Tell Me the Stories of Jesus: The Calling of the Disciples

Jesus chose to teach from an ordinary fishing boat, showing that God loves to work through our everyday moments. When Jesus told the fishermen to cast their nets after a fruitless night, their obedience led to an overwhelming catch. This miracle revealed Jesus' identity and transformed their disappointment into purpose. The disciples left everything to follow him, not after years of success, but after experiencing how Jesus could transform their ordinary work into something extraordinary. God doesn't wait for perfect conditions or impressive circumstances to show up in our lives.

Transcript

All right, friends, if you have your Bibles, today, I'm going to invite you to open up to the Gospel of Luke. We're going to start in the book of Luke, chapter 5, verses 1 through 11. So today is Pentecost. Now, I know I didn't announce that, but today is Pentecost. And here's a situation.

I preach a Pentecost sermon every year, and you know that it's Pentecost because Pentecost is described as the birthday of the church. There's a beautiful story in the Book of acts where 3,000 people are converted to faith and the church begins to grow and be loved by all the people. So there you go. That's my synopsis of Pentecost for today, because we're not going to do a whole lot of diving into Pentecost, but instead we're going to be beginning a new sermon series called Tell Me the Stories of Jesus. And for the last five weeks, as I've been planning on this sermon series, every time I say that, the song gets stuck in my head.

I don't know if you know, Tell Me the Stories of Jesus. I love to hear anybody. I see a couple heads nodding. All right, anyway, so today we're going to learn about the calling of the disciples, and we're going to read it from Luke's perspective. So if you have your Bibles, you can open up to Luke 5:1 through 11.

If you don't have your Bibles, you can follow along on the screen. Church. Here's the word of the Lord for us today. One day, as Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. He sat at the water's edge, or sorry, he saw at the water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets.

He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and he asked him to put out a little bit from shore. Then he sat down and he taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus feet and said, go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man.

For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, don't be afraid. From now on, you will fish for people. So they pulled their boats up to shore, left everything, and followed him.

This is a beautiful story. I've got a couple things I want to do today. I'm going to ask you some questions because it's summertime, and I have decided that I want summer to be a little more fun. Summer's usually boring, right? Nobody ever does anything in the summer.

Nobody goes on vacation. Nobody just sleeps in. It's boring. So in order to convince people to stick around, I'm going to give you pieces of candy. So I've got a couple questions.

Can anybody tell me what the name was of the last sermon series we just got out of? What? Good job, Levi. Okay, that one's for you, Gloria. There you go.

All right. Good catch, Levi. Can anybody tell me how many disciples Jesus had? Yes. Boom.

There you go. Good job.

Sorry, what? I don't hear out of the right ear. Yeah, I don't know how to call on you. Can anybody tell me what city I just visited? Oh, crap.

There's some candy for you guys and candy for you. Okay. All right, going in the back. Yay. There you go.

If you don't like any of these pieces of candy, you can just throw them to somebody else.

What day? Yeah, what day are we going to celebrate our graduates? What? That's right. Boom.

All right, you guys are paying attention. You guys are listening. Tell me the name of our guitar player. Debbie.

You caught that? That was kind of launched that. I almost blacked her eye. Sorry about that. All right, that's enough for now.

Sorry, you guys. All right, listen. I know that summer means it's time for sunscreen. It's time to get out the tent, it's time to go on vacation. It's time to do all these things.

But for the times that we show up together in church this summer, I want us to have fun. So I'm going to ask you questions throughout our time of worship today. And. And these are not rhetorical. I don't want you to sit and contemplate them and think about how they mean something spiritual and bigger than they imply.

I want you to answer these questions because you matter. Your opinions matter, your thoughts matter. Your faith matters to everyone in this room. And Oftentimes we can learn significantly by hearing one another. So we're starting today with a new sermon series called Tell Me the Stories of Jesus.

And so we're going to laugh together. We're going to listen to the stories of Jesus together. We're going to interact. Okay? Some of the stories that we talk about this summer are going to be stories that you know.

Some of them you will know by heart. You will know almost every single detail. Some of them will be less familiar. Some of them we're going to reinterpret from a perspective that we've never seen them from before. But my hope is that all of these stories of Jesus will help us to get to know Jesus so well that we can see God's actions in person of Jesus.

Because our goal is, by the end of the summer, I want us to not be confused at all about what we believe about Jesus and why it is so important that we gather together to learn about Jesus. So today we start with a story that I bet many of you could probably have told in your sleep. Now I will tell you. The calling of the disciples from Luke is different from the other scriptures, right? So we know that we have four gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and. Good Job. You guys need more candy? Whee. All right, so the stories as we hear them, we always need to understand this.

