Pilgrim Bible Study
Normal Disciples of the King Mark 1:16-20
Welcome to episode 3 of Pilgrim Bible study podcast with Pastor Chris. Today we explore a normal discipleship in Jesus' ministry and how that relates to our own Christian world. Join us as we examine Mark 1 16-20 and delve into what it truly means to be a follower of Christ. I wanted to share an unrelated story that maybe you'll find funny. Maybe you'll find it disturbing. I don't really know. For me, I thought it was kind of funny. We'll call this story "Getting Ready" or "A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Church." So this is what happened. I woke up this morning and I remember thinking to myself, "Well, one thing's for sure. I'll never be late to work again. I live right next door to the church building, so there's no way possible for me to be late." And so I got ready with great confidence and kind of took my time. I told Joe I'd be here a little bit early, so I was planning on being here at least by 930. That out of the shower, that dress, I said, "Oh, man, I'm right on schedule." And I realized that I was about to put on my sneakers to come here and preach to you. I was like, "Where's my dress shoes?" Now, by the way, I don't think that would be mad if I had my sneakers on, but I didn't really want to wear my sneakers. I was like, "Where are my dress shoes?" They're back at Londale Street. So I'm like, "Honey, I need a ride home." I got to go. And then I realized something else. I had the wrong coat. My girls got me a dress coat from home, and when I put it on, I felt like a 10-year-old boy putting on my edge coat. My wife walked into the bedroom, and I'm flapping my arms like this. And of course, she almost fell over laughing. And so I went home and found out that my dress coat was packed away. And I thought to myself, "Look who they hire." I am sanctified in Christ Jesus, but I'm just as goofy as I used to be. And I dare say that it will never really change. But anyway, I'm here. I made it on time with five minutes to spare. So I wasn't here quite as early as I wanted to be. I want to look at this passage. The first thing you might note is, "Hey, we're still in the first chapter of Mark." And I would say, "Hey, you're right. We're still in the first chapter of Mark because we're going to go verse by verse, and the gospel Mark's going to take us a little while to do it that way. But it's really important that we do things in this way because we don't want to go through the Bible topically, which means we're going to jump here and jump there. And I will look at the Scripture and make it fit whatever my ideas, what I want to preach on. That's not what I believe the Lord wants us to do. Instead, what we're going to do today is we're looking at the Scripture and we're letting the Scripture speak. We're letting the Holy Spirit speak through His Word. So I want to look at what are normal disciples of the kingdom. Now when I say normal discipleship, I mean that what should be normal, what Jesus would want to be normal, not necessarily what is normal. So we'll start here on in verse 16. It says about Jesus that He was going along by the Sea of Galilee. And He saw Simon and Andrew at the brother of Simon, and they were casting a net in the sea for they were fishermen. And so what I want you to understand that He is not just meeting them right now. In the gospel, John, it would indicate that they had already had a relationship with them. They were familiar with them. This was a moment of decision where Jesus says clearly, it's time to follow me now. And here they are doing their job. Now when I thought of this, I thought of Jesus coming to me in a factory on an assembly line. The last thing I was was a supervisor, but for years, I worked on an assembly line, which meant literally I stood in one spot all day long, putting car parts together. The next one, then I do it again. And I basically did that for eight hours a day. And I imagined Jesus coming to an assembly line and saying, "Chris, come follow me." And just walking away from the assembly line. But that's what He does. He comes to them at their business, at their workplace. And in the Sea of Galilee, it was really hopping, fishing, commercial business going on there. The historian Josephus said that at any time, there were more than 200 ships at all times on the Sea of Galilee fishing. It was packed with boats, and there were lots of people doing business there. And they might have been doing a very good business. But Jesus interrupts what is going on in their life to make a wonderful invitation. And He makes this invitation to everybody who hears the gospel. He's still making this invitation today. In verse 17, Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." And their response was they immediately left their nets and followed. And what I am suggesting is their response. And as later we see James and John, where they were mending their nets, it says, "Going a little further." He saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, and they were mending their nets. And he immediately called them. And they left their father. This takes it a little deeper. They left their dad. They're working. It was a family business. They're working together to their dad. They left their dad. Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went away to follow Him. What I'm saying to you is, this is normal discipleship. That's what discipleship should look like. Now, it's not that Jesus is going to come to you and say, "Leave being a doctor, leave being a trash man, leave being whatever you are, fill in the blank." But He is saying, "It now all belongs to me." And He can ask you to leave your job if He wants you to. To be honest, when I made the decision to candidate here, I was making that decision. And I want to tell you, my first response when the deacons told me about it is, I said, "No, I don't really think so." But I promise I'll pray about it. And in my mind, I had already made up my mind. I've been doing manufacturing since I was 21 years old. It made sense to me that I should retire doing this. It's what I'm qualified to do. I know how people build parts and come together, and that made the most sense to me. I felt the Lord convicting me that it was time to walk away from manufacturing, even though this is different. And to be honest, I'm a man in training. I'm learning what a pastor does day by day. And Jesus, when He calls you to be a disciple—and by the way, that's all He calls. He only calls disciples. He doesn't call converts to a religion. He calls followers to a person, followers of Jesus Christ. That's what He's calling us to be. And here's Peter and Andrew doing their job, and they leave their work to follow Jesus. Because in their case, that's what he was really asking them to do. I could still see my notes. We can finish. I don't know why we lost power, but it's okay. Thanks for quickly paying that bill online so we can get our power back on. Much appreciated. So they left their jobs to follow Jesus. James and John left their jobs and their dad. So what are we learning from their response? What is the cost of discipleship? In this case, it could be your finances, your career, and your relationships. And it could mean even more than that, it could cost you your life. And so if you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, if you've never, as we mentioned last week, repented and believed in Jesus, which is the message Jesus was preaching, he was saying repent and believe. Okay? If you haven't done that, then I want you to understand today that when I say that Jesus, doctor, your sins, I'm not telling you, raise your hand and say a prayer, and you'll be born again. Saying a prayer doesn't save you. Jesus saves you. Faith in Jesus Christ saves you. There's a lot of words that we have in the Bible, that we have in the Bible that we don't use. We've said asking Jesus into your heart. That's nowhere in the Bible. We've said accepting Jesus in your heart. Jesus isn't a poor beggar hoping to be accepted. He's the king of kings and the Lord of lords, and he is giving you the offer of your life. But what does it cost? It costs everything. Of these men that we see called here, three out of the four, died for Jesus Christ. And so when I say put your faith in Christ today and repent of your old way of living, what I'm saying is come to Jesus and die to get something better. Here's what discipleship costs. Jesus summed it up in this in Luke 14, 33. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. All. And so if your life is on the table, now he may not ask you to leave your job like he's asking his men. But that means that while you do your job, you now do your job for Jesus Christ. It means that wherever you go, my finances, my time, my resources, my relationships, they all belong to Jesus. He can take them whenever he wants. He can use them however he wants. That's what normal discipleship is to be. And many of us treat discipleship instead like it's compartmentalized in our life. Well, I come out to church and I do my daily devotions. Jesus gets this part of my life. But then I have these things that I like to do. And that's my thing. That's my thing. It doesn't belong to Jesus. I would suggest you're not a follower of Christ in all of that your attitude. Because what Jesus is giving is an all or nothing proposal. He says that you come and you renounce everything and follow me. What's interesting in the Gospel loop, we see the story of two men. And one of them was the rich young ruler who said he wanted to follow Jesus. And Jesus said, that's fine. He says, give up all you have. Sell all you have, give it to the poor and come follow me and I'll give you treasure and have it. And then he ran and followed Jesus. No. Went away sad. Because that wasn't the answer he was looking for. He was really hoping that Jesus would justify him and say, what a good man you are. You followed the commandments. What a good person you are. No, Jesus took the man's heart. Who the man was in love with money. And said, we'll give that up and then come follow me. And I'm going to give you something much better. And he walked away. He left the greatest gift on the table. And for those of you who are walking with Jesus, but you know that you haven't really fully committed to him, then repent today. Repent today and live the life that Christ has called you to live. Don't compartmentalize and give him everything. He gets your life part blanched to do whatever he wants. And if you've not yet put your faith in Christ, I'm telling you this, that it will cost you everything. Jesus said in the gospel loop that if you're going to come into the kingdom, they count the cost. He said, no one comes with an army and goes against a great army without trying to figure out whether he can face them with his 10,000 when they have 20,000. No one builds something and they're not sure of how they can finish it or if they have the resources to finish it. Jesus said to count the cost. And what is the cost? We just said it. Everything. Everything is normal discipleship. But now here's something really encouraging that I want to say to you today. If you're struggling with this on whether or not you want to receive Christ today, whether you are ready to repent and believe that when you give everything to Jesus, your gain is so great you really lose nothing. Now Paul said he considered everything a loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. That's what he said. He looked at everything that he treasured in his life. Everything had said, this is all garbage compared to knowing Christ Jesus. Matthew 1344 says the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field which a man found and covered up and then joy. He goes and sells all he