Welcome to the Liberty Baptist Sermon Archives.
The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us
or contact us at my libertybaptist.org or just look
us up on Facebook. And now we hope that this
message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.
We're going to look at Mark chapter 1.
We've been looking at missions, of course, this week and the
idea of what it means. And of course, Liberty Baptist
Church is a part of missions of man leaves his church and he
goes to a city. He's called by God to do that.
He feels LED of the Lord that this is a area that needs a
gospel witness. And now we have that here for
the last 12 years. And that's what missions is all
about. Sometimes people want to make
missions more than what it is or less than what it is.
But really missions is church planning.
That's what missions is all about.
So what I would like to do is take you back in the scriptures
to when the church started and and let you understand.
And my challenge to you today is that for us to understand that
what Jesus Christ started, we're still a part of today, 2000
years later. We're doing the same thing today
that the Lord Jesus Christ started in the, in the Gospels.
And he showed us, he shows us a pattern on what to do.
So if you would stand with me in Mark chapter #1 the book of Mark
chapter one, just to honor the Word of God, we're going to read
verses 14 down to verse #20 verses 14 and 15 gives us a
little bit of a background. And I'll look at basically the
1st 13 chapters in about two minutes.
And then we're going to be looking at verses 1516,
basically through verse 20. Now after that, John, that's
John the Baptist. After that, John was put in
prison. Jesus came into Galilee
preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God and saying the
time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent ye and believe the gospel.
Now let me stop right there. The Bible makes it very clear.
Now listen the Kingdom of God, listen to this.
The Kingdom of God is the rule of God in the hearts of willing
subjects. So people that would be be
willing to believe the gospel, which is the death, the burial
and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and then to repent of
their sins. And the word repent just means
I'm going in this direction and I'm going to turn and I'm going
to completely put all of my faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
I'm not going to add him to my religion.
I'm not going to add him to what I knew it.
I'm going to forsake all and I'm going to ask him to save me.
And I'm that means complete surrender.
That's that repentance is meaning I'm going in One
Direction. I turn and go to this direction.
I repent of my sins and I trust Christ as my savior.
Now listen, John the Baptist preached that Jesus Christ
preached that. And that's what we're to preach.
That's the gospel. And so now he he he shows us
that he is beginning this ministry of preaching the gospel
in the Kingdom of God. And then in verse 16, it says
this. Now as he walked by the Sea of
Galilee, this is Jesus. He saw Simon and Andrew his
brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers.
And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you
to become fishers of men. That's a part of church planning
and that's a part of what church is all about is that we are not
just fishermen. We are fishers of men.
We're seeking men that they might be saved.
Now like verse 18, because this is a very strong evidence of
these men and what God had been doing in their life already and
verses before because it says in straightway they they didn't
argue about it. They they straightway they
forsook their Nets and followed him.
And when he had gone a little further thence he saw James, the
son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the
ship mending their Nets. And straightway he called them,
and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the
hired servants and went after him.
So if I had a title for the message this morning, it'd be
very simply this, the beginning of the church, the beginning of
the church. Now, Liberty Baptist Church is a
church. It is a Church of baptized
believers who have coveted themselves together to carry out
the Great Commission. So you understand that inside,
in inside the Kingdom of God, which is the rule of God.
When a person believes, when a person is saved, God uses the
church inside of the Kingdom to do his business, to do the
gospel work. And so this is when it all
began. I get it.
I like it. Beginnings of things.
I mean, I, I get all fired up about something when it begins.
I love church planning and the idea of going to a place that
needs the gospel. And you see, it's not
necessarily you have to have a building.
You just gather the people. Jesus Christ with his disciples,
you understand, they never had a building.
They never had a building, but they were the same.
That's what we're doing right here.
Lord, I need your help today. I pray that it was this would be
very simple message, but understanding that the Church of
the Lord Jesus Christ is still alive in a well today.
Local assemblies of believers like the one that I pastor in
Springfield, MO and the one here in Easton.
And then we've had a couple of missionaries this week from New
Hampshire, and I believe somewhere else in my mind just
went blank on where the other brothers from I believe
Connecticut. And so I just pray, Lord, that
we'd understand those assemblies there.
Right now, those preachers are probably standing before their
congregations and people that may be visitors, and they are
proclaiming the gospel and they're wanting to see people
saved and then baptized into a church.
And then we become disciples. Every time that we have church
service, we're making disciples. We're learning from the Word of
God and then we'll have to make a decision on what we're going
to do with what we've learned today.
So I pray that'd be the case as we've looked at Wednesday night,
Thursday night, and Friday night as the idea of faith promise.
And then today the beginning of the church.
And then tonight as we'll look as an Old Testament story about
a New Testament application. I pray you'd help me in there
tonight. Also, bless these people.
