Forsook Their Nets

Mark 1:17-18 says, “17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. 18 And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him (KJV).”

That’s weird; I usually don’t quote from the KJV? Instead of using the NASB, I found this version appealing when I read this verse. It makes you think, what does it mean they “forsook” their nets? Other translations use the word “left” but it forsook seems to make it a bigger deal.

In context, Jesus is talking to fishermen, meaning that they catch fish and sell them. You may be saying, “Well duh! Everyone knows what a fisherman does!” That’s great, then you will further understand that fishing is their most important, and probably only, source on income.

All right, so that changes things a little bit. Lets go back to the verse and read it in with different pre-gathered information. “And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed Him.” When you’re a fisherman, what is your most essential tool? There are a few, but the way you catch fish is by a fishing net. I think it’s vital to point out that not only did they leave their positions as fishermen, but the very means that they could become fishermen. They didn’t say, “Yeah, we’ll follow you, but let us pack up out nets just incase things don’t work out or we need money along the way.” When they left their nets, they left their trade completely.

Think about Jesus and His earthly father for a minute. Joseph was a carpenter, and when he “adopted” Jesus as his son, he taught Jesus the trade of carpentry. This was very common in their culture, where the children would learn exactly what their fathers did. We can safely assume that these fishermen learned the art from their fathers as well. For the father, it must have been a sense of honor that what their jobs were being passed down and remembered. When the fishermen forsook their nets, not only did they leave their source of income, but also in a sense, they left a part of their heritage.

The main verse for this blog is Luke 14:33 which says, “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”

I write about these fishermen to encourage you. The past couple of weeks, God has been laying on my heart the importance of the Gospel and praising God with everything that I am. God and His glory is the only thing that matters, because it is the only thing that will last into eternity. Everything on earth will fade, like fishing nets, like businesses, like jobs. Where is your hope and security? Although, be not confused between a mission field and an idol. Paul was a Jew and after being converted he preached in Synagogues to minster to those who were just like them, and His old job became his new mission field.

Are there things in your life that you need to forsake for the Gospel of Christ? – Forsake All

Feeding Many

Proverbs 10:21 says, "The Lips of the righteous feed many; But fools die for lack of understanding."
The contrast is between life and death, however one must understand that the Righteous have enough life to give to others, and the fools collectively die. It is understood to substitute the Righteous with the Wise, so we will do so in this verse. If one has wisdom, then he will share it and it will bring others to life. Verse 11 says, "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life."
When you say something, does it give life or spread death? First we must find a common understand of what both life and death are and their relation to each other. We can say life is our experience of consciousness, in which we breathe and are able to function. We can further conclude that death is the opposite of this in the state of nonexistence, in which we can no longer function. Even though this is true for physical life, there is more to the spectrum.
Romans 6:8 says, "Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." In here we see both death and life and how they can work together to be a good thing. In this, death is the complete an utter denial of a master, being sin, and life is obedience and complete submission to another master. To make this clear, Paul goes through some verses saying that we were once alive to sin, being its slave, and since Christ was able to die and come back to life, He is able to do the same with us. So in our death to sin, we become alive to Christ. So in this, death and life are working together to complete our goal to praise God with our lives, but even this doesn't quite explain this verse.
What else could this life and death mean? These words are eternal consequences. For instance, life is the idea of goodness spread out along a timeline, but never ending. In John 10:10, Jesus says, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." This abundant life is living in the fullness of our purpose, which is to praise God and give Him all the glory. Thus true life is found when we fulfill our purpose as worshipers of a perfect, Holy, eternal God.
Death, we should say, is the misunderstanding of this meaning. Death is the misconception that instead of being worshipers, we are instead gods, and we are also to fulfill our own goals and purposes. Doesn't this seem backwards? If there is a God, which we have an overwhelming amount of proof that there is, shouldn't He be the beginning and the end, in which case all life would be centered around Him? Some know that there is a God, and some know it but still deny it with their lives. Thus, without living according to their purpose, they are dying.
When you speak, do you feed, or are you dying because you speak too much? - Forsake All

Who Shall They Glorify?

Proverbs 10:20 says, “The tongue of the righteous is a choice silver; the heart of the wicked is worth little.” We have two different people in this verse, one is the righteous and the other is the wicked. Also, we must always remember that Luke 6:45 says, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”

We have this idea of whatever fills the heart will pour out of the mouth. My pastor has always used the example of a full glass. How do you find out what the glass is full of? You bump into it. When one causes strife or somehow harms the person, he bumps his glass and finds out what it contains. Will he find joy and peace when he bumps the glass, or will he find hate and harm?

