Week 2: Come Follow Me (Believer)

Introduction

Welcome to week 2 of our new series Title “Follow Me” where we are going to explore what it means to follow Jesus.

Last week we introduced you to the chairs which are what we are using to symbolize the steps in our Christian walk.

All of us are somewhere within this walk and many times we can jump between chairs depending on what is going on in our lives at that moment.

Last week we learned about being a Seeker which is demonstrated by this old wooden chair.

To be a seeker is to be someone that is looking for Christ and who he is.

We talked about last week who the NT writers or figureheads belived Jesus was, we talked about who Jesus said he was, and we ended the night with a very important question.

Anyone remember that question? The question was who is Jesus to you?

Hopefully we all came up with at least Messiah and Saviour and then added some more stuff in there from that starting point.

Once we get that answered which the answer will look different for each person depending on their lives and circumstances but the basic part should be the same.

Like I was saying once we get that answer we can move on to the next stage in our Christian walk which we are going to demonstrate with this beautiful multi-color chair.

Anyone want to take a crack at that this next stage is?

This stage is Believer, once we know who Jesus is we can become a believer.

Tonight we are going to explore the stage of believer and what that means for us.

This is such an important stage but I want us to keep in mind this should not be the stage we stay in, there are two more stages we are going to look at through this series.

To really try and understand the believer stage we are going to look at three things.

We are going to start by look at:

How did the Disciples follow Jesus?

If we want to get a good grasp on what it means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus lets start by looking at the first ones.

The first example I want to look at is Simon Peter. To be able to see this the best we need to look in scripture.

Luke 5:1–11 “As the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear God’s word, he was standing by Lake Gennesaret. He saw two boats at the edge of the lake; the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the land.

Then he sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” “Master,” Simon replied, “we’ve worked hard all night long and caught nothing. But if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.” When they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear.

So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them; they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!” For he and all those with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s partners.

“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus told Simon. “From now on you will be catching people.” Then they brought the boats to land, left everything, and followed him.”

Simon and his partners were tired at this point they had worked all night and probably just wanted to rest.

However when Jesus asked him to put down the nets he did so as Jesus had said and this was before realizing just who Jesus is.

The scripture tells us that after Jesus filled the nets with fish the way that he did that Simon realized who Jesus was.

We can see this in verse 8

Luke 5:8 “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!””

It says when Simon saw this he fell at Jesus’s knees and said Go away because he was not worthy to be near him.

He recognized Jesus as Lord

Which brings us to our first point:

We Must Recognize Jesus as Lord

To leave the seeker phase and move into the Believer phase we must recognize Jesus for who he truly is. He is the son of God who came to earth as his creation to save us from the penalties or sin which we brought on ourselves.

To truly follow Jesus we must recognize him as Lord over everything including our whole lives.

Lets look to see what Simon did after he realized who Jesus is which is what we did in the seeker phase we discussed last week.

Luke 5:9–11 “For he and all those with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s partners. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus told Simon. “From now on you will be catching people.” Then they brought the boats to land, left everything, and followed him.”

More specifically I want to look at verse 11:

Luke 5:11 “Then they brought the boats to land, left everything, and followed him.”

When Simon and his partners I might add realized who he was they brought everything into shore and just abandoned it to follow Jesus.

Sometimes we miss the magnitude and the importance of this little verse right here.

They abandoned their entire livelihood. They left the very thing that feed them and the people around them.

That is quite a big thing to just up and leave to go follow someone.

But thats the thing; they understood that they were not leaving everything to follow someone, they were leaving everything to follow the true everything.

They were leaving some very important things in their lives to follow the most important thing/person we can have in our lives.

To have this kind of devotion we need to understand Jesus is Lord over everything which is hopefully what we figure out in the first phase as a Seeker.

After we recognize Jesus as Lord is when we can start forming our lives around him.

We saw that Simon had left everything behind to follow Jesus but lets take a look at some other quick examples:

Matthew 9:9 “As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me,” and he got up and followed him.”

John 1:37–39 “The two disciples heard him say this and followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” “Come and you’ll see,” he replied. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.”

John 1:43 “The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and told him, “Follow me.””

After all the disciples knew Jesus and heard his commands they followed him.

Much like the first example they dropped everything and followed Jesus. They realized that he was the most important thing.

Now that we have seen how Jesus called them to follow and they did lets see how Jesus says to follow him.

for this lets look in the gospel of Mark.

Mark 8:34 “Calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

This will being us to our next point:

We must deny ourselves to follow Christ

What does it mean to deny ourselves?

To break this down I want to look at what it means but also what it doesn’t

There can be a lot of misunderstanding around the phrase of denying ourselves.

Lets start by looking at what it is not.

Denying ourselves is not self-hatred.

It does not mean treating yourself as worthless or destroying your mental and physical health.

Jesus loves each and every one of us and he would never want us to put ourselves down in any way.

Denying ourselves does mean that “shift the center”

We move the center off of ourselves and onto Jesus.

We have been using chairs to symbolize so far so lets do it again.

We move ourselves off the “throne” of our life and make God the true center of our lives.

Denying ourselves is not Erasing our personalities.

It does not mean losing who we are or what makes us unique.

It is however disowning allegiances.

It is retraining our human nature from making ourselves our ruler and giving that over to the one true ruler Jesus.

Denying ourselves is not just giving up minor things.

While giving up the minor things like certain snacks and habits can be helpful.

Like during lent when we give those things up to focus on God it is important but it is so much more.

It is active sacrifice meaning being ready to give up your time, your plans, your rights, and your comforts to follow Jesus or to help someone else.

Jesus tells us that following him is not going to be easy and it is going to involve sacrifices.

Whether its missing that event or game your really wanted to go to to help someone while moving or to help your elderly neighbor mow their yard.

Or choseing church and spending time with God over a function with your friends or sports.

Now we have learned that following Jesus means dropping everything and following him.

And we learned that following Jesus means sacrificing the things we want to do for what Jesus wants us to do.

So this leads us to the third point well its really more of a question.

What in your life are you making the ruler of it?

If it is Jesus that is great.

If not, what steps can you take to fix that.

Small Group Questions:

What did the disciples give up to follow Jesus?

Have you ever had to give something up to be able to do something you wanted to do? How did that make you feel?

What does denying yourself mean to you?

Have you ever put anything before God? What was it?

Is there something that you are currently letting rule your life? How can we help you move past it and put God at the forefront.