Are We Ready?

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in John chapter 21 tonight. one of the again another one of the things that you know I said what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at are not always the same thing fishing is one of those for me I love fishing I love going to fish I’m not good at it sometimes I catch something more often than not I just sit there and enjoy the the peace and quiet of it but I have I have learned some ways to catch fish and more ways to not catch fish.

I’ve kind of given up on even catching fish at this point because I’ve started taking Benjamin with me and started out taking him to the Illinois River and I didn’t give him a hook because I like my eyeballs and so he has not earned his hook privileges yet but he likes to cast and we’ll sit there on the bank and cast and finally just gave up on even me putting a hook on my line because he got bored and he’d start throwing rocks in the river and you know how the fish love that. So I just kind of gave up and so we’ll just go sit out there and cast. We’ve sat at the river and my sister and her husband were here this morning visiting in our service. We’ve gone out to their house in Purcell to their pond and sat out there and pretended to fish.

I really just enjoy the tranquility of it. But there are some things that I’ve learned about how you don’t catch fish. You don’t catch fish without a hook.

Strangely enough, they’re not just jumping on the bank of the river saying, fillet me and fry me up for dinner. If you don’t go near the water, I’ve never caught a fish yet sitting on the couch. It just doesn’t happen that way.

You’ve got to go to where they are, and you’ve got to have the right tools. You’ve got to have the right equipment. And honestly, a lot of days you’ve just got to be lucky.

I’m not a great fisherman. I understand fishing in theory, and I enjoy it, but I’m not great at it. There were people, on the other hand, though, who made their living at fishing, and I’m so glad that I don’t have to do that.

But there were people in Jesus’ day who made their living fishing, and he called quite a number of them to be his first disciples, to be the first ones that he called to follow him. And because that’s what they were familiar with, Jesus oftentimes would talk about the things that they were familiar with as ways of teaching them deeper spiritual truth. And so he would talk to them about fishing.

He talked a lot about farming. He talked about parent-child relationships, things that people were familiar with that would help them to understand what he was talking about, a deeper spiritual truth with God. He told them early on in their ministry together he said follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

And that was a metaphor that has stuck. That’s something that we’re familiar with even to this day. The idea of going out and fishing for men that means going out and carrying the gospel to them and trying to, that sounds bad to say try to reel in who we can.

It’s not as though we’re trying to trick them like we do with the fish. You fix together the rigs and things for the fish and you try to convince them it’s something that it’s not. That’s not what we’re trying to do.

But we go out with the gospel to where the fish are And we try to hook some, knowing we’re not going to catch all of them, but knowing we’ll catch some. Well, toward the end of their time together, as a matter of fact, it was after Jesus’ death and burial and resurrection, he comes again to his disciples who were once again out fishing. They were in despair after he had died, and even after they saw him resurrected, they weren’t quite sure what to do.

And so they went back to what they knew best, and they went fishing. Well, it says in John chapter 21, we’re going to start in verse 1, 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 Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples. So we’ve got this group of his disciples, they’re out fishing on the Sea of Tiberias, and Simon Peter, verse 3, saith unto them, I go fishing.

So he tells the rest of the group, I’m going to go fishing. He’s going back to what he knows. And they say unto him, We also go with thee.

And they went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing. These were expert fishermen. If I had gone out fishing all day, fishing all night, and he caught nothing, it wouldn’t be even worth writing down because it wouldn’t be noteworthy.

But these were professional fishermen, and we’re not talking about going out after one or two at a time with a rod and reel. They were going out with nets. It was unusual that they would not have caught anything.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. So here’s the scene. They’ve gone out fishing overnight.

They’ve caught nothing. And suddenly the resurrected Jesus appears to them yet again. He’s standing on the shore, and they don’t recognize him.

Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. Do you have anything?

Did you catch anything? Do you have any food? Do you have anything to eat?

And they told him, No. And so he said unto them, cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. Now this is not the first time he told them to go into one place in particular.

He told Peter at one time they didn’t have the money to pay their taxes. He told them, go fish in this certain spot, you’ll catch a fish, there’ll be a coin in his mouth, take that to pay the taxes. Jesus always seemed to be able to teach them and provide for them at the same time.

