July 24, 2000

• Luke 5:1-11 Characteristics of Jesus' Divinity

  

  Characteristics of Jesus' Divinity, Part 1

  Luke 5:1-11

  "Now it came about that while the multitude were pressing around Him and listening to the Word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret; and He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them, and were washing their nets.  He got into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little way from the land.  And He sat down and began teaching the multitudes from the boat.  And when He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, 'Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.'  And Simon answered and said, 'Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but at Your bidding I will let down the nets.'  And when they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish; and their nets began to break; and they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them.  And they came and filled both of the boats so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus' feet, saying, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!'  For amazement had seized him and all his companions because the catch of fish which they had taken.  And so also James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.  And Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not fear, from now on you will be catching men.'  And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him."

  What happened that day was convincing enough that they left everything to follow Jesus.  The drama of this scene literally changed the rest of the lives of these disciples.  Here is the divine fisherman.  Five divine attributes are manifest here.  One of the attributes of God's nature is truth.  God is truth and always truth.  Another of the attributes of God's nature is omniscience.  God knows everything that exists, everything that exists in the material world and everything that exists in the immaterial world.  Thirdly, God is source of power.  When you think about God you think of power, Almighty God, all powerful God.  Another of God's attributes is holiness.  Another of His attributes is mercy.  God is by nature merciful.

  When you look at Jesus in this simple fishing incident that occurred this day in Galilee, what you see here in Christ is the very essential character of God.  You see divine truth.  You see divine omniscience.  You see divine power or omnipotence.  You see divine holiness.  And you see divine mercy.  Here then is the manifest nature of God visible in Jesus Christ. These verses alone are sufficient to indicate who Jesus really is.  He must be God because He is the source of truth, omniscience, omnipotence, holiness and mercy.  All these characteristics are manifest in Christ.

  Verse 1, "It came about that while the multitude were pressing around Him and listening to the Word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret."  The verse opens with an indefinite indicator, "it came about."  It doesn't tell us when, it doesn't tell us how much time has transpired since the incidents that occurred in the prior chapter.  You remember in chapter 4 He had preached in the synagogue in Capernaum and He had cast a demon out of a man there, that was His first miracle, the first one recorded by Luke.  And then, you'll remember, He went after the synagogue service home to the house of Simon where His mother-in-law was ill and He healed his mother-in-law of a very great infection that had produced a high fever.  And then at the end of the Sabbath day the people in the city were bringing everybody who was sick with every imaginable disease and He was healing them all and He was casting demons out of many.  That all occurred on one day in the synagogue in Capernaum and in the home of Peter.

  We have an indefinite then passing of time.  We don't exactly know what the chronology is, but it came about at some point in time after that.  Jesus is still in Galilee.  He's still preaching.  He's still calling disciples.  He's still performing these healings and casting out demons.  And on one occasion when surrounded by a multitude, He is near the lake of Gennesaret teaching the Word of God.  Jesus is beginning to collect massive crowds.  He could heal all the people who came to Him of any and every disease, do it instantaneously and permanently.  In Luke 4:14, The news about Him was spreading throughout the surrounding district, and as the word went that He could heal and control not only disease but control the world of demons, the crowd would get larger and larger."  Trace through Luke 5:19, Luke 6:19, Luke 8:4, Luke 8:40, Luke 9:11, Luke 12:1, Luke 13:14-17, Luke 14:25.  You just march all the way through and the crowds get bigger and bigger.  You begin to get the picture that when Jesus was teaching He drew huge crowds because of His power and because of the clarity and the uniqueness and the power of His preaching. 

  Remember what I told you about the incident when He was in Nazareth when He was in the synagogue, the people said they had never heard any teacher like Him.  A good communicator or a great preacher can draw a crowd.  Jesus was the greatest communicator, the clearest preacher that ever walked on the earth.  There never was anybody who could communicate the way Jesus could.  No one had such clarity of thought.  Noone had such grasp of the language.  Noone had such precision in presenting truth.  No one could grasp the perfect illustration for the perfect point the way Jesus could.  No one could make His point more deftly and more profoundly and more penetrating as Jesus could as a communicator because He was operating with the mind of God.  And because of that, along with His ability to heal and cast out demons, masses of people flocked around to hear Him and to see the wonders and even to participate in what He was capable of doing.  And so the multitude is pressing around Him.

  It didn't matter where He went, He drew crowds.  He was in Galilee, a good place to speak to people because you could be at the shore and the slope would be a place that would create sort of a natural amphitheater and the people could hear.  But there was a problem.  As the crowds got bigger, they pushed Jesus into the water.  We read about this in Mark 3:9 and Mark 4:1.  So this was a somewhat typical problem to deal with in the Galilee as He was addressing crowds that gathered around Him along the shore of the lake. 

