Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

"Are You (Really) A Follower Of Jesus?"

We've been trying to answer these questions…

Psalm 86:5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help.(NLT)

You say…why that's an offensive question… Of course I'm a follower of Jesus…I wouldn't be sitting here in this cathedral, this morning if I wasn't following Jesus…

Here's the thing… "Following" is one of those words that two different people can say and mean two totally different things. Even when you look up the word in the dictionary… the shades of meaning vary more than most other words.

1) Follow- to get in line behind. If we were to both, go to the air show today and I I were to drive behind you from here to there…would I not be following you? Is that the kind of following Jesus wants from us? Is that not what we see in this passage:

John 10:27-29  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, (NLT)

You know when you count sheep to get to sleep at night… it's one sheep followed by another, followed by another… right? Let's try another definition:

2) Follow- to pursue closely and persistently. If you advise me to not buy my gas at a Citgo station because the chain is owned by Venezuela's Dictator Hugo Chavez who openly spews out hatred for the U.S. and I faithfully drive past Citgo and get my gas at Hess….I am following your advice? Isn't that what we Christians do with Jesus??? He gives us advice, in his Word, and we pursue it "closely and persistently?"

Not quite right…is it?

3) Follow - to go after, in order to catch. When I began dating my wife… I wasn't getting in line behind her to get somewhere…or taking here advice on how to live. I "pursued" her, in order to "catch" her as my wife.

The Bible passages that deal with following Jesus, especially the one's that He, himself says, are hard hitting. There is nothing wimpy in how Jesus says he expects us to "pursue him in order to catch him."

Mark 8:34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. (NIV)

Mark 10:17,21  As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (NLT)

Whenever Jesus spoke to anybody about following him… there was a "radical-ness" about it. He never asked anybody to skip in a conga line behind him:

Unfortunately…many Christians follow Jesus in a "kick up your heels and share the fun way" … rather than in a " pursue intensely after in order to catch Jesus" way

Let me show you an example in the Bible that brings this stark difference into focus:

Jesus spent a lot of his ministry time in a thriving city at the top of the Sea of Galilee called __________________? Capernaum

You can pick out the ruins in this photo. In the first century it was a thriving city. Every caravan coming from the North (Damascus) going south (Egypt) and every body coming from the east going to the Mediterranean Sea passed through Capernaum on the new Roman stone "interstate". It was the perfect place for Rome to set up a customs taxing center like we have at airports and border crossings. They didn't do the "set by the government tax" system. They pretty much used the " get as much as you can get" system.

They would find local Jews who were ready to sell their soul for money… and give them a "tax franchise".

They were to meet a quota that the Roman government established and anything they could get over-and-above could be put in their own pockets. The tax franchisers were called "mokhes" and the lowest form of mokhes (and the most hated by their fellow Jews) were the individual franchisers who managed their own toll booths and were totally greedy and ruthless.

It's one of those mokhes who came face to face with Jesus one day.

Mark 2:13-14 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. (NIV)

Let me show you something very similar in the Gospel of Matthew:

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (NIV)

Wow…two similar stories… both taking place in Capernaum at the same time??? No it's the same guy… with a new name (given him by Jesus?) What do you notice about the name of the tax collector and the name of the author of this Gospel? Same…same guy!

We'll get to that in a minute… but you can quickly see, this is no conga-line follower of Jesus… this is a radical transformation from hated tax collector… to disciple and Gospel writer… all based on two words from Jesus:

Follow Me!

Try to imagine the upheaval, that day, inside Levi, the tax collector… Levi had built his life around being, just, who he was… He was proud to be a customs officer. He was rolling in money. He was not without friends… His friends were not good, God following, Jews. Like a Mafia Don… his friends were all people like him.

What went on inside Levi, when this wondering Rabbi spoke those two words?… His response in the next few minutes would literally change the rest of his life... and eventually the words he would write would change millions of other lives including you and me here today.

If we, today, could define what happened in those few hours….inside Levi's mind and soul … whatever that was… that is the definition of truly "following Jesus."

The story is not quite as simple as those two verses make it seem. We know that from the three verses that come next, in the Gospel of Mark. As soon as Jesus calls Levi… his response is to invite Jesus to his house for a feast. Guess who he invites as Jesus' fellow dinner guests?

Mark 2:15-17 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” (NLT)

The religious people that you might have expected to line up behind Jesus never did… Some of the "righteous "community people did believe… but in a Conga line type of salvation. They were the same ones who, later, hailed him as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday… then yelled for him to be crucified a few hours later.

"Conga line following" is not good enough…it doesn't transform deep into the soul.

The sinners… and the tax collectors… knew they were spiritual scum… all the religious people had told them so for years. (They were not allowed inside the temple by Jewish law)… But even though they lived it up on the outside… some were aching for something real on the inside… at least that was true of Levi…

We're not exactly sure how this change in Levi unfolded… but in a few short hours this man evaluated his life…decided that the money and the notoriety weren't all they were cracked up to be and walked away from it all…to truly follow the One he believed would make a radical change in his life.

This was a big deal…far more than most all of the other disciples… Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John… from what? ____________ fishing! They were not wealthy… but were respected businessmen. Did they lose the respect of their peers when they followed Jesus? No. Did they sell their boats and get out of business? No! We find them back in the boats, fishing, several more times.

Levi, on the other hand, has to leave it all behind. There is no way he can follow Jesus and swindle people out of their hard earned shekels. He's going to give up his circle of shady friends… He's going to lose his position of prominence in the community. He's going to walk away from a huge, steady, income that would make him even richer…. to follow someone he hardly even knows.

We now know… that he exchanged dying a rich old scrooge who nobody ever remembered… for having his name and words quoted by millions of people for all of recorded time. Point is… He didn't know any of that…he only knew that Jesus had said "follow me"… and he walked away from everything and did just that.

1) He exchanged his old name for a new name

We are not sure exactly when the name change took place but it is a common occurrence to get a name change when one's character changes in the Bible. Levi is really a last name, tribal name.. maybe he went by his last name or maybe somebody saw it on the back of his blue jeans and knick-named him that . Either Jesus brought out his original unused name or gave him a new one…Matthew means "Gift of God".

2) He exchanged his old job for a new job

From despised tax collector to, eventually, even more despised disciple of the man Israel would crucify… But from someone who made people's life worse to someone who would, one day, help change millions of lives for the better

3) He exchanged a fixation on temporal wealth for the assurance of eternal wealth

There's no mention, later, in the Bible or in church history of Matthew driving around in his sports chariot while everyone else walked. I don't know what he did with his ill-gained money. History does tell us that he served as a missionary in places as far away as modern day Iraq and Iran and even down in Africa.

4) He opened his Heart,

5) He opened his Home

Luke 5:27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. (NLT)

He had to know that most of these ungodly people would reject his new-found Savior, and finally him, but he gave it everything he had… to use his wealth and influence to introduce them to Jesus.

6) He opened his Hands

I love this part… The same hands that Matthew used to meticulously track taxes owed… the same anal mindset that helped him to be a successful pain-in-the-neck customs officer were used to meticulously record the words and actions of Jesus, the Messiah, and those accounting fingers were, then, put to use… writing eternal words of life changing truth.

My concern… are the many warnings in the Bible, of those who were faced with the invitation to follow Jesus… but chose to say no… Look at this uncanny parallel:

Mark 10:17,21  As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must inherit eternal life?”  21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. (NLT)