On August 10, 258 A.D., during the persecution by Emperor Valerian, St. Lawrence (of Huesca, Hispania) was martyred only a few days after the execution of Pope Sixtus II.

“Throughout all Syria” is astonishing to a Jewish reader (Matthew’s audience).

At first glance, this verse reads like a summary transition that’s easy to gloss over.

Immediately is pretty unsettling…

“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” - Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Whether you’re Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, there’s something about Mary, and it isn’t sentimentality.

If we’re not willing to be humbled, we’ll never grow.

If we’re honest, most of us don’t yet want what God is calling us to.

It’s likely that Jesus preached this first sermon in His native tongue: Aramaic.

If sin turns our gaze inward toward our appetites and anxieties, repentance moves us outward.

Jesus’s first sermon was only nine words (in English).

Another reason Jesus launched his ministry from Capernaum had to do with the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, which had occupied the territories north and west of the Sea of Galilee.

Why does Jesus launch his public ministry from Capernaum?

How did Jesus hear that John the Baptist had been arrested? Who told Him? Maybe a friend, maybe a family member. What was going through His mind when He found out?

What’s the fastest route to my destination? How can we make this process more efficient? What’s the productivity hack I can leverage to do more in less time? Etc, etc.

What’s at stake in Jesus’s second temptation? Satan is challenging the Son’s trust in the Father.

“…He was hungry” is quite the understatement…40 days? “Ravenous” or “starving” sounds more fitting.

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted.

The Greek verb used here for “led up” - anēchthē - is in the passive tense. Matthew is showing us that in Jesus’s humanity, He was actively receptive to the Spirit’s leading. And for forty days, He was attacked by the enemy.

Why was Jesus baptized? Did he even need to be?

From an absolute standpoint, no. He didn’t. But in order to “fulfill all righteousness” it was fitting that he do so. It’s difficult to capture here just how packed with meaning this single episode is in the life of Christ.

Growing up, the imagery of this passage never captured me. Although a couple of my best teenage summers included bailing hay on a friend’s farm, we didn’t use winnowing forks, and we certainly weren’t clearing a threshing floor.