The Gospel of Luke 5:1-11 Calling the first disciples
Luke 5:1-11 · Vern Peterman · Jan 25, 2015
Gospel of Luke, No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492645411140

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're going to be proceeding into this passage that Brad read for us here. First, I want to backtrack just a little bit. Last week, excuse me, last week, looking at this passage here, I had said that Jesus told the demon to shut up, shut your trap, that kind of thing. And Nancy was wondering, well, is that really, did he talk that intensely? So let's go back to that.

Here's Luke 4.35, but Jesus rebuked him, that is, the demon, saying, be quiet and come out of him. And when the demon had thrown him down in the midst of the people, he came out of him without doing any harm. Be quiet is actually a rather mild translation. What we have there, and you have this on a slide in your handout, the New American Standard says be quiet to the demon. The Greek word literally means be muzzled. Be muzzled, expressed as an imperative. You must be muzzled.

We can take as a point of comparison, here's Titus 1.10-12, and it starts off like this, For there are many rebellious men, and he's talking to Titus who is being sent or has been sent to Crete, many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, so Jews even, who must be silenced. That word silence means to cover their mouths. So yes, the language is rather intense, muzzled and then covering the mouths. So just to get that across, that's what it literally says there in that passage.

All right, now back to Luke chapter 5. We're starting in chapter 5 now, and we'll proceed through the chapter as we go along. Now, it happened that while the crowd was pressing around him and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. And he saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets.

Alright, so let's take a look there. Here you have this map, which is also on your handout, page one. This is probably taking place in or around Capernaum. That's Peter's hometown. It was also the place where Jesus moved to from Nazareth. So this was taking place probably in or around Capernaum, along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Now, we have here just a kind of a satellite view.

And it's called the Sea of Galilee. And it's also known as the Lake of Tiberias. Tiberias was the Roman built and established city named after the Tiberius Caesar. And so that was a fairly recent name given by the Romans. But sometimes you'll hear that.

And then there's the Lake of Gennesaret, Kinnereth, or Chinnereth. you'll find actually the ancient names there in Joshua 19.35.

And it's just variations in dialect and language between those different names, but they're all from the same root there as mentioned in Joshua 19.35. Here's an artist's reconstruction. We included this in your handout.

We pointed out, however, this shows these nice kind of cheery looking yellow buildings when in fact the archeological excavation says that it is dark basalt. Basically everything except for the more recently built synagogue. in Capernaum is this dark basalt. So you can imagine living in Capernaum, everything's this dark basalt, the windows are high and small. And so inside the house, guess what it's like? Dark, right? Now, what we have here is, we've titled it, The Word of God Gave Them the Word of God. But the first word is, of course, capitalized, because that's Christ.

Jesus taught in the synagogues, but one of the things that actually happened more commonly is he would teach out in the open, and people would gather wherever he was. He would teach out in the open and it was described, excuse me, described that there were crowds of Jews gathered. Not too much indication that lots of Gentiles gathered. Of course, one thing is sought out the Jews.

Jesus in these earliest times of his ministry was teaching the gospel of the kingdom. We pointed out last week that there are two gospels that are taught in the Bible. One is the gospel of the kingdom, which is looking forward to what is yet future to us even now, the coming millennial kingdom. And then the other gospel is the gospel of substitution, that Christ died in our place, was buried and rose again. So a lot of what was taught in this earlier time was the gospel of the kingdom. We don't find a lot of mention of the gospel of substitution in the early part of the Gospels. Later, and often only with his disciples, he would tell about the gospel of substitution, and we'll see that as we go in the gospel of Luke.

The disciples did not begin to understand that until after Christ's resurrection from the dead. They were clueless about what this was about. They were not expecting the resurrection. Matter of fact, they weren't expecting the crucifixion, even though Christ multiple times, as we'll see, multiple times, told them about it in advance. They were clueless about it. They didn't get it. Now, it says here the crowd was pressing. When we get to Luke chapter 8, we're going to read again about the crowds pressing around Jesus. Early in Jesus' ministry, this was fairly common. Later on, not so much, as we'll discover.

