Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] There's a very familiar but kind of unusual story in the life of Jesus.
[00:00:07] In this story, Jesus has just fed thousands of people, and he's sending the disciples on ahead of them, ahead of him across the lake. And he's going to go spend some time up on the mountainside praying to the Father.
[00:00:21] And as the boat is going across the water, there's wind and waves that are pounding against them. Well, Jesus, right before the dawn, decides that he's going to go out to catch up with them. And so as they're trying to get the boat across the lake, Jesus comes out to them walking on the water.
[00:00:39] Now, there's some fishermen in this boat, so they've spent a lot of nights out on the water.
[00:00:45] They've never seen anybody walking on the water. They are terrified and they cry out in fear.
[00:00:55] And Jesus responds to them, guys, it's okay. Take courage. It's me.
[00:01:03] You don't have to be afraid.
[00:01:05] And then here, in my opinion, is where the story gets a little bit unusual because Peter makes what is a very unusual request.
[00:01:15] He says this in verse 28 of Matthew 14. He says, Lord, if it's you, Peter replied, tell me to come to you on the water.
[00:01:28] You ever wonder when you're reading the scripture, ever try to put yourself into the shoes of the people that are there?
[00:01:35] Do you ever think, what in the world was Peter thinking?
[00:01:40] He went from fear to this. Ask of Jesus, can I come out onto the water with you?
[00:01:48] What's he thinking?
[00:01:50] I mean, we know some things about Peter. He's kind of an impulsive character. He's the one that when the servant of the high priest comes up, he takes out his sword and chops off his ear. He's the one that's constantly. When Jesus asking questions, he's raising both hands and giving the wrong answer. He is impulsive. Is that what this is? Is Peter just being impulsive? Is he some kind of an adrenaline junkie? Like, why not? Let's give this a shot.
[00:02:16] Why would Peter believe that he could walk on water?
[00:02:22] Many commentators believe that the reason that that request even came to the mind of Peter is that he understood at his very core what it had meant. When Jesus invited him to be a follower of Jesus, a follower of the rabbi, He. He understood that that meant that I live my life the way the rabbi lives his life. The invitation is about imitation. I do the things that I see the rabbi doing.
[00:02:57] I mean, Jesus invitation wasn't just, I want you to convert to Christianity. He didn't even say, I want you to become a Christian.
[00:03:07] He invited those around him to actually apprentice under him.
[00:03:13] An apprentice means that I'm going to look at your life and I'm going to learn to live my life the way that you live your life. That's what it meant in the first century for a disciple or a follower to follow a rabbi.
[00:03:27] You become like the rabbi, even if that means walking on water.
[00:03:37] There was a punchline at the end of one of Jesus parables in Luke chapter 6, verse 40. This is what Jesus said. He says the student and the student is the follower, the disciple, the apprentice. The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained, fully trained, all in with the Rabbi will be like the teacher will be like.
[00:04:12] What it means to be a follower of Jesus is that the student becomes like the teacher. We follow him in that way.
[00:04:22] And that's why we've been asking this question over and over as a follower of Jesus, does that mean that I just like Jesus or does that mean that I'm actually becoming like Jesus?
[00:04:36] Because a fan of Jesus likes Jesus, admires Jesus. But someone who wants to be a follower, who wants to be a disciple, is someone who is willing to give their life to becoming like him.
[00:04:50] Just think about that for a minute.
[00:04:53] Does that in any way give you a little bit of pause?
[00:04:57] Like if it doesn't give you a little bit of pause, I don't think you actually understand what I'm saying is that the invitation of Jesus, the invitation of us to be able to follow him, means that we would do everything in our power to become like Jesus.
[00:05:17] Jesus God incarnate, God living in the flesh.
[00:05:24] That's what it means for us to be a follower of him, that in every way we seek to become like him, even if it means walking on water.
[00:05:37] And that's why Peter asked Jesus if he could get out of the boat.
[00:05:44] Friends, here's the question.
[00:05:46] Here's the thing that a first century follower knew that that invitation was about imitation.
[00:05:55] I need to become like him.
