That very simple word which we were considering
just a few Sundays ago, follow me, said
he, follow me and I will make you
to become fishers of men.
Follow me, that's the condition.
We must now take, take a look at
the scriptures of the Gospels and see for
ourselves what really it means to follow me,
to follow Jesus.
It was a very simple directive on the
face of it.
One might almost gloss it over as meaning
very little and signifying little.
But when you come down to the Gospel
narratives and consider the implications of following in
the footmarks of our Lord, you'll find that
the way is steep and rugged.
You'll find that the way is difficult and
tough and that there are many, many adversaries
on the way.
Even so, this is the way.
If Simon is to become Peter, he must
follow the Saviour.
If you, if I am to become a
fisher of men, there is only one way.
We must follow in the footmarks of our
Lord.
There is nothing for us to learn which
we cannot learn by following him.
Every lesson we need to learn, we shall
learn as we press forward, moving along, at
the heels of the ongoing leading shepherd of
our souls, captain of our salvation, Jesus Christ.
Come then, let us see the master man
fisher about his business, looking at him particularly
to mark his footfalls, to see the way
he goes, to behold the principles whereby he
acts or does not, and then by the
grace of God to apply these things to
ourselves that we become fishers of men.
Now there are three outstanding signposts that mark
his journeying, as the record will point out
in this particular passage to which I've called
your attention this morning.
And I want us, as briefly as possible,
to be looking at these three landmarks in
following the Saviour.
There are three principles really, that are enunciated
in his life and practiced by him so
utterly and so gloriously and so evidently.
Now the first thing I would like you
to notice, in verse 35, Jesus began the
day after the Sabbath in a place of
communion with God.
How simple, but how utterly far-reaching.
Jesus began the day after the Sabbath in
a place of communion with God, and I
want to underline these words, a place of
communion.
Let's read verse 35.
And in the morning, a great while before
day, he rose and went out to a
lonely place and there prayed.
Now that is one daily feature that will
be required of any person who is to
become a fisher of men.
The pilgrimage from Simon to Peter, be it
in the historical Simon or in you and
in me, the pilgrimage from the old to
the new, from the man we were by
nature to the man God has promised to
make us by grace, the pilgrimage from Simon
to Peter necessarily means that we have a
place of communion with God.
I'm not now speaking of the family altar.
I'm not now speaking of the Lord's day
and the necessity of meeting together often in
public worship.
I'm speaking of something far more intimate and
far more personal that applies to every individual
man and woman of God.
A place of communion is a necessity.
Now we must be careful to note the
significance of our Lord's having such a place
at all.
You see, as the incarnate Son of God,
be it noted, he found it necessary, he
found it necessary to leave aside both friend
and foe in order to commune with God
personally and directly.
He left his foes, he left his friends.
May I go further?
He even left nature behind, as it were.
And he went aside to commune directly with
God, he to whom the lily of the
field was eloquent, even the green blade of
grass spoke of his Father's handiwork.
He goes aside to pray directly to his
Father.
He did that.
Not that he was ever severed from God
or his communion with God ruptured for one
solitary moment.
On the contrary, his life was one of
unclouded communion with God.
And yet he turns aside from that ordinary
plane of everyday communion in the common things
to have this intimate communion alone and apart
with his Father.
Now let's get the fact.
Let's get the significance.
It is most pertinent and of practical significance
to us that he did that.
You see, if there was any person in
the course of human history that could have
done without these exceptional communings with God, it
should have been Jesus.
His heart was utterly dedicated to do the
will of God.
He was filled with the Holy Spirit and
never grieved the infilling Spirit.
He knew the will of God from eternity.
He was with the Father in eternity when
all the progress of history was chartered.
He knew everything he needed to know.
He had everything he needed to possess.
If there was any person in history who
could have done without it, it should have
been he.
You and I often don't know the will
of God.
And when we don't know the—when we don't
know the will of God, we need to
discover it.
