Follow Me Dr. Steve Walker

Series: Mark February 19, 2017 Follow Me Dr. Steve Walker Wow! What powerful testimonies in the baptistry today! I hope you got here soon enough to witness that. All morning, in the first service as well just tears of joy as people experience what it feels like to surrender to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It's glorious. I'm going to ask you to get your Bibles open to Mark, chapter 1. We're going through the gospel of Mark, verse by verse. I want you to remember Mark is writing this gospel for a specific purpose. He wants to establish the true identity of Jesus as the Son of God, as the Messiah. His intention for writing this gospel is to confront the readers, those who would receive this letter. He would want them to be confronted with the claims and the life of Jesus and force the reader to decide: either Jesus is or he isn't who he claims to be. He wants to prove, I believe, that it's impossible to remain neutral once you're confronted and faced with a claim as life-changing and as sin-threatening as Christianity. I think what the gospel of Mark does for the church today is remind us that Christianity is not a theory. It's a proposal. It's a proposal for absolute allegiance and eternal intimacy with God. That's powerful. Last week, when we looked at verses 14 and 15, we learned that when Jesus began his public ministry, right after he was baptized, right after he went into the desert for 40 days of temptation Right after that he began his public ministry, proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God had arrived. You see, whenever Jesus spoke about our need for salvation in the New Testament, it was always in kingdom terms. This means the salvation of sinners is not just about the forgiveness of our sins. Salvation is about giving up our resistance. It's surrendering the control of our lives completely over to the sovereign and loving leadership of Jesus. This is where the real spiritual crisis takes place at conversion. To be Christians, we have to give up our own kingdoms, and that's really where the battle is in the heart. Whenever Jesus presented the gospel, he was always offering leadership and asking for followership. In today's passage, Canyon Hills Community Church 1

we're going to quickly notice, in living color, that being a disciple of Jesus has taken a completely different shape than the true discipleship we see in the Bible. Sadly, much of what we see around us today as following Jesus typically doesn't look a lot like what the Christianity of the New Testament talks about. If your Bibles are ready at Mark, chapter 1, let's go ahead and stand for the reading of his Word, as we always do. We're going to pick it up right where we left off. We finished in verse 15, so we're going to start in verse 16 right now. "Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, [Jesus] 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 become fishers of men.' And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him." God in heaven, again, we ask, in the power of your Holy Spirit, that you would open our ears, our minds, and our eyes to see and understand what it really means to follow Jesus. I pray, God, that any distractions that may be just clouding our hearts right now Bring us comfort and fill us with faith, God, that you not only know about those things, but you care about those things, so we cast them on you now and we ask that you would speak to us. In Jesus' name, amen. I hope that as we read that and ended right there, you would have noticed that Mark leaves a lot of details that would be in this narrative completely out of the story. He doesn't even allude to them. These are the very first followers of Jesus in the Bible, in the New Testament. What was going on in their minds when Jesus just walked up to them out of nowhere? Did they have questions for Jesus? Were these long, tearful, sad goodbyes? What about the emotions? What about the internal struggle? Where was the fear or the confusion in this moment? Mark leaves all of that out, what we would consider the human drama connected with an all-or-nothing, life-changing decision like this. I submit to you that this is Mark's full intention. He wasn't forgetful. He didn't lose his notes when he found out what happened in this moment. He absolutely, on purpose, is making sure we understand that this is not primarily a story about the people in the story. It's all about the Messiah in the story. It's about Jesus being front and center. It has to be, or this story would make no sense to you and me today. We wouldn't even know what to do with this if it wasn't for the fact that Jesus is center stage in what is happening here. I think we would be very quick to write ourselves out of God's plan of redemption if Mark would have put all the other stuff in there, because, after all, we're not like these four fishermen. Most of us aren't like them. These guys are either incredible or flat-out crazy. None of us in this room likes to put ourselves in either one of those categories (incredible or crazy), and so we would look at this quickly and go, "Whoa, whatever was going on there, that's them and that's Jesus, but that ain't me." Canyon Hills Community Church 2

