Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 5:1-11, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 6
- Date: Sunday, February 16, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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Learning to Trust the Instructions
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to put together furniture that came in a box, but if you’ve bought anything from Amazon, for example, a lot of those things come from overseas, and the instructions are not always translated well. As a matter of fact, they often don’t make sense.
I’ve 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? They have a few in Dallas. It’s mass-produced Swedish furniture that comes in boxes that make you wonder, “How did they fit that couch in that little box?” And then you take it home and 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 while trying to put something together and thought, “That doesn’t make sense. I’m not doing that.” Then, 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 matters into your own hands and say, “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 when we say, “We just need you to trust us, obey us, and do what we’re telling you, 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, and even when we don’t fully understand what the next 15 steps are going to be. That’s my problem. “Lord, I see what You’re telling me here, but I want to know the next fifteen 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. He doesn’t usually do that, at least with me. We’re called to obey the next 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: obeying Jesus even when we don’t understand.
Jesus Calls Peter from the Boat
Luke chapter 5, verse 1 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!” 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.
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. At this point, they’re more like 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, was preaching all throughout the lands of the Jews. He was preaching all throughout Galilee.
It says here that on one occasion, he’s out by the Sea of Galilee. The crowd is listening to him, and they’re pressing on him. Those of us who don’t like tight spaces and large crowds will understand this. There comes a point when everybody is pressing in 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, where you’re there with 15,000 of your closest friends. Sometimes the crowd is trying to move in and out of the building or the meeting room between sessions, and it becomes too much for me. 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 becomes overwhelming. They may even have been backing Him into the water as they kept pressing closer while He taught. 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.
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 the crowd is not going to be wading into the water. “That way, the crowd won’t be pressing in on Me. Everyone can see and hear Me, and we’ll still be close enough that they won’t struggle to hear what I’m saying.”
Peter apparently agreed. It’s not recorded his exact words, but they go out into the boat. Jesus sits in the boat and teaches the people who are crowded up onto the shoreline.
A Command That Did Not Make Sense
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 and 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. So he gets whoever is on his boat, they get together, and they go further out into the middle of the Sea of Galilee. They lower their nets, almost as though they’re going to humor Jesus for a moment. They lower the nets, probably thinking, “Why are we doing this?”
When they throw the nets down, they encircled a tremendous number of fish. This is not what we usually picture when we think of fishing with a rod and reel. These are massive nets, and it took a team of men to haul these things in.
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. So they have to call to their partner fishing boat that’s still closer to the shore. They motion to those men, “Come help us.”
So they’re all out there, two boats and all these men trying to haul in these fish. They’re getting the fish into the boats, and there are so many fish there that the boats start taking on water. They’ve got to hurry to the shore, and Peter sees this. Peter is just overwhelmed.
Peter falls all to pieces and says, “Lord, go away from me.” This is not an angry, “Get out of here.” This is, what did I just witness? Because of all the miracles that have taken place already, 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 who gets healed the way Luke focuses in on. Peter is a fisherman, so he recognizes the enormity and the unlikelihood of what’s just happened here. That just makes him go all to pieces. He says, “Lord, go away from me because I am a sinful man.” He recognizes that there’s something different about Jesus.
It’s not just Peter. The other fishermen who were there had very similar reactions. 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 great catches of fish anymore. You’re going to be catching people.”
It says here that they brought their boats to the land, they left everything, and followed him. It’s significant that they left everything because these aren’t hobby fishermen. These are people whose entire livelihood was on these fishing boats, and they just walked away from everything that mattered to them and went to follow Jesus.
We look at this story, and we immediately think that it’s really just about the miracle of the fish. Admittedly, the miracle of catching all those fish is a big deal in the story, but there’s something broader going on in this text that we need to understand. Jesus was commanding or calling them, depending on how He phrased each instruction. He was telling them to do things that did not make sense.
When Jesus Defies Human Wisdom
From this passage, we can see example after example of how Jesus’ commands often defy human wisdom. What I mean is that many of the things 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, and in a world where we’re taught how to get ahead and how to fight back, the things Jesus tells us to do don’t make sense on paper.
In all these ways, the world tells us this is how you are successful, this is how you get ahead, and this is how you live a good life. The things Jesus tells us to do don’t make sense on paper in that kind of world. There are 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 tells Peter, “Put out a little way,” in verse 3, his request to put out a little way was unreasonable. When I say unreasonable, I don’t mean that we look back and conclude that Jesus was out of line. I’m talking about from Peter’s standpoint.
Peter had not been through the crucifixion, the resurrection, or all the three years of being with Jesus and knowing all about who He is. I’m talking about from the standpoint of somebody who’s just 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.