But when we discover it, we are not
always wholehearted in doing it.
And when we have the Spirit within us,
we grieve the Spirit.
We are so different from him.
How much more then do we need these
times of communion with God, when neither friend
nor foe obtrudes, but when in the aloneness
of the moment we can open our hearts
and be frank and honest before the glare
of the throne, and receive his judgments and
assessments, as well as the grace that he
gives to those who draw near.
Notice that with our Lord this was a
matter of priority.
I remember how this took me by storm
the first time I noticed it.
The priority which Jesus gave to the fellowship,
his fellowship with God, is evidenced in many
ways.
Let me just point to one thing.
It's important to notice the context here.
And the previous day had been a Sabbath
day, our most exacting day for our Lord.
As some of you may be tempted to
question that, and unless you know what it
is to wrestle with evil spirits and evil
powers, you may not believe what the Scriptures
say.
But if you know what it is to
wrestle with principalities and powers, and to meet
demon-possessed people on your path, and rescue
them from the clutches of the devil, you'll
know what I'm going to say now, and
you'll appreciate it.
The Sabbath day begun, as it must for
the Son of God, in honoring his Father's
injunction to worship on the Sabbath day.
The Sabbath day was the Lord's.
He goes necessarily to the synagogue and worships
there.
He wasn't an ordinary worshipper.
This was not his hometown, and as a
visitor he was given the book in the
synagogue, quite obviously, and he began to expound
the Scriptures, and to join the people in
prayers and in praises.
Then a demon-possessed man comes into the
synagogue.
I don't know how he was there, but
there he was.
And of course the fray, the battle begins,
the first battle of the day.
Apart from the battle of expounding the Scriptures
to men that have misconstrued them, there is
this other battle with a demon-possessed man.
The man is rescued by the intervention of
our Lord.
The service proceeds.
Jesus now goes with his little band of
disciples to Simon Peter's home in Capernaum.
Going in through the door, he's told that
Simon's mother-in-law is ill with a
fever.
Here comes a miracle of healing.
And Luke the doctor tells us that when
Jesus healed, virtue went out of him.
Healing to Jesus was never a matter of
a divine fiat.
Utter the word, full stop.
It's happened.
Virtue went out of him.
He spent the day with his disciples, teaching
them and admonishing them, perhaps altogether within the
privacy of Simon's house, I don't know.
Then the Sabbath ended.
During the Sabbath, of course, the Jew could
carry no and nor nothing on his back
or in his arms.
He was forbidden by the scribal understanding of
the Sabbath.
But they were all waiting on tiptoe.
It's a remarkable picture here.
They were all waiting for the Sabbath to
end.
Why?
Because they wanted to take their burdens, sick,
and carry them, and lay them at the
feet of the Master and beg that he
would stretch forth his hand or utter his
word in healing.
And outside Peter's house in the Capernaum street
where he lived on that night, after the
Sabbath was over, late at night, you see
a multitude that the scriptures don't attempt to
number.
They've all brought their burdens, their sick folk,
their problem folk, and they've brought them along,
they've carried them along, and there they are
waiting for one thing, the touch of the
Master, the word of the Christ, the healing
virtues of the Son of God.
We're not told what time he went to
bed that night.
Now anybody that is aware of spiritual issues
and spiritual battles should be able to strike
a total heel.
This has been a most exacting day, preaching
to people who have no sympathy with your
message, extricating men not only from the power
of the devil, but also of disease.
And here we read, And in the morning,
a great while before day, he rose and
he went out to a lonely place, and
there prayed.
It had priority of place with the Son
of God, does it with us?
It was a matter also not only of
priority, but of consistency.
You see, our Lord was the most consistent
person that's ever lived.
He had been to the synagogue on the
previous day, on the Sabbath day.
Why did he go to the synagogue?
Well, not to be seen of men.
He went to the synagogue because it was
his father's house, it was the place of
worship.
