Have you watched River Monsters with Jeremy Wade? If you don't, you never have. We're still friends, but things are a little bit tense between us right now. You need to check this show out. It is phenomenal. The concept is very simple. You got this guy who's an old-time fisherman. He's been doing this forever. He's doing this kind of investigative journalism thing where he looks into reports about incidents in freshwater, and then he goes there to figure out what kind of fish might have attacked the person. And in doing so, we see how he interacts with the brotherhood andor sisterhood of fisher people all over the world. And there's this mutual respect that they all have for each other, and they all fish in these different ways. And you get to see Jeremy Wade try out all these different techniques, you know, depending on what makes the most sense for where he's trying to catch fish. And so you'll see him from time to time do what I do. That's fly fishing. That's kind of a hunting fish art form with lightweight, clever gear. Other times you'll see him do like the spinner fishing thing, like for bass, trying to get something to chase your shiny lure. At other times, you'll see him working with like a hand line, which I don't really understand, with like chunks of cut-up meat on there, trying to get gigantic carnivorous fish. Other times you'll see him trying to use a net, like there's this uh this one technique, like it's a throw net. People walk out into the shallow water. It looks like they got almost nothing in their hand, and they do this move like a video game character or a superhero, and this net just explodes out of their hand and spreads out perfectly over the water, and then they scoop it up, and somehow there's fish in there. It's amazing. I've seen him participate in gill netting, where you net off a chunk of water and you try and see what fish just swim through this particular area. Whatever the case, all these different types of fishing really mean something very different. They function differently, and they all involve a very different interaction, if you will, with the fish. Why am I telling you about this? There's usually a reason, right? I mean, come on, you've come to trust me. Well, it's because we're about to come upon a metaphor that is maybe one of the most pronounced and popular and iconic in the history of Christianity. This is the first time we come across it in the words of Jesus as we work through the book of Matthew, and this is the one about being fishers of men. The one about how I guess the analogy here is you're gonna go out and you're gonna put the Jesus thing in front of people, I guess almost like it's bait, except it's bait for a good thing, and you're gonna see, yo, who bites? Who's interested in this? And the analogy it makes a ton of sense if we think of it in terms of certain types of fishing, and it kind of breaks down and is a dumpster fire, if we think of it in terms of other types of fishing. So, whatever type of fishing you're picturing right now, it's probably gonna have an effect on how much this verbal imagery of Christ resonates with you. So let me set the whole thing up. We're in Matthew chapter four, we've just finished talking about how Jesus set up shop on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee in a little fishing town called Capernaum. He hasn't, you know, called anybody yet, but we know that here in a little bit he's going to recruit some people who are fishermen by trade, not all of them, but some of them, to come and work with him. And we also know that his being in this particular region of the north is a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecies regarding all of the things that this great king that's coming down the pike who's promised is going to fulfill. So we round out all of this with uh verse 17 of Matthew chapter 4, where it says, From that time on, Jesus began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. And if that sounds really familiar to you, I mean, well, I hope it does at this point, that of course is exactly the message employed by John the Baptist. And if you remember in whatever episode it was where we talked about that, we were talking about how uh my wife looked out the window and was like, hey, we got a blizzard coming. We need to put the chains on the truck. So, in light of what is about to happen, we need to abandon your plan, which is don't put the chains on the truck, and we need to embrace my plan, which is do put the chains on the truck. And she was right, and it's reasonable, and it's uh beautifully analogous for what Jesus is saying. There's a truer, realer, bigger thing coming down the pike. It is this greater kingdom with a greater king than any government or anything else that you're into or believe in. And so right now your lives are all calibrated for the realities of this temporal, temporary physical world with physical world values, but this other thing, this greater kingdom, has a different set of values and different currencies, and we'll talk about all of that, a whole bunch more. So it's time to recalibrate and repent and get ready for this thing that is coming. So Jesus is out saying that stuff. I mentioned, I don't know when it was it, last episode, the one before, that with John's arrest now, Jesus is kind of alyless. I don't think I've ever said the word alyless in my entire life, but you knew what I mean. The the deal is he doesn't have anybody on his side. I mean, God the Father, I mean, he's he's there, but we don't see him in all of these scenes. The spirit is a dove, but we don't see like the dove following him around, like like his avatar or something. It's just Jesus alone in this very difficult place. Well, we're gonna rectify that right now. Verse 18 of Matthew 4. As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come follow me, Jesus said, and I'll make you fishers of men. And at once they left their nets and followed him. There are two things here we obviously need to break down. One's gonna have to wait until next time, that being, who are these guys, and what kind of person can just walk up to you on a shore and be like, hey, quit your jobs, come with me. And you're like, oh, okay. I mean, something amazing happened there, and we'll talk about that transaction later. But he used that language, and this is the other thing we need to talk about. Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. If Peter and Andrew are up in the mountains and Jesus comes walking along and they've got waders on and they've got big nine-foot super lightweight two-ounce fly rods, and they are fishing upstream, so the fish will be facing the opposite direction of them, and they're using this line to kind of work their rod back and forth to flick this line just upstream six or eight feet and float it down in the current, carefully managing the loop in their line to try to get the trout to strike at it. That would kind of mean something different. It would mean basically you got a bunch of unsuspecting trout who are looking the wrong way, and we're gonna try to sneak up on them and give them something that looks like it's real and good, but it's not good at all. Ha ha ha ha, suckers, and then of course gut you and kill you and eat you, which I don't do. I put the fish back. So if you're picturing fly fishing here, then the analogy feels like the message of Jesus that he's inviting these guys to go out and share would be uh a dirty trick. You hunt people down and then bait and switch them into thinking Christian things, I guess. If you even picture like bass fishing with the spinner example, even there still, you're kind of provoking a strike from a bass. I think that's the language they use. I don't know, I'm not much of a bass fisherman. The idea there is that you uh you get this big flashy thing in front of them and sends bass or you know, these big-eyed sight hunters, they see the flash, and before they're even thinking, they just boom, they strike, and then you set the hook and you got them. Again, you tricked them and you irritated them into taking the bait. Well, you know, if Jesus walks up to these two guys and, you know, they're just getting ready to cast out in their bass boat, then again, this analogy is kind of weird because we view people as the objects of our provocation. We will irritate you in your space repeatedly until finally you just have a knee-jerk reaction, then boom, ha ha ha ha, you're in our Jesus cult, suckers. Or if Jesus walked up to Peter and Andrew and they are on their scientific catch and tag fish that are endangered, gill netting thing, and they got this net stretched all the way across this river in some remote place, and there they are with all their science pals and their clipboards, and they're documenting things and tagging things, and Jesus wades out into the water. He's like, hey, I'm gonna make you fishers of men. Well, again, it's not that appealing because that means what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have you set up a block that forces everybody, whether they want to be a part or not, to ram into this thing unwittingly, get stuck in it, and then we're going to collect them, mark them, and make them be a part of it. Yck! That doesn't sound like Jesus. No, the reason this analogy works is because instead of any of this, we're talking about just a net that gets thrown out into the water. Whatever's in there is whatever's in there. And frankly, it's gonna catch some pretty weird stuff. There's gonna be some stuff that comes up in that net that I don't know, all looks the same. Then there's gonna be some oddball fish that are gonna be caught in that net as well. There are probably gonna be some things that slip through that net, depending on their size or whether they get into the edge of the thing. There's also gonna be a whole lot more things that don't get caught in that net than that do get caught in that net. I go fly fishing, that water is clear, I know what I'm hunting, I know what I'm getting. You are my mark. I am going to try to get you, and I know exactly that I'm gonna get the same type of fish again and again and again, because that's the kind of fish I'm hunting. With a net, yeah, it's a better image for what the kingdom of God is actually about as we get to know it better. Yeah, it's kind of whatever. Kind of just whoever's in the net. People that don't look like you, people that don't sound like you, people who aren't into the same stuff as you, people who vote way different than you, people who are sensitive or get worked up about different things than you, people at different ages than you, different styles, languages. It's a really, really diverse thing. In fact, maybe it's the most diverse thing that's ever happened in the history of planet Earth, that being the kingdom of God, because the message of Jesus has gone all over the place and affected so many people. Here's a bottom line, though these guys understood what that analogy meant, or that I don't think they would have responded the way they responded. Again, we'll break that down more in another conversation. So they got it. They could picture what this would be about, or at least they were curious enough to want to respond, and then Jesus effectively begins training them to go out and do this professionally. Now, there are a lot of implications to that. Why does Jesus need help if he's God? I want to game that out with you. Um, is it weird to evangelize people? Like, should anybody be even fishing at all? Or is it just gross and grabby and is it uh assertive and arrogant to think that one person's idea is so much righter than whatever somebody else was already doing, that it's the height of arrogance or rudeness to even pitch such an idea to somebody else? I I think those are both reasonable questions, and I'm not asking them as straw men. We'll give those some real time to think that through. But for now, the biggest thing I wanted to accomplish today was to think through a little bit about what actually that analogy points us toward, what actually that analogy would have sounded like to the people it was originally announced to that would cause them to go and follow Jesus and give this thing a shot. If you feel like there's a lot more to think through here, you're right. And we're gonna get to all of it, and it's gonna be super fun. In the meantime, I want to say thank you again here at the end of the week to all the people who are supporting the program. It's kind of weird. A handful of new people signed up this week. That was really encouraging. Thank you to everybody who jumped in this week. And I don't know, I could read names, but I'll put them in the show notes at the beginning of next week as I try to always do to say thank you. So I appreciate that. That's encouraging. I appreciate all of you being here. If you want to be a part of supporting the thing, you can do that at patreon.com slash the tmbh podcast. If not, hey, that's all right too. Either way, I really enjoy doing this with you, and I can't wait to poke around next week at the calling of these first disciples and what it all means. I'm Matt, this is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do it again soon.