[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints, I want to consider this call of the Apostles, but first, just a quick word about Jonah. Can you believe Jonah, who doesn’t want to go to Nineveh? He says that here in the beginning of the text, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. That’s because the first time the word of the Lord came to Jonah, he got on a boat going the other direction, and the Lord had to swallow him with a fish and spit him back up. Now this is second; you got to see the second time as Jonah’s covered in fish slime.
Go to Nineveh, so Jonah goes over to Nineveh and he doesn’t want to preach to them. This is a rebuke to us. Jonah doesn’t want to preach to them because he knows that they’ll repent and the Lord will be kind to them. I think one of the things that we’ve forgotten is that the Lord is always working repentance. The Lord is always converting sinners. The Lord is always changing people’s minds. We should remember that. We think, especially, you know, as we mourn our family and our friends who don’t believe in Jesus, we mourn the troubles that we see in this world, whatever it is, and we think nobody ever changes. This is wrong. The Lord converts. The Lord changes. The Lord breaks hearts. The Lord brings back to life. And he does it in his church by the preaching of the word. It’s so wonderful. That’s why he called the disciples, the apostles, to do that work.
Now that’s what I want to focus on this morning. Last week, you’ll remember last week, we heard from John chapter 1, where Jesus gathered his first disciples, John, Andrew, Simon, Nathaniel, and Philip. And now we heard this morning in Mark chapter 1 how the Lord is calling disciples John, James, Andrew, Philip, and Peter, sorry, Andrew and Simon (or Peter), and we say, now how is that? They were already the disciples to begin with.
Now this is one of these places; we want to look at this. It’s one of these places where if you have a higher critical approach to the scriptures, if your approach to the Bible is that it’s full of men’s ideas and men’s words, and full then of error and mistakes and contradictions, this is one of your favorite places to go. This would be one of those passages when you go to college, and you take your Bible as lit class, and the professor starts showing you all the places where the Bible has contradictions; therefore, it can’t be true, it can’t be the Word of God, and you should abandon your Sunday school theology and become more sophisticated or something. This is one of those places.
And we want to approach the text in the exact opposite way. We want to approach the text with honor, with delight. We want to approach the text expecting that this is, in fact, the Lord’s words for us and that these words are true. And when we do that, something really quite marvelous unfolds. We start to understand the history of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Now, there’s not a lot about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but here’s how the chronology worked out. Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist’s cousin was during the summertime, probably June or July in the summer, and we remember that immediately after that, Jesus was driven into the wilderness for a month and a half, 40 days, and after that temptation in the wilderness, Jesus comes back to the Jordan River, where John points and preaches to Him, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” In fact, Jesus comes back to John two days in a row, and two days in a row, John preaches that, and on the second day, John the Baptist sends his disciples to follow Jesus.
That’s what we heard last week. So John and Andrew and Philip and Simon and James, I think at that point, they go and they follow Jesus. And they go with Jesus from the Jordan River back up to Galilee. They go to the wedding at Cana. They go to Capernaum when Jesus preaches. Because they go down to Jerusalem six months later for the feast of the Passover, and then they return to Galilee, and then the Scriptures go silent for about seven months.
I have the dates down here. From about the Passover in Jerusalem, which was March, until John the Baptist is arrested the next October or November. So, we have about a seven-month span where the Bible just doesn’t tell us much about what happened. But in that time, we deduce from the text that Jesus sent the disciples back to their work as fishermen. They had a six-week sabbatical or six-week… or six-month break from being disciples, and they’re going back and they’re fishing—Andrew and Peter, James and John, and they’re waiting for Jesus to come and call them.
Now it is of significance that Jesus decides that it’s time for his disciples to follow him permanently when he hears that John the Baptist dies. We’ll come back to that in a little bit. But this is important then, when we hear the words of our text from Mark chapter one, Jesus comes and he finds these guys, and they’re fishing, casting the nets, repairing their nets, and he says, “Follow me,” and they drop everything and they follow him.
And if we don’t know the background, if we don’t know that these guys knew Jesus already, that they’d spent six months with Him already, that they’d traveled with Him from the Jordan River up to Galilee, that Jesus was endorsed by John the Baptist. If we don’t know any of that background, it seems like these guys are just very impulsive, right? What? Jesus comes along and He says, “Follow me,” and they say, “Okay, don’t you want to tell us who you are first?”
Now, it’s important that the background is there to fill out the story, and maybe for two reasons at least. Number one, it helps us fight against this temptation to theological enthusiasm, or maybe like this. There’s a way in the church that we can think that the Holy Spirit works through spontaneity. I don’t know if Lutherans have that temptation so much, but you might have friends that have that temptation. The idea that if it’s spontaneous, then it’s spiritual.
Carrie was telling the story yesterday about some old friends of ours who, we were in a Bible study, and they came into the Bible study kind of in a whirlwind, rushed into the Bible study, a girl we knew and a guy that we’d never seen before. And they’d started dating a couple of days before and they said, “The Holy Spirit told us that we’re supposed to get married.” And then they rushed out. And we sort of looked at each other and we thought, “Well, if it’s that crazy, it must be the Holy Spirit.” I mean, that was the way, you know, if it’s spontaneous like that, it must be the way the Holy Spirit works. A lot of churches will have that idea of worship, too. If you go to worship in the church and if it’s spontaneous, it’s spiritual. If it’s not spontaneous, then it’s not spiritual. That’s why a lot of people will say that the Lutheran liturgy or even praying the Lord’s Prayer is not spiritual. It’s written down. It’s planned out ahead of time and this sort of thing. We’ve got to just fight against that false doctrine that the Holy Spirit and spontaneity are the same thing—not the case.
