The First Disciples

Having demonstrated His Kingship and authority over Satan, by enduring hardship and temptation in the wilderness, having announced His power over sin, Jesus now demonstrates His Lordship over people in the calling of His first disciples. Jesus is King. Jesus is Lord. When your Lord calls you, you obey, immediately.

Jesus is inviting you and me into His spiritual kingdom. He has conquered Satan and sin, and He has already set us free from both. We are able to repent and believe. We enter the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, by believing what Jesus has done, by believing that Jesus is the King! To all who believed, even the criminal on the cross, He gave the right to be children of God! That means we are members of His kingdom.

By faith we turn around and go the opposite way we are born going in. All human beings are born in sin, and naturally sin. In Christ, on account of His life, death, resurrection and ascension, He has sent the Holy Spirit to make us alive, to empower us to turn from sin, and to believe, to obey, to live for Christ.

Jesus came preaching this simple message. Repent and believe. There’s no social gospel, no political gospel, just the simple gospel of forgiveness, repentance, and belief. All those other things, like the healing of the paralytic, whose sins were first forgiven, all those other things flow out of a person’s life after they repent and believe. For those who repent and believe, they obey. Rather than desiring to sin, we desire to obey. But first, we must be seen by God.

Seen By God

Simon (also called Peter) and his brother Andrew were seen by God. They were seen by Jesus as He walked by the Sea of Galilee. They had already been seen by Jesus, and had seen him also. In John 1:35- 42, Peter and Andrew are identified as being present the day after Jesus’ baptism, when John saw Jesus walking and said, “Behold the Lamb of God.”

They knew who Jesus was. Jesus knew them. Having heard John’s words, they knew Jesus was the Messiah. Now, months later, Jesus comes to the Sea of Galilee to find them. Just to be clear, the word translated as sea, can mean any body of water. It is really a lake. It is just over 20 kms long, and 11 kms wide, and because it is shaped like a harp, it is also called the Sea of Gennesaret or Kinnereth meaning harp. It is situated about 700 feet below sea level.

Peter and Andrew were fishermen. Fishing was a big business on the lake, with more than a dozen harbours, with as many as sixty fishing companies. These men weren’t hobby farmers. They were business men. They were tough. Because the Sea of Galilee is below sea level, terrible storms often appeared without warning. It was a dangerous job. You might’ve seen Peter and Andrew featured on The Deadliest Catch.

Fish served as the primary protein for most people in that area. Because of this, fishing was an important business, with product being sold all over the Mediterranean. These were business men, as were their partners, James and John. Fishermen maybe weren’t well regarded in Jewish society, nevertheless, they had influence. John was well known enough that he was familiar to the High Priest. As businessmen, they would have been able to speak Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Jesus comes to them, He sees them, He knows them, from before, but also because He is God, and the Holy Spirit is upon Him. He says to them, Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

Follow Me

The first words Jesus says to them is follow me. This is a command. No rabbi did this. Rabbi’s, like the prophets, told people to follow God. They taught their disciples to obey God’s laws, to obey God, to follow God, not them. Jesus is the only one who says this, He’s the only one who can say it this way.

Later, in Mark 8:34, we’ll hear Jesus say, “When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” The significance is clear, isn’t it? What happens on a cross? Death. To follow Jesus is to die. It is to die to yourself. It means no longer living for yourself, going about your own plans.

James also talks about this when he says, in James 4:13-15 “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’” You are a slave to Christ. You’ve died to yourself. You are not the master of your life, Jesus is. Therefore, you must die to your own plans of what you can or cannot do, and you must surrender to Jesus.

In fact, one of the greatest lies of all time is that we are free and autonomous people. We are not. Human beings are either slaves to sin, or slaves to Christ. Slavery to sin results in everlasting death. Slavery to Christ results in true freedom and everlasting life. But it is a paradox. Jesus says for us to have life we must die. To have freedom, we must be bound to Him. To really live is follow Him.

