Obeying When We Don’t Understand

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to put together furniture that’s come in a box, but it’s not anything really that you have to put together. If you’ve bought anything that comes on Amazon, for example, a lot of those things come from overseas, and the instructions are not always well translated. As a matter of fact, they oftentimes don’t make sense.

And so I’ve just kind of learned to throw away the instructions and just put the parts together that look like they go together. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. If you’ve ever bought furniture from Ikea, has anybody ever been inside an Ikea?

Okay, they have a few in Dallas. It’s mass-produced Swedish furniture that comes in boxes that you think, how did they fit that couch in that little box? And you take it home and you assemble it yourself.

You can’t do that with their directions. Number one, the stuff is kind of complicated if you don’t have the directions. But I’ve looked at the instructions to try to put something together and thought, that doesn’t make sense.

I’m not doing that. And try to put the directions aside. And very quickly in that process, you learn that with some things, you can’t just put the directions aside.

With some things, you have to follow the instructions, even if they don’t seem to make sense at the beginning. Because if you take it into your own hands and say, no, no, I think it would work better this way, you’re going to get a completely different product. That’s what we teach our kids to do.

There are times that, yes, we will explain our decision-making to our children. There are other times that we say, we just need you to trust us and obey us and do what we’re telling you to, even if it doesn’t make sense right now. And the same thing is true with Jesus.

We are called on to be obedient to Him even when we don’t understand, even when we don’t fully understand what He’s telling us to do, even when we don’t fully understand the reason why, even when we don’t fully understand what the next 15 steps are going to be. That’s my problem. Okay, Lord, I see what you’re telling me here, but I want to know the next 15 steps.

He doesn’t have to tell us that. If He shows you the end from the beginning, great, but He’s under no obligation to do that, and He doesn’t usually do that, at least with me. We’re called on to be obedient with the next one step He’s given us, whether it makes sense at the moment or not.

And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning in Luke chapter 5 as we continue our study of the book of Luke is obeying Jesus even when we don’t understand. And so Luke chapter 5, if you turn there with me this morning, and once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word and follow along. And if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 5, it’ll be on the screen for you.

So I probably will be on the screen for you. This one keeps flickering off, but they keep turning it back on. So just follow along where you can.

Luke chapter 5 verse 1, it says, Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around him and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. That’s the same as the Sea of Galilee, as Matthew and Mark call it, or the Sea of Tiberias, as John calls it. He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and he saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake.

But the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. And 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 people from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Simon answered and said, Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as you say and let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break.

So 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, Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For amazement had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken.

And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were 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. And you may be seated. Just to recap what’s happening here.

This is not the first time that these men have encountered Jesus. It’s not the first time they’ve interacted with Jesus. But they’re not at this point his disciples.

They’re really more friends of a friend. They know him through John the Baptist. Some, if not all of these men, were followers of John the Baptist who’d been introduced to Jesus by John the Baptist. And so Jesus, when we left off at the end of chapter 4, he was preaching all throughout the lands of the Jews. He was preaching all throughout Galilee.

And it says here on one occasion, he’s out by the Sea of Galilee. The crowd is listening him and they’re pressing on him. And those of us who don’t like tight spaces and big crowds will understand this, but there just comes a point where everybody’s pushing on you and you just can’t take it anymore.

My kids have gotten well acquainted with this from going with me to the national conventions and you’re there with 15,000 of your closest friends. And sometimes the crowd’s trying to get in and out of the building, out of the room for sessions, just gets too much for me. And I say, okay, we’re going to sit down here and wait until it starts and then go in because I can’t deal with the crowd anymore.

This crowd was trying to get close to Jesus to the point that it just becomes overwhelming. They may even be backing him into the water because they just keep trying to get closer and closer as he’s teaching. And so there’s really nowhere for him to go, but he sees Peter and these other men, and they’re not on their boats.

They’re spreading their nets out after they’ve come in from a night’s work of fishing. They’ve cleaned the nets. They’re laying them out to dry and to stretch and be ready for the next night of work.

