“Fishers of Men” Matthew 4:19
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Scripture Worth Memorizing—Matthew 4:19
August 22, 2010
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Good Morning everyone! It’s good to have you here. Well, we are finishing up on our series on “Scripture Worth Memorizing.” So we have one more for today from the book of Matthew. So let’s take a look at that and it is probably shorter after last week. How did you do last week? O.K.? Thumbs up. Thumbs down. I want to continue to invite you to memorize these Scriptures. The ones that we have spent our time memorizing are on the back of our worship order. If you turn it over, there are the verses we have memorized through this summer, as well as some versions of today’s Scripture, if there is another version that would maybe work better for you; but we want to commit this to memory. So let’s do that in the way we have been working on memorizing Scripture, by saying the reference first, the Scripture and then the reference again. And I will actually try to do it right this time. So let’s say it together.
Matthew 4:19
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for men.”
Matthew 4:19
Well, what we have done, the Scriptures that I picked this summer really lay a basic groundwork. They are not the end-all be-all of Scripture memorization. There are lots of wonderful verses to memorize in the Bible; but I picked these four because they do kind of lay a groundwork for the basics of Faith, things like: salvation, like worship, like prayer, like Scripture and today, witnessing. Kind of the basics of who and what we are as followers of Christ. So I want to encourage you to take strength and commit these to memory because God’s word says about itself, it will not return void. So if you do the work and take it in, it will bear fruit in your life. So take the time, and may God bless you as you take in God’s word.
Let’s start with prayer.
God we thank you that your word is powerful. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. It is able to bear fruit, fruit that changes us, that conforms us to your image, and Lord God we praise you for that. Lord we ask that your Spirit would be moving today; be speaking to our hearts as we delve into this subject of fishing for people. So Lord, quicken our hearts to hear what your Spirit is saying today. In your name. Amen.
Well, as I was thinking about this Scripture, it is obviously talking about fishing and I like fishing. And “fishers of men” is probably how most of us have heard this, but it got me thinking about fishing. I did not do a lot of fishing growing up. Really for me the first time I really remember fishing is on a few vacations with my father, and it was a good time. But I really didn’t fish a whole lot other than that. When my son started to pick up fishing with some of his buddies when he was in high school and later on in college, he kind of dragged me along and showed me the ropes in some of the local lakes. I enjoyed that as well, although I must confess I wasn’t very good at it. But I have had the opportunity over the last few years to spend a few days on the lakes in Canada and it seems that when you are there the fish are always biting. And it is a wonderful thing. It got me kind of thinking about this verse and it helped me to kind of think about this verse a little bit differently. When you think about fishing, one of the things I think we can infer from this idea of fishing, whether it is for fish or whether it is for people, is that we can catch something but we can only catch it if we are offering what they want. Alright? If we are offering what they don’t want, they are not going to take it, are they? I think another thing we can think about with this idea that we can infer from fishing is that we are not going to catch every fish that is in the sea. It is just not going to happen. Some will avoid what we are offering and others, quite truthfully, we will just never come in contact with. We will never get to every corner of the lake or the world, will we? I think that is probably easy for us to understand when we are talking about fishing but maybe some of us are already clicking in our mind, “Wait a sec, Buck. When we are talking about fishing for people, we do have something that people want. We do have the gospel. We do have Christ. We do have salvation, right?” I think that is the case, but it may not be as simple as we might think, because for most people who are outside of the faith, for them they don’t think about it as something they want or something they need. So what we are offering, they don’t bite, just like fish.
Finally, another thing I think we can infer from fishing is that we are called to simply, faithfully, fish, and let Jesus be the one who gets the people to bite.
