This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's open our Bibles to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5. The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5. Luke, Chapter 5, we'll be picking up in verse 1, reading through 11. This is the reading of God's word. On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land and he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word, I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me for I am a sinful man, oh Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. This is the reading of God's word. Please have a seat. Let's open in prayer. Father, knowing you, we want nothing more than that. We pray that you would tune our hearts. Tune our hearts to long for your things. Tune our hearts to find their satisfaction only in you. Tune our hearts in rejoicing over hearing you speak. Lord, may this be a time that you speak. And may this be a time that in faith we draw near to you and we come to know you all the better. We thank you for the scriptures you have given us. We thank you for this day in which we get to dive into them and celebrate them. Please bless your people. We need you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I meant to say before the service that we were gonna talk about fishing in the afternoon service just to see if it changed anything, but you know. Tell everyone they missed the fishing sermon. So here we are and Luke is continuing to do the introductory work like we talked about last time. He's introducing us more and more to Jesus. He's showing us the building blocks of Jesus's ministry. Because so far now we have seen Jesus preaching, We've seen Jesus healing. We've seen Jesus defeating evil and just all in all going out there and proclaiming the kingdom of God. That's what we got to talk about last time. He's out there proclaiming the kingdom of God. And now Luke is going to show us a new part of Jesus's ministry, his disciples. Luke now introduces us to those first disciples of Jesus. So when you start into the text, you find Jesus teaching again, verses one through three. Jesus is teaching again, and this is really more by setting than anything else, because Luke goes through it rather quickly. There's this crowd pressing in upon him and they want to hear him. And again, it's actually encouraging to see that he was received in faith as well. There's a crowd, they couldn't get enough, they had to hear him. Whether it was the true believers or the curious, either way, they had to hear him, they're pressing in upon him. And so there they are by the lake, which is also called the Sea of Galilee elsewhere. There they are. And Jesus says, I'm going to need a better place to preach. And you sort of have to appreciate, it looks like he just steps into Simon's boat. Not like, excuse me, could you help me out? He just gets in. He just gets in. He says, hey, can we put out a little bit? I'm teaching here. And Simon obliges, Simon obliges. It's a better spot, better removed, so then Jesus can finish the teaching. And that's really all we tend to hear about what he did in the teaching sense of the passage, because Luke wants to get us to his main point in this story. And his main point is not what Jesus said that day to the crowd. His main point is on what comes next with those disciples, and particularly Peter, Simon Peter, same guy. So verses four through seven, Jesus turns his attention from the crowd he had been teaching to Peter and the fishing that had brought Peter out that day. And you have to appreciate the scene. The carpenter starts giving the fishermen fishing advice. I mean, just all things being equal, you take out the knowledge that we have that this is the son of God, and of course you take his advice on fishing, but the carpenter, comes out and says, you know what? I have a really good idea. You didn't catch any fish, did you? I have a really good idea for how you might fix that. You can imagine the human sort of sense of resistance and pride to that. And you're gonna see that in what Peter says, but you know, what's only going to make this harder to receive is as far as worldly vice goes, that's not good advice. The fishermen had been out there during the time when it was good to catch fish. They're no longer fishing because it's no longer a good time to fish. So when the carpenter comes and seems to sort of be sticking his nose into their business, hey, have you thought about doing some more fishing now? You can just imagine that there would be resistance on their part. And it's at the end of a full night too. It's not particularly good advice and it's not very convenient advice. There they are having spent a whole night. And you know that feeling when everything you just poured your energy into didn't add up to anything. And that's what their night just was. They've been up all night. They're tired. They've got nothing to show for the time that they spent. And now the carpenter is suggesting they go fishing again. Hey, go fishing one more time. And they're thinking, it is