Fishers of Men
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“Fishers of Men”
January 23, 2011
by Ken Owen, Midwest Challenge
Matthew 4:18-22
Now Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fisherman. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”’ Then they immediately left their nets and followed him.
And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father. (These were the two men that were called the Sons of Thunder. I could sit there for 20 minutes but we got to move on.) They were mending their nets, also, and he called them; and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
You know, very quickly here, parenthetically I might say this. This seems like a rather unusually abrupt invitation, or a command, if you will. I used to read that as a kid and think: Man, these guys were at their place of employment, two of them with their father, some guy walks along the beach and says, “Yoh, follow me.” And they get out of the boat. They follow him. I thought: You know, what kind of .., did he have that kind of presence about him, maybe that James Earl Jones voice where (in a deep voice) “I mean, you listen when he talks.” Or did he have some kind of mojo working for him, or what was going on here?
Well, you know, if you really read the entire text, in Mark and Luke, especially, Chapter 5, you find out that Jesus knew these men. He had made his headquarters in Capernaum. He was preaching in the synagogues there and that is where James and John and Peter and Andrew, his brother, lived. They had heard him in the synagogue, or synagogues, there. They knocked around with him. Jesus was in Peter’s house, healed his mother-in-law. Yes, the first pope was married. Peter had a wife. I know that comes as a surprise to some people I talk to because I am in Catholic churches, Pentecostal churches, Lutheran churches, Presbyterian churches, etc. etc. And every time I mention that, a lot of Catholics come up to me and say, “You mean Peter was really married?” Yes he was. But Jesus knew these men. That’s the point. He probably even established the day he was coming by here. In Luke’s passage, you find out that he actually told the disciples, “Go out, cast your nets on the other side of the boat, you will catch a great draft of fish.” Peter objected. It is a great story, I would love to spend a half an hour on it, but I got to go. Anyway, Peter is absolutely amazed and he sees Jesus as more than just a man. He calls him Lord. Something miraculous happened here. It is after that that Jesus says, “Don’t be amazed at that, from now on I am going to teach you how to be fishers of men.” So you see that there is a whole story behind this, there is a whole relationship that these men have when Jesus calls them. So it is not as abrupt as it seems.
“Follow Me….” You cannot follow, none of us can, what we are not focused on. Try it sometime. You cannot follow a person in a crowd if you are not really focused on them. Whether you are focusing with your eyes or you shut your eyes and you are really honing in and focusing audibly and moving toward the sound, if you are not focused, you cannot follow. So the question I had for myself when I examined myself, let a man examine himself, what am I focused on? What do I read? What do I listen to? Where do I spend my time? What are my ambitions? Is it all about me? Or is it about God’s agenda?
Where is my focus? “Seeing as how we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us set aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us and run the race with endurance, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” The book of Hebrews says that. So what kind of a weight are we carrying that impedes us from following and even running the race with endurance, looking unto Jesus, focusing on him? Many of our songs, our theme this morning, were about following Jesus, focusing on him, glorifying him. So I ask, what are we focused on?
If you find yourself continually in a loop, or sometimes meandering and finding yourself in a morass of despair: “Man, I have been here before. This is the third or fourth time, why can’t I get out of this rut? Why am I always back to the same old me? I can’t seem to make any progress.” Ask yourself, “Did you lose your focus?” Run with endurance, focusing on Jesus.
“Follow me,” he says; and then he says, “I will make you fishers of men.” I think everyone not only wants the kingdom to be expanded in their own life through the Spirit of God when they come to Christ, but they want to be sharers of the gospel. They want to broadcast it. They want to bring other people into the kingdom of God. I stand here this morning and I note that there are a few spaces in these pews. I think we can fill them up if we become fishers of men. Two hundred people bring one person to Christ, in a year there is four hundred of us. Four hundred bring one person to Christ, in a year there is eight hundred of us. Eight hundred of us, and you know where I am going with this, it only takes about twelve years, you know, and you get six billion people. It’s amazing. I am serious. Do the math.
I think all these pews should be filled. I think you ought to go to two or three services. It will happen if you become fishers of men. What does it take to become a soul-winner? Some people call them soul-winners. I don’t know if I like that term, but what does it take to become an evangelist? I know there are seminars; there are books; there are all kinds of programs we can join. And they are helpful, if their policy and their program and their agenda is to focus on Jesus— because I notice here that if we want to become fishers of men, if we want to expand the kingdom, become effective partnering with God, Jesus says, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” I noted there “The PRE-EMINENCE of Jesus—-I will do it. It is Me. Focus on Me. “Apart from me,” Jesus said, “you can do nothing—of any eternal significance, that is. “It is not by your might or by your power but it is by my Spirit operating in you, that we will prevail.” So you have feelings of inadequacy? Good! “In your weakness, if you turn it over to God, you are then strong.” Paul said that because it is not about all of your gifts and your abilities. Some of you are going to say, “I am too old for that man. I’ve seen this movie before. I am going to sit down. I am retired. I am seventy-five, eighty…” So you have had seventy five to eighty years to prepare for your calling. That’s biblical. Moses was two-thirds of the way through his life before he received the call. He was eighty.
