Classic Sermon 6047: Encounter on the High Seas

Let us turn to the Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 5, and we will take verses 1 through 11. “And it came to pass, as Jesus stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, that the crowd pressed in upon Him to hear the word of God. And He saw two boats near the shore of the lake; but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. And getting into one of those boats, which belonged to Simon, He asked him to put out a little from the land; and sitting down, He taught the crowd from the boat.

When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered Him, ‘Master, we have worked all night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at Your word I will let down the net.’ And when they had done so, they caught a great quantity of fish, and their net was breaking. Then they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; and they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. And when Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ For he and all who were with him were seized with fear because of the catch of fish they had taken, and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s partners. But Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be a fisher of men.’ And when they had brought the boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.”

May the Lord bless His Word.

Brothers and sisters, as you know, we have already shared three sermons from a series we have entitled “Encounters with Jesus,” and what we have wanted to do through this series is, as I was saying, to polish the image of Jesus Christ and reconsider—although we have always been circling around the person of Jesus—what Christ’s ministry was and how the way He entered into dialogue with individuals throughout His ministry can also be a blessing to our lives.

We want to look at the intimate Jesus, not the Jesus of the crowds who multiplied the loaves and fishes and fed 5,000 people; not the Jesus whom Zacchaeus had to climb a tree to see because He was surrounded by the crowd; not the Jesus who was so often engaged in dialogue with and confronting the Pharisees who came like packs of wolves, wanting to make Him stumble and look bad. Rather, we want to look at the individual Jesus, the intimate Jesus, the personal Jesus, who on many occasions took His divinity and His ability to attract the masses, narrowed it down considerably, and concentrated it in a saving dialogue with men and women who approached Him with different kinds of needs.

We want to look at Jesus the teacher, who with divine wisdom and a very pedagogical method led, for example, the Samaritan woman, as we saw, or Nicodemus, through a dialogue of growing knowledge of Him as the Messiah, as the Son of God. He confronted the Samaritan woman, for example, with her need for an encounter with Him and for the surrender of her life to Him; or He stripped away Nicodemus’s masks of religiosity and said to him, ‘Nicodemus, you must be born again and be born of water, of the Spirit, because ultimately that is what counts in this new kingdom that I am inaugurating.’

And here we have another one of those transforming encounters. As you can see, it is a tremendously dramatic encounter in which Jesus confronts Simon Peter with who He is. Many of you will see that this passage has the heading—in most Bibles, perhaps—“The Miraculous Catch of Fish.” That is how this passage is known. Paintings have been made, stories have been told, and poems have been written about the miraculous catch of fish. And it has certainly been one of the most beautiful symbols of the Christ who reigns over nature, the Christ of Power, the Christ who can do things that no man can do.

But what interests me is approaching this passage from the perspective of that dialogue between Jesus and Simon: this teaching process, this pedagogical process through which Christ leads Simon until, like Superman taking off his Clark Kent suit, He shows him the Son of God, the Son of Man who reigns over nature. So much so that Simon is shaken and throws himself at His feet because he realizes that he is in the presence of deity, and he says, ‘Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner.’ For Jewish doctrine said that whoever saw God would perish; it was dangerous to encounter God while in sin.

There are the memories of Moses on the mountain, who returned from that encounter with God with his face shining; and the Jews heard the thunder and saw the lightning, and they were afraid and said, ‘Tell God to withdraw from us, because we cannot endure so much glory.’

And you will see again that, time after time, this theme keeps arising—in the case of Nicodemus, in the case of the Samaritan woman, and here as well—how the Lord Jesus Christ leads these individuals through a process of increasing confrontation, of increasing clarity about who He is and about His power. The same is true of us, brothers and sisters, and I hope that theme will be engraved upon our hearts again and again. There are different levels of relationship with Christ.

Many of us are content to say, okay, I have punched my card, I have already gone forward. I have already been “converted,” in quotation marks, and we lie down to sleep and continue being just as we were, often just as we were before knowing the Lord. And we believe that merely going to church, going on Sunday, doing one little thing here and there, and making a symbolic gesture means that we have already arrived. But, brothers and sisters, the Christian life is a process of increasing confrontation with Christ, with the demands of Christ. It requires an increasing surrender of our being.

Every day the Lord wants to show us something new about who He is. Every day the Lord wants to speak to your life and mine in a different way. Every day He wants to perfect His power in you. Every day He wants you to have a new experience that shows you that He is closer to you than He was yesterday, that He wants more and more of you, and that He wants you to have more and more of Him.

