Follow Me

I have your Bibles with you today. Turn with me, if you would, to the Gospel of Mark chapter 1. And we're going to be looking at verses 14 through 20 this morning.

And I will make you become fishers of men. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning with hearts that are heavy, Lord, over some of our people that are going through sickness. Father, we pray for our sister, Joni Presley, who's in the hospital and at this point in time on a ventilator.

Oh Jesus, you need your touch. We ask Heavenly Father that you reach down from heaven as our great physician, that Lord, you minister to her and help her to recover. I pray, Heavenly Father, that you'd be with her husband, Randy, and comfort him.

Remind him day by day, Lord, that his wife is in your sovereign hand, that you're going to take care of her. I pray, Heavenly Father, for our others who are suffering with COVID, Nancy Starcher and Jenny Bracefield and Eric and Rachel Hampton. I pray, Lord, for Jay Krestar's family now as they've experienced the death of his brother Don.

And I pray for Jay as this coming week he's going to be taking part and speaking at that funeral service, give him the ability to get through that difficult, difficult time. Heavenly Father, today we are privileged to take a look at how Jesus started his earthly ministry. He used no gimmicks, no programs, no advertising to call people to himself. He just preached. He commanded people to repent and he preached the pure, simple gospel. In this passage we see his call to discipleship, a two-word call, follow me. And we see four men drop everything that they're doing and walk away from their careers and their security and with holy excitement commit to follow Jesus even to the cross. Lord, the call to follow you is not relegated to the apostles. You have called all believers to follow you.

May the calling of Peter and Andrew and James and John light a fire under us today. May we follow you with a reckless abandon. May we hunger after what you hunger for. May we love what you love. May we minister like you minister. Teach us to follow you so that we will look like Jesus. Father, keep my lips from error this morning. May this message exalt Christ and edify this congregation, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. After Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, he was driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit and there he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. Folks, Satan is a creature. He is a created being.

God created him as an angel, but when he sinned, when he said, I will lift myself up above the stars of heaven, I will be like the most high God, he became Satan. The adversary, the enemy of God. Is he powerful? Yes. Is he intelligent? Absolutely. Is he an enemy that we should respect?

Without a doubt. But he is not God. He is a creature and we need to remember that. He is not omnipresent.

He can't be everywhere at the same time. So, most of our battles that we do in the spiritual realm are not done with Satan himself, but are done with lesser spiritual beings, demons. When it came to dealing with Jesus, Satan did not relegate the responsibility of temptation to a lesser demon. He took that responsibility himself and he gave Jesus everything he had, trying the best that he could to defeat him.

He jumped on him with both feet. And it didn't happen just there in the wilderness for those 40 days, but all the way through Jesus' earthly ministry. Hebrews 4 verse 15, the scripture says that Jesus was tempted in all points, even as we are, but yet was without sin. So, before Jesus would start his public ministry, he was toughened and humanly and emotionally strengthened by the trials that he went through. And then when those trials were over, it wasn't long before he began his public ministry. This is where Jesus started today as we look at it, at his public ministry. I will never forget the first time that I preached in a pulpit. It was at Calvary Baptist Church in Charlotte. And I had been a Christian only for four years. I didn't have any seminary experience at that time.

I was going to go to seminary, but it was going to be two years on into the future. I had taught Sunday school for a couple of years and I had been teaching a lot on Wednesday night, the Bible study there at the church. But the pastor, Reverend Thurman Stone, came to me and he said, Doug, he said, I want you to preach the sermon Sunday morning.

I said, me? And he said, yes, you. He said, God's called you to preach and you need to get started. I had heard people before say that when they got ready to preach that they felt like they had butterflies in their stomach.

Well, I felt like I had water buffaloes in mine. I had never been that nervous before, but I got up to preach that morning and finally worked my way through that sermon and I was so glad to have finished it up. And when I walked off, I forgot that they had taken the microphone. It was hooked up to the pulpit and I just walked right off and about hung myself and just about threw myself to the floor. And the congregation all got a big laugh.

So that was my start. And it was awkward. I was nervous.

And I was praying, Lord, are you sure this is what I'm supposed to be doing? Not so with Jesus. Jesus had a shaky start. From day one, his ministry was perfect, powerful, and penetrating.

Kent Hughes described it this way. He said Jesus had it all together, perfectly so from the very first. His logos, which is his word, was perfect.

Whatever he said was absolutely true. His exegesis of Scripture was flawless. His application of spiritual truth was the most penetrating in all of history, as we see in such discourses as the Sermon on the Mount. His ethos, the kind of person he was, was without parallel in the human race. The tone of his voice, the expression on his face, the integrity of his eyes flowed with truth.

His pathos came from a heart absolutely convinced of man's need, absolutely loving, and absolutely determined. There never has been anyone as truly passionate as Christ in all human experience. Three points that I want to share with you in this passage today. Number one is simply the gospel. Look with me at verse 14. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.

As I've shared with you several times, the gospel of Mark is the shortest gospel that we have. And if all we had was the gospel of Mark, then we would not have the Sermon on the Mount. We would not have the parable of the prodigal son. We would not have the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers and only one of them coming back to thank him. And we would not have the high priestly inaccessory prayer, the prayer of Jesus to his Father concerning us.

We wouldn't have all that. But neither would we have something here that is left out of this passage. In this passage, it would seem like Jesus went immediately to Galilee after his baptism or after his being tempted in the wilderness.

But that's not what happened. What we find out from the other gospels is there was about a six months time where Jesus stayed in Jerusalem and he did not leave until after the arrest of John the Baptist. Now why in the world would John the Baptist be arrested? In Mark chapter 6, we have the story.

It says, I want you to picture this. John the Baptist goes to the king of Israel. It says Herod Anabas. He gets right up in his face and he rebukes him for his adultery and for his breaking up a marriage. He committed adultery with his own brother Philip's wife and stole that wife away and took her, Herodias, for himself. He did this not once but several times. He went courageously right up to the king, the most politically powerful man in Israel, right in his face and rebuked him for his adultery and for breaking up a marriage. Folks, where is the courage in preachers today? Why is it that preachers won't call sin, sin?

Oh, we can't do that today. You've got to be kind and loving. Would it have been kind and loving for John the Baptist to let King Herod just go off in his adultery as if he was never going to have to give an account for it?

Let me tell you something. This act of John was a loving, loving act because he was concerned about Herod's soul. And I want you to know that loving act sent him to jail and then later sent him to his own death. Well, after John's arrest, Jesus went to Galilee. Galilee is up in the northern region of Israel.

It is a place where the common people lived. There were preachers and fishermen and shepherds and carpenters that lived there. Jesus lived in Galilee.

He was raised there and grew up there and stayed there all of his life until the time he was 30. And he stayed there and he worked there in Nazareth. In this passage, we are told that Jesus went from one town to the next and he went preaching.

And the ministry absolutely exploded with power and spiritual fruit just absolutely blossomed. Mark tells us that Jesus preached the gospel of God. Folks, the world hates the gospel because of its exclusivity. The gospel rejects every other religion and declares that every other religion is false. The gospel says that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life and that no man comes to the Father but by him.

The gospel proclaims that there is no sin so great that the blood of Jesus can't wash it away and there is no sin so small that without the blood of Jesus that person wouldn't be stopped from going to hell. It was a message that was so powerful, so convicting, so mesmerizing that it could not be ignored. Now, does that mean that everybody came to Christ and heard Jesus preach?

Absolutely not. But everybody listened and nobody was able to ignore it. Folks, the power of Jesus' preaching was unbelievable. 1993, I went to Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenville Theological Seminary for a seminar. And the speaker that day was Jay Adams.

I'd never heard him before. I'd heard some really good speakers. I'd gone to seminary. I'd heard some great preachers in crusades. I'd heard some very elegant men that would share things from God's Word that were really, really good. But this day, Jay Adams was preaching or teaching on how Jesus taught.

There's only 25 of us that were there. We sat around a big table, 25 young pastors, and Jay Adams began to expound the Word of God on how Jesus taught. He taught for four straight hours. And when he finished up, couldn't believe he was finished.

It seemed like about 10 minutes. I mean, I was absolutely amazed at what had gone on there. And I remember just going back with Steve Stout, who wrote up there with me. He's a pastor friend of mine. And as we were going back, I said, Steve, I don't think I've ever been as mesmerized by teaching in the Word of God as I was today. And I said, I know this might almost sound blasphemous, but I think what I experienced today was just a little teeny bit of what the people who heard Jesus experienced. Absolute power, absolute truth that just gripped your heart and did something to you down on the inside. Folks, when Jesus preached, you might not like it, but you listened.

