Who is calling the shots?: Three ways the calling of the disciples reveals who Jesus is
Notes
Transcript
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Good morning.
That song we sang called “My soul will wait” is one of my new favorites. That second verse we sang says,
“You're my stronghold and my shield, in the midst of every threat
Though the wicked never yield, they will vanish like a breath
Yes, I know the outcome's sure, Satan's evil plans will fail
In Your power I'm secure”
It’s a song for the battle of persevering life that reminds us that our strength, our shield, our rock, is found in God alone. In the midst of calamity, we trust that God is who He says He is.
A great God centered song to start our service this morning. Thank you Cal and team for leading us so well this morning.
We are continuing our series in the Gospel of Mark which we are calling Truly seeing the Son of God. A very fitting subtitle because among the major themes of this gospel, revealing the identity of Jesus is among the major themes of this Gospel. We’ve seen it already with Gary’s sermon of the voices speaking to who Jesus is, and then we saw it in the message last week looking at the message Jesus was proclaiming as He started His earthly ministry. Our text today is a really a subsection of a larger context in which Mark is building a case for the reader to reveal the identity of Jesus.
For context, we have looked at John the Baptist coming and fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy of someone coming to make way for the Messiah. Then we saw Jesus prepare himself for ministry by being baptized, going into the wilderness to be tempted. Then after John completes his ministry and is thrown in jail, Jesus then begins His ministry by proclaiming the Gospel. Mark quickly moves from scene to scene and we arrive at our scene today where Jesus begins to recruit people to join Him in His mission.
I have titled today’s sermon “Who is calling the shots?: Three ways the calling of the disciples reveals who Jesus is” I was inspired by Mark’s illustration of Casey Diaz’s testimony who was calling the shots in prison before experiencing the transforming power of the Gospel. In a similar manner, Jesus in our text is confronting these fishermen and asking much from them. Yet I think the purpose of this scene is to communicate to the reader something about Christ’s identity. In our text we will see:
Who is calling the shots?: Three ways the calling of the disciples reveals who Jesus is
The Call
The Commission
The Cost
And how each of these elements of our text helps us to see Jesus as the Son of God.
Before we dig in, let us ask our Lord for his help. PRAY
When I was a sophomore at Emmaus I received a call in the middle of the day from a doctor at Mercy hospital… (finish the illustration)...
I did not know what I was getting myself into. You have to wonder if the disciples in our text knew what they were being called to. They probably didn’t…
THE CALL
THE CALL
Let’s begin looking at our text by look at The Call. We begin our scene with a change of scenery. Mark describes Jesus as “Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee” as if it were a casual encounter but this was in fact a divine encounter. Jesus sees Simon (who is later called Peter) and Andrew his brother working. They were fishermen and they were doing their job. Jesus speaks to them and presents the call: FOLLOW ME. We can assume the same call for the other pair of brother in our text, James and John.
Before we look at any of the other words of Jesus, let us consider this call. Follow me. If you grew up in the Church, you might be very familiar with this passage and not think anything of it. You’ve maybe even grown to appreciate the faith of the disciples to leave everything behind to follow Jesus, but this call to follow Jesus is kinda weird, isn’t it?
It’s weird in just the general sense of having someone walk into your office or your station who isn’t from your workplace and say, “hey, follow me.” Most people would respond with a, “wait who are you?”, “Follow you where?”, “Where are you going?” You might even call security to escort this crazy person off the premises.
Well, the call is a little less crazy when we look into the other Gospels for some context.
John 1:35-41 gives us some context. We find that Simon and Andrew had a previous encounter with Jesus.
The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).
Here in John’s Gospel, we find out that Jesus, Andrew, and Simon (who we know as Peter) had followed Jesus to where he was staying and spent at least a day with him, but more importantly, we see a mentor/disciple relationship initiate. You see, in these times, a Rabbi and Pupil relationship were typically initiated by the pupil. The normal custom was not for the Rabbi (or teacher) to pick their students, rather, like we see in John’s Gospel, the student chooses the teacher and begins to follow them. You see the cultural norms of this time gives us some insights that we might miss otherwise.
When Jesus asked them, “what are you seeking” they answer, “Rabbi”, “where are you staying?” To us that answer might seem disconnected to what Jesus was asking but it actually answers his question. When the disciples answer with “Rabbi” they are initiating the Rabbi and Pupil relationship with Jesus, following the cultural norms of the time.
Coming back to Mark’s Gospel, where we see Jesus coming back to them and calling them to follow Him. In doing so, Jesus was not claiming to be a Rabbi. He is claiming to be MORE than a teacher. Christ’s actions tell us He was not presenting himself as a teacher, but what about a prophet?
We find a similar interaction in the Old Testament when the prophet Elijah calls upon his successor Elisha in 1 Kings 19:19-21. In this passage we see Elijah choosing Elisha by placing a cloak on him. This is what some commentator see as the way a Prophet chose their successor. It was the duty of the Prophet to choose who they will train. The Prophet would choose the Pupil.
