4:18-20
Jesus now starts to call His disciples. The Sea of Galilee had a rich store of fish, and some of Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen. This was symbolic of the future task that they would have. Peter and Andrew were told that they would be sent out to fish for people. The gospel is about “catching” people, about calling people to be disciples of Jesus Christ. We can get despondent when we see our society having little interest in Christ, and in many ways going in completely the wrong direction. But God’s purpose is to change the direction of people’s lives and turn them back to Him. If we view the mission as “our” mission, and hoping that God will help us, then we have a mistaken view. If we view it as God’s mission and one that He involves us in His work then we should have a much greater prospect of success, and our view will be far closer to reality.
Peter and Andrew responded immediately. If we look at all the gospel accounts we see that here we are only getting a very brief snippet of what went on, and this may well not have been the first time Peter and Andrew had met Jesus (Luke 5:1-11; John 1:36-42).
4:21,22
Simon and Andrew were brothers, James and John were also brothers. They too were fishermen and were working with their father in mending the nets. Jesus called them and they too responded immediately. As mentioned in the previous bit, this may well not have been the first encounter with Jesus, all the same, to leave their family and livelihoods was an enormous step to take. It is perhaps likely that these disciples were in their mid to late teens, though that is just a guess.
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