Jesus Calls Fishermen

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me back to the Gospel of Mark.
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And I'm going to take us tonight just through a few more verses.
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There's going to come a moment, probably just next week or the week after, where we're going to make some larger strides because there's a section where we see Jesus healing one after another after another.
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Not that we're not going to take time for each one, but we're going to look at some things sort of in larger sections of text.
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But what we've been paying our attention to the last few weeks has really just been this introduction of Christ in the Gospel of Mark, which is interesting because Mark is, again, the shortest of the Gospels.
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It's the most hasty of the Gospels.
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And by that, I don't mean, usually when we use the term hasty, we use that in a negative sense.
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I don't mean that negatively.
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It's just quick.
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The word immediate is used throughout immediately, immediately, immediately.
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And so this is important that we understand that Mark is trying to get to a point.
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And what we're going to see is for the rest of chapter one, he's going to show Jesus's popularity rising.
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And then in chapter two is going to immediately begin to see his opposition that relates to that popularity, because as Jesus's name begins to be known, and as people begin to hear of the miracles that he's doing, almost as quickly, he begins to have opposition from the religious teachers and the leaders and all those things.
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And so we want to we want to maintain a bird's eye view of what's happening.
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But at the same time, I like to dig into individual moments in the life of Christ and be able to address them specifically.
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And so that's why I've been going so slow.
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So far, we have looked at several things that have happened in the life of Christ.
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We have looked at John the Baptist being his forerunner.
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We've looked at Jesus's baptism, and we talked about some of the things that are often associated with Jesus's baptism, and some that many of us probably had not thought about before the fact that this was his anointing for ministry, the spirit falling upon him, filling him, driving him out into the wilderness, and to that time of testing and probation in the wilderness where he faced the temptation of the devil, and afterwards said to the devil, Be gone.
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And the very next thing we see is John is arrested.
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So John, the great forerunner is taken away.
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And that puts the spotlight completely on Christ himself.
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And Christ's focus now, or the focus is on Christ and his preaching.
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And so what we're going to do, we're going to read what we read last week.
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And what we looked at last week was really verses 14 and 15.
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And we're going to read again 14.
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But we're going to read all the way down to verse 20.
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And we're going to focus tonight our attention on the calling of the first apostles.
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So let's begin with our reading.
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Mark chapter one, beginning at verse 14, says now after john was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, or as some translations say, the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying the time is fulfilled.
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The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.
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Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
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And Jesus said to them, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.
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And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
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And going on a little further.
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He saw James, the son of Zebedee and john, his brother, who were in their boats, mending the nets.
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And immediately he called them.
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And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants.
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And they followed him.
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Let's pray just once more.
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Father, I ask now that as we seek to open the word, and understand its meaning first that you would keep me from error.
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Lord, as it is, I am fallible, you are infallible, your word is perfect.
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Let your word so shine Lord tonight.
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And Lord, may we be subject to all that it says, in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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So we come tonight to an interesting portion of the life of Christ.
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Because this is the way that Mark has chosen to introduce us to some of the men who are going to play the biggest part in Jesus's ministry, those men that we often call the apostles.
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And this is the introduction of the calling of the apostles.
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In the Gospel of Mark, this is this is the first time we hear about these men.
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And this particular section of text is mirrored in the other gospels.
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And you've probably noticed this already.
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But in case you haven't, I know some of you haven't been with us.
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What I've been doing is whatever portion we're reading, I'm looking at the other gospels too.
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Now, as I said, I'm not going to make this a total harmony of the gospels.
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But there are times when it's just helpful to look at what the other gospels say, especially when Mark only gives us a few words about something.
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And we want to know more.
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I don't know about you, I want to know more.
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I want to know more of the narrative.
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I want to know more of what's happening.
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And by God's grace, he didn't give us just one gospel.
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He gave us four gospels.
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You know, the Bible talks about the testimony of two or three witnesses.
