Scripture: John 21:1-14
I have been using an Apple Macintosh computer since 1989. I’ve used Windows machines when necessary, but I’ve always preferred Macs. That preference was a lot more controversial in the mid-1990s, before Apple’s dramatic comeback under Steve Jobs.
Back then, friends would tell me, “Why are you buying a Mac? Apple will be out of business in six months!” And Macs were more expensive than their competitors then… just as they are now.
But in those days, I could spend hours in computer stores admiring the latest and greatest Macs. On one occasion, a young man approached me and asked whether he should buy one. I thought, This is my moment. I was delighted to tell him everything I knew.
We talked for quite a while. Finally, he said, “You’ve given me a lot to think about. If I have more questions, can I call you?” I said, “Sure,” and handed him my business card.
A few days later he called.
After reminding me who he was and talking for a bit, he said, “While I have you on the phone, I’d love to tell you about Amway.”
Of course! What a sucker I was! He had only pretended to be interested in Macs so that he could sell me something.
But then it occurred to me: I was trying to sell him something too.
Why was I so eager to persuade a complete stranger to buy a Mac?
Because I loved those machines. I believed in them. When you discover something you think is genuinely good, you naturally want other people to experience it too.
And that raises an important question: If Jesus Christ has truly changed our lives—if we believe the gospel is the best news in the world—how can we keep that news to ourselves?
Jesus certainly doesn’t expect us to.
In the gospel of Luke, chapter 5—after another miraculous catch of fish—Jesus tells Peter, James, and John, “From now on you will be catching men”… people. In other words, following Jesus means receiving a mission.
Yes, following Jesus brings forgiveness, assurance, and eternal life. But it also gives us a purpose that ought to occupy us for the rest of our lives—on this side of eternity.
That is exactly what the gospel of John 21 teaches us.
Although John contains no formal parables—like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan—this final chapter functions like a living parable. The event happened historically, by all means, but Jesus also uses it to show us what discipleship looks like on this side of Easter, as we live in the world and await his return.
And this living parable teaches us three things:
First, we follow Jesus in ordinary life… Second, we follow Jesus through failure… Third, we follow Jesus on mission.
First: we follow Jesus in ordinary life.
Let’s begin by clearing up one common misconception about today’s scripture… by asking ourselves why these seven disciples are fishing in the first place.
Some preachers and commentators believe these disciples have backslidden in their faith—that they’ve disregarded the resurrection, disobeyed Jesus, and abandoned their calling—they’ve gone back to their old lives… before Christ.
I strongly disagree.
After all, several of these men were professional fishermen before Jesus called them. Peter had a wife and family to support. Fishing was their trade. Besides, the apostle Paul himself would later work as a tentmaker while also preaching and planting churches. There’s no evidence these disciples were abandoning Jesus simply because they went fishing.
And honestly, that should encourage us.
Because most of you are not pastors or missionaries. Most of you spend your lives at jobs—in offices, in schools, in homes, in hospitals, in classrooms, in factories, in retirement communities. Most of your lives are spent doing what might seem like very ordinary things…
And the good news, as this scripture reminds us, is that Jesus meets disciples there too!
To say the least, Jesus doesn’t only show up in sanctuaries.
As Paul says in Colossians, “Whatever task you must do, work as if your soul depends on it, as for the Lord and not for humans… you serve the Lord Christ.”[1]
So Jesus is already your true boss, no matter what your profession happens to be.
That’s one reason I love this story so much. These disciples encounter the risen Christ not while praying in the temple… not while preaching sermons… not while leading worship… but while they’re exhausted from a long night at work.
And some of you know exactly what that feels like.
As I said earlier, Peter, James, and John had experienced a very similar miracle years earlier in Luke chapter 5. Again they had fished all night. Again they had caught nothing. Again Jesus directed them where to cast the nets. Again the catch was overwhelming.
But there’s one important difference between Luke 5 and John 21.
In Luke 5, Jesus was physically in the boat with them.
In John 21, the disciples are all alone in that boat… or so they think.
Sure, there’s a strange man standing on the shore a hundred yards away. But they don’t yet realize it’s Jesus. As far as they know, they’re by themselves in the darkness… working… struggling… trying… failing.