And I see this, which is why, to me, the miraculous catch of fish is almost secondary in this passage. The moment of the catch, when they gather in all these fish, is almost like a result that follows from everything else. But it seems to me that the Lord Jesus Christ was interested in things that were a little deeper than simply giving these men enough fish to fill themselves. He wanted to give proof of who He is, and that is why I believe the evangelist Luke focused this passage in this way: to show the superabundant power that is in Jesus Christ and the need to have a personal encounter with Him.

Let us go back now and begin an analysis of the passage. I do this simply for your benefit, because it sometimes helps us to separate the account into its component parts, and in that way we can understand a little more of what the Lord wants to tell us. I see three central points or phases in this passage—three stages, three points in the process.

The first is what we find in verses 1 through 3. Here I see Jesus ministering to the crowd with Peter’s help. That is very important, because we will see how that applies to our lives as well. Jesus ministers to the crowd with Peter’s help, and you can read those passages as I recount a summary of what these verses contain.

Then, in verses 4 through 7, we see a personal encounter with Jesus and His power. Peter and his companions are confronted with Jesus’ powerful work and with His person. There Jesus gives them a manifestation of who He is and what He can do. The crowd has now been left behind, and there is now a personal encounter specifically between Peter and Jesus and the power that is in Jesus.

And third, in verses 8 through 11, we have something like an interpretation of what has happened. Peter and his companions realize what they have witnessed, what they have seen. They are confronted with that which they have witnessed, and they have the understanding to discern what has happened and what the implications of what has happened are. And that is why Peter falls to his knees, and John and James are also overcome with fear, because they understand: they have been given a revelation of Jesus. I call this the call of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says to them, ‘Now come; from today, from this moment on, you are going to be something: you will be fishers of men.’ A calling—but thank the Lord that the Lord extends a calling and there is also a commitment on the part of these three men, who leave everything, Scripture says, and follow Jesus Christ.

So there is a calling on Jesus’ part. And there is commitment on the part of Simon, James, and John. And there we have the skeleton, or the basic structure, of this passage. And here we are going to see what I regard as the central message of this passage.

I say here that if we obey Jesus’ call, He does three things—in this passage, at least, that is what we see. Number one, He reveals His glory to us. We could say that He reveals His power to us; He reveals His ability to transform everything surrounding our lives. We receive a revelation of Jesus’ glory in our lives. Jesus provides for our needs. The Lord once said, ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things about which the Gentiles worry—those who do not know God, those who are always anxious and wringing themselves out and… agonizing… All these things will be added to you.’ The Father knows what things you need, but seek first the things of God.

So, if we obey Jesus’ call, number one, He gives us a revelation of His glory, of who He is. Number two, He commits Himself to providing for our emotional, physical, and material needs; and lastly, He gives meaning and purpose to our lives. He redeems our lives from their merely horizontal dimension and adds significance to life. Twentieth-century man, brothers and sisters, needs meaning. Do you know what the prevailing philosophy of our century is? It is called existentialism.

Existentialism is a philosophy that arose in northern Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it is a reaction to all the tragedies humanity has witnessed in the twentieth century: the First World War, from 1914 to 1918; the Second World War, from ’39 to ’45, in which more people died—more millions of people than, I believe, in all the other wars combined. Those two wars showed humanity that its idea of progress was completely fictitious. Humanity had not truly progressed; the human heart still had a savage capacity to kill and destroy.

And then there were all the other wars that arose from those, and all the tragedies of the twentieth century. Modern man’s reaction to the tragedy of his century has been that existentialist philosophy, which sees a meaningless universe, a universe without purpose, as though it had been created by a madman—or at least by someone who began making it, left it half-finished, and went away. So the only answer modern man finds today is: I am the answer.

There are no absolute answers; instead, there is a life of struggle and searching. But we believe, brothers and sisters, that when Christ enters our lives, He gives meaning to our lives, that Christ gives them purpose. Christ gives us a manual with which we can interpret and transform the tragedies of our lives into triumph, into victory. And that is the great difference between the person who has God and the person who does not have God.

So, brother or sister, if you obey Jesus’ call, Christ will grant you His glory and His power, Christ will provide for all your needs, and Christ will give meaning and purpose to your life.

Now let us see how all of that is embodied in this passage. Look at the first verse. It says that Jesus is beside a lake, the Lake of Gennesaret, and, as happened many times, the fame of Jesus Christ had already spread throughout Palestine. Wherever He went, many people followed Him. Jesus healed the sick; Jesus preached with an authority that the Pharisees and scribes could never imitate, because His word was genuine—it came directly from the Father.

Jesus spoke to the poor and the insignificant, while the Jewish religion rejected them and cast them aside. Jesus freed people from their Pharisaical burdens and told them, ‘The only thing God wants is for us to worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ That gained Jesus such popularity that wherever He went—as we see again and again throughout the pages of the Gospel—people crowded around to listen. These people were in need; there was a great crisis in Israel at that time. And when the people heard the genuine message that came from Jesus, they said, ‘This is for us.’

