You ever quit a job? Sometimes it's really easy, right? It's it's just ludicrously obvious. This job is dumb, it's not working, the math equation doesn't work, I'm not making enough money, or the pain I endure to do this job isn't worth it. But other times that is agonizing. I mean, one of the most difficult decisions you make in life because it's not just a job, it's a lifestyle, it's people, it affects other people, it can come with all kinds of uncertainty. Sometimes you want to pursue another opportunity, but there's no guarantee that it's gonna work out. So you have to add into the equation what happens if this utterly fails. Like, well, what's my fallback? Will I land somewhere worse than this safe thing that I have right now? And then you also have to factor into the equation, and what if the people you really love don't approve? That's pretty wild too. And as a result, I'm guessing that most of you, I mean, except maybe those of you who are students and still kind of on the front end of this whole thing, but most of you have done the adult thing for a while. I mean, come on, you've agonized over an employment decision before. And if any of you own your own business or your own thing, I bet you've agonized even more. Which makes the passage that we're looking at in Matthew chapter four all the weirder. So, Matthew 4, 18, while walking by the Sea of Galilee, he, that's Jesus, saw two brothers, Simon, who's called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, Follow me, and I'll make you fishers of men. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. And immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Now, admittedly, biblical narrative can be compressive in nature at times. That is, it takes a whole lot of stuff and a whole lot of emotion and a whole lot of character development, and it just crams it down into like two taut little sentences to just get you onto the action or the bigger points in the theology. But every now and then you can figure out that things happened in rapid succession and that the compression isn't an exaggeration for the sake of being economic, but that it really did happen that quickly. And here, I mean, the verbal cue is right there in the language. We see the word immediately occurring twice in regard to this call of Jesus. This wasn't a very mobile society. It wasn't like Simon and Andrew were home from college, their sophomore year on break. They needed to earn a couple of bucks to pay for their Dodge Daytona, so they were just getting a little bit of work back at the old job so they can go and climb the social ladder eventually. It wasn't just a job. This is who they were. You know how a bunch of us have last names that are indicative of what job our families before us did? Like Cooper, you may not make barrels, but people before you in your family did. And obviously, there's other kinds of last names. I mean, my last name, Whitman, isn't a job. It's a description of our pasty white thighs when we sunbathe. But Andrew and Simon, I mean, their last name was Fisher. I don't know that it actually was, but it would have been Fisher, right? This is what they do. This is what their dad did. This is what his dad before them did. This is what their kids were gonna do. This was their life. And I've been to the guy's house. I mean, they had a house that was right there for convenient access in a community that was secure, where they could make good money, they'd run the math equation. So we're not talking about a gig that they got a Burger King for a few hours a week to tell them over. We're talking about who they are. And then some guy walks up who, as best as we can tell, is homeless because he ends up moving in and crashing on the couch of Simon and Andrew right after this. And he's like, Hey, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. And Simon and Andrew are like, Okie dokie, that's good enough for me. Sign me up. What do we what do we do? Do we quit our jobs first? I mean, that's insane. Think about what it would take for you in whatever job you have right now, unless you utterly loathe it, to just drop what you're doing at the call of some dude that is. Let me just let me add it up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. In the ESV, it's nine, ten letters long. No one in the world could say anything with those ten words, maybe short of a threat that would make me quit everything I'm doing, change my identity, risk alienating everybody I know and everybody who loves me to go and do this. Well, it's not enough that it happens once, it happens twice. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And then going on from there, he finds two other brothers, and this time their dad is right there, who is the owner. We're gonna learn that these guys collectively are referred to by Jesus as the sons of thunder. We'll get into more about what that means as we go along. But these guys have their dad right there, and they're really well off. We've got all kinds of good reasons to believe that they owned multiple properties as a family. I mean, it's possible that Zebedee was kind of like the big money guy in this part of the lake, or heck, maybe even on the whole lake. It looks like James and John were very well educated. I think there's a reason that in the list of the big important disciples, you got Peter and you got James and John. It looks like their education paid off, their influence paid off. It looks like they were maybe even able to shelter the disciples a little bit later on because of those things. But what's crazy is they're at work with their dad, who's done all of this to build this. I mean, what for? For for his kids, right? I'm gonna hand this off to you, and like my father before me, you will be great fishermen and properteers or whatever. And so they're mending their nets, getting things all tidied up. These guys probably had people under their command as well. I bet they captained their own fishing vessels, so they would also be sacrificing authority and prestige, and same thing, homeless guy, follow me, I'll make you fishers of men. And they're like, Yep, right on, that's actually what I was gonna do today. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. I can't do the math on this. I can't. I've got the benefit of 2,000 years of history and being raised around this, which is totally cheating, and going to school for this and reflecting on this document and all of the theology that goes with it. I mean, so much about my life has happened in the orbit of this story, so it's really easy for me to be like, oh, well, if Jesus came up to me, I would follow him immediately. Right, but that's not analogous. These guys didn't know who Jesus was. They were anticipating a completely different religion. The analogous thing would be like somebody from some other tangent version of sort of Christianity comes up to me, and I've never really put a lot of thought into any of this stuff. I just got a job that I do and a business that I'm building, and he's like, quit all your stuff and come with me. And I'm like, okay. I I just I can't do the math on why that would happen. The only thing I can credit it to is that there was something absolutely powerful and transformative and effective about Jesus' presence and also supernaturally God ordained before the foundations of the earth were put in place that these guys were going to be on Team Jesus, and that was just that. So I guess to round out the thought, a couple of things. One, I would just challenge you to brainstorm this out for yourself. What would it take for you to do something analogous to what these guys just did? Thing number two, the original audience would not be different than you on this. In fact, it probably was more stunning to them because you're used to the story. And like, oh, that's so beautiful. Then Jesus came and he had that long silky brown hair and that perfect white robe and that irresistible Norse beard, and they just couldn't help it. Our ability to see this clearly is poisoned by the fact that we've heard it a lot. Original audience, they'd never heard it before and they would have thought this was crazy. You living in a land of upward mobility and opportunity would be like, well, if it doesn't work out, you know, I would just go and pick up some other job or fall back on my degree. They would not have a fallback plan. You living in a time where we kind of move away from our families, and if they don't like what we do, eh, tough luck. Maybe we should be more respectful of them than we are, but that is culturally what we do. Could imagine if my parents didn't like me, well, I don't know, we all have to be our own person when we grow up. In this culture, whoa, wow. This is a much riskier move in terms of family. So all of that to say, I think the original audience would have been even more staggered by this than you and I are. Third thing that I think matters here is just considering people reading this after the fact as the early church is taking shape, knowing what we know about the book of Acts and the role these guys played. This is a pretty big boost that Matthew is giving to his colleagues that demonstrates, frankly, no jealousy on the part of Matthew. He's not listed in the inner circle. These guys are, or three of the four are. And the fact that Matthew describes their conversion this way and being the first ones to follow Jesus that scores them a lot of credibility points at a time in the early church when this is initially circulating, where people would have been wondering, who do we exactly follow and who's running this thing moving forward? And you know what? I feel just great about that nice, neat little three-point bow we just put on it. So I'm gonna hit pause there. And tomorrow we're gonna talk about the whole Fishers of Men thing from the perspective of just what's the deal with evangelism. Is it weird that you got a whole religion that's predicated on people coming to think it's a good idea and then going and constantly telling other people about it? Thanks again to everybody who supports the program at the TMBH podcast. We do that on a weekly basis so that it doesn't get into a big hassle, but basically you can support a week of the podcast for a buck, two bucks, three bucks, five bucks. Some people do even more than that, and it helps a ton. Grateful to all of you. Thanks for considering that. And if you considered it and you're like, nah, thanks to you as well. I'm Matt. This is a 10 minute Bible hour podcast. We'll catch you soon.