Fishing Trip

Well, good morning. Good to see all of you, those watching online or later on demand. Thanks for being here.

My name is Jim Jensen. I’m the executive director at Shepherds Gate here on staff. People call me JJ, you can too.

And here we are in July, the second half of July. People call this the dog days of summer. But we’re still, are you still rocking it? Because I am.

We got to enjoy it while we have it, right? We’ve got about three months of this. Let’s live it as much as we can. That’s what this series is all about, lake life.

In fact, a lot of what we do in Michigan is kind of involved or surrounded by or in our lakes. Isn’t that correct? How many people have been on a Michigan lake or plan to be by the end of the summer? Just show of hands, just curious. Yeah, most of you, a lot of you, and the rest of you want to be on a lake probably.

It’s fun. I know our family is all about the lake life as well. A little over 10 years ago, we bought our first boat.

And I have pictures, so I’m going to show you our pictures, our boat pictures. This was our first boat, and we’re on a lake near our home, Lake Ponema. And so our girls were little back then.

There’s Haley enjoying the boat and the lake. There’s Julia. And we just enjoy our lake time, whether it’s tubing or swimming or fishing or just hanging out or posing for pictures, like you can see there.

Aren’t they cute? But we got a second boat after that. We needed one a little faster for tubing. So the girls were complaining that the boat got slower and slower as they got older and older.

Strange, right? So we got a faster one. That’s me enjoying it. There’s, so the girls are growing up now.

But we still enjoy the lake. We still enjoy getting out there and being on the lake. There’s my whole family on that boat.

And yeah, we really enjoy our lake life, for sure. Here’s the funny thing. I don’t know if you knew this, but Jesus and his disciples were all about the lake life too.

It’s true. They ministered and lived for three years around a lake. And I’ll show you a little map so we can orient ourselves.

This is ancient Israel, the boundaries of ancient Israel. Around it, that green outline, is the state of New Jersey, just to give you perspective. All right, at the bottom is the Dead Sea.

You can see there’s a long lake there. That’s the Dead Sea. And then there’s a river coming up.

That’s the Jordan River. And then at the top is the Sea of Galilee. It’s called a sea, but it’s really a lake.

It’s about 8 miles by 13 miles. And you can see Nazareth is there. That’s where Jesus grew up.

Capernaum is there. It’s mentioned in the Gospels. There were all these towns around this lake because it was a very fertile region and the fishing industry was huge.

And so if you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, again, you’ll see that Jesus is always like on the shores of the lake, or he’s crossing the lake in a boat, or his disciples are in a boat. There’s something happening around the lake. They experienced lake life.

Here’s a picture of the Sea of Galilee. I feel like this is touched up just a little bit because the colors are very vibrant, but it’s a beautiful lake and a beautiful place. And this is the actual lake where Jesus and his disciples were around for those ministry years.

Well, we’re going to do this short little series. It’s today and it’s next Sunday, Lake Life, and we’re going to actually just look at a couple of stories featuring Jesus and one of his disciples, Peter, on the Sea of Galilee and see what we can learn from it. So this first story, Peter’s name is Simon because Jesus is the one that changes his name to Peter later on.

But this story happens in the early days, so you’ll see that his name is Simon here for most of this story. But that’s Peter. All right, so let’s get into it.

One day as Jesus was standing by the Sea of Galilee, the people were crowding around him and listening to the Word of God. He saw at the water’s edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the shore.

Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Let me ask you here this morning as we get into this, how well do you know yourself? Pretty well? Not as much as you thought? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? How about this, how well do you know the circumstances of your life? Or asked another way, how much control do you think you have in your life? And if you think you do, how sure are you? Have you ever been surprised by something that was kind of bubbling underneath the surface and then suddenly, surprise, a problem has occurred? When we first got our second boat, we enjoyed it for about three weeks.

It has an outboard Yamaha motor, two-stroke, so it runs hot. And as like all boat motors, the water gets sucked in in the intakes to cool the engine. That’s how all boat motors are.

So it cools the engine as you’re running the boat. We enjoyed that boat for about three weeks on the water and then we were at one of the spots where we would swim and we were with some friends that had another boat. And we were done and I wanted to go back to the marina.

And so I turned the key like I had been doing the last three weeks and it didn’t start. I’m like, oh, I must have like forgotten something. So I looked at the the different buttons or whatever and I couldn’t figure it out.

Now I don’t know a lot about boats or boat engines. That’s why we’re at the marina. So that if there’s ever a problem, they can just handle it.

