Matthew 4:19- “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Good morning, everyone!
I hope you all had a great weekend! As we start this week’s devotionals, Matthew has just finished up Jesus’ “pre-ministry” phase and is now hitting the ground running with full on ministry. What we see in this passage is Jesus calling his first disciples to follow Him.

Jewish custom was for male students to graduate around 14 or 15 years of age. After they finished up their schooling, a rabbi would come and search for the brightest young men; once he found them, he would invite them to be his disciples by telling them to “follow me.” Essentially, the rabbi was inviting them to come sit under his teaching so they could learn from him.

Oftentimes, family and friends would gather around the student to celebrate and bless them as they went on their way. A common prayer of blessing was “may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” Their prayer for the young boy was that he would follow so closely to the rabbi that dust would fly up from the dirt roads and cover him.

Though this sounds a little odd, they knew one thing. To really learn from someone, you must be close to them. In other words, you must be in their presence! Here, Jesus is calling the first disciples to come be in His presence… to learn from Him. As He eats, as He teaches, as He works, and so on. He is calling them to learn by being with Him.

Knowing the cultural context of this passage helps me understand how revolutionary this really was. Here, Jesus doesn’t go to an Ivy League school to find the brightest of the bright to join His mission. He does just the opposite. … He goes down to the ocean where a bunch of uneducated fishermen were and begins to gather His troops….

He finds the ordinary and does the extraordinary through them!

This is where it all started for these men. Just a bunch of normal guys that no one had ever heard of before… A normal day at work…But after Jesus called them to follow Him, nothing was ever normal again. Don’t forget, one of these even became the “rock” on which Jesus built His church…. And though these men didn’t always get it right after this moment, they examplifed what it meant to really “follow” Jesus. To lay everything behind… to walk as closely as they possibly could… To just abide in His presence…

This should be an encouragement to all of us. We don’t have to be a “somebody” or qualified to be used by Jesus. We just have to be willing to truly follow Him. I believe with all my heart that if we strive to follow Him the way He intended us to, we will see things we could never imagine because when we are in His presence, we begin to experience His power!

-Taylor