He Is Good | Mark 1:16-20 | Jesus Wants Followers, Not Christians

It's really good to see all of you.

Thanks for being here today.

My name's Colton.

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, I get the privilege of pastoring this church, and I'm really grateful.

We're in a series right now titled He Is Good.

And we're looking at Mark's gospel.

And the reason we called it He is Good is because Mark says about his gospel, this is the good news of Jesus.

This is the beginning of the good news.

He titles it that way.

I want to give a quick caveat or just an aside before we jump into this.

We talked about this at Bible study a couple of weeks ago.

I do not believe that Christians, people who follow Jesus, should live doubting or wondering about their faith and if they are in or if they're out.

I don't believe that's true.

I don't think that's how we're supposed to live.

I don't think you see that in the scriptures.

I do believe what we see in the scriptures is Paul saying to different churches, hey, examine if you are of the faith.

Examine if Christ actually lives in you.

And so I say all of that, and I'm going to say it again here in a little bit, because this message is going to begin with the difference in Christians and followers of Jesus based on our current cultural understanding of those things.

And naming the difference and talking about the difference that we see in the scriptures.

And then moving into questions about which one are you, where do you align, where do you find yourself in this?

And so I just wanted to give that up front because it won't be a normal message in the way that it's like, oh, there's three points and you know, three illustrations, and then we're done and out.

It'll it's really gonna be a flow of understanding about Christian and follower, okay?

And the reason is because the text itself, uh, Jesus is calling people to follow him, and I'll talk about that more in just a little bit.

I was sick this week, and I normally wouldn't say that, and I even have it in my notes.

Don't tell them that you're sick, and I just couldn't help it because I think you can hear it.

And so if I if I'm like breathing for a second, I uh am just literally trying to make sure I breathe.

Um and I have coffee here uh just in case I need I need some something to drink, so don't feel like you need to bring me anything.

That would just distract me.

Um okay, that was a lot before we even begin.

All right.

Teaching text, Mark chapter 1, verses 16 through 20.

Mark 1:16–20

It says as Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee.

He saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting the net into the lake, for they were fishermen.

Come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people.

At once they left their nets and followed him.

And when he had gone a little further, he saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets.

Without delay, he called them.

And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and they followed him.

This is the word of the Lord.

I saw this post the other day.

Uh go to the next slide.

Um, that there's a desk in Austria for people who are actually trying to go to Australia, and there's a help desk in the airport for people who were like, oh no, we went in the exact opposite direction for many, many miles, and there are no beaches here.

Um and I don't know if it's it's real, but it was a clever thing.

If you're having a bad day, just remember in the airport of Salzburg, Austria, there's counterfeit people who flew to Australia to Austria instead of Australia.

I thought it was really funny.

Don't know if it's true, but it did get me thinking, what a tragedy to try and go somewhere that you really want to wind up, uh, and you end up thousands of miles in the wrong direction, completely in the wrong direction.

And even though the name is similar, Austria and Australia, even though the name is similar, they lead in two very different directions if you're trying to go to one or the other.

I say that because I believe in our culture the same is true of Christian, the names Christian and follower of Jesus.

You can go to the next slide.

I believe that in today's culture it's similar to say Christian, and it's similar to say follower of Jesus, but these two things lead in two very different directions in our current culture.

John Mark Comer, in his book Practicing the Way, explains this, and this is what he says.

He says the word Christian literally means little Christ, which is beautiful.

It was originally used to mock followers of the way, but over time our spiritual ancestors embraced the slur and used it to self-identify as those devoted to imitating Christ.

And then he notes the problem.

Here's the problem that is no longer what the word conveys to many people today.

Too many.

A Christian is just someone who mentally ascribes to the bare bones of Christianity, a word never used in the scripture, and a person who may or may not occasionally attend church.

Being a Christian and being a follower of Jesus should lead in the same direction, because literally, Christian means I'm devoting myself to imitating follow Jesus.

Those two names should lead in the same direction, but currently, in the modern church, and the way that we understand it, they lead in two very different directions.

For example, people say you can be a Christian and not attend church.

Next slide.

Next slide.

But you can't follow Jesus and not attend church because if you're following him, Jesus would lead you to church.

He would lead you to community.

He would lead you to want to hear the preaching of his word.

He would lead you to want to worship with the saints, to serve and use the gifts that he's given you.

As a follower of Jesus, you would go where he goes and be led by him, and you can't follow him and not go to church because he would lead you to do those things.