And honestly, isn’t that often how the Christian life feels?
We don’t physically see Jesus. We can’t shake his hand or hug him or hear his audible voice. And because of that, we’re tempted to think the first disciples had some enormous advantage over us.
But remember what Jesus told Thomas in the previous chapter: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”[2]
That blessing is for us.
And I think about something Jesus told Mary Magdalene after the resurrection. When Mary finally realizes that the man she thought was the gardener is actually Jesus, she grabs hold of him. Understandably so! It’s as if she were saying, “Lord, I lost you once. I’m never letting that happen again.”
But Jesus tells her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”[3]
Why does he say that?
Because Mary thinks it’s going to be like before: Jesus can only be with her if he’s physically present to her. She doesn’t know that once Jesus ascends to the Father, he will send the Holy Spirit. And through the Spirit, Christ will now always be present with her—and all believers everywhere. She doesn’t have to “cling to him” anymore. I think that’s part of the lesson in today’s scripture, too.
That’s why Jesus said earlier in John’s gospel, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”[4]
The risen Christ is still with his people.
Which means Jesus is just as present with you at your workplace on Monday morning as he is with us right here in this sanctuary on Sunday morning.
He is not absent from your ordinary life.
And not only is he present—he is powerful.
I’ll say more about this power in a couple of weeks when we get to Pentecost Sunday in Acts chapter 2…
For now, I just want us to expect Jesus to show up wherever we are!
I want us to expect him to show up in worship. I want us to expect him to show up in prayer. I want us to expect him to show up at work, at home, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our suffering, in our ordinary lives.
And that’s Point Number One… We follow Jesus in ordinary life.
Second: we follow Jesus through failure.
I said earlier that these disciples were doing nothing wrong by going fishing. I’m sure they were doing everything “right,” based on what they knew at the time.
But notice: they still failed.
And I think Jesus is teaching these disciples—and us—that failure will often be a normal part of following him.
In fact, failure has a way of getting our attention like almost nothing else. Sometimes I think I learn very little except through failure! At least nothing important. Jesus has a way of speaking to us through failure that cuts through all the noise in our lives.
To put it another way: we often don’t hear Jesus very well when we’re successful and prosperous.
Moses understood this when he warned the Israelites in Deuteronomy that they were about to enter a land where “food is plentiful and nothing is lacking.”[5] And Moses says, “When that happens, don’t forget the Lord.” Why? Because prosperity creates the temptation to say, “I did this. I brought about this success through my own strength and effort.”[6]
Success can make us feel self-sufficient.
Failure, by contrast, has a way of humbling us. Failure reminds us that we are not nearly as self-sufficient as we usually think.
And that’s exactly what happens in today’s scripture.
Verse 3 says, “But that night they caught nothing.”
These are professional fishermen. They know what they’re doing. They’ve worked all night long. They’ve done everything they know how to do. And they still come up empty.
It’s easy to imagine their frustration.
And then this stranger on the shore, in verse 5, asks what has to feel like the most irritating question in the world: “Children, do you have any fish?”
Can’t you just imagine Peter wanting to snap back: “Hey, buddy… Mind your own business!”
Or maybe the disciples could have lied to protect their pride. “Sure! We caught plenty!”
Of course, if they had done that, it would have been awkward a few minutes later when Jesus came ashore and asked to see the fish!
But to the disciples’ credit, they tell the truth:
“No.”
“No… We’ve got nothing.”
And honestly, that’s one of the hardest words for many of us to say.
“No… I’m struggling.”
“No… I don’t have it together.”
“No… My marriage is on the rocks.”
“No… I’m anxious.”
“No… I’m failing.”
“No… I’m lost.”
“No… I don’t know what to do.”
But notice: it’s only after the disciples honestly acknowledge their failure that they’re finally in a position to hear Jesus speak.
And isn’t that often true for us?
In my quiet time last week, I read James chapter 4… And by the way, in the fall—God willing—we’re going to do a sermon series covering the entire letter. But I was reading James chapter 4, and I was struck by the warnings James gives—not to people outside the church, but to people inside the church… people like you and me.
Verse 2: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.”
