05.09.2025 - Sermon for Eastgate - Jesus Fishes for People

Scripture: Luke 5:1-11

Luke 5:1–11 NIV

1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” 11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Sermon for Eastgate 05.09.2025 - Jesus Fishes for People

When You Grew Up

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you get to be the kind of person you dreamed about being? Did you do the things you always wanted to? Or did you change your mind somewhere down the line, trade in those old dreams for newer, better ones? Maybe something happened in your life, something outside of your control, that changed the kinds of things you could do and made you change your hopes and dreams.

Sometimes we get things wrong. We make plans to follow our dreams, or we make choices to please our friends or family, and we look back on those choices later with regret. Most of the time, we didn’t know better. We wonder if we knew back then what we know today, would we have made those same choices? Would we have ended up in the same place today?

Jesus has the power to change our lives more than anything else. The same God who called light out of darkness and brought the dead to new life did not abandon Jesus after he died on the cross. He raised him from the dead, and now Jesus is alive forever. Jesus invites us to live that new life with him, and he remakes us when we follow him.

Fishermen

Jesus did this in the life of his disciples even before he died on the cross. Some of those first disciples he called: Peter, Andrew, James, and John, were all fishermen by trade. Back then, most fisherman were not poor, and they often inherited their business from their family. James and John worked out of their father‘s boat, and they often worked together with Peter and Andrew to catch fish. One boat could throw a net out into the water and try to grab some fish. But if you had two boats, you could stretch out a net between them the way they stretch out nets across a tennis court, drop it into the water, and scoop up a lot more fish together than you could do on your own.

Once the fisherman got the fish, they would take them ashore and sell them either out of their boat or at the closest market they could find. For them, a successful day was when they caught as many fish as they could hold, and then they sold them all, allowing them to go home with an empty boat and pockets full of money. It was hard work, and to be successful, it required the weather to cooperate and for them to take care of their boats and their nets because faulty equipment would mean fish would be lost or their lives could be put in danger. But if they worked hard and had a little luck, they could make good money at the end of the day.

So the day Jesus went down to the Sea of Galilee to preach to the people and look for followers to work with him, these four fishermen had just come back with empty boats after trying to fish all night long. Late at night and very early in the morning, just before dawn, was often the best time to catch fish who would hide or sleep more during the daylight hours. These four fishermen were exhausted and disappointed, ready to head home empty-handed. They were cleaning their nets and repairing them while Jesus taught the people that crowded around him. We don’t know what Jesus said that day to the crowds, probably because these guys weren’t paying any attention. They were having a bad day.

But then Jesus walked over to them and asked if he could borrow one of their boats for a moment, going out into the water, just off the shore. Peter agreed to take him out in his boat. The water, with the hillsides just up the shore, acted like an auditorium that helped people hear Jesus better as his voice echoed off the water. Jesus didn’t stay out there long, and maybe chose to get out on the water so that the last people who had come in to listen to him, huddled behind the crowds, could see and hear him better.

When he finished, Jesus chose to return the favor to Peter, so he told him to go out a little further in the water and throw his net in. These fisherman were usually good at their job, and they knew this was not the right time of day to go fishing. They knew they had been out there all night, unable to catch anything. And they knew throwing one net beside one boat was not the best way to fish anyway.

But they also didn’t have much to lose, so they went ahead and tried it anyway. To their amazement, their net filled up with fish. It was almost as if the fish were trying to catch the net instead of the net catching the fish. It didn’t make sense, and they suddenly realized that Jesus was no ordinary teacher. There was something powerful, like the presence of God, that surrounded him, and there they were out in the water on a boat with him, trying to haul in all these fish and figure out how to make sense of this miracle.

Leaving it Behind

We don’t know much about Peter before he met Jesus, but it’s pretty clear he had some regrets about the choices he made in his life. Instead of just telling Jesus, thank you for that miracle that would have made him a lot of money. He got down on his hands and knees and big Jesus to go away because Peter knew he was a sinner and was not worthy of being in the presence of God. That’s about the same way evil spirits responded to Jesus when he came into their presence.

