Mark 1:18: What Does It Mean to “Follow Jesus”?

INTRODUCTION

In our church we have Sunday school classes for children as young as two years old. A mother of one of these toddlers told me this story. When her two-year-old daughter came home after her first Sunday school class, she asked her daughter what she had learned. The little girl stood up straight with her hands at her sides and looking straight up at her mother, she repeated, “Jesus said, ‘Follow me.’”

I don’t know what a two-year-old would think it means to “follow Jesus,” but I think that’s a good place to start teaching a little child what it means to belong to Jesus and live for him.

The story (Mark 1:16-18):

And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in 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.”

I. Let us picture the scene in our minds.

A. The Sea of Galilee is really only a large lake about 12 miles long from north to south and 6 miles across from east to west. It is at the northern end of the Jordan River, which runs south through Palestine to empty into the Dead Sea.

Along the six miles of the northern shoreline of the Sea of Galilee was a well-traveled road with many fishing towns and villages. In the time of Jesus, one of these towns was Capernaum. The town was the hometown of Peter, his bother Andrew, James and his brother John, and also Matthew. After Jesus began his public life Capernaum was Jesus’s home base.

Fishing was an important occupation in that country.

Fish was by far the most important meat that ordinary people ate.

We read several times in the gospels of meals that included fish.

Fishing was a demanding and dangerous occupation.

B. We don’t know much about the previous life of Peter and Andrew.

We know that Peter had a wife because Jesus healed his mother-in-law of a fever. We know that he spent some time at his home in Capernaum. Paul wrote in one of his letters that Peter took his wife on his travels.

We know even less about Andrew, but it was Andrew who brought his brother to Jesus. Andrew had been a follower of John the Baptist before he met Jesus. One day he was with John and another of John’s disciples when they saw Jesus. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”

Andrew went and found his brother Peter and brought him to meet Jesus

So it was some time later that Jesus saw the Peter and Andrew beside the lake casting their nets into the water, he called them to him, and they were ready to respond to his call.

Later the same day, Jesus found two more fishermen, the brothers James and John who were mending their nets. He called to them also and they left their father and the hired men in the boat and also followed Jesus.

C. It is noteworthy that the people Jesus called to him were working people.

There was only one man Jesus called to himself who was what we might call wealthy, and that was Matthew, the tax collector, and, though he had money, his profession wasn’t respectable.

In those days, upper class people didn’t do much work.

They could spend their time in pleasure or discussing religion or philosophy.

I can think of reasons why fishermen might have been well-fitted to be disciples of Jesus:

They were used to hard work.

They were used to danger. Fishing was dangerous because the Sea of Galilee was treacherous. The lake was prone to sudden storms.

In the early chapters of the book of Acts we read of James’s execution. Many years later both Peter and Andrew would die, as Jesus did, on crosses. Only John would life on into old age.

II. Jesus said, “Follow me.” Let’s consider what it would have meant for them to follow Jesus.

A. First of all, to follow Jesus would have meant giving up the security of their trade.

They exchanged the security of their fishing business for the adventure of following Jesus for the three years before Jesus’s death and resurrection.

In those days, occupations were typically passed from father to son for generations, sometimes for hundreds of years.

Fishing was probably the only way to make a living that Peter and Andrew and James and John had ever known and all they expected to know. They would have assumed that they would continue as fishermen and pass the trade on to their children.

So the decision to leave their nets and follow was a Big Decision. They would be giving up the security of the only life they had ever known to venture into an unknown future.

They didn’t know where they were going, they only knew that they were going with Jesus.

B. Following Jesus was far more than just believing something about Jesus. It was a life to be lived. When they followed Jesus, their lives were no longer their own.

They were disciples. Philosophers had disciples who followed them around and learned from their conversation. To be a disciple of Jesus meant to learn from him, to obey him, and to serve him.

In the language of today we might call them apprentices or interns. They would spend three years with Jesus, listening to his teaching, watching his example, serving him, and learning what they needed to know to carry on his work. They would learn from Jesus how to call on God’s power to heal sick people. They would learn how to preach the gospel. They would learn how to nurture young believers in the faith. They would be examples of what it means to belong to Jesus.