[00:05:58] The invitation was not about admiration, about being a fan. It was about imitation. It was about becoming like.
[00:06:08] There was a famous rabbinical blessing that people would pray over disciples and it was simply this. May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.
[00:06:22] Simply this meant that you would follow after the rabbi so closely, imitating everything about him so closely that the dust of his feet would get all over you. The things that were on his feet in these dusty roads would become a part of your life in every way. You would become like him.
[00:06:45] That's what disciples did. They watched the Rabbi and in every way they tried to imitate the Rabbi.
[00:06:54] These followers of Jesus, they were watching him all the time, thinking about Jesus, how do you do relationships, Jesus, how do you relate to your friends?
[00:07:07] Sometimes even more importantly, Jesus, how do you relate to your enemies? And they watched and they learned and they thought, I need to imitate that Jesus, how do you relate to the poor?
[00:07:19] How do you relate to those that are in the margins of society?
[00:07:23] How do you do that, Jesus? How do you do you love the world around you?
[00:07:30] And so as they followed after the Rabbi, the question that they were always asking over and over is, what is it gonna take in my life for me to become like him?
[00:07:43] To the point where you're willing to ask him, can I come on the water with you?
[00:07:51] Kind of makes me laugh a little bit. Not covered in the dust of the Rabbi, but covered in the wake of the Rabbi. I want to do everything that I see the Rabbi doing.
[00:08:02] The invitation to follow Jesus, it demands imitation.
[00:08:09] It demands us thinking about how in the world do I actually live my life in a way that it looks like the kind of life that Jesus would live if he was living here, his life through me, in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the calling to be a follower of Jesus.
[00:08:30] Now I think oftentimes when we think about what does it take to be a follower? This all in follower idea. Sometimes I think we believe, whoops, is that the most important thing is information that I just need to learn more.
[00:08:54] I need to know more of the Bible, I need to understand more theology. All those things are so, so important. But we can believe sometimes that it's just information that is actually going to lead to our transformation. All we need is, is just to learn more.
[00:09:15] Now you've got to hear me the Bible, theology, doctrine, it is so important. We need to understand it and we need to understand it accurately and correctly. But you can understand all of those things very, very well. And your life never change.
[00:09:34] Information by itself never creates transformation.
[00:09:42] That's why it's so important that Jesus wants us to understand what it takes for us to actually have a life that is different. A life that actually begins to look more and more like Jesus, is that we would give ourselves to imitation.
[00:10:02] We take that information, that theology, that doctrine, that understanding of the Bible, that understanding of who Jesus is, what he's like, what it is that he's done for us, how it is that we bring the kingdom into this life and we actually take that information and we turn it into imitation. And we're always asking the question, Jesus, what would my life look like if you were living it?
[00:10:25] That's the grid that we live our life through. And when we start to do that, friends, you will see transformation in your life.
[00:10:35] Your life will become more like Jesus.
[00:10:39] If you take that seriously, your character will actually start to look more like the character of Jesus.
[00:10:46] Your competencies, the things that you do in your life, the behaviors, the activities will actually reflect more of who Jesus is when we have that mindset.
[00:10:57] Imitation, the invitation to follow Jesus always involves imitation.
[00:11:05] That's the backdrop.
[00:11:07] That is the backdrop behind Jesus. Invitation not only to those first followers that we read about in Scripture, but his invitation to us as well to follow him. That's what it means to follow me.
[00:11:23] So I want to go back to a question that I asked at the very beginning of this series.
[00:11:28] The first question I asked was, are you a follower of Jesus?
[00:11:35] Are you following Jesus? Am I an all in follower of him?
[00:11:41] And so, in light of how Jesus defines what it means to be a follower, the way we answer that question is, am I becoming like Jesus?
[00:11:52] Do I look at my life and objectively just look at, are there ways that I can see that my life is actually changing in ways that it reflects more and more of who Jesus is?
[00:12:06] Are you a follower of Jesus or who are you following?
[00:12:14] Because here's the deal, friends.
[00:12:16] Everybody is following somebody or something.
[00:12:22] Every one of us is following somebody or something.
