And all right, that's for the college theme there.
So we got a rowdy bunch today. I love it, but it's enough.
Let's, let's go. You got your Bibles.
Let's grab them. We'll go to work.
Matthew Chapter 4 My name is Dustin.
I look a lot better than the guy that's normally here.
It's just natural. OK, that's no my name is Dustin.
I'm privileged to be able to join you this morning.
Matthew chapter 4 we're going to continue right on where we've
been studying chapter 4 verse 12 really is Jesus beginning his
ministry. It starts this section that will
run through Matthew chapter 4, the whole the whole chapter and
it just outlines what happens when he comes on the scene.
It's a beautiful picture. There's there's things he does
here. He as he begins his ministry.
What we read last week, if you remember that the light that had
been promised had come, this thing that God had promised for
centuries had come true. And when Jesus came, verse 17,
if you remember and says from that time, Jesus began to
preach. That's why he came.
He came to do that, not just to live, not just to die, not just
to pay the penalty for our sins, but he came to preach and he
preached saying repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Now you know that's a necessary truth that is foundational to
Christianity, and it must be because of this.
What Christ came to preach must be pressed in upon all mankind.
With no exception. We're called to preach the
gospel to every creature. All have sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God. All are guilty before God and
they must be converted if they want to be saved.
This of course, not just repentance is the reason for
Christ's coming, but His coming is to save.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that
all who believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life. Christ has come to save.
Luke 1910. For the Son of man has come to
seek and to save that which was lost.
Luke 2446. Christ came to suffer and to
rise from the dead the third day, and that remission,
repentance, and remission of sins should be preached in His
name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
And you are witnesses to these things.
The Holy Spirit comes and convicts men of sin and of
righteous judgment, and he seals them.
This salvation is what it's about.
And doesn't it make sense that those who are recipients of that
would become witnesses for Christ in, as he says, Jerusalem
and Judea and Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth?
And it threw these activities of witnessing to the grace and
glory of Christ that the Spirit would draw others into this
great salvation. You understand, we're not called
just to be recipients of it. We're not called just to be
invited into the Kingdom. We are called to invite others
into the Kingdom. So if you would stand with me as
we read Matthew chapter 4 verses 18 through 22, when I'm done,
please remind me to say this is the word of the Lord and you
guys can respond. Thanks be to God.
Matthew chapter 4, verse 18, while walking by the Sea of
Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and
Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were
fishermen. And he, Jesus said to them,
follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their Nets and followed him.
And going on from there, he saw two other two other brothers,
James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat
with Zebedee, their father, mending their Nets.
And he called them immediately. They left the boat and their
father and followed him. This is the word of the Lord.
Let's pray, Father, we're grateful this morning to join in
with brothers and sisters, and we're thankful that you did send
your son and he came with a message, but he came with the
power to save. We're so thankful, Father, for
his life, his death, his resurrection.
And I'm thankful today, Father, for the call, the call that has
gone forth to follow him. And I'm thankful, Father, for
the purpose of fishing for men as the call continues to go
forth. So, Father, help us as your
people to receive your word this morning, for I ask this in
Christ's name, Amen. You may be seated.
So Jesus begins to preach and he immediately begins to gather.
He's you know, you can see this he's been on on the scene really
6 verses and he's already preached and he's already
gathering. That's what he does, right?
Jesus proclaims good news and he brings people in.
That's his goal from the start to preach and gather a people
and to himself. And so here we see that Jesus is
calling his first disciples. This is really a narrative.
This is just telling what Jesus did.
But there's so much really important things in it.
So I want to spend a little time helping you see a few things
that might be helpful for you and also might clear up some
confusion. We see in the book of John and
in the book of Luke that Jesus calls these same guys and they
sound like different stories, OK.
And I want to tell you they are different stories.
And so I want to put them in the right order.
So I hope you got your Bible still out.
Go with me to John, chapter one. This is the first time that
Jesus meets these men. John chapter 1.
And I want to read just because the Bible's perfect and I think
it can do it better than I can. All right, John, chapter one,
verse 35. We're not good on the speed test
here. We're going to have to get a
little faster. All right, John chapter one,
verse 35 says the next day, again, John was standing, John
the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples and he
looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, behold, the Lamb of
God, Alan stole my Thunder here. The two disciples heard him say
this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them
following and said to them, what are you seeking?
