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Matthew 4:18-20 As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he
saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother.
Casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to
them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Matthew
16:24-25 Then Jesus told his disciples if any of you want to become my
followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me.
Will you guys pray with me real
quick?
Lord Jesus I just ask that you take
my words this morning, the last thing we need is just a good talk. We
don’t need our ears tickled. We need to hear from you Lord Jesus. We
need to hear what you have to say for us. I pray that you give me
clarity and speech. I pray that you give the congregation ears to hear
Your message. Think you for the confirmation students today. Thank you
for everyone in this room. We love you so much Lord. Amen.
When I
first got saved I told my youth pastor “I will never work in the church.
I’ll be a Christian, but I will never work in the church.” So here I am
wearing a blue tie, playing an electric guitar, wearing a ridiculous ear
piece and preaching in a Presbyterian church. So, it shows what a sense
of humor that the Lord has.
Well my
name is David Stewart as you bulletin indicates. It appears I have one
name repeated twice, that being Stew Stewart but I do have a first name
that is David. You guys can just call me Stew.
I want
to talk about discipleship today. What it means to be a follower of
Jesus. I’m going to try not to use the word Christian because that word
is loaded with all sorts of connotations. If you see me wandering back
and forth from the middle, it’s because Pastor Chris isn’t here and he
said, “Every good preacher needs to wander from the pulpit.” His big
hands are moving around. So part of me just wants to stay back here and
just enjoy the pulpit but I am going to migrate back and forth.
I am
notorious for missing the point at stuff. My mom can attest to that.
Jus to tell you a little bit about me, I am the oldest of eight boys so
that kind of make my mom a saint automatically. I was a nightmare kid.
I kind of missed the point. I didn’t really go to church all that often
growing up. When I did go I would just kind of beat up my brothers and
pick on them and I was just kind of a jerk. I would miss the point on
stories. And that trend tended to happen and continued to happen all
the way until the Lord found me when I was in junior high. And I took
that pattern with me to college when I was at Bethel. I kind of had
this thing, and I don’t know where this idea came from, that if I were
to have the Lord’s approval in my life that I had to be this spiritual
giant, that I had to be the best Christian that there was. And anyone
who knows me knows that I am pretty competitive at most things I do. I
have to be the best guitar player, the best everything. So when I got
saved I felt I had to be the best Christian. I didn’t even know what
that looked like. I don’t even know where that idea came from. I just
felt like I had to be for some reason really spiritual and know all
these bible verses, be really good at praying and stuff like that. It
was good intention but kind of missing the point of what it was to be a
follower of Jesus.
I had a
roommate named Terry and between my freshman and sophomore year of
college, we lived on campus. And we both had this complex needing to be
spiritual giants and at night time we would walk around campus and we
would pray for the campus. We would pray for the professors and the
campus pastors and the bible study we were going to be leading in the
fall. You know just out of the good heart, good intentions. We really
expected that God was going to use us for something great. Like I
always thought that maybe God would make me the next big thing in
Christian music or something like that. Or he would grow me six inches
and I would be the great ambassador for Christianity Major League
Baseball or something like that, but that never happened.
One
night in particular I was walking around the campus at Bethel it was
like nine thirty, just a beautiful Minnesota night. I’m walking around
and praying, just kind of enjoying being outside. And I had this one
phrase kept coming into my mind. It was kind of funny, it was a weird
phrase I had never prayed this before and the irony will hit you in a
minute. I started feeling like, “Okay Lord, I will do anything for
you. You just tell me what it is, you just tell me you want me to
become a famous musician, I’ll do it, I’m willing, fine. You want me to
be the next teenage Billy Graham. I‘ll do it. Fine, fine. Whatever.