It is never too late. Give what you have to Jesus. Focus on him. He will multiply everything you have to bless others. Jesus should be pre-eminent. Let me read this particular phrase another way. “I will” said Jesus “make you fishers of men.” I will do it. I will do it. There are people who will tell you that they are going to do something and maybe you believe them, maybe you don’t. Why? Well, because you know inductive logic would tell you there is a fifty-fifty chance they are not going to show because five out of ten times they haven’t shown before. You can’t trust them! But, when Jesus says “I will do this,” you can take it to the bank. We are talking about the one through whom the worlds were made; the cosmos was framed through him, the Logos, the Word. We saw him as “the Word made flesh”. We don’t have an inkling of what “The Word, Jesus” really looks like. If you want to get a little glimpse, turn to Revelation, the last few chapters—18, 19, 20. Jesus, to whom all power is given, through him, to him, for him, by him, all things were made that he might have the preeminence in all things. Nothing was made that is made without him. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. Every molecule, every atom, every subatomic particle, up quarks, down quarks, charmed quarks, electrons, neutrons, protons, why do they act the way they do? Because he wills it to be that way; and the moment he doesn’t, it is non-existent. Jesus.
Even the Holy Spirit, his work is to testify of Jesus. We hear a lot about the Holy Spirit, the work of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely essential! One of the persons of the Trinity, and yet Jesus said, “He (the Holy Spirit) will testify of me.” The Holy Spirit doesn’t testify and exalt himself, he testifies and exalts Jesus. Jesus, that Jesus, said, “I will do this.” Do you have a problem with that? “Well, you know,” some people say, “I am more of a scientific kind of a guy. I just…I am not like brother so and so because he is a man of faith.” You know everybody on the planet walks by faith. How many of you checked out the chemical constitution of that coffee or water that you drank this morning just to see if it wasn’t poison? You drank it in faith. When you walk, every time you walk, you walk in faith believing that the ground is not going to open up in front of you. There is a thousand things every day that everybody does by faith. It is just a matter of who do we put our faith in? I mention that because we, as a people of faith, we don’t operate on blind faith, that phrase is never used in the Scripture. Jesus said “I’m doing these miracles that you might know, not suppose, know that I am he.” I am the anointed one. That is why I am doing these things that you might know. This isn’t guess work. Jesus wants us to know the reality of his person through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. Yes, I know we don’t walk by physical sight always; we walk by faith but let me tell you what faith is. Not my definition, it comes right out of the Scripture. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” that means anticipated. God PROMISES something, I believe it, because it is rooted in the character of God. It is the word of God emanating out of his character, who never fails and never lies, God says that. I believe that. I anticipate that promise happening. I know it is as good as done because Jesus has said he will do it and has done it. Therefore I have the full assurance of things anticipated, things hoped for, and the internal witness of the Spirit of things not yet seen. Therefore, I can call the things that are not as though they are because I am just catching up in linear time with what God has already done and promised me. That is the walk of faith. It is a sure walk. It is a steady walk. I believe Jesus. If I am focused on him and if his Spirit is in me, he will make me a fisher of men. I will become productive. I will know what to do. He will orchestrate events. He will put words in my mouth. He will empower me to talk and walk in such a way that I will bring other people to know the joy of saving grace and to walk with Jesus their Savior and be reconciled to God their Father and be part of what Peter calls the restoration of all things.
That is our agenda. I believe him. Jesus said, “I will make you..” That word there, payeo, it means to bring forth out of you. I will make you, I will fashion you. It’s a process. That is my third point. It is a PROCESS. Very rarely have I ever seen a person turn around on a dime and become what God wants him to be overnight. It is a process, so don’t be discouraged if it is happening slowly. Don’t be discouraged if you run into a little pain now and then, some detours now and then. You know, the Scripture says, metaphorically, that “he is the potter and we are the clay.” God’s got you on the wheel. Now, God’s not just stroking you the whole time. A lot of us just want to be stroked. “Oh, it feels good, God.” No, God’s got you spinning on the wheel and then he takes his thumbs—imagine the potter –and he digs them right into the center of you, right into the heart. The wheel is spinning and those thumbs are going deeper and his hands are putting pressure on you and he is working you. Oh, it is uncomfortable sometimes. “What are you doing Lord?” Many people mistake it for the devil. “Oh, the devil is harassing me.” Or “Circumstances are just harassing me.” No, no, it may be God. He is working on you. It is a process. He is digging his thumbs into you; he’s shaping you into a vessel and when he is finished he is going to put you in the fire to temper you so that you may be a carrier of living water. He is going to make you a fisher of men, but it is a process. “Follow me, sign up, and I will do it.” So when these things happen to us, Peter says, “Don’t be amazed that these kinds of things happen to us, these tribulations, these fiery trials; this is part of the fashioning of God, working on us, taking care of us.” It is the process and we are all on that continuum. Somewhere in that process, if we have accepted Christ and acknowledged him as our Savior, if we say thank you for taking my sin, thank you for taking my shame, realizing that God his Father judged sin on the cross in the body of his own Son, and if I believe that and accept that, Jesus exchanges my sin and my shame and my penalty for his righteousness. “He became sin that I might become the righteousness of God in him.” That is the gospel. That is good news for me. But it is a process, so don’t get discouraged. There is that old spiritual, “Please, be patient with me. God is not through with me yet.” Now if he is through with you and you can’t relate to any of this, then you can just kind of levitate right on out of here and the rest of us will just kind of concentrate on what’s happening.