Thank you for being here this morning in Jesus name, Amen.
You may be seated this morning. I, I can't overemphasize how
excited that I am to be here. We have supported this ministry
for many years. We love brother Rivero, his
wife, their children. And so we're, we're, we're, I,
I'm always excited to be able to go and see where our finances
have gone to. And, and listen, as I say, one
of the things I say in front of our congregation a lot is one of
them is like we support Heartland Baptist Bible College.
And then when there's a somebody like Brother Dan here or Brother
Rivero, we've been supporting them long before he ever came
here because we were supporting him when he went to college.
We just didn't know he was coming here, but God did.
And now he is here and what he does every week is he stands
before you and he preaches the word of God.
Now in the in this in this passage of Scripture, we have if
you want to look back at Mark chapter one, one and the very
first beginning, I'm going to go through this real quick because
what we're seeing here in Mark chapter 1 is Jesus starting his
public ministry, Jesus Christ. Listen to this, Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, He went who would eventually go to the cross
and die for the sins of all mankind and pay for our sin debt
that we might have the forgiveness of sin.
But He did that before he did that.
He is starting His church because when he leaves and
ascends into heaven, it's going to be the church that He leaves
to keep on the work that he started.
He's going to be our intercessor.
He is at the right hand of God the Father.
He makes intercession for us. Praise God for all of that.
But Jesus started the church so that when he ascended into
heaven that the church would continue.
And over the last 2000 years, that's exactly what's been
taking place. But when you come to the book of
Mark, you have a man named John the Baptist.
And John the Baptist is the man that God used to introduce the
world to Jesus Christ. And he, you can see words like
in verse, verse #2 of chapter 1, prepare the way before him verse
#3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare you the
way of the Lord verse #5 He was preaching that they would
confess their sins. And then he's a, he's kind of a
wild guy. You know what I'm saying?
I mean, he's, he's a little bit different.
He's a, a man who's clothed with camel's hair and a girl of verse
6 and girdle about the skin of his loins.
And really what John the Baptist does, as we find out, he comes
in the, he comes in the spirit of basically Elijah the prophet.
He is the, he is the guy that paves the way.
He's the guy that paves the way and lets people know that he
must decrease, Jesus will increase.
And that he, it is Jesus that he's introducing everyone to.
And so Jesus comes in verses 9 through 11.
He's baptized in verses #12 through #13 he goes into the
wilderness. He fast for 40 days and 40
nights as he's prepares himself for the ministry.
And then John the Baptist gets thrown into prison.
And, and when John the Baptist gets thrown into prison, Jesus
does not use this opportunity to go to the religious community
and and really go at them. Instead, he goes to Galilee and
there in Capernaum, the city that he basically does his
ministry from, and he begins to call out his disciples.
And the message that Jesus Christ is preaching is the
message that John the Baptist preached.
Jesus preached and we preach today.
And here we find in our text this morning that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, who listen to this, who was all God 100% but
was all man 100%. So he's all God and he's all
man. And the reason that he becomes a
man is that he might die for us and know the feeling of our
infirmities. There's going to be people who
say, well, you just don't know what I'm going through preacher
Jesus does. There'll be people who say you
just don't understand. No, Jesus knows the the
firmities of of us. He knows everything about us and
he and he knows that because he was all man, but at the same
time he can save us because he is all God.
So Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world was a
church planner. That's amazing.
Church planning was the hope of the world in Jesus day.
And I will say this, church planning is still the hope of
today. Revivals are not Somebody
putting up a tent for three weeks and doing all kinds of
revival comes by church planning, by seeing people say
baptized and become disciples. And you know, that doesn't
happen overnight. It's hard work.
It takes a while. It's taken you 12 years to where
you are. The church I pastor, we have a
long legacy in history. And we go all the way back to
1966 when our church was was established.
There was a couple of pastors before my pastor came and he was
there for 33 years until 2000. And then in 2000, I came there
and I've been there for the last 25 years.
And, and so, but you have to start somewhere and a church
planner must begin at the beginning.
He must start by gathering a group of people who he can
preach and teach the burden of his heart, which is to be the
heart and the will of God. So this what I just read in the
verses before you is basically God laying the foundation of the
church inside of the Kingdom of God.
And like I've said before, I say this all the time to the people
that I preach there is the the the Kingdom of God is bigger
than anyone church, but every church should be involved.
In the Kingdom of. God and that's the way that I
put it. So my first question is actually
I think I might ask a series of questions based on this text
here. The first question I would ask
is, who are these men? Who are these men that listen to
John the Baptist and listen to him preach and listen to what he
had to say when he said verse #5 of chapter 1.
And there went out unto him all the land of Judea.
