HG037b+040-041. Matthew 4:13-22, Mark 1:16-20, Luke 5:1-11

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

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Last week we saw that Jesus was in the synagogue in His home town of Nazareth and that they rejected Him and His message. As a result we know that He moves His base of operation from there to Capernaum about 30 miles away. And this is at the very top of the Sea of Galilee. And even though the people of the synagogue wanted to kill Him, outside the synagogue people were thronging to hear Him. It is very much like what I said about John Wesley last week when he started to preach outside there were thousands who came to hear him.

I am grateful to Luke for the longer explanation of what happened with the calling of these four men. Both Matthew and Mark are very brief in their accounts. What we do know is that at least two of these men had met Jesus before. This started a period of openness to Jesus especially for Andrew who had been a follower of John the Baptist before. Andrew was the one who had brought Peter to Jesus. There were two other disciples that we know about by now and that is Philip and Nathanael. We know that Philip went on to be with Jesus all the time but we cannot be sure about Nathanael as he is not mentioned by name again until the end of John’s Gospel when the disciples go fishing, again. The beginning and end of the earthly life of Jesus seems to be bracketed by the disciples’ fishing!

The people are now so numerous that He has nowhere to go for they are practically pushing Him into the sea. They were eager to hear the word of God. Oh, how things have changed!

The beginning and end of the earthly life of Jesus seems to be bracketed by the disciples’ fishing!

This week on Radio Four they were discussing the sermon and whether it has had its time for people are now into the 7 or 15 second soundbite and their lack of attention has been getting shorter and shorter so much so, they say, that a sermon of any length is too long. But still universities give lectures where people sit for 2 hours. Makes you wonder how today’s children are going to cope with that! There needs to be more interaction with the audience, it is said, and participation. I wonder how long Jesus preaching and teaching was. I wonder how long we, the modern people, would put up with it before moving on. I’ve said before that Charles Spurgeon was complaining that people were finding sermons too long in his day…and if you did happen to listen to him it would be up to 2 hours though most generally it was 40 or 45 minutes which had more to do with the tax that was on paper than anything else.

And, today, if you go to a Pentecostal church you will still have a 45 minute plus sermons. Our attention span goes in and out during a sermon of any length anyway. I aim for 25-30 minutes including the Scripture reading - a long reading equals a shorter sermon, shorter reading - longer sermon. Today, is one of those longer sermons. Sermons might be going out of fashion but sermons are an absolute necessity for the spiritual growth of a Church so there will never be an apology from me.

But it does make me ask how much do we thirst for God’s Word. These people here could not get enough of it. We, also, are called upon to desire the Word of God:

1 Peter 2:2 NKJV

as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,

If we don’t drink the milk we’ll not be able to eat the meat. The reading plan that I have put in place for a period of three years is part of this. All I am asking us to do is to read. If we do not read God’s Word then how do we know what is in it? We are in a privileged time for in time’s past you would have to reply upon priests and monks to tell you what is in the Bible - today you can read it for yourself.

This week I had a couple of Roman Catholics on the door inviting me to their Cathedral. They also gave me a medallion of Mary with a leaflet explaining what it was all about. They went on and on about Mary whereas I talked about Jesus. After they talked about Mary’s eternal virginity I spoke of Jesus’ brothers James and Jude who wrote books in our Bible. I asked how could Mary be a virgin if Jesus had brothers? Can we point Catholics away from Mary, their Mediatrix, and say that the Bible says that there is only One mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. That Jesus is the only way to be saved and how we do not need their trinkets or Mary to help us come to God. After saying all that I told them to read the Bible for themselves - they could not get away from me quick enough. But I hope a seed was sown.

The point is that at a couple of points in the conversation I talked about what it says in the Bible and their ignorance was astounding. They also thought the book of James was written by John’s brother whom we read about in today’s passage. The thing is that James was the first apostle to die and could not have written the letter. They spoke about Peter being the first pope in charge of the Church for upon this rock I will build my church, they said. Except, I said, that the rock was the statement of Peter: “You are the Christ”. The Greek makes this clear: whereas Peter is called Petros, which is a stone and is a masculine word, the word used by Jesus for upon this rock is the word Petra, not Petros, which means rock and is a feminine word. Peter is never called Petra understandably seeing he is a male but in Greek things have gender just like we call a boat ‘she’.

On top of that, I said, that James, the brother of Jesus, was the first leader of the Church as proven historically as well as from Scripture. Traditions of men teach so many wrong things but we cannot know what is right or wrong in our beliefs if we do not read Scripture for ourselves. Remember that Catholic priests and monks were telling people what was in the Bible and instead they were teaching their own belief system. When Tyndale and others translated the Greek and Latin into English then people could see that what had been taught was not right and reformation’s flame billowed. Are we going to undo the reformation as some Christians are saying we should do? That’s because they, despite having a myriad of translations, do not read the Bibles that others suffered and died to bring to us. There are not many legitimate excuses for not reading our own bibles. And all I am asking you to do is read a chapter a day which takes less than 5 minutes.

