Disciples Fishing
Notes
Transcript
If you have been following along for the last five weeks we have been looking at the encounters of Jesus from his resurrection and we will lead all the way to his ascension and we have been talking about the things these encounters can teach us for our everyday life. So far in these encounters Jesus has showed us he will show up in the middle of our grief and pain and offer us hope and direction. Along the road to damascus Jesus showed up and spoke to the importance of our need for Christ Centered community and coming together in our trials. In the upper room, Jesus set his disciples up to be on mission for him and go into the world and make more disciples. Last week Jesus spoke directly to Thomas doubts and made sure he knew he couldn’t allow his circumstances to speak to his faith, but allowing his faith to speak to his circumstances. It is an important lesson for us, we often allow the situation in our world to diminish our faith. The world seems bleak so we start to think the Jesus is no longer with us, and we start to think he has never been with, and he may never be with us again. And from the moment with Thomas we learn we have to turn back to the truths we know in our faith when we are judging the situation we are in and allow our faith to give us hope for what Jesus will do for us.
This morning, we follow Jesus and his disciples into the 21st Chapter of John and pickup the story in verse 1
1 After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way.
And here John is telling us what he is about to tell us. He is laying out the synopsis of the story before he actually tells us the story.
2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together.
3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
So we have seven of the disciples here, they’re sitting together, or hanging out together or whatever they are doing together, and 4 of them are missing, but they are together and Peter gets this brilliant idea, He says, “Yo, I am going fishing.”
And it obviously sounds like a great idea to everyone else, because they are all down for it, and they say, “Yeah, lets do it,” and they go get in the boat.
Remember, back when he met with the eleven in the upper room he had given them a specific mission, he told them they were witnesses to everything he had done and they had seen and this was telling them they were supposed to go and start telling people about who he was. It was Jesus setting them up to go do the work he started in them while they were together. Now, we can say, Jesus told them not to get started, but that’s not true, what Jesus told them was they needed to stay in the city until he sent the Holy Spirit on them to give them the power they needed to go into the rest of the world.
Yet with everything going on, they are kind of uncertain with what Jesus means, and we know this because they aren’t yet doing what Jesus has told them they want to do, and in their uncertainty they turn back to their comfort zone. So not only have they went back to their old lives, but they have completely left the city, they are on the Sea of Galilee maybe 70 miles to the north of the city. Before Jesus met them Peter, Andrew, James and John were all fishermen and he had promised to make them fishers of men in Luke 5:10
10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
And so when they had this doubt about what Jesus was calling them to next they just went back to fishing, it was easy, they knew how to fish; that was easy. Except in this case, it wasn’t because they hadn’t caught anything.
And truly we can see ourselves in the lives of Jesus disciples here, when we start to have spiritual doubts or become unsure of what Jesus wants us to do, we turn back to what is easy. We try to do everything on our own, we go back to our old way of living before we ever met or knew him, we just revert to who we once were. You know where I see this a lot as pastor, and I try to warn people about as best I can, but you see this a lot after baptism in peoples lives. What happens a lot of times after baptism is the enemy comes at us hard, we have made this public proclamation of faith and the enemy is not happy so there almost always is some type of chaos that ensues in our lives after people are baptized.
I always want people to be ready for this type of attack, and hope they are part of a community of believers who can hold them up, because often what happens is we fall away from the new life we are living because we feel it is too hectic to keep walking through. And this is exactly what we saw happening with the disciples, they were so stressed they weren’t sure what to do next, though they had met with Jesus, and fell back to what was comfortable.
4 Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
Isn’t it interesting, after already meeting with him in the upper room, and this will have been the THIRD time for Peter to see him, they still don’t recognize him here for who he is, even now the power of death is evident in their minds and there is this place where they can’t really believe he’d be there.
Look at when John tells us this is happening, at dawn, at the break of the new day Jesus is about to offer some hope. I don’t know about you but it almost seems like this is how it happens often times in my life, when things are rough and seem bleak a new day dawns and in that new day I am able to start to see the hope in Jesus.
It walks right alongside scripture as well, Lamentations3:22-23
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
And you know what is even more amazing about all of this, even when they aren’t looking for Jesus, Jesus is looking for them. This may be one of the greatest pictures of the gospel we can see, because there is no doubt Jesus is pursuing us when we aren’t even pursuing him.
5 Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.”
6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”
Guys, you have any fish? And in my family, where Jennifer says sarcasm was our love language, this would have merited a smart aleck response along the lines, of what does it look like buddy? But they don’t give him that, and Jesus instructions are so simple; Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.