I’ve always read that and thought, “Are there Christians in these churches who are committing actual murder? I know about difficult churches, but c’mon! This is a whole ’nother level!”
But he’s not talking about actual murder! He’s talking about what his half-brother taught in the Sermon on the Mount: that anger is on the same spectrum as murder. Even when we lash out at people—not even with violence, but with supposedly small sins related to words we speak—like insults and put-downs and gossip—Jesus says, “you are in danger of the fires of hell.”[7]
Whoa… Why is this underlying angry impulse so serious? Because it’s the same anger that gives birth to violence and murder!
So I read that this week, and I sensed the Lord was asking me, “Why do you get angry, Brent?” And nine times out of ten… Who am I kidding, 99 times out of a hundred it’s because of my sinful pride. I want to win. I want to be on top. I want to look good… I want to look strong… I want to be right… I want to prove that my way is the best… And I hardly care, so much of the time, who gets hurt in the process. Too often, I want to be proven right more than I want to love people. Because that awful, ugly pride that gives birth to anger… is still down in there… in my heart!
See, we often talk about salvation as if it were merely some past event. But that’s not how God’s Word talks about it. Salvation is also an ongoing process. I mean, if sin is really such a big problem, and God really loves us, he doesn’t merely save us from our sins when we die, or when the Second Coming happens… He doesn’t save us for some future event… He saves us from our sins in the present! Because that’s what’s good for us… Because sin still harms us and others… and of course it harms our witness in the world… as media headlines attest every week!
So the Lord promises—because he loves me, and he wants to heal me of my terrible sin… he promises to root it out of me… to expose it to his healing sunlight… to disinfect me of it.
And one way he does that… is by making me fail.
And who knows? Maybe these disciples were experiencing this same sin of pride when verse 3 says, “But that night they caught nothing.”
See… we often think that the Lord is only showing us his power, his favor, his mercy, his grace, his love when he gives us what we want. That’s what’s all those horrible prosperity gospel preachers preach…
But no…
What if, actually… he also shows us his power and favor and mercy and grace and love when he doesn’t give us what we want? When we fail?
My point is… the Lord is showing us his power when the nets are empty every bit as much as when the nets are full!
That being said, when the disciples finally admit the truth, Jesus gives them new instructions: “Cast the net on the right side of the boat.”
As Warren Wiersbe says in his commentary, “The difference between success and failure was the width of the ship. We are never far from success when we permit Jesus to give the orders, and we are usually closer to success than we realize.”[8]
I love that.
Maybe you’re failing in some area of your life right now—in your family, in your marriage, in your career, in your finances, or in your walk with Christ.
Don’t waste that failure. Take it to Jesus.
Ask him, “Lord, what are you trying to teach me through this? You’ve got my attention. I’m listening.”
Because if you belong to Christ, failure is never meaningless. It has a purpose!
I love the way Dale Bruner puts it in his commentary on this passage. He says, “Failure is good manure.”[9]
That’s memorable because when we fail, we often feel like we stepped in it. Our failure may look like manure. And it certainly stinks.
But God has always specialized in turning manure into fertilizer.
If you are in Christ, failure is never the end of your story.
In Christ, even failure can become fertile ground for grace.
That’s Point Number Two: We follow Jesus through failure.
Third: we follow Jesus on mission.
This is perhaps the most obvious point of this “living parable” in John 21.
Remember my experience at the computer store with the Amway salesman. He was an evangelist for Amway. I was an evangelist for the Macintosh computer. And for all I know, we were both Christians who went to church every Sunday!
I say, “for all I know,” because of course I never bothered to find out.
And over the years, this incident has bothered me.
After all, why was I so eager to persuade this man to buy a Macintosh computer…?
Because I genuinely believed in it. I loved those machines. I thought they were great, and I wanted someone else to experience what I thought was so wonderful about them.
That’s just human nature.
When we love something… when we believe in something… when we think something is genuinely good… we naturally want to share it with others.
And if that’s true about computers… or hobbies… or sports teams… or our grandchildren… or English springer spaniels… how much more should it be true of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
After all, we’re not talking about helping someone get a better computer… We’re talking about eternal life.
We’re talking about forgiveness.
We’re talking about rescue from sin and death.