People say, I can be a Christian and not give generously and sacrificially.

You can't follow Jesus and not give generously and sacrificially because he would lead you to do those things.

That's who he is.

He gives generously, he gave sacrificially, and so in following him, he would literally lead you to a space where you begin doing that in your own life.

People say I can be a Christian and not love my enemies and forgive those who hurt me.

But you can't follow Jesus and do those things because that's who he is, that's what he does, and that's what he'll lead us to do.

People say, basically, I can be a Christian in today's culture.

I can call myself a Christian and still not follow Jesus.

And the truth is, you just can't.

Those things don't work.

It doesn't actually function that way.

You either are a follower of Jesus, or as the Bible calls them, you're a disciple or a student of Jesus, or you're not.

That's the way that these things shake out.

So Comer again in the Gospels, excuse me.

Uh Comer again says this.

He says, In the Gospels, there are two recurring groups.

You have the disciples and you have the crowds.

The disciples included all of Jesus' followers, the 12 apostles, but also many others, including women.

The crowds were simply everyone else.

There is no third category of Christians who generally agree with most of what Jesus was saying but don't follow him or make serious attempts to obey his teaching, but it's all good because I'll go to heaven one day when I die.

Like that group didn't exist.

There is no third group that just called themselves by the name Christian.

It was either we are followers of this man or we aren't.

We're still trying to figure that out.

We're still trying to figure out there is no third group who aren't interested in following Jesus but still call themselves by his name.

That doesn't exist in the scriptures.

A Christian is a follower of Jesus or they're not Christians.

In Acts, if you read the book of Acts, Christian is first used when they're calling Christians.

Go to the next slide right there.

They call the disciples in Acts 11.

They say, the disciples or the followers were first called Christians in Antioch.

The followers were called Christians.

And so it's important for us to see that like the people that the people who were called Christians weren't called Christians first, and then they chose to follow.

They were following him so well, they looked so much like him that they began calling them little Christs.

They followed him so closely and imitated Jesus' life so closely that people were like, you know what these people look like?

They look like little Christs.

And so that's what led them to call them that.

But we live in a culture where we self-identify as Christians because we walked an aisle at church or prayed the sinner's prayer, which doesn't exist in the Bible, because we've been baptized or we don't want to go to hell when we die, but we don't call ourselves Christians because we're interested in following Jesus.

We call ourselves Christians because it's just what you do in our culture.

And there's a problem with that because that's not how it was supposed to go.

It's supposed to go, you follow him so closely that then people identify you as a Christian versus you identifying yourself as a Christian and then living however you want to live.

Now, some people seek to justify themselves and say that they're Christians because the Bible says, all I have to do to be a Christian, all I have to do is to believe on the Lord Jesus and I will be saved.

And I'm saved by grace through faith, not by works, not by following.

And I completely agree with that.

Your good works do not save you.

They can't.

But everyone in the scriptures who believed on the Lord Jesus and it led them to believe on him, it always led them to follow him.

They never believed and then didn't follow.

It always led, their belief always led them to a space where their whole life was completely turned upside down and turned around.

And so when they believed, it was never like, oh, I just believed something theoretically.

It was their belief led them in a different direction.

I was going this way and then I believed something and I shifted and I started going this way.

There's not a space in the scriptures where someone believes in Jesus, and it doesn't dramatically change the direction in course of their lives.

It always changed the course of their lives.

Or as Jesus says in Matthew 7, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

There will be people who say, Lord, Lord, and he's like, Not everyone who says that will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.

And so there seems to be this connection between not only this belief that exists, but also these this shift that takes place in a person's life.

And so the real question isn't, do you believe in Jesus?

The real question is, has your belief in Jesus led you to follow Jesus?

The apostle James writes to plenty of people in James 2, where he's he's writing and says that you believe there is one God, good.

And what he's referencing is the Shema in the Old Testament.

It's like the Lord our hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And so he's writing to people who have the correct belief.

Like, y'all believe correctly that there is one God, that's good.

He goes, but even the demons believe that, and they shudder.

And his point is that there's a way to believe that doesn't change your allegiance and change your alignment of your life.

But every time that true belief takes root in a person's heart, it always shifts loyalties from ourselves or some other loyalty to Jesus and in his way.

And so any belief that doesn't shift loyalties from following our path or any whatever path to following Jesus' path, James would say that's not true faith.

You believe something theoretically, but it hasn't actually moved into a space where it's changed the direction of your life, or the way James actually says it in chapter two is faith without works is dead.

