I invite you to turn in your copy of God's Word to the gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 8. We'll be looking at verses 18 through 22 today, Matthew 4, 18 through 22. And as we continue in our look at this first gospel in the New Testament, we continue to ask the question, who is this Jesus? And we will see that that answer is increasingly revealed to us by the things that Jesus does and by the things that Jesus says. Today we're going to be looking at these few verses, verses 18 through 22. We're going to see him calling the first of the disciples. So Matthew chapter 4 verses 18 through 22, hear now the word of the Lord. While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he, that is Jesus, saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him." With us far the reading of God's Word, may He bless it to our hearing, especially as it's preached to us this morning. I was riding in the car one day many, many years ago. I was riding with my dad. I was probably something like seven years old when I saw a billboard that I pointed out to my dad because it was promoting something. I don't even remember what it was, but it was promoting something that was supposedly free. And my father explained to me on that day that even though they tell you that it's free to you, it's actually not free to someone else. He explained that nothing in life is truly free because someone always has to pay. And on that day I learned an important principle and that is that everything has a cost. Nothing is actually free, someone always has to pay for it. Think about your career. If you've pursued a career, what has been the cost of that career? You've had to go to school, maybe a university or college or a technical school. You had to sacrifice time, you had to sacrifice money, you had to sacrifice time spent with your family and so on. There are costs associated with anything that you value and that really is the issue. If you value something enough, then you'll be willing to pay that price. Why do I pay for medical care? Because I value my health. Why do I pay the mechanic to fix my car? Because I value, if not my car in and of itself, I value the freedom and transportation it provides. When you value something enough, then you're willing to pay the cost. to have it. If you don't value something, then you will not pay. I remember when I started my training now many, many years ago, over 40 years ago in the military, and we started off with a number of cadets, all who wanted to be commissioned officers in the US Air Force. Four years later, only 4% of those who started had graduated for a very simple reason. While some may have been medical dropouts or so on, many of them just were not willing to pay the cost along the way. That's just the way that sometimes is. If the cost is too high, we won't pay it. When I was back in Philadelphia, involved with a ministry called Faith at Work, we had a local reporter who had been offered a much higher profile job in Chicago. But his entire family was there in Philadelphia, so he turned it down because the cost was too high. Even though he wanted that higher profile job, we weigh it and we say in the end, the cost was too high. But when we read this passage, we're reminded that Jesus calls us to follow him. But to follow him comes at a cost. So the question for us this morning is, do you value Jesus enough to pay that cost? And what is the cost of following Jesus? Is it something that I can maybe set aside? Can I skip it? Can I get around it? Or must I pay it if I'm going to follow Him? And ultimately, really the real question for us this morning is, is it worth the cost to you? And only you can answer this. to follow Jesus. So as we look at this passage, we're going to see four things. We're going to see the call to follow, the person to follow, the purpose in following, and the cost to follow. So we're going to see the call to follow. Jesus calls us to follow Him. We're going to see the person to follow. Who is this person who calls us to follow Him? We're going to see the purpose for which Jesus calls us to follow Him. And lastly, we're going to see the cost. What is the cost to follow Jesus? So let's start with the first of those points. What is the call to follow? Now when we left Jesus last week, we saw that he had relocated from Nazareth, his hometown, to Capernaum. And as we saw, Capernaum was a small, moderately successful, and prosperous fishing town on the coast of the Sea of Galilee in the northern part of Israel. And Jesus had made Capernaum his base of operations. That was going to be his headquarters from his ministry for the next three years. And it is there, out of Capernaum, that we see Jesus calling his first disciples. We see in verses 19 through 20 that there are these two fishermen, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother. He calls them first. And then in verse 21, he calls two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother. Now, when we look at these first four disciples, Very often you'll hear certain pastors and teachers presenting them as being poor and uneducated. They're often portrayed as being country bumpkins, right, as backward type guys. And the whole idea is to show that, you know, here were these very ignorant people that just followed after Jesus, but actually that's a misconception. These four men may not have been aristocrats, but they were easily, to put it in today's terms, upper middle class businessmen, business owners. For example, in Mark chapter 1, in the parallel account, you remember the gospel of Mark, It has a lot of details that we