Luke 8

Chapter 8. The Son of Man and the First DisciplesDon’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men. (Luke 5:10)Nothing is more in keeping with the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ than the fact that He committed His work so fully to the hands of His disciples. His own personal ministry did not result in the conversion of as many people apparently as were added to the Church in a single day under the preaching of His servant Peter. Like David, who committed his work to the hands of Solomon and rejoiced to see it prosper in his hands, so the blessed Master loves to work through His disciples. He, the true Vine, does not bear the fruit Himself, but rather gives it to the little branches and the youngest sprouts to be loaded with the precious clusters while the Vine sustains them with His life. While the Lord Jesus had already called His disciples at various times to follow Him, it would seem that they had not yet abandoned their ordinary vocations and devoted themselves exclusively to His service. On His visit to Nazareth shortly before this, He was unaccompanied by His disciples, and on this occasion we find them still upon the shores of the Lake of Galilee attending to their ordinary business as fishermen. The call that comes to them at this time leads to their final separation from all other conflicting interests, and the devoting of their lives exclusively to the service of the Lord. His call to Simon and his fellow disciples reaches a wider company and teaches us many useful lessons about our service to the Lord. God Calls Us Through Our Secular Occupations He found Saul seeking his father’s donkeys. He found Samuel attending to his duties in the house of Eli. He found Moses shepherding the flocks of Jethro. He found David occupied with his sheep at Bethlehem. He found the shepherds of the advent morning engaged in their duties and vocations. He found Elisha ploughing his fields at Abel Meholah. And He found Simon at his fishing nets in Bethsaida. So He will meet us also at our daily tasks and enable us to turn them to higher account. We need not give up our callings to serve the Lord unless He clearly shows us that He would have us to do so, but serve Him in our secular duties with a consecrated spirit. And when He calls us to higher service, we will find the lessons we learned in the school of life to be fraught with holy power for the ministries of heaven. He Came to Them When They Had Failed in Their Earthly Calling They had toiled all night and caught nothing, and then it was that He met them with the miraculous catch of fishes and said, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men” (Luke 5:10). So God comes to us through our earthly trials and opens to us a vision of higher work. But for Joseph’s trials, he would never have been able to save his father’s house and feed the famine of the whole world. Had not poverty and widowhood come upon Naomi in the land of Moab, the beautiful story of Ruth would have been unwritten and she would have had no part in the glorious history of Israel and the Messiah. It was when the widow of Zarephath had only a single handful of meal and a single drop of oil left that the higher call came to her to feed the prophet of the Lord and to receive the most glorious manifestation of divine power in the whole history of the Old Testament. It is said that Adam Clark failed completely as a clerk in a commercial house before he found his higher ministry to teach the children of God and the churches of later centuries. There is some lesson in your business failure. There is some blessing hidden behind the cloud if you will only watch for the coming of the Son of Man and follow as He leads. Christ Asks Service From Simon “He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore” (Luke 5:3), and then turning the fishing boat into a pulpit, He began to preach to the people from the stern of the little ship. So He came to the woman of Samaria and asked her for a drink of water, and then He gave her the living water and the glorious ministry of telling the story of Christ to her own wandering people. So again He came to Zacchaeus and asked that He might stay at his house for entertainment, but He brought with Him a whole heaven of higher blessing. So He calls upon us for some little ministry, some gift to help a poor and suffering life, some act of self-denial for His service. And the joy it brings to us is so great that we never can rest again till we have entered upon His service and given Him all our life. He comes to us with deepest condescension. He asked Simon for the use of his little ship that day. He is asking us to give to Him our hearts and standing, as He pleads, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). Will we listen to His tender appeal and let Him lead us up to the noblest service and the most glorious and lasting blessing? The Value of Hard Places Had Daniel remained the petted courtier in the palace at Jerusalem, he never could have been God’s chosen instrument to bring Nebuchadnezzar to the feet of Jehovah and glorify God before the heathen world. It was the ordeal of the lions’ den that brought out the grandeur of his faith and the power of his God. The life of Paul was one continuous succession of hardships so that he could say he was made “a spectacle… to angels as well as to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9) of the power of God to sustain a suffering child. Each new trial enabled him to say, “What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (Philippians 1:12). And so God has to push us out into some new place of difficulty in order to develop our faith and show us what He can do for us and through us. You will never know how God can use you until you venture upon Him and attempt more than you are equal to in your own strength and resources. The first time you attempted to give a simple testimony for Christ, you hesitated and feared the very sound of your own voice; but when you launched out and ventured upon Him, you found your voice and your work, and ever afterwards you had liberty and power in witnessing for the Master. The late Mrs. Booth was literally pushed into her public work by her husband suddenly committing to her one day a public service for which she had no experience or training