But crowds pressing against him was commonplace. And you think about it, why would crowds press against him? You know, a lot of people, they want to hear better. A lot of times, unless you had a situation like we're going to see here, where he could get a part or get up on a rock or something, people would just tend to press up against him. Some of the people not only eager to hear what he had to say, but looking for, for example, a healing. And some, and we'll read about it, some would even find that they just touch him and they were healed, right? So there were kind of multiple reasons why this crowd-pressing phenomenon took place. Luke brings up that pressing, however, only when it's relevant to the events he's describing. He doesn't describe that pressing all the time.

In this case, Jesus is being pressed into the water. Can you imagine? Here he is up against the water's edge, and everybody's pressing up, and he's being pressed into the water. So that's when he comes up with the boat solution. Now we have Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen. And by the way, Andrew was not mentioned in this context. In parallel accounts, he is. Include him and some of the names and numbers here, but Peter and Andrew who were brothers and James and John who were brothers Okay, we're four of the disciples and next chapter We'll have a listing of the disciples and we'll go through the various ones But initially Peter and his brother Andrew James and and his brother John were called to be disciples they were fishermen they worked along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee and here also called the Lake of Gennesaret. Next chapter, he'll call it the Sea of Galilee. So the various names will play in. So here they are working along the North Shore. Think about it, and we're going to look into the life of a Galilean fisherman. Because not only will it help us understand what's going on here, but farther on as we go through the Gospel of Luke, we're going to see that it gives us insight into why they did what they did.

Now, because all the nets were made of more of a rope-like material, all the nets were visible in the daylight, the fishermen would cast their nets at night. You didn't do net fishing in the day. It was considered worthless. Only in the last century, and even less than the last century, have we got netting material that you can use during the daytime, okay? Because the netting material is made of a clear material that you get in the water and the fish can't see it. In those days, and really up until only recent decades, in those days, the nets were all made of a material that you could see, the fish could see them, and would avoid them, right?

And so they had to fish at night. And then when they got back to shore, then they would wash them and mend them. What's interesting is the Bible talks in washing in some places and mending in other places. The truth is they did both at once. If you're washing them, you're also mending them. So they would do that early in the morning so they'd have a chance to dry out during the day. and they'd have them up on the shore, drying the nets, washing them, making sure they're all clean and prepared, ready to go the next day, or excuse me, the next night, right? Okay. Washing was to remove the mud and organic material, even catching fish, you'd get fins and scales and things like that, and you had to get that off because if that started to rot on the netting material, you'd start to lose your net.

Mending was to repair tears, mostly from rocks. Remember that picture we had of the city of Capernaum, or the town of Capernaum, with all those rocks? Well, all those rocks were also in the water, right? And so when you'd go fishing, you would get either muddy material, and you'd have to wash that off, or you'd tear it up on the rocks. So there was always tears to fix.

And then there was everything else to do. And that's one thing. Typically what would happen, especially here's Capernaum, which was a small fishing village, basically about 1500 people. Once you caught the fish, now there's a bunch of other things that have to be done with it in order to get it marketed. Most of the time what would happen is either you would have either family, extended family, or some business partners that you'd hand off the rest of the processing because just being a fisherman and taking care of the nets and the boats and all that, it was everything you could do to get that done.

And they'd sleep during the day. So, once the fish were caught and brought to land, the fish had to be sorted out, since the Jews could only eat fish with scales and fins. Okay? Only scales and fins. Tilapia was a common one. It's okay for a Jew to eat. Tilapia is nicknamed St. Peter's fish. I'm not so sure that that isn't over-spiritualizing it, but tilapia was okay for a Jew to eat because it had the fins and had the scales. You're good. Okay?

Now, anything else was sold to the Gentiles. An example would be eels. If you caught an eel in your net, only good to give that to the Gentiles. Sell it to some Roman soldier or tax collector or something. So then, the fish were sold in one of three forms. Since they didn't have refrigeration, fresh fish was only sold locally.