And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are
you staying? And he said to them, come and
you will see. So they came and saw where he
was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was
about about the 10th hour. One of the two who had heard
John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's
brother. And he first, and he first found
his own brother Simon, and said to him, We have found the
Messiah, which means Christ. He brought him to Jesus, which
is great. You notice this.
He brought him to Jesus. Jesus says, I'm going to teach
you how to do it, but he's already trying to do it right.
Those who believe, they're part of that.
You're Simon. And and Jesus looked at him and
said, you're Simon, the son of John.
You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.
So this is the first meeting, OK?
And now Jesus is going around, he's walking around the Sea of
Galilee. And then the second meeting,
Phase 2, is really our text today, OK, where Jesus walks, he
sees these brothers, they spend a day with him.
They wanted to see where he was staying.
And they, they knew who's the Messiah, right?
But they went back to their normal vocations.
OK, Jesus comes to them and he says, follow me and I'll make
you fishers of men. And immediately, immediately
they left their Nets and they're set to him, left their father
and they followed him. Now if you go to Luke chapter 5,
I want to show you this happens 1/3 time.
There's an instance in this where Jesus says, come on, let's
hang out. We are going to, I'm going to
show you how to fish for men. And they did that a while, but
they went back to fishing. This is how they made their
living and everyday life. They just go back and start
doing the things that they knew how to do.
These are professional fishermen, OK?
This is what they do. John chapter 5, verse one.
I'm sorry, Luke chapter 5. If I've told you, John the whole
time, there's no way you're at Luke 5.
OK? Luke chapter 5 verse one says on
one occasion while the while the crowd was pressing in on him to
hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Geneser.
It OK, fun fact here. OK, it's the same place.
All right. Three of the apostles when they
write about this, they call this the Sea of Galilee or the Sea of
Tiberius. Around this sea is 13.
No, sorry, 9 cities. The the lake is 13 miles or so
long. I can see.
I keep calling it sea and lake too.
OK? It's 13 miles long and less than
7 miles wide, but there's nine cities around it.
And whatever city that they're in, they just right there in
front of them. They'll call it the sea of
whatever that place is, OK? So here Luke says it's the Lake
of Ganasser. I think Luke did it because
Luke's been around, OK, if, if you've not been many places, a
body of water that's 13 miles long and six or seven miles wide
is monstrous. But if you've flown over the
Pacific, it's a lake, OK? You know what I mean?
What you see some of these things that just changes your
perspective. And Luke calls it a lake.
And I, I find it funny. Same body of water.
OK, so Peter and Andrew did not have boats on all these
different places. It's the same place.
OK, all right, back to the text. So he's standing by the Lake of
Geneser and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had
gone out of them and were washing their Nets.
Getting into the one of the boats, which was Simon's is
Peter. He asked him to put out a little
from the land and he sat down and taught the people from the
boat. And when he had finished Pete
speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down
your Nets for a catch. OK, Now these fishermen had been
fishing forever, OK. And Simon answers and says,
Master, we toiled all night and took nothing.
Peter says, we're pros at this. We know exactly what we're
doing. And we'd have had just as much
luck last night if we'd have been fishing in the desert.
There's no fish today, right? And Jesus says to them, so first
of all, he says this, which is important, but at your word, I
will let down the Nets. OK.
And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of
fish and their Nets were breaking.
So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to
come and help them. And they came and filled both
the boats so that they began to sink.
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus's knees
saying, depart from me, for I'm a sinful man.
Oh Lord, I got, I got a really good sermon on that, but I can't
preach it right now. For he and all who were with him
were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken.
And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are
partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, do not
be afraid, from now on you will be catching men.
And when they had brought their boats to land, they left
everything and followed him. So I want to tell you what's
going on. OK, There's this call in John
chapter 1 where I believe these men were saved John.
They've been followers of John. They'd they'd seen John and
heard John talk about this Messiah that was to come.
And that day John points him out and says, behold, there he is,
right? And they follow him and they
went, this is amazing. I guess we're going to have to
eat today, so let's go fishing. OK.
