01.22.2023 - Sunday PM Service - Work and Prayer

Peter, John, and Paul

The New Testament is undeniably the story of Jesus, from His birth, death, resurrection, and work in the world through the Holy Spirit. However, it is often told from the supporting characters’ points of view. There are places where we are told what Jesus thought or felt, but most often, we are given reports of what he did as John, Peter, and others were watching.

That is a blessing and makes the scripture easier for us to understand. But it also gives us another advantage. It allows us to see the change Jesus made in the lives of those He led. You could use most of the New Testament as biography material for Peter, John, and Paul, following their lives before they met Jesus, almost to their deaths, and all the ways they changed in between. Their lives are a picture of what it looks like for each of us to learn to partner with God in His work of saving, redeeming, and caring for the world.

I have a couple of scriptures to share with you tonight that give us some insights about how to pray as we grow closer to Christ and others and are led to serve in different ways.

Fishing: Starting Right Where We Are

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

Matthew 4:18–22 NRSV

18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

When Peter met Jesus, he was a fisherman, so Jesus explained what it meant to serve him in terms that a fisherman could begin to understand. Peter didn’t have to figure anything out. He only had to make a choice. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fish for people.”

Peter, along with Andrew, James, and John, chose to follow Jesus that day, and Jesus was true to His word. He indeed had them all fishing for people. The passage in Matthew continues:

Jesus Ministers to Crowds of People

Matthew 4:23–25 NRSV

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. 25 And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

This was their ministry for most of the next three years. They would go ahead of Jesus into the villages, fishing for people to come to experience the teaching, healing, and miracles of Jesus. They were working for Jesus in an evangelistic program across Israel, in a shallower understanding of that phrase. They did not understand Jesus as Savior, and certainly not their Lord. He was their faith healer and miracle worker, and they had hopes that these miracles would get them to influence enough people to stage a rebellion and remove the Romans from their land. So how did they pray in those days?

Jesus gave them a prayer to pray a few chapters later. He taught them the Lord’s Prayer. Our God in heaven is Holy, Let His will be done on earth as in heaven, Give us our bread for today, forgive us as we forgive others, keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil. That is a standard prayer for a standard servant - a doer and an inviter for Jesus, and that is a phenomenal prayer to start with. It reminds you of your Lord, your mission, your need for nourishment, your need for forgiveness, and a reminder to stay out of trouble and ask for help when you get into it. I imagine they prayed that prayer daily for those three years, and I imagine that Peter’s eyes started to shift ever so slightly toward Jesus the more He prayed it and watched Jesus feed the hungry, rescue the spiritually oppressed, forgive sinners, and lead them out of their slavery to sin.

Farming: Investing in People

Somewhere in the middle of those three years, Jesus began to draw some big crowds, and at one point, He looked out to the vast number of people and told Peter and the disciples to pray to the Lord of the Harvest that God would send out more workers into the fields. With those crowds, His teaching included a lot more farming images rather than fishing ones.

Both farming and fishing would have been familiar lifestyles for Peter and the disciples, but there are some important differences. When you have a bad day fishing, you go out and try again. The weather may influence your catch, or too many fishing boats in one place getting all the fish. However, there is very little that you can do to make one day a better fishing day than another.

In farming, however, the days are not all equal. In fact, there is a very important sequence of events that you have to do in order to get any crop at all. You have to prepare the ground, plant the seed, make sure the seed gets enough water and sunlight, and then harvest the seed. Sometimes, depending on the crop, you even have to get in there and pull weeds, although Jesus told a parable about that and suggested leaving the weeds until the end so that the good grain was not damaged trying to kill the weeds.

If the farmer does not do these things in this exact order, there won’t be a crop. Jesus told a parable about that as well and even gave the disciples some special teaching on how that farming process related to their work serving God. In that parable of the 4 soils, the seed only grew to maturity, bore fruit, and multiplied when the soil was tilled and cleared of rocks and weeds. Jesus taught them that this was a picture of God’s word being scattered out to the hearts and minds of people, but only those who were prepared would receive it well.

