Read, Do, & Tell

Ep 25: Jesus' Early Life & Ministry Bible Reading Plan

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 19:24

Welcome back to the podcast!

Today, we're sharing our next printable Bible reading plan, which is the FIRST of our New Testament plans!

It covers the early life of Jesus as a child as well as His early ministry. We're picking up where we left off in Episode 21 in the storyline of the Bible.

Not only will we go through the early life of Jesus, but Amy and I talk about the "silent" years between the testaments. It's really cool to see what God was doing in those 400 years. While it's true that no prophets wrote or spoke during this 400-year period, God was anything but silent as He arranged things. 

Galatians 4:4-5 reminds us that in the fullness of time, Jesus came born of a woman to redeem those under the law.


Join our Podcast+ Membership or login to your membership to download the transcripts, guided notes, and study tools from each episode. Becoming a member also supports our work as we read, do, and tell the Word of the Lord!


If you're new to our podcast, it may be helpful to listen to the previous episodes where we go through the storyline of the Bible. Click on any of the links below.

Previous Bible Reading Plans:


Books Mentioned in this Episode:

  • Person of Interest by J. Warner Wallace
  • A Harmony of the Gospels by A.T. Robertson 
  • One Perfect Life by John MacArthur
  • The Doctrines That Divide by Erwin Lutzer 


Let's Connect!


SPEAKER_00

Wait. Okay. Welcome back to this Reading Mamas Podcast. I am Becky.

SPEAKER_01

This is Amy. Thank you all for joining us again. We want to remind you all the purpose of this podcast, and it is about Bible literacy. So, why is Bible literacy so important? It is important because it allows you to understand the overarching storyline of the Bible. And that is the redemption that Jesus brings to us to bring us back into a right relationship with God the Father and for eternal salvation. It allows you to be able to read the Bible, to study it well and understand it, which will lead you to apply God's word in your life.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Amen. So we began walking through the Old Testament. And so just a quick review of the different Bible reading plans that we've created. The first one was called The Beginning. You can go back and listen to that in episode two. Then we had February was Slavery, Freedom, Wanderings. That's episode five. March, The Promised Land, episode 10. Then in April, we had the United Kingdom. That is episode 15. May, the Divided Kingdom, which was episode 19. Then in June, we had Captivity and Return, which was episode 21.

SPEAKER_00

Very good. Thank you. Before we move on to the New Testament, though, we want to talk about this 400 years of waiting that was in between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because God was still moving. These are sometimes called the silent years, but God was really anything but silent. He was, I think of him as being like a chess player. I'm horrible at chess. I'm horrible at checkers. I'm really good at Uno. Because you don't really have to think ahead. There's no strategy there. It's just like, oh, I got a red card. I can play it. But with chess, you really have to like my son can think several moves ahead, and he can already tell me that I'm going to lose. And here I am going, what do I do with this one? What can I do? Every time I move, I don't have any idea what I'm doing. But God does. And so I absolutely love Galatians 4, 4 through 5, because it reminds us God is moving in the background here. So it says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And that's from the ESV. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01

So we see that history proclaims the sovereignty of God. And we see that through the Greek Empire, especially because the Greek Empire influenced the known world of the time to have a common language and a common culture. So much so that the New Testament was written in Greek.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And then you even we talked about this on the previous episode where the Old Testament, because so many people spoke Greek and read Greek, that the Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew into Greek, which is known as the Septuagint.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Also at this time, really after the Greek Empire, you have the Roman Empire that comes in. The Roman Empire, I love how Jay Warner Wallace says they were quote. Maybe I'm quoting him wrong, but I think he said something like they were lazy. Of course, that should be in quotation marks, lazy, because they didn't like to go around mountains or they liked to build tunnels and bridges, which is actually probably more work.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00

So these Roman roads gave the people a road or a way to travel for the gospel, ultimately, for the gospel to travel, for Jesus to travel, for Paul to travel. But also during the Roman Empire, they did something a little different than you see other empires doing. When other empires, I think about the Babylonian Empire, when they went, when King Nebuchadnezzar went in and took the temple, burned the temple, took the people, they bring the people into their empire and they kind of force them to assimilate. And so that cost a lot of money and that's cost a lot of resources. You see that with Daniel. He was, he came over, they wanted to teach him the way of the Babylonian, um, that culture. Whereas the Roman Empire comes in and they kind of let people, you can stay in your house, you can stay where you are, you can worship your gods, just make sure you pay us taxes. So during this about 150-year period, we have what's known as the Pax Romana. And like I was saying, Jay Warner Wallace has a wonderful book. Oh my goodness, I can't recommend it enough, called Person of Interest. And it really goes through, I'm not going to go through the whole book, but it's a really fantastic book that you need to get to help you see God as the chess player and how at just the right time, at the fullness of time, he sent Christ. It's pretty awesome. So we have our New Testament timeline here. We want to just briefly go through it. First, we have Jesus' early life and his ministry. And of course, we don't know a ton about Jesus' early life, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But we've got prophecies from the Old Testament. We have John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness preparing the way. We have Jesus' birth, his childhood, which again we don't know much about, his baptism, which leads to his temptate him him into his temptation with Satan, his first miracles, and then calling of his disciples.