And so they go fishing. Well, Jesus shows up maybe even
months later, we're not sure, but Jesus shows back up, sees
him and says, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.
And so they followed him around a little bit more.
And at some point in the way life goes, they go back to
fishing. And there I think what's
happening in phase three in Luke, 5I really think what's
going on is they're going, this is our normal life.
This is what we're supposed to be doing.
And I think it's very clear that Jesus says at this point you
don't get to catch any fish, that I don't let you fish or
that I don't let you catch, right?
Your life is no longer your own. It's mine.
And I'm now I've, I've called you to myself and you've been a
Fisher of fish. But now I'm telling you, let's
make you a Fisher of men so that all you'll catch from now on is
men. And I think that's what's going
on. And I think that's applicable to
us today because I want you to know there's not just one
calling, There's not just that effectual call to salvation that
Christ has on his people. There's more than that.
There's also a call to sanctification, right?
And there's also calls to service.
And I believe everybody gets calls to service in some in some
sense, but there's calls to special service that some of our
brothers and sisters get to serve the Lord where they're not
allowed to go fishing anymore, right.
The Lord called me earlier. I have no marketable skills.
It would be nice to be a fish. I went fishing once with my
grandfather, who was a phenomenal fisherman.
OK, He took me fishing for crappie.
He rigged it up. I was about 7 years old and he,
he rigged this thing up. I put it in and I caught 2 fish
the first time. Well, at lunchtime that day, I
had still caught 2 fish and he had caught 78.
That's I didn't make that up. That's true.
And I realized the Lord's not calling me to fish for fish at
an early age. I just I just have no skills.
Just not what I'm allowed to do. OK.
So here this same see the same lake that he's been around.
These men are staying there. It's this busy little place, but
God is pressing and Christ is coming and pressing into these
men because He has something special for them.
I want you to understand this call is still a call that He has
for people today. It does.
It looks a little different because He's not walking around
the lake that we're at, but there's still a call to come and
follow Him. So before we jump into the call,
let's look at the first round of disciples.
These are really the first disciples.
They're two sets of brothers. You can see here in our text,
Simon Peter and Andrew, and then James and John.
These are, I believe, tough outdoorsman fishing on this
lake. If you remember, most of the
time when it's talking about this lake, Jesus is either
teaching around it or there's a massive storm on it.
OK, it's a tough place because you can storms would rise up
very quickly. It was a dangerous job.
These are tough guys. I do believe they were spiritual
men because they had spent so much time with John the Baptist.
I think they had eyes and ears for spiritual things, but I
don't think they had a very high spiritual aptitude because if
you read through the Gospel so many times, Jesus says something
in the disciples with great wisdom go huh, what, what does
that mean? I'm counted up.
It is all the time when you said this, what that mean?
And Jesus would lovingly, patiently try to clear it up for
him. And so Jesus is like, these guys
are tough outdoorsman out. So he's like, this is a fig
tree. You see that some fig tree
supposed to have fruit, you with me, right?
That's the way you'd have to talk to them before they'd be
like, oh, we got it. So it's it's not that these guys
were all that impressive. That's my point.
They really weren't people, person type of people.
You read a story and some kids are trying to come around and
they kick the kids out and Jesus has to review.
No, you let the kids come, what time there's Sinner, there's
this huge crowd. Can Jesus, can we just send
these people away so we can go get something to eat?
Jesus goes no, like wolf feed them when you can just see it.
Like I just really don't like people that much.
They weren't all that humble, even though they're not all that
impressive. They didn't realize it.
If the shoe fits right, you know, some of you don't even
have to. It just fits itself, OK?
They weren't all that humble. I mean, they argued consistently
who's going to be the best? Who's going to be the first?
And I love our Savior because He took them with all their foibles
and frailties and faults and kept loving, kept enticing, kept
bringing them into himself. So patient, isn't He?
There are times that I grow impatient with other people's
sins, and it always does me good to remember how long the Lord
has been patient with my. And you can fill in the blank
because I've got a bunch of them.
He's very kind and He's very patient here.
One of the things that could be said about these these men is
there, there's so many spiritual people around the time there
were so many scribes and things like that.