You just tell me.” So I started praying this, “Lord I will do anything
for you, I’m your willing servant. If you want me to be a missionary,
you want me to drop out of school, you just tell me what you want me to
do.” Expecting he is going to whisper something great in my ear and
then I become a spiritual hero. Praying this prayer, “Lord, I will do
anything for you.” And all of sudden from this place in my heart where
God speaks to you from I think or it was meatloaf or something like
that, I’m not sure. I heard this voice and I heard it say to me clear
as day, I heard it say, “I want you to dance.” I was like, “Okay that
is really weird. I’m just going to keep walking and praying. I guess I
shouldn’t drink so much Mountain Dew late at night.” So I was “Lord, I
will do anything for you. Just tell your willing servant here I am oh
send me.” “I want you to dance,” I heard. I was like, “What is wrong
with me? I don’t even like to dance. I’m not a good dancer. I’ve got
no rhythm. Lord, I will do anything else for you, just whatever else
you want me to do.” I hear it again, “I want you to dance.” Okay,
whatever. So I get to the top of this staircase at Bethel in between
the college and the seminary and I hear it again. I’m like, “okay, this
is so weird.” So I look around, looked at my left, looked at my right
making sure that no one is looking. And kind of sheepishly I put my arms
out like this (palms up held out to sides at shoulder level). And I
begin to turn in a couple of circles like this, because I never danced
for God before. And I finished the seven hundred and twenty degree and
then thunder and lightning filled the sky. And it was one of those “Ah
hah” moments, “I get it now.” Then I heard him whisper again, “I just
want you to be obedient, even with something as so stupid as asking you
to dance.” I was like “Oh, that’s pretty easy, I can do that.” I
thought God was going to ask me or require me to use my skills and my
talents, which are numerous, just kidding. And to go change the world,
to take the Gospel everywhere but that simply wasn’t the case. He just
wanted me to be obedient. All that He wanted was for me to do what He
asked me to do.
I love
the story that Celia read from Matthew 4 where Jesus comes up to Simon
and Andrew these fishermen, who are busy fishing and catching their fish
and whatever else fishermen do. And he just goes up to them and says,
“Follow me.” And I love the response. I love that Matthew chooses the
word. He says, “Immediately they left their nets and they followed.”
Now we can read over that story and maybe just gloss over it because we
have heard it a bunch of times. But think about it. These were
fishermen so their nets were their livelihood. That was everything to
them. That was the way they made money and provided for their family.
It was everything. And when Jesus came to them and said, “Follow me,”
they dropped what they were doing, and they decided to follow him. I
think that’s pretty awesome. I think that shows a great measure of
faith or maybe they were just bored as fishermen, I have no idea. But
it kind of maybe gives us this false impression that the disciples that
Jesus called were kind of this A-list spiritual elite. That Jesus
walked around the Galilean countryside and went and recruited for
himself the best of the best. You know the best pharoses, and the best
scribes and the smartest people, the best looking. But I just don’t
think that’s the case at all. In fact when I read the Gospels I think
they kind of make the disciples look like a bunch of baphoones
sometimes. This is kind of a ragtag group of people who often times
miss the point of Jesus’ teachings. They really don’t understand who
Jesus is right away. They don’t get it. It kind of goes over their
heads sometimes. I think that is great, because I think it is awesome
that God shows twelve ordinary men with broken families, probably
unrealized dreams, they probably got rashes, got colds, had all sorts of
stuff wrong with them. But He shows these twelve ordinary men to change
the world to build His church upon and then to bring the Gospel to the
rest of the world. That is encouraging to me because I think I am just
a broken person with issues in my life. With broken pieces in my heart
and unrealized dreams but when you realize that you are that person.
That you are someone who is broken in spirit and just in need of grace,
then you can rely on God’s strength to work through you. When you
realize you are an ordinary person in need of God’s grace then God can
empower you to extraordinary things through His power. And that is what
Paul is saying 2 Corinthians 12, ‘His strength is made perfect in your
weaknesses’.
As we
look at the lives of the disciples maybe we are thinking that is just
how they lived back in the first century. But really, if you think
about what a disciple is you know its kind of has lost some of its
meaning so let me tell you what I think a disciple is and this is just
my understanding. I play the guitar, right? I started playing the
guitar when I was seventeen because I thought it would impress girls,
honestly, that’s why I started. So I’m like, “who is the best guitar
player that I know?” Well Dave Matthews is my favorite musician. So I
got all of his CD’s. I got all these videos and I copied everything
that he did. I tried to wear the ridiculous zubious clothing he did. I
tried to speak with that South African accent. It totally didn’t work.
