The Call to Discipleship // Matthew 4:12-22

We are pumped about our men's, and I can all the men go, "Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo." Come on. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, listen, guys, there is a difference. Maybe we're the last people on Earth to believe this, but there is a difference between men and women, okay? The culture may be confused, but we're not. That's okay, listen. It's such a big deal that it's the first thing you notice when you see a person. Are they a man or are they a woman? It's the first thing they ask when a lady is pregnant. Are you having a boy or are you having a girl? So why are we doing a men's night? I'm just, we're just talking about the men's night. We'll come back later and talk about the women's night, but the men's night. What are the women's event? Why are we doing a men's night? Because, listen, men need men, okay? Now, men need women. We know that. I've preached on that, that's Genesis 1, Genesis 2. We know men, we need women, okay, we know that. But men need men, they need brothers, they need fathers, they need sons. Okay, so here's what I'm asking you to do, man. Make it a priority May 9th to be here. Robbie Gallady's coming in from National Tennessee

to bring a word to the men and ladies. Here's your job. Don't worry, I'll come back and talk to the men about this later. Your job is to free up the men in your life to be at this event. I want you to say, honey, I want you to be gone for as long as possible, okay? I want, yes, I want your boyfriend, your fiance, your, you know, whatever, your son, your husband, that free them, okay, man, listen, it's at 6.30. But at five o'clock, because you need some space, okay? Listen, do not come to this event alone. Do not do that thing where you come five minutes late and you sneak in and try to be anonymous and then you leave afterwards and you don't meet anyone. Don't do that. I want you to call, I want you to call somebody, okay? 'Cause here's what we're gonna do. The event starts at 6.30 at five o'clock. We're gonna be cooking burgers. The elders of this church are gonna cook burgers for every man that comes. In fact, I got a picture. Look at that. I took this, they were preparing and I took this picture, okay. So listen, this is so biblical. Men are gonna get together and we are going to eat red meat, okay?

And if you are, yes, yes. Thank you. Now, and if you are a man in here and you are a vegetarian, you need to be at this event more than anybody, okay? BYOV, bring your own veggies. We're not providing them, okay, listen. I want you to, I want you to, I'm serious. You text your brother. I don't care where he lives, and you said, "Come to this event, I'm buying dinner." 'Cause it's free, it's included, okay, there you go. You said, "Come to this event, guys." It's gonna be a special event, okay, now. The other thing is, I gotta just real quickly, then we gotta get to work. I gotta celebrate Easter, guys. Across our campus and the Lexington campus, we had right around 6,000 people here. Last weekend, we just, yeah. (audience applauding) You know, we count people 'cause people count, but more than that, you invited, you invested, you shared, you served, guys, we had people, I want you to understand this, we had people that served two or more services, often in the kids' ministry, to make those services possible. And then they, I mean, I met people that they were here Thursday night serving,

and then they were here Saturday night serving, and then they came and they attended Sunday morning. So I just wanna say, thank you so much. In Lexington, you had almost 400 people at your launch. Guys, what's in that cupboard? And Pastor Luke, Pastor Luke, our campus pastor, he gave me this as a gift. By the way, if you're like, "What is this?" This is the coordinates for the Lexington campus, okay? So if you can't find it, just put it at these end of Google and you will find it very easily, okay? Guys, I'm excited, let's get to work, but let's first pray. Lord, we have so much to celebrate. And I just, but I wanna first pray for the men in this room, that they would stop making excuses. Some men in here are good at making excuses. They're not good at making plans and making progress. And I pray that this event would be something special and significant for them. We draw a line in the sand at this event. It'd be a before and after moment. Lord, I pray you would use it as a milestone, a marker, and a mountaintop experience. So we thank you for Easter, and the people who prayed to receive Christ, and the lives that are changed, and the relationships that are started, and people even today who are here again, they're here, or they're in Lexington,

and they came one time and they're coming back, Lord, I pray that you would help them understand their next step. And if our church is the right church for them, we pray this is Jesus' name. And then, well, here we go. We're in a brand new series, and we are going to ask and answer one question. I'm going to ask you, and I want you to answer one question. Okay, we make things real simple around here. So this is it. You don't even have to take notes on this question, but this is it for the next six weeks, or the next month and a half. Every week you come here, I'm going to ask you this one question. Are you really a disciple of Jesus? That's the question I want you to ask. I want you to ask, am I a disciple of Jesus? Now, listen, we didn't call this series Christian. We called this series disciple, right? Because Christian in Winston Salem in 2025, let's just say in the Southeast, in Texas, in Southern California, the word Christian has been so watered down, right? But I guarantee if you're like me, you have people in your life that think they're Christians and you know they're not. they're family members, and you don't know a lot. But one of the things that you know for sure, like you are absolutely sure they're not a Christian,

