Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to Part 2 with Dr. Jan Martin, Matthew Chapter 4 and Luke Chapters 4 and 5.

Dr. Jan Martin: 00:09 Let’s jump over to Luke Chapter 4 just so we can have a look. We’ve already looked at the Temptations. You’ll see those at the beginning of Luke. When he comes out of the Temptations, we have this return. Now, you look at Verse 14 of Luke Chapter 4 is where we’ll pick it up. Jesus returns in the power of the spirit, but that was the whole point. He went into the wilderness, was to come out with this increased spiritual power. And he does. He’s going to go public now. He’s going to go announce his ministry officially to people now, and he does it from his hometown, so he goes back to Nazareth where he’s brought up. I love Verse 16 where he goes and does something and this phrase, “As his custom was.”

John Bytheway: 00:52 He did this all the time.

Dr. Jan Martin: 00:53 Yeah. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, first of all, so that tells you something about his obedience to the laws of things, of going to where he needs to be when he needs to be there. Then he stood up for it to read. Now, whether his custom was to go there and read every time he went there, I don’t know, but very possibly he was someone who would be handed a scroll, that’s what you do, in their synagogues. If you can read it, you’re handed a scroll and you stand up and read it and then explain it to the group. So it sounds like he maybe did that frequently.

Hank Smith: 01:26 Kind of like a gospel doctrine/fast and testimony meeting together.

Dr. Jan Martin: 01:33 They seem to at least be comfortable enough with him being there, first of all, and then handing him scrolls to read, so maybe he’s been reading them in the past and this is not his first time reading. But he stands up to read. Then we get this book from the prophet Isaiah. For those of you wondering about the word Isaias in Verse 17, that is the Greek version of Isaiah’s name, so you’re not confused. Like, “Who’s this prophet Isaias?” Well, prophet Isaiah. He opens up the scroll. We have scrolls. This is one of the fun things about reading a KJV New Testament, for example. They often anglicize concepts: opening the book. They don’t have books in those days. They have scrolls. So you just need to be aware. He’s got a scroll, not a book that we’re familiar with. He unrolls the scroll and will be reading that aloud. Then we have these powerful verses of Isaiah to deal with. So here we are.

Hank Smith: 02:29 That’s interesting. With the KJV, they’re like, “He unrolled the scroll”. Well, he opened a book.

Dr. Jan Martin: 02:34 You’ll see that a lot in the KJV Bible all the way through the Old Testament and New Testament. They’ll take words that English people are more comfortable with and put them in there instead of using a more literal translation. But that should be a scroll.

John Bytheway: 02:47 I love when the Book of Mormon says, “He unfolded the scripture.” It’s like, whoa.

Dr. Jan Martin: 02:54 What?

John Bytheway: 02:54 We’ll save that for next year-

Dr. Jan Martin: 02:56 What is that?

John Bytheway: 02:56 … what that could possibly mean.

Dr. Jan Martin: 03:00 We have a lot to think about here with Jesus standing up to read, standing up to teach. He doesn’t have any official credentials as far as the typical education system goes for doing what he is doing. But people obviously are touched by the way that he teaches, the power that he teaches. Then he causes a ruckus right here with this verse.

Hank Smith: 03:21 Luke is quick to point out, this is where he was brought up. This is his hometown.

Dr. Jan Martin: 03:25 As he announces, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He’s anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives.” These verses, from what I understand from Old Testament scholars, that people in that day interpreted them as millennial, that these verses are going to take place when the Messiah comes later. So they’re familiar with them. They recognize them. But to have somebody saying, “This is now and this is about me,” you can see why that would be controversial, cause a bit of a ruckus, because the typical understanding of these is millennial, not now. To have them applied to somebody that’s standing in front of them would be unusual. Then their response, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” in Verse 22. Like, “We know this guy. We grew up with this guy. How can he possibly apply these verses in this way to himself?” You can just imagine the whisperings and the offended feelings going on with verses that they understand in a particular way.

John Bytheway: 04:31 When we did Isaiah 61, I think I mentioned this before, but I love to think of this as well. I ask my students, “Choose your favorite Old Testament Verse that you think perfectly describes the Savior,” and that sends them on a search. But then I’m like, we don’t need to choose it. Jesus chose the one, and he used this verse to describe his mission and look at what he says. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to what? Get those commandment breakers, to punish those people, to tell them they’re all disobedient-“

Dr. Jan Martin: 05:04 That’s right.

John Bytheway: 05:05 … the way we sometimes, “Look, actually, I came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted,” like you’ve talked about so beautifully, Jen, today. “I came to heal broken hearts. I came to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, set at liberty them that are bruised.” The manual this week asks us, “Do you know anyone who is brokenhearted or who needs to be set at liberty to them that are bruised?” To have Jesus choose the verse, to have it be about healing broken hearts is another window into how he sees his mission, I think. “I’ve come to heal people and to bless people.” It wasn’t a big obedience commandments thing, which are all important, but how does he characterize it? He chose the verse. That’s a question I’ve always had, maybe you know, Jan and Hank, but did they hand him the scroll or did he say, “Give me that one”? Did Jesus say, “Give me the Isaiah scroll”?

Dr. Jan Martin: 06:02 Now, you look at Verse 17, it doesn’t tell you they’re delivering him this scroll, but there’s no information at all about how that-

John Bytheway: 06:10 Whether he asked for it or-

Dr. Jan Martin: 06:12 Did he ask for it, or did someone just bring it?