And Jesus climbs into one of the boats, and He asks Peter, go out here just a little ways. Not out into the middle of the lake, but just far enough that, you know, the crowd is not going to be wading into the water. That way I’m not being pressed on.

Everybody can see and hear me, and we’re still close enough that they’re not struggling to hear what I’m going to say. And so Peter says, fine, apparently. It’s not recorded his exact words, but they go out into the boat, and Jesus sits in the boat and teaches the people who are crowded up onto the shoreline.

When he finishes his sermon, he tells Peter, okay, why don’t you go out into the middle of the lake and throw your nets out again. We’re going to talk in just a moment about why none of these things make sense, but he tells Peter, let’s go out into the middle of the lake, put your nets down. Peter says, Master, we have already been fishing all night, but if you say so, we’ll go back out.

We’ll do as you say and let down the nets. And so he gets, whoever is on his boat, they get together and they go further out into the middle of the Sea of Galilee and they throw their nets down, almost kind of like we’re just going to humor Jesus here for a minute. They throw the nets down, probably thinking, why are we doing this?

And when they throw the nets down, they encircled a tremendous number of fish. Now, this is not like we think of where they’re out fishing with rod and reel. These are massive nets and it took a team of men to haul these things in.

And the men are trying to pull up this net. And there are so many fish that it’s so heavy that it’s starting to tear the net. And so they have to call to their partner fishing boat that’s still over closer to the shore.

They beckon to those guys, come help us. So they’re all out there, two boats, all these men trying to haul in these fish. And they’re getting the fish into the boats.

And there are so many fish there that the boats start taking on water. And they’ve got to hurry to the shore. and Peter sees this and Peter is just overwhelmed.

Peter just falls all to pieces and says, Lord, go away from me. This is not an angry like, get out of here. This is, what did I just witness?

Because of all the miracles, of all the miracles that have taken place already, you know, I look at this and think, why does Peter react in that way to that miracle? Well, he’s a fisherman. That’s what he’s going to notice.

He’s not paying attention to every individual person gets healed the way Luke focuses in on, Peter, Peter’s a fisherman. And so he recognizes the enormity, the unlikelihood of what’s just happened here. And that just makes him go all to pieces.

And he says, Lord, go away from me because I am a sinful man. Because he recognizes that there’s something different about Jesus. And it’s not just Peter, the other fishermen who were there had very similar reactions.

And Jesus told them, don’t be afraid. From now on, you’re going to be catching men. You’re not going to be focused on these big catches of fish anymore.

You’re going to be catching men. And it says here that they brought their boats to the land. They left everything and followed him.

And it’s significant that they left everything because these aren’t hobby fishermen. These are people who their entire livelihood was on these fishing boats, and they just walked away from everything that mattered to them and went to follow Jesus. And we look at this story, and we immediately think that it’s really just about the miracle of the fish.

And admittedly, the miracle of catching all those fish is a big deal of the story, but there’s something broader going on in this text that we need to understand. Jesus was commanding or calling, depending on how he phrased each one of them, he was telling them to do things that did not make sense. And from this passage, we can see example after example of how Jesus commands often defy human wisdom.

What I mean by that is that many of the things that Jesus calls us to do do not make sense on paper. In a world where we’re taught to put ourselves first, in a world where we are taught that our happiness is the most important thing, in a world where we’re taught how to get ahead and how to fight back and how to. .

. You know all of the ways, or you know many of the ways, that Jesus’ teachings contradict the ways of the world. But in all these ways, the world tells us this is how you are successful, this is how you get ahead, this is how you live a good life, and the things Jesus tells us to do don’t make sense on paper in that kind of world.

And there’s at least three of them in this text that he’s given them, things that he’s told them to do that don’t make sense from a human standpoint. First of all, when he gets in the boat and he tells Peter, put out a little way in verse 3, his request to put out a little way was unreasonable. Now understand when I say unreasonable, I don’t mean that we’re looking back at it and saying, well, Jesus was out of line.

