Hello all and good Sunday to you. Marge & I had a fantastic time at Southcliff this morning covering chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation in small group and the story of Josiah with Dr. Marr in ‘big church’. What a joy to be fed with God’s Word everywhere we go. You definitely cannot ever get too much of God’s Word!
After Church Margie I went to Ninja Sushi near where we live. They have an all you can eat sushi buffet and we pigged out on sushi. Man, I love sushi! After that we went home and took a killer nap. It’s kinda funny, I saw a meme the other day that said that when you were a kid a nap was punishment but as an adult a nap is a reward! Tru Dat!
Well, I finished the book of John this morning. It’s amazing that even only reading 5 minutes a day, how quickly you can cover books of the Bible if you stay the course and read every day. The book of John is amazing, one of my favorites. I’ll be sad to see it go but I’m so excited to start a new book tomorrow. For simplicity, the 5MC starts in Matthew and then progress all the way through the New Testament. Since I just finished John, I will start the book of Acts tomorrow morning. I highly recommend this plan over just randomly skipping around. God put His Word in a specific order and I prefer to read it the way He built it.
In Chapter 21 of John, the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples again and the lessons abound. The lesson that God specifically spoke to me about this morning was about, go figure, fishing.
After Jesus appeared to them in the upper room He told them to go into Gaililee and wait for Him, he’d basically catch up to them later. There were 7 total disciples that went and as they waited around for Jesus to show up, Peter gets bored and says, “Let’s go fishing”. The other 6, apparently bored too, joined him. They fish all night and catch nothing. Now remember, Peter was a professional fisherman, he did this for a living. To get ‘blanked’ on all an all night fishing trip must have infuriated Peter. But failure that night was part of God’s plan. What? Failure part of God’s plan for our lives? Absolutely. God can and will use everything that He needs to achieve His purpose. You’ll see soon that in order for Jesus to teach this lesson He needed their fishing to be fruitless as He himself was fishing, fishing for obedience.
As morning breaks the disciples see a guy standing on the shore but they don’t recognize who it is. It was about a hundred yards off and might have even still been a bit dark. Jesus calls out to them, “do you have any fish?” Their answer? A very dejected one word response, No. He tells them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat and for whatever reason they do. They proceed to haul in 153 huge fish. There were so many they could not haul it in! But throughout this bountiful haul of fish the net did not break.
At this point John (also in the boat) puts 2 and 2 together and is the first to realize it’s Jesus. Now this is one of my favorite parts of the story. Peter now also realizes its Jesus and what does he do? He jumps over the side of the boat and swims straight for Jesus. Wow. That’s a desire and love for Jesus that I want to emulate. I think of the other 6 disciples standing there in the boat, dealing with all these fish and splash! there goes Peter over the side. You know that at this point some of the others were probably thinking of doing the same thing but for whatever reason they didn’t. Was the water too cold? Didn’t want to get their clothes all wet? Too far? Too hard of a swim? The others would think they're crazy? What a lesson this is in itself. What are you willing to do to get to Jesus?
Let’s look back at another fishing story that involved Peter. Remember way back when Jesus was just starting His ministry that He first found Peter fishing. Listen to this and see if it sounds familiar. Luke 5:4-6, “and when He (Jesus) was done speaking He said to Simon (Peter) ‘put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’ And Simon (Peter) answered, ‘Master we have toiled all night and took nothing! But at your Word I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they enclosed such a large number of fish that their nets were breaking.”
Until this morning I had never drawn the parallel between the 2 stories. Here at the beginning of his walk with Jesus, Peter is fishing unsuccessfully and out of his obedience to Jesus he catches a huge amount of fish. Now 3 years later in his walk with the newly resurrected Jesus, Peter finds himself once again fishing unsuccessfully but out of his obedience to Christs’ command, He hauls in a huge amount of fish. The difference in these amazingly similar stories? The nets.
Allow me to quote from McGee’s commentary IV, p502. “Early in the days of Jesus’ ministry He called Peter to be a fisher of men. That time the net broke, I think Peter was to see that many would follow Jesus, but they would all not be believers. The net would break and many fish would swim away. This time the net would not break but was drawn to land “full of great fishes”. Peter is being called later in this passage by Jesus to “feed the sheep and feed the lambs.” With what? With the Word of God. With the gospel of a risen, glorified Christ. The Gospel will not only save but it will hold just like this net. This net will not break. Even in their failures, believers are kept by the power of God through faith.”
How beautiful to see how deep God’s Word can go the more that you study it. I’ve read these passages so many times but today God through His Holy Spirit has allowed me to look much deeper.
I’m so thankful for a gospel that holds. A gospel that will withstand the stresses of this life. It will hold.
Bless your upcoming week by starting each day with 5 minutes in God’s Word, you won’t regret it!
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