This is John the Baptist and they of Jerusalem, and they were
baptized of him in the river Jordan confessing their sins.
So you know what happened. John received his authority from
heaven when they confessed their sins, when they repented of
their sins, when they believed that, when they believed, then
they were baptized and John took the men.
Gee, I'm sorry, Jesus took the men that John, the, that John
baptized and these were the first disciples that were going
to be inside of the church. But my question is in what we
just read, who were these men? Well, the Bible makes it very
clear they were fishermen. It's amazing to me that Jesus
would always use, he would always use getting to preach in
parables. He would he would tell his
disciples, I'm going to teach you a heavenly truth, but I'm
going to use an earthly example. And one of his first parables
was a sower went forth to sow and they all understood that in
that culture about us sower sowing the seed and, and
basically what Jesus Christ was trying to get him to understand
in that parable is when the seed hits the ground, it falls on
four different kinds of soil. Sometimes it hits hard soil
that's no good. Sometimes it hits soil that,
that the, the, the, the weeds come and choke it out.
But 1/4 of those people that the seed hit the ground, it hit good
ground, good soil and produce fruit.
That is an earthly illustration of a heavenly truth.
Will Jesus in this case, he calls fishermen to be in the
ministry and he uses this analogy.
You fish for fish, forsake that. Follow me, you'll fish for men.
So they were fishermen. Now, what was a fisherman in
that day? Well, I'll tell you exactly what
he was. He was about the most common man
that you could ever run into. He was just, they were just
common men of their day. Josephus, the Jewish historian,
who by the way, at one time was the governor of Galilee, said
that in his day there were 330 fishing boats that sailed on the
Sea of Galilee. I had the opportunity to go to
Israel in 2010 and my wife said that her favorite part of the
trip to Israel was getting on the Sea of Galilee and, and
going out into that, taking about a 30 minute boat ride or
45 minute. And you know, you're thinking,
I, I mean, I was thinking stuff like this.
I'm looking, I say, Robin, look, look over here.
Jesus could have walked on this water right here, right in this
spot, right here. Well, how do you know that I go?
I don't know that I'm just saying it's possible, but I do
know this is the Sea of Galilee that Jesus walked on.
I know this is the Sea of Galilee that John and James and
Andrew and Peter, they fished out of.
And the historian said that this area, there were so many fishing
boats that at one time that when when he was the governor, that
330 fishing boats sailed on the Sea of Galilee.
The ordinary man in that Ridge region did not eat meat, but
they ate, but they ate fish. In other words, they didn't go
to Walmart and buy cow. They didn't go and buy pig.
Well, they were Jews. They didn't eat pig.
Let's get that squared away. All right?
But they did eat fish. And if you go there, if you go
to that area and you go into a restaurant, guess what?
You're going to eat fish. And there's a lot of analogies,
like they would soak those fish in salt and that's how they
would preserve the fish. And they were just the ordinary
men. The fish was the staple, died of
the region. Beseda, which was a city around
close to the Sea of Galilee, was called the House of fish.
Another city in that area was called the place of salt fish.
And if you go to that area, it is likely you will be offered
fish as a meal. Now, I'll just have to confess,
when they brought out the fish, it had the head on it.
So either is going to have to cover up the head or order
chicken. So what I did was I ordered
chicken. All right, I'm just telling you,
I know I'm from the South, but there's some things that gross
me out. And that's like, if I eat fish,
it's not with a head on it. Somebody say Amen, This will be
your opportunity. And I'm just saying that.
So if you, you need to understand that this was an area
of fishermen and the first group of men that Jesus called to be
his helpers in the work of God's Kingdom were fishermen.
But here's what he said to him. You're not going to fuck.
You're not going to catch fish anymore.
You're going to catch men. And these men I want you to
listen to this would form what we know as the New Testament
church. And they would be taught and
they would learn by observation. And they eventually through a
church would be given the task of carrying God's Commission all
around the world. If I had time, which I don't
have time because it would be, it would make the message so
long, But I would suggest that you go and look at the
historical way in which some of these men died.
It's a, it's a, it's unbelievable, like Peter being
crucified upside down and becoming the apostle to the Jews
and, and, and Andrew going as far as India, history tells us.
And, and Thomas, I should say I apologize, Thomas going as far
as as India, Andrew going into Europe, even to where Scotland
was. I mean, these men were a part of
that first church that carried the gospel around the world.
And, and we can talk about when the gospel first went into
Europe. That was through the Apostle
Paul when he went to Philippi. We we could talk about we could,
we could go up here to Plymouth and we could talk about when the
Pilgrims came here. But but the pilgrims are not as
much as our ancestry as the brothers that came into Rhode
Island. And Clark who said, hey, I want
to have an experiment that this be the place where men have the
ability to worship without fear or without favor.
