Jesus’s Favorite Sport

But today I want to, this is actually going to be like a mini two-part series, so you need to come back next week to hear the second part of this. But I want to talk about Jesus’s Favorite Sport. Jesus’s Favorite Sport. And if you have kids or grandkids, you know how precious it is to have your child enjoy the thing you enjoy. Whether it's sports, you know, your favorite sports team, you know, when your kid starts wearing the North Carolina Tar Heels t-shirt, you know, and you see that, it gets you excited.

I'm a Tar Heels fan, okay. Basketball season, you know. Wasn't good last year, but you know, we're coming back, we're coming back, don't worry. And some of you are Duke fans out there, I know that, but we'll pray the devil out of you. But yeah, you get excited about that, or if it's golf, or if it's some type of interest that you have, there's something special about when your kid takes on what you take on, or maybe the job you enjoy doing, they take on that, you know.

Whether you're a doctor, they become a doctor. I became a pastor. My dad's a pastor. I'm sure he was, well, I don't know if he was excited about that. I think he was a little worried.

Are you sure you want to do this, son? Yeah, but of course, he was excited about that. And I was with my son last night. We went out for a surf, and he's just started getting into surfing the last few years. He's 11 years old, and he caught like 10 waves on his own.

And I didn't even have to catch a wave. I just enjoyed watching him catch it himself. It just brought joy to my heart, just seeing him. And for some of us, we might live vicariously through our kids. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, right?

If you're trying to pressure your kids to do something, you know, that you didn't get to do, that's one thing. But if you enjoy it together, there's something special about enjoying what you enjoy doing. Well, Jesus had something he really enjoyed doing. In fact, it was his purpose, and he shared that with his disciples. And if you'll turn with me to Matthew 4, 18 through 19.

We don't have notes today, but if you'll just kind of pull out and write, you know, your notes down or type them out. It's okay to use your electronic devices. That's perfectly okay here. And we'll go into this. So in Matthew 4, starting with verse 18, it says, And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers.

This is the first encounter with Simon called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting nets into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of man. I will make you fishers of man. And what Jesus was telling these two guys back then, he's telling us today, I want to make you fishers of man. And our vision statement is to lead all people, and I use the term all on.

Because I believe that God's heart is that all people, none should perish, but all should have eternal life. But all people come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and a growing relationship with Christ. And we have a little slogan here, salt always makes a difference and a little bit of salt goes a long way. And a little bit of us does so much. And it's just, we just believe that God wants to use us to reach people for Christ.

And how do we do that? Jesus’s Favorite Sport. And that's fishing. But not fishing for fish, although I think he enjoyed eating fish and he hung around a lot of fishermen and he spent a lot of time by the sea. But he liked to fish for men.

And he wants to share that with us. And fishing, let's just use the term evangelism. Some of you heard that term and you got a little weird or a little scared or certain emotions kind of trigger based on fishing or evangelism or reaching people for Jesus Christ. Because we're all called to reach people. Nobody is exempt.

This is just a calling that we all have. Evangelism. But evangelism can be scary. It can be really scary. And some of you have a lot of excuses because you're scared or you just don't understand it.

And here's three excuses I believe that most people share. And that's, I didn't know I should. I didn't know that I should be doing this. I don't know that I should be sharing the gospel with others. Isn't that your job, Leon?

Pastor Leon, isn't that your job? Isn't that the rest of the staff's job? Is that the elders' jobs? Isn't that your job? I mean, I just come and get fed and you do the preaching and this and that.

But here's what Charles Spurgeon says. If you're a Charles Spurgeon fan, this is kind of a bold statement. Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter. What is a missionary? People who go out of their way to reach people for Jesus, whether it's another country or right here living missionally for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So a lot of people say, I didn't know I should. And maybe you're the next point. I didn't know I could. I didn't know I could. I didn't know it was possible.

I just don't know how, Pastor. It just, you know, how do I share the gospel with people? How do I share the good news with others? Next week we'll talk more about that. We'll dig into that deeper.

So come back for part two and I'm going to give you some instructions on how to share the gospel. And then the third point is probably the biggest part and that's I'm afraid. I'm just afraid. I'm afraid what people will think of me because we've got this stereotypical idea of what an evangelist is, don't we? When you hear the word evangelist, you're thinking The guy with the, I don't know why this is, but every evangelist wants to slick their hair back, way big like that, you know, the traveling evangelist and the suit.

