Based on a sermon preached at Glasgow, MO First Baptist Church on 7-22-2014.
This is not an exact transcription.
Introduction: When someone gives up on something they love, it’s remarkable. This is even more so when a professional or full-time businessman walks away from the very thing that he based his life on. Simon and Andrew, brothers, worked with another set of brothers, James and John, as fishermen. They had boats, nets, opportunities, and they seem to have done fairly well. Then one day Jesus came, asking Simon for the use of his boat, and everything changed after that.
The text for today’s message is from Luke’s gospel, chapter 5, verses 1 through 11:
[Luke 5:1-11 NASB] 1 Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret; 2 and He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 And He got into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. 4 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." 5 Simon answered and said, "Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets." 6 When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; 7 so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus' feet, saying, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" 9 For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken; 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, "Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men." 11 When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.
Suppose Jesus Christ Himself asked you to do something. What would you do? We can see from the text that Jesus asked Simon to launch out a little, or into the shallow waters, and then to go into the deep water. Even though Simon agreed reluctantly, he had no idea what was going to happen once this voyage was over! Luke gives us thee sets of “twos” in this passage. Let’s take a look at the first of these:
I. The two requests
One thing to remember was the impact and effect Jesus had on people when He preached and taught the Word of God. True enough, the Jewish people had the Temple and sacrifices, and so forth; they also had the synagogues in various parts of Israel. The synagogue worship did indeed have the reading and exposition of the Law and/or the Prophets (Jesus Himself did this. (see Mark 5:38, Luke 13:14, and John 18:20) but there was one major problem in those days.
That problem was the layers of additional material treated as more authoritative than the Scriptures themselves. After the last prophet, Malachi, finished his ministry, the Jewish people hadn’t heard the voice of a prophet in nearly 400 years!
Imagine the hunger and thirst for the Word of God that these people must have shown! Best of all, they were hearing it from Jesus Himself. And wouldn’t you have liked to have heard Him speak, to be there in person? I’ve sometimes wondered what kind of voice Jesus had—did He speak in a tenor voice, or a baritone or bass voice? Regardless, when He spoke, people listened because they wanted to hear God’s Words.
At this point, according to what Luke said, the people were crowding around Jesus, so much so that He was heading (or walking backwards?) towards the Lake of Galilee. Remember that Jesus was 100% human and needed air to breathe! So He sees a fishing boat at anchor (paraphrasing) and asks Simon for, humanly speaking, a favor.
The first of the two requests was simple, but kind of unusual:
A. Launch a little from the shore.
The crowd is gathering so close to Jesus—understandably so, as they wanted to hear and keep on hearing what He had to say—and He’s about to be crushed by the mass of people coming so close. So He asks Simon to push out a little way from the shore or beach so that He could continue His message to the crowds nearby.
Then Jesus made another request
B. Put out into the deep water.
Now, according to Dr. John Gill (he lived about 300 years ago), the Sea or Lake of Galilee was about six miles wide and sixteen miles long. Nobody knows for sure how deep the “deep water” was but I sure don’t want to find out! Something, too, that we may not catch at first glance, is that Jesus didn’t promise anything, but He simply asked Simon for another favor. And Simon couldn’t have known what Jesus had in mind when He asked this favor, or made this request.
II. We can now look at the Two Responses
Simon, we recall, was a professional fisherman and knew—or thought he knew—more than Jesus about fish and fishing. He must have wondered what Jesus was talking about when He asked Simon, “Launch out into the deep so you can get a load of fish.”
A. A grudging response:
Simon—oh, we could wonder what he was thinking when he heard Jesus make that second request. I’m sure he was stunned, perhaps, that Jesus would ask such a thing. I mean, Jesus was a carpenter and some people may not have thought He knew much about fishing. Nazareth was the home town of Jesus and it was several miles, maybe 10-12 miles, from the Sea of Galilee. Simon’s home town was Bethsaida (John 1:44) and it was very close to the Sea of Galilee. Could Simon have wondered out loud what a carpenter knew about fishing?
At any rate, Simon gave a very grudging response at first, “Master (a word meaning someone in a position of authority according to Strong’s Concordance), we worked hard (to the point of being exhausted—Strong’s) all night and didn’t catch a thing (paraphrased)”. I remember one of my uncles and a friend or two of his who went fishing one day: leaving way too early for me, so that they could get some of the last of the darkness before sunrise. When I saw him later that day, I asked how it went and he said, “We didn’t catch nothin’”, shaking his head and muttering something about how the fish didn’t even bite that day.
Simon and perhaps Andrew had worked all night and were tired, probably grumpy, and I’m thinking they weren’t pleased at all about spending some of the day on the Lake of Galilee after spending a fruitless night.
B. A reluctant response
Simon, to his credit, didn’t turn Jesus down outright. He said, “we worked all night and didn’t catch anything (paraphrased)” but followed that by saying, “but if You say so, we’ll let down the nets”. Now I have no idea how big the nets were, or how many fish these nets were designed to catch and/or hold till the boats got back to shore. The same word is used in John 21 where Simon Peter pulled one net to shore, and that net held 153 large fish (IAW Strong’s concordance).
Again, I wonder how many times I’ve missed out on the Lord doing something for me or through me because I was too reluctant or too grudging to respond. As we’ll see, Simon Peter received more from Jesus than he dared imagine!
III. The Two Results
A. The nets were filled to the breaking point
Simon obeyed Jesus and saw the nets becoming so full the nets were beginning to break! This is so amazing—just a few hours before, Simon and anyone else who was assisting had worked all night and took nothing. Now here they are and the nets are full—Southern folks might say, the nets were “fixin’ to break!”, and the boats are beginning to sink!
Simon, as Luke relates, was astonished—amazed, we might say—at the miracle he had just seen, right before his very eyes. Simon saw all this, and fell down at Jesus’ feet. He gave a heartfelt prayer, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” He surely didn’t mean for Jesus to get out of the boat and leave Simon with a boatload or netload of fish, rather that he knew he was a sinner and Jesus was not.
Now here’s something that I’ve not really noticed until the Holy Spirit pointed this out to me. All of this, the net-load of fish, the boat starting to sink—I can imagine the water getting up to the edge of the boat’s body or “gunwales (rhymes with tunnels)”: and they’re all out there in the deep water! Somewhere out in the lake, they’re getting ready to make a final voyage unless something else happens! So Simon beckoned (waved, perhaps frantically) to the partners to come and help out. When the partners got there, the same thing began to happen—BOTH boats began to sink! Jesus replied, “Stop being afraid—you’re going to catch men from now on (paraphrased).” Again, I used to think that this conversation took place at the shore or near the shore, but it’s still out there in deep water. They weren’t even close to the shore at the time.
B. Simon and the others left everything to follow Jesus
It’s interesting that Jesus didn’t say “Follow Me” to any of these fishermen. They all volunteered, after they got the boats back to the shore. Think about it: they left everything they owned, everything they knew, everything they had, and everything they loved, so they could follow Jesus and be His disciples.
We—you and I—may not have a boat or a business but all of us have something or some kind of opportunity where we can apply do what Jesus wants us to do. If—no, when—He asks you to do something, don’t be reluctant or grudging in your response. Results? Who knows? But whatever we do for Jesus here, we’ll receive a reward for it in Heaven someday.
Bottom line, Simon decided to follow Jesus, no matter what. I hope all of us have made that decision, to follow Jesus too.
Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. http://www.lockman.org