John Bytheway: 06:15 Or maybe Jesus was so good: “No matter what scroll they hand me, I know where I’m going to go.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 06:19 He could just do it.

John Bytheway: 06:21 But they handed him this one. I just love that. You want to know how the Savior described his mission, announced who he was? Well, that’s Isaiah 61, and it’s about healing broken hearts. I think it’s awesome.

Dr. Jan Martin: 06:33 You look at Verse 21, how bold he is. “This day, is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Like, what? Like, “Right now, today you’re taking this millennial scripture and you’re moving it up.” Really?

John Bytheway: 06:46 That’s a mic drop moment, isn’t it?

Dr. Jan Martin: 06:48 Yes. I love Verse 22 because after he says that, “And all bear him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” So they’re feeling the spirit of it. They’re seeing the light of it. There’s something different about this claim, but they’re having a hard time getting their head around it. “Is this not this Joseph’s son?” Let’s have this conversation. As the interaction goes on, you look at Verse 23, and he starts into trying to help them understand who he is and what’s going on here. So I’d be interested in what you guys make of that conversation as he starts looking at people who are not Israelites and the miracles that have happened for non-Israelites and how you connect that to this conversation about his identity. I have some ideas obviously, but it’s fun to just talk about it.

Hank Smith: 07:43 I’ve been impressed. He says, “I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, ‘Do some miracles. We’ve heard of some miracles being done. Do some miracles.'” He says, “It’s almost like you have to believe first. Don’t you remember these stories from the Old Testament? Don’t you remember the story of Elijah and the story of Elijah and how they were rejected by Israel, their own people, but accepted by Gentiles, accepted by people you wouldn’t think who would accept them?”

Dr. Jan Martin: 08:15 You have Naaman, the Assyrian, being mentioned as being healed of his leprosy. I just find it really fascinating is they’re struggling to get past what they think they know about Jesus, what he’s doing here to kind of help them a little bit.

Hank Smith: 08:31 I find it fascinating, to me, they’re going to say, “Okay, do a miracle. Do a miracle then if you are really who you are.” It’s like, that’s not how it works.

Dr. Jan Martin: 08:40 Then you look at 28 after this conversation, here comes all the anger. Verse 22, they’re feeling the graciousness and recognizing the spirit. Then he does this, “I’m not going to do what you’re wanting me to do, and here’s my reasons.” Now the anger comes, and then they try and take his life.

Hank Smith: 08:59 “How dare you compare us to those ancient Israelites who rejected prophets. Let’s reject him.” It’s-

John Bytheway: 09:09 “You can’t be you because you’re from just down the street, and you’re Joseph’s son.” My students have asked me, “Hey, wait a minute. I thought that the reason they took Jesus to Pilate was because they couldn’t do capital punishment.” I remember I asked one of my professors, I think it was Kelly Ogden, “Wait a minute. I thought they couldn’t do that.” He said, “This is more like mob behavior in Verse 29.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 09:34 This is mob behavior, yes.

John Bytheway: 09:36 So that’s a different thing than an official state capital punishment. So they just wanted to, all of them, throw him off the brow of the hill.

Dr. Jan Martin: 09:44 They’re just mad. This is a rage moment, isn’t it, a mob mentality of, “You’ve made me angry.” Again, as we are talking about in the Temptations, notice this, they want to cast him down. They take him to this point up on a hill, and then they’re going to bring him down. Again, the spirit of contention, the spirit of anger, the spirit of rejection, and it always leads to going down. It doesn’t make things better. If they had just stopped and started recognizing what spirit was leading this show here, then they could have said, “Wait a second. We’re not actually being filled with a happy spirit.”

John Bytheway: 10:21 He’s right in their midst, and they don’t get it. He’s right there in front of them.

Hank Smith: 10:27 Isaiah says that the Savior would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. This has to be one of those moments where his own hometown decides they’d rather have him dead than be taught by him. It says, “He passing through the midst of them went his way,” but I wonder if his head was down.

John Bytheway: 10:45 That didn’t go well. But as soon as he leaves there, Verse 31, and goes down to Capernaum, then, oh. Then we have a very Book of Mormon sounding type verse: “They were astonished at his doctrine. His word was with power.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 11:03 Which, again, is what he was in the wilderness for. Here he comes out, and you see him being able to, with power and authority, teach unlike anyone else. Now, this is one of the common themes through the Gospel is people are just repeatedly astonished at his way of teaching, the power of his teaching, that he’s got this authority that their other scribes that they’re used to hearing from don’t have, and clearly they’re recognizing something, even if they can’t always figure out what.

John Bytheway: 11:31 When somebody says, “Astonished at his doctrine, his word was…” was that a feeling? Because I think we’ve felt that before. Somebody’s teaching and we go, “Whoa.” Is it a feeling? Is it a spirit that carries it to them? Is it both? I guess it’s all of that. Because I’m sure there were other people who could teach scriptures and stuff, but when Jesus taught, it was different.

Hank Smith: 11:57 It sounds like he had a way with it.

John Bytheway: 11:57 Where does it say elsewhere, “He taught with authority and not as the scribes”? Then the JST says, “He taught with authority from God and not with authority from the scribes.” It makes it even better. He taught with authority from God.

Dr. Jan Martin: 12:09 I was, again, doing some background research on teaching credentials and what this means for Jesus because he doesn’t come through the typical scribal education process. The Jews have several levels of education that you can go through. If you’re going to become a rabbi or a teacher or a scribe like this, you follow someone who’s well known for that. You become a disciple. You sit there in their school for years and years. Then when you come out of it, everybody knows who you have followed. When you learn about Saul, he says, “I follow Gamaliel.”

