Followers of Jesus Are Fishers of Men

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Okay, let’s be honest for just a moment and I won’t take notes or anything but, on a beautiful sunshiny day like today, who would rather be fishing right now than sitting here. Go ahead, come on. Yeah, I know who you are. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t like fishing. No, I really don’t. I’ve tried it on several occasions and it just doesn’t kind of compute with me. I don’t understand getting up at the crack of dawn, going out in the middle of the lake and every insect known to mankind decides I’m its new best friend. I don’t really get into that. I don’t understand taking a defenseless little worm, skewering it and then sending it to a drowning death. It doesn’t work for me. And then if you happen to catch one of the little buggers and you bring it, then you know what you’re supposed to do? You’re supposed to “clean” it. There’s nothing “clean” about it as far as I’m concerned so I don’t like fishing. No, it’s not what I do.

So you can imagine my reaction when, in all of the gospels, Jesus says if you’re going to be a follower, I’m going to make you a fisher of men. You’re going to be fishermen but you’re not going to catch fish. You’re going to catch men. Jesus was clear about that from the very beginning. He said to Simon, to James and to John, He invites them to follow Him but He says, “If you follow me, I’m going to make you fishers of men.” If you truly want to be a follower of Jesus, if you want to be serious about your faith, if you want to be more than just a casual Christian or a Christian by name, we’ve been learning for weeks what does it mean to actually be a follower of Him? One of the important, one of the key elements is if you’re going to be a follower of Jesus, you need to understand He’s going to make you a fisher of men.

Now if that makes you just a little bit uncomfortable, “Oh no, here comes another one of those messages where he’s going to talk about how I have to share my faith,” would you consider for a moment how uncomfortable that should have made Simon, James and John? These guys are fishermen who catch fish. That they understand. They have all the equipment. They have all the knowledge. They have all the expertise. They have all of the experience to go out and catch fish and now Jesus says, “Come and follow me. I will be your teacher but I’m going to teach you how to catch men.” In other words, “I’m going to teach you how to talk about your faith. I’m going to teach you to talk about the wonders of God.” Certainly, they had to be apprehensive about that. Certainly, they had to feel ill-equipped to go out and do that and yet, three short years later, on the Festival of Pentecost, these three guys stand up with the rest of the disciples and they start preaching the wonders of God in all these different languages of everyone who was gathered in Jerusalem at that time. And Simon Peter stands up, the one who fell at Jesus’ knees and says, “Go away from me. I am a sinful man, Lord,” he stands up and gives the sermon to beat all sermons because when he’s finished, 3,000 people come to faith. You see, Jesus had taught them how to go fishing and how to catch men.

If God could do that to these three guys, imagine what He can do through us. As we conclude our series of messages on what it is to be a follower of Jesus, to be sold out to Him, to want to be more than just casual Christians, let’s come together and learn what it means to be a fisher of men and how God is going to make us that fisherman that He wants us to be.

There are several things that I note about fishing. The first one is this: If you’re going to go fishing, you have to have a reason to fish. Now for those of you who raised your hand just a few moments ago, “I don’t need a reason to go fishing. I’m awake. That’s reason enough. Let’s go fishing.” You love to go fishing, right? It’s a natural thing for you to do. It’s something that is a passion of yours so you’re going to be out there. You’re going to be doing it whenever you want, okay? So that’s your reason, just fishing. That’s a good enough reason for you. Then there are people like me. You see, if I’m going to actually go out and go fishing, I need a pretty compelling reason to do that, say survival. That would be a compelling reason. So if I’m on a deserted island and I have no food but there is this stream going through it that’s teaming with fish, I just might look into the fine art of being an angler, right? And the hungrier I get, the more compelled I will be to start fishing because I need a compelling reason to fish.

If Jesus is going to teach us how to catch people, if He’s going to make us a fisher of men, what’s your reason? What reason do you have to go fishing? Now for some of you, some of you, honestly, you have the gift of evangelism. Scripture talks about that. He gives to some people the gift of evangelism which means they can talk about their faith so openly, so freely, you’d think they were talking about their favorite sports team. They’re just so eloquent with expressing their faith and what Christ has done in their life. They feel perfectly at ease asking other people about their relationship with God and where are they, do they know where they’re going to spend an eternity? So for them to go fishing, well, yeah, it’s just a natural thing they do. They don’t really even think about it. They just simply talk about their faith and they talk about the wonders of God and what He’s done in their lives.