When I was growing up, you had a revival service where you had a series of services, you know, throughout the week. And you invited the evangelist in, you know, and they would preach and salvation and hell and all that kind of stuff and scare you to heaven, right? And you thought of those things back in the early 1900s when the Azusa Street movement took place, the charismatic movement, all that good stuff. There was these camp meetings that would go up everywhere. It would be camp meetings all over.

In fact, Billy Graham was saved at a camp meeting. And you have these camp meetings taking place and the evangelist is up there on stage, right? And you're thinking, man, I can't do that. Or you're thinking of the guy with the tracks. You know, the little tracks, the paper tracks, the scary little tracks that they hand out.

Or they're on a box preaching at you. That's an evangelist because you've got that idea in your head. And you're like, I don't want to do that, right? Or maybe you're like the Ray Comfort guy, you know, like on Way of the Master. I've got to know a lot about the Bible in order to reach people.

I've got to know how this works and how that works. And I've got to convince people who are agnostics or atheists or whatever it is. You know, maybe that's your idea. Yeah, so it's kind of a scary stereotype. But my hope is to break that myth today because you will take on what Jesus loves if you love to share the hope of Jesus Christ with others.

That you are concerned about the things that Jesus is concerned about. Jesus has chosen you and me, the church. He chose the church. He didn't use anything else. He didn't want to use anything else.

He chose his number one plan. His only plan was the church to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, to spread and expand his kingdom. He expands his kingdom on this earth through the church. And he's called us. That's the mission he has placed there.

So we are all evangelists. Turn to your neighbor and say, I am an evangelist. Turn to your other neighbor and say, you are an evangelist. All right. If you are a believer, you are an evangelist.

So let me, yeah. And let me just shout out, hey, Greg, how you doing, man? He just walked in. I'm going to point out, Greg, just for a minute. I'm going to give him kudos.

Yesterday, we were out surfing yesterday evening. And that's probably why he's late. He's too tired, you know, tired to get to church. But he had a little boy. He was pushing in.

And I was sitting beside you. And I heard you ask the question, do you know Jesus as your Savior? And you had a whole conversation with that kid. Praise God. be doing that.

He was bold. He- And we need to be bold. So four things about fishing, okay, about evangelism, that may help us and stir us to take this as an important calling. First of all, fishing is enjoyable. Those of you who are fishermen, Tim, you're a fisherman, it's enjoyable, isn't it?

Man, you get out there on the boat, but you've got to catch fish. It's exciting when you catch a fish. Sometimes it takes a long time to catch a fish. Sometimes you don't catch fish at all. And sometimes you're out there and you're like, okay, it's challenging.

Fishing is challenging, but there's joy when you finally catch that fish. And fishing for people is not as scary as you think. Evangelism isn't as scary as you think. And there's nothing more exciting. Let me tell you, there's nothing more exciting that when you cast the nets, when you start sharing the gospel to watch people's lives change.

That God is actually working as you fish when you share with others. And Luke 15, 10, here's what it says about the joy of somebody coming to know the Lord. It says, I tell you there is rejoicing in the presence of angels, of the angels of God, over one sinner who repents. Did you know there is a party in heaven when one person makes a commitment to Jesus? And we should be filled with joy as well.

It's like, because listen, it's like finding the cure to cancer, okay? We have a cancer, spiritual cancer in this world, and people need hope. People need life. Every person, I'm going to tell you, every person has this. And the reason we shouldn't be fearful of it is because they are looking.

Everybody is looking for something. Those who have everything are looking for something. Those who have nothing are looking for something. Wherever you are, we're all looking for something greater than ourselves. There's something that's missing.

There's something that doesn't sit right. There's something that just gets us. Why am I this way? Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel guilty?

Why do I feel like I need to work to get the fine happiness or goodness in the sight of others or whatever it might be? We've got this thing called reconciliation. What does reconciliation mean? It means that I no longer have to feel guilty for what I've done or what it is inside of me. I don't have shame anymore.

2 Corinthians 5, 18 through 20 says it like this. All this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ. Praise God for that. We are reconciled. We no longer have to live in shame.

