Jesus and the Disciples
Mark 1:16-20, 2:13-14
Today, we’re continuing our series about Jesus asking the question, “Who is Jesus?” and “What does his life mean for us today?” To answer that question, we are turning to the oldest existing book about Jesus written between 56 and 60 AD. So what did Mark tell us about Jesus. To answer that question, we have to look at the geography of Israel. At the top of this map you will see the town of Nazareth where Jesus spent most of his first 30 years of life. To the south you will see the wilderness of Jordan where Jesus was baptized and spent 40 days in the wilderness. After this, Jesus returns to Galilee where he will spend almost his entire ministry. The Sea of Galilee is 13 miles long and between 1 and 7 miles wide. It was around these shores that Jesus spent most of his ministry. At the top of the Sea of Galilee is Bethsaida where three of the disciples were born. It was probably where Jesus first called Simon and Andrew. You will notice that the water does not go up to Bethsaida. Scholars believe there was an earthquake in the last 2000 years which caused the water level to drop and the shoreline to change where it is today.
Jesus walks on the shoreline about a mile with Simon and Andrew and he calls James and John to follow him. This is the town of Caperneum and is the place where Jesus set up as his home base for his ministry. The town of Caperneum is still there today and you can see the ruins. This is the area where Jesus spends the vast majority of his ministry. Here is an image of the Sea of Galilee. When you go to the Sea of Galilee, you can actually take a boat out there today and it looks just as it did when Jesus was alive. Show several images. If you ever wondered what kind of fish they caught, there are three kinds. The most prominent is called St. Peter’s fish which is actually tilapia.
Today, we’re going to look at the disciples and the call that Jesus placed on their lives. In our Scripture today, we heard the call of the first five disciples. Jesus calls the disciples to follow Him for three reasons. The first is he needs some help with His mission. The second is that he needs the fellowship and the third is that these disciples will be the ones who carry on Jesus’ mission long after he is gone. Jesus has three years to train them and if they fail, then his entire mission fails and everything that Jesus said, taught, and did, including his death on the cross would have been lost. This was a great act of faith in calling these disciples.
With that in mind, knowing that these men would be charged with carrying on the mission and message of Jesus, who do you think Jesus would call to be his disciples and what criteria would he set out for them? If you were hiring disciples, wouldn’t you get a job description, a list of qualifications, put out a search to find the youngest and sharpest seminary candidates, and then hold an extensive interview process. But did you notice that Jesus didn’t do any of that? When Jesus begins his ministry preaching, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”, he travels along the Sea of Galilee and who does he call but two fishermen. No interviews, no job descriptions, no qualifications. They were uneducated fisherman, who talked like fishermen and smelled like fishermen. They are not the kind of people you would pick as the most likely to succeed as disciples. Yet Jesus chose Simon and Andrew. They immediately leave their nets. Now the nets they had were the kind one throws from the shoreline and this indicates they were probably poor fishermen. With this net you can probably only catch 2-3 fish at a time. When Jesus calls, they sense that something extraordinary was happening and if they turned it down, they would regret it the rest of their lives. So they leave their life and their nets behind.
A mile down the coast, there are James and John with their nets. These nets are the kind that you take about 100 yards off the shoreline and then drag the nets in. You can catch up to a 100 fish with these nets. So when Jesus arrives, James and John are cleaning their nets on the shoreline and calls them. And they had this sense that if they didn’t do this, they would regret it for the rest of their lives. And so they leave their father Zebedee, their livelihood and nets.
Two miles down the coastline they come to Capernaum, where they encounter a man that James and John, Simon and Andrew all knew and didn’t like. His name was Levi and he was a tax collector. Romans put out tax collecting stations throughout Israel. A tax collector would bid to become the tax collector and you would pay the taxes up front. The tax collector would recoup their money by collecting taxes and any money over the taxes he collected was his profit or salary. You can imagine that the tax collectors often took advantage of this o live a nice life but it was at the expense of the people in their region. The Jewish people hated tax collectors. They were not like the taxes you have today which provide safety and schools and public services. In the first century, your taxes went to Rome and you got nothing but Roman soldiers occupying your land. So tax collectors were not only considered to be traitors because they dealt with Rome which made them unclean. They were also considered to be thieves. So when tax collectors are mentioned in the New Testament, we find them always mentioned with either sinners or prostitutes or both. So who does Jesus call when he gets to Capernaum? Levi the tax collector. Can hear the protests and resistance of James and John and Simon and Andrew? When Levi responds to the call, he leaves all of the taxes uncollected, money he has already paid but he realizes this is an opportunity he can’t let pass by.
These are the people that Jesus chooses. They are people that the world would not choose and if truth be told, the disciples wouldn’t have chosen some of each other and some probably wouldn’t had chosen themselves. Yet, Jesus calls just the same. He didn’t call them because of who they were, what training they had or even what they had accomplished. He called them because of who they could become in Jesus Christ. Now listen to me very carefully, Jesus has called you to His disciple. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you have done or accomplished and everything with what Jesus can do through you. Some of you are standing on the fence on whether to become a disciple but you know what? He chose you despite who you are and that you consider yourself unworthy. These are the people God loves to work through because God can’t work through those who think they’re something or those who think they are high and mighty and special. The only qualification you need is that God can work through you.
What’s interesting is that the people who had the credentials, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the temple priests or even the Essenes didn’t hear the call. But the one’s who did and responded felt that they were not worthy to be one of his disciples. They had times when they didn’t feel like they could do it and the reality is they couldn’t and you can’t either without surrendering to God and letting the Holy Spirit work through you. That’s exactly the people God can work through.