So, what do we learn? What do we learn from this rapid-fire encounter between Jesus and his very first disciples? I think Mark wants us to learn a few things, or, at the very least, remember a few things. 1. Following Jesus means I humbly yield to the authority of Jesus. I confidently surrender to the absolute authority of Jesus. This scene is so audacious. It's crazy. Jesus walks up to these guys and says, "Follow me." If you want to unpack all the Greek and all the language that's piled into that idea, Jesus just walked up to them and he said, "I want you to attach your life to me. I have a plan for you. Now, come." That's what's packed into that little phrase, "Follow me." This is amazing. Mark doesn't acknowledge it here, but the evidence points to the fact that they had never met Jesus until this moment. This is the first time they've seen him. There's no other evidence contrary to that. Yet what Mark does tell us is that these guys immediately got up and left family and business. If you're using the same translation of the Bible as I am, I want you to circle that word, immediately. Some of your Bibles say at once. Mark uses that word 41 times in his gospel. That should tell us something. It's absolutely his favorite way to describe the only acceptable response to the authority of Jesus. The glaring point Mark wants to make and impress on us is this: Jesus is Lord, and he has the right to enter a person's life and say, "Follow me." He's the sovereign Christ. This is the Son of God, so when Jesus invades our lives, he becomes our unchallenged King, our unchallenged Ruler, Savior, and Messiah. When Jesus invades our lives, he places himself at the center of all we are. I want you to listen to Jesus himself explain his lordship, or what it looks like to follow him. In Luke, chapter 9, verse 23, Jesus says, "If anyone would follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross." In Matthew 10, even more difficult than Luke 9, Jesus says, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Those are serious words of sovereignty there, because one of the transactions that takes place in the heart of a person who's coming to Jesus One of the things we have to understand is that Jesus didn't come in order to gather admirers. He wasn't looking for admirers. Jesus came calling for full allegiance, and there's a reason for that. If you'll let me just repeat a few things I shared with you last Sunday, in last Sunday's message, we saw that his intention was never to solve our self-esteem problems or to have us just all get along in this beautiful human oneness. The intention of Jesus is to solve the problem that has made the world such a dangerous place in the first place, a world filled with people who have rejected his loving, sovereign rule over our hearts and lives. You see, that's why we believe the world desperately needs followers of Jesus, true ambassadors of Jesus, who are humbly surrendered to the unequivocal leadership of Jesus. Like Paul, I think Canyon Hills Community Church 3

the world needs many more of us to say, "It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me." That's what the world needs. That's what will change the world. That's the mission of Jesus. That sounds a little different from what we tend to hear a lot of today, especially in Western Christianity. Humbly yielding to the authority of Jesus, because that is what we desperately need most We need to be saved from ourselves, from the brokenness of our sinful hearts. 2. Following Jesus also means I obediently respond to his call. This part of the scene is incredibly moving to me. The application I want us to see is that the call of Jesus is a call away from a life. It's a call out of a life that is void of his will for our lives. See, we see these four guys. They immediately drop their nets. They get up and they go. Now, what if the dropped nets in the story are not as much about walking away from a specific career? For them, it was, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but for the sake of the application for us right now, what if them dropping those nets isn't about us quitting our jobs? What if it's something deeper than that? What if those nets represent something way more difficult to drop? I see Jesus walking up to them, basically saying, "I want you to drop those nets. They will no longer be the controlling issues in your life." What if those nets better represent things like unforgiveness, our past hurts, or uncontrollable anger? What if the nets Jesus calls us to let go of are the sexual encounters, hoping to just find someone to give your heart to and someone who will give their heart to you? What if Jesus is saying, "I want you to follow me and I want you to let go of partying yourself to death every weekend, trying to escape whatever it is you're trying to escape, or desperately seeking the approval of a friend, boss, or parent"? What if the net Jesus is calling his followers to drop includes things like our insecurity about our looks, weight, finances, marital status, or whatever it is that causes us to so desperately try to fill those holes in our lives? What if Jesus says, "I want you to drop your fear of the future. I've got the future"? What if Jesus is saying, "I want you to drop your fear of failure. Yes, you have failure in your life, but I can redeem that. You need to let go of that." See, when I come under a new authority as a follower of Jesus, I'm in essence agreeing to the demands his authority and leadership make in my life. The demands and his authority make in my thought life, in my marriage, in my friendships, in my finances and possessions When I follow Jesus, I'm in essence surrendering, answering his call that he lead every area, every dimension of my life. See, the call of Jesus is out of a way of living and into a whole new way of living. Some of the possible nets I think some of you have had to drop and walk away from Maybe it was a relationship that was immoral or a lifestyle that mocked the sanctity of biblical sexuality. Maybe for some of you, the nets you had to drop were activities or habits that were once Canyon Hills Community Church 4

