Jesus was born at an inn in Bethlehem by his mother Mary and by the Holy Spirit. Jesus' earthly father was named Joseph who was a carpenter; he was also at the inn and was married to Mary at the time.
When Jesus was a baby, wise men came to visit Jesus with gifts of gold, incense and oil called myrrh. They were told that there would be a Messiah and they wanted to see for themselves. There were shepherds at this miraculous event and multitudes of angels appeared, who proclaimed that Jesus was the Holy One.
In the book of Luke, the reader can see that Jesus was dedicated at the temple as a young child, and when he was twelve years of age, Jesus was in the synagogue talking with the leaders and while this was going on, his mother and father, Joseph, left the city without him (Luke 2). When they came back, they asked him where he was and he explained to them that he was in his Fathers house, which is where he should be. Eventually, they took him back to Nazareth, where they lived and worked. Jesus would have went through a ritual called a bar-mitzvah, which welcomes the young man into manhood, and allows him to read from the Torah aloud.
When Jesus was around thirty years of age, he was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist, who claimed that Jesus wasn’t the one who should be baptized but John himself should be the one who is baptized. Jesus went ahead and had John baptize him for to fulfill everything that God had for him. John the Baptist exclaimed when he saw Jesus coming, “behold, the one who takes away the sin of the world!” People asked John if he was the messiah but he always set them straight telling them the truth as he knew it. The people surrounding Jesus at the time of the baptism would have heard the voice of God explaining that Jesus was his Son, and with him he was well pleased (John 1).
Jesus then started collecting disciples by saying “follow me” or in the instance of Nathanael, Jesus showed him that he was omnipresent and omnipotent in that he saw him under the fig tree, which eventually persuaded Nathanael to follow him (John 1).
Jesus was at a wedding in the town of Cana one time and the host ran out of wine, so Mary, Jesus’ mother, told Jesus to do something about it and Jesus replied that his hour has not yet come, but he performed his first miracle anyways; this is recorded in the book of John. In the miracle, Jesus told the servants at the wedding to pour water into the wine jugs and they noticed that the water had turned to wine, but the guests of honor didn’t know what was going on at the time. They complimented the host of the party telling him that they waited until the end of the party to serve the best of the wine (John 2).
Jesus performed miracles left and right. He healed the sick allowed the blind to see, healed the maimed, and healed people that were demon possessed. Jesus walked on the water, he calmed storms, and he actually had healed people on the Sabbath, when in the eyes of some of the Jewish leaders, was illegal.
There was a man who was lowered down through the roof of a building where Jesus was at because the place was so crowded the friends of the man who couldn’t walk couldn’t take him in through the regular entrance (Mark 2). This was on a Sabbath, and the people who lowered the man down in through the roof never get confronted with working on the Sabbath, but the Jewish leaders direct their attention towards Jesus to see if he will heal the man on the Sabbath. When Jesus sees the man, he tells him that his sins are forgiven which alarms the Jewish leaders because they ask who can forgive sins but God. This ultimately leads to their plotting to kill Jesus on grounds of blasphemy.
There were other Sabbath controversies that took place that also mostly deal with miracles of healing. One event has a man with a shriveled hand; Jesus told him to stretch out his hand and it was healed (Mark 3). Jesus knew their hearts and was angry that they were putting tradition before God.
At one point, the disciples were eating and Jesus said to them that one of them would betray him; the one who dipped his bread with Jesus is the betrayer. Lo and behold, Judas dipped his bread with Jesus, and Jesus told him that whatever he is going to do, he should do it quickly. So, Judas left the area and went to the Jewish leaders to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Judas was the keeper of the money for the disciples, and he may have even stolen from the treasury that they had collected.
While Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane at night time, Peter, James and John kept falling asleep while they should have been praying and asking God to help them to not fall into temptation. Jesus kept coming back to see if they were still awake and once when he came back, they were sleeping and while he was still talking, Judas and his group of Jewish leaders, and maybe a few roman guards came to them with swords and Judas kissed Jesus and Jesus replied to Judas, “you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” then the Jewish leaders asked the four where Jesus of Nazareth was and Jesus spoke up and said, “I am He” and then everyone fell down after he said that. So they got back up and Jesus said the he was who they were looking for (John 18).
They then took Jesus and brought him to Caiaphas’ father in law, and had a hearing illegally which was at night time, and the roman government appointed Caiaphas as the high priest and not who they took Jesus to on trail first. Then they took Jesus to Caiaphas at night as well and had an illegal trial, and then after they all slept on it, they had another illegal trial in the morning in some ones back yard and plotted how they would kill him.
The Jewish leaders then took Jesus to a man named Pontius Pilate who was in charge of the Jewish people in his area and they had a trial before him and Pilate saw that Jesus wasn’t under him in authority but under someone else named Herod, he sent him to him and Herod was excited because he wanted to see him perform some miracles which he heard he could do. After Herod wrote Jesus off as a lunatic, he sent him back to Pilate .
Pilate’s wife had a terrible dream about Jesus and urged him to leave Jesus alone (Matthew 27). Pilate then took Jesus up to a private area and told Jesus that he had the power to destroy him and Jesus said to him that he could only do what God allowed him to do. Pilate had Jesus flogged severely because he didn’t want to put an innocent man to death, but wanted to please the Jewish people so they wouldn’t create a rebellion. After seeing Jesus broken beyond being able to tell that he was a human, they told Pilate to crucify him, and Pilate washed his hands of him, explaining that his blood is not on him. Jesus was then told to carry his cross, and when the soldiers saw that he could no longer do this, they told a man named Simon to carry it for him. When they arrived at the place of the skulls called Golgotha, they crucified Jesus (John 19). Spikes that were five to seven inches long were driven through the hands and feet of Jesus and he was left to die.
While on the cross, Jesus said seven things; the first was praying to God asking him to forgive the people for hanging him on the cross because they knew not what they were doing. The second thing Jesus said was directed to his mother and to most likely John telling them to take care of each other. The third thing Jesus said was in response to one of the other people hanging on a different cross, which was defending Jesus, said “Jesus, remember me in your kingdom.” Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” The fourth thing Jesus said was “I thirst” and then they tried to give him some vinegar on a sponge and he turned it down once he knew what it was. Then he asked the father, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The sixth thing Jesus said was a prayer of trust to God, saying that into God’s hands, Jesus commits his spirit. The last thing Jesus said on the cross was “it is finished" (John 19).
The Jewish leaders saw that it was getting late and they didn’t want the bodies to be up in the air during the Sabbath, and so the guards were ordered to break their legs but when they came to Jesus they saw that he was already dead and so affirmed this by shoving a spear through his ribs and into his heart and out came blood and water which caused the soldier who did it to exclaim that this was the Son of God. There was an earthquake, the temple curtain ripped from the top down, and some of the dead were raised and started speaking (Matthew 27).
Jesus was raised from the dead after three days of being buried in a stone covered tomb and showed himself to Mary, and other women and eventually to the apostles and also to 500 witnesses (John 20; 1 Corinthians 15). He ate, showed Thomas that he was the Christ by the holes in his hands, and then performed a miracle of telling some fishermen where to cast their nets and they caught so many they couldn’t move the net (John 21). Eventually Jesus gave orders to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to preach the Gospel to every living creature (Matthew 28). Then Jesus ascended into Heaven (Acts 1).
© Nace Howell, 2022
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