Perhaps the greatest threats to Christianity do not come outside of the church, but inside of the church. Perhaps they come from misunderstandings and distortions and morphing of the faith that moves it from its Christ-centeredness to a man-centered, a peoplecentered, a me-centeredness. Hear this truth: Jesus did not so much come to make your life work, but to employ you in His work. That's a very different way of thinking about our faith. There is a Christianity that's all around us - you can read it on a thousand websites; you can find it in Christian bookstores; it's been "Barnes & Noble-d" all over the place - that doesn't look like the Christianity of Mark, doesn't look like the Christianity of the New Testament.
A Lengthy Quote
I want to read a rather lengthy quote for you; I don't do this very often, but I do this gladly this evening as we think about this amazing transition that takes place at this moment in Mark where Jesus begins to entrust His redemptive mission to His followers. And we are confronted with what is a theme all throughout the Gospel of Mark, the nature and the cost of discipleship: that we are called not just to be containers of grace, but to be disciples of a God of grace, to be part of this mission of grace.
And although it's very clear that these men who are called are called for a particular onetime mission as the disciples/apostles of Christ, there is much to be learned in this passage as it begins to introduce to us this theme of discipleship. I'm reading to you from a book by David Henderson; he's a Presbyterian pastor in Lafayette, Indiana, the sun and fun capital of the world, and is writing about how Christianity has morphed, and the first of maybe thirty pages of this book is worth the price of the book.
This is called Vending Machine Deity: It's a great temptation to make Christianity attracted to seekers by misrepresenting the faith as a relationship through Christ with a God who is a divine vending machine in the sky, there to meet every need. Unhappy, unattractive, unsuccessful, unmarried, and unfulfilled? Come to Christ and He'll give you everything you ask for! We forget God is not primarily in the business of meeting needs. When we make Him out to be, we squeeze Him out of His rightful place, at the center of our lives, and put ourselves in His place.
God is in the business of being God. Christianity cannot be reduced to God meeting people's needs; and when we attempt to do so, we invariably distort part of the Christian message. God's agenda is to display His glory and to further His kingdom around the globe. It is to call humanity to bended knee, bowing before Him in adoration and devotion and dependence and service. It is to invite men and women out of the hollow pursuit of living for themselves and into a life consumed by them. It is to make of His followers, men and women of deep trust and character, the kind of Christ-like individuals with whom God is pleased to spend in eternity.
Merely using need is our main basis for making sense of the Christian life, automatically knocks us away from the way believers have understood the faith for centuries. Why? Because God no longer occupies center stage; terms like self-love, self-expression, self-confidence, and self-fulfillment, none of which graces the pages of Scripture, begin to dominate the church's conversation. Meanwhile, other self-help words straight from the Bible, like self-surrender, selfsacrifice, self-denial, and self-control slip into disuse.
Self, great big and smack dab in the middle, squeezes out the notions of a Holy God, a fallen self, an underserved gift of grace in Christ Jesus, and a divine call on the whole of one's life. When that happens, we may be preaching, we may be sharing faith, but what we are communicating is not genuine Christianity. In Christianity, the one place the self cannot be is at the center! That is the rightful place of God alone. Look with me at Mark 1:16 through 20. In this significant moment as we again are being confronted with who Jesus is and how we will respond to Him, again Christ is center stage.
Look at this, let me read again: 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. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called to them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.
Jesus Is Center Stage
(ESV) I want you to reflect with me, first, as we examine these verses, at the way that Mark tells the story. It is really quite unique because, in every way, Jesus is center-stage. There are so many details that you would expect to be part of this narrative that are not recorded by Mark. We have little sense of what was going on in the mind of these men. We have little sense of the conversation they may have had with one another. We have little sense of the 'goodbyes' that they made. We have little sense of maybe the internal debate of heart that may have taken place.
We have little sense of all of that sort of human drama that would be interesting for us and that would tend to put sort of the human perspective front and center in the story. Mark is very careful to tell the story in a different way. This is not so much the story of followers; this is the story of the Messiah, Jesus: His plan, His purpose, His authority, His power; Jesus is front and center. And the reason that has to be the way the story is told is that that is the core of what it means to be a disciple.
The core of that is to recognize that what God does is He invades your life, and He places Himself at the center of all that is you. He becomes King! He is your Savior! He is your Messiah! He is your life! He is your hope! He is your peace! It's Him! It's Him! It's Him! It's Him! And Mark is 'want' to tell the story that way. If you were going to write this little drama, it's remarkable! These guys just got up and they left family; they left business. I have lots of questions. You would think that this story would be three or four pages of details, but Mark is confronting us with something: this is the Lord, and He has the right to enter the life of a person and say, "You follow me!"
