Just Like The Rabbi (Mark 1:16-20)

In the gospel of Mark.

And as you're turning, there's there's a few things that I wanted to mention here this morning as well.

One of the big things that we're going to be doing over the next seven weeks is we have core values here as a church.

And those are the things that we find extremely important that we want to make sure that are a part of our culture and things that we're fostering.

And so we're going to be giving you one of those core values each week in the next seven weeks.

And the the idea behind it is that we can take these values, communicate.

And when I say we, uh it's the elders.

We've we've spent some time on these kind of what are the main values, the core values that we want to make sure are happening here within this church community.

So that first value we're going to talk about here this morning is uh is this the word of God is the compass that directs everything that we do.

And the idea behind that is God has given us everything required for life and godliness godliness, and he speaks to us directly through his word.

So every time that we're here, you can be assured that we're going to be going through the Bible.

And right now we're going through the gospel of Mark, and we're going to go through verse by verse, and we're just going to see each time that we gather what God has specifically for us.

And that what we hope is first that you would take this, whatever we learn on whatever Sunday, that you would first apply it to yourself, but then second, that you would gain this knowledge so that you can help apply it to somebody else's life as well in a discipleship relationship.

And I'm not talking about your spouse, like, oh, my spouse really needs to hear this this morning, you know, you start nudging them.

I'm talking about in a true discipleship relationship.

And uh so you can just count on that.

We're gonna be going through God's word, we're gonna apply it to ourselves first, but then as you remember, maybe the first time that you came, um the first Sunday that we met, I encourage you to underline, to highlight, to write in the margins of your Bible so that the next time you come through in your personal study, the next time you come through within a home group or in a discipleship relationship, that you have some things that you've learned from right here this morning that you can then apply and remember.

If you're anything like me, I'm gonna forget a lot of the stuff that I learned in a sermon unless I write it specifically in my Bible.

So we encourage you to be note takers, to be underliners and highlighters, uh, and so that you can apply that not just this morning, but going forward in your walk with Jesus.

So we're gonna be Mark chapter one.

We're gonna be going through uh verses 16 through 20.

And I know what you're thinking.

This is the fourth week that we've met, and we're still in the first chapter of Mark.

Don't worry, we will get out of the first chapter of Mark probably maybe mid-July, somewhere.

No, I'm just kidding.

Um, we're gonna actually, after this week, we're gonna start taking some bigger sections uh of scripture uh at a time.

But there's just so many good things in the first chapter of Mark that we wanted to really take our time on and really go through.

And this is one of these passages here this morning.

We're just gonna go through five verses, uh, but there's a lot here, there's a lot of historical context uh that we need to explain uh and go through.

But um, as you're turning there, there's uh I want to kind of give a recap of where we've been before we jump in.

So two weeks ago we saw that Jesus had made his way to Galilee and he was proclaiming the good news of God, saying, The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news.

The good news being that Jesus is the Messiah, and that God is offering an opportunity to join his kingdom.

He's telling the people that there is another option than the world that they're living in.

We talked about how God's kingdom is wherever God is king, and that we all have the opportunity to have God's kingdom inside of us if we'll allow him to sit on the throne of our life, if we will allow him to reign inside of us.

So today we're gonna pick back up in Galilee, and we're gonna see Jesus call his disciples, the people that he's gonna be training for the next three years.

So let's stand as we read God's word as a sign of respect for it.

Starting in verse 16, he says, As he passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon's brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

Follow me, Jesus told them, and I will make you fish for people.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him, going on a little farther.

He saw James, the son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, putting their nets in order.

Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Lord, I thank you so much for this passage.

Thank you so much for your word.

Lord, I thank you for each person that's here this morning.

Lord, we're all here for a purpose.

We pray that you would mold us and shape us through your word right now, that you would speak through me, Lord, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that only your words would be heard here this morning, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So, something that you need to know from the get-go before we jump into this sermon is I sat under a pastor at Calvary Chapel of Oxnard for ten years, and he was a total history buff.