I have always been surprised at the ignorance of Christians in knowing their bibles. Surely this is not true of you? If so, it is time for a change. There are people in the world who are desperate to have the Scriptures in their own language. There are some villages where there is one bible for all of them and they all take turns to read. Where is our thirst, our hunger? Truly we all should be reading through our bibles at least once a year. We are supposed to be like the Bereans in Acts who checked and tested everything Paul was saying against Scripture as also you should be testing everything I say.

Zebedee, James, John, Peter and Andrew were washing their nets when Jesus came to Peter’s boat and asked whether He could use it to preach from. Peter allowed, of course, and Jesus sat in it - as we saw last week, sermons and teaching were done sitting down. When He finished speaking He said to Peter: Let’s go fishing! Push out the boat to deep water and let down the nets. Now Peter’s response could have been: Well, come off it! We’re professionals who have a great business going here and we know what we’re doing. We’ve been at it all night and there is nothing there for us to catch - You’re a preacher and a carpenter not a fisherman. We know our trade. But instead, Peter thought: well, there is nothing to lose by doing what He says. I wonder how often pride has gotten in the way of taking a risk.

Fisherman on the Sea of Galilee would fish at night using a particular kind of net called a trammel net for the fish cannot see it coming before they are caught up in it. What Jesus was asking was to put down the net in the day in the sight of the fish they wanted to catch which went against all the experience and all the intuition.

By the w

Well, the result was astounding. There were so many fish that the boat was struggling to stay afloat. This was not a normal hoard. They had to call James and John and their boat to help with the catch. It is hard to put over the amazement of Peter, a seasoned fisherman, to see this many fish. Then for someone like Peter to say to Jesus get away from me I am a sinful man this situation was, to him, so astonishing, mind-boggling and shocking that there could only be one explanation for a catch like this: God. Only God could do this. And whenever we are face-to-face with God our sinfulness becomes all too apparent.

Everyone who saw it were amazed. But then the call was given. Peter, Andrew, James and John: Don’t be afraid of what you have seen. Follow me! And instead of being fishers of fish I will make you fishers of men. They were now being called to catch alive people rather than taking dead fish to market. And that was it! They knew what they had to do. They did not consider their prosperous business for these were not poor fishermen; They had their own boats, their own nets and so on. These things did not come cheap. But they left it all behind.

And if Jesus can make all these fish appear in an apparently empty sea then it surely must be true of reaching people for Christ. We can work and toil and say we have done everything we can. But a matter of simple obedience, an overcoming of a bit of pride, we could suddenly be overwhelmed with hordes of people so much so that we will need help from our partner churches. The tried and tested ways of the past may, in fact, be the way we have to do things today, like knocking on doors as the Catholics were doing this week giving away trinkets, surely we can do better than them! We have the way, the truth and the life. They are peddling a false gospel but we can give the genuine.

The fish, by-the-way, became the symbol of the early Church; using the first letters of the word for fish in Greek make up what we can see here.

Are we willing to forsake all to truly follow Jesus? When we remember all that Jesus did, the miracles such as these fish, and in Him giving His life for us having forsaken Heaven to come to us then we, with Peter and the others, can only but follow Him and have our whole lives affected and directed by Him.

I would like us to move to a more outward, more forthright, more bold type of evangelism rather than hiding behind things like kids club and parents and toddlers which have their purpose but this is the fishing at night scenario where we are doing it secretly trying to catch them in the net without them realising it. But we can also be absolutely deliberate and open about what we are doing and God can and will answer by the grace of God and many can be caught up in the net.

Let us commit this day to get a grasp on the Bible, to read it, to recommit to the 3-yr reading plan - don’t worry about catching up if you’re behind just read each weeks’ from now on. Let us also commit to looking for ways to deliberately share Jesus with the people whom we know. Opportunities abound. The more we share our faith the more we understand it, the more we will be able to answer the questions we find difficult to answer now. Let’s not be in a rut, the choice is ours and as some of you have heard me say: there is no retirement in the Kingdom of God. Let us be creative about how to reach people on this estate where the agenda is clear and open to all - we want to catch them - so that they can be part of the family of God here at Mount Calvary. Amen.

Bibliography

Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Beitzel, B. J., & Lyle, K. A. (Eds.). (2016). Lexham Geographic Commentary on the Gospels. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Elwell, W. A. (1995). Evangelical Commentary on the Bible (Vol. 3). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Lexham Press. (2009). Logos Bible Software Infographics. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Robertson, A. T. (2009). A Harmony of the Gospels. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.