The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany is February 6, 2022.

Readings for Year C can be found here.

The Gospel reading is as follows (emphases mine):

Luke 5:1-11

5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,

5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

5:5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.

5:7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

5:9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken;

5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Last week’s reading concluded the story in Luke 4 of Jesus at His hometown synagogue in Nazareth, where the congregation wanted to throw Him off a cliff.

He then went to Capernaum.

John MacArthur summarises the rest of Luke 4:

… in chapter 4 He had preached in the synagogue in Capernaum and He had cast a demon out of a man there. That was His first miracle, the first one recorded by Luke. And then, you remember, He went, after the synagogue service home to the house of Simon where his mother-in-law was ill and He healed his mother-in-law of a very great infection that had produced a high fever. And then at the end of the Sabbath day the people in the city were bringing everybody who was sick with every imaginable disease and He was healing them all and He was casting demons out of many. That all occurred on one day in the synagogue in Capernaum and in the home of Peter.

Sometime later — ‘Once’ — Jesus was standing near the Lake of Gennesaret; the people were pressing in on Him to hear the word of God, His preaching (verse 1).

MacArthur says:

We have an indefinite then passing of time. We don’t exactly know what the chronology is, but it came about at some point in time after that. Jesus is still in Galilee. He’s still preaching. He’s still calling disciples. He’s still performing these healings and casting out demons. And on one occasion when surrounded by a multitude, He is near the lake of Gennesaret teaching the Word of God.

MacArthur describes the lake, which is part of the Sea of Galilee:

… in the very heart of the Galilee, as it’s called, which is the northern part of the land of Palestine all the way up to the Lebanese border, bordered on the east by Jordan, on the west by the Mediterranean, that north part of Israel, the major location there is the Sea of Galilee, or the lake of Gennesaret, as it’s called here, sometimes the Sea of Tiberias, the Old Testament name was Chinneroth. But that lake, 13 miles long and about 7 miles wide, dominates the Galilee. To the east is the sort of low ridges and then the flat lands of the wilderness that goes to the east. To the north are the great high mountains of Lebanon from which the water flows that flows in and creates the lake. To the west are the fertile marvelously, magnificent fertile fields of grain and crops and right on to the…to the sea. On that…Mediterranean Sea… On that are the major cities. Tiberias would be a major city in the time of Christ on the western shore, and the north would be the city of Capernaum. And so Jesus spent a lot of His time around the lake. And it was a good place to speak to people because you could be at the shore and the slope would be a place that would create sort of a natural amphitheater and the people could hear …

And it says in verse 1 He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. Gennesaret may be a word that refers to garden and could well be a reference to the…to the fertile land on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee which is very defining. As you get on to the Sea of Galilee you see these beautiful fields stretching all the way around from the north sweeping around to the west. And there are even some on the east. And so it perhaps is a word that reflected the garden environment that surrounded the water of that lake. It is not technically a sea. Luke is right in the technical side in calling it a lake. It is a freshwater lake fed by the snowmelt out of the Lebanese mountains, the high mountains that ultimately runs the south … Out of the south of the Sea of Galilee comes the Jordan river which runs all the way down and empties into the very famous Dead Sea.

Jesus saw two boats by the shoreline; the fishermen had got out of them and were washing their nets (verse 2).

Matthew Henry explains:

At first, Christ saw Peter and Andrew fishing at some distance (so Matthew tells us …); but he waited till they came to land, and till the fishermen, that is, the servants, were gone out of them …

Jesus needed more space between Himself and the crowd, so He got into Simon’s — Peter’s — boat and asked him to pull away from the shore a bit, at which point He sat down to preach (verse 3).

MacArthur says that Jesus deliberately chose Simon Peter’s boat to get his full commitment to discipleship:

The Lord didn’t do anything just by accident. Everything was intentional, divinely intentional, sovereignly purposeful. It was time to bring Peter to full commitment and to bring those who followed his leadership, in this case James and John, to their full commitment as well.

Let me give you a little bit of background.  Jesus first met Peter back in the first chapter of John.  John records the first time they met.  Jesus met Peter and that was the first meeting and at that time Jesus called them to follow Him.  This was sort of a first step in their following Jesus.  It was later on, recorded in Mark 1:16 to 20, and Matthew 4 about verse 18 to 22, that there was a second calling.  The first time they just sort of follow Jesus.  Later on, as recorded in Mark 1 and Matthew 4, Jesus made a more direct call and I guess they could say, we could say they became part-time followers, only in that case it was Peter and James and John, who were the sons of a man named Zebedee.   And they were all partners in the fishing business.  So they had already had a couple of encounters with Jesus.  Peter, that first calling, that second calling with James and John.

Now Jesus is getting to know Peter because Peter is following Him.  That’s why in chapter 4 after the synagogue service, when it was dinner time, Jesus went to Simon’s house.  He knows him now and Simon has become at least a far…a part-time follower, a little bit of fishing and a little bit of following Jesus.  It hasn’t been too difficult to follow Jesus and fish because Jesus has stayed in Galilee and so Peter could connect at certain points between his necessary employment as a fisherman.  And so Jesus knows Peter but it is time to take Peter to another level.  By the way, Jesus did this throughout His whole life, even after the resurrection, trying to get Peter to the level He wanted him at.  He was very reluctant and a difficult guy to deal with.  But he was also the recognized leader of the apostles.  It was important to have Peter where he needed to be because he was the one who had seemingly the greatest influence on the rest.  And so Peter is seemingly the key person for the Lord.  You have four lists of apostles in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Acts, and in all four, Peter’s name is first.  He is clearly recognized as the spokesman and the leader.  And so Jesus is going to work on Peter a little bit and James and John, as we see, will follow along.  But Peter is the target, so He wants to get in Peter’s boat, and that’s exactly what He does.  He’s here called Simon. He will be called Simon by Luke until we get to chapter 6, verse 14 when he is fully identified as Peter.  By this time the Lord had already changed his name but it didn’t get changed in the text of Luke until the 6th chapter, although He does refer to him here in verse 8 as Simon Peter, which sort of helps us make that transition.

When Jesus finished speaking, He asked Simon to go out into the deep water and cast his nets for a catch (verse 4).

Simon replied that they had fished all night long — when the catch would have been optimum — and caught nothing but agreed to do what Jesus asked (verse 5).

Henry has a practical application of the request from Jesus and Simon’s obedience. God wills things in His own time, therefore, patience is a virtue:

… [3.] Even those who are most diligent in their business often meet with disappointments; they who toiled all night yet caught nothing; for the race is not always to the swift. God will have us to be diligent, purely in duty to his command and dependence upon his goodness, rather than with an assurance of worldly success. We must do our duty, and then leave the event to God. [4.] When we are tired with our worldly business, and crossed in our worldly affairs, we are welcome to come to Christ, and spread our case before him, who will take cognizance of it.

Having obeyed Jesus, His men caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break (verse 6).

They signalled to their partners in the other boat that they needed help; the fish filled both boats to the extent that they began to sink (verse 7).

At that point, it became clear that Jesus holds command over everything. Peter, James, John — and the crowd — were witnesses to that miraculous catch.

Henry says:

Now by this vast draught of fishes, (1.) Christ intended to show his dominion in the seas as well as on the dry land, over its wealth as over its waves. Thus he would show that he was that Son of man under whose feet all things were put, and particularly the fish of the sea and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea,Psalms 8:8. (2.) He intended hereby to confirm the doctrine he had just now preached out of Peter’s ship. We may suppose that the people on shore, who heard the sermon, having a notion that the preacher was a prophet sent of God, carefully attended his motions afterward, and staid halting about there, to see what he would do next; and this miracle immediately following would be a confirmation to their faith, of his being at least a teacher come from God.

MacArthur tells us:

The point is that in omniscience God knows everything there is to know, everything that exists He knows.  He doesn’t learn it. He doesn’t conclude it by adding.  He doesn’t know sparrows hop because He watches them.  Everything that exists He knows, whether it’s material or immaterial.  So believe me, Jesus as God will know where the fish are.  And this is omniscience.  And this is what flows out of this.  God’s understanding is unsearchable. Isaiah 40:28 says, “Known to God from eternity are all His works.”  Paul said in Acts 15 and Hebrews 4:13, “There’s no creature hidden from His sight.”  God knows where every fish in every lake and every ocean is at all times because God omnisciently knows everything that exists in the material and immaterial world and the condition and state of everything, not only now but in the past and the future.  He knows everything.  Nothing in the universe is beyond His full comprehension.

That also includes the world’s languages, the law of physics and everything else we consider to be knowledge.

