Today if you have your Bible go ahead and turn it to the gospel of Luke chapter 5. We are going to be look at the first 11 verses of this chapter which gives the account of Jesus calling his first disciples. (Read Text)
As Luke’s account of this event begins, we can see Jesus standing on the bank of the lake of Gennesaret, which is more commonly known as the Sea of Galilee, teaching the word of God. Luke tells us that the crowd was pressing around Jesus, fighting to get a spot up front where they could see him and hear him better. They seemed to be hanging on to every word that the Lord spoke. This is every preacher’s dream right here. What a beautiful picture that is painted here with the Lord in front of a gorgeous body of water doing what he does best; teaching about the Father. But what was it that caused such a mass of people to flock to Jesus? Why did they care what he had to say? He had not revealed to anybody that he was the Son of God, the Messiah that had been long awaited. Yet people still came and truly desired to hear what he taught. I think that there are a couple of things that can be attributed to this such as he had a genuine compassion for people. More importantly, however, he met the needs of the people.
As Jesus gets near to the water he looks out and sees two fishing boats near the bank and some fisherman cleaning up their nets after a long night of work. As we will see later in verse 5, the fisherman had not caught a single fish all night long. I’m sure that we call all understand their weariness and frustration from their current lack of success. However, Jesus goes up to Simon and apparently requests Simon to get back in the boat with him and push out a little ways so that Jesus could teach to the masses. Now, when we look at the life of Simon Peter in other passages of the New Testament, we see a deeper view of his personality and that he had a little bit of a temper on him. So just imagine Simon’s frustration here when Jesus wants to use his boat for a while. Simon and the other fisherman are tired and are ready to go home and rest or spend time with their families. They probably don’t feel like being anywhere near water right now. That’s just like going to the golf course and shooting a 110, and then having a buddy of yours coming up to you and asking you to play another round. If it were me, I’d want to be as far away from the water as I could because being near it would only remind me of my frustration in my lack of success. But for whatever reason, Simon is submissive to Jesus’ request and gets back in the boat to allow Jesus to speak to the crowd.
Once Jesus was in the boat he sat down to teach. We see him do this several times throughout his life, which leads me to believe that it was customary to do so. Luke records that after he was done teaching he told Simon to “put out into the deep water and let your nets down for a catch. (v.4)” At this request, Simon has got to be a little bit ticked at the whole situation. He has had a long night and he is ready to go home. Furthermore, verse 2 tells us that he had already cleaned up his nets, which commentators tell us that the washing of nets was a tedious and monotonous task that had to be done well in order to ensure the longevity and effectiveness of the nets. I can recall several times, as I am sure that many of you can as well, when I have gone to a car wash to clean up my car and I just go all out to make it spotless. I mean I used the brush all over the car, put a fresh coat of wax on it, got down on my knees and cleaned the wheels by hand. Then I’d hand dry the whole thing to make sure that there weren’t any water spots left on it. In addition I’d vacuum out the interior, cover it in Armor All, and just had it looking good. I’d park it in the driveway, and then about 30 minutes later, you know what happens? It rains. Not just a little sprinkle, but it just pours. Now there are water spots and dirt all over the outside of the car, and since the ground is wet, I track mud into my freshly vacuumed floorboard. Can anybody else sympathize with that? It is absolutely frustrating. That’s where Simon is sitting in this situation.
We see some of that frustration come out in Simon’s initial reaction to Jesus’ request in verse 5. He says to Jesus, “Look, we’ve been at this whole fishing thing all night long and haven’t caught a single thing.” Simon was a professional fisherman; it is what he did for a living. Now some teacher is butting in telling him how to do his job. But for whatever reason, Simon is once again submissive to the Lord’s request and puts the nets back into the water. I think that many times with this passage we emphasize the miracle of the catching of fish, but to me the biggest miracle is that Peter did exactly what the Lord told him to do, despite the circumstances. As far as we can tell, this is the first meaningful encounter that Simon has had with Jesus. He couldn’t have known that Jesus was any different from him, an ordinary man, but he followed through with it anyways. There are many times in our lives where God will call us to do things that we just will not understand. But the beautiful part that is portrayed in this passage of scripture is that we don’t have to understand. We are to walk by faith and not by sight. The only thing that we have to understand is that God is in control and that we need to be submissive to whatever it is he would have us to do.
When Simon let down the nets, verse 6 tells us that “they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break.” This incredible miracle almost turns to disaster. The ropes of the net are straining and are probably becoming frayed from the amount of weight. So Simon calls to his companions in the other boat for help. Luke records that they come and are able to get the nets up and load the fish into the boats. There are so many fish drawn that it fills both boats enough that they begin to sink down into the water. Keep in mind that fishing is what they did for a living; when they caught fish, they made money. That factor will come into play in a little bit.
First, let’s look at Simon’s reaction to the miracle. “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Simon immediately tells Jesus to depart from him. “The awareness of God’s presence, directly or via a surrogate, produces such a response in people; it yields a sense of unworthiness at receiving God’s bounty” (Bock, 458). Next, Simon proclaims to Jesus that he is a sinful man. Now, this is not an act of repentance where Simon confesses all of his sins, but rather is a realization of the presence of God’s work in the life of Jesus. He sees his unworthiness in the presence of the Father. He does not however, come to a deistic understanding of Jesus being God. He just realizes that Jesus is an agent of God. The Bible says that he was filled with amazement, as well as his companions, James and John.
After the miracle, Jesus tells them that from now on they will become fishers of men, and in verse 11 the text tells us that after they had taken their boats to the bank of the water that they “left everything and followed Him.” Now let’s backtrack just a moment to the miracle of the catching of fish. Catching fish is how they made money, and they had just caught the mother-load. They had hit the jackpot of the fishing business, which meant big bucks. I bet that as they pulled the fish into the boat that you could see dollar signs gleaning in their eyes. To put it into a present day context, they could finally afford that big screen television that they had been drooling over for months, or they would finally be able to talk that vacation that they had longed for. But it says that they left it all to follow Jesus. The boats, the nets, the abundance of fish, their families….everything.
We have the luxury of seeing their future and the impact that they would have on the world after this occurrence. We are able to see that Simon would be called Peter and would become the starter of the first church, and that James and John would become the “Sons of Thunder.” But these things were not shown to them. They didn’t understand what they were getting into or what their future held. Still they left it all to follow Jesus; a man whom they knew very little about and at the time certainly didn’t know that he would be the one to save them from their transgressions. These men walked by faith and nothing else, and that blind faith called them to leave everything behind. As present day believers, many of us are still holding on to things that hold us back from God. We are not willing to give the Lord everything in our lives. We try and follow in the footsteps of the Lord while dragging all of our baggage behind us. As Christians, we will never be effective to our full potential until we decide to drop everything and follow after our Savior. What is it that you’re holding on to in your life? Is it really worth it, when you have the big picture in mind? Today, I call you to lay it all down at the feet of the Lord and live for him because he died for you.
Sources
Barclay, William. The Gospel of Luke. Westminster Press. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1976.
Bock, Darrell L. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Luke 1:1 -9:50.
Baker Books. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1994.
Gaebelein, Frank E., ed. The Expositor’s Commentary. Vol. 8. Zondervan Publishing
House. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1984
Morgan, G. Campbell. The Gospel According to Luke. Fleming H. Revell Company.
