Sermon: Mirroring Jesus’ Call

Have you thought about the stages you have gone through in your discipleship in Christ?

Of course, stage one was when you newly became a disciple of Jesus. You were converted to him, trusted in him, and were like a newborn baby in your faith. People had to hold you, feed you, burp you, and maybe even change your spiritual diaper.

Then maybe you went through a stage of learning and growing in your faith. You learned to feed yourself, you had fewer accidents.

Then maybe you entered a stage of dedicated service to him. You learned how you could serve the body of Christ and the world with your spiritual gifts. And of course, the stages don’t always follow along on a straight course. I know I had many instances in my own experience of letting off the accelerator and needing to be brought back to my true devotion to Christ, and we have all, undoubtedly, experienced times of deep doubt of our faith and temptations to give up entirely.

This is not unlike the very first disciples of Jesus. We know from John 1 that several of the first disciples had been followers of John the Baptist, who, when John pointed out Jesus and announced him as the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, they stopped following John and began following Jesus. Peter and Andrew would be among that number and Philip and Nathaneal.

Mary Magdalen and Matthew and Simon the Zealot no doubt had similar experiences. And by the way, what a wonderful depiction of this the tv series The Chosen is! The first stage in these disciples’ lives meant believing in Jesus, listening to his preaching and teaching, maybe even giving him financial support. But there came a time when Jesus invited them into a new stage, asked them to become full time followers and join him in his itinerate ministry throughout the villages and cities of Israel. They had to quit their day jobs.

This is what we’re looking at in our passage today, Luke 5:1-11. Jesus was staying in Capernaum on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, or as Luke refers to it here, the Lake of Gennesaret, different designations of the same body of water. Peter and Andrew and James and John were living here, business partners in a fishing business, apparently quite successful. Earlier in the day, after a night of fishing, they had been mending and cleaning their nets for use the next night, when Jesus came by and called them to be fishers of men instead, and they left their nets and took up a new stage of following Jesus full time. They stood with Jesus down on the shore and a crowd came to Jesus to hear him speak the word of God.

^5:1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.

Do you see how popular Jesus was? Some announcement had been made that he would be speaking today and bunches of people showed up. If you were a self-centered person this kind of popularity would have lit your fuse. You would be excited to increase your fame and prestige. But not Jesus. It wasn’t about his fame, it was about the message. The fame was a means to get the message to more people. And Jesus’ choice at this moment was not to glory in his popularity but to develop a team that shared his calling to make the word of God known. His choice was to engage a strategy of building disciples who could carry on his ministry. Notice his resourcefulness.

^5:1 …the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. ² He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. ³ 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.

This crowd is all up on Jesus, making it difficult to communicate clearly to everybody, so Jesus creates an artificial amphitheater by getting a little distance from the crowd in the boat and using the natural acoustics of speaking from the water so everyone can hear. And there are Jesus’ newly challenged disciples assisting him in this endeavor. Are you like me, do you often need more than one time to be told what God wants you to do? Aren’t we like Gideon who asked for multiple signs before taking the plunge, before we really get it?

⁴ When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” ⁵ 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.” ⁶ When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. ⁷ 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. ⁸ When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” ⁹ For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, ¹⁰ 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.” ¹¹ So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

What Jesus had begun just perhaps hours earlier, calling some of his disciples to be full-time followers, joining him in fulfilling his calling, he is reinforcing here. He knows it’s not easy for us to grasp his challenges to service. It is essentially a repeat of his call to them to mirror his calling, the calling of fishing for human beings, of seeking to bring other people into the faith. By making the challenge the way he does it this time, he clarifies the nature of this calling of his that we must mirror. And I’m saying “we must mirror,” because it is not just these early disciples who were to mirror Jesus’ calling, it is us as well, it is such for all of Jesus’ disciples. Here is the nature of our call:

I.   It is a call to teach the word of God

That is what Jesus was doing. The crowd came to hear the word of God. The word of God is the tool for fishing. The tool is not our personal philosophy. It is definitely not our political perspective. The Pharisees were guilty of that, preaching their wrong understanding of God’s law, making their converts, Jesus said, twice as much children of hell as themselves (Matthew 23:15). If we are preaching Republicanism or Democratism or Independentism, we are not mirroring Jesus’ calling. If we’re more concerned to make America great again than to make America saved again, we have strayed from the calling. If we are more concerned about getting foreigners out of our country than bringing those foreigners to Christ, we are following some other calling than the calling of Jesus. If we’re only about bringing our nation into conformity with our ethical view, our moral laws, we are no better than the Pharisees. We’re not singing to come to Jesus just as I am without one plea, but to change your life and then come. If we only want to make things like they were in the 1950’s, we have abandoned Jesus’ calling to preach the word of God.

