Matthew 9: 9
Following Jesus

The circumstances under which it occurs, precludes the superficial interpretation of it as being only an invitation to join Jesus' little band of followers who followed him around the land of Palestine.  Rather, it is a comprehensive description of his relationship to his followers, which is increasingly in our own time, being called "discipleship," but with the important additional ingredient of Christ centeredness, which is not always associated with the term "discipleship."

The question I would like to propose and attempt to answer this morning is "What does it mean to follow Jesus?"  What did he mean when on a dozen different occasions he said "Follow me!"  What does it mean to be a disciple as far as Jesus was concerned?  And implied in our thinking this morning is how it relates to you.  There are at least four different things that the phrase "following Jesus" specifies or includes.  They are four things which he also said to us when we heard the Gospel call and began to follow him.  And they are things which he includes when he continually says to us who are his disciples: "Follow me!"

I. ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT HE MEANS IS THE IDEA OF GUIDANCE.

1. To follow him, sometimes means to follow him in the sense of following a map or a set of directions.  We get this in the phrase "followers of the way" that is, as I say, a phrase, common in the book of Acts.  Jesus was the one to whom the disciples instinctively turned when they needed guidance.  And his recorded words -- and, likely, his unrecorded ones also -- were to a great extent about giving them guidance, both for immediate things, and also for the totality of their lives.  The situation is not greatly different for us, his latter-day disciples.  Not only are his recorded words a significant basis for discipleship, but the Holy Spirit, given to us as his representative, guides us in his behalf. And the Holy Spirit, as the agent of Christ, was also the one who inspired the six of the Apostles who left books that guide us. And this too is an illustration of the truth of following Jesus.

2. Sometimes that guidance has to do with providential circumstances as well as ultimate outcomes.  For we believe that the events and circumstances of our lives are not just haphazard, but are providentially controlled.  The events and circumstances of your life are permitted by Christ who rules and over-rules in history. And the concept of discipleship includes a favorable understanding of that truth.

3. In John 21, when Peter was getting bent out of shape about how another disciple's life was going to fall out, "following Jesus" meant attending to his own problems and discipline.  When Peter asked "What about John?" Jesus' answer was essentially: "Don't you worry about John! You give attention to your own self following me." (John 21: 22) So too, it is in our own case!  Our first priority is to find Jesus' guidance for our own lives, conveyed to us by the words of Scripture and subjectively highlighted by the Holy Spirit.

Do you seek the guidance of the Lord by prayer, consultation with spiritual leaders and by attempting to apply the Scriptures to the matter at hand?  This is, I believe, a part of what is meant by the Lord's command.  Do you seriously seek God's guidance for your life?  Are you "available," for his use as his servant?

II. THE SECOND THING THAT IS MEANT BY THE WORDS WHICH ARE BEFORE US IS DEDICATION.

1. "Follow me," Jesus said, in the sense of his being the sole object of our affections in the ultimate sense.

2. Paul spoke of this when he made the wonderful confession: "For me to live is Christ!" and again: "I count all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ."  May it be, he said, "that in all things, he might have pre-eminence."

3. Jesus is central in the disciple's affections.  That is not to say that you do not need or desire other relationships with friends, relatives, family or spouse.  In fact, the relationship with Christ has the tendency to enhance all those earthly relationships so that they might be what they were meant to be.

4. He is central in lives.  Every aspect of the Christian's life is related to this center.

III. CERTAINLY, THE EXPRESSION ALSO MEANS SOMETHING IN TERMS OF A VOCATION -- a "calling," the word means.

1. It means that he is preeminently relevant in every area of your life.  Those people of the middle ages who took these words merely as a command to divide up into little bands of 12 or so people and going out to beg their food, certainly took a wrong turn in the road.  But they were not wrong in giving heed to the command, but only to the quaint way in which they applied it to their lives.

Even in the days of the Lord's earthly life, there was good reason to believe that even then, Jesus did not intend for everyone to whom he said this, to leave all of their earthly affairs and become full time missionaries and preachers.

Still, there is something roughly equivalent in our religious world to the actions of the original 12 disciples who left home, family and occupation to be with Jesus.  Never again were they to permanently return to their fishing boats, their tax-collection business or other professions that constituted their occupation before they met Jesus.  That element is a sense of Christian vocation that certain Christians still sense and who dedicate their whole lives to the work of Christ.

2. However, numbers of very serious first century Christians who heard his call, did not become church supported Christian workers as the 12 apostles did. But they followed Jesus just as really, even if not quite so dramatically.  Names like Zacchaeus, Mary of Jerusalem, Priscilla and Aquilla who lived alternately in Rome, Corinth and Ephesus, and Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany dot the narrative as those who followed Christ just as truly as did the apostles even though they seemingly lived what we would call a secular, rather than a professional Christian life.

They did not give up their occupations and homes to follow Jesus but they did make their lives revolve about Jesus.  They got no pay for their Christian duty; they had no account with the Presbyterian Ministers' Life & Casualty Insurance Co.  But they were just as really disciples as the original 12 and their vocations were to follow Jesus.

Aquilla's tent business was a sacred trust from God.  And not just the tithe from his business, but the whole thing was God's, and it was used to support God's work.  Mary's large house in Jerusalem -- not just "the large upper room," that we are familiar with, but the whole house, was the Lord's.  And so, you could see in the lives of hundreds, then thousands, and finally tens of thousands as the decades passed into centuries, many, many people whose whole lives revolved about the vocation of serving Christ.  But they also supported themselves by their secular occupation.  And that phenomenon was only stopped by the unhealthy appearance of clericalism where a small group of clergy of various sorts took over the vocation of Christian service, leaving the laity with nothing more to do than pay the bills and give the clergy fawning attention.

They weren't just people who worked as craftsmen to pay their own expenses of serving Christ. Many of them did that.  But there were many others who worked to pay both their own expenses of serving Christ, and to support those whose lives they could free-up to spend their whole time serving the Savior in his church and in his missionary agenda.

IV. FINALLY, THE "FOLLOW ME" OF THE LORD HAD TO DO WITH FOLLOWING HIS EXAMPLE.  

This is the 4th thing that Jesus meant when he said "Follow me!"

1. In this sense, it meant: "Do as I do!" -- "Imitate me!" He frequently said to his disciples such things as "As the Father has sent me, so send I you." "As I have loved you, love one another," and many similar things.

2. He is our example in many respects.

As he gave himself to others and sacrificed what might have been his own prerogatives and benefits in the will of God, so he commands us: "Follow me!"  His whole life -- at least during his public ministry -- seems to have been dominated by his preparation for eventual saviorhood -- yes.  But, also by his ministry in the lives of other people.

As he lived his whole life accessible to humans around him, but never compromised the unique person he was, as the God-man, so he commands us to maintain the balance between our God-given individuality and our care for his work and his people, as he calls in words distinct but not audible to the human ear: "Follow me!"

In which of these four things do you think you most dramatically hear Jesus' command?  In which of them, the least?  Is there some significant sense in which all four of them are true of your life?  I think that there should be if you are following the Biblical model for a Christian.  Or perhaps you are indeed a true Christian and simply need to adjust the focus and priorities of your life.  It is not my responsibility to tell you how but to encourage you to hear the Savior's command now as it was long ago: "Follow me!"  This may mean to be encouraged in what you are already doing.  Or it may be a challenge to let your life more and more in one or more of these four ways to follow him.

Let us encourage one another in seeing this to be true in our lives by our words, by our activity, by our demeanor.  Will you please be an example to me and to all the others in the congregation of one who is following Jesus?  I pray that you will.