"Fishers of Men" Matthew 4:18-22 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 4 verses 18 through 22.

Matthew 4:18–22

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he, Jesus, saw two brothers, Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And he said to them, Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them.

Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Well, this is not what you would think would be a compelling start to a global ministry that will turn the world upside down.

In the narrative of Matthew, you would be expecting something bigger or more dramatic right about this point.

If you think of where we've come from, Matthew begins with the genealogy that traces Jesus all the way back to Adam.

And so you get this sense that all of creation has been building forward towards the Savior.

And now you jump into Matthew 2 and you see prophecies fulfilled in Christ.

He is the true Israel.

He's been called out of Egypt.

The prophecy that we just stopped reading in Jeremiah 31, where the next verse was about the weeping and in Ramah.

All this Old Testament prophecy about the Savior is fulfilled by Jesus as he comes onto the scene.

The Magi traveled from faraway places to bring him gifts.

The star lit the way.

I mean, this is a big deal.

And then in Matthew chapter 3, you have the baptism.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

John is, you know, a global phenomenon.

People are traveling from around the world to hear John speak out at the Jordan River and to be baptized by him, and tens of thousands of people were going out there.

I mean, this was a global phenomenon.

And Jesus goes out there and begins baptizing people as well.

And Jesus begins baptizing more people than John baptized, and then John baptizes Jesus, and the voice from heaven says, This is my son.

I'm well pleased.

The Holy Spirit comes on him in front of everybody.

And then from there, he goes up into the wilderness to be tempted by Jesus, uh tempted by the devil, and each temptation goes higher and higher and higher than the one before.

Higher in terms of topography, you know, from uh up into the mountains and then uh up into the temple and then up unto the tallest mountains to overlook the world, and also higher in terms of intensity, each one more extreme than the one before.

And Jesus conquers all of that.

And so now you're like, you're ready for action.

He's gonna turn the world upside down, something dramatic should take place, and some powerful sermon, perhaps, or some miracle that turns the world upside down, or something along those lines.

But instead, what you encounter next in his first, as Matthew and uh Mark both describe it, his first real public act of ministry here is calling four fishermen walking along the water and summoning these four four guys to follow him and become fishers of men.

You would be excused if you viewed this as anticlimatic.

But when you think about the nature of the gospel, it starts to make a little bit more sense.

If you know the end of the story, that these guys, these four, are going to become apostles, part of the twelve, and then eleven, and then twelve again, and then part of this massive movement that does indeed upend the world order, that does indeed lead to the collapse ultimately of the Roman Empire, that leads to the gospel going global, that leads to us believing right now.

I mean, this strategy paid off.

This strategy hinges on the fact that the most really radical thing a person can do in their life is treasure Jesus above everything else.

To become convinced that God is more glorious through the person of Jesus Christ and more valuable and more worthwhile.

And just Jesus is worth it more than anything else in this life.

That it's more special to follow Christ than to succeed at work, it's more special to follow Christ than to have a happy family and a blessed marriage and to have money and to have all these other things, that Christ is more precious than all of those things.

So that's the reality of the gospel.

That people who are lost in darkness and living for themselves get converted to Christ.

They converted one at a time.

Their conversion looks like treasuring Christ in their heart, their conversion looks like looking at the person of Christ as described in the scriptures and believing that he is more valuable than anything in this world, counting the cost, considering everything is lost, denying themselves, picking up their cross, going through the narrow gate, devoting their life to following Christ.

That's the most dramatic change.

People were made for happiness.

Happiness is seen in holiness, holiness is seen in conforming your life to Jesus Christ.

That's what the Bible is about.

The most extreme, high, noble, and virtuous thing a person can do is to love the Lord Jesus Christ.

The greatest command a person can keep is to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And I mean, that's it right there.

People aren't born willing to do that.

People are born in sin and transgression.

People are born living for themselves, loving themselves, serving themselves, charting their own course in this world, living for themselves, and then they have an encounter with Christ and they get radically saved.

So that is the most glorious thing that can happen in this universe is a sinner getting saved.

And it doesn't matter the sinner's educational background, doesn't matter how many followers they have on social media, doesn't matter their GPA at school, it doesn't matter their salary, it doesn't matter their SAT scores, forget all that.

Which is good news for a lot of you.

Amen.