has and buys that field. Yes. Being a disciple will cost you everything like we see here very clearly in the scripture. It costs them absolutely everything. But what they gained was so much greater than what they lost. And I also want to make this word of caution to you today if you're not sure of your salvation. Inasmuch as being a disciple of Jesus Christ cost you everything to reject Christ also cost you everything except the loss is much greater. In other words, if you choose that I love the things of this world more, no thank you Jesus. I don't want that offer of eternal life. I don't want to give up these things. I don't want to surrender anything. And what you do is you get a temporary gain. You get to enjoy those things but only so long as you live. That's how long you get to enjoy them. And of course, we don't know how long we'll live. Any of us could live another 24 hours. We don't know that. And what's a long life? What, 80, 90 years? What is that compared to ever lasting life in Christ Jesus which is what Jesus offers us? Life with him forever. And so I want you to understand if you're rejecting Christ that will also cost you everything. The loss will be much greater and your gains will be much smaller. Now the second point that I wanted to make that we see in this passage is that normal disciples don't just give up everything. The normal disciples make more disciples. Now let's go back to verse 17 where Jesus says follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. By the way, this is the first church title job that there is. The fishers of men. Before there were deacons, before there were elders, before there were pastors, there were fishers of men and that's what we still are. And that's what God has still told us to do. And what does that necessarily mean? Does that mean I just, I share the gospel to one and I move on and share the gospel to someone else and move on? No. You share the gospel, yes. You share your faith, yes. But you make relationships. And 2 Timothy 2, it says, "And what you have heard from me," Paul says to Timothy, "before many witnesses and trust the faithful men who will be able to teach others also." That means that what is normative is disciples who make disciples who make disciples. And that's what that is, to teach others so they can teach someone else, so they can teach someone else. And let's put it very plainly here, rather Jesus puts it very plainly. Matthew 28, 18, they're 20. He talks about the job of being a fisher of men and he really puts down and explains to us how we can do it and the way we should do it. It says, "Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me." So let's start with that. When you go to share the good news of the gospel, it's a little terrifying sometimes, isn't it? It is. Again, it can be scary because I've gotten rejected. I've lost some friends over it. I've had some people ridicule me to my face over it. I even had a guy bounce the track off my nose. That's people really angry at me. But we go in the authority of Jesus, which means that Jesus is the one who sends us. So no church here or anywhere else has any right to say to share the gospel. The authority is in Jesus who is the king of kings and the Lord of lords. He's the one who sends you so we best be going because he determines what the purpose of the church is. Not men. We don't determine what is the purpose of pilgrim Baptist church or if we do, we can be sure that the power of God is not going to be present in what we do. So first, we go in his authority and then he says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations." So the very thing that we said that a disciple is that we say, that's what Jesus wants more of. He doesn't want people to just raise their hands and say, "Yeah, I believe in Jesus. I want to tell you something. It's really upsetting to me to admit this, but I'm guilty of making the gospel sound too easy. I've done it in the past. I've been the youth leader since the early 90s. And I have many times said those words, raise your hand and trust in Jesus. And guess what I saw? I saw many young people who said they were believers in Jesus Christ walk away and never come back. You know why? Because part of it was my fault. Because I didn't tell them the whole gospel. I didn't tell them to count the cost. I didn't tell them that what Jesus is calling us to is a kind of death so that we can receive something better. And it wasn't just me and many of my other fellow youth ministers who I spoke to, they did the same thing. And what a terrible thing to feel that kind of guilt over that. We need to give the gospel the straight way. I remember years later, I shared the gospel and a young lady said she raised her hand, said, "I want to receive Jesus." And I talked to her about this. I said, "Well, do you know what a disciple is?" And then in the end, she said, "I don't think I want to give up everything for Jesus." And I told her, I said, "Well, young lady, I said you're not ready to receive Jesus. You're not ready to put your faith in him and repent." And that sounds funny to turn someone away. And I wasn't really turning her away. I was telling her what real disciples should look like. And she said, "No, thank you." Guess what? God would rather have that than have a hundred people raise their hands not knowing what they did and not truly having faith in Christ. Because Jesus said that the seed will fall on different kinds of ground. And there will be those who will be excited to be Christians excited to follow God. And when the problems of life spring up or the cares of life or the enjoyment of life spring up, they'll fall away because they didn't have any root. They weren't connected to the vine. And so what Jesus is calling us to make is more disciples. In other words, more people willing to repent, believe, and surrender everything. And that's part of that repentance. And