So we live in a culture that despises authority, and we don't really have many examples of big, strong, powerful authority in our culture because of that. The president has some authority, but nowhere near like a king. Lots of limitations and checks and balances on the president. Police officers, very specific authority just to enforce the law, and that's restricted. Nothing else. We don't have slave owners, obviously, and all that. Employers have limits on their authority. So we just don't have much in the way of real strong authorities. But if you were going to go to another country where there was a dictatorship, and you could pick which one you wanted to go to, so several countries, and you pick which dictator that you're going to be under, what would you look for in a dictator? Or suppose you were in debt and you had to sell yourself into slavery to pay off the debt for the next five years, you're going to be enslaved to somebody. Maybe you could choose who your master is going to be. What would you look for in a master, a slave owner? What sort of qualities would you want to have before you put yourself under the total authority of another leader? Let's just jot down a list. If you've got paper, I think this would be a good thing to do. In fact, maybe, Tracy, you could grab some papers. So what comes to mind? What do you think? Kindness, okay, you want him to be kind. If he's not benevolent, then you're in trouble. So you want him to care about your needs and do things that's going to benefit you, benefit other people and so on. What else? What's that? Oh, wise. Yeah, you want him to be smart, wise, intelligent. You want him to understand things, understand How, what tax rates would result in the greatest prosperity? You want to be smart. Things like that. So, what else? Generous, right? You want him to, if he's generous and has resources, then that'll benefit you. Firm, okay. Patient. Yeah, someone who isn't going to be harsh with you when you make mistakes. Have you ever had a boss that didn't have patience, and then you had a boss that did have patience, and he knew how to deal with your mistakes. It makes a huge difference. That's wonderful to have someone over you that's patient. Anything else? Understanding. What's that? Understanding. Yeah, understanding. Someone who really knows you, knows your strengths, knows your weaknesses, your gifts, your passions. He can utilize you in the best possible way and most effective way so you'll be fulfilled in your work. Okay, clear communicator. Yep, yep. Without that you get problems. Okay, decisive, has a plan, goes along with wisdom. Maybe influence. He can handle other world leaders and he can deal with other people. Or consistency. Somebody said something like that. You know, I'm blowing in the wind and changing all the time, changing direction constantly. All right. Well, as you think of things, just keep jotting them down because we'll use this list. As much as our culture hates authority, think for a minute, though, that whole list we just gave, what it would be like to be under the authority of someone who had all those qualities. Wouldn't you agree that life would be better under that authority than under no authority? In fact, life would be better under any authority than no authority. Even an evil authority is way better than anarchy. Anarchy is the worst possible situation. So authority is good, and the better the authority, the better life is. So in this gospel, Mark's gonna paint a portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ that will show us the magnificence of many of his attributes as we go through the gospel. And we all understand, right, that the more you experience the attributes of Christ, the more you'll love Him and trust Him. So this is the goal of the Christian life, to keep doing that. Nothing's more valuable than getting clear and clearer glimpses of His glory and His attributes. And the attribute that Mark wants to start out with, very beginning of the book, here in this passage, is Jesus' authority. That's going to be the theme through the next few sections of the chapter. So if you go down and look at verse 21, you'll see that all the people were amazed at his authority. Now Mark, he talks about amazement a lot. He uses various different words for amazement. This particular one means literally to receive a blow and be knocked back. You're knocked out of your senses with amazement to be struck. So, Barclay translates it, thunderstruck. They were thunderstruck. It's the kind of amazement that leaves you speechless because this thing you just witnessed, you can't put it into words. You can't process it. It just blows your mind. That's how they all were. In Capernaum, what was it that amazed them that much? It was Jesus' authority. Then you go down to verse 27, you see that same word used again. And again, it was because of His authority. Same word. In our passage today, in verses 16 to 20, Mark doesn't actually use the word authority, but instead he uses a paintbrush and paints a picture of Christ's authority, what it looks like, and that's what we're going to look at this evening. Now just to refresh everybody's memory, we finished Mark's prologue to the book. We're just beginning now Jesus' ministry, and Mark starts by giving us this quick two-verse summary of Jesus' entire ministry in verses 14 and 15. That's what we looked at last week. After John was arrested, verse 14, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. The time has come, he said, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel. So this whole book is the story of Jesus going around Galilee preaching that message. It's striking that it's in Galilee, that Jesus focuses most of His attention on Galilee. The people in Judea, I mean the temples in Judea, Jerusalem's in Judea, everything's down south. The people down there, they had a certain religious disdain for the people up north in Galilee. They thought what really makes us Jews, what