Telling a Fisherman How to Fish Luke 5:1-11 Peter was a fisherman. And very likely a good one. He probably learned his skills from his father, John. So we can suppose that he had fished most of his life. As an adult, he worked side by side with his brother, Andrew, and two other colleagues James and John, the sons of a man named Zebedee. Just as an aside, their mother was named Salome, who tradition says was the sister of Mary. If that was so, then Jesus was their first cousin. Back to that fact in a bit. The life of a fisherman, a commercial fisherman, was not easy. It was back-breaking work, often frustrating as well. Some days the fish were out there; other days there were none to be found. And as the Sea of Galilee, where Peter fished, often had violent storms that rose up unexpectedly, a lot of fishermen lost their catches, their boats, sometimes even their lives. Peter was not the kind of fisherman who put a worm on his hook and sat placidly waiting for a fish to bite! But we can be safe in saying that when it came to fishing, he knew what he was doing; he needed no advice or suggestions from anyone. Which brings us to the story Luke tells us. Peter, as well as Andrew, James, and John, had been fishing all night. And they had caught no fish at all; it had been one of those nights when all the fish were elsewhere. go out. So they brought their two boats up to the shore, waiting for another, more opportune, time to And then along came this itinerant preacher. If James and John really were His cousins, well, they knew He had been trained in a carpentry shop, so they also knew that He knew very little, if anything at all, about fishing. Certainly, He didn t know as much as Peter and the other three did. Well, there were crowds following Him, and in order to address them all, He got into Peter s boat and asked him to pull away from the shore just a bit a nautical pulpit from which to teach the people. And after He was finished teaching, and the crowds had begun to disperse, He told Peter to go out into deeper water and let down his nets. You can only wonder just what Peter was thinking. Who was this guy to tell him how to fish? Who was this carpenter, who had probably never let down a fishing net in His life, to tell him what to do? Unless He had spent a lot of time on the sea, why did He think He could tell a fisherman how to fish?
Only, well, Peter did as Jesus said. Peter the disciple who, later on, would question Jesus, would deny Jesus, would develop cold feet and find a big yellow streak down his back, did just as this carpenter told him to. And when he did, the nets were filled with such a huge catch of fish that Peter and Andrew needed James and John to join them from their boat and help them. There were so many fish that the nets began to break and the two boats almost sank under the weight of them all. So, what had happened? Did Jesus perform some sort of miracle and create this huge catch of fish, where there had been none before? I suppose He could have. Or was there something else going on? Something He wanted to teach Peter as well as Andrew, James, and John before they all left their boats and joined Jesus in His mission to fish for men? Was He teaching them something about vision? These fishermen knew a lot about how to find fish. They knew where to look. They knew every current, every underwater ledge, every inch of the Sea of Galilee. If there were fish out there, they knew where to find them. So, how had they missed them? Had their eyesight suddenly failed them? When we vacationed in Maine, we always enjoyed going to Acadia National Park. It is in a beautiful setting in what they call Down East Maine. When there, we would take the road that led to the top of Cadillac Mountain the highest point on the Atlantic Coast the summit of the mountain is where the sunrise is visible before any other place in the United States. From the summit, you can see the vast expanse of the park, the Atlantic Ocean around the island the park is on, as well as the town of Bar Harbor below. But one day when we were there, the summit was covered with clouds. There were so many clouds you could hardly see the paths which crisscrossed the summit. The ocean, even Bar Harbor, were totally obscured by them. It was an odd sensation to be sure. To know that all these things were there, but not be able to see them. Perhaps that was the lesson Jesus was teaching Peter and the others. Don t let the clouds obscure your ability to see what was right before you. Don t let your spiritual clouds keep you from seeing what is right in your face. And of course, what was right in their faces that day was their Messiah. They didn t know that yet the clouds were still there. But only as they focused on what was beyond the clouds, they began to see who this carpenter really was. And perhaps this is a lesson He was teaching us, too. How often do we allow the clouds to obscure our vision of what God is doing or intends to do in our lives? How often do we allow the clouds to keep us from seeing the glory and grace God has for
