Answering the Call of Discipleship

hing comes down to this right this is where I win them or lose them right and and I said okay so I was raised a beaver fan my dad is a my dad’s a Die Hard Beaver fan and he you know we went to Beaver games but but my grandparents have were they’ve since gone to be with Jesus they were big duck fans and they took me to Duck games when I was a kid so I I have to say you know I can’t be anti-

Ducks I you know that’s how it goes but you know I didn’t do Sports in college I did Sports in high school but I’ve gotten to know some college athletes being down in Corvalis and one of the cool things is to just hear the process they go through to get recruited by schools you know it’s quite the ordeal you know there’s training camps they’ve got to do research on which schools they’re you know wanting to go to they send in their recruiting videos you know they

get filmed and they send that in and the goal of course with all this process is that they would be picked by their favorite school and they want to be recruited that’s that’s the idea and in our passage this morning we’re going to be in Matthew 4 we are going to be looking at Jesus picking his first recruits for his movement and what I love about this passage is it’s very in many ways very counterintuitive the way he picks his first followers you know we we

would not think if we lived at that time especially we would not think that he would pick these guys he he picks fishermen not exactly the cream of the crop in the first century you know these were the guys that were they were not the star athletes they were more like the guys who wash the socks of the athletes in that Society they were not looked up to they were looked more down on and yet I love the way that we see how not only how

Jesus picks these guys but who he picks to be on his team his his recruits his first recruits I don’t know if you’re familiar with this or if you’re used to this but I sometimes like to ask people to stand for the reading of God’s word so so can we do that all right this is Matthew 4 and beginning in verse 18 very well-known passage here this is what Matthew writes Matthew 4:18 while walking by the Sea of Galilee he Jesus saw two brothers Simon who

was called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen he said to them follow me and will make you Fishers of Men immediately they left their Nets and followed him and going on from there he saw two other brothers James the son of Zebedee John his brother and boat with Zebedee their father mending their Nets and he called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him thanks you may be seated Lord God we are

so grateful that the Jesus that we love and worship that we were just singing about a moment ago that Jesus came to this earth he was born laid in a Manger of all places he lived the perfect life he called people to himself and then he died for us he rose from the dead and we are in awe of all of this Lord because this same Jesus calls us to follow him today and so we thank you for all of that and we ask that your

holy Spirit would be at work in our hearts and Minds this morning as we look into your word we pray this in his mighty name amen so if you were brand new to the gospel of Matthew this is what I’d want you to know so far when we get to chapter 4 so far we have already seen that there’s a powerful case that has been made for Jesus being the long- awaited Messiah this heavenscent King that Israel’s been waiting for for centuries and Matthew you know

Matthew is a interesting guy because he was a tax collector and you may know this tax collectors not looked up to again they were again they were seen as traitors they were basically seen as guys who had sold out to the Roman Empire they had been stuffing their pockets with hard-earned cash their fellow Jews and so Matthew he’s got an amazing testimony it’s later on that we see that but Matthew wrote this gospel because he wanted his fellow Jews to know that Jesus really is the

Messiah and so he sets out right from the beginning to make a case Jesus is the one we’ve been waiting for all all our lives all for centuries we have waited for this one and he’s here he’s come and so you can look at chapter 1 and and you’d see that he has the genealogical pedigree that the Messiah needs he’s a descendant of Abraham the father of the Jews descendant of King David he’s in that Messianic line you’d see that he’s one called Emmanuel that he’s

born of a virgin fulfilling prophecy that he is god with us and then you’d go on to see in chapter two that wise men from the East long away traveled this great distance to come and worship Jesus even as a baby and then you’d see of course that in chapter three he’s presented as one who is mightier than the great John the Baptist and in fact he’s so amazing that we see in chapter 4 he overcomes the temptation of the Wilderness he pass passes the test

that Adam failed in a garden he goes to the desert and he passes the test proving that he is the sinless one you know Jesus is met with that Temptation Satan says you shall not put the Lord your God to the test that’s Jesus’s response and in in a sense there’s a double meaning there because he’s really saying to Satan you should not put me the Lord your God to the test he’s also saying I will not put my father to the test because I love

my father I I trust him completely and so by the time we get to our passage we see that Jesus is the Messiah and he is the one who fulfills all that prophecy that came to this point now up until here Jesus has been operating alone and when we get to chapter 4 we see that Jesus begins to form this team that is going to be with him they’re going to be basically joined at the hip to him for the rest of his ministry he’s going

to travel everywhere and These Guys these 12 that’ll be 12 get to be with him the whole time imagine that experience and so we know this is significant when he picks his first disciples and Matthew doesn’t use flashy language he just explains it very abruptly it says in verse 18 while walking by the Sea of Galilee he saw two brothers Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and he said to them follow me and

