The Fisher of Men

Sermon Transcript

A.I.’s pretty cool, and I guess YouTube has figured out that I think so, so recently it suggested to me a video of an A.I.-generated tour of Philadelphia in the 1700s. I couldn’t resist, but I was surprised when it began with the skyline of Philadelphia. We think of the skyline of Philadelphia, we think of the Comcast towers, the Liberty Plazas, maybe the FMC building, but do you know what the skyline was in the 1700s? Church steeples. Some of those church building still stand today, though many of them are more like museums than churches, some have been demolished, and others have been turned into apartment buildings. People who study such things tell us that 7% of Philadelphians are in a church gathering on Sundays, and the narrative of Christian decline in the West is well documented by various other statistics. I assume this is not news to any of you, but it’s easy to let it, and your own experiences, discourage you into thinking that Jesus’ mission of salvation is somehow hindered, and maybe we should just give ourselves to other things.

 

As we come to chapter 5 of the Gospel of Luke today, though, do you know how many disciples of Jesus there were? Zero. We’ve come up through chapter 4 now, in which Jesus began his public ministry of preaching the gospel of the kingdom and performing signs like casting out demons and healing diseases as visible attestations to the gospel he was proclaiming. People are certainly interested, news of him is spreading, and at the beginning of our passage, crowds are pressing in on him to hear his preaching. But it’s only by the end of our passage that we read of the first three people who leave everything to follow him. So how did the disciples of Jesus get from zero, to three, to the roughly hundred of us in the room today, alongside countless more who are gathered with him now in heaven, and gathered in other churches throughout our city and world today? And what reason do we have to be confident that more disciples of Jesus will be made in the years to come, even in a place like Philadelphia, when the stats appear in at least some ways to be trending in the other direction? Jesus shows us in this passage, and Jesus tells us that we can have such confidence because Jesus will save people through his people. To see that, I’m going to do something a little different if you’re used to sermons here: First I’m just going to walk through the story in four parts: His power, his peoples’ response, the mission he gives his people, and then once again his peoples’ response. Then, once we’ve walked through the story, I’ll conclude with four points of application.

 

His power

 

This story begins with people pressing in on Jesus to hear the word of God. This is still the beginning of Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ ministry, and already we can see that when people want to hear the word of God, they press in on Jesus. Luke also tells us that Jesus was by the lake of Gennesaret, which is another name for the Sea of Galilee, around which Jesus engaged in so much of this early ministry. The Sea of Galilee is about the size of Washington, D.C., located in the modern nation state of Israel, about 30 miles east of the Mediterranean sea. With the crowd pressing in on him, things started to get uncomfortable for Jesus, and he saw two boats by the lake. These were fishing boats, but Luke tells us that the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. So Jesus gets into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asks him to put out a little from the land.

 

Quick note on his name: Throughout this passage Simon is called Simon, but he has another name that we more commonly know him by, and which he is more commonly called in other parts of scripture, and that’s Peter, the author of the New Testament books 1 and 2 Peter, the Peter who preaches the gospel at Pentecost—that Peter is Simon in this story.

 

It’s not clear at this point how familiar Simon Peter was with Jesus or what their relationship was, but do you notice how Jesus is already coming in like he owns the joint? He sees a boat, and he just gets in—no permission asked. Far from asking the owner permission, Jesus then turns to the owner and asks the owner to drive him out a bit from the land. Were a normal person to act like this, we’d call them arrogant, but it makes perfect sense for Jesus to do so, because he is the true owner both of Simon’s boat and of Simon. Scripture tells us all things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:3). So Jesus pushes out from land and keeps teaching people from the boat now that he has some space, and when he finished teaching, he gives Simon a command: Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

 

Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” Remember that Simon is the professional fisherman, and when Jesus tells him to put out to the deep and let down the nets, in Simon’s professional opinion, that’s not likely to catch fish. In fact, they’d already worked hard all night he says, and caught nothing. By what his eyes saw, by his own wisdom, letting the nets down then and there wasn’t going to accomplish anything, but listen to what he says: “But at your word I will let down the nets.” Instead of being directed by his sight or his wisdom, he was directed by Jesus’ word. Peter did call him “Master” in verse 5, after all, and if someone else is your master, what do you do? You do what he says. This is the heart of Jesus’ disciples, and haven’t you been in these situations too, brothers and sisters? It may not make much sense to me, it’s not what I would have chosen, I can’t see how it will go well for me, but I am not my own. Jesus is my master, and so if he says it, I will do it.

