FOLLOW ME | MARK 1:16-20 | Pastor John Anderson | 9.20.26

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson.

Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast.

Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Raceteen, Wisconsin.

So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, or just folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened.

It's something God is still doing.

Enjoy this week's message.

Good morning.

Today there is a reading from Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, 16 through 20.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.

And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.

And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

As he went a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.

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

The Gospel of our Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is John.

I'm one of the pastors here.

If you got your Bible with you, we are going to be in the Gospel of Mark.

So feel free to turn there, and we're going to be in the first chapter of Mark today as Carla so beautifully read.

When I was 17, uh, I got my driver's license.

I waited a while because all my buddies had cars, and I didn't have a car.

Uh, but also I'm like, I'll just get a ride with these guys.

Um and then at 17, they started to ask me for gas money.

So I decided to get my driver's license, and uh and I got 100% on my driving test.

And uh in the first year of being a licensed driver, I got in nine accidents in total two cars.

Uh, but I am um I'm safe to drive you all here, trust me.

Um mission trips passed to Ryan, they'll be driving.

So um, but I bring that up because I remember early on, if you're if you've been in Kenosha, if you're from Kenosha, it was divined, divined, maybe.

Uh definitely designed in a really smart way.

That uh all the streets uh go east and west and all the avenues go north and south.

Pretty simple grid.

Uh you would think no one would ever get lost driving in Kenosha.

Well, I remember uh early on I got my license, and and if you remember those days, adults, when you first get here, like I got freedom.

You know, I can go anywhere.

And and uh and I wanted to go to Walmart, you know, right?

And back then Walmart was kind of in the center of the city, and I remember telling my mom, hey, I'm gonna go to Walmart.

And she said, Well, I'm gonna go in a little bit, let's just go together.

And I said, No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna drive myself.

I don't want to wait.

She goes, Well, just wait.

You can follow me.

I said, No, no, no, I know how to get there.

About 20 minutes later, I was at a speedway on a payphone.

And uh, payphones, by the way, for those that don't know, uh, you'll ask the person next to you, but a payphone calling my mom and going, I'm lost.

Yeah.

And I remember she said, Well, where are you?

I'm like, I'm at a speedway.

She's like, What's the street?

What's the intersection?

I remember saying out loud, what's an intersection?

I don't know.

I I know I passed the test.

Anyways, I bring that up because I think there is a difference between knowing where someone is going and actually following them in there.

I I could have followed my mom.

She knew how to get there.

She'd brought me there so many times.

But I had to do it my way.

And I wonder if we sometimes follow Jesus that way.

God, we we know the end of the story.

We know we're supposed to follow you.

Look, we even came to church today.

Um, and and isn't that the point?

We're following you here.

We're here, God, we're here, we're doing what you what you've asked us to do.

We've got it the rest of the week.

We'll follow you back here on Sunday.

And that's not what I read in the gospel today.

In fact, I've been challenged more and more recently to think about what it means to follow Jesus and to really challenge you, church, to take seriously that call to follow.

You know, the beauty of this story, before we get into it, is that Christ encounters the disciples first.

Not because of anything they did, but because of who Christ is.

Much like last week with Zacchaeus, he belonged at that table with Christ long before he believed.

And that invitation in week one of this sermon series three weeks ago, come and see.

Well, that our lives would would draw people into the mystery of Christ, that they would want to come and see.

So as we enter today's scripture, let us pray.

God, we thank you for your patience with us.

And for the times we too often go our own way.

Help us to pay attention to your leading today.

Oh, God, Holy Spirit, move in this place.

I pray, not just through the preached word, but through the meal that we were received moments ago, through the joy of these kids leaving the sanctuary, God, through the songs of praise we lift up to you, God.

Receive it, we pray.

Make it holy.

You are holy.

As always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that pass through my lips are yours, oh God.

It's in Christ's name I pray.

Amen.

So, this is a story I think that many of us have heard.

Come and follow me.

So many songs have been written about these verses.

And what continues to amaze me as I read this story over and over again is Jesus just takes ordinary people.

And because of their willingness to follow Christ, their lives become extraordinary.

And what are they doing when he finds them?

They're fishing, they're working, they're throwing a net out into the water, and Jesus shows up, not with a chorus of angels, not with a mighty sermon, not inviting them into a spiritual retreat.

No, he just shows up and he says, Follow me.

And I love how God does that over and over again in scripture.

Moses is tending sheep.

God calls him.

Same for David.

Right?

Gideon is threshing wheat, Amos is at work tending livestock, and Simon and Andrew, they're just fishing.

If you don't think that God can use your life for extraordinary things and you have missed the message of Jesus, all of you are divinely created.

At least we believe that when we come in here, I believe it about you.

We just sang all of these songs.

There's songs of praise.

But I hope when you sing these words, you embody the truth of them that Christ is indeed your firm foundation in all things.

I will tell you that in my highest highs and my lowest lows, Christ is who I needed to follow to celebrate or to get through.

And in the moments I didn't, the joy was dampened and the valley seemed darker.

And so God calls us into something different.

I think we think that God's gonna show up in amazing and miraculous ways.

And by the way, I would argue God does every single day.

It's just the way we categorize it is different.

Yesterday I got to go see my boys uh play football in the evening in a youth program.

And they lost the game.

It was a tough game.

They lost.

Um and I got to watch how they dealt with loss.

I got to watch how they trusted their coach.

I got to watch how they got in the car and processed their game.

I got to watch all these things, and I thought right in front of me, right in the midst of life right now, I'm watching God move as these boys learn and grow, as these boys understand that life isn't easy.

Christ never promised us an easy life.

But Christ does offer us some joy.