  It tells us in verse 1, this is a very important point, they were listening to the Word of God.  This is a subjective genitive and let me tell you what that means.  An accurate translation is ...they were listening to the word that comes from God.  In other words, when Jesus spoke who was speaking?  God.  This is the source of divine truth.  He didn't need resource material.  He opened His mouth and God spoke and since He already knew everything there was to be known, and all truth came from Him, there was no reason to go anywhere else to find any information.  They were listening to the word that comes from God.  It was the word about salvation and it was the word about entering the Kingdom of God.  It was the word about the forgiveness of sins.  It was the word built on Isaiah 61 as Jesus referred to it in chapter 4 verse 18.  It was the good news that the poor could be made spiritually rich.  It was the good news that the prisoners of sin could be set free by forgiveness.  It was good news that the spiritually blind could be given sight.  It was the good news that the spiritually oppressed would be liberated to the glorious inheritance that God give to His children.  It was the good news of forgiveness, salvation and eternal life.  And when Jesus preached it, it was coming from God.  They were listening to the word that comes from God.  Luke uses that same phrase in chapter 8 verse 11 and verse 21, and again in chapter 11 verse 28.  This is the first time he uses it.

  Jesus is the source of truth.  When He preached the Sermon on the Mount up there on the hillside at the north end of the Sea of Galilee, and He finished that great sermon in which the Beatitudes really were the launch point, the introduction, the people said, "He speaks as one having authority, not like the scribes and Pharisees."  The scribes and Pharisees quoted sources, they quoted other people, they gave opinions, they attached themselves to some of the current literature and some of the ancient literature to document their viewpoint.  Jesus never did that.  He simply spoke the truth.  There was no other source than His own divine mind.  When Jesus spoke it was God speaking.  He was giving the long-awaited divine revelation of the Kingdom and how you could come into the Kingdom because God was providing salvation through Him.  This was the good news of forgiveness.  It was not His opinion, it was not His viewpoint.  He was not a theologian.  He was not a scholar of the Old Testament.  He wasn't giving a sermon from prepared notes.  This was not philosophy.  This was not theological intuition.  This was divine revelation.  This was God speaking.  He spoke and it was the voice of God.  When Jesus came to earth He came as God in human flesh and He spoke.  He said in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth and the life."  He is truth.  He is synonymous with truth.  He is one with truth.  John 1 introduces Him, "The Word becoming flesh and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."  He is the fullness of truth.  He speaks nothing but the truth.  He is God, Titus 1:2, who cannot lie. 

  In John 5:24 Jesus said, "Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life."  His word, His truth, is so powerful that it literally dispenses eternal life.  If you listen to what He says and believe it, you have eternal life.  It is divine.  It is by that word, Peter said, that we are begotten again.  It is by that word that we are transformed and given life.  You hear My words, you believe My words, and those words have divine power to give you life.  Repeatedly He defended His words as the very words of God.  He said you must believe that when I speak it is God speaking.  Chapter 7 verse 16 of John's gospel, "My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.  If any man is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching whether it is of God or whether I speak for Myself.  If you will hear what I say and believe it, you will know that it is the word of God.  It is not Mine, it is that word which comes from God My Father."

  God is true and only and always true and when Jesus who is God spoke what He spoke was the truth, always the truth, nothing but the truth.  Jesus said in John 8:31, "If you abide in My word, you are truly disciples of Mine and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."   The truth will set you free from sin, the truth will set you free from judgment.  The truth will set you free from darkness and blindness.  And the truth is what I say.  And if you believe what I say, that is the truth that saves you and sets you free.  

  In John 8:42 Jesus said, "If God were your Father you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, I have not even come on My own initiative but He sent Me.  Why do you not understand what I am saying?  It is because you cannot hear My Word.  I come from God, I am God, I speak God's word and you don't hear it."  Why?  Verse 44, "You are of your father the devil.  You want to do the desires of your father and he was a murderer from the beginning and doesn't stand in the truth, there's no truth in him." 

  So you have two kinds of people in the world, those who believe the devil's lies and those who believe the truth of God.  Verse 45, Jesus says, "Because I speak the truth, you don't believe Me."  Verse 46, "If I speak the truth why do you not believe Me?  He who is of God hears the words of God."  Jesus again is saying, when I speak it's the words of God, it's right out of the mind of God.  And if you believed it, you would understand it.

  John 12:49  "I didn't speak on My own initiative but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me commandment what to say and what to speak.  And I know that His commandment is eternal life, therefore the things I speak I speak just as the Father has told Me."  Literally, I am giving you the very words of God which have the power to produce eternal life.

  God is true. That's one of His attributes.  Psalm 138:2, "I bow down to Thy holy temple and give thanks to Thy name for Thy loving kindness and Thy truth.  Thou hast magnified Thy word according to all Thy name."  In other words, God magnifies His word equal to His name because His word is the expression of His essential truth.  That's why Psalm 146:6 says, "God keeps truth forever."  Isaiah 65:16 twice says God is the God of truth. 