It's not true faith.

Faith without works is dead.

True faith inwardly, true belief inwardly always is revealed outwardly.

It always changes the way that we live.

And so if you really believe, excuse me.

If you really believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the one who died and rose again, if you really believe that in truth and not just in words, it will always lead you to follow him.

If you really believe the man rose from the dead, you wouldn't just give you know thoughtful ideas to a belief and like, oh, he's a really cool guy.

He rose from the dead.

That's really awesome, really good for you.

Like it would shift your entire life if you actually believed that.

And that's what James is getting at.

And so following him, following Jesus has always been the visible evidence of true faith.

Do you actually believe and has your belief led you to follow him?

Or as Jesus said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves their way, must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Whoever wants to be my follower must deny their own way and turn and follow me.

So if you want to follow me, you have to follow me, is basically what he's saying.

And so, to that question, are you or are you not a Christian?

I think that's a bad question nowadays, because everybody's a Christian in the South.

Like I just think it's a bad question.

The real question before the church is, are you a follower of Jesus or not?

And to me, that is an easier decision to make and to look at and go, I can answer that question better, because there are tons of ways to be Christians in the number of congregations that exist in the world, and yet there's only one way to follow Jesus, and that is to follow him the way that he has said, Follow me this way.

Jesus never called anyone to be a Christian.

He always called people to be followers, not Christians.

Never called anyone to be a Christian.

The only people that ever call themselves Christians or that were called Christians, it's from the outside looking in.

They're looking in the scriptures, Christian is used three times.

Disciple is used, and followers used like 269 times.

Like it's a huge difference.

And the only time Christian was used was from outsiders looking at the people who were following him and is like, you look like a little Christ.

And so for us to identify as a Christian, it doesn't exist in the scriptures.

No one ever said Paul, Peter, any of them were like, I'm a Christian.

They never said that.

It was said of them, but never about them.

And so we shouldn't self-identify as Christians.

We should just seek to follow him.

And then other people should watch our lives and say, that person is a little Christ.

That person is seeking to follow Jesus.

Jesus called people to be followers, not Christians.

Okay, that was the first part of this.

So, what does it mean to be a follower?

If we're not called, Jesus never called anybody to be a Christian, but he called us to be a follower.

What does it mean to be a follower?

In order to understand what Jesus is doing in this passage and what he consistently does and calling people to follow him, you have to understand that what he's doing wasn't unique to him in this particular time.

This happened a lot.

People walking up to disciples or would-be disciples and saying, Hey, come follow me.

Okay.

So John Mark Comer, again in his book, offers some background on the calling of disciples.

This is a rather long quote, but it explains a lot.

So this is what he says.

To understand discipleship, we must first understand the Jewish educational system.

Jewish kids started school around five years old at the local Bethzep, the house of the book, which was the equivalent of elementary school.

The curriculum was the Torah.

By the age of 12 or 13, most kids would have the entire Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, all memorized.

At that point, the vast majority of students went home.

But the best and the brightest would go on to the second level of education called Betmedrash, the house of learning, where they would continue their studies, and by the age of 17, they would have memorized the entire Old Testament.

Now, at that point, the overwhelming majority were done and were basically told, go make babies, pray that they become rabbis and ply your trade.

But the best of the best of the best would apply to apprentice to disciple under a rabbi.

Now, this was really hard to get into.

Apprenticeship programs were the equivalent of Ivy Leagues today, but even more exclusive.

You had to find a rabbi whose yoke or way of following God that you were drawn to and then beg to join his band of students.

The rabbi would grill you with questions, and if he thought that you had the smarts, the work ethic, the chutzpah, to one day become a rabbi yourself, he would say something like, Notice, come follow me, come follow me.

And from that day on, your entire life was organized around three driving goals.

The first was to be with your teacher, to be with your rabbi.

And so you would leave your family.

Notice what Peter, James, John, and Andrew do.

You would leave your family, you'd leave your village, your trade, you would follow your rabbi 24-7.

You were a student, but class wasn't Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 11 to 11:50.

Class was life.

You would spend every waking moment with your rabbi.

You'd sleep at his side, eat at his table, sit at his feet, and end up after long hours of walking behind him on dirty roads, covered in his dust.

Because you were following him.

The next goal was to become like your rabbi.

That was the heart and soul of discipleship.

Being with your master for the purpose of becoming like your master.

Or as Jesus would say, like anyone who is fully trained will become like their master.

You would copy his tone of voice, his mannerisms, his figures of speech.