acceptable to you but now you know Jesus calls them harmful and sinful. Maybe for some of you, you had to drop certain possessions in your life that were just way too worldly. Letting go of those things is a powerful and emotional thing, and I think that's what Mark is showing us here. Now, here's the problem. I think here's the problem application. I think you know exactly what I'm going to say right now. I think we have too many followers of Jesus who are still hanging on to some old nets. You either haven't completely walked away from your old sinful ways or you've gone back to some of those things, you've picked them back up, things that are hostile to the loving leadership of Jesus in your life. I think this is exactly what the writer of Hebrews, chapter 12 was talking about when he penned these words in Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2. He says, " let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles." That sounds like a bunch of nets, doesn't it? "And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the [author] and perfecter [the sovereign King and Ruler] of our faith." Wow! Obediently answering the call to drop these things in our lives that keep him from being the Lord and King and Ruler of our lives. 3. Following Jesus means I align my whole life with the mission of Jesus. It's really important to notice that Jesus doesn't offer them some secular version of the good life. It's not his approach. Again, we start to feel the tension of modern-day Western Christianity a little bit right here. Jesus doesn't walk up to them and just offer to make all their dreams come true. He doesn't offer them the option of saying, "Hey, follow me, and I will make sure all of your happiness comes true." Unfortunately, that sounds like a lot of Christian preachers today. That's nowhere in this invitation to Jesus. It's not his approach. He is zealous to save lost people and hurting people. His mission is to dispense the grace of forgiveness, deliverance, and God's approval. That's the mission of Jesus. It's a mission of redemption at the heart and soul level. Jesus says, to all of his followers, "Come follow me and be a part of my mission." Unfortunately, again, in most of the Western world, we have propagated a version of Christianity that says, "Accept Jesus and he'll connect himself to your mission, passion, goals, and dreams." Again, that's nowhere in Scripture. To these unsuspecting fishermen, he says, "I'm going to make you fishers of men." In the moment, there's no explanation of what this means. There's none. Mark doesn't acknowledge if any of them ask Jesus, "Is there a job description with that?" or, "Is there healthcare coverage? How about a 401k? Does that come with this deal, Jesus? It sounds okay, but " You don't get any of that there, because the glaring point Mark wants to impress on us is that there's no room in discipleship for asking, "What's in it for me?" There's no room in surrendering to the leadership, lordship, and salvation of Jesus to say, "I'll consider this, but first, what's it going to do for me?" It's just not there, and thank God it isn't. See, the power and authority of his grace pierced their hearts and they knew following Jesus was going to lead them to a life with all new priorities. Somehow, that happened in that exchange. I Canyon Hills Community Church 5

can't wait to get to heaven, because these are the kinds of things I want to ask people in the Bible when I get up there. "Did you sense in that moment that your life was just going nowhere? Did you sense in that moment that Jesus spoke with such clarity, compassion, and power that you knew whatever it was you were pursuing was hollow compared to his mission? What was happening there? I want to know!" I'm going to go up to Mark and say, "Why'd you leave it out?" I think, if I were to do that I wouldn't, but if I did, I think he would say, "If I would have told you all that, you wouldn't have seen yourself in the story. You would have said, "Oh, well, that's not me. I don't feel that way. I guess I don't have to follow Jesus." I love how Paul Tripp comments on this. He says, "The wonder of grace is not just what grace is able to do, but part of the wonder of Grace is whom grace employs to do its work." Jesus was calling these four fishermen with issues. They had issues. They were insecure. They were hotheads. They were messy. They were normal, let's say. He calls them to be Apostles. Capital A Apostles. Just be sure, Jesus is not still calling people to be Apostles. There were 12 openings. They were filled, and they're not open for any of us. Can we just get that out of the way? That's not what this story is about. Mark doesn't make it about that. The truth is, Jesus is absolutely calling all of his followers to be apostles. Lowercase A apostles. The word apostle literally means the sent ones, the sent-out ones, or one sent forth. It's remarkable, when you think about it, that Jesus calls people in need of redemption to be tools of his redemption. That's the gospel. The Bible is this glorious story of people broken by sin, who are rescued by grace and then made usable by grace. How in the world? How does that not give you hope? I mean, it does for me. This is what fuels my preaching every week. It's true, from time to time, there are people from amongst our church who hear the call of God and dropping their nets includes walking away from their jobs, their homes, and their extended families into full-time service. It's an undeniable and miraculous calling. In fact, just a month ago, we had a couple up here as our elders and all of us together as a church commissioned them to leave his successful career at Microsoft and her very fulfilling career as a teacher, to walk away from those things, including their children and their grandchildren, geographically speaking, and go to India for the rest of their lives. I mean, that is just miraculous territory. Would you agree? Two weeks ago, we had Stephen Delatorre up here, and he answered God's call to go to Peru. Now, hear this. For the rest of us who follow Jesus, our call is considered no less miraculous. Think about this. Some of you, when Jesus called you, were construction workers, and now Canyon Hills Community Church 6

