Are We Ready?

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Transcript:

Turn with me to John chapter 21. John chapter 21. You know, when you’re expecting a baby, when you’re expecting a baby, the medical professionals, they will give you a due date.

And you can take that information to the bank and you can know for sure that that’s the day that that baby is going to get there. At least that’s what I thought the first time. And the second time.

You know, maybe not the second time. It didn’t take real long to figure out that With all the technology we have and all the learning and understanding we have, a lot of things about babies and the way they grow and what they do and how they get here, a lot of that’s just speculation. I mean, they can get some really accurate information, but stuff like that, it’s just a good guess a lot of the time.

When we were expecting Benjamin, though, we knew from the very beginning, and by the way, some of you all asked, he’s with his grandparents today. Today’s my mother’s birthday, so happy birthday to her. She got to watch him.

So that’s what she wanted. So it’s cheaper than a new car. Yeah, she’s looking at the wrong child if she’s expecting me to buy her a new car.

When we were expecting Benjamin, we knew from the very beginning that Christian was going to be having a C-section because she’d had one before. So we thought, okay, we know with certainty when the baby’s coming, not because they’ve given us a due date. It was not the same day as the due date, but they had scheduled it.

And because the surgeon was going to be there that day, and there was an OR reserved and all these things going on, we knew that was the day Benjamin was coming. Christian, what was the day? Do you remember the day you were scheduled?

I don’t know, sometime in April, I think around tax day. I thought that was appropriate because we get this new, lovely little tax deduction. Christian forbade me from calling him that, said it would give him a complex.

But it was sometime around tax day. I mean, we just knew we could expect that he was going to be coming that time, and we had a certain amount of time based on that date in order to get his nursery ready, get everything done. I knew it was going to be, not from experience, but I knew it was going to be hectic after the baby came around the house, and it was going to be an adjustment.

There wasn’t going to be time to get everything done. And so I said, we’re going to be good here. We’re going to have everything in order by the time the baby gets here.

We’re going to have his nursery done. We’re going to have it painted, all the furniture put together. We’re going to have all the stuff that belongs in boxes boxed up and in the attic, the stuff that belongs in the drawers.

It’s all going to be put up. The room’s going to be in pristine condition. The rest of the house is going to be ready to go that day, all the dishes cleaned up, laundry done, folded.

We’re going to come back from the hospital, and we’re just going to have a fresh start so that we have a running start in keeping up with this baby. That was the plan, and we were well on our way to doing that, except for some of the things we had to do. We were still in the process of moving.

We were moving boxes, moving furniture. We were painting. And Christian kept going in and painting our bedroom, and every time she’d go in and paint the bedroom, she’d have contractions, which is not really good when you’re expecting the baby to be on your timetable.

So one day she finally goes in there and paints one too many times, and we have to take her into the hospital yet again, and they decide she’s dilated, and they say, he’s coming tonight. He can’t be coming tonight. We’ve got church in an hour.

It’s Wednesday night. And the nursery’s not ready. He’s supposed to come on tax day.

You know, this is not according to my schedule, but it didn’t matter. He was coming that day, and so they were going to have to go and take him. And we have been playing catch-up ever since, trying to get rooms painted, trying to get furniture put where it belongs and laundry done and dishes done.

We didn’t get our running start, and so we never have caught up because we were not ready. And there is nothing, I won’t say nothing, there are a few things in this life that I hate more than not being ready. I can’t play that game with Christian where one of you puts your hand on the other one’s hand and then they slap and you have to pull it away.

You know what I’m talking about? I can’t play that game with her because she always turns around and slaps my hand before I’m even ready. I’ve always caught off guard.

Always caught off guard. Never ready and so I can never win. Can’t win with Benjamin because we weren’t ready.

Can’t win with her. I used to have a dream about getting up to preach and I have no notes. And I wasn’t ready.

And it messed me up. That dream, it was a horrible nightmare, I guess. And then one day it really happened, and we were like two hours away from the house visiting a church, and I had no choice but to preach without notes, and then I started having that dream where I get to the church to preach and don’t have my Bible.

Somebody bring an extra just in case that dream comes true. I hate not being ready. Things don’t go the way they’re supposed to when you’re not ready.

We’ve got to be ready for any number of things that come up in life, and that was true for the apostles, for the disciples too. they were following Jesus around all the time. And when you think about it, and I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, Jesus was very unpredictable.

He was, wasn’t he? Because they were always expecting one thing and Jesus was saying or doing another. That’s not to say that Jesus was flighty or Jesus didn’t do what he should have.

