"Fishers of Men"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now, let's get to the Word of God. We're going to talk about fishing today and the reason we're going to talk about fishing is because fishing was a major industry in Israel during the time of Jesus. The whole Sea of Galilee where He spent much of His ministry was ringed with little fishing villages. And this morning, we're going to see Jesus Christ interact with three professional fishermen and change their lives forever. Their names were Peter, James, and John. And if their names sound vaguely familiar, it's because these same three men became the leading three disciples of Jesus, the leading three apostles who established the early church, but they all began as fishermen in the little town of Capernaum where Jesus meets them here in Luke chapter 5.

And hopefully, not only will we see Him touch their lives this morning, but hopefully, He'll touch our lives as well. Let's look, Luke 5, verse 1. One day, Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret.

You say, what is that? Well, it's just another name for the Sea of Galilee. And the people were crowding around Him and listening to the Word of God. Jesus had gone down to the edge of the water early in the morning as the boats had come in from fishing all night, and people were gathered down by the sea buying fish for their daily food. And as Jesus went down there, He began to teach the Word of God and people began to listen, and a crowd began to swarm around Him so much so that it really became not a very good teaching situation.

So, verse 2. He saw that the waters edged two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. And He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon Peter. And He asked Peter to put out a little bit from the shore, and then He sat down and He taught the people from the boat. To create a little better teaching situation, Jesus gets in Peter's boat, says, Peter, why don't we move out 6, 8, 10 feet into the water here?

That'll put a little bit of room between me and the crowd. And I'll stand up in the boat and I'll teach from the water, which is what He did. Now, when He was finished teaching, He says to Peter, verse 4, Peter, I want us to go out into deeper water and I want us to let down our nets for a catch. The Sea of Galilee is 13 miles long, 8 miles wide.

It's very deep once you get past the shallows. And so He said, Peter, let's move out from the shallows here and we're going to let down your nets and we're going to catch some fish. Everybody who fished the Sea of Galilee would have known that this is not how you catch fish there, the way Jesus was suggesting.

Peter knew this. In the Sea of Galilee, you catch fish at night, not during the day. If you go to Israel today and get up around 6 o'clock in the morning, you'll see little fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee coming in after being out all night fishing.

But during the day, you won't see anybody fishing. They don't fish it a day, they fish at night. Moreover, the way you catch fish in the Sea of Galilee is you don't go out in the deep water and try to catch them.

You stay in the shallows and wait till the schools come into the shallows and then the nets were designed with little weights on them where you throw the net out and it would quickly sink to the shallow bottom and catch the fish under it and then you would pull it in. So you didn't fish during the day and you didn't fish in the deep water. Every fisherman knew that. Peter knew that. In fact, Peter's nets weren't even designed to be used in deep water. The point is, what Jesus asked Peter to do went against all of Peter's training and experience as a fisherman.

Look at verse 5. Peter protested. He said, Master, we've worked hard all night and we haven't caught anything. He said, Jesus, look, we've been out there all night working this stupid lake and we worked it at the right time during the night and we worked it in the right way in the shallow water and we didn't catch diddly squat. And now you're telling me to go out and fish it the wrong way at the wrong time and I'm going to catch something?

Nevertheless, look what he says, nevertheless, because you say so, we'll go out here and let down the nets. I might stop here and say to you for a minute, many times in our lives, Jesus Christ asks us to do things that look humanly illogical. And the reason for that is in the Bible. In the book of Isaiah, God said, My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts.

High as the heavens are above the earth, so much higher are my ways than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. God often has a plan that our human logic simply cannot figure out and many times he will ask us to do things that seem humanly illogical. That's what he was asking Peter to do. If we're smart, we will do exactly what Peter did. We will say, Lord, this looks humanly illogical and preposterous, but, because you said to do it, I'll do it.

