Following Jesus

Jesus withdrew his disciples to the sea and a great crowd followed from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Edomiah from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him, and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him. For he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. And whenever the unclean spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, You are the Son of God.

He strictly ordered them not to make him known. And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, they called to him. And he appointed twelve whom he also named apostles, that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons.

He appointed the twelve, Simon to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, John the brother of James to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is sons of thunder, Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus and Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before your throne today with a request, Lord, that we just ask that you minister to this morning. We pray for my friend and brother, Doug Colwell, who appears to be in the very last days of his life. We ask, Heavenly Father, that you be with him and may the transition to heaven be a sweet one. I pray for his wife, Alicia, Lord, that you would comfort her and give her peace that passes all understanding. Heavenly Father, I continue to pray for Nicole Lohse as she has discovered that one of the problems that she's dealing with is a horrible case of vertigo.

We pray, Heavenly Father, that you would give the doctors wisdom and how to help her through this and that it soon might be a thing of the past for her. Heavenly Father, today we have the privilege of studying the call of Jesus to those who should be or would be the 12 apostles. His call is wrapped up in two short words, follow me.

That was a call to the 12. It's also a call to us. Lord, there are too many in our world today who have a false sense of security about their salvation. They are convinced that they can claim heaven by just mentally acknowledging the facts of the gospel. They say, yes, sure, I'm saved.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. Father, it was James, the brother of Jesus, who warned us about that when he said in his epistle, thou believeth in one God, thou doest well, the demons also believe and tremble. Father, we need more than a demon faith. Father, help us to understand the calling of the gospel message. May we hear that message today and may we truly follow Jesus. We love you, Lord. Thank you for your love and goodness to us. And it's in Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. What is sanctification? Sanctification is a process, not a one-time event.

It comes from the Greek word hagios, that means to make holy. The apostle Paul in Romans chapter 8 and verse 29 said it this way, that we were for known and predestined in order that we might be conformed into the image of his son. And folks, that's what sanctification is. It is God conforming us into the image of Jesus. Now, I'm kind of a picture guy.

I like to think in pictures. And so when I think about the new Christian, the way I picture him is he's a big block of wood. And right there in the center of that wood is the image of Christ. Sanctification is God removing the rest of the wood and leaving that image of Christ. It starts off as your salvation. God takes his acts and he whacks off big portions of wood. It's sins that are like blatant immorality and drunkenness and habitual lying. And then as we grow in our faith, the Lord begins to deal with other areas. He takes his whittling knife and he whittles away sins like jealousy and bitterness. And then as we continue to grow, the Lord takes his heavenly sandpaper and he starts sanding down sins like the fear of man. Sins like not having a great enough desire for holiness. And as all that is taking place, we're becoming more and more like Jesus.

Now, we're never going to become perfectly in that image of Christ in this life because our sin nature has not yet been eradicated and will not be eradicated until we die. The sanctification is the process of God conforming us into the image of Jesus. Now, I know way too many professing Christians today who are not very concerned about sanctification.

They don't think it's really important. They think as long as I've been justified, which means that I have been forgiven of my sins and imputed the righteousness of Christ to me and my sins have been forgiven past, present, and future, I don't have to worry about how I live. I can do what I want to do.

I can live like I want to do. Sanctification does not matter. Folks, that's an absolute lie. If justification is certain, then sanctification... If justification is real, then sanctification is certain. Sanctification is not optional. Sanctification is the evidence in your life that true justification has taken place. Francis Schaeffer said it beautifully. He said, In sanctification there are degrees.

We have said that there are no degrees of justification because the guilt is absolutely gone. But in the question of our relationship to our Lord in the present time, there are degrees. There are degrees between different Christians. And we must also acknowledge degrees in our personal life at different times. The Christian life is not an unbroken, inclined plane. Sometimes it's up.

Sometimes we must all acknowledge if we are not deluding ourselves, it is down. While it is not possible to be more or less justified, it is possible to be more or less sanctified. Justification deals with the guilt of sin. Sanctification deals with the power of sin in the Christian's lives. And there are degrees in this. Salvation is not just justification and then a blank until death.

God never meant it to be so. Salvation is a unity, a flowing stream from justification through sanctification to glorification. How's the best way to go about this? I think it's this. Obey the commands of Jesus to every one of his disciples with two words. Follow me.

Follow me. Following Jesus means obeying his commands and trusting him for power, for wisdom, for guidance, and essentially for life. In Matthew chapter 16 verse 24, it was Jesus himself who said, if any man be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. Today we're looking at Jesus' call to the twelve apostles. His call to them and his call to you and me today is the same.

