Fan Or Follower - The Specifics Of Following - Part 1 Series

The Specifics of Following – Part 1

Who can follow? Anyone

What is the Cost? Nothing And Everything

Intro

Transition slide in Easy worship

Good morning.

I know everyone is excited for the Bears to beat the Seahawks today. Well everyone except Billy (and a couple other Washington natives).

Billy is trying to be neutral in this hostile territory, but don’t let him fool you. He is a Seahawks fan, through and through. I found this the other day.

Slide - (Picture of Billy in Seahawks gear)

While he looks big and bad and menacing, I know those Bears players are big and bad too

Slide - (Picture of Scott in Bears gear)Is that Olin Kreutz?

Well, we will have to see who comes out on top today.

Slide

This morning we are going to be continuing our series “not a fan” that we began for the New Year.

It is hard to believe that we are already half way through January. The time keeps moving by at what seems to be a faster pace, for me anyway.

College choices

I can hardly believe that all of my kids are teenagers now and Jason is going to be going to college next year while Adam is right behind him and will be looking at college the following year.

And I will tell you that going through this college application process has been a learning experience for us. It is amazing how many colleges are actually out there, so many that I had never even heard of, all seeking to have the best and brightest kids.

Now while each college hopes to have the best and brightest, depending on the college, there seems to be quite a variance in criteria to be able to get in. Not everyone is able to get into any school.

Now nearly every school has some criteria, but there are some schools that have very high standards for entry.

You have to have a high rank in your class

You need a high GPA

You need to do very well on the standardized tests

You need to have a life outside of just the classroom.

This is somewhat understandable because they want people who will be able to represent their school well after graduation. They don’t want people who will give their school a bad name.

Transition

Now we may think this is new to our times, but the fact of the matter is this same type of thing went on around the time of Jesus.

You see there were schools at that time too. They were the schools of individual rabbis.

Learned young men would seek out individual rabbis to study under and become their disciple or follower.

We see that Scripture tells us that Paul studied under the Rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). He says “Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers…” (Acts 22:3)

Now Rabbis would typically not just take anybody to study under them.

Who they allowed to study under them would reflect upon them so

they would test them

they would make sure they were learned men having the capacity to learn more.

They would make sure they were not “sinners,” but righteous, at least according to keeping the law.

Then they would allow them to study under them.

When you were allowed to study under one of these Rabbis, then you would be known as their disciple or follower.

We see in the New Testament that many teachers had disciples or followers.

In Mark 2:18, people were wondering about fasting and it says that

Slide

“Some people came and asked Jesus, "How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?"”

We see that both John the Baptist and the Pharisees had disciples.

The disciples of these men would follow them and be with them wherever they went.

Not only did these rabbis and teachers have disciples, but we know that Jesus had disciples or followers as well and the last thing he told his followers that were with him on earth was to go and make more disciples or followers.

Matthew 28:19 - Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…

Jesus is still calling people to become his disciple or follower.

Are you a follower of Jesus or just a fan that is on the sidelines?

Today, I want to consider who Jesus is calling to follow Him and what the specifics of that call are. I want to do this by asking and answering some questions.

First I want to ask.

Who can be Jesus’ follower?

Slide

Because we know from history that not everyone was invited to be a follower of these other teachers. Who did Jesus desire to be his disciples?

What we find from Scripture is that