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And we're given three synoptic gospels, which are three gospels which basically tell the same story three times in different ways and a little different length and breadth.
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But it's the same narrative.
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And we have two or three witnesses.
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We have the three witnesses, which are Matthew, Mark and Luke.
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John gives us a little bit different narrative of Christ's same story, but in a little bit different way, which why John is considered unique among the gospels.
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So what we're going to do tonight is we're going to look at how this same narrative is given to us in different accounts, because we see Jesus calling these men.
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And we see this in four different places.
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We see this here in the Gospel of Mark, chapter one, verses 16 to 20.
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And just like I did a few weeks ago, I'm gonna get some of you to read for me.
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So Caleb, you have to read again.
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Caleb, would you look up Matthew, chapter four, verse 18.
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And I'm going to get you to read 18 to 22.
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Okay.
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Now, Caleb Stewart, would you read as well? I'm gonna ask you to go to Luke chapter five, and read verses four through 11.
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And then, Brother Andy, would you read? Yours is going to be different, though.
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Because John's gospel is almost completely different.
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I'd like for you to read John 1, 35 to 51, when it's time, if you would.
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All right.
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So let's begin by looking at how Matthew gives us this same account.
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Caleb, read Matthew 4, 18 to 22.
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All right.
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So, almost word for word, what we have in the Gospel of Mark is given to us in the Gospel of Matthew, and we see specifically four names.
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And it's given to us in the same account.
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We have Simon Peter, and his brother, who is named what? Andrew.
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All right.
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We're going to talk about him in a moment, because he's going to become very prominent in what Brother Andy will read for us.
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Because we're going to see Brother Andy's narrative is quite different about this.
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And Andrew is going to take a different place in the Gospel of John.
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All right.
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So we see Simon Peter, Andrew, and then we see two other brothers, which are James and John.
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James and John are known as what? Anybody remember? Boanerges, which is the Greek Sons of Thunder.
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That's right.
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Yeah, that's the term Jesus calls them, calls them the Sons of Thunder.
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So we have four names that are mentioned in Mark, and four names that are mentioned in Matthew.
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Now, brother, would you read? Did you catch the connection between these three narratives? In all three narratives, the men are fishing.
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In all three narratives, Jesus says, follow me, and I will make you, in Matthew and Mark, fishers of men.
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But in that particular, he says, I'll teach you to catch men, which again, is just Luke's way of describing the very same thing, right? So I believe that Luke 5 is giving us an expanded account.
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Luke, the historian, is expanding the account of what we see in Mark 1 and we see in Matthew chapter 4.
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So we are seeing, again, remember Luke includes the birth narrative and all of these different things.
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So there's a lot more that Luke's including to get to this point.
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But Luke also mentioned something that I hope, I want to see if anybody noticed.
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And again, this isn't Jeopardy.
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If you didn't catch it, it's okay.
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You're not going to lose any points.
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But did anybody notice something specific about the way Peter addressed Jesus? He called him master.
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So there was already a relationship, at least a recognition by Peter that this man is in a position of authority among the people of God.
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He's already identifying him as master.
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Now the reason why I bring that up is because if you read Mark only, you could come to the conclusion that this is the first time Jesus has ever seen these guys.
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He's just walking along.
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He's got two guys in a boat and he goes, hey, follow me.
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And they said, okay, threw their nets down and just hopped off the boat and waited in the water.
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And that's the picture I think many people have.
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I think many people think Jesus is just walking along the sea.
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He sees a couple of guys in the boat and says, hey, come after me and I'll make you fishers of men.
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And they just hop off the boat and follow him like they'd never met him before.
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But when we read Luke's account, Luke indicates that Simon's already calling him master.
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In fact, he just told him, go put the net out in the deep water.
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He puts the net out in the deep water.
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Why is Simon listening to Jesus? Because there's this relationship that's already been established.
