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© November 27th, 2022 by Rev. Rick Goettsche SERIES: Mark
Most of us have had the experience of watching teams get picked, maybe in PE class or with a group of friends.
We often pick teams before playing games at youth group.
Usually, the team captains pick the people they think will be the best players first, and the players they think will be the least help to the team last.
I have found that as the years go on, my desirability as a pick seems to go down.
The kids have discovered that my ability to dodge balls has decreased dramatically as I’ve gotten older.
So I’m not usually picked early anymore.
Most of us have probably had the experience of standing around waiting to be picked, watching others getting picked for a team ahead of us.
That experience isn’t just unique to dodgeball or PE, however.
Even as adults, we often have the experience of feeling like other people are far more desirable than we are.
We see potential mates pick our friends before us, co-workers get entrusted with responsibility before us, or sit alone at a table for a long time until people sit with you because there’s nowhere left to sit.
These experiences can convince us that we are basically worthless, and unable to play a significant role anywhere.
As we work through our passage this morning, I hope you’ll see yourself through a different lens.
Today we look at Jesus picking the first members of His team, but they are not the kind of people you would expect Him to pick.
Jesus seemed to pick the nobodies, the people often overlooked by the world, as the people He would use to change the world.
Jesus can use us to do great things for Him, we just have to be willing to answer His call.
Jesus’ First Picks
Mark’s account of this event is once again quite brief, but it still gives us a lot to consider.
16 One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living.
17 Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 18 And they left their nets at once and followed him.
19 A little farther up the shore Jesus saw Zebedee’s sons, James and John, in a boat repairing their nets.
20 He called them at once, and they also followed him, leaving their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men.
(Mark 1:16-20, NLT)
Mark says Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee when He called his first disciples.
The Sea of Galilee was a fairly large body of water and it supported many people in the region through fishing.
The Sea of Galilee would have been a familiar place to the people of the region, because it was at the center of many people’s livelihoods.
Many of the stories we read about Jesus take place on or around the Sea of Galilee.
Mark’s readers would likely have been able to picture the setting well.
As Jesus was walking, we are told he saw Simon (later called Peter) and his brother Andrew and He called them to follow Him.
A little way up the shore Jesus called two more brothers, James and John (who were business partners of Simon and Andrew and were working with their father, Zebedee) to be His followers.
Nothing against fishermen, but it seems a little strange to us that Jesus’s first 4 picks for his team were fishermen.
Generally speaking, you probably would have expected Jesus to pick people who were well-educated, skilled in public speaking, winsome and persuasive, popular, and other such things.
But those weren’t the qualities that Jesus was seeking out.
We aren’t told exactly why Jesus chose the men He did, but we do know these men probably would not have been our first choice.
The Lord has a pattern of picking unexpected people to use.
After King Saul, who looked exactly like you would expect a king to look, God anointed David as the next king.
Everyone overlooked David because he didn’t look the part, but God said He was more concerned with what was inside than outside.
God chose Gideon to lead the Israelites to victory even though when God called Gideon he was hiding and not exactly the confident leader you would expect.
Many of God’s prophets were people you wouldn’t expect God to choose as His messengers.
I don’t know about you, but I find great encouragement in this.
Maybe you’re the kind of person who expects they should be picked first for everything, but I generally don’t think of myself that way.
I suspect most of us look at the people around us and we see all the skills they have that we don’t.
We feel unworthy for God to pick us for anything, and assume that God would never use us.
The example of Jesus picking these 4 fishermen as His first disciples should remind us that God can use anyone who is willing.
As a matter of fact, I think God delights in using the most surprising people to do His greatest works.
If you fast forward to the day of Pentecost, after Jesus had been crucified, risen from the grave, and ascended into Heaven, this same fisherman (Peter) stood up in front of a crowd and preached and thousands came to faith.
Later, he and John healed a crippled man and began preaching in the temple.
When the religious leaders called them and questioned them, Peter and John preached to the leaders as well!
Listen to how the leaders responded,
13 The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures.
They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.
(Acts 4:13, NLT)
The leaders marveled because Peter and John were nobodies.
They had no explanation for the power of their preaching other than the fact that they had been with Jesus.
God was working through them, even though they were “ordinary men with no special training”.
You may consider yourself to be an ordinary person with no special training, but I hope you see God can use you too.
It doesn’t matter what skills you bring to the table, it doesn’t matter how confident you feel.
If you will do what God calls you to do, He will use you.
Their Response
If Jesus’ choices for His first team members were surprising, perhaps more surprising is the response we see from these men.
Mark tells us they left their nets at once and followed Him.
Peter and Andrew seem to have left their nets and their boat behind and followed Jesus.
John and James left their boat, their nets, and their dad behind!
The other gospels help to give us a bit more background about what happened.
In John’s gospel, we learn that Andrew had been one of John’s disciples.
John had pointed Jesus out to him and told him that Jesus was the Lamb of God.
So, this certainly wasn’t Andrew’s first experience with Jesus.
We are told he had even brought his brother Simon to meet Jesus as well.
In Luke’s gospel, we are told that Jesus performed a great miracle with Simon and Andrew before He called them to follow Him.
Simon and Andrew had been fishing all night but had caught nothing.
Jesus asked to use their boat to preach to people on the shore.
After He finished, Jesus told Simon to take the boat into deeper water and let down his nets to catch some fish.
Simon, probably a bit annoyed with getting fishing tips from a non-fisherman, initially resisted, but then did what Jesus said.
Suddenly, they ended up with so many fish in their nets that the nets began to tear.
They called over James and John for help, and as they got the fish in the boat there were so many that they were on the verge of sinking!
It is after this that Jesus issued his call to these men to follow Him.
After hearing these stories, we can understand a bit more why Simon, Andrew, James, and John responded as they did.
So why didn’t Mark include these details?
I suspect it’s because Mark’s focus was not on why these men responded as they did, but that he wanted to focus on the fact that they responded with great faith.
Though the other aspects of the story are fascinating, Mark doesn’t want his readers to lose sight of the significant response of these simple fishermen.
These four men had an amazing experience, but what Jesus was asking them to do was still not easy.
Even after hearing Him teach and seeing a miracle, they could still come up with many reasons they couldn’t follow Jesus.
They could have reasoned that they couldn’t leave their business, and that maybe they’d be able to follow Him if they sold it and got a good price for it.
Or they could have said they couldn’t leave their families.
Surely Zebedee needed his sons to help run the fishing business.
They could have argued that Dad’s not getting any younger, so we really need to be here.
And they could have even argued that it just sounded unknown and scary, and the wiser course of action was to stay with what they knew and was established.
They had no guarantees in following Jesus.
But they were confident He was the Messiah, so they were willing to follow, no matter the cost.
How often do we miss out on some of God’s greatest blessings because we are scared to follow Him?
We are great at coming up with excuses why we can’t do some of the things the Lord asks of us,
· It’s not a good time.
I’ve got too much to do, too many ballgames, too much work, too many other things we’d rather do right now.
When things slow down, then I’ll make time to follow.
· We’re tired.
I’ve done what He asked of me before, but now it’s someone else’s turn to follow Him.
I’ve fulfilled my duty.
· We feel inadequate.
God surely doesn’t really want someone like me, because I’m messed up, I don’t know enough, and I’m not confident I can do what He’s asked.
· We’re scared.
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