But there are the rest of us. You see, we don’t all have the gift of evangelism. But God does say that we all are to be fishermen. So the real question is not whether you’ll be a fisherman or not but how good of a fisherman you will be. You see, what we need is a compelling reason. What is our compelling reason to go out and catch people, to go out and share the gospel?

If I’m perfectly honest with you, I don’t have the gift of evangelism. I really don’t. I can preach God’s Word all day long. In fact, some of you are saying, “You’re not kidding there.” I can preach God’s Word all day long but, one on one, talking to a stranger, talking to a family member that you don’t know where they are in their relationship with Christ, that gets pretty uncomfortable. That gets pretty dicey. I need a compelling reason to do that. That came home to me a few years back. Some of you will recall my father was on his deathbed. I didn’t know where he stood with Christ. I didn’t know where his faith was at. I had a compelling reason. I had to go fishing. I had to find out. Shortly thereafter, I decided, “You know, waiting until the loved one is on their deathbed is probably not a real stellar idea, that’s not the perfect plan really.” And even though I was hesitant to do so, I approached my brother because I didn’t know. And I fumbled and I stumbled and it was uncomfortable but, you know what, I had a compelling reason. It’s life or death. It’s heaven or hell. So I went fishing.

Who do you know in your life? Who do you know in your life that you’re not sure? You’re not positive whether they have Christ in their life or not. You don’t know whether they look to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. You’re not positive that you’re going to see them in heaven next year. It’s life or death. It’s heaven or hell. That’s a pretty compelling reason to go fishing.

Second thing I know about fishing, you can’t catch fish unless you drop the line in the water. You can’t just sit in the boat just hanging onto your rod and reel and expect the fish to come jumping in. You can have all of the best equipment. You can have the sonar, the radar, the GPS, you can have the best boat in the world, you can read all of the books about fishing that you want, you can watch TV shows on fishing, you can learn from experts about what it is to fish but you’re not going to catch a fish until you drop the line in the water.

We’re not going to catch fish until we talk about our faith, until we drop the line in the water. Lots and lots of people say to me, “You know, the way that I witness my faith is how I live and if people see how I live, then that’s a powerful witness to those around me,” and I agree 110%. I think the most powerful witness we have is when our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers, when they see you living out your Christian faith, when they see how you deal with adversity, when they see how you deal with joys in your life and how you deal with that in a Christian manner and in a loving manner and how you interact with them, I think that is a powerful witness. But somewhere along the line, you have to drop the line in the water. You can’t catch fish unless you put the line in the water.

Somewhere along the line, we have to talk about our faith and we have to express about what Christ has done for us and what Christ can do for them. Many people say to me, “Yeah, but I’m worried. I don’t know what to say and I might offend somebody or I might say the wrong thing.” You know what I think in my mind, I have traced where that all comes back to and that is we are starting to buy into the number one lie of our culture. There is a lie that is being propagated by our culture and that is if Christians talk about their faith, they’re being intolerant, they’re being insensitive and they’re being judgmental. That is the lie of our day: Christians are not supposed to talk about their faith. You can talk about any other faith, right? Celebrities, to millions of people through the airways, can talk about Scientology. They can talk about Kabbalism. They can talk about Hinduism. In fact, the more bizarre the religion is, the more acceptable it is that they can talk about it and they’re not being intolerant and they’re not being judgmental. But let one Christian get up and say, “Because of Jesus Christ in my life, I made it through this rough time,” and, all of a sudden, the red flags go up. We have to stop buying into that lie. We have to stop buying into the lie that just because we express our faith, somehow we’re intolerant. It’s exactly the opposite.

Christianity is the only religion that is filled with grace and love from God. God says that He loves all people. He doesn’t distinguish. God says that He desires for all people to be saved. He doesn’t single just one group out. Christianity is the only religion that says that salvation is God’s gift to you. Every other religion, there are stipulations put on it. You have to jump through some hoops. You have to try real hard. You have to live a certain way. You have to do this. You have to do that. And then maybe, just maybe, then you’ll make it to some utopia. You’ll make it to some place that’s better than this. Christianity is the only religion that says, “You know what, you don’t stand a chance. We are imperfect people. We live in an imperfect world. We don’t stand a chance. And that’s why God says He does it all for us. That’s why God says He came and He lived among us and He showed what it is to be a perfect human being. And that’s why He died on the cross to pay for our sins so God could then freely give to us His salvation and change our lives forever.” Christianity is the only religion that says that. That’s not intolerant. That’s not being insensitive. It’s the most loving, grace-filled thing you can say to someone. So we have to stop buying into the lie.

