Milestones of the Master: Crucial Events in the Life of Jesus and Why They Matter So Much

By Warren W. Wiersbe

A satisfying and enriching study of the 12 most important events in the life of Jesus. The author of more than 150 books and a beloved Bible teacher and former pastor, Warren Wiersbe explains the meaning of each event in the ministry of Jesus, and goes one step further to show the personal significance of each momentous event of the most important person who ever lived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Aug 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781683591795

Warren W. Wiersbe

Warren W. Wiersbe, former pastor of the Moody Church and general director of Back to the Bible, has traveled widely as a Bible teacher and conference speaker. Because of his encouragement to those in ministry, Dr. Wiersbe is often referred to as "the pastor’s pastor." He has ministered in churches and conferences throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Central and South America, and Europe. Dr. Wiersbe has written over 150 books, including the popular BE series of commentaries on every book of the Bible, which has sold more than four million copies. At the 2002 Christian Booksellers Convention, he was awarded the Gold Medallion Lifetime Achievement Award by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. Dr. Wiersbe and his wife, Betty, live in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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Milestones of the Master:

Crucial Events in the Life of Jesus and Why They Matter So Much

© 2015 by Warren W. Wiersbe

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

First edition by Weaver Book Company.

All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail].

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Print ISBN 9781683591788

Digital ISBN 9781683591795

Cover design: Frank Gutbrod

Interior design: { In a Word } www.inawordbooks.com

Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Incarnation and Birth of Jesus

The Boy Jesus in the Temple

The Baptism of Jesus

The Temptation of Jesus

The Transfiguration of Jesus

The Triumphal Entry of Jesus

The Arrest of Jesus in the Garden

The Trial and Rejection of Jesus

The Crucifixion of Jesus

The Resurrection of Jesus

The Ascension of Jesus to Heaven

The Sending of the Holy Spirit

Preface

When I was about to leave for seminary in 1948, my Uncle Simon Carlson, a retired pastor, brought me a dozen books from his library, among them a copy of G. Campbell Morgan’s The Crises of the Christ. At that time I didn’t know who G. Campbell Morgan was, but my reading of that book greatly helped to shape me and my ministry.

In his book, Campbell Morgan discusses seven crises in our Lord’s earthly career: His birth, baptism, temptation, transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The book was published in 1903 at a time when new theologies were beginning to infiltrate Christian schools and churches. In his book, Morgan not only answered the liberals of his day but he also met some of the challenges that we meet today.

In his spoken and written ministry, Campbell Morgan exalted Jesus Christ and made God’s truth practical and exciting. The Crises of the Christ gives us a beautiful example of Bible teaching that encourages us to search the Scriptures and relate one text to another. I’m glad I read the book early in my training because it helped me to love the Scriptures more and to receive the word of God as a treasury of living truth and not as a seminary textbook.

The idea for this present book came from my exposure to The Crises of the Christ. During more than sixty years of both pastoral preaching and conference and seminary teaching, I have occasionally given messages on what Morgan called The Crises of the Christ. I didn’t use his title or plagiarize his material, and I always told the congregations where the idea for the series originated. However, in my own series I have added three studies: Jesus in the temple as a boy, our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the sending of the Holy Spirit.

I never met G. Campbell Morgan personally; but in 1970, while ministering in Birmingham, Alabama, I did meet one of his four pastor-sons, Kingsley John Morgan. He was very gracious to spend time with me, and after our conversation he sent me back to my hotel with a bag of books out of his own library. (Shades of Uncle Simon!) Among them were hard-to-find reports of the Mundesley Bible Conference that his father had founded and conducted each summer, plus a stack of his father’s individually printed sermons. What treasures!

I have many of Dr. Morgan’s books in my library, and occasionally I read a sermon or a chapter to enrich my own soul. I also have a cassette recording of his sermon on Genesis 1:1–2, so I can actually listen to him speak when I have an hour to spare.

I encourage you to secure a copy of Morgan’s The Crises of the Christ and to study it carefully. It will help you learn more about Jesus and will also encourage you to magnify Him in your life and service. I trust that the book you are reading now will also help you to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Son of God. Our Lord has a master plan for each of His children and we must not fail to follow it.

Warren W. Wiersbe

Introduction

A Life Planned in Heaven

From the time Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb to His ascension to heaven, everything He did, said, and experienced while He was on earth had been planned beforehand by the Godhead, before the creation of the heavens and the earth. Jesus said, I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me (John 5:30). He also said, I always do those things that please Him (John 8:29). He knew He was under orders and He always obeyed. Jesus rose early each morning and spent time praying to the Father and receiving His orders of the day (Isa. 50:4–5; see Mark 1:35). This is a good example for all Christians to follow. In our Lord’s earthly life and ministry, there were no accidents, only divine appointments; and so it will be with His obedient people today. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way (Ps. 37:23).

God governs His creation by decree, and not by committee vote or popular consensus. John the apostle heard the multitudes shout, Allelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! (Rev. 19:6). The Lord says, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure (Isa. 46:10). King Nebuchadnezzar said of the Lord, He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’ (Dan. 4:35). Whether we like it or not, the Lord operates by executive fiat and answers to nobody for what He does.

