The Lake of Gennesaret is the Sea of Galilee. Once again the people were crowding round Him listening to the word of God. So what attracted so many people to listen to the word of God? Several things:
- The authority of His teaching
- The healings and miracles
- The quality of His life
In churches today we tend to focus on at most two of these things, we need all three to be truly Biblical. While the crowds were gathering Jesus was focused on the mission, and part of that was to gather disciples. That is people who would follow Him, who would truly learn from His life, and be transformed by Him. We too need to do the same.
So after preaching Jesus gives Simon a practical revelation. Jesus used Simon's lack of success at fishing as a way in to reveal something of who He was. Jesus told Peter to put out into the deep water. Simon was very dubious about the point of this, but obeyed Jesus anyway. Then he had a miracle catch. Clearly it is better if we obey with full faith, full commitment and with joy. However, there will be times (many times?) when the best we can do is obey despite all our misgivings. Even when we do this there can still be miracles.
The miracle convicted Simon Peter of his sin and wanted Jesus to go away from Him. Jesus commanded him not to be afraid and announced that his life was about to take a radical new direction. So Peter, James and John left everything to follow Jesus. Note that the call did not come out of the blue, but there had been prior involvement of Jesus in their lives, this was the culmination of that involvement.
No comments:
Post a Comment