Leaving and Following (Luke 5:1–11) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

In all of my growing up years, my favorite place on the earth could not be Googled. It lay in the middle of an old family farm. A giant spreading red oak tree anchored the spot. The oak stood proudly at the top of a ridge that peered down onto a blanket of aging leaves that dropped to a clear water branch. I could sit there for hours and look, listen to the wind rustling through the leaves, watching the squirrels jump from tree to tree, and smelling the rich aroma of the forest. I loved to go there. But I would have to take you. You couldn’t find it without following.

So if you wished to go and drink up the beauty of that spot, I would say, “Follow me.” Google Maps wouldn’t lead you there. Someone who had never been to that place could not get you there. To get there, you would have to leave and follow me.

When Jesus Christ began His public ministry, He called people to follow Him. He would take them where they had never been before. He would lead them where no one else could. But the cost was high: leave everything and follow Him.

We tend, in our day, to like a much less demanding kind of Jesus. You know what I mean, the kind that offers gentle appeals but no commands; the kind that scarcely utters a word lest it disrupt our plans and inconvenience us; the kind that wants to be led around by our hand doing as we want Him to do but not the reverse. A soft Jesus, timid at demands of busy Americans seems to fit our religious sentiments much better than what we see in the New Testament.

Yet Jesus never hesitates to command leaving and following Him. We might think of Him as too demanding, as when one man said, ‘I’ll follow you,’ but “permit me first to go and bury my father.” Jesus told him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:59–60). Too decisive? Too costly? Only if you think that Jesus is just another earthly leader or just another religious figure but not the eternal Son of God, crucified, raised from the dead, and reigning as Lord. In such case, to hear His call, we must follow.

Jesus Christ calls us to whole-heartedly follow Him. In that call, we don’t find Him first, structuring a massive theological framework for us to fully understand, or a vision of future triumphs and failures, or assurance that we’ll be popular and safe if we follow Him, or the certainty that following would never interrupt our personal ambitions. No, Jesus calls; we’re to follow. But what does it look like to follow Him? That’s where this gospel story helps us to see what it means to follow Him.

1. Followers listen to Christ

Jesus stood along the edge of the Lake of Gennesaret, also called the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Chinnereth in the OT, and the Sea of Tiberius. Much more a lake than a sea, it spread fourteen by eight miles, and lay 680 feet below sea level, serving as a principle source of income and food for many in the region of Galilee. As he stood teaching “the word of God,” the people kept pressing and pressing in around Him. So intent on getting near Him, Jesus needed a little space, so He got into Simon Peter’s boat, had him push off from the shore, and continued teaching.

But His teaching, in this case, was not the point that Luke wants to make. He wants us to see this first real movement of the disciples following Jesus. In it, he teaches us the common characteristics of those who follow Jesus.

Jesus finished up His sermon from the boat, then “He said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Well, here is an odd thing: a carpenter telling experienced fishermen to fish at a time not ripe for fishing. Peter says as much. “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing.” The language used expressed diligent, backbreaking work. Here daytime came upon them. They struggled to stay awake while He preached after staying up all night. Now He te[...]