really sets us apart as Jewish is the temple and the holy city and all the trappings of Judaism. And those people up in Galilee, they're just kind of out there in the sticks. They're surrounded by Gentiles. away from the actions, just kind of sub-Jews. So by coming along and making Galilee his main focus, Jesus is already setting the stage for all these rebukes that are going to come later in the book against the Jewish religious system and the temple worship and all that. So, Jesus up in Galilee. So now that He's gone up into Galilee and He's starting out His ministry, what's the very first event that Mark wants us to see? Verse 16, So Jesus is walking along the beach, just maybe skipping some rocks or just going along, and He comes up on a very, very common scene on that lake, some fishermen at work. But they aren't out there in boats with the big commercial drag nets. They're standing on shore with little one-man casting nets. So the word here that's used for these nets refers to a round perimeter-weighted net, maybe 10 feet. in diameter that they'd fold it a certain way over their arm and with a little practice they learned how you could throw it and the whole thing would unfold and spread out before it hit the water and they'd try to throw it over a school of fish and they had a rope tied to their wrist, they would dive down, pull it downward, try to catch some of those fish and then come back up and get the fish. So that's what they're doing. Jesus is walking along the beach. So here's Jesus. He's making his way down the beach, stepping over some rocks, and he's working through some brush and everything. He comes out to an opening, and here's these two brothers out there, like, waist-deep in the water with these nets, trying to get some fish. And Jesus issues an order. Verse 17, "'Come, follow me,' Jesus said." And these two guys stand there for a moment and just stunned silence. Jesus hit them with something and they realize at this moment they are facing the biggest decision of their lives. And Andrew looks over at his brother Simon and who's normally like Mr. Impulsive, right? And he's just as frozen as Andrew is. And he's like, what's that look on his face? And what is that? Is that bewilderment? Is it shock? Is it fear? Then Andrew looks back over to Jesus and his eyes haven't left him, they're burning holes in him, and Andrew realizes at that moment he has no choice. It's not an invitation. It's an order. It's not a request, it's not a suggestion, it's not a plea, it's a command. And so verse 18, immediately they left their nets and followed him. So make no mistake, Jesus' commands require immediate human response. Delayed obedience is disobedience. Jesus' commands require immediate response. Now, don't think of this as a typical thing that rabbis would do, calling disciples. Rabbis did have disciples, but they did not do this. This is unique. It's unique for a couple of reasons. First, rabbis did not recruit They didn't do that. Students would approach rabbis and ask, can I be your student? But rabbis did not go out recruiting. Secondly, and more importantly, rabbis' disciples were not followers. They didn't use that terminology. No one said, I'm a follower of rabbi so-and-so. If they did say that, the rabbi probably would have rebuked them and said, that's not, you're not to be a follower of me, you are to be a student of the Torah, the law of God. That's what a rabbi-student relationship, but we're, disciple means learner. So if you are a learner, a student, a disciple of a rabbi, that means you are studying the Torah, not following the rabbi. Not even Old Testament prophets would say, follow me. They said, repent and follow God. So Jesus is calling for something much more extreme than a rabbi, more extreme even than a prophet. He wants these men to become his followers, and he doesn't do it with a polite invitation. The wording here, the Greek authorities say it's the wording of a strong military-style order. Like, you, you, you, you, get behind me. Now, I mean, that kind of flavor. That's the way he said this, and if you want to find a parallel, you won't find it anywhere in that culture, certainly not with the rabbis. I can think of only one incident in the Old Testament that comes close And that's in 1 Kings 19, where Elijah, greatest Old Testament prophet, is ready to pass on his mantle to Elisha, and he comes up to him. Elisha's out there plowing a field with some oxen, and Elijah walks up, puts his mantle around Elisha, and Elisha says, okay, and goes home, kisses his mom and dad goodbye, burns all his farm equipment in a fire, slaughters the oxen, gives the meat to the poor people, and says, let's go, and he follows Elijah. That's the only parallel that comes anywhere close to this, and that was rare as a one-time thing. It was the greatest example of discipleship in the Old Testament, but still, as extreme as it was, it was still less than this. What we're going to see Jesus do, as we go through the Gospel, typically Jesus does this. He does the same things that the greatest leaders in the Old Testament did. but he goes way beyond what they did. He always does this and we'll see it time and time again. So Elijah calling Elisha was a unique one-time event. Jesus does this with Simon and Andrew and James and John and Levi and He keeps doing it and He keeps doing it. He ends up doing it 12 times and then we find out later He wants to make disciples of all nations. So if you want a precedent for this, there's really only one. It's not rabbis, it's not prophets, it's not even Elijah. The only one who calls people like this in the Old Testament is God. God himself. God called Abraham and he left his family, left his home, left his culture, left everybody, went and followed God's call even though he didn't know where he was going. God called the entire nation of Israel out of Egypt to go where he would lead them. Only God does this sort of thing in the Old Testament. Now Jesus, right