So you might say that Jesus was following the norms of a Prophet. Yet, his call to the disciples was not quite like that of Elijah and Elisha. You see that call was for Elisha to follow God and be God’s spoke person and representative, not Elijah’s representative. No, this was different. Jesus said, “follow ME”!
This call was not the call of a prophet, it was different. Still, you can appreciate how the people in Jesus’s times were trying to figure out if he was a Prophet or a Rabbi and were unsure. But we can see that Jesus was not presenting himself as a Rabbi, nor a Prophet, he was something entirely different. He was something that Israel had never had before.
In our day, we find people who also don’t know how to classify Jesus. I’m sure we’ve all met people who “believe in Jesus.” They acknowledge his existence, they believe he is real, but what is Jesus? Sometimes we treat Jesus like a Rabbi. He has amazing wisdom that transcends time and cultures. His teachings as narrated in the Gospels are still relevant today. A reading and application of the principles in the Sermon on the Mount presents for a way of life that is to our benefit. He tell us how to treat our friends, our enemies. He teaches us how to handle opposition, and we find healing works when we need them. But to treat Jesus like a Rabbi is still missing the mark. Same with acknowledging him as a Prophet. He isn’t a simple messenger delivering good news for all. He is more than a representative of God. We must not miss it. Jesus might have been only revealing in part who he was at the stage of his ministry, but he certainly is presenting himself as something new, something else other than a Rabbi or a Prophet.
Who is Jesus to you?
THE COMMISSION
THE COMMISSION
We see the call “Come, Follow Me” and Jesus also gives these disciples a commission. He says, “I will make you become fishers of men.”
This is not only a play on words for these fishermen. We find allusions to fishers of men in the Old Testament.
“Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.
The Lord God has sworn by his holiness
that, behold, the days are coming upon you,
when they shall take you away with hooks,
even the last of you with fishhooks.
These passages show us that God was using the illustration of fishers to bring about judgement. These prophetic statements were declared over God’s people to describe what was to come for the iniquity of the people. Now, Jesus wasn’t calling these disciples to bring devastating judgement upon the people. One of the commentators, William Lane, writes on this passage and says this.
“The summons to be fishers of men is a call to the eschatological task of gathering men in view of the forthcoming judgment of God.
Lane here is connecting the task of becoming fishers of men, not with these fishers bringing judgment upon people but with gathering people for the King in preparation for the judgement that is to come.
Again, we see that Jesus is presenting himself as something different, He is recruiting these disciples for a great task. The task wasn’t to become great men, or become influential, but rather it was to carry out the task of gathering people by proclaiming the message that Christ came to deliver and give testimony of who Christ is.
This commission to the disciples which is likely rooted in this eschatological task of preparing for the ultimate judgment to come when Christ returns again. Communicates for us at least two things.
First, the gravity of the message. As mentioned Jesus was likely not only making a play on words here with these fishermen but was likely also thinking of what is to come. Judgment is coming. Being under the curse of sin, and being born into sin, what we deserve is eternal punishment. That may sound harsh but it is just. We as a people have rebelled against God, but God desires to rescue us. Jesus enters the world with that purpose to rescue sinners like me, and you. Judgment is coming, but judgment has also been served through Christ. He has paid the debt that was owed for us, and His payment was complete, it was paid in full. Therefore, now, we have a gift being offered to us, the gift of salvation through faith in Christ. Praise The Lord for this glorious gift, that we do not earn this gift, we do not deserve this gift, but by faith we receive this gift for those who have believed in Christ.
Second, we see the authority of Jesus in his words. When Christ speaks, it is so. He calls, and commissions, and people respond. We might say, his call is so irresistible that these men aren’t able to respond any other way but in obedience. Now, their obedience here isn’t a reflection of their obedience from here on out. We see that the disciples though the gospels are a bit of a disappointment. They see Jesus do all of these miracles, they see His authority, they hear His teachings, and yet we find the disciples doubting, we see them denying. For us the reader of the gospels, we find them to be disappointing, but isn’t that true of all us too.
If we read our lives on a page, we would also be disappointed with our lack of faith and trust in our lives. This is evident in how we respond when found in various circumstances. We might believe that Christ is savior, that he is the mediator, the He is God, but we don’t realize the fault in those statements. Christ is not savior, He is MY savior, he not only a mediator, he is my mediator, he is not only God, but he is MY God.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
He is for us! All that He is, is for us! How might we live if we took His word for it.
The disciples in this moment responded with obedience to the call and commission to be fishers of men. We see the cost of answering the call in this passage as well.