It’s just that their expectations were not what they needed to be. And so it was beneficial to them if they were ready for what Jesus wanted to do, if they were ready, prepared for anything. And in one instance that we’re going to look at tonight, it was very important that they were ready, and we’ll talk about the ways they were ready and how it applies to our lives as a church and as individual Christians.

But it’s important for us, as we’re serving God, to be ready to serve God. Not just to wait until God shows up with an opportunity that we miss because we’re scrambling around trying to get ourselves prepared to follow God. We need to be ready.

We need to be like the, they call it the minute men. You remember that story? The minute men at Lexington and Concord, where as soon as somebody came in and yelled, the British are coming, they were supposed to be ready in a minute’s time to go out and fight.

We need to be the minute men when it comes to our Christian lives. When God calls us to do something, we need to be prepared ahead of time and ready to do what God’s called us to do. That’s true of us as a church.

That’s true of us as individuals. But let’s look at the preparation that these men made here. John chapter 21, starting in verse 1, said, After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias, and on this wise showed he himself.

There were together Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. And they say unto him, We also go with thee.

They went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night caught nothing. So they’ve walked off from Jesus, not necessarily in a bad way, but they’ve just said, we’re going to go fishing. Peter said that, and they said, we’ll go with you.

And so they go out on the ship, and it says, and immediately they go out, and that night they caught nothing. That’s a pretty big deal for them, because even though they’re following Jesus around, they’re fishermen. That’s their livelihood.

That’s how they’ve made their living all these years. And it’s not unusual for me to go fishing and catch nothing. I’m not a professional. As a matter of fact, it would be unusual if I caught something other than a tire or a snake or something like that.

But it was unusual for them not to catch anything because they’re not out there with a rod and reel. They’re out there with these nets in the Sea of Galilee where they can just surround the fish and kind of scoop them up. They don’t have to one at a time hit the right spot and lure the fish in.

No, they just go where the fish are and they scoop them up. And so it was unusual that they caught nothing. Verse 4, but when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.

So it’s starting to get light. It’s the morning coming, and they look, and they see Jesus standing on the shore, but they don’t know that it’s him. And Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.

Verse 5, Then Jesus saith unto him, Children, have ye any meat? Meat being a word for food. And they answered him, No.

So Jesus calls out to them from the shore and says, Do you have anything to eat? And they say, No, we don’t. So he says to them in verse 6, And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find fish, something to eat.

They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved, that means John when we see that, therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, it is the Lord. At this point, when this figure tells them, cast your net on the other side, they actually do it, and they catch all these fish.

They have a hard time scooping them up, and all of a sudden, John realizes that’s the Lord. It’s Jesus. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, for he was naked, and did cast himself into the sea.

That just paints an odd picture, just wrapping a coat on yourself and throwing yourself into the sea. But Peter was that excited that Jesus was there. And the other disciples came in a little ship, for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits, dragging the net with fishes.

So they go out in a smaller boat so that they can row into the shore and drag this net that is just teeming with fish behind them. And as soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.

Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, and hundred and fifty and three. And for all there were so many, yet was the net not broken. So something miraculous has happened here, that they go from catching nothing to suddenly Jesus shows up on the scene.

Now they don’t realize at first that it’s Jesus, but they listen to him anyway. And then when they realize it is Jesus, they continue to listen to his instructions. But they’ve gone from catching nothing.

They’ve been out in the middle of the lake, in the middle Sea of Galilee to Big Lake. They’ve been out there all night. And these were professional fishermen.

They had this big net. If there were fish out there to catch, surely they would have caught them. And yet they had gone through the whole night, and there was nothing in their nets.

And Jesus shows up and tells them, cast your net on the other side, and you’ll find something. And reluctantly, I assume, maybe not so, I probably would have been reluctant, but they, the Bible says, they threw the net in the water on the other side, as Jesus had told them, and they could barely pull in the catch of fish that they had. So they caught 153 great fish.

And it said, for all the weight, the nets were not broken. That tells me that it was an amount of weight that was sufficient that should have broken the nets. And so Jesus has not only provided them with this amazing catch, but he’s also preserved the net to be able to hold it all.

It’s an incredible story. I mean, folks, I hate even calling these stories. I don’t ever want to give the impression that I think these are just allegories or metaphors that God’s trying to illustrate a point by making up stories.

These things really happen. All of these stories are incredible to me. The things that Jesus did, the things that Jesus taught, it’s incredible.

It’s things that we don’t see every day. And this followed the resurrection. So just coming off of the most incredible miracle ever perpetrated by God, he does this yet again.

And it’s a teachable moment, I think, for us as we look at it. There are several applications that we could take from this passage. I told you last week a passage of Scripture has one plain meaning.