Now watch. Verse 6. When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that the nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat, which was still in the shore, to come on out and help them and they came and they filled both boats so full of fish that they began to sink. Now what kind of fish was this that they caught? Well, they caught a fish called St. Peter's fish. That's for real.

You go to Israel today and ask for St. Peter's fish around the Sea of Galilee and they will serve you the furry fish that Peter caught. So that's not a very precise name. You're right.

If you really want to know the technical name, it's Tilapia gallilea. That's true. But we call them St. Peter's fish. And you can still get them.

If you go, there's a little kibbutzim all around the Sea of Galilee. They'd catch them and serve them. They fry them whole. They serve them with the heads on and the eyeball looking at you. But if you don't look into the eye of the fish, it's really very good.

I mean, it's hard to eat something when you're staring in his eye, but if you don't look in the eye, he's very good. And this is what Peter caught. And he caught so many of them that he was about to have the boat sink. And I say, well, how large was this boat? I mean, how many fish did they catch, you know? Well, we dug up a boat in 1986 in the mud flats around the Sea of Galilee.

There was a horrible drought that year. And the sea receded back farther than it has in recent memory. And they unearthed a boat that was stuck in the mud. The boat's been dated to the time of Jesus.

It's on display near the city of Tiberias, if you ever go there. And that boat gives us a good idea what Peter's boat would have looked at. This boat was 26 and a half feet long. It was 7 and a half feet wide.

And it was 4 and a half feet deep. Now, I know what some of you number crunchers are doing. You're already multiplying this out to find cubic feet.

And I'll save you the trouble. It's 895 cubic feet. So they filled up this boat with roughly 895 cubic feet of fish. Not just one boat, but they filled out another boat with 895 cubic feet of fish. Now, that is a lot of fish.

895 cubic feet is a lot of fish. More fish than Peter had ever caught in his whole life. And certainly more fish than he'd ever caught in the daytime in the deep with nets that weren't even designed for it. It didn't take Peter very long to figure out that catching them at a time when they should have caught no fish, at a location when they should have caught no fish, with equipment where they should have caught no fish, but they caught more fish than they ever caught in their life that something was up. Peter was pretty smart. He wasn't a rocket scientist, but he was smart enough to figure this out. And what he figured out is that the person who said to them, let down your nets, was not an ordinary human being.

This doesn't happen ordinarily. So look, verse 8. And when Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and he said, get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Get away from me, Lord. You don't have any business being around a guy like me. Get away from me, Lord.

I'm not the kind of guy you want to be hanging around with. Peter was scared and he was embarrassed and he was uncomfortable being around Jesus Christ because he knew his life, his lifestyle was out of step with God. I mean, his personal habits were profane. He had a bad temper. His language was as salty as the sea. He was materialistic. He had his women friends in town. He told jokes that were off color while they sat around cleaning their nets. He was stubborn.

He was proud. He was a racist. His motives were all self-centered and he had no place for God in his life. And yet here he is in the same boat with the Son of God.

And he recognizes, whoa, you don't want anything to do with a guy like me, Lord, not me. You need to be hanging around with those temple types. You know, you need to be hanging around with the Pharisees and the scribes that sit down there in the temple and talk about the Bible all day long. That's where you need to be, Jesus.

But out here with a fisherman like me, I don't think so. Get away from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man. The Bible says, and he said this, verse 9, because he and all of his friends were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken.

And they were there, James and John, the sons of Debedee. But look what Jesus said. He said to Peter, Peter, don't be afraid.

From now on, you're going to catch people. Two things the Lord said in response to Peter saying, Get away from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man. He said two things. Number one, he said, Peter, don't be afraid. He said, Peter, you're not too sinful for me to love. You got it all wrong, Peter.

I don't care how sinful you are, I still love you. And Peter, I know more about you than you know about yourself. And yet I do want you, Peter. And I love you just the way you are, Peter. Don't be afraid.