quitting time. I'm tired of this day. I've got nothing out of this day. Can we just go home? But that's not how it goes. You see in Peter's reaction, this kind of tension, because on the one hand, clearly he has a high respect for Jesus. On the other hand, he's like, this is bad advice you're giving me and I don't want to do it. It's just going to add up to another hour out in the water for me. That's sort of what you see in that verse. He's not convinced Jesus knows anything or that this is going to yield anything. And that's sort of why he responds the way he does. Master, we toiled all night and we didn't get anything. But you see him kind of give in because of, I take it, the respect that he does have for this man. He's sort of thinking, okay, if he wants me to fish fruitlessly, fine, I'll do it. He says, okay, we'll let down the nets. We will let down the nets. You probably don't know what you're talking about, but I respect you enough to honor the command. Now, there's a moment to be captured here. And the moment is found in understanding Peter's history with Jesus thus far. You see, at this point, Peter had already met Jesus. More than likely, it also already heard Jesus teach before. It was at Peter's house that Jesus miraculously rebuked the illness that his mother-in-law was suffering from, that high fever, and she then got right up. She was miraculously restored. You know, even more than that, if you look at the Gospel of John, it seems like there was even one more encounter before all this, and that's in these early days when Peter's brother Andrew, Simon Peter's brother Andrew, recognizes Jesus. And what's Andrew have to go do? He's gotta go find his brother and he tells him, hey, we found the Messiah. Come meet him. So Simon met him under those contexts. He met the one his brother was assuring him was the Messiah. Moreover, even at that occasion, that was the occasion when Jesus renames Simon. From now on, you will be called Cephas, Aramaic for Peter. He has a history here. He has a lot of experience with this Jesus. And that's exactly why I want to point that out. I want you to see before we go any further that this is no ordinary relationship between strangers. Jesus didn't show up and step on a stranger's boat and expect him to go do all these things. Peter had seen and experienced more than enough to have already started following Jesus. Yet it's Jesus that has to seek Peter out. Jesus seeks Peter out. Even after Peter witnessed unimaginable deeds of power, clearly miracles from God, performed by Jesus, Peter still went back to his normal life. Peter still went back even after that. So this is the moment then. Here Peter is about to witness another miracle. What will he do this time? So you know the story, the miracle comes through. They take in a catch of fish that they cannot even handle it. It's so big. There's so many fish. Fishermen rarely have that kind of problem, but they had too many fish to handle that day, right? And there they are, their nets are breaking, the boats are sinking under the weight. And Jesus, just to sort of add to the list of things, he has authority over, he has authority over demons, he has authority over diseases, he has authority over fish and creation all in general. And now you see Peter has a new reaction. Pick up in verse eight with me. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me for I am a sinful man, oh Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. He sees this, they all see this. He sees this and he's probably thinking, we have never had a catch like this in our lives. We had never heard a fish story about a catch like this in all our lives. And it clicks. Something clicks for Peter right then. He falls down at Jesus' knees. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. In that moment, in that miracle, maybe it's because this one's so close to home, He's not a doctor, so he doesn't know what it takes to cast out a sickness, maybe, but he is a fisherman. He had a very bad night, and in a moment, Jesus reversed that all, right? Maybe it's just struck home. And in that moment, he recognizes at least something of who Jesus is. And he recognizes that he has encountered God. And his reaction then starts making a lot of sense when you run it through the lens of what do people do when they're near God? The most famous one, of course, being Isaiah chapter six. You know, he's in the temple and he sees the grandeur of the Lord and he says, woe is me for I'm a man of unclean lips. There's this like reaction of being undone by being near God. You see, the nearness of God, it's not like a day at the spa. It's nothing like that at all. The nearness of God is the nearness of power, and it is the nearness of holiness, and it is the nearness of purity. The closer you are to the light, the clearer you can see your sins. Peter recognizes the nearness of God, and as a result, he recognizes his sin. And he recognizes that his sin has no place next to a holy God. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. And then he adds this, oh Lord. Peter calls Jesus Lord. There is so much that Peter cannot possibly know this early in his time with Jesus, but this is a wholehearted confession of what he does know. He has glimpsed God in Jesus, and he says, depart from me. I am a sinful man, oh Lord. you see him truly being amazed, being astonished at this demonstration of Jesus's power, and in that, this demonstration of who Jesus is. And so you take the second half of verse 10, and you see then how Jesus responds. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. Do not be afraid. I tell you, how didn't he respond? Was being like, this is the number of times you could have done this before. It's about time, Peter. No. He sees Peter recognizing who he is before Holy God, falling down in fear. And Jesus in mercy says, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. This is the compassion of our God. He comforts him. He comforts him. A sinner has every right to be fearful, by the way, in the presence of God. Every right. This is a totally normal reaction on Simon Peter's part. But Jesus takes away that fear. And he says that from now on, you will be catching men. From now on, meaning from now on, nothing can ever be the same again. From now on, you will be forever a changed man, Simon Peter. From now on, you will be catching men. Daryl Bach points out that the picture of catching men, it's one of gathering and rescuing them from danger. You will be catching men. And Jesus takes Peter's career of fishing and he gives it a new twist. God is setting out to gather and rescue his people. And Peter gets to take part in the catch. He's gonna be a fisherman like he never was before. And it's this moment in verse 11, this is the moment when Peter crosses that line, crosses that threshold, and here we have a true disciple. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything. They left everything and followed him. True to Jesus's word, Peter is never the same after this. He and the others, they bring their boats back and they leave everything, everything behind to follow Jesus. And here you have in Peter, this guy who had all these experiences, and maybe he was kind of half-heartedly edging toward following Jesus, but he wasn't yet there, even though he had every reason to be. Peter says no more to the half-heartedness. Peter is now all in. And truly, the world itself will never be the same thereafter. This is a story primarily about Jesus and Peter. There's other people in there, but primarily it's Jesus and Peter. But there are two, two important truths that we need to take note of that I want you to go home with. First, God is gathering his people. And second, Christ calls his people to follow him. God is gathering his people and Christ calls his people to follow him. First point, God is gathering his people. What you see here is part of an ongoing mission that God is conducting, an ongoing rescue mission that God is conducting. You see it here in the early days. Jesus tells Peter that Peter's great mission is going to be in rescuing the lost. You see it at the end of Jesus's earthly ministry, that great commission, that great commission to the church is a mission to rescue the lost. It is a mission to go make disciples of all the nations, rescue them from their darkness. From beginning to end, you see God's heart for redemption. His mission makes rescuing the lost a top priority. Our God longs, longs to see the rebels restored. Our God longs to see the broken healed. You know, every Christian wishes they had a heart more like God's heart. Well, this is what God's heart looks like. This is what God's heart looks like. If God longs for the lost to be found, then we should long for the lost to be found. If God longs for the forgiveness of the rebels, then we should long for the forgiveness of rebels. If God longs for the broken to be healed, then we should long for the broken to be healed. Our heart should echo the heart of God. So day to day, what that means is, you know, we raise our kids and we long for the salvation of our kids. We prepare for our days. We prepare for our days without longing for the lost to be found. We take God's longing for the lost and we let it transform how we are willing to plan our days. How we are going to go into conversations. Every moment of our life transformed by our God's longing that the lost would be found. See, I want you, I encourage you to search your heart. Search your heart and see if it beats like God's heart. Search your heart for the depth of love that God has shown across all time and very much to you. Search your heart for the yearning that God has shown for the blessing of his people. Search your heart for a purposeful and a real desire for the salvation of real people. It's not just people in general, right? God loves people generically. I love people generically. No, it's more than that. Search your heart for a godly longing for the salvation of your family and for the salvation of your friends, for the salvation of that colleague and that person that you see just, you know, every