 

And sure enough, when Simon did this, what happened? We read in verse 6 that they enclosed such a large number of fish that their nets were breaking. They had to then signal to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and the boats were so full of fish that they began to sink. The professional fisherman had toiled all night and taken nothing, but when they put their nets down at the time and place Jesus told them, they took in such a large catch of fish that it began to sink their boats. Thus we see that Jesus not only exercises an authority that would have been arrogant for any mere human, but he possesses a power beyond any mere human, the power to bring in a massive catch of fish that all the toils of professional fishermen failed to bring in.

 

Certainly that’s what Simon saw. So let’s look next at his peoples’ response.

 

His peoples’ response

 

In verse 8 we read that when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Why was that his response? Why not, “Wow; thank you so much. That was amazing! How’d you do that?! Do you want to hang out and cook these fish? Can you come back tomorrow and help us fish again?” Why, “Depart from me, for I am sinful man, O Lord”?

 

That was his response because Peter realized he wasn’t in the presence of a really talented fisherman; he was in the presence of the Lord himself! Did you catch that change in title? When Peter addressed Jesus in verse 5 he called him “Master” and we already saw how he related to Jesus as though Jesus had authority, but “Master” is not the typical title for God—it’s more like a title for a teacher or an administrative official. But once he sees this miraculous catch of fish, now he’s not just calling Jesus Master—he calls him Lord. He knows only one with the power of the Lord himself could have told them to put out their boat that time, in that place, let the nets down, and bring in that draught of fish. And once he realizes he’s in the presence of the Lord, he’s not presumptuous; he’s humble. He knows the Lord is not only powerful; he’s holy. And Peter? Peter knows he is not holy. So he says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

 

Back in Luke 2 when the angels appeared celebrating the birth of Jesus, they pronounced glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom God is pleased, and so one of the big questions Luke answers throughout his Gospel is, “Who are the people with whom God is pleased?” and if you wanted to give a one-word summary of Luke’s answer to that question, it’d be hard to do better than the world “humble.” Who are the people with whom God is pleased? The humble. What characterizes Jesus’ people? Humility, and it’s humility that we see in Peter here. He confesses, “I am a sinful man.” You know what it doesn’t really take any humility to admit? “I am an imperfect man.” Imagine asking your co-workers, your neighbors, you family, anyone really, “So do you think you are a perfect person?” Can you imagine even one of them saying yes? Anyone can admit they aren’t perfect, but what Peter says about himself here goes far beyond that. He doesn’t say, “I am an imperfect man”; he says, “I am a sinful man.” He doesn’t say other people are sinful, he doesn’t say the world is a broken place, he says about himself: “I am a sinful man.”

 

The Bible’s verdict on all humans from our conception is not merely that we are imperfect; it is that we are sinful. In other words, we are not conceived as basically good people who sometimes make mistakes. We are conceived as basically sinful people who sometimes, by God’s common grace, do something good. We are conceived as people whose hearts are inclined away from God and toward sin. How often do we hear the half apology that goes like, “I’m deeply sorry for my actions; that’s not who I really am”? But the Bible says that when humans sin, it’s because that is who we really are. So there are two kinds of people in the world, and it’s not good people and bad people. Instead, there are sinful people who know they are sinful, and there are sinful people who are still trying to convince themselves, God, and others that they are not sinful. Jesus’ people, the people with whom God is pleased, are the former: Sinful people who know they are sinful, and sinful people who recognize they are sinful also recognize that they are not worthy to come into the presence of the Lord. I mean, think about who Jesus is as the true Lord, very God of very God: He is the one of utmost, absolute purity. All he is is fully devoted to all that is good, because he is the supreme good that exists eternally. There’s not a sinful thought, an impure motive, or a wayward desire for anything other than what is truly good. How could any of us stand in the presence of such perfection and not feel that we don’t belong there? So Peter says, “Depart from me.”

