Stop, Drop, And Go!

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.