Peter realised that Jesus is divine and told Him to go away because he was a sinful man (verse 8). He became acutely aware of his sins and failings. This happened with others in the Bible who saw God. It was terrifying. The contrast between fallen man and the living God is too great for the former to bear. It strikes a profound fear into a person’s heart and mind. This is why it is important to repent now instead of waiting until it is too late. The day will come when every one of us — believer or not — will see Him face to face.

MacArthur gives us more examples of this terror when confronting holiness:

That’s why Abraham in Genesis 18:27 says, “I am speaking to the Lord?  Who am but dust and ashes.”  This can’t be happening.  Dust and ashes were a symbol of penitence.  That’s what Job said.  He said, Job 42, “I now see You with my eye and I repent in dust and ashes.”  Then there’s Isaiah who sees the Lord and says, “Curse me, damn me, woe is me, I’m disintegrating, I’m a man with a dirty mouth,” and all he can see about himself is his wretchedness.  And then there’s Manoah. I love the story of Manoah in the 13th chapter of Judges.  Manoah has an encounter with the angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, the second member of the Trinity comes and appears to Manoah, and he goes home and he says to his wife, “I’ve seen the Lord, we’ll die. We will die.”  And then there’s Ezekiel who has a vision of God in Ezekiel chapter 1 and falls over in a coma.  And then there’s John in Revelation 1 who has a vision of the glorified Christ and it says he fell over like a dead person he was so traumatized.

One of the most interesting statements of all in regard to this is found in the 20th chapter of Exodus.  God is giving the law and in verse 19 they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us lest we die.”  Moses, please we don’t mind talking to you, don’t bring God down here.  We’re dead.  You see, that’s the sense of sin, the overwhelming sense of sin.  That’s the publican in Luke 18 beating his chest.  He won’t even look up.  He won’t lift his eyes.  He’s afraid somehow that God might see who he is and he’s crying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”  It’s the disciples in Matthew 17 on the Mount of Transfiguration who see the glory of Christ and fall over in a…in a coma, literally frightened into unconsciousness.  This is what God seeks in Isaiah 66:1 and 5, a person with a broken and a contrite heart.  This is someone who sees their sin and you can’t really see your sin until you see God.  And that’s why the emphasis of ministry always has to be to exalt God, to lift up God, to manifest His glory, His holiness because it’s when we see Him for who He is that we see us for who we are.

So here was Peter, broken, penitent, overwhelmed by his sin, frightened, terrified.  He’s in the presence of holiness.  This is an affirmation on Peter’s part that he is meeting the divine One.  “Depart from me for I am sinful, oh Lord.”  And he’s affirming in saying that the Lord is sinless.  “You don’t deserve to be in my presence, I don’t deserve to be in Your presence.  We don’t have anything in common.  Holiness is separation and, Lord, it’s unfitting for You to be near me,” that’s what he’s saying.

And why did he feel this way?  Well verse 9 says, “Because of the amazement that had seized him and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken.”  There was just no human explanation.  This is God.  And it was the same with, verse 10 says, with James and John.  They had exactly the same reaction, the sons of Zebedee.  They were partners, koinōnoi, partners in the business with Simon.  And they were all literally shaken to the core.

Now in the terror of this moment Peter wants to send the Lord away, but the Lord wants to pull Peter closer.  What from Peter’s viewpoint is so frightening that he wants to run is so encouraging to the Lord that He wants to embrace Peter.  At the very point at which the sinner feels the most alienation is the point at which the Savior is seeking reconciliation.  And here was Peter and his two buddies, James and John, wanting to run when Jesus wanted to embrace them, wanting alienation when Jesus sought reconciliation.  This is the glorious moment of their repentance.

And that brings us to the final attribute of God that is demonstrated here, divine mercy.  Peter was overwhelmed with his sin.  We certainly can assume that James and John were and perhaps others.  They were broken and contrite, just what the Lord was seeking.  You remember it was Isaiah who thought he was so unworthy that he was going to be destroyed, and it turned out that the Lord called him into ministry.  It was Job who thought that he was…he was the worst of sinners and needed to repent in dust and ashes that God blessed beyond imagination.  It was John, who because of his sinful life, in the presence of the vision of the glorified Christ in Revelation 1 fell over out of sheer terror in a dead faint.  And the Lord awakened him, told him to get up and take his pen and serve Him by writing the Revelation.

