FBC Sunday Evening Service

Made it back this evening, and if you had a good afternoon, it's a beautiful day, the Lord's given us, got nice and warm this afternoon, and good afternoon for a walk and maybe a nap too, whatever you did to get a day of rest.

I hope you were able to get that. I want to begin tonight in our hymnal with number 371. 371, the theme tonight is really discipleship, as the Lord, Mark records the Lord calling the disciples, the first few disciples.

So let's begin with this hymn of the disciples' heart. Let's stand, shall we, as we sing, now that you got settled. 371, Passion for Thee. My heart, O dear Father, on Thee and Thee only Give me a thirst for Thy presence divine Lord, keep me focused on loving Thee wholly

Purge me from earth, turn my heart after Thee Passion for Thee, O Lord, set a fire in my soul Lord, Thy power not just to serve, but to love Thee With all of my heart for service Let love for Christ every motive inspire

Teach me to follow in selfless submission Now my joy and my heart's one desire set afire in Thee Passion for Thee, O Lord, set a fire in my soul And a thirst for my God just to serve But to love Thee with all of my heart for service

Kevin, would you please, we just want to read a psalm and then sing it, Psalm 147, or 146, I mean, Psalm 146. We'll read this together and then sing it. I'm trying to remember off the top of my head if the tune in the Psalter is a familiar one to us.

I don't recall off the top of my head. Anyway, Psalm 146, as long as I read this psalm. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. While I live, I will praise the Lord. I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

Do not put your trust in princes nor in a son of man in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth, and that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord raises those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers. He relieves the fatherless and widow, but the way of the wicked, he turns upside down.

The Lord shall reign forever. Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. Now this psalm is a good reminder to us in this time politically when back in November, the outcome of the election, a lot of people were totally devastated because they thought their hope was gone, their help was gone.

I know some people who are still holding onto the idea that former President Trump is going to have a comeback here he's going to be declared as the rightful president and our current president is going to be displaced and he'll be put in place and so forth.

I understand some of the sentiment there, but as believers, here's where we go, right? Here's where we belong. We belong right here. We don't put our trust in princes or in the son of a man.

Why?

As they all pass away, they all pass off the scene. Sometimes it's because of an election, sometimes it's because of death. Verse four talks about the fact that our, you know, any man in whom we might put our hope, in whom we expect help, from whom we expect help, is going to pass away, he's going to die and all the plans that he had to help us, they perish.

Now, where's our hope? Where's our help? Well, happy is the one who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God.

Why?

Because he's eternal, he's timeless and his plans, they never perish. They never pass away. His plans are always perfectly accomplished. Well, let's sing the psalm that goes along with this, number 329 in our Red Psalters.

329, while I live, my soul shall praise him. So do we know this tune?

We do.

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

It's not that one. Okay, praise my soul, the king of heaven. All right. All right, let's sing it together. While I live, my soul shall praise him To my God my heart shall sing Hope in none who cannot save thee Sons of men, nor prince, nor king, hallelujah O my soul, let praises ring Praise his lots and plans, forsaken with him be dead

Tonight, there are any testimonies to share while you're thinking. Let me give you some prayer requests or updates. Kyle had some, got some results back today, said the bleeding, it was cranial bleeding, had stopped.

There wasn't any further, and they didn't see any, didn't see any tumors or anything like that. So that was positive. He was yet to get some results back from a CAT scan. That was results from an MRI.

So he's yet to get back results from a CAT scan. So pray, pray that there's nothing there. They said, of course, you'd surely love to see some answers as to what might have caused it. And so what they're thinking is just spontaneous bleeding.

In other words, it just happened. There's no particular reason for it. Well, that would be a good result because then there's no surgery or anything like that. So pray for Kyle and for Yvonne and his family as they await those results.

And then pray for Rachel. Rachel's here tonight. This is her last night with us for a while, at least a month. Did you hear anything about July? Not yet, okay. She'd like to stay away from us longer, but she's leaving Tuesday for a preceptorship down near Peoria.

So pray for her to have a good experience and learn much, and the Lord will use her during that time. I have not heard an update today on Jodi, so I continue to pray for her. All right, any word of testimony to share tonight that to think?

All right, well, let's take our Bibles and turn to Mark 14. I wanna read our text tonight, and then we'll sing another hymn for the message. Psalm, or Mark chapter one, Mark one. And tonight we're gonna focus on verses 14 through 20.

