Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:08] Church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting yes.newlife Gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:27] I don't know if you've heard, New Life is still growing. We are continuing.
[00:00:32] Our staff is throwing a 2000 party next week because for the first time last week, we broke 2,000 people on a regular Sunday, which is really awesome and exciting.
[00:00:47] Mitch got really creative and he figured out how to slant the chairs on the side more so we could fit a few more chairs in here. So if a few feels a little more comfortable, it's because Mitch got creative. So we got more chairs in here and we got more space. Good stuff. Hey, one of the reasons, or let me say welcome to those of you who are watching online, to the guys over at the prison, to our friends at the jail, and those of you who are here in the room. One of the reasons why New Life has grown over the years is because we believe that Christians should be known more for what we are for than for what we are against.
[00:01:24] You know, so often in our lives, we get caught up in this maybe hateful, maybe angry, maybe judgmental pattern of just picking out the things in the world that make us the most angry. And we spend so much of our time focusing on how we can divide from the people in the world that we disagree with or criticize the people in the world that we disagree with. And that that is a very unhealthy, like, just mentally, emotionally, that is an unhealthy pattern for us to get into. I think the 247 news media has. Media has been a horrible thing for our world because it has just gotten us in this negativity habit where we're just constantly focusing on the things that we dislike. But I believe what the Christian church should be is an organization, a community of people that has made it their top priority to. To shout from the mountaintops that there is a gift available to them. Come as you are.
[00:02:26] There are blessings available to you that you do not currently have access to. And if you would just come, if you would just follow Jesus, if you would just become a part of his kingdom, then you would have gifts in your life, you would have blessings in your life and even beyond this life that are greater than you can possibly imagine.
[00:02:47] So I think we as a church need to start by saying, hey, listen, come and receive the gift.
[00:02:53] Jesus already purchased it. It's available. It's just sitting Here waiting for you.
[00:02:59] Which was a fight that Jesus fought often when he lived in this world. There was a group of religious leaders or a couple different groups of religious leaders that Jesus often came in conflict with because they had kind of prioritized the things that we were against or maybe the rules that they wanted to enfor.
[00:03:19] And they fell into the habit of this judgmental, divisive, angry way of living life. And Jesus fought them on that.
[00:03:30] The reality, though, is that's not just the Pharisees, that's just not just the Sadducees. That's just kind of religion, like most religion in the world, does this same thing.
[00:03:41] We lead with, okay, if you will follow these rules, if you will dress like us, if you will act like us, if you will do the things that we prescribe for you, then you can be a part of our community. That's religion. Religion says change, Then you can follow God, then you can be one of us.
[00:04:01] Have you ever felt like you had to change in order to fit into a group?
[00:04:07] If you were in high school, yes, you have. This is why we dressed the way we did in high school. This is why you had the different social groups in high school. And the goths had a different way of dressing than the jocks and everybody. I don't know what they have nowadays, but the different groups dressed in different ways. And then you kind of became a part of this group if you dress the way the group did. I've told this story before, so if you've heard it, I don't know, cover your ears or something. But one time I went golfing with my family and my brother was a member of a country club and I showed up to golf with my family and my brother took one look at me and he said, uh, oh, this isn't going to work. You can't look like that in golf. Here I was like, what? I had a polo on. I wasn't like.
[00:04:59] Apparently they had a rule against cut off jeans.
[00:05:04] And you could not have cut off jeans, like jeans that had been turned into shorts and golf at their country club. So I was not allowed to golf at his big fancy country club because I had cut off. Actually, they weren't. They were just. They were jean shorts that had like a frayed edge. That what you're picturing when I say cut off jeans is this guy.
[00:05:25] That is not how I looked. And I would never wear a gator shirt like that.
[00:05:30] The actual jean shorts that I had were these ones.
[00:05:34] Now, I did not look like this dude, but these were the shorts, because I'm really cool like this.