He said, cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. Now, part of me thinks, did they not already try that? I’m sure they did.

These were not inexperienced fishermen. If they’re not on the left side of the ship, let’s throw out a net on this side. Let’s go to a different spot.

I’m sure they knew all the tricks. And remember, they don’t realize at this point yet that this is Jesus. And these experienced fishermen have been out all night doing what they’ve done their entire lives, fishing, and if there was a way to catch fish that night, they would have found it.

And yet this man they don’t know comes and says, well, just try it on the other side of the boat. Really, you don’t think we tried that already? But why not?

Give it a try. They cast, therefore, and now they were not able to draw it in for the multitude of fishes. I don’t know about you, but I would be mad.

I mean, happy that you’ve caught fish, but mad that I’ve been fishing all night, and you come along and tell me, cast it back on that side of the boat, when I probably have tried that already. And if I’ve had it on this other side of the boat, they’re not that far apart, and yet I go, now after all of this, you tell me to do that, I throw it in there, and there they all are. Sort of like when I tell Charla, I can’t find my keys, or my checkbook, or any number of other things that I can’t find, and she says, oh, it’s such and such place.

Or doesn’t even know, and says, why don’t you check under this? And it’s always, always there. I asked her a few weeks ago if she’d made a pact with the devil, or if God was giving her these, because there was really no explanation in between.

And it makes me mad. Well, they’ve been trying all night. And he tells them, go throw the net on the other side of the ship, and that’s where all the fish were hiding.

And so many fish that they weren’t able to pull the nets in. Therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved, anytime you see that in the book of John, that’s John talking about himself. Part of me has thought maybe that’s humility, that he’s not calling himself by name.

Part of me thinks it also could be, I’m the one Jesus loves, kind of digging at the other disciples there. Whatever reason, when you see the disciple whom Jesus loved, he’s talking about John. Whom Jesus loved, saith unto Peter, it is the Lord.

So John is the one who looks out and after this miraculous thing, recognizes that it’s the Lord telling them, hey, just move a few feet over and you’ll find all the fish you’re out there looking for. He says to Peter, it’s the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, for he was naked.

I don’t think that means he was totally unclothed. I’ve been fishing with groups of men before, and I’ve never seen that done, so I’m assuming that meant he, yeah, thank goodness. I’m assuming that means that he just was in some stage of undress.

He had his outer coat taken off, and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship, for they were not far from land, but as it were 200 cubits, dragging the net with fishes. So Peter is so excited to see the Lord Jesus, he throws himself into the water.

I can’t even imagine being that excited that I’m going to throw myself out into the sea to get to somebody. But nevertheless, he was, and the others came in a little ship, dragging the net behind them. They couldn’t pull it into the boat, so they just had to drag it behind them as they went into shore.

And as soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. See, they didn’t have any meat either, but Jesus had already prepared some for them. They saw the fire there, and the fish, and the bread.

And Jesus said unto them, Bring the fish which you have now caught. And Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full of great fishes. That’s something else about Peter.

If you haven’t noticed from the fact that he throws himself into the water, Peter was always the impulsive one. He’s always the one that as soon as something said, me, me, me, me, me, pick me, or I’m going, I’ll never deny you, or I want to follow you, he cut off a guy’s ear. He’s always the one who sort of thinks or jumps before he, I’m sorry, did I say that right?

Who speaks or jumps before he thinks. And so when they get to the shore, he can barely contain himself, he grabs the net and starts dragging it up on the shore. And drew the net to land full of great fishes, and hundred and fifty and three.

For all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. And that’s miraculous in and of itself. It was so heavy they couldn’t lift it into the boat, and yet the weight of all those fish didn’t break the net.

And just to give you a little aside here, you know, so many times people will say the Bible is full of fairy tales, the Gospels are full of fairy tales. That’s oddly specific. Telling where they are, when they are, and how many fish were there.

for it just to be a fairy tale. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see that in all those once upon a time stories. That’s very specific.

153 great fish there, and the net was not even broken. So what’s happened here? Again, Jesus is teaching them lessons through the things that they would understand.

He’s told them where to go fish. Try it again now. Try it again now.

Try it again on this side of the boat. Try it this way. Do it this way.