  It says then in chapter 5 that Jesus was speaking the words that come from God.  Here you have evidence of His deity.  This is not a human opinion, this is not a man, even a theologian who is well studied, this is not a scholar talking, this is the very word from God.  As He stands by the lake and speaks the very word of God, the crowd is pushing Him and in verse 2 it says He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake.  They would have been fairly large boats and so they wouldn't have been all the way up on dry land but the bow was pushed into the shore of that lake and they were there.  The fishermen had gotten out of them, verse 2 says, and were washing their nets. 

  The fishing enterprise was very time consuming.  What they did took up days and nights.  They fished at night and during the day they had to repair their tackle, their boat, and in this case their nets.  And so it was daytime now and Jesus perhaps had begun His first lesson teaching in the morning, and then there is later to be more teaching when He gets into the boat.  It perhaps is 11 o'clock in the morning, maybe even pressing noon by now.  He sees as the crowd is pushing and pushing the two boats on the edge of the lake and the fishermen gone and washing their nets to prepare for the next night of fishing. 

  A fisherman typically and certainly at the Sea of Galilee fish at night because at night the fish come to the surface and to the shore.  Fishermen today will tell you generally the cloudier the day, or the darker the sky, the better the fishing.  And in the sea of Galilee region, in the Galilee, it is blazing sun in the middle of the day and so the fishermen typically would fish all night and spend the daytime repairing their nets and so forth so they could be prepared to fish again when night came.  Days were the days to work on the equipment.  Nights were for fishing.

  The boats were fairly large.  In Mark 4 you have all the disciples in a boat and Jesus sleeping.  In Mark 6 you have all the disciples in the boat plus Jesus, at least 13 people, and maybe a crew to run the boat.  You have another incident in Matthew 8:23, or another account of the same incident that's in Mark 4 and Matthew 8, again indicating that all the disciples were in the same boat.

  In this boat you're going to see Jesus, Simon, James and John get in the boat and probably there's a crew to assist in the fishing enterprise.  So this would be a fairly large boat with some beams that could be used for the nets, with some winches that might be used to pull the nets in, with a sail that could be used to move the boat along as well as some oars with a hold so there was a deck and a hold below where the fish could be dumped into the boat after they were gathered in with the nets.  So these boats would be sitting on the shore.  Boats that would be manned by whoever owned the boat, the people who were the owners as well as a crew who served in the fishing enterprise.

  Here the boats sit at the edge of the lake.  Verse 3 says He got into one of the boats which was Simon's.  The Lord didn't do anything just by accident.  Everything was intentional, divinely intentional, sovereignly purposeful.  It was time to bring Peter to full commitment and to bring those who followed his leadership, in this case James and John, to their full commitment as well.

  He's going to reveal to Simon and the others who He really is.  So He says to him, "Put out a little way from the land."  Because the crowd has gotten right down to the edge, Jesus needs some space.  Water is a good conductor of sound and this is a fairly flat lake and gentle surface of that lake would make a good point to sort of bounce the sound to that crowd of thousands that had gathered and it would give Jesus a little bit of distance.  He asked him to put out a little way from the land, so Peter gets in the boat, whoever else needed to help him handled this boat and push it back off the shore and stabilize in the water so that Jesus could sit down, it says in verse 3, and begin again to teach the multitudes from the boat.  So this is the second set of lessons.  The first one completed now, the crowd is getting bigger and bigger, pressing and pressing, and they've been listening to the word of God but now Jesus has to get away into the water and He teaches them again. 

  This is relentless on Jesus' part.  No matter what the difficulties, no matter how much the press of the crowd is, you don't stop teaching, you just find a way to keep doing it because this is at the heart of why Jesus came.  He came to seek and to save the lost in order to bring them the truth because you can't be saved apart from the truth.  No difficulty can ever interrupt teaching, preaching.  This is that which is most critical.  You can set the miracles aside, you can set the casting out of demons aside, you can set the supernatural wonders aside, but you cannot set the teaching aside.  And so, Jesus must continue His teaching.  He must continue to preach to the poor and the prisoners and the blind and the oppressed who need to hear the message of forgiveness and the Kingdom of God.

  Salvation comes by hearing the word about Christ.  Romans 10  And how are they going to hear if you don't preach?  Jesus knew that and so God had one Son and He was a preacher and He preached His whole ministry.  And then He appointed Apostles who would preach.  And then He chose gifted men to be preachers, pastor/teachers and evangelists all down through history because how are they going to hear if we don't preach?  And then He gave us a commission to send people to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel because there isn't any salvation apart from it.  Jesus knew what was important, truth was important and the gospel and relentlessly He did it.  And if it got difficult, He figured out a way to solve it.  There were a number of occasions when He had to get into a boat to get away from the crowd.  He taught everywhere.  He taught in the temple, as we'll see later.  He taught in synagogues.  He taught in a cemetery in John 11.  He taught by the side of the lake.  He taught in houses.  Sometimes, as I said, they had to open the roof to let people down the crowds were so big in the house.  Anywhere and everywhere all through His life He preached because that is necessary.  You cannot come to the Kingdom of God unless you believe and in believing the Word, the Word then has the power to transform you and make you a child of God. 