The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations (Ps. 33:11). The Lord is sovereign and that settles it. But note that His counsel comes from His heart. The will of God is motivated by the love of God and is always well-suited and perfectly adapted to each of His children. He works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11). If that were not true, He could never have inspired Paul to write Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Everything that transpired in the life and ministry of Jesus on earth was ordained before the foundation of the world. As you read the Gospel of John, you find that Jesus lived by a divine timetable. At the wedding feast, He said to His mother, My hour has not yet come (2:4). When His unbelieving foster brothers urged Him to go to the feast in Jerusalem, He replied, My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready (John 7:6; and see vv. 8 and 30). At His last Passover feast, Jesus knew that the time had come for Him to die (John 12:23, 27; 13:1; 16:32), and in His high priestly prayer, He said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify Your Son that Your Son may glorify You (17:1). Because Jesus followed God’s timetable, He was not afraid of those who wanted to kill Him but boldly kept ministering the word of God. He could say with David, and so may we, My times are in Your hand (Ps. 31:15).

I recall the dark day when the seminary registrar called me into his office to inform me that I would have to spend one more year at school before I could graduate. For some reason, he could not accept all the hours I had transferred from Indiana University, so I would actually be spending an extra year to earn my degree. It also meant that my fiancé and I would have to postpone our marriage until after I graduated. (She was on a four-year course.) We could arrange to see each other occasionally, but I was pastoring a church as well as attending classes, and that was keeping me very busy. As it turned out, she arrived home and found a job waiting for her, and the extra classes I had to attend were exactly what I needed for my ministry! Yes, we had to be patient until my graduation, but as I said, we did see each other occasionally that year. Our times were in God’s hands and everything worked out beautifully, as it always does when the Lord is in control.

We can think of successful people in the Bible who learned to put their times into God’s capable hands. Abraham and Sarah schemed to get a son before God was ready and they paid dearly for it. Joseph could not understand why things seemed to go wrong in Egypt, but the Lord made him second ruler of the land at just the right time. By rescuing his family from the famine, Joseph rescued the future nation of Israel. Moses tried to use his sword to deliver his people from Egyptian bondage, but his attempt failed and he had to flee. Forty years later, God sent him back to Egypt, and this time the Jewish slaves were delivered. Our Lord’s disciples did not always understand what He was doing, but one thing they did know: He was doing the Father’s will.

As I look back on more than sixty years of ministry, I can affirm that the Master has a perfect plan for every believer and that He will unfold that plan a step at a time as we obediently follow Him. The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the milestones in the life of Jesus so that you might better understand how our loving God teaches us and guides us today.

1

The Incarnation and Birth of Jesus

Matthew 1–2; Luke 1–2

From eternity past, the Lord Jesus Christ existed with the Father and the Spirit; and together they conceived what we call the plan of salvation. The pre-existence of Christ is one of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. John opens his Gospel with, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God (1:1–2). Our Lord did not hesitate to say that He came down from heaven (3:13; 6:38, 42, 62; 8:14, 42; 16:28; 17:5, 8). He told Pilate that He had both been born (the physical) and had come into the world (the eternal—John 18:37). Babies are conceived in this world so they don’t come into the world but only out of the mother’s womb. Jesus was miraculously conceived in Mary’s womb and in that way came into the world from heaven.

First, the Lord created a universe—the heavens and the earth. Of all the planets God created, He chose the earth to be the stage on which He would demonstrate His grace. The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness (Ps. 24:1). In the creation process, God formed and then He filled. He formed the heavens and filled them with various lights and galaxies. The land and the seas He filled with vegetation and various kinds of creatures. He climaxed His creative work by making a man and a woman and commanding them to be fruitful and multiply.

As every Bible reader knows, our first parents disobeyed the Lord and brought sin and death into the world. But the Lord gave them the promise of a Redeemer: And I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (Gen. 3:15). Eventually, God called Abraham and Sarah to found the nation of Israel that would give the world the promised Redeemer. Salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22). Abraham and Sarah became the parents of Isaac, and Isaac and Rebekah became the parents of Jacob. It was Jacob who fathered the twelve sons who became the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel.

From generation to generation, the Lord revealed His plans to His people in types and prophecies. Before he died, Jacob told his sons, The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people (Gen. 49:10). He was speaking of Jesus, the Son of God.

Some critics wonder why God was so strict with His people Israel during those formative centuries, but we must remember that Israel was called to reveal God to the Gentiles and to bring God’s Son into the world. Whenever Israel went after idols and abandoned the Lord, they were jeopardizing that wonderful plan of salvation.

God had chosen a nation, and from that nation He chose one tribe—the tribe of Judah. On his deathbed, Jacob predicted that the promised Redeemer would come from the tribe of Judah (Gen. 40:10). Centuries later, God told David the Savior would come from his family (2 Sam. 7). The prophet Micah announced that the Redeemer would be born in Bethlehem, the city of David (5:2), and Isaiah predicted the Redeemer would be born of a virgin (7:14).

According to Scripture, there are four ways to get a human body. God made Adam from the dust of the earth, and He made Eve from a part of Adam’s body. Their sons received their bodies as has every human being since that time, through the union