Do exactly what I tell you, and you won’t be able to lift in the net for all the fish. And they do what he tells them to do, and the result is beyond their wildest expectations. And so there’s a lesson for them in there about his provision for them, about his power, but I can’t help but tie all of these things about fishing back into what he told them at the very beginning.

See, these are kind of the bookends of his time with them. Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And then one of the last things that happens in John’s record of all this is that he would tell them, go out and fish just like I’ve told you to do.

Folks, I think we can look at this and apply it to our spiritual catch as well. There’s some lessons here that we can apply to our spiritual catch as well that I’m going to share with you just very briefly before we dismiss tonight. I would say for us, our catch that he’s encouraged us to catch is the same thing that he’s first encouraged the disciples to catch, which was to be fishers of men.

We’re supposed to go out with the gospel, share the message of Christ with other people, and bring them into the fold. That night their catch was fish. But again, Jesus used the fish to teach them other lessons.

They were ready for their catch, first of all, because they were in the right place. They were in the place that Jesus told them to be. They were in the place where you would catch fish.

As I said earlier, I have never caught a fish sitting on my couch. It’s just never happened. I’ve never caught a fish driving in my car I’ve never caught a fish sleeping in I’ve never any number of things when you want to catch a fish where do you go?

you go where there are fish you go to the river you go to the lake you go to the ocean met our neighbor this week and he was talking about water coming down the hill and he said a few a while back I don’t remember how long ago he said there was so much water he told his granddaughter he was going to get a fishing pole and go out in the front yard I don’t know if there were fish there, but it’d be worth a try. Probably couldn’t tell if there were fish in there by me trying it. He saw water, and he said, I ought to go try to fish there.

If I want to catch fish, I’m going where the fish are. I’m going to the water. I’m going out to the river.

I’m going to a lake. I’m going to the ocean. I’m going where I know there are fish.

When I was working as an associational missionary years ago, one of the men I was working with used to tell the story all the time about how he was driving up I-35, and he saw a man in a truck past him going up the highway, and he had these waiting fishing boots turned upside down in the back of his truck, hooked to something so they wouldn’t blow out, and he had his fishing pole strapped in on the back of his, I guess like you’d see people put a gun rack, he had a fishing pole rack, and he had fishing poles up there, and he would talk about this when we’d go around to churches, and he used this as a metaphor. He said that man was just looking for a place to fish. He was ready.

He had his tackle ready, and he was just looking for a place to fish whenever he found water, whenever he found the water to do so. Folks, they were able to bring in this catch that God led them to because they were where the fish were. They were in the right spot.

And so if we apply this to being fishers of men, my question to you tonight is, are we where the fish are? Are we where the fish are? Now the point It was made several times tonight in discipleship training that we can’t wait.

We can’t wait for the fish to come jump in our boat right here. It’s just not going to happen. We need to go where the fish are.

In your daily life, are you where the fish are? Are we being purposeful about being where there are people who need to hear the gospel? That’s a hard line sometimes because the Bible talks about not being unequally yoked, and I think that applies to more than just marriage.

The Bible talks about being wise in the company we keep. And there’s something to be said about not wanting to be influenced by the world. But folks, we can’t completely insulate ourselves from the world and expect to lead people to Christ if we’re not where there are people who need to be led to Christ. So my question to you this evening on this point is, are you in the right place?

Are we in the right place? Are we where the fish are? Or are we sitting on dry land wondering why they’re not hopping into the boat?

Second of all, they were there at the right time. They were there when Jesus was, quite honestly. They were there at the appropriate time for Jesus to lead them to the fish.

If they had said, well, we’ll go out later, or we’re going to come in early. If they had not been there when Jesus showed up to say, here’s where the fish are, go there, they wouldn’t have found the fish. They were there at the right time.

It’s really hard to know what the right time is to cast out your line. It’s really hard for me to tell. We used to go fishing when I was a kid.

My uncle would say, well, the fish probably won’t be biting much today. It just rained. Or the fish may not be biting much today.

It hadn’t rained in a long time. Which is it? Do they just never bite?

Maybe that’s why I don’t catch fish. I was just trained to be too pessimistic about it. But it’s hard to know when to cast out your line.