us? How often do we allow the clouds to stop us from setting out, once more, to find what we were sure wasn t there? If Peter and the others had not let a carpenter teach a fisherman how to fish, just imagine what wouldn t have happened? And what if Peter, after he told Jesus that they had been fishing all night and found nothing, had simply refused to try again? What if he asked Jesus why He thought He knew more about fishing than they did, and where did He come off acting like some expert? What if he had just headed his boat back to shore? After all, they had been out there fishing all night and were exhausted. What if they hadn t tried one more time? A Farewell to Arms was the first best-selling novel that Ernest Hemingway wrote. It tells a semiautobiographical tale of an American ambulance driver serving in Italy during the First World War. It cemented his reputation as a great writer. right. And I remember reading that he rewrote the last sentence dozens of times until he got it just What if he had given up? What if he had stayed with his initial last sentence and let it go at that? I m sure that the novel would have still sold millions of copies if he had kept the last sentence as he originally wrote it. But Hemingway wanted to try one more time several one more times to get it just right. What if Peter and the others had chosen not to try one more time? us? And how often do we give up in our Christian walk when there is still one more time waiting for How often do we decide to stay where we are, forgoing the risk of one more time, and just accept the time we just tried? How often do we choose to be satisfied with what is when what will be just might be the moment of complete victory? What will we miss if we just sit and wait until what we deem a more opportune time to follow where God is leading arrives? If Peter and the others had passed on trying one more time, if they had not let a carpenter teach a fisherman how to fish, what wouldn t have happened? One more important fact in this story. It was morning. That s why Peter and the others had brought their boats back to the shore and were cleaning their nets. Night was the time for fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Fishermen did not go out in the daylight. Even if there were fish out there, Peter and the others knew that they could never NEVER catch any in the daylight. Why would this carpenter tell these fishermen how to fish, when the fishermen knew quite well that catching fish in the daylight was, in a word, impossible?
The great movie producer, Samuel Goldwyn (whose birth name. ironically, was actually Samuel Goldfish), was given a book by one of his associates to read, who thought it would make a good movie. Goldwyn seemed to take forever to read it, and when he was done, he had no clue as to how to film it. I m not sure if it was this was the book that inspired his famous phrase: I can describe this movie to you in two words im possible. But it might have been. So he passed on the book; another studio filmed it, and it did OK in the theaters. The book? The Wizard of Oz. Im possible? Well. What if Peter and the others had summed up Jesus instructions with those two words? And how often do we sum up God s instructions, Jesus directions, the Spirit s guidance with those same two words? How often do we read not the words of L. Frank Baum, but the words of God and decide that to accomplish them would be im possible? How often do we tell ourselves that to be the kind of servant God asks us to be would require too much time, too much effort, too much energy, too much whatever it is, that we would find it im possible to fulfill His task? (And I m not just talking about when the Nominating Committee comes calling!) And what have we passed up on because we just knew that it would have been im possible? deal. What the fishermen thought was impossible was not only possible to the carpenter, but a done So I suppose you could say that a carpenter could tell a fisherman how to fish. And Peter, Andrew, James, and John all left their boats on the shore, dropped their nets by the way, and took off with Jesus. For they were still going to fish, but for souls, for men and women who were willing to see what they had not seen before, to try more than one more time, to attempt the im possible. And what if they had not? What if they had decided that no carpenter had anything to teach a fisherman about fishing? What if they had not? And what if we just stay on the shore? What if we tell ourselves that a carpenter couldn t possibly have anything new to teach a teacher, a lawyer, an accountant, a clerk, a nurse, or even a minister? I ve known a lot of people who sit on the shore, wondering what might be out there on the sea, but hesitating to go look for it. Failing to discover what might be beyond the shore, past the waves, even over the rainbow. Ask yourselves: Where have I placed my boats?
Worship November 13, 2016 Call: In Hymnal Assurance: In Hymnal, Children s Message: Box Prayer: Lord above give us the vision to see beyond the self-imposed limits we put in the eyes of our souls. Help us to see what you know is there for us, even when we doubt that it us. Lord above, give us the willingness to try one more time, even many more times, so that we can find the great opportunities you hold out to us. And Lord above, give us the boldness to attempt the impossible, and the faith to believe that you can change the impossible into the possible. Lord above, walk before us to show us your way; walk beside us to teach us your will, walk behind us to keep us on task; and walk above us to protect and provide for us. Election; needs, etc. LORD S PRAYER