14. So what's happened so far in the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus is prepared for, and that's the ministry of John the Baptist, preparing for Jesus. And Jesus is prepared. He's prepared by the public baptism and by the wilderness temptation.

And now he begins his ministry in verse 14. It says, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe the gospel. And as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting an ad into the sea, for they were fishermen. Then Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.

They immediately left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther from there, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who also were in the boat, mending their nets.

And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went after him. The Lord had his blessing to the reading of his word. And let's take our hymnals again and turn to number 387.

387, the hymn, I Will Follow. 387. I will follow thee, my Savior, where 'er the pathway may go Through the storm or through the valley Or through great trials so low I rest in thee, trust in thee, I place my trust in thee My life in thy hand I will follow thee, my Savior, lead on, my shepherd, lead on I will live for thee, my Savior, the war and strife mark the way I'm so weak, but thou art mighty, so live through me day by day I rest in thee, trust in thee, I place my life in thy hand I will follow thee, my Savior, lead on, my shepherd, lead on I surrender all, my Savior, I hold no thing back from thee My heart is thine to use, Lord, thy living sacrifice be In thee, I place my life in thy hands I will follow thee, my Savior, lead on, my shepherd, lead on

It's a brief prayer before we turn back to Mark chapter one. So our Father, we just sung some songs about discipleship, about having a passion for you, about following you wherever you would lead us. These are hymns of commitment, hymn of longing, and a hymn of commitment.

And these are the heart, these express the heart of the disciple, the follower of Jesus. Pray that would be our heart. And challenge us tonight with this call of discipleship from Mark one, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

The Call of Christ and the Foundation of Discipleship

Oftentimes, and been a lot of times in history where some man and sometimes woman has been able, has been successful at rounding up some followers and sometimes a pretty good group of them. You think, for example, of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the founding and the laying the foundation for the cult of Mormonism.

Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, founder of Seventh-day Adventism, I believe.

What's that?

Christian science, okay. And there's another woman that's a founder of Seventh-day Adventism. Brian Mathis used to be in Seventh-day Adventism. Some of you may know him and he could tell me who that is right off the top of my head.

It escaped me, but anyway. And then we have them in the political arena, too. People who, because of some great achievement that they've accomplished in life, they're able to gather quite a following.

But what often happens is when that charismatic leader, whatever, passes off the scene, the disciples, the followers, they disintegrate, they split up, and they go on. And a lot of times, the movement just falters and fails.

Not always the case, obviously. You look at Mormonism, which is one of the largest cults in the world and still quite successful at rounding up followers. But what we have before us tonight in this passage is the preeminent one to follow, the preeminent one to call disciples to himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in this text that we've read, he issues a clarion call to some individuals to follow him, to become his disciples. And I would suggest that that call is a call to you and me as well. But the call, it's not based on his popularity, and it's not based on some great achievement of success.

I mean, by the time, at the point where he calls these disciples to himself, he's not calling them to himself and they're going because he's conquered Rome or anything like that. There's something else that leads them to follow him, and it certainly has to do with who he is, who he is, and what he came to do.

Not on the basis of who he is and what he came to do, so he issues a call to you and me to follow him as well. But in verses 14 and 15, you see what are really the, what is really the foundation of discipleship.

We can look at it, we can kind of divide it into two parts. The foundation of discipleship is the gospel. And it is, in the first place, the proclamation of the gospel. Because, I mean, after all, good news is only good news if it's proclaimed as news.

I mean, to have good news and to keep it to oneself, it doesn't accomplish the purpose of getting a message out to people who need to hear good news. So it's the proclamation of the gospel. And Jesus comes, after John is put in prison, Jesus comes to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

And as he does so, he's proclaiming its availability. The kingdom of God is at hand, he says. The gospel is available to you who hear it. The good news is available to you who hear it. And this is a message of good news that is being proclaimed regularly.

He is, the verse literally says Jesus was coming. He was coming and preaching the gospel. So it's not that he just came to Capernaum and one time, you know, stood up on a street corner and preached this message.

This was his practice. He came to Galilee and he was preaching the gospel of the kingdom everywhere he went in the kingdom. And here's the thing about this good news of the kingdom of heaven which is at hand.

John preached it, John preached it. And he preached that the king who was coming, the Messiah was coming and he was coming very quickly. John proclaimed it, Jesus preached it, and so did the disciples.

