Matthew 4:12-23 Grace 1/23/2011

The pastor of a 1,000-member church was asked the question, “How many active members do you have in your church?” He responded, “I have 1,000 active members. Four hundred are active for Christ, the other six hundred are active for Satan.” A little cynical — but maybe a little true

Why is it that some faithfully follow the Lord and others do not? We might ask—why did you come out on this cold January morning to God’s House to worship? Why are you a disciple of the Lord Jesus? Was there — is there — something about Him that attracted you to Him? Was it something He said; something He did, that moved you to follow after Him?

Two thousand years ago in the land of Palestine, that’s exactly how it happened. There were a whole slew of Rabbis (teachers) in Palestine. Each Rabbi had students (disciples) following after him. Young Jewish men would select the Rabbi of their choice; one whom they felt had a great deal of wisdom—and these young men would make the decision to follow him.

It was unheard of in those days for Jewish Rabbis to go out and call young men to discipleship. To go out and choose disciples and invite them to follow after yourself, just simply did not happen. Until Jesus appeared. He went about like a itinerant frontier preacher looking for folks to teach and lead. He did things differently. He went out and called disciples to Himself.

“As He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left the nets, and followed Him. As He went from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.” (Matt. 4:18-22)

There wasn’t one disciple who happened to choose Jesus as his Master and Rabbi. Jesus called every last one of them to Himself. “You did not choose Me,” He told them, “I chose you.”

That was true of them and it is true of us. You are not a follower of Christ because you made some great decision in your life to follow Him. You did. You chose to follow, but only after He chose you and called you. He called you by His Gospel to belong to Him; to be His disciple. When did He call you? When you were sitting in darkness. “The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light, and to those who were sitting in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light dawned.” (Matt. 4:16)

Galilee was the "wild west" of Palestine, a rough, unruly place with bandits and revolutionaries wandering about and a population which was considered by the religious elites in Jerusalem to be uncouth and semi-literate religiously and infected by the paganism of the area. It was called the "Galilee of the Gentiles" because there was a large population of Hellenistic pagans mixed in with the Jews who had only recently begun to resettle a land which had been devastated by earlier wars.

A rough parallel to what Jesus did when he walked along the lakeside and summoned his disciples would be if he had walked down the main street of Tombstone, Arizona and selected the odd cowboy and merchant and drifter for his band.

In this region, where the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali had settled, Rome had built cities for herself, introducing her “gods” and “goddesses.” The Jews to the south, in Jerusalem and Judah, scorned these Gentile Galileans, as they called them. The Name and worship of the Lord had been lost to these people of Galilee. They were living in spiritual darkness—“sitting in it,” as the Isaiah writes.

If you have ever gone through a cave, such as the Endless, Skyline or Luray Caverns of Virginia, you may have experienced total darkness. At some point, the tour leader instructs that all lights be turned off. It is so dark that you can’t see your hand directly in front of your face. That experience may be okay for a few minutes, but imagine if the lights failed to come back on. There would be nothing you could do but sit down and wait for help to arrive. Trying to find your way out would be futile. Your only chance is for rescuers to come with lights to lead you out.

Darkness is the absence of light. To sit in darkness is frightening. To sit in the darkness of sin ultimately is death—for spiritual darkness is the absence of Christ. But to the people of Galilee the Light came. To those sitting in the darkness of death, unable to do anything to help themselves, Jesus came to give the light of life.

He came to them, and He comes to you. Through baptism He called you “out of darkness into His marvelous light. You were in total darkness, but you have been bathed in Light. To you, God has come. He has given you the wisdom that leads to salvation. He has given you faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the Light. He is the One who has come to lead us out of our darkness.

You did not choose to follow Him. He chose to come to you—helpless and lost as you were. And by the light of His Word and Sacraments, He leads you from death to life; from sin’s darkness into the light of forgiveness and joy.

Why did He come to rescue us? We are but sinners before Him. The darkness has made us into “mad fools” as one person I read this week put it. Sitting in helplessness, we turn on each other. We lie, cheat, steal. We gossip, slander, covet. But our Lord has come to us. Did He come to us because we were kind, loving, and deserving of His help? No, God came to us because He loves us. We were sinners in total darkness, but God has come to us and called us to follow Him—and He has therefore made us people of Light.

And when God calls sinners to Himself, we follow Him and leave the darkness behind. Calling Peter and Andrew, James and John, they left everything and followed Jesus. As they did, so do we. In our baptism we renounced the devil and all his works and ways. We no longer sit in darkness — we belong to Jesus now. That’s why we come here to this place of worship, even on a cold January morning.

When our boys were young and able to walk well on their own, we let them. They weighed a ton so carrying them was a lot of work if they weren’t in a stroller. We would be walking somewhere outside and we would inevitably have to walk a lot slower. They were easily distracted. They would usually be stopping every ten feet to pick up a rock or a stick or a flower—and now and then, stumbling and falling. To be honest, they just weren’t very good followers. But we loved them anyway. And we always waited for them to catch up with us. We kept looking back and gently calling for them to keep up. When one fell, we helped him back up. When one grew tired, we carried him. That’s how Jesus helps us follow Him. He waits on us. He gently calls to us. He stays with us. When we fall, He lifts us up. When we grow weary and can’t go on, He carries us in His arms. He forgives us and loves us. And so He puts up with our sometimes distracted way of following Him. That’s the kind of Lord we have—one who led us out of darkness into His glorious light. Come! Let us follow Him together! Amen.