The Gospel gives us four different versions of the life of Jesus. And oftentimes they are very similar sounding. Oftentimes they tell the same story with just a few little details that are different. But sometimes they differ pretty significantly. And because of that, we recognize that God reveals himself differently in different ways to different people.

Right? Amen. Okay. It's a great thing for us to recognize. But before we get too deep in our story for today, I want to start with a question that I want you guys to answer for real out loud.

What is the most ordinary everyday place that you spend your time? How do you just chill at home in a recliner watching tv, fishing? Oh, Frank. Oh, that makes me feel so good.

Outside with dog. Yeah.

So we've heard some things I think many of us can relate to, right? Oftentimes we like to hang out in places like our kitchens, sometimes listening to music in our cars. Sometimes the most ordinary places we spend our time is in our cubicles at work, our couches in line at Quick Trip for a cappuccino. You know, they don't make the cappuccinos anymore. That's heartbreaking, isn't it?

Somebody call Mike Francie and have him figure that out. I'm glad nobody said bathroom because a lot of times I think we spend. I'm right. I think we spend a lot of time, you know, browsing the Internet now in the restroom.

But I want you to hold on to those places in your mind, the places where you feel are the most ordinary. Because today I want to remind you that those places matter. Have any of you ever owned a boat? Yes. You had a ski boat, right?

A big one? Big, fancy, Was it? Tahoe? Okay. Kim and Kyle own a boat.

They have a wake boat. Wake boarding boat, I guess. Surfing boat. I didn't know that was a thing.

Yeah, I mean, because it creates a wake and you surf behind the wake, I guess. Yeah. Anybody else have a boat? A kayak. So I think kayaks are fantastic.

You have a kayak, too? I have a kayak. Do what? Not a kayak. Oh, not a kayak.

What kind of boat do you have? A fishing boat? Heck, yeah. I. Friends used to have a fishing boat, and then I had children, and so it became irrelevant for me to own a fishing boat because I never had time to actually use it.

So, yeah, I sold that boat and used the money from that boat to help put a paint job on my Mr. 2. It's a fun story. Boats are important in scripture, but they're even more important for our scripture today because Jesus finds himself in the midst of this boat. So I want us to kind of repaint a picture of the scene that we're reading here in Luke's gospel this morning. So I want us to think about it like this.

You guys. Just imagine with me that it is a beautiful sunny day on the shore of Lake Gennesaret. Do you know where that is? I don't either. It's somewhere not here, but we're.

It's a beautiful day. The sun is out. There's, you know, sea birds diving into the. Into the sea, and they're grabbing like little fish and they're eating them. The water's calm.

The fishermen all around the lake are sitting near their boats. They're mending their nets. They're cleaning the fish that many of them caught over the night. Now, clearly not Peter didn't catch any fish. But the boats that caught fish, I'm sure, are filled with dudes who are just excited, right?

They're talking, they're laughing, they're having a good time. But some of the other boats are a little less lively this morning. These are the boats that came back that were empty. They were filled with fishermen who had sat out all Night who were grumpy, didn't catch anything. Has anybody ever experienced that?

You coming back from a fishing trip and not having any fish? Maybe you spent four hours vomiting off the coast of Hawaii and felt like your life was worthless at that moment. I don't know. No matter how successful or unsuccessful the fishermen have been, overnight, they were all, I'm sure, very exhausted. But we start out this morning focusing on a very specific group of fishermen.

And this group has been out all night and they've caught nothing.

And here we are on this beautiful sunrise, a peaceful shore scene. And there are two boats that are pulled up onto the shore, and they're by themselves. Have you ever wondered the stories that a boat would tell if it could talk?

I sank a boat once. I imagine my boat had some perspective, right? I know it sounds like a weird question, but think about all the boats. If they could tell you the stories about the things that they had seen or experienced. Maybe the events that these boats had been through, the boats that had seen storms, had seen sunburns, had been there in the moments where people got into arguments or maybe fights.

Think about the fish guts and the record catches that these boats would have been witnesses to, maybe the questionable decisions that its captains would have made.

But on this morning, something strange happens. Jesus walks up. He doesn't ask for permission, and it just says that. He steps into a boat and he starts teaching the people about God's word. And as we've talked about in this church over and over again, Jesus shows up in the moments in life where you least expect him.

Some of the most ordinary, plain moments, the fishermen were just doing their job, and all of a sudden this teacher comes up and sits among them.