But of course, it didn’t help me out there in the middle of the water. It was so great because our friends there were able to tow us back to the marina so we could get back without paddling or embarrassing ourselves in some way. So we got back and the next day I called the marina.

I said, hey, can you pull the boat, put it in the shop and tell me what’s going on? And they did. And then they called me up and they said, hey, listen, here’s what’s happened. Sometime about two or three weeks ago, you got some sand in your boat, in the intakes.

The sand got sucked up into your boat and unfortunately it stayed there and it got hard, it got hardened. And it didn’t cut off the water completely so your heat alarm didn’t go off. But for the last two or three weeks, every time you were using that boat, you were kind of melting the inside of your engine.

And you know what boat stands for, by the way, right? Break out another thousand. In this case, it was a little more than that. And I learned a valuable lesson about what you think you know.

I thought that whole time we were just enjoying this boat. We were kind of destroying it the whole time. And that wasn’t great.

We did get it repaired though. And we still enjoy it today. I do make sure that the sand is out of it after every trip on the boat now.

So what we don’t know though can hurt us. And I think this is maybe one of the fatal flaws of humanity. I feel like maybe this happens to us again and again, no matter how much we want to figure this out.

We keep forgetting that we don’t know. I was going to share another story here, but something’s happened in the last couple of days. A very public example of how what you don’t know can hurt you.

Do you think this guy is in control of his life and his circumstances? Not anymore. That’s right. For those that don’t know who this guy is, there was a Coldplay concert in an arena, a music concert.

And this guy who’s a tech CEO, or was a tech CEO, and this woman here who is the HR rep, or the person in charge of HR, were attending with some of their friends or whatever, and there was a roving camera during the concert. And the roving camera came to them and saw them in this embrace. The problem is they’re not married.

They’re married to other people, not each other. And even then it might have gone unnoticed, except that the guy ducked down like he was avoiding like gunshots or something, like he dropped out. And then the lady kind of turned around, and it was just very awkward.

And it was on the Jumbotron, and of course with thousands and thousands of people there, people videotaped that, and then they thought it would be nice to put it on social media. And you know, we can laugh at that because it is so public. It’s what happened so public.

But actually, we should be praying for these people because two families are ruined. The guy resigned this Sunday. I saw that on the news.

His job’s done. His, you know, he had a great life, and now all these people, these lives are ruined. I don’t know why he thought that he could be there in public with his affair, but what he didn’t know really hurt him.

This is the problem I want to talk about today. We mistakenly believe that we know. We get into this habit that we think we’re in control, and we’re really not.

What do we stand to lose? What do you stand to lose? What damage will our ignorance or our pride cost us in the long run? Well, Simon Peter is about to encounter what he doesn’t know, but fortunately, Jesus is in the boat with him, and so we get the benefit of that. We get to see how Jesus navigates this with Simon Peter and how it all works out. So let’s continue with our story.

You remember they’re out into the water, and Jesus is done speaking, and he says to Peter, let’s go out and let’s do some fishing. 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. Now Peter knows a lot about fishing.

So the fishing industry was big on the Sea of Galilee, and he has partners, so he’s been in it a while. He knows this lake. He knows when to fish.

He knows what kind of fish to get. He knows all about his boat, the places to go, when to do it. He thinks he knows, and I can’t prove it, but I almost feel like Peter is humoring Jesus here.

He’s like, well, we fished all night, but you know, these landlubbers, they want to go experience some fishing, so fine. We’ll go out. Jesus, because it’s you, I’ll let the nets down one more time, and we’ll just see what happens.

I can understand Peter’s dilemma here, because I feel like I’ve been on Lake Ponema for 11 or 12 years. I know the lake pretty well. I do.

I know the fishing spots. I know the deep spots for swimming. I know how to avoid the sandbar now, which is good, and you know, I kind of think I know this lake pretty well.

I don’t know if this ever comes up for you. It happens in church life, and as a church staff member, I do hear this often where someone will, you know, they feel like God is asking them, or someone’s asking them to do something just one more time, and you’re like, oh, I don’t know. You know, like I tried serving, but it wasn’t a good fit, and I don’t know.

I’ve tried. I’ve tried it a couple of times, or life groups, or small groups, or a Bible study. That’s a good, that’s another good church one.

Like, oh, I tried this Bible study, or tried this life group, but I don’t know. We just didn’t connect with the people, and I don’t know. I don’t know if I should try it again.

