Follow Me

By Brother R. Michel Lankford
 

And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19 NASB)

 
Messiah's second command in the so-called New Testament is "Follow me." In a very real sense, Christ's Second Commandment is actually an extension of the first, meaning that as you remember, His first Commandment is to repent (Matthew 4:17). In order to repent successfully we had to do two things. In order to repent successfully, we had to turn and change our mind, change our purposes, and change our lifestyle and actions AWAY from what God identifies as being sin, and then turn and progressively walk TOWARD what God says is pleasing to Him. So quite naturally, if we are repenting successfully according to God's definition of the term, then in the process, we will also be obeying the second Commandment Jesus gave as a byproduct of successful repentance.

 

What It Means to Follow Biblically

In Hebrew: Strong's #2143 (hā∙lǎḵ) It means, "To Walk after" or to "Walk behind." It is used approximately 635 times. (E.g. Numbers 14:24; 1 Kings 18:21).
In the Greek: Strong's #1205 DEUTE "Come" & Greek Strong’s #3694 OPISÔ after or behind." Literally: "Come here after Me.”
(E.g. Matthew 4:19; Mark 16:24; John 8:12; John 10:4; revelation 14:4; all use the same word).
Depending on your English translation, this combination of Greek words are used between 274 times to 437 times or anything in between that range. Sometimes it’s used in the positive sense as pertaining to follow after and come behind and follow after the things that are godly, and sometimes it is used negatively as pertaining to avoid coming behind are following after the things that are not godly.
Practical Usage: So what does knowing the original language meaning of these words have to do with helping us to successfully obey this command, today? In point of fact, knowing the Hebrew and Greek usage of these terms is quite helpful in helping us to successfully obey this Christ given Command.
1. In this case, it confirms the consistency of word usage throughout the text. The word "FOLLOW" has essentially the same meaning in both the Hebrew and Greek texts. So, we know that the Scriptures are consistent in what we are generally called to do.
2. More importantly, we learn something critical about how to follow the Messiah successfully. When you know that the specific imperative adverb used in the verse quite literally means, "To Come along after, and or to come behind," in the Hebrew, or literally "To come here AFTER," that tells us something critical. If we understand the word meanings, then we know that to be a successful disciple, we are NOT called to create or invent a different path, or a different way of walking through this life. On the contrary, we are called to follow in the footsteps, or to place our feet in the footprints, and come along behind and walk in the steps of the Messiah, who walked with God through this life before we did.
3. This is critical, because it specifically means that as disciples of Almighty God and Jesus Christ, we are called to follow Almighty God through this life in the same manner that Jesus already did it. We are not called to create and invent a new path, or a new way of walking before God. We are called to come along behind and walk before God in a manner that Jesus already did it. Remember when WWJD (What Would Jesus Do), was this great fad in Christian circles? Like all fads, it got corrupted by popular culture, and so it did not last, which is too bad because if we had used and had maintained it properly, it would have helped people become successful disciples by leaps and bounds.

 

How Do We Come along after and Follow behind in the Footsteps of Jesus?

