Jewish customs and modes of thinking at that time do not help us further to understand the Lord's call of them, except so far as they enable us more clearly to apprehend what the words of Jesus would convey to them. The expression Follow Me' would be readily understood, as implying a call to become the permanent disciple of a teacher. [2262] Similarly, it was not only the practice of the Rabbis, but regarded as one of the most sacred duties, for a Master to gather around him a circle of disciples. [2263] Thus, neither Peter and Andrew, nor the sons of Zebedee, could have misunderstood the call of Christ, or even regarded it as strange. On that memorable return from His Temptation in the wilderness they had learned to know Him as the Messiah, [2264] and they followed Him. And, now that the time had come for gathering around Him a separate discipleship, when, with the visit to the Unknown Feast, the Messianic activity of Jesus had passed into another stage, that call would not come as a surprise to their minds or hearts.
So far as the Master was concerned, we mark three points. First, the call came after the open breach with, and initial persecution of, the Jewish authorities. It was, therefore, a call to fellowship in His peculiar relationship to the Synagogue. Secondly, it necessitated the abandonment of all their former occupations, and, indeed, of all earthly ties. [2265] Thirdly, it was from the first, and clearly, marked as totally different from a call to such discipleship, as that of any other Master in Israel. It was not to learn more of doctrine, nor more fully to follow out a life-direction already taken, but to begin, and to become, something quite new, of which their former occupation offered an emblem. The disciples of the Rabbis, even those of John the Baptist, followed,' in order to learn; they, in order to do, and to enter into fellowship with His Work. Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.' It was then quite a new call this, which at the same time indicated its real aim and its untold difficulties. Such a call could not have been addressed to them, if they had not already been disciples of Jesus, understood His Mission, and the character of the Kingdom of God. But, the more we think of it, the more do we perceive the magnitude of the call and of the decision which it implied - for, without doubt, they understood what it implied, as clearly, in some respects perhaps more clearly, than we do. All the deeper, then, must have been their loving belief in Him, and their earnest attachment, when, with such unquestioning trust, and such absolute simplicity and entireness of self-surrender, that it needed not even a spoken Yea on their part, they forsook ship and home to follow Him. And so, successively, Simon [2266] and Andrew, and John and James - those who had been the first to hear, were also the first to follow Jesus. And ever afterwards did they remain closest to Him, who had been the first fruits of His Ministry.
It is not well to speak too much of the faith of men. With all the singleness of spiritual resolve - perhaps, as yet, rather impulse - which it implied, they probably had not themselves full or adequate conception of what it really meant. That would evolve in the course of Christ's further teaching, and of their learning in mind and heart. But, even thus, we perceive, that in their own call they had already, in measure, lived the miracle of the draught of fishes which they were about to witness. What had passed between Jesus and, first, the sons of Jona, and then those of Zebedee, can scarcely have occupied many minutes. But already the people were pressing around the Master in eager hunger for the Word; for, all the livelong night their own teachers had toiled, and taken nothing which they could give them as food. To such call the Fisher of Men could not be deaf. The boat of Peter shall be His pulpit; He had consecrated it by consecrating its owner. The boat has been thrust out a little from the land, and over the soft ripple of the waters comes the strange melody of that Word. We need scarcely ask what He spake. It would be of the Father, of the Kingdom, and of those who entered it - like what He spake from the Mount, or to those who laboured and were heavy laden. But it would carry to the hearers the wondrous beauty and glory of that opening Kingdom, and, by contrast, the deep poverty and need of their souls. And Peter had heard it all in the boat, as he sat close by, in the shadow of His Majesty. Then, this was the teaching of which he had become a disciple; this, the net and the fishing to which he was just called. How utterly miserable, in one respect, must it have made him. Could such an one as he ever hope, with whatever toil, to be a successful fisher?