Otherwise, what you do, you salted and dried them, either hung or you put them in layers with salt in between. Sprinkle a lot of salt on them. And the salted and dried ones were used, for example, when Jesus fed the 5,000, they'd break up the fish, and it was a salted and dried fish.

Now, then the last one, and some of us get grossed out about it, but fermented fish paste was basically it. That, by the way, was the staple of the Roman army. Fermented fish paste and they had different grades of it and the officers got the better ground and better graded stuff.

So those three forms and you'd have to work to do all that processing and marketing for all that and typically they'd hand it off to other family members because being a fisherman it was all you could do to just get that done. You had those three forms and no matter what you did, somebody else had to handle it because the fisherman's just exhausted by the time he's done fishing all night and getting his nets all ready. So the fisherman would sleep during the day, which if you had a dark house in Capernaum with high windows that were small, that would be just perfect, right? Okay.

So here's Luke 5.3.

And he, that is Jesus, got into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little way from the land, so he could keep from being pressed into the water by the people. He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat, so he could be out a little bit, get away and not be pressed into the water, and people could hear him better and see him better as well, because he's out just a little bit. So, moving into Simon's boat, By the way, this is Simon, who is Peter, who is Cephas, right? "...would provide a better location to address the crowd without his being pressed into the water, and in order for him to be heard and seen better by everyone."

Moving into the boat also provide another opportunity, and that's really what Luke's focus is. Luke doesn't even say one thing about what Jesus taught, although the record we have is that he taught largely about the gospel of the kingdom. in his first teachings, but he focuses on the move into the boat as an opportunity to deal with these men who would be the first disciples called. So Simon, that is Peter or Cephas, Andrew, James, and John, who would become his disciples and later his apostles.

So while the content of the teaching isn't stated at all, all the indications are that Jesus was teaching more on the gospel of the kingdom for Israel, rather the gospel of substitution. And one of the things that Jesus did is he went deliberately to the Jews. When he sent out the disciples two by two, this is recorded in Matthew chapter 10, he said, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When Jesus was up in an area that was the northern part of what Israel should have claimed, he said, when the Canaanite woman approached him for some kind of assistance, he said, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So he's speaking deliberately to Jews, giving them the gospel of the kingdom. To talk about the gospel of the kingdom, that refers to Christ's second coming. Christ's second coming and looking ahead as His reign as the King of Israel and the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over the Gentile nations.

It refers to the campaign of Armageddon. We have as a supplemental handout here, this on one side of a piece of paper. People talk about the Battle of Armageddon. The reality is it's a campaign of Armageddon initiated in that valley that is begun by what is now the port of Haifa in northern Israel. That is where the port of Haifa is where the armies of the Antichrist will begin to congregate. And so there are eight stages in that campaign of Armageddon.

We won't go into the detail but you can pick up on it in the supplemental handout if you like. The kingdom The kingdom is, as laid out in the Old Testament, Genesis 15. So early on in the life of Abraham, God says, here is what I'm promising you. And it starts from the Mediterranean coast and goes all the way to the Euphrates River. The kingdom will ultimately encompass what is now all or a part of eight different nations.

And again, that's also in the supplemental handout if you want to pick one of those up. So, the reason that Dr. Luke does not even mention what Jesus is teaching is because he wants to focus in this account on Jesus' preparation of these four fishermen, he only names three, but four fishermen to become his disciples. That's the focus. So he doesn't even talk about the content. Later on he will. Later on he'll talk about the content of what Jesus says. One thing to understand is that while Jesus was called a rabbi by his disciples, and he was considered a rabbi even by Nicodemus, for example, addresses him as a rabbi. So in one respect, they knew exactly what that meant.

The Jews had numerous traditions for rabbis and their disciples, which they took as laws, additions to the law of Moses. One of the traditions, for example, was a disciple was supposed to hang on every word, and by the way, memorize every word of the rabbi. So no matter how many disciples you had, the rabbi was to pass along words and thoughts and wisdom, and the disciple would hang on every word and memorize every single word. But in order to keep a rabbi from abusing the position that he had, they had rules to limit what a rabbi could do. And one of the rules, for example, was you could not, as a rabbi, ask your disciples to wash your feet. So what did Jesus do? There was no rule to prevent the rabbi from washing his disciples' feet.