but they think they are. Right, and you just, you just wanna, do you ever wanna just grab 'em and shake 'em and scream at 'em? - You're not a Christian! - I guess not, that's just me, okay. But you just, you're like, that wouldn't be the Christian thing to grab 'em and scream and yell at 'em and tell 'em they're not a Christian, okay? But here's the thing, the word Christian is a good word, it's a biblical word, but today it's a watered downward. Listen, how many times do you think the word Christian shows up in your whole Bible? Three times. Only three times. So it shows up in Acts chapter 11, and Acts chapter 11 is the first time it's ever used, and it says it was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians, which means for the first 10 chapters of the church, the early church, the word Christian isn't even used. And then in Acts chapter 26, when Paul's standing before King Agrippa, King Agrippa looks at Paul and says, Paul, do you think you can this quickly persuade me to be a Christian? And then in first Peter, Peter's writing to Christians who are suffering, and he goes, if you suffer as a Christian,

don't be ashamed, which means there's a unique type of suffering Christians go through. But we didn't call this series Christian, although Christians are biblical word, it's a historical word, but I want you to think of yourself, yes, as a Christian, but I want you to think of yourself even more as a disciple, 'cause guess how many times the word disciple is used in the New Testament, 261 times. The mission of the church is to make disciples. This whole initiative we're in, the multiply initiative is all about multiplying disciples, leaders, groups, and churches with an emphasis on multiplying disciples. See, there's not even, this is interesting, some of you will find this interesting, there's not one command in your Bible to plant churches. But we're putting together like a whole fellowship to plant churches, and we wanna plant as many churches as possible, why are we planting churches? Because we believe that planting churches is the best way to make disciples, and that's what the Bible says we should be all about. Like guys, everything we do, so this right here, why do we give 45, 50 minutes to the teaching ministry right now? Because what this is technically called, what I'm doing here is called corporate discipleship, corporate discipleship. This is why over the kids ministry, if you walk in there, it says meet Jesus and make friends,

which means be made into a disciple of Jesus. Guys, we're always asking how do we make more disciples and how do we make better disciples? And if we found out that something we were doing wasn't making disciples, we'd get rid of it. And someone was like, you know what, hey we found, it's kinda strange, but we've got the stats, we've got the details like community groups don't make disciples. If we found out community groups didn't make disciples, we would get rid of our community groups. Because the goal is not to have community groups, the goal is to make disciples. Okay, so here's what we need to do, we need to define discipleship. Because think with me, if something is not defined and something is not displayed, you don't know how to do it. So we are just committing today, here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna define discipleship and we are gonna display discipleship. Because if you can't say it and you've never seen it, you can't do it. Okay, so let me give you the definition of a disciple. And if you have your own definition, then you keep it. But I'm gonna give you our definition because one of our elders who's been with us forever, he said to me, he said, Kyle, we've got a lot of great language in this church. A lot of great phraseologies.

He said, I think our best language in the entire church is our definition of our disciples. So I'm gonna give it to you. It's somebody who is following Jesus and helping others find and follow Jesus. Period. I love that because it's active, right? It's about obedience and what does it mean? Well, Jesus is headed somewhere. Are we following along with him? And so what we're gonna do today is we are literally going to unpack what this looks like. And maybe the first application for you in being a better disciple or becoming a disciple for the first time is maybe knowing that definition. By the way, some of you, I fear, some of you are so bored with your Christianity men, especially tend to be like that, like their wife drags them to church. I don't wanna go to a community group. It's like, here's why, because you're not really following Jesus and helping others find and follow Jesus. Listen, if you would follow Jesus, just commit this, I'm gonna follow Jesus. My life's gonna be following Jesus and helping others find and follow Jesus. If you do that, your life will be so exciting. You won't be able to handle it. But we gotta go to Matthew chapter four.

Go to Matthew chapter four. We're gonna follow Jesus as we watch him ask, actually more command, the disciples to follow him. We'll pick out the story in chapter four, verse 12. So we are, grab your parachute. We're parachuting into the book of Matthew, okay? What we're missing is the birth narrative of Jesus, which we covered at Christmas. And then we're missing John chapter three, or sorry, Matthew chapter three, which I'll pick up on in a second, is all about John the Baptist, but here's what I want you to pick up in. Here's what it says. Now, when he, that's Jesus, heard that John, that's John the Baptist, had been arrested, he again, Jesus withdrew into Galilee. So this is gonna be the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. And here's what I want you to understand. Jesus' public ministry does not begin until John is arrested. Why are we told this? Here's the first principle maybe for your life. When you have catalytic events happen in your life, it normally catapults you into new ministry. This can be a good event. This can be a bad event. Listen, if a big event happens in your life, it usually means a new ministry. You get married, new ministry.