Like everything about history, he loved it.

His name's Lance Ralston, and he actually has a podcast called Communio Sanctorum, which is the history of the Christian church.

And if you're a history buff and you love history, especially within the context of church history, I recommend it.

It's hundreds of episodes, very short episodes, that take you all the way from the time of Jesus up to modern day.

But anyway, I'm gonna be giving you a sermon today that I've heard him give many times.

And I'm making it my own, I'm not plagiarizing it by any means, but I felt like I needed to give the bibliography kind of ahead of time before we jump in here this morning.

But it's a sermon that has really affected me personally, and I hope it's gonna have the same effect on each one of you as well.

It's about the call of a disciple.

And disciple simply means a learner or a follower.

So if you hear somebody say, I'm a follower of Christ, what they're really saying is, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I'm learning from Jesus and I'm desiring to become more like him.

So let's jump into verse 16 here.

It says, And he, so referring to Jesus, said, it says that he passed along the Sea of Galilee.

He saw Simon and Andrew, Simon's brother, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen.

So now it's time to jump into our history lesson here.

So in this time in Israel, there were three different regions geographically.

So you had these three regions kind of stacked on top of each other.

The southern region is Judea, and that's where Jerusalem is, that's where the temple is.

It's kind of the center in Israel for worship.

It's where the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribes and all of those religious leaders uh were based, was out of Judea.

And then in the middle, you had Samaria.

And if you've read through the Gospels, you know that Samaria was very much looked down upon.

People from the north and from the south went to great lengths to avoid actually walking through Samaria.

They would take the long cut, so to speak, just so they didn't have to pass through these people that they despised so much.

And the reason being is after Israel fell to Assyria in the early 700s BC, the Samaritans started to intermarry with the Assyrians.

Something God told them specifically not to do.

And they started to worship the Assyrian idols as well, which was also something that God told them specifically not to do.

So the rest of Israel looked down on them and actually just referred to them as dogs.

Those are the dogs, those people in that middle region.

And then the third region that we have is the very northern region.

That's the region we're going to be talking about today where this is taking place, where Jesus grew up.

So it was in the north, and it was really the blue-collar community.

It was filled with farmers and fishermen, laborers, and those types of workers.

So Galilee was looked down upon by the South, by the Judeans.

Okay?

So Judah looked down on everybody.

And then we have up at the top Galilee that just looked down on the central region of the Samarians.

They were people that had recognizable accents.

They were considered, the people up in Galilee were considered backwards in a lot of ways.

And we actually saw this as we were going through the book of Acts in our home groups, that the Holy Spirit fell upon the apostles and they all started praising God in different languages.

And the crowd says, uh it says that the crowd was astonished and amazed, saying, Look, aren't all these who are speaking Galileans?

They were amazed that these uneducated northerners were eloquently speaking in these various languages.

So Galilee is also, like I said, where Jesus grew up, in a town called Nazareth.

And we see a funny story in the Gospel of John where Philip's telling Nathanael about this Jesus of Nazareth.

And Nathanael says, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

You guys remember that story?

So Jesus was not only from a lowly region, but he was from a lowly town in a lowly region.

Which goes along with what we talked about last week.

He was a humble servant who set aside his glory for a season to come and to walk among us.

So, our geography lesson.

We have Galilee, Samaria, Judea.

Got it?

Okay.

So when uh let's see here.

The next part of the history of what we're doing here this morning is we're gonna dip into the Old Testament really quick.

When Israel came out of Babylonian captivity in the 500s BC, they realized that the reason that they were taken into captivity was because they didn't follow God's scripture and they fell into idolatry.

So they started to put an emphasis on the teaching of God's word.

And that is where rabbis came from.

They're the experts in scripture, they lived a life completely dedicated to learning God's word and then teaching others and how to apply it specifically to their lives so that they wouldn't fall back into idolatry.

So this position of rabbi became very revered.

