Community Baptist Church - South Bend IN

In Luke 5:1-11 our Lord used fishing to teach spiritual truth to His disciples.  This occasion on the Sea of Galilee was evidently His second call to the disciples, for although He had asked them before to follow Him (Matthew 4:19), apparently their response was only temporary, and they had returned to their fishing business.  In this setting He teaches them an essential key to true success or failure in ministry - God expects us to obey Him, simply because He has spoken.  It is at His Word and on the basis of His command that we spiritually launch out in ministry and let down the nets, and He accomplishes the results.

Like the disciples, so often in our service for Him, we are tempted to compromise the simple principle of obedience in one of several ways:

• Being guided by our friends, instead of what God says. Undoubtedly, there were skilled fishermen on the shore that day watching Peter to see if he was going to obey this man, Jesus. 
• Being guided by our experiences, instead of what God says. The Lord asked Peter to do something contrary to his expertise in fishing - launch out into the deep in the middle of the day.  The Lord was asking a great deal of that knowledgeable and experienced fisherman - He was asking him to trust His Word.
• Being guided by our circumstances, instead of what God says. The Lord asked the disciples to do what the circumstances of the preceding night of fruitless fishing would indicate would be useless.  But they needed to learn that obedience to Christ does not hinge upon favorable circumstances.
• Being guided by our fears, instead of what God says. Perhaps Peter's words in verse 5 were an attempt to protect Jesus from embarrassment in front of the crowd - or to protect himself from the embarrassment of a repeated failure.

The results of obedience to the Word of God are recorded in verses 6-7. As soon as Peter obeyed, two things happened.  First of all, obedience to Christ brought a greater than expected success - so great was the catch of fish that their nets began to tear.  Secondly, obeying His Word brought an expansion of their ministry - Peter was obliged to call on others to help with the catch. When the Lord's work is done according to His Word, the prospering that He chooses for our ministry will follow. 

An old German parable illustrates the point of our text. "Once upon a time in the development of life, the birds had no wings. They crawled around in the grass like squirrels and mice and other earth-bound creatures. Then one day the Lord threw wings at their feet and commanded them to pick them up and carry them. Well, at first it seemed very hard. The little birds did not want them, the heavy, unwieldy things, but they loved the Lord and, in obedience, picked up those heavy things and carried them on their backs. And lo! The wings fastened themselves there! Finally, the little birds caught the idea of it. What they once thought had been hampering weight had gained for them the heights and freedom of the skies!"

If we will simply learn to obey His Word by faith, we will have discovered the foundation for future, long-term success in ministry.