The first thing I see here, then, is a great need among the people. And, brothers and sisters, today we say again that man also has a great need to have an encounter with Jesus Christ. The world needs us to preach the good news of salvation to it. The Sunday before last I said that the woman with the issue of blood went to Jesus—why? Because she had heard about Jesus. She needed that information so that she could then go to Him and receive healing from Jesus. And I believe, brothers and sisters, that the world—our relatives, our friends, our colleagues at work, our male and female friends, homemakers or whoever they may be, at school, at the university—needs to hear about Jesus. And as the Apostle Paul says, how will they believe if there is no one to go and proclaim it to them? How will they be able to respond in faith if no one places the message of salvation before them?

Brothers and sisters, we have a great challenge before us. You, each one of us, and I—we face the challenge of not merely being nominal Christians who are content to come to church and grow fat and grow fat, to grow spiritually fat. Rather, we have a commitment to God to proclaim the Gospel wherever we go. We are disciples, preachers of the Gospel; we are servants. I would like that idea to be engraved upon all our hearts, brothers and sisters: none of us has been called to vegetate on a pew. We have been called to serve the Lord and not to waste a single opportunity to preach the Gospel.

I do not believe there is such a thing as a Christian who gives no light, who sheds no light around him. It is a contradiction. Ask yourself, as I continually ask myself: What am I doing for my Lord? What am I doing for the kingdom of God? How am I fulfilling that commission the Lord Jesus Christ left me, to go and preach the Gospel to every creature? For I believe that my condition as a Christian is validated when I act; as the Apostle James says, faith is confirmed by works. We are not saved by works, but our faith certainly has to act; it has to do something. And the way we can grow in the Gospel and be effective is by freely giving what we have freely received. It is by investing our talents. I see that scene as so full of meaning: you see Jesus here, and it says that the crowd presses in upon Him to hear the Word of God.

And here we have one of the mysteries of the Incarnation. We see Jesus as we also saw Him with the Samaritan woman. That passage says that Jesus, being tired, sat down beside the road and sent His disciples to get food, and Jesus also asks the Samaritan woman for water. So here we see a Jesus who grows tired, a Jesus who feels hunger, and a Jesus who feels thirst. For remember that Jesus was perfect God, but He was also fully man.

He was both things, and the Lord confined Himself to the limitations of a body, although on occasion we see Him remove that garment and enter into His fullness, as He did on the Mount of Transfiguration. But while Jesus walked on Earth, He chose to walk in the attire of a man and experienced everything a man experiences. He decided to do it that way. He spent 40 days in the wilderness, and the devil sensed that there was a point of weakness here and wanted to tempt Him with food, because He was a man suffering the pangs of hunger after 40 days without eating.

And that is one of the mysteries of the Incarnation.

Here we see Jesus limited in His ability to minister to the crowd. He could have, had He wanted to, spoken with a voice more powerful than the one this microphone allows me to use. He could have done it; He was God Himself, and He performed other, much greater miracles.

But here we see another Jesus: the limited—self-limited—Jesus, looking at this great crowd that has unexpectedly gathered around Him and asking Himself, “How am I going to minister to all these people? They are desperate; they need a word of healing and encouragement from Me. How am I going to minister to them?”

What does the Lord Jesus Christ do? He looks around, and His divine wisdom shows Him that there is a boat there and that this man, Simon Peter, whom Jesus already knew, is there. For if you read chapter 4, verse 38, you see that Jesus had previously healed Peter’s mother-in-law. But Peter’s relationship with Jesus was an imperfect relationship, like that of so many Christians who have had only a partial encounter with Jesus but have not yet surrendered their lives completely to Him.

Then the Lord Jesus Christ looks at this man who owns that boat, and perhaps at his companions who are around him, and in His mind the Lord says, “Now I know what I have to do. I am going to take the boat; I am going to ask the owner of the boat, Simon, to let Me use his boat and move a little way from the crowd, away from the shore. Then, from this boat, I will be able to preach to the entire crowd, instead of having them press in around Me while My voice is drowned out by the din and commotion of the crowd.”

I imagine that the Lord then asked them to sit down, and He ministered to them with His healing word. But in that little drama, brothers and sisters, I see a compact symbol of the mystery of the Great Commission. Before departing, the Lord Jesus Christ gave authority to His church and charged them to take responsibility for what He had begun during three years of ministry. “Now I am going to My Father. I am going to provide the energy; I am going to provide the power; I am going to delegate authority to you. But you are going to take responsibility for preaching the Gospel. The angels are not going to do it. The Holy Spirit is not going to do it; the Holy Spirit will do His part by confirming the message and moving hearts, but you are to ‘go and preach the Gospel.’”