Follow me. I've got three points I want to share with you today as we get through this passage. And the first one is public acclaim. Look with me at verse 7 through 9. Jesus withdrew his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed him from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Edomiah, from the Jordan, from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him, and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him. Now if you remember from last week, Jesus had had a showdown with the Pharisees. And Jesus had made the Pharisees horribly mad because he gave them scripture to prove that his healing people on the Sabbath was not a sin at all.

In fact, it was a very good and very godly thing. And then after Jesus did that, he made a statement to them. He said, I, the Son of Man, am Lord of the Sabbath.

What was he saying? Jesus was saying, I am the one who gave the Sabbath commandment. I am the one who gave you the mandate. I am creator of heaven and earth. I am the one who created the earth and the heavens in six days, and on the seventh day rested, and I gave you that pattern to follow. I am God.

There is no other. I am God, and there is none like me. And when Jesus said that, the Pharisees were furious, and they conspired to kill him. But this was not God's time for Jesus to be arrested and crucified. So Jesus travels north to the sea. When people find out where he is, they come from everywhere, north, south, east, and west. They come there to meet with Jesus. Folks, this is probably the largest crowd that Jesus has dealt with yet.

And I think it's important to see what's going on. As he's standing there by the sea, people start pressing in. And with great wisdom, Jesus said, put a boat back behind me.

And he says, that boat's there in the water, and if they start coming in where they can crush me, I can get in the boat and protect my life. Now at this time, what disciples had already been called to follow Jesus? Seven of them. And that was Peter and Andrew, James and John, Philip and Nathaniel, and Matthew. As we look at this passage today, Jesus finishes out the number of twelve, and he calls five more of the disciples. Now why was this huge crowd gathering? I wish that I could say to you that they came to hear Jesus preach, wanted to hear his message. And if they heard his message and they would respond to that message by submitting themselves to his lordship, I'm afraid I can't tell you that's what was going on. They were much more concerned about his miracles than they were his message. They were concerned about not their souls, they were concerned about their bodies.

R.C. Sproul had some powerful things to say here. He said, we are like those people of Galilee. Our prayer requests tend to focus mostly on our physical problems and those of others we love. Of course, God made us physical beings, and we see throughout Scripture that God is deeply concerned with the well-being of our bodies. The body is not a mere prison for the soul. It is not something to be despised. As Christians, we believe that our bodies will be resurrected, reunited to our souls someday. So it is good for us to be concerned about the welfare of our bodies and of other people's bodies.

Let me tell you something. When I was sick with COVID pneumonia, I got so many calls from you guys, got so many letters, so many cards, and in every one of them, you relayed to me how you were praying for me. That touched my heart, and I deeply appreciate it. I believe that I healed as a result of your prayers. So don't ever think that praying for people's physical ailments is somehow shallow or unimportant, not a big deal.

Oh no, it is a big deal. Folks, it is biblical, it is godly, and it is right. But our bodies are not as important as our souls.

We have a prayer meeting on Wednesday night, and I take prayer requests, and as I'm taking those prayer requests, the great majority of them have to do with physical ailments. And as we're getting close to the end, there is one young lady who always raises her hand up, and she says, Pastor, can we pray for our lost loved ones? And when she says that, my heart jumps up in my throat. I want to run over there and give her a high five. I want to do a little dance. I get excited about that. Yes, yes, yes.

Pray for physical ailments, but pray even more fervently for the soul. So the crowds may not have had the best motives here, but they've gathered, and it's a big crowd. Scripture says that some of them came from Judea, around the Jerusalem area. Some of them came down further south from Edomiah. Some of them came from the east of the Jordan River.

Some of them came from the northwest up near Tyre and Sidon, and many of them were Gentiles. Let's take a moment to picture this in our minds. Thousands and thousands of people healed.

Thousands. The blind are seeing. The lame are walking.

The deaf are hearing. The lepers have been cleansed. Folks, 2,000 years before the development of modern medicine, Jesus is banishing diseases. He is healing so many people, people that didn't have arms, people that didn't have legs, people that were totally paralyzed, and these people are made totally and completely well. And Jesus didn't just get rid of some disabilities here and there.

I mean, there was a completeness here. Not only that, but there were hundreds of people, perhaps thousands of people that were there, and they had been indwelt by unclean, demonic spirits, and Jesus cast them out. Folks, the Lord's miracles were public, and they were undeniable.

That's why people kept coming. No one questioned whether these miracles were real. Everybody knew that they were real. Even his enemies knew. They couldn't deny it.

