Sermon Tone Analysis

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Introduction
Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.
I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men.
I will make you fishers of men if you follow me.
This is a familiar chorus that many of us probably sang in Sunday School.
We may have even cut out little fishing poles and little fish or men and run around with them for an hour or so after church until the string broke.
This morning we have the distinct privilege of looking at the passage where both the song and the craft come from.
What I expect that we’re going to find though is that the point of that passage is not necessarily for each of us to be fishers of men.
An interesting observation emerged as I studied this passage this week - this specific phraseology “fishers of men” is only used once in the entire New Testament - well it is used twice, once in Matthew 4:19-22 and in our passage this morning - but each of these passages relates the same story.
In no other call that Jesus issues does He ever use the phrase “fishers of men” again.
My observation is that this phrase that we so key in on is an individual call for just these men at this time because it was a calling they could relate to.
So what is Christ saying to each of us through this passage this morning?
Let’s open our Bibles to Mark 1 and read verses 16-20 and then we’ll dig in and explore what His message is for us.
Just to catch us up to where we are - after being baptized by John in the wilderness and the coronation that took place there, Christ went into the desert to be tempted by Satan.
Following that, in Mark’s account, He makes His public coming out in Galilee with a message that involved both repentance and belief.
The events that we just read are going to expand and explain the extent of what Christ meant by His message.
Mark writes that as Jesus passed alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea - for they were fishermen.
Let’s camp out there for a few minutes.
The sea of Galilee is not a sea by the classic definition but rather is a large inland lake that is formed by the runoff from Mt. Hermon.
We live in a rich region for lakes and many of them are fed the same way that Galilee is.
The lake measured around 13-14 miles in length and was 7-8 miles wide.
By comparison Lake Coeur D’Alene measures 25 miles in length and around 3 miles wide.
The closest lake that I could find that would compare to Galilee is Bear Lake on the Idaho-Utah border which is around 18 miles long and 8 miles wide.
Geographically the sea sits 690 feet below sea level and is nestled in a valley between mountain ranges that rise to the east some 4000 feet and to the west 2000.
The lake was well known for it’s temperamental climate as cold air and hot air frequently clashed resulting in violent storms such as we will see later in Mark in chapter 4.
The semitropical climate was also favorable for the growth and development of many species of fish, some sources say up to 18 different species, with three that fed a bustling fishing industry.
There were sardines, probably the source of the two small fish for the feeding of the 5000, a fish called barbels and a form of tilapia known as a musht or more commonly now known as St. Peter’s fish.
This industry supported more than sixteen ports and thousands of families around its shores.
The region was so fertile that it is referred to by the Jewish historian Josephus as a place in which “nature had taken pride.”
The fishing industry shipped their catches all across the ancient Mediterranean basin.
Now as interesting as all that might be to a select few in the congregation who are fishermen, there are a few points here.
The first is that sometimes we sell these particular disciples short saying they were dull or maybe not the brightest individuals.
Their endeavors were most likely not simply subsistence fishing - but instead competitive in a bustling market that involved discipline, determination and some measure of intelligence.
Their labor was intensely physical in nature.
The fishing that Peter and Andrew are engaged in involves casting a circular net approximately 20 feet in diameter with heavy bars of metal and rocks attached to the edges.
After being flung the net would spread out and then sink trapping fish underneath and the fisherman would either swim down to the bottom to gather the weights together or drawing the net tight by a cord attached to the net.
The second point I want you to notice this morning is the verb saw.
From information later in the passage regarding James and John putting their nets in order - a phrase that points to the idea that they were preparing their nets for that days labors - this event most likely took place in the morning or possibly early afternoon.
There is Biblical evidence to suggest that much of the fishing life involved all night endeavors to catch fish.
Whether it was morning or afternoon, the shoreline would have been full of men starting their daily labors and Christ walks past all of them to select these four.
There is Biblical information that tells us that this is not the first meeting between Christ and these men.
Andrew was with John the Baptist as one of his disciples when Christ came to be baptized.
It was the following day when John looked up and saw Christ and told his disciples the He was “the Lamb of God”.
Andrew then went and found Peter and brought him to Christ.
So we know that they had already had some exposure to Christ and to His teaching.
What had transpired between Christ’s baptism and John’s arrest is not entirely clear.
Six months had passed between His baptism and His proclamations in Galilee.
Involved in that time was His temptation, Christ’s initial ministry in Jerusalem and transit back through Samaria.
We know there were some disciples with Him during that trip because John tells us in John 4 that His disciples had gone into town to buy something to eat when Christ encounters the woman at the well.