In fact, flip over a couple of pages in your Bible to Mark 3 and look at verse 14. Mark 3, 14, says then Jesus appointed 12 that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach. And what were they to preach?

They were to preach the good news of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom. In chapter six, verse 12, it says, in verse seven it says he called the 12 to himself and began to send them out two by two and gave them power over unclean spirits and so on.

And then in verse 12, it says so they went out and preached that people should repent. They were preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And of course, at the end of the gospel in chapter 16, after the resurrection, Jesus commissions his disciples, his followers, to continue this ministry of proclaiming the gospel.

In verse 15, he said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And verse 20 tells us that's exactly what they did. They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them.

So the proclamation of the gospel is foundational to discipleship. But a gospel that is simply proclaimed is not enough for someone to become a disciple. They have to accept it. They have to receive that gospel for themselves.

No one will become a follower or become a disciple of Christ who rejects the gospel. They won't do so. They won't be the disciple as James and Peter, Andrew, James, and John were in this particular passage.

You have to accept the gospel. To accept the gospel, I need to see it as real, see the reality of this gospel. Jesus says, as he's preaching the gospel in verse 15, he says, the time is fulfilled. The time has come.

The time is fulfilled. And the kingdom of God is at hand. It is near, literally, is what that means. It is near. The kingdom of God is near. And if only all who heard this message could see the reality that the king of the kingdom is right there before them proclaiming this message.

There is in this kingdom, in this good news message, a ruler with adequate authority. He is the Messiah. He is the Christ, a ruler with adequate authority. The kingdom of God is at hand. There is a realm over which this ruler reigns and a realm that is subject to him.

In this age, it is the church that is to be subject to the ruler, Christ. And his rulership is executed. We call Jesus Lord. He is the Lord Jesus, who is Messiah. Why do we call him Lord? Why do we call him Lord?

Lordship, lordship implies one who is a master, one who is our ruler, one who is our authority. We need to see the reality. If we're going to accept the gospel, see the reality of the good news, and that is the kingdom of God is at hand.

But there are some demands to this kingdom. Jesus brings them out here. He says repent and believe the gospel. There is, in accepting this gospel, the two-sided coin of repentant faith. Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.

You're not going to have genuine faith in Christ without repentance. And you can't have biblical repentance without faith in Christ. The two go hand in hand. Repentance, what is repentance all about? It's a turning, it's a change of mind.

Repent means to change. It's a change of mind that results in a change of behavior, a turning from sin. A good example of that is what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, how you turn from idols to God, to follow the one true God.

That's a good image or good picture of repentance, turning from sin and unbelief because the mind has been changed about who Jesus is and what Jesus came to do and turning to him, repentance. And the other side of that coin is faith.

Believe, he says, believe in the good news. Turn to Christ, put your entire trust in Christ. Now watch this. If you are filled with a sense of guilt and shame over your sin and you repent of it, if you will, but you don't have faith in Jesus, that just leads you to despair.

This leads you to despair because what's the answer to that guilt and shame that you sense, you feel because of your knowledge of your sin? You have no answer to it. Faith without repentance is presumption, is presumption.

So let me give you a couple of examples of this. I served as an assistant pastor for a while, for a couple years, and most of the time I was in that ministry, that church had a minister of, a pastor who was in charge of evangelism, and he loathed the idea of repentance, he loathed it.

In fact, he taught a class on personal evangelism, and he had some gospel tracts, and he read it, stood up before the class, and he read from this tract, and at the end of the tract, it said, if you, basically, if you believe the message of this tract and you want to become a Christian, the tract said, you need to repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and the guy, I mean, he just went ballistic, and he tore that tract up and said, this is wrong, this is wrong, no, you don't, repentance, he says, that's just a work, that would be work salvation, to say you have to repent in order to be saved.

No, no, no, repentance is wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong, and he was adamant about that. Now, the pastor of the church, he chided him for it, but he kept his position, and that public position of his anti-repentance stance didn't change, but that's, he's not unique in that position, and I've known some other ministries that had that idea that, no, you can't tell people to repent and turn from their sin, because that's just a work, and what that ends up creating is a profession without possession, if you will, it leads people to being very presumptuous, another example of that, I sat in a personal evangelism class, where the teacher was speaking about dealing with somebody, and I don't remember if someone in the class raised the question, or if he raised the question as rhetorical, and he said, I think somebody in the class raised the question, he said, what do you do if you're visiting with this couple, they're living together, and you're witnessing to them, and tell them, show them how the gospel, and so forth, and the guy says, well, if I accept Christ, are we gonna have to stop living together?