And these rabbis actually started to become very famous.

There weren't very many of them, and as my pastor used to say, they would be the equivalent of modern-day rock stars or superstar athletes.

Everybody knew them.

They knew their name, they knew their reputation, they were familiar with their ministry.

So most of the boys wanted to grow up to become just like the rabbis.

So remember, Galilee was looked down upon.

So they chose as a community to focus on education as a way to elevate themselves to the southern region's standards.

So the people of Galilee started different levels of education.

They realized that the education needed to start with their kids.

So what they did is they had the first level of education.

And that was going to be for the six-year-olds to the ten-year-olds, boys and girls, all of them, they were going to send them to this school.

And their job at this school was to memorize the first five books of the Bible.

Think about that.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

These six and ten-year-olds were memorizing all five of those books of the Bible.

Once they hit about the age of 10, the girls were done with their education.

They would go back to the home and they would start working.

Most of the boys were done with their education as well.

They would be encouraged to go find a trade or an apprenticeship or start working with their father.

Now the boys that were left, the exceptional students that showed a bunch of potential, those boys were then encouraged to go on to the next level of education.

And that was for roughly about ages 11 to 15.

And there they would memorize.

Get this the whole Old Testament.

So the Torah, the historical books, the poetry books, the prophetic books, that's 929 chapters.

That's over 23,000 verses.

That's over 600,000 words that they had to memorize from ages 11 to 15.

And that was just for the very special ones with a ton of potential.

And then at age 15, once they completed that, most of these boys wouldn't make it to the next phase either.

And then they would be encouraged to go find a trade or an apprenticeship, or they would be asked to go back and teach the six through 10-year-olds.

But the ones that reached 15 and they still showed a ton of potential and they were still thought that they needed to go on to become a rabbi, what they would do is they would tell the 15-year-olds to go and choose the rabbi that they wanted to follow.

So, like I said, they were familiar with these men.

These were the rock stars of the day.

Everyone knew them, their reputation and their teaching style.

So these exceptional 15-year-olds were told to go follow the one that they most wanted to be like.

So they would show up to the rabbi and they would just start following him.

History tells us that some of the rabbis would ignore their followers for days at a time just to test how badly they wanted to follow.

There's stories too of other rabbis that would just start quizzing these kids as soon as they showed up, saying, you know, give me this chunk of scripture, give me this chunk of scripture.

And with some of the rabbis, if some of those students even uttered the word um before reciting that chunk of scripture, the rabbi would dismiss them and just tell them, go home.

Like, you stuttered, go find a trade.

You were not meant to be a rabbi.

But for those that passed the test, whatever it was that the rabbi had for them, if they passed that test, the rabbi would say, Follow me.

And those were the words that they were waiting to hear.

Which leads us to verse 17.

So let's look at verse 17 together, where Jesus says to these fishermen, what's he say?

Follow me, Jesus told them, and I will make you fish for people.

So these fishermen just heard those words from this rabbi.

Follow me.

They're working in their family business, right?

They're fishermen.

They're in a trade.

Which means that they've never heard those words before.

And not only that, they had probably lost all hope of ever hearing those words.

So they went about their work.

They weren't being called in that direction as far as they knew, so they went about their work and they were found working very hard.

As a side note, with the working hard, that should encourage us to be faithful where we are, to work hard.

The Christian ministry is not for the lazy.

And if you're not called yet, you don't know what your calling is within the body of Christ, just be found working hard in the exact place that God has placed you.

Be faithful in that, and then he's gonna direct you and call you into that ministry that he has specifically set aside for you.

Now, we don't know the disciples' level of education, but we do get the impression that their education was done.

They were working and they were working hard.

But they just heard those words.

Follow me.

And when somebody heard those words from a rabbi, it literally meant at this time to follow me for the next 15 years until you are 30.

And then, when you're 30, then we'll decide whether you're gonna become a rabbi or not.

So it's it didn't seal their fate that they were just following.