out of the hatch, right when His ministry begins, this is the first thing He does. So He's just coming out and saying, I call people like God calls people. So right from the outset, we see Jesus had authority over everyone's life. Total authority. He can just suddenly command you to leave your livelihood, leave your property, your home, your career, even your family, and you must obey on the spot. He can command anyone at any time to give up anything, pay any price, and they must do it. That's the authority of Christ. And the amazing thing is, they did. This is what's amazing. The people did. You know, there's some people who have positions of authority, and people ought to listen to them, but they don't. Right? You picture a school teacher. She's in a position of authority, and her class isn't paying any attention or listening to her. Jesus' authority wasn't like that. It went beyond just a position or a title. It included the power to bring people to respond. Because look at verse 18. At once, immediately, they left their nets and followed Him. Interesting little note here. That's a different word for nets. In verse 16 they're throwing their little round amphibolus on nets. This is a different net. This is the big 100 foot long commercial drag nets that they would fish from the boat with. So they left that. In other words, they left their whole fishing business. They left the whole thing. Verse 19, when he had gone a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John in a boat preparing their nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him." So now two more men, right in the middle of their workday, drop everything, leave their property, leave their livelihood, leave their families, and obey Jesus. Jesus was a man of awesome authority. You ever seen someone who, even though you didn't know who it was, they just seemed to, you could tell by the way they carried themselves somehow that they're a person to be taken seriously, they carry some authority. I was at a conference once, a real gripping conference, and I'm in this classroom waiting for the next session to begin, and my face was buried in my laptop trying to get some work done in between sessions, oblivious to everything around me. Suddenly, my eyes just broke away from my laptop for whatever reason, looked up, and I looked at the door where lots of people were coming in and out, but there's this one guy. He walks in and my eyes just stuck on him. He walked in and I just watched him go across the room. I don't know why. He wasn't doing anything or saying anything unusual, but it just seemed like I should be paying attention to this guy. And I remember thinking to myself, I think that guy's in charge of this place. And he's something big around here. And sure enough, I found out later, it was James MacDonald who was the pastor of that huge church that was hosting the conference. And I had never known who he was before, but that was 20 years ago. And for 20 years, I've wondered, what was it about the way he carried himself that made me have that reaction? Well, 20 years of wondering hasn't gotten me anywhere. I still have no idea. But the other day I looked up a website that gave tips on how to come off as more authoritative. And I won't read the whole list, but here's a few of them. Number one, dress the part. Powerful people wear powerful clothes. Make a note of what everyone else is wearing and emulate their style in a put-together way. Number two, make yourself visible. Height helps. Stand up from your desk when you talk to people. And if there aren't enough chairs in a meeting, you be the one to stand up so you have a bigger presence in the meeting. Stand up even when you're talking on the phone because your voice will sound more authoritative when you're standing. Number three, create powerful associations. Link yourself with other powerful people and authoritative people by agreeing with what they say. Now, I think... I think Jesus might have missed that website when he did his Google search on how to come off as authoritative, because I don't think Jesus did any of that. He might have stood up when he talked on the phone, but other than that, there wasn't anything special about how Jesus dressed. And I guarantee he certainly didn't link himself up with powerful people by agreeing with them. And yet he had awesome authority. There have been kings that can order people around and get them to obey, but usually that's because if you disobey, you get your head cut off. They get their power and authority either from military power or from maybe just their crown and their throne, the position they hold. Like Donald Trump, he has way more authority now than he had a year ago, even though he's the same man, just because he has a position of authority. A lot of people will obey presidents and kings. But how many carpenters do you know that can command this kind of obedience? What goes through your mind when you see people like these disciples just willing to give up everything for Christ? Just walk away from their livelihood, their job, just everything. Impressive, right? How do you have that level of commitment to Christ? What's different about these men that makes them so willing to give up so much compared to someone like me who's barely willing to ever give up anything? Is it something about their personalities? Is it some profound virtue that they have that I'm missing? Are they emotionally stronger? Are they wiser? Are they a different personality? What is it about these men that makes them obey like this? would you please notice that Mark doesn't tell us anything about these men that would answer that question. Mark's picture of these men just shouts, ordinary, ordinary, ordinary, right? It's just everything about them is just as ordinary. None of them are priests, none of them are scribes, they're officials. I mean, can you imagine if Jesus would have called 12 priests to be his apostles? If he would have done that, what would