Thus, the Lord Jesus Christ entrusted the Church with the commission to do His work, and He established a partnership among God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and redeemed men and women who would continue preaching the Gospel. Why? I believe it was because the Lord wanted His creature to be a fellow participant with Him.

God does not want parasites. I always see God working in partnership with man. God delights in working with us.

Brothers and sisters, if we understood how highly God esteems us and how much God needs us, I believe we would be less indolent in the work of the Gospel. If you and I do not do the work, no one will do it. God is not going to do it, because He has already delegated His authority to us, and the work of restoring the world rests upon the church—and the church is you, and you, and me. And we are expected to work in partnership with Jesus Christ.

Now, where in the text do I get that assertion? The Lord Jesus, though He could have done all the work by Himself and preached to the crowd if He had wanted to, chose to work in partnership with Peter. And Scripture says that He approached Peter and asked—pleaded with Peter—to allow Him to use his boat to preach the word. Brothers and sisters, I see in Peter’s boat a symbol of our lives. The Lord needs a boat that He can board and from which He can preach the Gospel.

The Lord needs a boat in which to become incarnate, into which He can enter and with which He can form a partnership—a boat that will allow Him to take His place upon it and, from there, minister to a needy world, to a needy multitude. You and I are that boat.

And as could have happened in this case, Peter could very well have said to Him, “Lord, I am very sorry, but I am very busy mending my nets. I am too frustrated because I have caught nothing, so please find Yourself another boat and do not bother me right now.”

But thank the Lord that it was not so. Instead, Peter heard the Master’s voice and instinctively understood what this meant, and he allowed the Master to use his boat. Brothers and sisters, I believe that every day the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to us, speaking to you and to me, and He is saying to you: “Let Me use your boat. Let Me board your life. Let Me take control of your life. Let Me take control of your personality, your thoughts, your plans, your dreams, your projects, your talents. Let Me board your boat and minister to this desperately needy world.”

The Lord could have said to Peter, “Peter, step aside. I made the wood from which this boat is built. I created the tree from which that wood was cut.” Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus, like a gentleman, pleads with Peter: “Peter, allow Me to use your boat.” The Lord will not force Himself upon your life. The Lord will come again and again, insisting: “Let Me use you. Let Me work with you. Surrender your life to Me.” And if you and I do that, the Lord then commits Himself to working through you and me, as He did in this case.

But that was the first thing. Look at it from another angle: let us now focus not so much on Jesus’ need and on the drama of Jesus wanting to minister to the crowd, but let us focus on Peter for a moment.

Scripture says that Peter is washing his nets, and later we learn that he had been fishing all night and had not caught a single fish. So the picture we have of Peter at this moment is of a defeated Peter—a fisherman whose modus vivendi, whose means of making a living, is completely barren. He has spent the entire night under optimal conditions trying to catch fish and has been unable to do so, and now he is there agonizing as he washes the nets, because in one sense all those nets have in them is salt water. That is why he washes them, so that the salt water will not ruin them. But in reality, those nets have not touched a single fish. Those nets are completely empty.

And in Peter I see an image of the man or woman who is trying to live life without God, trying to succeed and to fish in the waters of life without the help of the power of the Holy Spirit—without the power of Jesus Christ. Peter is an experienced fisherman; he knows the best ways to fish. And yet, through His Spirit, the Lord prevents him from catching anything that night so that His Power will become clearer to Peter when he has his encounter with Him out in deep water.

Brothers and sisters, without Christ we are like Peter the fisherman at that moment. We can do nothing without the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, I believe that this is a perfect picture of the condition of modern man in our time. Young people have tried to put their lives in order and build a career, or build a marriage, or raise obedient and healthy children, or succeed in their work, or whatever it may be—to have influential friends. And they have tried to obtain these things on their own and through their own intelligence and resources, and in the end they have discovered that they have failed.

Modern man, with all his resources and all the things he has been able to accomplish with his mind and his brain, is in the same condition. Man today possesses great knowledge. He sends men into space so routinely that hardly anyone even pays attention anymore. And he has accomplished great things in medicine and made great discoveries about the human mind, the brain, human biology, the chemistry of the world in which he moves, and physics. But, brothers and sisters, when one looks at the condition of man, as we said before, what we see is modern man himself washing his nets after a night spent trying to fish without having caught anything.

