Luke 05.01-11 What
we will study today in By the Lake 01. Jesus the Teacher (Luke 05.01-03); 02. Jesus the Master (Luke 05.04-07); and 03. Jesus the Leader (Luke 05.08-11).
01. Jesus the Teacher (Luke 05.01-03)
Luke 05.01 “He was standing by the lake of
Gennesaret;” (Matthew 14.34; Mark 06.53) This is what we know
as the Sea of Galilee. It is also known throughout the Old Testament as Chinnereth (Kinnereth) (Numbers 34.11; Deuteronomy
03.17; Joshua 13.27; Joshua 19.35 and Chinneroth Joshua 11.02; Joshua 12.03; 1Kings 15.20),
and as the Sea of Tiberias in the New Testament, named after one of the towns
on the western shore (John 06.01; John 21.01). Chinnereth in Hebrew (H3672) twrnk means harp-shaped, most likely named because
if you look at the Sea of Galilee, it is in the shape of a harp. It is
about 16 miles long and six miles wide. The Jews say, “the holy, blessed God created seven seas, but chose none of them all,
but the sea of Gennesaret.” (Pirke Eliezer, c.
18.)
Luke 05.01 “Now it happened” This
phrase means that some time had passed from the events recorded for us in Luke 04.38-44.
Luke 05.01 “that while the crowd was pressing
around Him” The crowd was pressing and literally pushing Jesus to
the water’s edge because they were hungry for the Word of God.
Luke 05.01 “to the word of God,”
This phrase is not referring to the Bible as we would recognize it today. It is
written in a subjective genitive tense in the Greek, which indicates the
source. What this means is that the people were listening to Jesus speak the
word that comes directly from God. When Jesus spoke, the people were literally
hearing God speak.
Remember that the people were
amazed because He spoke with authority (Matthew 07.28-29; Mark 01.22; Luke 04.32) and not like the
other Rabbis of this time, only quoting past Rabbis who they agreed with. Jesus
is God, and what He spoke was from God.
As He was teaching the people, they continued to press Him
closer and closer to the water,
Luke 05.02 The fishermen who owned the boats and just
finished fishing and were preparing the nets for the next night of fishing. Fisherman
had to wash the nets after each use to clean them. If the nets were not stretched
out, they would in turn dry and rot. These nets were long, even up to 328 feet
long and 8 feet wide. The fishermen would attach corks to one side of the net
to keep it afloat, and attach weights or sinkers to the other end to cause the
net to go down into the water. The fishermen would row their boats in a
semicircle from the shore, and then drawing the net together with the ropes. The
bottom part of the net was drawn together faster than the top, thus catching
the fish in the net. In deeper water the net was often spread between two
boats, and the boats were rowed in a circle.
To make some space between Him
the crowd, Jesus “got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s,” (Luke 05.03)
Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist and started to follow Jesus when John
the Baptist proclaimed Jesus as “the Lamb of God!” (John 01.36) Andrew then
introduced Simon Peter to Jesus after following Jesus (John 01.35-42). Then as we saw
last time in Luke
04.38-44, Jesus went into Simon Peter’s house and healed his mother
in law.
Jesus then asked Simon Peter “to put out a
little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat.” (Luke 05.03)
to allow the crowd to see Jesus and hear Him better, perhaps using the smooth
water of the lake to amplify His voice to the crowd so that more could hear
Him. As a teacher, the custom of the day was for you to sit when teaching (Matthew 05.01;
Matthew 13.02;
Mark
04.01-02; John 08.02) and
usually the people stood while the teacher taught. Jesus was always open to the opportunity to teach the
Gospel of salvation to mankind.
02. Jesus the Master (Luke 05.04-07)
Luke 05.04 “When He had finished speaking”
to the crowd, Jesus then said to Simon Peter in the second person singular
imperative, “Put
out into the deep water” and then He includes Andrew and the rest of
the crew, “and
let down your nets for a catch.” which is written in the second
personal plural imperative. Jesus commands Simon Peter to take the boat into
the deep water, and then He commands Andrew and any crew that they had to drop
the nets into the deep water.
Luke 05.05 “Simon answered and said, “Master”
Simon Peter’s then responds by calling Jesus “Master”, which is the Greek word
(G1988) epistathv which means an overseer or a superintendent. Simon
Peter though was not at all claiming that Jesus was God. Simon Peter only saw
Jesus as a master, or an overseer, not as God.
Peter goes on to state “we worked hard
all night and caught nothing,” (Luke 05.05) The fishermen here were
expert fisherman, and they had spent all night fishing and caught nothing! Fishing
on the Sea of Galilee was typically done at night and along the shoreline.
Simon Peter couldn’t understand why this carpenter would tell him the
experienced fisherman when and how to fish!
Luke 05.05 “but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” Dr.
Luke tells us that Simon Peter was obedient to what Jesus had told him to do,
but it seems to infer in the original Greek that he had no confidence in the
command to fish now during the day. It was also culturally a major faux pas to
refuse the request of a Rabbi.
Luke 05.06 The nets were literally tearing in two, and were
about to lose all their fish!
Luke 05.07 Those in the boat with Jesus and Simon Peter “signaled”
(G2656) kataneuw or made signs of some sort
to those in the other boat belonging to James and John (Luke 05.02;
Luke 05.10).