that mean to us? I mean, we would just look at that and say, well, That's not me. That's them. I'm me. I'm not in that category. But these men weren't priests. They weren't even from Jerusalem. They weren't even from Judea at all. They're Galileans. They're not scribes. They're not scholars. They didn't study under Gamaliel or Hillel or any great rabbi or any lame rabbi or any rabbi. They're just guys who got up every day and went to work and tried to scratch out a living for their families. Just regular, ordinary guys. But they have seen his baptism? Yes. Transfiguration? Yeah, and we'll get to that. Not transfiguration yet, but we'll get to that, yeah. But the point here is, if you ever study the Twelve Apostles, you'll notice a wide variety of personality types as well. Which is also encouraging, because what if Jesus would have called twelve Peters? Someone like me would see that and just say, well, that's the kind of people who God uses to do great things. That's not me. But Jesus calls this wide spectrum of personality types. Whatever kind of person you are, I guarantee there's one of the 12 that's like you. Very, very ordinary men. But if these guys are so ordinary, how is it that they had such an extraordinary response to Jesus when He called them? Because most people don't give up everything and follow Christ, right? The impression I get, to answer that question, the impression I get by the way that Mark presents this is that these men's response was not due to anything about them, but it was due to the fact that they were exposed to Christ's awesome authority. I don't think the design is for us to read this and think, wow, those guys are amazing. I think the aim is for us to read this and think, wow, what astonishing authority Jesus Christ must have had to get this kind of response out of regular guys. See? I think Mark is saying, do you want to see how awesome is the authority of Christ? Just look at how ordinary men respond to His authority when they're exposed to it. So it's not something special about them, it's something special about their encounter with Christ. And that's a great lesson for us in our individual walk with the Lord. Do you want to have greater faith? Do you want to be more like these guys? Extraordinary faith comes from extraordinary exposure to Christ's extraordinary authority. I think we'll miss the point if we read the story and walk away just thinking, man, I want to be like those disciples. I'm just going to try to have lots and lots of willingness to give up everything for Christ from now on. That kind of resolve is a good thing. It's good, but by itself it's not going to be enough. I think the intention for the passage is for us to read this and say, wow, look at how those men responded. I want to see what they saw. so that I'll respond like that. I want to be exposed to the awesome display of Christ's power and authority like they were so that I'll have that kind of response like they did. You see that? And it's not to say that the disciples' response was just automatic. They saw Jesus' authority and so it was automatic that they were going to respond. Jesus revealed His authority to others and they didn't respond. They didn't obey like this. So when you see Christ's amazing power and authority, it still requires that you have a willingness to accept what you're seeing and to embrace what you're seeing, there is a responsibility on our part. But the responsibility isn't just to try to muster up a lot of willpower to obey Jesus. It's a receptiveness to learn of and embrace more and more truth about what Jesus is like. See what I'm saying? So, what had these men seen? Good to get back to Tracy's question. Because just from reading Mark's account, it sounds like this stranger walks up out of the blue and calls him and they leave their nets and follow him. So what made him so authoritative? Was it like the tone of his voice or look on his face or what? No. People don't leave their family and livelihood and everything else just because of the tone of someone's voice. In fact, think about this. Think of how you would respond if somebody walked up and gave you an order. Even a small, I mean not something this big, just somebody just silly. Pick up that piece of paper. Just someone comes up and tells you, sit down over there. Or just some simple order. How would that strike you? I mean, no matter how small the command, your first thought would be, why is this person, are they an authority? Is this someone who's like, is this a police officer or the owner of this property? Why does he think he can give me an order? Right? I mean, wouldn't that be your response? and pick up a piece of paper. That's about the smallest command you could ever give a person. What if it's bigger? They're asking you to do something really big. The bigger the command, the more confidence you would have to have in that person's authority over you before you would be willing to obey. So what gave these men so much confidence in Jesus' authority? We read through the other Gospels and we find, especially in John's Gospel, that these men had already known Jesus for many months. Close to a year, probably, they had known Jesus. You read that account, you find that they hooked up with Jesus down with John the Baptist and They started following Him then. They saw Him do miracles. They saw Him cleanse the temple, drive everyone out with a whip, do a whole bunch of miracles there. They baptized with Jesus for a long time, months. Then they traveled with Him as He made His way back up to Galilee, past Samaria, woman at the well, all that. They saw all that. So these guys had been with Jesus through all those events. But then, as soon as they get back to Galilee, they just sort of disappear. from the accounts. So all these accounts, it says what the disciples did, the disciples are there, Jesus and the disciples, all that. As soon as he gets back to Galilee, he goes to his hometown, preaches a sermon in