The most glorious thing that can happen is when an individual gives his life over to Christ, surrenders his life to Jesus Christ, and says, I'm gonna find Jesus as more beautiful and more captivating and more glorious than anything else this world has to offer.

That causes the angels to rejoice.

The angels don't rejoice when you get a promotion.

The angels don't rejoice when your kid hits a home run.

The angels don't rejoice at anything dramatic in this world, honestly.

I mean, think of the new pictures that are just coming out in the last few weeks from the Hubble telescope, which apparently lives longer than it's insane.

That thing is still cranking stuff out.

The pictures that just came out this week are unbelievable.

Far-off galaxies, swarms of galaxies.

It's unreal.

But the angels don't rejoice over that.

They're not wowed by the cosmos.

The angels are wowed, they're blown away, they're astonished, they celebrate when one sinner comes to faith in Christ.

They're not even odd at miracles.

Angels aren't.

But they're odd when a sinner gets saved.

And so, with that as the kind of framework here, the way Jesus launches his ministry makes a little bit more sense.

He doesn't ride into ministry here with pomp and circumstance, surrounded by Roman dignitaries, or the he doesn't go to a summit of the leaders of the world.

There's no Roman kings here.

The Caesar's not around here.

Jesus comes out of the Roman wilderness and he, or the Judean wilderness, and he doesn't turn right and go to Jerusalem.

He doesn't turn right and go find John, who's in prison on the other side of the Dead Sea.

He doesn't, you know, cut back to the west or the northwest and head out to Caesarea, which is the capital, the Roman capital of Israel.

He doesn't go there.

He doesn't go to the Jewish headquarters.

He doesn't go to Egypt, where more Jews were than in Israel at this point in time.

So he doesn't go there.

He doesn't go to the big city.

He doesn't go to the Roman city.

He doesn't go find the kings.

He doesn't go find the Pharisees.

What he does is he goes to Galilee.

And he finds four people.

Four individuals.

That's what he is on the hunt for.

After the drama of his baptism, the triumph of his temptation, and the simplicity of his preaching in verse 17.

I mean, the content as he's walking around here of his sermons is basically repent, for the kingdom of heaven is here.

You're expecting something with shock and awe.

You're ready for events of national importance and cosmic significance, but you don't find a miracle.

You don't find a parable, you don't find a prophecy, you don't even get a whole sermon yet.

The whole sermon's coming in chapter five.

For now, all you get is a simple appeal to four people to leave their lives behind and follow Jesus Christ.

And I submit to you this morning that that is the most glorious thing that can happen.

It's more profoundly radical and world-changing and life-upending than a miracle would have been, than a parable would have been, than a prophecy would have been.

What you see here is four individuals who commit their life to following Christ, to serving Christ, to being like Christ, and to being his mouthpieces in a lost and dark world.

If the greatest thing a person can do is be filled with the joy of the Lord, if happiness comes with holiness, a person can't do that unless they know about Jesus Christ.

And how can a person know about Jesus Christ unless someone goes and tells them?

And so it truly is a beautiful, powerful, world-changing scene here when these four guys commit to spending the rest of their lives serving Jesus Christ and telling other people about him.

So this command here to drop what you're doing and follow Christ.

What you're seeing here in the verses 18 through 22, it is, in a sense, the conversation that turned the world upside down.

I mean, Peter's gonna go on and be the leader of the church here.

This is just crazy things are gonna happen.

These guys have no idea about as of right now.

And it all comes from this really simple command to follow Jesus Christ.

I think sometimes we don't evangelize because we think we don't know how, we don't know what we would say, we don't know how to transition the conversation, we don't know how to respond to objections, and so we just, you know, we're nervous what will people say or what will happen to me at work, and so we don't evangelize, but it's worth just pausing and taking a step back, put your heads up, take a deep breath, and realize, you know, the gospel saves people's lives.

It's life-changing news here that we have, and nothing more important can happen in your life than the Lord using you to save other people, to bring the gospel to other people.

I mean, that's that's worth living for right there.

And that's what we see here this morning, and just how powerful it is, the command of Christ, to just follow him.

So, what makes this call of Christ so compelling?

I want to give you an outline to hang your thoughts on this morning.

Three ways Christ's call compels us to take the bait.

The fishing thing, take the bait.

That's where this is going.

Thanks for appreciating that half as much as first hour.

Christ's call compels us to take the bait.