There’s another reason, though, why the background is helpful. These disciples had seen Jesus perform miracles. They saw it. They tasted the water turn to wine. They saw Him cast the demon out of the man in the synagogue. They had seen those things. But they had also seen Jesus opposed by the rulers in Jerusalem. They had gone with Jesus to the first Passover down in Jerusalem, and they had seen how the religious rulers hated Him, how the religious rulers rejected Him. In other words, the disciples knew what they were getting into, that this was not going to be easy. This was not going to be roses, that the way of Jesus is the way of suffering, so that they knew ahead of time that to follow Jesus is to be rejected by the world. To follow Jesus is to be an outsider to the temple and the synagogue and the rulers in Jerusalem. They knew that before they signed up. Jesus says, “Whoever would follow me must take up their cross and follow me.” His way is the way of suffering, the road that Jesus walks is the Via Dolorosa, the suffering way.
And the disciples willingly join this. They drop their nets immediately, and they follow him. And they’ll follow him to the end. They’ll follow him down to Jerusalem. They’ll follow him back up to Galilee. They’ll follow him up north to Caesarea Philippi and then back down to Perea, and then back up to Jerusalem and Bethany. They’ll follow Him when He rides on the donkey, when He goes to Jerusalem, they’ll watch from a distance as He’s crucified, they’ll go and they’ll visit the empty tomb, and they’ll keep following. These guys right here? They’ll keep following until the Lord grants them the blessed death of the martyrs, or with John, old age, and they come at last to the joys of eternal life.
Now what’s the application for us? I want to suggest two things. Number one, and this is how I think this text is normally preached, the normal preaching of this text is like, look, Jesus calls these men to become fishers of men. So no longer are they fishers of fish, but now they’re men fishers, right? Normally the preaching is, now we got to do the same. We got to go out there and catch people. We also need to be fishers of men. It’s an evangelistic text.
And I suppose that’s fine. We are all called to bear the light of the Lord Jesus into the world. Jesus says, “Who lights a lamp and then puts a bushel over it?” That’s foolish. He has enlightened you. Every Christian desires that all people would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And especially, the Lord has put you in families and in neighborhoods where there’s those who do not know Christ, and you pray for them and you look for opportunities to bless them by speaking the name of Jesus and speaking the gospel and forgiving their sins. Christians are interested in conversion. And we should probably be more joyful about it than Jonah was. We want people to come to know Christ. We pray for those. All of you should have a list of those that you love and those you know, family and people you work with who don’t know Christ. You should pray for them every day. You should put them in your pocket or in your purse and bring that list of names with you when you come to church to pray for them and to bring them before the Lord and to ask that the Lord would come and rescue and save them and to know that that’s what the Lord does. That’s all true.
But more important than that, now listen, listen carefully to this. More important than being a fisher of men is for us to be fish. More important for us to go about the business of bringing people to Christ, it’s more important for us to know that we ourselves have been brought to Christ. Being caught is more important than trying to go out and catch. To know that Jesus has dragged us, kicking and screaming, into his church. That he has called us by the gospel. That he has enlightened us with his gifts. That He has converted us, that He has transferred us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light in Christ.
To know that we who were born enemies of God, children—Paul says it like this—children of wrath. We are born children of wrath, and the Lord has taken us and He says, “No, my wrath is not for you; it’s for Jesus instead. And for you is glory, and for you is honor, and for you is forgiveness, and for you is life that never ends.” That’s what’s for you. You’re not getting what you deserve; you’re getting what Christ has won for you in His death and His resurrection. He’s cast out the net, and He’s dragged you into the boat. That’s where you are. You might still be trying to flop over the edge back into the ocean, but He’s got you, and He’s not going to let go of you. That’s your joy.
Oh pastor, I’m not a real good evangelist. I’m always nervous to share my faith. I never know what to say. This is where it starts. You are caught. You are Christ’s. You belong to Him. Your sins are forgiven. One day you’re going to die, and you’re going to wake up, and there right in front of you is going to be the face of Jesus, smiling. That’s what you have. And to rejoice in that, that’s evangelism enough. Tertullian, the old church father, he’s writing about baptism. It’s a really amazing passage. He says that we are all little fish following our big fish Christ, Ichthos. We’re little Ichthoi following our big Ichthos. And he says the devil knows how to kill fish. He tries to get them out of the water. This is what the devil is always trying to splash us out of the font.
Forget your baptism. Forget the forgiveness of sins. Forget the adoption that you have as God’s children. Forget the gifts that the Lord has given you in your baptism. But the Lord Jesus has us here in his gifts, in his mercy, in his kindness, in his love, and it will never end. We swim around in the fishbowl of grace. That’s what the baptismal font is, and there we are safe. So let us rejoice that Jesus has claimed us as his own, that he’s stamped us with his name, he’s sealed us with the Spirit, he’s endowed us with promises that never end, he’s given us the inheritance of eternal life. Let us rejoice in that today and always with those who rejoice with us and those who do not yet know the Lord’s mercy.
Let us give thanks that the Lord has called apostles and evangelists who wrote and preached and established the church so that we might have this sanctuary and the joy that never ends. May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen.
And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