But these were, these guys weren't trained by scribes.
They weren't trained by the Pharisees.
They, they weren't pushed into this tradition.
And I think that's one of the reasons Jesus called them first
is because they were willing to listen and receive and even
transmit the new doctrine that Jesus had for them.
But they were men of the people. Do you think they had a passion
for souls? I want to just go ahead and say
I doubt it. I really do.
I doubt it. I think that they gained a
passion for souls. And there's like loads of proof
through this, through the book of Acts that gained a passion
from souls because of obedience. When Jesus says, come, follow
me, I think it's through that act of obedience that they began
to realize and and they began to burn for souls.
So super not impressive. I'm I'm grateful to know that
Christ doesn't see his man sees. I'm grateful to know that God
chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.
I'm thankful that God calls out of obscurity into a service.
This all shows His power and His purpose and His good and His
glory and helps us to realize it's not about us.
But He takes men like this and it acts.
Chapter 4, There's a great verse of Scripture where John and
James are there and they're, I'm sorry, Peter and John are there
and they're preaching and they're filled with the spirit
and they're in front of this council.
And, and these wise religious men said this.
It says now when they, these wise religious men saw the
boldness of Peter and John, they perceived that they were
uneducated men. They perceived they were common
men, but they were astonished because they recognized that
they had been with Jesus. And so I want to encourage you.
It's it's really not about who you are when Christ calls you.
It's about what he makes you into when you spend time with
him. So let's quickly, because the
again, this narrative just God sees two brothers, it calls them
God, Christ continues, He sees 2 brother and brothers and he
calls them. That's really the text.
So I want to look if we can at the call itself.
It's an important little sentence that he says here in
your Bibles. It's translated.
Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
Let's do, let's start with a word study and then we'll break
it. OK, so your English, my English
cannot do justice to this. It is just a weird way that
Jesus says this. So it is not a command.
Follow me. It's actually an adverb, which
if you're an English person, that makes sense.
If you're not, I'll explain to you.
He's not saying follow me really, if we were to translate
it just as as as Greek as I could as backwards as this thing
is worded. It's really that Jesus says hey
here behind me, OK, here and come, come over here behind me.
And and the point, the way he says it is not this come once
sort of thing and stand here, but it's come once get behind me
and just ongoing as we continue on continuously be here behind
me. Does that make sense?
Are here behind me. And then it gets crazy.
You ready for this here? He says, and I will make you.
And the word is proper for make. I will create in you.
I will produce this in you. I will make you sonners of men,
SUNNERS. OK, This was brand new to me.
I learned this this week in the Greek to fish is to sun.
And I thought for a while about this and it's yeah, there's this
aspect that you as a fisherman, you're out in the sun all the
time, right? But we see in Luke chapter 5
that Peter says we toiled all night, right?
I'm like, what is this idea? And the idea is, and in one
aspect, yes, you're out in the sun all day, but the other
aspect is you're fishing because you're going to take fish that
are in the water and you're going to pull them into the sun.
You're already there. I was really thinking, I was
going to have to explain the whole thing.
No, you got it. When when Christ says this,
you're going to do this for men. You're going to take men that
are in darkness, you know, bring them into the light.
This is evangelism, right? Evangelism mentioned 53 times in
the New Testament. Christ's heart has been to go
and take people who are lost and to get the gospel to them so
that they may be saved. And here the call of Jesus to
his first disciples is here. Come on behind me.
I'm going to show you. I'll make you into a Fisher of
men, which I find fascinating. OK, All right.
I want to break the call down with this.
To understand this sentence. Follow me and I will make you
fishers of men. You need to realize there's a
person, there's a path, and there's a purpose.
Person. A path and a purpose.
Now you hear me? Well, here's where things get
dangerous. The tendency of our hearts is to
say there's a path, there's a person and a purpose, and you
cannot do it like that. You cannot do it like that in
our individualized cultures and with our sinfulness and our
pride that tries to well up in us to want to be good enough at
something, we, we lessen the person of Jesus Christ and we
emphasize the path and we and we start drowning in this whole
idea of this legalism of the follow.
And we've got to protect from that.