You get divorced, new ministry. You graduate high school, new ministry. Somebody dies in your family, new ministry. You start a new career path, new ministry, okay? So the first thing we see is that Jesus enters this new ministry, which we'll pick up in a second, but we can't talk about that without talking about John the Baptist. I love John the Baptist, okay? He's not John the Presbyterian. He's not John the Lutheran, okay? He's certainly not John the Episcopalian. He's John the Baptist, okay? Now here's why I love John the Baptist. John the Baptist, Jesus said, was the greatest man who ever lived. Let me tell you something in the show about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is so important. He's mentioned at the very beginning of all four gospels. John the Baptist is so important that he's the only other person in the New Testament to get a birth narrative. So two people in the New Testament get a birth narrative. Jesus and John the Baptist. John the Baptist, though, is a really strange guy. This is why like eight year old boys when they're first born under the re of the Bible, they like love King David, Samson, you know, and John the Baptist. Because when you look at John the Baptist,

here's one that we know about John the Baptist for sure. He was single, okay? If you don't know anything about his story. First of all, he lives in the wilderness, it says, okay? So he camps for a living. How many of you go? No, thank you. That would be me, no, thank you, right? Secondly, he has a really strange dress code. He wears camel's hair and a leather belt. And if you know this story, he has a really strange diet. He was organic and gluten free before it was cool, right? He lives off of locus and honey, which listen, if you're trying to get ready for swimsuits, he's in the John the Baptist diet will help you lose an enormous amount of weight, okay? So, but he, you know, he's, he really is single. He's a single kind of guy. He lives out of the wilderness. And the main thing he does is he preaches and he baptizes. So he's a voice crying out in the words, oh, this is what else is interesting. He's the only prophet who has one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the New Testament. He exists in the overlapping of ages and he preaches repentance and he points to Jesus. He's an intense guy, like he speaks out against the religious leaders of his day. He is a baptizing ministry, which really confused the Jewish people because he said everybody needed

to be baptized and they thought only the Gentiles who were, you know, transferring over to the Jewish faith that they needed to baptize. He said, no, everybody needs to baptize. And then his message was he pointed to Christ and pre-trependent. So for example, we sing songs occasionally about Jesus as the Lamb of God. John the Baptist is the first person in the New Testament to say that. He says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. What John is saying is the entire Old Testament, remember that story about, you know, the Passover and the Lamb and the blood on the doors and all of that? He said, that was ultimately about Jesus. So here's what happens, he, it says John is arrested, by the way, he'll end up getting his head cut off in jail because he'll confront a political leader of his day about his sinful lifestyle and that's how John's life ends. But for now we're going to put John away and we're going to see as John as silenced, Jesus begins to speak. Look here, Matthew four verse 13, here's what it says. "In leaving Nazareth, which was a super small town, "probably a hundred people, we can tell that "by the size of the well that was there, "he went and he lived in Capernaum by the sea "in the territory of Zebulun and afterlorn." Now listen, you don't always have to do this,

but sometimes you have to move for the sake of ministry. Jesus leaves Nazareth for Capernaum. Nazareth is a small, rural, religious, Jewish town. He lived in his whole life. He leaves Nazareth to go to Capernaum. Capernaum is a bigger city. It has more gentile influence. It's more progressive for that day and it's growing. So he basically goes there to have a base of ministries. In fact, if you read the gospel accounts, what you'll notice is Jesus starts at Capernaum and then he'll go out and then he comes back to Capernaum. Basically, in the gospels, he takes the disciples on short-term mission trips and retreats and keeps coming back to Capernaum, okay? But watch what happens next. Look at me in verse 14. That's it. So he said, Jesus moved so that an Old Testament prophecy could be fulfilled. I don't have a lot of time to get in this, but here's what I want you to know. The entire Bible is about Jesus. The key to understanding the scriptures is to realize the entire Old Testament is anticipating and announcing the coming of Jesus. And it says that there was this prophecy 700 years ago about Jesus coming. In fact, I'll read you the prophecy. Look what it says here, verse 15. The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtila, the way of the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. So this is going to be shocking and surprising to religious Jews who are reading it of the day. It says, listen, Jesus came in the world to reach all people, including

the Gentiles. Here's what I want you to know. God cares about those who don't care about him. I've got to imagine in a room like this, there are people in here who do not care about God. And you don't care about God because you had goofy, religious, fundamental, overbearing parents, maybe. Who knows? You know, and maybe you don't care about God because you just, it doesn't make sense to you like how, you know, I don't know, usually something terrible happened in your life or to somebody you love and it's hard to reconcile it all. And I just want you to see that what we're told here at the very beginning is God cares about those who don't care about him yet. And God pursues those people. That's the story of Scripture. So he moves to this Gentile area in part, Jewish and Gentile, but to reach them. But then look here, now we're actually introduced to that, what the text says. The people dwelling in darkness verse 16 have seen a great light. And for those dwelling in the region and the shadow of death, on them, the light has dawned. So Jesus comes to bring light into the darkness. Now, verse 17 is key. Let's just read the first three words from that time. Okay, full stop. This is interesting in the book of Matthew. There are key moments of transition that all start with the phrase from this time. This is the first one of these. Jesus is now entering full time public and ministry for the first time. Let me say this, Jesus spent 30 years before this in absolute obscurity. Is it not? I mean, it's worth thinking about probably for like two weeks that Jesus Christ, the sinless son of God, swung a hammer with his stepdad for 30 years in obscurity.