You had no recourse but to listen. The gospel of Jesus penetrated hearts. What did people say about it? They said, Jesus doesn't preach like the others. He doesn't preach like the scribes and the rabbis. He preaches with authority. And they said, we have never heard preaching like this before.

So put yourself in the picture. And I want you to feel the excitement. Everybody's talking about this new preacher.

You can just feel it in the air. All right, point two is the time. Look at verse 15. And saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So what did Jesus preach? He preached repentance and faith. The word repentance is a Greek word metanoia. It means to make a U-turn. You turn from your sin and you turn to Christ.

This is what John MacArthur said here. He said, Jesus' message stands as an example for all who would seek to preach and teach faithfully today. Preachers are not called to analyze the culture, to give politically charged speeches, or design new gimmicks for persuading the audience. Rather, they are called to proclaim the same message that Jesus himself preached, the good news of eternal salvation that comes from God.

R.C. Sproul said, Much of what passes for evangelism today concerns me. People say if you want to have a personal relationship with Jesus, then come forward to this altar. Raise your hand, sign a card, or pray the sinner's prayer.

All those techniques together add up to cheap grace. Because what is noticeably absent from these attempts to evangelize is any serious call to repentance. No one can enter the kingdom of God without repentance, without fleeing from sin and putting his trust in Christ alone. This is how our Lord himself did evangelism. He announced the gospel, then he said in essence, Your response must be to repent and believe. How did Jesus say it? Jesus said the time is fulfilled. In other words, his coming to the earth and starting to minister the gospel marked the turning point in salvation history.

Now what does that mean? Does that mean in the Old Testament that God saved people in a different way? That with Moses and Joshua and Daniel and David and those boys, that they got saved back then by keeping the law.

No, they didn't. Nobody got saved by keeping the law because nobody has ever kept the law but one, and that is Jesus Christ himself. How did they get saved in the Old Testament?

They got saved by repenting of their sin and acting in faith in what? In the future Messiah to come. So here comes Jesus on the scene and what does Jesus say?

He said the time of waiting is over. I am the Messiah. I have come. I am going to live a perfect sinless life. I am going to perfectly keep the law of God. And then I'm going to die as your substitute. My blood is going to wash away your sins, past, present and future. Then I'm going to impute to you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And then I am going to be resurrected from the dead on the third day to break the curse of death on you and you will have eternal life.

Does that not excite your soul? That's what Jesus is saying. Jesus says the time is fulfilled. Now the word time here is a Greek word karos.

And it doesn't mean calendar time or clock time. That's the word kronos. This word karos means this.

Karos means a fixed point in history for an event to occur. This is what Paul was talking about in Galatians chapter 4 verse 4 and 5. When he says, But when the fullness of time has come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. In other words, Jesus' ministry took place according to God's sovereign timetable.

A perfect timetable. This was the hour for which the world had been waiting. This is the hour when the Old Testament prophecies were coming to pass.

The new king was initiating his kingdom. Now folks, over 4,000 years have passed by since the gospel was first presented. When was the gospel first presented? In the Garden of Eden. And it was presented as God the Father spoke to Satan. And we call this the first gospel or the proto-Uingelion. And what did God say to Satan? God said this, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head. So Jesus proclaims his ministry by saying the kingdom of God is at hand. Third, point three, the call to discipleship. Look at verse 16 through 17. Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee. If you have never seen the Sea of Galilee, it is absolutely beautiful. When I was there in 1977, I remember our guide pointing us to the Sea of Galilee and saying, That is the most beautiful body of water on the face of the earth. He said, I think that God made the seven seas for everybody else.

He made the Sea of Galilee for himself. The Sea of Galilee has several names in the scripture. It's called the Sea of Tiberias, sometimes called the Sea of Chenareth, sometimes called the Sea of Gennesaret. The word Chenareth is a Hebrew word, and it comes from the root word for harp.

The word Gennesaret is a Greek word, and the root word it comes from is harp. The Sea of Galilee is formed in the shape of a harp. It's 13 miles long, it's 7 miles wide, and it's 690 feet below sea level. The Sea of Galilee is the lowest body of water on planet earth. Have you ever thought about the difference between Galilee and the Dead Sea?

