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Well, I want to start tonight by giving you a statement that you may hear a couple of times throughout the message. It simply says this Jesus always has an open invitation to follow him. I'll say that again. Jesus always has an open invitation to follow him. I'm going to get you guys to, because you're kind of seeming a little bit uh like it's afternoon nap time, I'm gonna get you to help me say that again, okay? So I'll say a little phrase and you guys can echo it. Just amuse me and and follow me here for a second. So Jesus always has always good an open invitation to follow him. One more time. Jesus always has an open invitation to follow him. That was good. You guys kind of have a manly sound about the group as a whole, so I like that. Ladies, we love you and value you too. Uh but it it's it was a good sound. Okay. So Jesus always has this open invitation to follow him. Invitation. I want to kind of talk about that word for a second, a second. It's kind of an interesting word. And I don't know what comes to your mind when I say invitation, but for me, there's a bunch of different things. One of the things I think about is kind of like that awkward moment in elementary school when a girl hands you a note and she's inviting you to be her girlfriend, you know, that kind of awkward moment, and you're like, I don't even know what a girlfriend is, but that's okay. Or I also think of the moment that you're invited to a birthday party, or you're invited to a wedding, or you're invited to a baby show. You know, as life progresses, we have invitations, right? Yes? Okay, so invitations. I was thinking about, you know, what does that mean when we say we have this open invitation? And as I thought back over invitations, I thought to one specific one that really has shaped my life. And so I wanted to give you a little bit of a story and a glimpse into my life and how it is that I'm standing on this stage here this evening in the context of invitation. About eight years ago exactly, in 2005, in May, I came to America for the very first time. I came over to spend ten weeks at a big church in Houston as a missions intern. I went there, I I flew in actually to Chicago, spent two days in Australia uh in Australia, uh two days in Chicago with some Australian friends, and then I flew down to Houston where I knew absolutely nobody. Like I hadn't met any of these people ever before. And I was going to spend ten weeks of my life with these people living pretty closely and doing life. Well, the first day that I was there, we had this barbecue, and uh I think they were grilling something. Anyway, we were eating together, and they had different people coming in and visiting and meeting all the interns, and one of those couples was Nick and Jada Shock, and they had two kids at the time, and so they came in and we started to talk a little bit, and before I knew it, Nick and I were having quite a lengthy discussion. I didn't realize it at the time, but he was kind of giving me a job interview because I'd come in to be a missions intern and he was looking for a student ministry intern. So for the next ten weeks, I became the student ministry missions intern, I don't know what you call it. It was a weird, diff weirdly defined role, but I spent 10 weeks working and living with Nick and Jader along with a bunch of other people in Houston. And it was a great time, but I came to the end of that time and I didn't know what I was doing with my life. I had no idea. And I was kind of confused and wondering, okay, God, what what is the next step? What do you want from my life? I've finished my university, I've finished college and all that degree and stuff, but I'm wanting to know what you want me to do with my life because I don't feel like you're leading me down that career path that my college had had led me. And I started to pray. I remember there was a specific morning I really started to pray about what was next. I was like, God, what do you want from me? Spent a significant amount of time praying. And I went up to the office at the church that day, and Nick was like, Hey, I need to talk to you in my office. He pulled me into his office and said, Hey, I want you to pray about coming back, moving here, and living here for a year and being an intern for a year-long internship. And that day, there was an invitation on the table that changed my life. Now, there's a lot more to the story than that, but that's just a snippet to show you how significant an invitation was in my life. This moment that I had to follow what ultimately has turned out to be God's calling, I believe, on my life. And just like that was a really significant moment for me, the scripture that we're going to look at in Luke is a super significant moment for these guys who are invited to follow Jesus. And it's not just significant for them, it changes the course of history because these guys go on to start the church. Okay? So that's what we're looking at tonight. Don't see it as like, you know, an invitation to a birthday party or a wedding or something else. This is a significant invitation that has a significant impact on the rest of history. And whether you realize it or not, the invitation that these guys received