I think about the parable that we hear in Matthew.

Jesus tells us a parable about a man who finds the kingdom of heaven buried in this field, and he sells everything that he owns just so he can have this, just so he can experience this kingdom of heaven.

And it says that he was full of joy.

And I just wonder how often we miss the opportunity to be full of joy because life has knocked us down, or because we believe that we don't deserve joy.

I think the biggest problem for the church today is that we are we're waiting to clean ourselves up, or or we think that there is something that prevents us from actually fully committing to following Jesus Christ.

I mean, we we receive the gift of the table, we we claim it as true.

Thank God that God came to us, amen.

Thank God that God came to us, amen.

It has to be that way, and so God does, and God says, I have come and I have rescued you.

Follow me, and you will live the fullest life that you can possibly live.

Follow me and you will experience the kingdom of heaven here, not as some faraway reality.

Follow me and you will help people, you will dig them out of the graves that they have created for themselves or that others have put them in.

Follow me, he says.

But we get distracted, the world distracts us.

There's this sign in my neighborhood, and it says, US first, everybody else second.

God bless America.

No.

That's not a charge statement.

I disagree with that sign as a Christian.

Because as I follow Christ, I don't claim to know a single thing about governing a state or governing a country.

But in other words, as I follow Christ, we are all one.

We are all created, we are all divine.

Other is always first, not second.

That's the life our Savior lived.

Follow me and I will show you.

I will show you our Savior says.

Abram, back in Genesis 12, the great patriarch of this whole faith.

God says, Come.

I want you to go to this land and you will become my people.

And he goes.

I dare you to follow Jesus.

I dare you in those tough moments to claim Christ as supreme.

I dare you to have radical generosity, unconditional grace.

You know what Jesus does, by the way?

He calls them to follow, and then read Mark.

It's the shortest gospel.

It's Pastor Ryan's favorite.

Not for that reason, but it is because Jesus is like a superhero in this.

He just flies from one scene to the next.

You know what Jesus does immediately after asking them to follow him?

He goes and teaches.

And then he heals, exercises demons, he feeds people, he bends down and he touches a leper.

All the things the world says we shouldn't do.

Boxes and categories that we create that aren't real over and over again that just continue to divide us.

And as a pastor, sometimes I kind of get discouraged.

That's that's not true.

I get disappointed, both in myself and in the church.

We're at a great season here at resurrection.

We got growth.

Who doesn't get jazzed up seeing all those kids?

Amen.

Come on.

And the incredible leaders.

But I look out at our world and it's so broken.

And I think 2,000 years later, we this savior who offers us his whole self each and every day, who brings us through the passion out of death into resurrection and says, follow me.

And we say, Well, we don't know what that means.

Well, yes, you do.

Follow me.

Look at how I lived.

Because he says, because I've entrusted you with the gospel, so that by following me, others will want to see, others will want to know, others will come along.

So follow me.

It's actually less complicated than we think it is.

There's this Stephen Furtick quote that I love.

I think I think he's got it up here.

Uh, but Pastor Furtick talks about uh the call to follow, and he says, Jesus does not call you to figure it out.

So many of us think we have to figure it out.

Or that God doesn't know.

No, he calls us to follow each and every day.

That your day would begin by saying, Christ, here I am.

Your vessel, fill me up, use me as you will.

And in those moments where life is heavy and hard, thank God for the church because Christ offers us support, his very presence, and the neighbors sitting next to you.

Follow Jesus.

That's the call of the church.

I'm gonna invite the band up.

For those of you shocked that I'm almost done preaching today.

I'm gonna end with a story, but I I also would challenge you to go and read the gospel of Mark.

You can just read the first and second chapter.

In those two chapters alone, we read about baptism, a sacramental promise that Christ would radically change in our lives.

We read about healing and teaching.

We read about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and we read about the cost of following.

My mom, who I didn't follow to Walmart.

That's an entirely true story, by the way.

Um, she had a lot of hardship in her life.

Um she lost a child early on through miscarriage, she had a rough divorce.

Um, she was a single mom for a minute, and for those that don't know, she eventually um got sick and died of cancer.

But she followed Jesus, and not in super loud ways all the time, just by constantly not allowing her circumstances or the world or other people's opinions to define her or shape her view of the world.

Only the gospel shaped it, and it radically changed my life and the life of my wife, the life of my kids.

And I think about all those moments in my life when I've chosen to follow Christ, when everything inside of me said that's gonna be a lot of work, it's gonna be so hard, and I'm scared.

And I thank God that I did.

I thank God that I followed Christ into the church so many years ago when I thought I'd never have this gig.

I thank God that I trusted Pastor Ryan and checked out a campus ministry.

I thank God every day that I had the opportunity to follow God, that we for some reason, for some reason, can be used to create the kingdom of God.

And I wish, God, I hope, God, that you would use this church to do something different just in your home, in your workplace.

I dare you to follow Jesus.

This isn't about believing, but actually following.

Because our Savior offers us so much, and he also offers us a chance to change the world for his glory.

Wouldn't you want to be a part of that?

Amen.

We're gonna sing a song, but it's also a prayer.

God, take my life.

Let that be your prayer every morning, church.

Let us pray.

God, we are broken and we are in need of grace.

What you offer, you bestow upon us lavishly your grace each and every day, new mercies.

And God, we so often squander it.

Help us to follow you, help us to show the world the message of Jesus, not some denomination or some religion, but the actual way of Christ.

That we would follow you, God, in the midst of hardship and trial, that we would be a church that surrounds each other in those moments and reminds them of the great beauty that's only found in Christ.

We love you, and we thank you.

We ask that you receive our praise in song now.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.