Follow Me Series

Follow Me: The Call to Discipleship

CCCAG 1-29-24

Scripture: Matthew 9:9

Today we will be beginning a new series (Call to Discipleship) focused on what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

I read a lot about the condition of the church in our current day. There is a lot of blame that people throw around when we consider the contracting or shrinking of the church over the last thirty years.

I have put a lot of thought behind this idea, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think the church has shrunk.

I think what has changed is how you define the church.

I think a lot of people had the wrong idea of what it meant to be a Christian, and because they had never faced any pushback about it, they stuck around the organization but never really were part of of the actual institution that Christ created to be an example of HIS Kingdom on this earth.

20 years ago- there were a lot of people that treated the church like the lobby of a YMCA. (brief explanation)

It’s nice there- comfortable. In the larger YMCA’s there is a coffee bar there with nutritious drinks and snacks, chairs, music. Very relaxing.

However, do you call hanging out in the lobby of a YMCA going to the gym if you never actually enter the exercise area to break a sweat?

That’s what I’m referring to when we talk about why the numbers are down in church membership and attendance. Many people claimed membership, but never really made it past the lobby. They came for the show, but never really became part of what the church really is.

That is what I want to talk about this morning. We are going to see how Jesus brought people into a relationship with HIM. It’s vastly different than how we do it today.

We are going to explore this idea by seeing how Jesus called Matthew to be a disciple-

Background- Jesus is in Capernaum during the launching of his ministry.

Capernaum was a city on the north side of the Sea of Galilee and like the rest of the world that Jesus was born into, it was a city under Roman rule.

It was an important city as several trade and travel routes when through there, so there was a sizable Roman presence there to police that and to make sure people were paying the taxes that were due.

Jesus has preached and performed several miracles there, and is pretty well known to the Roman authorities, to the local synagogue leaders, and to those living in that area.

Now the scripture-

Matt 9:9

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

Prayer

Main Idea: Today we are going to talk about what it means to be a saved and devoted follower of Jesus. We are going to look at this moment in the life of Matthew and his call and compare and contrast that to what many of us have known in our Chrisitan experience.

We are going to start today with exploring this idea-

There is a cost to following Jesus

1. Matthew’s Cost

Out of all of Jesus’s disciples, Matthew stands out as the one who had the most to lose by following Jesus.

Prior to Jesus telling Matthew “Follow Me”, Matthew was a Roman tax collector. In the time of Jesus, Rome was a huge empire spanning the entire Western world now known as Europe, the middle east, and northern Africa.

To help govern and administrate this huge empire, the Roman government would look for people within the areas they conquered to be representatives of the Roman Government, and one of these jobs was that of being a tax collector. The reason they did this is because a local person would know the local people So that there was much less chance of people getting away with not paying taxes.

Because this person would be working for the Roman government they would carry the same authority. They could have people arrested, imprisoned, take away their houses, property, and in extreme cases even sell their children into slavery to pay off their tax debt.

However there was a cost to being a tax collector-

You had to turn your back on your own people and become the most despised person in that area.

Perspective-

Imagine for a moment America falls to an invasion, and now we are under the rule of another country. The new government doesn't even consider you a citizen and you really have no rights. Everyone else in your area is living under the same conditions.

You could be walking down the street and one of the soldiers from the government could force you to carry all their equipment for up to a mile. They could show up at your doorstep with a few of their friends, tell your family to get out and sleep in the barn while they lived it up in your house and ate all your food. You could walk past them on the street and they could smack you on the side of the cheek just for the heck of it.