One day, two guys were out fishing. A funeral service passes over the bridge they're fishing by, and Bob takes off his hat and puts it over his heart. He does this until the funeral service passes by. Frank then said, "Gee Bob, that sure was a nice thing to do!"
Bob then replies, "It's the least I could do. After all, I was married to her for 30 years."
Now, I know fishing is not for everybody but for those of us that enjoy it, we really enjoy it. I enjoy being out in nature. I enjoy the peace and quiet. I enjoy the challenge of catching something that doesn't want to be caught. I enjoy the fight when I do get something on the line and I enjoy eating the fish too. I'm not very good at it but it's a lot of fun and I enjoy the whole experience.
But just like most hobbies, it can get expensive. There is a motto in the hot rod world that says, "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?" And I think most hobbies are that way. When you first start out, you get by fairly inexpensively but once you get into it, you realize you need this and you need that and you just gotta have some of that over there. Right?
In fishing, you can spend a lot of money on boats and gear and fish finder sonar. Then you have to have a new truck to pull that boat. And you need a new wardrobe and you need that new fishing rod Bass Pro has on sale. Gotta have that. That's what the pros use.
But, one of the things that really starts to add up is all the different lures you need. Most lures aren't real expensive except but then you realize you need a few of each. You need a few buzz baits. You need a few crank baits. You gotta have some plastic worms, some jigs and some spoons. Then you need some Texas rigs, some Tokyo rigs, Ned rigs, Alabama rigs, Neko rigs and wacky rigs. You need topwater poppers, whopper ploppers and toppers. You need chatter baits, spinner baits, swim baits and blade baits. You also have spinners, plugs and flies, not to mention just a good old-fashioned hook if you are going to use live bait. And that's not including all the different kinds of line and the different rods and reels that you use for each one. And like most hobbies, the accessories are endless. So, yea, it can get expensive after a while.
Now, I know what you non-fisherman are thinking. You don't need all those different kinds of lures. Why, my granddad caught fish out of the pond with a cane pole and a nightcrawler. Right? I hear ya. And you can do that still today. But if you want to catch more fish and bigger fish and different kinds of fish then you will start to see that you need different baits.
So, now some of you are beginning to think you came to a TED talk on fishing and you are wondering why I am bringing all this up. Well, today our passage of scripture is from Matthew chapter 4 where Jesus is talking to some fishermen and he uses a phrase they can relate to. I hope you have your Bibles with you today. I want to encourage you to always bring them with you to church. I want you to see for yourselves what it says and not just take my word for it.
Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and in chapter four we see Jesus just starting His ministry. He has just been baptized by John and then He went out into the desert and was tempted by Satan. Having been obedient and passing that test, Jesus starts to gather His crew together. So, let's read Matthew 4:18-22. We will concentrate on just one main phrase but let's keep it all in context by reading those verses.
Matthew 4:18-22 says, "As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." 20 At once they left their nets and followed him. 21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him."
"I will make you fishers of men." Now, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, you have to always keep scripture in context, right? And some of you right now are thinking, "Whew! Thank goodness this isn't written to us!" And you would be right. It was not written to us. Jesus didn't say it to us. We are not on the shore of the Sea of Galilee trying to go fishing. But, if you will excuse the pun, you are not off the hook on this one because there are lots of other places where this overall message is given to us as believers. So, this message definitely applies to us.
So, let's break it down and see what Jesus meant then and what He means for us today and how we should go about doing what He told us to do. First, notice that Jesus knew how to read the room, if you will. He didn't say to a bunch of fishermen, "I will make you farmers of men." Or "bookkeepers of men." They were fishermen so he used a fishing analogy and this goes right into why I was talking about all the different kinds of lures earlier.
Let me show you a few lures to give you an example. I have all kinds of different lures for all kinds of situations and all kinds of fish. I have really big lures and tiny lures and lures with feathers and some old lures that were made with metal and wood. And they all still work if you use them at the right place and the right time. But you have to know what to throw and when depending on the type of fish you are after and the conditions of the water. Like Jesus could read the room, you have to read the water. But even if you have all that nailed down, you still have to present the lure in a way that will be enticing to the fish.
The Apostle Paul was a master of reading the room and seeing who he was talking to and making the Gospel enticing and relevant to his listeners. Do you think that was just good luck for Paul? No, he was a master fisherman and he tells us his thought process about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 where he says, "Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some."
He is saying that he makes himself all things to all people. It's not that he is a hypocrite, telling one person one thing and somebody else another thing. He just makes the lure attractive to the fish, knowing full well that one fish will be attracted to one lure and another fish to another lure. And he presents it in a way that the fish will most likely bite.
To the Jews he became like a Jew, following their traditions and rituals so that he might come alongside them and gain an audience. To those under the law, he ate what they ate and worked when they worked even though he didn't have to just so he could meet them where they were physically and spiritually. To those not under the law he didn't impose the law on them. He just loved them as they were for the purpose of becoming their friend and leading them to Jesus.
To the spiritually weak, he didn't brag about how strong he was. He talked about how weak he was and how he was made strong in his weakness. He didn't engage in high-handed theological discourses on dispensationalism or why he was pre-millennial and they were wrong not to be. That wasn't Paul's method of ministry. His method of ministry was to preach the Gospel. Paul was constantly preaching, "Christ, and Him crucified."
This doesn't mean that Paul could only say those words or that he wasn't very smart. In fact, it was because Paul was smart that he knew how to talk to just about anybody but his purpose for talking to them was to lead them to Jesus. He was always going to get around to, "Christ, and Him crucified."
