[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints of God, we hear today of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the beginning of His ministry, and its fulfilling of the promise of Isaiah chapter 9 that by the way of Zebulun and Naphtali, by the way of the sea in the land of the Gentiles, a light has shone. I think that’s what makes this, by the way, an epiphany text. Christ, because Epiphany is about the light that is shining in the darkness, the light that is Christ, the light that no darkness can overcome.
So Matthew gives us a summary in chapter 4 of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and especially of the calling of the apostles and the disciples. Now I don’t know how it is in your own imagination, but for me it seems like this is a really sudden thing, like the disciples are just there fishing. There’s Peter and his brother Andrew, and they’re fishing, and there’s James and John down the beach, and they’re fishing, and Jesus walks by, and they don’t even know the guy, and Jesus says, “Hey, you guys, follow me,” and they say, “Okay.”
And this is a troublesome way I think of thinking about it because we think, “Well, who of us would ever do that? If we’re sitting there at work and some guy comes along and says, ‘Follow me,’ and we just leave everything and follow him?” It’s really quite nice for us to put it in context and to recognize that this calling of the disciples happens three, maybe four, maybe even if you would, five times.
Remember last week, for example, when John is preaching and Jesus is baptized, and the Holy Spirit descends on him, and the Holy Spirit then sends him into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted, and he comes back to the Jordan River, and John the Baptist, looking at his disciples, says, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, this is the guy I was telling you about.” They don’t seem to get it, so that the next day he has to preach the same sermon, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” so that they go and follow him.
Andrew goes and follows him, John goes and follows him, and Andrew finds his brother Peter. The next day, Philip and Nathanael come along and follow Jesus, so we have this initial calling of the disciples. That marks the beginning of the early Judean ministry of Jesus, which Matthew just doesn’t say anything about; he skips over. Matthew is really interested in the second phase of Jesus’ ministry, what we call the Galilean ministry, which probably starts about a year later.
So in the Gospel of Matthew, we go from the temptation to the calling of the disciples. There’s about a year that lapses in between, and a lot of things happen, including the cleansing of the temple, the wedding at Cana, all these other things. Jesus is relocated up north to Nazareth, to his hometown, and that town of Nazareth, if you think of it on the map, it’s about ten miles east of the Sea of Galilee in the hills there.
But the text tells us in Matthew chapter 4 that Jesus learned there in Nazareth. He learned about the imprisonment of John the Baptist, his cousin, down on the other side of the Dead Sea. And so Jesus relocates his ministry to Capernaum. He moves about 10 miles west, right to the Sea of Galilee, right to this region of Zebulun and Naphtali that is prophesied in Isaiah chapter 9, and it’s this little coastal village. I mean, I don’t know if it counts as a coast because the Sea of Galilee is more like a lake, like a medium-sized lake.
But there the city was right on the major trade route and this is where Peter lived. We know that Peter lived there with his wife, or at least his mother-in-law was living with him, that Jesus would stay there with him. You can go and visit the place now right there on the sea. That James and John would have had a part of their business would have been located there even though it seems like they mostly lived in Jerusalem. James and John had a fishing business also there.
And so Jesus, with those disciples, moves over to Capernaum, and now they’re really in their hometown, and they are, in a way, back to work. They’re fishing. They’re studying with Jesus. They’re watching what’s going on. They’re learning from him. And now Jesus comes along to those guys and says, “It’s time. You’re enrolled in seminary. It’s time to get serious. Come and follow me.” In other words, the incident in the text is not a cold call. Jesus is not just introducing himself. They had known Jesus, and they were in a way waiting for this.
And I shouldn’t pass this text by without mentioning that some of you, especially some of you young men or medium-aged men or old-aged men, are thinking about becoming pastors yourselves, and this is the text to meditate on. Is the Lord calling me not to be a pastor, but is the Lord calling me to go to seminary? That’s what he was doing. Is he calling me to learn theology so that I might also be ready to be called to be a preacher of the Lord’s word? If you’re thinking about it, that’s great, and it’s a good and godly thing, and you should talk to me later; we can talk about it some more.
But Jesus calls the disciples into this study of the word, and we also should make sure that we don’t confuse this incident in Matthew chapter four with another incident that we hear about, for example, in Luke chapter five. That’s when Jesus was teaching there in Capernaum, and the crowds were pressing in on him so much that he gets in Peter’s boat and Peter pushes off from the shore. This happens later, some months later, and Jesus is there teaching from Peter’s boat.
After the teaching is done, Jesus says to him, “Put the net on the other side,” and Peter sort of rolls his eyes. “We were fishing all night; we didn’t catch anything, but all right.” And they pull in the catch of fish that’s breaking the net. They have to call James and John over to help him lift up all the fish, and that’s when Peter realizes even more who this Jesus is. He falls on his face and says, “Oh, get away from me, Lord; I’m a sinner.”
I’m not worthy for you to be standing here in my boat. I don’t know if it’s this way for you, but it is for me. For whatever reason, I sort of collapse all of those events into one, but I think it’s helpful for us to see this as an unfolding story of the way that Jesus deals with the apostles and the disciples. In fact, it’s even later, it’s until Matthew chapter 10 that Jesus has all of these disciples and he’s going to choose twelve of those disciples, of all those seminarians that he’s been working with for a year and a half, maybe two years at that point, and he’s going to select the twelve to be the apostles.