whatever, and from which she shrank back with extreme sensitiveness and dread. But finding herself alone and compelled to say something, she opened her lips in dependence upon God; and to her own amazement and the delight of her hearers, she found that God had given her an unction of which she had never dreamed, and which, but for that venture, would have been unused and lost. This is why our fellow workers upon foreign fields grow so fast in their spiritual life. Their difficulties mold them. Their hard places challenge for them the richer gifts and graces of the Spirit. As they “put out into deep water” (Luke 5:4) they find the Master is with them and that great shoals of fish are to be gathered in. Why remain in your diffidence and false humility and fail to attempt some bold service for the Master? Arise in your strength and, giving up both your strength and weakness to Him, go forth to “attempt great things for God and expect great things from God.” God’s Providence Christ manifested Himself in the miraculous catch of fishes to Simon and his brethren, and astonished and inspired them by the vision of His power. So God meets us in some hard place in life by the angels of His providence and the interposition of His power, until we too are filled with awe and praise at some marvelous deliverance, and henceforth we never can be the same again. Such places in our life are like “the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar” (Psalms 42:6), to which David looked back as the sunlit peaks of life’s mountains; the places where God meets us, and the heavens are opened in the revelation of His love and power. This forever makes life divine and God intensely real. God is waiting to meet us along life’s pathway with just such memorials which fill our hearts with confidence in His all-sufficiency and power. And if He has so met us let us not be “disobedient to the vision from heaven” (Acts 26:19), but remember that our life is a trust, and that God has simply shown us what He is able to do for us a thousand times if we will but step out upon His Word and venture upon His almighty help. God’s Word It was the word of the Master that called Simon to higher service. “But because you say so, I will let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). It is a crisis hour in our life when first the Word of God becomes real to us. Up to that time it was just a book, but now it becomes a message. It was that Word that came to Moses, to Samuel, to Elisha, to Paul, and transformed their lives. If we will listen, we will hear it speaking with divine authority to our conscience and heart and saying, “Follow Me.” When God speaks to us and sends us forth at His command, then no danger can appall us and no difficulty can discourage us. Oh, what a condescension that the Mighty One should turn aside and call us, insignificant children of the dust, to be His fellow workers and partners of His very throne. God grant that, even as you read these lines, some heart may discern that voice and answer, “Rabboni.” The Revelation of Self This miracle brought to Simon Peter not only the revelation of Christ, but a revelation of himself. “Go away from me, Lord,” he cried, “I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). The vision of God always disgusts us with ourselves. There need be no discouragement in this deep consciousness of our unworthiness. It will but make larger room for God Himself and bring us into closer sympathy with weak and sinful men. May God show us Himself and ourselves. A Call to a Deeper Life The call to Peter may be translated as a call to each of us to come into a deeper Christian life. Such an experience is the best qualification for Christian service. It is what we are, more than what we say or do, that God uses to impress other lives. Have we gone down into the depths of self-surrender and have we ventured out into the ocean of His boundless grace? “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch” (Luke 5:4). Separation The Master’s message to Simon and his brethren led them to an entire separation to Him and His service. “They… left everything and followed him” (Luke 5:11)—their nets, their fathers, their old ties, interests and aims. Henceforth there was but one thing to live and labor for: the Master’s work and will. Are we thus separated unto His service? Even if we still are led to continue in our secular callings, have we the separated spirit and the single aim? The Place of Service The end and purpose of all God’s dealings with us is service. “From now on you will catch men” (Luke 5:10). The word “men” is very emphatic in the original. There is the suggestion that many of us are fishing for very poor game. Are we catching men? Oh, the value of a single soul! Think of one such life as Ramabai, saved from the wreckage of India and the thousands of precious lives that she has brought to her King. What if God should give you one such soul in heathen lands? Oh, the glorious fruition which some day will meet us from lives of consecrated service! This is but the apprenticeship of our immortal life. There we shall enter upon unknown glories, and we shall find that they will simply be the outcome of our life below. In a recent poem Kipling has touched with a master hand, although with a very unconventional touch, the vision of the future. His striking picture is worth repeating: When Earth’s last picture is painted, And the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest color has faded, And the youngest critic has died— We shall rest; and faith, we shall need it, Lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of all good workmen Shall set us to work, anew. And they who are good shall be happy, And sit in a golden chair, And splash at a ten-league canvas With brushes of comet’s hair. They shall have real saints to draw from, Magdalene, Peter and Paul; And work for an age at a sitting, And never get tired at all. And only the Master shall praise us, And only the Master shall blame, And no one shall work for money, And no one shall work for fame. But each for the joy of working, And each, in his separate star, Shall paint the thing as he sees it, For the God of things as they are. God has provided some better thing even than this. “Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together” (John 4:36).