Never Too Young to Follow Jesus

 Never Too Young to Follow Jesus

Well praise Jesus everyone. I made a similar message earlier today, but I misspoke a part of the message, and I don't think the video quality was the best quality, so here I am remaking the same message. But the message is about serving Jesus Christ even when we are young and even if people look down at us because we are young. 

When I first started following Jesus, especially when I was on the internet, a lot of people looked down at me because I was young. I started when I was about 25 and I remember thinking when I first started, it is a blessing to start following Jesus about the same age but a little bit younger than He was when He started His ministry. This morning I really got to thinking about just how young Jesus actually was and how young the people were that He called. Now interestingly, the people that portray Jesus in Jesus films or for example the Chosen, they choose people to act for Jesus who are much older, about double His age. That seems kind of odd but there I believe is a very good reason for that. That is because in the world they want and perceive a leader to be 50 years old, 60 years old, 80 years old. And that is most likely why you are not allowed even to be President of the United States until you are 35 years of age or older. If you are 30 years old or 20, no one would vote for you ever to be President of the United States. But that is not true in the Kingdom of God. In the Kingdom of God you can start ministering to people when you are as young as you want to be. 

Jesus calls young people to follow Him and interestingly enough the apostles all were under, most likely they were under the age of 30. We know that traditionally masters were older than the ones they were mentoring so it is likely that most all of the apostles were between the ages of 18 and 25 to 30 years of age. We know that John was the youngest and he probably was somewhere around 18 or 20 years old. He was not how they portray Him as a 50-year-old and Jesus certainly was not 50. If you have ever seen the Chosen series, that guy is like 49 or 50 years old. That is almost double the age Jesus was when He was on this earth. If they portrayed in Hollywood or any of these films the age Jesus actually was, a lot of people would just think, “Man, I couldn’t follow that guy, He is too young. His disciples are too young. What could they possibly know?” In the world people are looking for an older man to look up to but Jesus was not that. That is why the Pharisees were so jealous of Jesus Christ and His followers, His disciples. They were all young. They looked down at them. In fact a few times the Pharisees and Jewish leaders even said about Jesus, “You’re not even 50 years old yet”, and they mocked Him, they hated Him, they despised Him because Jesus was what they perceived to be just a youngster who did not know anything. He was not educated or His disciples were not educated the way they were and He was just too young to know anything. 

It is the same for any of us if we have true wisdom from the Lord. People just think, You’re too young to follow Jesus. You’re too young to be witnessing. The crazy thing is now people may still look down at me or you even though I’m almost 40 years old now. I’m literally like 10 years older than Jesus was when He started His ministry and people will still think we’re too young. The world is looking for people who are 50 or 60 years old who they perceive to have all this worldly knowledge and wisdom. 

Guys, being older does not make you wise. Sometimes people that are old are wise but there are people that are 80 years old who are very foolish. They reject the wisdom from above. What makes you wise or foolish is if you put your faith or if you don’t put your faith in the living God. True wisdom and knowledge and everything that is true comes from Jesus. That is why Jesus’ name is the Truth. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. If you want to have true wisdom you have to follow Him. Not following Him at a distance, not just seeing things that He did but you have to walk the walk that He has for you. 

A lot of Christians are very arrogant. They think that because they went to Bible college, because they went to seminary, because they know Greek or Aramaic, because they know the Hebrew language, they think that they have wisdom. I had college professors that knew 10 times as much as any of us do, of any of our knowledge because they grew up in Israel, they were trilingual, they knew Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin and they knew these languages and they knew all about the Bible. But many of these guys they didn’t even believe that Jesus truly was the Messiah. They didn’t worship Him as God. They thought of Him kind of the same as another prophet, Mohammed maybe, or just any other man that achieved good deeds on the earth. But true wisdom comes from knowing what the Holy Spirit is teaching you and obeying what the Spirit of the Living God is teaching you. 

Hopefully whether you’re young or old you have this wisdom because you have received the same Spirit that Peter received when he repented, that John received when he repented, that the tax collector received when he repented and came to the Lord. Jesus gave these guys wisdom, but they didn’t automatically have wisdom. They grew in wisdom as they walked with the Lord and as they received the power that came from above. People would notice and say, “These guys are just ordinary men.” But they noticed that they were different because they walked with the Lord. Ordinary means you don’t have necessarily any high education, you haven’t went to any specific school, you don’t know the Bible forward and backwards like the teachers of the law. You’re just an ordinary person like you, like me. And because you walk with Jesus, you’re head and shoulders above anyone in the world, not because you think that you’re better than them, but because the world has never walked with God. They’ve never walked in the truth. But because we walk in the truth, we have truth in our hearts, and we have real wisdom. That is what makes a man wise, if you are walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

The disciples did that. And people hated the disciples, they hated Jesus because they were young, they didn’t look like they had a 50-year-old maturity, yet they were working miracles, they were speaking in wisdom, no one could speak rebuttals against them, that’s why they hated Stephen. No one had a word against Stephen. They could not speak a true word against him because he had the power of the Holy Spirit in him. And that’s why they took him out and stoned him. 

Do we have the Spirit of God in us, whether we are young or old? That is what we need. You know, all of the apostles, all of the twelve got themselves killed, except for John, I believe, and Judas of course killed himself. But they were dedicated to walk with Jesus their entire life up until the point they died. They were unashamed of the gospel. And they had wisdom, not because of the family they were born into, not because they were born Jewish or born Christian, but simply because they walked with the Lord. The Pharisees hated it. Any time the Pharisees saw a miracle worked by the hand of Paul or the hand of Jesus, they were incredibly jealous.

 These guys don’t know anything, they were born in sin. They’re not educated like we are, they haven’t been to church as much as we have, they’re not cultured like we are. The same religious people hate the disciples today because they have true wisdom. They’ll look down on you. If you follow Jesus, they would rather you don’t follow Jesus, that you don’t have true wisdom, as long as you go to their church, you go to their seminary, you pay tithes to them, you put yourself at the feet of their pastors. And really, they would hope that you never speak out about anything until you’re maybe 60 or 70 years old, until you look wise. How many of you would vote for a president who was 20 or 30? Probably none of us. In the world, people will not respect you if you are younger. But if you do put your faith in Jesus, Jesus will accept you, He will give you wisdom beyond your years, He will teach you, He will lead you, and He will guide you into everlasting life. Don’t be concerned what this world thinks. This world is blind and dead and on their way to eternal damnation, eternal destruction. So don’t strive after what they perceive to be wisdom and knowledge and truth of this world. Rather seek to get to know the Way, the Truth and the Life. His name is Jesus Christ.