don't see in the other Gospels because it's actually based on Peter's preaching. Peter was there for all of these things, and so he remembers a lot of those details. And in the parallel account in Mark chapter 1 verse 20, when we read in our passage the last verse, immediately they, being John and James, left the boat and their father and followed him. In the Mark account, it says immediately they left the boat and their father and their hired servants. and followed him. And so we have this added detail that they were able to afford hiring people for their business. So it was a going concern. In fact, when we look at the whole family of Zebedee, James and John and their father Zebedee, we realize that as a family they were rather well connected. For example, they had an inn with the high priest, and the high priest is the most central figure in all of Jewish culture. And the high priest would be living in the south, in Jerusalem, in the capital city, the religious center of Israel. And here they are all the way in Galilee, but their family was well enough connected that they had connections with him. So, for example, when Jesus was arrested some years later and brought before the high priest, we read in John 18 verse 15, it says, Simon Peter followed Jesus and so did another disciple. Now, whenever you see in the Gospel of John references to another disciple or that disciple, John always refers to himself sort of as a, never mentions, he mentions everybody else by name, but he never mentions himself. He takes a rather humble approach. And then he goes on in this passage and says, since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter stood outside the door. Now it's very highly unlikely that John, who was probably 19, maybe 21 at max, years of age, was best buds with the high priest personally, that they just hung out, you know, and did shots together and all that. No, it's more likely that the family of the Zebedee and those were very well connected and knew the high priest. And so he recognized, oh, this is Zebedee's boy. And so they let him in. So that tells us something about the family of Zebedee. Now, Peter and his brother Andrew may not have been as well situated. Peter was kept on the outside. But he still was fairly well off. For example, in the other Gospels, in Mark chapter 2 and Luke chapter 5, we see that Jesus is using Peter's home as the center for his headquarters, for his ministry. In fact, he lives in Peter's home during the time in Galilee. And Peter's home was so large, or at least large enough, that when we see Jesus preaching in the home, the home is described as having a very Roman villa style, has a courtyard in the center and a courtyard on the outside, and it's enough to accommodate a very large crowd that comes into that space. So these are the men then. that Jesus called. And he calls them as we see in verse 19, calling them to follow me. And so they did. We read in verse 20, immediately they, that is Peter and Andrew, left their nets and followed him. And then verse 22, immediately they, James and John, left their boat and their father and followed him. Now, when you first read that passage, it seems kind of abrupt, doesn't it? It kind of sounds like, you know, here's some guys working on their boats, doing their things, mending their nets, doing whatever, and some dude who they've never seen before just walks by, but his personality is so magnetic, and I've actually heard preachers put it this way, he's so magnetic and whatever that he just says, follow me. And these guys are just like, well, I guess I have to follow him. But it's not like that at all. Okay, these were folks that actually already knew Jesus, even though Matthew doesn't mention that here. In Luke chapter 5, for example, before Jesus calls his first disciples, he had already started his preaching ministry, and we saw a little bit of that last week. And in Luke chapter 5, we see Jesus preaching, and he uses Peter's boat. He pulls it out into the water because the crowds were so large that he couldn't address them on the beach. So he gets in the boat, pulls back, and is able to preach to all of them. He knew Peter. Peter knew who he was. And right after that comes this miraculous great catch that so amazed Peter that Peter's like, yeah, this guy really is the Messiah. We also see in the first chapter of the Gospel of John that you have John himself and Andrew, so two brothers, one from each of the families, right? Not two brothers themselves, but one of each of those families. Both of them were previously disciples of John the Baptist. And they already knew who Jesus was because John the Baptist introduces them to Jesus. Jesus is coming, walking towards them and he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He pointed Jesus out to these men. So they already knew who he was. What Matthew is doing is he's condensing that moment of the call to say these are men who knew who Jesus was, but at that point they were still involved in their vocations, their occupations of fishing. They were still, the two of them, disciples of John the Baptist. They had not yet gotten to the point where they were following Jesus, but when Jesus says, follow me now. He invites them to become His disciples. And that's important to recognize, that in calling them to follow Him, Jesus was not inviting them to take a pleasantly, you know, pleasant stroll along the beach. He was calling them to become His disciples, to attach themselves to Him permanently, to take on His values, to pursue the same things that Jesus was pursuing. And these men did so at quite a cost. They left