Almost everything you know about Jesus, you just know from three years of his life. And I tell you that because some of you today are living in obscurity. And you feel like nobody sees me and nobody knows how I'm praying and how I'm serving and how I'm working on it. It's like, who knows what God might be preparing you for in the future? Jesus enters full time ministry. And here's the first thing we're told he does. Look here, verse 17, and from that time, Jesus began to preach. Okay. Now, here's what I think most Christians, even if you've been in the church forever. And I think most non-Christians, here's what they think about. They think, let me ask you this question. What do you think Jesus did every day? A lot of people think of Jesus and they like think of him walking slowly with his disciples, one place to another. And then he sees somebody with a knee eat and he heals them. And then he goes over here and he's just hanging out. He does a miracle. Well, listen, go check this. Almost all of the miracles and almost all of the healings were to validate the teaching and preaching ministry of Jesus. And then we think of Jesus, we think, you know what he's doing? He's confronting the Pharisees and we think of this, you know what Jesus is doing? He's talking to his disciples a lot and he's having like conversations on the boat and around the table. Yes, but guess what? Go check this out. See how many of the conversations that Jesus ends up having with his disciples are questions they had about his sermons. So Jesus said, you said there's four types of, you know, soils and what is the soil

and what is the seed and then he explains it to them. Okay. So here's what Jesus does. He preaches a sermon and then the community group talks about the sermon. We should do that. We do do that. That's how our whole church is organized. There's the preaching of the word and then you gather to have conversation about it, which is exactly what Jesus. Okay. So I want you to understand this. This is a big idea. Jesus understands himself primarily as a preacher of God's word. Look here, this is Luke four, but Jesus said to them. So this is not Matthew saying about Jesus. Now we're in Luke's gospel and this is Jesus speaking, but Jesus said to them, I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well. Why for I was sent for this purpose. God had one son and made him a preacher. Oh, Judea, look at this. Mark one, so after Jesus' busiest day is Mark one. This is busiest day of ministry from what we can tell. He wakes up early in the morning, the next day, and he's praying by himself. And the disciples come to find him and go, hey, there's a lot more work to be done here. More people need healed and all this kind of stuff. And here's how Jesus responds. And he said to them, let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also for this is why I came out.

And he went through all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Then check this out. Mark chapter six, when Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on him. And you might think it says he had compassion on him. And so therefore he healed him. Therefore he prayed for them. Therefore he fed him. It doesn't say that, look here. He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Well, that sounds like they need some real help. And he began to teach them many things. I want you to understand that the most compassionate thing a person can do is teach somebody else the Bible. I'm not saying there's obviously a place for mercy. There's obviously a place for good works and good deeds and acts of kindness. But I just want you to understand that basically the teaching ministry of Jesus he viewed as an act of compassion toward people. And so what you'll see starting with the life of Jesus Christ and going on into the life of the apostles, preaching is unbelievably important. People who say silly things about preaching have never really hurt it. But he does more than preach. I want to see you, I want to show you what he preaches. Look here, continue, we're just doing verse 17.

From that time Jesus began to preach saying, will you please ask me into your heart? That's not what it says. Look what it says here. For at that time Jesus began to preach saying repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The content of what Jesus preached is very similar to John the Baptist. They both preached repentance. But Jesus preached repentance and the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God it's hard to explain, okay? But it's the reign and the rule of God primarily in the hearts of men and women. And when the kingdom comes, right? It's pushing against other kingdoms. The kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of this world as is what it's called. And what's interesting is we are told to both preach the kingdom and pray for the kingdom, right? In the most famous prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We, a lady in our church, get a pretty aggressive form of cancer. And we gathered a group to pray for her this week. And when we were praying for her, one of the other young ladies who just can really pray, she started calling down heaven and calling down healing for this young lady in our church who has cancer. And as she's praying, she says, God, I'm praying for your kingdom to come

and your will to be done. She says, in your kingdom in heaven, there is no cancer. And I'm asking for that kingdom to come in the body of my sister. But, amen, we've got to, we have to preach the kingdom. This is what life with God looks like under the lordship of Christ. And then we need to pray, God, we can't, we can't make it manifest God, you have to make it happen. So he preaches the kingdom, but here's where we need to spend the rest of our time on how he has a preaching ministry and a personal discipling ministry. He has a public teaching ministry and a personal discipling ministry. I'll show you that. Let's look here. We're in verse 18, while walking by the Sea of Galilee. So here's the context. The context is the Sea of Galilee, which was the only place they ever lived up until this point, these many is gonna call. And it's the only profession that they've had. When you hear the Sea of Galilee, by the way, some of you may think of a massive like, almost like ocean-like thing. The Sea of Galilee is actually quite small and it's smaller than Lake Norman's big, but it's smaller than Lake Norman. In fact, Pastor Dave and I were there with a friend of ours, Paul, and we got this picture.