For what is the picture of our time? We see wars everywhere. In the United States, what do we have but mental illness everywhere, divided families, crime, the influence of gangs, the proliferation of drugs, AIDS everywhere, premarital pregnancies everywhere, and suicides among young people…

Brothers and sisters, the world we live in is a world like that—like Peter washing his nets. It is a world that has fished all night, has done so many things, and has tried in every possible way. But what happens? In the end, it always comes away unsuccessful and defeated because it is trying to do things on its own. Now it needs the power of God; it needs Christ to board its boat and transform its failure into victory. And that is what happens, thank the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ asks him, “Peter, let Me enter your boat.” And Peter probably did it without even imagining that Jesus Christ had another purpose to fulfill; he simply thought, “Well, all right, I will let Him use my boat, and afterward I will continue with my work.”

But here is the wonderful thing: Jesus Christ had a purpose for Peter as well. And Jesus Christ knew Peter’s need, and Jesus Christ wanted to minister to Peter’s needs, just as Christ wants to minister to your need too. My brothers and sisters, here I see a very great lesson. It is that we want success in our lives. I want to be happy, and many of you want to be wise and successful parents and want to be happy husbands or wives. Many of you want to know Jesus Christ in His power and in His glory. Many of us want to have power and victory in Christ Jesus. And we have different needs: we want healing; we want a solution to the problems in our lives.

Now, how does that effective life come about? How does that victorious life that Christ promises every believer come about? For the Lord has said, “I have come that you may have life, and that you may have it abundantly.” Why is it, brothers and sisters, that there are so many defeated Christians? I am not saying Christians with problems, because we all have problems. But there are so many Christians with problems who, in addition to having problems, are… they feel defeated. They feel desperate, they feel depressed, they feel that there is no way out for their lives. Why? Is it because Christ fails to keep His promise? No, my brothers and sisters. I believe it is because we have not followed the pattern Christ has established for a successful Christian life; that is the problem.

And I believe this passage shows us the sequence we must follow in order to have victorious lives in Christ Jesus, in order to obtain a vision of the glory and power of Christ in our lives. And what is that method, that secret? Brothers and sisters, it is a life of service and surrender to the Lord. Many of us first want God to fill us with power and fill us with glory and make our muscles really big, so that we can then say, “Okay, Lord, now that I have everything and I am doing well, now I am going to serve You.” “Now that the bank accounts are paid, and now that I no longer have problems with my wife or my children, and now that all my illnesses have been healed, and now that I can praise You with joy and freedom, now I am going to begin serving You.”

But, brothers and sisters, we are putting, as they say, the cart before the horse. Because the Lord has established a pattern, and it is that the Christian life is lived by faith. It is not by feelings; it is not by what you feel in your heart, but by the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And if we first place our lives at the Lord’s service, commit ourselves to the Lord, and yield to the Lord our boat, our resources, our talents, our body, and our time, and then begin serving the Lord by faith, even though our entire being cries out, “You’re being an idiot; you’re giving what you don’t have,” then we begin to act and work for the glory of God; and as we commit our lives, the power of God begins to flow in our lives, and then we can have an encounter with the glory of Jesus Christ.

But first, brothers and sisters, we have to give to the Lord in order to receive. He has already given His body on the Cross of Calvary; He has already provided a perfect plan of salvation that guarantees success. He has already poured out His Spirit upon every believer; He has already left us His Word to guide us. Now, what is missing? That we add the central ingredient, which is our faith, to kindle the Lord’s flame in our lives.

And I have learned this, brothers and sisters: that the way to believe, to live in the Gospel, and to acquire power to overcome in the Christian life is by doing, by working in the name of the Lord. It is by launching out in the name of Christ, even though we do not know where we will end up, but simply throwing ourselves forward in the name of the Lord. And then the wonderful thing happens, because at every step along the way the Lord is there to comfort us, strengthen us, and lead us to certain victory.

For me, the perfect image of that process will always be when Joshua and the Jewish people stood before the Jordan River, ready to cross into the Promised Land. They had been in the wilderness for 40 years, and Moses had already died. Now Joshua had been given command, and He said to him, “Now you are standing before the Jordan River and the Promised Land. Joshua, tell the priests to stand before the people, with the people behind them, and to begin marching forward.” And the question was, “Well, Lord, how are we going to cross through that river in front of us? How are we going to get past that enormous obstacle before us? We do not have enough boats to transport a million people across that river.”

And that is how all of us are: God has called us to a land of blessing. That is why the chorus says: God did not bring us here to turn back. He brought us here to conquer the land He has given us, to receive it and take possession of it. But, brothers and sisters, sooner or later we all find ourselves before a Jordan River in our search for the power of God in our lives, in our search for the Promised Land. All of us have things in our lives that are like that Jordan River, preventing us from entering into the fullness of God’s blessing in our lives.