It would have been unexpected. Jesus, in this moment, chooses to step into a fishing boat. Not a throne, not a temple, not a stage. He doesn't step into the spotlight. He steps into a boat, a regular, plain fishing boat.

And if that boat was sentient, if it had an opinion, it probably would have said something like, I don't know that I'm worthy of the Messiah being here in my presence, I'm more of a transportation device for fish. But in this moment, Jesus doesn't seem bothered by his surroundings. He sits down in this boat and he starts teaching. And suddenly this ordinary boat becomes a pulpit for the Son of God.

What's the most ordinary thing in your life that God has used to teach you? Something? Has there been something in your life that God has shown you through something ordinary? Again, this is not rhetorical. If you Want to just shout out and talk to me?

I would love that. Does God ever show up in ordinary moments in your life?

But it's usually after you you've done something, you recognize there was a sign. There's hindsight, I believe, is what 2020 hindsight is 20 20. What about. I mean, yeah, I agree with you. I think we have to be looking for the moments that God is active in our lives.

And oftentimes it's in the plain, ordinary days that we forget God even exists. We're not reaching out and calling for God. God, I'm dealing with more than I can handle. God, where are you? Or God, I'm so thankful that everything is going well in my life that I just want to praise you.

There's those extremes, and oftentimes we sit somewhere in the middle and we just forget that God exists.

God loves the ordinary things.

So let's pause this story for a moment. Jesus steps into the boat before any miracle happens, before there's a call to push out into the deep water, before the nets, before the big catch. He steps into the boat and it's empty, it's smelly, it's unproductive. And I think that's important for us to remember. Because Jesus doesn't wait for the moments in life when everything is impressive and you've got everything together.

He doesn't wait for our schedules to be perfect. He doesn't wait for your house to be clean. He doesn't wait for the big catch. And friends, Jesus doesn't even wait for our faith to be big enough. Scripture shows us over and over again that Jesus is willing to step into our boats, into our ordinary places in life, right where we are.

All right, I'm going to ask you another question. I want to hear you. If Jesus stepped into your boat, that ordinary place today in your life, what would he find? Would he find a pile of laundry, Stress kids who've messed up your house, half drank coffee cups, projects that you haven't quite finished yet. What would Jesus find to be stepped into your ordinary place today?

A lot of weeds. Nicole took care of ours yesterday.

What other things would God find in your ordinary places today?

A messy shop.

Yeah. Still recovering. Yeah. On the table, ready for gifts. Do what?

Your table is always ready for guests. Wow.

When Jesus steps into the real moments of our lives, he finds real life happening. And that's exactly where Jesus wants to be. He doesn't want to be amongst the pretenders and the fake and the phony. Jesus wants to show up in irregular moments to make a difference here and now, always. So back to the story.

Jesus has pushed out a little bit. They're out in the middle of the boat, and he's sitting in a boat, which is an interesting way to teach. I've never done it. Maybe we'll do that at the lake someday. That could be fun.

I wonder if I could preach wild fishing. That would be ideal. It's like my biggest loves together all in one space. So he pushes out, he's teaching, and then all of a sudden, he looks over to Simon. He says, simon, Peter, listen, I think you didn't try hard enough last night.

It's not what he said. He said, why don't you just push out and let's try fishing again. And Peter, I'm sure, is pretty ticked off if you, preacher, have ever tried to tell a fisherman how to fish. Shut up. Right?

Like, I'm sure Peter's thinking, Sorry, call him Simon. This is pre Peter. So Simon is thinking to himself, what do you know about fishing, carpenter? What do you know about fishing, teacher?

But that's not how he responds, right? What does he say?

Because you are you, I will do what you say. And so he pushes out and they drop down their nets and the boat is filled with fish.

In my spiritual imagination, I see boats. I see these fishermen just trying to drag these boats into the net. And they're so heavy, they can't get them up onto the net. But fish are so. Like they're jumping out and they're.

Some of them are dropping into the boat and there's just chaos everywhere. And then another boat has to come and help grab all these fish and they're bringing them to shore. It's just incredible excitement after a day of feeling useless.

And the boat. The boat has to be thinking, jesus, I can't handle this many fish, right? The boat's thinking, I'm done for. I'm going to be at the bottom of Lake Gennesaret Church.

Jesus asked Peter to go deeper, go out, be ready to do something different. Where is Jesus asking us to go out in deep waters today? Not someday, not when life gets better. Where is God asking you to go deeper today? Those things that God is asking us to go deeper into, those things are our deep water.

And when Simon sees the miracle, he falls down at Jesus knees and he says, go away from me, Lord. I am just a sinful man. Where's Jesus gonna go? They're out on a boat in deep water, and the boat is thinking to Peter, peter, dude, you are kneeling in Fish guts. Right now, you're embarrassing yourself in front of Jesus.

