16 Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.
Although it may not seem so obvious, Simon, Andrew, James, and John being fishermen and the Lord calling them to follow Him is no small thing. As children, all Jewish people were required to go to school when they reached a certain age. The primary reason for sending the children to school was for them to learn and memorize the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; by the time the children finished their schooling, they memorized every word of all five of these books. They knew the books inside and out, and could quote them to you in their sleep. Having memorized the books of Moses is even true of many practicing Jews today.
Along with learning the books of Moses, Jewish girls spent time learning how to help their family around the home, as well as learning what was expected of them as Jewish women in their culture. As the male children continued to go to school, slowly but surely they were sent home after their instructors believed that the student had reached what they had the potential for doing. The longer the students were allowed to stay at the school, the greater the chance they had at becoming a rabbi or a lawyer. The students who desired to be a rabbi not only had to be able to do well and show potential; they also had to be accepted by a rabbi to become his disciple. Ordinarily, rabbis NEVER initiated the process of having someone become their disciple; the student was always the one to do the initiating. Even then the rabbi had the sole choice in the matter, being under no obligation to choose in any direction he should so choose.
Simon, Andrew, James, and John being fishermen tells us that they did not make it to the top of their class; they might have done well, but certainly not well enough to be disciples. Jesus chooses four men who, from a natural standpoint, did not have the potential to be disciples who would eventually teach people the Scripture. Jesus reverses the pattern as to what was required for a person to be in leadership. Jesus chooses these four men, showing us that the people God uses to spread His Name get their authority not from people, but from God Himself. The choosing of these four men also shows that God uses people often overlooked by the world to be His witnesses; people who were not the smartest; people who were not prominent in society, who lived ordinary lives, who worked with their hands.
Although it is possible that Simon, Andrew, James, and John had some knowledge of Jesus because of His baptism and His coming into Galilee proclaiming the kingdom of God, the text is silent about how, or if, they knew Jesus or what they knew about Him, if they knew anything at all. All that we know is that Jesus calls out to these four men in the ordinary day-to-day activities of their lives and they immediately leave to follow Him. Whatever their relationship to Jesus might have been, we can at least deduce that people felt compelled to obey Him; when He spoke, people obeyed Him.
Something worth noting is that when Jesus goes out to the Sea of Galilee to call people to follow Him, He doesn’t make a general call to everyone who is there; He makes a specific call to Simon, Andrew, James, and John but does not call the others that are there, as it shows by mentioning other people there with some of these four men. Jesus never gives His children just a general call; Jesus calls us each individually and when He calls, we respond to it and begin to follow Him.
The four disciples mentioned in this passage are fishermen. They worked with their hands for a living. They probably went fishing almost every day; life was pretty predictable for them. It is very likely that it wasn’t just them that fished for a living; it was likely a family business. There is a good chance that there were generations upon generations of family that had gone before them who did the same thing they are doing now. Life was predictable. Their dad’s were fishermen, they were fishermen, and they probably anticipated that their children and grandchildren would also be fishermen. Being in that type of setting was pretty safe. You had a long line of people who had gone before you who taught you all there is to know about fishing, which made learning how to be the best at what you do relatively easy. You have people who have bought fish from your family for as long as you can remember. You have no concern about where your next meal is coming from; if things get tough, you simply put in more hours or work a little hard to make up for the loss.
Then one day Jesus comes along. Here you are at work, doing what you have always done and known when suddenly Jesus asks you to leave behind all that you know to come and follow Him. Jesus probably isn’t asking for you to think this over for a while; He means now, He means immediately. Jesus calls you to leave everything you know behind. It is a pretty scary thought if you stop to think about it.
But Jesus just didn’t call four men a long time ago to come and follow Him. It wasn’t just them that Jesus intended to call, He is also calling us. Jesus is calling us, even right now, to leave behind the familiar, the comfortable, and the known, to step out into the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable, and the unknown. He calls us to leave our old life behind.
He calls us not only to leave behind our old life, but also to receive new life as well. And the thing is, when Jesus told them that they would be fishers of men, they probably had no idea what exactly that meant or what it would be like; they just more or less did it. They stepped out in faith and left their old life behind. Jesus spoke with authority over their lives and they left all that they once knew. Jesus still speaks these same words to all who have ears to hear it: “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
1. Have you ever felt incapable of doing something God called you to do? What was it? Did you act on it?
2. Why does God choose to use people who seem to be unlikely candidates to do His work through?
3. Have you ever heard God speak to you in such a way that what He spoke shook your very soul and you were compelled to do what He told you to do? What was it like?
4. When you received the Lord, what was it like? What did God call you to leave behind when you came to know Him? In what ways did your life change when you put your faith in Him?
5. What is it like for God to call us out into the unknown away from what is familiar and comfortable to us?
6. What is God’s purpose in calling us to follow Him?
21 And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. 22 And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. 23 And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, 24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.
After Jesus begins His ministry and calls His first disciples, He goes to the synagogue to teach. The synagogues had a rabbi whose primary job was to teach the congregation, but they heard lots of different teachings. The people who went to the synagogue heard numerous people teaching the Scriptures, much in the same way we do today. Traveling around this area was common for the people who lived there, which made access to multiple teachers rather easy. Also, having your religion tied to all aspects of your daily living made speaking about your faith a normal and regular occurrence. Much like today, there was a wide diversity of interpretation of the Scriptures during that time. Judaism being not only a private religion, but also being the basis for how national and civic affairs meant that the Jewish people had to have somewhat close ties with one another.
A religious official’s interpretation of the Scripture was a big deal. It wasn’t like how it is today; your whole life and country could change based on the Jewish authorities interpretation. In our day and time, if Christians disagree with one another over an issue they aren’t forced to keep close ties. Imagine a Roman Catholic, a Charismatic, and a Fundamentalist being forced to have a conversation about even one topic, say, the Holy Spirit, and for them to live and worship together in relative harmony; now imagine them all having to be in close company dealing with one another’s views on every area of life. Needless to say, it would get pretty intense at times.
Verse 22 tells us that Jesus taught with authority and not as the scribes did. The scribes did a number of things; some of the tasks they performed included dealing with legal matters, serving as record keepers or historians for Israel, and interpreting the Scripture. They were generally diplomatic people, as their job usually required it; with such a wide spectrum of interpretation of the Scripture, they generally had to do some people-pleasing to make their lives easier. Some of their people-pleasing was probably done out of trying to avoid or not create conflict; some of it was probably done to gain favor from the particular groups, possibly even out of personal interest.
The scribes would likely teach in a way that what they said was so vague and general that no one could disagree with what they were saying, or they just taught on what the varying interpretations of the texts were, not telling what interpretation they themselves held to. One of the things the scribes were notorious for was for their making the traditions they made equal, and sometimes even more important, than the Scripture itself; they not only taught the Scripture, they also taught bringing very precise traditions that had come about because of years of endless debate on any given topic in the Scripture.
Jesus, on the other hand, came in and taught as one who had authority. Jesus did not make vague and general statements about the matter at hand; He taught as a person with conviction. He taught from the Scripture, not bringing in tradition that took away from the Scripture itself and completely missed the obvious intention of the Scriptures author.
For Jesus to teach with authority he had to know the Scripture. He not only had to know the Scripture, He had to know the heart of the Scripture and what it meant. Imagine Jesus, the One whom everything in the Scripture is testifying to, speaking about the correct interpretation of what a text means. Jesus knew he was on a mission from God. He was moving forward in bringing about the Kingdom of God. Not only was He moving forward in bringing about the Kingdom of God, He was the Kingdom the God, the rule and reign of Himself over all things. Imagine being in the very presence of the Word of God made flesh, standing so close you could reach out and literally touch Him; the very reality of all of Scripture, of all of how your life as a Jew was set up; it was probably a convicting place to be.
So here is Jesus in the synagogue, teaching from the Scripture that is testifying of Himself, and a man with an unclean spirit cries out against Him. The intensity must have been enormous. Here is the God-man, teaching the very truth of God in the presence of sinful men, one of whom has an unclean spirit. Sinful men hate the truth of God and, unless compelled by the Holy Spirit, will not come into the light because their deeds are evil. Listen to what Jesus tells us in the third chapter of the Gospel of John concerning this:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not
send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned,
but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed
in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light
has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light
because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates
the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
The man with the unclean spirit cries out and yells, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
Evil and darkness will always cry out against the truth. Evil hates the truth, and wants nothing to do with it. Evil knows it cannot co-exist with good; it must put up a fight against good or be forced to flee, in the same way that darkness flees when light enters. Jesus responds to the man with the unclean spirit by rebuking him and commanding the unclean spirit to leave the man. The unclean spirit has no choice but to leave.
We don’t talk about it a lot, but the truth is that Jesus has complete authority over evil. When Jesus commands spiritual darkness to leave, it must do so; it has no choice in the matter. Often times, we have a picture of there being a sort of tug-of-war match going on between God and Satan; sort of a back-and-forth battle where, although God will inevitably win, God must take some losses here and there, and He actually has a hard time keeping things together. The Bible, however, presents a much different picture of God’s relationship over evil. The Bible presents a God who is totally sovereign over evil, yet in such a way that He is not responsible for evil and does no evil in all that He does. God has complete control over evil; when He chooses not to restrain evil from happening it is not because He has no control over it. We may never know the why’s of His choice to not restrain evil during certain times; it is not for us to know. As Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
1. Think of a time when you heard two different types of proclamation of the Word, where one person spoke what is from the Scripture and the other person did not stay centered on the Scripture. How were their messages different from one another? How was the way they presented their messages different from one another?
2. Have you ever heard God speak something to you that was hard for you to receive? What was it? What was it like to hear it?
3. Why can’t light and darkness live together?
4. What does it mean for God to be sovereign over evil? Is it hard to accept that God is sovereign over evil?
5. What kind of implications, both good and difficult, does God’s being sovereign over evil have?
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