What do we say to that? And the teacher said, no, you don't tell them that, you don't tell them that, because the issue is not, they don't have to quit living together in order to be saved, they just need to believe in Christ, they just need to ask Jesus to be their savior, and I was like, you're kidding me, right?

Do you not realize that the reason he asked that question is because he was aware that his living arrangement was a violation of God's will, and there was a sense of guilt on his part? Don't you realize you say, well, yes, that's exactly what it would imply, because you would wanna live a holy, righteous life, if you were genuinely converted, you would wanna change that living situation, you know it's sin, and you deal with it, but no, you don't, so faith, repentance without faith leads to despair, faith without repentance, it just leads to presumption, you can just live any old way you want to, no, the acceptance of the gospel involves repentant faith, repentant faith, and I think it's a good way to express it like that, what kind of faith is it that we need in Christ?

A repentant faith, a repentant faith. Well, with that foundation laid, let's look at the followers of this discipleship in verses 16 and 19. As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea.

They were fishermen, and Jesus calls them, and then in verse 19, he also saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were also in the boat, mending their nets, and he called them. What can we discern about these individuals?

Well, in the first place, they're just common people, they're just common people, they were fishermen, they weren't highly educated, they weren't greatly respected in their community, they're just, I mean, there are a lot of people who are fishermen, it's just a trade, they're just common tradesmen.

They had no fame, they had no fortune, they had no real power or authority over anybody else, they were just fishermen. And that's pretty consistent with the way God works. Whom does he call? You know what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26 through 28, right?

Not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise in the world's eyes are called, but who's called? The weak, foolish, why? Well, the praise would be to God. No, who's he call? The common people. And in fact, you know, I was thinking about that as I was reviewing this this afternoon.

Okay, this is 19, 20, 21, so 41 years. If you counted the church I worked in while in college, that would be, let's see, one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine. Eight or nine different churches that I pastored in 40, or been involved in, worked in, in 41 years.

In all of those churches, there weren't any people in those churches that would be considered really famous or highly respected in the world. Now, the closest to that was in Schaumburg, when we were in Schaumburg for a couple of years.

Some of you, do you know the name Harry Volkman? He was a weatherman for WGN, and every once in a blue moon, he would come to the church, and that was a big deal. You know, somebody made a big deal out, you know, Harry Volkman, and a lot of times he would, in that night's weather broadcast, he would say something about being at that church today, and just a shout-out to the people, the good people of that church.

And everybody thought it was a great thing that this famous weatherman in Chicago was at church. Other than that, the only other famous person that I have ever seen in any of the churches I've been in was Peter, what was his name?

He was a representative in the house, was it the Illinois House of Representatives? Anyway, over in the Chicago area, and he came to the church a couple times, you know, of course, campaigning, drumming up votes.

But again, everybody thought it was a big deal. You know, we got this representative in church today. But besides those two individuals, I can't think of anybody in all the years of ministry that was famous, but I know a lot of people, just common, ordinary people.

Jobs, like normal jobs, get up, go to work, do their thing. Homemakers, you know, not many mighty, not many rich and famous. This is the way God works, and it's evident at the very beginning of Jesus calling people to discipleship.

He calls common people. Also, interesting to note that they're busy. They're busy. They're not workaholics, I wouldn't suggest, but they're busy people. Here, in verse 16, Simon and Andrew are casting an ad into the sea.

They're doing their job. They're faithful in doing their job. In verse 19, James and John are mending their nets. They're done fishing for the day, and they gotta fix their nets. They're just mending their nets.

You know, the Lord wants and uses working disciples. Lazy disciples are not, it's kind of an oxymoron. Again, I'm not calling, and you understand, you know, if you've been around here long enough, you know I don't condone workaholism.

I think there's a balance in life that needs to be maintained and sought after, but laziness is not something that the Lord just kind of overlooks. Oh yeah, you know, he's calling these guys while they're doing their job.

I think there's some significance to that, and they're also persistent people in this sense. They're fishermen. They're fishermen, and one thing you know about fishermen is they have to be patient. You know, they cast their net on one side, pull it up, nothing in there.