And listen, it is the Baptist that brought in the freedom of
of it is the Baptist people who brought in the idea of freedom
of speech and freedom of religion.
Now, I don't know if you know this and I don't know why this
is not taught and this is not even a part of my message, but I
don't care. I'm going to go ahead and say it
anyway. When, when, when I when our
revolution against the British was going on.
One of the things that. George Washington did and you
can go and find, you can go and find the letter he wrote to the
governors of the of the States and he said, listen, don't send
me any more Anglican priest. We don't need them.
The Anglican priest are being paid by England and therefore
they are loyal to England. He said.
What I need is Baptist preachers.
That's George Washington. And the other thing people don't
realize is George Washington was baptized by John Gaino outside
of New York City and John Gaino was a Baptist preacher and
there's still there's still artwork in the some of the
places where that you can see that.
Go look it up, John Gaino and and we have it in our church.
We've got that. We've got a copy of that because
I want our people to know that the founding George Washington
was the founder of who was our founding father.
I'll get it out here. Was baptized by Baptist.
You know why? Because he saw the loyalty of
the Baptist during the Revolutionary War.
Now, listen, this is all in this area.
You should be all excited about this.
And unfortunately this is not always taught in school, but it
is still a part of history. But then you come up to the you
come up to the Constitution. So you have this Constitution
that was written and John Hancock, you know, had the big
signature. And the men that that made the
Constitution, they listen to this.
They took their life in their hands by signing that document.
But, you know, there was a problem with the Constitution
and that was it was having trouble being ratified by the 13
states, especially the especially Virginia.
And Virginia would not ratify the Constitution because they
were concerned about religious persecution.
And they were already being persecuted by the
Congregationalist because they wanted them to baptize their
babies. And, and the Baptist said, no,
we're not baptizing our babies. That's not in the Bible.
People get baptized after they get saved.
And so they would not pay the vestry tax and they would not
have their babies baptized. And so John James Madison,
listen to this James Madison went to, went to John Clark went
to a Baptist preacher. I don't know why my mind's going
blank. And he said, hey, listen, we
need to get the Constitution. We need to get it ratified.
And our problem is, is Virginia and the and the preacher, the
Baptist preacher looked at James Madison and said, you got to
give me guarantees that we'll have the word.
We'll have religious freedom, the right to bear arms.
And those are the two things that we need to make sure that
we're going to be able to have a hold of.
And so James Madison looked at the brother the Baptist preacher
and he said, listen, I guarantee you, if you'll go as a Baptist
preacher and you have all of this influence in Virginia
Schubel Stearns and he had great influence and all these men.
So he he goes out and he starts going to the churches and he
said, let's ratify the Constitution because James
Madison gives guarantees that if we do this, they'll give us
amendments to the Constitution. Now listen to me, folks.
That's how we have the 1st Amendment.
There would have been no religious freedom in America.
Without the Baptist. Now that should that gets you to
say Amen. And here we have Jesus Christ
taking John the Baptist baptism and men who started with him and
he builds this church. And now we live in America and
we have the freedoms that we have because of Baptist people.
No one believed in the ordinary person like Jesus Christ.
These men did not come from the schools and the colleges, these,
these disciples, they did not come from the religious schools
of the scribes and the Pharisees.
These men were not wealthy or in the upper upper social social
echelon. Hey, they were fishermen, which
means they were ordinary and that means they were ordinary of
the ordinary. And I don't want to, I don't
want to bust your bubble. But if you look at Berea Baptist
Church and the people that are there on a weekly basis.
You know what? They are ordinary people.
You know what I look at this morning when I look out at
Liberty Baptist Church, I just see ordinary people.
Amen. Just ordinary people and no one
believed in the ordinary like Jesus Christ and no one listen
to me. This is what you got to get a
hold of. No one uses the ordinary like
Jesus Christ. Abraham Lincoln said that God.
This is a quote from Abraham Lincoln.
God must have loved the ordinary man, because he made.
So many of them. That's a great quote.
Who were these men? Ordinary men?
Second question, what were these men doing?
I'm telling you man, my messages are deep.
Like way deep. What were they doing?
They were fishing to get that. You know why they were fishing?
Because they were fishermen. Ordinary fishermen.
Yeah, that's it. That's fine to say.
What were these men doing? They were doing their ordinary
day's work. They were going to their
occupation and they were doing the work that they did.
They were catching fish and mending Nets.
Why? Because men who fished in this
area with Nets caught fish and mending Nets.
So what's the point, preacher? God saves us where we're at and
God uses us where we're at as ordinary people.
