Transcript

Dave Bolin writes: In October of 1781, General Cornwallis marched his British troops into Yorktown. The patriots to the south had wreaked havoc on his redcoat army, and he was hoping to rendezvous with the British Navy on Chesapeake Bay.

American and French troops, however, anticipating Cornwallis’s plan, pounded them with cannon fire, while the French fleet cut off escape by sea. The British found themselves trapped.

Thomas Nelson, then governor of Virginia and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was fighting with the patriots firing the cannons in Yorktown.

Gathering the men, he pointed to a beautiful brick home. “That is my home,” he explained. “It is the best one in town. And, because of that, Lord Cornwallis has almost certainly set up the British headquarters inside.”

And he told the American artillerymen to open fire on his own house. They did. As the story goes, the first cannonball shot at Mr. Nelson’s house sailed right through the large dining room window and landed on the table where several British officers were eating.

It is one thing for a man to talk about freedom. It is quite another to destroy his own home to help make that freedom a reality. Nelson understood, however, that to hold on to his current life would mean forfeiting the life he was so desperately seeking. A life of freedom would cost him the things of his present life. It was a small price to pay.

On October 19, as the British troops surrendered, the Redcoat band played the song, “The World Turned Upside Down.” The song was apt. The world’s greatest super-power had just been defeated by an army that couldn’t afford to put shoes on its soldiers’ feet.

And as Dave Bolin says, “But how can you thwart an army willing to sacrifice everything they currently have, for something infinitely better waiting on the other side?”

Colossians 3:2 teaches us to set our affection on things above, not on things on the earth. God would have us, the Church, live in light of eternity and our hope, in light of something infinitely better waiting for us on the other side.

As the Lord called His apostles to follow Him and their willingness to forsake all to follow teaches us to prioritize our lives by devotion to Christ and to live for what is lasting.

Luke 5:1-3: “And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.

“And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.”

In verse 1, the lake of Gennesaret is another name for the Sea of Galilee. Gennesaret was a town and the plain on the lake’s northwest coast.

The Sea of Galilee is a large, freshwater lake, over 690 feet below sea level, making it the lowest freshwater lake on earth. It is 7 miles wide and 12 miles long.

In the Lord’s day, it served as the main source of water and commerce for the region of Galilee region, and was abundant with fish.

The Lord, after His baptism and temptation, had been ministering in Galilee, teaching in its synagogues and healing the sick and casting out demons. Here in chapter 5, He came to the Sea of Galilee.

Because of all the good He had been doing in the area, Luke 4:37 states, “And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.”

Thus, when He came to the Sea of Galilee, a large crowd came to see the Lord and gathered around Him. But the throng of Him became so large that there was a press and the Lord was being pushed up against the waters and shoreline of the Sea of Galilee.

This was preventing Him from being able to teach effectively, and He needed to put some distance between the crowd and Himself.

So the Lord used His surroundings to His advantage. He saw two empty boats by the shore and decided to create a natural outdoor theater. He got into one of the boats, which was Simon Peter’s, and asked him to row the boat a short distance from the land. Peter did so and the Lord had a captive audience with Peter in the boat with Him.

From out on the water, the Lord could address the people more effectively since they could all see Him now further away from them and His voice would be able to project since He was facing all of them with the shore functioning acoustically like an amphitheater.

Once the boat was positioned a short distance from the shore, the Lord sat down. It was a custom in the Lord’s day for a teacher or rabbi to stand during the reading of the Scriptures, but when he taught, he sat down.

The Lord began to teach the crowd the Word of God and His voice echoed across the waters of the early morning Sea of Galilee as hundreds lined the shore to hear Him.

As this was all going on, the fishermen were mending and “washing their nets.” It’s said that “If their nets were not washed and stretched out to dry, they would rot and break.”

The fishermen were dutifully washing their nets, and removing debris from them, like seaweed, perhaps a sandal or two that they had drug up! If it was now there would probably be a couple soda cans in the nets, but there were no soda cans back then.

