Introduction: Two Call Stories, Two Invitations
Last week, many preachers stood with John’s Gospel and heard a calling story shaped by presence. Disciples linger. They ask questions. They spend time with Jesus. “Come and see” was the invitation, and time itself became the space where revelation unfolded. Discipleship emerged slowly, relationally, almost naturally.
This week, Matthew tells the story another way.
There is no extended conversation here. No curiosity-driven questions. No staying the night. Instead, there is interruption. Command. Decision. Nets dropped. Boats abandoned. Fathers left behind. Matthew’s version of the call of the first disciples is not better or worse than John’s. It is simply doing something different theologically.
As preachers, we don’t help the text by trying to smooth these stories into one tidy account. This is a week to be honest about the difference. John invites us to dwell. Matthew presses us to decide. Where last week emphasized presence, this week moves quickly toward response. And Matthew is unapologetic about what that response costs.
Narrative Movement: From Light to Lives Reoriented
Matthew 4:12–23 moves fast, but it isn’t scattered. There is a clear flow to the story:
John’s arrest signals a transition
Jesus relocates and Scripture is invoked
Jesus proclaims the kingdom
Jesus calls disciples
Jesus begins his public ministry
Matthew is not just piling up ideas or adding filler. He is building momentum. Each movement and transition leads to the next, showing that revelation never stands alone. Light is dawning, but Matthew refuses to let us admire it from a distance. Light exposes a way forward, and people are called to step into it.
John the Baptist’s arrest matters here not simply as background information, but as a turning point. For Matthew, this is the moment when the prophetic witness shifts. The voice crying out in the wilderness gives way to the one who carries that message into the world. But Jesus does not introduce a new slogan or reinvent the message. He takes up the same words John proclaimed: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
That continuity is important. The kingdom is not Jesus’ personal project or a fresh idea. It is God’s long-promised work, now arriving with urgency and weight, coming to fulfillment.
Matthew then pauses to connect Jesus’ move to Galilee with Isaiah. This is not a prooftext meant to impress, but a way of locating Jesus firmly within God’s ongoing story. Darkness and light language here is not vague spirituality. Darkness in Isaiah (and now for Matthew) names real conditions: oppression, vulnerability, lives shaped by fear and threat. Light names God’s decisive action on behalf of God’s people.
And then, almost as quickly as the prophecy appears, Matthew moves on. It’s not the primary resting place of the text. This is all moving toward Jesus moving toward and then with the people of God. And so, we find Jesus walking along the sea. And as he walks, he calls people into motion.
The Call: Authority That Creates Response
The calling of Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John is almost absurdly short. Jesus sees them. Jesus speaks. They follow.
Matthew gives us no insight into their inner thoughts. No hesitation. No explanation of what finally convinces them. But that absence is intentional. Matthew is not exploring the psychology of conversion; he is making a claim about authority. Jesus does not argue his case. He does not persuade. He calls and his call immediately creates a response.
“I will make you fishers of people” is often treated as a clever metaphor or a way of affirming the disciples’ existing skills. But Matthew seems less interested in wordplay than in outcome. These men leave nets, boats, and family behind. This is not symbolic or theoretical. Something real is surrendered.
At the same time, Matthew is not laying out a one-size-fits-all model for discipleship. He is not suggesting that faithfulness always requires quitting jobs or abandoning families. What he is saying is that following Jesus always costs something concrete. In Matthew’s Gospel, discipleship is never just an internal shift or a private conviction. It rearranges priorities and loyalties.
And that’s the growing challenge of this text. These disciples do not negotiate the terms. They do not ask how following Jesus will fit into their existing lives. They allow their lives to be reorganized around the call.
Discipleship as Participation, Not Observation
When preaching this text, the temptation is to either admire the disciples’ decisiveness or dismiss it as unrealistic. Matthew does neither. He is not holding these fishermen up as exceptional heroes, nor is he softening the story to make it easier to swallow. He is setting a pattern.
Jesus calls disciples before he delivers the Sermon on the Mount. That order matters. Teaching does not come first. Following does. Discipleship creates the space in which Jesus’ teaching can actually be heard.
By the time Jesus begins teaching, proclaiming, and healing throughout Galilee, he does so with followers alongside him. They are not watching from the sidelines. They are learning as they walk, being shaped by proximity and participation.
Preaching Possibility
The Cost of Reordered Loyalties
Matthew does not soften this call story, and neither should we. Nets are left. Boats are abandoned. A father is walked away from. Whatever else we say about this text, it is not interested in an easy or symbolic discipleship. Following Jesus here requires a reordering of priorities and loyalties. And that is not a secondary theme. It may be the central one.
This does not mean that every calling is a one-to-one replay of the first disciples’ experience. Matthew is not suggesting that faithfulness requires everyone to leave their job or family in order to follow Jesus. But he is insisting that no part of life is exempt from the claims of discipleship. Following Jesus always reshapes something real.
We’ve all heard the sermon about not just being a Christian on Sunday. Matthew presses us further than that. This text is not about adding religious sincerity to the rest of our lives; it is about asking whether the lives we are already living are being reordered around the kingdom of God.
That question is uncomfortable by design.
Matthew invites us to ask whether the systems we participate in, the choices we defend, and the loyalties we assume are neutral actually align with the life Jesus calls us into. This includes how we earn our living, how we use power and voice, what we prioritize for ourselves and our children, and what we are willing to excuse because it benefits us. It is not enough to ask whether our lives are fulfilling or sustainable. The deeper question is whether they participate in God’s healing, justice, and restoration, or whether they quietly contribute to harm.
Are our jobs benign, benefitting, or damaging to our neighbors?
Are we offering protection, or profiting from risk shifted onto the most vulnerable?
Are we building patterns of life that sustain others, or maintaining ones that extract while shielding us from the cost?
These are not abstract questions, and they are not meant to be settled quickly. They are the kinds of questions disciples wrestle with over time, often at real cost. Matthew’s story reminds us that the first disciples did not wait until they had everything sorted out. They responded to the call, and their lives began to change as they followed.
Closing Thought: Reordered Allegiance, Not Performed Virtue
Matthew’s calling story is not primarily concerned with what disciples do, but with who they now belong to. The fishermen do not pause to demonstrate faithfulness or prove their worthiness. They do not perform virtue. They respond to a call that quietly but decisively reorders their lives. What changes first is not their behavior, but their allegiance. Nets, boats, family, and livelihood no longer sit at the center. Jesus does. Everything else begins to shift around that new center.
Because of this, we must be careful that our sermons do not encourage performative faith or religion. Matthew will have plenty to say about righteousness, devotion, and practice in the Sermon on the Mount, but only after allegiance has been named and lives have already been reoriented.
Discipleship, in this moment, is not about looking faithful or acting pious. It is about allowing the deepest organizing commitments of our lives to be reordered around the kingdom of heaven. Before anything is done for God, something significant may need to be released. And that, Matthew suggests, is where following Jesus actually begins.
Micah Krey 
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