We've got to protect from that. So let's make sure we think
first about the person. The emphasis really is on the me
and not on the follow. OK, You understand this call of
Jesus to these disciples. And I will say today to all
disciples, the call remains the same to come here.
We are called to Christ. We're called to fellowship with
him. We're called to commune with
him. Before you can follow, before
you can fish, you've got to be with Jesus Christ.
You must learn Jesus Christ. By this I mean Jesus is the one
that is going to provide all the righteousness that you will ever
need. He is the one that provides all
the strength that will ever be needed to follow along.
It's comes from him. This is the person is the one
that provides all the power that's going to be needed to
actually fish for men when that time comes.
But the call is to Jesus. You understand discipleship is
is really becoming what the teacher is.
That's I think that's the best definition of discipleship I can
give is becoming what the teacher is.
And Jesus is inviting us into him to relationship with him.
Relationship with him really is the training ground for all
sanctification That is the follow and it is the training
ground for all evangelization that is the fish.
It is being with Jesus that matters that by that I mean
attempting to his word, relying upon his grace.
Knowing Jesus, Jesus says to know him is eternal life.
It is this that we're called to. This is the beautiful Savior
that invites us into relationship.
The follow is where we get in trouble because we we look at
the following, we hear legalism. The great reformer said that
there's three uses of the law. The use of the law is 1 to curb
evil in society. Second use of the law is to
expose sin and drive people to Christ.
And the third use of the law is to instruct believers on what a
life would be pleasing to God looks like.
OK, there's instruction there, but I use the term pleasing to
God on purpose because you and I ought to be able to talk about
would this be pleasing to God while at the same time realizing
we're not doing this in order to please God.
You see, there's three uses, not 4 uses.
There's no use of the law that says a man can try to follow it
in order to gain the affection of God, that there's no such
thing. There's no use of the law like
that. Legalism.
Legalism is this conviction that law keeping is now on this side
of the of the of the fall, that law keeping can be the ground of
acceptance with God. Now, I want to be very clear
with you. The guy in the room that needs
to hear this the most and learn this the most is the guy that's
trying to tell you I grew up in a very, very legalistic religion
and it was always pushed upon me that Jesus was very angry at me,
that God was very angry at me. But hear me well, not angry at
me before Jesus, angry at me after Jesus.
I need you to understand the difference.
God hates sinners. God abhors evil doers.
You need to understand that. I need to understand that that
apart from Jesus Christ, there's no affection of God towards you.
That is not just common to all, there's none.
But I need you to get that when we come to Jesus Christ and
Christ saves us and imputes his righteousness to us, then God
has all the affections for you. That the same affections he has
for you on your very, very best day is the same affections He
has for you on your very, very worst day.
And it's not we're keeping the law in order to try to find
affections from God, to try to find acceptance from God.
It's not that if you were to say, how can I get God to be for
me and not against me? The legalist answers keep the
law, perform the law. I want you to understand
legalism is totally destroyed in the New Testament.
Romans 320 says this For by works of the law no human being
will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes
knowledge of sin. I say that because I want to.
If you're in here and you're still thinking that you're going
to be good enough one day, I want you to just note it says no
human being will be justified in this site.
Romans 328 says we hold that one is justified by faith apart from
works of the law. Meaning works of the law have no
part in it at all apart, separated completely.
It's not in the same conversation as being justified.
Why? Because justification will only
happen by faith in Jesus. And Galatians chapter 2, verse
16, we know that a person is not justified by works of the law,
but through faith in Christ Jesus.
Does the Bible have anything plain to say?
Yeah, we live in a country and a culture that still has this idea
that we're supposed to approach God because of our moral
tendencies, and that needs to die.
I need you to understand that there's no way that any human
being on any earth, in any religion, it does not matter,
will ever be able to be good enough.
When Christ says follow, he does not say do all these things so
that you can hang out with me. Jesus says I've done all these
things and because of the grace and mercy found in the cross,
come all the way in, Come all the way in.
That's the call of Christ to a lost person.
Come all the way in. You don't have to clean yourself
up and come all the way in, though.
Preachers will say you catch him, he'll clean them, right?
That's the order. The cleaning happens after
you're in the sun. You understand we get God to be
for us and not against us through Jesus.