That's the Sea of Galilee behind us. So you can kind of get an idea there. That's where they spent their, it's beautiful. Hopefully we'll go there someday and you guys will come with me. But it's a beautiful area. It's a small town feel and they live their whole lives there. And these fishermen are there and then look here, it says this. He saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the Sea for they were fishermen. I wanna stop and encourage you for a second. 'Cause Jesus today is gonna call four different disciples to follow him. And the first four disciples to follow him are two sets of brothers. Here's what I wanna encourage you with. God loves to save families. I mean, God, yes, God saves people as individuals, okay? And you can't come to Christ for someone else. But God loves you. And some of you are the first person to believe in your family, but you're not gonna be the last person to believe. It's this beautiful, he does this on multiple occasions. We'll talk about this more next week as we look at the different disciples and who the 12 are, but it's really a powerful picture. Well, they were fishermen, right? But here's the key thing, verse 19.

And he said to them, "Follow me." This is gonna be the controlling text for us for a time. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Now when we read this, sometimes it's easy to go, "Okay, does anybody really do this anymore?" Like this is, Jesus goes around asking people to follow him. Does anybody really say, "Follow me anymore?" And I'm like, every Instagram account, every YouTube channel. This is about as, you know, sometimes you're just like, "Wow, this is so relevant." We live in a time probably more than ever where people are saying, "Follow me and we're doing it." And that's okay, 'cause people do follow other people, but we need to ultimately follow Christ. Maybe a good exercise would be go look at who you follow on Twitter, go look who you follow on Instagram, whatever else you're on, and see what that just, see the self-awareness that that might bring. For me, obviously I'm gonna follow a lot of people in our church that I'm thinking I could do. I'm going to follow, I know it's kind of goofy, but I try to be into some of this health stuff, so I'm gonna follow people that are like, "Okay, what kind of, how cold do you keep your cold blood?" Do you know that kind of thing? Like, what's your workout routine?

What do you eat, you know, all that kind of stuff? What do you do with intermittent fasting? So I'm interested in all that. Obviously I'm gonna follow other pastors. And who do we tend to follow? You tend to follow people who you feel like are ahead of you. I mean, isn't that, you can think of the image of following someone. You're following somebody who's ahead of you in an area of life that you value. So we're all gonna follow people, okay? But we need to ultimately follow Jesus. Now, here's what I want you to understand. This is so key. Sometimes you have to ask, what is it not saying? Or what is the opposite of this? Let me say this is clearly. Jesus says, "Follow me." Here's what I want you to understand. Jesus does not follow you. In some people's Christianity is about trying to get Jesus to follow them. Right, come on. How many of our prayers are really trying to get Jesus to follow us? Some version of Jesus, this is what I would like to do with my life and hope you follow, right? Or Jesus, come over here, I want you to meet this non-Christian boyfriend or girlfriend that I have. Jesus, I don't follow you there.

When does Jesus come over here? I just really want an easy life of safety and consumerism and materialism and worldliness. And Jesus is like, I'm not gonna follow you there. The first thing Jesus calls us to is, this is important, is a person, follow me. He doesn't call us to a practice, a program, a philosophy, even principles. He calls us to a person. Now, here's what's interesting about the phrase follow me. It's the first words Jesus speaks to Peter in this passage. And it is some of the very last words Jesus speaks in John chapter 21, where he says to Peter, after he restores him, he says, follow me. Listen, Jesus begins his earthly ministry with the words, follow me. And he begins his heavenly ministry to earth with the words, follow me. The reason we can follow Jesus, very simply stated, is Jesus Christ is still alive. This is why I didn't focus on this last week, this is like the confession at Easter is not he was risen. I don't know if you notice that. It's like I didn't say he was risen. It says he is risen. It's the present continuous tense and what that means for us. So the first thing is he says, follow me, but I want you to see the second thing. So he calls us to a person, he says, follow me.

