The Divine Crash

Today’s sermon continued moving through Matthew backwards and we studied the calling of the first disciples; Peter, Andrew, James, and John.

Jesus comes from the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, this is a land that has been occupied by foreign governments for centuries leaving the people beat down with the boot of society on their necks.

You can hear the audio of the sermon here.

Jesus comes out of a land of people shamed and down trodden and takes the initiative to tell them the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

The disciples were suddenly looking at homelessness, unemployment, poverty, and not knowing where their next meal was coming from all in the hopes that this, Jesus, guy was from God.

Jesus then tells them they will be fishers of people, a very deceitful term given how fishing is done in that time.

I put a lot of research into this sermon, I spent about 20 hours just researching this sermon and then another 10 hours just arranging the information.

I think a lot of this connects to people on a personal level, we understand living in a land ruled by someone else. Maybe not by a physical enemy government but when our credit card bills are too high, we are then by something outside of our control.  Or when our addiction gets out of control it begins to rule us instead of us living life the way it should be.  It is in those moments that Jesus comes to us and he comes in the midst of that, in the middle of our working and the middle of our life so that we are called to something totally different not knowing what is ahead.

It is important to notice that Jesus is the one who comes to us in the middle of our working and living.  Even now we may think when we pray a prayer or say some words Jesus comes to us but the truth of the matter is that Jesus came to us before we were even aware of it.

Then, when we go we have no idea of what will happen next, all we know is that suddenly we are homeless, unemployed and following some guy who is going to make us “fisher’s of men” which is a deceitful term when we think about it (but you’ll need to listen to the sermon to find out why).  I think people understand this, we long to leave the things that they thought would free them but ended up enslaving them so when God arrives and says I can rescue you from this enslavement.

I really enjoyed this sermon, it took a lot to create and was exhausting but was an amazing thing to deliver.

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Sermon by RevBT