This is sovereign King Christ. And so Mark is willing to frustrate us a bit. He's willing to leave our questions unanswered. He doesn't want anything to detract us from the glory, the authority, of Christ, because the heart of discipleship, the heart of following Him, the heart of discipleship is not the disciple. The heart of discipleship is the One whom the disciple follows. You know that's hard for us to keep straight. That's why it's been so tempting in the 'me'- ism of modern Western culture, for Christianity to begin to bend and twist and take another shape, a shape that is very different from what you find in the New Testament.
Brothers and sisters, be aware; be on guard; be afraid; watch your heart. It's not about your kingdom working; it's about your invitation to participate in the work of a greater Kingdom, and even the way Mark tells the story is that. Let me give you some details. First notice, he focuses on Christ's authority. What an audacious thing to do to walk up to these men with little explanation and say, "You follow me; I have a plan for you. You're going to keep fishing, but it will be people. You come."
Now you and I don't have that authority, and it is an awesome picture of Christ's position. This is the Lord; this is the Messiah; this is the Christ, and He has the right to enter people's lives and say, "I have a plan for you. You follow me." Being a disciple is submitting to His authority. He has the authority to come into our lives and to call us to His purpose. Second thing that you see here, this is a little more on the subtle sign of things, but it surely is in that way that Mark tells the story, you are confronted with His power.
The Power of the One Who Calls
The disciples responded immediately, not because of the spirituality that was inside of them, but because of the power of the One who was calling them. He was calling them by the power of His grace, and there was an irresistible power to that call, and with immediacy, it's radical; these men drop their nets and they follow. What a picture of Christ's power. There's a third thing that Mark focuses on here; it's the mission of Christ. Notice the emphasis is not on the tough things that these guys are going through.
Jesus doesn't say, "Follow me, and I'll heal all your hurts. Follow me; just give me this seed response, and there will be wealth to follow for you. Follow me and there's the good life." You see, that kind of approach to what it means to follow Christ is alien to this moment. It's, "Here's my zeal." I read it there from Luke, "The zeal of Christ is to seek and to save those who are lost." His zeal is redeeming grace! His zeal is the grace of forgiveness, the grace of acceptance, the grace of empowerment, the grace of deliverance.
His mission is a redemptive mission. And that mission reaches to the heart of what every sinner needs: he needs salvation; he needs redemption! That is the zeal of Christ, and Christ says, "You come, and you be part of my mission." There's no opportunity to say, "What's in it for me?" This is not a vending machine deity, put in your prayer quarters, and press the button for your desire. This is the Lord. There's a final thing that is emphasized in the way that Mark tells the story. It is you immediately see the cost of following Him.
Following Him means that His will, His plan, His authority, becomes the thing that sets the agenda, the pathway, the motivation of my life. And I do forsake my claim over whatever to follow Him. Following Him becomes the most important pursuit of my life. What an important way of telling the story. Jesus is at center-stage. It's His authority, His power, His mission. There's a second thing that jumps off the page, not only the way that Mark tells the story, but how God has chosen to fulfill this mission: Passing along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
And Jesus said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called to them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. (ESV) It is, again, a remarkable moment, a significant transition as I mentioned when I began that, in this moment, Jesus begins to entrust His mission to people.
That's an amazing thing to think about. We know some things about these guys. If you were the Messiah and you were going to pick your first four followers, I would wonder if you would have picked these guys. Think of the story of Simon Peter. Think where that story went. Think that James and John were more concerned about who was going to be greatest in the Kingdom than they were about the work of the Kingdom. Now this is remarkable that God calls people in need of grace to be tools of transforming grace!
That's the wonder of the mission--that God calls broken people to be instruments of healing. God calls people still in need of redemption to be His tools of redemption. The wonder of grace is not just what grace is able to do, but part of the wonder of Grace is whom grace employs to do its work. And again, does that not put Christ at center-stage? These men are not called because of who they are. They're called because of who Christ is - that's the Gospel. And that doesn't leave us with much room for pride or much room for boasting because the Gospel never preaches our adequacy.
Messy Disciples
The Gospel preaches the sufficiency of the grace of Christ. And you see it here. What messy disciples these are. What needy men these are. What confusion and lostness lives in their hearts even as they are chosen to be His disciples. And that's the story of Scripture. Think of Abraham, the great father of the faithful. Think of his story; messy story that one is. Think of Moses; messy story that one is. And you can look at character after character after character, and you see that the Bible is not a story of noble people who made the right choice; the Bible is a glorious story of broken people who are rescued by grace, and who are made usable by that grace.
Oh, that gives me hope because the minute you say, "Yes, I want to be part of Your mission," what hits you next? "I am totally unable to be a tool in Your hands. Look at who I am!" Isn't that what hit's you next? "I want to be part of what You're doing. I get it Lord! It's not about me. I want to be used by You." And then you look at yourself, and you say, "How could I possibly be used by You?" But honestly, it hits me every week I preach. I get so filled with a sense of the wonder of these truths that God calls me to share, and what follows that is a sense of how far I am from the kind of living of those truths that I would like to be true in my life.
