Matthew 4:19 He said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Follow me:

1. The invitation that Jesus gave was, “follow me”.  This is the same invitation that he is still giving to anyone who will listen.
2. Not agree that I exist.  Agree that I love you.  Agree that I forgive you and am full of mercy and grace, etc. Neither does it say agree in the fact I exist and I will follow you!  The creator is to be followed and not be the follower
3. To follow someone requires actively seeking and paying attention to what they are doing and where they are going.
4. It also requires submitting to a way that is not your own and submitting to someone else's leadership. 

I will make you:

1. When we follow Jesus it is he that will make us.  Not we must make ourselves.  
2. When we follow Jesus the outcome is that we are changed.  You cannot follow Jesus and remain the same.  His path will transform your way of thinking, living, feeling, seeing, hearing, and everything in between.
3. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.  So when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all and followed him.”       Luke 5:10.
    
   1. Jesus told Peter not to be afraid.  Why?  When you hear this invitation to follow Jesus, it means release your control, your plans, your ideas, and follow Him.  This is a scary thing to our flesh, our mind, our instincts of self preservation and probably scariest of all, our reputation!  But when the Lord says, “Do not be afraid.”  He gives grace and the peace that surpasses understanding.

Fishers of men:

What is a fisher of men?!  Did they have a picture of throwing nets on people and catching them? Jesus is obviously using a word play on what they were doing in that moment, “casting their nets”. 
Jesus didn’t and still doesn’t vision cast like we do. He usually speaks somewhat ambiguous. Fishers of men?
I don’t know what Peter and Andrew thought it would look like to be “fishers of men”. But I guarantee that they didn’t think it would be three and half years of having their understanding turned upside down, often confused, with tons of misunderstanding of what Jesus was saying and doing, denials before servant girls, redemption and going through life altering dramatic events, to get there.  I’m sure they didn’t have in their minds that being fishers of men was being baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire on the day of Pentecost, speaking in foreign languages the glories of God and spontaneously preaching to thousands of people who saw and heard the commotion. Nor did they know it would be going to Cornelius house, a Gentile, and preaching to a family and the same experience happen to them as it did to Peter and the rest of the disciples on Pentecost. Nor did they imagine it would look like pastoring young Jewish and gentile churches and then ultimately being martyred. 
They probably thought they had some sort of idea on what Jesus meant when he invited them to follow him and become fishers of men. 

Jesus’ invitation to us as we begin Refuge City is the same invitation that he gave his disciples. Follow me....I will make you....fishers of men. What the “fishers of men” means for us, I do not know, nor do I want to try to define it cause I know it is beyond anything that I could possibly understand at this stage in the process. But we will follow him and we will allow him to make us and we will eventually understand what “fishers of men” looks like for us. 

Sunday April 11th, 2021

What's the purpose of fasting? Is it to fight against principalities and rulers of darkness or to receive things we want? Or is it to become more like Jesus?  Learning to live with our hands up in adoration toward Jesus and our hands out towards those in our community in our expression of Jesus. 

Sunday,  April 5th, 2021
5 pm Gathering
Gabe Palmer

Revealing Jesus Series, The book of Revelation

For full notes and to learn more about Refuge City visit  www.refugecityatl.com