 

But Jesus responds in verse 10: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” Let’s think about the first phrase first: “Do not be afraid.” Peter has just said, “Depart from me, for I am sinful man, O Lord” and the next words he hears from Jesus are, “Do not be afraid,” and Jesus does not depart. How could Jesus tell him not to be afraid? I mean, it’s not like he adds, “Do not be afraid, for I am not as holy as you think,” nor does he add, “Do not be afraid, for you are not as sinful as you think.” No, Jesus really is the holy Lord, and Peter really is a sinful man, and yet Jesus can still say, “Do not be afraid” because he is also the gracious Lord, and he came into the world to save sinners like Peter. On the cross all of Peter’s sins, and all the sins of all Jesus’ people, were transferred out of their account, and deposited into Jesus’, such that when Jesus died, the debt Jesus’ people owed was paid in full. Though Peter was a sinful man, Jesus could tell him not to be afraid of punishment for his sins here, because Jesus had a plan to take that punishment upon himself on the cross.

 

But Jesus’ plan in doing so was not merely so that Peter could be forgiven; it was also so that Peter might be changed from a fisher of fish, to a fisher of men. So let’s look next at the mission he gives his people.

 

The mission he gives his people

 

Continuing in verse 10 Jesus says, “From now on you will be catching men.” The analogy is obviously to catching fish, and the word here used for “catching men” could be translated more like, “From now on you will be taking men alive.” It’s the word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament when Joshua and the Israelites “take Rahab alive” to rescue her from the conquest they are about to bring on her native city of Jericho (Joshua 6:25), and the connotation here is similar—rescuing people from captivity, and yes the word “men” there refers to both men and women. Recall that in the passage just before this one Jesus said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim good news to the poor, and liberty to the captives. Every human comes into the world captive to their own sin and to the evil one himself, the devil. And already Jesus has begun to set people free as in the passage before this one he freed some from demonic possession, and others from disease. But here we see not only that Jesus will save people; we see that Jesus will save people through his people. He says to Simon: You, though a sinful man yourself, from now on will be catching men.

 

In Luke chapter 9 it will be Simon, James, and John, along with nine others, who he sends out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal (Luke 9:2). In Acts 1:8 it will be that same basic group to whom he promises to give his Holy Spirit, so that they might be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. In Acts 2 it’s not only them, but all who receive his word, who then receive his Spirit, and who through the rest of the book go about fishing for men by preaching his word. So when Jesus says, “From now on you will be catching men” he’s saying from now on you will go about preaching the gospel of the kingdom, just like Jesus already started doing, and through that preaching, they will set the captives free from their sins and deliver them to Jesus as their Lord and savior (cf. Acts 26:18).

 

So now we can see what the miraculous draught of fish was really all about. It wasn’t merely to display Jesus’ ability to catch a lot of fish, nor was it merely so that Simon, James, and John could prosper as fisherman. It’s certainly not to suggest that if you just trust Jesus, he will prosper your business or grow your finances so much that not even your bank account will be able to hold all the money! That teaching is satanic. Jesus provided them more fish than their boats could hold that day, and then he told them they weren’t going to be catching fish anymore from that day forward. He had something better planned for them: Catching men. His power to provide the fish through the nets of Peter was a sign pointing to his power to save people through the preaching of sinful men like Peter, James, and John. Notice that this statement, “From now on you will be catching men” is a promise, not a command. Not “go catch men,” not “from now on you will be fishing for men,” but from now on you will really be catching men.