It's the same with men who had been in the past that God has
called in the ministry. Like if you go in the Old
Testament and you read about like Amos Amos the prophet in
the Old Testament. Here's what Amos said in Chapter
7 verse 1415. I was no prophet, neither was IA
prophet son, and I can say this my daddy wasn't a preacher.
My grandfather wasn't a preacher.
My great grandfather wasn't a preacher.
I was no prophet fact. If you go back and check out my.
Heritage you'll find a few horse thieves a man, my great
grandfather beat a man to death with a walking stick over a
poker game. I'm telling you that's.
That's rough business back in Tennessee, you know what I mean?
But but Amos said I was no prophet.
Neither was I prophet's son. But I was a herdsman.
He said. I was a farmer.
I I gathered Sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me as I followed
the flock. And the Lord said unto me, Go
prophecy unto my people, Israel. So Amos was AI mean Moses great
great man of God in the Bible. He was somebody as far as, as
far as a Prince in Egypt, but before God could use him, he had
to put him on the backside of the desert for 40 years and make
him A and make him a shepherd. And you know what the Bible says
about the Egyptians and what their belief was about
shepherds. They were abomination.
So here this Prince of Prince of, of Egypt had to go to the
backside of the desert for 40 years and become a shepherd so
God could use him as an ordinary man.
Isn't that amazing? And the call of God can come to
a man not only in the House of God, not only in the secret
place, but it could also come in the middle of the of a day's
work. These men were doing the work.
I was in the Air Force doing my work when I got saved, just
minding my own business, doing my job as a contracting
specialist, meaning I I was a. Buyer for the government.
I understand contracts. I understand that world.
I did all kinds of contracts when I was.
One of the biggest contracts that I was involved in was
procuring nurses because the Air Force, when I went in under
Reagan, the Air Force had been depleted.
Of nurses and other things that needed to happen because of the
previous administration and so we had to procure nurses from
civilian world until the military could get recruit
nurses. And things like that to put them
in the hospitals. And I wrote this giant contract.
You know what I was doing? I was just doing my job when the
gospel came along and a man behind me started witnessing to
me. And I was not very nice to him.
And maybe you weren't too nice before you got saved.
And maybe since you got saved, you maybe need to work on being
a little nicer. But here's his, here's his
direction that Jesus gave these men.
And here's the direction that God will give you.
Follow me. Follow me.
Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
And you know what these men did? They heard Jesus preach.
They saw Jesus heal the he caused people to see and then
preach the gospel. He saw.
They saw Jesus heal leopards. They saw Jesus raise the dead.
Oh, by the way, can I say this? Only God can raise the dead.
Only God can cleanse leopards and he doesn't.
He didn't do this just so that he could cleanse leopards and
cause blind people to see and raise the dead.
He did it so that he could, he could show people who he was,
that he was God. He authenticated who who who he
was. And you know who else Jesus is?
Jesus is the word of God. You know what Jesus left us the
word of God. And this, this is Jesus Christ.
This is everything that we need to know.
Do you need to know how to be saved?
Right here The Bible tells you how to be saved.
Repent, believe the gospel, and you can be saved, get baptized,
be a part of the church, and become a disciple of Jesus
Christ. What I'm saying is, as Jesus is
doing here what we're still doing today, follow me.
These men had been in the crowd. They'd heard John the Baptist
declare that Jesus was the Lamb of God that took away the sin of
the world. These men had no doubt about who
Jesus was. They had they had been
astonished by how he spoke with great authority.
That was one of the things that it said about Jesus.
When he came on the scene and regular people started listening
to him. They said no man spake like this
man. Listen, the scribes and the
Pharisees, they were religious. They had no power.
They had no salvation. And listen, let me tell you
something right now. Religion won't save you dead
dry. Religion will not save you.
A personal relationship with Jesus Christ in repentance
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what salvation is all about.
They knew he was different than any man they had met.
And I believe personally they had already felt in their heart
the pulling of a greater person than just being a fisherman.
And, and here they were right for discipleship.
And Jesus comes out there and I, I love some of the stories like
1. You know, one of the stories is,
you know they fished. All night and they caught
nothing and Jesus shows up and he said Peter Castornet on that.
And they're like, Laurie, man, I'm tired.
You know, we fished all night.
I don't know why you made me do that.
But never at that. But you know, Lord, I
nevertheless at thy word I'll do it.
And they threw. The net out and they couldn't
even hold the fish. Now if you don't think Jesus
laughed, I'm sorry I did boy. And he said probably something
like this boy, these are these fella got a lot to learn and
they realized you know what Peter did He fell down at the
feet of Jesus and he said my Lord, he just said I am.
I'm a sinful man. When Thomas doubted that Jesus
Christ had been raised from the dead, he wasn't, by the way, He
wasn't in church on Sunday night reading in the Bible, and Jesus
showed up in the middle of them and they told Thomas, Man, Lord.