But I’m talking about from Peter’s standpoint, not having been through the crucifixion, the resurrection, all the three years of being with Jesus, knowing all about who He is. I’m talking about from the standpoint of somebody who’s just kind of acquainted with Jesus, has been around Him a little bit, and is looking at this from purely an earthly standpoint. The request, let’s go out from the shore a little bit, was unreasonable.

And the reason why it’s unreasonable from Peter’s perspective, it was time for Peter to quit and go home. They went out and fished at night. If they are coming, if they are back at the shore and they’re washing their nets, that means they’re packing up to go home.

Because at the end of the day, the nets had to be washed, they had to be stretched, they had to be dried so that they would be ready to be used the next day. This is the end of a long shift, and they’re ready to go home. Many of you have experienced those long shifts, especially if you worked, I mean, office jobs can be challenging too in different ways, but especially if you worked a job where you were on your feet all day.

I remember working at the grocery store and being on my feet for eight or nine hours, helping people who weren’t always pleasant and getting sick all the time because they would bring all their their coughs and things through the line and at the end of those nine sometimes 10 hour days the last thing I would want is somebody to say as I’m walking out once you come back in the store no you have to deal with that yourself I’m out of here or sometimes when I was teaching school and on my feet constantly and dealing with kids and I loved them but when the school day is over That’s enough. Those of you who were teachers can kind of sympathize. He is at the end of his day.

He’s ready to go home. He’s ready to get some sleep. And here this man has come to him and commandeered his boat as a teaching platform and said, would you take me out a little ways in the water?

That’s not that Jesus is out of line, but for Peter, this is an unreasonable request. If you don’t know who Jesus is. Then we see in verse four, his command, the very next thing to put out into the deep water. From Peter’s standpoint, it was unreasonable.

It didn’t make sense on paper. And the reason why is that Peter had already been fishing all night without success. He tells him that in verse 5.

Lord, we’ve already been fishing all night. We haven’t caught anything. And it didn’t make sense at this point to go back out.

It didn’t make sense because, number one, Peter was an expert fishermen. That is how he made his livelihood. That’s how he supported his family.

He probably came from a long line of fishermen. And here he’s taking fishing advice from a carpenter. What does a carpenter know about fishing that a fisherman’s not going to know?

There are a lot of things that I will take advice from people on because I know that there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know. But if somebody’s never done the thing that I’m trying to do, that’s not somebody I’m going to for advice. And yet you can find people who have never walked in your shoes, who are ready to give you advice about the thing you’re doing.

I love when you get on social media and get advice on what you should be doing raising your kids from people who’ve never had kids. And I’m probably guilty of having done that before I had kids. But that’s not typically somebody I’m taking advice from on how to parent children.

So from Peter’s standpoint, why in the world would I take fishing advice from a carpenter. It didn’t make sense for him to go back out because his nets were ready for the next night. He’s already done everything so that they’d be ready for the next night.

The last thing he needs to do is take these nets and go get them messed up again on what on paper sounds like a fool’s errand to go out and try again to catch fish. And what would have made it a fool’s errand is that the most likely setting for catching fish on the Sea of Galilee was up in the shallow areas at night. I don’t know that.

I’m not an expert fisherman, but historians who’ve written on this passage say that’s why they went and fished where they did. They went at night. They went to the shallows.

That’s where the fish would come up to feed. You’re not going to find a lot of fish in the middle of the day out in the middle of the lake. It just didn’t, none of this, none of this made sense from a human standpoint.

And then his call to start catching men probably sounded unreasonable to Peter as well in verse 10. Now to us, we think, okay, we have the benefit of seeing in hindsight, Jesus’ whole ministry, we know what it was about. So when he tells Peter, you’re going to catch men, I’m going to make you fishers of men, we know what he’s talking about.

That was, unless you’re inviting somebody to become part of a human trafficking ring, that’s probably the first time anybody had ever heard that phrase, I’m going to have you catch men. And I’m sure Peter knew we’re not going to be kidnapping people, but he probably thought, we’re going to be doing what? I’m going to leave what I’ve done to support myself and my family all this time, and I’m going to do what now?