We no longer have to live under the devil's power, right? Or fear or whatever it might be that we have been reconciled from our sin, our sin nature. Sin literally means missing the mark. We've been off for a long time doing the wrong things. We were missing the mark, the target that God set before us.

But through Jesus Christ, we are forgiven of our sins. We are reconciled. We no longer have to worry because of our sinful nature, but God has rescued us from our sins. And He has committed, and it says this, and He has committed to us, what, the message of reconciliation. So you've been reconciled.

Now you have a message to share with others. We are therefore, oh, I skipped ahead, hold on, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sin against them. And He has committed, here it is again, to us the message of reconciliation. God has committed to us, has given us, has challenged us, has given us the authority to share the message of reconciliation with others. We are therefore, what, Christ's ambassadors.

You guys know well what an ambassador is if you're a United States citizen, right? I mean, we have ambassadors all over the world. What do they do? They represent the U.S.

and other places. We are ambassadors of Christ. We represent the kingdom of God in this earth, in this world. We are Christ's chosen people. We are a royal priesthood, as Peter tells us we are.

And we have been called to represent Christ. We are regents. We stand in place of the king. And we're called to share the gospel that way. And it says, we are Christ's ambassadors as though God were making His appeal to us.

And we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. So there's no mistaking there that we are called to share the message of reconciliation, to hold this message, this testimony that we have, to share it. And here's another point I want to make. God does the catching. You do the fishing.

God does the catching. You do the fishing. And that gives me a little bit of relief there because I don't save people. I just cast the net. I'm just throwing out the fishing line.

I'm just doing my job, just sharing my testimony, loving people, loving them where they are. And He catches the people. I love the story in Luke 5. And if you've watched The Chosen, it kind of brings it to life a little more where the net was cast on the other side and they caught all the fish. And there's a point to this.

Jesus was making a point. When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Okay, let's do that. Simon answered, Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. Now let me just say this.

Some of you... You have cast a lot of nets. You've worked and you've ministered and sometimes it feels like, where is the fruit? What is going on, Lord? I know we've had seasons in our church like that where we just felt like, okay, God, we're obeying, we're listening, we're faithful servants and we're just working hard.

But here's what I would say to that. Sometimes we have to just sit in the boat and enjoy the sunrise and the sunset and the still water while we're casting out the lines, right? We're not just sitting there doing nothing, but we're casting out the lines. But sometimes we forget, even in life in general, sometimes we forget to stop and smell the flowers, right? And enjoy life and live in the moment because we're so concerned about where we want to be.

Because God didn't call us to be, well done, my good and successful servant, did he? He said, my faithful servant. So being faithful sometimes is seasons of just dryness and seasons of just casting, but we don't stop casting the nets. So that's why Simon says, but because you say so, I will let down the nets. I'll let down.

I can just imagine, okay, you know, it's not going to work. How many of you have been there? God, I know you're telling me this. It's not going to work. Virginia Beach is a really hard place.

It's not going to work. There's a lot of people that aren't saved. It's hard ground. It's not going to work. Just send me to the Bible Belt, further into the Bible Belt.

It's easier out there. It's not going to work. You know, I'm speaking for myself. Sometimes we have these questions, right? But what happened when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.

And so they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. So many fish. So many fish. And it was because he had his net on the wrong side.

Some of you might. Here's another point. Some of you might be casting your net on the wrong side. Maybe it's time to look at another way of casting your net. Maybe God's calling you to do something.

You've been trying to do something else because you haven't listened to God and what he's called you to do. Maybe you haven't shared the gospel at all. I don't know. Maybe it's a private thing for you. I don't know.

I'll get to that in a second. But he cast the nets on the other side. And what did Simon Peter do? He saw what happened and he fell at Jesus on his knees and said, go away from me, Lord. Lord, I'm a sinful man.

I'm a sinful man. The power of Jesus Christ helps us realize. You know what the purpose of the nature of Jesus is? Not only salvation, but to realize that we need a Savior. And he realized right then and there, there's the Messiah.

There's my Savior. My Savior. My Savior. Through the miracle that happened in front of him. And it says, For he and all of his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken.

And so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, Don't be afraid. Can I tell you, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. If you're afraid to take on this mandate that God has given you as a church, it has given me as a church, it's the church of Jesus Christ, it's the kingdom of God.

