Fishers of Men // Essentials

Jesus pursued the people that he called. And when you think about it, this makes perfect sense with who Jesus is. Jesus is Emmanuel. Emmanuel means God with us. Jesus looks at us and said, I am coming to pursue you. I am in heaven. You are separated from God. You can't get to me, so I'm gonna come to you. Jesus calls us the same way. He doesn't ask us to build a resume and present ourselves before him. He says, I'm coming to you, and I'm gonna call you smelly fish and all. Amen? He doesn't say, let's see how worthy you are. He says, yeah, you're smelly, you're wet, you got fish covered all over you, I'm calling you. Others may think you're not worthy, I'm calling you. And then he doesn't just come to us, he invites us into a mission.

In essence, God said, the world may think that they are worthless, that they're not up for the challenge, but I'm choosing them because I love them. They can't get to me right now, so I'm gonna go to them, and I'm gonna rescue them from the curse of death. I'm gonna rescue them and release them into a life of purpose where they can follow me freely so they can become what I've called them to be. They can become fishers of men. They can become a holy priesthood. They can become heirs to the kingdom. They can become children of God. And when we forget that we are loved by God, when you forget that you are loved by God, we lose sight of our calling to follow him.

Many of us have been taught that we can be Christians but not disciples of Jesus. I can say I'm a Christian. I can check it on the survey, whatever I get. But following Jesus, that seems like a lot. That's not what this says. To be a Christian is to follow Jesus. There's not two different separate ones. So we can see it as an end and just wait for Jesus to come back and not follow him, or we can work to try to prove to God that we're enough and that we're worthy. Both of them result in disobedience and missing out on the greatest gift that we could ever receive, experiencing the love of God and following him and being changed.

I don't know about you, but this, this hit me, hits me hard because I think this is the case for a lot of us. We try to measure up. Well, if God chose me, I gotta be my best. And, yes, we're called to follow. Right? That's what I just spoke about for ten minutes. But we're not called to follow to show that we are worthy of being chosen. And when Peter did this, he kept falling. He kept tripping. He kept falling short. And that brings me to the heart of what I think all of this is and what Jesus was calling them. At the heart of being called by Jesus to follow him is this, God loves you. Now, you may be like me when I would hear a sermon like this and say, I know Ryan. I am aware.

Have you ever been chosen for something, and you're like, wait. Me? You're picking me? My mind goes back to, like, dodgeball in, like, elementary, middle school, and it's like, are you you sure you want me on your team? Like, you're picking me? I imagine that they were both the brothers. You see they immediately followed. I feel like some of that's because they're like, well, I'm not gonna let him change his mind. I'm gonna go. Like, if he's fought if he's calling me to follow him. And the reason I say this is because I want you to get a context of what fishermen were like in the Jewish world in the first century and how odd it was that Jesus chose them to follow him. Little bit about fishermen. You see there are two sets of brothers.

We can't just sit around and wait on Jesus to come back and complain about the world going to hell in a handbasket. But it's so tempting for us to do. Say, well, at least I'm saved. I can't deal with these other people. They're crazy. I'm just gonna wait for Jesus to come back, and God will do with them whatever God does. But I'm just gonna sit here and pray that he comes tomorrow. I pray that Jesus comes tomorrow too, y'all. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. Lord Jesus, come. But in the meantime, we are to follow. We are not to sit because doing nothing is being apart from Christ. Again, that's not saying we aren't saved if we don't go, but that's saying Jesus called us to go, so let's go.

When we forget this, we miss out on the awe and the shock and the wonder that Jesus chose you to follow him. Because he didn't follow you because he thinks you he can he thinks you can help him make more money as a business. That's not why he chose you. He didn't choose you because you bring a lot of social media followers to his business. He chose you because he loves you. The end. The God of the universe looked into time and creation. It blows my mind, but God is outside of time and creation. And he looks into it, and he said, I wanna choose them to follow me.

