August 31, 2003

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8, Matthew 4:18-22

The Old Testament lesson is from Isaiah 6:1-8.

The New Testament lesson is from Matthew 4:18-22:

The Word of God for the people of God. Join me in saying: “Thanks be to God.” I would also like to thank Cindy Arnold for playing this morning. She does a beautiful job. Aren’t we blessed with talent in this church.

The lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer are dwindling down to a precious few although it seems like we are having more of the 90-degree weather of summer now than we had in July. I heard the weather caster say yesterday that we had had 90-degree plus weather on five of the last ten days and very little of the 90-degree weather in June and July and the very early part of this month of August, whereas last year we had something like fifty-four days of 90-plus weather. So, summer is fading away, according to the calendar, anyway. The children are back in school, and the school activities are cranking up, and the football teams are playing, and the bands are marching, and the cheerleaders are rehearsing, and our church has been a hubbub of activity - actually all year long, when you consider the fact that we are in this building program - and there have been tractors grinding and digging, and drills drilling all over the place since the early part of this year—well, really since they started this construction. But it seems to be noisier lately than it had been for awhile.

But, anyway, we have been gearing up also in the Church itself for the Fall programs. We had the Youth Kickoff last Sunday night. The Youth program was presented and parents were given the opportunity to volunteer for whatever they wanted to volunteer for in parent support. This week we will be having a meeting about the Fall Festival of Faith. But since early this year our church has been engaged in thinking and talking about ways that we can grow spiritually and numerically. This Natural Church Development Program that you have heard a lot about is guiding us to determine our strengths and weaknesses as a church. We have discovered that our strength lies in empowering leadership and in functional structures, which in a nutshell means simply that we have leadership capabilities in our church and our committees work well. Our weakness lie in passionate spirituality and need-oriented evangelism. Our administrative council has spent a lot of time discussing these strengths and weaknesses and developing goals to help our church to continue to grow stronger where we are strong and to grow stronger where we are weak.

There were several key issues that were determined to affect the way that we accomplish these goals. One of the key issues is TIME. People seem to be overwhelmed with work and community and family commitments.

Another key issue is FEAR. Many people in our church are uncomfortable with the prospect with open, public sharing of personal private faith.

A third key issue is LACK OF KNOWLEDGE. There seems to be a widespread feeling that many of our members do not possess sufficient knowledge of their faith either to live it passionately or to share it with others.

As I have read the COMMUNICATOR articles and other information concerning this study, it has come to me, afresh and anew, a call from God to a more passionate discipleship, to more disciplined prayer and Bible study for my own personal growth. We ministers sometimes, in our “busy-ness about the Lord’s work,” tend to relegate our Bible reading to the time that we prepare our sermons, just because we can’t find the time, or don’t take the time to read and study for our own spiritual nourishment, and it is to our detriment that we do this. As I thought about this and meditated on it and prayed over it, I was lead to preach this sermon The Call to Discipleship.

A disciple, if you look in the dictionary or a Thesaurus you find out that a disciple is a follower, a devotee, an adherent, a pupil. When Jesus was on this Earth he called a group of men to be his Disciples, to be his followers, his pupils, to learn about his work. When we begin to look for someone to do a particular job, we send out inquiries, or we advertise in the paper or in the North Carolina Christian Advocate. We review resumes we conduct interviews and then we decide who is best qualified to do the job that needs to be done. Well, in Jesus’ day this was not the way things got done. There were no advertisements; there were no resumes to consider, no job interviews to conduct. When Jesus called his Disciples, He was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. There He saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew throwing out their nets into the water, because they were fishermen. Jesus' call to them was simple and direct: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

One source I read said their following of Christ was meant to be more than just physical nearness. Following Christ meant that they were to be imitators of His life and His actions. In other words, theirs was to be a ministry of character. What they were was more important than what they said or did. But I might add that what they said or did would definitely affect what they were in their character. Their response to Jesus was immediate: at once, Matthew says. Without delay, Mark puts it. Or, Immediately, as the translation I read said, they left their boats and followed Jesus.

As Jesus continued along the shore, He saw James and John, who were sons of Zebedee, with their father, and Jesus called James and John to follow Him. They left their father and the hired hands in the boat mending the net and went and followed Jesus. The source that I read said that in leaving their father and their nets, they were acknowledging the priority of Jesus over all earthly ties.

Now this was probably not the first time they had seen Jesus. Most likely, definitely, they had heard about Him. Possibly they had been curious and sought him out to see just what He was like in person. They had seen Him in action. They had encountered that penetrating gaze of His, so they knew He was no ordinary person. And when He came to them, just plain old laboring fishermen, to say, Follow Me, they were probably somewhat astonished. Surely He would have chosen someone with more clout, better education, or more appropriate experience. Maybe He has made a mistake. Maybe He needs to think about His selection a little more. But there wasn’t anyone else around, and Jesus knew that His time on Earth was limited, so He had to find followers; he had to find disciples who would carry on His work after he left this Earth. But fishermen? “You, Fishermen, follow me.” And they left everything behind and followed Him.