So that's what he did, right? So anyway, there are lots of traditions. They knew when they were signing up to be a disciple what that meant. There was enough definition that they realized what this meant. Jesus would follow some of these traditions, but he would also do and say things that no other rabbi did and said.

So was he a rabbi? Yes. Did he do like all the rabbis did? And say like all the rabbis said? Uh-uh. Very different things. He said, for example, I and the Father are one. No rabbi would dare ever say such a thing. Right? But Jesus did. We'll look into more of that as we go through the Gospel of Luke.

Now, in Luke 5, 4, when he, Jesus, had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Now, this was an amazing thing for Peter and the rest to hear. And notice, catch is singular. Catch is singular. So, if you really want to catch a lot of fish, listen to a carpenter.

So the disciples, who had a great deal of experience fishing, had fished all night because the fish couldn't see the net in the dark, and by this time they were tired and discouraged, and just as poor as they had been the night before. because they didn't catch anything. They didn't have one fresh fish for all their night fishing. That's really discouraging. Now Jesus had waited until the sun had come up. The fish would certainly be able to see the nets. These four fishermen had just washed and just mended all the nets. So, because they have to put the work in, even if they don't catch any fish.

So Luke 5.5, Simon answered and said, Master, okay, so he's respectful here. We know you're a carpenter, but you got to understand. We worked hard all night, caught nothing, but I'll do as you say and let down the nets. This is likely to be very fruitless, right? But because you've told me, I'll do it. So the disciples no doubt had used all their training and experience, hunches, I wonder if it's better over here, along with hard work, moving the boat into various places to try to find something, casting and drawing the nets repeatedly all night. Nothing. Nothing. They caught no fish at all. None. Jesus' words might have sounded like a carpenter who was naive about fishing. You just don't fish, you know, when the sun's up like this.

And by the way, we just got through, you know, washing the nets and mending them and all that, and we put them... Oh boy. You can understand Simon's reluctance. He doesn't say, I'm going to go let the nets down. He says, we worked all night and we, you know, this is probably not going to be productive at all, but we'll do it because you said. He doesn't protest too much. And while the translations have it, as we just read, it says, it's actually, upon the word of you, I will let down the nets. That's the literal translation there. Upon the word of you. I'll let down the nets.

So on the advice of a carpenter, this fisherman is going to let down the nets and have his fishing partners do the same. We're going to get out in the boats. Uh-oh. The poor fisherman likely is still tired and discouraged. Prepare to follow through on the carpenter's fishing advice. Oh boy, this is good.

So, keep in mind that the nets are all on the shore right now, and they just got through washing them and mending them, and now they're going to put them back in the boat and go out there and put them at risk of getting into a position of needing to be mended and needing to be washed again. by taking the nets back to the boats they risk having to wash and mend them all over again since we know how this story ends they will indeed have to mend the nets at least so they go out and get the nets back in the boat push the boats out for a ways and put the nets down just like Jesus asked They were not expecting anything because they'd worked all night and now the chances, since it was light, of catching anything were even slimmer. So both boats are prepared to put it down. The impression we get, however, it looks like Peter's net got the fish first. So here's Luke 5, 6, and 7.

When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break. Oh, we're going to have to mend these things, right? Their nets began to break, so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats so that they began to sink. Isn't this great? This is wonderful! We're sinking both boats, and we've ripped up the nets! This is so great!

The picture we get is that Peter's in one boat with an unnamed partner, possibly Andrew. There were at least a couple other fishing partners in the other boat nearby and likely ready to cast, but it's the one that Peter had that got all the fish. The very first cast, you put the nets out, you're not expecting anything.

All of a sudden you're filling up with such a great quantity of fish that the nets were never designed to handle the load of fish that they got, and neither were the boats, even two of them. So Simon needed help just handling the fish that were in his net. So they used baskets to load the fish into the boats. They would have baskets that would drain the water, but you could still move the fish. So they'd load the fish into the boats, and they filled up both boats, and the nets were all ripped up, and the boats were beginning to sink.