God is saying one thing from the passage of Scripture. But the same plain meaning of Scripture can be applied sometimes in different ways. And we can look at this passage of Scripture and we can find several things in there that we need to know about.

One of them being faith that when Jesus says, cast out your net, cast out your net, trust Jesus to tell you, to steer you in the right direction, and to provide the results. But I want to talk to you tonight about a teachable moment about being ready. About them being ready for this catch and how it applies to us.

See, what I think makes it a teachable moment is, I tend to take a second look at anything that when Jesus talks about them fishing and dealing with fish, because of the passage in Mark, where he tells them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And Jesus taught the disciples as he taught all of the people in language that they could understand. That’s why he used parables.

He used stories about fishing. He used stories about agriculture. He used stories about livestock.

He used stories that they could understand and taught them in ways that related to them. And he’s already at the beginning of his ministry. He’s laid the foundation for this idea of sharing the gospel, of doing ministry as being fishers of men, as going out into the world and reeling in those who are in the depths and bringing them up.

He’s already established that idea. And while I believe this story really did happen, I believe it’s also a teachable moment for them and for us about being ready to be fishers of men. And the fact remains, they were able, this is a story about faith, but it’s also a story about preparation.

And that preparation has to come from a place of faith, as we’re going to talk about, because you don’t prepare for things you don’t expect to happen. Well, not in this instance. I guess that’s why we have insurance and things like that.

although if I really thought there would not be a tornado or a fire or a hailstorm or any of the other natural disasters that seem to follow me, I probably would not have an insurance policy if it wasn’t required by the bank. If any of us really believed we’ll be perfectly fine, there’s no chance whatsoever of this happening, we probably wouldn’t prepare for it too much. I’m not preparing for, checking around as I say this, I’m not preparing for the possibility of there being rattlesnakes up on the stage with me because I think there’s virtually no chance of them being up here.

Although, talking to Miss Johnny this afternoon, it seems like they turn up in strange places. But see, I don’t see that as a possibility. I have no thought that that could happen, and so I am not preparing myself for rattlesnake attacks up here on the stage.

What we have faith, what we expect God to do, what we have faith in, we prepare for. We show our faith by our preparation. If we believe God is going to do something, if we believe that God is going to take care of a problem, say we have a financial issue, say that we just don’t know how we’re going to make ends meet this month and we’ve prayed to God and we believe that He is going to take care of us, we prepare ourselves in faith that, yes, He’s going to come through, don’t we?

If we believe that there really is power in the gospel and that God can change sinners’ hearts by the proclamation of His Word, we prepare ourselves by being ready to go out and give people an answer for the faith that’s in us with meekness. We prepare ourselves for the things that we have faith will happen. And they went out that night thinking they were going to catch fish.

They weren’t just sitting in the boat playing. Sometimes, I don’t know about y’all, sometimes I go fishing just for the relaxation and no expectation based on my past history that I’m going to catch anything. But these were professionals.

They went fishing because they expected to catch fish, and they were ready for that. We see the ways that the disciples were ready for their catch. First of all, because they were in the right place.

They could not have caught fish. I suppose with God, anything is possible. But just their expectations for what a normal night was going to be like, they were not going to catch fish if they had gone out into the middle of the desert.

Fish have a hard time living in the sand. I’ve seen those Wild Kingdom episodes where just before the rainy season hits in Uganda or wherever and the last muddy puddles in the Sahara, not the Sahara, the Savannah, are about to dry up and you’ve got these fish that bury themselves in the wet mud and the sand. Well, if the rain doesn’t come before that dries up, the fish die.

If the rain comes and they’ve got water to live in, you’re just not going to find fish out in the middle of the desert, out in the middle of the sand. No, they expected to catch fish and they were ready because they went to where the fish were, right? If I go with the expectation of wanting to catch fish, if I leave my house and I say, I want to come home with fish, I’m either going to the lake or I’m going to Walmart.

Probably Walmart for me. But they went where the fish were. I mean, that’s a pretty simple concept.

If you want to catch the fish, you go where the fish are. And they were prepared to receive the catch that God had for them because they went where the fish were. Folks, if we’re to be fishers of men, we prepare as a church and as individuals for our catch by going where the fish are.

Let me say that again. In terms of being fishers of men, if we are expecting a catch and we’re to be prepared and ready for that catch to come, we go to where the fish are. Now, it happens that people who’ve not trusted Christ walk into church, that sometimes they hear the preaching of the word, their hearts are changed, they trust Christ, all that wonderful stuff.

But you know what? it doesn’t happen quite as often as we go out where they are and we find them. See, we wonder why we don’t catch many fish.