I will make you Fishers of Men so I’m going to basically be zeroing in on that one statement for the rest of our time together I’m going to unpack what Jesus meant when he said follow me and I will make you Fishers of Men but first I want to give you a little background of what it was like to be a fisherman in the first century so in your handout I think it might be on screen as well there were three basic Nets that a fisherman

would use there was the drag net as you can see they would work together as a team to pull in that net and those would be the fish closer to the Shoreline there is the cast net which you could also do by hand from the close to the Shoreline and then the traml net from a boat and so in other passages we’ll see that Luke 5 for example John 21 these are places where Mo most likely they were using a traml net because they’re fishing from

a boat out in the deep but in our passage in Matthew chapter 4 where we see Peter and Andrew fishing they they’re likely using a cast net that would have been something that would have been easy enough to do from the shoreline and they’re able to gather in the fish right where they’re at on the Sea of Galilee and by the way I don’t know how many of you like to fish I’ve already met a few of you who like to fish there there’s a few

here I figured but if you do like to fish you know that fish aren’t stupid right some people think they are they’re not I’m I’m not an expert fisherman I’m I’m what you call an aspiring fish f but you know fish aren’t stupid they they know if they see a net they’re not going to just swim right into that net right and so what you’d have to do is you would fish at night because then the fish couldn’t see it in the darkness and they would

capture the most fish when it was dark and so a fisherman’s life was to fish at night and then they would come in in those early morning hours and they would spend those morning hours on the shoreline cleaning their Nets mending their Nets that was hard work and then they got to go to bed and so it’s likely the early morning hours here when we see Jesus comes to these men and just notice the Simplicity of his words he says follow me he could have said

a lot of other things he could have said I want you guys to follow this long list of regulations and rules these laws that have been handed down to you you need to follow those he could have said something more you know esoteric like I want you to follow this great philosophy of life that I have come up with and I my Brilliance has designed he could have said I want you to follow a new set of religious rituals many religions have gotten started this way

right someone comes along and they says we’ve got the answers Jesus does it totally different he says follow me see he’s not calling them so much to a new religion he’s calling them first and foremost to himself because he is the Fulfillment of all those expectations he’s the one they need to come to so in your outline you can see it says disciples follow Jesus this is what Jesus was doing he was calling people into a personal relationship with himself he’s saying the answer is not

go follow this or go do this but come straight here come to me come to me as your savior and your lord disciple is that’s the basic definition it’s one who follows Jesus now when we first read this passage it kind of seems like on first reading it would seem like Jesus is kind of just taking a walk on the beach and oh there’s four random guys you know I’ll ask them you know come on guys come follow me and then for no apparent reason they

just drop everything and they follow Jesus it can look like that but that’s not the full picture see if you compare the other gospels to each other what you see is that these guys probably had a lot of exposure to Jesus up to this point they they had seen Jesus in action in fact some Scholars would say it was it was probably about a year that they had seen Jesus heard Jesus teaching watched the way he he’s he’s telling people about his fulfillment and and so

by this time we see that they’re they’re following someone who they have been exposed to for a while so this is not a random experience this is not irrational on their part it is Supernatural and we don’t want to take anything away from their immediate obedience to follow him it’s always Supernatural whenever some starts following Jesus that is not natural that is Supernatural but it is rational because they knew about Jesus and so you can think of another time they saw Jesus in action in Luke

5 at that time Jesus had told Peter the expert fisherman put out into the deep Peter and Peter at first is wondering come on I’ve just been fishing all night we didn’t catch a thing you know that’s it was a terrible night of fishing and you want me to go back out there are you kidding only he he understands Jesus is wise and he’s a carpenter turned Rabbi but okay I’m going to do what he says and so he he goes out and to his astonishment

they so they catch so many fish that their two boats get weighed down begin to sink because of all the catch you can imagine Peter in that moment and what he does is he he’s just in awe and and he drops to his knees and he says depart from me for I am a sinful man oh Lord you know he’s in awe of who he’s in the presence of he’s recognizing this is no ordinary man this is Jesus it’s kind of an Isaiah 6 kind of