Cast it on the other side. They keep going back and forth. They keep at it, they keep at it, and they keep at it even though they fail at it. You know, they come in after one night out fishing. They don't catch any fish.

They go out the next night. They just keep at it. They just keep at it. They're persistent, responsible individuals. Well, these are the men that Jesus calls in this particular case to be his followers.

The Seven Fundamentals of Discipleship

All right, now, in the time remaining, let's look at verses 17 and 18, and then at verse 20, and I want to just share with you, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven different fundamentals of discipleship that come out here in this passage.

Seven fundamentals of discipleship. One of them is that there is a call to heed, a call to heed. Jesus says to these individuals, come after me, verse 17. He says to them, follow me, or come after me.

Come after me. Now, what's significant here is that Jesus takes the initiative. He takes the initiative. He issues the call, and he still does. So, and here's the way it happens even today. People sit in a service like this, or a church service, or they are witnessed to by a friend, a loved one, Jim or Stan at the jail ministry, witnessing to these guys, and they'll talk to some people, will talk to some people, will preach to some people, and they sit there like bumps on a log, unbelievers, unconverted, bumps on a log.

They might even say, oh, that was interesting, and go out unchanged, uninterested, to do any more than what they've just done. But then there are some who hear the exact same message, and they hear Jesus calling to them, saying, come after me.

They hear the gospel call in the gospel call, and they respond. This is Jesus taking the initiative to call unto himself. So there's a call to heed. He issues the call, but there is a self. Here's the second fundamental of discipleship.

There is a self to renounce. In heeding the call, what am I gonna do? Well, I have to follow. I have to follow. Now, in the case of Peter, let me show you, turn to Luke chapter five. I'm gonna talk about a self to renounce.

Here is the expression of Peter's self-renunciation. Luke chapter five, verse eight. And this is after Jesus performs the miracle of the draught of fishes, you know, nets full of fish, and the boat's about to sink.

So in verse eight, when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Here is his self-renunciation. He fell down at Jesus' feet. He fell down at his feet.

He fell down at his feet, recognizing the superiority of Christ, recognizing the significance of the one before whom he stood. He fell down at Jesus' feet, and in his self-renunciation, he sees himself as unworthy.

Depart from me, I am a sinful man. I'm a sinful man. So what Peter's recognizing is when Jesus calls him, to himself, Peter recognizes that by following, he's not doing God any favors. Jesus doesn't need Peter.

Jesus wants Peter. And I saw this rather vividly. I mean, I think it was well done in this last episode of The Chosen. I mentioned it this morning. It's the account where, I mean, and largely fictional, because we don't know the details regarding the calling of Simon Zelotes, Simon the Zealot, one of the disciples, right?

We just know that in that list of disciples, there's Simon the Zealot. You know who the Zealots were? They were a company of Jews who were training to overthrow Rome and do so with clandestine attacks and assassinations and things like that.

Simon was one of these guys. He was a zealot, and Jesus made him into a disciple. And there was a scene in that episode that, again, is fictionalized, but it brings out the point that I want to make where Simon, the zealot, has his dagger that he would use in assassinating somebody.

He's carrying it with him. You know, he's trained to be a fighter and to use that dagger and to protect. He's now, he says to Jesus, I can protect you. I can protect you. We got, whoever comes after, you know, I'm.

And he hands Jesus his dagger to show Jesus his dagger so Jesus will be impressed. And he is, he looks at it and says, wow, this is pretty impressive. Simon's, you know, really proud of it. And then Jesus takes the thing and he throws it into the river, throws the dagger into the river.

And Simon's like, I thought you needed my skills. And Jesus says to him, Simon, I don't need you, but I want you for my own. I want you for my disciple. One of my disciples. And this is a good understanding for us to have.

Jesus doesn't need us. God doesn't need anything. But he wants, he wants you, he wants you to follow him. A self to renounce. And then back in Mark chapter one, there is a cause. Here's the third fundamental of discipleship.

There's a cause to claim, a cause to claim. Jesus says to him, to them, I will make you become fishers of men, fishers of men. They have no idea, they have no idea what that means. I get fishers of fish, throw a net into the sea and cast in the net and get what I can.

But what does it mean to be a fishers, a fisher of men? Well, we know as we look back on this and all the training that they were yet to receive that it would include a message that needed to be proclaimed.