It was the place where the nucleus, the
remnant of God's people met along with others.
And those that waited salvation in Israel were
there along with others who misunderstood completely, but
they were there, he went.
In other words, he went to please God.
He went to worship God.
He went to pray to God.
Very well then, having publicly attended the synagogue
for worship on the Sabbath, he will privately
attend to the same exercise the next morning.
You see, God was as important on the
Monday morning, or I say, Sunday morning, the
Sabbath is on the Saturday.
God was as important the next morning as
he was on the Sabbath day for him.
It wasn't a matter of day, it wasn't
a matter of the season, it was a
matter of heart, and of soul, and of
evaluation.
To follow Jesus means having a place of
private communion with God, where you worship him
and hear his voice, as well as being
loyal at the place of public worship at
the appointed hours.
That is the way for Simon to become
Peter.
That is the way for a man to
be weaned away from material and earthly things,
and to become a fisher of men.
And there is no other way.
A place of communion.
Secondly, Jesus emerges from his place of communion,
will you notice?
Mark 1, 36 to 39, with a God
-given sense of compulsion.
Jesus did not simply come to do God's
will.
Now, he did that.
He did come to do God's will, but
not simply to do God's will.
He came to do God's will in fellowship
with God.
And that makes a world of difference.
Jesus was not an errand boy sent by
the Father to do certain things here upon
earth, whilst the Father remained in heaven.
Jesus came to live on earth, and to
act on earth, as a man in communion
with God in heaven.
And they spoke together, and they labored together,
and they suffered together, and they had victories
together.
It was the Father and the Son.
He was no mere errand boy.
Now, that meant, of course, his constant conferring
with the Father, so that he might do
his Father's will, in his Father's way, at
the Father's time.
This is why, you see, for one thing,
you notice our Lord so conscious of the
fact nine hour is not yet come.
The time hasn't come to do certain things,
and so I'm not doing them.
He would refrain from doing certain things, legitimate
and right as they were in themselves, but
no, no, no, they mustn't be done yet,
because it's not the hour.
He could hear the tick of the clock
in his Father's home, and until that clock
strikes time, he doesn't do even what he's
pledged to do.
It must be done in the right time.
Our Lord was not only conscious of a
call to be the Savior of men—this is
the point I'm getting to—he was conscious also
of his daily duty.
And he moved out of this place of
communion with a sense of compulsion.
These are his words, Come, let us go
into the next towns also, that I may
preach there, for therefore came my force.
Now, if ever there are challenging words for
a Christian man and a Christian woman, there
they are.
Jesus has been in the heart of the
throne.
Here from the world we turn.
Within the veil we bow the knee, the
hymn we've just sung.
What for?
To hear the voice of God, to commune
with our Father.
Then what?
Right, we know what to do, we know
where to go, we know how to do
things, we're ready for the day, we've had
our command.
We move out in fellowship and in communion
with a sense of compulsion.
Thus spiritually armed for the day, you will
notice how Mark was impressed by both a
negative and a positive fact.
Negatively, our Lord refused to heed the clamor
of the Capernaum multitudes, to go back to
them for the day.
Look at verses 36 to 38.
And Simon, we read, and they that were
with him, followed after him.
That is after Jesus.
He had gone aside to pray.
And when they had found him, they said
unto him, All men seek thee, that is
now, early in the morning, all the Capernaum
people, seek thee.
And he said unto them, Let us go
into the next towns, that I may preach
there also, for therefore came I forth.
Have you noticed what happens there?
Quietly, unobtrusively, without making a fuss of it,
Jesus turned down the plea of the Capernaum
people to go back again and to show
them the might and the mercy of his
right hand.
He simply, he simply made it clear that
he intended now to follow in the pathway
of duty which was forward, not backwards.
Forward into new areas, not backward to the
old.
Not where he was yesterday, but where God
wills him to be today.
And that is positively put in the words
to which I've already referred.