moment remember what Isaiah says he’s experiencing the Holiness of God and he says woe is me I’m ruined because I’m in the presence of God Almighty that’s Peter in that moment but I love this because this is how Jesus responds when Peter is just falling apart in front of him he says do not be afraid for from now on you will be catching men you think that’s impressive Peter you just caught a whole bunch of fish greatest fishing day of your life that’s not the amazing

thing you’re going to see what’s amazing and so I believe this is the moment where Peter goes from being a casual fan of Jesus to a committed follower of Jesus because it’s from here on out that Peter responds to Jesus understanding he is the Messiah he is the one we’ve been waiting for he’s not just God With Us he’s God for us not just God who came and we’re all in awe and and ready to be judged he’s the one who took the Judgment in our

place on the cross that’s what makes Jesus so amazing no other person has ever done that could ever do that and so when we get to this passage Matthew 4 says Peter and Andrew follow him they they know who they’re saying yes to all right they are not being foolish here this was Jesus of Nazareth everybody who encountered Jesus recognized there’s something compelling about this man the way he speaks his his power he’s got power over nature power over the fish of the sea this is

someone I want to get to know this is someone I want to be with so to be a disciple of Jesus you have to know that he is The God Who Came to save us from our sins you know there’s a lot of people that respect Jesus in this world a lot of people admire Jesus you listen to what Jesus said he has got a lot of wisdom and it’d be easy for us to say you know Jesus was a great teacher Jesus was among the

greatest Minds in history that’s not enough Jesus and the only Jesus that is worthy of our worship is the Jesus who is God and come Among Us and these 12 disciples would get to see this they would have access to Jesus in a special way it’s interesting when you read about The Parables especially in one sense Jesus is speaking to all the crowds he’s he’s preaching to everybody but you notice he actually is primarily speaking to the disciples because after he speaks these Parables he calls

them aside and he says guys this is what I’m telling you through what I just said they were the ones that had special privilege to hear that and then within that 12 you have the inner circle of the three Peter James and John they would get to witness the Transfiguration and so much more than the other 12 and of the four that he calls here all three Peter James and John the only one who’s not included in that three from this passage is Andrew not sure

why you know he he might not have liked that he was left out but he was not in that inner circle but Jesus says in verse 19f follow me and I will make you I will make you Fishers of Men so there Jesus is saying I’m going to make you when you become my disciple I will make you into something new I’ll make you into something that you weren’t before it’s going to be through my power don’t think this is about you being a great enough

student or you being a smart enough Disciple This is about me working through you I’m going to make you into a fisher of men so in your outline disciples are being transformed by Jesus you can remember right before this passage in verse 174 Jesus has just announced the arrival of the kingdom of God so think about this Jesus coming on the scene there’s a lot of expectation in Israel this time he says repent change your mind change your mind about God change your mind about yourself

repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand it’s here it’s here in me and so you can can imagine if someone is starting to announce the kingdom of God well it would make sense if he’d want to gather some real powerful you know social Elite kind of types that all to himself and he might even gather some priests to himself to crown him as king and so imagine how anticlimactic it would feel that he picks four fishermen of all people as his first recruits what

does that say about Jes Jesus that he picks the guys who are are not powerful not not no no prestige in being a fisherman in the first century he doesn’t pick the guys who would in a sense benefit him like it would it would look really good if he had priests surrounding him and and a religious Scholars surrounding him he picks fishermen that’s amazing and so Jesus shows us that he’s interested in these men who were relatively uneducated not not particularly bright right these these guys

they’re just ordinary men and John MacArthur even wrote a book called 12 ordinary men to make the point that these guys they’re really nothing special you look at them they’re they’re not you know they’re not the A+ kind of kids these guys are right there in the mix they’re ordinary guys and so as you would look at these hardworking you know fishermen right by the shoreline they’re they’re working to detangle Nets clean them up they’re sweaty they smell like fish you wouldn’t think greatness when you

saw them you would think wow how how ordinary how mundane and Jesus wanted them for his world changing task force and rabbis were very common in that day what rabbis would do is they would travel from City to city and what would often happen is people would recognize their teaching and and be drawn to them and so they would try to attach themselves in some way and so you’d have people coming to the rabbi to say I would like to be your disciple I’m willing to

make that commitment Jesus is not your conventional Rabbi instead of waiting for people to come to him Jesus goes out and he handpicks the guys that he wants on his team it’s very different from what would happen and this is the way it always works with God you know later Jesus will say you did not choose me but I chose you it’s my choice that that’s why you are privileged that’s why you have access to me that’s why you know me as you do I chose