I feel like I’ve, I feel like I know better now, or I was hurt. I think this happens to us. We get kind of turned off about something, and then we’re asked to do it again, and we think, ah, I don’t know, and I think Peter’s kind of in this position.

Here’s what happens, though. When they had done so, when they let down the nets, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that the boats began to sink.

So here’s where we see the missing piece in Peter’s calculations. He thought he had it all accounted for, and he thought he knew, but he’s just making the same mistake that we all make. He’s making the same mistake that we make all the time.

We discount the reality of a God who is personally involved in our lives. Let me say that again. We discount the reality of a God who is personally involved in our lives.

When Peter saw this, he was overwhelmed. It was obviously a miracle, and you have to understand, for us, it’s like, oh, the fish, the boat sank. That’s cute.

For him, it was like a giant pile of money. It was his, it was his industry. It was his livelihood.

It was like if we were to win the lottery or get a huge bonus at work. It was, it was just overwhelming for him. It represented security, financial stability, opportunity.

He just didn’t account for the possibility of God breaking through in that moment. In fact, when Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’s knees and said, go away from me, Lord. I’m 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. It’s interesting that Peter says, go away, Jesus. Like, I don’t know if that would be my reaction.

I may be like, wow, look at all the fish, or I don’t know, like, you know, something, not that, right? But it’s interesting because in the Bible, a lot of times when someone has a direct encounter with God like this, a miraculous encounter, actually, this is the normal response. And I think that it’s because Peter’s coming face to face with the fact that there’s something going on here that he is not, he has not accounted for. The holiness of God, the power of God in that moment is contrasted with his very inadequate view of the world and the view of his own abilities, and it’s just such a contrast that he just falls at Jesus’s feet.

Sometimes our pride has to be broken like that. I mean, let’s just face it. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and then God has to just show us that in a moment so that he can break down that pride, so that we can be humble enough to depend on him and say, okay, I will trust you.

I’ll put my faith in you. And that’s when God can use people. And that’s exactly what Jesus says to Simon, don’t be afraid.

From now on, you will fish for people. So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him. Now that Peter’s ready to hear what Jesus has to say, Jesus just changes Peter’s destiny.

He says, you’re not going to be a fisherman anymore. You’re going to share the gospel with people. And they just leave, like they just leave everything on the shore.

What does that mean, everything? What are we talking about here? It’s total abandonment. It’s like, it’s the boats, it’s the job, it’s maybe even the families, it’s definitely the fish. I mean, they just caught these fish.

They just had the best catch they’re ever going to have. Left it on the shore. And here’s what we have to see.

It’s not about the fish. It’s about faith. It’s not about the fish.

It’s about faith. Peter’s faith to this point was in his lake life. It was in his business, his livelihood.

It was the center of his knowledge and the center of his expertise. And Jesus just shows him a different perspective. You’re working so hard to get this fish.

You want fish? Here. Here’s so many fish, your boats are going to sink. Peter, it’s not about that.

It’s not. Don’t worry about that stuff. It doesn’t matter.

It’s not about the fish. This isn’t what life is about. Put your faith in me, and let’s go change the world.

So let’s pivot this and just talk about that for a second. If you’re here today, or you’re listening online, or you’re watching on demand, then there’s something within you that’s telling you to pay attention to the spiritual side of life. Right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.

You wouldn’t have shown up today, or you wouldn’t be watching online. So there’s something within you awakening to the idea that within yourself, you actually don’t have all the answers. That maybe there’s some truths out there that you are not aware of, that you need to know.

And this is the truth that the most important part of life isn’t what you know. It’s not how much experience you have. It’s not the deals that you can close.

It’s not how accurate your hunches are. It’s not how often you take bold risks. It’s not about any of those things.

The most important part of life is where you put your faith. And that’s the truth. Or more specifically, who you put your faith in.

I have to tell you that my parents did a great job raising me. They taught me about Jesus. They made sure I was at church.

And as soon as I could understand any part of it, I received Jesus into my life. I accepted that free gift of salvation that he offered by dying on the cross for our sins. And I’ve lived my life as a follower of Jesus.

But I can tell you that there are many times it just kind of creeps in where I think, okay, I think I’ve got it figured out now. I think I’ve got things settled. Or I think I know enough and just Jesus every once in a while.

Otherwise, I’m good. And then something always interrupts that. You know, whether it’s 9-11, or something like COVID, or it’s some sort of relationship issue, or a job thing.

It just happens. And I’ve lived long enough to know that I just can’t put my faith in myself. And we’ve got to watch for this.