I'm not sure exactly how they solved that problem. Luke doesn't say. It may have been that they reluctantly threw some of the fish back into the water. It may have been they called back to the shore for help with some of them. But one way or another, they solved the problem. That's not Luke's focus. So this was so good, it was really bad.

So imagine their excitement at realizing that they had so many fish, they'd have to use baskets to move the fish into both boats, and just holding the fish nets was tearing them. They weren't trying to pull it up into the boat, there just wasn't a chance of that. Situation gets so good that it gets even worse. Having worked vigorously to distribute the massive catch of fish between the boats, both boats were sinking. Way, way too many fish.

So, think about this. The disciples worked hard all night before and they'd caught nothing. What do you think their perspective was? Oh, this is bad. This is bad. But catching nothing after all that hard work just provided God's opportunity. Do we ever have things like that happen? When we look at the situation, we look at the situation and we say, this is really bad.

That may very well be God's opportunity in the bad situation that you find yourself in. May very well be God's opportunity. We need to keep these things in mind. God might be doing something very intentionally with all of our disappointments and struggles and even apparent successes.

One of the key things here is what's really going on isn't always what's going on. Was it God's intent for these four fishermen to just have a bad night of working hard for nothing, followed by a morning in which they rip their nets and nearly sink the boats with fish? If we just look at things on the surface, we can end up with those emotional extremes. there by the picture of the roller coaster, right? And just stop there. Oh man, I've been through quite a day. Or a night. Or a day and a night, right?

The emotional experience in our reaction isn't what God is looking for. The emotional experience in our reaction isn't what God is looking for. Does it mean we don't go through the emotions? No, we may very well. Ultimately, God's aimed somewhere else.

So these fishermen were given an experience that certainly put them through emotional extremes. You can imagine being so tired and discouraged, and then to have this carpenter come and tell you to put the nets down in the middle of the day. I mean, we're exhausted, you know, and we got nothing for all our exhaustion. And now this carpenter comes along and tells us in the middle of the day, when we know it's useless, to put the nets down.

It was to help them along the way to being disciples and apostles. That's what it was for. Did they have emotional roller coaster? Of course. But it was God's intent to use that experience to help them along the way to being disciples and a few years later to be apostles.

The same is true for us. In Romans 8, 28, and 29, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, the ones He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. Are all things good? No. We're right to say, you know, this is not good and that's not good. And we can say those kind of things. We don't have to go and pretend that everything's good. But that's different from working all things together for good. We may indeed go through some very difficult things. But where is it headed? that we're conformed to the image of His Son in all the things we go through. That's where it's headed.

So here's Luke 5.8. So, when Simon Peter saw that he fell down at Jesus' feet, saying, Stop blessing us with so many fish at once. Is that what he said? Or, how about this? If you could do this every day from here on out, we could be prepared for it and make lots of money. Or how about this one? Jumping Jehoshaphat! Now I'm going to have to mend all those nets all over again.

Now, this is the real Luke 5.8.

Simon Peter saw that. He fell down at Jesus' feet saying, Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Now, Simon was recognizing, OK, here's Jesus. He's a rabbi. He's no ordinary rabbi. He recognized that Jesus' teaching was different, certainly. He was probably grateful that Jesus had just healed his mother-in-law from a fever. But this event had told him something. Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. In fact, he saw Jesus as sinless deity. Lord, you are obviously sinless deity. And I can't measure up with that. I'm not worthy to be around you. Go away. He saw himself as unworthy of the Lord's holy presence with him.

So here's Luke 5, 9, and 10. For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, Brothers and James was the older and John was the younger Who were partners with Simon and Jesus said to Simon? Do not fear from now on you will be catching men So dr. Luke is telling us here the fishermen were to use a modern expression blown away Blown away by what they'd experienced They didn't just look at it and say, boy, we've got a lot of fish. Isn't it great? Jesus, thanks. But they were blown away. Whoa. We've been fishing for years. We grew up fishing. Our father fished, right? We've never seen anything like this. Never. Whatever exhaustion, or discouragement they might have felt, that certainly was not what they were feeling now. To add to their amazement, all these fish had been caught in broad daylight when it was useless to fish any other time.