I will use a couple of examples of what not to do first, so that we have comparison. Remember the WWJD craze of the 1990s? The WWJ D. or What Would Jesus Do? fad went out of fashion for two key reasons. First, we (the Christian culture) allowed popular sinful culture to detour and deter us from it. The second reason that it lost momentum was that modern-day Christianity turned the question "What Would Jesus Do?" into a theoretical discussion, instead of a concrete one. I will explain both of my points:
We Allowed Ourselves to Be Torpedoed by Popular Culture: The sinful world culture started getting very annoyed and uncomfortable with all these WWJ D. signs and bracelets everywhere, because they were being reminded of Jesus all over the place, so the culture decided to corrupt it, by creating their own words for those initials, so that they would not have to think about Jesus and or consider what He would do. So they created their own words (sometimes purposely profane) for those particular initials. Naturally, Christian believers who love Almighty God and love Jesus, did not want to be associated with this new popular profaning of those initials, so Christians stopped wearing those things in droves.
On the one hand, the response within Christian culture is understandable. On the other hand the way that Christian culture and the churches responded to that situation proved to be symptomatic of a much larger disease within the body of Christ within American Christendom. More and more over the past few decades, Christianity and our churches have allowed what the sinful world and its appetites are comfortable with to dictate what we do as Christians. More and more what the sinful world is comfortable with has dictated what we say, what we do and what we decide not to do within our churches. More and more we are being dictated to by what the world is comfortable with, instead of seeking and doing what God says makes Him Happy.
The problem is gotten much worse. In more recent decades, entire church movements and organizations (such as the seeker sensitive and emergent church movements) are entirely based on adapting ourselves to make the sinner more comfortable with God, instead of helping the sinner be truly changed so that God will truly be happy with him or her. We are called to preach the gospel, and to MAKE disciples; that is to help people truly understand and believe Jesus, to help them to truly obey and follow Jesus, and to help those in the church to show others how they can do the same thing. That and that alone is our mission as congregations.
We are NOT called to make up and design our own path, and put Christ's name on it. For instance, we are NOT called use popular market strategies and re-package Jesus so that He will be more popular and agreeable to the sinner, so that the sinner will be more comfortable with God, in hopes that we can sell people on accepting Jesus. People will either believe or accept Jesus for who He is, they will either believe and obey Jesus and what He said, or they won't. Nowhere in Scripture are we told to make the sinner more comfortable on his or her way to hell! That is not our mission! That is the opposite of our mission.
By constantly adapting ourselves to make sure that the sinner is not offended in our churches, we are losing our ability to be salt and light (to be noticeably different than the world). The result has been that the world culture is influencing the church far more often than the church is truly impacting the world culture for the real Jesus Christ. That's the truth. And if we do not repent quickly, we will reach the point where we will lose our salty flavor, and we will soon be good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot by men (Matthew 5:13-16). That is the very real danger of our constantly compromising and adapting Christianity and church to the world’s likes and dislikes.
We Allowed Ourselves to turn the question into an abstract theory instead of a concrete question: In other words, we allowed ourselves to get bogged down into the theoretical questions and debates such as, "Would Jesus lie to protect Jews from the Nazis," and questions of that sort. We allowed ourselves to get bogged down into endless debates, trying to evaluate what Jesus would do based on our own modern mores and sensibilities, according to the popular feelings that we hold dear today. In the process we turned something that was fairly concrete into a mystery. In other words, the debate became about trying to make Jesus more politically correct, instead of truly looking at what Jesus would do. We in the churches forgot one key thing:
If you want to know “What Would Jesus Do? ” We have to look more carefully and deliberately at what Jesus ALREADY DID DO. It's not theoretical, it's concrete. If you want to know what Jesus would do, look carefully, learn from and follow what He already did do. Jesus doesn't change no matter what the morals and attitudes of the day happen to be, (Hebrews 13:8). When Christians allow ourselves to let go of that truth, we allowed ourselves to get tossed back and forth with every idea wind of doctrine, and we lost more stability.
This will not be an exhaustive list, and as we go through the Commandments we will find even more things that Jesus would do, but let's just summarize some of the key things that Jesus did do, and then we can know what Jesus would do:
1. Jesus regularly spent time in prayer with the Heavenly Father: In Mark 1:35 for example, we see that Jesus went off by himself a long while before daylight to pray. Notice according to the context of the passage though that His disciples had a pretty good general idea where to find Him, so it's likely that Jesus had a favorite isolated quiet spot in which to pray, and that if they do not know where precisely He had gone, that's where they should look for Him (Mark 1:35-37).
2. He successfully fought off the temptations of the devil using the rightly divided written Word of God, and not human logic (Matthew 4; Luke 4).
3. Jesus did not live for Himself. His entire goal in life was to truly please Almighty God His Father. If Yahweh did not delight in it, Jesus did not choose to delight in it or enjoy it either. So His constant question was would Yahweh be truly pleased with this? He desired that more than He did His own food for survival (John 4:34; John 8:28).
4. Jesus did not live to fulfill His own plans desires and initiatives, but He obeyed Almighty God (John 5:30; John 7:28; John 8:42).
5. Jesus did not speak His own words or His own opinions. He spoke only what Almighty God the Heavenly Father gave Him to speak (John 12:49; John 14:10).
6. Jesus did not sin. He did not disobey or transgress the Laws of Almighty God, but He obeyed them (Matthew 5:17-20; 1 John 3:4; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 1:9).
7. Jesus neglected His own rights to benefit others Jesus did not promote Himself, and especially not at the expense of others. On the contrary, He accepted a lower position than what He was rightly entitled to, in order that we could be saved (Philippians 2:5-8).
8. He loved righteousness, and He hated iniquity (Hebrews 1:9).
9. Jesus was zealous and desired that there would be true righteousness in God's house (John 2:13-17).

