Our Work or His 1973

I want to read from Luke 5, starting at verse 1. While the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. And he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land.

And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had ceased speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing.

But at your word, I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish. And as their nets were breaking, they beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.

And they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with him had to catch a fish which they had taken.

And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid. Henceforth you will be catching men.

And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. Most of us have come to see that there is a great deal more to follow in Jesus than getting saved, joining a church, and then living a good, clean Christian life until the trumpet blows. To follow Jesus, for every single one of us, is a call to work.

Go work in my vineyard. Here, take this money and trade with it until I come back. Lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already ripe for the harvest.

I'm going to make you fishers of men. And all these things are directed to all believers. Now in man's order, we have religion, where the work is done by ministers and missionaries, while the rest of us contribute a few painless dollars.

But in God's order, the work is done by the entire body. There are no professionals. Everybody works.

Everybody gives. Everybody prays. And everybody rejoices as the harvest comes in.

But after we begin to catch on to this idea that we all seriously share in the actual work of proclaiming the gospel and gathering souls into the kingdom, another danger arises. The danger that we find ourselves indeed engaged in a work, which is not His. Here we are, we're busy doing, quote, the Lord's work.

And we're quite enthused about the progress we're making, and we're making marvelous plans for greater things. And suddenly the Lord is at the door, and He says, all right, let's look at what you've been doing. And without any shame, we say, of course, Lord, come and see.

Look at all the members we got for our fellowship. And look at the reputation I've built among the saints. And look at all the people I healed.

And look at the signs I performed. And look at all those misguided souls that I straightened out with my pure doctrine. And He will say, but where are the men and women of God that I sent you to bring to birth? And what about the condition of my church in this city? While you were busy building up your fellowship and your reputation, my church in Detroit was floundering.

And while you were busy straightening out everybody on their doctrine, their hearts were crying for you for some encouragement. People who were desperately looking for me were storming the door of your life. And you never bothered to open it because you were too busy building your own kingdom.

We have to constantly have a look and be very careful that our work as fellowships is really His work. Are we gathering men and women into the kingdom of God or into our own thing? Are we really edifying the body or are we merely enriching our own club in some way? And we notice in this passage that Jesus told Peter to lower his net. And the net comes up so full of fish it begins to break.

And we notice that Peter, back into his partners in another boat to come and help. Peter did not say, these fish came up in my net, so they're mine. I'm going to keep them.

And all the money I make when I sell them goes into my pocket. Peter understood very clearly that he didn't draw those fish into his net and that he had no claim on them. And it's important for us to really try to figure out what was the power that drew the fish into his net? It was not magic, nor was it what this thing we're so quick to call charisma, nor was it the fact that Jesus was the Son of God and so He can make the fish do anything He wants.

The fish are drawn into Peter's net by the same power that drew men to Jesus, that multiplied the loaves under His hands, Jesus' hands, that caused the water to coagulate under His feet that stormy night on Galilee. Jesus was moving toward a goal that He knew very well was going to affect and change the destiny of the whole planet and everything on it. And although He has not yet arrived at that goal, the heat from this baptism of fire which is going to come on Him is already moving out upon His body and mind.

And He knows very well what's causing these demons to cry out to Him and these Greeks to come calling for Him on His last Passover. And these little ones to sing His praise. These people are being drawn to Jesus by the power of His coming crucifixion.

The Father in His mercy is somehow enabling people and even the wind and the waves and the rocks and the trees to see that the cross of Jesus Christ is their only hope. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth on the cross, will draw all men to myself. What was it that drew these multitudes to Jesus? To hear Him speak and to be healed.

But the power of the cross which was already burning in His heart. What made this woman come to the house of Simon the Pharisee to wash Jesus' feet with her tears and wipe them with her hair? Her troubled conscience could already see the cross coming down in full weight on Jesus. And it was reaching out to that.

Or what caused Zacchaeus to climb the tree to get a look? Or what caused that man to come out of the tombs around Gadara and cry out to Him? What brought these mothers with their little ones asking Him to touch them? It was as if these people could somehow already see the cleansing blood and they were drawn to it. When people who have an ounce of integrity left in their hearts see the Lamb of God laying down His life for their sins, they are drawn. When they see this holy, divine, self-emptying love going the ultimate, dying, they have to be drawn.

Granted, on Calvary, the people stood at a distance, but you can be sure that the memory of that thing was something that they could absolutely never erase from their minds. And it drew them as long as they lived until they came to the place where they made up their minds what they were going to do with this man. You ask, how come the apostolic believers ministered with such effectiveness those early days after Pentecost? And the answer is very simple.

They relied on nothing but the Word of the Cross. Study, for instance, the sermons that come up in the Book of Acts. And every single one of them revolves around the Cross.

