Fishers of Men
Mark 1:16-20
It was the morning after a bad night of fishing if we read in from Luke 5. The disciples were tired. Simon and Andrew were in one boat, and apparently James and John were in another. They were near shore and casting their nets. We get more details in Luke, but for purposes of brevity, I will stick to the account given here in Mark which is also substantially the same as that given in Matthew.
It seems from John 1 that Andrew and John had been disciples of the Baptist, and we also know that Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus. It also says they stayed the day with Jesus. If we are to harmonize this account to John, we have to take the previous encounter as temporary in that they soon went back to work. This is not unlike the picture we get of the disciples in John 21 which records a similar incident to that recorded in Luke.
So we should realize that the call to be fishers of men we see in this morning’s passage was not a complete leap of faith into the dark as Kierkegaard thinks. They had some knowledge of Jesus personally. And although they probably not scholars and invited by the Rabbi of their synagogue for further study, they were at least given a primary education in Scriptures. The disciples were portrayed by the Jewish authorities in Acts as uneducated idiots, but one must be careful not to read too much into ad hominem attacks against someone’s character.
As fishermen who had to sell their fish, they had to have enough business sense to barter. And as Greek culture had invaded Palestine for almost 350 years, this probably included the idea that at least one of them knew some Greek. They may also have been literate as well. Amongst their peers, they tended more to the middle class than a lot of the poor of the land surrounding them.
God was preparing the disciples for a much greater purpose than the catching of fish. He was working on them even before the existential moment when Jesus commands them to follow Him permanently. I feel this is true of anyone God calls to the work of ministry. Paul certainly felt this way as did Jeremiah. Even Abraham before his call in Genesis 12 had attained to some degree of education and culture, even though He did not know Yahweh. And he may have been called more than once as the Scripture says in one place that he was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. But in Genesis it says that his father removed from Ur to Haran, and that is where God calls to Abraham in Genesis 12.
Many who have been called to ministry by the Lord does not get it the first time. Many of us like Jonah run the other way until this call is repeated with authority. Then we now we must follow Jesus. And this is the type of call the disciples understood. To them it was confirmed as Luke reports by a miraculous catch of fish. This time they knew Jesus was for real. They had grappled with this before, but now they knew. They left all behind and followed Jesus. Perhaps the catch of fish was so great that the sale of them would cover the loss to Zebedee of valuable workers.
The disciples had not come into contact with the god of the philosophers as Pascal recounts in his vision, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God’s word created the universe, so when God speaks with authority, things will happen. Jesus speaks with divine authority “Follow Me” and they follow, just as when the Lord appeared to Abraham and Abraham left all to follow Jesus.
Just like Abraham had no idea of what to expect, neither did these fishermen. All they were told is that they were called to catch men rather than fish. What a journey of wandering through Palestine and then to the ends of the earth following Jesus. Their lives were to be that of pilgrims just like Abraham who never possessed in his earthly life and more of the Promised Land than a cemetery plot. These disciples had some ideas of Jesus and ideas about the Messiah, but most of their preconceptions were wrong. Jesus would patiently teach them as He prepared them for their work of ministry. Preparing is the first work of obedience for one called to Christian discipleship. They needed to learn before they could tell.
In looking at this text today, we must realize that there was a degree of the call to these men which is different than ours. We are not to be called “Apostles” in the formal sense as we did not walk with Jesus on earth. Neither are earthy witnesses to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. But God has given us more than just a book, the Bible to go by, although it is thoroughly and throughly inspired. There is also the confrontation by the Holy Spirit which affirms and interprets the written Word.
It seems to me that evangelicals are split into two different camps. One talks about the experience being the primary cause of belief and others say it is the Bible. I say that is both. Brunner is right as others in stressing the confrontational aspect of God and man. God confronts us personally. But I don’t agree with him or Barth that the Bible is just a saga (myth or legend) but involves historical events and people. The proper understanding of this call is that God prepares the way for the experience, the experience, and then being led into all truth by Word and Spirit. We are not called to relationship with a book, creed, or confession. Our God is personal. And the ministry to which He calls his ministers is also personal.
This call to discipleship is a call to obedience as well. It is Jesus who is the head of the church to call the shots, and for His disciples to carry them out. This leads us to the question: “If God calls us to catch men, how is this done?” Now this is a very good question to ask. Some would say that you fish with bait. One can look at the witnessing style of Jesus with Nicodemus as well as that of Jesus with the woman at the well. There He leads and confronts them in his conversation with them.
But we must realize that Jesus can do this because He knows the hearts of all men. And if we are led by the Holy Spirit, it may be the approach we need to take. But too often we rather resort to deceit to try to catch men. We tell them one thing and try to sucker them in and then tell them about Jesus. Is God honored by our cleverness? We beat around the bush and pretend to be something other than who we are because we are afraid to confront sinners directly. What I have to ask is whether this approach is working? These ideas were implemented in the 1960’s in Britain. Martyn Lloyd-Jones warned about these deceptions, that it would lead to the demise of the church rather than its real growth. Time has mostly proven him right. Other than tiny remnants of mostly elderly people who attend the mainline churches, the church in England is dead. The only signs of life are the churches which have held fast to their evangelical confession.
What we see in this passage is that fish are not caught by bait and hook but by use of a dragnet. Jesus Himself compares the Kingdom of God to a dragnet which catches all sorts of fish, both good and bad. Then God Himself will separate them. So using a net is what is known as broadcasting. Even where to throw the net is not based upon the wit of the disciple but by the direction of the Lord. They tried it all night and caught nothing their way. And in what seemed absurd, Jesus calls them to cast the net into the deep. Even if the fish were there, they could have been able to dive below the net and evade capture. Yet it works, because Jesus said to do it His way and the boats were filled to the verge of sinking.
So there we have it. The Gospel is meant to be broadcast in its purity to all people good and bad. It isn’t to be selectively broadcast for a particular group of people. There is only one church, and not a generation x, y, or z church. This is a call to obedience which calls for radical repentance on the part of the church. Like the parable of the sower, the sower simply throws the seed on the different soils. It was not by the use of human reason or preparation, although God can use preparation which He has prepared. It would seem to us that we should have plowed the ground and fertilized it. We should have attended to the weeds, and watered it. And we would not have wasted precious seed by sowing it in rocks soil. But man’s ways are not the ways of God who uses means that seem utterly foolish by man’s standard to accomplish His will. Again I remind us that what God ordains will surely come to pass.
Let Jesus be the one to direct our mission. He does believe in preparation. He carefully prepared His disciples. But He did it His way. He chose the most unlikely of candidates to broadcast this message, but if one read the Prophets they would have been tipped off to the Messiah calling fishermen. He prepares the called rather than calls the prepared. This is true even when He works in them before the formal call.
The ways we have employed in the church to fish are leading us to certain disaster. We are winning them to the church with the hope of later winning them to Jesus. We are a mile wide and an inch deep in our approach. There is no power in the church, and when they see the deception being used on them, they will leave the church. The message of Jesus is hard. When Jesus confronts them with this hardness in John 6, the Scripture records that many turned back from following Him. This is what will happen in the church. But Jesus will bring the church into contact to His understanding of reality.
It seems much better to me to confront the world with the gospel up front.
