Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction:
So many people live their entire lives asleep.
No, they don’t close their eyes and nod off as they walk around.
But they are clueless about what is truly going on around them.
They do not see God working in this world.
They are oblivious to the spiritual warfare going on around them.
They just live moment by moment with nearsighted vision - only seeing what is right in front of them and missing out on everything going on around them.
Today we are going to see the Christ come and call His first disciples in the midst of their own nearsightedness.
As we will see later in the sermon, these disciples had encountered Christ in the past, but had gone back to their same daily routine.
But today, they are about to see Christ move in a mighty way.
And in light of today’s Scripture, people everywhere need to be ready for Christ to move in their own lives and be prepared to respond to that moving.
Join me as we read today’s Scripture.
Read Full Scripture:
Prayer
Today we will discuss three ways that we need to be ready for Christ to move.
The first is…
I.
You Need to Be Ready for Christ to Come (1-3)
The crowd is pressing in on Christ because they are hanging on His every word.
Why is this?
Because He is speaking the very words of God-made-flesh!
We have already seen Luke allude to the fact that His teaching carried authority.
And if you can recall, we mentioned Mark’s Gospel statement:
As you can see in this map, Jesus has moved from Capernaum to Gennesaret.
The Lake of Gennesaret was actually a shore on the Sea of Galilee and was a few miles southwest of Capernaum.
It also must be noted that we have seen Jesus only preaching in Synagogues up until this point.
But here we see Jesus open air preaching on the shore.
Moving into verses 2 and 3…
Jesus sees that the crowd continues to grow and continues to get closer and closer.
And as He preaches, He sees two boats by the lake.
The men were washing their nets after what was likely a long night of fishing.
First we need to see the humility of these men who had been out fishing all night.
We all need to respond to Christ with humility when He comes.
Simon Peter and his other crew members were cleaning these dragnets which were likely full of plant material and rocks and dirt.
And as we will see in a moment, they had no luck fishing that entire night.
But we see the respect for these men for Christ.
They obviously know that He is something special - although as we will also see, they don’t fully understand just how special He is.
They also resist the fleshly urge to have a bad attitude due to their rough night fishing and instead they respond to Him coming and obey his command to put out the boat from the shore.
As we have already mentioned, the boat that Jesus gets into is none other than Simon Peter’s.
Obviously we see God sovereignly working here to teach Simon a lesson about the Son of God.
Simon Peter knew Christ and had encountered him before as we see in John’s Gospel:
The He in verse 41 is Peter’s brother Andrew.
Andrew led Peter to Jesus.
At this initial encounter, Jesus prophesied that Peter would be the rock.
He would eventually be the rock in which Christ would build His church.
But obviously, Peter had gone back to his work after a while.
It is likely that he would hear Jesus preach at times, but he continued living life as normal.
Today would change Peter’s life forever though.
Because today, Christ was coming in a mighty way.
Getting back to our Scripture:
Jesus asks Simon to push them out a bit from the land.
This way it would give Him some room to be able to speak and provide better acoustics so people could hear.
Imagine this scene - Christ standing in a boat and preaching to a large crowd on the shore.
People are hanging on the words He is speaking.
And this is where we leave off in verse 3.
With this imagery, I am reminded of what the late Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee once said about preaching…
“Every pulpit is a fishing boat… a place to give out the Word of God and attempt to catch fish.”
J. Vernon McGee
This is how Christ is using the boat right now.
He is using it as a fishing boat - a fishing boat to catch men with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I pray that our pulpit at CrossPointe is always used that way as well.
I pray that we are always ready for Christ to come and show up and move by saving souls.
That we are a church that is fishing for men and women and children for the Gospel.
Next we see that…
Scripture References: Mark 1:22, John 1:41-42
II.
You Need to Be Ready for Christ to Charge (4-7)
After Christ has preached to the crowds the words of God, He turns to Simon and charges him to do something that seems ridiculous at first glance.
Jesus starts to meddle into an area where Simon Peter was an expert.
It’s one thing for Jesus to teach about theology and righteousness.
But to give Peter fishing advice, this was difficult for Peter to handle.
Yes, Peter had just seen his mother-in-law healed by Jesus.
But Jesus was a carpenter not a fisherman.
All fishermen knew that on the Sea of Galilee, night was the best time to fish with dragnets because the fish came in to feed at that time.
During the day, this type of fishing was and even today is much more difficult and less rewarding in most cases.
We also have to remember that Peter and his crew had just finished cleaning these dragnets.
You have to imagine that Peter is exhausted at this point.
He has been up all night.
He has to be frustrated as well.
He has toiled for nothing and has just finished the arduous duty of cleaning his nets.
And Peter starts off letting Jesus know that the fishing in the area has stunk it up and that this is probably not a good idea.
But he submits to Christ anyway and responds to Christ’s charge to drop down the nets.
We see humility again with Peter and the crew.
This is how we need to respond to the charge of Christ.
We must respond with humility, faith, and trust.
Even when things seem crazy, we know we can trust God.
God is faithful and trustworthy.
There is a word in verse 5 that we need to focus on because this word will change in the coming verses.
Simon Peter refers to Jesus as master.
This word was the equivalent to rabbi.
It is a term of respect for Christ.
But it was not a term that necessarily set Christ apart from the other rabbis in Israel.
Yet, Jesus Christ is not just any rabbi.
He is the Christ.
Listen to John the Baptist speak of Jesus:
John knows that Jesus is above all.
There is no one higher than Christ.
And Simon Peter is about to see this truth not just in word but in deed right in front of him.
This seemingly ridiculous charge from Christ to put the dragnets down at the worst time of the day to fish comes with a miraculous catch.
One must understand that this doesn’t happen in normal fishing.
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