Where and How It All Began, Part 3

Today, on Insight for Living, from Chuck Swindoll. Some of you are right at the crossroads of your life. You're right there mending nets and casting nets, and you think you're going to be doing that the rest of your life?

No. But if you very sensitively listen to His voice, you will hear His call. How did Jesus, very early in His public ministry, convince a salty crew of fishermen to drop their nets on the shore and follow Him? That dramatic scene is described for us in the fourth chapter of Matthew. And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll will help us see the magnitude of this pivotal moment for each of the disciples and its relevance to our lives today. Maybe you, like Peter, Andrew, James, and John, have begun to hear God calling you to a new adventure.

Chuck titled today's message, Where and How It All Began. Jesus knew that for His message to penetrate, the maximum number of people He needed to go were it was dark. Many people are called to serve in places of gross darkness.

We should faithfully remember them in prayer. It doesn't mean they're not modern places. It doesn't mean there are not a lot of people. It means there is little spiritual truth. A gathering like the size of this church would be unheard of in those places of darkness. The truth would not be taught, would not be preached, would not be proclaimed. In some places, you would be killed for declaring a truth that would differ from those who are in the leadership of the darkness. He's led to those places because it was there that would be the most response to His message.

And you notice His message? Verse 17, change your mind regarding sin. The word repent, metanoeo, has to do with the change of the mind. Turn your thinking around. You've been moving in one direction. Turn around as you trust in me and go in the other direction. Change your mind. Change the direction of your life. Repent of your sins.

Turn to God. The kingdom of heaven is near. Maybe there were those who climbed out of the darkness and said, I've been waiting all my life to hear of something like this. I long to know what it is to have peace within, to have the assurance of eternal life.

I long to know what it is to be a part of the kingdom of heaven, to have a kingdom life lived on this earth so that I could please the one that I'm worshiping, knowing by His grace He's accepted me into His family. What a privilege Jesus had. Don't miss the fact that we read in verse 17, Jesus began to preach. Familiar to all of us.

Not familiar to them. They had never heard preaching like this in their life. They've sat through the monotonous lectures of the scribes and the demands and legalism of the Pharisees. They'd gone through the schools of the synagogue and been bored through much of that. But now they're listening to an individual who has a magnetic, supernatural appeal. We read in Matthew 7 29 that Jesus spoke with authority not as the scribes. Preaching has an arresting quality to it. It goes far beyond the personality of the preacher.

You find yourself unable to go to sleep. You find yourself riveted to the truth as it's revealed in the print on the page of the scriptures and you wonder what it is. They'd never heard anything like it there in Galilee where they had been in a shroud of darkness and in the grip of sin.

And here comes one who says there's a better way to live than that. And he preaches the good news to them. Now it gets fascinating when you get to verse 18. Because in the midst of this itinerary preaching where he goes from one place to another, there is no church formed. There is no pulpit. He does all of his work for the most part outside except when he preaches in the synagogue. Usually there he's teaching and there's a difference. When you preach, you preach to the will for the purpose of bringing a change in the mind and heart of the listener.

When you teach, you're giving information to feed the mind so that there's an understanding of what the truth means. But now he comes to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We've already seen it on our map. And he's walking along the shoreline and he sees two brothers, Simon, Paul, Peter, and his brother Andrew. If you read in John's Gospel, you'll read where they first encountered Jesus. So this is not the first. They've heard him before, but he's never offered this invitation before. Look at the calling.

Imagine it. They were throwing their net into the water for they fished for a living. That's the way they fished back then. He sees them with their nets and he takes advantage of that visual by saying, follow me and I will show you how to fish for people. You're good at fishing for fish.

I want to cultivate within you an understanding of how to attract people into the net of salvation. Please observe they left their nets at once and followed him. I don't know about you, but I find that fascinating. That's their occupation.

That's how they make a living. Their family is living nearby in the town of Capernaum or one of the villages there on the shoreline. But Jesus says, I'm going to begin a work and I want you to be a part of that special band. And he extends a call and notice the next couple of men. Verse 21, a little farther up the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee. In this case, they're repairing their nets. They often snag on the bottom of the body of water and they have to repair them and they're now mending the nets. And he says to them, come. He called on them and immediately they followed him leaving the boat with their father, the boat and their father behind.

That's quite a statement. I want to journey here with you with a little imagination. I want you to remember when someone offered you salvation, the message of salvation. In my case, it was my mother. I remember her telling me of Jesus when I was a little boy. I didn't sense any call to ministry. All I heard was that Jesus died for me and paid the complete penalty for my sin and I could trust him and have eternal life.

You may have heard about it from some classmate at school. Maybe some college ministry that was going on in the campus. Maybe some preacher you listened to as you were a visitor at a church. Maybe a crusade led by Billy Graham or some other evangelist.

All callings are different, but they have that quality, that arresting quality that says, follow me, trust me, rely on me. You know what's interesting here? There's no pension plan that Jesus offered. There isn't.

There is no insurance. I mean, this isn't a resume for them to get another job. They're not hired to follow him.