  What do we see in Jesus that indicates who He is?  Divine truth, He spoke the words that come from God.  Secondly, divine knowledge.  He knew exactly where the fish were.  Wouldn't you like to go fishing with Him?  You say, "How do you know that?"  Well, I can give you a comparison.  Matthew 10:29-30 says this, "Are not two sparrows sold for a cent and yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father's knowledge?"  What does that mean "fall to the ground?"  One commentator says the word actually means hops.  Never does a sparrow, a little tiny inconsequential bird, never does a sparrow hop that God doesn't know it hopped.  God knows every sparrow on the planet and He knows every time a sparrow hops.  That same passage says, "The very hairs of your head are numbered." The point is that in omniscience God knows everything there is to know, everything that exists He knows.  He doesn't learn it, He doesn't conclude it by adding.  He doesn't know sparrows hop because He watches them.  Everything that exists He knows whether it's material or immaterial.  So believe me, Jesus as God will know where the fish are.  And this is omniscience.  And this is what flows out of this.  God's understanding is unsearchable, Isaiah 40:28 says, known to God from eternity are all His works.  Paul said in Acts 15 and Hebrews 4:13, "There's no creature hidden from His sight."  God knows where every fish in every lake and every ocean is at all times because God omnisciently knows everything that exits in the material and immaterial world and the condition and state of everything, not only now but in the past and the future.  He knows everything.  Nothing in the universe is beyond His full comprehension. 

  We see this revealed in verse 4.  "When Jesus finished His teaching He said to Simon, 'Put out into the deep water, let your nets down for a catch.'" We're going fishing.  This is a big enterprise, folks.   There are two kind of nets.  There is a hand-held one-man net.  You walked along the shallows until you came to a school of fish and you flung that, the weights then went down, sunk to the bottom, surrounded the fish.  You had a cord in the hand, you pulled the cord tight and essentially what you had was a catch of fish in that net that surrounded that school that you found when you were wading, it was used when you were wading, you pulled it into the shore.  But the kind of net here is called a sagena.  It's a massive net.  It is a net that is generally put in the fishing experience of Peter between two boats and history tells us it could be as long as a half mile, a large net that had corks on the top and weights on the bottom.  When the boats separated it created a wall of net and into that wall of net everything would literally swim and be collected and then the net was by cords and some winches pulled together until you had this massive potential to catch whatever was there.  That is what they were using, this great sagena.  Well in order to operate this you had to have a crew of men.  This was a large operation.  This was a very big net.  You can imagine a half a mile of net piled up on a boat and dragged out and spread out as the boat separated, covering this massive amount of area.  Pulled finally into a great circle as the boats pulled around, they pulled this wall of net into a circle as they got together and then they began to pull the rope in and pull the thing together.

  In the middle of the day, however, at the brightest point of the sunlight, it was generally possible that the fish could be so deep they were even below the ability of that net to go down and find them.  And furthermore, after all, Peter had fished all night and caught nothing, so Peter was convinced there were no fish there.  Peter's experience, lots of years of fishing, that's his lake, that's his area.  He knows what he knows and he cannot resist telling the Lord that in verse 5.  "Simon answered and said, 'Master,'" it's a term of respect, it's not deity, master is a word that is epistates, it means chief, or commander, or one in authority.  He can't resist saying, "We worked all night and caught nothing."  It's as if he says, "Let me remind you, you are a carpenter, we are the fishermen.  We've got to get all this crew together, we've got to get all this tackle together, we've got to get the nets we've been washing, we've got to get them back in the boat, this is going to take a lot of work.  We fished all night, we caught absolutely nothing.  I'm telling you, the fish aren't there. You're going to make us go to all this work and all this effort and get out there and spread this thing out and go through all this and it's going to all be pointless.  Then as I said, by then it's noon and the sun is burning down on the lake and the fish are way down and there just aren't any fish.  But...he says, and of course you would say this if the Lord had just healed your mother-in-law and made your wife happy, so he says...Master, we worked all night and caught nothing, but at your bidding I will let down the nets, the least I can owe you for healing my mother-in-law who is a tremendous cook and got right out of bed and made dinner and all of that.  So hey, what can I say?  We'll do it."