It is a process. I will make you fishers of men. It is PERSONAL. God is looking. Jesus is looking at you eyeball to eyeball. I don’t want to make any of you uncomfortable but Jesus said “I am going to make you fishers of men.” “John, I am going to make you a fisher of men.” I know John from the men’s group so I can pick on him—the coach. “Pastor Buck, I am going to make you a fisher of men” Jesus says. You, this is personal stuff; so don’t duck it. “Take care of the rest of those guys behind me, Lord. You know they need it. But me, having arrived already…” No, he is talking to you. The gospel, you know, is personal. Jesus died for your sins. You know when I was a kid I used to hear that song, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Remember that song? You sing it at Easter. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” I used to think, what a stupid song! Of course, I wasn’t there! Then the more I began to understand, I guess I was there. He died personally for me. I was there. You were there. It’s personal. “You follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Your name personally is written down in the Book of Life. One day—and we like to avoid this because we have a lot of cheap grace flying around these days in syrupy type of emotions and we don’t get down to the nitty-gritty— read the red print. You want to find out who Jesus is, read the red print. Quit reading books about Jesus, read the red print and ask the Holy Spirit, the spirit who guides you into all truth, to teach you who he is. You will start finding out he is a different person than maybe your Sunday school teacher taught you, and from what a lot of seminaries are teaching people. Get to know him personally. But one day we are going to stand before him, we are going to hear one of two things. No matter how many accolades we have accumulated— “Lord, I prophesied in your name, done miracles in your name, cast out demons in your name”— and I will say to them, Jesus said “Depart from me you worker of inequity, I never knew you. I never entered you, knew you in that sense intimately. My spirit was never in you. You were never a part of me.” Man, who are those guys? I don’t want to be one of them. Or are you going to hear him and look at him as he says, eyeball to eyeball, “Well done, you, good and faithful servant. You enter into the joy of your Lord.” That is what I want to hear. But it is personal. Will you follow him, make it part, no, all, of your personal agenda.
My last point is this enables us and we are privileged to be PARTNERS with Jesus. As we, through many, many different avenues, many ways, cast the net of God’s mercy, we never know what we are going to catch. That net goes down into the deep, into a darker world and people are entrapped, impeded, snared, in their everyday migrations going back and forth, just like fish. It may be a catastrophe in their life; it may be they just come to the point of success, realizing “I climbed a lot of rungs on this ladder but I think it is leaning on the wrong wall. I am not satisfied. I am looking for something more and deeper and more significant in this life than what I thought would satisfy.” I don’t know what the situation might be, but God in his mercy impedes their progress and they begin to think and they are stopped. They are halted, and we pull up the net, pulling them out of that darker kingdom into the kingdom of light. It is partnering with Jesus and it is a privilege and he empowers us to do it.
And as I mentioned before, we have to clean those fish. We can’t abandon them now. All kinds of fish…you don’t get to pick out the walleyes and throw the eelpout back in. No, you have to handle the eelpout, man; Jesus takes eelpout. He takes everybody. “Whosoever will may come.” So will you follow him? That is the question. If you follow him, he has promised among other things to make us fishers of men, to be effective in expanding the kingdom of God, ennobling, enhancing, uplifting the lives of others as they come into the full knowledge of who he is and what their purposes are, being reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God. That is our work as he leads us and guides us. If we do that, this church will be full in six months. I am serious. You will have to go to two services. I have seen it happen. I know a church that has two services seven days a week. They just don’t want to incur the debt of building a new building. So literally they meet seven days a week, two services. We are about expanding the kingdom. That is what we have been called to do. That is what we are commissioned to do— going into all the world preaching the gospel, teaching all the things that Jesus taught us to tell them, doing that with the power of the Holy Spirit, accomplishing the agenda of God as his servants. And in that, as we give up our lives for him, we find out that we gain our lives. Our lives are expanded. Our lives are enriched and we become everything that God wants us to be. Think about it when Jesus says “Follow me.”
Thank you for your time and attention and may God bless this portion of his word to us this morning.