well-paying jobs behind, they left their families behind, and especially in a culture where that was counter-cultural. In our culture, we don't think much of that. You get a job opportunity in another state, you just go and you do that, and you know, you send Christmas cards, and you come and visit on the holidays. But back then, this was considered rather counter-cultural, and yet these men did so, and they did so, it tells us, immediately. And they did so at a great risk and at a great cost, perhaps greater than we at first realize. You might remember back in chapter 3, the very beginning of chapter 3, we read about John the Baptist and it said, in those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea And his message was simply, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And you remember what we said about that message when we went through it. It basically is saying, look, the kingdom of God is coming, and when it comes, it comes with judgment. And that message is dangerous, because it's essentially saying, you will fall in line or you're going to get swept away by the judgment of God. And that is a threat to us. It's a threat to our desire to be autonomous. It's a threat to our desire to be the ones in charge of our life. And as a result of that, John the Baptist was arrested, as we read in verse 12 of our chapter 4. And not only arrested, but later we'll see that he is actually killed. Now, why does that apply here? Because as we saw last week, the very last verse, right before we pick up on today, on verse 17, we read that Jesus' message is identical. Take a look at that, verse 17. From that time, Jesus began to preach saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So he has that same dangerous message. Right? And so that same message puts Jesus in the same danger as John the Baptist, and it also puts in danger all those who follow Jesus. So this then is Jesus' call to follow. He's calling us, He's calling them to become disciples and to do so at great risk to themselves, even to the point of death, which some of these men experienced. And so these men did follow despite all of that. And what we see here is ultimately we're gonna see as we go through the gospel, Jesus calls us to follow him as well. The question for us is, will we follow Jesus? Will you follow him as he calls you to follow him and to obey him? Now that's His call to follow, but that brings up a new question. What kind of man is this who prompts this kind of immediate obedience? And that's our next point. Who is this person to follow? So let's take a look at that. That urgency of Jesus' call and the radical obedience of the disciples leads us to ask the question, who is this Jesus who calls and immediately people obey? Now let's take a look at what the Old Testament says using the language that we've seen here in this passage where it says that He called them to be fishers of men. It's interesting that in the Old Testament it pictures God as the one who is the fisher of men. And this is a number of different passages all throughout the prophets, both major and minor prophets. So, for example, in Amos chapter 4 verse 2 it says, So this is a sentence of judgment that is being pronounced. And we can look at other passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Habakkuk, and they're all equally ominous in tone. They all depict the coming judgment of God. They all stress that God is the judge. That's the background, and so these men, when they get called by Jesus, and he tells them, I'm gonna make you fishers of men, what they are hearing is language that they recognize from the Old Testament. Jesus is summoning them to join him in that task of gathering people up for the coming judgment of God. Remember, this was Jesus' message. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God is coming, and it comes with judgment. So Jesus, in calling them, is giving them evidence that indeed the kingdom has arrived, that it is here. And he's inviting them to be part of that process in which the king gathers up people for judgment. So when we ask the question that we did right at the very beginning, and we've been asking all throughout this gospel, who is this Jesus? Even in this call, the answer that comes forward to us is that this Jesus is judge. He is judge over all people. In 2 Corinthians 5.10, the Apostle Paul says, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Scott read that earlier in the service as our call to confession of sin. That passage should get your attention. Each and every one of us seated in this room will appear before the judgment seat of Christ. And Jesus, this man whom we see calling these men, is the judge who will judge every thought, every word, and every deed, whether good or evil. That should get our attention. In John 5, 27, it says, the father has given the son authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man. So you see, this judge has been given the authority over all peoples, including us. And that means that if that's the case, he not only is our judge, but he is our Lord. The word Lord, we sometimes use it now so blithely, we take that name in vain and we just say it for all sorts of reasons. Remember what it meant in those days to say that someone is Lord is to say that he is a master. Now that word is one that doesn't get used much nowadays because of certain connotations that it has with it, but that is what the word means. He is our master. Philippians 2.9 says, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So who is this Jesus? who calls, this one who has been given the authority to a call, he's