Very, very different. The Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake, and it is absolutely beautiful, but it teems with life. It has plant life, it has all kind of fish. It has many different kinds of fish. One of the primary kind of fish that it has is called the St. Peter's fish. We call it tilapia today.

We find it out all over the world. And Josephus says that in Jesus' day, when he walked the shore, there were at least 250 shipping boats, fishing boats, that were around the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So many, many fishermen that were there, they used fishing as a lucrative business. The Dead Sea is about 30 miles south of the Sea of Galilee. The Dead Sea is not freshwater, it is filled with salt and minerals. As you ride toward the Dead Sea, you'll smell this real pungent odor. It's the odor of sulfur, and there's nothing living in the Dead Sea.

No plant life, no fish, nothing. Very buoyant. You can see people out close to the middle of the water, and they're up to about their chest.

You think, how are they doing that? The water just holds you up. I walked out into the Dead Sea, and when I came back out, I looked at my legs, and they looked like somebody had painted them white, just absolutely covered with salt. So why is there such a stark difference between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea? Well, the Sea of Galilee has the Jordan River flowing into it, so that's the inlet.

And that water comes from the mountains where there's snow and rain that flows down. It flows right down the Jordan River and flows right into the Sea of Galilee. But there is also, at the bottom of the south of the Sea of Galilee, an outlet. And the Jordan River flows right out of it, and it goes all the way down to the Dead Sea, and there's an inlet where the water comes into it, but there's no outlet, not at all.

Folks, what a powerful picture this is. Where there is an inlet and an outlet, there is life. Plant life, fish, all this teeming life there, when there's an inlet and an outlet, that's the Sea of Galilee.

But where there's just an inlet and there's no outlet, there's nothing but stench and death. You know what that is? That's a picture of us.

Here's the way it's supposed to be. Blessings of God in, and then blessings of God out to others. Life from God in to us, and life of God out to others.

Fruit of God in to us, and fruit of God out to others. Well, that's where Jesus is. He's at that beautiful Sea of Galilee. Verse 16 tells us that as Jesus was walking by the sea, he saw Andrew and Peter.

Now, this is not the first time he's seen them. On the day of his baptism, several months before this, when John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Andrew was there, and Andrew heard that. He went and talked to Jesus. After talking to him just a little bit, he went and he got Simon, his brother, and he brought him back, and they talked together that day. But this is several months later. Jesus walked right up to these two and says to them, he says to them, I want you to follow me.

Throw away your secular occupations and come right now and follow me. But fish was the predominant meat in the ancient world. That's what most of the people ate. And so, these fishermen that would go out and catch these fish, they had a very loose place. Andrew and Peter had their homes there in Capernaum. James and John were working with them. Homes there had nice places. They made a lot of money, and things were going well with them. So Jesus went to these first two, Andrew and Peter, and he says, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

I want you to pay rapt attention for just a minute to how Jesus calls these men to be his disciples. Was this a general suggestion? No. Was it a hopeful question?

Like, hey, maybe you guys would like the opportunity to be on my team. Was it that? No. This was not a request from Jesus. It was an absolute command. Jesus was not asking for them to express their opinions or to give him their thoughts. Jesus was saying, Get up, leave your nets, leave your boats, leave your security, walk away from your homes, and follow me forever.

Wow. I'm your pastor. What if I were to come up to you today and get in your face and say to you, You're going to start teaching Sunday school.

It's going to start right now, and you're going to teach Sunday school for the rest of your life right here at Grace Church. Or if I were to say to you, We need some help with Monday night visitation. You're going to be here Monday night.

You're going to be here every Monday night until you die. What would you say? You say, Well, that might be a good idea, but Doug's being a little pushy. Well, when Jesus commanded Peter and Andrew to follow him, they did not see it as pushiness. They saw it as his power, his authority, and his right. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Jesus was no ordinary preacher. He was no ordinary rabbi. He was no ordinary religious leader. Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God. When Jesus called you to be his disciple, brothers and sisters, it was the greatest privilege that you ever had. And when Jesus called Peter and John to be his disciple, it took them about two seconds to count the cost. And they got up, and they followed him immediately. John MacArthur said, The implication of his command were extreme and unmistakable.

