Introduction: Over the past few Sundays we’ve begun to see Luke describe the ministry of Jesus. It has involved both teaching and healing. Now, in chapter 5, Luke reveals a third major focus of Jesus’ ministry – calling and spiritually forming a group followers, or disciples, who ultimately will carry on his ministry after his departure from this earth. As this begins to unfold, we see Simon Peter and his associates involved in an amazing – a miraculous – catch of fish. But what seems even more amazing to me is that they go from telling Jesus to go away, to getting up, leaving everything, and following him. Not too much later, Levi, does the same thing. What prompted them to follow Jesus? What enabled them to do so? How could they just get up and leave everything? The answer, I think, revolves around the following: As it comes to following Jesus and serving him in the kingdom of God Jesus doesn’t look at what we’ve done; he looks at what he knows he can enable us to become. Let’s go to the lake and see how this plays out.

 

I. A Lesson by a Lake

            A. The lake is called Gennesaret, another name for the Sea of Galilee, a body of fresh water in the north of Palestine that runs thirteen miles long and five miles wide. While Jesus continues to teach in the synagogues in the various towns of the region, we see that his ministry quickly breaks out into other, everyday venues. It’s a good lesson for us. Jesus goes to where people are; he doesn’t wait for them to come to him. At this particular location, the crowd is so large that Jesus hops into one of the two boats that had been beached and asked its skipper – a fisherman named Simon – to put out a little from the shore. It’s a neat bit of resourcefulness on the part of Jesus for the shoreline in this area contains a number of steep inlets that each function like a kind of amphitheater. It enabled Jesus to speak in a normal voice and be heard by anyone who was sitting on shore.

 

            B. But the lesson we’re allowed to hear turns out to be, not the one for the masses on the beach but for the men in the boats. It begins after Jesus has finished teaching. Turns out he wants to go fishing. However, the fishermen, led by Simon (who later becomes Peter), aren’t too thrilled by that idea. They’ve been up and out all night, and were not very successful. In fact, they had caught nothing, “not even a minnow” (The Message). Not only were they tired and discouraged, but they knew full well that the fish rarely ran during the day. What’s more, the nets they were washing were not the kind of nets one would use for fishing in the daylight. They were made, one expert tells us, of linen, which means that while fish could not see them at night, they could spot them during the day.

 

            C. So, just picture the scene for a moment. Here is a carpenter’s son, turned preacher, telling a seasoned fisherman how to run his business, at a time and in a way that made no sense. It would be a little like me trying to tell Steve Brown how to make furniture, or Lisa Clark how to coach lacrosse, or Ernie down the street how to repair cars. They would all, if they were smart, and kind, tell me to keep my day job! But to his credit, though Peter protested a little, he agreed to give it a try. Perhaps he reasoned that the one who had healed his mother-in-law (4:38-39) just might have some additional power to spare. Or, possibly he figured that Jesus at least deserved to have a little bit fun out on the lake after all his hard work of healing and teaching. What we see is that they caught so many fish that it took both boats to haul in the catch, and that both boats began to sink from the weight of the abundance of the catch.

 

Illustration: There is a marvelous depiction of this scene hanging on the wall of the retreat center out at Eastern Point. The fish are flying all over the place, the men are frantically trying to gather them in, the spray from the surf is shooting up in the air, and the two boats are wallowing in the water from the weight of the fish. In the midst of the chaos, in the stern of one of the boats, sits Jesus, calmly, serenely, with one arm in his lap and the other propped up on the rail. He’s simply surveying the scene. You can almost hear him saying: “I told you so. . . “

 

How many times would Jesus be able to say to us, “I told you so!”? When we realize that forgiving is better than getting even? When we come to learn that we really are blessed by giving generously? When the statistics overwhelmingly confirm that living together before marriage is more likely to lead to instances of domestic violence and divorce? When praying for those who persecute, or even disagree with, us actually leads to a change of heart?

 

D. There are many times Jesus could say to us, “I told you so,” but he doesn’t now, and he didn’t then. When Peter falls to his knees in realization that he must be somehow in the presence of an agent of God (his Christology was far from formed at this point), Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid. Instead of scolding Peter, or mocking Peter, or pointing out how unsuccessful Peter had been without him, Jesus invites Peter and his mates to come work with him in accomplishing the purposes of God, to cast their nets in a different sea, the sea of humanity, in order to invite people into the boat of God’s kingdom. He didn’t look at what they had done; he looked at what he knew he could enable them to become. But, why did they go?