Nazareth, he has this whole ordeal that happens there. No disciples are mentioned. The nobleman comes, he heals the nobleman's son. No disciples mentioned. Where did they go? Fishing. They went fishing. Evidently, when they started following Jesus, they followed Him for about a year, and they're thinking, this is like a short-term mission deal. And we're gonna go, we'll go for a year. As soon as they got back home to Galilee, they're just like, oh, okay, we'll go back to our work and our jobs, and we'll go back fishing. So they've known Jesus for quite a while. They've seen Him perform miracles. In fact, they saw Him perform a miracle that morning, the morning that this happens. In Luke's account we find out that they had been fishing all night long in the boats with the big nets, commercial fishermen. They fished at night because the fish come up close to the surface at night. And this particular night they didn't catch a single fish. That's a miracle. The Sea of Galilee is jammed full of fish. And these are, they have these huge hundred foot drag nets, I mean they would pull them along and they would get massive numbers of fish on every pass. To fish all night with those nets like that from those boats and not get one single fish requires a miracle. It required God to make all those fish swim away from those nets somehow. They must have just been thinking, this is insane. Are we in the twilight zone or what's going on here? No fish all night. And it's a bummer of a miracle because this is their livelihood, right? I mean, they probably had to catch several hundred fish just to break even. They had employees, right, because they left the employees. They had overhead. They had equipment. all this stuff. So to do the exhausting work of fishing all night and not catch a single fish, put them in a real bind. Not only can they not pay their workers, they can't even feed their families now. And so after this whole night of exhausting fishing, now they're just standing there on the shore with these little 10-foot casting nets, just trying to get some breakfast. And that's not even working. And then Jesus, at that moment, Jesus walks up and tells them, Go back out in the boat again. Now you've folded up your nets, you put everything, get it all back out again, go back out there and fish during the day when you don't catch anything, you know. And so they did it and they got out there and they put the nets down and they got so many fish that it almost tore the nets and sunk the boats and everything else. And it was at that moment that Jesus said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. So here's a person who controls the creation. He can guarantee massive success if we follow him. This promise he's given, I'll make you fishers of men, he can guarantee that. He also has the power to guarantee massive failure if we don't follow him, which we learned that, so fishing's no good now. What choice do we have? So Tracy, to answer your question, yeah, they had seen a lot. to establish Christ's authority. Now, Mark didn't tell us any of that. Did the readers of Mark know any of that? I think it's very possible that they did. They heard the preaching about Christ, they heard the oral traditions, all this stuff was known, so they may very well have known a lot of those details. We're going to see later in the book of Mark that sometimes Mark assumes the reader knows things that he doesn't say but are recorded in the other Gospels. We'll see that later on. So maybe the readers knew that stuff, maybe they didn't. Either way, Mark doesn't mention any of that because he doesn't want us to lose sight of his point. His point, and this is Mark, he gets down to business, his point is Jesus called these men with awesome authority and so he tells us it's just enough, it's a story, to show us that and only that, so you can't miss that. Jesus calls these men like God calls men, and something Jesus had done established His authority in their mind that He showed such awesome, unresistible, non-negotiable, divine authority that four out of four of these men immediately just give up everything and follow Him. That's the kind of thing that Jesus had shown them. That's all you need to know, Mark says. You don't need to know the details of how He showed His authority. I'm just telling you, He did something that made them respond this way. You see that? And keep that in mind when you read the Gospels, because there are some things that you read about Jesus that sound a little strange. It's like, why did that person respond to that? Why did this happen? And probably wouldn't sound as strange if you knew all the circumstances and details. But the circumstances and details aren't mentioned because they would distract us from the point being made. So just realize, not everything is written down. And just one other quick aside here. I love this. I love how this shows the reliability of the Gospel writers. Because at first it sounds like Mark made a mistake. He uses two different words for nets. He walks up, they're casting, they're casting nets. And then a minute later, they walked away from their commercial nets. And the critics say, see Mark, he's just getting this hodgepodge of sources and bits and pieces and piecing it together. And it doesn't even match. The words don't even match up. But then when you put the whole story together and you find out from the other Gospels what happens, it makes perfect sense. Mark didn't give us all the details, but he did preserve the right words. Because Mark, he's going from Peter's eyewitness accounts, and it's like, yeah, he walked up and he was throwing the casting nets. Then they left their whole business. And what happened in between, Mark doesn't say, but he gets the words right. So I love that. All right, so Jesus commanded them to follow. They left everything and they followed. That's what we've covered so far, but that's not the whole story, because I left something out. Jesus didn't just command them to follow. He gave them a promise, right? What's the promise? Verse 17. Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I'll make you fishers of men. Now we're just used to that phrase, fishers of men. Think of what it would sound like to ears who had not heard that phrase. The language of it, I believe, comes from Jeremiah 16. Take a look at Jeremiah 16. Jeremiah chapter 16 is describing how God is going to punish Israel by allowing Israel's enemies to come and wipe them out and carry them off into captivity. And that's the judgment that's being given. First it's going to be Assyria, then later Babylon. Look at verse 16. But now I will send for many fishermen, declares the Lord, and they will catch them, talking about the Israelites, and after that, that's Assyria, and after that I will send many hunters, that's Babylon, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks, for my eyes are on their ways and they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes. So your enemies, the prophet says to Israel, are like, they're gonna be like hunters and fishermen, they're gonna hunt you down, they're gonna find you where you're hiding, they're gonna drag you off into captivity. And that image of a fisherman, the enemies being like fishermen, was very common in the Old Testament prophets to describe coming judgment in terms of the Jews being captured in a net or by fish hooks and dragged away, that's common. This is just one example of it. So here's what's happening. Jesus is using that same imagery to describe the spiritual restoration that he as the Messiah is going to bring about when he brings God's people back. So he's going to come out with some nets and recapture all these fish that have been captured by Israel's enemies. Jesus is going to recapture them with some nets of his own. In fact, back up to verse 14, Jeremiah 16, 14, and listen to the promise that Jeremiah sneaks in right before that verse that I just read. He says, however, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when men will no longer say, as surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites out of Egypt, but they will say instead, as surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them, for I will restore them to the land that I gave their forefathers. What he's saying there is, you know how when everybody, whenever somebody wants to talk about God's great act of salvation for Israel, they talk about Egypt? You know where God rescued us out of Egypt in the Exodus? There's times coming when God's going to rescue His people again. And it's going to be so awesome, people are going to forget about the Exodus. The Jews are going to forget about the Exodus, because this is going to be the greatest standard of rescue. The rescue from Egypt was great, but now God is going to bring His people, not just out of Egypt, but out of all the nations where they were scattered. And it's going to be such an amazing rescue that it'll be greater than the Exodus. Well, has that happened yet? Did that happen when they came back from Babylon? I don't think so. They're in Babylon 70 years, a handful of them come back, they build this lame temple. That does not make anybody forget about the exodus from Egypt. this is a great restoration that's still to come. It's going to happen when the Messiah arrives and makes it happen. So now the Messiah is here, he's arrived, and he's going to begin this great restoration to rescue God's people who have been scattered all over the world and he's going to bring them back into his big, glorious, great, Davidic kingdom that's going to endure forever. And so he's going to now recruit some men to help him do that work of rescuing all God's people from the nations. And so He uses this fishing imagery backwards. What the enemies did, like fishermen, now you're going to go out and fish for those people back. One of the qualities you look for in a good dictator, or slave owner, is someone who's doing a great work. So we listed a bunch on our papers earlier. All the things, we want them kind, we want them benevolent, we want them smart, we want all that. Another one is you want someone who's doing a great work, and who will involve you in his great work. If you're going to be following someone's orders, you want those orders to come from someone who's ordering you to do great things, right? Something big. You want it to be someone who, every time he orders you to do something, you go to bed that night thinking, Whatever his reason for telling me to dig this ditch, or whatever it was, it must be part of accomplishing a big, huge, great, glorious thing that he's doing, and so I'm happy to dig this ditch. By digging the ditch, I accomplish something great today. That's what you want in a dictator, right? Or a slave owner. Someone that you can have that kind of confidence. That's one quality of a great authority, and we have that in Christ. He calls us to do this amazing work of the regathering. I mean, you go through the Old Testament, all the times that you find this promise of the regathering of God's people, it is everywhere. I mean, it's just, we don't even have the time to go over it tonight. Just over and over, God promises this great regathering. Jesus recruits His followers to do that work. Isn't it amazing that Jesus spent so much time recruiting and training the disciples? People told me a lot when I was pastoring that I should spend more time training men and all that. It was so hard to find the time. But I was thinking, if anybody could be justified in saying, I don't want to train people to do what I do, I'm uniquely qualified for this, no one else is going to be able to do it like I can do it, I just need to keep doing this myself. If anyone could be justified in saying that, it would be Jesus Christ. Where he could just say, you know what, these guys are not going to be able to do it like I can do it. I mean, tell me, who's more gifted, Jesus or the Twelve? Yeah. Even