Jesus’ 5 Invitations Pt. 4 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. All this week at this time of day we’ve been talking about 5 invitations Jesus gives during His ministry, and He’s inviting people into a journey towards God with Him. It starts off with Come and see.

People who are curious about Him or want to know more about God and how to have a relationship with God. This first invitation is just come and see, come and spend some time with me. Come and find out more about me.

The second invitation, it is to repent and believe in the gospel, to just acknowledge those things I’ve been pursuing to bring me happiness are never going to do that. They haven’t yet. Why would I expect that they would now? I’m going to turn to God. He’s the one I need in my life.

The third invitation comes once you have turned to God and put your faith in Him. Jesus then says to the people who have believed in Him, Follow me, build your life around me. Change the way you’re living.

Well, His next invitation to these same guys comes a year and a half later. Now let me just point out to you though in the story we’ve already read this week about those two guys who came to put their faith in Jesus.

Here’s what it says about them, right? The two disciples heard this. They walked along behind Jesus. He said, What do you want? They said, Where are you staying? And he said, Come and see the first invitation. They spent the entire day with Him, and He challenged them to believe in Him.

The second invitation they came away from that believing and here’s what it says. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, and he brought him to Jesus.

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The next day Jesus went and found one of the other new believers, Philip, and said to him, Follow me, build your life around me.

Philip was from Bethsaida, and he found his friend Nathaniel and said to him, We’ve found Him, of whom Moses and also the prophets wrote of – Jesus of Nazareth, and Nathaniel said, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?‘ And Philip said to him, Come and see. And he took him to Jesus. So do you see this natural response of people who have encountered Jesus, put their faith in Him.

Other things aren’t working. I need God in my life. They turn to God. They recognize that Jesus is the way to God, and they put their faith in Him. The natural next step is I need to find the people in my life who I care about and introduce them to Jesus as well. And that’s exactly what they do. A year and a half later, they’ve been following Jesus, and Jesus recognizes it’s time for the next invitation.

In their lives, and it says in Mark chapter 1 verse 16, passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea. These are the two guys we just read about, right?

And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately they left their nets and followed Him, and the story goes on with others He called in the same way.

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

While this is the next step for you in your journey with God, come and see, repent and believe. Follow me, build your life around Jesus, and then the next step is follow Him and become a fisher of men.

So these guys have already been just talking to people and bringing them to Jesus, but Jesus says, now I’m going to train you in different situations how to represent me, how to talk about me with people. He immediately takes them into the synagogue, and He says, there’s people in your religious places that don’t know me, and He reaches out to someone in the synagogue. They go straight from there into Simon Peter’s house.

And He says, you’ve got to reach people in your own family who don’t know me. Soon after that, Levi becomes a believer and throws a party for his secular sinful friends and invites Jesus along, and Jesus reaches out to those people. He says, ‘This is how you reach out to your workmates and your secular friends.’ He just keeps taking them into different circumstances and teaches them how to be fishers of men. That’s his next step for you as well.

I’m John North.

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