| Fishing for truth |
In the gospels we read about Christ ministering to a crowd on the shore of the lake of Gennesaret. Recall that Simon (Peter) had been fishing all night long on one of the boats present at the time, and hadn't caught a thing, and now the boats stood empty on the shore, as the men who made their living fishing these waters were on the shore washing their empty nets.
Recall that Christ got into one of the boats (Simon's) and asked to be set out a little from the land. Christ then preached to the people gathered there, and when He had concluded He turned to Simon and bade him to put down his nets into the deep and pull in a catch of fish.
What a picture. Simon, with all the authority of a [1] a professional fisherman, [2] a man intimately familiar with the lake, and [3] someone who had spent the whole night fruitlessly fishing these very shores,, Simon began to explain to this Rabbi the unlikelihood of them catching any fish at this time.
Yet when Simon decided to humor the request something happened: Every fish in the lake of Gennesaret spontaneously decided to jump into Simon's net.
Question: Did Christ have anything to do with the fish jumping into Simon's net, or was it just that Christ had knowledge that a bunch of fish would jump into Simon's net?
Can you picture the impact this would have had on Christ saying, "I will make you a fisher of men?" I mean, Christ tells him to let the net down after a night of nothing - and suddenly, even though Simon has fished these waters all his life and knows that this is not the time to be fishing - even though Simon knows that they will not catch anything - yet he obeys and the nets are full to bursting - then Christ hits him with the "I will make you a fisher of men" line... I mean, I don't wonder that Simon (Peter) said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" - I think Simon was saying, I can't be a fisher of men, I am a great big sinner. I mean Moses had his excuses when God commissioned him, so here I think we are seeing Simon's reaction. What me?? Um, I can't!
Yet the fact that the fish had filled the net, not according to Simon's fishing prowess, but according to the sovereign authority of God - it stood to reason that if Christ could fill that empty fishing net he could certainly make a sinner like Simon into a fisher of men. Do you see how that would have been an undeniable impetus?
Simon was a fisherman, but the fish didn't fill his net because of his great fishing ability. In fact, all his fishing wisdom counted for nothing in this catch. The lesson, for Simon at least, was that it wasn't his fishing ability that would catch the fish, it was Christ who would put the fish in the net (metaphorically speaking of course).
Did the fish have free will? Of course they did. But they used that free will to respond in exactly the way Christ intended them to respond to his call. They came, they jumped in the nets, and filled them to bursting - not because they were zombies, but because when God calls, who can resist?Labels: fishing. |
posted by Daniel @
12:37 PM
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