Matthew 4:17

‘From that time began Jesus to preach, and to say, “Repent you, for the Kingly Rule of heaven is at hand.” '

From that time.' That is from the time of John's imprisonment, which provided Jesus with the opportunity and necessity of establishing His own ministry. What must have seemed a disaster for the true people of God was in fact to be the beginning of an even greater work of God, as so often happens in God's planning.

Jesus' preaching is deliberately given by Matthew in the same words as John's. Matthew thus makes clear that Jesus has not supplanted John, but is carrying on where he had left off. For while we are not as much aware of it as they were in those days, we should recognise that John's ministry had had a huge impact, affecting many people in Judaea, Peraea and Galilee (among them some of those who would now be Jesus' disciples) and reaching out far into the Dispersion. Thus when the Gospel eventually did go out among the nations there would be many disciples of John who would gladly receive it (and, such is the perversity of human nature, some who would even consider John, in spite of what he himself had said, superior to Jesus).

But while the words are the same the content of their messages is in fact to be seen as very different, for John could only look to the future, while for Jesus it had become the present. In Him ‘the last days' were here. And we can see quite clearly the way in which Jesus' message expanded by considering His discourses, especially chapter 13. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, backs up His calls for awakening and repentance, and bases those calls on a new interpretation of the Law that John would never have dreamed of. The parables of the Kingly Rule of Heaven proclaim the Kingly Rule of Heaven in more depth, and greatly expand on the idea. What a contrast Jesus' teaching and ministry is with John's message. John spoke with the authority of the Old Testament prophets, and with the authority of his calling, but Jesus speaks on His own authority, an authority that is beyond that of the prophets. He alone can declare, ‘I say to you'. John proclaims the Kingly Rule of Heaven that is coming, without expanding the idea very much further, although we must recognise that in his preaching of the way of righteousness many entered into it (Matthew 21:31). Yet that Kingly Rule is still to him, as a prophet, something to come in the future, even though near at hand, for ‘he who is least in the Kingly Rule of Heaven is greater than he' (Matthew 11:11), and this is true even though the tax-collectors and prostitutes under his ministry  have  entered it (Matthew 21:31, compare Matthew 23:13). But we may see it as probable that as a humble sinner responding to his own preaching, on the same terms as the tax-collectors, he was able to enter it without necessarily realising it, for after all the King was now present.

Jesus proclaims the Kingly Rule of Heaven and expands on it and explains it in great detail and reveals that it is now present. John does no miracle (John 10:41), for the Kingly Rule was not yet manifested. But once Jesus arrives in Galilee He is constantly doing miracles (seemingly He would not do so while John was preaching, out of deference to John). Thus it is revealed that the Kingly Rule of Heaven was now not just promised, but was definitely present in power! Consider Matthew 4:23; Matthew 11:4; and the expectancy that He would heal as ‘the Son of David' (Matthew 9:27; Matthew 12:22; Matthew 20:29; Matthew 21:14).

‘Repent and believe the Good News.' What Matthew is saying is that this was, as with John, the essence of His message. But it must be quite obvious to anyone who thinks at all that Jesus must have said much more than this at the time. He was not just a one verse preacher. Prior to the Sermon on the Mount He must clearly have had a considerable preaching ministry. He must therefore have said many things. But in essence, says Matthew, basic to His message (as with John) was that He was calling on men to repent, to turn to God from sin, to find forgiveness (this is the assumption from the requirement to repent, and is assumed in, for example, Matthew 6:12; Matthew 9:2) and to respond to the Kingly Rule of Heaven now present among them, (which they could not have done without forgiveness). What the fuller content was we must gather by reading on in Matthew's Gospel. But it was sufficient to gain Him a good following of ‘disciples', that is, of those who followed Him because they had responded to His words and in order to learn more.