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Read: Matthew 4:23-25
Listen: Matthew 4

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. Matthew 4:23

Jesus arrives as the long-awaited Savior, but he is not the sort of deliverer the people expected or longed for. Many long for Jesus to heal, and many more desire Jesus to free the Jews from the oppressive grip of Rome. Crowds surround Jesus with great excitement, believing that he is the answer to what they believed were their biggest problems. Jesus came to set people free, but not in the manner they expected or longed for. Jesus focuses on preaching and teaching, revealing the nature of God’s kingdom and what it means to live as God desires.

Just like those in Jesus’s day, we can have wrong expectations of Jesus. We can expect (or at least long for) Jesus to rescue us from any pain or discomfort in this life. Or we can expect a certain sort of ease or even prosperity in following Jesus. But that is not what Jesus promised or set out to accomplish. Rather, Jesus came to set us free from sin and empower us in a new way of life. The best way we can learn and better understand what this way of life entails is to sit under Jesus’s teaching and apply his teaching to our lives.

TODAY: Immediately following Matthew 4 is Jesus’s core teaching called the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Slowly read through or listen to the Sermon on the Mount. As you do so, ask yourself, “Based on Jesus’s teaching in this sermon, what sort of life does he want me to live?