Don't be afraid. For now on, you will fish for people. Jesus’s Favorite Sport, fishing for people. I want you to enjoy it with me. So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Let me just give you like a little thing about the excitement and joy of sharing the gospel. Because for some of you, you're like, it's just a hard thing and I don't know if I'll enjoy it. Life change always happens. I don't care how you see it, whether it is revealed right in front of you, life change does happen in the power. Because Paul said it himself, it's the power of God unto salvation.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. So that's why we're not ashamed of the gospel. That's why we share it. So life change always happens. And here's what you do.

If you step out and begin to share your faith with others. I don't know how you do that, how you want to do that, culturally how you do that. But if you begin to share your faith with others, life change will happen. You will see people's lives change. You will see them come to Christ at some point.

Maybe not right there, but it's going to happen. And you're going to experience that. Maybe you want to just bring them to church and let me tell them about the gospel, right? And maybe that's your thing. But what you're going to do, you're going to watch somebody come to Christ.

You might invite somebody to church, they'll sit beside you, they're far from God. And when that altar call comes, at that time where they give their life, you see their tears coming. What is it going to do to you? You're going to praise Jesus. And you're going to enjoy that because that's why we exist.

And when we see life change takes place, we get excited about it, right? We get super excited. And then it motivates us to want to go out and share the gospel more. And then we go out and share the gospel again. People get saved.

We get excited. We're motivated. We go share the gospel more. And then we keep going and going and going. But it all starts with taking that bold step and sharing the gospel.

And I can promise you, if you share, if you let people know about Jesus, however you do that, I'll tell you more about how to do that next week, okay? I just want to inspire you a little bit today to just be open, not ashamed of the gospel. And you will find joy in it. There's joy. Jesus wants you to experience life to the full.

And part of that is the reason you exist, so that you can experience life to the full, the joy of following Christ and honoring his commission. Second thing is fishing is necessary. It's not only enjoyable, it's necessary. Thank you. Thank you.

He doesn't give us another option. It's not a game, okay? Fishing for men and women is not a game. There is a real heaven and there is a real hell. It's not about a church building.

It's not about an organization. It's about Christ's kingdom. And that's what we're about here. We want to reach people. The growth and expansion of the kingdom of God is what we're about.

And that is the plan or God's plan for the local church. He's called us to populate heaven and plunder hell, okay? We want to populate heaven. We want to expand His kingdom. It's His plan.

We should be about the Father's business just like Jesus was about the Father's business in everything we do. We want heaven to be full of people that we love and people we don't even know. And people are dying every day and going to hell. And we're quiet about it. We can't be that way.

We don't need to. That should hurt us a little bit. It should bring an aching to our hearts a bit. That people are hurting. That people are lost.

That people are without. Because here's the deal. There is a peace of God in every person. Because God breathed the breath of life, the spirit of Himself in humans, in mankind when He created them. And that's why people are always longing for something spiritual.

That's why they're looking. The physical will, they can have everything. But they're looking for something. They're hungry. They're ready to hear.

They're ready to receive. But how can they know unless you share it? That's why Paul says in Romans 10, Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard?

And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? For it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. The gospel is good news. It's not bad news.

It's the greatest news that anyone could ever have. In fact, His heart is that no one should perish. Look at 2 Peter 3 verse 9. The Lord is not slow to keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Again, you're probably in that place.

Man, it's just... What's God doing? Instead, He is patient. That's what He's doing. He's patient.

He's holding back His judgment. That's where we get the idea of Salt Church. That as long as we're here, a little bit of salt is holding back God's judgment because we're still working and we're still expanding His kingdom because He wishes none to perish, but all to have eternal life. That's what He says. And not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

He wants everybody. And as long as there's one person who has not heard the gospel, God is holding back His judgment. Will judgment come? Absolutely. It's very clear in Scripture.

We'll be right back. That one day God will reckon everything, that all the bad in this world and all the things that are going on that you're questioning all the time, God will have His way one day. He will make a judgment call one day on evil and Satan and his demons. They're destined for hell. You know, hell was created for Satan and his demons.

You know, it wasn't created for us. In fact, that's why he sent his son, so that you could have life, that you could be rescued from it. So he holds back. And I had a young man that used to come to our church years ago, and he was in the military and he was out on deployment, and we kept up by email a lot, you know, and he was growing in his faith and stuff like that. He said he met a girl, and that was great and everything, and she was a Christian, she was a believer.

