January 24 2021
Luke 5:1-11
When my wife Jennifer and I decided to get married thirty five years ago we didn’t have a clue at first where we were going to spend our honeymoon. Then, as luck would have it Jennifer won a cruise and a stay at Disneyland from a local travel agency that was opening up. So, honeymoon problem solved. Then we had to figure out just where we would stay on our way down to Florida. Well, again we were blessed because friends of ours were big patrons of Praise the Lord Ministry. Does anyone remember that? You know, Jim and Tammy Baker. He was as slick as a used car salesman and she was was made up to the nines with big puffy hair. They felt compelled by God to create what was called the Heritage in South Carolina. Their plan was for this to be a water park, and theme park with an enclosed mall and hotel. Since our friends had given so much to Jim and Tammy they received two free nights at the Heritage which they graciously gave to us and which also we enjoyed very much.
Now, while I am very thankful to have had the experience of staying at the Heritage, still on looking back on the whole Jim and Tammy Baker ministry I can’t help think their whole ministry was rather cringe-worthy. Do you know what I mean by cringe-worthy? It is one of those things that is so embarrassing, or awkward or upsetting that when you think about it it makes you cringe. I really liked the stay at the Heritage park but having to explain that it was part of Jim and Tammy Bakers ministry just makes me cringe. I cringe because their ministry was in retrospect rather embarrassing and awkward. As it turned out Jim Baker had used many of the donations that people sent in for his own use and he was also involved in a sexual scandal. So, yeah that whole ministry of theirs was pretty cringe-worthy.
Well, as it turns out the history of Christianity is kind of filled with these cringe-worthy moments. Probably at the top of the list of these cringe-worthy moments is how people interpret our scripture for today, you know the one where Jesus tells his disciples that they will be fishers of men. When Christians have heard this phrase, “fishers of men’ they have just let their imaginations run wild. Many see this term being fishers as meaning evangelism. So what you end up with is all these messages on evangelism and witnessing that use different types of fishing to promote Christianity. You have your fly fishing, there’s deep-sea fishing, catching fish in nets and using bigger nets to catch yet more fish. Now while we have to admire the enthusiasm that people have for catching people for Christ what might be important is to stop and consider this whole fishing metaphor from the fishes perspective. If the fish are unsaved people imagine all these fishing ideas from where they stand. There is something about being hooked and dragged into a boat that I imagine most people might find more than just a little cringe-worthy.
What is surprising is that most commentators just rush to a judgment as to what Jesus meant instead of stopping to let the scriptures tell us just what this whole fishers of men thing is really all about. Somehow, going slow and listening to the story seems to be a better way of looking at it then just coming up with yet another explanation of just what it might mean for the disciples and us to be fishers of men.
So, keeping all this in mind then lets take a fresh look at our scripture from the fifth chapter of Luke. In order to begin though we need a little context of what has come before this moment in the ministry of Jesus. Last week as you my recall Jesus was tested in the wilderness by Satan and it was there that Jesus defeated Satan through his proper understanding of what it means to be a Son of God. This victory of Jesus you might remember centered on three main ideas that are found in the sixth and eighth chapters of Deuteronomy. These ideas are first, that as people we need to hear the word of God to be fully alive. Unlike the rest of God’s creatures, we as God’s highest creation we need to find our security in the trustworthiness of what God speaks to us. Only as we are secure in the promises of God are we set free to love others as God commands. The second idea is that as God’s people is that the world is set free from the domain of Satan through our worship and service of God. This service is the service of the priesthood of all believers whose purpose is to bear the name of God just as the High Priest had always done within the Temple. The third idea is that we are to swear by the name of the Lord. We are to know that the name of the Lord, that our God is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness, this is the one thing on which we can stake our life. If we have any uncertainty in who God is we will inevitably put God to the test, something God hates because it blasphemes his holy name.
