It is not at all subtle here that I’m looking at the incident recorded in Luke 5 - Jesus’ calling of Peter and his fellow fishermen - through the lens of Hebrews 1:3, where it says that God “sustains all things by His powerful word”.
(Read Luke 5:1-7)
Jesus was teaching. He wasn’t fishing. Nor did he come with any announcement, “Just watch, I’m going to give the biggest catch of fish you ever saw.” No, Christ was about His business. He was teaching. God is always occupied with His own business – it couldn’t possibly be otherwise. God’s business is always a perfect business and in fact the very essence of everything there is. Jesus was teaching the people, revealing to them the truth of the heavenly kingdom, unfolding to them His very self as Savior, Redeemer. And the people so excitedly responded that Jesus had to get in a boat and teach from there, because there was no room left on the shore. And in all of this, even in the fact that there was no room left on the shore and Jesus had to get into a boat, God was continuing about His holy business, carrying out His perfect plan.
Peter also was about his business that day, a fisherman’s business. But at just the right moment, God’s intention for Peter began to materialize – stunningly, vividly; right at the moment when Jesus Christ needed Peter’s boat. And whose boat was that, by the way? Yes, it was God’s boat. Because all created things in all the universe belong to the Creator. If, as it says in Hebrews 1:3, God sustains all things by His powerful word, then it follows that all things all the time play some sort of role in God’s perfect intentions. Of course, it’s not always clear to us what God’s intention could be in one situation or another, since we’re not God! But there is a great gift that’s been given to us; it’s called faith. Even when we can’t see, when we don’t understand, we can do this: believe. We can know that God is acting, is taking things somewhere, and that the outcome of His activity will be supremely glorious.
Jesus sat down in Peter’s boat and continued his teaching. At that moment there was only one assignment for that boat: to serve as a pulpit for the Son of Man. A glorious assignment, don’t you think? That little boat never expected such a privilege, never dared to dream of such a thing. Moreover, its owner, poor Peter who assumed that this day would be a regular humdrum day, no better, no worse than any other day, is sitting there in the boat stunned, stopped dead in his tracks by the sudden presence of Heaven itself in the words and power of Jesus. Perhaps he’s too overwhelmed to think anything at the moment but, “My God... my God....” And at this instant in time and eternity, Peter’s whole world has changed, because the one who sustains all things by the power of His word is sitting in Peter’s boat and teaching the people.
The Heavenly Son condescended to become the Son of Man, to enter our world which is His world, to open up the glory of His grace to the eyes of sinners to transform the fallen into the redeemed. Of that glory the apostle John writes (John 1:14), “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And here on this very day Peter looks upon the glory of the Only-Begotten, hears the truth of heaven from His lips, and life becomes something altogether new. And the Son of God is altogether capable to this very day to come to us, wherever we may be occupied with life’s everyday humdrum affairs, and utterly change our whole world, starting before all else with what’s inside us.
I quite imagine that if anyone else had said to Peter (read v.4, “...Push out into deep water...”), Peter would have given a rather different answer! But not to Jesus Christ. To Jesus, Peter says (read v.5). Peter was already different, had already become someone else. He could have hardened his heart, as many others did, but in contrast to them Peter began instead to love. “Lord, I don’t understand this, and I fished all night with nothing to show for it, but it doesn’t matter: if You say to do it, I’ll do it.” It is miraculous how the One who sustains all things by His powerful word with just a word pierced to the very heart of this strong-willed fisherman.
We also often need a word, just a word, from God, for Him to pierce to our deepest heart with transforming truth. But His word is not always the word we expected. Like Peter, we need to be ready to answer: “Lord, I don’t understand, but all the same, if you say it, I’ll do it.”
And that’s what Peter did. And the result was, they caught a great quantity of fish, so much that their nets began to break. The One who sustains all things by His powerful word, who one day turned water into wine, who multiplied the bread and the fish and fed multitudes, that very One transformed Peter’s “daily bread”, his perfectly common, humdrum livelihood, into a manifestation of divine glory. Those fish hardly expected that they would become the manifestation of the power of Christ, but when the call came, they answered and with alacrity! They sped to the nets when the One who sustains all things by His powerful word called. And what was His purpose? Just to give Peter and company the biggest catch of their lives? Make the biggest one-day profit their business ever saw? Throw a humdinger of a party and invite the whole town? No. The Lord demonstrated his power in order to conquer the heart of a self-assured fisherman.
(Read vv. 8-11)
And when the boat and the fish and the nets had fulfilled their assignments, Jesus Christ and His new disciples left them there on the shore. Let somebody else, maybe a pauper, sell the fish, let it be a blessing to him and his family. But to Peter, John and Andrew, Christ says, “I will make you fishers of men.”
God’s business is to seek and save human souls, to the glory of His name. The One who sustains all things by His powerful word will utilize anything He wants, everything He has created, to do that. As the apostle Paul says in Colossians 1:16-17 (read: “...And he is before all things, and all things by him exist.”) This is the same one of whom the apostle John writes (John 1:11-12), that he came to his own, but his own did not receive him. But as many as did receive him, those who believed in his name, to them he gave the right to become the children of God.