And where do I run? I run to the cross once again. I run to grace once again. I run to the beauty of the fact that God puts His treasure in jars of clay to show that the all-surpassing power is from Him and not from us. What qualifies you is not worthiness. What qualifies you is willingness. There's no evidence that Jesus says to Himself, "I've scanned modern Palestinian humanity, and you four are the most noble examples that I could find, 'Follow me.'" No, we know differently. Broken, confused, lostness still in their hearts, they rise up and they follow Christ; and in their following, the world is changed - how beautiful is that?
That's what Jesus says to you tonight. "Get up in your brokenness. Get up in your confusion. Get up in your wonderment. Get up in a heart that still has war going on inside of it, and give yourself to My mission. You follow Me and you watch what I can do through those who are willing to be part of the work of the Gospel. You go and I'll catch people through you." Amen! That's the mission. Again, the wonder of grace is not just what grace is able to do, but also who grace chooses to employ--and that's all of us.
There's a third perspective that comes out of this little piece of history that Mark records. It is the nature of discipleship. Although we should surely say that the calling of these four men is unique; we can learn from this calling because Mark's going to expand this subject of discipleship to all of the followers of Christ. And so he begins to introduce to us, in this moment, this theme of, what does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? What is that actually about? And I want to just mention three things this evening, and then we will be done.
It first means submission to His authority. One of the transactions that takes place in the heart of a person coming to Christ, one of the things you let go of, one of the things that you ask forgiveness for, is you let go of your authority over your life. You ask for forgiveness for your godlike intentions, and you submit yourself to the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you understand from this radical picture here, there is no such thing in the New Testament as part-time discipleship. You are either living under the authority of Christ, or you're setting yourself up as your own authority, because that submission to the authority of Christ is not first a set of words or a set of actions; its first a surrender of my heart.
Not Just a Piece of Your Life
And it is the very surrender that was absent in God's people in the Old Testament that angered God so. "I don't want just a piece of the religious dimension of your life. I don't want that. That's actually an abomination to me. I want your heart." It's the thing that Christ goes after in the Pharisees, the shocking externalism of their religiosity that wasn't a surrender of hearts to God. And because of that, these men, who were the religious leaders of their day, were unable to recognize the Messiah.
And so God wants the surrender of our hearts, that we give the thoughts and the motives, the deepest desires, the deepest purposes, the deepest cravings, the deepest motivations of our hearts to Him. And we confess and forsake the rulership that we have wanted over our own lives. Discipleship means submission to His authority. Second thing, it means obedience to His call. That not only in all ways am I recognizing now that I'm under a new authority, but I submit to that call that this God of authority makes in my life; His call in my thought life, His call in my marriage, His call in my friendships, His call in every dimension of my life.
My answer is not what would make me happy, but what has the Messiah called me to do in this domain of my life? And then there's a third area; discipleship means allegiance to His mission. I've said it already that the Zeal of Christ is "...to seek and to save those who are lost." He is Redeemer; that is the zeal of His heart, and that should be our zeal as well. That somehow, some way, we could be part of His redemptive agenda. We don't see ourselves again as just containers, sponges of grace. But we joyfully become conduits of that grace to others.
We long to be the light of the world; we long to be the salt of the earth; we long to be the look on His face, the tone of His voice, the touch of His hand; we long to incarnate His love; we long to speak of His grace. We don't get tired of telling the 'old, old story.' You can't look at what it means to be a disciple, submission to Christ's authority, obedience to His call, allegiance to His mission, without saying, "That call is way too high, too high, too high." That call drives you to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ to say, "Only by Your forgiveness, only by Your power, only by Your presence and Your provision, that catalog of gifts of grace that was purchased as You stood in my place and took my punishment, only by that grace will I ever be Your disciple.
And God, once again this evening, I cast myself on Your grace. I find my hope in Your cross, and I long to be Your disciple; I long to live as one who submits to Your authority, who is obedient to Your call, and has deep allegiance to Your mission." I want to end by a quote from John Owen on his work on sin and temptation. It's a quote about our affections. Where are your affections this evening? What has your heart? What brings you joy? What claims your desires and your thoughts? Is it King Christ and His mission?
Is it the love of the story of His cross and a desire to bring that story to people who don't know it? Owen says, "When someone sets his affections on the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ, and you will find no room for sin." May God help us by His grace to be His disciples, crucified Christ in the center, gladly pursuing His mission. Let's Pray: Thank you again, Lord, for how Mark, again and again, confronts us with the identity, the authority, the power, the mission of Christ.
Thank you that Mark, in his narrative, makes sure that Christ is central, that all the cameras are on Him; and in that way, under the inspiration of Holy Spirit telling the narrative, even the telling of the story confronts us, confronts us how we want to be in power, and we want to be in control, and we want to be acclaimed; we want to be in the center. And oh, by the grace of the cross, would You not make us people of the cross, deeply grateful for the grace that we've received and consistently desirous to be tools of that grace? We pray these things by Your grace and for Your glory. In Jesus's name, Amen.