Washing their nets early in the morning showed that these men had been fishing all night. Verse 5 tells us this also.

These men weren’t sports fishermen. They caught fish for a living. This wasn’t a pastime for them. This was their livelihood, and how they supported their families.

Peter and his brother, Andrew, were fishermen, and in verse 10, we learn that John and his brother James, were partners in business with Peter and Andrew. But business wasn’t good after the bad night they had fishing.

All these men were tired and frustrated. They were washing their nets to put them up to dry for the day. Then they were going to go home and go to bed and get some rest, so they’d be ready to go out the next night. But then something unexpected happens.

Luke 5:4-5: “Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.”

After the Lord had finished teaching the crowd, He turned to Peter and told him to take the boats out to the deep water and to let down their nets for a “draught,” or a catch.

I like the assurance the Lord gives with this instruction. He didn’t want them to go fishing; He wanted them to go catching. Let down your net for a catch, He told him.

Peter’s reply was, “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” Peter and the other three men had been throwing out and hauling in empty nets all night long. The word “toiled” means to feel fatigued due to hard work.

They hadn’t slept all night and they had worked hard all night, and so they were tired, is what Peter is telling the Lord. And the fact that they caught nothing all night indicates that further fishing would be pointless.

And you can almost hear him thinking: “I just got done cleaning my nets. If I throw them into the water, I’ll have to take them back to shore and do it all over again.”

And not only did Peter resist the instruction due to fatigue, but it also didn’t make sense. The Lord asked Peter to do something contrary to his own expertise in fishing.

Peter was a professional fisherman. And Peter knew two things: 1) This is the wrong time of day to fish. 2) And the deep is the wrong part of the lake to do any fishing.

Normally, the fish that were in shallow water at night would migrate during the daylight hours to waters too deep to reach with nets, which is why Peter fished at night.

He knew the fish were deeper in the lake and retreated to the depths to stay cool during the day. And he knew to fish at night when they came to the shallows and to the surface to feed. According to everything that Peter knew about fishing, he was sure he would not catch anything at that time of the day.

The best fishing on the Sea of Galilee was at night close to shore. But the Lord had asked him to launch out into the deep in the middle of the day. This was asking a great deal of Peter. But the Lord was teaching Peter to trust Him, to have faith in His Word.

There also is an analogy from the shallow to the deep water here for Peter. Peter’s relationship with Christ up to this point had been casual and uncommitted.

The Lord and Peter had been acquainted for some time. There are a couple of callings of the Peter, Andrew, James, John before this one and there is a progressive drawing of them.

According to the Gospel of John, Peter met and was introduced to the Lord in Judea the day after Christ was baptized.

Later, according to Matthew 4, the Lord had been walking by the sea of Galilee and “saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”

Although, Peter and Andrew had followed Christ, they did not yet follow Him in a complete and unconditional manner. They were still, at least for part of the time, engaged in their fishing business and their trade as fishermen.

So at this point in Peter’s life, Christ was still not the complete focus of Peter’s life. Fishing was still a focus.

The Lord’s call for Simon to launch out into deeper water is an analogy of what He wanted to do in Simon’s life, to take Peter from the shallows, or a half-hearted and casual commitment to Him, into a deeper, personal and strong devotion to the Lord. He wanted to move Peter from shallow to deep water faith.

The Lord wants to do the same thing in our lives. He wants us to move from the shallows to the deep with our faith, to go deeper in our knowledge of Him by the Word, deeper in our relationship with Him, and deeper in our devotion to Him.

Sometimes, like Peter though, we might drag our feet, and it might take some time before we give more of ourselves to follow and live for the Lord and to give Him the preeminence in our lives that He is worthy of and deserves.

But like Peter, we’ll find that “launching out into the deep” with Christ is the best thing for our lives, and the best decision we could ever make.

