Thinking Through Luke 5:1-11
by Clarke Dixon
Does the thought of God terrify you?* Maybe it should? Maybe it shouldn’t? Simon Peter had a moment of terror early in his relationship with Jesus which will help us think through our response to God.
Peter’s Scary Moment
One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God. He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.”
“Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.”Luke 5:1-5 (NLT)
Let us remember that Simon Peter was a professional fisherman. Jesus was a a carpenter turned teacher. The fishermen knew better than to let down their nets. Yet,
…this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear! A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.
When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m such a sinful man.”Luke 5:7,8 (NLT)
When Simon Peter tells Jesus to “Go away from me, Lord, because I’m a sinful man!” we should not think of this as an affirmation of a Christian statement of faith. At that point in time there was no Christian statement of faith to affirm. Rather, this is the recognition on Simon Peter’s part that Jesus is no ordinary human being, that Jesus somehow represents the divine. Simon’s natural response to the divine is terror.
“Go jump in a lake!” or “don’t throw me overboard!”?
When Simon Peter told Jesus to go away, we should remember they were on a boat. Where exactly did Peter think Jesus was going to go? Yet we should probably should not think of Simon as telling Jesus to go jump in the lake. Rather, this is a statement of humility, of saying “don’t throw me overboard. Don’t let me die.”
Which of these two sentiments do people hold toward God today? Some respond to the thought of divinity with fear, like Simon; “please don’t throw me overboard, don’t throw me away!” Others respond to the idea of God, Jesus, and Christianity with a fearless kind of attitude, with “I don’t need God or Jesus, and anyone pushing that on me can go jump in a lake.” Some speak as if they would tell God to go jump in a lake given the chance.
Should we be fearless?
What if such fearless people, instead of merely entertaining thoughts about God, found themselves fully in the presence of God? Would have a different response? Ideas are easy to dismiss, manipulate, and misunderstand. When God, or Jesus as God the Son, is just an idea to us we can easily say “go jump in a lake, for I am self-sufficient, good, capable, and have all I need.”
However, if instead of merely entertaining ideas about the divine, we were confronted with the presence of the divine, our natural response would be closer to that of Peter: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful person.”
We see this with Isaiah when he has a vision of God:
It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven’s Armies!
The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.”Isaiah 6:1-5 (NLT)
Isaiah had the same reaction to a vision of God as Simon Peter did to Jesus. Both were confronted with the awful reality that a sinful person does not belong in the presence of a holy God.
If we can go from thinking of the divine as an idea to an experience of the reality of the divine, we will go from “go jump in a lake, God,” to “please don’t throw me off the boat!” Perhaps we should not be fearless.
But should we be afraid of God?
Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you’ll be fishing for people!”
Luke 5:10 (NLT)
Not only does Jesus tell Simon Peter to not be afraid, he goes even further in boosting Simon’s confidence by telling him he has something for him to do. Far from being afraid of being thrown off the boat, Simon could have confidence that Jesus had made space for him on the crew.
The apostle Paul had a similar experience. If Peter could say “I am a sinful man,” Paul could say that even more so! Yet he also was invited to be part of the crew:
This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all. But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.
1 Timothy 1:15,16 (NLT)
We could sum up the response of God to Isaiah, Simon Peter, Paul, and many, many others with “though you are very aware that you do not belong here in my presence, you do belong here in my presence and I have a purpose for you, for though it is not what you deserve, it is what I want.”
That is the Gospel message, the Good News message, that God has made a place for us in his Kingdom, and further, that God has a purpose for us in his Kingdom, in this world. The cross makes that possible as we experience the reconciliation required for a sinful person to be in the presence of a holy God. We are called to take our place on the crew, in God’s presence, and in God’s Kingdom. We are called to a purpose.
Peter, Paul, and many others took their place on Jesus’ crew:
And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.
Luke 5:11 (NLT)
As we read of the adventures of the apostles following the resurrection of Jesus, and as we read their letters, they don’t seem scared of God. They seem thrilled to be serving.
So should we be afraid of God or not?
Are you scared of God? Maybe you should be? Maybe you shouldn’t? It really depends on what we are thinking when we are in the boat, when we are in that Simon Peter moment of finding ourselves confronted with the reality of the divine.
If the thought of God terrifies us, there is good news; in moving beyond mere ideas about God, to actually knowing God, who reveals himself and his desires for us in Jesus, we can trade in being terrified of God for being joyful, confident, and fearless in serving God.
*Watch an 18-minute sermon on which today’s reading is based at this YouTube link. Clarke Dixon is a pastor in Ontario, Canada.