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.
The entire community is living under these conditions. There is a shared community within that misery though. It is US versus them and we absolutely despise and hate them.
This is exactly the conditions the Jews were living in under Roman rule.
Matthew decides he is going to go work for those people. And he's not going to mop a floor or be a servant of one of the Roman officials.
Matthew is going to help the Romans subjugate his entire community, and even his family to help these Roman oppressors stay in power.
Not only that- he is the chief tax collector- he supervises and trains others how to collect the maximum amount from people whether they had it or not.
You begin to see now why they were so hated and despised.
Tax collectors were so hated and so despised in their community that they needed a squad of Roman soldiers to guard them to keep the zealots from killing them. The Zealots were what we would today consider to be a terrorist organization dedicated to throwing off Roman rule through assassinations of a Roman officials…especially tax collectors as they were considered to be both a traitor to Israel and thieves that stole old people’s social security checks.
The tax collectors were spoken of at the same level as satan. That’s the level of hatred they had.
However, there are also a lot of benefits. They were by far the wealthiest citizens in their area. In fact they were often given Roman citizenship which gave them rights and privileges far above anyone else they lived around. Many of them earn both a salary and a Commission which means they got to keep a small percentage of what they brought in.
Obviously, human nature being what it is, this system would lead many of them to overcharge to fill their own pockets.
They lived in large, guarded houses with servants and luxuries only available to them.
So when Jesus walks by Matthews stand and says, “Follow me”
If Matthew walks away from his booth
He looses his house
He looses his citizenship
He looses his only source of income
And most immediately, He loses his guard. He now has zero protection from the entire city that wants him dead.
Giving up all of this to join a poor, itinerant preacher whose followers are the same people he has been taxing for years, and one of them is even a zealot who is probably thinking-
It’s Christmas Morning! I don’t even know what that is, but Jesus is giving me a the first Christmas present- a tax collector I can kill right now!
Matthew is quite literally making what most people today would consider to be an insane decision.
I know some of you think that these kind of things only happened in Bible times but let me tell you one a little bit more current-
In the mid 1980s, there was a large construction firm that handled many of the larger buildings going up in Chicago, Throughout northern Illinois and even the southern Wisconsin area. It had a great reputation, was in demand, and was making millions and millions of dollars for its owner.
He was rich, prosperous, and at the top that ladder called success that everyone is trying to climb in their life.
Like Matthew, he heard the call to follow Jesus. Not only to follow Jesus, but to do so in the land that his family had escaped from- China.
Especially in the 1980s, being found to be a Christian in China would most likely lead to a bullet, and your family being sent to bill for the cost of the bullets, and the soldier having to clean his rifle when he was done.
Yes that was a real thing.
He's being called back to the country that knows his family escaped when they defected to the United States. Their whole family became exceedingly prosperous in the United States, all while being highly critical of the Chinese communist party government. He and his family were even featured on a national news program.
He strongly receives this call of God to become a missionary to China and the rest of Asia.
What does he do?
He goes to prayer. That's a great start
Then he reaches out to some of the leaders in his church for advice. Elders, board members, and pastors.
Do you know what a few of them said?
God would never give you this much success and wealth and then call you to leave this much prosperity
Pause.
Rant coming-
This is why I absolutely despise the prosperity gospel. It is heresy and an abomination on the highest order because it focuses on the happiness of man and not the glory of God. It stems from the original sin that caused all of humanity to fall away from God and it continues in many churches in America.
The prosperity Gospel would keep Matthew in his booth.
It would have kept Peter Chun running his construction business instead of being the closest thing to an apostle Paul that exists today in the world.
Why do I say that?
Hundreds, if not thousands of home church’s in Asia have been established because of his faithfulness to hearing Jesus say “Follow Me” Millions have come to faith in Jesus and following HIM today even under the threat of death.
Peter Chun heard the call from Jesus that said, “Follow Me”
And he obeyed that call.
And, he teaches others to obey that call. That’s why the church in Asia is exploding in growing disciples, while we try to figure out which bathrooms to use.
We’ve seen the problem- shallow Christianity if you can even call it that.