Once they hit 30, then they would decide whether it's no go back and teach, or you need to go find a trade now.

So another side note here I find interesting.

How old was Jesus when he started his ministry?

It's debated, but he was roughly 30 years old, and that's when he started his teaching ministry.

That was their job, though.

To follow their rabbi for 15 years and to stay close behind, to observe all that they do and how they handle every situation so that they can become just like the rabbi.

The goal of every disciple was to become just like the rabbi.

So we're gonna do a little question and answer here.

What's the goal of every disciple?

To become just like the rabbi.

Okay, let's try it again.

The goal of every disciple is to become just like the rabbi.

I'm gonna quiz you guys later, so remember that.

So let's look at the reaction of Simon and Andrew here as Jesus says, follow me.

Verse 18.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

So there's no second thought, there's no follow-up question, there's no, hold on, Jesus, I need to go take care of some stuff.

They heard the words they had been longing for and they were gone.

Now, in Mark's gospel that we're in right now, you could read this and think, wow, a stranger approached these guys and they just took off like that.

But in John's Gospel, we see that Simon and Andrew already knew Jesus and they'd already interacted with him.

In fact, Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist.

We also learned that they both already believed that Jesus was the Messiah before their formal calling that Jesus just called them into.

So they were aware of this rabbi named Jesus.

They knew him already, had already seen and heard enough to know that Jesus is the Messiah.

So when Jesus calls, it says immediately they followed him.

Verse 19, look at that with me.

Then going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John in a boat, putting their nets in order.

Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Now I remember reading this passage so many times and thinking, poor Zebedee.

You know, his sons just up and left him with the family business and just said, Hey, see ya pops, we're out of here, we're gonna go follow that guy now.

Doesn't seem very honoring, does it, to your father?

But from a parent's perspective, this is why educate the education system in Galilee was first put in place to provide a better future for their kids, to provide a better future for their region in Israel.

So when they're called right here in verse 20, I can't imagine that Zebedee was bummed.

He's probably looking at his workers and saying, Did you see that?

My sons just got called by a rabbi.

Both of them.

This was a big deal for the called, but this was a big deal for the family as well.

That would be like finding out that your kid just got a full ride scholarship to Stanford.

I doubt any of us would be bummed if we found that out, right?

Anyway, Zebedee was probably thrilled that his sons just got called.

And we don't get to see the calling of all the disciples, but I kind of gathered together the information of the ones that we do know about to kind of share with you who those are.

So we know that we have these four, and that these four are all fishermen.

We also know that there's Simon, not Peter, but Simon who's referred to as the zealot.

And a zealot means that he was a part of a political party that wanted to overthrow the uh the Roman government that was currently occupying Israel at this time.

We know that Matthew worked for the Roman government as a tax collector, which in this time, in this day and age, he probably would have been considered a traitor by many of the people that lived in Israel because he was working for the people that were occupying their land.

So I can imagine the conversations between a zealot and a tax collector.

Right?

That's about as far across the aisle as you can get in these days in Israel.

And we know that there was Judas the Scariot, and we know that he had his issues with embezzlement and being a traitor and all those things as well.

So Jesus chooses a very diverse group of men.

And there were more followers than the twelve that we read about following Jesus.

But in Luke chapter 6, starting in verse 12, and I'll just read that to you, it says, During those days, he, so referring to Jesus, went out to the mountain to pay to pray and spent all night in prayer to God.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

When daylight came, he summoned his disciples, and he chose twelve of them whom he also named apostles.

So after praying about it all night, he chose this ragtag, rough around the edges, diverse.

Verse group of guys get this to lay the foundation of the church.

They probably had various degrees of education, very different life experiences, very different upbringings, and none had been called to follow a rabbi yet.

And God says, perfect.

Let's use those twelve.

And I mention this because we can take a self-inventory of ourselves and say, God can't use me.

You know, I'm uneducated, I'm untrained, I don't know the Bible well enough, my past is too sketchy, my family history is all crazy.