[00:05:42] But apparently I was not cool enough for his country club. And he told me that because I had not met their standards, if I had not, because I had not dressed the way they said that I should dress, then I could not belong. I could not be a part of their cool little country club and church. We cannot fall into this trap if we do not actively work against it. Our sinful nature will cause us to enforce expectations on people.
[00:06:13] And what that ends up doing is it builds a wall, a barrier between where they are now and where we want them to be.
[00:06:21] We say, we want you to be a part of our group. We want you to be a part of our family. Like, come and join us. But if we create some kind of barrier between us and them, we're stopping them from doing the exact same thing or the exact same thing that God came to fight so much against.
[00:06:41] So country clubs and religion say, change and then you can follow God. But Christians, Jesus says, no, follow God. And then he, this is key. And then he will change you. You need the relationship so that you can be formed so that you can be changed. You have to follow first. We often say Jesus makes our lives better and he makes us better at life. He does both. My life improves when I follow Jesus, but also I get better at doing life. The following comes first. The story we're going to read today is actually the story that inspired the mission statement that we use here at New Life. Our mission statement is. Can anybody say it out loud?
[00:07:33] Yeah, you can all say it. Come as you are and become who God created you to be. That's, that's our mission statement. The full thing is we encourage people to come as they are and become the people that God created them to be. It's kind of a two stage thing. And, and the, the story we're going to read today has a verse in it that you've probably heard before. And this verse is where we got that mission statement. The verse goes like this.
[00:07:58] It says, follow me, come as you are, and I will make you fishers of men. I'm doing the King James version because this is how you memorized it in Sunday school. Come with me and I will make you. I will sanctify you, I will mature you. Jesus says, I will make you something that you are not already.
[00:08:19] I will make you something different.
[00:08:21] But you've got to come as you are first. This is how Jesus invited some of his first apostles to follow him. And they were fishermen and it would not make sense to walk up to some random dudes fishing and say, hey, I would like for you to lead the movement that I've come to establish. I'm going to establish a kingdom. Fishermen, you're going to be the kings in my new kingdom.
[00:08:47] That wouldn't make sense. What has to happen? First, they need to learn some things. They need to grow, they need to mature. And Jesus's method of teaching them, of helping them to mature, was to walk with them. Follow me. This is going to be a process. We're going to do ministry. We're going to. We're going to do the things that I'm teaching you to do. And you're going to learn while we do them.
[00:09:10] So what does this teach us about Christian fellowship? It teaches us that. I think we can get a couple things out of these verses. One is this following requires movement.
[00:09:23] The disciples had to leave their fishing nets or their tax collector booths or their families to follow Jesus.
[00:09:33] Something had to change.
[00:09:35] And you will have to at some point in your life, if you want to follow Jesus, you're going to have to leave your agenda.
[00:09:42] You're going to have to stop going with some of the plans that you had before. And you're going to have to say, okay, I'm done going my way. I'm ready to go God's way.
[00:09:51] You're going to have to move. You can't become like Jesus and stay like you.
[00:09:58] You're going to have to change.
[00:10:00] The second thing we can learn from this verse is this. It is God who does the making or God who does the changing. I will make you.
[00:10:08] You can't just try harder.
[00:10:11] You can't just have more self control.
[00:10:14] Self control is a fruit of the spirit. You need the spirit in you. You need God working through you. And this is counterproductive. But Christians, the way to grow is through fruit following. It's not through just trying harder. It's not through better behavior. It's all about faith. Put your faith in God so that he can do in you what you could never do in yourself.
[00:10:36] All right, let's jump into the story.
[00:10:38] The first four books of the New Testament are called the what? Anybody know the Gospels? Good Job. The first four books of the New Testament are the Gospels. The Gospels are just biographies of Jesus. They tell the story of Jesus. So if you read in the New Testament, you start reading the four Gospels, you're just going to read four different versions of the same story of Jesus's life.
[00:11:02] And those four books of the Bible are these. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
[00:11:09] And three of these books tell the story that we're going to read today.