 

Because if Jesus is powerful enough to catch fish, might he not also be powerful enough to catch men? Jesus can promise that Simon and his companions will catch men because Jesus is going to exercise his divine power to save men. Jesus knows that before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, his Father chose some men to be saved, and no purpose of his can be thwarted. Jesus knows that at the end of his life, he is going to shed his blood on the cross for the particular sins of those particular people, and not a drop of his blood will be wasted. And Jesus knows that once he rises from the dead and ascends into heaven, he is going to send his Holy Spirit, to grant repentance to all those his Father chose, all those for whom he shed his blood, a repentance that leads to their salvation (Acts 11:18, 2 Tim 2:25). Jesus can say that his disciples will be catching men because Jesus himself, through their ministry, is going to catch them, just as here, Jesus himself, through their letting down their nets, brought in the large catch of fish. Jesus will save people through his people, because Jesus is mighty to save.

 

That’s the mission Jesus gives his people, and finally in the story let’s look now at his peoples’ response.

 

His peoples’ response

 

Where Peter’s initial response was to say to Jesus, “Depart from me,” now that he’s been told by Jesus not to fear and called into this greater mission of catching men, we read in verse 11 that when Peter, James, and John brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Jesus. Here’s another way we know this story isn’t about Jesus providing material prosperity: They just got what had to be the biggest catch of their lives, but they never ate the fish, they never sold the fish, they didn’t take a selfie with the fish and post it to Instagram. Instead, they left them all behind—the two boats full of fresh fish, the boats themselves, the nets, in James and John’s case, they even left their father Zebedee, mentioned in verse 10, behind, so that they could stay with Jesus, and follow him wherever he went, to catch men.

 

They simply couldn’t stay behind with their boats, their fish, and their dad, and follow Jesus. Jesus is a real human, with a real body, that like all human bodies, was confined to a certain space, probably five or six feet tall, about 20 inches wide, 10 inches deep, and in his time on earth, when he moved, if you wanted to stay with him, if you wanted to follow him, you had to move too. Jesus already made clear in the passage just before this one that he wasn’t going to be staying in one place: “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). And when you rightly encounter a person as amazing as Jesus, you do whatever it takes to stay with him. You go wherever he leads.

 

Would they ever fish again? Sure, there are times after this when they are travelling with Jesus when they still need food and they fish for it. Did James and John ever see their father Zebedee again after this? We can’t say for sure, but there are some hints that they did. So it’s not as though in following Jesus they were banned from fishing or seeing their family, but what we do see happening in verse 11 is a matter of allegiance, or lordship. They can fish and see family if it works out as they are following Christ, but when faced with the choice of sticking with the family and the fish or following Jesus, they left everything and followed Jesus. And Jesus requires nothing less of any who would follow him. Later in Luke 14 listen to some of these things he says: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27, 33). Peter, James, and John weren’t “super Christians” who left everything to follow Jesus; they were just Christians, and Jesus’ call for any who would be Christians is that they must renounce all that they have, or they are not Christians.

 

But Peter, James, and John left everything and followed him. When Jesus’ people see the power of Jesus and their own sinfulness, but then experience the grace of Jesus not only forgiving them but sending them on his mission, they leave everything and follow him. So let’s close then with four points of application.

 

Trust Jesus for fruit

 

First, trust Jesus for fruit. When you think about your own personal evangelism, or even this church’s ministry, do you ever feel like Peter in verse 5? “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” Adoniram Judson was one of the first missionaries sent from America. He departed in 1812 for Burma, the nation we now know as Myanmar. Estimates are that 4 or 5 million people who are descended from the people groups in Burma in 1812 now identify as Christians. When Judson went, there were essentially zero. And after six full years of laboring there, having left everything to move across the globe with his wife and a few other missionaries, do you know how many men they’d caught in Burma, how many converts they had? Zero. How might history today be different if they had given up then?

 

If Jesus is the ultimate fisher of men, if he’s the one who brings the catch, and our role is just to let down our nets, then Jesus is also sovereign over when, and how much, of a catch he brings. If you get fixated and functionally measure your success on the size of the catch, you are going to be tempted to do all kinds of weird things to make the catch happen. Jesus didn’t tell Peter to figure out how to catch the fish. He just told him to let down his nets. So also Jesus doesn’t tell us to figure out how to save people; he just tells us to preach the gospel, and to pray that Jesus will do the saving that only he can do. We put down the net of the gospel, but it’s Jesus who brings the fish.