[00:12:26] Another way to say it is we're all disciples, we're all followers. It's just a matter of who it is that we're following.
[00:12:34] Your life is being changed. Your life is being formed.
[00:12:39] Your life is being conformed and transformed.
[00:12:43] But the only question is, what is it being formed into?
[00:12:48] Here's how the apostle Paul said this. Oh, how am I doing.
[00:12:59] Technology.
[00:13:02] This is what the apostle Paul said.
[00:13:05] He said, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed.
[00:13:14] You are being formed. And what the apostle Paul is telling us is that we don't allow our lives to be formed by the world around us.
[00:13:25] What we need to understand is that the world is forming us constantly.
[00:13:31] But what is it forming us into?
[00:13:35] Every one of us is changing. Every one of us is growing. None of us stays the same. That's the way God designed us. Our lives are elastic and malleable. We are made to grow and to change and to form.
[00:13:49] But what is it that we're being formed into?
[00:13:54] I'm going to say it again. The world will form you, the world is forming you.
[00:14:03] All you need to do, this is all you need to do to allow the world to form you is do nothing.
[00:14:11] Just go with the flow. Go with the flow of this life, go with the flow of your culture. And the world is going to be who it is that we're becoming.
[00:14:22] And so if we've come to that place where we're like Jesus, I believe that you are who you claim to be. I want my life to be in your hands. I want to be a follower of you. I want to become like you. This is what we need to face in our life.
[00:14:43] If we are not being intentionally, intentionally formed, meaning that we are making decisions moment by moment, day by day to allow Jesus to speak into our life and by the power of his Holy Spirit to transform our life, we will be unintentionally formed by the world around us.
[00:15:07] Another way to say it, friends, is that none of us accidentally becomes an all in follower of Jesus.
[00:15:17] This means we've got to regularly look at all the things that are happening in our life and in our mind.
[00:15:26] What is it that is forming our life, forming our views? It is so sobering to me to think about how many times I look at what Jesus says to be true about something and then I look at my life and it's off of what Jesus would say about those things.
[00:15:45] And so if we want to be a follower, what that means is that we learn to grow and change and we follow him. We align our life with him. He is our North Star. We allow him to change us from the inside out.
[00:16:01] He's the one that needs to speak into our life about how we do relationships.
[00:16:08] Jesus needs to be the one that speaks into our life in terms of how we do marriage.
[00:16:15] Jesus needs to be the one in our life that helps us navigate how we deal with our sexuality in this world that is just rampant apart from the Word and the will of God.
[00:16:26] Jesus needs to be the one that gives us direction on how we handle our money, how we handle all the resources that God has given us.
[00:16:35] Jesus needs to be the one that speaks into our politics.
[00:16:39] Everybody thinks that Jesus bumper stickers on their politics. But does your politics actually align with the Word and the will of God?
[00:16:50] Jesus needs to be the one that speaks into our mental health.
[00:16:54] How do we deal with the challenges of this life, the anxiety of this life?
[00:16:59] How do we deal with church?
[00:17:01] How do we navigate our life inside the church? Jesus needs to be the one that speaks into that, not the world, friends. The world will form us we have got to push back against the world in many different ways. And I will say it over and over that we hold our life up to Jesus and we say, jesus, how do we become like you?
[00:17:27] How do we live our life the way that you would live my life if you were me?
[00:17:37] We are intentionally formed.
[00:17:41] Here's what I want to do in the time that we have left. I want to give us a little bit of a framework for how do we think about the ways that we need Jesus to speak in and form our life.
[00:17:55] And here's the framework. This is not a formula, but this is a framework, a way for us to think about how do we live the kind of life that Jesus lived.
[00:18:06] And if we had to just pick one word that would describe the life of Jesus, it would be the word love.
[00:18:13] There's no better word than that. But what I want us to do and what I want us to understand is how do we see the different kind of love relationships in the life of Jesus? And how do we begin to mirror those in our own life? I need to find another triangle in the other direction.
[00:18:42] Three love relationships.
[00:18:45] And the only way that we're gonna do this, friends, is if we allow Jesus to love us, to love us in a way that we begin to spill out in these love relationships and the life in the world around us. When we look at the life of Jesus, we see that one of his loves was an up relationship that he had with the Father.
[00:19:11] We see this all the time in the life of Jesus, even in the midst of incredible demands, all the things that were happening in life and ministry.
[00:19:20] He had a job to do while he was here, but he was always quietly pulling away, creating space in his life where he could experience the presence of the Father, that he could hear and respond to the voice of the Father.
[00:19:38] He was always saying things like, I only do. I only do what I hear the Father doing.
[00:19:45] He modeled how to hear and respond to the voice of God.
[00:19:50] And then Jesus gave this invitation to us as followers. He says, abide in me.
[00:19:57] Abide meaning remain. That you would dwell in me, that you would sink your roots into my life.
[00:20:05] Another way that he would describe this idea of abiding. When he talked about sheep, my sheep, he said, they're the ones who hear my voice and they follow me.
[00:20:16] They will not listen to another voice because they do not recognize it. They hear and respond to my voice. They separate. They learn to separate his voice from the voice of the world because they want to be formed by Jesus and not be formed by the world.
[00:20:33] Part of what it's going to mean for us friends as we walk through this series is that we've got to learn how do we engage the presence of God in that way? How do we become like Jesus so that we give God the space in our life to speak in? Jesus modeled that up relationship with the Father, but he also modeled an in relationship with his spiritual family.
[00:21:06] One of the first things that Jesus did when he came to this earth is he called a group of men and women to follow him and to follow him closely. It was his spiritual family.
[00:21:19] And when we see throughout scripture and we see how the church was launched, part of the purpose behind this community of people is that not only would Jesus be forming them, but they as they lived in community with one another, would be formed by one another.
[00:21:38] That's what Jesus wants us to understand. We experience his love and then that love is poured out to the lives of other people around us, his family, the church.
[00:21:51] I love how John said it in First John 3:16. He says, this is how we know what love is.
[00:21:58] Jesus laid down his life for us.
[00:22:03] That's how we see love. Jesus sacrificed everything for us. We love that we experience that. Amen. Here's the response of that. And we ought to to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters who are brothers and sisters.
[00:22:24] It's our spiritual family.
[00:22:28] Jesus said, if you're going to live the kind of life that I live, you've got to do that in the context of a spiritual family.
[00:22:37] And I'm going to say it as clearly and as bluntly as I can.
[00:22:41] You can't follow Jesus alone.
[00:22:48] I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it or that it's more difficult if you want to do that. I'm simply saying you can't. It's not even an option.
[00:22:58] In terms of how Jesus describes what it looks like to live the kind of life that he lived, it requires community, because community, it's that incubator.
[00:23:11] It's that incubator opportunity to be sharpened by one another.
[00:23:17] Is it hard?
[00:23:20] Yes, absolutely. None of these things that we're going to talk about in this series are easy, but it's what brings life to us if we want to be a follower of Jesus.
[00:23:34] And lastly, Jesus had an outward love, a love for the broken world around him.
[00:23:50] He cared about the lostness of this world.
[00:23:55] In fact, when he came, he made his mission statement clear.
[00:23:59] Luke 19:10, he said, for the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
[00:24:07] That was his mission.
[00:24:10] And if that's his mission, that means that if we are going to be a follower of him, if we are going to imitate his life, that needs to become our mission as well.
[00:24:22] That also, my friends, is not option optional.
[00:24:26] That we learn to love the things that Jesus loved.
[00:24:31] And when he looked out at the world around him and he saw lostness and he saw brokenness, the scripture makes it clear he was wrecked on the inside. He had compassion on people because they were harassed and helpless like a sheep without a shepherd. And now that mission, he's handed the baton to us, are we going to grab ahold of the love that he had for the lostness and the brokenness of this world?
[00:24:59] My answer is yes.
[00:25:01] If we're going to be a follower of him, if we're going to imitate him, that's got to be a part of our life.
[00:25:08] And friends, this framework, this up in and out is going to shape the way we unpack the rest of this series. We're going to look at different ways that we need to grow in that up relationship, that up experience of God's presence and his voice, that in experience, how do we learn to grow as a spiritual family and that out relationship? How do we learn to grow in our love for those that this, at this point are outside the kingdom? How do we grow in that?
[00:25:41] And here's the picture of what it means for an all in follower.
[00:25:48] If this is you and you want to be an all in follower, it means that we're continually going to be thinking about how do I grow up, how do I grow in, how do I grow out?
[00:26:06] That our life, over time, it begins to look like the life of Jesus.
[00:26:13] That's how we're gonna walk through this series. Because to follow it, to follow him means that we become like him.
[00:26:20] It's not optional.
[00:26:23] Here's the deal.
[00:26:25] I always wanna just shoot straight with you.
[00:26:28] All the things that we're gonna be talking about, none of them, zero of them are gonna be easy for us.
[00:26:36] Because when Jesus invited us to follow him, he never promised easy. This isn't an easy road. In fact, he said the road is narrow and the road is difficult.
[00:26:48] And he will say, actually not a lot of people will want to do it. There'll be a lot of people that want to be my fans, but not a lot of people that want to be my followers.
[00:27:00] And that doesn't sit well culture does it? We want it just to happen like that. We want it to be easy. You want me to just give you a Killer app. If I just download that and I do a couple things, all this is gonna transpire in my life.
[00:27:14] It won't happen.
[00:27:18] In fact, the Promise. I love the title of one of Eugene Peterson's book. This is the Promise. It's gonna be a long obedience in the same direction.
[00:27:29] It's going to be a long obedience in the same direction.
[00:27:34] And the reason we've just got to say up front how difficult it is is because we can't lower the bar. I can't try to tell you it's super easy, it's super fun. You're going to love every minute of it. It is going to be challenging and it's going to be demanding for every one of us. But we can't, we can't talk about it in a way that it's not. We've got to talk about it as it really.
[00:27:57] Because it's not loving to lower the bar and make it sound easier than it actually is.
[00:28:04] I read this story about a pharmacist named Robert Courtney.
[00:28:10] And he was prosecuted because as a pharmacist, to try to make more money, he began to dilute a chemotherapy drug that was given to thousands of and thousands of patients.
[00:28:24] He diluted it so that he could make more money.
[00:28:28] And Eli Lilly, they finally began to catch on as they began to look at how much he was buying from them, how much he was selling three times. He was selling three times the amount that he was buying and he was selling it at a discounted rate. And they said, something doesn't work.
[00:28:47] And as they began their internal investigation, even talking to some of the nurses, they just said, well, it's been amazing. Like a lot of the patients, they actually don't experience a lot of the negative side effects of the chemotherapy drug.
[00:29:03] Why?
[00:29:05] Because it was diluted and it wasn't saving them, it was killing them.
[00:29:14] It doesn't help us friends to try to lower the bar, to try to dilute the message of Jesus in any way.
[00:29:22] The bar that Jesus gives us of being an all in follower of him. And that meaning that we actually look to imitate the life of Jesus. That bar is higher than this short bald man can reach.
[00:29:37] And the truth is also that we think about where are we at in relation to that bar.
[00:29:43] We are so down here.
[00:29:46] I am so down. It feels overwhelming to think that that's what Jesus is inviting us to. That's what Jesus wants of our life. That we would hold that bar and want our lives to become like him.
[00:30:02] The bar is high.
[00:30:05] But Jesus can Help us get there one step at a time.
[00:30:13] Let's go back to Peter.
[00:30:16] When we last left Peter, he was asking Jesus to step out of the boat.
[00:30:22] Jesus response, come, come, follow me, Jesus.
[00:30:30] Peter does. He steps out of the boat.
[00:30:33] He gets on the water and he starts to walk toward Jesus for a little while.
[00:30:41] And then the text tells us that he took his eyes off of Jesus and began to look around and he became afraid and he began to sink.
[00:30:53] And then he said one of the most honest and short prayers ever.
[00:30:58] He said, lord, save me.
[00:31:03] And what does Jesus do?
[00:31:05] He reached out his hand and grabbed him.
[00:31:09] Matthew, chapter 14, verse 31. This is how the story ends.