so often. Search your heart for the longing for the salvation of this community. And of this world, people are locked in darkness. And you, you may be the only one who can speak the good news to them that would set them free. If your heart doesn't beat like God's, then know that you are out of sync with your God. You are out of sync with your God. So pray, pray that he would give you a heart like his, a heart with the yearning and the longing like his. Pray that you would have a heart for the rescue of the people of God, like your God does. Second application, second truth in this passage. Christ calls his people to follow him. Christ calls his people to follow him. What was the fundamental point? What was the fundamental point of the call of these disciples? Was Jesus' big point, I want you guys to stop fishing. Was Jesus anti-fishing? No, no, that's not it. Maybe Jesus just needed some witnesses so they could follow along and report on all that he had done. Was that it? No, it's not enough, is it? Jesus' call was a call for the followers of Christ to deny themselves. to die to themselves and to live at long last completely for their God and completely for this savior. And this is the call for all Christians across all time. You are called to a new life that flows out of the new heart that he has given you. That doesn't mean you're called to stop being a parent, to stop being an employee, to stop being a student. No, you are called to be a transformed parent. You are called to be a transformed employee. You are called to be a transformed student. Ordinary life is not an obstacle to following Christ. Ordinary life is the context in which you follow Christ. Did that hit you? Ordinary life is not your problem. Ordinary life is where God calls you to follow him. In your ordinary life, you are called to forsake who you are and finally go all in for Christ. No more half-heartedness. All in. That is the call of our Lord Jesus Christ. And for so many of us, this is a call to come back. Come back to a life that somewhere along the way we let slip. Right? This isn't something new. but at some point we let it get away from us, didn't we? Is that you? Is that kind of pricking your heart? When I'm talking about following Christ, I'm not saying anything that most of you have never heard before. That's not new. But I might be talking about something that no longer describes who you are. So again, is that you? Does it feel like a long time ago when your time in the Bible felt like it really mattered? Does it seem like a distant, far-off memory when you reflect on what it was like to simply trust God Submit your will to His, and then just watch Him work in your life. Can you still remember when your faith and your walk with God felt like the realest and most important part of your life? I mean, this is so many of us, isn't it? We struggle with the most simple things, with the most basic things. We struggle to simply trust God and follow. And the truth is our lives bear the sorrowful fruit of that struggle. You see, if you looked at our lives, you wouldn't describe it as some thriving, victorious Christian life. Many of us, rather than that, are living these broken and failed pursuits of a Christian life because it turned out it proved to be more than we could handle. Is that you? If it is, if it's you in the slightest, I want to show you something. There's something in particular you should see. Because what we have here in Luke's gospel in chapter 5, this passage just marks this beautiful and inspiring moment of faith in Simon Peter's life. This is the beginning of of Peter the zealous, of Peter the wholly devoted, of Peter who would walk on water and confess the purest kind of faith in Christ. But that wasn't the whole story for Peter. His whole life was not characterized by these beautiful and inspiring moments. The amazing heights of Peter's walk with Christ, it makes the fall all the more heart-wrenching. In the end of the Gospel of John, chapter 21 to be specific, we find a different Peter, actually. We find a despairing Peter. We find that Peter the zealous had failed in the end. In his Lord's worst trials, Peter could not even be counted on to say, yeah, I know that guy. Peter denied his master three times. Didn't even act like he knew him. John 21 picks up in the aftermath of Peter's failed devotion. See, John 20 and 21, this is where Jesus is appearing to the disciples again. He's risen from the grave and he wants them to know And it's actually fairly likely that Peter saw the resurrected Jesus once in chapter 20. At the very least, people he knew had seen the risen Jesus Christ. Yet, here we are, chapter 21, and you find Peter returning to his former career. Fishing. Peter stands up one day with the other disciples and he says, I'm going fishing. As the King James says, I go a fishing. And they'll go right along with him. We got to do something. See, what you have to understand is I'm almost positive this is not some passing act of necessity. You know, they're like, hey, we've got no lunch. Okay, go