Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying

Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you

have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've

been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission

of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this

week. So I invite you to grab a Bible and turn one on or open it up, whichever one of those that

you do, and open up to Matthew chapter four, the gospel of Matthew chapter four.

You have, you did the spiritual practice series that John Mark just talked about,

and then before that you've been with baby Jesus for a while.

And then you got to adult Jesus, who faced his arch enemy in the wilderness. And tonight,

we're exploring Jesus comes onto the scene. He goes public for the first time in the Gospel of Matthew.

So I just want to read, it's about the second half of Matthew chapter four. I just want to read it,

the whole thing. It won't take very long. And it's about the second half of Matthew chapter 4, I just want to read it, the whole thing.

It won't take very long, and it's really cool, and that's our mission to explore the second half of Matthew chapter 4. How guys doing? Great, good. Let's start in verse 12, Matthew 4, verse 12.

So when Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee.

Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Copernium, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naftali,

to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah, land of Zebulun and land of

...