Farmers pray differently than fishermen. They pray that God will take their investment in groundwork, seed scattering, and nurturing and bring their crop to bear fruit. They understand that a destroyed harvest means no new seeds to start a new harvest next time. They aren’t just looking ahead to the next fish, they are looking for the growth to happen with their current crops.

These were the days when the disciples were going out preaching, teaching, and healing themselves and then coming back to report to Jesus. They were distraught when their prayers for healing and deliverance did not work. They were also cautious about where they wanted Jesus to be spending His time. They wanted to avoid the Gentile lands, places like Samaria, and those they thought were beyond their help. They were growing invested in the ministry of Jesus and wanted to see it bear fruit. I’m sure they saw some of the potential in the people around them and prayed to God to send more disciples to help do the work and grow the ministry.

Shepherds

As Jesus taught and challenged the disciples, they served in different ways and prayed differently. They changed their prayers from the prayers of ambulance drivers, trying to get people to the hospitals they need, to that of paramedics, who can offer some help in the field before getting people to the doctors. They weren’t Jesus, but they were beginning to do some of the things that He did with His help.

Everything began to change, though, as Jesus got near Jerusalem that final year. Some of his teachings began to shift from farming to shepherding. Whether it was the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats from Matthew 25 or the Lost Sheep from Luke 15, Jesus began to turn his attention away from the crowds and toward Peter and His own disciples. The crucifixion of Jesus, His resurrection three days later, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost would forever change Peter.

You may remember, though, at the end of the Gospel of John, Peter tried to go back to fishing. Jesus called him to shore, fed him breakfast, and then asked if Peter really loved Him. With every affirmative response that Peter made, Jesus gave him a command to feed His sheep. It was another change, this time to livestock.

In the days that followed, Peter no longer just fished for people or scattered God’s word out to hearts that heard and received it. He became a shepherd of the people. He was there guiding the church through times of miracles, persecution, and transformation as God led Peter to bring the Gentiles into the fellowship, and confusion as they dealt with the implications of non-Jewish brothers and sisters with them. He was now no longer praying for his own work, nor even that the movement would grow and be successful. Like the Good Shepherd that Jesus taught him, He knew these people by name. Especially once they were persecuted and scattered, the people were not projects or converts, they had become family. They were the people he stayed with when he traveled from place to place.

I wonder how Peter prayed in those days. He used shepherd language, not fishing or farming language, in His letters to the churches. I’m sure He still prayed the Lord’s Prayer in those days and found an even deeper meaning to it as one who watched over others serving Christ. There was a sense of urgency in the daily work of the church, but also a call for peace and patience in the midst of suffering. I don’t know for sure what He prayed, but I know He had a shepherd’s prayer. It was a prayer that was 1000 years old when Peter was born, but he may have known it by heart, and many of you do as well.

I think that the final shift to shepherding the flock that God calls you to, be it your family, your friends, your neighbors, or your entire community, begins to happen when we change our prayers from me to us. So allow me to close by praying that shepherd’s prayer, and I’m going to change the words that refer to me individually to us as God’s flock together. I, like you, am both shepherd and sheep, and like Peter, we serve our best when we are able to tell and show those we are raising up as disciples of Jesus that this story we are telling is not about us. It is about Jesus. Psalm 23 (edited to “us” instead of me) The Divine Shepherd A Psalm of David. 1 The Lord is (our) shepherd, (we) shall not want. 2 He makes (us) lie down in green pastures; he leads (us) beside still waters; 3 he restores (our souls). He leads (us) in right paths for his name’s sake. 4 Even though (we) walk through the darkest valley, (we) fear no evil; for you are with (us); your rod and your staff— they comfort (us). 5 You prepare a table before (us) in the presence of (our) enemies; you anoint (our heads) with oil; (our cups) overflow. 6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow (us) all the days of (our lives), and (we) shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Ps 23). (1989). Thomas Nelson Publishers.