I. The Transformation of a Disciple
A. The call to follow Jesus Christ
B. The call to evangelism
The call is our empowerment. If we see that this is what God has for us and He wants to equip us for it, then what can stop us? If God is for us, who can be against us? If we see that this calling is from God’s own lips, then it ought to embolden us to call upon God Himself to equip us for the task.
II. The Attitude
A. Immediacy
B. Relinquishing
Peter and Andrew forsook their nets and followed Jesus. James and John forsook their boat and their father and followed Jesus.
Now I want to answer the question, “What happens when I pick the nets back up?” There will be times when I want to return to the way it was. A time without the trouble or trial of following Jesus Christ. A time to pick up what I had left behind for the Savior. An easier, gentler path (or so I think). In the classic story, Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and Hopeful were walking along a path that became rough and dry and filled with sharp stones. They were almost spent when they saw a beautiful fenced meadow. Christian looked at the field excitedly. He told Hopeful that they could certainly go that way since it appeared much easier. He was confident they could pick up the path on the other side of the field. They took the way by that meadow and left the rough and dry road that was filled with sharp stones. And it led them into doubt and despair.
There are times (many times) when we look at the path that lies ahead of us and think that we might skirt it for a while and make for a short cut. We might run away from being faithful to the Lord. We will go back to what we were used to instead of pressing on in the difficulty. We will pick up what we left behind and return to a less difficult time with less sacrifice and toil. We will wistfully consider days gone by that we would like to try again.
Peter was there. At the beginning of John 21 (after the resurrection of Jesus), the disciples were seeing the risen Christ intermittently. He wasn’t with them the entire time. And perhaps Peter got to thinking, is this it? Is this what it was supposed to be like? Is this the end of the movie? What do I do now? This interim period before the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the birth of the church caused Peter to reconsider just what he was doing. In his mind he called into question the entire work to which he was called. The chapter starts out with Peter saying to several of the other apostles, “I am going fishing.” And they followed him. He went back to what he knew best, but it was not what the Lord had for him. Jesus came to Peter and called him again to recommit himself to follow. The whole apostolic endeavor was in risk of collapsing if Peter turned away.
What are we doing when we feel like quitting what God has called us to do? You need to surrender your will again and again and again and again. We are always going to be tempted to give up the way of a disciple. It comes with the territory: we don’t want to be told what to do. This is why Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” In 1 Corinthians 15:31, Paul affirms the fact that this will be played out again and again. He says, “I die daily.” Why should it take us by surprise that we have to reaffirm our desire to follow the Lord at the start of each day? Aren’t we engaged in a spiritual battle where eternal consequences are on the line? Has not every soldier, in the heat of battle, and perhaps on a daily basis while at war, had to recommit himself to his task?
Satan tempts me in this very way at times. It has happened a few times over the years. The temptation usually revolves around an orchestrated (not coincidental) event involving submarines. I remember taking my children to the Nautilus museum in Connecticut some years ago. Would you believe that on a Monday afternoon at the museum I ran into John Schneider? He was a fellow officer a few years my senior. He had just finished his CO tour on a fast attack sub. After speaking to him I was in a small depression for a few days. Satan tempted me with thoughts like “What would you be doing now if you were still there?” A similar thing took place when I saw a news story title about a Good Samaritan submariner. The title piqued my curiosity. When I read the article I saw a picture of the CO pinning a commendation medal on this man. The CO was a friend of mine from my old boat who was now in command of the USS Nevada. “Dave, do you see where you could be?” Satan knows how to take our mind off the call of God so that we doubt if relinquishing is really the right attitude for a disciple. And so when we feel like picking up the nets and going back to what was comfortable, familiar, and safe, we must recommit ourselves to the path that Jesus has for us as His disciples.
