Matthew Series Week 5 - Fishers of Men
“Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
This past Sunday in our Matthew Series, we covered Matthew 4:18-25. In the sermon Nick said “discipleship invades every aspect of your life” as a Christ-follower, and that ultimately other people’s salvation is not up to you, but up to Jesus. When Jesus called the first disciples to follow Him and He’d make them fishers of men (Matthew 4:19), He was just walking along the lake when He saw them going about a normal day. Then from there he went about the area teaching and proclaiming the Gospel as they followed him.
We know their lives changed in an instant because it says “20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” Meeting Jesus is a life changing event and it creates fundamental shifts in a person, whether or not it’s a career change like we see with Simon, Andrew, James and John.
In the first century church we see people with a fundamental change in their everyday life, where they clearly go against the flow of the culture around them.
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Here in the early church we see people living their daily lives with generous thankful hearts praising God and having favor with all people. They were living life being good neighbors, upstanding community members, and creating a loving community among themselves. From that “the Lord added to their number”, so it wasn’t dependent on them and what they were accomplishing for Jesus in trying to get people, but that Jesus was doing the work on others' hearts already.
“And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”
Going along with what Nick was saying on Sunday though, discipleship and evangelism are not mutually exclusive terms. What’s the goal of both of them? To point people to Jesus, whether they have a personal relationship with Christ yet or not. The goal of the church and of individual disciples is to continually point people to the Messiah. We do this in our daily lives by living with integrity, “having favor with all the people”, and by having lines in the water, as Nick said, sticking with the fishing metaphors. You can’t catch anything fishing if you don’t have any lines in the water, and Paul tells us in Romans 10:14
“How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
Just like our calling as believers is both to evangelize and disciple those God has sovereignly placed us around, our part in it is both passive and active. Passive in that as we grow more like Christ and have lives that reflect him, we are a witness to the faith we have. Not that our lives are easy or without hardship because of our faith, but that we deal with the ups and downs of normal life in a way that is honoring to Jesus and shows we operate with a different currency than the world around us, as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. And we are active in our part of evangelizing and discipling because we are called to proclaim the truths of the Gospel, like Rom. 10:14 points out, as well as Jesus’ final command of the great commission in Matthew 28:18-20, that we are to go and teach.