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Like I said, when Andy reads, I think a lot's going to come clear.
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But ultimately my point right now is Mark's gospel is not misleading us, but it's not giving us everything.
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And this is why we have more than one gospel.
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And as we read this gospel narrative in harmony with the other gospels, we begin to see some more of the story.
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Now, something else that we didn't mention when this is Matthew and Mark is who's named here, Simon, Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
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By the way, it's always in that order.
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Simon, Andrew, James, and John, Simon, Andrew, James, and John.
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But in Luke's gospel, one is conspicuously absent.
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And who is it? Andrew.
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Isn't that right? Going back to, you read it, brother.
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I don't have my Bible open, but am I correct that Andrew was not mentioned? And that everybody look at the Bible.
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I want to make sure that this is not just a translational issue, right? If you go back, if you go to Luke 4 or Luke 5, you only see Peter.
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So Luke only mentions Peter, James, and John.
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We don't hear about Andrew, which is interesting.
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It's not as if he's not present because we know he's present.
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He's part of, am I correct though, you're looking at Andrew's not mentioned.
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So again, we have each gospel is giving us a piece of this larger narrative puzzle that we as students of history and Bible harmonizers are intended to come in and put all these pieces together.
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Again, nobody's lying.
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Nobody's misleading.
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No one is making an error or an obvious oversight.
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They're focusing on what's important to them.
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Later, we're going to see this come up in a few very important places like the time of the demoniac.
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There's a few places where the demoniac is mentioned as only one person, but there's another gospel that says it was two demoniacs that were in the catacombs there in Gennesaret, right? And so it's interesting that with these gospel narratives, we can overlay them with each other and learn more about all of what's happening.
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All right, so Matthew and Mark say Simon, Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
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Luke says Peter, James, and John.
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Now, Brother Andy is going to read from the gospel of John, and I believe it's going to give us an earlier account of the interaction between these men.
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Brother, if you would read verses 35 to 51, so it's a longer section.
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Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and Philip found Nathanael, and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses is in the law, and also of Prophet Crow, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
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Nathanael said to them, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see.
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Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him and said to him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom you shall die.
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Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him, for what Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
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Nathanael answered and said to him, rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel.
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Jesus answered and said to him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe you will see greater things than these? He said to him, most assuredly, I say unto you, hereafter you shall see heaven opened, the angels of God ascending and descending on the stone.
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Amen.
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That was it, right? Those were 51.
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Awesome.
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Thank you, Brother Andy.
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Okay, so totally different, right? What is the main? Well, I would say the main difference is a bunch of them.
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What's the first thing that pops in your mind when you hear that part of it? There ain't fishing.
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That was like for me, right? This is this is a different time, right? This is not a time where Jesus sees him on the seashore, right? So that this either happens before or after that event.
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And I am convinced that it happens before.
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And I'm going to explain why in just a moment.
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But just to get an idea, we know that the Mark Matthew event and the Luke event all happen in a boat on the shore.
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The Luke event even says Jesus was preaching like so there's an event happening and it's all around the seashore event.
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But in the John gospel, it says there was two disciples and they were disciples of John the Baptist.
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You see, we don't read anything about that in the other gospels that Andrew was one of two disciples who were with John the Baptist, which means they had probably heard his gospel.
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They had heard his message about Jesus.
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They had been baptized by him.
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They were following him.
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And John the Baptist says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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And these two guys and we only know one by name, but I will tell you who I believe the other one is.
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I believe the other one's John.
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John never names himself in his gospel.
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He talks about being the beloved disciple.
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He talks about being the one who wrote it, but he doesn't name himself as John.
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So I think it's very conspicuous that there's two disciples.
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One is Andrew.
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The other one's unnamed.
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And one of the people we know in the gospel, John, who is unnamed, is himself.
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So I'm going to say John here is the likely candidate for that second disciple.
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These disciples are listening to John the Baptist.
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He says, There's the Lamb of God.