  So the whole enterprise gets going and when he says there, "I will let down the nets," he means "I will have the nets let down because this is an enterprise that says two boats with two crews."  Verse 6, "But when they had done this they enclosed a great quantity of fish and the nets began to break."  You know why?  Jesus knew where the fish were.  That's what hits you, He knew where the fish were.  Peter says, "There's no fish there."  Jesus said, "Put the net down."  He knew where the fish were.  If He knows every sparrow's hop, He knows where all His fish are.  He knew where they were, He knew exactly where they were.  One time in Matthew 17 they needed to pay their taxes, remember that?  Peter needed money for the taxes.  Jesus said, "Go down there, put your hook in the water and pull out the fish and the fish has a coin in his mouth that will pay for both of us."  He knew what fish had the coin, where the fish was.  He said, "Go put the thing down there, that's where that fish is."  And then there was John 21 where Peter was fishing after the resurrection.  Peter was fishing and he couldn't catch anything, remember?  And Jesus was on the shore and He said, "Try the right side of the boat."  Try the right side of the boat.  And they did and they couldn't even get all the fish in.  Why?  He always knew where the fish were.  He always knows where everything is because He knows everything that is to know.  There are no limits on His knowledge except those which He imposed upon Himself in His condescension.  But He is God and He's omniscient as God and He knows everything.  It says in John chapter 2 that He didn't need anybody to tell Him what they were thinking because He knew what they were thinking.  When He had a conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 He answered a question Nicodemus hadn't asked, but He read his mind. 

   

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  Characteristics of Jesus' Divinity, Part 2

  Luke 5:1-11

   In the third point omniscience blends into omnipotence.  It's one thing to know where the fish are, it's another thing to have the power to gather them there.  And this is what stuns us in this story because we read in verse 6, "When they had done what the Lord told them to do, put down the nets, the amazing result, they enclosed a great quantity of fish."  A massive quantity, an enormous quantity of fish, so much that the nets began to literally snap, pop.  They just began to shred with the weight of this enormous mass of fish.  I mean, typically fishermen who fished in that area knew what the normal catch would be, maybe what a good catch would be, maybe what a great catch would be and they had designed usually capable nets that would be able to handle with their time-tested cords, the kind of catch that you would get in the sea of Galilee.  Nothing like this had ever happened.  They were seeing an expression of divine power because there's no explanation for the volume of fish, other than the fact that Jesus not only knows where they are, but He has commanded an enormous number of fish, way beyond any imaginable school of fish that would ever be swimming together into this one place and he knows now that he's dealing with the Creator of the universe.

  In fact, in verse 9 the catch was so massive that amazement had seized everybody.  Everybody sees Peter and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken.  The term here for amazement is just that.  They were absolutely shocked by what they saw.  It's a term that's used a couple of times back in chapter 4.  They were amazed at His teaching.  They never heard anybody teach the way He taught.  And in verse 36 they were amazed at His confrontation of the demon.  And now they're amazed at His power expressed over nature.  Just amazing expression of His power.

  The nets began to break and in order to try to deal with what they had on hand, they signaled to their partners in the other boat.  The other boat, remember, had been mentioned back in verse 2 as sitting on the edge of the lake and probably belonged to James and John who jumped in their boat since they were partners with Peter in the fishing business, and went out to where they were to try to give him some help.  Typically they had one large boat and the boat that took the net to the other extremity would typically be a smaller boat for the purpose of simply taking the net over there and then bringing it back.  But there wasn't going to be a large capacity in that smaller boat to carry the tremendous catch and so they called for their partners to put their boat in the water, get out there as fast as they could and help them with this massive catch.  They signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them.  They came.  That boat may well have been on the water, we can't say for sure, but nonetheless they came hurriedly, surely, and they got alongside Peter's boat and after having pulled this net in and the net is snapping and popping and somehow with the use of smaller nets whatever means they would use they started pulling those fish out of that great net and putting them in the hold of the boat.  And it says in verse 7 that they filled both of the boats so that they began to sink.  This is is just beyond anything they had ever experienced.  As the fish were hoisted into the hold, the weight began to push the boat under the water so that now the lake is lapping over the edge of the boat.  Water begins to come in which, of course, sets the crew in motion to be throwing it back out and trying to make sure that they turned the boat against the waves, or whatever you have to do to keep them from lapping across the edges and sinking the boat.  They managed to cope with that problem, but the point is the catch is so massive that it...it literally goes beyond anything they have ever anticipated because their nets can't contain it and their boats can't hold it.  It's without human explanation.

  Not only did Jesus know the location of the fish, but He commanded the fish to be exactly where He wanted them to be and He commanded them in massive numbers.  Now Peter and James and John and their companions and the folks that were there knew the Old Testament.  They knew that God is the Creator and God is also the controller of His creation.  They knew  Isaiah 50 said, "Behold I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness, their fish stink for lack of water and die of thirst." They knew that if God wanted to He could dry up a lake, He could dry up the sea, He could have all the fish die.  They also knew what Daniel had said that God was the one who did whatever He wanted to do in the kingdoms of men, that God was the ultimate sovereign over all sovereigns.  In Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar said, "All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth."  He does whatever He wants with whomever He wants or whatever He wants within His creation.

