Celebrating the Ministry of Jesus
The “Holiday Celebration Series” looks at times when Christians gather to rejoice in their faith and praise God for who he is and what he has done. Depending on your practices and preferences, the labels used and scope of the festivities change, but in general terms, we celebrate Christmas and Easter.
We cover the Christmas season (which can include Advent and Epiphany) in the devotional book The Advent of Jesus. And we celebrate the Easter season (which can encompass Lent, Good Friday, Ascension Day, and Pentecost) in the devotional books The Passion of Jesus and The Victory of Jesus.
This book, The Ministry of Jesus, doesn’t address these specific holiday seasons but instead revels in the space between them, sometimes called Ordinary Time—but there’s nothing ordinary about it.
In the Christmas season, we observe the Messiah coming as a baby to save us. In the Easter season we remember the resurrected Savior who has successfully completed his mission.
The church calendar has but a few weeks between these two holy seasons, yet historically there are three decades between them: thirty-three years transpire between Jesus’s birth and his resurrection from the dead.
The last three years of Jesus’s life are when his ministry on earth occurs. This is what we’ll cover in this devotional, which is also the bulk of what’s addressed in the four biographies of Jesus in the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
For our purposes, we’ll use the timeline in Mark’s gospel of Jesus to guide us. We’ll weave in Matthew, Luke, and John as appropriate to look at Jesus’s words, work, and witness.
You can use this devotional in the period between the Christmas season and the Easter season, which spans a few weeks. Or you can read it in the time after Easter and prior to Christmas, which lasts about six months. Or do both.
However you proceed, may God speak to you, inspire you, and bless you through this devotional as you immerse yourself in wonder over the ministry of Jesus and what he has done for us.