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And they follow after him and they say, Where are you staying, Lord? So this is the introduction.
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This is the first time they see this man.
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Where do you live? Where are you staying? So that's that initial connection.
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And what does Andrew do? Andrew becomes the very first evangelist.
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I would die.
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You beat me.
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For those who don't know, back in the 90s, Billy Graham had a push, an evangelistic push.
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It was called Operation Andrew.
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Now, we all think of Andrew as being a hurricane that hit in the 90s.
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And Operation Andrew had to do with taking supplies and things down to Miami, where Hurricane Andrew had totally decimated that area, Florida.
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Well, Billy Graham had an evangelistic push that they also called Operation Andrew.
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But the idea was, barring from that, you know, the event, the hurricane situation, the Operation Andrew was you have you have unsaved people in your life, be an Andrew to those people and take the gospel to those people.
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And this narrative was the narrative that was used for that event.
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It said it said, be like Andrew, because the first thing Andrew did when he realized he found the Messiah was what? He ran to his brother Simon and he says, we have found the one.
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We found the one the prophets wrote about.
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We found the one that the Messiah who is to come.
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So Andrew becomes this first evangelist and Jesus comes to Peter.
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I'm sorry.
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Excuse me.
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Peter comes to Jesus and his name is Simon.
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What is what is the narrative say? The very first thing Jesus says in the Gospel of John to Peter.
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Brother, didn't he say you're now going to be called Cephas? Now, we think about that name change as being something associated with his statement of faith, because we know and it's in Mark, chapter eight, and it's in some other places and other gospels.
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We know there's a point where Peter is going to say, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.
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And he's going to say flesh and blood is not to reveal this to you, but my father who is in heaven and therefore thou art Peter.
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Right.
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It's Matthew 16.
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Right.
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He says, thou art Peter.
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And upon this rock, I build my church.
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Right.
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We know that event.
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But John John says early in their relationship, he identified this man as something particular.
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He identified him.
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Cephas is also means rock.
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Peter is the Greek word, which means rock Petras.
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And Cephas, the Hebrew word means rock.
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So that name change, even though it's tied to his confession of faith later and other gospels, actually was something that happened early as Jesus meets this man.
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And and and Simon again takes this place of prominence among the apostles.
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Now, I don't believe in Roman Catholicism.
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Certainly, I'm you guys have been in the history class.
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You know, I give him a hard time.
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I don't believe in that whole seat of Peter and the authority of Peter down through history.
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And I certainly don't believe that the Peter was the first pope.
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But there is no doubt that Peter held a position of prominence among the apostles.
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If nothing else, he was the guy who was the mouthpiece and and he had his foot in there quite a bit.
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And I know how that feels to to to speak a lot and every once in a while to feel like you're swallowing the water behind your knee.
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Right.
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Because it's as I said, the water behind my knee often quenches my thirst because my foot goes in my mouth so deep.
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Peter is prominent in this.
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But so we see Andrew is mentioned, who is Simon's brother.
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Simon is mentioned.
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John is not mentioned by name, but I believe he is there just unnamed.
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And then we have in John's account two other apostles who are mentioned.
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And again, if I am correct, if my hypothesis, which again, I believe is correct, if this event is prior to this event.
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Then Jesus has already called Philip and Nathanael as well.
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So you say, well, why is it then? And this is a good question, not just because I asked it, but it's a good question if it's in your mind.
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Why does it seem like Matthew and Mark's account and even Luke's account to an extent? Why does it seem like this is the first time they're getting a call? Well, there is some importance to that question.
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And and I can't give you an exact answer, but I give you my thoughts.
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My thought is that what we have in John is the initial meeting and the initial introduction and the recognition that this man is special.
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And this is why in Luke, Peter's calling him master.
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That's why in Luke he actually listens to him when he says, go put the nets back out.