Going back to this verse, we must say that the righteous contains good, like Luke says, and the wicked man’s heart contains evil. We make this contrast according to the contrast between silver and something that is worth little. If the heart of the wicked is worth little, than when he speaks, it is easy to say that he has nothing good to say. Everything he says is foolish and the conversation that he may enter could go on without his addition. However, when the righteous speaks, it brings life (Verse 11) and it is worth so much more than the words of the wicked.

Right now, where you sit, do you find yourself in the description of the righteous or wicked man? When you speak, is it worth the time of the listener? Does God have your heart? For I hope you understand that the only way one’s heart can be pure is if God is in complete control of it. We use solely the example of speaking, but when you do something, does it bring God glory?

If our chief end is to glorify God, then we can say that is the most priceless experience, and then we can say this silver is speech or conduct that pleases God and gives Him joy and praise. Where are you? When you speak, who is glorified, God or the Devil?

We have words to speak and actions to call our own, but who shall they glorify? –Forsake All

Guard Your Tongue

Proverbs 10:13 says, “On the lips of the discerning, wisdom is found; But a rod is for the back of him who lacks understanding.”

In this verse, we have two different men; one that is wise and the other whom is foolish. This verse talks about what the end consequence for each man is. For the person that thinks about what he is about to say and whether or not it is uplifting will grant wisdom to his listeners.

In the same chapter in verse eleven, Solomon says, “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.” It’s the similar idea. When you speak, do people heed to what you have to say? When you say something, do people feel refreshed? I think this is a huge warning to those who talk, which is most likely everyone. It warns them to be careful about what they say. James, in his book, says a lot about how powerful the tongue is and even compares it to the rudder of a ship, determining where it goes (James 3:4). Even so in Proverbs, it is an important part of the body, either giving life or destruction.

In the second line of this verse, it says that a rod is for the back of him who lacks understanding. This gives me a picture of back when I was younger when I would get spankings. Believe me, I received a lot of spankings when I was younger. Why? Because I simply lacked understanding. Another famous punishment that my parents would give to me is the soap, which they told me to rub on my tongue. That was everything but enjoyable.

However, without these simple corrections and punishments, I would have gone into the world, not knowing that words do have strong affects on people. What someone says can completely change another person’s mood. The song, “Oh be careful little tongue what you say, oh be careful little tongue what you say. For the Father up above is looking down with love, oh be careful little tongue what you say.” Do we lose sight of how important it is to really and truly guard our tongues?

God, change our hearts so that when speak, life is given. – Forsake All

How Then Shall We Pray?

Job 40:1-5 says, “Then the Lord said to Job, 2 ‘Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.’ 3 Then Job answered the Lord and said, 4 ‘Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. 5 Once I have spoken, and I will not answer; even twice and I will add nothing more.’ ”

Yesterday it came to me that we often pray, if we pray at all, with overwhelming confidence. We get this idea from Hebrews 4:16 when it says, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” I am not here to condemn or to judge whatsoever, but just to share some thoughts.

Once my pastor did a study on the glory of God, in which he compared God’s almighty strength and intellect with the things of which we can grasp, meaning simple material things. He showed us the different planets and plants and mountains and galaxies: all of which were created by God Himself. He showed the great wonders of creation and then said that God was supreme over these things and very careful about how He made things. The study was supremely helpful for everyone, because we got a glimpse on just how majestic and wonderful God is.

A few months later, I realized that the same Pastor who gave this message was praying over the microphone in a tone that seemed familiar. This is to say that it seemed as if prayer was becoming a routine, in the sense that some of the passion was lost. I myself am not as much of a man of prayer as I would like, but listening to this prayer, it sounded as if this Pastor had already said this prayer, or he was reading off a piece of paper.

In contrast, I met someone recently who prayed with such passion with his voice. You could hear the relationship between him and God just within the tone of his plea. I listened to his prayer and immediately thought to myself, That is type of relationship I want with Christ.

Sure, we are to come to Christ with confidence, but there is so much room for simply falling on our faces because of Who He is! Do we understand that we are talking to the Creator of the Universe? Of course we don't. How could we? Our minds are so small and narrow compared to God and His intellect. There is no way for us to fully grasp God in all of His Splendor, but isn't that even more incentive for us to completely break down into ashes and sackcloth when we talk to Him. Not even that He is God, but even more so that He has loved us, who were first His enemy. Should we not respond with Job's reply and say, "4 Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You?" 