And that’s the fourth time, and then there’s even a fifth time, which we remember famously when Peter and the disciples were back fishing again after Jesus rose from the dead. And again he calls them and he gives them the same commission: “Now you are supposed to be fishing for people. Give up the fishing of fish; I will make you fishers of men.”
Now, this is good for us to consider, I think to have all these different times that Jesus is coming to the disciples and he’s calling them away because I think we’re tempted, at least I am, to think of the gospel call as like this one-time event, as if I’m running away from God, I’m denying God, I’m living the way I want to, and I hear the preaching of the gospel, and everything changes in an instant.
And we give up the ways of the flesh and the ways of the world and now we are chasing after the Lord. That’s, I think, how a lot of people think the Christian life is, even especially in the United States, this kind of revivalistic view that it’s a one-time event, some sort of momentous moment in our lives where Jesus just takes us and he spins us around. But we see the way that the Lord works with his disciples here, that he’s working gradually, that he comes to them and calls them, and then they go back to work, and he calls them again, and they’re back at work, and he calls them again, and he’s working with them to show them who he is and what he’s done for them, and in a way he’s doing this in a gradual way.
Even when Jesus has the disciples there, he’s gonna start moving around so that he can take them away then from their hometown and from their work, and he’s gonna take them up north, and he’s gonna teach them more things. They’re gonna wrestle with more things, gonna learn more things until halfway through the ministry, then Peter’s gonna recognize who Jesus is: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
But even then, Peter doesn’t know what it means to be the Christ; he thinks it’s some sort of victorious thing. So he begins to teach him that to be the Christ means to suffer and all of these sorts of things. Now, this is the way the Lord works with us. He’s bringing us along. Faith is not like a light switch that just is turned on or turned off. The Lord is drawing all of us in, the Lord is teaching all of us, the Lord is showing himself to all of us, and this is a very important thing.
When we’re dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re not dealing with some sort of abstraction or some sort of force. No, we’re dealing with a person who’s dealing with us, who’s dealing with you as a person, calling you one step closer, giving you one more piece of the puzzle, enlightening your mind through his word a little bit more. How wonderful!
We wonder why all of our lives look so different. We all have these different stories and different families and different paths that we’ve been on and different histories and different afflictions and temptations and struggles and all these different joys and sadnesses. Why? Well, because the Lord has each one of us on this individualized Kingdom of Heaven tutoring plan, and He deals with us as individuals and He brings us along.
“Come and follow me,” He says, and we’re now following Him, walking behind Him, rejoicing that He’s with us and that we’re with Him. Now, normally when we hear this text, the emphasis is put on the call to become fishers of men, and that’s not bad. Again, this idea to go and study the Lord’s Word so that we might be able to speak it. But the main joy that we have is not in being fishers of men, but in being the fish that are caught. And that’s the joy that the Lord Jesus wants us to have, especially as we consider this preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
And I’d like to spend the rest of the time thinking about that. Now, the first thing I want to tell you about this sermon, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that’s probably not all that Jesus preached. You’re wondering, “Pastor, I’ve never heard you preach such a short, succinct sermon as Jesus preached on that day.” One sentence: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We want to think that this is probably a summary of the Lord’s preaching. That’s probably how he started his preaching, and he continued to amplify that thing, but look at how the Lord Jesus wants us to approach the kingdom.
He does not say, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand; you better run for it.” I think that would be my first thing to preach. If the kingdom of heaven is coming, you better look out! Because the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of holiness, and the king of heaven is a king of holiness, and if he’s coming, it’s surely to bring about that holiness which will destroy us. But that’s not what Jesus says.
Neither does Jesus say, “The kingdom of heaven is coming; don’t worry about it.” You know, remember those signs? I think they keep showing up all over the place, but they were from England in World War II. The signs that were on the wall said, “Keep calm and carry on.” Okay. I think that’s how most people treat the kingdom of heaven, like the bombs are dropping and the soldiers are coming, and we’re supposed to pretend like nothing is happening. That is not what Jesus says.
He does not say, “The kingdom of heaven is coming; keep calm and carry on.” But Jesus does not also preach this: “The kingdom of heaven is coming; rejoice.” That’s kind of what I wish he would have preached. That would have been a really fun sermon to preach myself. “The kingdom of heaven is coming, and it comes with joy, it comes with gladness, it comes with hope and peace and love.” But before the kingdom of heaven comes with rejoicing, it comes with repentance, and that’s what Jesus says.
The kingdom of heaven is coming; repent. This is how we enter into His kingdom. It’s how we become its citizens and partakers of His rule. It is through repentance. And repentance is to believe what God says about us, and specifically these two things: to believe God when he tells you that you are a sinner, and to believe God when he tells you that you are saved.
To believe God first when he tells you that you’ve broken the law, and that because of that law breaking you deserve his eternal wrath and punishment, and then to believe God when He tells you that His Son has suffered that eternal wrath and punishment for you, to forgive you, to save you, to deliver you, to wash you clean, to declare you to be His own. And this, dear saints, is what His kingdom is. His kingdom is where we stand forgiven.
His kingdom is where He rescues and delivers us. His kingdom is the place where His word of law and gospel is preached and heard and trusted and believed, and that kingdom comes on us like a light that shines on those who dwell in deep darkness. The kingdom has come because the King has come, and he’s come not in judgment or in terror, but kind and good, with healing in his wings. So you who dwell in deep darkness, we who dwell in deep darkness rejoice! The light has shone. Christ has come, and he is calling each one of us into the fellowship of his grace and his mercy and his peace, into his kingdom.
This is our hope. This is our joy. This is our comfort in Christ alone. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
