Weekly Sermon Overview

Message Date: May 4, 2015 Message Title: Come, Follow Me

OVERVIEW Last week, we started our new series, Words of Life, by asking the question, who is Jesus, and we found that He is, without question the greatest man who ever lived and so much more. We saw in Him both the pinnacle of humanity and the fullness of Divinity. He was the greatest poet, prophet, teacher, that the world has ever seen, and He is the risen and reigning Lord of glory, that is, He is God come to us, God with us. The question, then, that we touched on last week and need to explore further this week, and over the course of the next 18 weeks is, why did He come to us? What does He want with/from us? In the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus answers this question simply and powerfully: After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. (Mark 1:14-20)

There are four things that Jesus is saying here.

First, He is announcing and, in doing so, inaugurating the Kingdom of the Heavens, the Kingdom of God, on earth. In other words, He is, as we mentioned briefly last week, kicking off a new era, a global age of Jubilee, of grace and redemption—in which we are still living—that precedes the restoration of all things. Until His arrival humanity, creation itself, has been groaning under the weight of sin and death, dimly perceiving, through God’s revelation of Himself in and through Israel, a hope that perpetually lay just beyond our reach. But, with Jesus’ advent, this Kingdom that always seemed to be just over the next hill suddenly burst into vibrant reality right before our eyes, and though it is not yet fully realized, though this place is not yet the promised new earth, the checkered flag has been waved. The end is near. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ll talk more about that in the weeks to come.

The second thing that Jesus is saying, then, on the basis of the inauguration of Kingdom of God, is two-fold: “Repent and believe”. In other words, He is calling us to a new way of living, really, to a new life. Unfortunately, in modern society, even in the Church, both of these words have been co-opted and drained of most of their

power. We tend to think that to repent simply means that we feel guilt and stop doing whatever bad behavior caused that conviction in the first place. In other words, we have taken it to mean, confess and quit sinning. And, while this both of these acts are necessary parts of repentance, they are really only half of what it means. At its root, this powerful word connotes the idea of physical turning, not only from but also to. In other words, while Jesus call necessarily contains an element of abstinence—stop living wrong—it is, first and foremost, an invitation to engagement—discover the life for which you were made. In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes His purpose like this:

…I have come that they may have l i fe, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

Jesus doesn't simply want us to die to ourselves; He wants us to live in Him. Likewise, we have lost much of the weight of the word, “Believe”. In modern parlance, belief is a second-rate mental process that doesn’t necessarily have to have any grounding in reality. In other words, to believe is to “imagine” something to be true. This is not, at all, what Jesus meant. Instead, He was calling us not to imagine or even to want really badly for something to be true, but rather, on the basis of what we have seen to trust and allow our trust to dictate our lives. Belief in the biblical idiom, in a world in which word and action were synonymous, is not only about agreement but also about commitment. Belief dictates action. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer so brilliantly perceived:

“Only the believing obey; only the obedient believe.” (Discipleship)

This leads us to the third element of Jesus’ call. If, in fact, the Kingdom of the Heavens has burst into inaugurated but not yet fully realized life and Jesus is inviting us to, via belief-inspired repentance, to live as citizens of that Kingdom here and now, the natural question for all of us who have learned to live wrong (which is, of course, all of us) is: How? Jesus’ answer is simple: “Come. Follow me.” This must be the heart of the Christian life, to get and stay as close to Jesus as we can. Unfortunately, much of the modern Church has failed in teaching and embodying this life of discipleship. We, as we have already mentioned, first allowed the world to redefine faith and belief and then, accepting back their woefully impotent definition of both, have begun to live as if this powerless intellectual assent is all that Jesus wants from us, as if this is the best He can offer us. This is simply not the case. Jesus’ call, based on faith-filled repentance, that is, based on what we have seen of new, abundant life in the person of Jesus is to learn to live that new life now by continuing to see Jesus, to follow Him around and learn from Him.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Jesus came to teach us all of us groaning beneath the weight of sin the mystery of the easy yoke, the life that we were made to live, to teach us as we follow Him.

Finally, the fourth piece of Jesus’ call, which we will not deal with in detail here but will address later is this idea that disciples make disciples. “Come, follow Me and I will send you out to fish for people.” There is a missional impulse ingrained in the call to follow. As we see Him, learn from Him, and become like Him, living here and now as citizens of this new Kingdom, we become ambassadors, cities, not just over the next hill, but right on top the hill, shining and fully visible for the whole world to see.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. Do you find yourself striving to control your own life? What are things you feel convicted to surrender to God?

2. Do you have an understanding of the relationship between belief and action? Does your life speak to not only your belief in Christ, but also to practically living it out?

NEXT STEP RESOURCES (Check out these resources for additional reading on this topic.)

1. Who Is This Man: The Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus by John Ortberg

2. The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey