Scripture: Luke 5:1-11
Happy New Year!
If you belong to a gym, you may have noticed things are a little different right now. The parking lot is fuller. The equipment you want to use is already taken. Someone is sweating all over the shoulder press machine you had your eye on—and you’re not entirely convinced they’re going to wipe it down when they’re done. Everywhere you look, the gym feels more crowded.
Why? Because it’s the new year—the season of great optimism… the season of resolutions.
This is the year, finally, when we lose those extra pounds. This is the year we get healthier… we sleep better… we finally form those good habits. We are resolved. It’s going to happen… this year.
But if you don’t like the extra people at the gym, I’ve got good news for you! Just give it a few weeks and the crowds will thin out once again. In fact, this time last year an Apple Watch ad campaign called “Quit Quitting” named something called “Quitter’s Day,” that point in January when the average person gives up on their resolutions.
And the tagline was quit quitting.
So it makes sense that this time of year also prompts many of us Christians to think about spiritual resolutions—about getting in better shape, spiritually speaking. Doing things—putting forth effort—to grow closer to Jesus. Six times in Paul’s letters, Paul—a sports fan—compares living a Christian life to athletic training and getting in shape and competing. In 1 Corinthians 9 he talks about running to win, about exercising self-control, about disciplining the body.
That’s why I like beginning each year with a sermon about discipleship. It re-centers us. It reminds us what life with Jesus is supposed to look like. And it helps us see that following Christ isn’t just about inspiration—it’s about steady, faithful training of the heart.
Which brings us to today’s scripture. It’s all about discipleship. In fact, it almost reads like a parable—only this isn’t something Jesus tells; it’s something he does. It unfolds in the real lives of Peter, and then James and John. And if we watch carefully, we learn a great deal about what it means to follow Jesus.
So today I want to highlight a just few key principles of discipleship from this story—truths that can shape the way we live, not just at the start of a new year, but every day we walk with Christ.
But first, let’s figure out what’s going on here at the beginning of the chapter.
Jesus has just begun his public ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing… in the town of Capernaum… on the Sea of Galilee—the Sea of Galilee is the same body of water that Luke calls the “lake of Gennesaret” in verse 1. It’s a very big lake.
In chapter 5, the word has gotten around about Jesus of Nazareth… especially the fact that he can heal people, physically—in chapter 4, in fact, he even heals Peter’s own mother-in-law… Listen to verse 40 of chapter 4: “Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them.”
And of course Jesus heals them spiritually, too. He’s also been performing exorcisms, driving out evil spirits that were afflicting people.
So at the beginning of chapter 5, as you can imagine, Jesus is very popular; everyone wants to hear and see Jesus! So hundreds or likely thousands of people from around the Sea of Galilee are crowding around him. There’s hardly room to stand! So Jesus borrows his friend Peter’s fishing boat. Pushes out from the shore a little… and he speaks to the crowd using the boat as a platform. And because of mountains and inlets on the shore of this lake—which function as a natural amphitheater—Jesus could project his voice even while speaking at a normal volume level.
And what I want to say first of all is that Peter, James, and John—along with his brother Andrew, who isn’t mentioned here by name… they have a problem, one to which most of us can relate in our own way—even though we have very different professions. As for these four professional fishermen, they have had a very unproductive evening of work. They were up all night, hard at work, and didn’t catch anything… This is a problem! If they don’t catch fish, they don’t eat. And they don’t feed their families. And they don’t sell fish in the marketplace and make any income.
And that’s what’s happened to them. Frustrating, right? We’ve all been there!
So Peter himself is frustrated on this particular morning in which his friend Jesus borrows his boat and preaches God’s Word… to Peter and to the crowd. Everything good that follows in today’s scripture comes in response the word of the Lord.
Even Peter’s remarkable words to Jesus in verse 5. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
After Jesus finishes preaching, he has an idea for Peter. Verse 4: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
“Into the deep”… Why is this significant? Because Peter and his fellow fishermen had already tried that. They spent all night fishing in the deep. No luck! I mean, as a matter of pride, I could excuse Peter for thinking, “Lord, you’re a carpenter by trade; I’m a fisherman. I won’t tell you how to build a table. How about you not tell me how to fish?
“I know what I’m doing. I know, for instance, that if we were unable to catch fish in the wee small hours of the morning, in that part of the lake, we won’t be able to catch fish now that it’s warm and the sun is shining brightly.”
And we can sense a little of Peter’s pride rearing its ugly head in the first part of verse 5: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!”
But you know what? It doesn’t matter, because what follows is a perfect and beautiful statement of Christian faith on Peter’s part: “But at your word I will let down the nets.”
In other words, it may not make any sense to me; all things being equal, I wouldn’t choose to fish over there at this time of day. But at your word—i.e., because you say so (and possibly for no other reason)—I’m going to do what you say.
“But at your word I will let down the nets” represents Peter surrendering to the word of the Lord. Peter submitting to God’s Word. Peter trusting in the word of the Lord—even if it doesn’t make sense to him… even if he suspects he knows better than Jesus. If it is clear what God is telling us to do, we do it. Period. Full stop.
So when Peter says, “But at your word I will do this,” he is living out an important principle of Christian discipleship: we disciples submit our lives to God’s Word.
Indeed, it’s a principle that Jesus communicates himself in a parable at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. You probably know it:
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.[1]
So that’s what Peter is doing: hearing Jesus’ words and doing them. This is how you “build your house on the rock.” But notice, please, what happens next: “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house…”
Notice that when we build our house on the rock by exercising our faith… doing what Jesus’ half-brother James later tells us to do—to put faith into action, apart from which our faith is dead, and we are not saved at all… when we do this, we are not protected from trouble.
When we put our faith into action, God does not “reward us” with protection from trouble.
Do you see what I mean? Jesus doesn’t say, “Build your house on the rock so that you won’t face rainstorms and flooding and howling winds.” On the contrary: this parable of Jesus is premised upon the idea that trouble will come to all of us. And when it does, we don’t say, “God must not love me. God must be mad at me. God is no longer working his plan for my life.” No! Trouble is going to come in your life, whether you’re faithful to God or not—big or small trouble, every single day without exception. The question is, will we have the faith to meet trouble when it comes… and to stand strong… rather than just falling apart.
But when trouble comes—as it came for Peter in today’s scripture—we need to make time to listen to the word of the Lord. And that’s why we’re here this morning, in large part… to hear a word from the Lord.
Here’s an interesting thought… I wonder what Jesus was preaching about to this crowd on this particular morning?
He might have been preaching all about trusting in him, even when it’s difficult or doesn’t make sense. In which case, Jesus was giving Peter an opportunity to apply the word of the Lord to something that was currently happening in his life! Isn’t that cool? Peter’s actions were part of the sermon!
And this is one of the great things about reading and reflecting on God’s Word every day. Because something supernatural happens when we do: our Lord Jesus meets us, through the Holy Spirit, in the pages of scripture, and gives us what we need for trouble and problems and challenges and circumstances that we are facing that particular day. I can testify that it happens every day in my own life, and it almost doesn’t even matter what particular part of the Bible I’m reading.
With this in mind, let me give you a sneak preview of my new sermon series starting next week: It’s called “The Gospel According to the Old Testament,” and I’m going to be preaching a lot about Jesus, and a lot about discipleship and Christian faith in the often unfamiliar pages of the Old Testament. By doing so, I pray that we will grow as we hear the voice of the Lord in a part of the Bible that too many Christians tend to ignore.
Anyway… What other principles of discipleship do we see here?
Consider Peter’s response to the miraculous catch of fish…
You would think that having the biggest catch of his life would bring Peter incredible joy. You would think the first thing Peter would do—once he and his partners dragged all these fish to shore—would be to give Jesus a big hug, or a high five, or a fist bump and say, “Lord, please don’t go anywhere. We want you to stay right here with us… so we can do this again tomorrow. We want to make you a full partner in our fishing enterprise.”
Instead, Peter says what? Verse 8: “But when Simon Peter saw it”—that is, saw this miraculous catch—“he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’”
Isn’t that strange behavior?
Not at all. It’s precisely the same behavior of the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 6… Isaiah is in the temple when God calls him. And Isaiah has a very close encounter with God. Shouldn’t that make a prophet of God happy? No, because you can’t get close to God without getting close to God’s holiness. Which is terrifying for us sinners. God’s holiness, apart from God’s grace, literally destroys sinners. So Isaiah shouts, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”[2]
When Peter falls down at Jesus’ feet and begs for him to leave, it’s because he senses—perhaps for the first time—that when he’s close to Jesus, he is dangerously close to a holy God… Peter still has a lot to learn about who Jesus is at this point—that he is, for instance, God in the flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity—but he knows enough about Jesus to know that in Jesus God is very close to him… And as with Isaiah, Peter is afraid he’ll die if he gets any closer!
To say the least, because of his sinfulness, Peter is not “spiritually qualified” to answer Jesus’ call… One commentator I read speculated that many people in the crowd knew Peter very well… So many people in the crowd would have heard Peter say, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” and they would have thought, “Yep! I’ve known Peter since he was a kid. He truly is sinful!” And they would have agreed that a man like Jesus—so obviously holy, so obviously gifted by God, so obviously close to God… a man like Jesus should want nothing to do with a sinner like Peter!
Except… Jesus knew something Peter didn’t yet know—and something the crowds certainly didn’t know. Jesus knew that, within a few years, he would take all of Peter’s sins—past, present, and future—upon himself at the cross. He would suffer the penalty for every one of them. And through faith, Peter would be forgiven. He would become a child of God, loved by the Father every bit as much as the Father loves his own Son.
Even though Peter would continue to sin, Jesus would give him the gift of his own righteousness—what theologians call imputation. Paul describes it in Philippians 3:9: he wants to be “found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.” Because Peter was clothed in Christ’s righteousness, when the Father looked at Peter, he no longer saw Peter’s guilt—he saw the perfect righteousness of Jesus. In that sense, even though Peter still sinned, it was as if he hadn’t.