so he says, "Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father of the Holy Spirit." By the way, baptism is a command from Jesus Christ. If you put your faith in Jesus Christ and you've never been baptized, then you need to remedy that. Because we said that Jesus didn't need to be baptized, but he was baptized in obedience to the Father. He was baptized to identify with sinful man. And so he led the way. And so if you believe and are walking with Jesus Christ, then you need to be baptized as well. That is a public demonstration of your faith. And then it also says, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. Well, this goes much further than someone signing a pledge card or raising a hand. What this is saying is that the way to make disciples is you go through God's Word together. I mean, there's many ways to share the Word of God with another person, but I'll give you an example from myself. As I started learning better what discipleship was, I've had a lot of young men over the years who have had a cup of coffee with me or had breakfast with me. And we looked at a chapter in the Bible together, we prayed and we read it together. And they asked me questions and we discussed it. That's disciples. And my wife and I made a choice years ago because we saw it modeled in some other youth ministers to have an open-door ministry, meaning that the kids after youth group used to come to our house and hang out. Why? Because I wanted them to eat all my food. Well, they did. But that's not why I didn't want them to eat all my food. But I wanted them to see is to see a Christian family and see that we love Jesus. We're not perfect, but we love Jesus and we're trying to follow him and let him guide our lives. And it's important for people to see that. How do they see that? By being in your home, seeing you, seeing how you conduct yourself around other people, to see how you deal with problems when they come up. And so it's important that we and you don't have to be a seminary graduate to teach another person. If you yourself are a believer in a follower of Christ, you have some things they had in the early church. And by the way, the early church was explosive. Why? Because God did. And by the way, only God can still do it. So they had some things that you have. Number one, they had a faith in Jesus Christ that was living and active, meaning that they truly repented and they truly put all their faith in Christ for their salvation. We have that too. Secondly, they had the Holy Spirit. That's key, because the true believer in Jesus Christ will have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does the work. The Holy Spirit saved. The Holy Spirit takes God's Word and gives it life and understanding to human beings. So we have that too. If you're a true believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit. And then lastly, a willingness to say yes to God and serve. And if you have those three things, then you have enough to pray, read the Bible a chapter at a time with another person, and then just ask some questions. What does this passage say? What is God saying? And how should I respond to it? That's, I'm giving you the most simple way to look at it. What does it say? What does God saying? What does it mean? How do I respond? And you could start somebody who's a new believer down that road and growing that way. And their job would be to then go out and make more disciples. Because something's wrong, isn't it? It seems like even the percentage of Christians in the United States is stagnant. It's not growing. The numbers are growing, but the percentage is growing. And that's because there's something wrong. Disciples aren't making disciples that make disciples. And that's the way Jesus said to do it. That's the way we need to do it here at Pilgrim Baptist Church. And then he said, after teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, he says, "Well, I am with you always to the close of the age." And so Jesus is also reminding us, we're not going at this alone. He's reminding you that you can't do it. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit, who's Christ in us, the hope of glory, we can't do anything. Otherwise, without the Holy Spirit, we would be like the blind leading the blind. But because the Holy Spirit has given us new life in Christ, we can share that with someone else. And so I look at this passage. And what I see is that normal disciples give up everything. Have you? Have you today? Have you yet? Then repent and do it. Normal disciples make more disciples. Is that a problem for you because you've been afraid to share the gospel? I understand what that feels like. I've been afraid sometimes and past that year, I forced myself to talk to somebody. Then repent of that if you haven't done it and do it today. And lastly, I want to say before we close, that if you have not yet repented and come to Jesus Christ in faith, do so today. I implore you to do so today. The Bible says that he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. Do you understand that? Jesus hates your filth and gives you his righteousness. Why would you leave that offer on the table? Why would you reject Christ there? Don't any longer put your faith in Christ and repent today and be saved. And for the rest of us, let's follow as a normal disciple. Now on Jesus gets everything. Amen. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Pilgrim Bible Study podcast with Pastor Chris. Remember, normal discipleship involves giving up everything for Jesus, making more disciples through teaching and sharing the gospel and following him in all aspects of life. As we continue our journey through the gospel of Mark, let us strive to emulate the lives of Peter, Andrew, James and John by putting our faith in Christ, repenting and embracing discipleship. God bless you and may his word guide you on your path each day.