And what I'm after here is this concept that what Jesus does is he draws us into himself, is he he lays down bait here, and bait can have a negative connotation in in English.

I'm not after the negative side of it, as much as that God is the divine fisherman and he fishes for us and he baits us, he lead leads out something for us that we grab onto, and then we're his.

And then we're his.

And so, what is it that's wrapped up in this little conversation that makes Christ so compelling?

That makes this call so convicting, that draws us, magnetizes us into his grasp.

Well, I think there's a couple, there's I mean, there's several things in this passage.

As I mentioned, I've preached this several times and I've done it differently uh every time.

I'm pretty happy with this one, though.

The first is the clarity of the call.

The clarity of the call.

The call of Jesus is it's simple and it's clear, it's precise, it's direct, it hits right at the heart.

This is one of the most famous acts of obedience in human history here, where Jesus comes to these four and says, Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men.

There's not a pause here, there's not a second look as described in Matthew and Mark.

They just surrender completely to the entreaty of Christ.

Notice just what I mean by clarity here.

Jesus came to them, he met them where they were at, he sought them out.

When they scattered from the Jordan River after John's arrest, they made their way through Cana.

John describes the journey of the disciples here.

They made their way back through Cana, they stayed off the Jordan River, flew under the radar, made it back to Galilee.

Jesus goes up for the temptation.

They don't know what's happening.

And Jesus comes down and finds them.

He seeks them out.

He finds them in their life, he finds them in their world, he finds them at the sea, they're fishermen and they're fishing, and Jesus goes there.

Don't let it, don't miss the Jesus.

He even uses the language of their worlds.

These guys are fishing, and Jesus comes to them and says, I'm gonna teach you to close the sale on other people.

He doesn't use the language of business.

He doesn't say, I'm gonna teach you to plant trees that'll grow eternal fruit.

He doesn't use the language of agriculture.

He comes to them and says, I'm gonna make you fishers of men.

He calls fishermen using fisherman language and gives them a term.

He takes their world and captures it.

He takes over their world for himself.

That's what I mean by this is so clear.

Take what you're doing and do it for the Lord.

Casting nets was extreme.

It was hard work.

You know, sometimes we Americans read this and we think of those little nets.

I know my kids might think of those little nets that you get guppies out of the creek with, you know, those little things like that.

That's not what these nets are.

This isn't the kind of fishing net that fishermen have that, you know, you lure the fish in and you grab it in that little fishing net.

This is this is a net, it's a 20-foot, you know, it's 20 feet wide here.

It's weighted, it's got weights, rocks along the outside of it.

It's got ropes that connect like spokes of a bicycle that then can cinch up if you grab it with the main rope.

And you would you would take this thing and you would swing it around the top of your head.

And it would sometimes take several people to do this, or a couple of guys would hold the waist of the one guy in the middle who's doing this, and you'd swing it back and forth, and then you would chuck it into the water.

And it's all in technique here.

If you do it right, the thing spreads out like a parachute, hits the water, it sinks to the bottom.

The rocks then gather, trap the fish under the net.

Guppies don't get caught in this thing, guppies swim right through.

Guppies laugh, laugh at this.

But bigger fish get stuck in this thing.

And the fishermen have to grab the rope and hoist it up, and you pull the rope and it closes the bottom of the net.

That takes a lot of force to do that, and then you're heaving this thing that's now soaking wet in water with all the rocks, and plus hopefully a lot of fish that are in it, and you're heaving it back up onto your boat, and most of the time you don't catch anything.

There's no fishing radar here in this world, no fish reports, no underwater radar or any of that.

You're just based on their experience in the sea.

They've this is a large lake, the Sea of Galilee.

It's a, you know, it's it's not much bigger than Lake Anna, it's wider than that, but it's this is a lake that you can know.

You can spend your life here and know all of it.

And that's what's happening here.

These guys are in their world, wrestling these nets, working on these nets.

If the nets ripped, the fish escape, of course.

They're mending their nets.

This is their world.

Jesus comes to them in their world and uses their language and says, I want you to follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.

They're in their normal routine, and Jesus up-ends it.

I don't want you to catch fish anymore.

I want you to go, use your skills, use your training, use your life, but now use it to catch people.

I've seen bumper stickers that say fishing is living.

And you know what?

I like those bumper stickers.

I don't like fishing, but I like those bumper stickers.