THE COST
THE COST
In our passage read the response to the call resulted in Simon, Andrew, James and John “immediately” leaving their nets (or their Father) and followed Christ. Leaving their nets is to leave their livelihood, or in the case of James and John, leaving their family. We are presented with the cost of being a disciple of Jesus. We find specific teaching from Jesus on the cost of being His disciple in Luke 14:25-27
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
To follow Jesus is to see the value of Jesus. It is acknowledging that following Him is far better than anything, ANYTHING this world offers. That’s what coming to faith means, it is realizing who Jesus is and what He has to offer, and receiving what He is offering. He is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Prophet, Priest, and King. He was there at creation, He came to Earth and lived a perfect life, a life that no one could, and died the death that no one could. He paid the price for our redemption, and to believe in Him is to follow him. There is a cost to following Jesus. My family is from Mexico and Catholicism is deeply rooted in the culture. To deny Catholicism, in my family, is to deny your family, it is to deny tradition. The members of my family who are saved are in constant tension with those who are not saved, but they have come to realize that Jesus is better! When Jesus here says, “hate” he does mean mean to be hostile toward your family. He is contrasting what loving Jesus looks like in comparison to loving your own family. We love our family, but in comparison to loving Jesus, it is nothing.
Acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, and believing in Him for salvation changes everything. If you haven’t acknowledged who Jesus is, don’t wait, I would love to talk to you and help you make sure you know who He is and what He has to offer you today.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
Looking at our text, and seeing this authoritative call from Jesus, the son of God, we see a theme that can be traced throughout the whole of Scripture. We see these divine callings all through Scripture. We see God calling out to Adam when He failed in the garden and ushered in Sin in Genesis 3:9. We see God calling out Moses at the burning bush. When God calls someone, he usually sends to do something. We could say that the idea of calling and sending are connected, even as we see how the disciples were called and then sent. We see later in Mark, where it is described for us Jesus’s intention of calling these disciples and then sending them out.
And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach
This was the intention of the calling, to then be sent. Just like Moses was called and sent. We see that this is how God interacts with His people. He initiates with a call and for the purpose of sending out.
We also are called. We have been called to be saints. Look how Paul describes the believer in these verses.
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Church you, and I, those of us in Christ have been called. We have been called and sent as we see in the great commission.
Yet, there is a cost we must consider, that God’s word warns us. We see it in the opposition we see Jesus and his disciples receive in the chapters to come. We will also face opposition in our walk and in fulfilling our calling as followers of Jesus.
We should not only be aware of the opposition we chose to enter, like engaging in spiritual conversations with those who might be hostile toward you and the faith. There is also the kind of opposition that is circumstantial. John Piper, in his book Desiring God describes this kind of opposition for the Christ follower. In this portion of the book he makes the case that persecution may not always come from a person or from people. Listen to what he says.
Another reason for not distinguishing sharply between persecution and sickness is that the pain from persecution and the pain from sickness are not always distinguishable. Decades after his torture for Christ in a Romanian prison, Richard Wurmbrand still suffered from the physical effects. Was he being “persecuted” as he endured the pain in his feet thirty years later? Or consider the apostle Paul. Among the sufferings that he listed as a “servant of Christ” was the fact that he was shipwrecked three times and spent a night and a day in the water. He also says his sufferings for Christ included “toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Corinthians 11:27).
Suppose he got pneumonia from all this work and exposure. Would that have been “persecution”? Paul did not make a distinction between being beaten by rods or having a boating accident or being cold while traveling between towns. For him any suffering that befell him while serving Christ was part of the “cost” of discipleship. When a missionary’s child gets diarrhea, we think of this as part of the price of faithfulness. But for any parent walking in the path of obedience to God’s calling, it is the same price. What turns sufferings into sufferings with and for Christ is not how intentional our enemies are, but how faithful we are. If we are Christ’s, then what befalls us is for His glory and for our good, whether it is caused by enzymes or by enemies.
We have been called by God to be saints, a people set apart by God with a mission. We will face opposition from people, and we can expect to face opposition like sickness like Cancer. As John Piper points out in his book, it’s part of the cost of being a disciple of Jesus. But what the disciples knew in part when they were called at the Sea of Galilee, we know in whole. Jesus truly is the son of God, who offers redemption for mankind, who has all authority in heaven and on earth and who is worthy of our worship, worthy of our lives. We respond by being obedient to His mission for the Church. To make disciples.
Jesus here provides for us perhaps a model for Gospel-ministry. We see that He is out proclaiming the good news in verses 14 and 15, but then we also see Him calling disciples and teaching them. Even if they hadn’t understood completely who Jesus was, we could assume they didn’t with how they lived, until they saw Jesus resurrected did they truly believe. Jesus still discipled them. There is a cost involved there also, but this is what we have been tasked for and our Lord has given us all we need to fulfill this mission. Our response to who Christ is, is with obedience and worship.
I’m going to call up Cal and the team back up to lead us in a closing Hymn. This hymn is a one that affirms our calling as saints having been received just as we are for His divine purposes. Let’s stand and sing together.