They could see it right there in front of them. They didn't want to give him the credit for it, though. They said the way Jesus is doing this is by the power of the devil. I do love the wisdom of Jesus here, for he tells the disciples, put that little boat behind him, and he says if it gets too rough, then you just kind of watch, and if they start pressing in, then I'll jump in the boat, you push the boat out, and that's what they did. They pushed Jesus out in the water.

They held the boat while they were standing in the water. Jesus sat down in the teaching position, and then Jesus began to teach. I have to think to myself that when Jesus did that, he said, yes, now I'm getting to do what God has called me to do, and he preached to that huge crowd. What did he preach? He preached the gospel. And he preached telling them how they could know for certain that they had eternal life.

That's what he did. Most of the people in that huge crowd were eager to experience his miracles, but when Jesus started preaching, his words pierced into their heart. And I think most of these people, when they came there that day, they would have said, yes, we are disciples of Christ, but when his words stung their heart, they walked away from him, at least many of them did, and some of them never to follow him again. In John chapter 6, verse 63 through 66, Jesus said this, It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who would not believe, and who it was who would betray him. And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it's granted to him by my Father.

After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Let me ask you something. Is that very thing not happening today? People love the idea of heaven when we die, and they hate the idea of repentance while we live. Our culture is now rejecting the Lord, it's rejecting the gospel, and it's rejecting the Bible.

Do you know why? Because there is no woke position in the Scriptures. Now folks, there is help. There's help for the homosexual, there's help for the transgender, there's help for the sexually immoral, there's help for the drunkard, there's help for the drug addict. But there is no help outside of repentance and surrender to the Lordship of Christ. Is that biblical? Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, 9-11. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. As such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. These pastors today that are telling people it really doesn't matter if you're homosexual, it doesn't matter that that's how you identify yourself, the Lord loves us all. Folks, the Lord is very, very explicit in telling us that that is one of the things that will send a person to an eternal hell.

We're not loving when we tell people, hey, it's okay. We are very loving when we tell people there's hope for you and that hope is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. God cannot only save you, he can change you and make of you a new creation.

Where old things are passed away and where all things are become new. How important is that? It doesn't matter what liberal theologians and woke pastors think. It doesn't matter what kind of spin they try to put on the scripture.

It doesn't matter what they think. The Bible is very clear, very explicit and it says unless you repent, you shall all likewise perish. Matthew chapter 7 verse 21, Jesus is speaking to a group and Jesus says, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. And he says, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven is the one who will know me and love me. He said on that last day, many will come to me saying, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name? Have we not cast out demons in your name? Have we not done many wonderful works in your name?

And Jesus will say to them, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. Notice he didn't say, I knew you at one time, but you lost it.

He said, I never knew you. You were never in a right relationship with me. Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish.

Let me stop right here and put this question to you. Is your repentance real? Is it genuine? Have you genuinely confessed your sin to the Lord? Have you genuinely repented of your sin?

Have you genuinely submitted your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ and put your trust in what he did for you on the cross and what he did for you through the resurrection? Jesus is talking to these people in Matthew chapter 21. And the day will come when they will stand before God in the final judgment. And Jesus says they're going to be shocked because they put their stock in the fact that they had done good works and the fact that they had done things in the name of the Lord.

And Jesus told them, no, no, no. If you are truly saved, there will be real repentance and there will be true trust in Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection. Does that mean perfection?

Absolutely not. We're not going to be perfected until we go to be with the Lord. But it does mean a hatred for your sin that leads to repentance and submission to Christ.

Folks, once you get there, this is what you need to understand. If that has happened in your life, it's not your works. It's God's grace. God did that, not you.

Not you. John 10 26, Jesus said, but you do not believe because you are not of my flock. Now, why do we believe? Not because of our wisdom, not because we're smart, not because we're spiritual.

We believe because the Holy Spirit of God enabled us to repent and believe. If that's so, and the Bible says that it is, then when we stand before him at the final judgment, who gets the glory? Not us, but Jesus. Jesus gets the glory.

I think that takes us to point two, power and authority. Look at verse 10 through 12. For he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirit saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, You are the Son of God, and he strictly ordered them not to make him known. I've been a Christian now for over 50 years, and I have read through the Gospels hundreds of times, but I have never been made so aware of the magnitude and the immensity of healing that Jesus did until I started going through this study that I'm teaching on right now in the Gospel of Mark.

