Luke 5:1-11; 1 Cor 15:1-11

I must admit that when I first saw what the readings were for this evening, I thought what an odd selection we had for a service where we are thinking about healing, and where we are looking to God for healing. But as I pondered further I realised this: If we are open, really open to what God wants to do and have the faith to let go our own fears and prejudices, then we may well be surprised with what God will do. I believe He wants to far outstrip our expectations!

Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there

Faith is telling a mountain to move and being shocked only if it doesn't

I don‘t know who was responsible for those ‘one-liners‘, but they tell us a lot. Our fears can nullify what God would do; our faith will expect God to do something.

So, let‘s turn to Luke‘s text and see what happened:
Jesus is standing on the shore of Galilee, teaching the people- we‘re no told what His words were, but we do know that He got into a boat to teach. There would be a practical purpose in getting into a boat, so He could the better see the people He was talking to. Jesus was never so haevenly-minded,as to be no earthly use!. But there was a purpose. He got into Simon’s boat, for Simon was on His agenda. Jesus never did anything that didn’t have a purpose. And there He sits and teaches and all goes along smoothly. Simon no doubt felt fully at ease and probably intrigued and entranced by the words of this preacher. Mere words he could hold at arm’s length.. In his Bible Speaks Today commentary on Luke, Michael Willcock says this:
   Religion is a curse!- when, that is, it means admitting God into one department of life,
   while every other door is labelled ‘Secular’, and bolted against Him. Such religion Jesus
   now repudiates with the next of His words of power.
There’s always the temptation to relegate Christianity into ‘Church’, into ‘religion’. It is a closed ‘Christianity’ if it deserves of this name; it is closed to God; it is of closed expectations. It is faith-denying.

But Jesus has His agenda with Simon. This is the day He will break into Simon’s life. Does He, I wonder, want to break into any of our lives in a new and dynamic way tonight?
Put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch.
This wasn;t on Simon’s agenda. He’s been toiling away all night and caught nothing! But because you say so, I will let down the nets. It would have been interesting to see Simon’s face, to hear his tone of voice! Talk about telling you grandmother how to suck eggs! He’d fished Galilee for years and his family before. He knew. He knew you caught fish in the dark and in shallow water. How much does that say of the attitude of those who have never known God’s touch in their lives.
At night. In the dark. How we hate being exposed to God’s all-seeing, all-searching light! The world always loves darkness rather than light. It loves privacy and secrecy. It loves to hide away from God and keep Him at arms length.
Shallow water. How, too, we love the place of safety, the place where we can remain in control. We don’t, instinctively, like to get out of our depth.
And  this matches our expectations. It matches our expectations of God; it matches our desire to keep Him at arm’s length. We tend to trust our experience. We feel we know better than God! As Patrick Henry says:
  I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of
  experience.

But Simon, to hs credit, does say Because you say so. I will let down the nets. We know that when Simon did this he caught a haul of fish he couldn’t contain.
  There’s a world of difference when God sovereignly touches our lives. So, we may be ‘religious’ and claim to be Christian, but have our lives had that sovereign touch from God. Or we may be Christian and claim that God has done something special for us. It’s possible to fool others, even to fool ourselves. I recently read a sermon by R T Kendall in which he points up this very difference. He points to Rachel when she became Jacob’s wife. Jacob had of course been deceived by Laban into marrying Leah- and having six children by her. Laban was plain, Rachel was beautiful. When Jacob finally marries her she must have had everything going for her. Except that God closed up her womb and she was childless. That was her shame. She gets her servant Bilhah to sleep with Jacob, and, hey presto, along comes a child. Rachel flaunts the child as her own. Now she has it all- or so it seems and she was probably- almost- deceiving herself. But not really for we can read in Genesis 30 that Rachel has a child. She says God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son. This was the real thing! She really has a son. God had sovereignly touched her and opened her womb and had vindicated her. No need to pretend now.
  When the real thing happens and God makes us a Christian (and we never do it to ourselves. If we claim we have made ourselves Christian we are deceiving ourselves. If we claim some other special touch of God’s we may deceive ourselves. The real thing always carries its own conviction, its own authentication. And like Simon’s haul of fish it’s something we can’t contain and something which far exceeds what we could have expected

Let’s notice something else. When Simon Peter saw this he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man
Firstly, there was Simon’s sense of total unworthiness. When God draws near we are humbled. Not maybe, not sometimes. Always. If we claim a touch of God and have not been humbled by it, we deceive ourselves. If there’s one lack above all other in modern Christianity it is this lack of humility, rather a proud boasting of what God has done, and often I’m the centre of attention. We need remember words by F B Meyer:
  I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves-one above another-and the                 taller we grow, the easier we can reach them. Now I find that God's gifts are
  on shelves-one beneath the other-and the lower we stoop, the more we get.

Secondly, the Bible now speaks not about ‘Simon’, but about ‘Simon Peter’ Something very significant had happened to Simon in that encounter with Jesus; that encounter which had been on the Lord’s agenda. He knew He was going to touch Simon’s life that day
So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed Him.

Before I close I want us to look at 1 Corinthians 15 . Paul said he was passing on what he had received, and passing on as of first importance.And note that: C S Lewis says somewhere that Christianity is of utmost importance or of no importance at all. It can never, says Lewis, be moderately important. And there were three things
-Christ died for our sins
-Christ was buried
-Christ was raised again.
Elsewhere Paul speaks of the Christian being identified with Christ is death, burial and resurrection.
Christ was buried; we were buried with him. Now burial is among things the recognition that the dead person is that- dead, so we bury them and say ‘Farewell’. That person is here no more! And if you are Chrsitian then your pre-Christian self is no more- dead and buried and a new you raised up. How often we go round like Lazarus with our graveclothes on. We must realise that our old life with its sin, its condemnation is all past and gone; gone never to return- though we do let the memory haunt us- just as the bereaved can’t always easily let go of their loved one, so we can’t let go of our old life- and how Satan likes us to hold on!

I believe God wants to touch us tonight.
-For some it may be the revelation that their pagan self is no more
-For some it may be that God has an appointment with us, to-so to say, take away our shame and make us really His
-For some it may be ‘launching out into the deep’ Recognising that God can’t really touch us while we remain in the ‘safety’ of the shallows. Maybe He wants us to expect great things of Him

I think that’s enough words from me
I would just reiterate the statement I made at the beginning:
If we are open, really open to what God wants to do and have the faith to let go our own fears and prejudices, then we may well be surprised with what God will do. I believe He wants to far outstrip our expectations!
 
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