At some point in time, we have to drop our line in the water. Sometimes, dropping the line in the water is not the most popular thing to do. And it started 2,000 years ago on the very first Pentecost. The disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter stands up. He starts preaching to the crowd there. Understand, the crowd he is preaching to are all Jewish people which means they have been waiting for the Messiah, the promised deliverer, for generation upon generation. This is what Peter says to them in his message to them, “Men of Israel, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and science which God did among you through Him. As you yourselves know, you’ve seen the miracles and how God showed Jesus to be the one. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge,” and then here it comes, “and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross.” And then later on, he says, “Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this, God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.” He tells the people there the Messiah has come, they have rejected Him and with the help of wicked people, they put Him to death on the cross and they laughed about it. That is about the most politically incorrect thing he could have said. He took his very life into his hands to tell a whole group of people who have been waiting for generations the Messiah is coming. He came, they rejected Him and they watched as He died. But He did it with a purpose because He knew that He had to cut them to the heart. He knew He had to penetrate to them, to show them Jesus as the Messiah and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, this is what happened. They replied, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” And immediately Peter tells them, “Repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and the free forgiveness of all your sins.”

You see, he put the line in the water. He says some things that weren’t very popular but sometimes you have to rock people’s world. And they were cut to the heart so he could share with them the love of God and the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. If we’re going to be fishers of men, we have to drop the line in the water. Sometimes, we will say some things that are very unpopular but if they are from God’s Word and they are truth, then we need to say them. Sometimes, we need to rock people’s world but we need to follow it up with the best news we can tell people and that is the love and the grace of God and the salvation that can be found only in Jesus Christ. We have to drop the line in the water.

The last thing I know about fishermen is that fishermen don’t catch fish, the bait does. You can have all the equipment that you want, you can have all of the knowledge that you want, you can choose where you’re going to fish, you can choose what kind of bait you put on the hook, what kind of rod and reel you have, you can do all of that but, in the end, you don’t catch the fish, the bait does. That’s what the fish bite at.

You don’t convert people, God does. You don’t capture their hearts, God captures their hearts. That’s why on this Pentecost celebration, God gave the gift of the Holy Spirit to His disciples and, filled with the Holy Spirit, they then spoke to the crowds and it was the power of the Holy Spirit that captured the hearts of the men and women of that crowd. It’s the same Holy Spirit that Jesus had promised to His disciples. Before He died, before He rose again, He said this gospel of John, “But the counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” It’s the Holy Spirit speaking through the apostles. When Peter got up to speak, I’m sure he’s saying to himself in the back of his mind, “What in the world am I doing? I’m a fisherman, an uneducated man.” And he delivers this incredible message because God spoke through him. The Holy Spirit reminded him of all the things that Jesus had taught him and He told him the right words at the right time so God’s spirit could use those words and capture a heart.

That same spirit lives in you, my friends. It was given to you at your baptism. God promises it. That same spirit will work through you, will tell you the right time and the right words. When you say, “I don’t know what I’m going to say,” and you may fumble over your words but I guarantee you that God will work through you and will work through your words. What an awesome privilege that is. Can you imagine experiencing standing in front of somebody, starting the conversation, your palms are sweating because you’re not sure what you’re going to say and, all of a sudden, it comes to you, the words? “This is what I need to say.” Or if God gives you the privilege of watching Him work on their heart and to see them come to faith or come back to faith, that’s the power God gives you because it’s not you. The pressure’s off. Fishermen don’t catch the fish, the bait does. We don’t convert hearts, God does. That’s the power of His Holy Spirit. We’re just the fishermen and that’s what God calls us to be. God says, “If you’re going to follow me, I’m going to make you fishers of men.”

He took three guys from the seaside and said, “From now on, you’re going to catch men.” They couldn’t imagine. Three years later, 3,000 souls for the first catch. Now if God can do that with these three guys, just think what He can do with all of us. Amen.

Copyright 2009 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church