So Jesus has called your name, saying, come, follow me. And so you've decided to follow Jesus. And there's a big, huge question. Now what? Now what? Well, first thing is. First is a few weeks ago, we talked about putting on the armor of God. It's one of the first things we can do. Putting on a helmet of salvation, right? Well, whose salvation? Salvation in Jesus. Name in Jesus. A breastplate of righteousness. Well, whose righteousness? Well, Jesus. Righteousness, right? Not. Not our own righteousness, but Jesus taking. Putting on a belt of truth, right? Well, whose truth? Well, God's truth. The truth of God's word. The truth that is Jesus. His call on our life, what he created us to be and what he redeemed us to be.
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A shield that has everything to do with surrender and trust, which, quite frankly, is this image we had two weeks ago of being clay in the potter's hands, of complete surrender and trust. Of being pliable, moldable, allowing the spirit of God in our life as we follow him, right? To shape us, to transform and reform us.
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Wherever he's going to lead, don't follow too far behind. You need to stay close or you'll miss the path, you'll miss the teaching, you'll miss the following, and therefore you'll miss it all. And he was right. For someone being much older than the rest of us, this man could hike, and you had to keep up. Our journey began in the desert as we hiked arid desert landscape, all the while listening to the teachings along the way. And by the way, if you lagged behind, you would miss much of the teaching. Along the way of traveling, you needed to stay close, you needed to hear the rabbi's words.
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He would almost be shaking his head. Isn't it enough for you to just follow me? Isn't it enough to just be with me now? Yes. Ray is a human being, like we are. He's not Jesus, but he's trying to teach us something. What does discipleship look like?
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Do you get it when Jesus says, follow me. Do what the rabbi does. Teach what the rabbi teaches. Say what the rabbi says. Live out how Jesus lives. It was powerful. There's so many reasons not to follow. What would they be? I could spend some time with you, right, Just listing them. I want you to just think what pops into your mind. Like, what are some reasons why not to follow?
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What does it mean to be, like, pliable in the potter's hands? To be clay, to be moldable, transformable? What kind of. Of posture is needed there? What does it look like to be a tree planted by a stream of water that meditates on God's word day and night? To be like a tree, right, that yields its fruit in season as it was created to you and I, a tree that's. Leaves are green, that provides shade, right, for other people, that produces fruit. What does it mean to produce seeds that hit the ground and begin to grow other saplings, so to speak, to make disciples. What does it look like to walk as Jesus walked and to be in his footsteps?
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Disciples, followers of Jesus, who hear the voice of the shepherd. That's Jesus, by the way, with a capital S, right? The good shepherd saying, come, follow me. I am your shepherd. You are the sheep. I will lead you into green pastures, quiet waters. I'll restore your soul. I'll lead you in paths of righteousness for the Lord and for God's glory and for his sake. It's what we were created for.
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No, the lesson is follow the shepherd wherever he will go. He knows what your needs are. In fact, he knows what you need before you even need it. And all we have to do is follow, to hear his voice and follow, and he will lead us from tuft to tuft, giving us everything we need.
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It takes on new meaning. Like, what does it mean to be a disciple? It means to follow Jesus, hear his voice, the good shepherd, to give us, Lord, this day our daily bread, to trust him to be pliable, to be in God's word, allowing him to shape us.
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How do sheep recognize the shepherd's voice? Well, it's the Holy Spirit that we know in Christianity, whispering the word of God to us. It's the actual word of God itself in scripture that's alive and active. It guides, corrects, leads, shapes, fills, transforms. As we do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God, the Good Shepherd. Trust. Surrender. Trust. Obedience. Trust. Faithfulness. Trust. Confession. Trust. Trust. Trust.
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What does it look like to follow somebody? It looks like being really close. So close that your feet are dusty from the rabbi as you walk behind him. And I wonder, right, like, when you think about your sandals, how dusty are they in the sense of actually following Jesus, wherever your feet may go?