The word of God is the gospel. It Is the gospel message that needs to be proclaimed and lived out, because it is that message alone that can rescue a human being from the danger they are in as unbelievers. They are poised over the precipice of hell, as it stands now, in danger of entering eternity as the enemies of God subject to His just judgment. The call of Jesus that we are meant to mirror is the call to preach the word of God, the gospel.

 

II.  It is a call to depend on the miraculous

When Jesus urges Peter to go out into the deep of the sea or lake and fish, Peter knows, as an experienced fisherman, that you don’t and won’t catch fish in the daytime. You catch them at night when they can’t see the nets and avoid them. But Peter isn’t depending on Jesus to make the catch happen. Jesus performs a miracle to make the catch happen to teach us that our calling to preach the gospel does not make the results up to us. The results, the response of unbelievers to the gospel, is dependent on Jesus and his power. We proclaim the gospel in faithfulness to his calling and leave the results to him. And hey, he wants people to come to faith, so guess what, he is going to make that happen.

I have some wonderful friends who have been ministering to a Muslim people group called the Yao in southern Africa for probably 15 years now. They have not seen much fruit for their labor in terms of converts, but slowly and surely, people are coming closer to Christ. You see, that is God’s decision how people respond, not ours. We aren’t under pressure to make conversions happen. Jesus does that.

I remember being asked by a couple of young men in my young adults ministry years ago to visit their dad and witness to him. He had been diagnosed with untreatable cancer, and he had resisted their attempts at witness for some time. He had objections to the faith. He seemed lost forever. But when I met with him, yes, he did mention an objection he had to the faith, for which I gave him a clear answer, but he buckled quickly and easily to that answer and was ready to believe. God broke through his objections, his determined unbelief, and like the catch Peter and his partners made on the Sea of Galilee, this man came into the net of faith. It wasn’t me, it was God. Our calling to mirror Jesus’ calling is one of depending on the miraculous. No one comes to faith apart from a miracle.

III. It is a call to give up fear

If you are like me, you feel some fear and trepidation at proclaiming the gospel, the word of God, to unbelievers. Peter felt this fear. He saw himself as unworthy of Jesus, a sinner who had no business telling others about Jesus. But Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” Jesus’ miracle working power made this a business of freedom from our sense of inadequacy and insufficiency. He would work through us and bring powerful results. We might need to increase our skill at fishing.  In fact, we’re doing a discipleship intensive next Sunday to increase our skill at evangelizing. But lack of skill is no reason to fear, because our efforts are not dependent on our skill but on the fact that Jesus is with us whenever we fish.

I am awed by and strangely warmed by Jesus’ statement to his disciples on the night he was betrayed.

¹² Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12)

Jesus is expecting us to experience the miraculous in our pursuit of human beings for the gospel. This is the context for his promise that whatever we ask for believing we will receive. When we are pursuing Jesus’ calling God is doing the miraculous. Doing greater things is really doing more things than Jesus did, because he went to the Father, and the church has been working for millennia. We don’t need to fear proclaiming the gospel.

IV.  It is a call to reverse the catching to death

What happens when you capture a fish and take it out of the water? A fish breathes through oxygenated water pulsing through its gills. It can’t breathe outside the water. It suffocates and dies. And a case could be made that unbelieving humans must die, in a sense, when they come to Christ. They die to themselves, they die to the world, they die to their sin, they give up their lives for Christ. But in the process, they are given a new kind of life, eternal life. When we catch men, women and children for Christ, we are reversing the catching to death. Jesus came that we might have life, which suggests that we are dead without him.

Paul tells Timothy, in his second letter to Timothy,

²⁵ Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶ and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:25,26)

There has already been a capture to death of unbelievers, a fishing expedition that has been quite successful, as Satan has captured the will of unbelievers. Unbelievers have been captured and trapped in Satan’s clutches, which is death. Unbelievers desperately need to be led to repentance and a knowledge of the truth. We need to reverse that capture to death as we mirror Jesus’ calling by bringing people, men, women, and children, to the light and to life.