In calling Peter and Andrew, Jesus is saying, “Follow Me. I will make your life worth living. I will change your whole perspective. I will show you a treasure that is greater than can be imagined, a treasure so valuable that when a man found it in a field, he sold all he had so that he could buy that field. Follow Me. Give up everything you have to come learn from me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Fishers of Men

Jesus called them to be fishers of men. These guys knew about fishing. They were successful businessmen. Jesus called them to fulfill Jeremiah 16:16 ““Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.”

The context of this passage in Jeremiah is that the Lord God would restore Israel. Let’s hear the verse in context from verse 14: “‘Therefore behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that it shall no more be said, “The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,” but, “The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.” For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers. ‘Behold, I will send for many fishermen,’ says the Lord, ‘and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes. And first I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable and abominable idols.’”

We know from history that God indeed scattered the Israelites all over the world in the Babylonian exile. Many returned, but some did not. Jesus has come to call the people back, He is the Lord, who “lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.” This is why Mark starts Jesus’ ministry in the north, in Galilee. And to do this work, He would send for many fishermen and hunters. Here Jesus referred only to the fishermen, because He was talking to fishermen.

And His plan in calling them was to transform them, from sinners into saints. He would train them to be preachers of the gospel. That’s the way of Jesus’ work. He preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God. We must never think that Jesus came to bring healing to people. All His healing, all His miracles, point to His Kingship, His Lordship, His authority over all creation. They accompanied His preaching and teaching. God still uses preaching and teaching today. We do not need fancy things, we do not need focus groups, or felt-need identifiers. We simply need to keep preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. God uses what is foolishness to man, for His purposes, for the power is not in my words, my preaching, the Power is in the presence of God working in and through us all!

When Jesus calls, He demands everything. This requires an immediate cost.

Immediate Cost

In verse 18, they immediately left their nets and followed Him. This is amazing, when you think about it. Wasn’t Peter a go-getter? No one had to ask what was on Peter’s mind, right? He told you without asking. Peter was headstrong, and He did what He wanted. Andrew was the same. Brothers were often alike. These guys were successful, but they immediately left everything, all they had built up, all their hopes and dreams, the family business, everything, and followed Jesus. This was a sovereign call of God, and God the Holy Spirit came upon them, and He moved them to follow Jesus.

Then right after, Jesus calls James and John, the sons of Zebedee. These guys weren’t lightweights either. They were called the sons of thunder. Their dad was Zebedee, married to Salome, possibly the sister of Mary, Jesus’ mom. These four men were in partnership together, with Zebedee. I wonder what Zebedee was like, to be referred to as Thunder. Did he have a loud booming voice? Was he the guy who fished in the most extreme weather, coming as it were, out of the thunderstorm with a full day’s catch? Did James and John carry themselves like their dad?

Just like Peter and Andrew, James and John immediately “left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went after Him.” Can you put yourself in Zebedee’s place for a moment? Can you imagine your sons taking off, leaving the family business that you’d worked your whole life building up, to follow some rabbi? It is incredible obedience from these four men. God saw them, and He chose them.

Immediate obedience, seen in all the calling of the disciples, look at Mark 2:14 “As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.” Each of them, immediately dropped everything and followed Him.

Why? Because of who Jesus is. He is God. John 15:16 “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”

Jesus is indeed king. He is King and has authority over Satan. He is King and has authority over sin. He is King and has authority over sinners to call them to Himself. Jesus sees you. He has called you. Are you ready to let go of everything else and follow Him? As abruptly as Peter and Andrew, James and John left their father’s business, left their business, are you ready to follow Jesus, letting go of your past, your worries, your fears, your hurts, your cares? Trust Jesus to conquer Satan. Trust Jesus to conquer sin. Trust Jesus to see you and call you to follow Him. You cannot, on your own, you can with Christ in you. Amen.