The message of the gospel of the kingdom that they ended up preaching so many times. But it also involved a job to do, a job to do. The proclaiming of the gospel. The issuing of the call themselves to others.

A job that's like none other. Now this is not a social gospel. This is not a social movement. It's not a social cause. It's a spiritual cause to make people to become fishers, to call people to become followers of Jesus.

I mention that because right now there's a lot of rumbling going on in Christian circles about social justice. That we ought to be concerned about all these social issues because after all, people are suffering and people are suffering social injustice.

We ought to be, the church ought to be involved in social justice. And so what we have going on today and here in the 21st century is a cycling back of the social gospel movement of the late 1800, yeah, the late 1800s and early 1900s that really gave birth to liberalism in the United States.

Now this is not our call. This is not the call of discipleship to go and rectify all the social injustices of the world. The call of discipleship is to be fishers of men. Fishermen of men. But that brings up the fourth fundamental discipleship.

This cause to claim also involves a process to begin. Jesus says, I will make you to become. I will make you to become fishers of men. That means if Jesus is going to make them to become fishers of men, they have things that they need to learn.

And so do you and so do I. Discipleship, being a disciple of Jesus involves being a lifelong learner. A lifelong learner. Sometimes I think we make a mistake. I understand the sense. I understand the heart of it.

But I think we sometimes make a mistake to say, to young converts, okay, now you've accepted Christ. Now we need to get you into discipleship class. We need to, you need to have some discipleship. And so they get right away into a class where they learn some of the fundamental basics of the Christian faith.

There's not anything wrong with that. But I think the way we describe it can be misleading in the sense that, okay, I've gone through the discipleship class, so I'm done with the discipleship learning.

I'm now a full-fledged follower, a full-fledged disciple of Jesus. Failing to realize that, look, I don't care how old you are or how young you are. You can be as young as Rachel, as old as, as old as, okay, Mrs. Dean doesn't mind being the elder sister here in the congregation.

You're still a follower. You're still learning, right? You ever stop? It's a lifelong learning process to become a fisherman of men. But here's another aspect of that process. It involves a change that we need to make.

If I am to become a fisherman of men, Jesus is going to make me to become this, then he's gotta do some changing in my life, a changing in my life. I have to have different priorities. I have to have different desires.

I have to have a different way of looking at things, a different way of looking at the world, a different way of looking at people in the world, and so on and so forth. It's a process involved here. Number five, in the fundamentals of discipleship, there's a decision to make, a decision to make.

Jesus issued the call in verse 17, and then verse 18 says, they immediately left their nets and followed him. They left their nets and followed him. And verse 20, the same with James and John. Jesus issued the call while they were mending their nets, and immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went after him.

So, of course, you get the point. Jesus issued the call, come after me, and I will make you to become fishermen of men, and Peter could have stopped and said, I don't know, I kinda like all these fish.

I kinda like this business that I'm in. It pays the bills, covers the taxes. I think I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. No, there's a decision to make, and they made it immediately. And the point there is that opportunities like this are not eternal.

The opportunity that's come and given to Peter and Andrew and James and John, they came at this particular point in time. If they'd said, eh, no thanks, would they have had another opportunity? I don't know.

Sometimes God does give us further opportunities, but we certainly can't count on it. We shouldn't presume upon it. Here, the call is issued. It's time to act. It's time to decide. There's a decision to make.

And then number six, there is in this fundamental discipleship a lifestyle to forsake, a lifestyle to forsake. Andrew and Simon, they had to leave their nets. James and John, they had to leave their father and the other hired servants in the boat.

So the old priorities are left behind. The old pursuits are left behind. The old claims are left behind. It is assumed that as the sons of Zebedee out fishing, Zebedee was the business owner of this fishing trade and James and John worked for their father in this fishing business.

Reasonable, reasonable arrangement, typical arrangement for the time. But with this call, they had a choice to make. Would they forsake the lifestyle that they were used to, taking orders from dad and getting directions from their father as to where to go fish today and all that kind of stuff?

Are they gonna leave all that behind? Are they gonna forsake that claim, that rightful claim that their father had on him to follow Jesus or not? There's a lifestyle that oftentimes needs to be forsaken.

And there are many followers, people who become followers of Jesus who learned that pretty early on. For example, they used to have the lifestyle of Sunday was, man, it was my day. Saturday, I got to do all the stuff around the house, got to get projects, do whatever, but Sunday, that's my day, man.