A parallel story to our Scripture here, from the gospel of Luke. It is the story where Jesus is standing on the shore and Peter and his buddies come in after fishing all night and they have no fish in the boat. They have no fish in the net and they are pulling in the net and Jesus says, “Hey guys! Throw it on the other side.” And they do, and we know the story that the nets are so full of fish that they can barely bring it in. You see, Jesus is the one who is the ultimate heart changer. He is the one who brings people to faith. Our role is to be faithful fishermen and fisherwomen. That is what God calls us to do. He doesn’t call us to change hearts; he just calls us to be fisherman. “Put the line in the water.” Well if you think about that, really what then does a fisher of people look like in today’s world? What does that mean? What does that look like? Is it telling people the salvation story? Is it inviting people into a lifelong relationship with Christ? Yeah, it is that. It is that, but in our world today I think that is our last step. There are a lot of other steps to get to that point that we need to take on that will help people get to the point to where they are ready to make that commitment to faith. Yet, I think many of us think that is the only step that we have to do so we miss these steps in between that I think are just as important in getting people to the point where they are ready to hear the gospel story. The book of Ecclesiastes in Scripture says that “there is nothing new under the sun.” If you let that sink in, I love that verse and the older I get the more I see the truth of that statement, that there really is nothing under the sun and you can apply it everywhere in culture. But I was thinking about it in the context of witnessing and evangelism, because about thirty years ago I learned an approach to evangelism, equipping and disciplining that then was referred to as full cycle evangelism. It was a blueprint for the ministry that we used. It was used to bring people into the kingdom, to grow them up in their faith and then train them and send them back out to start the cycle all over again. Pretty ingenious, huh? Kind of rocket science like….
But a part of that cycle I think we need to recapture today. We need to rediscover what might be called pre-evangelism. It is I think a word that can get kind of messy for us, the term evangelism, because for many of us evangelism is all just about the invitation. So the idea of pre-evangelism is all the stuff that happens before that point. So maybe if you have grown up in that understanding it is a helpful term, for others it may not be helpful. But the idea here for pre-evangelism, particularly in the context that I learned it in full cycle evangelism, we talked about it simply as sharing some kind of witness, sharing some kind of witness. What we meant by that was doing something that caused people to start thinking about their faith or thinking about their life. It wasn’t necessarily about sharing the gospel story with them at that point, rather it was pointing to something beyond themselves, beyond the things of this world.
The truth is that if we embrace this notion of pre-evangelism it can be a fairly lengthy process, particularly when it is compared to this idea of crossing the line of making a commitment to faith. One of the things I think that is very important for us to understand, and I think it is devalued, is that this notion of pre-evangelism is actually witnessing; that is witnessing when we are involved in pre-evangelism even if we never invoke the name of Jesus, because I think Jesus knows what is going on right here. He knows what is going on in our heart and he knows the motivation in which we serve, in which we are involved in whatever the pre-evangelism activity is. He knows that and he honors that and he uses it by the power of the Holy Spirit to nudge people towards faith, slowly, over time.
I think that is important for us today to understand and comprehend particularly in our world that is becoming more and more anti-Church and anti-Christian. Pre-evangelism is something I think we need to think about very seriously. We need to think about strategically. As we do that we may be wondering, well, is that something that Jesus, did he do anything like that in his life? Well I think maybe a little context around our Scripture from Matthew 4 may be helpful at this point to maybe answer that question. I put a little map up here just to give us a little idea of what’s going on. I am going to try and use something very fancy, a laser pointer. Jesus is just beginning his public ministry in the beginning of Matthew, Chapter 4. He grew up down here in Nazareth. That’s the town he grew up in. It says that he moved to Capernaum, up here, in the north edge of the Sea of Galilee. That’ll kind of give you a reference. By way of referencing if you are not really good with maps, Jerusalem is off the map to the bottom of the screen. So that will give you a little orientation of what is going on here. Jesus is just beginning his ministry and he moved from Galilee to Capernaum, which is probably about 40 miles. This area around Capernaum, around the north end of the Sea of Galilee, it was a very small area but it had a very dense population because it was very fertile. It had a lot of good environment for growing and living; so as a result, it had a very, very dense population compared to some of the other areas.
Josephus— who was one of the historians for the Jewish people, who kind of chronicled this time in Jewish history— said about this area around Capernaum that it was a volatile time and people who lived in this area were open to change, even rebellion. The Jews who lived there, as well as all the other people who lived there, were very open to it and they were open to considering new things and thinking about stuff in new ways. Beyond that they were a very tough and courageous people, i.e., think of Peter at this point, O.K. They were people who were tough and courageous and yet they were kind of looked down on by those proper Jews who lived down in Jerusalem. These Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem actually had a name for this area. They called it the Galilee of the Gentiles. So the Jews who lived there, they were a little bit shunned because they were hanging out too close to the Gentiles. This was an area that had strong pagan roots because it was on the main trade area, so there were lots of different cultures interacting along the north coast of Galilee. As a result, many non-Jewish customs held sway there. That was just kind of the world in which Jesus walked.