the Lord. He is the one who can expect immediate obedience, not just from these men, but from all of us. And what that means is that he has authority over you as well, and he calls you and me to the same radical obedience that we see in these four men. So Jesus calls us, He is the Lord who has the authority to call. Now here's one of the things you need to recognize though is that when you follow this Lord, when you heed the call, He utterly transforms and changes your life. And He does so by expanding your horizons in ways that you perhaps couldn't even have imagined at first. Just think of these men. Think of the small world that these four men inhabited before they began to follow Jesus. They were fishermen in a small town and there were concerns about family and about business and so on. But they were in this little corner of the world, in this little province in the Roman Empire, and that was that. But after they began to follow Jesus, The scope of their lives expanded enormously. It went from Galilee to the entire world. It went from the smallest of interests to the deepest of thoughts and encompassed all the entire world and all the thought processes involved. These men became theologians and thinkers and sociologists. They became psychologists and strategists all because they followed Jesus. And it's a reminder that when we follow Jesus, he eliminates the trivial in your life and he expands your heart. Nothing will make you grow more than following Jesus. Because He is the Lord over all things. That's the power of this Jesus. He actually has the power to fashion new lives. The power to fashion and create a new reality for you. You sit there and you say, well my life doesn't really add up to much of anything, when you follow Jesus as does. And that's because He has the power to make something new of you. He has, as we read in John chapter 1, the power to create and to create from nothing. As we'll read later in chapter 8 in our gospel, he has the power to cure. He has the power over the physical world, the power over the spiritual world. But above all, as we see here, he has the power to change people's lives. Notice what he tells you, I will make you fishers of men. He doesn't say I invite you to become fishers of men. I would like to show you how to become fishers of men. No, I will make you. fishers of men. He has the power to transform your life. That same power that we see here is available to each and every one of us even today when we follow Jesus as it comes to us through His Holy Spirit. And that power enables us and gives us the ability so that we are able to deal, that it's sufficient to deal with all the problems that we face. It enables you to change that sinful habit, to deal with your broken marriage, to face that devastating diagnosis, and to handle all the challenges that come at you at your workplace. That's the power of this Lord who is able to transform and change you. Look, you're going to follow someone, right? And if you're going to follow someone, look to this Jesus, the one who is the Lord of power. He's the one that you want to follow. Now, what is the purpose in following him? That's our third point. We've seen his call to follow. We've seen who is this person. whom we are to follow, Lord, judge over all. Now let's look at the purpose. When Jesus called these men to follow, he was not calling them to be mere supporters, to be those who would just cheer him on, who would, you know, perhaps provide a little money or so on. No, he's calling them to be fully engaged in kingdom life. He's calling them to become fishers of men and to have an active role in ministry. You might remember a few years ago, we went through the book of Acts. And the book of Acts, you know, look at the way I just referred to it, the book of Acts. But the Acts of what? And it's often called the Acts of the Apostles. But you might remember when we went through it, we really said that the name should be the continuing Acts of Jesus through his apostles. Because really what you get is Jesus' earthly life And when he dies, he's raised, he ascends into heaven, and then he sends down his spirit to inhabit his people, and they go out and they continue his earthly ministry. We are called, just as these men were called, to continue that kingdom work, each and every one of us. If you are a follower of Jesus, then God has a pattern and a purpose for your life. When Jesus calls you to follow him, he's not calling you to be on the sidelines. He's not calling you to be a cheerleader. Each of you has a role to play in his kingdom. Each of you has a particular purpose in following him. Now, maybe we're not all called to be full-time evangelists, as were these four men who would go off into all the world with the gospel. But there are certain things we can say. For example, we're all called to be witnesses of what Jesus has done, regardless of the setting in which we find ourselves. So you can be a witness for Jesus, whether you are in your school, whether you are in your work, whether you are in your neighborhood, whether you are at your club, whatever the case may be, you're called to be a witness. In the next chapter, chapter five, verse 16, Jesus will say, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Now, some of you might say, well, I can't do that because I'm not a very good evangelist or I'm not a professional speaker like you. But yet, Jesus doesn't give us any caveats. And yes, you can talk to anyone. You don't have to, look, when you talk to somebody and you want to witness to them, when you want to share what Christ has done, do what Jesus does