Category: Bible Study

Experience the Grace of God

The steps that the first disciples took are the steps we must take if we want to get on the greatest journey of all – one that will lead us right into a God-filled eternity.

The first step of this journey is simple…to hear the Word of God.  The next step was to trust the Son of God.

When you hear the Word of God and you trust the Son of God – that is when you get to experience the Grace of God.

 

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Notice exactly what Jesus said to Peter in verse 4:

Luke 5:4b (NKJV) — 4b …“Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “Let’s go fishing.”  Because all fishing is looking for fish.  Some of us may be better at that than others.

Jesus said, “Let’s go catch fish” which is a big, big difference.

Luke 5:6–7 (NKJV) — 6 And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. 7 So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.  

It is one thing to know how to fish.  It is another thing to know exactly where to fish.  You talk about a catch!

Get the picture in your mind: A fishing boat was 7½ feet wide and over 27 feet long.  They were filled so full that they both began to sink.

We are talking about tons of fish – never before and never since has a catch like that been made.

“It is the first time in history that a fisherman came home and actually told the truth!”  “Yes – I really caught that many and yes – they were this big.  If you don’t believe me you can ask Jesus!” 

Put yourself in Peter’s sandals.  How excited would you have been?  Can you imagine what he was thinking?

He had to be thinking, “Wow!  What a huge payday!  Jesus, let’s go into business together!”  He probably began to add up all of the profit in his mind.

Then the thought hit him, “Why would Jesus, a poor carpenter, who didn’t own a home and had no money of his own, travel the countryside preaching, teaching, and healing for nothing?  In fact, He could have gotten into somebody else’s boat.  Why did He get into mine and why did He give me this catch?”

Then the reality of what was happening hit him: “Jesus doesn’t care about fish, or about business, or about money.  He cares about me.  He doesn’t care about prosperity.  He cares about people like me!”

Look at how Peter responds:

Luke 5:8–9 (NKJV) — 8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” 9 For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish which they had taken;  

Peter either knew at that moment that this man was God or he knew He was somehow in the presence of God.   He gets it right.

“Jesus, you are Lord.  I am a sinner.”  It is the first time the word “sinner” is found in the Gospel of Luke. 

Do you know what a sinner is?  It is a missing person far from God.

Jesus agreed with Peter.  No argument.  You are a sinful man, but as Peter is about to find out, Jesus is not going to leave Peter, but He is going to ask Peter to join Him:

Luke 5:10 (NKJV) — 10 and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will catch men.”

 Seven times in the Gospel of Luke Jesus will say these words, “do not be afraid.”

What Jesus said to Peter Jesus says to us.  “I don’t care what you’ve done.  I don’t care who you are.  I don’t care how bad you’ve blown it.  I care about you.”

Jesus didn’t come to bring fear.  He came to bring forgiveness.

It is amazing to me that Peter wanted to send the Lord away, but Jesus wanted to draw Peter closer.  At the point you feel most far from God is the point that God wants to be most near to you.

“When you meet Jesus and you recognize who He is and you realize what you are, and you resolve to bring what you are to who He is, He won’t reject you with a closed fist, but He will receive you with open arms.”

When you experience the grace of God it will lead you to step #4…that we will look at in the next post.

Trust the Son of God

When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  Luke 5:4 (NKJV)

Trust me: The last thing that Peter wanted to hear Jesus say that day was “Let’s go fishing.”

You have to understand that Peter is the professional fisherman…and has to be looking at Jesus like, “Why don’t you stick to carpentry and I will handle the fishing?”

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Remember what Peter and his fishing buddies were doing in that boat? Verse 2 says, they were “washing their nets.”

Why?  Because the day’s work is done.  He has clocked out.  They’ve pulled their nets in and are cleaning their nets so they don’t get damaged.

It was time to get home, get a bite, and watch a little T.V. before getting up and doing it all over again.

That is why Peter says this:

5 But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.” Luke 5:5 (NKJV)

Peter is exhausted.  His crew had fished all night and hadn’t caught anything.

“There was a reason they worked at night.  The fish in the Sea of Galilee feed at night.  In the daytime, they hide under rocks.

Even worse, they congregate around the streams and the springs at the edge of the sea, close to shore, not in the deep.  A fish can’t see a net at night, but he can see it in the daytime and avoid it.”

Jesus was asking Peter to fish at the wrong time in the wrong place.

If they did what Jesus asked with everyone watching, they would be the joke of the town and the only boats out there trying to fish.

This is how I imagine the conversation went, “Jesus, I really like you a lot and you are a cool guy, but I am a professional and you are a carpenter. I know rods and reels and you know hammers and nails. You don’t know anything about fishing.”

To this, Jesus probably replied, “Well, from looking at your empty nets you don’t know as much as you think you do!”

You need to understand that fishing is back-breaking work.  Jesus wasn’t asking him to hang out at the end of the boat and watch a bobber for a bite.

What they did in Peter’s day was to lay out a great net in a semi-circle, encompassing a radius of 100 feet, drawing it in hand-over-hand and repeating the procedure again and again and again.