John Bytheway: 12:43 Who’s your rabbi?

Dr. Jan Martin: 12:44 Jesus doesn’t have any of that. So I was looking just into some of that and found a great article by Matt Richardson on the Religious Studies website, and you can find it. The title of the article is Jesus: The Unorthodox Teacher, so if anybody wants to go and have a read of it, it was pretty helpful. One thing he said was, “What is astonishing is not that Jesus was without proper credentials, but that the people even cared. Most teachers without proper training would be dismissed without a second thought. But this uncredentialed teacher astonished the people to the point that they not only recognized him as an outstanding teacher, but they actually addressed him by the title “teacher. Some even went so far as to call him a teacher ‘come from God.'” That’s in John 3. So as we’re talking about this, clearly he doesn’t have the typical worldly credentials, but people are being touched to the point that they’re caring and interacting and calling him a teacher anyway. What does that say about what he’s doing here?

John Bytheway: 13:51 Could you please display your degree so that we know? I like that, is it in John 7, “Where’d you get this doctrine?” and “My doctrine is not mine. It’s him that sent me.” Because that seems to be a common question. “Wait, wait. Who did you study under? Where’d you get your degree from? Who’s your rabbi?”

Dr. Jan Martin: 14:10 We get those kind of questions today. Where’d you do your degrees? Where’d you come from? But Jesus actually just is like, “From God.

Hank Smith: 14:16 From God.

Dr. Jan Martin: 14:18 Where else will I get it from? If you know who I am, where do you think I’m getting this from?”

John Bytheway: 14:24 Is that an accredited school?

Dr. Jan Martin: 14:27 Exactly. As we pointed out, he’s been rejected by his own people. One thing that I just wanted to mention is that that is sometimes the most painful type of rejection that we have in this life is to be rejected by the people that are closest to you and that should know you the best. Sometimes the people that we know the best kind of limit what we can be and do. Sometimes they don’t want to let us be seen differently. You watch that prophet that has no honor in his own country. “I can’t get past your preconceived notions of me, so I’m now going to go somewhere else,” where they don’t know him from a child, they don’t know him from a teenager, and he has some really powerful experiences elsewhere because they aren’t limiting what Jesus can do by their preconceived understanding. That’s kind of important to think about for us when we’re dealing with our own families and friends or people that are our families and friends, and let’s try and maybe not limit them to their past or limit them to what we know about them.

John Bytheway: 15:31 Especially when they get a calling or something. We’re like, “Whoa, they called me.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 15:39 Really? “Yeah, I know him or her.”

John Bytheway: 15:40 But isn’t that wonderful? Look what the Lord can do with an Amulek.

Dr. Jan Martin: 15:45 Then we head over to Capernaum. I think it’s worth just helping people with Capernaum, if you aren’t familiar. This is up on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It’s a fishing village. From what I understand, it had about 1,500 inhabitants at the time. It’s also located on the famous Roman Road, the Via Maris, the way of the sea. You’re going to have lots of people from different towns and nations coming through here. You just have to get the background for the population and the visitors and the tourists and the travelers and different nations that will be coming through here because the road linked Egypt with Syria and Mesopotamia. So it’s a big long road, and it’s highly traveled. It’s Peter and Andrew’s hometown, as you’ll find out.

  16:30 Then from what I have found, there’s more recorded miracles in Capernaum than any other town. Maybe because it’s such a melting pot, they just have an ability to allow the spirit to work without restraining it or something. But this is quite a place where we have a lot of powerful things happening. For anyone who wants to know, Capernaum has been abandoned. It was abandoned in the 11th century. There’s nothing there but ruins today. But at one time, it seems to have been a bustling pass-through spot where you’d come through as you’re on your way somewhere. So a good place for Jesus to be.

Hank Smith: 17:03 Excellent.

John Bytheway: 17:04 This is great. I’m excited to get to Luke Chapter 5 where Jesus actually starts calling his apostles. Can we go into Luke 5?

Dr. Jan Martin: 17:13 Yeah, let’s do it. One of the things about Jesus that I appreciate as a teacher is that he was willing to teach anyone anywhere in any way. Here’s an example. He’s not in a synagogue. He’s not sitting comfortably somewhere. He’s at the side of the lake, and he gets out in a boat. He goes out there, and he thrusts out from the land, and he sits out there, and he teaches anyone who’s willing to come and listen. So we have this beautiful example of teaching. But then we move to this interesting interaction with Simon Peter, calling him. The backstory is here that they’ve been fishing all night and weren’t able to get any kind of a catch. Then we have this miraculous, “Oh, just put your net in here.” You got to love Simon for being willing to put the net in. He does say that, “We didn’t catch anything,” but he does it anyway.

Hank Smith: 18:13 It sounds like they’re all done for the day. They were washing their nets. They were putting everything away.

Dr. Jan Martin: 18:21 Yeah, they’re coming in.

John Bytheway: 18:21 I saw Michael Wilcox reenact this once that I thought was so funny because he was like Simon answering, he said, “Master, we’ve toiled all the night and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word…” He talks about the nevertheless, like, you’re looking at the Savior. “Nevertheless, okay.”

Hank Smith: 18:40 Sure.

John Bytheway: 18:42 Who are you arguing with?

Dr. Jan Martin: 18:45 Well, you have to wonder what the Savior’s facial expression was right there as he’s listening to this explanation, “We’ve toiled all night.” You just wonder what body language is going on there for him to go, “Nevertheless, okay.”