[00:11:14] Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this same story. And we're going to read this same story in two different versions or two different. Two different versions of these stories and two of the books. The first one we're going to read out. Read it out of is Matthew. And Matthew's version of the story goes like this.
[00:11:32] One day, as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, also called Peter. Usually he's called Peter. That's how we know him. And Andrew, throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. They were fishermen.
[00:11:48] Jesus called out to them, come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people. And they left their nets at once and followed him.
[00:12:02] What?
[00:12:05] That's not brave. That's just irresponsible.
[00:12:09] You had a good job.
[00:12:11] What are you doing? They left their nets at once and followed him. But it gets worse.
[00:12:16] Watch this.
[00:12:17] A little further up the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets. And he called to them, come.
[00:12:30] They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind. You jerks.
[00:12:40] Now your dad's got to fix the net and carry it through the. What is. This is. What would Dave Ramsey say?
[00:12:47] This is just irresponsible.
[00:12:49] What are you doing?
[00:12:51] Hey, dad, see that white guy over there in the flowing hair and the white robe and the blue sash and the beard? He didn't actually look like that.
[00:13:01] We're gonna. We're gonna follow him. So, dad, good luck with the family business.
[00:13:07] But when I was growing up, going to summer camp, I felt like every preacher use this version of the story, and they would say, drop everything. Change now.
[00:13:19] Like overnight, immediate change. Leave your lives behind. Become a missionary.
[00:13:25] And I was like, can I finish high school first? Like, how much time do I have to consider this? This is. This seems like a big challenge. This is pretty difficult.
[00:13:37] The good news is there's actually more to the story.
[00:13:41] Matthew's story version of the story is true, but it's not the full story.
[00:13:46] There's more that happens in between.
[00:13:49] And I think sometimes when you're reading the Gospels, you need to know who they were writing to when they were writing their versions. Who were they writing it to? Matthew, when he wrote his version of the story, was writing to the Jews.
[00:14:03] And most of the Jews at this time had already decided that they were going to give their lives to religion.
[00:14:10] And so most of them were looking for a rabbi. This is just kind of. They didn't have the same kind of school system we do. They. They would finish school at a much earlier age, and then they would select a rabbi.
[00:14:23] And then when they found a rabbi, who would. Who would accept them, they would go and they would follow that rabbi.
[00:14:30] And so you should know that these brothers that Jesus was talking to were likely already looking for a rabbi.
[00:14:38] This was already the plan. Who was the rabbi? And Jesus was coming up to them and saying, I will be your rabbi. So this. This is the backstory. They didn't need to know all the details about what it looks like for a young man to follow a rabbi. This was just kind of the plan. This would be like us deciding, I'm going to go to this college. It's not that big of a thing to think of them doing that. Now Luke who. We're going to read his version of the story next. Luke was different. Luke wrote to the Gentiles.
[00:15:09] That's us.
[00:15:11] Anybody who is not a Jew is a Gentile. And that's who Luke was writing to. So when Luke told the same story, he gave more information. He gave more of the backstory.
[00:15:22] And so I think if we just tell regular people, drop everything and follow a rabbi, they'd be like, wait, what's a rabbi? Give me some more information.
[00:15:31] So Luke does it like this. He's like, here's the rest of the story. So let's read it in Luke's version. One day, as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. So, Matthew, you've already missed a giant detail here, right?
[00:15:50] Matthew left out the fact that Jesus was not just walking on the shore. Jesus was preaching on this shore.
[00:15:57] And this is important because Jesus ministry was centered teaching, it was centered on information.
[00:16:07] In other words, Jesus wasn't preaching just blind faith. Don't ask questions, just follow.
[00:16:14] Jesus led with information.
[00:16:16] The truth is, in our lives, information precedes formation.
[00:16:23] I need the details first. Right? I don't want to just walk into something without knowing who I'm following or what we're doing.
[00:16:30] Following Jesus always begins with information.
[00:16:34] If anyone ever asks you to just believe, just follow. Don't ask questions. They're trying to pull a fast one on you.