fishing and get us some lunch. I don't think it was like that. I don't even think it was like a recreational thing. Like, I got to do something right now. This waiting is killing me. I'm going to keep waiting, but go fishing, right? I don't think that is it at all. Peter returning to fishing is much more likely to be an act of doubt and despair. In unbelief, Peter returns to all that he once left to follow his Lord. And even when Peter is wallowing in doubt and unbelief, Jesus seeks him out again. Jesus seeks him out again. John 21 reenacts basically this whole scene that we just talked about from Luke chapter five. There the disciples are on the same lake, probably in the same boats, fishing again. And what do you know? They just had a night without any success. Jesus, now not on the boat, but on the shore, calls out to them in the early morning light so they probably can't see him clearly. He calls out, hey, why don't you try casting the net on the right side of the boat? And again, all things being equal, you're like, I don't think that really helps in this situation. But the disciples are like, okay. They cast the net on the right side and they take in one more time a catch of fish that they couldn't even haul in. The gear starts whirling in the disciples' head. John, you imagine him squinting at the shoreline saying, that's Jesus. Peter recognizes him next, and Peter, doing what Peter does in his excitement, here he is all in once again, and all in in this case means he throws himself into the water, because he wants to swim back to go see Jesus. There Jesus is on the shore. He's made a fire. He's cooked for them breakfast. But he didn't just come for breakfast. After breakfast, I think his true purpose comes out, or maybe one of his higher purposes comes out. He's not just here to eat, he's here to heal his once zealous disciple. This part of the story, it's famous. Peter had denied Jesus three times, and so Jesus calls Peter to affirm his love for Jesus three times. And in so doing, he restores him. And Jesus restores Peter at the very same place where Peter had once given up all to follow Christ. I will bet you I will bet you that Peter had every confidence in our chapter, Luke 5, I bet he had every confidence in his ability to follow Christ faithfully. That sounds like Peter, right? I just, I don't think he was harboring doubts at that point. I think he's like, I'm doing this and I'm doing this all the way. Yet three years later, Peter had run headlong into his sin, and into his unbelief, and into his weakness. And so here we are three years later, and the true catcher of men comes back, and he comes back to restore his wayward disciple. Jesus restores, picks up men's heels, his broken disciple, and he ends the conversation with probably the very same thing he had said three years before. He looks at Jesus and he says, follow me. Follow me. In other words, where you started is the same place where you are called to today. Follow me. The most zealous and devoted of disciples once fell. He abandoned the Lord and still the Lord sought him out and still the Lord restored him. The Lord would not abandon Peter to his despair and his unbelief. The Lord likewise will not leave you behind, burned out and broken down. So, for the half-hearted, for the faint-hearted, for the broken-hearted alike, Jesus calls you to follow Him. Today is the day to be wholeheartedly in. All in, whatever yesterday was is no more. Today you are called to be in. And it's not because you look at yourself and you think this time I'm different, I can do this better. It's not because you look at yourself and you think I've got it in me. It's because you look at your savior and he is the one calling you to follow him and he is the one who will be faithful every day along the journey. The one who gave his life to rescue you now has a new life for you to live. The one who rescued you intends for you to be involved in the rescue of others. Your Savior says to you today, follow me. Let's pray. Our Father, help us. Our God, we are weak. Our Lord, we are sinful men and women. We pray that you would give us the faith we have lacked. We pray you would forgive us for the ways we have fallen back. We pray you would forgive us for not embracing all you have given us, for not living in light of all you have shown us. Lord, be gracious to us and would you use us. Would you spur us along? Would your Holy Spirit never stop hounding our hearts? We want to be those who are all in. We don't want to be what we've been before. We don't want to be the half-hearted. You deserve more than half-heartedness. We don't want to be those who betray you. You deserve those who are loyal. Father, we pray that you would transform us. We pray that you would restore us and pick us up, and we pray that each one of us, by your grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit, would be a wholehearted disciple, following after his Master, after his Lord. We pray this in the name of the true catcher of men, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.