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Are your feet, which is representative of your life. And whatever paths you take and where you go, are they guided by God? Is God on the way there with you? Are your sandals dusty because you are close to him, right, in the sense of being surrendered? You're trusting Him. You're looking to him for your every need. What does that look like to you? It certainly looks like learning. It looks like watching. It looks like a close relationship with Jesus.
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To be a disciple is to follow in his steps, to become like him. And for three years, the disciples walked with Jesus. I mean, think about that. Three years. They literally followed him everywhere he went. They heard his every teaching. They breathed the same air. They witnessed the same miracles. To know and interpret the Scriptures as He did. That's what they were learning. To pray as he did, to obey God's law as he did, to love as he did, to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God as He did, to make disciples as he did.
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In the Hebrew. When it talks about living or talks about walking, they're really one in the same. Living is walking, and walking is living. So think about your feet. Where do they take you each week? How do they take you? What does your own following look like? Who are you following? How are you following? Where do your feet take you? Just essential questions like that.
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For every Jewish boy, you would Want to be the superstar generally in that culture, the one where the rabbi recognizes you and your gifts and your skills and your devotion, your intellect, maybe whatever it may be, your heart for following. And he says, would you come and follow me? It was a high, high honor to be asked by a rabbi. You would drop everything. What would you do? You would follow them, you would live with them, you would learn from them so that you could be just like the rabbi. Isn't that cool to know? Because Jesus comes to every one of us. And in Jesus Christ, right, Jesus says, would you come and follow me?
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At the Last Supper, he says, you didn't choose me, I chose you. That's what Jesus does. Repent. The kingdom of God is near. Come, follow me. Talmidim. So, wow. Do you hear the word hagah? I do. Hagah, right? A passion like that. Now you may say, well, wow, that's not me. I want you to hear the power of these words again. Jesus says, you didn't choose me, I chose you.
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Am I deserving to follow Jesus? No. How would you answer that? I would tend to say no. This is something interesting about Scripture, that if you don't know the context of some of these things, you'll miss it. And it's this. What were the disciples doing when Jesus went to call them? What were they doing? What is that? Fishing. It's a treat. What does that mean? They were not selected by a rabbi. So I ask you, do you feel deserving of being a disciple? God says, I choose you. You didn't choose me, I chose you. And that is what makes us deserving and worthy. Right. To pick it up and follow him. It doesn't matter how far you strayed. It doesn't matter what paths you've been down. It doesn't matter. Even the struggles you're currently going through, all of these kind of things are part of the journey of discipleship. We don't choose him, he chooses us. And he says, come, follow me.
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To walk in it, to know God's voice, to hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit behind you and in your life, to hear the voice of the good shepherd up ahead, to ask where the good path is and follow it. That's discipleship, to surrender to it in Hebrew. Right. Living is walking and walking is living.
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What it means when Jesus said, I chose you. Come and follow me. What is the spirit leading you to pray into about that this week? Something about your witness or about your character or just about your person, your. Your behavior, the relationships you have where God is actually calling you to follow him, to be like him. And think about some of the most powerful teachings Jesus gives. That. That is a word for you in the sense of following and being just like Jesus. It's discipleship.
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You can also just make yourself available to regular Sunday worship. I really want to encourage that today. It's. It's a lesser value. We are super mobile. That's not about guilt. It's more about. That's the reality. So what I'm asking as your pastor is just simply that if you can't be here, you get online that week and you listen to the message so that you can be in step. You can understand where we're going. You can actually be in step. Right. As we all go through this together.
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If some of you are feeling led to be involved in more of a one on one discipleship relationship with somebody. We would love for you to let Dionne and I know and we will start thinking about what that could look like, have a discussion about that. And if you'd like to join in on that, it'll give you a great language of the gospel. Your feet will be ready with the gospel by the time you've gone through something like that. So really about relationship probably requires, you know, every other week to almost every week just 45 minutes an hour together with somebody.
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