Hank Smith: 19:00 Jesus is like, “I don’t remember asking.”

John Bytheway: 19:03 There’s this big pause in there. I have a question though. Why would they call him master? Is this the first time they met? Did they know him?

Dr. Jan Martin: 19:11 Now, I did some looking into that word, again, because that’s a King James thing. The word that’s under there in the Greek is didáskalos, which would be translated as teacher. Now, the interesting thing about the King James Version is, mostly it uses the word master, but most other modern translations will use teacher or rabbi here. Yes, this is kind of a KJV thing. Why would they be doing that? Well, back in their culture, they have that social hierarchy. They have a way of using that word master. That’s a very anglicized viewpoint for the 16th century, 17th century, so that’s them. But a normal, modern translation would either have teacher here or rabbi here. We just need to remember what Peter’s going after is this kind of links us to our conversation about, why did they see Jesus as a rabbi or a teacher when he didn’t have any credentials? But by this point, they’ve seen him teach and heard his doctrines at least enough to be giving him that title.

John Bytheway: 20:13 Interesting. They knew something different about him, enough to call him master.

Dr. Jan Martin: 20:21 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 20:21 What was the Greek? Di-

Dr. Jan Martin: 20:23 Didáskalos, that’s the word. But, like I said, most of the other translations will either put teacher there or rabbi there. They don’t use master. KJV keeps that to itself. That’s a very 16th, 17th century word. I don’t know if anybody’s read the Lord of the Rings or done any of those kind of things. But if you have, you’ll see Samwise, the character, calling his master, Frodo, master all the way through there. Just a very English, very English way of showing respect to somebody and conveying that they’re on a higher plane than you. But that’s not really… I think teacher or rabbi would be closer to what the Greek has in there.

Hank Smith: 21:02 I think Verse 5 lets us in a little bit on the personality of Peter, that he’s like, “What? We’ve just been fishing. We just did that. We just cleaned up. But okay.”

John Bytheway: 21:15 I know. I love the pause, “Uh, nevertheless.” The depiction of this in The Chosen I just thought was so delightful, how excited they were when they pulled those nets up and all the others came running. That’s when I… “Okay, I got to watch this show.” That was so well done.

Dr. Jan Martin: 21:39 To me, you see in this explanation… I don’t know if any of you’ve had this experience with your students. You’ve asked them to do something, and they haven’t done it. Then the first thing they do is give you all the reasons why they haven’t done it.

John Bytheway: 21:52 Good point.

Dr. Jan Martin: 21:55 I can imagine, the look I give them usually is, “And? I realize that you have-

John Bytheway: 22:00 Therefore?

Dr. Jan Martin: 22:02 … all of those, but I still need you to do the following.” So what a fun student/teacher interaction here. It’s just very typical. Peter, you almost feel like he feels a little defensive a little bit: “But we really did try to do this, so we’ve done our best. We’ve worked all night. There’s nothing out there. I promise. There’s no fish out there.” Then that look from the superior rabbi of, “Oh, okay, I’ll do it.”

Hank Smith: 22:30 “You got to trust me on this.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 22:30 “You got to trust me on this.”

Hank Smith: 22:33 “You got to trust me. Go, go do it again.”

John Bytheway: 22:35 “I’m the fisherman. So what do you know about fishing?”

Hank Smith: 22:40 I wonder if that’s why he calls him teacher, John. He’s like, “Teacher, not fisherman.”

John Bytheway: 22:44 “You’re a teacher.

Dr. Jan Martin: 22:45 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 22:45 I’m a fisherman.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 22:46 “I’m the fisherman. I’m the expert on this part at least, and I’ve been out here all night.” Just the amount of fish that they get, you just got to love that imagery. They filled both ships, and they both began to sink.

Hank Smith: 23:02 Boats are sinking.

John Bytheway: 23:03 With all that tilapia.

Dr. Jan Martin: 23:06 Yes, exactly. Then you look at this reaction, especially since we’ve been having fun with that first interaction of, “I know what I’m talking about, but I’ll do it anyway.” Then you look at Simon Peter. He falls down at Jesus’s knees: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

Hank Smith: 23:27 You almost get the feeling he knows what’s coming. He knows you’re calling… I know that some people get a sense that a calling is coming and their first reaction is, “No, not me. I am not the guy, I am not the woman you’re looking for, I promise.”

John Bytheway: 23:42 Can I read something from Elder Holland about this?

Dr. Jan Martin: 23:45 Sure.

John Bytheway: 23:46 This beautiful phrase in Verse 4, “Launch out into the deep.” This is what Elder Holland said about that. “Peter could not have known the ever-widening circles that single command would make in the stream of his plain and simple life. He was launching out into the expense of godliness, into the eternal possibilities of redeemed and celestial life. He would be learning the mysteries of the Kingdom. He would be hearing unspeakable things to launch out into that limitless sea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Peter brought his craft ashore, turned his back on the most spectacular single catch ever taken from Galilee, forsook all and followed him. From that moment on, Jesus taught and trained Peter at every opportunity.” That’s September, 1975, Ensign.

Dr. Jan Martin: 24:35 Brilliant.

Hank Smith: 24:36 We’ll make sure to link all of these quotes in our show notes on followhim.co, so you can come to one place to get all of these great quotes we’ve been using today.

John Bytheway: 24:46 There’s something else, too, that I think is true. Verse 6 says, “Their net break.” But when Jesus comes again post-resurrection, the net doesn’t break. I’ve always wondered if there’s a symbolic meaning there or something. So I’ll throw it to you guys.