[00:16:44] Reject that. That's not Jesus way.
[00:16:48] Don't trust them. So Jesus is teaching people on the edge of the water, and they are engaged.
[00:16:55] These people are into whatever it is that Jesus is teaching. So much so that the crowd is grow and they're pressing in on Jesus.
[00:17:05] Remember, Jesus did not have a microphone on the shore of the Sea of Galilee that day. And these people want to hear him. So they're getting closer and closer, and Jesus is getting pushed back into the water as he's preaching.
[00:17:19] So Jesus noticed two empty boats at the water's edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets.
[00:17:27] Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, or Peter, its owner, to push it out into the water.
[00:17:35] So Peter is cleaning out his nets. He's taken the Big Mac boxes and beer bottles out of the fishing net and cleaning it all up. And he's tired, right? He's been fishing all night long. And some stranger says, hey, I know you're busy, but can I borrow your boat? I'm running out of shore. These people are pressing in on me.
[00:17:59] And apparently something Jesus said had sparked Peter's curiosity because he said yes to Jesus. So Jesus stood in the boat and continued to preach so that he could have some space between him and the crowd.
[00:18:16] So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there.
[00:18:20] When he had finished, I get the sense here that he's been talking for a while.
[00:18:26] This is more than just a short little message.
[00:18:29] When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Peter, now go out where it is deeper and let down your nets to catch some fish.
[00:18:38] Jesus, are you kidding me?
[00:18:42] I've already done you one favor. I've already let you use my boat.
[00:18:46] I don't even know you.
[00:18:48] We just fished all night without catching anything. And this rabbi is asking for more in addition to just using the boat.
[00:18:58] He's telling me that I'm fishing. Wrong, dude, you're a rabbi. I'm a fisherman. Let the fishermen do what the fishermen know how to do.
[00:19:06] Don't you think it's crazy how many details Matthew left out of the story?
[00:19:11] There's way more to the story. A lot of interaction here.
[00:19:17] Master Simon replied, this is just kind of a normal way that they would have talked to somebody who was a leader or a teacher. Master Simon replied, we worked hard all night, all last night, and didn't catch a thing. And here's the tipping point.
[00:19:31] Will Peter choose to follow Jesus even though he's already cleaned out his nets and been fishing all night? Will he obey Jesus or not? Peter's probably thinking, jesus, I don't know if you noticed or not, but you drew a big crowd of people here.
[00:19:47] And fish don't usually like to hang out around Big crowds. It's the heat of the day. The fish have swum down lower to get away from the heat. Nighttime is coming, gone.
[00:20:00] This is a terrible time to go fishing, Jesus.
[00:20:04] But Peter must have seen something special in Jesus.
[00:20:09] Apparently something he heard in Jesus teaching sparked Peter's interest.
[00:20:15] Because Peter does it.
[00:20:17] He says, but if you say so, I want to have this sentence come out of my mouth more often in my life. God, if you say so, I don't get it. I don't understand. I don't necessarily agree, but if you say so, I'll let the nets down again.
[00:20:34] Apparently Peter's interested. God gave us these same types of chances in our lives.
[00:20:43] Often God invites us to take a step just to see how willing we are to follow.
[00:20:50] It might just be a little step. It might just be a little inconvenience.
[00:20:54] And in the moment, you might be thinking, but why God?
[00:20:57] This doesn't help anything. I don't. I don't see how. What possible good could come out of this. Sometimes God's just like, I want to see if, if you will be generous when I ask you to be generous, just to see how much you're willing to follow.
[00:21:12] I'm going to ask you to serve somebody. Just to see if you are really in, if you're really following me or if you're just here consuming.
[00:21:21] Have you really surrendered to me or not? Let's, let's take a little step. Let's test the waters. How willing are you to take a step of faith?
[00:21:32] And this time, their nets were so full of fish, they began to tear. Jesus performed a miracle. Matthew, you left the miracle out of the story.
[00:21:43] A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat. Now we know where the other brothers come from. And soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.