The second thing he calls us to is a process. Do you see that? He says, follow me, let's look at it. He says, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. So if you're going to be a follower of Jesus, you're going to have to follow him and you're going to have to do it for a while, it's going to be a process. Let me say this way, you can't microwave spiritual maturity. There's just no, I wish there was. The only microwave is suffering. So that does work, but that's kind of out of your control. Suffering will ensure you very, very quickly, right? I never forget, I didn't tell a story in the first service, just came to me. I was at this girl early on in our church. She came to our church, young lady. She was married to a medical student She's missing the bottom half of her leg. And her friend brought her to church, and I said, "What's her story?" She said she lost her leg in a boating accident when she was 16 years old. And I'll never forget this. My friend looks at me and goes, "And so that means she knows Jesus better than you and me." I was like, "You're exactly right. "You go through that type of suffering. "At 16 years old, you're walking with God.

"At 30 years old, you know Jesus better than I do." There's a process, let me ask you this. Who are you becoming? And do you like who you're becoming? Do you ever have that conversation with yourself? You're like, "I don't like who I'm becoming at work. "I'm like the goofy overbearing boss. "I'm like the silly, overly competitive guy, "your gout." And always it's like, "I don't..." Some of you are like, "Right, you wake up "and you're like, "I don't like who I am as a mom." I don't like the husband or the dad that I'm becoming. See, the truth is we're all in process and the truth is you will one day be what you are now becoming. And Jesus says, "If you follow him, "he will turn you into the godliest version of yourself." So he says, "Be committed to the person in the process." Which by the way, that's a great way to think about discipleship. When I was in college ministry, that's what we would always say. If we were gonna disciples, I'm gonna, you know, we said, "Okay, I'm gonna be committed to you "and the process of discipling you." But I'm gonna ask you to be committed to me and the process of discipling. And if we're, if you'll be committed to the person and the process, we'll make it through this. It'll take a lot of time, we'll make it through it.

The final thing is the person or the purpose. So it's, it's all peace. But it's right, we wanna be committed to the person, the process and the purpose. So the purpose is to make you fishers of men. Now, as a communicator, I love that Jesus spoke this way. Because I think especially when talking to men about spiritual things, we need to speak it in a language they can understand. Men are practical theologians and they need to be spoken to directly. And he doesn't use flowery language, he doesn't use religious language, he doesn't use spiritual language, he doesn't use overly theological language. He's like, "Hey guys, you're fishermen. "You understand that profession. "I do something kind of like that, "except I catch people." Would you be interested? See, here's the question. Are you a fisher of men? My fear is that some of you are fisher-less fishermen, which sounds like the title of a Dr. Seuss book, right? Some of you are fisher-less fishermen. Now, can you answer this question? You're not allowed, but are you a fishermen if you never catch any fish? Now, if I could put my pastor hat on for a second, yes, if you're trying to fish.

Somebody goes to the lake, whatever, and they're trying to fish. But for some reason, they're not catching anything. I don't know, it's a hard area. Then they could be a fisherman, so, but if you never fish, you're not a fisherman. And my fear is that there's some of you in here and you're not doing the very thing that defines the Christian life, which is not just following Jesus, but helping others find and follow Jesus. Now, we need to look at the response of the disciples in verse 20. Look here. In verse 20, it says this. Immediately, they left their nets and followed him. And going on there from there, he saw two other brothers. I told you God loves to save families. James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother in the boat was Zebedee, their father, amending their nets, and he called them. Look, repeated, it's where it's repeated. Immediately, in a moment, they left the boat and their father and followed him. Now, scholars and commentators struggle with this because it just seems so dramatic. I mean, can you imagine you're just guy walks by, looks at you and says, "Follow me." And you drop everything. Part of it is we don't realize that Jesus Christ

is not an ordinary person. He's the God-man himself who the call creates the response. Charles Spurgeon, he was a very famous pastor. He said, "When Jesus said, 'Lazareth, come out.'" Come out of the grave. He said, "I'm glad he put the word lazareth in front of it." 'Cause if he just said, "Come out of the grave, "every dead person would have risen." So there's something about the call that creates this. There's something about Jesus's truly felt authoritative presence. things that I think every Christian must do to become a Christian, to begin the Christian life, but then also to become a better disciple, you need to continually do these. They're right in the text. I'll show you. The first one is they drop their nets. Okay. So what are you holding onto that you need to let go of, right? It's hard to follow Jesus carrying a bunch of stuff. You get that feeling? Like I can't keep up with them because you're holding on to too many different things. Some of you have bad beliefs and you have wrong ideas about yourself and about God and about sin and about the world and who knows you learned it from your parents or your professors and your 30 years old now and your minds all messed up and you need to start reading the scriptures. You need a renewal of your mind and you need to drop these bad beliefs. Some of you are holding on to some sin and you need to drop it and let it go and begin to follow Christ at a whole new level. There's different things in our lives that we need to drop and let go. Maybe even more importantly for some of you, there are things that you don't just need to drop. There are things that you need to leave. So notice it says that the sons of Zebedee leave their father and his boat. Now there's a debate right among scholars as to were these fishermen, like there's two camps. Some people go look, the fishermen were just blue collar, kind of lower middle class guys and look, God can use anyone. And I think that's true and that may be the case on some of the fishermen that he calls. Most likely though, you look at the sons of Zebedee and you go, they have their own boat and they have their own business. So they're pretty far ahead. Think of them. It would be like two young men leaving their father's