You wanted to be just like him.

And then finally, your goal was to do as your rabbi did.

The whole point of discipleship was to train under a rabbi in order to one day become a rabbi yourself.

If you made it through the gauntlet of discipleship, then when he thought you were ready, your rabbi would turn to you and say something like, Okay, I give you my blessing.

Go and make disciples.

That was what it meant to be a disciple.

That is still what it means to be a disciple today.

And so this is what you see in the passage.

Go to the next slide.

Jesus says, Come follow me.

And then he says, I will send you out to fish for people.

They leave their old way of life behind.

That once they leave their nets, they leave their fathers, they leave their hired men, they leave everybody to do that.

Because they understood this culturally.

This is what you do.

The only thing that Jesus has shifted is disciples weren't pursuing the rabbi.

The rabbi was pursuing the students because he opens it up to anybody and everybody.

He opens it up to fishermen who shouldn't, who probably didn't make it through Beth Sephira, much less were any type of Ivy League kind of thing.

And so he opens it up to everybody.

Then they become like him.

The disciples preach what Jesus preached.

They act like Jesus acts.

They cast out demons like he did.

They heal the sick like Jesus did.

That's Mark 6.

And then Jesus looks to them in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, which I realize is not Mark, but it's similar, because Mark has its own ending.

But it's basically like, hey, go and make disciples.

Go do what I did.

Go do the same things that I did.

And so that's what discipleship has always meant.

This is what following him has always looked like.

This is what it's always been.

And so this is what Jesus had in mind for anyone who wants to become his follower, for anyone who wanted to become his disciple.

They would be with him in order to become like him, and ultimately they would do what he does.

And so the question naturally becomes with that understanding of what it means to be a follower.

The question becomes: are you a follower of Jesus in this capacity?

Or do you just call yourself a Christian?

And again, I don't think that we're supposed to live wondering if we make the cut because it it so quickly goes to, am I in heaven or going to hell?

Like it in our cult, it never meant that back then, but like we have turned it into it's just one or the other.

I'm going to this place or this place.

And that is our driving force of why we make a decision to follow Jesus in our culture.

And that was never that there.

They understood that following a rabbi who had the words of eternal life could lead them into life beyond compare.

And they wanted to follow that man.

And for us to become like, do I want to go to heaven or do I want to go to hell?

And that's a piece of it, but that shouldn't be everything.

So I don't think that we should live doubting our salvation, wondering about it, but I do think we should examine our faith, the way that Paul tells the church in Corinth to examine if we are in the faith.

And so, are you a follower of Jesus or do you just call yourself a Christian?

Two things to examine, as Paul says it.

The first is, do you have any desire to be with Jesus?

To become like Jesus, to do what Jesus did.

Examine your desire.

Not, do you have a desire to go to heaven?

Everyone has a desire to go to heaven, of course.

No one's like, no, no, no, hell.

I'm really excited.

Like, no one's doing that.

Everybody wants to go to heaven.

And so it's not, I just desire heaven.

I just I desire the kingdom, but not the king.

You can't have that.

That doesn't exist.

You have to have a desire for the king leads to the kingdom.

And so the idea is, is there a desire to be with Jesus?

I want to be with him.

I want to become like him in his life.

I want to do what Jesus did.

Look at Paul's desire when he shifted, when he believed in Jesus and began following him.

This is what it says.

Paul writes this, he says, Whatever were gains to me in my old life, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings, becoming like him.

So Paul is literally using language of a disciple.

Like I want to know him and be with him, and I want to become like him.

I want to know him even in his sufferings.

I want to suffer the way that he did so that I can know him the way that he and know the suffering that he experienced and I can understand what he walked through.

Paul's desire to know Jesus and to become like him overshadows everything else in his life.

And everything else in his life that would keep him from knowing Jesus and becoming like Jesus is basically garbage.

He's like, all these things, I don't want any of this stuff.

Whatever was gained to me, Now I'm like, I don't even want that.

I just want to know him.

His desires had shifted.

Do you have any desire to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus?

Do you have any desire to obey Jesus' commands?

Jesus talks about this and he says that the way to be with him is through obedience.

And John, I think it's John 15, he says, Abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

And so the idea is like, do you have a desire to be with him by doing the things that he says?

Is there a desire to like, I want to not just do something so that you'll love me more?

It's not that.

It's like I actually want to be with you where you are by doing the things and going to the spaces where you tell me to go so that I can be with you.

1 John 5, 3 says, this is love for God.

Keeping his commands.