[00:21:53] When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he said, rich, I'm never going to have to work again.
[00:22:03] I'm out of here. Let's buy the vacation home.
[00:22:07] Nope, that's not what Peter did.
[00:22:09] He fell to his knees before Jesus and said, oh, Lord, please leave me. I am such a sinful man.
[00:22:21] This is key.
[00:22:24] When Jesus became Peter's Lord, remember he said, oh, Master, which was just kind of a sign of respect. Now he says, oh, Lord.
[00:22:33] When Jesus became Peter's Lord, Peter became aware of things in his life that needed to change.
[00:22:41] When he started following Jesus, now all of a sudden things come into view that he realizes, I am a sinner.
[00:22:50] I need to change.
[00:22:53] And Jesus response to Peter's repentance you'd assume, right, He's a religious leader, would be some kind of rebuke, some kind of criticism. But that's not Jesus style, so this shouldn't be our style.
[00:23:10] We say, come as you are.
[00:23:12] Repent and believe. Follow. We will support you all the way through the process.
[00:23:17] Be afraid.
[00:23:19] Come to God humbly, but with courage, knowing that he is on your side. He is on your team. He wants to give gifts to you. He wants to support you. He wants to make you better at life.
[00:23:34] Jesus response to Peter is, don't be afraid.
[00:23:41] Thank you for the confession, but don't be afraid. I've only got good things planned for you. From now on, you will be fishing for people.
[00:23:50] Okay, that's a little weird, right?
[00:23:54] Fishing for people? Jesus, I thought we had a cool thing going on here.
[00:23:58] That doesn't sound normal, but whatever you say, I've already decided. I'm following you. And following you this time led to a miracle. I'll keep following.
[00:24:09] And then the story picks up where Matthew jumped in to the story.
[00:24:14] Verse 11 says, and as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus. Peter didn't change so that he could follow Jesus. Peter was changed because he followed Jesus.
[00:24:27] And imagine what hangs in the balance, right?
[00:24:31] Peter went on to change the world because he said yes.
[00:24:38] I think more hangs in the balance when God asks us to take a step than we can possibly see what hangs in the balance in our families, in our health, in our lives and our jobs.
[00:24:51] When Jesus says, follow me and we have to decide, am I going to do the difficult thing to do, the thing that God tells me I should do, or am I going to do what comes naturally? Am I going to do what's comfortable?
[00:25:03] And every time we choose to go our way instead of going God's way, every single time we miss out on something that we can't even see what we are missing out on.
[00:25:14] Every time we choose to do things our way, we are missing out on the good life that God created us to live.
[00:25:22] If you are new to church, sometimes things that we do seem weird.
[00:25:28] I'm guessing the first time you came to church and you saw people standing in rows, singing songs and raising our hands, it was like, what is wrong with these people?
[00:25:40] These people are strange. We are strange.
[00:25:42] We got to admit it. In what other area of life do we do things like this?
[00:25:47] It's kind of strange.
[00:25:48] But why?
[00:25:50] Because we did some following and it changed us.
[00:25:55] We feel like we've got a message to share, we've got Good news that we want to tell people about. We've got a God that we want to worship. Like there. There are things bubbling up in our heart. There's energy and excitement and joy as a result of the things that we've experienced. And we've discovered ways that, that we can interact with each other, that support each other and help each other and encourage each other. So we do a lot of weird things because we've been changed.
[00:26:21] And if you would just walk up to somebody and before they. They've got any of the back story or any of the information and invite them into a community of people that stands and rows and sings songs and raises our hands together, you'd be like, what kind of weird cult? I don't want anything to do with that. That's strange. But when you've got the backstory, when you've of a God who came to the world to die for us, to give his life for us, to make it possible for us to live in relationship with him, now all of a sudden you say, okay, now I could see why you would do some strange things.
[00:26:53] Because now you're a part of a strange kingdom because now you are following a strange God, a God that is different than anything else in this world.