For us, this might sound almost impossible. How can we become all things to all people? I'm not smart enough to be able to talk to everybody I meet. How do I get to be Paul's kind of smart? A young boy once approached his father to ask, "Dad, why does the wind blow?" to which the father responded, "I don't know, son." "Dad, where do the clouds come from?" "I'm not sure, son." "Dad, what makes a rainbow?" "No idea, son." "Dad, do you mind me asking you all these questions?" "Not at all, son. How else are you going to learn?"
If you want to be Paul's kind of smart, you can either ask your dad about such things...or you can ask the Father. Do you remember what Jesus' last words were to His disciples just before He ascended back to Heaven? He gave them the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) that said, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
"And surely I am with you" when you are talking to the educated man. "And surely I am with you" when you are talking to the uneducated man. "And surely I am with you" when you are talking to the Jehovah's Witness or to the Mormon or the atheist. Your job is mainly just to be willing. Your job is to love people enough that you are intentional about going to the grocery store or to the car wash or the football game so that you can strike up a conversation about whatever might lead you to lead them to Jesus.
I hate to tell you this but that might include learning some Veggie Tale songs so you can talk to some little ones about Jesus. It might include listening to some music that is too loud and too repetitive for your taste so that you can lead some youth to Jesus. Maybe you should go to the local football or baseball games even though you don't have kids playing so that you can talk sports to someone in the hopes of coming alongside them for the purpose of being who they need you to be so that soon they will listen to you preach Christ, and Him crucified.
For you to not try to be all things to all people is like trying to catch all different kinds of fish in all different kinds of weather and all different kinds of water with your grandpa's old cane pole and a nightcrawler. It'll still work every now and then and it may be the very best way to catch certain kinds of fish but you are missing out on a whole bunch of other fish that that combination is not even close to being effective on.
The first time I went to the Wise County jail to minister there, I didn't know what to do. I volunteered and they sent me to a room and brought some inmates in to listen to me talk. At least that's what I thought. So, I preached to them the same message I had preached that morning right here. And the men were very nice and they tried hard to listen but I could tell I wasn't getting to them. They were bored and I was wasting their time and mine.
So, I changed it up and asked them questions and tried a little different presentation and I have done that ever since. And it has been one of the highlights of my ministry to go there. The problem is, every week they ask me some question that I don't know the answer to. They ask me something and I don't know how to respond. And every time, I pray one of those quick little Nehemiah breath prayers, "Lord, please help me. I can't do this." And every time I feel the Lord's presence. I feel Him and hear Him say, "Surely I am with you." And I'm able to give an answer that is truth and that makes God look good. And that is not me! I can't do that. I'm not smart enough to do that but I am smart enough to know where to go to get the answer.
The Great Commission tells us, "As you go, make disciples." And as you go, you will go to different places and talk to different people and have different types of encounters with all different kinds of people. You may feel the need to be a little bit confrontational like Peter was in Acts 2. He told them the blunt truth and it says they were cut to the heart and said, "What do we do?" And Pete didn't mince words. He said, "Y'all need to repent!" (That's back when Peter went to Texas. You may not remember that part.)
As you go, you may feel the need to be more intellectual in your approach like Paul did in Acts 17 where it says he debated with the philosophers on Mars Hill to persuade them.
Or maybe you are with your family and you need to be more relational. Family can be some of the hardest to witness to. Jesus told the man who had been possessed by demons in Mark chapter 5 to "Go home and tell your family how much the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you." That's a lure we can all throw.
Maybe you just need to be invitational like the woman at the well in John 4 who met Jesus and then told the whole town, "Come and see!" What a witness that can be.
Maybe your serving can be your witness. In Acts 9, Dorcas impacted her whole city by doing deeds of kindness intentionally and for the sake of witnessing to others.
Lastly, one our favorites around here is the testimonial method the blind man used in John 9 when Jesus healed him. You remember what he said when the religious leaders peppered him with questions? "I don't know. But one thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"
There are just about as many different ways to witness to people as there are lures to catch fish. But the one thing all lures have in common is they all have some kind of hook and that hook for us as fishers of men is the Gospel. What is the Gospel? The Gospel is the Good News that Jesus, who is God, came down to earth from all the glories of heaven to be the perfect sacrifice for my sins and your sins. It was the price we could never pay.
Sin is anything that displeases God and Romans 3:23 says that we are all sinners. Romans 6:23 says that what we deserve for that sin is eternal death in hell. That's bad news! But the Good News is that John 3:16 says that God loves you so much that He sent Jesus to die for you and all you have to do is believe it. But that belief will manifest itself in your life as a changed life. You will be a new creation. That doesn't mean you will be perfect or that your life will be perfect. It means that when you sin from now on it will pain you, it will hurt you. And you will repent of that sin and ask God to forgive you of that sin right away and He will and your relationship with Him will be restored immediately. See why they call it the Good News?
Have you done that? Let's bow our heads and close our eyes and if you have never done that, then today is the day of salvation for you. Ask God to forgive you and allow His Spirit to come into your life and lead you to a new life as a new creation. Do it right now as the music plays.
Invitation
I want to bring out one more thing in this passage just real quickly. When Jesus tells the disciples to follow Him, do you see that they left everything and immediately were obedient to Him? I've heard it several times that 95% of true believers in Jesus go their whole lives without ever leading one other person to Jesus. That is not being obedient. What is God calling you to do? Where is He calling you to go? What is He calling you to say and to whom? Just be obedient!