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Because again, a seasoned fisherman wouldn't have just listened to some carpenter from, you know, Galilee, right? He's he's he if anybody knows fishing, it's me.
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I'm in a fishing business.
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My best friends, James and John, they are in a fishing business.
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Their father owns the boat.
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We are fishermen.
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We know how to fish, but you're going to tell us to go out and put the net back down.
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Why would they listen to him? Because there's already a relationship they've already seen and heard from this man, the things that he says and does.
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And now Jesus is confronting them with a moment in time where they are given that call to follow me.
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And that's what we see in Mark and in Matthew and even in the Luke narrative, which, again, I think all are the same.
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Jesus is confronting these men and he's saying, now's the time to set down your nets.
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You're not fishermen anymore.
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Now you're going to catch men.
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You're not going back and living in the comfort of your father's business anymore.
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But now you're going to be about my father's business and you're now receiving the call to follow me.
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So Mark and Matthew and Luke all focus on that moment because that's the moment that's there.
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And honestly, I don't want to get too ahead of myself with application.
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That's a moment for all of us in one sense.
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If you're a believer in Christ, there's a moment in your life and you may not know exactly when that was because some people can date in time.
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You know, I was I was at First Baptist Church and it was, you know, 1978, August 1st.
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And I know when I walked forward.
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But other people grew up in church and maybe they don't have that exact moment, but they know that they're following Christ and they know that their life changed.
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This is that moment in time where there's this life change for these men no longer, no longer one foot in the world, one foot and one foot in the fishing, one foot in the fishing boat and one foot with me.
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No, you're going to follow me.
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Does that mean they never went fishing again? No, we see them in boats later doing things.
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But this is the call, the call to action, the call, the ministry, the call of their life that would change their lives.
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Now, just for a moment, I want to talk about the fact that not all the apostles are mentioned here.
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Some of the some of the gospel writers do at a certain point indicate the names.
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And one of the things you'll notice is that the names always add up to how many? How many apostles are there? Not a trick question.
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12, right? It always adds up to 12 apostles.
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However, the names aren't always the same.
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Now, that doesn't mean that he had apostles coming and going.
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But there were some men whose names were actually two names.
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And so you had like, who is it I have down here.
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Nathaniel was also called Bartholomew, right? And Matthew was also called Levi.
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And so we see that, you know, even with the apostle Paul, Saul and Paul, there was there were those times where there's two names.
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And so when we look at the names, the list of the 12, we can go and compare the gospels and say, okay, this is who this person was, this is who this person was.
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But what's interesting and what we find throughout all four gospels is that it's always the same four who are in that position of Christ's most Christ's closest apostles.
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And so and who are they? They're these four.
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So again, going back to why are these four? Why is their call and their particular moment made prominent early in the Gospel of Mark? And then, of course, early in the other gospels as well.
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Why are these four men mentioned? Because these four men are who are going to make up that inner.
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I hate I hate to use the term inner circle because that sounds so like like corporate, you know, like this is my inner circle band or whatever.
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But that's the idea, right, is these guys are these are the ones, you know, think about who's with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration.
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Right.
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Who are the ones who see that moment? It's not all of them.
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Right.
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Who are the ones praying in the gardens? Not all of them.
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Right.
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And so we have these men who have a specific and particular relationship with Christ, not to say that the other ones are not important.
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They are.
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But why? Why twelve? Why not ten? Why not five? Why not four? Because if these four tend to be the ones who are the preeminent among them, somebody just said something.
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What did you say? Or did something? I think you're right.
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I actually do place an important specific reason because we're not told.
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So, again, this is, again, my opinion.
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You're welcome to have a different opinion.
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I'm not holding this as dogma, but the number 12 in Scripture is very important and it often relates to the concept of that which is complete, that which is that which is full.
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We see when we look at the generations which are given in the early accounts, and I talk about this when I preach through Genesis, there's an account where you have all of the nations that are mentioned.
