Matthew 4:18-22

Sunday message · The Book of Matthew series

Corey Adney  ·  Matthew 4:18-22

Listen to the message

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Watch on YouTube

Message Summary

In this message from the church’s study of the Gospel of Matthew, Corey Adney looks at Matthew 4:18–22, where Jesus calls two pairs of brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, then James and John, to follow him. Readers easily hurry past this short passage, but Corey finds a lot to unpack. It reflects a theme that runs through Scripture: God pursues people, calling out to Adam and Eve as they hid in the garden and calling prophets and leaders by name.

Corey, a self-described movie nerd, notes that Jesus films show fishermen abandoning their boats, and even their father, without a word, which always seemed strange to him. So he supplies the cultural context. Jewish children memorized the Torah by about age ten. Most were then sent home to learn the family business, while the best and brightest continued until they had memorized the entire Hebrew Scriptures, then applied to follow a rabbi. If a rabbi believed a student could do what he did, he said, “Come follow me,” and the disciple left everything to live alongside him and become like him.

Jesus, fully God and fully man, grew up in that culture. At twelve he amazed the teachers in the temple with his understanding (Luke 2:41–52), yet most scholars believe his unrecorded years were spent learning Joseph’s trade, and if so, he never became any rabbi’s disciple. After his baptism, a public spectacle people surely talked about, and his temptation in the wilderness, Jesus began preaching that the kingdom of heaven is near. Many scholars place about a year between his baptism and the calling of these disciples, time in which Jesus stepped into his role as a rabbi.

So the men Jesus calls beside the Sea of Galilee are fishermen learning the family business, the ones other rabbis had sent home as not good enough. Only the most radical rabbis called their own disciples, and Jesus’ invitation to follow him and fish for people told these unlikely candidates that he believed they could do what he does. With that context, Corey says, leaving their nets makes sense: anyone told as a child that they were not good enough for their dream would go if an expert offered to show them how.

At the end of Matthew, Jesus gives the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:16–20), passing his work to his disciples. They are not told to make connections, acquaintances or even believers, but disciples, people who want to become like their rabbi. Corey asks whether we long not just to believe in Jesus but to follow him, learn from him and do the work he does. If so, we do not wait for people to come to us; we go to them, invite them in and show faith in them. “Jesus has faith in us and our abilities to do what disciples are called to do.” Extending an invitation, Corey says, is far easier than walking on water or raising the dead, and if his rabbi could do it, so can he.

Questions about Jesus calling his first disciples