GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 5:4-7
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water, and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered him, “Master, we worked hard all through the night and caught nothing. But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets were about to tear apart. 7 They signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
I wonder whether anyone watching thought of the words of Isaiah, who had prophesied that the shore of the Sea of Galilee would be especially singled out by Jesus Christ as the place to perform so many of his miracles. “In the future,” Isaiah wrote, “he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan…” (Isaiah 9:1).
Simon Peter’s tired objection to any more fishing was answered by his awakening faith in Jesus. Certainly, the fisherman had more than a suspicion that there was something very special about Jesus and his teaching. The healing of his wife’s mother and of so many others in Capernaum had opened Simon’s heart. Now Jesus began to fill the nets.
This wasn’t just a good catch of fish! The precious nets were worked to straining—they were in danger of tearing. The second boat was brought out, and the catch was hauled in, but now both boats were in danger of sinking into the deep water out in the approach to the Capernaum harbor.
The question we need to ask is, what does this miracle mean for us? It means more than a lot of fish for Peter and Andrew and the others (James and John, their partners).
Critics of the Bible dismiss the miracles of Scripture and more. The more fantastic the miracles—the Red Sea, Jonah’s whale, the sun standing still and the sun marching back ten steps, and everything connected with Samson—the sooner they are denied. The resurrection miracles, of course, are dismissed as impossible. Skeptics are amazed that no Christians bother to search for the body of Jesus in a tomb. But in the end, every single miracle in the Bible is either explained away or dismissed.
But every single Christian has a miracle to grasp and hold tight that cannot be dismissed. Every single one of us knows that he or she has been brought to faith by the gospel. This impossible rescue has created trust in Jesus that can’t be explained by any rational means. A sensible person might believe or suspect that there is an angry God that needs to be appeased somehow, or they might delude themselves into thinking that there is a God who “just wants me to be happy.” But a God who would become human to die for our sins? The more we think about it, the more it doesn’t make any sense. And yet, there it is: the central teaching of Christianity. God saved me. The God who dumped so many fish into Peter’s boat that Peter nearly lost the boat is the God who dumps so many blessings into our lives that we don’t have containers enough to hold it all. That’s the same lesson God taught to prophet’s widow when Elisha told her to start pouring oil into jars (2 Kings 4: 3-7), and to Joseph when he was ordered to keep track of all the grain they could manage to store up in Egypt (Genesis 41:49), and again, when Jesus told the disciples to feed five thousand men and their families with a boy’s lunch.
When God wants to bless us, he says “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). When we share the gospel, he will bless our efforts. Our work isn’t for nothing. Sometimes, there’s so much going on that you think the boat’s gonna sink. Don’t stop trusting. God knows what he’s doing, miracle by miracle, with every net you throw.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota