Sunday Sermon: Heed the Call

Jesus Christ was approximately 30 years old, and he was ready to step from the shadows of a life which to that stage had been lived in relative anonymity. He had learned of the fate of his cousin, John 'the Baptist', and decided that it was time for he himself to begin a public ministry. It was what he had waited his whole life to do. It was the entire reason for his being alive.

Jesus knew as he began that he would need to start somewhere. And so he set out along the edge of the waters of the sea of Galilee, beginning to spread there a message" that the people should "repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

As he made those first tentative public speeches and teachings, he was mostly alone, and he quickly came to realize that he needed help. He needed people to help him travel, to organize, to simply be his companions on the journey.

Walking along the edge of the Galilean sea he observed two brothers named Simon and Andrew, and he began to talk with them. He talked and taught, telling the brothers "Follow me, and I will make you fisher's of men!" His divine inspiration was so great that the brothers left behind their nets and began to follow Jesus.

The trio moved along the sea a bit and came upon the fishing ship of a man named Zebedee. Tending the nets with their father were his two sons, James and John, and Jesus again began to speak to the men and called on them to join him, which they did. From this humble beginning has arisen the greatest church in the history of the world.
 The very church of the one true God Himself, founded by His only son.

That very first man he had called, the brother once named Simon, had his name changed by Christ prior to his own death to "Peter". Jesus turned over the church to this man saying "You are Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."

These men were just the first to be called by Christ to his ministry. The first to be asked to hear him, to listen to the message from God, to have faith, and to lay aside all they thought that they had previously known in order to follow Jesus. More would follow. First by the few, then by the dozens, ultimately by the hundreds and by the thousands. Over the course of human history, the same exact call would go out to billions.

A Pharisee named Saul was one that was called in those early years. It was after the crucifixtion of Jesus that his disciples were first trying to spread his word as a group which had become known as "The Way". Saul zealously persecuted Jesus' followers, and in the continuation of this effort was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus.

On the road to Damascus, Jesus suddenly appeared to Saul and called to him: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Saul asked who was speaking, and Jesus replied: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what to do." Saul ultimately heeded the call, changed his name to 'Paul', and along with Peter became one of the Founding Father's of the church.

But just as human death did not stop Jesus from calling people like Paul, neither has the passage of time stopped people from being called. You are called.

That's right, you reading this right now.  The simple fact is that we are all called by the Lord to hear his word and to yield our lives to him. Every single person reading this has heard of Jesus Christ. Every single person reading this knows exactly what Jesus claimed to be: the Truth. The one true way.

In Jesus own words we find the single most important call that any of us have ever received in our lives, and make no mistake, we have all received this call. Jesus himself said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

You have been called. Have you heeded his call? If you have, congratulations brother or sister. Continue in your own personal journey during this life in trying to live as he would wish you to live. You will never reach perfection. You will stumble and fall and sin many times, for you are human. But you have heeded the call, accepted the truth, and will be rewarded.

Others of you have not heeded the call. You have either hesitated, or you have outright turned away from the truth. If you are reading this, you still have time to make the single most important choice that you will make in your life here on earth. You still have the choice to heed Jesus' call, to accept the truth, and to begin to try to follow the way as best you can.

From that first day along the sea of Galilee when Jesus called a quartet of fishermen to become fishers of men, the call has continued to ring out around the world. It has reached your ears. The next step is yours. If you are my family member or my friend, if you in any way have impacted my life, I am reaching out to you right now, personally. Heed the call. God bless you.

NOTE: this is the continuation of the Sunday Sermon series of articles that appear regularly at the www.mattveasey.com website, all items in which can be read by clicking on that label link found below here at the website

Conspiracy, Betrayal, Denial

We are now just three weeks away from Easter Sunday, which along with Christmas Day is the celebration of one of the two greatest events in the history of mankind. On that day of Easter we will celebrate the great victory of Jesus Christ over death, his rising from the grave into which he entered as a repentance for the sins of man. But besides that sin for which his death was payment, there was a human process of actual conspiracy and betrayal that served as the mechanization leading to his crucifixion. And near that end there were a series of denials from his most beloved and respected friend and follower. As the Bible tells it in the New Testament gospel of Luke, with the Passover festival about to begin the chief priests and scribes were looking for a way to put him to death. They feared Jesus' popularity among the people, and that many of his teachings were outside the bounds, some directly in conflict with, the tenets of the Jewish faith. The Gospel of Matthew tells that they assembled in the palace of the high priest, Caiaphas, and consulted on how best to effect his arrest and eventual execution. Their initial plan was to have this plot carried out after the festival was over, because as both Matthew and Mark tell us, they feared "a riot among the people", such was Jesus' popularity. Their plots against him came together more suddenly than they wanted because the fact is they were not in charge of things. As Luke tells it, Satan "entered into" one of Jesus' twelve disciples, Judas Iscariot, who approached the temple guards and the chief priests with an offer to betray Jesus and turn him over to them in exchange for money. When the chief priests agreed to pay him 30 pieces of silver, the conspiracy was in place, and Judas began to seek an opportunity to lead them to Jesus when there would be no crowds around to cause a disturbance. When the time came to celebrate the Passover meal, Jesus gathered with his disciples in the large upper room at the home of a Jerusalem man who was a supporter of their group. During the meal, Jesus instituted the Sacramental expression of the sharing of His body and blood. In breaking bread and passing it among his friends he said "This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me." After they ate, the Lord then took the cup of wine and said to them "This cup is the new covenant of my blood, which will be shed for you." As they further celebrated the meal, an argument broke out among them as to who was the greatest of Jesus' followers. Rather than select anyone of them, Jesus instead told them that true greatness comes not from lording it over others, but through service, saying "I am among you as the one who serves." When his closest follower and dearest friend, Simon Peter, told Jesus that he was prepared to go to prison and die for him, Jesus replied that "Before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me." He also told the twelve friends that one of them sitting among their group would betray him saying "It would be better for that man if he had never been born." As we know through history, late that very night while his followers slept in the garden at Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Judas saw the opportunity to turn him over. He led a group of soldiers to that location, approached Jesus, and identified him to the soldiers by kissing Jesus on the cheek. Jesus was taken into custody and brought before the Sanhedrin, the council of elders, chief priests and scribes who would begin the process of a sham legal proceeding leading to his death. While Jesus was in custody, three different times that day his friend Peter was approached and accused of being one of Jesus' followers, and all three times Peter denied that it was so, just as Jesus had foretold. As the celebrations of Easter approach we should all be reminded of these moments when the very Savior of mankind was conspired against, betrayed, and denied by his very closest friends and followers. We need to remember that while our friends and family are important, no one is beyond Satan's grasp, and no one is beyond doing the exact same thing to each of us. In the end, we hope to count on the people in our lives at the most important moments. But the fact is that in the end the only one whom we can really count on is Jesus Christ himself. He was the one who stayed faithful to us. He is the one who went to the cross so that your sins would be forgiven. He was the one who suffered and died for each of you reading this. Do not turn your back on him as his followers did. Use the approach of this holy and blessed season to set your lives on a path that draws you closer to Jesus Christ.