Grant Ewing Political Science Valen Copu 28 August 2011 Words: 480

Meditation Commentary Follow Me

And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Matthew 4:19 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.II Corinthians 4:5-7 Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men (Matthew 4:19, NKJV): When Jesus said this to the Galilean fishers, Peter and Andrew, he He made an enormous proposition. Jesus essentially said, leave your job, for get about your financial security, your lifestyle, your family, everything: leave it all to follow me. What does the son Son of God promise in return for such surrender? He offers a completely new life, and that he would be the demolitionist and the architect. They would have to forsake the worldly kingdom they were a currently apart of, and enter into the service for Christs kingdom. Charles Spurgeon once said on a sermon upon this very verse: When Christ calls us by his grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what he can make us (No. 1906). He gave the chance for men of humble origins, to come and

take the risk, to be disciples of a man they had only just met, and to live a radically transformed life. These men took that chance, and they were the closest 12 men that ever knew Christ, and as As a product of that intimate relationship, they were the founders of the Christian church. If Christ had decided to come to earth and to gather disciples in 2011, the equivalent would be for him to walk into a fast-food burger joint and tell the employees Follow me, and I will make you workers of my kingdom. Charles Spurgeon beautifully describes this story "Note, next, that we are not made all that we shall be, nor all that we ought to desire to be, when we are ourselves fished for and caught. This is what the grace of God does for us at first; but it is not all. We are like the fishes, making sin to be our element; and the good Lord comes, and with the gospel net he takes us, and he delivers us from the life and love of sin. But he has not wrought for us all that he can do, nor all that we should wish him to do, when he has done this; for it is another and a higher miracle to make us who were fish to become fishersto make the saved ones savioursto make the convert into a converterthe receiver of the gospel into an imparter of that same gospel to other people. In essence, Christ takes the lowly, those caught in spiritual darkness, and by the power of His grace, saves us, redeems us, and equips us to do the very miracle he has done in our lives. This is the splendor and glory of the Gospel. People of the Christian faith all have

their part in this wonderful story. The question is, if one will surrender it all to follow Christ and to live for His Kingdom.

Work Cited New King James Version Study Bible. Nashville TN. Thomas Nelson. 1997, 2007. Print.