As “fishers of people,” they would learn how to catch people for God.

APPLICATION

Jesus also calls us to follow him.

For us to follow Jesus means to depend on him.

It means to trust him—to commit our lives to him in faith and obedience.

It means to live our lives to please Jesus and not ourselves.

When I was little I loved to go to my granny’s house in Kansas City.

Granny was generous and gracious.

She always thought of the needs of others.

She had a big box of unusual toys for us children; that was one reason we loved to go to her house. She had thoughtfully picked out unusual toys that we had never seen before that we could play with.

She had the first push-button radio we had ever seen. We loved to listen to that radio and push the buttons to change from station to station.

She had a shelf just under the ceiling all around the walls of her dining room, and on it were displayed unusual plates with pictures on them. She had a little organ that you pumped with your feet.

Granny sent money to many missionaries. They would write her letters from countries in Africa and other exciting places. I collected stamps, and whenever we visited she would call me over to her desk and give me the envelopes with colorful stamps from the various countries the missionaries wrote her from.

One thing I remember clearly about Granny’s house was a framed Bible verse on the stairway landing.

Written in pearl-inlayed letters was this Bible verse from Romans (15:3): “Even Christ pleased not himself.”

That verse summed up my granny’s life. She didn’t live to please herself. She lived to please other people. And especially she lived to please Jesus.

A “fisher of people” doesn’t live to please himself or herself.

Followers of Jesus live to please others. They might be pastors or evangelists or “soul winners.”

None of us are pastors or evangelists or soul winners, but we are still followers of Jesus if we belong to him, and live for him, and serve others in his name.

God has put us into a community, which is called the “church.”

The church’s mission is to bring people to Jesus and nurture them in the faith.

We don’t do God’s work by ourselves. We fulfill the church’s mission together.

Today I would like you to remember the many ways in which during your long life you contributed to the church’s mission of “fishing for people.”

Some of you taught Sunday school.

You invited people to church.

You cleaned the building or cut the grass. You prepared food for potlucks and picnics.

Some of you sang in the choir or played the piano for worship.

You visited the sick.

You extended hospitality to lonely people by inviting them for dinner.

You gave money for good causes.

You came alongside people were hurting to comfort them, and you remembered to pray for them.

In your old age, you can still serve Jesus in some of these ways. Maybe there are more ways you can live out your faith by serving others. Think about what you can do.

There are lonely people here that need a friend who cares. Maybe you can be that friend.

A STORY

I will end with a story that a pastor, John Fanestil, tells about how his grandmother brought him to God.

He tells about his visits when a child to his grandparents’ little house in El Dorado, Kansas.

He and his seven brothers and sisters would lie on the floor of the living room in their sleeping bags jabbering beside the grate above the furnace burning in the basement.

When they had all gotten to their sleeping bags and were getting drowsy, their grandmother would come into the room and kneel on the floor beside each of them, starting with the youngest, would rub their backs and stroke their heads, whispering to them, and putting them to sleep one by one.

Pastor Fanestil says that sometimes when he is anxious and having a hard time falling to sleep, he can still feel the hand of his grandmother on his back, so cool, so calming. He can still feel her hand on his head, fingers running through his hair. And he can still hear her voice whispering softly in his ear.

He says that as a young man he wandered from the faith but eventually came back.

Some of his sophisticated friends asked him why he returned to faith.

He says that the honest answer to that question was “because my grandmother used to rub my back.”

He remembers his grandmother’s cheerful trust in God, her grateful spirit, her Bible reading, and her unceasing prayers.

He says, “Because my grandmother used to rub my back and place her hand on my head, I know that my life, too, has been touched by the hand of God.”

(John Fanestil, Mrs. Hunter’s Happy Death, pp 55-57)

We don’t have any apostles here, but Jesus calls even us to follow him. And I have reason to believe that you responded and followed him and he has used you—and will continue to use you—to bring people to himself.

But maybe you aren’t sure you have ever responded to the call to follow Jesus.

It’s not to late to come to Jesus and give yourself to him. And he’ll give you something to do for him by serving others.