  Nehemiah 9:6 says, "Thou alone art the Lord.  Thou hast made the heavens, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them.  Thou dost give life to all of them.  Thou art the Lord God." And they knew that Psalm 62:11 said, "Power belongs to God," and they knew God was El Shaddai, God the Almighty One.  They understood something of the immense and massive power of God.

  And Peter knew it.  He knew exactly what he was dealing with.  He was dealing with one who was the source of truth, one who knew everything that could be known and one who had power.  He was dealing with truth, omniscience and omnipotence.  And that meant, fourthly, that he was in the face of divine holiness because Peter knew that the God of truth, and the God of omniscience, and the God of power is the God of holiness..  And he knew now that Jesus is God and this is clearly bursting on his mind. 

  When Simon Peter saw the divine display, when he saw this omniscience and this omnipotence in action along with the message of the words of God that had come, he knew in whose presence he stood.  "And he fell down at Jesus' feet," the actual Greek says, "His knees."  He fell down at Jesus' knees. 

  Fishing was Peter's thing, you know.  He knew about fishing.  But this was not fishing.  What he had seen was not fishing.  Knowing where the fish are and controlling them, that's not fishing.  This was supernatural.  This had no human explanation.  Peter had heard Jesus teaching about the Kingdom.  He had heard Jesus teaching about repentance and salvation and forgiveness.  He had heard that because he was sitting in the boat, his boat while Jesus was teaching it.  And he had heard it in the synagogue just prior in the record of chapter 4.  And no doubt he had discussed it with Jesus when Jesus spent the day at his house and healed his wife's mother.  But no teaching left to itself would have brought Peter to where the Lord wanted him to come apparently.  And so the Lord had a very special manifestation for Peter that shocked him.  The Lord wanted to get Peter was the place of recognizing his sinfulness.  This is the first time we have that indication.  Peter had his initial call as recorded in John 1, there was a confirmation of that initial call to follow Jesus recorded in Matthew 4 and Mark 1, parallel passages.  In neither of those passages is there any discussion on Peter's part about his sinfulness. 

  Now Peter knows something.  Whoever he thought Jesus was when they first met, whoever he thought Jesus was at that second confirmation, whoever he thought Jesus was in the synagogue, and whoever he thought he was at home when He healed his mother-in-law, and whoever he thought he was when he...when he was teaching that day on the shore at the lake now there are no doubts for this moment, anyway, that this is God because verse 8 says when he saw that he fell at Jesus' feet and this is the prostration of a worshiper.  But not just a worshiper, a worshiper who is frankly terrified because look at his words, "And he said, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.'" This is that penitence that Jesus is after.  This is that poor prisoner, blind and oppressed, that Jesus said He had come to preach the gospel to in reciting the words of Isaiah 61.  This is exactly the kind of attitude Jesus was looking for, not an attitude of confidence, not an attitude of self-satisfaction, not an attitude of religious achievement, not an attitude of self-righteousness, but an attitude of brokenness. 

  It's interesting to me that Luke always refers to Simon as Simon, up until up to 6:14, he's always Peter after that.  And he's never Simon Peter, except here.  Why is he Simon Peter here?  And I think the answer is because this is where Simon becomes Peter.  This is where the real transformation takes place, and so He gives him the full name.  This is Simon Peter.  This is the moment of his penitence.  This is the first time in the gospel of Luke that someone is brought to the recognition of their sinfulness.  And Peter is crushed because he knows he's in the presence of holy God, that's why he reacts this way.  He is stunned by the presence of God and is only aware then of his sin because he knows if he can see God, God can see him and he sees holiness and God sees sin.  And it's very traumatizing and it's very intimidating and it's very terrifying and he says, "Go away...go away."  He's afraid for his life, calls Him "O Lord," and I think he means by that at this point, "God."  In the Septuagint God is translated kurios, the word for Lord.  This is worship of the holy one.  When he falls on his knees, that's worship.  He knew not to worship anybody but God.  And then when he calls Him Lord, I think he means it in the...in the highest sense possible.  The Old Testament is very clear that God is holy.  Peter knew it very well.  He knows he's in the presence of God and he says, "Go away...go away."  The trauma, the self-consciousness, the guilt, the shame, the sense of unworthiness, the terror, the fright and he can't restrain himself from telling the Lord to get out of his presence.  It's just too intimidating.