The biblical gospel is the good news that legalism and the
legalist approach to God is totally impossible.
God knows it's impossible, which is why He provided His Son.
We have the way through Jesus Christ to Himself bore our
punishment for not keeping the law, and He Himself fulfilled
it. So biblically, I stole this.
Somebody wrote this and I thought this is so good, I'm
just going to steal it. I said.
Legalism biblically is an attitude, a spirit, a
disposition of all kinds of behaviors and feelings that are
rooted in a failure to be amazed that I am saved by grace, a
failure to be melted, broken, humbled, and filled with joy
because of what God has done. If you look at the cross of
Christ and still say I'm going to have to do something to earn
it, I don't think you've looked properly at the cross.
I don't think you fully understood the weight of your
sin. The amazing thing about Jesus is
he takes all of it from us and dies.
For it removes all guilt. All guilt.
There's now no guilt. Well, what happens when we have
a bad day? There's still no guilt.
You should have heard what I said.
Oh, I did. There's still no guilt.
I think what you and I need more than anything is to truly be
amazed that we are saved by grace, to truly be melted,
broken, humbled, and filled with joy because of what God has
done. Because I when we do this, when
we put this in the right place, we understand that the ME is
Christ and therefore the follow is not in order to gain his
affections, but it's because we have affections in Christ
because he loves us, therefore we follow him.
It just makes perfect sense. I want to be around the only one
who can put up with me and still love me for eternity.
I'm not sure you're quite impressed enough.
That's a big deal. But I want you to understand
when when Christ calls a disciple, it is not just that he
says me. He does say follow and I want
you to to know that the free grace of Christ will cost you
everything it is offered to us freely to receive.
But he says if you will follow me, you must take up your cross.
It will cost us everything. We could do nothing to earn our
salvation. We are absolute beggars
receiving a gift of a king, but the gate of repentance is far
too narrow for us to be able to keep 1 foot in the world.
You just can't do it. You can't bring your own agenda.
You can't bring your own priorities.
The call of Christ is follow me. There's a person, there is a
path and we must reject all and submit ourselves holy to Christ
and his rule. But again, we do this because of
the favor we have not to earn favor.
There's no second lever level of affections from Christ.
There's not all the the love that God has for us we have in
Christ, not in and of ourselves. That news is freeing.
The news is freeing. You see, when we understand the
salvation we have in Christ, the law is no longer a burden.
We get to read David and just rejoice.
Oh, how I love your law. I love it.
Why? Because it teaches me what it
looks like to follow in your ways.
I'm doing my best to stay right as close in behind you as I can,
and I want to follow your ways so I can do it.
Because I love communion with Christ.
Now you got a purpose. No, sorry.
You got a person. You got a path, and then Jesus
gives us a purpose. Follow me and I will make you
fishers of men. Fishers of men.
Now let's just get right at it. If you're not fishing, you're
not following, or else I don't know how to read.
Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
That's a beautiful promise. That's a beautiful promise that
you have been given a purpose not just to be a recipient of
grace, but to be an agent of getting that grace to others.
We are ambassadors for Christ and He calls us to that.
I want to be very clear in our day and age and so many times in
our theological huddles that we get into, we don't believe this
fishing for men. We believe more often than we're
called to destroy men. We don't understand that we're
called to draw men to Christ. So many guys believe that their
job is ultimately to condemn. Their job is to use words of
judgement against wicked behavior.
And I want to help you understand the way the world
hears that most of the time about our complainings and our
condemnation of them, our rejection of them.
They feel like we're looking down upon them as lesser beings
than ourselves, as if we've achieved some high status of
piety or religiosity or perfection, and they resent it.
They resent it. Hear me?
Well, I'm not saying don't condemn sin.
I'm saying don't condemn sin because you get your kicks out
of condemning sin. I'm saying we condemn sin
because we genuinely have a concern for people who will face
an eternal reality of punishment if they do not turn to Christ.
There is a use of the law when it's supposed to expose people's
sin and then drive them to Jesus.
We can use it like that, but let's not use it to condemn.
So we do condemn sin in hopes that men might be shaken from
their spiritual slumper and come to Jesus.
