Matthew 4:18-22

Four Fishermen Called
to be Disciples

And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They immediately left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him. (John 4:18-22)

Matthew 4_12 part 1 Matthews Missing Year

Matthew 4:12 part 1

Matthews Missing Year 

Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

Now when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, He departed to Galilee.

Matthew 4:11-12

Between vesres 11 and 12 of Matthew chapter 4, a year in Jesus ministry had passed by. In verse 11 we read that Jesus had just successfully defeated the temptations of Satan after spending 40 days fasting in the wilderness. Now, he will be embarking upon his ministry, but after His temptation, we read in verse 12 that John the baptist was arrested. Yet if you look at the chronological order of Jesus life, John was not arrested until after Jesus entered Judea. However, Matthew does write about His ministry in Judea until chapter 19.

If we only had the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we would never have known about the events that took place in Judea. This is where John's Gospel fills us in on many important aspects of Jesus ministry. In order to properly understand what happened, I decide to cover the events that took place between verses 4:11 to 4:12, in a 9 part series. This is part one of that series, where I will cover 4 of the 9 steps Matthew omitted in his Gospel account of Jesus ministry.

Matthew 4:11-12

Matthew 4:11-12

Outline of Events Matthew Omitted

Between verses 11 and 12 of Matthew chapter 4, a year in Jesus ministry had passed by. In verse 11 we read that Jesus had just successfully defeated the temptations of Satan after spending 40 days fasting in the wilderness. Now, he will be embarking upon his ministry, but after His temptation, we read in verse 12 that John the baptist was arrested. Yet if you look at the chronological order of Jesus life, John was not arrested until after Jesus entered Judea.

Like the other synoptic Gospels of Mark and Luke, Matthew covered many events in Jesus early ministry of Galilee. We do find far more events recorded by John from Jesus' ministry in Judea and Samaria, but not all of the differences are attributable to geographic reasons. The Holy Spirit led each Gospel writer to write in a way that, when taken as a whole, they would give us a complete picture of our Lord Jesus, HIS ministry, and HIS mission.

Matthew does cover Jesus early life, HIS baptism, and HIS temptation which all took place in Judea, he will not cover any more events of Jesus ministry in Judea until HIS last year just before HIS triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

If it were not for John's Gospel, which was the last one written, we would never have known about the events that took place which I cover in the outline below. While I did cover this in another more broad outline, I decided to isolate out this portion for an easy reference to truly get a good picture of the events Matthew omitted in first year of Jesus' ministry.