Colossians 1:13-14 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

1. Like storm clouds that block out the sun, _____________has moved in to block out the ____________ of God's ______________.

2. Jesus breaks into this __________ _________ and begins to take people out of it, to bring them into a new _______________.

3. When Jesus ___________ out to us in the darkness, He _____________

Scripture Readings
Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-25

Take It With You!

Here we will offer thoughts and meditations on the message to help us as we contemplate and discuss and wrestle with what we are hearing.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
- John 1:1-5

When Jesus said, "Follow Me," He was confiscating man for Himself. For that word applied to man with personal and inescapable urgency His call to repentance and His annunciation of the Kingdom come. It brought the gift and the claim of the Kingdom to bear on man. The whole Gospel of Matthew is simply the record of the process of progressive Messianic confiscation, the record of how Jesus shaped men in the mold of repentance, of how the Christ created men in His image, Christian men. Matthew's record, with its rich reproduction of the words of Jesus, is anything but a record of the pedagogy of Jesus. It is a record of Messianic action, both in its recounting of Jesus' deeds and in its recounting of His words.
-Martin Franzmann, Follow Me: Discipleship According to St. Matthew