Let us go into the next towns, that
I may preach there also, for therefore came
I forth.
Capernaum sought him, if we understand her right,
because of his miracles, because of his power
to heal and alleviate the sick.
Of course they wanted a man like this
all day and every day.
What a wonderful thing to have, a man
like this among you.
Come back, come back, they said.
Spend the day with us.
Repeat the things you did yesterday.
We still have more sick people.
We still have more demon possessed.
No, says our Lord, I've come forth for
another purpose.
And though I may be doing this on
the way to fulfill the larger purpose of
God, there is another reason that has brought
me forth.
Come, let us go into the next towns,
that I may preach there also, for therefore
came I forth.
In other words, our Lord's purpose at this
point in his ministry was, first of all,
to exercise his prophetic ministry of teaching.
Ultimately, of course, it is to lay down
his life, in a high priestly sense, for
the sins of men.
But at this moment, the purpose of God,
planned in eternity, was that he should teach.
And so he tells them, therefore came I
forth.
And therefore I must go into the next
villages, into the next towns, to preach there
also.
He knew what he was to do, and
he knew where he was to do it.
My good friend, do you know anything of
this sense of compulsion?
Like a goat that carries you along through
the days, living a life that in your
heart of hearts you know you're doing your
master's will.
In communion with his father, Jesus heard again
the bleating of the sheep in the other
towns.
He'd never seen them yet, but there they
were, lost in the desert.
They've not seen his might, they've not seen
his person, they've not heard his voice.
And he hears them bleating, and he says,
I must go.
And therefore came I forth.
Do you know the reason for your existence?
Men and women, will you will you will
you forgive me for putting it so bluntly
this morning?
Do you know why God has preserved you
in life and redeemed you by the blood
of Christ?
Are you sure in your souls this morning,
as you sit in these Knox pews, and
as I stand in the pulpit here, are
we sure that we know why we're here?
Therefore came I forth.
There is one place to know it, and
to discover it, and to be reassured of
it daily.
And that is in a place of communion,
where the heart communes with God.
To the extent that you and I know
communion with God, we may know whether or
not we are about his business.
Now this was a wonderful message to Simon.
You see, I'm doing the carnal thing first.
Before I apply this to myself, I'm applying
it to Simon.
Oh, I trust the Lord will forgive me
that, because I'm doing the preaching this morning.
But I'm going to come to myself in
a moment, and to you as well.
But may I say that this was a
very special, a very relevant message for Simon.
You see, we all, and Simon among us,
we all need two things if we are
to become fishers of men.
We need to be sure of our initial
call.
Now every Christian worker knows this, and especially
if you're involved in what we call full
-time work, at home or on the mission
field anywhere, you need to be sure of
your initial call.
Make sure that you've not thrust yourself out
when the Lord meant you to be somewhere
else.
Make sure of your call.
We need to be certain of our initial
call.
But we also need to be certain of
the fact that daily we're doing the Master's
will.
That daily we are about the business of
the day according to the the agenda in
heaven.
Now, Simon had been initially called, come after
me and I will make you to become
fishers of men.
He'd been called.
But you see, at this moment he was
floundering as to what to do.
Even that initial call was uncertain, but he
most obviously didn't know what to do today.
He was now toying whether he should go
forward or backward.
He felt the pull of two worlds.
And it was he, you notice, who came
to Jesus and suggested that he should come
back to Capernaum for that day.
Why?
Well, because that's where his boat was.
That's where his home was.
That's where his family was.
And how much easier it would be to
serve the Lord in Capernaum and to stay
in Capernaum, where he could go back to
the boats and the fishes if he so
desired, rather than follow into new areas, into
new fields, into difficult places, beyond the home
territory.
There is only one way of assuring Simon
and reassuring him of his original call and
of the purpose for today, as well as
of mediating grace to do the will of
God today, and that is in a place
of communion.
That is God's ordinance.