The reason it’s unreasonable from Peter’s perspective is that it was time for Peter to quit and go home. They went out and fished at night. If they are back at the shore and they’re washing their nets, that means they’re packing up to go home. At the end of the day, the nets had to be washed, stretched, and 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’ve worked a job that kept you on your feet all day. 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 coughs and things through the line. At the end of those nine- or sometimes ten-hour days, the last thing I wanted was for somebody to say as I was leaving, “Why don’t you come back into the store?” “No, you’ll have to deal with that yourself. I’m leaving.”
Sometimes when I was teaching school, standing constantly and working with children, I loved them, but when the school day was over, that was enough. Those of you who were teachers can sympathize. Peter 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.
Trusting Beyond Expertise
Then we see in verse 4 his command 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.” It didn’t make sense at this point to go back out.
It didn’t make sense because, number one, Peter was an expert fisherman. 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 an experienced fisherman doesn’t? 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.
Yet you can always find people who have never walked in your shoes but are ready to tell you how to do what 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. 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.
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 is to take those nets out and foul them again on what, on paper, sounds like a fool’s errand. 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. None of this made sense from a human standpoint.
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 probably the first time anybody had ever heard that phrase, “I’m going to have you catch men,” unless you’re inviting somebody to become part of a human trafficking ring. I’m sure Peter knew Jesus was not talking about 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. 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 more spiritual insight than the rest of us. It just doesn’t.
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 are not calls for us to understand everything. They are calls to obedience.
Obedience Rooted in Trust
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 we sometimes imagine that this was their first meeting with Jesus and that they simply dropped everything in blind faith because He told them to follow.
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, and there are some other miracles Jesus has done. They’ve heard of who Jesus is as much as anybody else had.
This is not some random man showing up and saying, “Follow Me,” while they answer, “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 means believing everything we’re told without reason. Faith says, “I don’t understand how this will turn out. I don’t fully understand the importance of what I’m being called to do, but I’m going to obey because of the evidence already given and the proven character of the One calling me.”
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. 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. “I’m not sure what’s happening here, but You’re getting into my boat and asking me to take You out a few feet.
I’m sure You have a reason.” He knew at this point Jesus wasn’t a crazy person. He’d been around him enough. “There is a reason for this. I may not understand it, but we’re going out a little way.”
I don’t understand why you have to keep me from going home and going to bed so you can teach, but I’m going to trust you here. 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. We, with all of our expertise, haven’t caught a thing, and now you’re telling us to go to where our expertise tells us there are no fish? That’s a pretty tall ask. But I know what John the Baptist said about you. I’ve heard about the miracles you’ve performed. “All right, let’s find out.”
That seems to be Peter’s approach. He’s willing to trust Jesus enough to say, let’s go let down the nets. Most importantly, Peter trusted Jesus enough to follow him. In verse 11, Jesus essentially tells him, “I’m going to make you a fisher of men.” That is not His exact wording here, though He uses that phrase in the other Gospels.
Peter trusted him enough to follow him. He left everything and went. You don’t do that unless you have enormous trust in somebody.
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, and 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.
I can step a little way into the unknown because I trust Him, even if I don’t know what lies ahead. Obedience to him requires trusting him even when things don’t make sense.
Seeing Jesus Work Through Obedience
We see throughout this passage that there’s this incredible payoff that takes place. When we obey, Jesus does unimaginable things. What Jesus does in your life may not be as visibly miraculous as what He did in Peter’s life here.
You may not have this miracle of the fish that is so big it’s going to sink your boat, that everybody can see. But he works in our lives nonetheless, and he does things, orchestrates things, and changes us in ways that we cannot imagine. 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, Jesus followed it up by doing something extraordinary.
When Peter went out a little ways in the boat so he could teach, Jesus taught a crowd, and he drew a crowd with this unprecedented authority. Every time he taught, people recognized that they were hearing something from God. 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. They caught a catch of fish that you were not going to find, especially in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the day. It happened only because Jesus orchestrated it and brought those fish there.
The catch of 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. Whatever Peter thought, he trusted Jesus enough to obey. 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.
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. When we obey God, He does amazing things in our lives.
Seeing Jesus More Clearly
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. This is what happened to Peter.
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. 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.
Isaiah sees the Father on the throne and his holiness. Isaiah is so overwhelmed by the holiness of God and his own sin in comparison that he starts to fall apart. But that vision of the holiness of God, that understanding of who God is, that clearer picture Isaiah had of who God is, compelled him then to go out and serve God in new ways.
Peter, when he obeyed, 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 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, and 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. He said, “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.” He repeated this three times and restored him to ministry.
Peter falls apart again, but after experiencing the compassion and grace of Jesus, he walks away more determined than ever to serve Him. When we obey Jesus, we will see Him more clearly, and that is bound to change our lives.