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I think it's chapter 11 where you have this long genealogy.
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There's 12 specific genealogies.
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Now, there were more than that, but those 12 names are mentioned specifically to show fullness, that this is representing the fullness of the world, right? So, 12 has, and again, I'm not a numerology guy.
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I'm not saying that every time you see the word 12 it means this and divided by this and you end up with this.
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I'm not saying that, but there is a certain sense in which we do see certain numbers having importance.
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Like, for instance, the number 40.
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Think about how many times the number 40 is meant for testing.
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Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, right? We see the idea of being tested and that the concept of 40 having some significance there, and the idea of 12 tribes and 12 apostles.
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And when we get to the book of Revelation, how many seats are there in the heavenly council? 24.
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24.
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Now, what does that mean? Now, again, again, I'm not being dogmatic, but if we consider the old covenant was represented by 12 tribes and the new covenant is represented by 12 apostles.
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And we come to the book of Revelation and there's a number that comes out of nowhere, the number 24.
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You say, well, what does that got to do? Well, it's, I think it all kind of relates back to this idea that Christ is calling 12 men and each one of those men represents, in a sense, this fullness of these men represent this fullness of the apostleship.
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I want to say something that, again, some of this is not speculative, but just things I've thought through.
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When we consider, when we consider the 12 apostles, we think about, you know, if they do represent in some way, the 12 tribes, or if some way a new covenant version of the 12 tribes, we see that, that mirroring that the scripture is doing.
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We ask ourselves this question, what part did the apostles play in the foundation of the church? And, and with that question in mind, I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter two, Ephesians chapter two.
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All right.
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So in Ephesians chapter two, go to verse 19.
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Most of us are familiar with Ephesians chapter two, right up to verse 10.
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And then we kind of, because that's the, that's the part we like, you know, it begins with being dead and trespassing sin, and then being by grace, we were saved.
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And then for by grace, you're saved through faith, not of yourselves.
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And then we get to chapter verse 11, and we sort of, sort of drops off, but verse 11 and following is great too, because it talks about breaking down the wall of division between the old covenant, the new covenant, no more Jew, no more Greek, but we're all one in Christ Jesus.
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And then we get to verse 19.
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And he says this, so you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
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Now, you are members of the household of God built verse 20 on a foundation.
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Now, if you were to go to anybody, and you were to ask them, who is the foundation of the church, they would be right.
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If they said Jesus, because in other places like first Corinthians three, that a man built on any foundation other than Christ, you know, he's building on a wrong foundation.
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So Christ is the foundation of the church.
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But in this context, Paul addresses a different foundation.
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He says, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
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So Paul paints a different picture of the church.
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And the picture is this, that yes, the foundation stone is Christ.
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But when Christ laid the foundation for his church, he did it in the hands of the apostles.
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They say it also mentions prophets, and that's true.
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But in the context, I just want to focus on the fact that it's mentioning the apostles here.
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Because when we talk about the early church, my history students, see if anybody remembers, what do we call the early church? Apostolic church.
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That's right, Miss Deborah.
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It's the apostolic church.
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You see, when we talk about why do we give credibility to what Paul wrote? Why do we give credibility to what John wrote? Why do we give credibility to what Matthew wrote? And John? Because they were apostles.
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And they had the works of the apostles.
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They had what the Bible says, the signs of the apostles.
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These men are the men that Christ built his church on.
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Do you understand Christ is the cornerstone, but he is building these men up so that when he ascends into heaven, they will be filled with the Holy Ghost.
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And they are what the book of Acts tells us are the men who go out and become church planters.
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And they become the fishers of men that Christ called them to be in this passage.
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See, Christ says, I'm going to teach you how to catch men.
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If you only read the gospels, you're going to say these guys are awful at catching men.
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You're going to read the gospels and you're going to say Jesus failed.
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Because by the end of Jesus's ministry, everybody's gone and even they're gone.