after they're fully trained, who's the better preacher, Jesus or these guys? Jesus. Who has more skill? Who has more wisdom? Who has more love for people? Who has the greater measure of the Holy Spirit? Jesus. Jesus, by far. So why didn't he just do the work himself? Amazing verse in John 14, 12. Jesus said, I tell you the truth. He says this to his disciples. I tell you the truth. Anyone who has faith in me will do what I've been doing and he will do even greater things than these. See, did the disciples do greater things? Jesus never went outside an area smaller than the state of Colorado his whole life. He never wrote anything. And the outcome of Jesus' ministry after he died was about 120 believers. The apostles turned the whole world upside down and reached millions of people over thousands of years through their ministry and their writings. Even though Jesus was more capable and more qualified and more holy and the Spirit was in Him in greater measure, still the Spirit of God was pleased to do the greatest work of reaching the world through the church, not through one individual, even if that individual is Jesus Christ. So Jesus pours huge amounts of time and energy into training these men. This is an example for us. He trains them. Trains them to do what? To undo what the Assyrians and the Babylonians did. Assyria and Babylon came in like fishermen and hunters, captured God's people, dragged them away. The disciples are gonna go out into all the nations like fishermen and hunters and drag the people back, recapture God's people and drag them back to God. You say, well, how are they gonna do that? Because the fishnets of Jeremiah 16 were swords, right? I mean, that's how the Babylonians and the Assyrians did it. They came in with military power and captured the people, literally captured the people. So is Jesus saying that these men will have to use that same method? You know, like Islam, you go out with a sword and evangelize with a sword? The answer to that question is found in the structure of this passage. Let me tell you something you need to know about Mark. Mark loves sandwiches. Not literal sandwiches. He probably liked literal sandwiches too, but I'm talking about literary sandwiches where he brings up one topic, And he brings up that same topic again, and in between, sandwiched in between, is a different topic, and he does it that way to show you the connection between the two topics. We're going to see this over and over in the book. He loves to use that device. And he does it here. So look back at verses 14 and 15. Verse 14 and 15 is an introduction to the body of the book, right? This is the summary of Jesus' whole ministry. He went around preaching the gospel, okay? That's the summary. Now after that summary, after verses 14 and 15, what do you expect to see Jesus do? The very first story you expect to be a teaching story, Jesus going out preaching or teaching or doing something. You get that, but you don't get it until verse 21. See, down in verse 21, there it is. They went into Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. So there it is. So the two pieces of bread are teaching and preaching ministry, teaching and preaching ministry. Well, what's sandwiched in between? So that's Jesus' ministry. He's going around teaching, preaching the gospel. But what's sandwiched in between? Jesus calling the disciples and promising to make them fishers of men. What does that tell us? It tells us that those are connected. The work of capturing men and women and bringing them back to God Rounding them up and establishing the Messiah's kingdom. It's not gonna be done with literal nets It's not gonna be done with the sword. It's gonna be done by teaching and preaching That's the Messiah's method and That's what we're gonna see Jesus train the disciples to do and that's what they're gonna go out and do So What is it about these? being fishermen that will make these guys good at teaching and preaching. Why does Jesus call fishermen? How does being a fisherman make you so you would be a pretty good preacher? Nothing. There's nothing about being a fisherman. Jesus doesn't pick them because they're good at teaching and preaching. Look what he says. He says, follow me and I will make you. I'm going to make you something. I'm going to turn you into something that you aren't already right now. Literally, in the Greek it says, I will make you to become fishers of men. It wasn't follow me because you're great preachers. It wasn't get some training in evangelism and then follow me. It's a promise. I will make you. I'm going to do this. Which, coming from a guy that just did the fishnet thing, is some pretty powerful thing. He says, I can make success happen. I can make failure happen. I can make success happen. I'm going to make you fishers of men. What kind of success? Watch this. And then their nets break and they're both sinking. That kind of fishers of men. Which is exactly what we see in the book of Acts, right? One sermon, 3,000 converts. So how's that for a quality to look for in a dictator or a slave owner? Some authority. Someone who has the ability to make you something better than what you currently are. He doesn't just demand that you do something, he promises to make you into that thing. I would put that on my list of a great dictator, great slave owner, great authority. So hopefully you have a pretty good list now in your paper of things that will make a great authority. And what I would urge you to do this week is just spend some time thinking about those things on the list and how Christ fulfills those qualities. And then as much as possible, consciously enjoy the experience of having an authority over you who has all these qualities. That's a wonderful thing, and what that'll do is that'll move your heart to do the same thing that the disciples did. You'll experience His authority, and you'll love Him more, and you'll trust Him more, and you'll have stronger faith, and a more willingness