successful business to go in a ministry. So they leave. Now here's a couple of you. Let me tell you this. Some of you need to leave toxic relationships. Some of you today, today, this service, you need to have an ex-boyfriend or an ex-girlfriend. I can tell you how to do it. You take out your phone right now. In Texas, I'm at church, you're not, we're done. Send. I'm telling you, some of you, guys, listen, some of you have toxic relationships with friendships. Women are the worst of this. You stay in all of these relationships because you feel like you have to be loyal to this person. You don't. Christian, you get to pick your friends and you don't have to spend a bunch of time with people who bring you down and wear you out. And some of you have two or three relationships in your life that you need to get rid of so that you can more faithfully follow Jesus Christ. You are the average of your five closest relationships in your life. And every parent knows this. Everything becomes so clear when you're a parent. You know, my kids are 13, 11, almost nine. There is outside of like, you know, their salvation and like their health. There is nothing I care about more than them finding great friendships. So they had, by the way, sometimes you have to leave good relationships. And you have to leave good relationships because God's calling you to say a gospel goodbye. We have a lady in our church and her daughter's a missionary and this is an older lady in our church and right around Thanksgiving time, Christmas time, she pulled me aside at those doors right over there and just said, I really miss my daughter. This is sad. She's not around. Not because she doesn't love you, not because it wasn't a great relationship, but because she had to move for the sake of mission. Some of you may have to leave careers. Some of you, you know, over the next, hopefully this year is going to get used to this, but over the next like, you know, five to 10 years, we're just going to be like, all right, who's leaving to go to this place in the world of planet church? Who's leaving to go to this place in America or planet church? Who's leaving to go this place in the tribe to plant a campus and you're just going to leave? But there's a third thing that's really interesting. So listen, sometimes you have to drop things and sometimes you have to leave things, but there's an interesting one. Sometimes you have to repurpose things. Now, I'm leaning on tradition. I don't have a Bible verse for this, but tradition tells us the boat that Jesus went around on was Peter's boat. Do you ever think about that? You're like, how does a poor itinerant preacher always have a boat? You're like, I need a friend that's got a boat, right? It's like, you know, how does Jesus have a boat?

And how is he able to sleep on the boat? And at one point, he gets to a crowd and he preaches from the boat, right? And they use the boat to travel all over the place. Most people think this was Peter's boat and Peter repurposed the boat for the purposes of Jesus. What in your life do you just need to go? I need to read, you can do it right now in your mind and heart. My career is repurposed. I'm repurposing my home. I'm putting the word Christian in front of my family. I'm taking all of my hobbies and I'm repurposing them for Christ. I was somewhere recently, I'll try to keep this story coded 'cause I don't wanna reveal the people in it. But I was at this place really recently and it's a place where you'd have a hobby. Okay, let's just say that. This guy has a, and I see a church member there and he comes over to me and he says, "Hey, Pastor God, we talked for a little bit "and then another guy that I don't know comes over to me "and says, "Hey, Pastor God, I went to your church one time "and I go to this guy who's at his hobby place." And I say, "Dude, who is this guy?" He says, "He's my one." You don't know if you're not in our church, you know what I mean? He's the person who's far from God and close to me. And then he said to me, "Kyle, I have 19 ones here."

I don't know if I was amazed at how many ones he had or that he knew that he had exactly 19. (laughing) Here is a guy redeeming, redeeming his hobbies, repurposing his hobbies for Christ and his kingdom. What do you need to repurpose? What do you need to drop? What do you need to leave? Really, here's the question we're gonna end with. If we said that what it means to be a disciple is to follow Jesus and help others find and follow Jesus. Here's what this means. This means you're always asking this question. What is my first step and what is my next step? By the way, this language is so, I feel so good about this because it's so biblical. This is, what is the first thing we're talking about, Adam and Eve? They walked with God in the garden. The idea of walking with God is take your first step and take your next step. And here's why I love this, okay? 'Cause some of you are in a really dark place. You're suffering a lot or you're deep in some kind of sand or whatever you're dealing with. And here's what I wanna encourage with. There is no place you could be where you couldn't take your first step. I mean, that's gotta be so encouraging, right? It's like, okay, you're in like some like deep addiction.