So if you were to look at Scripture, starting in verse 15 of Matthew 4, you see a quote from the prophet Isaiah. He talks about how the people in this region sat in darkness. They sat in the shadow of death and they said a great life is dawned on them. What he was referring to was Jesus. When Jesus moved to Capernaum a light began to shine in this dark area.
Commentator Michael Greene said “It is not uncharacteristic for God to go to the least likely place where the Orthodox would never expect to find him, among the greatest masses of unreached humanity.” This is the world that Jesus walked into that he starts his public ministry in. Sound a lot different than our world today? I’m not sure it does. I’m not sure it does. So this notion of pre-evangelism I think is not only needed, it is required today. It is required because I think most people before they want to hear about Jesus they want to hear the salvation story. They have to get some things settled in their mind. They have to be able to think through and process some stuff before they can even get to hearing the message of God’s grace. So for most people it is almost like if this is the getting to faith there is all these obstacles they have to deal with here, or that we have to deal with here, before we can even tell them the story of Jesus.
So I want to invite you for a moment, think about the people who are in your life, who are in your life that don’t know Christ, that aren’t people of faith. What are the obstacles for them, before they might be ready to really hear the gospel? What are things that they kind of got to get settled in their mind before they are really going to consider faith? I want to invite you to just share some. As you think about it, what are some of those obstacles those things people have to get settled in their mind before they are really ready to consider the message of Jesus?
Obstacles from the congregation:
- Virgin birth, O.K., they have to figure out, how does that work.
- That they are sinners, yeah. Who me? A sinner?
- I’m not in control. Yeah, I am not in control of my life. I am not in control of the world.
- Have to be perfect. Exactly.
- How does the Trinity deal work? O.K.
- If God is in charge and God is good, then why do we have so much suffering
- O.K. It’s about doing. That’s how you earn your goodness.
- Any of your friends ever have a bad experience in church?
- How about, these guys called Christians? They don’t always live up to what they say. They might even be called hypocrites. Ever have that happen?
- How about the great Jesse Ventura line: Christianity is for the weak.
- I don’t need faith. Man, I got it. I got all I need.
Those are the things that we have to overcome before they are even going to say, I might want to think about this Jesus guy. So it is important for us to be thinking about those obstacles in our friends’ lives before we even think about telling them that Jesus loves them and died for their sins. I think this idea of pre-evangelism, then, gives us a way to be thinking about how to overcome those obstacles. I think the way that we do that is by allowing these people that are in every one of our lives to see what faithful followers of Christ look like, to be able to rub shoulders with them, to be able to talk to them. And as they have that opportunity, and as we have that opportunity, you know what? They will come to see that many of us struggle with the same issues that they do and that maybe even some of us have the same questions that those who don’t have faith in Christ may have. But, there is something different about us. We look at the world differently. We understand that we are being changed for the better little by little, day by day and that we have a hope that is different from the world’s hope; and we are in the process of understanding what it means to be fully human, made in the image of God, being restored back to that person in the garden, Adam and Eve. For as follows of Christ, we are to have an aroma of Christ. That is what it says in 2 Corinthians 2:15, “We are the aroma of Christ.” When you think about that, I mean, smell is such a wonderful sense, isn’t it? Think about those things that you really enjoy and the smell that comes along with those. That smell just brings everything back into your mind, quickly and right away. We have a smell about us as Christians. When we get up alongside those who don’t have faith, they will pick that up, for we are to be a sweet aroma to the world. And the goal then is for us to put ourselves around people so that they will begin to sense it. “Why did you say that? Why did you act that way? Why aren’t you worried about this?” …that there is just something different about us. They may not be able to identify it, but they will know it. That is what pre-evangelism is, it is coming alongside people so they can get to see, smell and touch what followers of Christ look like. We can begin to break down those stereotypes, break down those objections that they might have to faith so they can begin to get some things settled in their mind.