There's some truth to it.

There's no better way to spend your life than going after other people to introduce them to Jesus.

To introduce them to Jesus.

This is what the disciples themselves would say.

John 12, verse 21, sir, we wish to see Jesus.

John 12:21

That's what people want.

They have a need to see Jesus.

If happiness is holiness and holiness is conformity to Christ, there's no way to be conformed to Christ unless you know of him.

And so there's no better thing to spend your life doing than to introducing people to Christ.

So Jesus is inviting them to do something better with their lives.

It's a radical message, a radical call that leads to radical obedience.

Leave your life, follow Christ.

I say the clarity of the call because he met them where they're at, he used their language, but also there's so much that's wrapped into these simple words.

Notice the call for discipleship is in here.

He says, follow me.

Follow me.

In other words, you're gonna spend your life pursuing Christ, becoming like him.

They're gonna take fishing lessons from Jesus.

They're gonna learn to evangelize by listening to Jesus evangelize.

Jesus is then gonna give them instructions and send them into the world.

He's gonna bring them back, he'll debrief, he'll send them into the world a second time, bring them back, debrief again.

Then he's gonna give them his last sermon, which is about how they're supposed to go into all the world.

Then he lays down his life.

And he expects them to lay down their lives as well.

He doesn't challenge them to do anything he didn't do.

It's all about following Christ.

Setting down their nets doesn't make them an evangelist.

You know, dropping their nets does not make them obedient, and it does not make them evangelists, it doesn't give meaning to their life.

But setting down their nets and following Christ does those things.

You follow Christ, you become an evangelist.

You follow Christ, you you treasure him.

The Lordship of Christ is in here.

They're the ones obeying it.

This is not an equal partnership.

Jesus doesn't say, let's go into a joint venture together.

We'll draw up documents, split the profits.

No, this is very clear what's happening.

Jesus is the Lord, they are his servants.

They're underneath him, they work for him, not the other way around.

All of that is wrapped up in this simple command: follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.

Discipleship, lordship, evangelism, obedience, and they're gonna learn this their whole life.

At the end of Jesus' ministry, Matthew 28, the end of this gospel, he's gonna say, now you go into all the world and you make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

So it's a lifelong fishing lesson that they get turned over.

It becomes theirs.

Jesus is the most compelling person who has ever lived, the most magnetizing person who's ever lived, so much so that just simple command, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men, draws people in and upends the world.

And I want you to appreciate that the same invitation comes to you.

You're not fishing at the Sea of Galilee with Jesus walking up to you after he's been up in the wilderness for 40 days.

No, you're living your own life, doing your own thing, but the invitation to follow Christ comes to you in some way or form, and you believe it, and that should upend your life.

You may not have gotten saved on a fishing trip.

Some of you may have gotten saved on a fishing trip, I don't know, but you may have gotten saved at work, you may have gotten saved with over coffee with friends, and the friend that led me to Christ, I'm at playing soccer, and I prefer soccer to fishing all the time.

But the Lord used that to bring me to faith in Christ.

You got saved in your own way, but underneath all of it is this exact same story you see right here at the start of Jesus' ministry.

Leave your life, follow me.

Follow me.

That's the simplicity.

This command is succinct, it is clear, it is inviting, and it comes to us.

An invitation to spend our life at the feet of Christ, to be radically abandoned to the Lord.

This is the first command Jesus preached back in verse 17 of Matthew 4.

From that time Jesus began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

This is the command to us.

It's not a generic invitation to the world.

Although there is a global call.

That's not what this is.

This is not an evite that was sent to a million people, and you can open it or not open it.

Nobody will know.

This is personalized, individualized, traceable right back to you.

Jesus calls his sheep by their name.

He hires his fishermen by their name.

It's less like a global call and more like an individual summons.

That you, by your name, would be attached to Jesus by his name, accept his authority, and imitate his example.

That's this exchange.

Now these guys knew who Jesus was.

This is not their introduction.

To Jesus here.

As I mentioned, they had already been with him along the Jordan River.

They had seen him baptizing.

They may have even participated in his baptisms.

Not only that, they heard the voice from heaven proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah.

I mean, they knew who this guy is.

Remember, Peter was introduced by his brother Andrew.

You see Andrew four times in the New Testament, by the way, introducing other people to Jesus, saying, Hey, come check out this guy.

What a legacy.

One of them is Brother Peter.

He says, You got to check out Jesus.

He's the Messiah.

So they have already met him.

They know he's the Savior.

They know he's going to have more influence and more potential than John the Baptist, who is the most famous person in the world, probably at the time.

So they know all that, but then he disappears, arrested.

John disappears because he's arrested.

Jesus disappears into the mountains, and they go back fishing.

They don't know what's happening.

And Jesus comes and finds them and says, You have to follow me.

And so they give up on their life at this point.

Henceforth, they're not going to serve their own interests and desires, but they're going to live their lives in submission to Jesus and in pursuit of his interests.

They surrender living for themselves and they start living for him.

Peter, of course, as you would expect, took a little bit more persuading.

Remember, this is in Luke's gospel that Jesus goes out on the boat with him and says, Hey, throw your net over here.

And Peter says, I know this lake.

You don't.

I fished all night.

Mind your own business.

And Jesus says, try the right side.

Try it.

And so Peter does, and he catches more fish than he can handle, has to call everybody to help load the net on the fish.

And Jesus just is standing there watching this, and Peter is undone.

Remember, he just collapses at Jesus' feet and says, You're the Lord.

That's this invitation.

To collapse at the feet of Jesus and say, You are the Lord.

I will spend my life serving you.

Notice the divine initiative in this.

Jesus saw, Jesus spoke, Jesus called.

This is all Jesus is doing.

The disciples have the human response to the divine call.

They respond by obeying, they respond by leaving.

They abandon their nets.

John and his brother James, and he went look at verse 21.

They leave their nets, they leave their boats, they leave their father with the nets.

Doesn't even say if they pulled the nets back up into the water there.

Picture their dad.

No wonder they're called the Sons of Thunder.

Picture their dad's response as they just follow Jesus down the beach.

Dad's singing, there goes my future.

Walking on the sand there.

Immediately it says in verse 22, immediately it says in verse 20, they did this to follow Jesus.

They say it's a simple and a clear command to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Secondly, this command is compelling, not just because of his clarity, but it's compelling because of the deity of Jesus.

The deity of Jesus.

This is a new kind of relationship where they will be submissive to him and take on his character and emulate him.

This is unusual in the world.

Jesus is going to send them into the world to be a fisher of other men.

This is an enormous command.

This is not a command that's okay to tell somebody to do.

Religious leaders didn't do this.

The prophets in the Old Testament didn't do this.

No other religion in the world did this, sent people into the world to make disciples and lure other people into the religion.

There were Eastern religions.

They didn't send missionaries.

There's no missionaries from India or China in Jerusalem at the time.

There's no missionaries from Egypt.

There's no missionaries from for the Roman pantheon.

They don't have their own missionaries going out and witnessing the Jews about the greatness of Athena or Zeus.

I mean, that didn't happen.

But Jesus is saying, you're going to surrender everything and follow me, and I'm going to send you into the world.

As I mentioned, the Old Testament prophets didn't do this.

They didn't command people to follow them.

Ezekiel never commanded somebody to follow him.

The Old Testament prophets did insane things, didn't they?

Insane things.

Ezekiel cooked cow dung.

But he didn't command the Israelites to follow him and eat with him.

He came in the Israelites to repent and obey Yahweh.

Jonah down to the whale.

But he didn't invite other people with him.

There's a one-way ticket for Jonah.

One ticket on that boat.

One ticket in that whale.

And Jonah didn't even have good news.

Remember, he goes to Nineveh, he didn't have good news.

And Jonah's sermon was, hey, get ready, you guys are gonna burn.

If you need me, I'll be on the hill rooting for the fire.

I mean, nothing like what Jesus is pitching here to these disciples had ever happened before.

That's what I mean by the deity of Jesus.

To say to somebody, leave your life and follow me, you'll get more information later, is not acceptable.

Christian leaders don't even don't do that.

I don't come to you and say, hey, leave your life and follow me, become be a disciple of Jesse.

I mean, that's that's cult, that's kind of cultish, except for the kind of parts.

That's cultish.

Paul he says, follow me, but notice the quick deflection, follow me as I follow Christ.

Paul says, you know what, there's only one head of this, Jesus.

You follow him.

I'm glad I didn't baptize any of y'all.

So you can be servants of Jesus.