Because our culture tells us to do that. You control the rudder of your own ship. You control your own destiny.

You make your life choices. And I’m not saying that we don’t make choices. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use what God has given us.

I’m not saying that. But where do we put our faith? Is it in ourself? Or is it in Jesus? Here’s what Jesus said about faith. And this is interesting.

In John, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them. Peter had this fish miracle. And so he falls at Jesus’ feet.

And you might be saying to yourself, well, look, this is a great story. If God did something miraculous like that in my life, like my fish, if he multiplied my fish, then sure, that would be easy to put my faith in him. But I don’t have that kind of miracle.

I’ve never had that kind of miracle. The thing about this story, though, is that there are two miracles. There’s the miracle of the fish that you can see outwardly.

And there’s the inward miracle of faith awakened in Peter’s heart by Jesus. That is also a miracle in the story. We all have something miraculous right now.

Faith. If you’re here today, it’s not an accident. If you’re listening online, that’s on purpose.

This verse tells us that if we have been drawn to the things of God, it’s God himself who is drawing us. Jesus is working in your life and in my life right now. Faith is your miracle.

So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about faith. Martin Luther was a 16th century church reformer, and he had a huge influence on the church, and even today, a huge influence on the church.

And he identified three kinds of faith, and I think this is a useful definition. Let’s talk about it. Historical faith, temporary faith, and justifying faith.

Historical faith is like knowing the facts about Jesus, or knowing the facts about Christ. Maybe you’ve gone to church, or you grew up in church, or someone told you something about the Bible, or you’ve read the Bible, and you know the plot. You know the basic story.

That’s a start. That’s historical faith. But it’s really, it’s just head knowledge.

It’s a start. Or maybe you’ve experienced this. You’ve experienced temporary faith.

Like, boy, that song just moved me. Or, wow, that message was hard-hitting. And you have kind of a heart response.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. That is part of faith. But that’s only temporary faith.

It’s this third kind of faith that Jesus gives to Peter. Justifying faith. True saving faith.

How does Jesus draw us? He went to the cross. He died for our sins. He takes a dead soul that we are spiritually dead inside, and he makes it alive again.

Justifying faith. The word justifying means just as if I’d never sinned. So that when we put our faith in Jesus, it’s that when God looks at us, He sees Jesus.

He doesn’t see our screw-ups. He doesn’t see our failings. He doesn’t see our sin anymore.

That’s justifying faith. And I want to encourage you to do what Peter did. Fall at the feet of Jesus.

Recognize that you’re a sinner, but God loves you so much. He sent Jesus to pay the price for your sin. Receive into your life the free gift of salvation by grace through faith.

The justifying, miraculous faith. And just follow Him where He leads you. And for those of you like me that are already followers of Christ, maybe you’re starting to tune out.

You’re like, oh this was a salvation message. I guess I don’t need to pay attention anymore. No.

No. We do need to pay attention because this message is for us as well. Don’t be fooled into thinking you have enough wisdom to handle your life situation better than Jesus can.

Remember your gift of faith and nurture it. Stay close to Jesus. Maybe, maybe there’s something like the disciples left everything at the shore.

Maybe there’s something that you just need to lay down on the beach and just let it go and just follow Jesus. Remember that this scenario, this scene, this location, it’s not church. Peter’s not in church.

He’s not in temple. He’s at work. This isn’t just about our church life.

This is about our work life, our lake life, our family life, our home life, our personal life, any kind of life. Jesus is the life. Amen.

Love that. Follow where He leads. Next week we’re going to take another look at another story of Jesus and Peter on the Sea of Galilee.

And we’re going to investigate this a little further. What does it mean as a follower of Jesus to take those things and leave it on the beach? What does it mean to have trust in God? And actually faith and trust are closely related, but there is a difference. And I’ll be excited to share that with you next week.

But for right now, let’s just pause for a minute and just close it out by thinking carefully about our lives. And I just want to say to you again, if you have not received that gift of salvation, put your faith in Jesus. Now is the moment.

It’s already been done. There’s nothing you can do to receive it. It’s a gift.

It’s a gift from God to you. And if you’ve been following Jesus now for some time, I want to just counsel you and encourage you to think about the different lives that you have. And just think if there’s anything that you need to leave on the shore and just give it to God in this moment and say, Jesus, I’ve been using my own wisdom, my own experience, in my own pride, but I’m just going to come to the cross again.

And I’m just going to lay that down. I’m going to give that up. And I’m going to listen for your voice.

I’m going to listen for your direction. And I’m going to follow you.