After Peter’s brief objection of toiling all night and catching nothing, you can almost hear his “sigh” of doubt and reticence in verse 5 when he says that “nevertheless,” or against his better judgment, “at thy word I will let down the net.”

Luke 5:6-7: “And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.”

Peter rowed the same boat he had all night out into the deep, and he cast the same nets into the water that had come back empty all night long. But after he and Andrew put the nets out in the deep water in obedience to the Lord’s Word, something amazing occurred.

Right after deploying their net, Peter felt it pull down with tremendous force as it filled with fish and became taut. The weight of the fish in the net almost pulled them overboard into the water. They held onto the net with all their might, and there were so many fish in the net that it stretched and began to break.

As they were grunting and groaning trying to haul in the net, Peter frantically began beckoning unto his business partners, James and John, “that they should come and help them.” They couldn’t handle the net by themselves.

But they were too far away to yell for them to come help since they were in the deep water and they were on the share, so Peter was waving his arms, motioning, signaling them to come out to them to help.

Getting their attention, James and John then quickly row, row, rowed their boats as fast as they could to Peter and Andrew’s boat.

Arriving there, they helped them bring in the fish from this one net. And from it, both boats were filled to overflowing from this catch, and each of them began sinking. The weight of the catch of this fish nearly swamped BOTH of their boats.

And the picture the Bible gives us is that as the boats were rowed to shore, they were barely visible above the water because of the weight of the fish.

This was not just a good catch; this was a record catch. This was a haul. And talk about a great fish story to tell!

They had caught their share of fish in their day but this kind of catch was unheard of. And they had caught the fish in a place where and at a time when they never should have gotten any fish at all. This was a miracle at the hand of God, and Peter knew it.

Luke 5:8-10a: “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken. And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon…”

After all the fish were in both boats, and Peter looked at both boats filled with fish, the Lord’s object lesson brought Peter to his knees.

He began to see Christ in an entirely new light. He was not just a powerful prophet or just a gifted healer or just a wise teacher. He saw Christ for Who He truly is: Lord. He is Lord of the sea, Lord of creation, and Lord over his life.

And Peter recognized that he was in the presence of majesty. This caused him, still in the boat mind you, to fall down before Christ in worship and to beg for His mercy.

When Peter saw the power and majesty of Christ in this miracle, it made Peter very aware of his own spiritual bankruptcy compared to Him, and he was stricken with shame over his own sin in His presence.

This was very much like another man who found himself frozen with fear when confronted with being in the presence of God.

Isaiah, the prophet, in the vision given to him in the temple, when he saw the Lord, high and lifted up, on his throne said, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips…for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5).

Both Isaiah and Peter understood the consequence of direct contact with God. Sinful man cannot survive in the presence of divine holiness and majesty.

And Peter at this moment, understood himself to be a man tainted with sin in the presence of a holy God, and he was overcome with a sense of his own unworthiness.

Peter asked Christ to leave him, not because he did not want to be in His presence but because he felt unworthy of being there.

He was one who fell short, and he realized that he was a sinful man in the presence of the Holy One who was exercising His divine power over His creation.

And his shame is tied to the fact that he had not given himself completely to follow the Lord up to this point.

Peter’s confession was true. He was a sinful man, like all of us are. And Peter telling the Lord to go away from him shows that sin demands separation from God.

We can’t be in God’s presence in heaven in our sins. We must have our sins taken away and forgiven in order to have the hope of heaven. And by the Cross, and Christ’s shed blood our sins have been paid for. And the moment we trust Christ as our personal Savior, all our sins are washed away and we’re ready for heaven.

Verse 9 states that the remarkable catch of fish astonished Peter, “and all that were with him,” Andrew, James and John (v. 9). There was no explanation for it, except divine intervention, and that it was a miracle by the hand of God.

Luke 5:10b-11: “And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.”

As the fishermen trembled before the Messiah, the Lord, in His kindness and mercy, calmed them by telling them, “Fear not.”