There's false teachers out there telling people, hey, don't listen to Paul, but follow Jesus.

And Paul says, you know what, I'm gonna rejoice in that.

They slander my character, whatever, because at least people end up following Jesus out of this.

I mean, that's the New Testament leader's ethic, but that was not Jesus' ethic.

Jesus never said, it's okay if you reject me and you follow Yahweh instead.

Jesus said, you cannot reject me and say that you follow Yahweh.

You cannot reject me and follow the true God.

It's an ontological impossibility.

There is one true God and Jesus is it.

That was his message.

And so Jesus can say, leave your life and follow me, and everybody has to obey.

His greatness and power is on full display in this command.

And Peter noticed it, Andrew noticed it, James noticed it, John noticed it, the other disciples would notice it.

The fact that the disciples responded to this teaches you more about the authority of Jesus than it does about the disciples, by the way.

These disciples were fickle, they were hard-hearted, they were proud, they were divisive, and that was after following Jesus for two years.

At this moment, they're of course that.

All of the religious leaders of Israel, even the Pharisees, even the prophets in the Old Testament, had a borrowed authority from God.

Jesus has that authority intrinsically in and of himself.

And it's on display.

Notice how other people responded to calls to follow Christ.

They could have said, Who is he to ask us to follow him?

Isn't he a carpenter's son?

Isn't Mary his mother?

Aren't James and Joseph and Simon and Judas his brothers?

Why would we follow him?

They could have answered like John 6.42 and say, Don't we know his mother and father?

What's behind that language?

This guy's not God.

He can't say that kind of thing.

We know him.

We know where he's from.

But not these four.

Peter and Andrew, they didn't even get their nuts.

Left it there in the water.

When Jesus calls you, obedience is the only option.

The response could have been James and John especially, it could have been viewed as blasphemous.

And this is a world where you don't leave your parents' business to go off in the world and discover yourself.

I mean, this isn't the Renaissance here.

Remember the prodigal son story?

The first shocking part of that story is where the son says, I'm going to leave my parents and go off in the world and live for myself.

I mean, that's unacceptable.

They could have put him to death for that.

In the Jewish mind, this kind of thinking, I'm going to venture out and do my own thing, that's a violation of the fifth commandment.

They could be stoned to death for that.

To ask someone to leave their family is unheard of.

There's an exception for that in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, military service.

You can leave your family for military service.

Moses sanctioned that.

God sanctions that in Deuteronomy.

This isn't that.

This is somebody telling two people who are fishing with their dad to leave their dad, walk away from that life, and follow Jesus instead.

And I'm not reading too much into this because Jesus doubles down on this throughout his ministry.

He says, unless you hate your mother and your father, you have no place with me.

When he does that, notice he's overtly elevating himself above the fifth commandment and saying, I'm more important than even that.

He does that to the fourth commandment.

He's the Lord of the Sabbath.

He does that to the fifth commandment.

He makes himself, remember what the Pharisee said when he said that?

You keep making yourself out to be equal with God.

Aha.

Well, the four disciples are there already.

It might seem unreasonable to say, I'm going to drop everything and follow Jesus, but they were summoned by their maker and they obeyed to him.

And remember, Jesus doesn't ask them to do anything he won't do for them himself.

He leads by example, certainly.

That's the whole point of this.

He says, follow me, and then he lives how he wants them to live.

All the way up to and including laying down his own life.

At the end of three years, a couple of years after this, Jesus tells his disciples, I call you friends.

True love is no one greater than this, that he lay his life down for his friends, but this is not egalitarian.

The order is not reversed because he says that I'm your friend, I will lay my life down for you.

You are my friend if you do what I command, he tells them.

So again, this is not equal playing field.

Jesus remains the Lord at all times, but he makes it very clear.

I'm telling you to do what I am doing for you.

I will lay down my life for you.

And Jesus does.

He dies for their sin.

These four guys are sinners.

That's on full display.

He dies bearing the penalty from God for their sin.

We are in the same boat, so to speak.

We are sinners.

We're born alienated from God, separated from God by our own sin.

We are lost in sin and darkness.

Jesus takes our sin from us and dies on the cross bearing God's punishment for our sin.

He dies in our place as our substitute, so that when he tells us, hey, follow me, treasure me more than anything else in your life, he can say that to you because he has already laid his life down for your sin.

That's what I mean by the deity of Jesus.

