By going into the wilderness to prepare for his public ministry, Jesus was following the example of the prophets and holy men and women of all the generations preceding him. This is probably why it is here, after Jesus had become an adult and been baptized in the presence of many witnesses, that Luke's Gospel veers off the narrative track to retrace his genealogy back to Adam, whom Luke calls “the Son of God,” which Luke takes as foreshadowing the “second Adam” role Jesus had come to carry out. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all put Jesus' retreat to the wilderness immediately after his baptism, but John the Evangelist, in the fourth Gospel, tells a more personal, memoir-like account, describing events more in terms of his own impressions or what he was told, without trying to make them fit a sequential timeline.

Significance of the Wilderness

As mentioned previously, many of the prophets and other holy people performed important acts while in the wilderness. In the wilderness Moses met God in the burning bush and, atop Mount Sinai, talked with him and received The Law. Centuries earlier, Abraham had traversed the wilderness from Ur to the land of promise, and took his son, Isaac, into the wilderness to offer him up to God as a sacrifice. The nation of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness to get to the land God had promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. David the shepherd boy was tending sheep in the wilderness when he wrote the first Psalms. And it was John the Baptist — whom everyone in Jerusalem and all Judea came out to the wilderness to listen to and be baptized by — and the long line of prophets before him, that Jesus emulated in retreating to the desert before starting to preach.

Matthew and Luke have very similar versions of Jesus' retreat to the wilderness and his temptation by Satan, but Luke's version is a bit more detailed than the other Gospel accounts. Luke is the only Gospel writer who includes Jesus' reference to himself, in speaking to Satan, as “the Lord your God.”

Satan uses possessions, the power to command vast lands or nations, even selected quotations from the Scriptures, to seduce, but the Word of the Lord can always best him. A widely held interpretation of this passage sees it as describing what believers go through following baptism, when they commit their lives to God. Temptation — testing — is part of the life of faith.

Return to Galilee

After ending his fast and wilderness retreat, Jesus returned to Galilee (from the Judean desert near the Jordan River across from Jerusalem) to begin preaching and call his disciples. Galilee, more multicultural and less set in its doctrines than Judea, but home to numerous converts, was more likely ready to receive Jesus' message.

By now, many had heard that John the Baptist had been arrested by Herod, so the people may have been eager to hear a message like the one the baptizer was famous for. Also, since Jesus had been known in the region from his youth, it was possible that some young men there would be ready to follow him if he would only invite them. They were, and he did.

The First Called

John the Evangelist says that the first two followers of Jesus to commit to discipleship were initially followers of John the Baptist. “John, standing with some followers when Jesus walked by, said of him, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’ And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus” (John 1:35–37). One of these, John reports, was Andrew, and as the second is not named, it is believed that he was John himself, the author of the Gospel. Andrew then recruited his brother, Simon Peter, John reports, saying to Simon, “We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ” (John 1: 41).

In this manner, Jesus gathered his first disciples. Luke gives additional background before the calling of the first disciples, indicating that Jesus had already begun preaching and becoming widely known in the region, first around Nazareth, and then in the north near the coast of the Sea of Galilee: “And came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on the sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power” (Luke 4:31–32).

On the opposite end of the time spectrum from John's, the Gospel of Mark is believed by scholars to have been written first of the four evangels. Mark, though not an apostle like Matthew and John, is also believed to have been a close associate of the Apostle Peter, and some even believe his Gospel was composed under Peter's direction. Mark's is the shortest of the four Gospels, but much of its wording is repeated in one or more of the others.

Matthew provides a succinct transition from the call of the first disciples away from their profession as fishers, to fishers of men. See Matthew 4:23–25.

Jesus' actual teachings, considering the proportion of the Gospels they make up, are arguably the least known and least understood aspect of his ministry. The church in general has always said that Jesus' main teaching was that he was the Son of God, the Creator and Judge of the universe in the flesh. And, as C. S. Lewis so famously said in Mere Christianity, to make that claim, if it's not true, either indicates madness or a lie, and if either of those are true of him he couldn't possibly have been a “great moral teacher.”