But I want you to understand Our Calling through Christ is to
draw men. It's the call to save, not to
destroy. It's our call.
Our call is to go and share. Our call is to go and say,
listen, I was in that darkness and somebody fished for me and
they brought me into the sun. And now I'm doing the same
thing. I was just like you.
I know that we got to help people.
See, This is why Paul so many times says and such for some of
you, don't you remember? Sometimes we forget.
He lists these horrendous things, the worst sins, and he
says and such were some of you and I can do that, can read
those things and read my biography.
Check, check, check. Yeah, that was me too.
Check. Right.
And then I remember that's what Christ brought me out of.
That's what Christ saved me from.
And if He did it to to me, the lowest of sinners, then I have
great confidence then that His grace can reach you too.
I have great confidence that as he sends me into the world,
there's men out there that I'm supposed to be fishing for, that
His grace can save. He didn't send me on a mission
that was impossible. There's no music that plays.
You just go out and faithfully do it.
I hope you do. You understand that it's a
massive task, but it's not as big as you might think it is.
I read an author who wrote in 1877 had to look up the
publishing date in 1877. This man said there was what
they estimated. He didn't.
They didn't know, OK, we don't know today, but they estimated
there was about 1.6 billion people in the world.
And he gave an encouragement to the church and he said, church,
if one person will this year reach two people for Christ, and
then those people go out and each of them reach to next year
and then the the third year, if those people would just go and
do it, Do you know how long it would take to reach all 1.6
billion? Less than 30 years.
I didn't believe him. So I pulled my calculator out
and I'm not, I don't math very well but I got the same number
he did. Was real impressed.
I got bad news they didn't do it.
So I did the math for us. If just one person would this
year go reach 2 and disciple them to be like Jesus and teach
them to fish for men. And next year they all did the
same. So I started thinking about
ahead. And so I, I googled what's the
pop? What's the estimated population
of 2060? And it's 10.2 billion people.
That number's huge. It'll take forever, 32 years
actually, in 32 years we could get 17 billion people.
So even if this next generation decides to be really fertile, we
can still do it. The question is, are we going to
do it? So many times we look at the
world that what can we do? Interesting.
Jesus started with 12 and changed everything.
Anybody want to do the math on how long it take us to reach
Magnolia? Because I did it.
It's not very long. You know how long it takes if we
don't obey. I want to encourage you as a
individual disciple because that's really the call.
The call is follow me, and we can't do that collectively.
Follow me. That's an individual thing.
That's what are you going to do with the Lord, but there is this
collective thing about I will make you all plural fishers of
men because he was talking to two brothers.
I'll make you fishers of men. A long time ago there was a fire
station the outside of a city and they were just a group of
life saving firefighting people. There's a small little shed,
it's all they had. They had one fire engine and
they would watch over and anytime there was a fire they
would just run right into the middle of it.
And it was incredible the success that they had because
they were saving lots of people. They would gather people up and
they bring them back that help them heal, that help them clean
up. Well, because they were so
successful, There were so many people that started to see that
or be be saved by that, that they wanted to like come hang
out and they, they came in, they want to start giving and, and
realizing, man, we need to make this bigger.
And so they looked at the little shed and they're like, let's,
let's do this big nice station. They built a nice day.
Well, let's, let's find better equipment.
And they started decking it out and they started decorating it
with all sorts of life saving equipment and all this motif.
And they started trying to train others to be lifesavers as well
firefighters. And as it continued, they
started people didn't didn't want to just come for the fires
anymore. They wanted to just kind of come
and, and hang out and enjoy each other's company and they kind of
became a social club. One day there's a fire and they
send people off and they brought a bunch of, they've rescued
people and they brought them back in while it really stuck up
the place. They were real dirty.
So they decided what we don't, this is kind of some exclusive
club we've got going. Let's just hire somebody else to
go do the job for us. And so they told somebody else
to go become firefighters. Some of the people, especially
the ones that have been saved from the fire, said, don't we
need to still be doing this? And they were voted down and the
people said, why don't y'all just go start at your own fire
station somewhere else? And so they did.
And pretty soon it became an exclusive club.
And if you look at the town now, there's tons and tons of
exclusive clubs that used to be fire stations.