[00:31:14] It said, immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.
[00:31:20] But now let's just listen to what Jesus said.
[00:31:23] He said, you of little faith. He said, why did you doubt?
[00:31:31] Whenever I read this, I think I've always just read it with the assumption that what Peter doubted was Jesus.
[00:31:40] He doubted Jesus.
[00:31:43] But what if a piece of that doubt, at least a piece of that doubt, was that he doubted himself?
[00:31:52] He doubted himself that he could actually do what it was that Jesus was inviting him to do.
[00:32:00] Friends, that's what we need to engage with. We need to put our trust, no doubt in Jesus. Because he said, I want you to be my follower. You can become like me.
[00:32:14] That is the bedrock truth. We can trust that.
[00:32:18] But what we also need to trust is that by the power of God's spirit that lives within every follower of Jesus, that he can reach out his hand and grab our life and take us to the place that he wants us to be. We don't doubt Jesus, but we don't doubt ourselves either. He can do it. If we surrender our life to him and trust in. In the power of his spirit, we can be like Jesus. Our life can increasingly become like Him.
[00:32:56] Okay, here's your assignment.
[00:32:59] I want to give you an opportunity to begin to look at the life of Jesus and to look at your own life. This is that opportunity to look at the life of Jesus and look at maybe places in your own life that don't mirror the life of Jesus. And we can begin to adjust and begin to change little by little over time, decision by decision, next step by next step. That's why we're always gonna talk about next steps around here. It doesn't matter where we're at.
[00:33:30] Our next step is to move toward Him. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to pick a gospel. It doesn't matter. It can be Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. It all works the same. Here's what I want you to do.
[00:33:43] I want you to read that gospel.
[00:33:46] I want you to look at the life and the ministry of Jesus.
[00:33:51] But here's the lens that I want you to look through. And here's the question that I want you to ask.
[00:33:59] How would I imitate what I see in Jesus, my own life?
[00:34:07] Let's just say that you're going to walk out of here, you're going to take Jesus at his word, that we can actually be changed into his likeness. We can become like him.
[00:34:17] It makes sense then, that we would look at the Word and begin to ask ourselves, jesus, how is it that I can become more like you? What is it in your life that I need to imitate and see what Jesus does?
[00:34:32] See what the Holy Spirit brings to your attention?
[00:34:36] My imagine. I imagine that there's things that you're gonna say, I need to start doing this.
[00:34:43] I'm not doing. I need to start doing that because that's what Jesus does.
[00:34:47] There's probably some things in your life that you need to stop doing.
[00:34:50] You just know that thing that I'm doing that doesn't represent who Jesus is.
[00:34:55] And you know what? I would imagine that you're even gonna find some things that you need to keep doing because you're doing a great job, well done, good and faithful servant. What is it that needs to change in our life? How would our life be different if we took imitating Jesus seriously?
[00:35:18] Because that's the invitation.
[00:35:21] The invitation to follow Jesus. It's not about admiration, although. Do we admire Jesus? Absolutely.
[00:35:28] But fans admire Jesus.
[00:35:31] The invitation to be a follower of Jesus is about imitation.
[00:35:37] How do I. Moment by moment, step by step, decision by decision.
[00:35:42] Live a life where I am becoming more like Jesus.
[00:35:48] Pray.
[00:35:55] Jesus. You know how overwhelming this has been to even think about this and to think about saying these things and thinking about how high the bar is that you've called us to.
[00:36:09] But Jesus, we love you and it doesn't.
[00:36:14] And I love these people.
[00:36:16] And it's not loving to try to lower the bar in any way to make it seem like it's easier, better, less difficult than it really is.
[00:36:26] Jesus, we want to hold the bar high, but we also want to trust you, Jesus, that we can't get there apart from you.
[00:36:35] We surrender our life to you.
[00:36:38] We ask you through the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in us, would you begin to mold our life, begin to shape our life? Form us, Jesus, into someone that looks like you.
[00:36:54] To the glory of the Father, Jesus, we trust you to do this in our life.
[00:37:00] And it's in your powerful and resurrected name that we pray. And all God's people said, amen.