Dr. Jan Martin: 25:03 Well, there’s lots you could do with that, of the life that you’ve lived is going to be different now. Those nets that you’re going to be using-

John Bytheway: 25:13 To catch men.

Dr. Jan Martin: 25:15 “I’m going to have you catching men. You’re not going to be doing this anymore. I need you to be willing to separate from your old life,” which would be really hard to give up. I’ve always tried to help my students see that this is very much a First Nephi 37. Because if Simon has a wife and kids and this is their only means of livelihood, how do you take the main provider out of the house and not have him providing fish anymore? So this moment allows them financially to leave. This is a windfall, a financial windfall. So how does the Lord help us fulfill callings that he asked us to do? He does help us, and we got to look at that enabling. Here’s the enabling power of the atonement into Peter’s life and James and John’s life because they’re these major breadwinners. How are you going to have those families survive without the money from the fishing? Look at this, there’s a preparation and help financially to do what they need to do, so the way’s been provided.

Hank Smith: 26:21 Me too. I love what Peter sees in himself and what Jesus sees: two totally different things. “I’m a sinful man, and Jesus sees a fisher of men.”

John Bytheway: 26:30 I think Jesus knows about Peter.

Hank Smith: 26:34 What do you see in you versus what does he see in you?

Dr. Jan Martin: 26:37 11 Verse 10, too, that he starts it off with, “Fear not.” Of course you’re going to be nervous. “I’m a fisherman. I’m not a missionary. I’m not a leader of something. I don’t know. I’ve never done this. I don’t work with people.” “Fear not, I am going to tutor,” as Elder Holland said, “I’m going to tutor and train you into catching men,” which is going to be a steep learning curve, a difficult time. Everything’s going to be different for Peter, James, and John from henceforth. They have every reason to be insecure and to be anxious and afraid. “But I need you to not be afraid. I’m going to help you.”

Hank Smith: 27:18 We can all take comfort in that with any new calling. Getting the calling to be the Gospel doctrine teacher or the Relief Society president or the Young Women’s president. “Fear not. You can do this.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 27:31 Then you have that lovely verse, Verse 11: “They forsook all and followed him.” Now, one of the interesting things that, when I was reading about teachers and disciples and the education system in the Jewish times to just understand why Jesus was so unusual, one of the things I read was that teachers and people you wanted to go study under, they didn’t invite you to come study with them. You went and asked if you could study with them. But Jesus is always inviting people to come study with him, “Come and see. Come and follow me. Come and forsake everything and come, come, come.” Again, that makes him an unusual rabbi is he’s always inviting disciples, and that’s not normally what you did. You had people coming and asking to study under you, which is the typical academic way.

  28:23 Even today when you do PhDs, you have to go and approach a doctor of something. You find a tutor, and you ask if you should apply, and you get support. You don’t just apply for a PhD program. You find someone you want to study under and ask if you can. This is, again, just really fascinating where he’s inviting them to come and study under him, and they are. They’re willing to leave everything behind.

John Bytheway: 28:49 “Hey, follow him.” It’s right in there, isn’t it, Hank?

Hank Smith: 28:51 Yeah. We kind of like that phrase. You got to think that maybe part of Peter is like, “Let’s stay here and do this. Let’s stay here and catch all these fish and get really rich.” But it’s, “No, I gave you enough,” Like you said, Jan, “I’ve given you enough to where now you can walk away and go full-time to the ministry.”

John Bytheway: 29:17 It’s like Elder Holland said, “If I want fish, I can get fish.” He’s saying that the Savior’s saying this. “If I want fish, I can get fish. I need you to be a fisher of men.” There’s another quotation that I like with this. Elder John Longden, we’re talking in the 1960s before you and Hank were born, he said something like, and he was quoting, it’s kind of an old saying type thing, “Satan chooses his disciples when they are idle. Jesus chose his when they were busy at their work.” I thought, what an interesting idea is that they were busy at their work and Jesus chose them. Satan chooses people when they’re idle. That’s a whole interesting topic. The Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon talk about people that are full of idleness. I guess you get in trouble when you have nothing to do type of a thing. But Jesus chose people who were already working. I thought, oh, that’s an interesting insight.

Dr. Jan Martin: 30:12 And what that says about their work ethic because preaching the Gospel, all of this, is work-oriented. We have to wear the garments of the laborer. You want to pick people who already have a work ethic and invite them to then transfer their good work ethic to something of more eternal value than maybe what they were doing. So Peter, James, and John clearly are hard workers. They’ve been up all night. They’ve been fishing. They’ve been trying to earn a living. It’s not like they’re sitting around waiting for the fish to just come to them. They’re out there looking. But now we’re going to take all that talent and hard work, and we’re going to have to put it in a realm where they’re not used to working and see if we can transfer the skills over to do something new. But you’re working with people who are already used to hard labor, and this is going to be hard.

John Bytheway: 30:59 When Nephi says that “We got to separate from the Lamanites,” Lehi dies in the Second Nephi 4 and in Second Nephi 5, he takes his people, they call it the Land of Nephite. Nephi says, “And I did cause my people to be industrious and to labor with their hands.” There was a lot of things he could have done. “All right, we’re gone. Let’s party.” But he says, “Okay, let’s get to work.” And they did. They built a temple.

Dr. Jan Martin: 31:24 Then you’re looking at what they were asked to give up. They forsook all or left their families behind to whatever extent. They left their jobs. They changed their focus. They went traveling around instead of staying at home. That’s something to think about, too, is that sacrifice is part of the Gospel. It’s one of the first principles of the Gospel that we learn to sacrifice. You watch a massive sacrifice happening here, but then you think about all the things that Peter, James, and John are going to get to receive in return for their sacrifice that they could never have had any other way.