  Occasionally we have discussions about people who leave Grace Church.  I believe people leave this church primarily because it intimidates them because being brought even on the human level the best way we can do it face-to-face with the Creator, face-to-face with holy God is something they seek to avoid.  But to come and enter in to a place where God is exalted, God is glorified, His Word is lifted up, His name is preached, His...this for the person who doesn't really want to deal with their sin is an intimidating environment.  But that's nothing compared to literally being in a small boat with the Creator.  That's why in Mark 4:41 when Jesus was in the boat and they said, "We're going to drown."  And He stopped the storm, it says they were afraid and then it says they were very much afraid because it was far more frightening to have God in your boat then have a storm outside.  They were terrified.  They knew what they were dealing with, the Creator. 

  That's why Abraham in Genesis 18:27 says, "I am speaking to the Lord?  Who am but dust and ashes."  This can't be happening.  Dust and ashes were a symbol of penitence.    That's what Job said.  He said, Job 42, "I now see You with my eyes and I repent in dust and ashes."  Then there's Isaiah who sees the Lord and says, "Curse me, damn me, woe is me, I'm disintegrating, I'm a man with a dirty mouth," and all he can see about himself is his wretchedness.  Then there's Manoah, I love the story of Manoah in the thirteenth chapter of Judges.  Manoah has an encounter with the angel of the Lord, a preincarnate appearance of Christ, the second member of the Trinity comes and appears to Manoah and he goes home and he says to his wife, "I've seen the Lord, we will die."  And then there's Ezekiel who has a vision of God in Ezekiel chapter 1 and falls over in a coma.  Then there's John in Revelation 1 who has a vision of the glorified Christ and it says he fell over like a dead person he was so traumatized. 

  One of the most interesting statements of all in regard to this is found in the twentieth chapter of Exodus.  God is giving the law and in verse 19 they said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us lest we die."  Moses, please we don't mind talking to you, don't bring God down here.  We're dead.  You see, that's the sense of sin, the overwhelming sense of sin.  That's the publican in Luke 18 beating his chest.  He won't even look up.  He won't lift his eyes.  He's afraid somehow that God might see who he is and he's crying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner."  It's the disciples in Matthew 17 on the Mount of Transfiguration who see the glory of Christ and fall over in a...in a coma.  Literally frightened into unconsciousness.  This is what God seeks in Isaiah 66:1-5, a person with a broken and contrite heart.  This is someone who sees their sin and you can't really see your sin until you see God.  That's why the emphasis of ministry always has to be to exalt God, to lift up God, to manifest His glory, His holiness cause it's when we see Him for who He is that we see us for who we are. 

  So here was Peter...broken, penitent, overwhelmed by his sin, frightened, terrified.  He's in the presence of holiness.  This is an affirmation on Peter's part that he is meeting the divine One.  "Depart from me for I am sinful, O Lord."  And he's affirming in saying that the Lord is sinless.  "You don't deserve to be in my presence, I don't deserve to be in Your presence.  We don't have anything in common.  Holiness is separation and, Lord, it's unfitting for You to be near me."

  Why did he feel this way?  Well verse 9 says, "Because of the amazement that had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken."  There was just no human explanation.  This is God.  And it was the same with, verse 10 says, with James and John.  They had exactly the same reaction, the sons of Zebedee.  They were partners, koinonos, partners in the business with Simon.  And they were all literally shaken to the core.

  In the terror of this moment Peter wants to send the Lord away, but the Lord wants to pull Peter closer.  What from Peter's viewpoint is so frightening that he wants to run is so encouraging to the Lord that He wants to embrace Peter.  At the very point in which the sinner feels the most alienation is the point at which the Savior is seeking reconciliation.  And here was Peter and his two buddies, James and John, wanting to run when Jesus wanted to embrace them, wanting alienation when Jesus sought reconciliation.  This is the glorious moment of their repentance.

  That brings us to the final attribute of God that is demonstrated here, divine mercy.  Peter was overwhelmed with his sin.  We can certainly assume that James and John were and perhaps others.  They were broken and contrite, just what the Lord was seeking.  You remember, it was Isaiah who thought he was so unworthy that he was going to be destroyed, and it turned out that the Lord called him into ministry.  It was Job who thought that he was the worst of sinners and needed to repent in dust and ashes, that God blessed beyond imagination.  It was John who because of his sinful life in the presence of the vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation 1 fell over out of sheer terror in a dead faint.  And the Lord awakened him, told him to get up and take his pen and serve Him by writing the Revelation.

  Just at the point where you think you're on the brink of damnation because of your sin, you're at the brink of reconciliation because of mercy.  And I love this in verse 10, Jesus said to Simon, "Do not fear," or perhaps better, "Stop being terrified," phobeo from which we get phobia.  Stop being terrified.  You don't need to be terrified.  And that's the kind of fear he was feeling, it was terror of being in the presence of holy God and being on the brink of divine judgment.  Stop being terrified.

