Nevertheless at Thy Word

Straight from the waters of baptism, Jesus goes into the wilderness. The Joseph Smith Translation of Matthew 4:1 says He went “to be with God,” and it clarifies that the Spirit, not the devil, took Him to the pinnacle and the mountain. After forty days of fasting, the tempter comes with three offers: bread for a starving body, a spectacular leap to prove God’s protection, and all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship. Every answer comes from Deuteronomy (8:3; 6:16; 6:13), words Moses spoke to Israel after their forty years in the wilderness. Where Israel had struggled with hunger, testing God and false worship, the Son of God stands firm. He doesn’t argue with Satan; He simply answers with what God has already said.

🔗 Cross-references

• Deuteronomy 8:2–3 ↗Moses reminds Israel why the Lord led them forty years in the wilderness: man does not live by bread only.
• 1 Corinthians 10:13 ↗Paul’s promise that God will not let us be tempted above what we can bear, and will make a way to escape.

Luke tells the same story with a few differences worth noticing. He begins by saying Jesus was “full of the Holy Ghost” (4:1). He places the temptation at the temple last, so the account ends in Jerusalem, the city where Luke’s Gospel will reach its climax. And he adds a sober final line: when the devil had ended all the temptation, “he departed from him for a season” (4:13). Temptation did not end in the wilderness. It would return, and the Savior would meet it again all the way to Gethsemane. That is both a warning and a comfort. Winning one battle doesn’t end the war, but we are not left alone in it: He knows from experience what it is to be tempted and not give in.

🔗 Cross-references

• Hebrews 4:15–16 ↗Because our High Priest was tempted yet without sin, we can come boldly to the throne of grace.
• Doctrine and Covenants 20:22 ↗A latter-day witness that the Savior suffered temptations but gave no heed to them.

Jesus returns to Nazareth, where He was brought up, and goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath “as his custom was” (4:16). Handed the scroll of Isaiah, He reads the passage we know as Isaiah 61:1–2, stopping at “the acceptable year of the Lord.” Then He sits down to teach and says, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (4:21). The first reaction is wonder at His gracious words. The second is “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (4:22). When He reminds them that Elijah was sent to a widow in Sidon and Elisha cleansed a Syrian, Nazareth erupts, and they try to throw Him from a cliff. It is a sobering picture of how nearness and familiarity can blind us to what is right in front of us.

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 61:1–3 ↗The full passage Jesus read, which goes on to promise beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning.
• John 1:11 ↗John’s summary of the same sorrow: He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.
• 1 Kings 17:8–16 ↗The widow of Zarephath (Sarepta), who fed Elijah from her last handful of meal and never ran out.

Matthew notes that Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, fulfilling Isaiah’s promise that the people who sat in darkness would see a great light (Matthew 4:13–16; Isaiah 9:1–2). Luke then gives a day in Capernaum. In the synagogue an unclean spirit recognizes Him as “the Holy One of God,” and the people marvel that His word was “with power” (Luke 4:32–34). At Simon’s house, He stands over Simon’s wife’s mother and rebukes the fever, and she rises immediately to serve them (4:38–39). At sunset the sick are brought to Him, and Luke says He “laid his hands on every one of them” (4:40). Not a crowd blessing; one person at a time. The next morning He moves on, because other cities need Him too (4:43).

🔗 Cross-references

• Isaiah 9:1–2 ↗The prophecy Matthew quotes: a great light rising on the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, in Galilee.
• 3 Nephi 17:21 ↗The resurrected Savior blesses the Nephite children one by one, the same personal ministry.

The fishermen of Gennesaret have worked all night and caught nothing; now they are washing their nets. Jesus borrows Simon’s boat as a pulpit, then asks the unthinkable: go back out and let the nets down again. Simon’s answer is one of the great sentences of faith: “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net” (5:5). The nets break, both boats begin to sink, and Peter falls at Jesus’s knees: “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (5:8). The Savior does not depart. He says, “Fear not,” and gives Peter a lifelong calling (5:10). Then comes a leper, touched and cleansed, and the note that Jesus often “withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (5:16).

🔗 Cross-references

• John 21:3–7 ↗After the Resurrection, another fruitless night, another word from the shore, another overflowing net.
• Ether 12:27 ↗The Lord gives us weakness to make us humble, and His grace makes weak things strong.

A house is so packed that friends carrying a paralyzed man can’t reach the door, so they climb onto the roof and lower him through the tiles. Luke says Jesus acted “when he saw their faith” (5:20), the faith of the friends as well as the man. Before healing his body, Jesus forgives his sins, and when the scribes object that only God can forgive, He heals the man as evidence of His authority to do both (5:21–25). Then He calls Levi, a publican, who leaves everything and throws a feast full of tax collectors and sinners. To the critics Jesus says, “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick” (5:31). His closing images of new cloth and new wine say that what He brings can’t simply be patched onto old habits.

🔗 Cross-references

• Mark 2:1–5 ↗Mark adds that the man was “borne of four,” four friends who wouldn’t give up.
• Matthew 9:9 ↗Matthew’s own account of his call from the tax table: Levi and Matthew are the same man.
• Luke 15:1–2 ↗Publicans and sinners keep drawing near to hear Him, and the critics keep murmuring.

Return to Nazareth today and read the key passage slowly. The Savior’s mission statement is full of people others overlooked: the poor, the brokenhearted, the captive, the blind, the bruised. He announced that it was being fulfilled “this day,” not in some distant age. That is still true. The sacrament you take today is part of how He keeps healing and freeing us, week by week. It is also worth noticing that His mission became the pattern for His disciples. Peter, who knelt in a sinking boat, would spend his life doing these same things in the Savior’s name. As you partake of the sacrament, ask which phrase He is fulfilling in you, and which one He may be inviting you to help Him fulfill in someone else.

🔗 Cross-references

• Mosiah 18:8–9 ↗The baptismal covenant includes bearing burdens, mourning with those who mourn and comforting those who need comfort.
• Doctrine and Covenants 81:5 ↗The Lord asks His disciples to succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down and strengthen the feeble knees.