John Bytheway: 32:01 Doesn’t Peter bring that up later? “Hey, we’ve forsaken all.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 32:05 Well, that’s when he is asking about the rich people who can get into the kingdom, isn’t it, when he says, “The rich people can’t get in”? He’s like, “Well, we’ve given up everything. If those people can’t get in, who can get in?” It’s interesting watching what it costs us to become a disciple of Christ, the things that we get. It’s that Doctrine and Covenants verse that, “Neither eye nor ear hath comprehended,” or whatever word they use, “the things that God has in store for them that love him.”

John Bytheway: 32:33 1 Corinthians 2:9.

Dr. Jan Martin: 32:36 Is that where it is?

John Bytheway: 32:38 “Eye have not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.” Well, it’s in the manual, too. This was quoted recently in General Conference, Page 22, in the manual, “Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. Know how this happened to Simon Peter and his fellow fisherman, Jesus saw something greater in them than they saw in themselves. He wanted to make them fishers of men.”

Hank Smith: 33:03 Fascinating who he chooses. He doesn’t choose these students of the scriptures in Jerusalem. He chooses fishermen from Galilee. Then over in Verse 27, he chooses a publican. That’s got to be hard for some in the group. This is Matthew in Verse 27, this publican named Levi. “And he left all.” There’s that word again. “He left all, rose up, and followed him.” He’s putting together quite an odd team.

Dr. Jan Martin: 33:29 An odd team. He is. That’s something we have to remember, too, is, and I remember Elder Ballard saying this. He came to BYU a couple of years ago and did a question/answer session. One of the things he said to the students was, “Sometimes you misunderstand what it means to be a general authority. I’m not an authority on every subject. My job is to bring you to Christ and to teach you how to come unto Christ, and I’m an expert in that. I’m not an expert in every Biblical subject or every scriptural topic or every Church history subject. We need to remember what our leaders do and what they don’t do.” None of these people were scriptorians. He doesn’t call anybody who’s been studying under a scribe or who’s got an education. Everybody has to learn the Scriptures from the ground up. And our leaders are very similar to that. Some of them have had a seminary teaching background or something, but a large majority of them come from whatever walk of life.

John Bytheway: 34:24 Business, law, medicine, whatever.

Hank Smith: 34:26 You look at the First Presidency right now. You got medicine, law, and education.

Dr. Jan Martin: 34:31 So we need to be reasonable about what we’re expecting them to be able to teach us and remember that they’re learning and studying and getting revelation the same way.

John Bytheway: 34:41 Hank has heard me talk about an interesting experience in my life. I was 17 years old and called to be what they used to call the junior Sunday school chorister. I was a primary chorister, basically, and I was 17 and a boy. I love telling this story. We don’t have time for it here. There were other teachers watching me struggle to teach the kids. There were other primary teachers going, “Who called him?”

Dr. Jan Martin: 35:10 Who called him?

John Bytheway: 35:11 I’m sure that was happening. It’s a fun story to tell because suddenly I found myself opening an area in the Philippines and been alone and having a bunch of people show up to our branch and a lot of kids, and I knew exactly what to do. It was a really interesting moment for me to go, “I know what to do.” I knew the songs. They were in my head. So we may have those moments, “Who called him?”

Hank Smith: 35:36 Or, “Who called her?”

John Bytheway: 35:40 “Who called her?” The Lord is smarter than we are, and he might call a publican and a fisherman and say, “I’m going to make you apostles.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 35:49 Yeah, and he does, and he’s perfectly capable of transforming us all into things that we’ve maybe never imagined. We were joking around earlier. I’m this little picked on, bullied nobody who’s ostracized socially and a loner basically to see a future of being able to be a teacher and be in front of people and be able to do stuff like this. Wow, what a transformation from the person that hid in the corner and never wanted to be noticed and did everything to avoid any attention because it was usually negative to being comfortable teaching and interacting with large populations of people.

John Bytheway: 36:27 You are a personification of that idea. Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover he can make more out of their lives than they can. You didn’t see it in yourself, but he saw it in you all along. You taught physical education for a while, too.

Dr. Jan Martin: 36:41 Yeah, I did a degree in that. I did little student teaching and things, but it was just one of those realizations that, though I wanted to be a teacher, I hadn’t quite discovered the field that felt exactly right. I had a journey to figure that out, and I’m so grateful that I’m here, but it didn’t start there. So all of us have this adventure figuring out who we are and what our purpose is in life and what the Lord has for us to do. For me, it wasn’t remaining in that.

John Bytheway: 37:11 I think for all of us that teach young adults sometimes, they’re, “Well, should I major in this, or should I major in that?” You’re like, for a lot of people, it really doesn’t matter. The Lord’s going to find something he wants you to do, so you might work in the same degree you studied and you might not.

Dr. Jan Martin: 37:26 You might not, and I certainly don’t. It was an adventure. It was just line upon line, learning piece by piece, gathering the preparation for certain things, and you just let the Lord lead you. But he’s got it. He can get you where he needs you to be.

John Bytheway: 37:40 I will order all things for your good.

Dr. Jan Martin: 37:42 Yes.

Hank Smith: 37:44 It’s fascinating to me that he calls this fisherman and he calls this publican, and then he throws a dinner party. That’s going to be our first order of events is we’re going to have a dinner party. He gets highly criticized for it, that he’s eating with sinners and publicans.