It’s because instead of putting our nets in the water, going out into the water and putting our nets in the water, we expect to sit on the shore and let them jump into the boat. I have never seen that happen. It’s been a rare enough occasion that I’ve seen fish tug at the end of my line, but to see them jump in the boat on the shore, I’ve never seen that happen.

And yet that’s the mentality we have a lot of times as American Christians, that if people want to hear the gospel, they’ll come to church and they’ll hear the gospel. But it was never supposed to be that way. If we want to catch fish, we go where the fish are.

If we want to be fishers of men, we go where the people are who need to hear the gospel. Am I telling you that you have to go and knock on every single door in Fayetteville that you need to walk across the plains of Africa to the remotest? I’m not telling you that.

If God’s telling you that, then you need to listen. But I’m not telling you that. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of ways that I like to talk to people about Christ. But walking up to somebody’s door that I’ve never met before scares me to death.

I’ll be honest with you right now. Anybody else willing to make that admission tonight? Scares me to death.

I’ve done it, and I will do it as the Lord leads. But as I meet people out in the community, and I’m not invading their territory, I’m still out where the fish are. As you go to work tomorrow morning, as you leave your house, as you go to school, as you go to work, as you go to the ball game, as you go to the library, to the grocery store, to the bank, you’re going where the fish are.

So am I telling you, you’ve got to do these scary things? Well, if God’s telling you to do them, go do them. There have been times God’s told me, go knock on this door, and I’ve done it.

It’s not my preferred method of evangelism, but I’ve done it. But I much prefer it when I’m out somewhere and have the opportunity to talk to somebody on neutral ground, I guess you call it, and get to talk to somebody about Jesus. But we can win people for Christ as we meet them out in the community.

We can win people for Christ as we go knock on doors because we’re out there where they are. But if we just sit in the boat and expect them to jump in, that’s not going to happen all that often. Hear me, it can.

God can do what God wants to do. And if somebody comes in here and is convicted by the preaching of the Word, is convicted by the message they hear in a Sunday school class, is pricked in the heart by the stirring gospel message they hear in some of our hymns, then so be it. Glory to God that that happens.

But He told us, go and tell, not sit and wait. And if we expect to catch church, if we expect to reach people here in Fayetteville, or in Farmington, or Elkins, or Springdale, or wherever we live, then we need to go where the fish are in those places. And as I’m telling you this, I’m not saying you don’t go where the fish are.

And I’m not saying you don’t even think about it. I’m just saying it’s a reminder to all of us that as we go these places and we’re around people, we need to be mindful. The guy that I used to work with in the Norman church plant, his name is Steve.

He talked about driving from his home in Washington, Oklahoma, a little farm community outside of Norman, and driving through Norman on the highway up to Oklahoma City. He talked about seeing a man in his pickup truck, Ford F-150, I guess, a big status symbol in Oklahoma. He had his fishing pole and his tackle box there in the back seat of the car.

And he had a net back there and waiting boots. Steve said that man was ready to go fishing. He was driving up and down the road looking for a spot.

I love that analogy. I’m not asking you to step out and do anything that is that remarkable. But people, as we go about our daily lives, we need to be looking for a spot to fish.

As we go to the bank, as we go to the grocery store, as we talk to our neighbors, We need to remind ourselves of the fact that they need the gospel. And we can’t always just sit in the four walls and expect them to come to us. We’ve got to go where the fish are.

The disciples were not only ready for the catch because they were in the right place, but they were there at the right time. They were there at the right time. Think about it.

The fish were there because Jesus said the fish were there. Five minutes before, when they’d been fishing, the fish were not there because they would have been in the net. And if they had gotten done at the end of the morning and said, we’re tired, we’ve been out here all night, we’ve had no success, we’re through with this, Let’s just go on home.

And Jesus showed up on the shore and said, if you’ll throw your net on the other side, you’ll find fish there. And they had said, no, we’re tired and we’re going to go on home. They would have missed out on the catch because they would have left too early.

And they were ready for the catch because they were there at the right time. What do I mean by us being there at the right time? What I mean is being available when God arranges for us to have encounters with people.

I don’t believe that a lot of things happen. I’m not sure I believe in coincidences. And I don’t believe a lot of things that we think are accidents are accidents.

And most of the people that we meet in our daily lives, we just don’t think anything about. They’re just there. We walk past them.

So many of the people that are there among us, I think God puts us in contact with them for a reason. Especially the people that are closest to us. They’re there in our lives for a reason.