Just at the point where you think you’re on the brink of damnation because of your sin, you’re at the brink of reconciliation because of mercy.  And I love this in verse 10. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not fear,” or perhaps better, “Stop being terrified,” phobeō from which we get phobia.  Stop being terrified.  You don’t need to be terrified.  And that’s the kind of fear he was feeling. It was terror of being in the presence of holy God and being on the brink of divine judgment.  Stop being terrified.

Now let me just say as a footnote.  There is a healthy fear of God.  There is a positive fear of God.  We could go a lot of places in the Bible to demonstrate it, but let me simplify it, if I can.  There is a statement in the 4th verse of Deuteronomy 13 that defines this proper fear.  Just listen to this.  Deuteronomy 13:4 says, “You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, listen to this, and cling to Him.”  There is the fear that seeks to run and there is the fear that seeks to cling …

There is the terror of the sinner who fears the judgment of God.  There is the healthy reverence and wonder and awe and love and adoration of the child who wants to cling to a father who is the Father of mercies, as Paul calls God in 1 Corinthians.  And so we want the fear that clings, the fear that says I can’t make it on my own.  The fear that says You are my Redeemer, my Savior, my Lord, my Master.  You are the object of my love, my affection, my worship, my praise, my adoration, my devotion.  I want to keep Your commandments.  I want to listen to Your voice.  I want to serve You.  I want to follow You.  That’s the… That’s the fear that clings.  And for the sinner there is that fear that terrifies and wants to run.  That’s why I say there are people who come even here and when God is displayed and God is manifest and the glory of God is shown in the face of Jesus Christ, it’s a very intimidating thing.  Those who love their sin want to run.  Those who are, in a sense, unmasked by it but want to continue the game of hiding, flee.  But for us who desire mercy, we cling, don’t we?  The same God can create terror in the unrepentant sinner and calm in the penitent sinner.

Peter and all who were with him were amazed — one of Luke’s favourite words, also used in last week’s reading (Luke 4:22) — at the miraculous catch of fish at midday, when fish were least likely to be near the surface because of the sun’s heat (verse 9).

MacArthur says:

Everybody sees Peter and all his companions because of the catch of fish which they had taken. The term here for amazement is just that. I mean, it’s a term that simply means shock. They were absolutely shocked by what they saw. It’s a term that’s used a couple of times back in chapter 4. They were amazed at His teaching. They never heard anybody teach the way He taught. And in verse 36 they were amazed at His confrontation of the demon. And now they’re amazed at His power expressed over nature, just amazing expression of His power.

Luke reinforces the amazement by mentioning that of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were Simon’s fishing partners; then Jesus told Simon not to be afraid, because he would be catching people (verse 10), meaning making converts by preaching the Good News, something that happened early on in the Book of Acts after the first Pentecost. Once filled with the Holy Spirit, Peter made thousands of converts in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.

Henry says:

When by Peter’s preaching three thousand souls were, in one day, added to the church, then the type of this great draught of fishes was abundantly answered.

When they brought their boats to shore, the three men left everything to follow Jesus (verse 11).

I wanted to find out what happened to the fish, but neither of our commentators has any supposition. Perhaps the people were able to take one or two home.

MacArthur concludes:

This…this may have been the…who knows how much money this was worth, what this could have done in catapulting their career to another level. What more boats they could have bought. What perhaps more equipment they could have bought, men they could have hired to increase the business. But here they are at the very pinnacle, here they are having made the catch of all catches in the history of fishing and it says they brought their boats to land, got out of the boats, left everything, followed Him.

That was history. That was history. All the activities of their life to that point, past. Initially they had followed Him part-time and this was the full-time. This was the life they would live all the way to their death. From this moment on they were permanently engaged in catching people in God’s salvation net, the highest calling in life, the great commission. The word followed is used in Luke as a technical term for discipleship. You see it about five times in chapter 9, a couple of times in chapter 18. They became disciples.

Henry had an interesting insight as to why Jesus wanted to display His omnipotence with the large haul of fish. One of the reasons was to repay Peter for lending him his boat as a preaching platform:

He intended hereby to repay Peter for the loan of his boat; for Christ’s gospel now, as his ark formerly in the house of Obed-edom, will be sure to make amends, rich amends, for its kind entertainment. None shall shut a door or kindle a fire in God’s house for nought,Malachi 1:10. Christ’s recompences for services done to his name are abundant, they are superabundant.

Next week we begin the Sundays before Lent, starting with Septuagesima, meaning 70 days before Easter.