SPEAKER_01

Then next we see Jesus' ministry. Jesus' ministry walks us through the teachings, his miracles, his parables, his ultimate mission to seek and save, and then the rejection of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00

Then we have Jesus' death and resurrection. We see him riding into Jerusalem and then waving palm branches and saying, Hosanna, Hosanna. We have Passion Week, which was that week between what we call Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. We have him in the garden. He's arrested, betrayed by a friend. We see him in his trials, his crucifixion, and hallelujah, his resurrection.

SPEAKER_01

Then we have the early church, which walks us through the Pentecost, Peter's sermon, God adding to the church, Stephen being stoned, Philip, Saul becoming Paul, and then the missionary journeys of the disciples.

SPEAKER_00

Then we have letters to believers. Sometimes these are called epistles. So we have Paul's letters, he has 13 of them. We have Hebrews, James, Peter writes two, John writes three, and then we have the book of Jude. These are letters to new believers in the faith. A lot of them were Gentiles, not sure what to do with the Jews now, and the Jews not sure what to do with the Gentiles. So a lot of that conversation between the two.

SPEAKER_01

Then we have the last part, which is we called right now the rock. And maybe as we dig into this a little bit more, we may even change the title of that. But this is coming from the book of Daniel. And so before I read Daniel, I want to read through what topics will be touched on in this sixth part of the timeline. So we have the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the Millennial Kingdom, Satan being destroyed, the new heaven, the new earth, and then the forever and ever. Amen. So I'm going to read Daniel 2, verses 44 through 45. This is where Daniel receives the interpretation from God to Nebuchadnezzar's dream. And it says, In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. This is the meaning of the vision of the rock, cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands, a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the golden pieces. The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true, and the interpretation is trustworthy. Love it.

SPEAKER_00

He's the rock. Today we want to walk you through the first of our New Testament reading plans. This one's going to cover Jesus' early life and his ministry. I got the order of which we're going to do these from two books in particular. There's A Harmony of the Gospels by A.T. Robertson, and then One Perfect Life by John MacArthur.

SPEAKER_01

So we'll start with the prophecies of Jesus that are found throughout the Old Testament. The Old Testament prophesies that Jesus is going to be a prophet, he's going to be a priest, a king, and the suffering servant.

SPEAKER_00

Then we have John the Baptist in Luke 1 and 3. And in a lot of these scripture references, they're going to be found in multiple Gospels. We're just putting a few here. But John is called the voice crying out in the wilderness. This is from Isaiah 40, but he also comes in the spirit of Elijah, which we see in Malachi. And it's interesting when we were teaching about Elijah in Sunday school a few months ago, it was describing him. And then I was like, this sounds a lot like how John the Baptist dressed. It was kind of cool how they're very similar in describing the two. But he comes baptizing, calling for repentance. He is actually calling for people's the wilderness of their heart. It's like there's wilderness in their heart in a way. And he's preparing the way for Christ to come. And when he sees Jesus, he cries out, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

SPEAKER_01

Then we'll get to the events of Jesus' birth, which we find in Luke 2 and Matthew 1 through 2. It will take you through the stories of the angel Gabriel and Mary, Joseph receiving a dream from the angel. Well, where Joseph is dreaming, and the angel of the Lord visits him in his dream. The trip that they take to Bethlehem, the visit from the shepherds after they see the angels in the sky. I would have loved to have witnessed that. But one day we will in heaven. We'll see the angel singing. And then we have the magi. Did I say that right? I usually say magi, but the magi who are not there at his birth, but are believed to have arrived around the time that he was two years old, and they come bringing treasures to the king.

SPEAKER_00

Then we have Jesus' childhood, and really there's not a lot of information there. And I think primarily it's because these are not important parts of Jesus' life. Bibliography is not the right word. When there were ancient biographies, see the title. I was going with you. Yeah. Bibliographies doesn't work. So with ancient biographies of people, you typically focused on the biggest impact that they made, they made in their life. And that would have been during Jesus' ministry years, his three, three and a half years on earth. During this Jesus' childhood, we do get a glimpse into when he was presented at the temple eight days later after his birth for circumcision. It's really fascinating because there's a man there named Simeon who the Holy Spirit tells him he will he'll see the Messiah before he dies, which I think that's really cool. And he actually says some things that are really really awesome, but really sad. He does, he does tell Mary, I think it's in verse 35 of Luke 2, he basically tells her that a sword will pierce her very soul. So sad. It is a prophecy of how Jesus is gonna die. So then we see around the age of 12, his trip to Jerusalem at the Passover. This is where Jesus stays in the temple and his parents lose him. It's funny hearing kids tell this story. They think Jesus got lost and that he sinned and not have to say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what happened. And then we see in Luke 2 at the very last verse, verse 52, where it says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man. And we got an ancient picture of Jesus here with Joseph. So he probably would have taken up his father's trade, which would have been a carpenter.