God calls the broken because it’s then that you fully yield yourself to Him. It’s God who qualifies you to do His will and play a significant role in His plan of salvation, not you. Brennan Manning has written a book entitled the Ragamuffin Gospel. He was a pastor whop struggled with alcoholism and kept it hidden for a long time. When he took the steps necessary to give up alcohol, he reflected back on his journey and realized God uses broken people. Most of us, he says, have broken halos and yet Jesus still calls us.
One of the characteristics of the Gospel of Mark is that the disciples are painted as very human. They are dense and often don’t understand Jesus, his mission or even His journey to the cross. Jesus is teaching one day and it’s getting to lunch time and the people are getting hungry. So the disciples encourage Jesus to stop and send the people to town to eat. But Jesus asks what they have and they answer a couple of tilapia and some bread. Jesus tells them to give it to the people. But the disciples say that’s not even enough to give each of the 5000 gathered there a crumb. But Jesus says, just give it to them and see what happens. Now one can’t fault the disciples for not understanding but here’s the deal. Mark tells a second story of the feeding of the multitude on a separate occasion and they tell Jesus the same thing, ‘Send the people away to eat.” And it’s this way throughout Jesus’ ministry. He is constantly having to rebuke them and challenge them because they do not understand. Another time, the disciples proudly come to Jesus and tell him of a man casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they told him to stop. And Jesus says, “He who is not against us is for us. Let him cast out demons in my name.” Or at the Last Supper when Jesus is thinking about his impending crucifixion the next day, James and John are arguing about who will sit next to Jesus in the seat of authority.
This is the main message of today, Jesus has called you to be His disciples not because you’re gifted, powerful, educated, beautiful or smart. He has called you because you’re broken. And it is in your brokenness that you turn and depend completely on Him. That’s when Jesus can do a powerful work through you. It’s in your sense of unworthiness that you then lean into and depend upon God to use you, sometimes even in spite of yourself. Jesus knows you are going to fail and fall short of His will in the future and he still calls you in spite of that.
So what does it mean to be a disciple? To be a disciple means to be changed. Jesus changed their names. Now every name in the middle east has a meaning and that meaning becomes your destiny. We know that Simon whose name means reed, a grass along the side of the sea of Galilee which blows and moves wherever the wind blows. And in many respects that is just who Simon is. But Jesus renames Simon, Peter, which means rock, not because of who he is but because he can see who he will become in Jesus. Jesus gives James and John the nickname, the sons of thunder. The Gospels don’t tell us why but I believe it’s because there will be a time when their witness rings out like thunder across the land. Levi, the unwanted and hated tax collector, becomes Matthew which means gift of God. Jesus looks at you and see you as you can be not what you are. He knows you will stumble and fall but he still calls you.
To be a disciple means to be a learner, a student. A disciple is one who comes to Jesus and learns from Him to become like Him and model their life after him. Disciples are ones who want to see the world like the Master, to think as He does and do the things He does. So if you are a disciple of Jesus, the first thing to do is to get to know Jesus which is in part why you are here on Sunday mornings but is also why it is absolutely critical to be in a weekly Bible study. Reading and studying the Gospels is the way to do that with other Christians.
Third, to be a disciples means to be on mission. A disciple lives as He lived. Jesus was always on mission wherever he went. Wherever you are and whatever you do throughout your day, that is your mission field. The thing about Jesus is that many times before he ever preached the Gospel, he ministered to their point of need. They experienced God’s mercy and power and love through Him and then they were willing to listen to Him. So the best thing you can do is decide how you can bless the people in your life. Mother Theresa said, “Small things done with great love will change the world.” St. Francis of Assisi said, Preach the Gospel at all time and if you have to, use words.” Let your life be the best and loudest sermon you ever preach. “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16
The last thing we do as disciples to be a fisher of people. We invite other people to go along with us on the journey. If this life is really about following Jesus and there really is a kingdom and we are His subjects and there really is eternity hanging in the balance, why would we not invite them along for the journey. You can have an eternal difference in the lives of your family, your friends, your co-workers and your neighbor. Jesus calls you do the same as he did with Simon and Andrew, James and John and Levi in our Scripture today.
Even though most of the 12 came from Galilee where there was a very strong commitment to observant Judaism, there was significant diversity within the disciples. Simon, Andrew, James and John came from the world of fishermen. Levi was a despised tax collector, considered to be a thief and unclean in the eyes of the Galileans. Simon was a zealot, an extreme nationalist for God. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, must have had a rough and tumble sort of volatile personalities that you might find in a biker bar, Judas was a zealot from Judea and. The point is this. Jesus did everything intentionally and thus he was intentional about diversity amongst his followers. And that means there is room for you and me. If you look around the sanctuary today, you see a wide diversity and if Jesus were to come today, you are the people he would choose as his disciples, people from every nation, tribe, people and tongue-and unite us as he did the first disciples for mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. The only thing Jesus was looking for was people who passionate and committed to their faith and their God.
The disciples recognized this was an invitation they could not turn down. Some of you are on the fence and wrestling with becoming a servant and follower of Jesus, fearful and what it will require and maybe even if you can. He’s the deal: you’re going to serve somebody or something, so why not have it be the Creator of the Universe and the Savior of all people? This is an invitation you don’t want to turn down because if you do, you are missing out on the very best part of life and the very purpose for which you were born. Jesus calls saying, “Follow me,” in other words, “Come with me, become one of my disciples and apprentices and submit your life to my teaching and my teaching alone” and not only will your life change but you will change the world by helping to build my kingdom. The invitation is given, the choice is yours and the time for decision is now.