And what are we going to do? Are we going to remain before the river? Are we going to start crying as Moses did when he stood before the Red Sea?… What the Lord said to Joshua was, “Tell the priests to begin walking with the ark among them.” And the Bible says that when the priest’s foot steps into the water, the river will open. Then the priests began to move, and when the priests’ feet stepped into the water, the river opened, and all the people crossed over on dry ground.

But, brothers and sisters, why did God not open the river before the priests began to walk? Because the righteous shall live by faith, says the Word of God. And God is glorified when His people begin walking and working even though not everything before them is clear. Like Abraham, we have to launch out toward a land whose location God has not even told us. But we believe that God will provide, as Abraham said concerning the sacrifice of Isaac. We believe that God will meet us along the way and that none who trust in Him will be put to shame, because we are moving according to the Word of God.

And every day I believe with greater and greater certainty that this is the key, brothers and sisters, to all the problems and difficulties in our lives. Even though all the pieces of the puzzle are not in place, we have to begin putting it together in the name of the Lord, and the Lord will see to it that, as we travel along the way, He will provide us with more and more and more. But the Christian life must be a life of pressing on by faith, of launching out in the name of the Lord.

Perhaps you have some project in your life, some need, some obstacle, some burden, some problem. Whether it is something emotional that is binding you, a family problem, or whatever it may be, my advice is: brother, sister, begin working in the name of the Lord; launch out to conquer in the name of the Lord. In a sense, almost forget about your problem and begin working, believing that all the other things “will be added unto you,” as the Word says.

Now seek the Lord’s glory in your life, surrender more and more of yourself to the Lord, and let the Lord take care of the problem, and God will do the work. Because what happened was that when Christ finished ministering through Peter’s boat—the resources Peter provided Him—and there, brother or sister, you can insert whatever you wish: your money, your time, your work; Christ needs all those things. The church of Jesus Christ needs all those things in order to see the work accomplished. Now, when Peter gave those things, the Bible says that when He had finished speaking, the Lord said to him, “Simon, now put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Evidently, the Lord knew Peter’s predicament. With divine wisdom, the Lord understood that Peter was a defeated man at that moment, that Peter was a man in need of finances and resources, a man who was worried about his future, just as the Lord knows your need.

Brothers and sisters, there are moments when I wonder whether God… whether God knows what I need and what I am going through. There are moments when the water rises to our necks and we ask ourselves, “But when will the salvation of Jehovah come? Could it be that God has forgotten me, or that He is somewhere else in the universe, busy with other problems?”

But, brothers and sisters, time and again we see a God who knows our needs. As the psalmist says, “He remembers that we are dust; He remembers that we are made of something perishable and that He needs to reach in and extend His help to us.” Peter himself experienced another situation that you will remember. Peter launched himself onto the water when he saw Christ walking on the water. Peter said to Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to walk on the water.” And the Lord Jesus Christ said, “All right, walk; launch out.” And Peter launched himself onto the water, and what happened? Along the way, when he began to look around and saw those huge waves and heard the whistling of the wind, and surely felt water strike his face and saw that raging sea—at that moment he looked at his feet walking on a substance that was supposed to swallow him up, yet he was walking on it—and his mind betrayed him.

He took his eyes off the Jesus who told him, “Come to Me,” and fixed his eyes on the problems, and he began to sink… he began to fail. And thank God Peter had the wisdom to say to Him, “Lord, I’m sinking!” and reached out his hand. Because there is the other thing, brothers and sisters: sometimes we launch out by faith. I could tell you about moments like that in my own life, when one launches out by faith and says, “Lord, I am going to throw myself into this water. There are no maps that can take me where I want to go, but I feel that You are sending me that way.”

And once we are already involved in the matter, the problems and the struggle begin, and we ask ourselves, “Lord, how are You going to get me out of this predicament?”

In fact, there is a book titled precisely that: How Will You Get Me Out of This Predicament, Lord? Like a half-trained mechanic who begins taking an engine apart and, after seeing all the parts scattered there on the floor, says, “And now, how am I going to put this back together?” And many times we undertake things by faith in our lives, and once we are already involved in the matter, we realize how daring we have been, and we are filled with panic.

But the wonderful thing, brothers and sisters, is that even there, when our faith fails the Lord, after we had the initial faith to launch out in the name of the Lord, we still have recourse and say, “Lord, have mercy on me; take hold of me.” And the Lord comes and strengthens us and lifts us up as well. And He sets us on a secure path because, brothers and sisters, it is a bulletproof promise. My motto is, as I have said here from the pulpit on other occasions, “None who trust in Him will be put to shame.”