to give up anything to follow Him, because great faith comes from great exposure to Christ's great authority. Let's pray. Lord, as our culture resists authority of every kind, especially yours, we love it. We love being under your authority. We cannot command ourselves. We need a guide. We need someone smarter than us. We need someone more powerful than us. We need someone wiser than us. We need someone more loving than us. We need someone who sees the future, who has all these qualities of a great authority, and all of them are perfectly wrapped up in Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, for placing us under him, under his great leadership. Teach us to obey. We ask it in his holy name, amen. Any questions? Yeah, all the disciples were Jews, and they were all from Galilee except for one, Judas. He was the only one from down south, from Judea. Luke was not one of the twelve. He came along later, but he was an associate of Paul's. And so Luke got his information from Paul. And not just Paul, but he says at the beginning of his book that he did all kinds of research. Yeah, he was a doctor. And he patched Paul up. He traveled around with Paul. They were really good friends, Luke and Paul. It's a neat thing to watch. If you ever do a study of Luke, the relationship he had with Paul is really cool. I don't know if they understood it. When he said, I'll make you fish as a man, they might have thought, Swords? I mean, that would probably be the first thing that would come to their minds. It's like, are we bringing judgment on God's people? Or wait a minute, I thought that was already done. A lot of this stuff they didn't understand. Although, it wasn't as lowly as some people make it out. It was actually a middle class job. I mean, they have, I mean, the Zebedee family, they have employees that they had out there. So this got more of a managerial kind of a position they had. There was pretty good money in fishing. on the Sea of Galilee back then. They actually exported the fish. They caught so many fish. And Easton's Bible dictionary says there's no lake, there's probably no sheet of water anywhere in the world that has such a profusion and variety of fish as the Sea of Galilee. It was like that then, it's like that now. So it's just jammed full of fish. The Mediterranean has no fish left at all. Mediterranean, yeah. It's all fished out. But the Sea of Galilee, amazing how much fish, and they would, They would not only provide fish for that whole area, but they exported fish. They would pack them in salt and export them and everything. I don't know about the others, but at least Simon had a wife. That bothered me for the longest time until this week. And another thing that bothered me for years and years and years, even though I've already preached on it, it still bothered me because I couldn't quite figure out Why is the healing of Peter's mother-in-law so important? That it's recorded in three different Gospels. It seems like such a little miracle, compared to all his other miracles. Mother-in-law gets a fever and he goes and heals. I mean, it's so small. And it's just mentioned and it's described and it's got a lot of real estate in this text devoted to it. Why is this so important? And then finally this week, those two things split together. It's like, you're worried, wait a minute, are these guys neglecting their families? Doesn't Jesus say you honor your father and mother? Are they leaving to the point where they're leaving them high and dry and not taking care of them? Two paragraphs later, they're in Peter's house. Peter's mother-in-law is sick. Jesus takes care of her. And you're like, OK, no, we're not leaving them high and dry. It's just like the signal that the gospel writers are giving us saying, don't worry about wife, mother-in-law, mom, dad, Zebedee. God will take care of them. They're not leaving them to the point of irresponsibility. They're not leaving them high and dry. No, no the whole family would be there and Later on it says that Peter led about his wife. So sounds like she went around with him Yeah, he's he's he's not as famous as John the Baptist at this point, but he's well known and He was starting to get as much name recognition as John the Baptist. And when he was down in Judea baptizing and the Pharisees heard about that. And that's why Jesus left Judea and quit baptizing, because it wasn't time yet to have a confrontation with the Pharisees. And so so yeah, his his fame level was getting up close almost to John the Baptist because of his popularity. Well, it's The way that Mark portrays it he puts it in a section all about Christ's authority and so I think it was If it was just as popularity They wouldn't have stopped following him when they got back to Galilee and gone back fishing because he was already popular then It was it was a command and So they start following him, and then they're following him for a year, and then they go back fishing, and then it's like, he has to, all right, I'm gonna make it you don't catch anything. And then I do this miracle. Let's go over this again. Follow me. It's like, you got it? Follow me. Not fish. And then he has to do it again. So you fast forward to the end of Jesus' life. He dies. He's crucified. They're dejected. they go back fishing. And what does he do? After he rises from the dead, he goes out on the lake, he sees them fishing, he makes it so they don't catch any fish, and then he says, throw your nets on the other side of the boat, and they catch, and the nets are ripping and the boats are sinking, and they're like, wait a second, wait a second. And then John recognizes, wait, that's Jesus, and Peter jumps and swims, and he's like, follow me. And they're like, oh, like, so first time they thought it was like a one year deal. Then they thought it was like during his lifetime. And now he's like permanently follow me, you know, and then finally they get the hang of it. They don't go back fishing after that. So. Yeah.