Brothers and sisters, let me tell you something. The Bible is a living word. It is not like any other book. You can read any other book, put it down, walk away from it, and maybe think about it sometime, but it doesn't have that kind of effect on you. With the Bible, you can't put it down. God's children want to read it over and over again, and you can read a passage a hundred times, and then that hundred and first time you read it, God will show you something that you never saw before, and it will knock your socks off.

I mean, that is an absolute amazing thing. I don't think we really comprehend the healing ministry that Jesus is doing here. I mean, thousands and thousands of people day after day after day, and when these people came to Jesus for healing, if they got to Jesus and Jesus ministered to them, if they just touched Jesus, they were made well, all of them, time after time after time. There were some people who came and didn't get to be with Jesus while they were there, but they left, and they weren't healed, but everybody that Jesus ministered to was healed.

Now, I want you to just think about something for a minute. What if Jesus could show up here today, and he'd say to us, I want you to take me over to Northeast Hospital, and we're going up to the ICU. And so we walk over there, we go up to the ICU, there are people that are lying there in those beds, many of them are unconscious, many of them have already been told, and there are people who have been told that they're not going to make it. And Jesus goes from one bed to the next, just reaches over and touches them, and all of a sudden, all those people, every single person in the ICU, they jump up, they rip their gown off, they start putting on their clothes, and then they run out of there, leaping and hopping and praising Jesus.

That sounds crazy, doesn't it? That is exactly what's happening here in Mark chapter 3. It is an amazing thing. John MacArthur said this, Those creative miracles required the instant reversal of disease and decay and the immediate restoration of the human body. For Jesus, the creator of the universe, no sickness or disability proved too difficult to heal.

He instantly created new limbs and organs, restoring eyes, ears, heads, feet, bodies to full health and function. The people pressed tightly around Jesus, hoping just to touch him in order to be healed. Mark 6.56 reports, regarding a later point in Jesus' ministry, Wherever he entered villages or cities or countryside, they were laying the sick in the marketplaces and imploring him that they might touch the fringe of his cloak, and as many as touched it were being cured. They had learned that Jesus' power was so available and effective that merely putting a hand on him could produce instant and total healing. But Jesus not only healed, he also cast out demons. There would be people that were indwelt by demonic spirit. Jesus would cast them out. As they were leaving the human body, they would speak through that human body and they would make this statement, Jesus, you are the Son of God! And Jesus made them hush.

He made them be quiet. Why did Jesus do that? What they were saying there was true. They were acknowledging, and this is the greatest enemies of Jesus, that Jesus is exactly who he said he was, that he is the Son of God. They were acknowledging that. I think they were so afraid that they thought, wow, maybe Jesus will have mercy on us if we just acknowledge his deity. Jesus could have turned to the Pharisees and he could have said, see that?

You hear that? These are my worst enemies in the world. These are the fallen angels that followed Satan, and even they acknowledge that I am the Son of God. Jesus did not do that. He didn't need their testimony and he did not want their testimony. He had lots of other testimonies. One of those testimonies was God the Father, who spoke on the day of his baptism and several other times from heaven and said, this man is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

I think of the miracles that Jesus did. What a testimony to Jesus. Healings and resurrections that took place claiming Jesus is God. What about the testimony of the disciples? What did the disciples done? The disciples left everything they had. Lucrative jobs, a lot of money, families, fun, stuff that they were doing, and they walked away from it all, forsook it all, if they might go and follow Jesus completely.

Why did they do that? Because they knew that Jesus was the Son of God. They knew he was the great I Am. They knew that he was their Savior, their provider, their protector, and their defender, and they went off and they followed him completely.

What a testimony. Jesus' power and authority shouted to the world, let every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. All right, point three is personal appointments, verse 13 through 19. He went up on the mountain and he called to him those who he desired, and they came to him and he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.

He appointed the twelve, Simon to whom he gave the name Peter, James the son of Zebedee, John the brother of James to whom he gave the name Boanerges and his sons of thunder, Andrew and Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. The religious leaders of Israel rejected Christ and they made plans to kill him. The Sadducees hated Jesus and they wanted to take his life, because Jesus had cleansed the temple and he had exposed their greediness and their corruption. The Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus, because Jesus had made a mockery of their man-made commandments and rules, and he claimed to be God himself. Even the secular Herodians hated Jesus and they said, he's an agitator and he needs to die.

He needs to die. So when the leaders of Israel rejected Jesus, Jesus rejected them. He called them blind leaders of the blind. In John chapter 8 verse 44, Jesus said to the religious leaders, you are of your father, the devil. So Jesus turned his back on the religious establishment and he called to himself twelve representatives. These representatives that he called were not part of the religious establishment, they were laymen. Some of them were fishermen, one was a tax collector, one was a political zealot who was the enemy of Rome, but Jesus called twelve.