You will not undertake anything in the name of the Lord, prayerfully and prudently, having sought counsel in the Word of God, and then, if you launched out by faith in the name of the Lord, be put to shame. Perhaps God will change your plan along the way; that is true. Perhaps the final outcome will be different from what you envisioned when you began the race, but in the end you will not feel ashamed; you will not say, “Good grief, I trusted in the Lord, and look how He failed me!” In my life I have not yet known such a moment, nor have I seen it among those who have truly trusted in the Lord.

Let us launch out by faith. But let us launch out while giving to the Lord, brothers and sisters. I tell you, as a pastor, that sometimes I worry a little because—at the risk of sounding negative—I often wonder whether our entire congregation is living that life of genuine surrender to the Lord, whether we are truly experiencing the Lord’s glory in our lives. Many times I fear that some of us—and I assure you that I do not have anyone in mind at this moment, but I say this pastorally—are living a fiction, living a religious ritual, but we have not entered into the depths where God wants us. We have not seen the glory of God; we have not begun to live the life of service, the life of surrender, the life of the cross which, as the Lord Jesus Christ says, means that whoever wants to follow Me must take up his cross daily and follow Me.

We have not launched out to be trained like a soldier who suffers hardship, as Paul tells Timothy, so that our bodies and our spirits may be strengthened. We are always right at the water’s edge, dipping in a little toe to see whether the water is warm enough for us to jump in, and we never jump in. And we never come to know the Christ whom Peter came to know at that moment.

But the fact is that Peter took a risk; Peter yielded his boat, and the Lord said to him, “Now, Peter, I am going to show you that all along—even when I made a request of you and you thought I did not understand your need—you were faithful and let Me use your boat. Now I am going to teach you that I reward those who honor Me. Put out to sea, and let us see what happens now with Me in your boat.”

And when Peter reaches that point out in the deep water, the Lord now says to him, “Let down your nets for a catch.” And once again the fear of the carnal man, of the rational man, arises, and he says to Him, “Lord, but we have been fishing all night, and I am an experienced fisherman, and I can tell You that nighttime is when one fishes because there is no noise, the light makes the fish drowsy, and then we can let down our nets and catch fish. But now it is daytime, the fish are frightened, and the conditions are not favorable for fishing.” But Peter did not stop at that doubt; instead, he said, “But, Lord, since You say so in Your Word, I will let down the net.”

Brother, just as we must put forth our efforts in the name of the Lord, we must undertake the things we undertake in the name of the Lord. Name whatever you wish: what is it that you most want in your life? Some of us want, as I was saying, to be successful parents. And what does being successful parents mean? Raising healthy children, raising children who fear God. We want to be husbands and wives who feel fulfilled in our marriage, and I point these things out because I believe this is one of the great needs of our time.

Families are divided; they are being slashed by the devil everywhere, and there is much anxiety, a great desire to have healthy families. Others simply want a life like the proverb says: “Lord, do not give me so much that I forget You, nor so little that I curse You; give me enough bread.” In fact, we only want to live comfortable lives, and that is legitimate, brothers and sisters. We want to have our three hot meals on the table and a roof over our heads, you know. And a nice little suit to wear now and then, and to be able to go out for Chinese food once a month, or to McDonald’s, or whatever. We are not asking for great things; we simply want provision for our lives, and that is legitimate.

And how are we going to receive those things? How am I, a young person who wants to pursue a career, going to find the resources to study and become a professional? Or whatever it may be. It is by casting the net in the name of the Lord; it is by making Christ the foundation, the point of support, like the pitcher who plants his foot on the mound there in the center and throws the ball. We must first plant our foot on Jesus Christ before accurately directing the ball in our lives.

We must do everything in the name of the Lord. But first we must serve the Lord, because there are many easy ways of saying, “Oh, in the name of the Lord!” To me, doing things in the name of the Lord means placing my life in the Lord’s hands, placing my resources in the Lord’s hands, surrendering my whole life into the Lord’s hands and saying to Him, “Lord, wherever You lead me, that is where I will go.” And then you have handed the title deed over to the Lord Jesus Christ and placed all the rights to your life in His hands. You say, “Now, Lord, I am going to venture out. I am going to trust that You will open a way for me, that wherever I go, I will go safely; I will overcome in Your name.”

And what you will see is what Psalm 127 says. It says, “It is in vain that you rise early and go late to rest, and eat the bread of sorrows, for God gives sleep to His beloved.” Well, sometimes we will be fishing in circumstances that are very unfavorable for fishing, and people will say, “But isn’t this person a Hispanic who only recently arrived from his country and does not even speak English? And I speak English, I was born in the United States, I come from a middle-class family, I have the resources to attend college—and this person is trying to become a professional? And look at that other undocumented, unknown person in this country, so cold and so vast, and he expects to find his way in this country?”

