Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Surprise! What Happens When You Encounter the Glory of God | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 5.1-11

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

"At that moment, Peter got a glimpse of who Jesus is. Whenever we see Jesus in all of his glory and beauty, whenever we get an accurate understanding of who he is, well, it causes us to see our own sin." Sometimes you think you know a person, and then they surprise you. If you've been a Christian for a long time, especially if you've grown up in church, it can feel like you have God all figured out, and he's pretty boring. But then he'll amaze you. Hear how that happed to one of Jesus's first disciples, Peter, as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) reads through Luke 5.1-11 to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Have you ever noticed that a lot of people wear yoga pants and yet not near as many people actually practice yoga on a regular basis? The same thing goes for running shorts or running shoes. A lot of people own some really nice running gear. And yet it turns out they never actually run.

Yoga pants, running gear, other kinds of accessories are all part of this growing retail category called athletic. And what people are noticing, what the manufacturers are noticing is that a lot of people buy athletic gear who don't actually use it for its intended purpose. They want to look like they are athletic or they want to look at. or they want to look like they are working out, getting in shape, but they're not actually working out and getting in shape. They're kind of posers.

They want the benefits of looking a certain way, but they don't actually follow through and do it. I wonder if that's not a lot like how some of us think about Christianity. We might be posers, or maybe that's too strong of a term, but you get the idea that we dress up and we look Christian in some ways We look like we are following Jesus, but we don't actually follow him. We don't actually obey him or surrender to him in our life. Today we are in Luke chapter 5, and we are going to see Jesus' call to some of his very first disciples.

And I think there's a lot that we can learn in it, a lot that will challenge us today. So let's just start in verse 1. One day as Jesus was standing by the lake of Ganeset, the people were crowding around him and listening to the Word of God. So the first thing to notice is that when Jesus is calling his first disciples, he's not in a synagogue, kind of with a hushed crowd, listening to a sermon. No, Jesus is out with the common people. He's out with the ordinary people with ordinary lives because that's where his followers come from. They don't come from the academy. They don't come from the real religious.

Instead, they're just people, ordinary people, like you and me. And Jesus doesn't expect them to come to him. He goes out and intermingles with them, lives life with them, spends time on their turf. Verse 2 tells us that there were two boats nearby. They were boats the fishermen had been using. They were finished with them, and they were off-collarfe. cleaning their nets. Jesus got into one of the boats, owned by a guy named Simon, or you might know him as Peter. And after getting in the boat, he asks Peter to put out the boat from shore. And then he sits down

and he begins to teach people from the boat. So it all seems kind of rude to us. Jesus just climbs into Peter's boat and asks for help. He doesn't ask permission or anything. And Peter responds willingly. it might help to understand that Jesus had just healed Peter's mother-in-law. So it's kind of like Peter owes Jesus one. And so what he asks Peter to do is to put out the boat a little bit from the shore so that he can teach. Now, a couple of things that I just think are incredibly interesting here. When Jesus is calling Peter to be one of his early disciples to follow him, he doesn't take Peter away from his profession.

In fact, he shows him that he is going to use. his profession as he follows Jesus. In a large lake like this, keeping the boat in one place so that Jesus could teach from it was really challenging. It was hard to keep the boat from drifting, and so Peter is having to use his experience and his skills to serve Jesus. And I think it would be really helpful if we all saw our vocation, our professions, as one of the first places that we are to follow Christ. Sometimes we get the idea that we need to spend less time at work so that we'll have more time to follow Jesus. That's one of the ways we compartmentalize our life segment our faith from other parts of our life. But that's not how Jesus wants us to think about

life and faith. He wants us to bring all of our life under his lordship, including our profession. So think about how you spend your day. Maybe you're a stay-at-home mom or a teacher, a doctor, a carpenter, a janitor, a banker. I mean, the list goes on and on. How could you serve Jesus in your profession? Remember, Simon's profession is a fisherman. He's not a philosopher. He's not a theologian.