They're called. No one is hired into the family of God. You're called to serve Christ. I remember in my case, I'm in the Marine Corps.

I'm 8,000 miles from home and family. And thanks to the ministry of a man named Bob Newkirk with the Navigators, he and I are involved in all kinds of activities. And I remember one time he put me on the back of a flatbed truck and I led songs and he did the preaching. And the next time we met, I did the preaching and he led the singing. It was better the first time around, by the way.

He was a better preacher by far. And anyway, I remember thinking after all this was over, I would love to do that. I would love to do that. I told Bob that and he said, you may be called to do that. And I thought, what a chance me of all people. And over time, I realized I was. And I remember writing Cynthia back home and I said, you're not going to believe this.

But when I'm out, I want to find a way to get to Dallas Seminary and begin there. You know what she said? No way.

No, I'm kidding. She did not say that. She said, I am thrilled.

That's great. Never once asked, what are we going to make? Where are we going to go? What's the insurance plan? What kind of pension will we have?

Never once. She said, let's do it. So we pack up. I think we had all of seventy five dollars in our great bank account. We moved to Dallas, moved into little campus apartments, hot and cold running rats, all the benefits of home. Thank goodness they destroyed it when they built the library there on top of it. But back then it was a place where we live. Little tiny place. Never once did we fuss about how small it was. Never once.

We had one living room that was a living room, bedroom, dining room, all together room, study room, had a little room off of that for the baby when we began our family and had a little kitchen and a little tiny, tiny bathroom. You had to go outside to change your mind. I mean, it was really little. You're sitting on the toilet. You've got to pull your feet off. Probably shouldn't go into all of that.

But anyway, they're really, really small. Sorry, honey. I got carried away there.

But you know what? It was fabulous. Why? We were called. It was a calling.

It was a throw. I didn't know one faculty member, not one new me. I knew a handful of classmates. And for the most part, unless they came from Houston, where I'd come from, I didn't know any of them. I didn't have any idea of what I was getting into.

No idea of the number of books that I'd be reading. No idea of the direction would be going. But I was called. Had no clue as to my future. But I was called.

Like Peter, James, John. I wasn't qualified to do any of that. I look back on that and I just shake my head thinking how gracious God was to do that in my life. He had visions that I never had. He had plans that he never told me about. Just one day and week and month to the next. Just as we walked with him.

One place to another. And before you get all impressed with these disciples, let me kind of bring it down a notch. Robert Coleman has written a wonderful book called The Master Plan of Evangelism, which you really need to read if you want to study how Jesus put his 12 together. In the book he says, what's most revealing about the men at the first is that they don't impress us as being key men. For the most part, they're common laboring men, probably having no professional training beyond the rudiments of knowledge necessary for their vocation. None of them could have been considered wealthy. They had no academic degrees in the arts and philosophies of their day. They were raised in the poor section of the country around Galilee. They would surely be considered a rather ragged aggregation of souls. They were impulsive, temperamental, easily offended, and had all the prejudices of their Galilean environment. Yet Jesus saw in these simple men the potential of leadership for the kingdom.

Great. They were indeed unlearned and ignorant according to the world's standard. But they were teachable.

They were honest. Willing to confess their need, their hearts were big. What is perhaps most significant about them was their sincere yearning for God and the realities of his life. The superficiality of the religious life about them had not obsessed their hope for the Messiah. They were fed up with hypocrisy, fed up with the ruling aristocracy. Some of them had already joined the revival movement of John the Baptizer. These men were looking for someone to lead them.

Jesus can use anyone who wants to be used. That's the thing that makes this book so exciting. You're right here on the page. You're right there. Your name isn't there. My name isn't there.

But in principle, that's where we are. You're not fishing. You're not casting nets.

You're not mending nets. You're working in some area of life that's your profession or maybe your occupation. You have no idea what his plan for your life is. He steps into your life in a number of different ways and he reaches you with a message. It's called your calling and you're drawn to him.

And you cannot say no. I know a man who left a very excellent engineering profession and went into ministry. I don't know what his salary must have been.

One half of one third of one fourth of what he used to make. Never once complained about the change in salary. When you're called, the money doesn't matter. That's not significant. When you're called, the response of people doesn't matter.

That's insignificant. All you know is that the news of Christ spreads into lives and you have the privilege of communicating it. In this case, news, verse 24, spread around about Jesus.

And look at this. Along with the message he preached and taught, he heals all of those who come with every kind of sickness or disease, those who were demon-oppressed or epileptic or paralyzed. He healed them all. Large crowds followed him wherever he went. Now admittedly, there were some that lingered in the crowd that were just curiosity seekers, but not all. Can you imagine the eyes of Peter and Andrew and James and John as they stood in the shadows and watched the master they were following do his work of healing? No gimmickry, no money exchanged, no big signs, no big gathering, just people from coming all around out in the open and they bring all of these who were sick. And we read at the end of verse 24, he healed them all.