Then, He added, “from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” And as the Lord said in Matthew’s account of Him calling Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

Christ used the fish to represent people that Peter would catch and draw into the millennial kingdom.

Christ was now calling these fishermen to leave their profession behind and to begin following Him permanently. He would take them from fishing for fish and catching fish and make them fishers of men and catchers of men.

The gospel of the coming kingdom needed to be proclaimed widely so that many could hear and could become subjects of His kingdom, by repentance, water baptism and faith in the name of Jesus.

Peter, Andrew, James and John were called by Christ to cast the net of the gospel of the kingdom and catch people for the Messiah and His kingdom.

And like this net caught fish in great quantity, so Peter, after his Spirit-filled sermon on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:41 reads, “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.”

The symbolism of this account was teaching these men how they were to catch men. Christ had chosen to teach the Word of God from a fishing boat. So the boat was transformed into an instrument of evangelism.

The boat was where the Word of God was proclaimed to the multitude and then Christ told Peter to row this boat into the deep water, and the boat was where a multitude fish were caught. Thus, they were being shown that the way the disciples would catch men was through the Word of God.

Just as Christ had gathered a multitude people with the Word of God, as verse 1 states that “the people pressed upon Him to hear the Word of God,” so Peter and the others would be fishers of men and catch a great multitude people by the Word of God.

And their message from the Word was to be like Christ’s, they were to preach the kingdom of God, the gospel of the kingdom, Israel’s hope and calling of the earthly, millennial reign.

What was also made clear in this miracle is that while Peter and the others did the work, it was Christ who provided the fish.

The great catch of fish was all due to Christ, and it was He who deserved the glory for it.

They were shown what could be accomplished through Him and His power in the ministry and service for Him.

You see principles of how they were to catch men throughout the account. Faith, obedience, and humility were all necessary in their ministries. And they learned to be dependent on Christ for the catch.

In most cases a mentor trains their pupils to become autonomous. As the students learn, they become less and less dependent on their teacher, until they gain enough knowledge and experience to strike out on their own.

But the Lord had a different lesson plan for His disciples. He taught them how to become ever more and increasingly dependent on Him.

The abundance of fish only came by Him and His power. And in their fishing and catching of men, results and fruit would only come through Him and by dependence on Him.

After Isaiah was confronted with the Lord’s glory and holiness, when the Lord said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah’s voluntary response was “Here am I Lord, send me!” And this was Peter’s response to this experience also.

Peter followed the Lord in an intermittent fashion, on a part-time basis before. After this experience though, he forsook all, and followed Him with all his heart.

You could say that there was a “catch” to the story, the Lord caught the fishermen. He caught Peter. The experience of this miracle made Peter worship Christ and surrender his life to Him. And Andrew, James and John also did the same.

Later, Peter would deny the Lord 3 times, and here we see how after this the third call on his life, Peter followed the Lord completely.

The word “followed” is a word which signifies the deepest inward attachment, and it indicates to follow someone down the same road.

After this miracle, Peter, Andrew, James, and John responded to the call of Christ on their lives to follow Him and catch men. So when they pulled their boats up on that beach, they forsook all and followed the Lord down the same road He was on and didn’t look back.

That day, they determined to follow the Lord anywhere He led them, and to do anything He commanded them, and they left their former lives and livelihoods behind.

On the day they had their best day ever doing what they do Christ called them to leave it all behind. And with no hesitation they willingly left it all behind.

Against all reason, they obeyed the Lord’s command to do something irrational from a human perspective, something that professional fishermen would refuse to do.

They steered their boats toward deep waters, the wrong part of the lake and the wrong time of the day for catching fish. In response to their faith and obedience, the Lord did a miracle.

And against all reason, they did something irrational from a human perspective, and forsook all and gave their lives to following the Lord, and in response to their faith and obedience, Christ made a miracle out of their lives. And He can do the same in our lives.