you and it’s the same for today you know God doesn’t wait until we are good and ready he he comes looking for us he pursues us he chooses us this last week when I was talking with Pastor Steve he said you know Jason at Grace Point our mindset is you don’t have to straighten up or dress up you just got to show up and I love that I love that because that’s the truth you just got to show up that’s how it is with Jesus he

doesn’t say clean yourself up first he doesn’t say I want to make sure you’re looking exactly as you should like these religious Scholars over here or anything like that he says as you are I pick you I Choose You Now come follow me and Jesus though he meets us where we are at he loves us too much to leave us there he goes to work right away changing us from the inside out this is something religion can’t do it doesn’t matter how many laws how many

regulations you have that can’t change your heart only Jesus can change your heart these fishermen didn’t know everything but they did know there is something special about Jesus they saw him in action they recognized his raw Authority and power this man is totally unique we have not met anybody like this and so they wanted to get close to him they couldn’t say no to this call so how about you have you said yes to Jesus do you know that he still today is making that call

follow me this is not a 2,000 years ago kind of thing this is a today kind of thing he says to us as the Living Lord follow me would the people who know you best say you know you’re not the person you used to be there there’s something different about you and it is because of Jesus that’s what a follower of Jesus looks like they begin to look more and more like Jesus because of his work in them so this is how the transformation Works Jesus

says follow me and I will make you Fishers of Men Fishers of Men that’s an interesting phrase you know I didn’t know this probably till just this last week but I was doing some research on this phrase it was a very common phrase among people in the ancient Greco Roman World a fisher of men was seen as someone who would be really good at persuading others to their philosophy of life but when I read this I think Jesus is giving it much more meaning much more

significance Jesus is saying disciples those who follow me are now on Mission they’re now going to be reaching out and they’re going to be on mission to win others to me and see the whole point of being a disciple of Jesus isn’t that the gospel stops with you it’s so that it goes through you to reach somebody else to be a disciple is not I’m going to follow Jesus and it’s just me and Jesus me and Jesus doing this thing called life and that’s it to

be a disciple of Jesus is to be someone who makes Disciples of Jesus it’s part of the package you can think about this Jesus was a excellent Communicator that probably goes without saying but when you read the gospels you see he’s always speaking to people in a way that they can hold on to and they can understand and here he’s speaking to fishermen and he’s saying be a fisher of men you will be a fisher of men well they’re fishermen they can hold on to this

language they understand what’s being said they’ve cast The Net into the water multiple times and they’ve had days where they they don’t catch anything right and they’ve had days where they catch a lot of fish and ultimately they keep showing up you can’t just on a bad fishing day you don’t say okay I’m done fishing bad day I’m not going to do it anymore if that’s your livelihood like it was for these guys no you go back out there the next day throw that net in

again you keep going and that’s the mindset Jesus wants us as disciples to have there are going to be people who say Jesus is not for me I’m not in interested I don’t need Jesus he says keep throwing that net keep casting it in the waters be persistent be diligent because that’s what you would do as a fisherman you wouldn’t give up remember the words that Jesus left his disciples at the end of this gospel after he’s risen from the dead he says all authority in

heaven and on Earth has been given to me in other words because of my resurrection from the dead that’s proof that I am the king of the universe everybody is accountable to me I’m the one in authority and then he goes on to say go therefore in light of what I have done this is what you are to do go therefore and Make Disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to

observe all that I have commanded you and behold I Am With You Always to the end of the age see Jesus was saying from the beginning of his ministry he was saying it at the end of his ministry the same thing to be my disciple is to be one who is catching others winning others throwing that net in making disciples of Jesus showing me showing others the love that I have for them and you notice the disciples response in verse 20 chapter 4 there immediately they

left their Nets and followed him there’s no hesitation it’s not like Peter and Andrew are looking at each other like I don’t know about this no they leave everything the emphasis is on they leave even their Nets now if you are a fisherman that is the one thing you do not leave you always take care of your nets because that’s your livelihood they left their Nets they left everything to follow Jesus same thing happens with the next two brothers James and John verse 22 immediately you

know Mark loves that word immediately it’s like he’s always in a hurry Matthew when he says immediately he’s saying they they really did this right away he they left everything their boat their father and followed him they immediately left Matthew is saying that there is this urgency there has to be this urgency in responding to the call of discipleship I remember a few years back I was talking to a kid who came to our youth group when we were at a church in Salem and in