It's like, oh man, I'm sorry. I know that they're just think about it. I know there's a first step for you. What is it? Do you need to just invite one person into your life that they could know about this, that they could help you think what your next step would be? But maybe your first step is to invite somebody in. By the way, don't we all parents, we know this. Parents of kids know this. I guess every parent has kids. But you know what I'm saying? Parents of little kids. Parents of little kids know this. We all get excited when our kids take their first steps. Right? It's like little Timmy and Tawny and me and Jimmy and all that, they're standing on the couch and they're wobbling and they go boop, boop, and they fall back and we get, we're like, ain't talking first step, right? I want you to know that God is as excited as a parent when you take your first step. You know, he looks at you, he's like, you've never ever read the Bible until today. Congratulations, I'm so excited. He looks at you and goes, you've, you prayed out loud. You prayed out loud with other people in the room. You've never done that, great job. Right?

You gave something. You never give anything. You gave something. God rejoices in your first step. But here's the other thing. You've got to take your next step. But here's what I love about the next step. So if the first step works in the worst situation, the next step works in the best situation. Because, you know, I can see some of you out here, you might be like, Kyle, I've been a Christian longer than you've been alive. And, you know, not only do I have kids, I have grandkids, and I've been in the church for a long time and I've read the Bible tons of times and I've led all these different things. And I would just look at that person and I would say, "Take your next step." And you can find out your next step by simply doing this, sitting on the edge of your bed and saying, "God, what is my next step?" And then something that you don't want to do will appear in your mind. And that will be your next step, right? Listen, some of you, I actually think many of you, your next step is to help somebody with their first step. What would this church look like if everybody was walking around here, especially those of us who've been believers who have been going,

And then they look around and they go, Oh my goodness, there, there's a new mom. I bet she's going to struggle to know how to be a mom and a wife and a Christian and all that. I bet I can help her. I've done that. I bet I can help her take her first step. Look at that guy over there, man. That guy over there, he's still saying when he's a grub. I bet I can help him take his next step and look at that lady over there. She's struggling with some sin and temptation and she doesn't understand spiritual warfare. And I can, I think my next step is to help her take her first step. By the way, as I'm talking today, you know this, right? I'm just going to say, I've kept it till now, but I'm just going to say it for some of you, your next step. Or your first step is to get baptized. And here's what happened. I'm talking today and you're going, ah, I need to get baptized, but I didn't sign up. And I didn't talk to anybody and I, what am I going to do? We thought about that. OK. What I want you to do is if you need to get baptized, and some of you do, and you just need to go, you're done making excuses. Nobody and nothing's holding you back. I want you to find who to do this last service to. I want you to find a staff person or a pastor and I want you to tell them that you need to get baptized. And they're going to meet with you and you're going to come back at the five o'clock service and we're going to baptize. Amen, because that is yes. And we're going to rejoice with you. Because guys, that that is your next step. OK, now, last thing and we'll be done. I did tell you, you know, that Jesus does not follow you and you know that. But I forgot to say this. Jesus does not follow you, but he will pursue you.

If you think about this, all the things that we're told to do to become a disciple are basically things Jesus did. So, OK, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to have to drop everything in heaven and I'm going to have to leave my father in my home. And Jesus Christ is the first fisher of men who comes after us and he says to us, follow me. Now, here's what's interesting. They didn't know what was going to happen. And you don't know what's going to happen. If you commit today to say, I'm going to follow Jesus and I'm going to help others find and follow Jesus. You have no idea what's going to happen. It's going to be very exciting. Your life's no longer going to be born. You're going to have the adventure in the mission of your life. And so what I want to do is I want to give us a moment at the end just here just to create up a space for you to respond. So if you'll bow your heads, close your eyes. This is just to create a moment for you to think about what we talked about. I want to ask you, are you a disciple and I want you to just be honest. And I want you to maybe today, you need to become a disciple right now and you need to get baptized tonight. And you need to give Jesus your sin and you need to give Jesus yourself. And you can do that right now. You could transfer trust to Jesus. Some of you need to become a disciple and you need to get baptized tonight. Others of you right now, you just need to go, okay, what does it look like for me to drop something? And if you're struggling to drop it, maybe you just give your, I did this sometimes. Maybe you just put your palms up to Jesus and say, Jesus, I'm struggling to drop it. I'm going to need you to take it. Others of you, you need to leave. It's going to be hard to leave and you can't leave until you cleave. And so you're going to have to find some new relationships. Hopefully this church community can be that for you. Others of you, as I've talked about repurposing, you literally thought I have a boat.

I could repurpose or I have a house. I could repurpose or I need to go into my career on Monday with a whole new mindset of this career is for Christ. Or I've got a hobby. I could repurpose for Christ in his kingdom. Where would you do it? Would you take our church and would it be a place where discipleship is defined and displayed? Lord, we know that the reason to be a disciple is you are worthy of it, Lord. You are worthy of our, all of our heart, all of our time. You are worthy to be followed. You are worthy to be worshiped and we're going to do that together. Now we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. [Music] [Music] [Music] You [BLANK_AUDIO]