Tag: Matthew 4:12-25

Learning Repentance

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Biblical Text: Matthew 4:12-25

The text is the calling of the first disciples from Matthew’s Gospel, two sets of Brothers – Andrew and Peter, James and John. And right before that calling you have Matthew’s summary of the Preaching of Jesus, at least in the days in Galilee, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” So, the sermon’s main concern is the idea of discipleship. What does it mean to follow Jesus? And a big part of that answer is to learn the meaning of repentance. This particular sermon walks through what I tend to think is the modern church’s biggest problem – worldliness.

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The Reign of God Dawns

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Biblical Text: Matthew 4:12-25

The text presents us with the basic message of Jesus – “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” – and two ways that this reign of God becomes evident to us. Those two ways are the immediate preaching and miracles of Jesus and his specific calling of the disciples with the promise to make them fishers of men. So this sermon asks us to repent – to change our minds about the order of this world toward Jesus – and to join in discipleship.

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Right Timed Calls and Rightly Ordered Priorities

Biblical Text: Matthew 4:12-25 (Psalm 27)
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The text is Jesus calling Andrew and Peter and James and John. I probably owe a few former pastors an apology as I use them as a straw man. Those sermons of blessed memory were never as bad as I put in hear. It was probably just my listening. But, the way this text is usually preached never sat well with me. In one stroke it tended to make Jesus unbelievable, ignore everyday discipleship and create lots of holy make work. (Most cries for “relevancy” I think fall into holy make work.) Learning to “walk humbly” is often enough. What this sermon attempts to do is to reimagine the situation that leads to “immediately following” as those disciples do, and to understand what that is. Not as a call to “do something- anything – for Jesus right now”, nor as a “only a religious calling is a true calling”, but to be able to hear the lifelong call as well as the more particular calls.

Worship Note: I’ve left in the hymn of the day, LSB 688, Come Follow me the Savior Spake. You might also notice a slightly different order (although my editing obscures it). Fourth Sundays as Morning Prayer/Matins days which have a massed reading of the lessons.

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