It just wouldn’t seem to be a wise career move. And this shows us that what Jesus tells us to do, what he calls us to do, is not always going to make sense. If everything Jesus calls you to do makes perfect sense to you, congratulations, you have a lot more spiritual insight than the rest of us.

It just doesn’t. And I think we start out as believers expecting it to, but then the longer you walk with Jesus, you start to recognize, okay, this is another one of those times. It’s just not making sense what he’s calling me to do.

But his commands aren’t calls for us to understand. They’re really calls to obedience. And obedience requires trusting Jesus when his ways don’t make sense.

Now, I want to be clear. In each of these cases, Peter obeyed. But I think we also have the idea in mind that this is their first time meeting Jesus and they just drop everything, blind faith, and follow him because he said so.

But this is not the first time that Peter or the rest of these men have encountered Jesus. There’s the testimony of John the Baptist, there’s some other miracles Jesus has done. They’ve heard of who Jesus is as much as anybody else had.

So it’s not just Jesus showing up as some random guy saying, hey, follow me. And they all say, oh, okay. He calls us to have faith.

And when I say faith, even when it doesn’t make sense, a lot of people will hear that and say, oh, blind faith. It’s not the same. Blind faith is saying we’re just going to believe everything we’re told.

Faith is saying, I don’t understand how this turns out. I don’t understand really the importance of what I’m being called to do, but I’m going to do it anyway because of the evidence back here and the track record of the person calling me to do it. And so we as believers have faith, not just because we believe everything we’ve ever heard, but because of Jesus’ track record of faithfulness.

We know we can trust Him. Even if I don’t understand the circumstance, I know I can trust Him because He has proven Himself faithful time and time again. And they had a glimpse of that from their previous encounters with Jesus.

So in each of these cases, Peter obeyed. Peter was willing to trust that Jesus had a purpose for boarding his boat. Okay, I’m really not sure what’s going on here, but you’re climbing on my boat and you’re wanting me to take you out a few feet.

Pretty sure you’ve got a reason. He knew at this point Jesus wasn’t a crazy person. He’d been around him enough.

There’s a reason here. I don’t understand what it is, probably, but we’re going to go out a little ways. Don’t understand why you have to keep me from going home and going to bed in order so you can teach, but I’m going to trust you here.

and he took Jesus out to teach despite the fact that he was probably very eager to get home. He was also willing to trust Jesus by letting down his nets. To say, you know, we with all of our expertise, we haven’t caught a thing, and now you’re telling us to go to where our expertise tells us there’s no fish?

It’s a pretty tall ask, but I know what John the Baptist said about you. I’ve heard about the miracles you’ve performed. Okay, let’s find out.

It’s kind of Peter’s approach. He’s willing to trust Jesus enough to say, let’s go let down the nets. And most importantly, Peter trusted Jesus enough to follow him.

In verse 11, when he says, I’m going to make you fishers of men. That’s not his exact phrasing here. He uses that in other gospels.

That’s essentially what he’s telling him. Peter trusted him enough to follow him. He left everything and went, you don’t do that.

You don’t do that unless you have enormous trust in somebody. And for us to follow Jesus, we have to be willing to trust him enough to obey him. And not just when it’s easy and not just when it makes sense.

Not just when it’s pleasant, not just when it happens to line up with the things we wanted to do anyway. If we’re going to follow Jesus, we can’t obey him only when all of our questions are answered. Again, I am not talking about blind faith.

I’m talking about faith rooted in who he is, so that even if I still have questions about what he’s asking me to do, I trust him. and so I can step out a little ways into the unknown because I trust him even if I don’t know what’s over here. But obedience to him requires trusting him even when things don’t make sense.

And we see throughout this passage that there’s this incredible payoff that takes place. When we obey, Jesus does unimaginable things. Now what Jesus does in your life may not be as overtly miraculous as what he does in the life of Peter here.