And I say this to you, sometimes witnessing to family members is the hardest group of people you can witness to. Sometimes witnessing to your old friends can be hard to witness to, too. But God puts us in the right place at the right time, and given the fact that we have free will and we have choice, I don’t understand how all this works together.

But I do know we need to be available when the Spirit says, you need to talk to so-and-so. My dad tells a story years ago that he was out doing visitation when he was a teenager back in the 70s, I guess, and they were doing visitation in the youth group. He said they had a kid that was on their list that they knew they needed to go and talk to about God.

They knew they needed to share the gospel with him. And something told them, this is the time we need to go. And they went, but it was the end of their day, their visitation.

And, you know, they were ready to go eat. And they knocked on the door one time and then hurried back to the van and left to go eat and didn’t wait for him to open the door. They knew it was the time for them to go talk to him, but they passed the opportunity.

And my dad very emotionally tells the rest of the story is that the young man committed suicide just about 10 minutes after they were at his house. And I don’t tell you that story to try to manipulate an emotional response from you. I just want you to see that sometimes God tells us to do something at a certain time for a reason.

Sometimes when God says you need to do this now, well, okay, all the time that God says you need to do this now, it means you need to do this now. If God tells me to go talk to Joe down at the convenience store today, and I say, God, I’ll go do it tomorrow, I’m not being obedient. But we need to be available, and we need to be ready when God arranges for us to be in contact with those who need him.

We need to be there at the right time. They were ready for their catch because they had the right tools and the right preparation. If they had been there and they had not had any nets in their boat, if they had not had any poles in their boat, it wouldn’t matter how much they wanted to obey Jesus, they wouldn’t have been able to catch any fish.

But you see, before they went fishing that day, they had nets in the boat, and they knew how to use them. They had the right tools and preparation. They had the nets in the boat, and they knew how to use them.

So when Jesus said, go catch those fish that are down there, they were able to throw the net in the water. They got it in the right spot. They knew what they were supposed to do.

What I’m asking you is, do we have the right tools and preparation? Now, I believe that the Holy Spirit can speak to someone’s heart in spite of me, and in spite of you sometimes. I’ve told you before, I used to worry so much about the gospel presentation and whether I got it just right because I thought I had to argue people into heaven.

I believe that God can use the words that I say to somebody and speak to them and speak the truth to their heart in spite of my shortcomings, in spite of my failings. But at the same time, if we’re going to go and we are expecting God to bring people, if we’re expecting people to trust Christ, we’re expecting this catch of fish. And we have no idea how to share the gospel.

We have no idea what we’re talking about to people. What are we doing out there? I’m not saying you have to understand all the deep theological underpinnings of everything related to the gospel.

I don’t understand all that. I don’t think the theologians understand everything they’re talking about. But I told you a few weeks ago the simplicity of the gospel is that we sinned, it separated us from God, there was a penalty owed, Jesus Christ paid the penalty, and we can be forgiven because he bled and died on that cross.

It’s as simple as that. If you understand that, if you’ve trusted Christ, you understand that well enough to tell somebody what you did. That’s what I’m talking about with tools and preparation.

Do we know what the gospel is? Do we know how to tell somebody about what happened to us? Do we know, you don’t have to have the whole Bible memorized, but do you know a few verses that you can point to show somebody, hey, I’m not just a cultist making up doctrines as I go along.

Here’s what the Bible says. Do we have the right tools and preparation? And finally, they were ready for their catch because they followed the right leader.

Most important of all, they followed the right leader. If Peter had said, I think we ought to throw the net over there, Who cares what Peter said? Peter obviously didn’t know where the fish were, or he’d have caught some.

John didn’t know either. None of the other apostles knew. Any random person standing on the bank didn’t know where the fish were, didn’t know what to do.

But Jesus came along and told them exactly where to throw their nets, showed them exactly where the fish were. And they caught the fish because they followed the directions of the right leader. And if we expect to catch fish, we have to be alert and receptive to God’s direction as we serve him and as we minister to others.

We need to follow Jesus’ example, and we need to obey His commands. The Great Commission, Matthew 28, 19 and 20, says, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. I’m sorry, I know all the words, but I want to make sure I get them in the right order.

You can turn there with me if you’d like. Matthew 28, verses 19 through 20. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. That’s the instruction he gives us.

Go to all nations and make disciples. Make disciples. And for so long, we’ve condensed that down to evangelism.

And evangelism is extremely important. Do not get me wrong. But what he tells us here is to go and make disciples.

And guess what? Evangelism is a step in discipleship. Somebody’s not going to be equipped to follow Christ if they’ve never trusted Christ. And that’s where evangelism comes in.

We lead them to Christ, and then we lead them to gro