It’s hard to know sometimes, do I continue reeling it in very slowly or do I just let it sit there? Do I let the motion attract the fish or do I just let it sit there? Do I go fish at that spot at that time of day?

It’s hard to know. And I know there are people who are experts on it, but for me it just feels like guesswork. Folks, sometimes it’s hard to know about when to cast out our line spiritually.

I would err on the side of talking to people about Christ when you get the opportunity. But you know, there may be times when God says, go talk to that person. When the Holy Spirit puts it on our hearts, go talk to that person right now.

And other times the Holy Spirit might say, no, no, I need you over here. And I know that sounds foreign to us that God would say, don’t go right there, don’t go right then. But if you remember, Paul was going to cross into all these towns in Turkey, in Asia.

And God told him, no, you can’t preach there. The Holy Spirit forbade him to preach the gospel there. Not because God didn’t want those people saved, but because God had something prepared for him in Macedonia.

So my answer to you on this about the right time, how do we know it’s the right time? Listen to the Holy Spirit. Keep your fishing pole ready.

Keep your tackle ready. And go look for some place to fish and follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. When he says go fish right there, go fish right there.

When he says, cast your net out on the other side of the boat, it’s time. Folks, we need to listen to that. I believe that God will give us opportunities to share the gospel with people who need it if we’re listening to those opportunities.

I think a lot of times the reason we don’t hear the leadership of the Holy Spirit is because we’re not listening. Third of all tonight, they were not just at the right place and at the right time. They had the right tools and preparation.

They were unlike me. They knew what they were doing with the tools that they had. They had their nets.

They knew how to use them. I’ve seen some of these fishing nets that I guess commercial fishermen use, and they’ll throw them out in the water. And it doesn’t seem to me like it should work because it’s open at the bottom.

And I don’t know how that works. It encloses around the fish. I wouldn’t begin to know how to use something like that.

I do well just to keep a rod and reel from snagging. But they know how to fish. I’ve been fishing with a man who would put all these little spoons and beads, And he knew just what, I mean, glass beads and then little things that looked like, well, they didn’t look like any kind of fish I’ve ever seen, but they’re supposed to look like something the fish would like to eat.

See, I don’t even know the terminology. And he knew how to position everything just right where he knew the fish would just love it. He knew what he was doing.

And he’d catch fish every time because he knew the tools. He was prepared. He’d done this before.

Folks, they had their nets, and quite frankly, it’s what they’d done all their lives. They knew how to use it. If you feel like you don’t have the right tools or the right preparation, folks, that’s something we can fix.

If you feel like, well, as far as tools, I don’t know how to share the gospel with somebody. There are all kinds of training things that we could do. I’ve been through part of Way of the Master.

I’ve been through part of Evangelism Explosion. I’ve been through some of the things that they’ll offer at the State Evangelism Conference. You know what?

I don’t stick to any one of those. I pull a piece of tackle out of this one. I pull a line out of this one.

Whatever I’m comfortable with using in order to try to communicate the gospel with somebody. But if you think I wouldn’t even know where to start with communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ to somebody, I mean, I’ve been saved, but I don’t know how to explain it to somebody else, that’s a problem we can fix, but we need to get you the right tools. And be prepared.

Be practiced up. Part of practice is just doing it. It can be.

It can be. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be a scary thing to try to go share the gospel with somebody. But you know what?

The more you do it, the easier it gets. You know what? Driving was terrifying to me at first. I didn’t want to kill anybody.

I remember at 16 years old telling my parents, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to kill anybody. They show you some very gory, cautionary videos in driver’s ed, I’ll tell you.

I didn’t want to kill anybody. Driving was terrifying for me. But you know what?

I’ve done it now for 14 years. I can’t believe it. And it’s not so terrifying anymore because I’ve practiced some.

The right tools and the right preparation, they knew what they were doing with those nets. They knew how to use them to catch fish when God told them right there, cast them over there. They knew exactly what to do.

Do you feel like you’re ready with the right tools and the right preparation? If not, hey, talk to me. Let me know.

We can do something to fix that. But it takes realizing that we have a need to catch fish. Finally tonight, they followed the right leader.

They followed the right leader. That’s why they were able to catch the fish. You know what?