Now, so they have a big change of occupations coming right up, right? Jesus could have just let them be amazed at what happened and left it at that. What if he had just said, ah, isn't that cool? See ya. Or he could have said to Simon, you're right. I will go. Bye bye. But no, he said, do not fear.

From now on, you'll be catching men. From now on, you'll be catching men. So though they didn't know what all that meant, Did Jesus warn them, now look, if you're going to be my disciple, this is what you're going to go through. Oh, and by the way, I'm going to have things for you to do decades from now.

And I'm going to start up a body called the church that you've never heard of. He didn't tell them all that. They didn't know what they were signing up for. But they wouldn't be catching fish anymore. Isn't it amazing to end their fishing career in great part here, to end their fishing career with this great success and then you're done. And the great success is only because of Jesus, not because of their experience, not because of what they knew or how they were equipped or anything else.

So here's Luke 5.11, when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

So let's think about this. Do they just drop everything? Here's a boat just full of fish and you just walk away from it? Probably not. With partnerships and families and boats and nets and all, they likely move promptly to put things in order to follow Christ as His disciples. Here's my boat. You guys can go ahead and use it. Here's the nets. They're a little ripped up, but you'll get over it.

So they made arrangements like that. However, it was well understood among the Jews, even though Jesus was an unconventional rabbi, was well understood what it meant to be a disciple. So when he said, you know, you'll be fishing men from here on out, you'll be a disciple. They knew that that was a huge commitment. The disciples of Jesus had not a clue what was up ahead, because Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. His coming had been planned from eternity past. Can you imagine this? What was taking place here with Peter and Andrew and James and John? This had been planned from eternity past. The following Jesus was something done promptly.

It would take about three years to even begin to understand what he had called them to from the very beginning. At the right time, Christ died. At the right time, Christ died. It was the right time, even though none of the disciples at that time understood what was going on when he was crucified buried, and they weren't expecting the resurrection. Though some of them would witness Christ's death, burial, and resurrection about three years later, it would be more than 20 years before they understood that they too would be identified with Him in those things.

Think of this. Here's the disciples. When Christ was betrayed, so far as we can tell, they all ran except John. They all just ran in terror and fear. Later on, they would understand that they were identified with him in these things that they witnessed.

It would take 20 years before they would begin to understand that. What? I was there spiritually? Yeah. And it would be explained to them by a man who was at first an enemy. Can you imagine that? They had no idea what they were signing up for. No idea. The disciples spent several decades having aha moments. Whoa! Is that what was happening? I had no idea. I had no idea. They were constantly learning new things.

It was even about 30 years later that Paul would write, you've been identified with him in his ascension and his seating in the heavenlies. Imagine that. What a huge turnaround that was for them to discover. Wow. You mean when he ascended and we had a bunch of questions that were unanswered, I was identified in the ascension that I watched? Oh, wow. This is amazing stuff.

But it's similar with us. We first put our faith in the gospel, that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. That's the content of the gospel. You believe that, you're saved. We believe just those things and we're saved eternally, forever. But from there, God does so much from that moment on, we spend the rest of our lives catching up to what He's already done spiritually in our hearts. We're spending the rest of our life just catching up to what He's already accomplished the moment we believed.

That's what spiritual growth is. And at the outset, just like the disciples here, we had no idea. We had no idea what God had in mind and what God accomplished. Amazing, isn't it? Let's pray. Lord, we thank You as we look at this We are, just like the disciples, spending the rest of our lives catching up to what you've already planned, what you've already accomplished, and already put in place. And that catching up to what you've already done, that's our spiritual growth. And we thank you that just like with the disciples who went through an emotional roller coaster, you put us through things for a purpose, and it's an eternal purpose. And what happens in time is intended to have an impact for eternity. We thank you for that. And you're telling us about it and we know it because you have revealed it and because you love us and you care for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.