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“From
Now On”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 5:1-11
“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”
As a preacher, my goal each week is to hear the Word our written
scriptures are telling us to believe about God and the relationship that
we presently have with God in Christ Jesus.
I want us to hear this Word and to say “Yes” to it, in the
sense that it is now becoming applied to our lives. What is actually one
of the most fascinating aspects of our passage this morning from Luke is
the very experience Jesus himself has in the Holy Spirit.
In The Letter to the Hebrews it is indicated that Jesus Himself learned
what it was to be obedient to God.
Yes, we believe Jesus is fully God and we also believe that Jesus
is fully human. One of the
most wonderful features of Luke’s presentation of the Gospel is that
he tells many stories about Jesus’ life.
Jesus, as a human being was also growing, learning, moving
forward in what it was for Him that He is the Son of God.
He spent many nights, by himself, sitting on hillsides praying to
God. He was seeking the
will of our heavenly Father. He
went through His own forty days and forty nights of temptation where He
had to deal with the offerings from Satan that we all have to deal with
in this world. On the night
of Jesus being taken into custody which leads to his crucifixion, he was
in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying so intensely that drops of blood
were coming through the skin of his forehead.
He was praying that God would remove from Him what he was having
to go through, but His final prayer was, “Not my will, but Thy will be
done.” “Although he was
a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered;” (Heb 5:8)
What Jesus experienced in our passage this morning, was not really
suffering at all—though Peter falling down at his knees and asking him
to leave Peter because of certain guilt in Peter’s heart—this might
have been a moment of sharing pain with Peter.
Still, what I want us to see in what Jesus experienced is first that He
was being surrounded by a crowd of people who wanted to learn from him.
He knew that a major part of His ministry in this world was to
share the good news from God that was actually beyond and above and more
awesome than anything we as humans could imagine.
He knew the people wanted to learn from him.
He got Peter to put him in a boat, move him a few feet from the
bank, and then He sat down and taught the people truth about God’s
reality and loving presence in their lives.
Luke does not give us the exact teaching of Jesus at this time.
However, Jesus, Himself, is so inspired by His time in the class
of God’s Truth. Jesus
experienced the wonderful presence of the Holy Spirit when He was able
to reach these people in their hearts.
He could see they were learning, hearing, and actually being
touched, changed, converted, regenerated by hearing what He was sharing
with them.
I believe this inspired Him.
Jesus was, Himself, experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit
through what was being taught and learned, and then He went out and
performed the miracle of catching hundreds of fish after Peter told him
that they had fished all night long and hadn’t caught anything.
Jesus, after His own involvement of participating in the education of
the Holy Spirit was then lead to a fascinating experience.
I want us, as a church to hear this and realize a pattern of the
presence of the Holy Spirit with us.
As we hear and learn of God’s good news to and for us at new
and deeper levels, then that is going to inspire us to find ourselves
experiencing God’s ministry with us in new and life changing ways.
Of course, there is the experience of Peter.
And when I read a number of sermons on this passage, many of them
were about Peter seeing the awesome presence of God, and then sharing
his own guilt, and saying to Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a
sinful man.” We also read of Isaiah seeing a vision of God in heaven being
surrounded by angels and his response was “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a
people of unclean lips;” We can all relate to the feeling of being
inadequate if we have some awesome picture of the holiness of God.
“…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;” (Rom
3:23)
Jesus said to Peter, “Do not be afraid.”
That very phrase is used 365 times in the Holy Bible.
“Do not be afraid” of God, because of God’s love for us in
Jesus Christ may very well be the most important thing we need to hear
about our own feelings with God.
We’ve seen Jesus’ experience in the Holy Spirit.
We’ve seen Peter’s first response to the awesomeness of it
all. We may very well seek
and experience Christ’s own presence within us, teaching us and
leading us to new ministry experiences.
And in times of growing closer to seeing God’s presence in our
lives we may feel guilt at time due to our sinfulness.
And God, through the Holy Spirit, will lead us to not be really
afraid.
Having said all this, is this passage telling us anything very directly
applicable to us, that’s not just talking about Jesus and his
experience or Peter and his experience?
Yes! It is! It is telling
us from now on, what we are to know about ourselves.
Jesus told Peter, after He said, “Do not be afraid,” he then
said, “from now on you will be catching people.”
What is that telling you that you are to know about yourself from now
on? You have been caught by
God. God has used the
ministry of the church of Jesus Christ and has caught you.
You are in a net that you cannot get out of.
I have a stuffed 10lb bass on the wall in Tommy’s room that I caught
when I was teenager. I have
it stuffed because I’m proud I caught it.
You are not stuffed, but you are a trophy in the life of God that
He has in His home, proud that He has caught you.
From now on, we are to know in our hearts, that we have been
caught by God. Nothing can move us out of His netting.
Let us pray…
Amen
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