Was here but we had a church service.
It was amazing. And Thomas got that whatever.
That's why we call him doubting Thomas.
But nevertheless, Thomas came to church the next Sunday night and
Jesus showed up again. And Jesus looked right at Thomas
and said, you want to see my hands, the scars, you want to
see my side, the spear that's been cast through.
And what did Thomas do? Fell on his face and said, my
Lord and my God, you know what Jesus said?
Blessed are to those that don't see these things, but yet they
believe that's us. I've never seen the Lord Jesus
Christ with my physical eye, but I've seen him with the eye of
faith. I've been following for over 40
years. I've never regretted one time
when I got saved back in April of 19184 as a 24 year old Air
Force Airman and I got saved by the grace of God and I've been
saveth ever since it and I wouldn't have it any other way.
And I'm just telling you, man follows Jesus not only for what
he says, but for who he is. And here's what he said to those
men and here's what he says to us today.
Follow me. You know, there's two things.
This is just Pastor Abel's. And so I'm just going to throw
this out there and it probably don't mean anything, but there's
two things that I don't like. I don't like disrespect and I
don't like disloyalty. And let me tell you about these
men. They were loyal to Jesus Christ.
They respected him as this, as Lord and Savior.
And you know what? If they did so should we be
loyal to me? Jesus said, put your trust in
me, follow me and I will give you purpose.
I will give you an abundant life.
I will make you to become fishers of men.
And it all begins with a personal relationship to Him.
Who are these men? Ordinary fishermen, what were
they doing when he called him? They were doing their work of
fishing. What did he call them to do?
Follow him? Has any of that changed?
No, 2025, almost 2026, Still the same today.
And by the way, can I say this? There's still a bunch of
Pharisees and scribes and dead religion all around us.
And it's bigger than we are, isn't it?
It's bigger than we are. It was bigger than this little
church that was started with 12 men.
Do you know, do you know how I know that it was a church?
Just so you'll know because I read the Bible and here's what
the Bible says. The Bible says in Luke chapter
6, from the disciples that were around, he called 12 men and he
called them apostles. He named them apostles.
And in First Corinthians chapter 12/26, 12:28, it says this.
He said first in the church apostles.
That's why I know this is a church, even though they didn't
have a building. You know, a lot of church plants
don't have a building. I went to India in 2010 and I
went to places where people were congregations of churches met
under a banana tree. I've been to, I've heard of
places I'd have no, I've not been to Africa, but I've heard
of places through brother, brother Boonster.
He'll say hey. We'll go to this place and, and
they don't have a building, but what they do is they have a, a
place in the park and everybody knows it.
On Sunday morning, they all come to this park and the church, the
church meets in the park. You see that?
A church is not the building, a church is the people.
And Jesus gathered these people, these people that were saved.
And had been baptized. And now we're beginning a
church. And what did he say?
Follow me. Now the third question I would
like to ask is what would be the task that they should perform?
Well, here's what he did. He called them to a life not of
ease, but to a life of service. Serving the Lord is not always
easy. Pastoring a church is not always
easy. Let me tell you why.
Pastoring a church is not always.
Easy, 'cause there's people. That's a good time to laugh.
Because there's people involved, you know?
You know what? Jesus compares his people as
sheep. Did you know that sheep are
night like the most intelligent animal on the face of the earth?
So that's kind of who we are, sheep.
For 10 years I drove a truck for FedEx.
I was a Courier and I, I would do a lot of driving in the
country. You know, I remember, you know,
I remember back in the day when they didn't have Rd. numbers and
all that, you'd call somebody up and say, ma'am, I got a package.
For it says. Rule Route 3, Box 85.
Now, how in the world is anybody going to find Rule Route 3?
Well, you just go down this road and when you see the when you
see the tree that's been hit by lightning, turn right.
I'm like, what? Those are the kind of places I
went to and I remember one time that I went by this sheep, there
was a sheep farm there and there was 1 sheep on the other side of
the fence. And I hate could I could see in
my, you know, I could see that he had roamed down there and got
around the, there's one little spot and got around there.
And then he's standing there and he's, he's looking at the rest
of the sheep on the other side of the fence and he's going, you
know why? You know why sheep want to be on
the other side of the fence? They think the grass is greener
on the other side of the fence. Oh, really?
There's just a septic tank sitting there.
And I was like, I wanted to stop.
I felt sorry for the little thing, but I had, I had to
deliver this package by 10:30. So I went by.
But when I came back by, I thought, I'm going to stop and
see if I can help that little sheep because he's going to get
hit by a car. Well, I didn't need to because
the shepherd was there. And the shepherd was like doing
it. And here he came.
He followed the shepherd. But we ain't too smart.
