(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 02/04/07)

INTRODUCTION:

I only have one really good fishing story, which I will abbreviate.  We were on a small river just off Lake Huron.  I was bringing in my line and it caught really hard on a log and wouldn’t move.  Upstream there was a bridge, so my dad’s idea was to let out some line, cross the bridge, and try to free the line by pulling from the opposite side – it made sense.  But when my dad got on the other side and started pulling, suddenly I hear him yelling, “Michael, get over here, it’s a fish!”  That salmon was three feet long, and I do have pictures to prove it.

There’s nothing like a fishing story, right?  But today’s gospel lesson is no fishing story.  There are plenty of people around who will say that the bible is nothing more than a bunch of stories, and we’re supposed to get a message or a moral from the story.  With this story they would say that there weren’t really all these fish, but we can sure learn that Jesus can miraculously provide for us.  That approach is mistreating God’s Word. There were slippery, smelly fish in the nets, big lunkers would be my guess, and two boats were riding low in the water because there were so many. 

So is it about fish?... Yes.  Is it about providence?  Yes, it would appear the great catch of fish was taken to market.  But it’s also Epiphany season, so it’s about the one who did the miracle.  It’s about what happens when he speaks.  In at least four different ways, there is this real fishing story that’s calling for your attention today, inviting you to look.

Look How The Word Works!

How critical is that for you, that the things Jesus says about himself are able to change the heart and mind of someone you care about deeply, so that that person confides in Christ instead of themselves; that when your world is crumbling around you on every side, Jesus has a promise that will keep you safe and well; that when you are convinced that there’s no possible way something could ever come around, Jesus’ word can make it happen; that not even death can trump the Word of the Lord?

This event, at the very point where men like Peter James and John are now going to be with Jesus on a full time basis, couldn’t be more important in setting a foundation for their lives and for their work.  For our daily well-being and for all those sticky issues that we face, it couldn’t be more critical to see and believe that the word of Jesus works.  It works wonders…

…Even when it’s not all that evident.  When Jesus finished preaching the sermon from the boat, was there an all-time record high offering?  Did he get a standing ovation?  Was there an explosive clap of thunder on a perfectly clear day as God’s way of tacking on an emphatic Amen?  From what can be told, there was nothing like that.  It looked like a garden variety Bible Class.

But that’s one of the reasons we’re supposed to look at all those fish.  One sentence from Jesus and they have more fish than they can handle, but his word was working just as powerfully and just as effectively during the teaching session as it was when all those fish swam into the net.  It’s the same word of Jesus.  Look how the Word works even when you can’t really tell.  The lessons, the sermon, the Bible Class, the home study, the dinner time devotion – they may appear to be as plain and mundane as they can be, but those ordinary, no-frills sessions with the Word are God’s most powerful tool at work, changing and calming the human heart.

What is there in your life right now that seems to defy resolution?  I cannot get this issue out of my mind.  I’ve prayed for days / weeks / months / years (pick one) and still no progress.  Nothing seems to help.  I might as well bag it – I’ve tried everything.  Well you know what that sounds like, right?  Almost sounds like you’ve been fishing all night and haven’t caught a thing.  Then the Lord himself says, “You will find real answers for your real problems in the book that I had written for you and in your baptism and in Christ’s body and blood.”  There are times when that prescription from Jesus sounds like fishing in the deep during the day.  “How could that possibly help?”  But what did one more casting of the net bring about, and why?  The entire miracle turns on Peter’s statement, “but because you say so.”  When you’d think it couldn’t, look how the Word works, because Jesus says so.

I’ve never been in a boat with Jesus, but I do know how Peter felt when the nets filled up.  It’s like I feel when I hold a Christmas gift in my hands, the one from all of you (thank you), and I have to think, How can God be so nice to me through all of you?  I’m a filthy sinner and he’s so kind to me.  It’s like when we’re finally singing Silent Night at the candlelight service.  Sermon done, songs sung and, hey, after all that worrying the service did go halfway OK, and, oh yeah, what’s that child doing in the manger for me, come to this earth to die for me?  Doesn’t he know?  Surely he must know the sinner I am.  It’s like Isaiah felt seeing the holy God, like Peter felt being in a boat with the Son of God, like you and I feel when we know that the stadium where they’re having the Superbowl today is not big enough to hold all our sins and Jesus shouldn’t come anywhere near us, and yet he got as close to us as a person could be, observing with flawless compliance the rules God made for us, dying on our cross, rising from our grave.

Guilty as we know ourselves to be, he says, “Don’t be afraid.”  The crippling, damning, debilitating, mess-making, shameful guilt of your sins was injected into Jesus and you own it no more.  Look how the Word works when you need it most.

I have always rolled my eyes on the inside when a guide tells me, You will get a deer here.  You will kill an elk.  You will catch fish.  OK!!  It’s worlds different when Jesus says, “You will catch men.”  It’s a promise from the one who has never broken a promise.  You will catch men.  The entire early Christian church was gathered through the apostles’ testimony about Jesus.  They caught men.  Look how the Word works when you let it be heard. 

Three years ago (on February 8, 2004) I preached on this text, but I figured that was OK because Jesus repeated this miracle, too, three years after he did it the first time.  It bears repeating.  In your devotions, in your dilemmas, in your discussions with family and friends, in your darkest moments, what Jesus says produces incredible results.  There’s nothing of which you could say, “I’d stake my life, my marriage, my family, my eternal future on that” – nothing except the pure, powerful, pardoning word of Jesus Christ.  His word is the genuine article.  “All in” on what he promises!

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