FISHERS OF MEN

Matthew 4:18-20

“While walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.”

As a wee lad, I was taught to fish by my maternal Grandfather, Rip Roberts, in the Atchafalaya Swamp outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Anyone who has ever fished knows that when you catch a fish, you take it out of the environment that enables them to live. A fish out of water will die to the only life it has ever known. The fish my Pawpaw and I caught ended up on the dinner table. 

Many of Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen. They had not continued with their schooling after having studies and memorized the first five Books of the Torah. They had not displayed an aptitude for further study in Hebrew school, so they went to work in the family trade: fishing. When Jesus said, “Follow me.” He was telling them, as a Rabbi, that they were going to do what He was doing and say what He would be saying. He was telling them that they would reflect Him and because of who He was, people would be brought out of death into life.

Fish have no concept of being wet. It is their natural environment; they have known nothing else. It is their normal. Think about this, humanity has been living in sin, in rebellion against God since the fall in the Garden of Eden. “Going your own way” is normal and people do not think that sin is anything out of the ordinary. In fact, people tend to take great offense when anyone points out that the way they live is sinful and less that what it means to be fully human.

I have had people say to me, “Why do I need to be saved? From what?” Like fish in water, people accustomed to living in a broken relationship to God, living by their own wits, living out of their own insight, and their broken internal compass, don’t see the need to change. That is, until someone comes with the Light of Christ Jesus to shine before them and in love expose that the “light” the person had been walking in is actually “darkness”.

To be a “fisher of men” entails catching people by the means of grace and truth to see that the life they are living has a trajectory that is leading to eternal death. People, to be caught by the love and mercy of God, are, by the Holy Spirit’s power, taken out of the death they had all their lives thought was “normative life” and dying to that old way, become born anew into Life as it is meant to be. The wage that sin pays is death that will one day exert itself into eternal death. The gift of God is Eternal Life in Jesus Christ.

As a fish fights to not be taken out of the water at the end of a fishing line, Satan will fight inside a person accustomed to living separated from God to keep them enslaved to a life of indifference to God and His ways. The wonder is that the power of God’s eternal grace and love is infinitely greater than all the powers of darkness can muster in the fight. Turning from death to Life is called repentance; an abandoning a life of sin, and turning to God in the surrender of one’s whole life so that one might begin to live a new way, a new life, drawing meaning and purpose from God, Himself, becoming, at last, truly alive.

The “bait on the line” of those who are fishing for people by God’s direction is the reality that God has already done everything necessary for a person to become a new creation. It no longer has anything to do with “achieving” it is only received by “believing” what God has already done for humanity through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has dealt with the sin of the whole world so that we no longer must be slaves of sin. You can come Home today. Living life without God is not true living. It is not “home” it is a coffin. You, too, may come alive and be rescued from the darkness and death that seems “normal”.