Jesus is asking a man who had not slept all night, hadn’t caught one thing, who had just finished washing his nets to beach the boat, load a 1000 pounds of wet- nets, row out to deep water in broad daylight in front of a crowd and catch fish that won’t even be there.

Yet, Simon says, “nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.”

Don’t miss the importance of what he said and what he did. What you are looking at is the first example of faith in the New Testament.

Faith is simply taking Jesus at His word and trusting what He says. 

Peter says, “I wouldn’t do this for just anybody, but since I have heard You teach and I’ve seen You work, (by the way, back up in Chapter 4 we read that Jesus had been to Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law so Peter owed Him one!) I will do what You ask.”

God honors faith and faith is simply trusting Jesus and doing what He asks in spite of the:

  • Feelings within you,
  • the circumstances around you
  • and the consequences before you.

It is this second step of trusting the Son of God that makes the first step of hearing the Word of God come to life.  If you hear the Word of God, but you don’t trust the Son of God, then your hearing won’t make a difference.

Peter has taken the second step of what will be a life-long journey, but now he is about to experience the greatest thrill of all – the third step.

We will examine that step next time!

Pastor Marcus

The First Step

The first step on a journey with Jesus is remarkably simple:

We must hear the Word of God.

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Luke 5:1 (NKJV) — 1 So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret,

When you read the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus’ public ministry centered on three things: teaching, preaching, and healing.

For three years, Jesus went about the countryside teaching what was right, preaching what was true, and healing what was wrong.

This story in the Gospel of Luke begins with Jesus teaching and people hearing the Word of God. This is exactly how every journey with Jesus must start.

You have to understand, however, that Jesus was not preaching or teaching from a Bible like the one that you probably own.  In that day, a Bible like yours did not exist yet.

Jesus was teaching the Word of God because He was God!  Every single time that Jesus spoke, what the disciples and others were hearing was the very Word of God…because He was the God of the Word.

As a matter of fact, John, who is in this story, would later write this:

John 1:1 (NKJV) — 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

What was He teaching this crowd?  Luke records this in Luke 4:43:

Luke 4:43 (NKJV) — 43 but He said to them, “I must preach the kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I have been sent.”

He was teaching them about the Kingdom of God.

  • Light had come to the spiritually dark.
  • Sight had come to the spiritually blind.
  • Freedom had come to the spiritually captive.

Now in order to make sure the crowds could hear Him and create some space between Himself and them, He does a wise thing:

Luke 5:2–3 (NKJV) — 2 and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. 3 Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat.

He gets into Peter’s boat and has him push it offshore a short distance.  Why did He do that?  He was using the water to magnify His voice so all the crowd could hear Him.

He knew this would work because…well, He created water.  But more about that some other time.

The crowd is hanging on every word and so is Peter, because he has no choice.  He is in the boat with Him!

Jesus knows exactly what He is doing.  He knows the first step to becoming a follower of His is to hear the Word of God – that is step #1. 

And when we are followers of Jesus and we are trying to show others the way to salvation, this is where we must start also: with the Word of God!

In the next post, we will talk about step #2!

Pastor Marcus

 

Expect the Unexpected

 

Though Jesus came according to prophecy, many, many people totally missed His coming. The way that He came into this world was so unusual, so unexpected, that they didn’t recognize Him even when He fulfilled all prophecies and performed all of the miracles.

Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew teaches us that, looking at the cast of characters that God used to bring the Messiah into the world, with all of their flaws and dysfunctions…

Jesus came to include you, no matter who you are, in His family.

These names are included in the line that leads to Christ so that you can know that your name can be included in the line that leads from Christ.

 

Full Combat Load

When I was in the Marines we had an expression: “full combat load.”  This term could be used to refer to the individual Marine or equipment.  For the Marine it meant that you would be carrying on your body every item needed to wage war in the field against the enemy…all of the ammunition, weapons, grenades, food, gear, medical equipment, communications gear etc.

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If you went into combat without your combat load you could quickly find yourself at a disadvantage.  Not only that, but you would also be risking your life and the life of your brothers who went into combat with you.

In previous posts we talked about the fact that we are at war.  This war is a very real spiritual war that is going on all around us…unfortunately, too many of us have failed to show up for the battle.  We talked about how important it is to know who our REAL enemy is: the devil.  His plans for you are different than God’s plans.

Paul says in v.11:

Ephesians 6:11 (NKJV) — 11 Put on the whole armor of God…

Literally what the verse says is this: “Put on the whole armor of God and keep it on.”  That is your “full combat load.”

There are no furloughs; there are no truces; there are no leaves of absence; there are no cease fires in this spiritual war.  You’ve got to keep your armor on and you’ve got to keep your guard up.

You don’t get weekends off…you can never let your guard down because just as surely as you do, Satan will hit you.  He will hit you at your weakest moment when you least expect it.

There is no point in denying it: Satan is dangerous.  He is deadly.  He is deceptive.

But listen to me carefully.  He is not invincible.