I want you to think of how you would respond in this situation. These guys know what they are doing, they are fishermen, they made a living doing this, and this guy standing there on the side has this simple suggestion, just throw your nets on other side… and that advice sounds so simple, but what you may not know is in this time they ONLY fished from the left side of the boat. The way the ships were designed if you fished from the right side of the boat there was a high probability of the nets getting caught in the rudder. This is completely contrary to what they would have done.
I think sometimes we don’t listen to Jesus instructions in our lives because we have a similar attitude, it just seems to simple., but so contrary to what we think we should do. I remember my youth pastor days and you are counseling teenagers who are dating other teenagers, and they are praying for direction and want to know what to do with the guy who is talking to other girls behind their back and how to handle it, and God speaks to them through wise youth pastors and tells them, you probably need to dump him. And they won’t listen, its simple to do, but its not really the answer they were looking for so we can’t do it. Can you remember situations like that in your life where looking back you remember praying to God about a situation, and it seemed like he was leading you one way but you decided you just couldn’t wrap your heart around it and get yourself to do it, because you know, its completely different than how you think you should do it. However, when you look back on that situation you see and know what he wanted you to do and realize now it might have saved you a whole lot of grief.
Look what happened when the disciples who were there did what he wanted them to do.
So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish.
I love the imagery of this. Can you imagine how many fish that would have to be for these 7 guys to not be able to lift it into the boat? You don’t really have to imagine, we see later its 153. And the moment they begin to pull the fish into the boat look what happens.
7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea.
I have a friend that said this scene reminds him of Forrest Gump when Lt Dan comes to see him at the dock, and he just starts waving and stepping off the boat to go see him…
John, bless his heart just can’t let us forget he is the one Jesus loved, if you follow his gospel, you know he is loved, you know he is fast, well at least faster than Peter, and in the moment they begin to pull the fish out of the water, he knows this is the miraculous work of Jesus and they recognize him. In this moment they see and recognize Jesus you can see what it does to Peter, it changes everything for him, he covers his work clothes and he is so excited he doesn’t even wait for the boat to return to the water, he just goes after him as quickly as he can.
When we truly see and recognize Jesus in our lives it makes us run after him, when we have this life change and see him in our lives we want nothing more than to be with him and close to him, and this is what you see happening to Peter, he needs more the moment is at hand and he is going after Him. I talk about it all the time, but I want you to remember the moment you first gave your life to Jesus, and had this real encounter with him. Chances are for a while you wanted to be in church every time the door was open at any opportunity and you would run to take all of those opportunities.
Truthfully, this is the way our hearts should always be tuned to Jesus, our hearts should desire to be with him as much as possible and want to get closer to him. This is why I am always praying God would help us to desire Him more. Because often we treat our relationship with God like he’s a friend we’ve had too much of and we have moments when we want more and moments when we want less. I would be surprised we would be happy with eternity if we don’t desire him more in this life, because in eternity he is all our hearts and desires are turned after.
8 The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.
9 When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread.
This is such a cool scene, Peter and Jesus are already there, and the rest of the disciples roll up or paddle up on the scene and there is this meal there waiting on them. Ever wonder where Jesus got that fish? Here they come struggling all night, he tells them where to fish to catch some, and by the time they get to shore he already has a meal prepared with what they were struggling to figure out.
10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.”
11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn.
12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.
13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish.
14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
This is such a beautiful picture of who Jesus is; these guys have failed to follow his directions, they have actually went back to the life they once lived, the one he called them away from, and in this moment he is inviting them back into communion with him. He is caring for their spiritual and physical needs.
Obviously, he is caring for their physical needs by offering them the nourishment their body needs. At the same time he is offering them spiritual nourishment by sitting with them and making his presence known and restoring their hope and peace. He is giving them exactly what they need.
The good news for all of us, whether we are here and have never know him as our personal Lord and savior, or we have called him Lord for years and just had some seasons of putting him on the back burner and doing it our own way, when we come back to him, he will give us the spiritual and physical nourishment we need. There is nothing we can do that he will not welcome us when we come running after him like he did.
The question is, when Jesus speaks, whether through his word, through a song, through the words of a message are you going to heed what he says or are you going to go back to the life you were already living, because truthfully, many of us live lives that wouldn’t be much different if Jesus weren’t real. We like the disciples at the beginning of the story, live a life like we did before we ever met him.