We talk a lot about service and I think every time I get up here I end up talking about it; but it is, I think, really critical. We are called to serve because Christ served. Yes! That’s true. But, when we serve it also acts as an opportunity for us to begin to breakdown those stereotypes, breakdown those objections, so that they can begin to move closer to faith. So what I am saying is when we serve, that is a way towards pre-evangelism, that is one of the avenues of pre-evangelism. It is not the only one, but it is one that I think is easy for all of us to step into, for when we serve, we bring that sweet aroma of Christ. We bring it to those we serve alongside of us as well as those that we serve.
Well, I have been blessed to meet one of our guys in our church here and I know all of you have been blessed too by John O’Keefe, not only because he has a great singing voice; but he is working and helping us create venues where we can be about this business of pre-evangelism. So John, I want to invite you up and I want to have an opportunity just to let people hear a little bit of your heart. There you go my friend. Thank you. I appreciate all your work. You’re doing good stuff.
Buck: John, you and I have talked about this and you are the one who has said, “You know, we have to be about this. This is important”, to be “winsome” for Christ is the word you love to use, and I like that. What brought you to this understanding, I mean, is it something that has happened in your life? I mean, how did you put this together, because I think this is important for us to hear?
John O’Keefe: It is really interesting to just sit there and listen to you talk because I can see that God’s at work because I wrote down, been thinking about this for the past ten days since you sent me the email, and …
Buck: This is completely unrehearsed.
John: So I have been writing down thoughts and it is really amazing. I learned about pre-evangelism, or you could call it soft evangelism, really two ways in my life. One was how people acted on me; and then the other one is, after I had a relationship with Christ, how people responded to me. I’ll tell you, I’m not great. The disclaimer is I am a sinner just everyone else. I mean, there is nothing special about me.
So the first one is: What people have come into my life and what did they do? Well, I am kind of a late bloomer. I was a church person but I didn’t know Jesus Christ. I didn’t have a personal relationship with him until I was in my thirties. You know, I wouldn’t have known Christ unless people came beside me and became my friends. I can tell you what some of those peoples’ names are: Bill Ehle, Dick Estensen, Paul Ramseyer, and a young woman named Sarah Sinclair, who is now my wife. (She has a different last name.) But they made an investment in me and told me some things I didn’t understand. Things like, “You are a beloved child of God—what an amazing thing to let somebody know—and that God has something special planned for you. You have a special purpose. That doesn’t mean just getting a paycheck, or feeding a family.” That really made an impression on me. They spent the time, they developed relationships with me, they let them get to know them and they showed me Christ.
The second thing is, you know, maybe about six months after I accepted Christ and my life started to change, some people came into my life. They also have names. The first one was Rick, and Rick was a very successful business person from Edina and I knew him through some group experiences we have had. One day he called me and he said, “John, something’s different. Something’s changed in you and I need to know what that is.” I was just really floored and flabbergasted and terrified, quite frankly. But Rick and I for two years talked about the change in my life and I learned my first Scripture memorization was with Rick. Then there were others. There was Bob and Chris and Greg and a bunch of others. I had the chance then to say to them, you know, you are a beloved child of God, in one way or another in just spending the time with them and having the relationship talk. Then I was also able to pass on that God had a special plan for them and a purpose for their life. It just was really important.
Buck: John, those of us who know you know you are a pretty gregarious guy. You are a salesman by trade. You know, as you get into this, it is like, O.K. well this is just John. That is what we are probably thinking. This is just John. I mean you are very easy getting to know, talking to people. I mean, as you do that, is there something that you are thinking about or processing in your mind in terms of saying, You know.., and you just do it; and all of us go, “Well, it is just John,” but it is also something we can do.
John: Well I have to relate this to Caring Works because, you know, I have invited everybody that is here, and even people that aren’t here to come and sit or stand in the booth that we have, the tent, on Main Street. And what we have tried to do is, even introverts can do this, you don’t have to be an extrovert, but it is to just say hello to people and invite them to serve, even non-Christians; God has created them and wired them to want to help. Just reaching out and saying to them, “You know, we have some projects. We are looking for people that would like to join with us in projects.” We are not asking them to confess their sins or to bow down so that we can, you know, cast the demons out, or anything. But what we are doing is we are saying “We would really like to serve with you” and there are lots of opportunities, I mean, Caring Works is not the only one, we have Feed My Starving Children. We are collecting food and clothing for the needy in the area. We have Community Days of Service. But before that for many years I have been doing things like Minnesota Teen Challenge and with Gary Hemphill, we do Midwest Challenge and we have done Habitat for Humanity. People, regardless, like to serve.