And when you're a pastor, you have to shepherd the people.
And sometimes you get you get people who get on the other side
of the fence and you're trying to do everything you can to help
them. So stay on the right side of the
fence. And remember, I yelled that at
you, too. Amen.
Well, you're, you're not very nice.
I didn't, brother. Rivero's the nice one.
I was thinking today, good cop, bad cop.
I'm the bad cop. He's the good cop.
You know what I'm saying? I.
Believe everyone needs a purpose, I do, and the purpose
of the gospel is greater than any purpose we could have.
Everyone needs something to which they can invest their life
in. He called them to serve others
by becoming fishers of men. He called them to a task whereby
they could win something for themselves, but it had to be by
giving their all to Him and then to serve others.
These were ordinary men called out of their ordinary work to do
and perform an ordinary work of service.
And he used them based on who they were.
I always tell a young lady, you know, if you ever heard of a
young lady, I. Love him.
I'm going to marry him. I'm going to change him.
No, you're not. He is who he is.
If he's an idiot today, he'll be an idiot.
Tomorrow, so don't marry an. Idiot.
Somebody say Amen. I'm just saying he used them
based on who they were. At the very beginning of his
public ministry, Jesus would gather around him an inner group
of men whom he would direct his purpose to listen.
Still same thing going on today. He called men who were who were
different from each other. Now to me, the greatest
dynamics. And when you're early in March,
listen, we're talking about the first people that were in the
church. We're talking about four
fishermen, basically Andrew, Simon Peter and his brother
Andrew, and then these two guys who were the sons of Zebedee
called John, who later became John the Beloved or John the
Revelator, wrote the revelation. But you know what Jesus called
John in the beginning, called him the Son of Thunder.
He was not the guy who wrote first, second and third John.
He was got. He was the guy in the beginning
that when they were going to go into a city and prepare
everybody for Jesus to come and they wouldn't listen to him.
They said, he said to Jesus, hey, can we call?
Fire down out of heaven and consume these yahoos and Jesus
said John. That's that's not the right
spirit. But by the time you get to 1st
and 2nd and 3rd John, you you read the beloved, you see a man
that's different. How did how did that happen?
Jesus son, when I before I got saved, I just soon whip you as
look at you and you say, well, you're kind of small, to which I
say dynamite comes in small packages.
But I found out. I mean, I listen, this is a true
story. I'm in Bible college.
I am in Bible college. I'm fired up.
I want to serve the Lord and I came into one day and I'm
drinking coffee in this coffee shop and this guy comes in and
he is bad mouthing a preacher and then I realized he's bad
mouthing my preacher. I put that brother up against
the wild brother. I had this elbow right in his
throat and I was fixing to take him back to where Jesus started
out all There was three guys that pulled me off and they
said. He said he's.
Gone to jail. I said, one of us getting ready
to go back and then my pastor got a hold of it, called me into
his office, said, Brother Jeff, you can't be doing that if
you're going into the ministry. And I said, well, I'm not a
pastor yet. It says a pastor can't be a
striker. But I'm still in Bible college.
He goes, brother. And I listened to him and he got
on to me, read me the right act. And I was like, man, Lord,
you're going to have to help me because I just can't stand
stupid. And the Lord's changed me.
Now sometimes the old flesh riles up in me a little bit and
I have to go lay down and take a baby aspirin and take a nap till
I get over it. But that's not the spirit that
the Lord wants us to have Somebody say.
Amen. He doesn't take a stand,
brother, but have the right spirit about it.
All right. I'm with you, I understand you.
We'll have coffee together and bemoan our station.
But but here's the point. John, John, John was not always
the son of Thunder. He became the beloved love.
He he was the one that Jesus loved and laid on his breast.
So everybody getting this, God wants to change us.
God wants to mold us. What about Peter?
Think about Peter. Peter, the bold and brazen one
said to Jesus, hey, I know these other guys.
Hey, listen. But Peter basically said this
Lord, I know these other guys, they're a bunch of losers.
I will never forsake you. And Jesus bowed his head and
looked at Peter. And he said on the very day that
Jesus was going to be crucified, he said, Peter, before the cock
crows three times he'll deny me thrive, he'll deny me.
Three times. Peter said no.
And then when they come to get Jesus at the Garden of
Gethsemane, he pulls out a sword.
And he wasn't a very good swordsman because he only
whacked the guy's ear off instead of his head.
I'm glad he only whacked his ear off because I think it have
freaked everybody out of Jesus to pick the guy's head up and
stuck it back on his head. So don't do that because Jesus,
it doesn't say he picked the year up.