If we are to follow Christ’s call for our lives as His disciples we must be willing to relinquish what He calls us to relinquish. We will never know what difficulties or joys He may bring us through unless we acquire the attitudes of a disciple. And we can never know how the difficulties will result in blessing unless we continue to recommit ourselves to the attitude of relinquishing for the sake of Jesus. Let me ask a question: if the path of following Jesus meant allowing your family’s health to suffer, would you continue in that path? If the path of following Jesus meant that your family would lose their lives, would you continue in that path? May it never be, but doesn’t the attitude of relinquishing include even this?
C. Pursuing
The third attitude of a disciple of Jesus Christ is that of pursuing. In verse 20, Matthew says, Peter and Andrew “followed” Jesus. In verse 22, Matthew tells us that James and John “followed Him.” Being a disciple is a pursuit of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a willingness to be led by the Savior. It is a willingness to each day find what the Savior would have us to do and by the power of the Spirit of God to do it.
This attitude of pursuit calls us to follow our Savior. How are we supposed to follow Him? By serving Him. He calls every one of His followers to serve Him in accordance with the gifts He has given in the church. Hebrews 12:1-2 shows us how it is we are to follow Jesus Christ and in what manner we are to serve Him. The Lord says, “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
To what is the author of Hebrews calling us? To follow Jesus Christ. How then are we to do it? First, put off those things that are hindering us from serving Him. Every encumbrance. In running, there are things that will keep you from running effectively and may stop you from finishing what you have started.
Encumbrances are those things which keep us from serving the Lord effectively. They distract us from getting down to serving the Lord. What are the encumbrances that are preventing you from effectively serving the Lord? What is keeping you from committing yourself to serving Him in this body? What is getting in your way of serving the Lord here in this church? It might be an attitude that keeps you from surrendering for service. It might be an activity that interferes with your ability to serve consistently in a dependable fashion, some hobby or other pastime that fits right over your schedule to work for Jesus Christ. It might be your own busyness that encroaches upon your service for the Lord, even as Jesus mentioned those who are prevented from bearing fruit because of the worries and affairs of this life. These things have a person so bound up inside that they cannot bring themselves to serve Christ because of everything else. Encumbrances might be fears that prevent you from going further on in serving Jesus Christ.
But the author of Hebrews mentions not only encumbrances (weights that make us less effective in serving Christ) but sin that so easily entangles us and prevents us from serving Christ at all. When you are not willing to get past your sin and confess it and move on, you are not able to serve Christ. You will not be able to serve the Lord in the Spirit’s power until you are willing to deal with your sin in the way the Holy Spirit reveals to you that you must. Sin will prevent you from serving the Lord in His way with His power. Encumbrances will prevent you from being as effective as you might be as you seek to serve the Savior. Sin prevents you from serving Him acceptably.
But then we see a transition. Not only are we to leave these things behind in a disciple’s attitude of relinquishing, but then he says, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” There is a race (a real race, a race for the souls of people) that we need to be running in. We need to work together, each individual in this church, to see this carried out. But how can we do this? Who is adequate for such an awesome task? How can we faithfully continue in it?
He tells us in verse 2 that we are to be “fixing our eyes on Jesus… who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.” Fixing our eyes on Jesus doesn’t mean we look at some picture of Jesus with our physical eyes. He is not calling us to idolatry. He doesn’t mean we wait to behold some vision of Jesus. But in order that we might not get sidelined in the race of serving Jesus Christ in His church, the author calls us (understand this) to find our rest in Him who already endured for us. He says to “run with endurance” by “fixing your eyes on Jesus who endured the cross.” We are to seek His power so that what we carry out in His service we do through His Spirit. This is why God has given us His Holy Spirit so that He might carry out His work through us and that we not trust (or rest) in our strength. The Scripture says that the arm of flesh will fail you. I suppose some people take that to mean that they should not trust in other people (and it does). But it also means that we must not trust in ourselves to carry out God’s work.
Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. What joy was it that He was looking to? The joy of bringing people to His Father. He knew that without suffering there would be no fruit, no one saved. You and I need to realize that if we are to experience the joy of seeing others come to know Him and grow in Him then there must be suffering in our lives as we follow the path of a disciple.