[00:27:05] There's no other options here but to just follow and do whatever you call us to do.
[00:27:13] Because Peter came in contact with a gospel, gospel means good news that Jesus was preaching some good news that changed his life.
[00:27:24] We talk a lot about the gospel and a lot of people, the first thing they think about is the style of music or something, right?
[00:27:31] What's the gospel?
[00:27:33] The cool thing is, I remember I told you there are three books of the Bible that tell this same story. I'm not going to read the whole version in Mark, but Mark added a detail in here that the other two did not.
[00:27:46] Mark described the gospel that Jesus was preaching.
[00:27:50] That caught Peter's attention.
[00:27:53] What was the gospel that Jesus preached?
[00:27:56] Because Mark or Luke referenced it, the gospel that was being preached. But he didn't say what the gospel that Jesus was preaching was. What was the gospel? What do you think it was?
[00:28:07] What was Jesus preaching on that shore? Mark tells us this is what Jesus was preaching after John was arrested. So this is John the Baptist. Jesus went into Galilee where he preached good God's good news. This is when he's at the Sea of Galilee. Here's the good news, the gospel. The time promised by God has come at last, he announced.
[00:28:30] Here it is. The kingdom of God is near.
[00:28:35] Repent of your sins. And believe the gospel.
[00:28:41] Repent of your sins. What does that mean? It means stop going your way and start going God's way. Repent means to turn from.
[00:28:50] Turn from your methods, from your ideas, from your plans, and follow God's plans.
[00:28:59] God's kingdom has come.
[00:29:02] So you can keep serving your kingdom, you can keep trying to build your kingdom, or you can build God's kingdom. And if you want to be a citizen of the kingdom, here's what you have to do. You've got to choose to follow the king.
[00:29:16] You've got to swear allegiance to. You've got to surrender to the king. You have got to make Jesus the Lord of your life like Peter did.
[00:29:28] So that's the invitation to you today.
[00:29:32] Have you made Jesus the Lord of your life?
[00:29:37] Have you turned from your way? And are you following his way? There's a card in the chair in front of you that says next steps.
[00:29:43] And you can check the box on there that says, today I'm ready to begin my new life with Christ as a citizen of his kingdom.
[00:29:52] Check that box. Don't put it off. Today is the day, the most important day of your life, where, just like Peter, God is asking you to take a step.
[00:30:00] The step could be as something as simple as checking a box on a card.
[00:30:06] Because just Jesus is just like, will you take a step? A lot of times we think that becoming a Christian is just praying some prayer of salvation. And now if I get the words in the right order, then I'm in God's holy club or something like that. That's not God's method.
[00:30:21] It's like you just gotta start following.
[00:30:23] And following starts with a single step. And the single step we're asking you to take today is to check that box.
[00:30:29] If you're watching online, you can check the box by going to nextsteps.church307.com check the box. Take a step.
[00:30:37] God, I want to follow you. I want to do it your way. I'm done doing my way because I've tried my way and it just leads to pain.
[00:30:43] It's not working out for me. I want some hope.
[00:30:47] So follow him today. Today could be the day when you become a citizen of the kingdom of God. Today could be the day that changes your life forever.
[00:30:57] God, I thank you that you have given us the opportunity to build your kingdom.
[00:31:06] God, would you make us people who are passionate about your good news, passionate about your gospel passion to share the gift of salvation with everybody we know.
[00:31:16] God, would you inspire us, fill us with your holy Spirit and make us the people who are fishers of men who are sharing your good news.
[00:31:30] And God, I pray for everybody in this room today who needs to take that big first step in following you and say yes to you.
[00:31:39] God, for whoever it is in this room who's scared to turn their back on their old ways, who's nervous to say no to the things that have become so comfortable in their lives, God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would give them a glimpse of the good life that you came to purchase for them on the cross.
[00:32:02] God, we surrender our lives to you.
[00:32:05] You are our Lord, you are our King.
[00:32:08] We love you and thank you. In Jesus name, amen.