He alone can be the substitute for sin.

He alone can give this kind of command, making atonement for his own people.

Thirdly, Christ's call compels us to take the bait because of his clarity, because of his deity, because of its urgency, because the urgency of our need.

As I mentioned, these guys are in a tough situation.

They're fishing back on the Sea of Galilee.

They don't know what the future has.

They had gone out to the Jordan with John and with Jesus.

They had followed Jesus.

Depending how you line up the synoptics, it's likely they had followed Jesus already through Cana.

They had seen the wedding feast already, the water turned to wine.

They had seen the Samaritan woman, likely had taken place already by this point.

So these guys had information about Jesus.

They had seen him do things, but then Jesus goes away and John is arrested.

At this point, all bets are off.

And they are confused.

And so just try to appreciate their emotional fragility, their emotional state here, how they view the world.

They're convinced he's the Messiah, but now John's the one who baptized him is in prison.

There's no rescue effort underway.

And Jesus is missing.

What are you going to think?

So they go back to fishing.

That's what they know how to do.

And so when Jesus comes and says, Hey, follow me, it's going to change your life.

Starting today.

They don't say, I need a moment to think about this.

Can you get back to me tomorrow?

Let me talk to some friends.

I mean, that's not this kind of call.

This is an urgent today, right now, you need to follow Christ kind of call.

You don't need, if you get the playing field here, if you understand the scenario, you don't need to call a timeout and think this over.

If you the scenario is this you are lost and don't know what your life has in store for you.

God made you and you believe that Jesus Christ is sent by God to redeem you, and now Jesus is saying, follow me.

If you get that, then you're all in for Jesus.

You don't need a moment.

So you respond immediately.

It's an urgent call.

Plus, there is work to do.

There are people that don't know about Jesus.

This is a very forward-looking call.

Jesus says, follow me, I'll make you future.

This is going to happen.

I will, future tense, make you into somebody who's going to go in the world and do all of this.

This is an urgent command.

There's work to be done.

You have no idea where your life is headed now.

Jesus knows, and he's telling you to go this way.

That's what's happening here.

These guys are going to do in Galilee what John was doing at the Jordan.

They're starting to get that.

John was making disciples.

We know this from John's gospel.

John was filling out his ranks with disciples.

Jesus is now going to do the same thing, only he's not doing it with the Jews down at the Jordan.

Jesus is doing it in Galilee of the Gentiles, with Samaritans up in Cana, up in Nazareth, up in Zebulun, Naphtali.

He's doing this in the outskirts in Nowhereville.

But that's where it's going to start with these four right here.

This would not be the way worldly thinking of success would function.

They wouldn't start here, and they wouldn't start with fishermen.

I mean, Jesus should at least get a good lawyer in the mix.

Get a politician to come with you.

Get a centurion.

That would be great.

Call a centurion to follow you.

He doesn't do any of those things.

He gets these four fishermen.

That's what he's going to take on the world with.

By the way, these four guys, I said this earlier, but I want to repeat it.

They have no idea what's about to happen.

I mean, how could they?

How could they?

They're going to see things that have never before been seen.

They're going to see miracles that John himself says, I can't even, I can't.

John, the one who's called here, says, I can't, I can't even write all that went down.

It would fill up, fill up books.

Can't do it.

Can't do it.

These guys are going to turn the world upside down.

They're going to start preaching in Jerusalem.

They're going to get scared back into Samaria, into Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the world.

They're going to scatter.

These guys, who at this moment in time are so provincial, I mean, they have probably never even been to the Dead Sea.

Down to where John was baptizing is probably the furthest south that they had been.

You go the other direction.

They probably hadn't been past the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee.

Their whole life is in this little pocket here.

Certainly they knew Greek and Aramaic.

They were bilingual for Americans, that's a big deal.

That's impressive.

Whoa.

That's normal in their world.

They hadn't traveled the world.

They hadn't seen things.

These are not erodite.

They were uneducated, you find out in the book of Acts.

These people probably had never spoken publicly before.

Do you get that?

They never stood up in front of people and said something.

They never told somebody else, drop what you're doing and follow me.

Like that.

This is totally out of their experience, and they're going to turn the world.

The phrase in the book of Acts is they're going to turn the world upside down.

These guys will.

They were not influential other than maybe John.

John was the most influential of these four, but these guys weren't that.