Nothing to be afraid of. Second thing he said to him is, Peter, you're not too sinful for me to use. You're not too sinful to serve God. If you'll turn your life over to me, Peter, I'll make your life count regardless of your weaknesses, regardless of your shortcomings. I'm going to make you a fisher of people. And I'll have you catching people for me, Peter, if you'll just turn your life over to me. You're not too sinful for me to use. Some people have objected to the terminology here that Jesus uses when he talks about catching people.

They've said, well, you know, that's really not very good. I mean, when you catch fish, that's harmful to the fish. I mean, they die. You cut them open.

You eat them. That's harmful to people and fish. And so to talk about catching people just doesn't seem to be very nice. But I hope you'll understand Jesus never meant the analogy to go that far.

Not at all. I mean, when I let Jesus Christ catch me, it was the best thing ever happened in my life. And if you'll let Jesus Christ catch you, I promise you, he won't kill you and gut you and eat you.

No, no, no. It'll be the very best day in your life if you'll let him catch you because, you see, Jesus Christ, when he catches you, he never hurts anybody he catches. His fish are the safest fish in the universe. He doesn't put them in the oven.

He puts them in the aquarium where he feeds them and he cares for them and he treasures them. So when Jesus Christ talks about catching people, please don't think the wrong thing. He's not talking about doing harm to people. He's talking about giving them the greatest blessing of their lives. So here's what he says to Peter. Peter, you're not too sinful for me to love you and Peter, you're not too sinful for me to use you and if you'll give me your life, not only will I love you, but I'll use you to catch people. The ball's in your court, Peter.

What you gonna do? Verse 11, and then it says they pulled up their boats onto the shore. They left everything, Peter, James, and John, and they followed him.

And I'm sure they look back on this day as the greatest day in their lives when they made the decision to give up fishing for fish and go out with Jesus and start fishing for people. And dear folks, may I say to you that if you're here and you've never trusted Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, if you've never let him become the doorway as Peter, James, and John did to a whole new way of living and a whole new existence, then you're missing what God has in this world for you. God wants you to do exactly what Peter, James, and John did. God wants you to turn your life on the way you've been living because chances are it hasn't been that satisfactory and satisfying anyway. And he wants to give you a whole new way of living based upon his love for you and his service for Almighty God. And he'll change your life forever like he did Peter, James, and John if you'll just let him have it. If you're sick of the way you're living and it doesn't make a lot of sense, Jesus makes you the same offer he made Peter, James, and John. Follow me and I'll love you and I'll let you serve God and I'll give you a purpose for living and I'll change your life.

And I hope you'll do that if you're here this morning and you've never done it. Well, that's the end of our passage. And yet it brings us to the question, so what? Well, I want to talk to those of us here who are Christians who have already made the decision to give our life to Christ because I believe the day you gave your life to Jesus Christ, the day I gave my life to Jesus Christ, God gave us the very same appointment to being fisherman that he gave Peter. God called us to the very same vocation he called Peter, the day we gave our life to Christ. You see, the reason God left us here was not to enjoy driving our cars and going to work and buying new clothes and enjoying our new furniture and going on vacations.

Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things. But you know, when you compare those to heaven, what we're enjoying down here is so piddly it's not even funny. If God really wanted to take us to the place where we would enjoy life the most, he would have taken us to heaven right away.

He wouldn't have left us here. The reason he left us here is one simple reason to be fishers of people. And I maintain, dear friends, that when Jesus Christ said, go out into all the world and preach the good news to every person, that wasn't limited to just the apostles. It's for all of us. And when the apostle Paul said, I have become all things to all people that by all means I might win some, that that was the same passion that every one of us as Christians ought to have.

Listen to it again. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might win some people to Jesus Christ. That's why God left us here. Not to enjoy the things of this world, although it's fine if we do, but so that by all means we might be all things to all people so we might win some people to Jesus Christ before it's too late. And I maintain you cannot love Jesus Christ and not care about fishing for people because if you love Jesus Christ, you'll love what he loves and Jesus loves lost people. The Bible says that Jesus Christ came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.

