Demonstration

Readings in Luke Continued – No.12

Lk 5:4-11 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”   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.”   When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signalled 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. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 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 catch men.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

Today’s sceptical world is not good with miracles. We try and explain them away; we wriggle about intellectually, trying to show that God cannot interact with the world He made. Why should He do this, we reason, ignoring the obvious answer that He loves us and sometimes, to express that love, He does things that defy our understanding, things that appear to run contrary to nature. Really it all boils down to how big your God is. If He is a limited figure who sits outside of all He has made completely ignoring it, then you are simply a deist and believe in a God who is not found in the Bible. If you start from the position that there is no God then, of course, miracles cannot happen, but that is prejudging the situation and intellectually lacks integrity. If you accept the testimony of the Bible and believe what it says about God, then you will have no problems with miracles because the One who created the world and who loves the world has both the power and the motivation to sometimes step into it and change things as He sees fit.

Let’s, first of all, simply examine what happened in the above account. Jesus has got Peter to agree to use his boat as a floating pulpit so Jesus can preach to the crowds without being trodden on. When he comes to the end of his teaching, Jesus tells Peter to throw out the nets for a catch. Peter is an experienced fisherman and knows these waters and knows that the previous night they spent the whole night out fishing with no success. He also knows the water and knows there are no fish here now, but there is something about this preacher that makes Peter want to please him and so he throws the net out. It is at that point that all of Peter’s world comes crashing around his ears. Suddenly there are fish in large numbers, so many that they need help to get them all in. We’ll stop at that point for the moment. That is the story in its simplest form.

Now our sceptic will say that Peter got so caught up with Jesus’ teaching that he didn’t notice that the fish had arrived. You are trying to tell me that this experienced fisherman did not look at the water as Jesus spoke and that his mind was so taken up with other things that he didn’t see the movement of fish? I used to live on a fishing coast and I’ve seen the water shimmering when this number of fish turn up. No, that explanation won’t fit; in fact no natural explanation will fit. I can’t explain how it happened but all rational explanations don’t fit. If the fish are swimming deeply in the coastal waters (unusual!) then Jesus’ abilities simply change to one who can see what no other person can see! Whatever you come up with, the only rational explanation is that somehow Jesus did something that no human being could do, which is what Peter realised in his response to him.

Indeed Peter’s response is highly revealing. Peter realises that this man in his boat is moving in a dimension beyond anything Peter knows. Peter KNOWS there were no fish one moment, but now he also knows he has just caught an enormous catch, and that seems impossible, and Jesus is the cause of it. He’s heard the teaching and he’s seen the action and he’s left with a conclusion that many of us aren’t comfortable with: he’s sharing the boat with a holy man (at the very least) or with God.

As we implied earlier on, this story challenges our presuppositions about Jesus. If this is the first time we’ve come to the Gospels and thought about what is here, we may try and write it off as a deception worthy of our TV illusionists. The only trouble with that is that this sort of thing happened every single day with Jesus with even more spectacular things happening, things that defy the mind. I know some people, intelligent, non-gullible people who went to visit a particularly spectacular healing ministry in Africa. They said that for the first three days they struggled to cope in their minds with what their eyes were seeing, as growths and injuries were removed before their very eyes. We say it can’t happen, but surely a God who can do the things we’ve seen already in this Gospel, will have no trouble with these things.

No, this account challenges our intellectual integrity. Will we believe the evidence that pours out of the Gospels, that tells us that this was God at loose on His earth? More than that, can we cope with the fact that God is unchanging and if He wants, He can still do exactly the same sorts of things that we read in these accounts? Remember who the writer is: it is Luke the doctor, an intelligent man who has ‘carefully investigated’ all he has been told, and he has no problem with this! He’s seen miracles as he’s travelled with the apostle Paul and so he has no trouble believing what he has heard about Jesus. If you struggle with such things, ask yourself why? It’s not a matter of the evidence; it is a case of the state of your heart that doesn’t want to submit to Almighty God, the God who can and does still bring transformations to lives today. Think about it please. This is a spectacular demonstration of the presence of God with man.