Sermon Central
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Fishing With A Net
Contributed by John Bright on May 12, 2023 (message contributor)
Dr. Daniel B. Wallace has taught Greek and New Testament courses on a graduate school level since 1979. He wrote about this idea based on Matthew 4 “19 He said to them, “Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” 20 They left their nets immediately and followed him.” “It’s strange how we read the Bible: we filter everything through our own worldview, our own culture, our own life-setting. Then, when we discover that our perspective is not that of the Bible’s, we resist the truth. This even happens over simple interpretive issues—such as Jesus’ analogy of fishing. Even though passages like Matthew 4:18-22 are plain enough, we still often have blinders on our eyes. Many a preacher has elaborated on the analogy along the lines of a fishing pole, reel, line, and hook.”
The church has forgotten how to fish with a net. We keep teaching evangelism in a way that looks like fishing with a rod and reel so you only catch one at a time. Dr. Daniel B. Wallace makes several points about net fishing and evangelism:
• They are both labor intensive
• Greater focus on the work than the skill
• The need for persistence and dedication to the task (often in spite of minimal results)
• the infinite value of the new “catch” (people)
• As the day approaches for Christ’s return - catching people is the opposite of catching fish: the fish would be caught, killed, cooked, and eaten; people would be caught so as to remove them from the eternal flames of hell and to give them new life.
https://bible.org/article/fishing-new-testament-misunderstood-analogy-evangelism
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