That’s what Jesus was going to do for Peter on the cross. And—praise God—that is what Jesus has done for us as well.
So don’t be tempted to think, “Well, once Peter became a disciple, he must have stopped struggling with sin… unlike me.”
Oh no. Peter kept stumbling. He kept failing. For example, he famously denied even knowing Jesus, three times, when his life was threatened… but he also corrected Jesus, resisted Jesus, acted out of pride and fear—even years after following him, even after Pentecost when he received the Holy Spirit. See Paul’s words about an episode involving Peter’s hypocrisy in Galatians chapter 2!
No, Peter was not perfect. And yet—God used him. God used this flawed, impulsive, often fearful man to preach the first Christian sermon, for instance… to lead the early church… to open the door of the gospel to the Gentiles… to write Scripture that still encourages us today.
Peter’s story is not about Peter’s strength; it’s about the strength that Jesus gives him. And it’s about grace that doesn’t give up. The good news is that Jesus doesn’t wait until we are perfect to call us, to grow us, and to use us. He meets us in our weakness—and then, like Peter, he slowly turns weakness into witness.
In fact, speaking of witnessing, let me share with you a favorite verse of mine, Acts 4:13…
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.
That’s it. That’s the difference. It wasn’t Peter’s background. It wasn’t his education. It wasn’t his natural abilities. What changed Peter—and what made his witness powerful—was simply this: he had been with Jesus. And he continued to “be with Jesus” through the power of the Spirit.
And that is still one of the most powerful ways we bear witness today… this is one powerful way we do what Jesus says in verse 10: that we “catch” men and women for God’s kingdom with the gospel…
People see us over time. They see what we were… and they see who we are becoming. They see our failures, by all means—but even more they also see forgiveness, humility, patience, courage, and hope taking root where those things didn’t grow before. They see a life that doesn’t make sense apart from Christ. They recognize, in their own way, that we have been with Jesus—and that he has made and is making an undeniable change.
There’s a before and after to our lives… like those “before” and “after” photos so often related to home gyms and diet plans…
Do we have a before and after related to our lives? Has Jesus made important changes in our lives? Is he makingchanges… that other people can observe?
At the top of the sermon, I sounded somewhat skeptical about Americans’ efforts to fulfill our “New Year’s Resolutions.” I mean, there’s so much data to back up the fact that we’re not very good at self-improvement.
But listen: When it comes to being changed… transformed… exhibiting fruit of the Spirit… overcoming sinful patterns of behavior… becoming holier… becoming more Christ-like… this is not self-improvement.
It’s transformation by the power of God working within us!
And also… it isn’t optional for us Christians.
In verse 8, when Peter falls at Jesus’ feet and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,” we Christians lovethe idea that Jesus forgave Peter’s sins. And we love the thought that Peter was such a screw-up… Because we can relateto him—because we’re so often screw-ups, too.
Right?
But that “sinful man” who fell at Jesus’ feet did not remain that same sinful man… even as, of course, he wasn’t perfect.
After all… This man who at one time denied even knowing Jesus three times because he was so afraid for his life would later stand up to the same religious authorities who took the life of our Lord Jesus, and say, “You tell me what’s right… Should I obey you when you tell me not speak in Jesus’ name, or should I obey God. I’m going to obey God!”
Where did that courage come from?
Peter changed… not by his own strength, but by the power of Spirit of Jesus Christ working within him.
Do we believe that he can and will change us? Do we believe that the Lord can work miracles in our lives, just as he worked this miraculous catch of fish?
I feel convicted that for too many of us, our expectations about the Lord’s ability to change us for the better is too low.
I had a conversation recently with a dear brother in Christ recently—you don’t know him… whose marriage is on the rocks right now… And he’s at a crossroads: And saving his marriage will mean making difficult and costly decisions about his life. And he said, “My wife and I have basically been roommates for the last 20 years. Is this even a marriage worth saving? Is it worth it?”
And I said, “No, you’re thinking of it wrong. You’re not going to make these costly and difficult changes in your life in order to save the marriage you’ve had for the past twenty years—you’re going to make difficult and costly changes for the sake of the marriage that you and your wife both want to have and want to experience!”
Do you believe in the power of God to work a miracle in your life… or not?
You’re not stuck. You’re not helpless. Jesus loves you too much to keep you in this place of misery. He wants to change you and your circumstances. He wants to help you. He wants to heal you.
Do you believe Jesus wants that for you? Do you believe he loves you enough to do that for you?
We call today’s scripture “the miraculous catch of fish,” but how did this miracle manifest itself?
The fish didn’t magically jump out of the water and into the boat. Peter, Andrew, James, and John still had to sail the boat and lower the nets and haul these fish in. It took great effort on their part for Jesus to work this miracle
And that’s often how Jesus works miracles in our lives—through great effort on our part. But the miracle comes.
But I want us to believe… in 2026… that Jesus wants to work miracles like that in our lives and in our church…
So let’s get to work… with the confidence of knowing that Jesus Christ will work miracles though our efforts!
Amen?
[1] Matthew 7:24-25 ESV
[2] Isaiah 6:5 ESV