Jesus didn't discount what they do. I think that's so cool. What was Jesus' job? He was a carpenter. Okay? How many fishermen you think love to get fishing advice from carpenters? Not many. Right? It's like, we're fishermen. You cut things. Like, leave me alone. But Jesus didn't say, come follow me, and I'll turn you into carpenters. He said, no. Come follow me, and I'll make you a fisher of men. He didn't discount what they brought to the table, but he transformed it. He said, let me show you how to be better fishers of fish. He says, I'm gonna make you a fisher of men now. Yes. You've been created this way. You have these talents in this way, but let me transform you. Now, it's important to know that when we're following Jesus, we're still gonna work. We're still gonna work.

And if you read the next book over in the book of Acts, Peter is a changed man because the resurrected Jesus met him, and the fact that Jesus loved him went from here to here, and it changed everything. And God used him to help bring the gospel to south side of the river, Montgomery County, Tennessee. How crazy is that? Not because Peter became a better manager, but because Peter grasped that God loved him. And he said, I can follow that. I don't have to measure up because I won't, but I can follow that.

Jesus was saying, come follow me for the next three years in all that I do. Your entire life will now be identified by following me in what I do. This assumes Jesus wanted their entire life to be impacted. Okay? This wasn't, hey. Go to school or go to church, and then go home and do as you wish. Go home. Watch what you want. Go home. Do what you want. No. Jesus said, follow me, all of you. Like, where I go, you go. Where I sleep, you sleep. Where I eat, you eat. Full transformation. This is discipleship.

God has called you. What? You who all of you, God of the universe, looked at you and has called you. We gotta let that hit us because pick whatever hero you want in the world that you look up to. If they call you personally and say, hey. I want you to follow me, we're gonna be in shock and awe and probably say, okay. I'm coming. The God of the universe has called you. We can't get so callous that we go, appreciate you saving me. I'll be on the couch. He has called you into important work. Remember, he's called you despite your resume.

Fishermen were often they were familiar with storms. I think there's something really cool that Jesus chose people who were familiar with storms. So if you're going through storms in your life, that's not a reason God doesn't choose you. Maybe it's a reason specifically why he wants to choose you in the midst of it. So this is who they were, and Jesus called them. So what does this mean? So we talked about the fishermen. Let's talk about rabbis now. So rabbis, it's just another word for Jewish teacher.

Now, I don't want you to think I am anti conversion. Okay? Like, we need to preach the gospel and invite people to respond to the gospel. Amen? Like, we need to do that. That is the gospel. Like, ask people to repent. Call people to repent. But it doesn't end there. It begins there. Because a lot of times with this conversion centered gospel, we've interpreted the gospel as a finish line or an ending instead of a starting line or a new beginning. Think about it. Jesus didn't say to the fishermen, hey, guys. I've chosen you. You good? Alright. Keep fishing. Let me know if you need anything. Let me know if you got any questions. Try to be better, but just know I've chosen you. Now carry on with your life.

Because when we hear follow me, we're like, oh, I gotta get my stuff together. Do I have time to follow him? I gotta take off the kids off at day care. I gotta try to apply for this job. I gotta do this. I I love you, Jesus. I know you love me, but I don't know if I can follow you just because I have so much on my plate. When Jesus is like, breathe. I love you. I love you, so just follow me. He's not saying don't drop your kids off at day care. He's saying just follow me as you go.

Peter was constantly saying I'm gonna do this, but then he can't. Saying I'm gonna do this, and then I can't. Because you see Peter was called and then spent the rest of his time following Jesus trying to prove that he was worthy of being called. Jesus called him, and then he said, I am going to show you that I'm worthy. I'm gonna show you that you didn't mess up when you called me. I'm gonna show you, God, that I won't let you down. I'm gonna show you and the world that I can do what you asked me to do. I'm gonna prove myself worthy of being called.

