Testifying at City Council as Discipleship

Bert introduces the Jesus of Matthew 4:23-25 as a sort of traveling pentecostal preacher: he’s preaching the gospel, healing people, casting out demons, and he gathers a large international following.
Jesus was doing this in synagogues, which to us were religious spaces, but in first century Galilee these were the town governments, centers of self-governance and communal political and religious life. Synagogues were governmental bodies that attended to municipal matters — rather like a town hall. Jesus was going through the towns and villages spreading the good news of the kingdom of heaven — God’s new society. And he told his disciples that they would do the same.