This is love for God, keeping his commands.

Not, do you obey him perfectly without error?

Like it's not that.

We'll screw up and we'll make mistakes, and that's that's that's great for us that we're covered in grace.

But if there's no desire to even seek to follow him, there's something wrong with that because it seems that everybody who chose to follow Jesus had a desire to be with this man so that they became like him, so that they did the things that he did.

Is there a desire in your life for those things?

The second thing to examine is reputation.

The followers of Jesus never self-identified as Christians ever once in the scriptures.

They never called themselves Christians.

Other people watched them live and called them little Christs.

And they were actually being derogatory when they did that.

But they watched them live and they called them Christians because of how much they resembled him and how much they looked like him.

Would the people in your life call you a little Christ?

Not what would you call yourself, but like would the other people at your office, in your home, your friends, and the restaurants where you eat, based on how you live, talk, and act, would they call you someone who reminds them of Jesus?

Not are you a good person?

It's a bad question.

Lots of people are good, a lot of good people out there.

But does your life reflect the qualities of Jesus?

Like in Acts, Acts 14, it says, when the when they saw the courage, not when they saw that they were good people, when they saw the courage of Peter and John, they realized that they were unschooled ordinary men.

They were astonished and noticed they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

They just saw the courage of these people.

It was like, your courage reminds us of somebody else who stood in the very place where you stood at one point, and we crucified him, and you guys seem very similar to that man.

I feel like we've done this before, like a couple days ago.

Like, that's what they noticed.

They just watched these men live and were like, they took note.

You had the same courage of Jesus.

What is that?

And it's like, oh, they must have been with him.

And so, what is your reputation around those who know Jesus?

What is your reputation around those who don't know Jesus?

I think it was Gandhi that said, I love your Christ, but not your Christians because your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

That's a problem.

There's something there that shouldn't be there.

I don't think we should self-identify as Christians.

I think we should allow other people to look at us and say, Hey, you're actually very, very much like that man, Christ, that you talk about.

So examine yourself.

What is your desire for Jesus and your reputation from others reveal about your faith?

Your desires and your reputation reveal about your faith.

So Jesus calls you to be followers, not Christians.

And the last thing I want to look at before we close is why he does this.

Why he doesn't simply want you to self-identify as a Christian?

Why he doesn't want this to be this thing.

It's like, oh, what do you do you follow me?

No, but I just call myself by your name.

One, that's that's as good as like slapping on a Grizzlies jersey and be like, I play for the NBA.

It's like, nah, you probably don't though, right?

Like it's not gonna help you, and no one's gonna believe that.

And so slapping on some type of name isn't gonna do anything for you.

But the reason he calls us to be followers is because he actually has something for us that he's trying to drive us and lead us into.

And so, three reasons why he calls us to be followers very quickly.

Uh the first is he calls us to follow him because he wants us to be with him, to be where he is, and to experience a life that's led by him.

To call ourselves a Christian doesn't necessarily make us follow him in any capacity.

He actually wants to lead our lives into a space that we can't get ourselves into.

He literally is the way into the life that we're longing for, the truth of that life, and he is the life itself.

And so when he calls us to follow the way, the truth, and the life, he's actually trying to lead us into a space where we can't get to ourselves.

He wants us to be where he is and to experience life led by him.

Dallas Willard has this really simple but really great quote where he says that there is no problem in human life that following Jesus cannot solve.

There's no problem in human life that following Jesus cannot solve.

And he says this because he knows Jesus will never lead you into more brokenness or more sin.

Because death has no hold on him, he'll never lead you into spaces of death where you're actually led into more sin and more brokenness and more depravity.

He's never gonna lead you in that way.

He's always gonna lead you into more fullness and more joy and more peace and more love and more hope.

He's that he has no other way.

He can't do it the other way.

And so he constantly wants us to follow him so that we're led into spaces and into uh a place of life that we can't get to but we long for.

And so there's no problem in human life that Jesus, that following Jesus cannot solve.

There's tons of problems in human life that calling ourselves Christians won't solve, which is why most people think it doesn't work.

Like, I I don't want to be a Christian, like I don't want to be, what's it done for you?

And it's like, well, calling yourself a Christian doesn't do jack, but actually following the man into a space, like what he actually wants to lead you into is really great.

So, for instance, you have a struggling marriage.

If you begin following Jesus in your relationship, you will begin doing the things that he tells you to do.

