5:1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. 2 He saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
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.”
6 When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.
8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”
11 So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.
It is easy to become confused by geographical terms used in the Bible. Not only because terms for locations changed over the many centuries of Israel’s history, but because different authors within the Bible sometimes had their own preferred designations. What Luke calls here the Lake of Gennesaret is the same as what others call the Sea of Tiberias, or—even more commonly—the Sea of Galilee. It is this lake that bordered on the major Palestinian city of Tiberias, as well as the fishing village of Capernaum. In other words, verse 1 hasn’t necessarily taken Jesus away from where he was in chapter 4, in Capernaum.
The lakeside was a comfortable place for large groups of people to gather to hear a speaker. In smaller locales, where there may not have been a formal synagogue building, a site near a body of water was sometimes used in lieu of a synagogue.
But Jewish teachers in Jesus’ era often stood when reading scripture, but then sat to continue their comments on the passage and their drawing of applications to daily life from it. We saw Jesus do this in his sermon at Nazareth in chapter 4. But at the lakeside there may not have been any seat for him other than the ground, which would have been both uncomfortable and too low down for him to be seen and heard properly by people at the back of the assembled listeners. A nearby boat seemed the ideal solution. He could sit in it and be easily seen and heard. Anyone who has every lived on a lake, as I did when I was a boy, knows how well someone’s voice—even a whisper—carries across a surprising distance of the water, especially in early morning or late evening. Peter’s words, “Master, we have worked hard all night,” seem to suggest that it was early morning.
After Jesus had concluded his teaching session, since he was already in Peter’s fishing boat, he instructed his disciple to put out into the deeper water of the lake and let down his nets for a catch. He may have noticed how tired, weak and hungry Peter and his crew members were after an entire night of fruitless fishing. Peter, however, thought this suggestion considerate in intent but naive in practice; so he reminded his teacher that they had already fished all night with no success. There would be no sense now in continuing to try after dawn.
Peter had years of experience as a fisherman in these waters, and knew them better than anyone—or so he thought. But Jesus was not basing his instruction on years of personal experience in fishing. He was a prophet of God—and much more, the Son of God. Like Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament, Jesus often taught God’s message to his people by dramatizing it. Hosea was told to marry a woman who would prove to be a adulteress, and then to take her back after her adultery, just in order to dramatize the truth that Israel was God’s wife, “married” at the exodus from Egypt, and had become unfaithful through worship of other gods throughout her history, and yet God would always take her back, because of who he was. What lesson was Jesus going to dramatize?
He was going to train t hem to “fish for people,” that is, to rescue people from their sins and self-inflicted injuries, and make them forgiven, healed, and transformed “sons of God.” There would be situations in which all human indicators would point to the futility of trying to “catch” some suffering soul. And yet, if the fisher was led and instructed to make the attempt by God himself, he could expect miraculous results.
The drama impressed an old hand like Peter, like no other illustration would! He was utterly stunned by the catch of fishes! You or I might have embraced Jesus. But the effect on Peter was different: sensing who this man had to be in order to actually control the fishes underwater in the lake, he knew he was in the presence of Deity incarnate, and for a man as aware of his sinful lifestyle as Peter was, the thought of the judgment that might await him was electrifying. He fell trembling with fear at Jesus’ feet and begged him not to defile himself by contact with such a sinful person as he. Everyone in the vicinity was dumbfounded by the miracle, and they had all heard some pretty remarkable “fish stories” in the lifetimes. But Jesus was not concerned with anyone but Peter himself—and probably with James and John who were also among the bystanders. These would be his disciples and eventually his missionaries after his resurrection. So he said to Peter, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you will fish for people.” And after the boats were pulled up and tied, Peter, James and John (v. 11, “they”) left everything and followed him.
Luke told this incident to show (1) the demands Jesus made on that first group of disciples, to put their discipleship with him and their training missions ahead of all other pursuits of their daily lives, including their primary sources of livelihood, and (2) by extension, to show in principle the same kind of demands that Jesus makes on all disciples, including the readers of this book.
God doesn’t call all of us to become pastors, teachers, missionaries, or evangelists. But he does call each of us to share with others what we are learning day by day from following Jesus in life, and—with those who don’t really know him, or haven’t committed themselves to trust him as Savior and Lord of life—to share the simple truths of these gospel narratives that tell who he is and why he came to Earth, died and rose again. We shouldn’t ever be afraid to share our experiences with Jesus in words, for we know they are true and we know how fulfilling it has been to live with and for him. But neither should we discount or neglect the non-verbal witness. Sometimes, people ignore our words, so accustomed they have become to ads on TV and their smartphones. But they are struck by unusually generous, kind and unselfish behavior, for that is NOT common today. Let’s use the normal vehicle of speech, but let’s really use the megaphone of our actions, to “fish for people” in Jesus’ name.
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