Sunday February 7, 2010 Luke 5:1-11

Welcome, our text for Sunday continues on in the Gospel of Luke. In these verses He calls his disciples. Note in all other instances the rabbi was picked by his students to teach them. Jesus changed this and he picked his students-disciples so no one could claim they had chosen him and therefore be superior to the others.

V1 Jesus is by the Sea of Galilee teaching and the crowd is pressing in on him. He isn’t waiting in the Synagogue for the people to come to him for his teaching but he is bringing it to the people. He is going to the places they gather to show them who his Father is.

V2 There were boats there without fishermen in them. The fishermen were washing their nets. The men fished at night then because the nets were made of dark threads and the fish could see them in the daylight. The men had been out all night fishing and were cleaning their nets so they could go home and get some rest before the next night of fishing.

V3 Jesus stepped into Peter’s boat to distance himself from the crowds pressing in on him so he could continue to teach. He asked Peter to float out a little way so all of the crowd could hear him. Then he sat down to teach. A rabbi always sat to teach so throughout the gospels Jesus will sit down to teach the crowds.

V4 He finished teaching and instead of asking Peter to take him back to shore he asks to go to the deep water of the lake and for Peter to put his nets in the lake that he had just finished cleaning. A carpenter instructs a professional fisherman where to fish. The men didn’t fish in the deep as they felt the fish were in shallower water. The deep was considered a “dead” zone.

V5 Peter, sarcastically, replies we’ve been at this all night and caught nothing. Peter is probably thinking I’m the professional and you obviously aren’t, this will be hopeless. Yet Peter does what Jesus requests.

V6 When Peter put his nets into the water, where he knew there wasn’t any fish, he caught so many fish that he nets were full to the breaking point.

V7 Peter signals his companions to come and help them with the great catch. The men come and both boats are filled to overflowing with the catch of fish, to the point of almost sinking.

V8-9 Then an odd thing happens; Peter fell at Jesus knees and says “go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” His address to Jesus progresses from Master in verse 5 to calling him Lord now. Peter, the professional, after fishing all night with no luck is, at the most unlikely time and place, catches an over abundance of fish because he followed the directions of Jesus; an over flowing blessing. Peter recognizes this miracle as coming from God. The prophet Ezekiel in 47:1-12 had spoken of a time when the Messiah came that water would flow from the Temple into the Dead Sea making it alive again with an abundance of fish. This is what Jesus did but at a different place. With Jesus the Messiah in the boat the water of the Sea of Galilee, the deep which was thought to be dead of fish, was living (see John 7:37-39 where Jesus states he is the living water and John 4:7-15 where Jesus speaks with the Samaritan women at the well and explains to her that he is the living water) and an abundance of fish was caught. Peter recognized this and realized he was in the presence of the Messiah and he fell down and worshiped him.

V10 Jesus replies to Peter and the others with him who had come to help with the abundance of fish “Do not be afraid”. Why would they be afraid? Because they knew they were in the presence of the Messiah, the Son of God. They had been taught that to see God was to die; no one saw the face of God and lived. Not even Moses had been allowed to see the face of God on Mount Sinai. Jesus comforts them and gives them their new commission to catch people just as he had done in catching an abundance of fish.

V 11 When they had put their boats on shore they walked away from them and left to follow Jesus. They walked away from their livelihood to follow a poor rabbi. It was a transformation of everything for them. They didn’t know where their next denarius or meal would come from, just that they needed to follow this man whom they knew as the Messiah.

This was a radical shift for them. It is also a radical shift for us. Not many of us do this. We proclaim that we follow Jesus but we still live in the same house, keep the same friends and work in the same job. Now we can’t all leave everything and still be effective in our lives. We need to work, socialize and live somewhere but what if in our work lives, social lives and homes we drew people to Jesus by the way others saw our example of living? When Jesus called his disciples they left with him maybe we need not to leave but invite Jesus into our homes, work places and social lives so we can introduce him to others.