But Jesus doesn't go away from Peter. He doesn't look at Peter and go, yeah, you're right. You're a pretty big sinner.

Jesus stays and he says, don't be afraid. From now on, you will fish for people. He says, I have a plan for you. You're going to join me in changing everything about the world.

Jesus stepped into that ordinary place he called an ordinary person. And then he did extraordinary things through Simon Peter and his life friends. That's what scripture tells us about who Jesus is.

And the boats in the story can teach us something too. The boats in the story are just ordinary. There is nothing special about any of them. They're smelly, they're worn out, they're literally empty because they couldn't catch any fish all night. There's nothing impressive about these boats.

But Jesus chooses to be there in our lives every single day. There are ordinary moments where life feels smelly, where we feel unproductive, where we feel like if Jesus just stepped in, we would be embarrassed and ashamed, right?

But Jesus chooses those places. Jesus walks down to the boats on the shore of our lives and just jumps in.

The story tells us that he chose the boat that he chose on purpose. He chose the fisherman on purpose. Because Jesus does love the ordinary things. Jesus loves the ordinary people and he shows up in the ordinary moments.

He loves the boats that creak, the lives that feel messy, the hearts that feel empty, the routine that feels boring. Because those are the places that Jesus can show up and do extraordinary things.

So think about your life. What ordinary piece of your life might Jesus be trying to use in you right this second? It might be your commute to work every day. Maybe instead of filling your life with the news and the sadness and the fear, maybe you spend that time praying. Maybe it's your kitchen table that is always messy because your children have no idea how to put their dishes away.

They always have a plate where there's a clean spot and, and they've ate so much gross and they've left a mess, that there's only the round clean spot and everything else is a mess. I don't know from life if that's a real thing or not.

Oh, I love you.

Maybe it's your workplace. Maybe Jesus is trying to break down the walls between you and your co workers. Maybe your co worker needs to know about a community where they will be loved and supported and cared for. Well, like we have here at Community. Maybe there's a place in your neighborhood that Jesus is trying to break down the walls of the ordinary to just move in to your neighborhood with you.

Those places matter.

At the end of the story that we've read this morning, the disciples pull their boats up on the shore and it's the most mind blowing thing ever. How many of you guys, if you were made CEO of your company, you've just spent 14 years doing the same thing every day, and finally you become CEO and you've had this incredible encounter where something miraculous has happened and you are the cause of something good. Maybe you've launched a new product or you've rebuilt a website, or you've got a government contract that will give you billions of dollars, whatever that thing is, you've reached the pinnacle of success. Then you say, all right, now I'm going to walk away from it all.

The disciples who lived in the ordinary every single day had one encounter with Jesus, one moment of true faith. Because you say, so, I'll go do what you've asked me to do. And in that moment, God has proven that God is in the ordinary. And then you say, okay, great, I've had this wonderful encounter fishing. Thank you Jesus.

I'm leaving it all behind and I'm going to follow you for the rest of your life.

That is a big deal and I think we pay very little attention to it because of the way it's written here in scripture.

They've had for sure one moment of success, but what they've left behind is a lifetime of failure. It wasn't an over and over success again. It was oftentimes they would come home with empty nets. Life was just trying to be sustained through their fishing. And some nights they went home hungry.

It wasn't until Jesus stepped into their boats that everything in their lives got better. And they chose to leave behind the empty nets. They leave behind the nights of frustration. They leave behind their disappointment.

And in that moment, Jesus turns empty nets into a calling. And I absolutely believe that Jesus wants to do that for us today. There might be disappointments in our lives, but I believe that Jesus is trying to turn our disappointment into calling.

So here's what I want you to take home. Today. Jesus stepped into a boat, a regular old smelly fishing boat. A boat that was filled with emptiness and had caught nothing. And he turned that boat into a pulpit.

He turned that emptiness and that disappointment into a classroom. He turned that boat into a miracle and a moment of calling that changed not just the lives of his closest disciples, but because of those disciples, changed the lives of each one of us. Sitting here today in the ordinary. Jesus changes the world.

And I believe that Jesus still wants to do that for us today. God wants to use our ordinary places, our ordinary routines, our ordinary moments, so that we can become partners in building his kingdom here and now. So this summer, we get to see again and again and again stories of a God who loves us, made real in the person of Jesus. So today, as we prepare to leave this place this morning, I want to remind you that your boat, those ordinary places in your life, these are the places where Jesus exactly wants to begin that work.

Let's pray together.