John Bytheway: 38:00 What a great answer he gives. Oh my goodness.

Hank Smith: 38:04 That’s Verse 31, right, John?

John Bytheway: 38:05 Yeah.

Dr. Jan Martin: 38:05 31. “They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”

John Bytheway: 38:11 How do you argue with that?

Hank Smith: 38:13 “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” So he’s got them all called and he’s like, “All right, let’s get started.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 38:20 “Let’s get started. Let’s get to work.”

John Bytheway: 38:22 I like how Elder Holland says, “The church is not a monastery for perfect people, although all of us ought to be striving to become better.” He said, “It’s more like a hospital for those who are ill and want to get well.”

Dr. Jan Martin: 38:34 This is an important thing to remember because I think it’s Elder Maxwell that said, “We are each other’s clinical material.” We’re all running around in this clinic together of the Church being a clinic, and we’re all imperfect people. We all do and say things that are not helpful sometimes. It can be really difficult to be a member of an organization with imperfect people, but this is where we have to apply the Gospel and say, “We’re all disciples. I can forgive. We can work things out.” Just because something unkind happens, which happens, it doesn’t mean I have to leave the organization and be offended by it. I need to expect that people are going to do things that aren’t great, and I need to find a way to work it out and continue being a disciple instead of leaving the clinic and going elsewhere because I was bothered that somebody didn’t do the right thing.

John Bytheway: 39:26 Elder D. Todd Christofferson gave this talk called Why the Church? I took that apart and just made a bullet point for everything that he said. There are so many good reasons, but one of them was to experience the application of divine doctrine. Then he said, “We have to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies…” and then he said, “or as President Packer called them, our idiotsyncrasies.” Where do we learn love and forgiveness and mercy? Sometimes in our own church. We’re learning to get along. Like you said, we say things that are hurtful or didn’t mean to be hurtful, or sometimes maybe somebody did mean to be hurtful. Well, what are we going to do? Well, where else are you going to go? This is still the Lord’s Church, and we’re all doing the best we can. So I like that you’ve brought that up.

Dr. Jan Martin: 40:13 It’s tough. I’ve lived long enough to have had many a difficult experience with various church members, but the ultimate question you ask every time something happens that’s hurtful or disappointing or didn’t go the way that you hoped it would is, “Why am I here and who am I following?” I’m following Jesus. I’m here for the Savior, and that makes everything else go to the sidelines and be put in their proper place. I’m not here following that particular leader, or I’m not here following that particular member who hurt my feelings. I’m here because I love Jesus Christ and I’m a disciple of Christ. So I’m going to stick with Christ, and then I’m going to learn, as painful as it is, to apply his teachings to help me deal with everyone else who’s following Christ. And it can be hard.

John Bytheway: 41:03 Elder Christofferson, in that talk about, “Who am I following?” he said that “We are striving not for conversion to the Church, but to Christ and his gospel.” I thought I have used that language myself. My dad was a convert, but I noticed the Book of Mormon never calls it that they were converted to the Church. It always says, “Converted unto the Lord.” There’s one Verse, I want to say Third Nephi 28:23 I think, where it says, “And they were converted unto the Lord and united with the Church.” You see the object of our conversion is Christ, not the members, not the Church. If we’re converted to the right thing, then we can have that perspective and stay in. We’re experiencing application of doctrine.

Dr. Jan Martin: 41:46 Yes, we are. It could be so painful, and it really pushes us right where we are, right in that core sometimes to have to work with forgiving other members of the church for things they either did or didn’t do. But it’s important to remember this concept of, “Who am I following?” I’m studying under the Lord Jesus Christ, and he can handle everything that’s going on in the clinic. He’s aware of all of those little things. In fact, later on when the Savior talks about his disciples and how he’s aware that on occasion they were fault finding and having contention amongst themselves, it’s not like he was blind to that. He knew about all of that, but his teachings are there to help us to handle all of that and still be a disciple.

Hank Smith: 42:36 We belong in this group even as sinners. He’s saying, “They belong right next to me.” Right in the manual it says, “Sometimes people feel guilty when they are tempted to sin, but even the Savior, who lived without sin, was tempted. Jesus knows the temptations we face and how to help us overcome them.” So anybody listening who’s saying, “Well, I’m not a fisherman or publican, I’m a sinner,” well, you are invited to the party as well.

Dr. Jan Martin: 43:03 Do you know what’s so funny about this comment? The richness of it and the all-encompassingness of it is amazing because the scribes and Pharisees are murmuring because they think they’re better spiritually than everyone else because the way they live their lives. Here’s the Savior saying, “They that are whole need not a physician, but that are sick.” But the people he’s addressing that comment to are sick as well because of their judgment of others, their rejection of others. They’re sick too. It’s kind of this invitation here of, “Well, I am going to hang out with these people, but I actually need you to come and be part of these people because you’re kind of part of these people.” All of us are sinners in one way or another.

Hank Smith: 43:44 All have fallen short of the glory of God.

John Bytheway: 43:47 It seems like the Savior is harder on people who think they have no sin. How would you even say it? He seems to be harder on hypocrites than on sinners, and hypocrisy is not willing to admit that you’re a sinner. “Why are you eating and drinking with publicans and sinners?” Well, who else am I going to find on planet Earth to eat with?

Dr. Jan Martin: 44:10 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 44:12 “All the Lord’s ever had to work with is imperfect people,” Elder Holland, that famous thing. “It must be incredibly frustrating to him but he deals with it, and so should we.” This is all there is. I couldn’t find a perfect person, so I chose this guy to be the bishop. That’s what my ward said.