Follow me. I'm not gonna tell you to not fish anymore. I'm just gonna tell you how to fish for the kingdom. He doesn't tell you don't teach anymore. Don't change tires. Don't do this. No. But follow me as you do it, and I'll transform what you do into a way that'll have a kingdom impact to show other people that I love them too. And in doing that, he will change you to be more free and wholly purpose driven into the life that he has created for you. You see, in the midst of being called by Jesus, we often fall into two traps. We either see it as the end, and we sit back and wait for Jesus to come back. Right?

And Jesus met him on the shores. He met him there. And what did Jesus say? He didn't say, Peter, I told you you'd mess up. You didn't believe me, but I told you. He didn't say, Peter, we gotta try again. We gotta work harder. Jesus asked him the same question three times. Peter, do you love me? Do you love me, Peter? I wanna ask again. Do you love me? And in essence, Jesus says back to him, if you love me, just do what I've called you to do. Follow me. Feed my sheep. Know that I love you eternally, and I'll always be with you. So just follow me.

So more or less, children, students, as they grew, they tried to build their resume up, and then they applied, so to speak, to their favorite rabbi or the rabbi they agreed the most with. Oh, I wanna try to be in this one, this one, this one. And they built their resume for it. In other words, they spent their life trying to become worthy, and then they asked a teacher if they could follow him. We understand that? So traditionally, in that time, to follow a rabbi, you tried to make yourself worthy, and then you went to a rabbi and said, can I follow you?

In our Essentials series, if this is your first time in a while, we are going through traditional Sunday school type of stories that you may have heard a long time ago, but maybe you haven't dug into it in a while. You haven't revisited it. And the reason we're doing this is because while you may have heard them a while ago, oftentimes, when real life started to hit, instead of returning to stories like these, we end up kinda just moving past them or forgetting about them. And the reality is the problem with these stories isn't that they were too simple for our problems.

Because a lot of times, fishing was actually overseen by some higher elite people, and the fishermen were just kinda your rural, we're just gonna do the work. And the bigger catch we can get, the more money maybe we can split between us. They fished at night, which they weren't catfishing. Okay? This was like in a boat, scary at night where storms pop up quickly. Dragnets, they pulled these things. This wasn't a ZIP code 33 they're casting. Like, are pulling nets, throwing nets, strong, rugged men, working class, hardworking, they probably smelled.

Feel like this is how I speak to my two and three year old. I'm like, am I asking them or am I telling them? You kinda go in between. Right? So Jesus didn't say, I would like for you to pray about following me. He said, hey, you. Follow me. Now they technically still had to respond. Right? They could have said, absolutely not. We got fish to catch. But it wasn't a question. It was a call. I'm not asking you to consider this. I'm calling you into this. I'm choosing you, and I'm calling you into it. And it wasn't just come follow me and let me tell you some things.

I wanna put this little definition of discipleship up here. This isn't Webster dictionary approved or anything, but this is, hopefully, a clear example definition of discipleship. It is committing your entire life to walking with Jesus, learning from Jesus, and being changed by Jesus. K? There's a cue here talking about walking. When he says, follow me, he's like, get up. Move your feet. Follow me. There is very much a term kinda in the Jewish world at this time too about the dust of the rabbi. Like, I am following so closely to the rabbi, the teacher, that as he walks, the dust from his shoes cover my legs, cover my feet.

Because here's the cool thing. We're not just following some average person. We're following the one who created us. And if you're following the one who created you, you can trust that he's gonna turn you into what he created you to be. So Jesus says, I know no one else is gonna pick you, but I'm gonna follow you. So come on. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. So in summary real quick, don't get your hopes up. We're not done yet. But in summary of our first part here, I want you to know this before we keep moving. Jesus doesn't ask you to build your resume to come to him. Okay? He does not. That's what the world did then. That's what the world does now. Be good enough and then come. Jesus says, no. I know you're not good enough, and I'm still picking you.

That's not what he did, and that's not what Jesus calls us into today with the gospel. Jesus said, follow me. It starts now. It doesn't end now. It starts now. Follow me, all of you, with all of me, all the time. Does that make sense? Yeah. So he said thank you. So he said, follow me. And then he says, I'll make you fishers of men.