you're going on Global Encounter Trips for two weeks at a time. I just saw in our bulletin today We have a team that left this past Monday for India, and when I looked at the picture, I just smiled, because the two guys I recognize in the picture One is a roofer and one is a construction guy, and here they are. Who would have guessed, when God called them, they would be leading teams on the other side of the world for the mission of Jesus? Maybe some of you were accountants when Jesus called you, and now you're leading a Life Group. Others of you might have been homemakers or full-time, at-home moms, and now you're directing a ministry for Mothers of Preschoolers. One of you was a welder, and now you're an elder. It took me all week to find that rhyme, but it's true about one of our elders. Some of you, when Jesus called you, were full of addictions, and now you're doing street ministry, reaching out to those suffering with the same addictions. Some of you, when Jesus called you, were in places of deep loss and brokenness, and now he's using you to counsel others. What in the world? Some of you were molecular biologists, and now you're volunteering in the preschool department. I'd call that being overqualified, but hey, that's how Jesus works, right? Some of you barely got through high school when you were called. Now you're mentoring and discipling teenagers. Some of you, when Jesus called you, were really shy, and now you're speaking and leading leaders. No matter what you're still doing to pay the bills, no matter where your place of employment is right now, when you answered the call, first and foremost, you were employed by Jesus as his apostle. You are a missionary right where you are tomorrow. I wonder if some of you need to hear Jesus saying to you today, "Get up, in all of your imperfections or weakness, in all of your averageness. Get up, in your unanswered questions, past failures, and hurt, and give yourself." What if Jesus is saying to you right now, "Give yourself to my call on your life and watch what I can do because you're willing to follow me"? Here's the point. The mission is the same for every disciple. The New Testament version of discipleship does not call us to be containers of grace only. Following Jesus, being disciples of God's grace, means we are to be a part of his mission of grace. When we align our lives with his mission, following him becomes the most important pursuit in our lives. I just love how Mark writes his gospel. It's just plain and simple. You don't have to be a theologian to feel like you have any worth or use. You don't have to have everything perfectly lined up. He calls you and says, "Follow me. Allow me to take my rightful place in your life," which is what sin destroyed, by the way. "Respond to my call. I want you to let go of stuff you're hanging onto." Not stuff, literally, but just things in your life that keep him from being front and center on the throne of your life Jesus is saying, "Let go of that and be a part of my mission." I think the world would like that message of Christianity. All this other nonsense we keep hearing is a constant letdown. I think people, down deep inside, know when they're at the center of their own universe, life is intensely one or two things. It's either incredibly boring, because we Canyon Hills Community Church 7

just get tired of living every second for our own happiness, or it's incredibly disappointing, because there's no end to that pursuit. Sin has made sure of it. I'm going to ask you to bow your heads, just for a moment of quietness. Let's just let this resonate for a minute. I want you to hear me say that I don't assume that everybody sitting here right now is a follower of Jesus. I don't assume that everyone here is a Christian. That would be impossible, I think. If you are not a Christian, I want to invite you to accept Jesus as your Savior and to surrender your life to him as your Lord and King, not because you have to but because you get to. You want Jesus to fill that void. He's the leader your heart longs for, the leader you can trust. He is the Son of God. Accept him as your Savior and allow him to be your King. If you are a Christian in here but you're hanging onto some old nets, I want you to consider dropping them today. The Holy Spirit works in wonderful ways. You probably already know what they are. I'm just going to encourage you, before the sun sets tonight, go for a walk. Be by yourself. Shut the door and surrender whatever nets keep tangling you up. Let them go. I'm going to close us in prayer, and when I'm done, there are going to be people standing all across the front up here who would love to pray with any of you who want to accept Jesus or who are just struggling in any area of your life. You need someone to come alongside you and pray. We'd be glad to do that as well. Father in heaven, be glorified now as we have lifted up Jesus for who he truly is. Your Son, our Savior, the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. God, may we find great joy, peace, hope, and happiness in surrendering our lives to his absolute and total loving rule and reign. God, may we be the people, the followers of Jesus this world desperately needs, not some watered-down version of it but the very thing the world so needs. God, you are good. We love you. In Christ's name, amen. We'll see you next Sunday. Canyon Hills Community Church 8