And Jesus is going to launch them.

They're going to follow Jesus to Samaria, then to Syria, to Jordan, to Lebanon, to Tyre, to Sidon.

That's all.

Well, Jesus is alive doing ministry.

And after Jesus ascends into heaven, these guys are going to go to Africa, to Asia, to Europe.

They're going to birth the church.

They're going to be sent to the corners of the world.

Again, this is unprecedented in world history.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.

God is taking the gospel, He's sending it to the nations.

Not to a nation, but to the world.

And it will be carried there by people.

And he doesn't use rocks and he doesn't use angels, both of which he threatened to do at various times based upon Peter's behavior.

Keep it up, Peter.

I'll make the rocks take your place.

Rocks were available, angels were available, not the Lord's plan.

His plan was to use people, low people, fishermen, to turn the world upside down.

And this is their new task.

The Old Testament uses the analogy of fishing.

God goes fishing and he catches people to judge them.

You don't want to get caught by God in the Old Testament.

You get the hook in your mouth in the Old Testament, God's gonna fillet you.

It's over.

Jesus takes that analogy and flips it.

Totally reverses it.

And says, We're going fishing, only it's to rescue people.

They think they're happy in their sea.

No, they're drowning.

They think their fish in their water where they belong.

No, they are drowning in their world.

We're gonna fish them out.

I'm gonna teach you how to do it.

And it's going to change the world.

These men will not change the world by their heroic performances, but rather in their submission to Jesus Christ, they will turn everything upside down.

Their ultimate function is gonna be to confront people with God's presence in the person of Christ, tell them to count the cost, turn from their life, and follow Jesus Christ.

Repent and believe in him.

That's what they're gonna do.

How does it turn out for them?

Well, Peter becomes the leader in every list of the twelve.

He's always the first.

He will be martyred in Rome.

Andrew, as I mentioned four times in this list, he'll be one of Jesus' most cherished disciples.

He'll bring others to see the great news of Jesus Christ.

He also will be martyred.

James is the first of the twelve to be martyred.

He's put to death in Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

The very first of the apostles to be martyred.

And then John, the disciple whom Jesus loves.

I'll count him as a martyr.

He died of old age, but exiled on an island.

If you exile an old guy on an island and he dies, the blood's on your hands, okay?

They turn the world upside down.

Simon and Andrew in this narrative illustrate a prompt response.

Immediately they obeyed.

James and John illustrate a complete response.

They leave everything, net, boat, dad, all of it behind.

It's an obvious question for you.

What's your response?

What's your response to this call?

There's a sense in which this is a passage about vocational ministry.

It's not a challenge for everybody in the church to quit their jobs and become a pastor.

That would be not what the Bible describes at all.

But certainly it is a picture here of people that are qualified, that are gifted as a pastor, to stop toying in the secular world and walk away from it and just get all in and serving the church.

Certainly there's that application to this.

But there's a broader application for this as well.

If you're a follower of Christ, you should be a fisher of men.

And I just fear that some of you have, you know, you go fishing on Sunday, you'll go to the lake, but you're not actually all in.

You haven't actually given up living for yourself in exchange for living to Christ.

You come to church on Sunday, but you treasure your own life and your own family and your own goals and your own agenda more than you treasure obedience to Christ.

Yeah, you find the church.

That's fine.

But you're not going to drop your nuts and follow Jesus.

That's you got things you want to do.

You got people you want to please.

You have goals you want to set.

They might be at odds with Jesus' goal, but that's okay because I am still at church on Sundays.

That's just such a milktoast, mediocre, middle-of-the-road response.

You don't see it in this passage.

These guys did not say, ah, all right, Jesus, I'll follow you for a month, but I gotta check back in next month.

No, they they are all in.

Peter will remind Jesus of that several times, remember?

Lord, we gave up everything.

What do you got for us?

I hope that you have counted the cost of following Christ and have found Jesus more valuable than everything in this world.

God, we're grateful for your word and the gift it is to us, the glories that it offers us.

We're thankful for the joy and the privilege of following Jesus Christ.

I pray for hearts here that don't know you, I pray that you would get a hold of him this morning, that you would call people.

They would feel the individual call of you, our sovereign fishermen, on their hearts.

They would surrender their own goals and lives and agenda in exchange for following you.

We're grateful for the gospel of Christ, and we give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.