So, it is these three ideas that defeated the devil and following this defeat, Jesus leaves the wilderness and we find that now he has authority over the demons, the minions of Satan, who possess some of the people surrounding Capernaum, a town on the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus rebuked the demons, telling them to be silent and to come out of the man in whom they possessed, the people were amazed saying, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out! So, here we see, just like we heard in the story of the testing of Jesus, the emphasis on the Word of God. And as in the testing of Jesus, we see the victory of Jesus over the devil, in his authority to rebuke demons.
With this we come to the beginning of the fifth chapter of Luke where in the very first sentence we read that the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear what? The came close of Jesus so that they might hear the word of God. The word of God found in the testing of Jesus, the same word that is found in the rebuking of the demons is here heard speaking to the crowds who swarmed to listen to Jesus. Now, when the crowds threatened to push Jesus out from the shore into the waters of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus simply got into the boat of Simon. Now, stop for a moment and imagine that you are Simon, sitting in your boat after a long night of fishing listening to this man called Jesus speaking the word of God, what Luke calls the good news of the kingdom. Suddenly, Jesus stops, grabs the ropes on the side of Simons boat and heaves himself aboard, no asking permission just hopping aboard like he owned it. Once aboard, Jesus asks Simon to put out a little and once Simon did what Jesus asked him to do Jesus sat down and continued to speak the word of God, teaching the people who had come to listen to him. Now, when Jesus had finished speaking, we are told, Jesus told Simon to take his boat out into the deep waters and once there Jesus instructed Simon to let his nets down for a catch of fish. Now, you have to wonder just what was going on in Simon’s mind when this total stranger begins to tell him, a person who had been fishing his whole life just how he should now go about fishing. What is recorded, is Simon telling Jesus that they had fished all night and had caught nothing. This, I imagine was perhaps the polite version of what was going through Simon’s mind. Yet strangely enough Simon agreed to do as Jesus said which as most of us know is really hard to do, this taking advice from someone who has never done your job. So, Simon having taken his boat out into deep water lets down his nets just as Jesus told him to do.And as the story tells us, that when they had let down the nets, the nets filled with such a large haul of fish that the nets began to tear apart. There were so many fish that it took two boats to haul them all to shore.What happens next though is also very interesting because there in the midst of this incredible fish story we find Simon, not dealing with the nets or the fish but instead Simon is found kneeling at the feet of Jesus. You see, Simon is not blinded to what has just happened; he realizes that in some mysterious way, God had caused a miracle. There could be no other explanation for it and if God had worked a miracle then Jesus most assuredly was a man of God. In that moment not only did Simon begin to have some inkling of who Jesus was but he also could give an honest assessment of who he was, a sinful man. So many times we want people to confess that they are sinful people before they accept Christ but here we discover that perhaps people need to encounter the holiness of Jesus first in order for them to grasp their own sinfulness.
Once again we must pause to think about what has just happened. When we meditate on the story so far we begin to realize that this incident with Simon is just like the rest of Lukes account, centered on the word of God. We must remember what Isaiah tells us about the word of God in the fifty fifth chapter where we read, “God tells us that the word that goes out of his mouth will not return to him empty but it shall accomplish that which he purposes and his word shall succeed in the thing for which he sent it.” Jesus spoke the word of God to Simon, the word that told him to go into deep water and there let down his nets. This word accomplished exactly what Jesus knew that it would, an abundance of fish in the nets of Simon. When Simon reluctantly placed his faith in the word of God he realized in a personal and profound way, the faithfulness of God through the word God spoke to him through Jesus. In experiencing the faithfulness of God, Simon would have also realized that what had driven his life before this moment was not faith in a trustworthy God but instead what drove his life was the fear, anxiety and worry which he had felt after fishing all night and ending up with nothing. Without fish how was Simon to feed his family, how was he to pay the bills and for lack of a better word, keep his life afloat? In the midst of his worry and anxiety, there came Jesus speaking of the word of God, how this word is the one absolute bedrock trustworthy voice in a world where there is much shifting sand. Yet, I suppose Simon thought, this word seemed more like a fantasy when his worry and concern were his cold hard reality. Knowing all of this then we can understood his sudden response of confessing his sinful nature there on a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.