People from Galilee, from Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and east of the Jordan. Look at that. Look at that. A few weeks before nobody even heard of him. A few days before there weren't even close followers. But now there's a small band, there's a gathering of those who will make up the team that will turn the world upside down. They're called his disciples. They're people who have been called to do a unique work. We will have missed the point of all of this if we leave today thinking that calling is something that occurred only in the days of Jesus.

It still goes on. Some of you are resisting the call. You're more concerned about the stuff of life than you are the substance of the call. Os Guinness' book The Call is a marvelous work to read. I read a couple of chapters of it yesterday and then early this morning.

I think it should be required reading. He writes there's more to God's call than simply sending us out. Certainly it ends by sending us out, but it begins by singling us out.

Singling us out. We're called by name and it continues by standing us up as we respond to the call of our Creator. We rise to our feet not only physically but also in every sense of the word to be the people. He alone knows we're capable of being. God's call resonates in us at depths no other call can reach and draws us on and out and up to heights.

No other call can scale or see. Then he asks, do you long to rise to the full stature to which you were created to be, to be your utmost for his highest? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth.

Answer his call. I will testify to this when you do, you will wonder how you could have ever, ever considered doing anything else. Many of you should remain exactly where you are, but not all. Some of you are right at the crossroads of your life. You're right there mending nets and casting nets and you think you're going to be doing that the rest of your life?

No. Not if you very sensitively listen to his voice. You will hear his call. It won't be audible.

You will just know in your heart. I cannot keep doing what I've been doing all my life. I now must carry out his work and I must do it from here on for his glory wherever he may choose to use me. Isn't it remarkable what God has done since 1998 in this little church?

No one is more surprised than I am. Same guy that walked in the hallway of that country club thinking that was another group for another group for another group of people not realizing that was all part of this plan. Had no strategy, had no written guidelines for how to begin it. It's messy. It's exhausting. There are days you wonder if you can keep going. There were times when I decided this is enough. I quit.

I remember seeing that laying in bed one Saturday night. Times were tough and difficult occasion. Things were happening and I sat up in bed and I said tomorrow I resign. Cynthia says lie back down.

No I'm serious. Tomorrow I'm quitting. No you're not. I said you have no idea and I began to cry. She put her hand on my back. She said just lie back down. Just settle down. I have two words for you. Okay?

Shut up. Oh she said them with compassion. She said you're not quitting. God didn't start this to witness our quitting. We're not quitting. How grateful I am and I realized you can't quit a call. But God has begun.

He'll complete. I'd like you to bow your heads. I'd like you to close your eyes. I'd like you to meet with the Lord very quietly for the next few moments. You sure you know Jesus? You absolutely sure you've changed directions? Are you sure that he's the one who is enthroned in your life, not yourself? If you're not sure, hey, this is the moment. Trust him. Just tell him you trust him. You want to give him your life.

To do with it whatever he may wish to do. Maybe you do know the Lord but you've been fighting his plan. Because you can't figure it all out and you can't get all the ducks in a row. You're thinking well it can't be his plan.

God doesn't spell it all out on the front end. He asks you to trust him, to take the first step. He'll take you to the next one and the next.

So right where you're sitting, answer that call. Take his offer. Trust him. Free us from fear our Father. Take away that longing within us for tangible security.

Drive far from us any interest in leaning on our own understanding. And bring us face to face with the joy of serving you wherever you lead us. Honor your name Father for those who today trust in your son and those who accept the call.

Set them apart for a special work. Lead them clearly in the way they should go. I pray in the name of Jesus for his sake. Father once said, Amen. Where and how it all began. That's the title Chuck Squindoll assigned to our study in Matthew chapter 4. This is Insight for Living and in the event you missed any program in this brand new study of Matthew, remember you can catch up by streaming the audio directly from the Insight for Living website.

You'll find all the information at insightworld.org. With much of our world in turmoil over the global pandemic, fragile economy and political unrest, nothing seems more timely than a study about Jesus, the King of Kings. This series, which is a celebration of Israel's long awaited King, will take us through the entire book of Matthew and in the coming weeks and months, Chuck will guide our audience through Matthew's account of Jesus' entire ministry on earth, right through his parting words, commonly known as the Great Commission.

Along with the daily program, Insight for Living Ministries has prepared a number of additional resources for you and each one is designed to help you fall more in love with Jesus. For example, Chuck's written a very popular devotional book called Perfect Trust. No matter what fears are standing in your way right now, Chuck's insightful book will help you overcome those barriers to knowing God's best for you. To purchase a copy of Perfect Trust, go to insight.org slash offer. Finally, along with the release of this brand new series on the daily program, Chuck has recently completed his verse-by-verse commentary on the book of Matthew as well.

It comes in two hardbound volumes. Alongside the verses in Matthew, you'll gain access to charts, maps, photos, and of course Chuck's practical observations. To purchase Swindoll's Living Insights commentary on Matthew, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., call 1-800-772-8888. That's 1-800-772-8888.

Or go online to insight.org slash offer. Be sure to listen again tomorrow when Chuck Swindoll describes the sermon of all sermons right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Where and How It All Began, was copyrighted in 2015 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.