Jesus really is the Master, the Lord of all, who knows where all the fish are
in the Sea of Galilee. Solomon wrote, “Unless YHWH builds the house, They labor in vain who
build it; Unless YHWH guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. It is
vain for you to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful
labors; For He gives to His beloved even
in his sleep.” (Psalm 127.01-02) Nothing like this had ever
happened to these men, having so many fish in their nets that they wear tearing
in two and needed another boat to bring the load of fish in. Nehemiah prayed, “You alone are YHWH.
You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth
and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. You give life to all
of them And the heavenly host bows down before You. “You are YHWH God, Who
chose Abram And brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, And gave him the name
Abraham.” (Nehemiah 09.06-07) The Psalmist declared the power
that the LORD has over all of His creation in Psalm 104.24-30.
03. Jesus the Leader (Luke 05.08-11)
Seeing and experiencing the great catch of fish (Luke 05.06-07),
Simon Peter’s response was to fall “down at Jesus’ feet,” (Luke 05.08) or literally at His
knees (G1119. gonu) in the Greek. Here at
this time Simon Peter realized that Jesus was not just His Master (G1988 epistathv) overseer in Luke 05.05)
but also God. This is evident in his action of
falling down at the feet of Jesus to worship Him and he realized that he was a
sinful man at the feet of a Holy God.
Luke 05.08 “Go away from me Lord” In
calling Jesus “Lord”,
Simon Peter moved from the term “Master” (G1988 epistathv overseer in Luke 05.05) to Lord or God (G2962. kuriov). As a religious Jew, Simon
Peter would know that God alone was to be worshipped (Deuteronomy
06.13) yet Simon Peter fell down at
the knees of Jesus in the position of worship (Luke 05.08).
Luke 05.08 “for I am a sinful man, O Lord!””
Simon Peter was there at the synagogue to see the demon cast out (Luke 04.33-35),
and obviously he was there when Jesus healed his mother in law (Luke 04.38-39),
and now with this great catch of fish for which there could be no way to
explain this one away, it brought Simon Peter to the place where Jesus wanted
him, to recognize his own sinfulness and pitifulness in the presence of God,
Jesus. It is also possible that Peter knew the words of the LORD to Moses on
Mt. Sinai in Exodus
33.20. All throughout the Bible, the common belief amongst the Jews
was that if you are in the presence of God you would die. After being in the
presence of the pre-incarnate Christ (Genesis 18.01-33), Abraham called himself “but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18.27)
When the children of Israel were in the wilderness and Moses was on Mt. Sinai
receiving the Ten Commandments from the LORD, “All the people perceived the thunder and
the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking;
and when the people saw it, they
trembled and stood at a distance. Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us
yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.””
(Exodus
20.18-19) When the pre-incarnate Christ appeared to Gideon (Judges 06.11-24),
he said, “Alas,
O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of YHWH face to face.” (Judges 06.22)
After the pre-incarnate Christ appeared to Manoah and his wife foretelling the
birth of Samson (Judges 13.01-23), “Manoah said to his wife, “We will surely die, for we
have seen God.” (Judges 13.22) Job said “I have heard of You by the hearing of the
ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and
ashes.” (Job 42.05-06) after encountering the
pre-incarnate Christ. After seeing a vision of the LORD in His heavenly temple
(Isaiah 06.01-08),
Isaiah said, “Woe
is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a
people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, YHWH of hosts.”
(Isaiah
06.05)
After seeing a vision from God (Ezekiel 01.01-28),
Ezekiel fell on his face (Ezekiel 01.28). When John the writer of Revelation
saw the glorified Christ, he “fell at His feet like a dead man” (Revelation 01.17).
This shows us that Simon Peter
understood Jesus to be God, and worshipped Him in that way. This also shows us
that Jesus accepted the worship of Simon Peter and never rebuked him for doing
so!
Not only was Simon Peter amazed
at what had taken place, so were his fellow fisherman (Luke 05.09-10a). David
tells us the greatness of the LORD over all creation in Psalm 08.01-09.
Luke 05.10b “And Jesus said to Simon, “Do
not fear, from now on you will be catching men.””
The response of Jesus was to tell Peter that he had
nothing to fear, or literally “stop being
fearful” (G5399. fobew), for he would no longer be
fishing for fish but “catching men”, or literally (G2221. zwgrew) “taking
men alive, to catch”. Matthew
(Matthew
04.18-22) tells us that Jesus not only said this to Simon Peter, but
also to Andrew, James and John and that they would be “fishers of men”. These are all men who had spent a large portion of
their lives fishing for fish with the purpose to kill them, and now Jesus wanted
them to spend the rest of their lives catching men, taking them alive to offer
them eternal life. It was the common practice
at this time for a Rabbi to gather for himself his disciples. A Rabbi would
walk up and choose men by basically saying, “Follow me”, and that man would
immediately understand what that meant, and would drop all things to be a
disciple of the Rabbi.
Luke 05.11 After having the catch of a lifetime, these four
disciples left all that they had, all that they knew, turning their backs on
their old life to follow Jesus and the call that He had on their lives. They
even left all their fish, which they could have made some good money selling
all those fish (see also Luke 18.28-30)!
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