But I copied him everything he did. He was the master guitar player as
far as I was concerned and I wanted to be his disciple. So all that I
was doing was watching Dave Matthews play the guitar and I would copy
him, even when it didn’t make sense. Even when it hurt my hand. Even
when I totally couldn’t do it. I just wanted to copy what he did so
that some day I would perfectly emulate his guitar playing. And that is
the same thing that it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It does not
mean that you have your stuff together. It does not mean that you have
all the answers to tough questions. It just means that you watch Jesus
and you try to become obedient to His commands, even the tough
commands. Such as love your enemies, pray for those and bless those who
persecute you. Now I don’t know about you but my kind default kind of
operation when someone cuts me off in traffic, the first thing – I don’t
bless them, I unbless them in my mind. Or when someone goes into the
grocery line and they have eleven items and it’s the “Ten items or less”
lane. You’re like, “come on seriously, can’t you count?” You know my
first instinct is not to bless. But if we are to take seriously Jesus’
command to be obedient to His teachings to love our neighbors, to love
our enemies. Even those people that we don’t like that really get under
our skin that is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
Two
points I want to drive home to you today. This is for the confirmation
students just as much as it’s for the rest of us adults. To be a
disciple of Jesus is to be a person who is in process. To be a disciple
of Jesus is to be a person who is on a journey. To be a disciple of
Jesus is not to be someone who has it all figured out, who is not at the
top of the spiritual ladder who has all the answers. it is to be
someone who is broken, who has been taken into God’s family by His
grace. And then lives in that brokenness lives in the strength that
God’s grace provides for you.
The
second defining quality to being a disciple of Jesus: We become people
who learn how to be obedient to Jesus’ teachings, even the tough ones.
Let me transition here to another story. There is a man in northern
Minnesota who was out hiking in the winter and knew that if he wanted to
get home in time there was this frozen river that he had to cross. So
he gets up to this river and he knows that he doesn’t have time to got
around this river so he is going to somehow cross the river. Now he
gets to the edge and he can hear the moaning and the cracking of the ice
and he goes “I don’t know if it’s going to hold me. I just don’t know
if the ice is thick enough.” So he comes up with this brilliant idea,
“I am going to get down on all fours. I’m going to spread my weight out
across the ice. So that way if I distribute my weight it will hold up a
little better.” So he gets down on all fours and starts crawling, inch
by inch across the ice. And all the while he is hearing the moaning and
the cracking and he’s thinking, “Oh man, I’m sunk.. I’m going to get
wet and its going to be cold and I’m in trouble.” So he is inching his
way slowly but surely and finally, he is half way through, there is no
turning back, he’s half way in the middle. And he hears this sound
coming from behind him. And it’s getting louder and it’s bearing down
on him. He looks, and there’s these four, five horses coming toward the
river. They are pulling these logs, these big timbers that have been
cut down. He’s going, “I’m going to die.” They are coming so fast that
there is no way he can get to one side of the river or the other. They
are coming so fast that he just braces himself for going under. The
horses get to the river and just go across without even so much as
stopping or pausing. These huge horses didn’t even break the ice. He
is sitting there thinking, “I feel really stupid now.” So he gets up
and dusts himself off and walks to the other side of the river.
The
point of that story is that when the man got up, nothing about the
thickness of the ice had changed. The ice was still the same thickness
and the ice was going to hold him no matter what. The only thing that
changed that allowed the man to get off his belly and walk to the other
side was the fact that he believed in his heart and his mind that the
ice was thick enough. And that belief motivated him to act
differently. And that is the same thing that the confirmation students
are doing today. Maybe when we started in September they had certain
beliefs about Jesus. Today they are going to stand up before you and
confirm they believe in Jesus. They believe who he is, who he says He
is, and then they are going to act accordingly. They are going to be
like the man who got up off his belly and then confidently walked to the
other side. We have a Christian word for that that we like to throw in
that’s called faith. It’s the substance of what we believe. Confirmation
students, what’s the Greek word? Hupostasis. It’s the hupostasis of our
beliefs. It’s the substance. It’s the very essence of what we believe.