And so if your marriage is struggling and you begin following Jesus in that relationship, what you will begin doing is you'll be you'll begin seeking to outdo one another and showing honor instead of talking badly about one another.

You'll begin considering her needs and his needs as greater than your own because that's what Jesus tells us to do.

And if we're following him, we're gonna put his word into practice.

We'll begin loving her, men, we'll begin loving her as Christ loved the church.

Women will begin submitting to him as Jesus submitted to the Father, which is not a less-than thing.

It's actually a great thing.

Jesus submitted to the Father not because he was lesser than the Father, but because that's what he did.

And so if you begin following him and you begin doing these things, even just one of you, the relationship will drastically shift and change.

But if both of you begin mutually submitting to one another, all of a sudden what he's seeking to lead you into is a healthier, fuller, more holistic relationship that you can't have any other way.

But if you just call yourself, well, we're two Christians getting married, it's like, we'll see how that goes.

Like it's just not going to do the same thing.

But if you actually put his word into practice and you begin seeking to outdo one another in showing honor, it will change your dynamic, it will change your relationship.

You got a bad relationship with your kids.

If you begin following Jesus in that relationship, you'll discipline the way them the way the Lord disciplines us.

And you'll actually seek to do that, which will actually lead them to a healthier life because the Lord disciplines us, and he does that because he loves us, not because he's mad at us.

And he'll he disciplines us not out of out of anger or out of embarrassment, but he does it because he sees us as his sons and his daughters.

You'll not say yes to everything and spoil them.

You won't do that.

Jesus doesn't say yes to most of what I pray, and that's really frustrating.

But like, he loves me and he knows what I actually need.

And so I he's never gonna spoil me because that's ridiculous.

He's a good father who wants to give good gifts to his kids.

And he also doesn't want to give me everything because he knows that will ruin my life.

And so, if you have a bad relationship with your kids and begin following him, you'll set boundaries for your kids.

Uh, as the scriptures say, you won't provoke them or embitter them, you won't do things to embarrass them, you'll forgive them the way the father has forgiven you.

And it will begin healing your relationship.

It'll shift the way that you parent, and it'll change all of those things.

Kids, if you want a better relationship with your parents, follow Jesus in that.

And the scriptures say that what you would do if you begin following Jesus in your relationship with your parents, you will honor your father and mother.

I promise you.

You do a little bit of that, it'll make your relationship better.

That didn't seem to go over, okay.

That's fine.

Even parents weren't excited about that.

Honor your father and mother.

Uh if you do that, I do think it'll make make your relationship better.

If you worry about things, if you begin following Jesus and you're just constantly worried about things, if you follow Jesus with your worry, he will lead you away from fear and worry.

He will never lead you into more fear and worry.

He doesn't have any of those.

And so he wouldn't lead you into those.

He's not worried about anything.

He's not fearful about the government.

He doesn't care.

I mean, he's just not, he's not worried about those things.

And so if you are and you follow him in those spaces, he will lead you to be anxious for nothing.

He will lead you to pray about everything with prayer and petition with thanksgiving to make your request known to God.

He will lead you to seek first the kingdom of God and trust that everything else will be added to you.

He will lead you away from fear and away from worry and away from anxious thoughts.

He will lead you out of that stuff if we follow him.

If you call yourself a Christian, it's not guaranteed.

But if you follow him, that's where he'll lead.

If you're struggling with overspending, if you begin following Jesus, he will lead you to be content with what you have.

He will lead you to give away more money versus spending it on yourself so you can't overspend because I gave most of it away.

I gave it away.

And then when you give it away, when you choose to do that, the the emptiness you feel that leads you to overspend, to buy more stuff for yourself, to kind of overcompensate for the emptiness that you feel, you won't feel that anymore because you'll begin giving the money away and he will fill you with himself and the things that he's actually doing for you.

And so you won't struggle with that.

All of this stuff is like, it's just in the scriptures.

If you just put it into your life, it's like this is the space where he's going.

If you'll just march after me, if you'll be covered in my dust and following me down the road, like I will lead you into this space.

Will you experience those things?

If you're struggling to forgive, follow Jesus and He will walk with you to learn grace and learn compassion and forgive.

He will lead you to do that.

If you're struggling with a sin that you can't overcome, following Jesus will lead you to confess your sin to others, add accountability from other people.

It will lead you to cut off the things that lead you to sin, asking the Holy Spirit to work in you the fruit of self-control.

Like all of these things, every ailment and every issue that human problems in human life lead us into.

Following Jesus is seeking to lead us out of those things.