And God looks and says, No, he says, I can use you.

And I can use your life experiences as well for my kingdom and for my glory.

When God calls us, we really should be the people that are the most baffled.

Like, really?

Me?

Like God, and we can go down our list.

He's like, no, no, no.

He's like, I can use you.

I can use that.

And I hope each one of you know that God has uniquely gifted you to bless the people that are sitting around you right now, to function in your gifting to make this body of believers function as a body.

God has gifted you and wants to disciple you to use those gifts.

So we see Jesus calls his twelve and they follow him for three years.

How long did most disciples get to follow their rabbi?

You guys remember?

Fifteen years.

These disciples only got and really only needed three years.

And they were ready for ministry.

And I think a big part of this is because they had the best, well actually, they had the perfect teacher in Jesus Christ.

They had the best example ever to follow, to look upon, to ask questions to.

But also, they would have the Holy Spirit living inside of them, counseling them along the way after Jesus ascended into heaven.

Their teacher lived inside of them.

The discipleship of the Holy Spirit never stopped for them.

And the same is true for us today, too.

That the discipleship of the Holy Spirit should never stop for a follower of Jesus Christ.

So, back to our verses.

Jesus called these twelve to be his what?

His disciples.

And the goal of a disciple is to become the goal of a disciple is to become?

There, that's much better.

Jesus was their rabbi.

He called them.

But get this, he calls us too.

And he left us everything that we need here in Scripture, and through the Holy Spirit, and through the giftings of the people that are sitting around you to become like Him.

And before Jesus ascended into heaven, what did he say?

He said, Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

He wasn't saying, make disciples that are just like you.

He was saying, make disciples that are just like me.

And Jesus has invited each one of us to be his disciple, to be like him, to follow him, to know him so personally and closely that we would know what he would have us to do in every situation through his scripture and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us.

So I think the question is how do we do that?

How do we become more like Jesus?

How do we become great disciples of Jesus Christ?

Well, there's a few things that we can do on our own.

The first is you need to go to the source of discipleship, which is the Bible.

Spend time with Jesus in his word and also in prayer, talking with him.

Second, if you're a follower of Christ, the Holy Spirit is already living inside of you.

Allow him to direct you, convict you, mold you, to shape you to become more like him.

The other part of discipleship that I want to talk about and been referred to a little bit earlier involves others.

It involves the church.

God uses people to disciple other people.

He said, Go and make disciples of all nations.

So there's a human element here, and that's where the church comes in.

It's not just me, it's not the pastor's job to do discipleship, it's the whole church's job.

We talked about this the first Sunday that we met last month, but how discipleship looks here at Abide.

So the first is what we're doing here.

This is a very formal time of discipleship, where there's one that's teaching many.

Where we open up God's word and not only gain knowledge of how to be more like Jesus, but we leave with practical things that we can work on, things that we need to submit to the Lord, or we leave with things that God wants to encourage us in so that we can become more like Him.

Now, the second part of the church's role in discipleship, and the less formal way, is through our home groups, as Ben was mentioning.

Being in a smaller community of people, spending time with those people, sharpening each other.

And this is a setting where we get to be more interactive, where we can ask questions and give input, a chance to learn from the other people that are surrounding us.

It's a chance for us to pray for one another and get to know each other.

It's a time to know and to be known within the smaller confines of a community.

Now, the third way is meeting one-on-one for coffee, for a meal, a phone call, taking a walk together, whatever it might be.

You know, Jesus' disciples learned a lot through his teaching, but they learned just as much by hanging out with him, by watching him, by asking questions.

And it's really is my prayer, and it has been before day one, that we would start to see multi-generational one-on-one discipleship start to become the normal thing here at Abide.

Where some of the more mature in the faith are pouring into some of the younger in the faith.

And I bet a bunch of you that have been walking with the Lord for 20, 30, 40 years just said in your head, I don't have anything to offer somebody in high school or that's in their 20s or in their 30s.

And I want to tell you, no, you do.