You may not pull in so many, you may not have this miracle of the fish that you can, I mean, that’s so big it’s going to sink your boat that everybody can see, but he works in our lives nonetheless, and he does things, and he orchestrates things, and he changes us in ways that we cannot imagine. And he does that when we walk consistently in obedience. In each of these cases, Jesus did something extraordinary.

Every time he told Peter to do something that did not make sense to Peter, and Peter said, okay, this doesn’t make sense to me, but I trust you, so I’m going to do it. Every time that happened, Jesus followed it up by doing something extraordinary. When Peter went out a little ways in the boat so he could teach, he taught a crowd and he drew a crowd with this unprecedented authority.

And every time he taught, people recognized that they were hearing something from God. And Peter got to hear firsthand God’s word from the mouth of God. He got to hear it firsthand because he was obedient to move the boat out.

Each of these gets a little bigger as we go along. When Peter trusted him enough to take the boats out into the middle of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus did something extraordinary, and they caught a catch of fish that you were not going to find that many fish, especially in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the day. It was only because Jesus orchestrated it, put those fish to be there.

Catch a fish was so large, they nearly lost their boats. And when Jesus told Peter, come with me and you’re going to catch men, and Peter said, okay, that’s an odd career move. I’m kind of putting words in Peter’s mouth here, just imagining how we would react to it.

Peter likely thought it was a strange career move, but still trusted Jesus enough to do it, we see throughout the rest of the New Testament, the transformation that takes place in Peter’s life. Jesus turned that man upside down and used him for the kingdom of God in ways that he could never have imagined. Jesus does unimaginable things when we obey.

He completely transformed Peter. Now, if the comparison that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, as we’ve been in the book of Luke, if the comparison between Nazareth and Capernaum shows us that Jesus tends to work where people are receptive. Peter’s example shows us that if we’re receptive to his work, he tends to work in pretty amazing ways.

And when we obey God, he does amazing things in our lives. And I think this is the best part of all. When we obey, not only does Jesus work in amazing ways, but when we obey, we see Jesus more clearly.

When we obey, we see Jesus more clearly. This is what happened to Peter. It wasn’t a pleasant, It wasn’t a pleasant experience in the moment.

Because what Peter saw was a glimpse of the holiness of Jesus and the power of Jesus. And it was so overwhelming that Peter recognized his own sin. This reminds me of Isaiah chapter 6, where Isaiah has the vision of God in the temple sitting on his throne.

The Father on the throne and his holiness. And Isaiah is so overwhelmed by the holiness of God and his own sin in comparison. that he just starts to fall apart.

But that vision of the holiness of God, that understanding of who God is, that clearer picture that Isaiah had of who God is, compelled him then to go out and serve God in new ways. And Peter, when he obeyed, he saw Jesus more clearly. He got to see something that opened his eyes to who Jesus is.

When we obey, we will begin to see Jesus more clearly. we’ll begin to understand Him. We’ll begin to understand Him through experience.

My wife and I know each other better now than we did when we got married because of years of experience together. If you’ve been friends with somebody for years and years, you’ve spent time with them, you know them better now by experience than you did when you started out. It’s the same thing with God.

As we continue to walk in obedience to Jesus, we’re going to know Him better and see Him more clearly. And it will have some unpleasant moments, moments where we begin to grasp His holiness and begin to grasp His power and understand who He is. And the reason that’s unpleasant is because we see who we are in comparison.

But on the other side of that, we come away with a renewed sense of mission and a renewed sense of calling to obey Him and to serve Him. And the more we understand Him, the more we love Him. Every time Peter got one of these glimpses of who Jesus is, it was like it was dawning on him for the first time.

Something he understood for the first time. He then walked away more determined to serve Jesus. Right up to the day where by the sea of Galilee again, after the times he had denied Jesus, Jesus restored him, said, Do you love me?

Feed my sheep. Repeated this three times. Restored him to ministry.

And Peter falls apart again, but understanding the compassion and the grace of Jesus walks away more determined than ever to serve him. Folks, when we obey Jesus, we will see him more clearly. And it’s bound to change our lives.

Powered by atecplugins.com