Dr. Jan Martin: 44:30 That’s such an important thing for us to do when we’re tempted to point fingers at the weaknesses and sins of others is to really just stop and say, “Well, maybe I don’t do that particular thing, but there’s other things that I do.” The minute you start doing that, you can be humbled and then get off the judgment pedestal and be like, “Maybe I didn’t like that that person did that, but these are my weaknesses. I want someone to be merciful for mine, so how can I find it in my heart to be merciful to someone else’s problems?” That then allows that unity you were talking about to happen. Humility is a major component of being able to be unified. We all have to just be humble, and then it’s easier to connect. So I love that he’s saying something like that, that he’s coming to heal the sick, but sending a message to the people he’s talking to, that they’re included in the group. “As good as you are…”

John Bytheway: 45:31 What was the joke? It was Zig Ziglar or somebody that said, “Oh, I’m not coming to your church. There’s just a bunch of hypocrites.” He said, “Well, we got room for one more.”

Hank Smith: 45:45 That’s funny. I want to read this paragraph to both of you out of the manual and get your thoughts on it. It kind of sums up the entire lesson. It says, “From his youth, Jesus seemed to be aware that he had a unique sacred mission, but as Jesus prepared to begin his earthly ministry, the adversary sought to plant doubt in the Savior’s mind, ‘If thou be the son of God,’ Satan said. But the Savior had communed with his Father in heaven. He knew the scriptures and he knew who he was. To him, Satan’s offer, ‘All this, will I give thee,’ was a hollow one, for the Savior’s lifelong preparation allowed him to receive the power of the spirit.” That’s that reference to Luke 4. “So despite temptation, trials, and rejection, Jesus Christ never wavered from his appointed work, quote, ‘I must preach the kingdom of God for therefore am I sent.'” Then we could add that he called others in that same way. Jan and John, both of you, what do you hope our listeners walk away with from these three chapters we’ve studied today?

Dr. Jan Martin: 46:47 I would hope that they would walk away with a love for what’s here and a practical way to apply it to that common problem of self-doubt and not maybe feeling comfortable with me or my mission and what I’m here on Earth to do and to really be able to connect with a Savior who’s shown us a way to handle that. As we said with the Temptation section, we spent so much time looking at that, but every single verse is incredibly rich about, how do I deal with Satan? How do I deal with the weakness of mortality? How do I deal with temptations and still remain faithful and true to the fact that I’m a daughter or son of God and I was sent here to do some specific things? I would hope that the audience out there would just be really touched at here’s some tools I can use to discover that and remain faithful to who I am and what I came here to do.

Hank Smith: 47:54 And to see that in others as well. It seems that he sees that in himself. Then he goes and finds these fishermen and publicans and even sinners, and he sees something in them. He sees a greatness in them as well.

John Bytheway: 48:05 I love that idea. I love it when we can find a way not just to see what’s here and to try to be scholarly and to be able to say, “What do I do with this?” I think, Jen, you helped us find a beautiful way to apply how Jesus answered those temptations and that all of us can think that God sees more in us maybe than we see in ourselves. I liked what you said about practical ways that we can take these passages and to help us go through this life. I really like that.

Dr. Jan Martin: 48:39 I love that he has those experiences, and then just even announcing who he is and the pushback he gets from announcing who he is. It’s not just Satan who keeps questioning “If, if, if.” It’s other people, even that last incident that we’re looking at with the scribes and Pharisees saying, “Why are you eating with publicans and sinners?” There’s an “if” in that: “If you were who you said you were, you would not be doing this.”

  49:05 That’s one of our biggest pieces of adversity and mortality is forgetting who we are and what we came here to do. So I appreciate President Nelson’s reminders of those identities and that we need to really cling to those eternal identities and not apologize for who we are and what we came here to do, and push through the adversity that comes against those things and not let them dissuade us from that. It’s so easy.

  49:32 I’ve had so many times in my life where unkind things have been said or people have complained about something. It can really devastate you and make you question, “Why am I even doing this? Why am I even trying to teach the Gospel? How come I’m even up in front of those people?” when sometimes it just feels like you’re a target for the complaining or the misunderstanding or the whatever, and that can really undermine you. Every time that happens, it’s a real temptation to cave in to self-doubt and to say, “Well, maybe I am in the wrong place. Maybe I do need to find another job.” But when you come back to those spiritual moments and you’re like, “No, this is what the Lord has asked me to do, and as I focus on that, I can overcome any of the pushback,” and we’re all going to get it. So it just gives us the strength to be comfortable and confident that, like the Savior is, he’s so confident, and he never deviates from his purpose.

Hank Smith: 50:32 So well said. Wow, what a fantastic, fantastic day, John. How did we get this job to sit at the feet of people like Jan Martin and to learn today? It’s just been an absolute treat. My Scriptures are well marked after today.

John Bytheway: 50:47 I’ve got a whole bunch of to-dos. Go find this, go find this, go find this, some of the things you shared. Cherish your personal burdens. Whoa, wow, go find that. Thank you, Jan.

Dr. Jan Martin: 50:59 You’re welcome. It’s been fun. Thanks for having me.

Hank Smith: 51:02 Absolutely. We want to thank Dr. Jan Martin for being with us today. We want to thank all of our listeners. Of course, we want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. We want to remember our founder, the late Steve Sorensen. We hope all of you will join us next week. We’re going to come back. We’re studying more of the New Testament on followHIM.

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