V.   It is a call to submit to Jesus’ leadership

When Jesus tells Peter to shove off into the deep of the Lake, Peter questions the doing of it. There is no point in trying to fish right now. But he says,

“Master… because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

Mirroring Jesus’ calling, making it our calling as well, is acknowledging Jesus as our Master, our Leader, our King, our God. He is telling us to do this. He is telling us to push off into the deep when there seems to be no possibility of success. My friends in southern Africa seem to have no possibility of success, but Jesus has told them to reach out to the Yao. Our ministry to street kids in Ethiopia seems to have no possibility of success, with kids trapped in poverty, abused and helpless, hardened to street life, mistrustful of all adults, and yet God has used us to reach them and many of them have come to Christ. Your neighbor, who seems so hardened to faith, or maybe just so uncaring about God, appears to be an impossible catch, but God has called us to take Jesus to him or her. Jesus is the Master who has called us to be fishers of men.

I remember being outside working in my yard and seeing my neighbor out in his yard working, and I felt this urge to tell him the gospel. I was fearful and began asking God for some kind of empowerment to push me toward my neighbor. Nothing was coming, and I realized that my empowerment was the command of my Savior. The Master had commanded me to fish, so I got up and went over to talk to my neighbor. This call is a call to submit to Jesus’ leadership.

VI.  It is a call to prioritize one’s calling (vocation)

You know, I believe that every one of us has unique giftings and therefore “callings” in life in line with the gifts and abilities God has given us, and so, in fact, we have multiple callings. For example, a woman has a calling to be a godly wife, if married, and a godly mother, if she has children, and a Bible teacher, if that is her gifting, etc. I have a friend who is unmarried and is a writer, and that is his calling. God has equipped him to write. You may sell insurance which means you have a calling to help people protect their future. Some of you are teachers which means you have a calling to guide people into truth.

But if we are understanding Jesus correctly, there is a calling everyone of us has that is a priority over all our other callings. We are called to make disciples of all nations, we are called to fish for and catch human beings for the gospel. We have a great commission given to us by the Savior. This calling doesn’t contradict the other callings. In fact it works in union with them. It is just in priority over all of them.

We call ourselves evangelicals because we believe the church is called to be evangelists. We may all do that task of fishing for people differently, in accord with our unique gifts and personalities, but we are all called to reach the world. We are encouraged to do it with teamwork, not just as lone individuals, but we may also be asked at times to do it as lone individuals.

It’s true, we could get so caught up in our other callings that we neglect to mirror this calling of Jesus as our calling. But if, for example, we are mothers, called to nurture our children and help them grow aright, our calling as evangelists should also move us to seek to bring them to Jesus, to throw the net out there for them, to pray for them to come to Christ, and when they do, to help them grow in Christ. We may put them in the way of other fishers to help us in this task of love and compassion. But we are their evangelists. We may and should carry on our work occupations with excellence and divine enablement, but we must also be engaged in fishing for lost souls, snatching them from the Devil’s deceitful grip.

VII. It is a call to sacrifice whatever is necessary for the sake of lost and dying men, women and children

The modern mission movement is a testimony to the sacrifice needed to reach the world. Countless men and women have trained and gone to live in other cultures to bring people the word of God. Many have lost their lives, or their health, or their wealth in this endeavor, but they’ve done it because they were obeying the Master’s call to mirror his call.

Many believers have given of their wealth to fund these missionaries and to fund men and women to pastor flocks of believers for the sake of the call. Many believers have risked their own reputations, their time, their energy, to tell others about Jesus.

You recall the four men who carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus, tearing up the roof above Jesus’ head to get their friend to him for healing and forgiveness. Charles Spurgeon, writing in his inimitable style, said,

Faith is full of inventions. The house was full, a crowd blocked up the door, but faith found a way of getting at the Lord and placing the paralyzed man before him. If we cannot get sinners where Jesus is by ordinary methods, we must use extraordinary ones. It seems, according to Luke 5:19, that tiling had to be removed, which would make dust and cause a measure of danger to those below. But where the case is very urgent, we must not mind running some risks and shocking some proprieties. Jesus was there to heal, and therefore fall what might, faith ventured all so that her poor paralyzed charge might have his sins forgiven. O that we had more daring faith among us! (Charles Spurgeon)

The case is very urgent, dear ones. Do you believe the Scriptures?

¹⁰ As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; ¹¹ there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. ¹² All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12)

²⁰ Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:20-24)

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

¹⁴ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? ¹⁵ And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:14,15)

Those are our beautiful feet Jesus wants to use. Those are our feet he wants to carry us down to the shore, sail out and cast the nets. It is our feet he wants us to use to carry the gospel, the word of God, to everyone who needs it. Jesus isn’t jealous of his call. He wants it to be our call, too. His call is our call.