 

II. An Amazing Invitation

A. Well, certainly they had seen something amazing, and someone who was amazing, but I don’t think that’s really it. It has more to do with the amazing invitation that Jesus offers. Rob Bell, in his book by the intriguing title, Velvet Elvis, provides us with some helpful background material. In first century Judaism, Bell reveals, one of the most important questions concerned how to best teach the word of God to kids. They believed that when their ancestors had camped at the base of Mount Sinai, and when their leader, a man named Moses, had gone up the mountain, that he really had received words from God, words that became the first five books of the Bible, words that revealed the very best way to live. So the central passion of the people living in Jesus’ world was teaching, living, and obeying the Torah, as these five books were called.

 

B. They took this so seriously that most kids, when they began school at the age of six, would begin to memorize the Torah. By age ten, many would have learned the whole thing by heart. Those who would have excelled at this would have been separated apart and led on to the next level of education. By age thirteen, the top students would have had the entire OT memorized, Genesis through Malachi, all 39 books. They also would have begun to have been schooled in the oral tradition that surrounded the text. At age fourteen or fifteen, the best would again be separated and the top students would apply to a rabbi to become one of that rabbi’s disciples. The goal was not just to learn what the rabbit knew, but to be just like the rabbi. It was the aim of the disciple to take that rabbi’s yoke upon him, to learn to do just what the rabbi did. As Bell points out, when this student came to a rabbi and said, “I want to follow you,” the rabbi wanted to know a few things. Can this student do what I do? Can his kid spread my yoke? Does this teenager have what it takes to be like me? To find out, the rabbi would grill the prospect until the best of the best had been separated from the rest and qualified as the rabbi’s chosen disciple.

 

C. So what, you ask, happened to those who were separated out along the way, to those who didn’t make the cut? Simply, they were told to go home, love God, and learn the family business. Why were Peter, James, and John fisherman? Because they hadn’t made the cut. They weren’t good enough to be a rabbi’s disciple. They hadn’t passed the tests along the way and so they’d gone home to enter into the family business – fishing. So why did they just drop their nets one day and walk away from this business? Because they had met a rabbi who did not look at their test scores, and who did not ask for a resume of their accomplishments, but who still believed that they could learn to be like him.

 

Illustration: This is counter to our way of thinking, both then and now. Today, for instance, there are a great many people, and you may be one of them, who are looking for a job, who are trying to convince one employer or another to hire them. In this process, one of the things you are instructed to do is put a resume together in which you list your accomplishments, your past successes. Active verbs are good, I recall being told once upon a time. So, you might include statements like, “Increased sales by 25 %,” or “Enabled my students to achieve higher test scores,” or “Coached my team to three straight league championships.” We list these things because to a prospective employer, past performance is the best indicator of future success.

 

But oddly, at least from a worldly perspective, Jesus is not looking for a resume of success, for a list of accomplishments. He didn’t look at what these men had done and he doesn’t look at what we have done. Instead he looks at what he knows he can enable us to become. As Bell puts it, “Jesus took some boys who didn’t make the cut and changed the course of human history.”

 

D. What’s most remarkable is that, unlike the tradition from which they came, they didn’t go looking for this rabbi; he came looking for them. They didn’t apply to follow him; he invited them: “Come, follow me.”  This is the beginning of the Christian life. As a writer named Gordon Smith puts it, “Before we can seek God, God has already sought us. Christian spirituality is always a spirituality of response.” (The Voice of Jesus, p. 18).  

 

III. A Humble Response

A. Now, Jesus doesn’t ask most of us to leave our families or jobs in order to follow him, but he still invites us to join him in working for God’s kingdom purposes, no matter what we do from 9-5, and to learn to be like him. What enables us to respond to this invitation? At the heart of our “spirituality of response” is humility. Our text points to a humility of both mind and spirit.

 

1. A humility of mind in seen when Peter, who still thinks he knows best, bows before the authority of Jesus’ word and says, “But because you say so.” There are many times when we think we know better, when we believe we’ve got things figured out. There are also times when the culture around us calls the word of God into question. I think of Peter, on a different occasion, when many were starting to question who Jesus was and were actually abandoning him. Jesus said, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” And Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:66-68). One who follows Jesus needs to humbly trust that he knows what he’s talking about.

 

2. A humility of spirit is seen when Peter expresses an awareness of his sin. He fell on his knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man!” It’s not that he had done anything morally repugnant at this moment. It’s that he had begun to see himself in the light of God’s holiness and glory, here represented by Jesus. Someone once said that humility is to “see oneself in truth.” The truth is that we fall far short of the glory of God. But the truth also is that when we acknowledge this, when we realize that God is God and we are wee, that this does not disqualify for service in God’s kingdom, in enables us to serve well because it means that we’ve come to know who we are in light of who God is.

 

“Come, follow me.” This is our invitation too. May we rejoice, knowing that Jesus has great significance in store for us, and may we have humility of mind and spirit in order respond.