This was not an accident, it was not arbitrary, it was purposeful. Jesus called twelve. There were twelve tribes of Israel in the old covenant, now there are going to be twelve apostles in the new. This was a powerful message to Israel. John MacArthur said, by selecting twelve apostles, Jesus was sending an unmistakable message to the leaders of Israel that they were spiritually disqualified and therefore shut out of his kingdom.

He confronted them directly, publicly, and repeatedly with such denunciations. Instead of repenting their determination, the killing increased. Jesus knew their hatred would eventually lead to his death as the father had planned. The cross was looming nearer as Jesus set his face toward Calvary.

He also made preparations for what would happen after his death. Who would carry on the message of the gospel to the world after he, the Messiah, had been killed? The answer to that question started with these twelve men. None of these apostles came to Jesus with an application or a resume.

If they had, it would have been utterly, just utterly unimpressive. Most religiously, educationally, and socially, these twelve men that Jesus is calling to be his disciples were just unqualified commoners. And that was, to me, if Jesus selected them, that was a very powerful statement, wasn't it? Jesus was saying that he doesn't need those people who the world thinks are the elite.

He doesn't need that. Jesus can take common, everyday people. He can feed them the Word of God, fill them with the Spirit of God, anoint them with the power of God, and use them for the glory of God.

Verse 13 tells us that Jesus went up in the mountain. He called those whom he desired. Over in the Gospel of Luke, we are told that that night before this, Jesus got on his face the whole night seeking the Father's guidance about who he should call. Now, I told you a while ago that Jesus had already called seven. Now he calls five more, and this brings the number to twelve. And he commissions them all, not just as disciples, but as apostles. And what is he calling them to do? He calls them to go out and to teach and to preach and to cast out demons. Up to this point in time, Jesus has been spending a lot of time with the crowds, and now he's going to, at least a little bit, back away from the crowds, and he's going to spend his time focusing on these twelve disciples.

They're going to live with him day in, day out, 24 hours a day, they eat together, they sleep together, they're with each other all the time. Mark tells us that there were two reasons for this, and I think these are important. Number one, Jesus just wanted them to be with him.

Why? So they could watch him, so they could see how he operated, they could watch him teach, they could watch him pray, they could watch him minister to people, they could see his compassion for people who were hurting, they could learn from how he dealt with people with broken hearts and people who were going through depression, people who were going through hard times. And if they did that, then when Jesus ascended into heaven and was gone, then when these things came up in their lives and they saw it, they didn't have to wonder, well, what would Jesus do? They could remember back to what Jesus did do. Secondly, they were called to preach. They learned to preach like Jesus preached. How did Jesus preach? He preached the Word. He preached the Bible. He was faithful, not fanciful. He let people know, this book, this Bible, is not like any other book, it is the Word of God. It is infallible, it is inerrant in every jot and every tittle.

You can trust it. Then he did like Ezra the prophet, and he taught them how to make sense of the Word, explain to them, and open it up to what it really means. And then he applied it. He gave them illustrations, illustrations from life so they could understand how to live out these biblical principles. They learned to preach, listening to Jesus preach. Now, put yourself in the shoes of one of those disciples. You're sitting down on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and you're listening to Jesus preach what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus turns around and he looks you right in the eye. He said, you've heard it said by them of old, thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if you even look upon a woman as to lust after her, you've committed adultery already with her in your heart. They learned as they sat at the feet of the greatest preacher who ever walked the face of this earth. Let me close with this.

I want to just give you some motivation. If Jesus can use fishermen and tax collectors and political zealots, then guess what? Jesus can use you and Jesus could use me. What's his command to us? The command is this, follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Now here's a question. Will you obey?

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we study today the calling of the apostles. There are no more apostles today. They had special gifts and powers that no Christian possesses today.

When God inspired them to write books like 1 and 2 Peter and the Gospel of John, the book of Revelation, they pinned those words down infallibly, inherently, and perfectly as you wanted. When the New Testament was completed and the canon was closed, it has never been that kind of inspiration since. We in 2022 are not called to pin down inspired scripture. We are not called to be apostles, but we are called to follow Jesus. Help us to do that, Lord. We won't do it perfectly. We'll mess up often, but may our hearts be set on being obedient and loving Jesus with all of our hearts, minds, soul, and strength. That's his prayer in Jesus' precious name. Amen.