It doesn't say that, but I just like the thing in my mind that
he picked that up and stuck it back on the side of his head and
said, Peter, stop it. Peter denied the Lord, but he
became a great preacher. He became the apostle to the
Jews. Paul persecuted the Church of
the living God and was zealous about it and thought he was
doing the right thing till he got saved and God changed his
heart. You see what I'm saying?
That we're just ordinary people and God changes ordinary men and
ordinary churches to build ordinary churches like this
right here. There's nothing, nothing new
under the sun, I mean, but we. But it's amazing that you get to
see it right here in the Bible. And so Jesus just took this
inner group of men and called men who were so different from
each other. They would display different
gifts and be used in different ways.
What I was going to say that slipped my mind is Matthew is
not in here right now. Matthew.
In fact, if you read Matthew free the Gospel of Matthew,
Matthew don't show up until several chapters.
So he's got eyewitnesses of what's.
Going on and then Matthew shows up and when Matthew shows up, he
he wants everybody to he, he has this big supper.
And invites everybody to come to it so they can see Jesus and
that he wants them to be saved like he was.
Now, Can you imagine, listen to this.
Can you imagine Peter and Matthew in the same church?
Well, what's the deal, preacher Matthew was a tax collector.
The most hated man in the city. He collect.
Yeah. They still they're not the most
popular. I can tell you that they and he
collected taxes. Guess who he would collect taxes
from? James and John, Peter and
Andrew, and I can just see Jesus or I can just see Peter.
Going What are what are you? What are you?
Doing him as a disciple well, because I want him to be
fisherman too. And it and it was Matthew that
brought many people to the Lord as far as that supper was
everybody getting this hope everybody's understanding this
what I'm trying to get across this morning.
He used the men and who they were.
He and and again Peter was a fisherman.
He would deny Christ. He would be used greatly by the
Lord. He would become a public
preacher and pastor after his time as pastor in Jerusalem.
Basically, Jesus gave Peter the pastor after him, and then later
on it was James and Peter became the apostle to the Jews.
And Simon Peter's brother was entirely different than his
brother. Me and my brother, we are so
different if we were to stand next to each other and you hear
us talk and all that. You'd never even, you'd not even
know we're brothers. They were different, but you
know. What Andrew had, he had a he had
a gift of bringing others to Christ.
He's the guy who brought Peter to Jesus.
He was the disciple who brought the boy who had the five loaves
and the two fishes. He was the man who won others to
the Lord. John was a man of spiritual
insight, a man of passion, the Son of Thunder, but he came the
beloved disciple. The 4th man is James, who was a
man of courage and devotion. He would be one of the earlier
martyrs of the Church along with Stephen.
And John the Baptist, those are the three martyrs.
So let's bring this all together if we can, and close.
This brings us down to a simple application where I hope that
everybody can understand this morning.
Boy, if you got your lunch at 12:00, you got it burnt.
Who does God use today in his church?
The ordinary. Who's performing their everyday
ordinary work? What should be the task that
we're performing? It starts with a personal
relationship with Jesus, repentance toward God, and faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then listen.
Doesn't matter if you're a preacher.
Doesn't You don't have to be a preacher to be called to a life
of service. We may not all be preachers or
missionaries, but we're all called to serve.
And he's going to use those that are here.
He's going to use us as we are. We're not to stay the same.
He's got to chip off the edges. He's got to mold us and make us.
He will use us as who we are, though.
Who are we? Well, I'll tell you, I look
around. I think we're a bunch of
ordinary people who've been called out of our ordinary work
to perform an ordinary work of service.
Church planning is the same today as it was when Jesus did
it. Very sane.
Now the question is, are you a part of it?
And you can't be a part of it unless first you enter into the
Kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God is the
rule of God in the hearts of willing subjects.
And then when you get in the Kingdom of God, you need to be
baptized into the church and become a servant of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he may, he may very well
call you to a life of missions or pastor.
But if not, you're still to serve in the church that Jesus
started. Are you saved?
Do you know the Lord? Are you a part of his work?
Well, preacher, I'm saved, but I'm not a part of the work.
Get a part. Be a part.
You're going to have to stand before the Lord one day, and
you're either going to have to hear well, well, well, well,
well, Lord, you know, I just thought I'd do it my own way.
No, no, no, no. I didn't want you to do it your
own way. I wanted you to do it my way.
Well, I like to go. Out and finish, you know, and I
worship Lord out. No you can't not, not if you do
it Jesus way. Be a part of his work.
Are you saved? Are you in the Kingdom of God?
And if you are, have you moved yourself into the church that
Jesus started? Thank you for listening to the
sermon from the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church.
If this message was a blessing to you, or if there's any way we
can serve you, please let us know by contacting us at
info@mylibertybaptist.org. Or you can visit us this Sunday
at 800 Washington St. in Easton, MA.
May the Lord bless you as you grow in His Word.