For instance, Peter's sermon on Pentecost, his climax. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, but God raised Him up.

We see the same thing when he preaches his sermon after healing the lame man in chapter 3. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted you and killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. And then Peter and John are arrested, and the next day they're brought before the big shots. We hear the same thing again.

Be it known to you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man is standing before you well. It was this relentless testimony to the death and resurrection of Jesus and the healing and the life and the forgiveness that flow from that that drew people like a magnet, not into some honky church, but into the kingdom of God, the true church. We see that Paul ministered in exactly the same way, on the same basis, and the place where you see it most clearly, of course, is in 1 Corinthians.

This is Paul now. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in much weakness and in fear and trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the spirit and power that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And what is the power of God? But the cross.

Foolishness to the Greeks. A stumbling block to the Jews. But to those who are being saved, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The cross. And this is true to this day. Behind a million masks out there on the streets and everywhere else, people are beside themselves trying to figure out what to do with this burden of guilt in their hearts.

And they know very well that all the gimmicks that they keep trying, never do it. But when they see Jesus, not as the greatest man who ever lived, or the prophet of all prophets, but as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, they come. If we try to draw people into our net by any other name or by any other power than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we are doing our own work.

And even if we try to embellish this work with Christian jargon and quote the Bible and say little prayers and pretend that we're saving souls, we are drawing men to ourselves. And they're going to be looking to us for things they can only get from Jesus. And they are going to be disillusioned sooner or later.

Also, when somebody else's net comes up with a beautiful load of fish, we're going to be jealous. That's always a good sign. And when somebody comes in through our net, they hang around our boat for a while, and then they decide to shoot off to somebody else's boat, we're going to be angry.

And when the Lord comes to try our work by fire, it will all go up in smoke. Only if men and women are drawn into our net by the power of the cross of Jesus, is it His work. For when they are drawn by the cross of Jesus, they are not drawn to us.

Doesn't matter whether we're here or not. They are drawn to Him. We have no claim on them.

They do not belong to us. They belong to Him. And then they are His.

And they serve Him in the same way we serve Him. And they're going to serve Him wherever He chooses to put them. If somebody comes into our net today, and six months from today, they're serving Him in Windsor, or Inkster, or Dallas, or Shanghai.

Praise God. Somebody comes into our net today, and a year from today, they're burying on the other side of town a hundred times more fruit than we are. Praise God.

If we're bringing people into the kingdom of God by the power of the cross of Jesus, and a mile away, another fellowship is hauling them up five times faster than we are. Praise God. Because it's His work.

And it's His glory. And this is much easier for us to get into our heads than into our hearts. And the only thing that matters is that they come to see Jesus as He is.

Now the question that must be asked of us today and every day is, in the place where God has put us to labor, are we in fact gathering souls into the net by the power of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and only that? Have we decided to know nothing except that? No supports, no gimmicks. Now if we're doing it that way, by the power of the cross, then I tell you, we must, there's no, we have no choice about it. Then we are bound to work in harmony with brothers and sisters in every part of town.

Real harmony. And we're going to be patient with those who consider us to be doctrinally unsound. And we're going to be compassionate with those who may deliberately twist everything they see us do or hear about us and go right on working.

Because it's not our work and it's not for us to defend this work. It's Jesus' work. And it's going to go on.

And it's going to bear fruit. So this week as we go out to fish, and may it be that every single one of us goes out to fish, may God help us to remember that the power that draws men and women into the kingdom of God has nothing to do with how well we can talk or how fine we look or what a heavy reputation we may have or think we have. People are drawn into the kingdom of God by the power of Jesus crucified and raised.

I will draw all men to myself. So you lower your net and remember that the work is not yours, but mine. And you will see things happen that you never dreamed could be.

Let's wait upon Him in prayer. First of all, Heavenly Father, we're asking that should there be anybody among us right now who knows himself or herself to be standing outside the door of the kingdom and by the power of your spirit, Father, has received any vision at all of the meaning of the cross of Christ, that this may be their day of salvation and that in whatever way, Father, you choose to bring them in, as they answer that call and respond to it right now, they may find peace that they've never known. And for those who know you, Lord, we're asking that you'll turn whatever is true, the words that have been spoken, into action in our lives and that you'll come in with a knife and cut away all those things in us that we think are helping, but they're only hindering and all those supports and all those gimmicks and all those props that we use to do the work which is not ours, but yours.

Help us, oh Lord Jesus, to really labor by faith and see your power at work and glorify your name and to, oh Lord, remain in unity with brothers and sisters across this earth who love you too. We ask it in your blessed name, Lord. Amen.

Amen.