He is not a media executive. He's just an ordinary guy working an ordinary job. And that's exactly the place that Jesus says, here's your road to discipleship. It starts with bringing your professional life under my authority. Verse four is where it gets interesting. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down the nets for a catch. So Jesus is finished teaching the crowds and you kind of expect him to get out of the boat and everybody goes about their day, but that's not what happens. Instead, the carpenter, remember that's Jesus's profession,

starts giving instructions on how to catch fish to the professional fisherman. Imagine someone who had never done your job giving you advice. Someone who had never raised a kid telling you how to raise your kid. Someone with no educational background and never taught in a classroom telling you as a school teacher for several years how to run your classroom and teach the kids in your class. How would you respond? Well, you might have responded the same way. that Simon Peter did in verse 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. See, this suggestion by Jesus that they let down their nets, it's ridiculous. First of all, everybody knew that the fishing was much better at night. And these fishermen had fished all night and hadn't caught any. anything. So it's not just that they were tired because they'd been up all night. It's that they were also frustrated because they didn't have any fish to show for all their work. And now here is a guy from Nazareth, a town that's not even by the sea, a guy who's a carpenter telling them to go

out and fish during the day. I mean, none of this makes any sense at all. But that takes us back to one of the things that Peter said. After he had complained, after he had griped about how they'd fished all night and hadn't caught anything and how ridiculous this was, he says to Jesus, but because you say so, I will let down the nets. Now that's powerful. That has so much application to our life because what Peter does there is he surrenders, he submits to the authority of Jesus, and specifically the authority of Jesus' word. Because you say so, I will let down the nets. Do you see the application to our life? Because you say so, I will do what you say Jesus, even when my life is confusing, even when what you say doesn't make sense, even though everything inside of me

wants to do something different, even though everybody that I'm friends with, everybody in our culture is saying that there's a different way to go because you say so, I will follow you. I will do what you command with my money, with my time, with my sexuality, with my thoughts, with everything. My guess is you know where this is going. The fishermen let down their nets and they caught more fish than they could handle. What Peter says next, I think is really interesting. When Simon Peter saw this, It was when he saw all the fish they'd caught. He fell at Jesus' knees and said, Go away from me, Lord.

I am a sinful man. You might have expected Peter to be excited, to high-five Jesus, to give him a hug. After all, now, he had all the fish that he could handle. He had more than made up for the night's loss. But that's not what he says. He says, go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man.

See, I think at that moment, Peter got a glimpse of who Jesus is, a glimpse of all his glory and beauty and purity and holiness and goodness and mercy and love. And Peter knew his own heart. So instead of high-fiving him and giving him a hug, he falls down on his knees and says, I am sinful. Whenever we see Jesus and all of his glory and beauty, whenever we get an accurate understanding of exactly who he is, well it causes us to see our own sin this is the same reaction that the prophet isaiah had back in

isaiah chapter six when he saw god seated on the throne in the temple he knew his own sin he says woe is me when job saw god's glory he repented of his sin when john saw the exalted jesus in the book of Revelation, he fell down like a dead man. See, what shocked Peter most deeply was not that he had caught a lot of fish. No, what really shocked him, what really got his attention is who Jesus is. He started to see that perhaps this is the Messiah. Perhaps this is the one that has been promised. Perhaps this is the coming king that the Old Testament has told us about.

And that was much better news than a catch of large fish. So here Simon is. He's at Jesus's knees saying, Lord, I'm a sinful man. Get away from me. Listen to how Jesus responds to him. It's a compassionate response. He says, don't be afraid.

From now on, you will fish for people. So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him. And so Peter in these early disciples left everything and followed him. followed Jesus, it doesn't mean that they never fished again. In fact, we see them fishing in other scenes in the Gospels. But what it means is that there was a priority change, that Jesus had become Lord of their life, and that compared to following him, it looked like they had left everything else behind. And he gives Peter a new commission. He says, from now on, you will fish for people. You think you caught a lot of fish here out of this boat? Well,

well, you're going to catch even more fish. They're people, people that I love, people that I'm drawing into my kingdom. And that's exactly how God used Peter. Peter was one of the 12 apostles that spread the message of the gospel throughout the world. And remember where it all started. It started with his willingness to surrender his life to the authority of Jesus. It started back there with, Because you said so, I will let down the nets.

Where in your life do you need to say, because you said so, I will do what you've commanded Jesus? Even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's not easy, even when it's not what I prefer at this moment, but because you said so, because you're Lord, I will obey you. Ask Jesus to show you if there's any areas of your life that are out of step with what he's called you to.

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