Fishers of Men | Matthew

Introduction:
Can you remember what it was like in your life just after the Lord saved you?
Can you remember the new awareness concerning lost people?
Can you remember the new concern for their souls?
Can you remember the kind of burden that moved you to put forth an effort to share the gospel with those people in your life that you knew were lost?
Evangelism is one of the immediate concerns of the evangelized. With new life comes a new love. That new love is a love for God, which fuels a desire to tell others about Him. And that new love is a new love for men, which fuels a desire to tell those men about God, and about His Son, your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are taught by God’s grace to care about the spiritual condition of other people. We are taught by God’s grace to care about the everlasting destiny of other people.
When that goes away we are no longer spiritually healthy. That’s true on an individual level and that is true in the life of a church.
Evangelism reflects the love of the Father for sinners (John 3:16).
Evangelism reflects the love of God’s Son for sinners.
LUKE 19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Evangelism reflects the love of the Spirit for sinners.
ESV Acts 8:29 And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." 30 So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 31 And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. 33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 34 And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. 36 And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" 38 And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. 39 And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. (Act 8:29 ESV)
There is something defective, then, when we find ourselves interested in worship meetings but not interested in rescue missions. There is something defective when we say we gather to worship the God who calls for evangelism, and then have no interest in the evangelism that He calls for.
From the very beginning of our Lord’s earthly ministry, in its official sense, He makes plain what He will do with those whom He calls to Himself. HE WILL MAKE THEM FISHERS OF MEN. He will make them into men who reflect His own heart toward lost sinners, by equipping them and sending them into the world to seek out those lost sinners with the good news of Himself. And what He intended for them, with respect to gospel witness, He intends for us. This is our work as well. We are His witnesses.
Tonight I want us to think about fishing for men, I want us to think about the privileged work of evangelism, by examining Christ’s calling of the first four men who would belong to a band of disciples who would serve as Christ’s evangelists.
What we see tonight is basic, but usually the things that we forget and need to be reminded of are very basic.
There are four things I want to point out about these four fishers of men.
• THESE WERE CONVERTED MEN
This is not the first time that these men have met Jesus. If you read the first four chapters of John’s gospel account, you will read of the earliest meetings of these men with Jesus. These are men who have already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are men who have already followed Him in an initial sense.
This calling is not the calling to salvation. This is a call, a command, to leave their lives as they have known them and to devote themselves completely to a life of training at His feet. This is a call to be His full-time ministry apprentices.
And while it is simple, and I would hope quite obvious, I do think it is important to state this fact.
You will never have a heart for evangelism if you are not yet someone who has been evangelized. Nor are you qualified, nor are you equipped, to do the work of evangelism if you are not saved yourself.
It is only the saved who understand the value of salvation.
It is only the pitied, who have pity upon poor sinners.
It is only the enlightened who understand the darkness that sinners are engulfed in.

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