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But then Jesus resurrects and he comes back and he calls them back.
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Remember what he does to Peter? He sweetly gives him that, you know, Peter denied him three times.
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He sweetly gives him that three fold recovery where he says, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Feed my sheep, feed my sheep.
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You remember that portion at the end of Gospel of John and what happens as a result of that? We read the book of Acts, those men up in the upper room, the Holy Spirit fills them and they go out and 3000 souls are saved from one sermon.
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Jesus said, I'm going to teach you how to catch men.
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And he did.
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He filled them with the spirit whereby they would catch men.
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And through the book of Acts, he uses them to catch men.
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And here's the thing.
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We don't know all of the apostles and all of what they did.
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We know what Peter did.
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We know what Philip did.
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We can go down and we can see some of these other men and what they did.
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But church history does tell us there are things.
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Let me finish my thought.
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There are things church history does tell us, like Thomas apparently went to India and brought the gospel to the east.
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The Martama church is still there today.
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It's the church of Thomas because he went where Paul went west to Rome.
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Thomas went east into Asia.
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So the gospel, these men caught men.
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They fulfilled what Christ had called them to.
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Okay, brother.
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Yeah, I think that I don't know how many of you heard his question.
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He says, he said, do we think that that's why in Corinthians we see people wanting to follow Paul or follow Cephas or follow these other men because of them being prominent? I would say absolutely.
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In fact, we don't know for sure how the apostles died, but traditionally we have traditions like Peter being crucified upside down and Paul having his Paul being beheaded and other ones being burned and things like that.
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I think there's a reason why God kept it to where we don't have sepulchers for these men.
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Because if we had the, if we had the place where Peter was buried, people would still today be going there to worship at the feet of Peter.
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If we had the place where John was, bones were kept, people would still be going today to worship where John was.
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So yeah, I think that's very true that people unintentionally sometimes elevated them.
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I think also though, just to, on that passage in 1 Corinthians, I think there's also a tendency among men, and this is even down to today, to elevate somebody.
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Yeah, and then we see that in churches where people elevate the pastor or elevate a specific leader or put leaders against one another for this purpose of having position or say or power.
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But yes, absolutely.
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The early church, the early church was the apostolic church.
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That is not to say that they were the saviors, but they were the groundwork.
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Christ had laid the groundwork of three years of training these men so that when he ascended, they would be prepared to take the reins and catch men.
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So that is an important part of this that we often miss, is that when Christ called them to catch men, they actually did eventually become wonderful evangelists for the gospel, but it took God working in their hearts just like all of us.
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And we'll kind of use that as maybe a way to draw to an application because we're out of time.
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We who have been saved by Christ have also been called to be evangelists.
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We have been called to catch men, but often we feel very inadequate and often we feel like we don't have the tools necessary to share the gospel or something like that.
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But that call to be fishers of men is not something that we ever get away from.
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Some churches believe that that call is only for pastors.
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Some churches believe that only the pastors or elders are the evangelists of the church.
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And the rank and file are not called to be evangelists.
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They're not called to tell people about Christ.
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But I tend to look at it like this.
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If Christ has saved you, you are like a beggar who found out where the bread is.
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And how would it be right if any beggar who knows where to get bread wouldn't tell others about this bread of life? And so we've all been called to be fishers of men.
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Maybe not to the point of being foundational stones in the church, but we're all called to fish for men.
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Yes, sir.
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Yeah.
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And you kept it to yourself.
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You kept it to yourself.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Does anybody have any questions about this text before we close the prayer? Good.
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Well, I hope that was helpful and encouraging.
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Let's end.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for this picture that we have of the apostles as being the ones, Lord, that you paved the way for the church to grow.
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And Lord, we know that we still have one holy, universal, apostolic church.
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And it still exists to this day, Lord, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the only cornerstone.
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And Lord, we thank you for him.
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And we praise you tonight in Jesus name.
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Amen.