So what had happened that had separated Christ from these men and why they had returned to fishing is a bit unknown.
One thing we do know is that this was their standard default.
Whenever something seemed to be going different than what they expected it seems they returned back to their old life.
We see it here at the beginning of Christ’s ministry and we see it again at the end.
Following Christ’s crucifixion when the disciples finally left Jerusalem to go to Galilee as Christ had commanded them, the disciples find themselves in familiar territory and they do what comes natural to them when they’re not really sure what the next step is.
It is significant I think that in our text this morning Christ calls the disciples to follow Him and during the events that John recounts after Christ appears on shore and the disciples join Him for the best fish breakfast ever that Jesus goes through the process of restoring Peter following his denials during Christ’s trial before crucifixion.
And so at the beginning and the end of Christ’s ministry He has to call them and get them moving again.
This is a great encouragement to us today as we often will relapse into what is familiar and comfortable when it comes to our discipleship with Christ.
But just as with these disciples, when He calls us we are to drop our nets or whatever we have retreated to that is safe and comfortable and immediately follow Him.
Christ’s call to these disciples and to us this morning involves three components that we can see demonstrated for us in this text - first He calls them from something, second He calls them to something and finally He expects them to do something.
For the rest of our time together this morning I want to explore these three facets first in the lives of Peter, Andrew, James and John and secondly in our own lives.
Because you see - this command “Follow Me” is not one that can be simply glossed over.
It wasn’t a timid request but instead it was an authoritative command that carries the same weight as a military order.
In and of itself this command is striking - it belies a status and authority that enables the issuer to deliver such a command.
Christ was not just another prophet or rabbi or scribe.
He was in fact God and had the authority to call men to follow Him.
Prophets never called men to follow them but instead pointed them to follow God.
The rabbis and scribes of Jesus day didn’t call men to follow them but to rather subscribe to a particular teaching or philosophy of the Torah that had been handed down to them and that they were handing down to others.
In fact rabbis did not seek out their disciples, their disciples sought them.
So this calling of Christ to these men was significantly different on several levels.
From Something
Peter and Andrew, James and John had a relatively decent life going for themselves.
We’ll learn later in Mark that Peter is married and has a home.
He worked hard at fishing, ran his kids around to the first century equivalent of soccer and karate.
His brother Andrew was close by and often, following a long night out on the water they may have gotten together and hung out discussing local politics or the price fluctuations of fish.
They had ties to the local synagogue but, with Greek names, they were probably only occasional attenders.
Andrew had a brush with a more serious religious life recently when he’d heard about a man down south who was baptizing and calling people to repentance.
Andrew had sought him out and surprisingly been accepted as one of his disciples.
They had both had an encounter with a man name Jesus but now life was returning back to normal and their fishing business was continuing on as normal.
Just down the street the brothers James and John worked hard to manage the business their father was training them to take over one day.
In the Jewish community it was incumbent upon the father or patriarch of a family to pass on three things to their children - a working knowledge of the Torah, in the history of the Hebrew nation and a trade.
He was also required to find his son a wife and teaching him to swim.
And one day into all of this relative normalcy a man comes walking down the sea shore and changes their very lives with two words - Follow Me.
And immediately the men dropped not simply their nets but their very livelihood, their family dynamics and everything to follow this man.
I can only imagine the conversations that took place in Peter’s household when he informed his wife of what he was planning.
And there was no consultation - no family meetings.
Christ called and they went.
The remarkableness of this entire event is demonstrated for us at the end of John 6. Jesus popular ministry was taking a beating as people were turning back and not continuing to follow Him.
He turns to the disciples and asks “You don’t want to go away too, do you?”
Peter’s answer
This calling may have been revolutionary for its time - but it isn’t unusual when the whole Biblical corpus is taken into account.
Throughout the Bible we are presented a consistent picture of men and women obediently responding to the call of God.
We are also consistently presented with a picture that true discipleship requires sacrifice.
Noah responded to God’s call to build the ark when he had never even seen rain with faith that what God had said would happen would come to pass but it cost him his reputation.
Abram was called at the age of 75 to leave his homeland and become a nomad following only the command of God but leaving behind his family, their gods and his home.
Moses left behind the opulent lifestyle of Pharaoh’s palace to be with the people of his birth, and even rejection by them at his initial attempts to become their leader.
David was called off of the farm and the life of a shepherd and called to become king.
The entire passage of Hebrews 11 demonstrates this principle for us.
The consistent picture of Scripture is that discipleship requires sacrifice.
Then there are more modern examples in the stories of men like William Borden and Jim Elliot.
In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school.
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