It's that old joy to the world song where it's like, as uh, as what is it, how does it go?

Uh he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

Like, what a beautiful line.

Like, that's what he wants to do.

As far as the curse is found in us, and like all the brokenness and all that stuff is like he comes to make his blessings flow wherever that stuff exists.

He wants to reverse the curse that happened in Genesis 3.

And so all the spaces where we experience that, he's like, if you follow me, I want to lead you away out of that stuff.

And I want to do it now, and I want to lead you eventually out of that completely when you're with me forever.

And so this is why he calls us to follow him.

When we follow him, we become like him.

We actually put his way in front of us, and he leads us out of spaces that we don't want to be in in the first place.

So that's the first.

Secondly, Jesus wants you to follow him because he wants our lives to take on his qualities.

He wants our lives to not just be as we are with him, we become like him.

And where there are qualities of the curse in our lives, he wants to actually replace those with qualities of himself.

And so, for instance, we, and no offense, but we, all of us, we are selfish.

We struggle with selfishness.

It's a product of the curse.

He is selfless.

He wants to replace how we are, and he wants to give us himself.

We are, go to the next slide there.

We are greedy, he is generous.

There we go.

We are proud, he is humble, we lack self-control.

He is self-controlled, we are short-tempered, he's patient and long-suffering.

We're faithless, he's faithful, we're mean, he's kind, we're harsh, he's gentle, we lack wisdom, he's wise.

We get deceived, he leads us into all truth.

I don't know where the we came from.

We are tempted to sin.

He was tempted in every way, yet without sin.

We worry about what people think about us.

He has no fear of man.

We hate our enemies, he loves his enemies.

We struggle to forgive, he is quick to forgive.

We fear death and he is fearless.

We are filled with anxiety, he is filled with peace.

We're trapped and he sets the captives free.

We are filled with shame and guilt and he covers our shame.

We are broken and he is whole and will make us whole.

We are weak and he is strong.

We are empty and he is full.

We are filled with regret and he redeems our regrets and makes them a testimony of his kindness.

This is what he wants to do.

And so when it's when it's a space of like, when you when you spend time with me, and then you will become like me.

If again, if you just call yourself by the name, it doesn't do any of those things, but but time in his presence.

He will replace the spaces in our lives that we like, I don't like this quality that exists in me.

I wish that this was something that I could just not deal with anymore, and is like, I would love to replace that with one of my qualities.

And the way that happens is by spending time with me so that you become like me.

Again, he comes to make his blessings flow for as the curse is found.

What he wants to do is every area in your life that is overrun by some area of the curse, or we're experiencing like these things that steal from us and take from us, he wants to replace those things with himself.

And lastly, he wants us to do what he did for the world around us.

He wants us to do what he did to be with him, to become like him, and then to do what he did for the world around us.

And so Jesus cared for people who couldn't care for themselves.

Jesus lifted up the weak in society.

Jesus went after the forgotten and those who were too far gone, and everybody thought that.

Jesus healed people, he served others regardless of who they were, he loved people, he encouraged people who were discouraged.

Like and he wants us to just do these same things in our space here, in our families, in our friendships, everywhere in the world where the kingdom of God hasn't broken in.

He wants us to be people who are kingdom carriers of his life, and we're experiencing those things, and we usher those things out into the world.

That's what he wants.

He wants us to do what he did, read the gospels, and watch him walk through town and all of the spaces where the curse exists and all these different things.

People are sick and dealing with darkness and all these things.

Like he walks into this space and the kingdom begins to break into these different stories and all of these different things.

That's where we get the gospels.

It's all these different things, and that's what Jesus wants us to do, to be carriers of that exact same life, pouring that out into other people's lives.

Dallas Willard says this, he says, the greatest issue facing the world today, with all of its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples, students, apprentices, and practitioners of Jesus.

Steadily learning from him how to live the kingdom of God, how to live, excuse me, how to live the life of the kingdom of heavens and bring it into every corner of human existence.

How we can learn to live like him and then bring that kingdom into every part of our existence that we occupy.

And so that's what he wants for us.

He wants his followers to be with him, to become like him, to do what he does.

And that's why he calls us to be followers and not just call ourselves Christians.

Calling ourselves something doesn't change it.

That's why he constantly was like, hey, make sure you're with me so that you experience the life that I want to give you, and so that you're able to pour that life into other people.

So to be with him, become like him, and to do what he does.

Now, excuse me.

It is my assumption that over the last 70 years of people telling you how to be a Christian, uh, that this is relatively new information, which is shocking because we're the ones that changed it.