We’re talking about reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ…
We’re talking about greater love, greater joy, greater peace…
Which is exactly where this miracle of fish is pointing.
The risen Christ is still calling disciples to follow him and help bring others into his kingdom.
I think about a funny scene in Acts chapter 14: Paul heals a man born with a physical disability, and suddenly the pagan crowd starts worshiping Paul and Barnabas. They think Barnabas is the Greek god Zeus and Paul is Hermes, the messenger god. The priest of Zeus in that town even starts bringing oxen to sacrifice to them!
It’s both funny… and sad… because these people are so completely lost.
But give these pagans this much credit: they were at least acting consistently with what they believed. After all, if they genuinely thought these gods had come down from heaven, then of course they would worship them and tell others about them. And do whatever these gods tell them.
And honestly, that convicts me.
I remember years ago when I was serving a church near Atlanta, I got roped into helping with an outreach event at a retirement community. And I say “roped in” because I had also tickets that afternoon to a Georgia Tech-Miami football game that I ended up missing!
So there I was at this retirement community, standing behind a table with representatives from all these other churches in the area. And honestly, my attitude was terrible. I basically thought, “We’re all Christians here. Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist… Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors and so does the church. So just pick whichever one you like.” My being at that event just didn’t feel all that important.
Can you tell I really didn’t want to be there?
But there was one man there who definitely wanted to be there. He was eager. Outspoken. Even a bit aggressive… Making a point to talk to everybody, including the people representing the various churches.
And I found out why.
He was Mormon.
And suddenly I felt ashamed.
Because in his own way, he genuinely believed he had the truth. He genuinely believed eternal things were at stake. And he believed that churches like mine were leading people in the wrong direction! And so he spoke to people with urgency.
Meanwhile, there I was—a Christian pastor who genuinely believes Jesus is the only way to the Father… who genuinely believes eternal life and eternal death hang in the balance… who genuinely believes the gospel is the best news in the world…
And who genuinely believes that Christ was resurrected to prove the truth of these things!
And yet so often over the years, I’ve remained silent.
When I was in high school and college there was a guy on Christian radio named Dr. Walter Martin, otherwise known as “The Bible Answer Man.” And he often fielded questions from callers about Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other cults. And the tagline at the end of every episode was, “Are we willing to do for the truth what others are willing to do for a lie?”
Good question!
Because too often God has placed people directly in front of me who were hurting, lost, anxious, lonely, skeptical, or far from Christ… and I said nothing.
No invitation.
No testimony.
No offer to pray.
No conversation about Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, if we truly believe what we say we believe, shouldn’t we be at least as eager to “catch people” for Christ as the disciples in today’s scripture were to catch fish?
Jesus did not save us so that we can bide our time until heaven. He saved us to follow him now.
Which means joining him in this mission he gave us.
Think about this: God loves every person we meet—every coworker, every neighbor, every classmate, every friend, every stranger, every enemy we have… God loves each of these infinitely more than we do. Every person we meet is someone deeply loved by God… someone Christ died to save… someone who needs the hope of the gospel…
And so he’s given us a fishing license. Are we going to use it?
Listen… Just as these seven disciples caught an abundant number of fish, we can too!
In fact, I don’t know if y’all believe this, but I’m going to say it anyway… Are you ready? Even if all the churches in our area—Grace, NewSpring, Fellowship Greenville, First Prez Greenville, First Baptist Simpsonville and the Upstate Church satellites, Brookwood Church, Buncombe Street Methodist—if each of these churches cast their nets faithfully and widely, guess what…?
There would still be an abundant number of fish waiting to be caught by us here at Five Forks Methodist, I assure you!
If we’re interested in fishing for people, our work is cut out for us…
So let’s ask the risen Lord Jesus to make us as eager to reach people for him as those fishermen were to fill their nets!
[1] Colossians 3:23-24 NRSVUE
[2] John 21:29b ESV
[3] John 20:17
[4] John 14:18 ESV
[5] Deuteronomy 8:7-9
[6] Summary of Deuteronomy 8:10-14, 17-18
[7] Matthew 5:22 NLT
[8] Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary: New Testament, vol. 1 (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 1989), 397.
[9] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 1219.