To make things a little more clear, the difference between these two men was how much it seemed like they valued their time communicating with God. I’m not saying that one man is better than the other, or even rating them on spiritual maturity, but simply saying that I, and we, need to value the time when we pray. If you’re not praying regularly, then you probably need to start, not out of legalistic ideals, but out of desperation, for something more. C.S. Lewis is often quoted by the phrase, “Eating candy at a gourmet feast.” In this statement, it makes no sense for this man to be wasting away his appetite on something smaller and less grand then his simple surroundings.

Are you missing out? You don’t have to. Pray. Dive into the Word. Live – Forsake All

He Will Remember

Proverbs 10:7 says, “The memory of the righteous is blessed; but the name of the wicked will rot.”

Yesterday was the very first Tuesday Night Bible Study, and we went over the first six verses in Proverbs 10 and talked about what they meant and how they apply to our lives. It was awesome to get hear what people had to say and really see them get into what they were reading. Some even came with prepared notes about what they had read, which was awesome. These next verses are going to focus a lot on the following verses that we will go over.

Going back to the verse quoted above, we have to understand that it is actually split into two different sections. That little semi-comma in the middle splits these sections. This was a very popular technique of poetry in Solomon’s time. The reason they would do this is to emphasis the comparing and contrasting points. The following is going to be our shot at distinguishing the following points that are being compared and contrasted.

The first two words in each section are very similar (The Memory & The Name). Then it goes on to describe two different people (the righteous and the wicked). Then both lines end with a contrasting affect (blessed and rot). From this we can say that both of these men are men. This may seem like a simple point, but the fact that they are men mean that there is no a difference in being between the righteous and the wicked.

Note this closely, that some men are righteous and some are wicked. Yesterday, we described righteous not only as someone who was completely perfect and very far along in his or her walk, but simply someone completely justified by faith. The only way someone can be righteous is by the blood of Christ being shed for him or her. Thus, it would only make sense that the righteous that Solomon writes about is someone that is under the grace of God, not reaching this position by some sort of work or spiritual advancement. By saying this, we can even dare to use a geometrical term called the Substitution Property, which allows us to use “righteous”, and “one saved by the grace of God” interchangeably. We can know transform the first section into “The memory of the one saved by the grace of God is blessed.”

In my Bible, a parallel passage is given to the first section we just looked at. Psalms 112:6 says, “For [the righteous] will never be shaken; the righteous will be remembered forever.” It makes this idea of being remember a blessed thing, from what we know of both passages previously looked at. Another question then comes to mind, why is being remembered blessed? Many people that I know of remember the wicked and are happy in their memory. Is it not all a matter of perspective when it comes to us delegating what is a blessed or cursed memory?

To make this point more understandable, I have included an old example from my Philosophy class. When Christians think of Bloody Mary, they are not filled with an overwhelming sense of happiness, but instead, grief and sorrow. Don’t they have the right to feel this way, for this person persecuted many of the Protestants during her reign? However, what do the Catholics think about Bloody Mary? I would only but guess that their memories are a little more pleasant, as she stood up for what was right, in the sense of Catholicism. Here we see two people remembering one specific person with the same specific action, yet we disagree in the morality of it.

Thus, to my knowledge, the blessing of remembrance is not pointed to men after thinking back to the righteous, but the remembrance of God. Matthew 7:23 says about some who will come and do great works in the name of Christ, “Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” We know that these people are not righteous because they have not been justified, and they have not been justified because God’s blood has not been shed for them. This makes the Christian wonder and ask I hope God remembers whom I am! Then shall we turn to this verse and say, “How blessed is the memory of the righteous, that God will take me in because of the price that He paid for me.”

The men are listed as evildoers are also wicked, like it says in Proverbs. Their name has rotted, and is not acceptable when they try to get into the gates of Heaven. God will look at them not with the knowledge of them that He has for us. By knowledge, I don’t mean simply an understanding, but an intimate relationship between two people. The type of relation where the two people really know each other and they have more than a simple understanding, but a legitimate knowledge of the other person.

How wonderful is it that God says that He will remember us, when we were born into a state that said we should never know Him, which was at least His enemy? – Forsake All