our first conversation that the music group was practicing I just sat down and talked with him for a bit and he said you should know that I’m an atheist I said okay tell me why you’re an atheist we got to talking and he wasn’t disrespectful he let me share the gospel with him and we began talking and we had several more conversations after that and I still remember to this day he he stopped me when I was trying to explain things again and he said you

know Jason even if you’re right even if you’re right about Jesus the fact is I don’t feel a need for Jesus in my life right now and you know to this day as far as I know he still hasn’t come to Christ not yet anyway I haven’t given up on him but you know what that tells us is until people have a sense of their need their burden of sin when you recognize I have a guilt problem I have a need for forgiveness and and doesn’t

matter what I’ve done it doesn’t matter what people say to me I can’t get rid of this guilt until you have that sense like Peter did remember he said depart from me for I am a sinful man Peter got it he knew religion’s not going to cut it I have a problem that goes way too deep for religion but then when you have that sense that of Despair that I can’t do anything about this that’s when you are open to Jesus that’s when you run to

Jesus that’s when you immediately go to Jesus because there’s that urgency eternal life is at stake here I I do not want to risk anything without Jesus do you still have that sense in your heart that sense of I would be so so lost without Jesus you still feel the weight of that that eternity hangs in the balance on me being united to Jesus and Jesus alone this is what the disciples understood that’s only something the Holy Spirit can bring I standing up here I can’t

bring that right this is not something that humans can do this is something God has to reach down and he has to basically turn the switch in the heart so that we see our need and we recognize it’s only Jesus that’s going to save me I better run right to him the life of discipleship is the life we’d never choose for ourselves because it’s infinitely better than anything we could come up with disciples your notes disciples forsake the world for Jesus so over and over in

Matthew he will emphasize this same truth again and again this is what the disciples left this is what they forsook to follow Jesus you know Jesus will say things like you need to count the cost nobody starts building something if they haven’t counted the cost what’s going to factor into this you don’t go to war and not count the cost you don’t follow me without counting the cost there’s a cost he says things like you will be hated by all for my name’s sake and he

says you got to take up your cross well that’s how people were killed take up your cross and follow me Jesus demands total Allegiance you think about what this means for for us today well even back then think of how radical this would have sounded he said whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me you just think about how radical that was Radical back then that’s radical today

right when you think about this this is this is who Jesus is and I have to ask myself I can’t make this theoretical right this doesn’t work for me to read the Bible and say yeah that’s nice in theory I have to ask myself am I still feeling the sense of how radical Jesus’s demand is on me what he’s calling me to be and to do he must be first there can’t be any rivals in our hearts there’s no shared space in our hearts with Jesus

there’s also a negative example in Matthew Jesus tells a rich man you lack one thing he says you go sell all your possessions give that money to the poor then come follow me and you remember what the rich man said he goes away sorrowful it emphasizes that in all the gospels he goes away sadly sorrowful and he he says no to Jesus because he has so much stuff and when it comes down to it he chooses stuff over Jesus wow you know when you think about

that in your own heart is there anything is there anything right now that I’m prizing I’m I’m lifting up to a level in my heart where it should not be is there anything where Jesus is in competition with something in my affections Jesus would say you can’t do that I must be first because I’m the Living Lord of the universe and Peter when he sees what happened to the Rich Young Ruler it’s almost like he feels the need to remind Jesus he says look Lord we’ve

left everything and followed you what do we get and Jesus essentially says you know what Peter you left your nets you left your fishing business you left all of that but you got to know you have so much more coming to you you will be infinitely repaid you just wait you just wait and see dri Bon hoofer wrote the cost of discipleship and he said when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die die now all that is true but we also need to

remember this this is the other side to that Jesus also promised that the only true and Abundant Life is found in him and so while it’s true that there is a cost to following Jesus there is an infinitely greater cost to not following Jesus the cost of non- discipleship is eternal and this is something that people today would would sometimes scoff at but the reality is Jesus made this so clear if you’re not United to me then you are eternally lost you’re dead in your sin

there’s no hope for you if you’re not putting your whole hope in me and he’s the The Living Lord so he can rightfully say that so I’m going to close with this if you understand who Jesus is if you really get it if you understand his his identity as that prophecy fulfilling Messiah the savior then really giving your life to him only makes sense it’s the only right response it’s not irrational it’s not foolish it’s wisdom so what about you when Jesus says to you and

me today follow me what are the Nets that you need to leave behind Peter and James John and Andrew they all had to leave something they left their Nets behind what in your life is Jesus by his holy spirit what’s he saying to you today you need to le

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 5,901 words.