And as we were kind of going back and forth, I said, so are you ministering to people, are you sharing the gospel? He says, oh, no, no, no. We don't do that here. In fact, me and my girlfriend have decided we're going to keep our faith personal. I was like, no, no, no.

God never called us to keep our faith personal. He wants us to share our faith. That's the whole point. And maybe we're afraid of offending. That's probably part of it.

You know, we're in the military. We don't want to offend anybody. But did you know, if you go about it the right way, if you're sharing the good news the way God intends us to share the good news, people are not offended. People are not offended. I'm not talking about standing on a box on the corner of the oceanfront yelling that people are going to hell.

Well, I'm talking about good news, guys, that Jesus has come to save them regardless of where they are. They were born here without something, and God is offering them something. He's offering salvation to them by his blood, through his blood, and through the cross. And it's a good thing. In fact, if you're familiar with Penn Jillette, the magician, here's a picture of him in case you want to kind of get it in your head who he is.

Penn and Teller is the longest-running magic show in Vegas, and he's a devout atheist. He's a devout atheist. Unashamedly, he will let you know that. But he talked about a man, a Christian man who was at one of his shows that came up with the Bible after the show. And he handed him the Bible, and he told him he was concerned for his soul, and he wanted him to know Jesus, and he was praying for him, and this and that.

And you would think that a devout atheist would be like, get away from me with that junk. You know, I don't believe that. But instead, he says, I respect that man. I respect that man. And here's what he said, and I quote.

This is a devout atheist, okay? I've always said I don't respect people who don't proselytize. That's right. Thank you. Proselytize is kind of a scary word these days.

We don't like to use that word. But he says, I don't respect people who don't. I don't respect that at all. If you believe there is a heaven and hell, and people could be going to hell and not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward, how much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize? How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

If we believe what we believe, isn't it hate not to tell somebody that needs to know? Especially if it's somebody we care about? And this comes from a man who doesn't believe in God. Offense? Awkwardness?

Let's do what God has called us to do. Let's trust God. Let's be faithful in what he's called us to do. Because number three, Jesus asked us to go fishing. Jesus asked us to go fishing.

He told us to do it. We don't have an option, right? I mean, he told us to do it. Well, where does it say that in the Bible? Well, you know what?

It says it all over the Bible, okay? I could go on for days and days and days. But Jesus, if you surrendered your life to Jesus, you don't have a choice. He's king. He's master of the universe.

He told us to do it. He gets the right to say what needs to happen. You don't. I don't. And he called us to do this in all the Gospels.

He's told us to do this. And a lot of you know Matthew 28, Not good enough. Mark puts it in there. He said to them, Let them go into the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. Not good enough.

Luke says this. With my authority take this message of repentance to all nations beginning in Jerusalem and tell them there is forgiveness of sins for all who turn to him. Not good enough. John said this. As the Father has sent me.

This is Jesus speaking. I am sending you. Still not good enough? Acts. I can go on.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria. And where? To the ends of the earth. The reason we're here today is because they honored the call that God gave them. And God's got extraordinary plans for us even today to reach people way in the future.

And I don't know how long the Lord will tarry. We don't know the time or the hour he will return. But he's got plans for us now. So we need to get busy sharing the Gospel, guys. There's a lot of people out there that don't know the Lord.

Eight out of ten people in Virginia Beach alone don't know Jesus. And it's more than that. Amen. I mean, those are just people who say, I go to church, Easter and Christmas. So it's a lot less than that.

I mean, people don't know Jesus and they need Him. They're hurting. They're looking. And what do followers do? Followers fish.

We fish. Followers fish. If we follow Jesus, we fish. We're fishers of men. But there's always this gravitational pull to get back to it being about us.

It's about me. It's about what I get. It's about what I do. You come to church and you expect, you know, how dare, you know, these churches and people criticizing churches for trying to be more evangelistic, you know. Well, they're doing this or doing that and that's kind of out of the way.

Because that's the nature. All of us kind of want to go back to it being, what am I getting out of this? But I can promise you this. If you make Jesus' heart for people the number one priority in your ministry, if you share His heart, you will get everything you need and more from Christ, from the church and everything. You will get it.