Choosing to pursue the attitude of a disciple may result in hardship, difficulty, comfort, or ease, on any particular day. The day before us may be a hard one. Being faithful to Jesus Christ may make for a day filled with trials. Or this particular day may be one of physical and spiritual rest. But (and this is the key) as a disciple we don’t get to choose what that path is for the day. As a disciple we seek to follow immediately. As a disciple we relinquish our plans into the Lord’s hands so that when He changes our plans we know that He is leading us for a purpose. As a disciple we follow where He leads, even if it is not the direction we thought of for the day. To go where He goes: this is the path of a disciple. It is life surrendered to Him daily.
Let me close with this story I recently read in the Christian Law Association’s “Legal Alert.” A man named Earle Lee, a friend of David Gibbs, relates this story. He said, “What a privilege my wife and I had in August of 1991 when we hosted a group of eight people to go to Russia. In fact, we left America the day the Russian coup was the front page headlines in our morning newspaper… The following Sunday we had the privilege of sharing in the first open service the underground church was able to hold after 30 years of meeting in secret. The service was 5.5 hours long but no one noticed its length because of the sharing of God’s grace to them that they experienced during the persecution.
“A pastor was called up to share his testimony… He told how he was saved and called to preach. The Russian authorities found out and wanted him to stop preaching or threatened he would lose his job. He refused to quit preaching even though the church could not pay him a salary and he lost his job. At that time he and his wife had three young children. The authorities arrested him and put him in jail four different times and demanded that he deny Jesus and stop preaching. Each time he refused to deny Christ and pledged his word that he would not stop preaching.
“He was arrested a fifth time, and they told him that this time they would make him deny Jesus and quit preaching. They brought his oldest child in and put her in front of him and told him that if he did not sign that he would deny Jesus and quit preaching, they would literally put hot pokers in both of his daughter’s ears and make her deaf, and then they would cut her tongue out to make her mute.
“While standing there looking at his daughter and thinking of the consequences, his daughter looked up at him and said, ‘Daddy, don’t you deny Jesus for me.’ He didn’t and they did what they had promised. They kept him in prison, and eventually did the same thing to his other two daughters. Eventually they let him out of prison.”
Lee continued, “I noticed that while he was sharing his testimony there were three adult families sitting together and someone was signing to them in sign language. After the service was over I asked our interpreter if they were his children and she said, ‘Yes.’ I asked if we could go and ask them a question. When that was arranged I asked them this, ‘Are you not bitter with God?’ Immediately three sets of hands began to move in unison and with smiles on their faces, they signed, ‘It was just our reasonable service.’”
Don’t think that anything the Lord Jesus calls you to relinquish for His cause, for the sake of the gospel reaching more lives, will not produce fruit. And the only way you will ever know it is by adopting an attitude of immediacy, an attitude of relinquishing and daily surrendering your will to His and of pursuing. Jesus said, “Follow Me.”
Those three girls were willing to give up their hearing so that the gospel could go forward, but can you forgo an hour of your beauty sleep to meet together in Sunday school so you can more effectively serve Him? They were willing to give up their speech so that Jesus Christ would be exalted in their lives. Can you burden yourself to give up some time at lunch to pray for the salvation of your coworkers and spend time in His Word to know what He has to say to you? This man was willing to give up His job and livelihood for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Can you step out of your comfort zone to find some way to serve in the church?
I know that you have important things to do during your lunch break instead of reading the Scripture or praying. There is the all-important solitaire game or that latest best-seller. I know you have important things to do on Sunday and during the week instead of serving the Lord. There are so many good family outings and sports games that crowd into that day called “The Lord’s Day.” But if your life has been captivated by the Messiah, shouldn’t your walk with Him and service to Him take precedence over updating your social networking site? Shouldn’t we see the need to lay aside the encumbrances of life and the entanglements of our sin to follow the Savior? If He has chosen you to follow Him, then it is not for you to choose in what way you will follow, but for you to open your ear as a disciple, to listen and obey what He calls you to do. Don’t procrastinate. He says, “Come follow Me.” Start today.