from Jesus to come and follow him, I believe it's on the table for all of us here tonight. And like we've already said like 5,000 times, Jesus always has an open invitation to come and to follow him. Does that make sense? Okay, good. You guys are waking up a little. This is good. Okay, so we're talking about invitation and following in the context of, see, we got follow-up there. Uh, in the context of discipleship. And discipleship is one of those churchy words that you may hear a lot, and if in my mind, if you hear it too much, it gets really confusing. But last week, Nick did a great job of defining what is discipleship, what does it mean to be a disciple? And he kind of asked that question, what is a disciple? And he answered it simply as this, and if you got the notes, this is your first fill-in-the-blank. A disciple is one who follows, learns, obeys, and leads. A disciple is one who follows, learns, obeys, and leads. And over the next four weeks, we're going to talk about each one of these. Obviously, this week is follows, that's what I'm talking about. And so I feel like this is a very significant thing to talk about, but I don't want to just assume that we're all on the same page in that regard. And so let's just back up the truck a little bit and let's talk about why do we even need to talk about discipleship? Let's just consider that for a second before we jump into the text. I promise we'll get there. So I could give you a really simple, easy answer, which may actually annoy some of you. We need to talk about discipleship because Jesus said so. Is that a good answer? Now, that that really is true, but Matthew 28, let's go there really quickly. This isn't the scripture we're parking in, but this is what Nick used last week. So Matthew 28, let's see why we need to talk about discipleship. Matthew 28, verse 18 is where I'm going to pick it up. Matthew 28, sorry, I should have had you getting ready to be there. This is what they call in church world the Great Commission, okay? But this is a significant moment. Jesus is talking to his disciples before he's about to leave. Verse 18, I'll pick it up part way through. Jesus said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make what?

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Disciples?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. Love that promise at the end of the verse. But I want you to see there. Go therefore, verse 19, and make disciples of all nations. Jesus said that discipleship is important. And because he says that it's important, I believe that this is an important thing for us to be talking about these next five weeks. This isn't a waste of time. This is an important thing for us to discuss. Because discipleship, and hear this, discipleship is the vehicle that God uses to convey the gospel. Does that make sense? Discipleship is the vehicle that God uses to convey the gospel. Now, the gospel is one of those, again, like discipleship or disciple, a churchy word, that if thrown around too much can lose its meaning. So I really quickly want to tell you what the gospel is. Landon and I have kind of practiced doing this, so I'll see how I go here. So the gospel simply is this that what we believe the gospel is, it's the good news. That what it is what it translates to. That's the meaning of the word gospel is good news. And the good news is this is that you didn't happen in a random combination of atoms. That's not how you came into being. The good news is that you were created by God. God created, that's the first part of it. But man sinned and separated ourselves from God. We thought that we could be like God. And so sin entered the world with Adam and Eve. You may have heard the story of Adam and Eve before. So we've got creation, everything's perfect. God creates man, but then sin enters the world, and there's like this divide between us and God. Well, God, unlike any other religion in the world, God sends his son to come and get us. We don't have to measure up to him. He sends his son to us to redeem us. He lives the perfect life that we couldn't live, and then he died the death that we should have paid. That's what we believe as Christians. So you got creation, like I said, then you got the fall, then you got redemption. Jesus comes down, and then restoration is the hope that we have that the world is going to be right again. Okay? So that is the gospel in like, I don't know, did I do it in two minutes? I was trying to do about two minutes. So that's the gospel, okay? So if you haven't heard that before, that's what we're talking about. And discipleship, I believe, is the way that that gets spread out. As I was thinking about things being spread, I was thinking about the Olympic flame. Do you guys know what the Olympic torch is and the relay that they do with that? They have the torch and you know the it gets lit from one place to the next. It starts in one Olympics, and then four years later, maybe on the other side of the world, this flame makes its all the way across. Well, unlike the Olympic torch, they light one thing and then turn off the flame that it was on. Discipleship has happened throughout history where the flame continued to be lit. So one disciple then goes and makes maybe two or three or four or five