That’s what our faith is. So we change the essence of our beliefs when
we put our faith in Jesus then we act accordingly. So that is what the
confirmation students are going to be up here doing in a couple of
minutes. So what’s the point of that story? Well it’s this. It’s one
thing to grow up in church and go through the religious motions and
stuff like that, but at some point in your journey, and faith is a
journey. Don’t be mistaken, you are going to have to make a choice to
become a follower of Jesus. Because the reality is He is at the door of
each one of our hearts and he is saying, “Follow me. Drop what you are
doing. I don’t care if it is your job, whatever it is, follow me. Those
are the words he is saying to us and it is up to us to respond
accordingly.
I want
to leave you guys with an encouragement and a challenge. The
encouragement is this: we are all broken people. We are all people
poor in Spirit, that’s the word that the gospels use, and when we
embrace that beautiful things happen. Because when we learn to accept
God’s grace for broken ordinary people, then we learn how to extend
God’s grace to other broken ordinary people, especially those outside
the church. But when we have this air of spiritual elitism or this kind
of religious thing built up then it becomes for non-believers to hear
what we are saying. Confirmation is one step in the life-long process
of becoming a follower of Jesus. Just one check point along the
journey. I love what Buck said that it’s a resting point where you can
come and re-evaluate what is going on.
The
challenge is this: to the congregation, to the confirmation students,
to myself, to the pastors, to everyone here if we are to identify
ourselves as followers of Jesus then we are intentional about following
his commands, especially the tough ones, like loving your enemies and
praying for those that you don’t like. Think about this. Would you buy
a car from a Ford salesman if the dude was driving a Chevy? Why would
the unbelieving world buy our Gospel of love if we can’t love? Now it’s
easy to love people that you like and that are similar to you, but how
about those that are really different, how about those of other races
and other countries and religions and sexual orientation and all those
things. Do we love those people? I think by that standard is how we
judge if we are really being followers of Christ, our ability to love
those who are different than us. So that is my challenge. Are we
people who are taking seriously becoming like Jesus and becoming
obedient to his commands? If not, then all of this is meaningless,
useless religion and the world does not need more religion. There is
plenty religion out there to go around. What the world needs is Jesus.
Plain and simple. That is the message that I taught to the confirmation
students on a weekly basis that is the message I am giving you today.
We need Jesus. We need to become his followers. And when he asks us to
follow him we need to respond. Now, we talked about a lot of tough
questions in confirmation. I didn’t have a lot of the answers, “that’s
a great question, I don’t know go ask Pastor Chris, or Buck.” They
asked all the tough questions and when I didn’t have the answers then I
encouraged the students to ask the tough questions, to deal with the
tough issues. But the one thing I told them to never question is this:
that God loves you no matter what. That Jesus looks at you and he likes
you. Have you have thought of that, that Jesus likes you. Not
just love, this abstract entity. But he looks at you and says “I like
you, you know you are pretty good just the way you are.” He likes us, he
loves us and this, don’t ever question that he is calling you to follow
him at this moment, right now. Don’t wait. Right now. And the fifteen
students who are standing up here today are saying “Yes” to that. Jesus
is saying, “Follow me” and they are going to say “yes”. Faith
Presbyterian Church lets become a people who are not just about
religious activities. Lets become people who are serious about becoming
like Jesus, becoming his disciples and his followers. Then what we can
do is take that grace and that love that we know we have received. We
can take it to the un-believing world and we can make disciples of all
the nations. We can replicate the Calvary-like love that Jesus
demonstrated. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the Church with
a capital C is all about. So confirmation students my words to you
right now: Welcome to the journey, I will see you along the way. Amen
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