 

And Jesus does say he will bring the fish! He doesn’t tell us when or how many he will bring, and he doesn’t make that promise to us as specific individuals. Just as Peter had James and John, so we fish alongside our brothers and sisters in this particular church, and we as a church work with other churches to get the gospel out to as many people as we can. If they happen to get saved through some other person or church, more glory to Jesus! The important thing is that he catches them, not whose net brought them in.

 

So why not let your nets down? Perhaps the catch is small because you are only letting your nets down in one spot over and over again. By all means, keep praying for and looking for opportunities to share the gospel with your unbelieving family for whom you’ve been praying for decades; there’s no reason to give that up. But maybe also meet that neighbor you’ve never met or that co-worker who sits near you at work, and share the gospel with them. The one who sows sparingly reaps sparingly, and the one who fishes sparingly catches sparingly. But if you’re fishing bountifully and just not catching, be patient. Keep saying to Jesus, “Even though I have fished all night and caught nothing, at your word I will let down the nets.” Let the stories of other catches encourage you, keeping letting your nets down, and trust Jesus with whatever fruit he chooses to bring in his timing. You may wait until the innumerable heavenly assembly before you see the fruit, but be assured: None of your labor in the Lord will be in vain.

 

Humble yourself before Jesus

 

Next, humble yourself before Jesus. Admit that you are not just an imperfect man or woman, but a sinful man or woman. We celebrated a baptism a couple weeks ago, and one of the questions we ask baptismal candidates, a question I’m happy to say I got from the Presbyterians, is, “Do you confess yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure, and without hope except in his sovereign mercy?” You aren’t saying you’re as bad as you possibly could be; God’s grace restrains our wickedness. But you are saying that whatever good is in you is only there by God’s grace, that of yourself, all that is in you by nature is bent away from God and toward sin.

 

And if you really are a sinful man or woman, it does mean that you justly deserve his displeasure, and are without hope except in God’s sovereign mercy. An imperfect person can improve him or herself, but a sinful man or woman cannot transform him or herself. A sinful man or woman needs a savior, and while that’s scary to admit, the good news this passage shows us is that we have just such a savior, who has both the power and the willingness to free those who are captive to sin. If he came into the world to save sinners, you don’t have to despair if it turns out you are one. If you’re here today and you have not left everything to follow him, could it because you are still struggling to admit the extent of your sinfulness? Again, I’m sure you don’t consider yourself perfect, but do you confess yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure, and without hope except in his sovereign mercy? Until you can give an unqualified “yes” to that, you’ve not yet become a Christian.

 

And to you who are following Jesus today, be careful never to lose sight of your inherent sinfulness. Yes, by God’s grace you have now been born again, and you cannot go on sinning as you used to. But that is by God’s grace, and God has not yet finished the good work that he began in you, nor will he until the day of Christ Jesus. As the great pastor John Newton once said, every day there are fresh mercies on God’s part, and fresh ingratitude on ours. The sin that remains in us is no less heinous than the sin in others; if anything, because it remains in the face of such unspeakable mercy as we’ve received, it is the more heinous. Apart from Christ, as we stand today, we would still need to say to God, “Depart from me.” This is one of the reasons when we gather on Sundays we always take time to confess our sins together. It’s only as we continue to humble ourselves before the Lord, as we remain aware of our sinfulness, alongside of his grace, that we have the strength to persevere in our mission. As we think of that mission, the next application I want to commend to you is to pray for the preaching of Jesus’ word.

 

Pray for the preaching of Jesus’ word

 

All God’s people are part of Jesus’ mission to catch men, and all God’s people go about speaking God’s word (Acts 11:19). And yet, there is also a special calling of some to give themselves to the preaching of the gospel vocationally, such that they even get their living from it (1 Cor 9:14). Peter, James, and John received that kind of calling here. They left their vocation as fishermen to follow Jesus. When a man receives that calling to preach to a particular church, we call him a pastor or elder. When someone receives that calling to proclaim the gospel across cultural and geographic lines, we call them missionaries, like Adoniram and Ann Judson who I mentioned earlier. Not every one of you will be called in that way, but if we can see here that Jesus saves people through his people, and that he not only uses his people generally, but sets apart some for unique devotion to the proclamation of the gospel, all of us should pray that he would set more apart, and should pray for those who he’s already set apart.