So how do we fix this? How do we as American Christiains living in 2024 become dedicated followers of Jesus and learn to follow HIM more closely?
I. Count the Cost
Let’s look at what Jesus said the cost of becoming a disciple and answering the call to follow HIm means-
Matt 16:24
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me
We spoke at length about what Matthew was giving up in answering Jesus’ call. We spoke of a Modern Day version of this with Peter Chun giving up a multimillion-dollar business to risk his life on numerous occasions to get the Gospel into China and North Korea.
But what about us?
Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time will tell you there is a cost.
It might mean standing a biblical principle that gets you in trouble at work. Happened to me several times. (nude magazine)
It might mean turning down a promotion because God has you planted in a vital area and needs you to stay there.
It might mean living below what is considered to be normal for the people you live around.
When Jesus tells us to count the cost- HE isn’t just being a sadist wanting us to be miserable.
Remember, Jesus is speaking from personal experience here-
Jesus HIMself counted the cost when He came down from heaven, and humbled Himself to become a baby.
The divine voice of this universe had to learn to talk.
The being who in a single stride could cross our galaxy had to learn to crawl, then to walk. He might have been an awkward teenager with pimples.
Jesus, who lived in the most glorious of throne rooms traded it in for what was probably a single room house with a connected workshop.
He who owned everything in all of creation had to live on the charity of others during his ministry here on earth- largely supported by a few rich patrons (Lazarus, Mary, and Martha).
Finally the largest cost Jesus had to count, He who was without sin, became sin for us.
So when Jesus tells us to count the cost to becoming a disciple- he is coming from a place where he knows and has lived exactly what HE is asking of us.
This is not just a walk down an aisle to say a prayer, and then we never see you again.
It is a life commitment to your savior- “Here I am LORD, send me”.
That leads us to the second decision we have to make if we are to be disciples of Jesus.
II. Pick up your cross
We spoke a lot about what we might have to give up, but what about what we might have to take on?
Jesus’ life isn’t defined but a manager. We don’t wear carpenter’s tools around our neck, or hang them in our church’s to represent HIM.
We look at the cross- the very thing that he came to do for us- that’s His symbol.
You know, the older I get, the more I look back on my life, and especially some very hard times and see them for what they did for me in the long run.
I can look back on a time of extreme stress and suffering and say, “Oh, that’s why you let that hardship in my life. It built in me a resilience and faith to come to you first when life seems to be spinning out of control”
Let’s apply that principle to Jesus-
Do you think it’s a mistake he was born into a family who were carpenters? Or was this part of a plan?
He took upon himself a very strenuous, very difficult job to prepare his body to endure what was coming, especially the torture he would someday go through?
He was born to a poor family, so they had to walk everywhere. Again, preparing him for his ministry and his death so he had the physical strength to survive.
Pain can be part of God’s plan. That’s really hard to digest and accept, but it’s what the bible teaches, and what we saw in the life of Jesus and those who followed HIM.
Jesus wants us to pick up our cross, trust HIM that He is giving us what we need for our future, and let HIM lead us.
Remember though-Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. He says that because He is there carrying and pulling that yoke with you, and letting it build the toughness you need for what life has for your in the future.
So what is your cross this morning? Pause. Take a moment and ask God- that thing I’ve been praying for you to take away- is that the thing you are using to humble me or prepare me for something that is coming?
Is there something that Jesus needs you to pick up and trust HIM with?
It’s only when we count that cost, and pick up that cross, that can we actually obey His call on your life, and follow him.
I want to end with watching a dramatic depiction of Matthew’s call
Matthew video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fCrm008EJE&t=11s
All Rise
I’m going to read from you a quote- I don’t have a source, but it beautifully summarizes what we are talking about today-
“The call to discipleship is not a casual suggestion or a mere request; it's a compelling command to abandon our old ways and embrace a new life in Christ. The discipleship journey begins with a call, a divine summons that stirs something deep within us and awakens the spirit. It's a call to leave behind the familiar and venture into the unknown, a call to surrender our lives to Jesus and follow Him wholeheartedly.”
Prayer/altar call
