Following Jesus of Nazareth…
OK, are you the official dog walker in your family? Christmas 2013: Ella Grace, 5 years old at the time, through tears begged Santa for a dog for Christmas. She wanted a dog. She wanted to love it, play with it & take care of it. We got a dog. She loves it, plays with it; I take care of it. Didn’t quite work out like I had planned! So as of right now I’m the official dog walker in our family.
If you’ve ever done this you know, unless you have a really well trained dog, you have to constantly use the leash to pull the dog back on track. Dogs love to walk with you. But they also are easily distracted & they love to chase after anything & everything that moves! They see a squirrel & they want to chase after it. They see another dog & they want to sniff it’s bottom! What’s that all about? They see a fire hydrant &, well you know. Dogs are easily distracted & almost impossible to keep on track.
Here’s what I want you to know today: You are not dogs! 🙂
But sometimes I think we act just like them. We’re easily distracted. Our eyes see something shiny & we have to go find out what it is. We’re curious people. Most of us have apparently have ADHD.
Have you ever thought of yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ? Someone who is following Jesus of Nazareth? Kind of like the original 12 disciples we read about in the Bible? Truth is, the word disciple simply means follower. And many of us have claimed Jesus as the Lord & Savior of our lives. We’ve made the decision to be a follower of Jesus. But what does that mean, really? How do you do that? And if you do that how do you stay on course? Stay focused? Keep from being so easily distracted? It’s not like you can lay down your fishing nets & literally walk around the city with Jesus — like those first guys did. So what do you do? How do you follow Jesus? How can you be more committed to following Him?
2000 years ago if you wanted to be a disciple you were up for a rather involved process.
Boys & girls went to school to learn reading & writing. Their curriculum was the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy. Now don’t check out on me. Listen to this. By age 13 many could recite large sections of Torah. Some would memorize the entire thing! At that point many were finished. If you were a girl at age 13 you would begin a family. You would have children. Boys would learn a trade. Like carpentry or something.
But a few would move on to the next level. It was called Beth-Midrash. They had the ability & the passion at age 13-15 to begin to study the deeper meaning of Torah & the Tanak. Basically what we call the Old Testament. If you reached this level you were a Telmid. A Disciple. What did that mean? The hebrew word disciple refers to someone who wants to be what the Rabbi is. I want to be in my walk just like the Rabbi. Rabbi means teacher. It took a deep commitment to know the scripture like your Rabbi & a passion to give everything up to be like your Rabbi. You would live with them, follow them every day, spend every minute with them to become like them in every way. In effect you would walk so closely to them that the dust churned up from your Rabbi’s feet walking on the dusty roads would cover you. That’s how closely you followed your Rabbi.
I think this raises a great question for you & me. Do we want to be like our Rabbi? Do we want to be a disciple in the biblical sense? How consumed are you to be like Jesus more than anything else in the whole world? How badly do we want to be like Jesus? How closely are we willing to follow Jesus of Nazareth?
Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me…” Matthew 4.19