And we made following Jesus this call yourself a Christian idea that doesn't exist in the scriptures.

It was always supposed to be this.

But for 70 years or so, what's been presented to the church is a gospel of do you want to be a Christian or not?

And I think it's affected us in more ways than one, negatively.

And so I think there's a space for us to just consider, again, the idea of like, do I just call myself a Christian or am I interested in this at all to be with him, become like him, and do what he does?

If you are, if you find yourself going, like, oh no, I don't just want to call myself a Christian, I want to follow this man, I want to experience those things.

Here are a number of ways for us to actually do these things.

So go to the next slide.

If you want to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, do what Jesus did, uh, he talks about consistently practicing his word, putting his word into practice into our lives, so that we don't just call ourselves by name, but we're actually putting his life and his words into our lives.

And so be with Jesus, these are practices that help us to be present with him, to become like Jesus, these are practices that help us to grow in the likeness of Jesus, to do what Jesus did.

These are practices that seek to extend his kingdom on earth.

All of these are from the Bible.

Like all of these things are just things that he has either spoken on or talked about, and all these different things.

Like these are just spaces where he's like, put my word into practice.

None of these make him love you more.

None of these get you into heaven, none of none of them do any of that.

But he does call us to follow.

And so consistently, when he's saying, Do you follow me?

It's like, how do I even do that?

This is how we do that.

How to be with him back in the day was to literally be with him.

How to be with him now is by reading the scriptures and meditating on the scriptures, and by hiding God's word in your heart, practicing prayer as communion.

I'm not gonna read all of these, practicing secrecy at the bottom there.

We talked about that last week, just doing things between you and him.

The practice of these things, actually putting his word into practice.

When we become like him, one, just the spirit is gonna do that anyways when we're around him, but then seeking to pray for the fruit of the spirit, pursuing joy, seeking peace, developing patience, all anyways.

All these different things.

And so for you, if you're like, I don't just want to call myself a Christian, I want to be a practitioner of Jesus, I want to be an apprentice under Jesus, I want to be a follower of Jesus, this is how we do those things.

Again, these things don't save us and they don't make them make him love us anymore, but these are ways that we follow him.

These are ways that we actually begin experiencing his life breaking into our lives.

If you want to experience the life Jesus has for you, it's not by calling yourself by his name.

It's by actually seeking to follow his way of life and to do those things, to spend time with him so that you become like him and then doing what he does.

So my encouragement to you is to, I don't know if you I'll send this out, I don't know, maybe we'll put it in an email or something like that.

But my encouragement is to follow him in these ways, to pick one, to find one, to go like, I don't, I don't, if you don't do some of these things to do this, again, it's not to get him to love you.

It's just to actually begin following him in these ways.

Pursuing community and anyways, all these different things.

This is how we follow him.

This is what he meant.

And so when he called disciples, this is what he was hoping for.

Do the things that I do, be with me where I am, so that you ultimately become like me.

And so my encouragement to you, don't just call yourself a Christian.

That does nothing for you.

It does nothing for you.

You won't experience his life breaking into yours.

And it won't actually get you to where you're actually longing to go, but following him will.

And so my encouragement to you is to follow him.

Everybody good?

All right, let me pray.

Excuse me.

Jesus, thank you for your word.

Um, Lord, thank you that you call us to be followers and not just to change our name.

Lord, you have more for us and you want us to experience your life breaking into ours.

And so, God, I pray that you would help us.

Um, bring wisdom and guidance and uh insight to our desire for you.

Lord, help us to uh put into practice more of the things that you call us to, to see that you're actually asking us to be where you are so that we experience the life that you have for us.

And I pray that you would shape our church in this way.

That we would be practic practitioners of your way and not just people who give lip service to it.

And pray that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion.

One of the ways that he calls us to follow him is by taking communion together.

And so we're gonna do that.

Um if you helped set it up, I'd love for you to come and stand here.

And Ray's gonna be here.

My encouragement to you is um to take some time in your seats.

This is the communion is literally a celebration of what he's done for us.

He has given us his life, he has given us his blood to cover our sins, he's given us these things so that we can actually be with him.

He took away our sin and reconciled us to God so that we could be together now and in the future.

And so, my encouragement to you is to uh use this time as a space to be reminded.

He wants to be with you, he wants to be near you.

And so come take communion, uh, take the elements, take them back to your seats, and we'll commune together in just a minute with the liturgy.

But come as you feel led to.