  There is a healthy, positive fear of God.  Deuteronomy 13:4 says, "You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him."  There is the fear that seeks to run and there is the fear that seeks to cling.  If a child has managed to put himself in a very precarious position by some foolish things, there are some fathers who may come and castigate the child and brutalize the child and criticize the child, be unmerciful to the child and the child would rather work his way out of his dilemma without the father because he fears the father's hostilities.  On the other hand, there are children who are by their own foolishness found in situations of difficulty and perhaps danger crying out with all their might for a father to cling to because they understand the love and the tenderness of that father who will forgive their folly and rescue them. 

  There is the terror of the sinner who fears the judgment of God.  There is the healthy reverence and wonder and awe and love and adoration of the child who wants to cling to a father who is the Father of mercies, as Paul calls God in 1 Corinthians.  And so we want the fear that clings, the fear that says I can't make it on my own.  The fear that says You are my Redeemer, my Savior, my Lord, my Master.  You are the object of my love, my affection, my worship, my praise, my adoration, my devotion.  I want to keep Your commandments.  I want to listen to Your voice.  I want to serve You.  I want to follow You.  That's the fear that clings.  And for the sinner there is that fear that terrifies and wants to run.  That's why I say there are people who come even here and when God is displayed and God is manifest and the glory of God is shown in the face of Jesus Christ, it's a very intimidating thing.  And those who love their sin want to run.  Those who are, in a sense, unmasked by it but want to continue the game of hiding, flee.  But for us who desire mercy, we cling, don't we?  The same God can create terror in the unrepentant sinner and calm in the penitent sinner.

  What does the Lord your God require from you, says Deuteronomy 10:12-13?  But to fear the Lord your God.  What does that mean?  To walk in all His ways.  To love Him.  To serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and keep the Lord's commandments and His statutes.  That's the positive kind of fear.  That's respect.  But Peter was in terror and so Jesus said to Simon, "Do not fear, stop being terrified." And then He says this, and here's where mercy takes you, "From now on you will be catching men." 

  You can't do that if you don't belong to the Kingdom and the King.  You can't do that if you don't enjoy the presence of the Lord, the power of the Lord, the power of His Spirit.  This in my mind is an affirmation of the fact that the Lord had drawn Peter into His Kingdom and into His Kingdom enterprise as well as James and John. 

  This is wonderful.  Isaiah feared that he would be destroyed.  Instead he was called to preach.  John feared that he would be destroyed.  Instead he was called to write.  Peter feared that he would be destroyed.  Instead he was called to preach, along with his friends.  You never have to be afraid to admit your sin, that's the point at which you must come to receive mercy.  Here is the formalizing of the call of Peter and James and John into that intimate inner circle that they enjoyed through the whole ministry of Jesus.  The most penitent, the most penitent is the one who receives the most mercy and becomes the most qualified to accompany the Lord in the great salvation mission.  This is kind of where the great commission starts.

  By the way, "you will be catching men," interesting Greek word, zogreo from two words, greo, to catch and zoen, life.  You're going to catch alive, is what it means.  They spent their life catching fish dead, now they're going to catch men alive.  You catch fish for the purpose of killing them, you catch men for the purpose of giving them life.  It's an astonishing mercy that not only does God forgive the sinner who is overwhelmed by his sin in the presence of the holiness of God, not only does God forgive the sinner, but God clings, God pulls that sinner in in an embrace in which He chooses to use that sinner in His salvation enterprise. 

  The sovereign power of God had done its mighty work in the hearts of these men and verse 11 says, "When they had brought their boats to land, both boats, both Peter, James and John and when they brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him."

  This is the catch of all catches that they had dreamed of their whole fishing career and it might have been a temptation to say, "Well, I think the better plan than us following You to catch men is You come with us and we'll really catch fish."  I mean, the dawning of a new day.  Who knows how much money this was worth, what this could have done in catapulting their career to another level.  What more boats they could have bought.  What perhaps more equipment they could have bought, men they could have hired to increase the business.  But here they are at the very pinnacle, here they are having made the catch of all catches in the history of fishing and it says they brought their boats to land, got out of the boats, left everything, followed Him. 

  That was history.  All the activities of their life to that point passed.  Initially they had followed Him part-time and this was the full-time.  This was the life they would live all the way to their death.  From this moment on they were permanently engaged in catching people in God's salvation net.  The highest calling in life, the great commission.  The word followed is used in Luke as a technical term for discipleship.  You see it about five times in chapter 9, a couple of times in chapter 18.  They became disciples. 

  Jesus has appeared, He is God.  He has come into the world.  He is God.  We know He's God because He's the source of truth, knowledge, power, holiness, mercy.  Only God gives mercy to sinners.  Only God calls sinners to reconciliation to Himself and commissions them to the great task of evangelization, catching men alive.  This is God.  They know it.  And when they are called, they will not resist.  They see their sin.  They see their Savior.  Their Savior embraces them in mercy.  They embrace Him in obedience.  And together they will preach the gospel that saves souls.

  

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