
floor so on and so forth. It's quite an amazing thing to be walking into
the floor, in the area where Jesus taught. The Sea of Galilee of course, lots
of activity, most of the Apostles were called. They were fishermen in that sea
and they crossed over it many times. Instead of walking around they would
take the boat to cross from one side to the other. Cana, again if you are at the
Sea of Galilee and you go just above Nazareth there's the city of Cana
where the first miracle was done at the wedding, the turning of water into
wine. Decapolis, if you again, at the Sea of Galilee to the, little at the bottom,
to the right you'll see a whole region. They're called Decapolis. This is where
the demoniac, Jesus heals that demoniac, the man possessed by many demons. The
demoniac came from there. And Decapolis means 10 cities. There were 10 cities
that were in that region and they call the region Decapolis. Of course, Jerusalem
the capital city, you go all the way down the Dead Sea, to the left of the Dead Sea,
Jerusalem is there, the capital city. That's where the temple was. No matter
which way you came north, south, east, west, no matter which way you approach
Jerusalem, you would always say you were going up to Jerusalem. You're never going
down to Jerusalem or around to. You were always going up to Jerusalem.
Bethany-- Bethany is just, if you look at Jerusalem go to the right slightly,
there's Bethany only a few miles from Jerusalem. That was the city where Jesus
would often stay overnight at the house of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.
They lived in Bethany and that was kind of Jesus' home base, if you wish, away
from home when He was in Jerusalem. And then Samaria. Samaria is not up, just one
place. It's a whole region, a region in between if you want, between the Dead Sea
and the Sea of Galilee there's a whole region there called Samaria. And it was
a country that he had to go through in order to get to and from Galilee.
And that's where he met the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well.
We're going to talk about the Samaritans and some of their backgrounds a little
later. So I wanted to show you that map to give you some of the stops along the
way where Jesus carried out His ministry walking to and fro with disciples always
accompanying him on the road. Okay? Let's go on now to number 6. The 6th, remember
these are not events that we're talking about today. These things are periods in
His life, the general periods of His life. We're going to break these down into
many more events as we go on. So number six would be the last Passover week
ending with the crucifixion. We're gonna go through this section giving you the
events, day by day, almost hour by hour, as they took place. We'll even give you
some of the dates, some of the calendar dates, like what month and what day of
the month certain things took place. Now according to our present-day calendars
it would have been Sunday, for example, April the 2nd to Saturday April the 7th
His final day in the tomb. And we're, as I say, when we get there we'll talk about
that. And then the final period of His life of course, the resurrection, His
appearances and the Ascension. So aside from His ascension before the Apostles
the Bible counts 10 separate appearances to more than 540 people in the space of
40 days, quite significant proof of His resurrection. And we're going to go over
these as we study. Well, hopefully at the end of our study, the Ministry of Jesus,
His life, His work, will become more real. Actually, that's my goal, to make it more
real. Sometimes when we read things out of sequence it's hard to realize that
these things, these events actually happened and it was in the
normal train of life. And when we see how one event leads into another
event, each event will, as I say, gain more perspective.
Hopefully they'll be even more understandable as a historical event and
not simply a string of teachings that we read in four different
gospel books. Now, each week also I'm going to
to focus in on some event or teaching to try to draw a lesson or a word of
encouragement that we can take, that we can take with us. So in this week's
lesson we've not looked at any particular event but rather an overview
of Jesus's movements and His work but even from this we can draw certain
conclusions. Conclusion number one, there was a method. There was a method.
When you read the gospels you don't readily see the pattern of His
movements but there's definitely a well-laid plan here and you see it when
you begin to look at these things in chronological order.
For example, the early years at home in the north with His family and then the
announcement of His ministry in the capital in the south where John was and
the leaders were and the bulk of the population were situated. And then a
return to the north to actually begin His teaching and miracles for His own
family, recruiting His own neighbors as disciples. Doesn't that make sense? We're
always thinking, oh yeah, he went out and just looked at a stranger and say, okay
you come with me. No, it's not the way it worked. The people He
called as disciples were His neighbors, people who knew Him growing up.