But Jesus didn’t cast Peter aside or condemn him for all the sins he had committed. Instead, he looked at those four fishermen, who hadn’t even been paying attention when he was teaching earlier, and told them to follow him. When the Jewish teachers chose students to raise up and become teachers of the law, they did so by telling them to follow them. In Jesus added to this moment of choosing four fishermen to be his disciples by telling them that he would remake them into those who fish for people.

Once Jesus got out into the water with these fishermen, he only said two things to them. But those two things changed their lives forever. First, with this fishing miracle, Jesus proved he can turn any bad day around, even when we think we know better and that things will not work out for us. Jesus knows what we want and need, and he always takes care of us, especially when we do as he asks. And Jesus knows that we don’t always know best. Sometimes we don’t even know what to ask for. But he does, and he guides us to change our minds and our decisions in our lives when we follow him.

As bad as Peter, Andrew, James, and John needed money to take care of their families and their business, and needed fish to earn that money, they found something just being around Jesus that they needed even more. I don’t know if it was forgiveness or supernatural power or maybe just hope that their life could be better than they had allowed it to get. What we do now is, that day, they won the fishing lottery big time and would’ve had trouble carrying all the money home. But instead of cashing that all in and going home feeling like Jesus had done them a favor, they left their boats, which was their family business, and all those fish on the shore for anyone to come and take.

Following Jesus

Being invited to follow Jesus is bigger than financial success. It’s bigger than achieving your career goals. It’s bigger than raising the perfect family or being the best mom or dad or brother or sister you could be, because we are just like Peter. There is something about being in the presence of Jesus that we need more than food or water or shelter. There’s something about him that we need more than we need our next breath. Disciples have been following Jesus for almost 2000 years now, and many of us have had experiences like Peter, where we’ve let go of our past, both our failures and our successes, emptied our hands and our lives and ourselves, and just followed Jesus — because there is something he has that we can’t find anywhere else. And throughout all this time, we don’t even have a word for what that is.

It’s not something he gives us or something he does for us. It’s just who he is. We know we need food and shelter and protection. We know we need Health and Love. And we know we can find all of those things in many different places, but it’s not the same. Deep down, those of us who met Jesus and experienced what it’s like being in his presence know that the bottom line is we just need him. We know that if we have him, all that other stuff will be taken care of.

Jesus has the power to change our lives and remake us into the people we were always meant to be. He has the power to cancel out our sins, pick us up from wherever we are, and put us back on the right path, going where we need to be. And that’s powerful, because there’s nothing else in the world that can do that. But he does even more. He redeemed our past, taking all of those choices we made, and weaving them together in a way that works out better than we could ever have planned. God intended those four men to share Jesus with the world and to build the church, his people, all over, for the rest of time. Fishing had nothing to do with that. But Jesus took all that history of who they were and connected it to who he was, remaking them so that they understood all those years out in the boat learning to fish were not wasted, apart from God. He was right there with them the whole time.

As Jesus taught them over the next three years to fish for people, they already had some ideas. They knew how to work together to reach more people instead of going by themselves, how to build nets that let the current do some of the work for you bringing the fish to you instead of trying to grab them one at a time. And with all of that training and expertise, they could translate from fish to people in their new work for Jesus, they would always remember that even on the bad days, when you do everything right and it still doesn’t work and you’re headed home empty-handed, all it takes is Jesus and the willingness to do what he says, whether it makes sense or not, to turn that bad day into the best day ever.

Jesus is here with us today. He’s been with you the whole time. He’s been helping you in your good times and your bad times.

Do you want to spend your life making him chase after you as you make all your choices, until you have none left?

Or are you ready to lay it all down, leave it all behind, and follow him today?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank You for all the ways you have worked in our lives, blessed us, provided for us, and brought us here today. We want to follow You with all we are and in everything we do. Help us to set aside anything that holds us back from following where You lead us and help us to become the disciples You call us to be. In Jesus' name. Amen.