You will be filled. It's called life and life to the full. That's why we were designed. That's why we exist. We exist to share the gospel with others.

We don't keep it quiet. We don't keep it personal. He commands us to share the gospel with others. And lastly, lastly, and I land a plane here, we were all fish once. We were all fish.

I go back to that time. And I know you can go back to that time where God rescued you when you were not worth rescuing. We were all uncought fish. But I remember His salvation. I remember the night I threw myself on the floor in tears because I just could not figure out why life didn't make sense.

And Jesus spoke to me and says, Dear child, I'm the answer. Come and let me take your yoke off of you. And He rescued me that day. Guys, my story, I grew up in church. I knew all the rules.

I knew what to wear. And I knew how to act. And I knew all the church language. But I didn't really know Jesus. I didn't know who He...

I didn't know Him. I knew about Him. I knew what He's about. I could quote scripture. I could do all that stuff.

But I didn't really know Him. And I didn't know until that point where I realized that I needed to know Him. I needed a relationship with Him. You don't just serve Him. You...

You love Him and He loves you and you come into that relationship, it's just something powerful about that. And I remember the joy and the hope and the fullness of life that entered into my life at that point. And you could grow up in church, you could have done all the right things, maybe you didn't grow up in church. I don't know your life, but we were all fish once. We were destined to be separated from God forever.

But I always want to go back to that, and I preached this. One of my missions trips, I went to Africa, East Africa. And the missionary put me up on the stage, I didn't know I was going to be even speaking that day. He says, guess what, you're going to share the gospel. I was scared to death.

And I shared, I said, you know what, I'm going to share this scripture. It's in Matthew 18, 12. If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won't he leave the 99 others on the hill and go out to search for that one lost, desperate, depressed, lost sheep? We want to be a church.

If we're known for anything, I want to be known for a church that goes after the one. We're the 99. But we need to always keep our focus on the one. On the one. Because we were once that one.

We want to do everything we can to reach people for Jesus. Everything we possibly can. And I want to talk more about that next week. How do we do it? How do we reach people where they are?

But let's not forget that. Let's not make this about us. He says, I'm going to leave the 99. You're good. And if you focus on the one, the 99 will get everything they need.

You already have everything you need. You're going to get everything that you need. You've got eternity for you. But let's focus on why I put you here. Why on earth did I put you here?

And it looks different for everybody. We all have different gifts. We all have different abilities. But we're all focused on one mission, right? God and Jesus Christ cast vision for the local church.

And he said, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's why we're here. That's why we're here. Right here in this area. And I'm going to make disciples.

You know what disciple means in that particular context of scripture? Because remember, there wasn't churches at the time, right? Disciples were followers. They didn't have the term Christian. That was later on in the Church of Antioch.

They started calling them Christians, you know. That didn't happen yet. Or else they would say, go and make Christians. But followers are Christians. And Christians fish.

And if you're a Christian, let's do what God's called us to do. Amen? Let's do it. Don't let this just be today. We gather, but we scatter.

Fish this week. Fish this week. Take the opportunity to share Jesus. Fill some more seats in here. Well, we're running out of seats, guys.

So we're praying for a building, right? But we will make room for them, okay? We will make room if we have to put more seats in here. Whatever we have to do, standing room only, we have to do it. But we care about those who are lost.

Let's pray, guys. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this message. We thank you that it's so life-giving and life-changing. And it's still alive today as it was 2,000 years ago.

You're still real. You're still God. You're still almighty. And you're leading people to you. Even as we speak, Lord, your spirit is working.

It's working on hearts right now. It's working on lives. You're regenerating. You're changing. You're speaking to people right now.

And with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, if that's you that God's speaking to, God's speaking to you, if that's you and you want to give your life to Jesus, it says, he who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. If you just believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you're saved. Is that you today? If you would just slip up your hand and say, yes, I want to give my life to Jesus. Amen.

Amen. Put those hands down. Pray this with me, Father. Father, I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sins. Come into my life.

Come into my heart. Give me life, Lord. I want to walk with you. I did it my own way for too long. But today, Lord, is the day that I'm no longer a wandering fish, but I'm caught in the nets of Jesus Christ.

So thank you, Lord, for all that I receive you today in Jesus' name. Praise God.