You have a lot to offer.

And I encourage you to just start hanging out with someone and just watch how God wants to use you.

It doesn't have to be formal, it doesn't have to be a program, it doesn't have to be going through some curriculum or anything like that.

It's just hanging out and sharing life together and allowing the experiences that God has brought you through and the things that He's taught you, and you know, from child rearing to you know escaping sin or whatever it might be, the Lord wants to use those experiences that you've walked through, the hard times and the trials that you've walked through to help the younger generation in the faith.

And if you're a parent with kids still in the home, you may be saying, I don't have time to meet with anybody.

That's okay because your disciples are already living with you.

Parents, your kids are your most important disciples that you will ever have.

The way they perceive you will directly correlate with how they see their Heavenly Father.

So be intentional with how you discipline, with how you respond, how you show grace and how you show mercy to your kids, how you talk to them, how you treat them.

Teach them through your example how to be just like the rabbi.

And when you fail, which you will, God's grace is sufficient and kids are very forgiving.

So don't worry about that.

But just be that example.

Show your kids how to be just like the rabbi through your example.

Those are the most important disciples you will ever have.

Because the goal of a disciple is to become just like the rabbi.

The word become means that it's a process.

It means it's gonna take some time.

It's not gonna be an overnight thing.

So I want to leave you with a few closing questions.

What do you need to do to submit, surrender, or change to become more like Jesus?

So that's the first question.

What do you need to do?

What do you need to submit?

What do you need to surrender or change in your life to become more like Jesus?

The second question is this Who are you discipling?

If you've been walking with the Lord for more than a couple years, that's something that we all need to wrestle with.

Who are we discipling?

And the third question is this Who is your discipler?

Every Christian should have somebody more mature in their life that is pouring into them, or someone of equal maturity so that you can sharpen one another.

Who is that in your life?

Or maybe who do you need to talk to after service?

Or who do you need to call after service to make sure that this part of your life, this part of your walk with Jesus, is taking place.

And that, all those reasons is why we value discipleship so much here at Abide.

Because we want to become more like Jesus.

Just showing up on Sundays is great, but it's not enough.

We need to stay in the Word, as we talked about.

We need to stay in prayer without ceasing.

We need to depend completely upon the Holy Spirit.

And those are all things that we can do on our own.

But in the context of the church, we need to come on Sunday morning.

So good job.

You got that down today.

Way to go.

But I do encourage you, we're not just trying to build up our home groups.

The home groups are there specifically to help with growth.

It's really hard to pray for one another on a Sunday morning to really have time to dive in and see what people are going through and spend that quality time or to share a meal.

And the home groups are really a compliment to Sunday morning.

And I say this with all honesty as your pastor, I don't hold Sunday mornings above home groups, and I don't hold home groups above Sunday mornings.

To me, they're both an integral part of us becoming more like Jesus.

And then the last thing is I encourage you to just start hanging out with people, having coffee, having meals, having people over for dinner, going for walks, making those phone calls, emails, text messages, checking in on each other, and just seeing how God wants to use you.

How God wants to use you in a discipleship relationship where you can start pouring in to somebody else.

So that we can become more like Jesus.

The highest calling we could ever have is to follow Jesus.

So let's do that well.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you so much for your word.

Thank you so much for Jesus.

Lord, I thank you that you don't call us into this relationship with you and just leave us.

Lord, you want us to become more and more like you because that's the biggest benefit we could ever have is becoming more like you.

And that's what your desire is for us.

Lord, I pray that you would show us how to do this well as a church, Lord, and as a bunch of individuals here in those areas that we just talked about where we need to improve.

Lord, I pray we wouldn't try and do things through effort, Lord, but because of dependence upon your Holy Spirit working in and through us.

Lord, that truly is our desire.

Show us how to be more like you and how to become more like you.

Help us to follow you with everything that we have, leaving everything else behind.

Lord, and just saying, Yes, I will follow you.

That's our desire.

But we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.