disciples, and those disciples go and make disciples. Does that make sense? And so here we stand two thousand years after Jesus had this conversation with his disciples, and we're proclaiming this message that has been passed on to us like a flame. Does that make sense? So there's generations of things. And the cool thing is that Luke 5, where we're going tonight, is the inception, it's the very beginning of this flame. It's like the start of it all. It's Jesus calling his very first disciples. So it's kind of cool to read about this moment in history that's so significant. Because I believe, I personally believe, that this really changed the course of history. So let's go there, Luke 5. I know it's taken us a while to get there. But Luke 5, verse 1 is where we're going to be. And what we're going to do is we're going to talk about, we're going to read through it, and then we're going to talk about four things that are requirements of us accepting the invitation from God to follow him. Okay? So we're going to read this text together. Luke chapter 5. It would help if I turned my Bible there as well. Luke chapter 5. We're good? Let's go. As the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear God's word, he was standing by Lake Genesaret. He saw two boats at the edge of the lake. The fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats which belonged to Simon and asked him to put out a little from the land. Then he sat down and was teaching the gr the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Master, Simon replied, We've worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but at your word I'll let down the nets. When they did this they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear. So they signalled for their partners in the boat in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, Go away from me because I am a sinful man, Lord. For he and those who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they took. And so were James and John, Zebedee's sons, who were Simon's partners. Don't be afraid, Jesus told Simon. From now on, you'll be catching people. Then they brought their boats to land, left everything, and followed him. What a great kind of story, a scripture. The cool thing is it's not just a story. I mean, I believe that this really happened. And there's a couple of things I want you to know contextually before we dive into these four points, okay? First thing is that Peter is Simon and Simon is Peter. Okay, so don't get confused on that. When we say Simon in the text, it means Peter that we talked about later on in Acts. And so it's one of those things in the Bible where both names mean the same guy, like Saul and Paul, Simon, Peter, same guy. Okay? Second thing that you need to see, and I feel like this is relatively significant, was something that I found in the text this week, as I was reading a lot of people's thoughts on this text. The consensus basically is this is that this isn't Peter's first interaction with Jesus. Growing up, I'd always believed that this was like Jesus coming up to this stranger, Peter, jumping in his boat and being like, hey, I'm going to teach for a bit, and then we're going to go catch some fish, and then you're going to come follow me. But that's, I don't believe that that's the case anymore. What I believe is truth is the fact that Jesus and Peter had had at least two or three interactions already. And Peter was struggling with who is this Jesus guy? Is he the Messiah? Like some of these people are saying, my brother's even saying that he's the Messiah, and I'm struggling with that. You know, he seems like a good guy and he's able to do some miracles. Is he just a prophet? Or is he, you know, a rabbi, a teacher? Who is Jesus? And so I feel like he was struggling with this question. The cool thing is in the text we see him come to a resolution. Okay? So anyway, that's some context. Let's jump in and talk about these next four things. They're in your notes there. The first fill in the blank is this To be a follower requires a recognition of authority. So the invitations out there, if we're gonna follow, if we're gonna follow Jesus as He's invited us, just like these disciples, we need to have a recognition of authority. No student is greater than his master. And being a disciple requires humility. You can't be a learner without believing that somebody has something to teach you, right? Like you're never gonna receive anything from somebody unless you're like, okay, this person has something good that they can pass on to me. Does that make sense? So there has to be this hierarchy, this acknowledgement that, okay, this person's here and I'm here, but they're gonna teach me. Does that make sense? That's the position you have to be in to accept the invitation to be a disciple, to be a follower. And I think it's really interesting for us to see how Peter makes this move. He jumps, I think, in the text, from saying one thing to coming to the realization of the position that Jesus is in. Let's look at it together. Verse 5 of the text again. Peter says, or Simon says, Simon says, uh, Master, some of you got that. Those of you who are awake, Master, Simon replied, we've worked hard all night long and caught nothing. See how he's saying, Master here, that, you know, other people may translate it that as rabbi or teacher or, you know, guy who's doing a good job. That's basically what he's saying. But the cool thing is, after this miracle happens where there's more fish than this fisherman has ever seen in his life in his boat, in the middle of the day when the fish aren't even meant to be out, he comes to this moment and realizes, hey, this guy isn't just a master, he is Lord. Listen to what he says in verse 8. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, Go away from me, because I am a sinful man, Lord. Something switched in a moment, something changed where he went from being just, oh, master, good guy, Jesus, yep, you're awesome, to being like, man, this guy in my boat, I I believe he may be, I think he's the Son of God. Like he's not just, he's the mess. The Messiah is in my boat. And in this moment he has a realization of who God is, but who he is as well. Does that make sense? So, and I feel like that's a very healthy place for each of us to be in. Before you're able to follow Jesus, you need to have a realization of who you are and who God is. Or maybe the reverse order, who you are, who God is and who you are. Does that make sense? There has to be this realization that God is good and I'm not good. God is perfect and I'm sinful. God is holy, I'm not holy. The world is about God, the world is not about me. You have to come to that moment before you can accept the open invitation that Jesus has to come and to follow him. Does that make sense? Okay. So, next thing that I believe that we see in the text is that to be a follower requires faith. That should fill in the blank. Faith. It requires faith. Being a disciple is risky business. To be a disciple, you're making a huge investment in your life. I believe to be a disciple, you've got to it takes a lot of time to be a disciple, right? Would you guys agree with that? To follow something or someone requires time and energy. And I don't believe, as I think about it, I don't believe that there's any more precious resource that I have than my time. Time is a vapor, it's gone, you know? Yesterday's gone. And so to be a disciple requires an element of faith, of trust, of saying, this is a worthwhile investment of my time, of my energy, of my resources. It's cool to see this faith process going on in Peter. He's just washed his nets, they're just gotten them all clean, and Jesus says, Hey, let's go out and fish. Peter's like, dude, I've been up all night. He doesn't say that, he didn't say dude, but he's like, I've been up all night, and now you're asking me to put my nets down to catch fish in the middle of the day. This doesn't even make sense. But he has enough faith, he has just a little bit, but he has enough to throw out those nets and it changes his life. And so for some of you this evening, you may not really get this whole Christian thing. You may be kind of searching or struggling with it. Who is this Jesus guy? Who is what's the Bible all about? But my encouragement to you is just to have a little bit of faith to believe that it might be true. And to maybe even ask a prayer and say, God, if you're real, would you prove that to me? Would you show yourself to me? Would you reveal yourself to me? And I believe he will answer that prayer of faith. Peter only had a little bit of faith to throw out that net, and yet he pulled it back in. So to be a follower, like we said, requires faith. It requires trust. One of the things it does not require, and this is a great thing for all of us to hear tonight, is perfection. To be a follower of Christ, to be a follower of Jesus does not require perfection. Listen to Peter, what he said again. Verse 8, he says, Go away from me because I am a sinful man, Lord. And Jesus' response, just a line or two down in your Bible, Jesus says, he doesn't answer Peter's question. He says, Don't be afraid, Jesus told Simon, from now on you'll be catching people. Don't be afraid. He doesn't say, hey Peter, you know what? You're very right. You are sinful. And I don't even know why I'm hanging out with you. I'm sorry. I'm gonna leave now. He doesn't say that. He doesn't say, hey, hey, Peter. You're so right. I just can't handle being here with you anymore. He says, don't be afraid. And so some of us, I think, need to hear that tonight. That God requires faith. He requires trust, but he doesn't require perfection for us to follow him. If he required perfection to follow him, none of us would make the cut. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is right. No matter how good you are. And that kind of plays back to what we were just talking about earlier. You've got to realize who God is, you've got to realize who you are. They fall in order like that. If you don't have that figured out, you're not going to be able to follow Jesus. Does that make sense? Yes? Okay, good. Well, let's move on. The third thing that we see here in the text that's required of a follower, of a disciple, of someone who would follow Jesus is sacrifice. That's not a sexy word in our culture, is it? Sacrifice. That's not the cool thing to talk about at church, and yet it's all through the scriptures. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. This is the part really in the text that's gone hit me in the middle of the eyes this week that I'm like, ow. Like to be a true follower of Jesus requires me to give up some stuff and to to follow. It requires a letting go. I wrote a few things down here, a couple of thoughts. One is that uh we have to surrender our will and our agenda to follow Jesus. We have to give up ourselves, and that means leaving behind maybe our will and agenda, but maybe also leaving behind comfort. Family, friends, relationships, friendships to follow Jesus. That's sacrificing. But the Bible, throughout the Bible, we're not taught that being a Christian is an easy or simple process. To be a Christian requires that we would, as we've been reading this week in our reading plan, to take up our cross daily and follow Him. What does that mean? That means giving up of ourselves. Now again, He's not asking for perfections. He's not asking for us to be perfect people, but He is asking of us to be willing to give up. And we see this so clearly in that last verse of the text, verse 11, says this, Then they brought their boats to the land, left everything, and followed him. As I look at that, that really grabs my attention because in my analytical head, and some of you who know me know I think like this, in my head, what would have been the best scenario would have been for those guys to pull their boats in, be like, okay, Jesus, we are following you, but we're gonna go sell these fish first because we know how to turn fish into money. We're fishermen, we're experts at that. And also, Jesus, we are going to go and sell the business. I'm gonna list it on Craigslist with the boats and everything, our nets, sell all our gear, and then we're gonna do a going-away party, and then we'll follow you. That's what I would have proposed to Jesus in that moment. But rather than that, they have this reckless abandonment. They're like, man, this guy is worth everything, and our lives that we had are worth nothing. There's a parable that Jesus told that kind of helps me out with processing this. He says that this man, in this parable, which is just a story, a fictional story, that this man found a great treasure in a field. And in that field, as he found this great treasure, he realized he didn't have enough money to buy the field. So he went and sold everything he had just to buy the field, so that he could have this great treasure. And that was a story to talk about what it's like to follow Christ. It requires sacrifice for us to follow Christ. The thing that Nick and I talked about as we were talking about this uh text this week is that in our culture, people struggle with thinking that the cost of following Jesus, the cost of following Christ, is worth the reward. They're like, I don't know if that's worth it. I don't know if that's worth it. And so I guess it's not my job to convince you of that, it's God's job to convince you of that. But I do want to answer this question, and this is a difficult question, but I want to try and answer this question. And the question simply is this why is Jesus worth following? Why is Jesus worth following? And I guess that's kind of what we talk about every Sunday, right? Why is Jesus worth following? But in a nutshell, let me, and I probably won't articulate this great, but in a nutshell, let me tell you a few things that I think that of why Jesus is worth following. Jesus is worth following because he brings meaning and purpose. He brings hope and joy, he brings salvation, he gives me a hope for the future, he gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. If I didn't have Jesus, I'd be a hopeless cause. I'd think life was about me. I'd have no idea how I came into existence. And so I need Jesus to give me meaning and purpose and a reason to wake up in the morning. I need Jesus because he loves me perfectly. More perfectly than my wife, than my family, than my children. God is the only one who will love us perfectly and never let us down. Nobody else can do that. I'm telling you tonight, nobody can do that. Everybody's always going to let you down, other than Jesus. And so I believe those are a few reasons why Jesus is worth following. He has this open invitation that we can come and follow him. And so I'm I'm just here tonight saying that the sacrifice is worth the reward. Okay? So that's what I'm saying on that point. Okay. Fourth thing there in your notes that's required to be a follower, to be a disciple of Jesus is a commitment to growth. A commitment to growth. If you are a believer or someone who believes in Jesus, this may be the one that you struggle with here tonight. Because it's easy for us to kind of get stuck on the sidelines or hung up and kind of get sidelined or sidetracked in our Christian walk and in our faith. And yet the commitment to growth that we see in these disciples through the next pages, a guy called Luke wrote this book. That's why it's called Luke. But uh that was a deep and meaningful moment right there. Uh so Luke wrote this book called Luke, and he also wrote the book of Acts, and through these pages, we see that Peter and these other disciples go on this huge journey of growth and of change and of development. And so I believe that one of the things required of us as followers and as followers