Peter tended to be the leader of the group when Jesus wasn’t around, for better or for worse, depending on the circumstances. And Peter probably would have had them continuing around. Well, let’s just try again.

Let’s go over to that spot again. Let’s try this again. Or maybe let’s give up.

There’s no telling what Peter would have told them to do or anybody else. if they listened to themselves and said, well, we’re just going to do what we feel like we need to do. I’ll tell you what, I have tried to evangelize, I’ve tried to share the gospel before without listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit and always have fallen flat on my face.

I was in college before I realized you can’t really argue somebody into heaven. And I hate that because I used to like to argue, now I don’t so much. Now I really don’t enjoy confrontation, but used to.

Man, I was primed for an argument. I had what I thought were all the answers. And you’d get into an argument, you’d get into a debate with somebody in high school or college or at work, an atheist or somebody who believes some other religion or somebody who just didn’t care, and think I can blow them away with all the answers, I can argue, I can convince them.

I have never seen that work, not once. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be prepared with those things. We should always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that lies within us, as God’s word says.

But this idea of I’m going to forget about the role of the Holy Spirit, I’m just going to argue these people into heaven, that never, ever worked. And I think when I realized that didn’t work was around the same time that I realized, hey, the Holy Spirit plays a role here. I’m not kidding.

I didn’t realize that for a long time. The Holy Spirit plays a role in drawing people to Jesus Christ. It’s the Holy Spirit that opens people’s eyes. It’s the Holy Spirit that prepares people’s hearts to receive the message.

we are just the mouthpiece it’s just our responsibility to go where God tells us to go to follow his leading stand where he tells us to stand and open our mouths and say what we know and then it’s the Holy Spirit that connects that message with people’s hearts and I don’t understand all about how that works and how he does it it’s because it’s the work of the Holy Spirit but I’ve seen where a pastor can preach evangelistic messages week after week after week and there’s somebody in the crowd that just doesn’t get it, it doesn’t connect. And then somebody comes along and preaches a very simple sermon on the 23rd Psalm and somebody runs to give their life to Jesus Christ. I don’t understand how that works. That’s the Holy Spirit connecting words with a man’s heart.

But I tell you what, we’re going to have a whole lot more success if we follow the right leader. If we go where he tells us to go and we work where the Holy Spirit is already working and is leading us to go. They caught all those fish, ladies and gentlemen, because they went exactly where Jesus told them to go.

They did the things Jesus told them to do. So when he told them to fish some more, they put their nets down again, even though it probably didn’t make sense to them. Folks, we have to be alert and receptive to God’s direction as we try to serve him and share the gospel with others.

We need to be prepared to go where he tells us to go, whether or not it makes sense. God, I’ve already cast my net there three different times and haven’t caught anything yet. God says, I don’t care.

Go again. then we need to go. We need to be prepared at times that don’t make sense.

We need to be prepared. Even when he says, go talk to this person, we think there’s no way on earth they would ever listen to me. Because I’ve made the statement before that I’ve known people who have started outreach to bikers.

I have no problem with bikers, but there’s nothing biker about me. Y’all are surprised by that, aren’t you? There’s nothing biker about me, and I’ve made the statement, You know, they can reach people I can’t reach because they’d never listen to me.

Well, there may be some wisdom in that. But the truth of it is, God can use whoever He wants to reach whoever He wants. And if God tells me, go share the gospel with that biker, God’s got something in mind.

And so we may think, God, you want me to reach out to that person? It doesn’t make sense that I would be the one you would send. You know what?

It doesn’t matter. Follow His lead. simple truths tonight from a story that really happened, something that really happened with God’s people, and tying it into the lesson that he’d been trying to teach them throughout his ministry with them to go and be fishers of men.

Well, here he taught them a lesson about fishing in a major way, and I think we can pull those principles from it. Be where the fish are. Be where the fish are.

Go when God tells you to go. Make sure you know what you’re doing. Prepare yourself.

Let’s not just look at evangelism like an accident, let’s look at it as something that we’re going out on purpose to try to do. And then follow his leadership. When he tells you to go, when he tells you to go there or to that person or go at this time, even if it doesn’t make sense, we go.

The words no Lord should not be in our vocabulary. Folks, we need to make sure that we’re prepared for our catch just like they were prepared for theirs.