And others see the mother who comes from a family marked by divorce and who may have lived in a home with alcoholics; they see this young woman beginning her marriage and will say, “But don’t you know that psychology says that if someone comes from a broken home, she will probably repeat the same story? You are fishing in the wrong waters.” But, brothers and sisters, the difference is that we are casting the net in the name of the Lord. We are fishing according to the word of the Lord, who has promised, once again, that none who trust in Him will be put to shame. That we can do all things through Christ, through Christ who strengthens us.

Brothers and sisters, that is the great difference, but first there must be integrity toward the Lord. Because many times promises are made from pulpits that are very easy to make, but they are not being made with the integrity required. I say that first you must place your life in God’s hands. I repeat that because it is the central message: you must place your resources, your gifts, and your whole being at Jesus Christ’s disposal; you must venture out in the name of the Lord and say, as Esther said, “If I perish, I perish.” You must bet all your chips on the Lord, place them on the table, and say to Him, “Lord, here is all my money; here is everything I have. If I fail in the attempt, that is my problem. But I am going to believe that You will honor me, that You will lift me up.”

And then, when you do it, what happened here takes place: Peter cast the net, and what does the Gospel say? It says that he caught a great number of fish, so many that the boat was sinking. The nets were breaking. When God gives, God gives abundantly. The multiplying miracles that I see in Scripture are miracles in which things are left over; and as I say, it is not because God cranked the miracle too hard—it happened. It is because He wanted to leave an image of abundance: when He gives, He gives until it overflows. “My cup is overflowing,” says the psalmist. You anoint my head with oil; my cup is overflowing. The psalmist also says it is like Aaron’s beard; he says that the oil runs down from the beard onto his garments.

When God blesses, God blesses abundantly. When God brings light into our lives, God gives light until we say to Him, “Lord, I am already being blinded by all the light You have given my life.” When we fish in the name of the Lord, when we embark on the adventure of life in the name of the Lord, with integrity, the Lord commits Himself to being with us step by step and leading us to victory.

And the wonderful thing is not that we do not have enough for ourselves, because what did Peter and James and John do? They called their companions: “Then they signaled to their companions in the other boat to come and help them; and they came and filled both boats, so that both boats were sinking.”

Brother, when God gives to you, God will give you enough to give to others as well. God never gives so that only you may have light. That is the beautiful thing about this parable of the virgins. I believe there were 10 virgins; I believe 5 were wise and 5 foolish. The wise ones had their lamps filled with oil, and when the bridegroom comes, the foolish ones, who had not been watching or preparing, approach the wise ones and say to them, “Help us; give us some of your oil so that we too may have light and go out to meet the bridegroom.” The poor wise virgins said, “Ladies, we are very sorry, because if we give you some of our oil, then neither you nor we will have enough.”

But, brothers and sisters, things are different in the gospel. God gives you enough oil for you to have light yourself and to give light to others as well. When they come to you, you will also have resources in your life to give good advice, to offer a word of encouragement, to give a word calling them to seek Christ as Savior, to offer a word of inspiration and hope. Because you will have enough personal and emotional resources within yourself to share generously.

God will give you the resources to forgive, to give to others, and to be generous, instead of acting like people who clutch the few coins they have like usurers, holding them tightly against their chests because they do not want anyone to take them away. Because they think that if someone takes them, they will have no more. But in the Kingdom of God, brothers and sisters, the more you give, the more you receive. Because the flow of God’s grace in your life becomes greater. That is the secret of the Christian life: in the Christian life, subtracting is adding. When you give, what the world apparently sees is that you are losing, but the Lord is adding to you. There is a small pipe running from you to others, but there is an enormous pipe running from God to you, and God keeps filling you: the more you give, the more you receive, and the more God multiplies your talents.

That is the secret of the talent that was given to the servant. What he did was bury it in the ground and do nothing with it; others invested, took action, and when the master came, they had much to show him.

Brothers and sisters, how are we living our lives? Are we living our lives merely by coming to church, sitting nicely there, listening to a sermon, dropping a coin into the offering plate—and is that all? Are we living a life of investing, of giving our boat and placing it at the Lord’s service, and seeing how God multiplies His blessings from us and within us? I would like all of us to leave here today with that challenge, with that clear vision: “Lord, I am going to place my life in Your hands today, right now. I am going to strengthen my commitment to You. I am going to make my covenant with You anew, like a husband who says to his wife, ‘Today I want to renew my covenant of love with you.’”

Tell the Lord today, in your heart, “Lord, right now I renew my covenant with You. I want to marry You again. I want once again to affix the seal, the mark of surrender, to my relationship with You.”