Title: Follow Me (Matthew 4:18-22)
Contents
Therefore, I also want to ask you a favor at this time. "Hajina Adai" Lend me your ears. Pay attention only to the Word of God." Because we are going to deliver an important message today.
Jesus said to his disciples, "Follow me." At the beginning, He said, “Follow me,” and when He suffered, He said, “Follow me.” After His resurrection, He also said “Follow me” (John 21:19,22). Even now, the Lord says to us, "Follow me." A life of faith is a life in which you decide to follow the Lord and follow Him. A Christian believer is not completed in an instant through any conversion or experience of the Holy Spirit, but grows and matures by continuously following the Lord. Conversion or the experience of the Holy Spirit is the moment of birth as a Christian. And it provides a decisive turning point in the process of being born and growing up.
A person's destiny is determined by whom he follows. Samson in the age of the Judges did not follow the word of God, but followed the advice of the prostitute Delilah and fell (Judges 14-16). The prophet Balaam, who followed King Balak for money, was rebuked by the donkey. The 450 prophets who followed Baal were savagely slaughtered on Mount Carmel. However, all those who followed God's word in the Old Testament enjoyed prosperity. And according to the New Testament, the nameless disciples who followed the Lord became great people who were not forgotten and loved and respected by all mankind even in the long history of 2,000 years.
Let's consider together what it means to "follow the Lord" through the text given to us today.
1. Following the Lord begins with “leaving”.
Abraham left his hometown, relatives, and father's house and followed the word of God, becoming a source of blessing (Genesis 12:1-). Ruth, a Moabite woman, left her hometown and followed her mother-in-law Naomi to Bethlehem, where she became a member of the genealogy of Jesus.
Following the Lord presupposes a departure from the sinful past. It's sad when you leave. A new beginning always frightens humans. But there must be self-denial. A decision to break is required. Peter and Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother left their nets and left and became followers of Jesus. And they became fishers of men.
The Gospel tells the story of Peter's mother-in-law who fell ill with a fever right after Peter followed the Lord. I wondered why Peter's mother-in-law had a fever.
As a parent with a daughter, how would Peter's mother-in-law feel? One day, as if possessed by a daytime goblin, he suddenly turned his back on his family and fell for the lure of an unfamiliar young man who promised that he would become a 'fisher of people'. Someone's precious daughter and child, but I can't take her and make her a better person. I need to stay on the outside, but since I gave up my life's job and followed Jesus, can my mother-in-law have no choice but to blow a vase? A vase is a feverish disease, and the Bible describes it as a fever. It wouldn't be cool to make my wife and children strong, but to become a hungry Jesuit is so miserable and the sky seems to be falling. So, naturally, there was no other way but to lie down.
It is clear that it was Peter who wandered around without knowing what happened to his mother-in-law. Could it have been that others could not have seen it and let Jesus know about it? However, the mother-in-law believes that the moment she meets Jesus, all her worries are gone. His truth and love set her free. In the end, Peter's mother-in-law understood Peter and forgave him and reconciled. It was to help him.
Following the Lord completely can sometimes make a person feel like this. And the facts need to be opened. It can be healed anyway.
Peter never followed the path of destruction wrought by his own self-interest, fame, or passion. He followed the word of life, the way of salvation, that "the truth shall set you free" (John 8:31-38).
In this way, He said that all things work together for good and for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).
We sometimes hear the news through the media that migratory birds have forgotten their seasons and that all other migratory birds have left, but only a few migratory birds remain. What will happen in the end if the migratory birds who are supposed to leave for Gangnam keep delaying their decision to leave? They die because of the cold.
2. Following the Lord means becoming like the Lord.
We must become imitators of the Lord. The Lord did not come as a Spirit. The Lord is incarnated. The Lord came to this world in the flesh. The Lord came to this world in human flesh to set an example for us.
The message of the cross of the Lord is not only given to us to believe. He gave us the way of the cross to make us believe, deny ourselves, and take up that cross like me and follow me. No matter how easy and simple the way of believing in the cross is, to turn away from the way of carrying the cross and forsake the way of carrying the cross is not following the Lord and not becoming like the Lord. People who only have faith in the cross keep trying to carry the cross on their own and to put on others the cross that they must bear, so the number of crosses keeps getting bigger and heavier. But the way of carrying the cross is that I carry the cross so that no one else needs to bear the cross, and in the end, no one needs to carry the cross.
Is it not at home or in church? If each works according to his or her own quota, work never piles up. However, if we do not do our part, we become overloaded, and some people get tired of doing the overloaded work, and there are side effects such as complaining and feeling discouraged. .
In the name of the Lord, I pray that all members of Hankwang Church will not be those who wear crosses on others, but that they will become believers who wear crosses on themselves. I hope that you will not become the people who put the cross on the chest of others, but the saints who put the cross on their own chest.
The supreme target for us to follow is not any human being, but the Lord Jesus Christ. James and John, like thunder, became the first martyrs and apostles of love. It was the result of following the Lord.
Elisha followed his teacher, Elijah, to the end, and was twice inspired.
Philippians 2:5 says, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” If you follow Jesus, you will have the heart of Jesus. If you follow a thief, you will develop a thief's heart. If you follow the world, you will become like the world. We must follow Him as our model and standard in our lives.
The beneficiary of the redeemed grace is simply the birth. Believing, receiving, and becoming a child of God is nothing more than being born as a bloody baby. A child born must learn, resemble, grow, and mature by watching his parents. You have to meet many teachers, learn, learn, grow, and mature.
In this way, the Lord's people must go through the process of achieving salvation throughout their lives, and they must work out a new salvation every day. We must not deny the fact that non-dominant beliefs or graces in our lives can be withdrawn and the final state can be worse than the initial state. We are called to carry the cross for our salvation. Rejecting or ignoring this will only lead to birth and death.
3. Those who follow the Lord will inherit the kingdom of God.
He said that Jesus is the only way to God the Father, the truth, and the life. Following Jesus is the only way to Heavenly Father. Only following the gospel of Jesus is the truth that leads to Heavenly Father. Only the life that follows Jesus is the life that can lead to God the Father and the life that enjoys eternal life.
No matter how hard you try to follow other things, if you do not follow Jesus Christ, you cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There is nothing that human beings can do for entering the kingdom of God, and they can't be used as achievements, nor can they be of merit. Only following Jesus can inherit the kingdom of God. I hope you believe that there is no other way, another truth, another life.
Even today, the evil devil and Satan whisper to us. Don't follow Jesus, say, "Follow me." So many people follow the temptations of Satan the devil and go out into the wide world. But the wide road and wide gate of the world are the road leading to destruction and the door leading to destruction. The Lord says to us today, "Follow me," saying, "Are you also going to follow Satan and the devil into the world?" As Peter said, "You have the word of life, and where do we go? Let us also die with you." I pray in the name of the Lord that you will become saints who follow the Lord.