So, here we have a sinful Simon and a holy Jesus and what comes next is somewhat surprising because Jesus does not really confront Simon about the reality of who he is, a sinful man. There is no brow beating, and there is no stating of the forgiveness of the sin of Simon. No, all Jesus tells Simon is to not be afraid. Jesus is getting at the root of Simon’s sinful nature, his fear and tells him to be done with letting this fear run his life. Why does Jesus tell him this? Jesus tells Simon not to fear because he has shown Simon in a profound and miraculous way that he can live a life of faith because the word of God has proven to Simon beyond a doubt that God is a God of utter faithfulness. And this is where we at last come to the call of Jesus that from this moment on Simon would be a person who catches men. Now at first blush you have to admit this sounds like a cringe-worthy thing to tell Simon. What in the world does Jesus mean that Simon was going to be a person who catches people? Well, the word used here that is translated as “catch” is actually used quite often in the New Testament but it is used to describe the action of Satan. In the second letter to Timothy we read in the second chapter, “God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of truth so they might come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.”The word, “snare” is the same word translated as “catch” in our story of Jesus and Simon. How, we might ask does the devil snare people and capture them? Well, if you go back to the Garden of Eden, what we find is that Adam and Eve are lured and captured by the serpent when he, in his questioning, causes them to doubt whether they should listen to the voice of God or whether they should listen to the inner voice of their desires. Here again the issue is whether or not to trust the word of God.Satan’s method of capturing people is to create doubt and fear in their hearts so that they do not place any faith in what God has spoken to them. Jesus teaches about this in his parable of the sower. This is the story that Jesus tells that is about him proclaiming God’s word. Jesus says his proclaiming God’s word is like a gardener who scatters their seed. Jesus goes on to say that as many people know, some of the seed will never sprout and grow because it gets snatched away by the birds. This, Jesus explains is like the word of God because those who hear the word of God and do not understand it these are the ones that the evil one comes to and snatches the word of God that has been sown in their hearts. So, the key to whether or not a person is caught by the devil or not is whether a person understands the word of God. To understand the word of God means that they find wisdom in placing their faith in what God has spoken. So if the devil captures those who do not understand then it follows that those who do understand are in some way captured by the word of God. So I believe that when Jesus tells Simon that he was going to catch men what he was referring to is that now that Simon has profoundly seen the wisdom of placing his faith in the word of God he was to live a life that demonstrated this wisdom to others. When others witnessed the life of Simon they would take the word of God that they had heard and they would understand the wisdom of placing their faith in this word of God. This word of God which described the kingdom of God would have captured their imagination setting them free from the fear, anxiety and worry that controlled them. What Jesus was asking Simon to do is what God asked his people to do when they entered the Promised Land as we hear in the fourth chapter of Deuteronomy, “Keep my commands and do my commands, in other words place your faith in my word, so that these will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples , who when they hear all these statutes will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” You see when the people of Israel listened to the word of God and their lives reflected the wisdom of doing so then their actions captured the attention of a watching world. This is what, I believe, Jesus was calling Simon to do. Jesus was telling Simon, you have seen the wisdom of placing your faith in the word of God. Now, I am asking you to live out this wisdom and understanding so that the attention of those who watch you will be captured by what you say and do and they will desire the wisdom and understanding that you have. Then when they hear the word of God the devil will no longer steal God’s word from their heart. The devil once again will be defeated because now the people who hear the word of God will understand and God’s word will be treasured in the hearts of those who hear it.
Just as we saw in the testing of Jesus when the word of God is understood as being necessary for life then what follows is the worship and service of God. This is what we see next in the life of Simon. Simon in his willingness to follow
Jesus was saying that Jesus as Lord was worthy of his life. Now he would live his life in service to him. In so doing Simon challenges all of us. We must ask ourselves, do we understand the wisdom of placing our faith in the word of God? Do our lives capture the attention of others so they might want to understand God as we do? And is God worthy of our life and is it God that we long to serve? May God find us as faithful to him as he has been to us. Amen!
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