That's his whole mission. And if we know and love Jesus Christ, we will love what he loved and he loved fishing for lost people. You can't walk with Christ, I say, and not have a passion for lost people. And if you don't have a passion for lost people and forgive me for being so generalized in my application, I maintain something's wrong with your walk for Christ if you don't love lost people and you don't care about fishing for them. You say, but Lon, I do care. I'm just not that good. I mean, you know, I'm not a good physical fisherman to be honest with you and I'm not real good at fishing for people and, you know, it's not that I don't care.

I do care. I just don't really know exactly how to do it so good. Well, I want to give you a couple of suggestions this morning. I have three suggestions about how to be a good spiritual fisherman. And they're kind of three suggestions that come out of being a good physical fisherman. Now, if you're a fisherman, you're going to say, Lon, that's not all there is to it. That's simplistic.

There's about 10 or 15 principles. Okay. Well, I've only chosen three so be nice to me. Okay. I'm not a fisherman but I've chosen three.

Here they are. Number one. Number one, if you're going to catch fish, you got to go where the fish are.

That make sense? You got to go where the fish are. Can I give you a surprise? There are very few fish in church on Sunday morning. You say, well, we're here.

Yeah, but you're already caught. Right? How many real fish do we see on an average Sunday morning? And I'm glad for people who come that don't know Christ.

I think it's exciting. But in an audience such as ours, I guarantee you they're a very small percentage. And you look across every church in America, they're a very small percentage, almost minuscule. And if we plant ourselves in the church and we say, we're here, we've got the message, now you all come, we're not going to get a whole lot of fishing done. Second thing I'd like to share with you is if you're going to catch fish, you got to use good bait. Got to use good bait. There are fishermen who spend their whole lifetime learning how to make bait attractive to fish. And as Christians, I maintain we have to be using the most attractive bait that we've got available to us if we're going to catch people.

You say, well, what is it? Let me tell you what it isn't. The most attractive bait we have is not our church. The most attractive bait we have is not our youth program. The most attractive bait we've got is not our morning services. The most attractive bait we've got is not Lon's messages. The most attractive bait we've got is not the music. The most attractive bait we've got is not any program we have. The most attractive bait we have is Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus Christ himself for two reasons. Number one, people can always find something wrong with all those other baits. They can find things wrong with our church. They can find things wrong with our youth program. They can find things wrong with our music and wrong with our services.

And I guarantee you they can find things wrong with me. But you can't find anything wrong with Jesus Christ. The second reason why he needs to be our bait is because only Jesus Christ himself can meet the needs of the human heart. Church programs can't do that. Church programs are nice, but they can't give peace and joy when you're in the middle of heartache. Only Jesus Christ can forgive sin. Church programs can't do that. Only Jesus Christ can take a life and renew it and make a person a new creature. Church programs can't do that. Only Jesus Christ can give peace in the middle of the storm.

Church programs can't do that. Third and finally, not only do we have to go where the fish are and offer them the best bait, but third and finally, there has to be a perceived need on the part of the fish. You can have the best bait in the whole world and be right where the fish are, but if they're not hungry, you're not going to catch any fish. There has to be a perceived need on the part of the fish.

In this case, the fish has got to be hungry. Now, the same is true with human beings. We can go where the fish are with the best bait in the world, the Lord Jesus himself, but if people aren't perceiving a need, they're not interested in biting. And I have learned that human pride and human self-sufficiency is the strongest force in the world.

Have you learned that? That human stubbornness is the strongest force in the world and that people will only be interested in Jesus Christ when they feel a need for help. They'll only be interested in Jesus Christ when they feel like they're in over their head. They'll only be interested in Jesus Christ when they feel like they've got problems they cannot figure out and solve in their own self-sufficiency and human wisdom. And when that stubbornness has been broken down to a humility where they're willing to accept help. Now, folks.