Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Hey y’all, y’all good everyone alright?

How was break?

Everyone good?

Does anyone know the name George Muller?

Prob not a lot of you, George was born in Prussia, which is now Germany thanks to WWI, in 1805.

George moved to England where he became a pastor at a church in Bristol.

He pastored there for 60 years, which normally that would be what you might be known for, but that i not what George is known for.

George is known for the orphanage that he built.

And not only the orphanage that he built, but the way he went about it.

So normally if you a re a non profit, you are going to need money, so you ask for money, people can make donations.

FBC Gray is classified as a non-profit, we don’t make money, but rely on giving.

George though, didn’t.

He intentionally never asked for resources, he never wrote letter to donors, he never tried to have a giving campaign, nothing.

All he did was pray, he prayed and asked the Lord to provide.

I promise I’m not making this up, you can read about this.

But do you know why George started the orphanage?

It wasn’t just to take care of the orphans, he wrote in his journal what his goal was in starting out.

The first and primary object of the work was that God might be magnified by the fact, that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-laborers whereby it may be seen, that God is faithful still, and hears prayer still.

Literally there are stories though out his ministry that are them sitting at an empty table, not sure what they are going to eat and a food cart breaks down outside the orphanage, they get to have whats on the food cart.

It is pretty wild.

George Muller is a really interesting guy to read about.

But George trusted the Lord to provide.

So we are going to be looking at a story that deals with some of these things, but I wanted to tell you about George because his story should remind us that God is who he says he is, and that we need to rely and trust in the Lord.

He truly followed the Lord, followed Christ in all that he did.

So that is where we are going to be tonight, looking at another story in the life of Jesus.

Looking at one of the most important figures in Christian History, Simon, aka Peter.

How did Peter come to follow Christ?

Context

So tonight we are going to be in Luke 5:1-11, looking at the calling of Peter, or the Calling of Simon as Luke calls him.

So Luke 5:1-11.

let me give you a little but of context, to what is going on here while you’re flipping to over to Luke.

Does anyone need a bible?

If you need a bible?

Go ahead and throw a hand up and we can get you one.

Anyone need one?

if you don’t have one at home, go ahead and take that bible with you.

So Luke 5, let me set the scene for what is going on.

Jesus is going around a preaching in different places, healing people, preaching in different synagogues, and people are starting to pay attention.

People are starting to realize that this is the word of God.

That Jesus is something else.

Crowds were starting to follow Jesus around, and this time that we are about to look at they had gotten him next to a lake, or sea.

Now this text calls this the lake of Gennesaret, but this is just the sea of galilee by a differnt name.

Thats one of the things about scripture is that sometimes things and people have two different names, one for what it is known as across the region and one is what the locals call it.

It’s like if you have a nickname.

Like people called bubba, that is 9/10 times not their given name.

Bubba might actually be a Robert of something like that.

But that is where they are at, this lake this sea, and Jesus is teaching and Jesus is trying to Not get taken over by the crowd, so he sees some fisherman and asks if he can use their boat so he can teach from it.

And so that brings us to this scene we are about to see take place here in scripture.

So Let’s read Luke 5:1-11, but before we do that, Let’s pray for our time in the word tonight,

pray

Following Christ starts by hearing

Okay, so, what is going on here?

What are we looking at?

This is an interaction between Simon, aka Peter, and Jesus.

At first we see Jesus teaching to a crowd, but Luke doesn’t tell us what Christ had said, instead we see Luke key in on Jesus focusing on one person.

SO who is this one person?

There are other people in the scene but Jesus is only talking to One person, Simon Peter.

So who is Simon?

Who is the Simon Peter guy?

Simon is a fisherman, he works all day trying to catch fish that he would then take to the market and sell.

Fishing was a super hard job.

They actually found a fishing boat that dates back to around 40 AD in the Sea of Galilee, this would have been about the same kind, and it was 25 feet long, and about 7 1/2 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, not a very big boat, one or two person boat.

You would cast a net out then pull it up, hopefully with some fish in it.

Fishermen were usually not highly regarded members of society, known for being hard men, kinda crusty dudes.

You wouldn’t want to fight a fisherman, they were strong dudes.

From what we can see in rest of scripture, Peter is a very black and white guy, very matter of fact.

Kind of brash.

Bold guy.

And so this was who Jesus is talking to in this passage, this low society, brash, hard, fisherman named Simon.

SO this is the scene, Jesus, this guy who has this giant crowd with him, listening to every word he says, teaching all of these amazing things, talking to a lowly fishermen.

This is the God of the Universe talking to a fishermen.

The God of the universe talking to someone who was an after thought to the rest of the town, rest of the state, rest of the world.

And what does he say?

Jesus asks if he can borrow his boat, and Simon lets him.

Simon gives Him a place to teach so that he can address the crowd and not be taken over by the crowd.

All the while Simon get’s to listen to what Jesus is teaching.

Hearing the word of God.

Here God speak the word of God.

So what should we see from this?

Following Christ Starts by hearing.

If you are writing things down, write that down.

Following Christ starts by hearing.

Simon had sat there and listened to everything Jesus had said.

Simon doesn’t know it yet, but he is going to be called, because he first heard.

Christ is working in Him way before Simon realizes what is going on.

Christ is at work in Simon before Simon is able to be in Christ.

Christ has come to him before Simon came to Christ.

Following Christ continues through trusting

So let’s keep going.

After Jesus get’s done preaching, he looks at Simon, who had probably just finished cleaning up their nets from the long night of being on the water, and apparently not catching much.

Jesus looks at Simon and says, hey put out over there in the deeper water.

Get off the shore, and get out in to the deep water and put your nets out there.

And Simon kinda looks perplexed at Jesus and says,

“look we just came from over there, we didn’t take anything.”

But he also says, “but I just heard what all you just said, so I’ll give it a try.”

So Simon get’s his boat out there and let’s the net down and he catches more fish than he’s ever caught in his life.

Anyone still watching the chosen?

We haven’t watched it since last year, but we did watch this episode of it, and I like how they did this scene, Peter lets his net out and immediately it is full of fish, and his boat actually starts to sink, his brothers have to come and rescue his boat and they split the fish and all that stuff.

They did a good job show the amount of fish.