SPEAKER_01

Then we have Jesus' baptism, which we find in Matthew 3 and John 1. John the Baptist sees Jesus and he wants to be baptized by Jesus. But Jesus wants John to baptize him. And so John asks him, Do you want me to do this? And Jesus in Matthew 3.15 says, Let it be so. It is proper for us to do this, to fulfill all righteousness. So Jesus is baptized, not because he's a sinner and he's repenting and he is being washed from his sins, but he is showing us that he is the one that washes us from our sins, ultimately through his blood. But the water baptism is the symbolic act that we do to make a public profession of our faith in Jesus. And so we're to follow his example. And then it says when he comes out of the water, heaven opens up and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. It doesn't say that a dove comes down on him. So we may not know exactly what this looks like, but it says that the lighting is on him. And so this is a vivid image of the shekana glory of God. So the Holy Spirit is on him, and a voice from heaven says, This is my beloved son, whom I love.

SPEAKER_00

Then we have the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4, where Satan tempts Jesus. He has been fasting, and he has three tests, if you want to call that, for Jesus. He asked Jesus to turn the stones into bread, which is fascinating because Jesus probably would have been really hungry about this time. I mean, how many days have you tried fasting? I've tried three and couldn't make it.

SPEAKER_01

I tried seven and made it to four, but I was in a bad spot.

SPEAKER_00

Can you imagine 40? Wow. Yeah. So then he tells Jesus to throw himself down that the angels will protect him. And then he also asks Jesus to basically bow and worship him, and he would give him the kingdoms of the earth. In all of these, it's fascinating to think that Satan is quoting scripture partially. He's twisting it, but Jesus knows the correct context of that scripture. And he doesn't just let Satan take the verses out of context. He basically gives it right back to Satan, but quoting scripture, it's really cool. This is kind of an interesting thought that Jesus being with Jesus being tempted. And right now, Amy and I are both reading the book by Erwin Lutzer called The Doctrines That Divide. And there's a fascinating thing he says here because people have comp they have a what's the word I'm looking for? Conversations, heated conversations sometimes. Lively debates. Lively debates about Jesus' humanity versus his divinity. And so I love what he says here on page 49. He says the Bible doesn't say whether Christ could have sinned, but merely that he didn't. And he says later on in that same on that same page, the purpose of the temptation from God's standpoint was not to see whether Christ would sin, but to prove that he wouldn't. I love that.

SPEAKER_01

In John 2, we see Jesus' first miracle, which takes place in Cana at a wedding. Um John 2, 1 says that through this miraculous sign, he revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him. And of course, we know that this sign was when he turned the water into wine.

SPEAKER_00

And then there's various interactions we get through the rest of this reading plan. We've got through from John 3 and 4, as well as Luke 4, we see Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night. He's a Pharisee. That's in John chapter 3. That's where we have that famous John 3.16 verse. And then he goes to Samaria and it says he had to go through Samaria, which I think is really fascinating. It's a divine um appointment. My words are gone today. So he meets with the woman at the well, and he ends up staying there. She believes in who he is. She goes and tells everybody, he's told me everything I ever did, which may have been an exaggeration, but it's very possible he did. And then they all believe he stays in Samaria for two days. Then he goes to Galilee, and they do welcome him. It says because they had seen what he had done at the when he was at the Passover at the festival. And in John 2, 23, we see that he did do signs. But from what I gather here in Galilee, their belief more is on, we believe you because you did signs, not necessarily we believe in who you are. And then we see him go to Nazareth, which is his hometown, and he is rejected there.

SPEAKER_01

Then we have the calling of the disciples that we see in Matthew 4 and Luke 5. This is really interesting because he's calling his disciples in a crowd of people. They were out fishing, they come in, they haven't caught a lot of fish. Jesus takes them back out, they drop their nets, and they have all of these fish now in their nets. And actually, after the miracle, Simon Peter recognizes his sin and he becomes afraid. And Jesus says, Don't be afraid. From now on, you will catch men. And they left everything and they followed him. And it's interesting because not the whole crowd followed him. So don't forget about the podcast plus membership. This was created with Bible teachers in mind, being parents, grandparents, and Sunday school teachers. You can partner with us at $5 a month. This helps us to continue what we're doing and equip others to read and teach the Bible to the next generation. The Podcast Plus membership gives you access to the monthly Bible reading plans, the transcripts to the podcast. So in case you don't have time to sit down and walk through it, you can read through it really quickly. Sometimes this is what I do because it helps me grasp the important information and then I can move on. Then we also have visual resources that we use in the podcast that we make available through the podcast plus membership. And it gives you the guided notes resource, which Becky created this and it takes you through each of the headings of every slide of the podcast and it has the lines there. So you can put your notes in order because I don't know about you, but when I write notes, I'm like, oh, I forgot to write that. And then I have arrows going here and circles and underlines, and then I have no idea what my notes are saying. Then you got to rewrite them. Yes. Hence why it's called guided notes. So that's a very helpful tool as well. If you have any questions about what we cover in the podcast, or you would like us to cover something specifically, then you can email Becky at Becky at this readingmama.com.

SPEAKER_00

So let's be determined as Ezra to read, do and tell the word of the Lord. Amen.

Head Shot

Becky Spence

Host