Matthew was not in this group to be called away from their nets. Matthew had a more “upper class job,” you might say — a more “upper crust” job: he was a tax collector. Mathew himself may have thought that this tax collector’s job was more “upper crust” than the fishermen, but he was still just as common and ordinary as they were. And people despised him because he was a tax collector.

You might wonder why Jesus went to these people, but he saw possibilities. He recognized potential, and besides he needed people who had no preconceived notions about what the religious life was to be. He needed people who were willing to follow a radical way of living. And that’s what being a Christian is, friends, a radical way of life. If we look through the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, we find that God used ordinary people who were willing to follow his directions and do His work.

Do you know who Jochebed was? I have to confess I didn’t until just a few years ago. She was the mother of Moses. An ordinary woman of extraordinary faith who refused to allow her son to be killed by the Egyptian soldiers. She made that little “ark” and put him in there so that he would be found by Pharaoh’s daughter. And you know how the story goes, that Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s court to become the one who would lead the Hebrew children out of bondage. You will recall that Moses had fled from Egypt to Midian where he married Jethro’s daughter and tended Jethro’s sheep. He was on the backside of the desert, tending these sheep one day when he saw a bush that burned but would not be consumed.

And he heard the voice of God saying, Moses, take off your shoes, for the ground on which you stand is holy ground.

It was set apart as holy ground because of the presence of Holy God. And you know how God called Moses. And you know the excuses Moses made. But for every excuse Moses made God had a reason for why Moses could do what God was calling him to do. And the best reason of all that God gave Moses was that He would be with Moses to help him do what He was calling him to do.

Check out the story of Esther. The name of God does not appear in the whole book of Esther. But the providence, of God, the protection of God, the provision of God are all there. Esther knew that her people faced extinction. She knew that if she didn’t go in to the king and speak up for her people they would die. And Esther knew that she faced almost certain death herself if she went in to the king without his invitation. So she said that she would go in and speak to the king and, “if I perish, I perish.” An ordinary woman with extraordinary courage to follow what God was leading her to do.

Consider Jeremiah, the prophet to the Kingdom of Judah. God called Jeremiah when he was just a young man and Jeremiah’s response was much like that of Moses: “I am just a youth, I can’t do this. I’m too young for this job. They won’t listen to me. I can’t do this.” But God told Jeremiah the same thing He told Moses. “I will be with you. I will tell you what to say and when to say it.” So Jeremiah went forth and did what God called him to do, in the strength that God gave him to do it with.

Consider Paul in the New Testament. When we first meet him, he was a member of the Sanhedrin who thought he was doing God a favor by rounding up the Christians and putting them in jail. But God had other plans for this man. In Chapter 8 of Acts, we are told that Saul began to destroy the Church by going house to house and dragging out the men and women who were followers of THE WAY, as the Christian way of life was called, dragging them off to prison. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest some more Christians when God zapped this man with the power of the Holy Spirit and he became a stalwart preacher of the gospel, an establisher of churches, and a mentor of young pastor.

Look at all the people God called: A mother of great faith and courage who nursed her son through childhood in the court of the very Egyptian Pharaoh who held the Hebrew children in bondage;

A tongue-tied Hebrew man;

A beautiful Jewish woman who risked the treat of losing her life to speak up for her people.

A bunch of uneducated, unsophisticated fishermen; a much despised tax collector; a threatening member of the Sanhedrin.

Look at modern history: Dwight L. Moody was not a polished man at all, had very little education, but he was determined to be totally dedicated to do what God called him to do, and he shook two continents with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Cory Ten Boon was a diminutive little Dutch woman whose family hid Jews in their home during the second world war, whose family was arrested ant taken away to German prison camps, and all of them died, and Cory would have died except for a clerical error which released her from prison on December 31, 1944. And from then until she suffered a debilitating stroke, she traveled the world, becoming a “tramp for the Lord,” preaching the message of God’s love and salvation to whoever would listen. Billy Graham, farm boy, how long has he been traveling the world preaching the gospel. Indeed, he has become pastor to the world, but he has gone forth in the strength of God, doing what God called him to do. Mother Teresa, a little Roman Catholic nun, who gave her life taking care of people no one else would even speak to, much less gather up in their arms and love them with the love of God.

Why would God call such people? He wanted people willing to be used in His service. He wants people who will follow Him and not count the cost. He didn’t ask for a resume. He didn't conduct a job interview. He didn’t specify hours on the job or salary or benefits or retirement plans. He just said to the prophets, the Queens, and the princes: go and do what I have asked you to do and don’t worry about what to say, because I will be with you and I will tell you what to say. He just said to the fishermen and tax collectors: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

The word disciple comes from the same Latin root word as the word discipline. We speak of someone being a “disciplined person” meaning that that person exhibits a lot of self-control in his or her habits of life. Following God’s call on our lives requires discipline.

What is God calling us to do today? What is our answer? In the name of the Father, because of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord, help us to be willing to say, “Here we are, Lord. Take and use us for we know that You have a plan. Give us grace to follow our Master and our Friend. Amen.