10. Jesus taught the Law and the Prophets (Luke 10:25-26; Matthew 19:16-21; Luke 24:13-35).

11. Jesus forcibly confronted hypocrisy, especially in God's house (Matthew 23:13-39).
12. Jesus loves sinners, but He still insisted that they repent before they perished (Matthew 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32; Luke 15:7-10; Conversely; Luke 13:1-5).

13. With God's power Jesus restored broken lives (Matthew 14:14-21; Matthew 9:6; Matthew 17:27; Luke 4:36).
14. He embraced the truly outcast and disenfranchised (Luke 5:12-29).
15. Jesus showed kindness, tenderness and compassion, but He never violated a single principle or Commandment of God's Word to do it. For example when He forgave the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11), Messiah found a perfectly legal way to show her mercy and let her go, partly because the way they went about trying to execute her was a violation of the Law of God given to Moses. Since she was caught in the very act of adultery, the Law given by God to Moses said that both the man and the woman committing adultery were to be stoned to death, but they brought the woman to be judged and protected the man, so her execution would've actually violated the Law of God in that case. Jesus used it as an opportunity to show mercy, but He was well within the Law (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). He convicted the accusers of their own guilt, so that none dared to demand the death penalty against her (John 8:7-11; Deuteronomy 17:6). So, He was able to legally let her go. From that, we need to understand that we can and must and should show mercy whenever And wherever we can, but we must learn to do it at the same time, without violating God's Laws or Principles, just as Jesus did.
16. Jesus openly rejected the traditions of men and passionately upheld the Word of God (Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:1-13).
17. He taught and demonstrated servant leadership. Jesus taught and demonstrated a way of life and a way of getting ahead that was the direct opposite of what is commonplace in the sinful world (John 13:2-17).
18. Jesus equipped leaders (Matthew 10:1-4; Matthew 28:19-20).
19. Jesus obeyed God and left the results in God's hands (Matthew 26:39; Luke 19:11).
20. Jesus chose to be forgiving to the bitter end (Luke 23:32-38).

 

 

Review Summary:

1. Christ's second Command in the New Testament is, "Follow Me." (Matthew 4:19)
2. In the literal biblical languages, to follow someone means that we come along after or come along behind and walk in the footsteps of the One who went before. The important dynamic here is that, we are not called to create a different path or a different way of life. Instead, we are called only to be faithful and true to the way of life that Jesus modeled (1 John 2:3-6). Otherwise, we are not truly following Jesus. In such a case, we would actually be following something else other than Jesus.
3. In order to know and understand what Jesus would do any given situation, and thus know how to follow Him and walk in His steps properly, we must look squarely at what Jesus did do. What Jesus would do is fundamentally the same as what He already did do, because Jesus remains constant and does not change (Hebrews 13:8).
Closing Prayer: Almighty God, have mercy upon us and save us according to your unfailing love. Mercifully transform and fill us to overflowing with Your True Love. Graciously give us the courage to submit to You until you thoroughly transform us so that we will think like Jesus, believe like Jesus, speak like Jesus, and obey You in the course that You choose for us, just as Jesus did. For that is what it means to truly follow Jesus. LORD, in your mercy here and grant our prayer. Amen.