Abandon everything, including your career as fishermen, and follow me. The unique, non-negotiable, all-encompassing mandate from the King to his first chosen subjects. Now, we look at that today, and what do we say? We say, Wow, wow, I'm glad he doesn't do it like that anymore.

That would be tough. You know, now, all we have to do is just believe. We just have to believe in the facts of the gospel, that Jesus died on the cross, and that he rose from the dead, and that's all it is. We are saved by grace, and we don't have to worry about all this other stuff.

Hmm. Is that really true? It is true that we are saved by grace through faith plus nothing. It's God that does that. It's God that brings us to himself. It's God that regenerates us. Salvation is not just a head belief, though. It was James who said this, You believe in one God, thou doest well. The demons also believe and tremble.

Brothers and sisters, let me tell you something. If you have been regenerated, if you have been born again, then you have been called to be a disciple of Jesus. And what did Jesus say about his disciples? He said, If any man be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.

Wow. Does that mean that every true Christian has got to do like Peter and Andrew, that we've got to just abandon our careers to follow Jesus? No, Jesus doesn't call us all to do that.

He does not call us all to do that. Jesus told Peter and Andrew that when they followed him, he would make them fishers of men. In other words, he would give them the ability to share the gospel. They would go out, they would share the gospel, and with many of these people, they would hear it, God would do a work in their heart, and then they would follow Christ as well.

They would be fishers of men. Verse 18 tells us what they did. Immediately, they left their nets and followed him. Then Jesus walked on down the shore a little bit. There was James and John. He walked up to them and said two words, Follow me.

Follow me. That's it. And they turned around, they gave their nets to their dad, Zebedee, and they took off with Jesus.

Verse 20 says that Zebedee was still in the boat. Can you imagine this elderly man? He's thinking he's got it all together.

He's thinking, well, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to retire. I've got two boys to take my business on, and everything's going to be great. And then Jesus speaks two words to them. They hand the nets to Zebedee. They say, Dad, we love you. Tell Mom we love her too.

And we're gone. Does that not excite your soul? I tell you what, that blesses my socks off. I want to follow Jesus that way. Quit worrying about what people think.

Quit worrying about security. Quit worrying about fitting in with the culture and just follow Jesus. People say, well, they were apostles. We're not apostles. They had special gifts. They had special callings. They had special purposes.

That's true. They were called to be apostles. You're not an apostle. You are no apostles today. But you are a disciple. If you've been regenerated, if you've been born again, he has called you to be his disciple. And if you're his disciple, what did Jesus say? Can a man be my disciple? Let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon entitled How to Become Fishers of Men.

He said this, When Christ calls us by his grace, we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what he can make of us. It did not seem a likely thing that lowly fishermen would develop into apostles. That men so handy with the net would be quite as much at home in preaching sermons and instructing converts.

One would have said, how can these things be? You cannot make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee. That's exactly what Christ did. And when we are brought low in the sight of God by a sense of our own unworthiness, we may feel encouraged to follow Jesus because of what he can make of us. All you who see in yourselves at present, nothing that is desirable, come you and follow Christ for the sake of what he can make out of you. Do you not hear his sweet voice calling to you and saying, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. As temptations arise in your life this week, and that's going to happen, I want you to think of two words, follow me. Next Sunday you wake up, you say, I don't know about going to church today. Follow me, Jesus said. You're at work and you get an opportunity to witness to somebody that you know needs the gospel but you feel kind of nervous about that. Jesus said, follow me.

You're on the computer and you hear about a website that's kind of just kind of maybe a little bit shady and you think, maybe I can go to that website and it's going to thrill my flesh, this will be so much fun. Jesus said, follow me. If you're a needy person that you know and you realize that that person's in great need and you feel like you probably need to help some, Jesus said, follow me. Folks, those are not requests. That is a command from our Lord.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this passage was deeply convicting to me. It forced me to look squarely at my commitment to follow Jesus. I have been called to walk holy before God in this world. I have failed way too often. It is a calling to die to self.

Myself is way too much alive. Lord, help us to see that following Jesus is not turning over a new leaf. It's not a commitment to be a better person. It's a desire to be like Jesus by dependence on Jesus. As we prepare for the Lord's Supper, we pray that we would experience your spiritual presence and the power that we would know that we have been with you. And you not only called your apostles to follow you, you called all your children to follow you. It's in the precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.