Buck: So is this something you think all of us can do?
John: Well, you know, I’m betting my reputation. I think anybody can do it and I will tell you why I believe that is true. Because after serving a couple hours in the tent, on a really hot steamy day, talking to people and I have people who have served that aren’t particularly outgoing say to me “I am surprised that people will even talk to us.” You know, we kind of sucked them in. We gave them a balloon, because their kids were screaming for the balloons, or we gave them a seedling plant. So we encouraged them to come. We asked them to play a silly game, kind of their service I.Q. count. You know, we didn’t say anything about “come join us as a church” “are you saved” or anything like that because we are going to have a chance to tell them as we develop relationships with them and work alongside of them “that they area beloved children of God and that God has a special purpose for them.” They will see that through us and I am convinced it will work. It is working. It is working.
Buck: John, thank you very much.
I think this gives you a sense that this can be done by anyone, it is not difficult. You do not have to have an answer to every objection to faith. You just have to love people and love Jesus and bring that love to them. And we even have a script.
Thank you John. Well I want to just leave us with this notion that there are lots of opportunities for us. I want to invite you to be thinking about it. Be thinking about it not just, how does it fit into my schedule and can I make it? But when I come, what is the attitude, what is my mindset as I come to these activities? Community Days of Service, to give you a little update, we are going to have it on just a Saturday morning from 9 to noon on September 25. We are going to have four projects and we are only going to have three churches involved because we are going to do another one, a big blowout one, next spring with all the churches in the community. But we wanted to continue the momentum, so we are just going to have us, All Saints Lutheran and Gethsemane Lutheran are going to work together on four projects on Saturday morning. You will hear more about those projects. It is a great opportunity maybe just to invite a neighbor to come and join us, do something good for the area, or for the world. So that is a real easy way to do it. John is going to be bringing us some other opportunities outside at the table out there. There’s my plug for you.
Feed My Starving Children is another great opportunity that honestly I kind of threw out there last year to see how we do it. Well we are lined up in droves to sign up, folks, and I appreciate that. Thank you. The second Tuesday of every month from 6:00 to 7:30 is when we are scheduling our Feed My Starving Children section. We will have a signup out there next week if it is not out there already for September. One of the things we will do there you need to know is that the names that John has collected through Raspberry Days and Main Street Days, we are actually going to call some of those folks that we asked to join us this summer. We are going to ask them to come back and join us. So as you sign up for Feed My Starving Children, understand that you may be working alongside people who have no faith in Christ. That is an opportunity for you to be about being a sweet aroma, of showing them the love of Christ. So as you think about that, have that in the back of your mind when you go these activities, alright. We are going to talk more about sharing our faith. I’m going to teach a class this fall called “Just Walk Across the Room.” Please be a part of that. We are going to talk about how to do that and some of the things I think I am going to expand off the curriculum I bought, but it is going to be good for us. So I invite you join us for that, as well.
Chris alluded to it, we are a church, the Church of Jesus Christ; and Jesus says that we are a light on the hill and we are not to be covered by a bushel basket. Each one of us is a light to this world. As we share our faith in any way that is appropriate, we are bringing people the sweet aroma of Jesus and we do that with everything we say, as well as with everything we do. So I invite you to be good fishers of men and women.
Let’s pray.
Lord God, thank you. Thank you that you do the heavy lifting, Lord. You are the one who moves hearts towards you. We don’t have to do that, and honestly Lord I praise you for that; but, thank you Lord that you also call us to put our line in the water. So help us to do that Lord in everything we do, every place we go, that we might really be the sweet aroma of you that this world so desperately needs. Lord, that is what we ask because you are Lord over all and, as John said, we are your children, all of us and you love us dearly. May we expand your kingdom for your glory and your honor. Amen.