Doesn't that make sense? Isn't that... Aren't those the first people... Let's say
your introducing a product or you're selling Avon. Who
are the first people that you're going to talk to? Now, obviously,
I'm not comparing the gospel to Avon but in the natural scheme of things who are
the first people you're going to, well, you're going to share the gospel with
when you first are converted to Christ? Isn't it your mom or your brother, your
cousin? Aren't they the people that you're gonna talk to at the very
beginning? Nothing is different here. Jesus calls His disciples, first
disciples come from where? They come from... they're His cousins. They're people that
He knows, people that live near him. And then once He has some then there's a
return to Jerusalem to expand His ministry. Once it's established he's got
some followers, people are beginning to talk about Him. He's
beginning to teach them. So then He and they, where do they go? Well they go to
the big city and they begin to explain and begin to expand the things that He's
talking about. And then they spend time in the north once again and then in east
and the west after being rejected and hunted by leaders in the capital. Again,
it makes sense. He goes to the capital. He teaches. He does miracles. He gets
not feedback, he gets blowback. Who are you? Who gave you the right to do
these things? Who do you think you are? You better be careful. So what happens?
Well, they go back north and they expand the ministry in the northern
regions. And then His final appearance in Jerusalem which resulted in His death
and resurrection at the very end. And then of course, the church
beginning in Jerusalem and spreading out. So there was a method,
begins in the north, goes to the south. Every time there was problems or He was
being hunted or there He was being pushed in by the leaders, He would
go back north for a time and then let things cool in the city and then he'd
come back and continue. There was a method to His ministry. Secondly, His
movements were based on ministry. His movements were based on ministry and
prophecies. The fact that He was born in Bethlehem and He was raised in
Nazareth were not just coincidences. These events were mentioned in
the prophets. The fact that He was born in Bethlehem, for example,
this was mentioned in Micah, the prophet Micah chapter 5 verse 2. The
fact that He lived and grew up in Nazareth, this, Matthew talks
about this in chapter 2 verse 23. So Jesus Himself mentioned that He did
the will of the Father. The Holy Spirit moved Him to go into the desert to be
tempted. He didn't go to Jerusalem until the time was fulfilled. In
other words, He had an agenda. He had a prophetic agenda to
fill. It wasn't, how do I feel today? Well, maybe I'll do a miracle today. No that's
not the way that it worked. So we don't see mindless wandering but rather a well
ordered ministry time to be in certain places at certain periods based on God's
Word in the prophets. And He will, during the period Jesus was physically on earth
God's will was being accomplished and God's will according to what the prophets
said would happen when the Messiah would come.
So the point we need to remember was that His whole ministry was not based
simply on random events but all events that were carefully laid out in advanced
by God and spoken of by the prophets. And maybe one more lesson that we can draw
from this. Jesus worked in and existed in, at that time, in a very small area but He
had a tremendous impact on the world. He covered a corridor, roughly
the corridor between Galilee and Jerusalem about a hundred
miles. So if you go from Nazareth or from Cana or Capernaum down
to Jerusalem 70,80 miles and then if you go a little further north, little further
south, you've got about a hundred miles this way and maybe 60 miles between the
Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan. A very, very small area of land but look at
the impact over 2,000 years. So when we're thinking that we can't do
much for Christ from our little town or our small resources, remember how much
came from how little in Jesus' ministry. If God directs our work and our
efforts we can affect the whole world for Christ from right here where we live
and where we serve. Okay? So that's lesson 1 in the beginning of our series on the
"Life of Jesus in Chronological Order". I hope that you'll read the passages to
prepare for next week. That's one other thing. We won't have time to read all
the scripture references and all the passages, so I encourage you to
read those in advance and be ready for our lessons. So thank
you. We'll see you again starting a lesson two.