You know, this call to discipleship and this call to
fish is not just an individual call.
I tell the stories about a fire station because it's my Trojan
horse to try to get in. Because that's the history of so
many churches, isn't it? And I praise the Lord that we
care deeply about evangelism here and we talk a lot about
missions. But you understand, if we keep
doing this and keep bringing in more people, if we don't
understand our call is a life saving mission to fish for men,
then when we keep bringing in the stinky ones, new believers
sometimes say and do things they're not supposed to do,
babies in the faith make messes. If we start becoming a club
instead of a life saving station, we're going to quickly,
quickly lose our purpose. So I have a call to you as an
individual today to be a Fisher of men, but also have a call to
us collectively today. We're going to keep our purpose
of fishing for men because when Christ calls people to
discipleship, when he calls them into fellowship with him, this
is the purpose. It's not to sit and to enjoy
each other's company. By God's grace, He gives us each
other to strengthen one another. For what?
For our purpose of going forth. Could you imagine a fire station
that all they did was they had one guy that would set up and
he'd turn anytime there was a fire in the city and they'd turn
on this alarm, go, hey, there's a fire, there's a fire.
Thanks. I guess right?
My dear brother gets up here every day and faithfully
proclaims it and you need it because people will be warned
from here. But my brother stands up and he
faithfully proclaims the truth so that you and I can go into
the fire. So we can go find our Co workers
and our family. We can go find friends.
We can go find lost people when talk to the guy at the gas
station so that we can tell him about Jesus and the one who
saves. Let's not be one of those
stations that just sounds an alarm from one place.
Let's be that life rescuing station that sends our people
out to go and seek and to save the lost.
The call of discipleship stands. The call goes forth to give up
everything and follow Him. I loved how both these brothers,
both sets of brothers, excuse me, It says immediately they
left their Nets and followed him.
Immediately they left their boat and their father and followed
him. The call goes forth.
I need you to understand that the call has two responses.
It may either be rejected or gladly accepted.
And the call goes forth to us into relationship to Him, to
follow in His ways and to fish for more, just like us.
What will we do today? Let's pray.
Father, I'm thankful for your word.
I'm grateful, God, that you've given it to us that You've given
us all of it that you come to us as Lord and Savior.
You come with all the things that are required for our
salvation fully accomplished. And when you bring them to us,
you bring them where we can joyfully relish and be in awe of
the fact that you've done everything for us.
So Lord, when when the call goes forth from this pulpit to to
repent and believe the gospel, that's all that the call
requires. It's it does not require good
obedience. It's it's not this legalistic
call, no matter how disobedient that person has been, repent and
believe means that that's all that's required.
So Lord, I pray that you would draw them into yourself today.
Many may have been waiting because they were hoping to get
some things fixed first. But Lord, may they just come.
Father, I do pray that you help us to walk in the ways of
Christ. I do pray that you help us to
understand your call upon us to fish, the call to not just
simply be a recipient, but also be an ambassador for Christ.
Lord, You've sent us out as light in The Dark World, and we
can look in fear about how are we ever going to be able to
overcome the darkness. But I pray that You help us to
see that You are the light of the world and that we can
overcome the darkness, because greater is You who is in US than
the one that is in the world. Ask that you continue to pray
and consider your calling. Has Christ come and bid you to
follow Him? Are you in relationship with
Christ? Have you communed with Him?
Have you become like the teacher?
Are you following in His path? Do you have the love for souls,
or have you walked in disobedience so long that you've
grown cold to the fact that eternity hangs in the balance?
Father, we pray that you would strengthen us.
I thank you for the words of Dustin this morning, for you
speaking through your word and just pray God and ask that you
would help us to to follow you a better.
To be better fishers of. Men as Dustin, as mentioned, not
out of legalism or an attempt to to gain some sort of standing
with you, but because of the the great love that you've loved us
with that you've called us out of darkness and into the sun,
into the light. Help us to to help others to do
the same. Please strengthen us and to do
this work that you've given us and help us to to take it
seriously Lord and we thank you so much for Christ who has saved
us. We pray that all of this brings
glory and honor to His great name.
We ask it in His name, Amen.