 

I’m sure this will be shocking to you, but as someone who you all have affirmed to be so called, I can tell you that the work of catching men is not unanimously encouraging. I can honestly say that it is an absolute joy, and I can honestly say that it’s hard, and all preachers of the word have days and seasons in which we just feel like quitting. So pray for me, pray for Herb at Greater Exodus, pray for Jonny at Tenth Presbyterian, pray for Jeff at Christ Church South Philly, pray for Siby at Seven Mile Road, pray for Matt at Citylight Manayunk, pray for Wayne at Chinese Christian Church, pray for Wouter at Risen Christ Fellowship, pray for Harshit in South Asia, and we could go on for a while. And pray for Jesus to call more. Pray that we’d have more preachers of God’s Word in this church than this church needs so we can send preachers to other churches and other nations to catch men there. Pray that the Lord would sustain us, and pray he’d bring the catch.

 

And, finally, leave everything and follow Jesus.

 

Leave everything and follow Jesus

 

Now I’ve already alluded to the fact that not all of you will receive a special calling that requires you to leave your job, your family, or where you live. Ordinarily, in fact, the Lord has us remain in the condition in which we were called (1 Cor 7:17). So what does it mean for you to leave everything and follow Jesus? It means you don’t try to bargain with him. Yes you will fall short in your service of him; sometimes even sincere followers mess up, and the sin that remains in us sometimes gets the upper hand. But leaving everything to follow him means you take his side against your sin, instead of trying to coddle and keep some of your sin. It means your desires get subordinated to his.

 

The image of following is helpful in this regard. Imagine you decided to follow someone out of the service today; a bit weird, I don’t recommend it if they aren’t inviting that, but bear with me. Let’s say they walk west toward Broad St, and when they get to Broad St, they head north. But you were really hoping to go south to get some food in center city. Now the rubber meets the road: Will you follow the person, or will you do what you want? If you head toward center city, we see now that you weren’t actually following the person after all; you just happened to be on the same road as them for a bit. So also, if you really follow Jesus, you can’t hold on to any of your desires. That doesn’t mean you’ll never get to do stuff you want, but it means what you want now takes a back seat to following him.

 

So if you are here and you are not a Christian, you must admit that you are a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure, and without hope except in his sovereign mercy, but don’t stop there. Trust Christ for salvation from your sins, leave everything, and follow him. As he told Peter not to be afraid, though he was a sinful man, you do not need to fear coming to him, though you too are a sinful man or woman. He is a merciful savior, whose death has made a full payment for sin, and whoever comes to him, he will never cast out. As another pastor, J.C. Ryle wrote on this passage, “Out of Christ God is a consuming fire. In Christ he is a reconciled Father. Without Christ the strictest moralist [should] tremble, as he looks forward to his end. Through Christ the chief of sinners may approach God with confidence, and feel perfect peace.”

 

And to you who are in Christ, when your desires conflict with what Jesus has clearly commanded in his word, follow Jesus, not your desires, no matter what you have to give up. Unless your job requires you to sin, you don’t have to leave your job, but consider how to use your job and the income you earn from it in the mission of catching men. You should never leave your family, but don’t let the American ideal of a successful family crowd out the more important work of bringing up your children in the discipline and instruction of Christ, and sending them out from your home ready to catch men. Kids, this mission of Jesus is the one mission worth leaving everything to follow. Perhaps the Lord would send you as a missionary one day; we’d be delighted to support that.

 

Jesus is truly God, the holy and gracious Lord with the infinite power to not only catch fish, but to save people from captivity to their sins, and he takes personal responsibility to do just that. Jesus will save people through his people. So trust him for fruit, humble yourself before him, pray for the preaching of his word, and leave everything to follow him.