in this passage. He uses language that the people understand. He calls these men who are fishermen using familiar terms. I will make you fishers of men. So you don't have to talk to people and, you know, use words like propitiation or superlapsarianism or any of those things. Right? Those are fun words. We can use them in appropriate context. But you can just talk to them the way that we very often talk about what Jesus has done right here. What do we say? We say that Jesus lived the perfect life that none of us here can live. Those are simple words. We say that Jesus died the death that we all deserve to die because of our sin. We can use words like that. A few weeks ago, we talked about what is it that Jesus did, and we said that when he dies on the cross, what does he do? He brings our debt from infinitely red, right? We use the counting terms to zero, and then we said that after that, he lives the perfect life, so he brings our account perfectly and infinitely into the black. Just use language and terms that the people around you understand. Terms that you understand. And that's all it takes to be able to reach out to them. And then be persistent and be diligent in that task. Be like fishermen who are patient. Have you ever seen a person who is fishing, right? Even though they look like they may not be doing anything, they're just being patient. They're waiting for that right moment. And yet they're still active and diligent. They'll use all the means to catch that fish. You might catch a fish with a rod and reel. You might do it with a net. You might do it with a spear. You might do it with your hands. Use all these different means, but be diligent, be patient, use language they can understand, and before you know it, you'll be out there talking to everybody about Jesus. So, you may not be an evangelist full-time, but we are called to witness. I think the key thing, though, is that we look in our own life and we ask the question, what is that purpose for me? The real question to see is, do I see my life as part of kingdom life? Or do I see what I do on the outside, you know, pretty much what fills up most of the week, and then I come in and I do some churchy things, either here at church or various times of the week. You know, I do, oh, I might pray, I might do this, I might have a Bible study. Do you do it that way or do you see the whole of your life as being involved in the kingdom? Do you have that perspective in everything that you do? The real question I think that comes down to is, whom do you serve throughout the week? Do you serve Jesus or do you serve yourself? Because you see, there's a lot of folks who might be involved with Jesus. Now listen to this, and yet they're still serving themselves because the reason that they have contact with Jesus or think they have contact or want to pursue Jesus is because they want Him to serve us. Him to meet our needs and to do what we want Him to do. And that's not serving Jesus, that's still serving ourselves. So the real question when we're asking, what is my purpose in following Jesus? Is to ask, do you have that kingdom perspective? Do you serve yourself or do you serve Jesus? Each of us then has been called to a particular vocation, to a particular role in kingdom life. And yes, we will say you're unable to fulfill that role on your own. Remember, these disciples had to be enabled to become fishers of men. But Jesus is the one who enables us and he equips us to be able to take on that role. So I challenge each and every one of us to not stay on the sidelines, but to get in the game, recognizing that we are equipped and enabled by the master himself to be able to do those things that he calls us to do. Now I recognize that also means that you won't always know where following Jesus is going to lead. These fishermen were called away from their homes and their occupations, and they didn't know where that road led. For all of them, it ended up being hardship and suffering, and for a good many of them, it was death and martyrdom. But they did so because they valued Jesus, and therefore they were willing to pay the cost. And that brings us to our last point. What is the cost to follow Jesus? We look at these four men, and each of these men left everything that they had to follow Jesus. This perhaps might be the most radical thing I say this morning, but that is the minimum requirement to follow Jesus. Not the maximum where you give up everything. It's the minimum. Jesus himself said as much. In Luke 14, 33, he said, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciples. Now that's not me saying it. That's not the Presbyterian church doctrine saying it. That is Jesus himself saying it. Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. That's the minimum requirement. Does it mean that we're not expected to have homes or families and so on? No, of course not. And God knows, Jesus knows what our needs are. We're going to see that next week when we begin the Sermon on the Mount itself. But those things cannot get in the way of our following Jesus. So He calls us to be willing to give up everything in order to follow Him. And very often the things that He calls us to give up, the things that He calls us to sacrifice, are the things that we most value. And you saw that in the reading that we had earlier from the Gospel of Mark. I'm gonna read that again, only this time I'm gonna do it from Matthew chapter 19. A man came to Jesus saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, which ones? And Jesus said, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, all these I have kept. What do I still lack? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. Jesus knew what his idol was in his life. Jesus knew the thing that he valued more than everything else, that he want To have, as he says here, what does it take to have eternal life? Did he want eternal life? Yes, but not enough. As we saw at the beginning of the sermon, there are certain things that we say, yeah, I'd like that, but I'm not willing to pay the cost. In the end, this man was unwilling to pay the cost. When we read this, again, I say it does not mean that every one of us has to leave our homes and our occupations and sell every last thing that we have. But it does mean that these things cannot stand in the way of following Jesus. As Basil of Caesarea, who was an early fourth century theologian, once wrote, Those who are strongly seized with the desire of following Christ can no longer be concerned with anything pertaining to this life, not even with the love of parents or other relatives, insofar as this runs counter to the calling of the Lord. I think he put it very well in that sermon. These things cannot get in the way, insofar as they run counter, they block and stop you from being able to follow Jesus. And so I ask you this question, what are those things in your life that you still sit there and say, well, I want to follow Jesus, but I think I need to hang on to this. And Jesus is saying, you really can't follow me if you're hanging on even to one of those things over and above me. The wonder is, and you also saw it in the reading that Scott gave to us a moment ago, is that even though he calls us to surrender everything, Jesus graciously gives us back many, many times more. than what we surrender. We read in Mark chapter 10 verse 28 where Peter said to him, see we have left everything and followed you. Jesus said to him, truly I say to you there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel. Notice, it's for those things. Not anything else. But for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. You hear what Jesus is saying? Yes, you might lose certain things, but I will graciously give you so much more than you ever could have imagined. I have one brother, and he's a wonderful brother. And yet in Christ, I have hundreds of brothers. I have one mother. She is a wonderful mother, and you all know that direct experience. And yet, in Christ, I have hundreds of mothers and fathers and children. and houses, right? As believers, we connect. You've done that. You've traveled to other places, maybe in this country, even other parts of the world, and you find that believer, and immediately there's that connection, and you know that you have a welcome, and you know that you have a place where you'll be cared for, no matter what happens in life. That's why we say in this church, nobody here in this church will ever go hungry or be out on the streets. Because Jesus, through all of this, gives us all those things, but with persecutions in this life. He's not promising you easy street, and all that gospel prosperity stuff is nonsense. He's not saying you're gonna have a Cadillac, and you're gonna have this, you're gonna have whatever. But he is saying that he'll provide through the church for all those things, and ultimately give us eternal life, where all those evil things drop away. So yes, He is a Lord who demands all, but a Lord that gives you more than you could ever gain on your own. And He does so graciously because we don't deserve it. So as we hear this call, people of God, I want to remind you in this passage, look at it carefully. Jesus commands us to follow Him. It's not a request. He's not asking. Remember, He is the Lord who has the authority to call us and to expect immediate obedience. And that makes Him different from every other teacher, every other wise man, every other religious leader who has ever lived. In those days, when you had a rabbi, somebody that you wanted to follow, the disciples sought that man out. Here, Jesus seeks us out. and he calls us to follow him, whether we want to or not. In those days also a rabbi debated with his disciples. You might say, why would they debate? Why would they go over things? Because the rabbis recognized that they were not infallible, they were not God, and they each learned from one another. The rabbi would throw something out, the student would discuss it, and it would go back and forth. There were insights that were to be had, and so on. It was also very common for the rabbis to refer and say, well, according to the Rabbi Gamaliel, or according to this passage. But notice Jesus does not do that. As we'll see later in chapter 7 verse 29, it says, he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. Jesus doesn't sit there and debate with us. As our Lord, he doesn't have to learn anything from us and it's not a mutual exercise. He speaks without reference to any other authority because he is that final authority. So it's a command to follow him. And yet so many of us delay, and we do so for any number of reasons. Oh, we mean to follow him, we mean to walk the straight and narrow path. But the timing is just not good right now, right? In Luke chapter nine, we read, to another Jesus said, follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. And yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. When we follow Jesus, we follow him. You can't carry anything else with you. So what is it then that holds you back from answering the call of Jesus? Are you just too busy to bother? Is it the volume of your busy life that drowns out his voice so that you don't hear it? Are you one of those persons who made a start to follow but you easily got diverted because of all the shiny things in life? Or because you returned to self-sufficiency or at least thinking that you were self-sufficient? You need to hear the same sense of urgency that Jesus had in his message to these men, in his call to these men. That same urgency applies to us today. And if you do not hear the call of Jesus, that is the ultimately most foolish thing you can do. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7, Jesus says everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. If you do not heed the call, disaster awaits in your life. And so it is for each and every person. And some of you might say, I get that. I agree with it. I'm just going to wait until tomorrow. I'm going to wait for a more favorable time. I remind you of something else that Jesus said in Luke chapter 12. Jesus told a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this, I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So you see people of God, you might sit there and say, well, I'll wait until tomorrow. I will wait until more appropriate time. But you don't know what your time is. It is foolish to not listen to these words. It is foolish to not heed them. It is foolish to wait to answer them. Today, Jesus still calls. He calls you to believe in him. He calls you to repent of your sin, and he calls you to follow. Will you answer that call? Of course, it all depends. Do you value Jesus enough? What value do you place on Him? Are you willing to pay the cost to follow Him? Let's remember grace, the grace that saves us, is free. But the cost of following Jesus is extraordinarily high because it's everything. It's all or nothing when you follow Jesus Christ. As the 19th century Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond once said, the entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing. The annual subscription is everything. That's the cost. And some of you might say, well, this is a very unpleasant message. I thought I was coming to hear good things, you know, where Jesus comes and does whatever I want. He's like a gumball machine in the sky and I say nice things about him and I put my little quarter in and he comes and he gives me whatever I ask. This is something I just don't want to even think about. But here's the thing I'm going to tell you is that you have to respond to that call. As you've heard me say in this study in the book of Matthew, is that Jesus is the most dangerous person whom you will ever meet. Because whenever you encounter him, you're not free to just walk away untouched. He never lets you remain neutral. Every encounter with Jesus, you must walk away saying, I am either for him or I am against him. He is that kind of man. And so he calls you today Even through me, even through the preaching of the word. You have been called, how will you respond? Think about it in just a few moments. Tomorrow, you'll be returning back to the world. With all the demands that the world places on you, all the costs. And I suspect every one of you will pay that cost. Of going to work, and doing all the things that your job requires, and your career, and so on. Why? Because you value those things. Or at the very least, you value the income from those things. Do you value Jesus? That's the real question. Will you pay the cost to follow him? May the answer be yes for all of us. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, Jesus calls each and every one of us here. It is not a request. It is not something open for debate that we can sit down with the Lord of heaven and question how he runs things. He is the Lord who expects and who deserves immediate obedience. We confessed earlier in the service that we are sinful people who very often choose to follow our own way. We pray, Lord, that as we ponder these words that we might be reminded that Jesus calls us to obey him, to follow him. And the amazing thing for all of those who do is that it will transform our lives in good ways that we can't even begin to imagine many times. Even when things look hard and difficult and we encounter so many challenges and hardships in life, yet we see that Jesus rewards us And Jesus always answers and graciously gives us more than we can imagine. We pray that each and every one of us, Father, here will be enabled to follow and heed that call. We pray for those, Father, who have never answered that call at all in their lives. We ask that you would show them, even this morning, that it would be foolish to do otherwise. Give them, Father, the desire to follow your Son, even today. And for those of us who have been disciples, some for a few years, some for now decades, we pray that you will continue to equip and enable us to do what we cannot do on our own, which is to pay that cost. Help us to see more and more the value in Jesus, even as we see him here in his word, as we continue to ponder his glory, his wonder, his splendor, his majesty, his beauty. And as those things enrapture us, May we be more and more willing to pay the cost because of what we gain when we follow Him. Father, we live now in a world where people do not follow Christ and are in open rebellion against You and Your Son. We read about it in Psalm 2, where it says the nations have literally conspired against You, and yet, O Lord, You laugh. Because what can they do? And so, Father, we pray to you as Jesus himself has called us to do in Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 2, to pray for the needs of this world. And we can lift him up to Jesus because he is the sovereign Lord and judge over all things.