of Jesus is to be committed to a lifestyle of movement and change and progress. In this moment, we see they go from being fishermen to being apostles, to being disciples. They're not fishing, making money, making catching fish anymore. They have a career change. Jesus simply said to them, From now on, you'll be catching people. They came in, left everything, and followed Jesus. And so I just want to encourage you tonight, no matter where you are at in the room tonight, that one of the things that we've got to be committed to if we're going to follow Christ is this continuing change. We never arrive. At 80 years old, I want to continue to be growing in my faith, in my understanding of who God is and what he's done. I don't want to be that grumpy old dude who's like learned it all and's got a lesson to teach everybody. I want to be the guy who's continuing to learn and be a disciple at 80. So that's my encouragement to you guys tonight is to continue to commit to change and to growth. So, really quickly, I want to I want to back back over the things that we've talked about about. We've talked about being a follower requires a recognition of authority, faith, sacrifice, and a commitment to growth. And as you think about things, I want you to ask this question of yourself tonight. How does this apply to me? What does this mean to me? What is it that God is trying to say to me out of this scripture this evening? And I believe that you're in one of two places in the room tonight. It's it's not rocket science, you're in one of two places. First place that you may be in tonight is that you may not be quite sure about this God thing or this Jesus thing. You're not quite sure if the Bible is true or if this Christianity thing is real or if it's just, you know, you know, you're just struggling. You're well not even struggling, you're just trying to figure out what this is all about. You're investigating. And that's awesome. I'm really glad that you're in the room tonight and that you're in that position. My hope for you is that you would see that being a follower of Jesus is worth the cost. Like we talked about. It's worth taking these steps. It's worth coming to that moment of realizing that God is more important than you. It's worth coming to that moment of having that moment of faith where you just are like, I don't get the whole Bible, I don't understand this whole Christianity thing, but I'm gonna jump in on this anyway. I'm gonna believe that God's gonna help me take that step of faith. I've heard a couple of stories lately of people coming to faith and just saying, you know, I don't understand it all, but I'm gonna trust that God is who he says he is. I'm gonna take that moment of faith. My prayer for you too is that you want to understand that the sacrifice is so worth the reward. As we give of our lives to him, we're we're gaining our lives. It's like reverse psychology, you know. It's kind of cool. And then finally, that as you take that step, that God wants to walk you through a life of committing to change and to following Him. Okay? So if you're in that position tonight, I'm just gonna encourage you to pray one of two prayers. Really simply, you could say, God, I'm not quite sure if you're real, I'm not sure if you're there, but if you are, I pray that you would show yourself to me. That's a great prayer to pray. Because I believe he's gonna answer that prayer. The second prayer you could say is, God, I believe that you've been showing yourself to me, even in the text tonight. And I just want to say that I'm ready to follow you. I'm ready to follow you. That's a simple prayer, but it's an easy one to pray and say, God, I'm ready to follow you. And he'll hear that prayer tonight. If you pray either of those prayers, I'd love to hear about that. I'm not gonna put you up here on the stage or make a show. I just want to I want to talk with you about what God's doing in your heart. You could talk to Nick or the person that brought you tonight about that, but talk to somebody about that. Don't let that just be an inner thing that you don't share with anybody else. That's an awesome thing to be praying either of those prayers. If you're a believer in the room tonight, my challenge to you is this evaluate yourself as to where you are with in the discipling process. As in, I'm trying to say, evaluate which of these areas you're kind of struggling with. Hey, am I submitted to God's authority right now, or am I bucking against what he's been telling me to do? Do I have faith that he is good and that he's gonna provide for my family? You might be going through a rough spot and you're struggling with your faith. So maybe the faith thing is kind of hitting home. For you, you may be like me, where the sacrifice part is like, oh man, I I've got I've got to be committed to a life of sacrifice where I'm willing to just let go and let God lead me fully. That's the one that I've been struggling with. Or it may be for you that you're like, man, I've been sitting on the sidelines and I've got to continue to be a disciple, a follower, committed to change, committed to God's leading. So, whatever thing you need to do business with God about tonight, I'm just gonna implore you, encourage you, please be honest with God tonight.