I will never forget how frightened people were of Saddam Hussein at the start of the first Gulf War, and people thought his armies would be incredibly strong (I believe he had the fourth largest army in the world at the time) and that he would be a dangerous enemy.

But after the war was over, in just a matter of hours, General Norman Schwarzkopf stood before a press conference and gave this assessment of the same. 

He said, “Saddam is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier; other than that he is a great military man.”

  • Satan is not omnipotent.
  • Satan is not omnipresent.
  • Satan is not omniscient.

God is all three.

But other than those qualifications he is a powerful foe.

“But greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”  You see, we have an advantage over Satan.  It is the armor of God.

Hold your hands 24 inches apart, that is how thick some of the walls are on older battleships.  In fact, the armor-plating on an American battleship is so thick that a Russian Styx missile would bounce off an armor-plated bulkhead on the direct hit. 

Armor on a ship is placed in areas where the ship is the most vulnerable to enemy attack. 

Normally, an armor belt is placed around the sides of the ship from about ten feet below the water line to just above the water line.  Theoretically, a torpedo hitting the armor belt would not penetrate into the hull and cause flooding. 

Likewise, armor-plating would be placed along the upper surface of the ship to repel bombs dropped from airplanes. 

God has given us armor guaranteed to repulse the most powerful missiles, the strongest bombs, and the mightiest torpedoes that Satan can fire at us.

No wonder James said in:

James 4:7 (NKJV) — 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Did you know there is not a single verse in the Bible that tells us that we are to run from the devil?

The Bible says we are to flee temptation.

The Bible says we are to flee sin.

But the Bible never says we are to flee from the devil.

The Bible says we are to resist the devil and he will flee from us.

Jeffery C. Ward in his book, The Civil War, tells a story about a scene that took place on a battlefield during the battle of Gettysburg.  He said:

“Right in the middle of the Battle of the Wilderness, all the staff men who had been fighting in the east all this time—Grant had just come from the West—kept talking “Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee.  He’ll do this, he’ll do that, he’ll do the other.” 

Ulysses S. Grant heard all he wanted to hear and finally said to them, “I am tired of hearing about Robert E. Lee.  You would think he was going to do a double somersault and land in our rear.  I want you to quit thinking about what he is going to do to you, and I want you to start thinking about what you’re going to do to him.”

We’re in a war.

We need to stop thinking and worrying about what the devil can do to us and start thinking about what we can do to him.

How will we win?

Our victory is assured because of the Lord Jesus Christ and His death on the cross, because of the awesome power of the Holy Spirit, and because of the armor of God.

It’s time for all of us to carry a “full combat load.”

Know Who Your Real Enemy Is

General MacArthur, a great military leader of his time once wrote an article that dealt with what was necessary for military success.  He gave four principles that he thought were the most important: Morale, strength, adequate supply source, and most importantly, a knowledge of the enemy.

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The Bible tells us exactly who our real enemy is:

Ephesians 6:11 (NKJV) — 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

When thinking about the devil we need to be careful and avoid two extremes in attitude that you may have towards Satan.

One extreme, many people ignore the devil; some even make fun of him.  They think of the devil as some kind of a mythical figure like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

I’m not ashamed to tell you, I believe in a personal devil just as much as I believe in a personal God.

When I hear people say “there is no such thing as a personal devil” I’m reminded of the prize fighter whose opponent was beating him about half to death.  Every time he would come back to sit on the stool between rounds, his manager would say, “Go get him tiger, he hasn’t laid a hand on you!” 

Well, for seven rounds this guy was getting beat from pillar to post and every time his manager would say the same thing. 

Finally, with both eyes closed shut, bleeding from the nose and his lips cut wide open, when that manager said, “Go get him tiger, he hasn’t laid a hand on you!”  the fighter looked at the manager and said, “Then I want you to keep your eye on that referee because somebody is beating the daylights out of me!”

But we also need to avoid the other extreme of being obsessed with the devil.  I’m always concerned about Christians who see a demon in everything.

A preacher told this story:

I heard about a woman that went to a church picnic and the ladies were having a covered dish luncheon.  When she walked in one of these super spiritual ladies walked up to her and said, “What did you bring to eat?” 

She said, “Deviled eggs.” 

 Well, immediately this woman flung her hands up high and said, “I bind everyone of them in the name of Jesus!”

That of course is a silly example…but, we must be careful with extremes.

I encourage you to give the devil his due, but don’t give the devil the farm. But we need to know who he is.

We’re told in v.12 that our battle is against:

Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) — 12 … against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

That tells me that Satan is a spiritual being and that ought to tell you that not everything spiritual is necessarily good.

But it shouldn’t surprise you that our fight is spiritual because our foe is spiritual.

You’re not going to win your war against Satan by sheer will power… this is a spiritual battle.

“He quakes at the sight of the breastplate of righteousness. 

He quivers before the shield of faith. 

He quails before the sword of the spirit.” 

Those are the only weapons that the devil is afraid of…and they are also the only weapons that will work.

Don’t take him lightly:

Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) — 12 …principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age…

Don’t ever think you can handle him on your own because you can’t.  On your own he will overpower you every time.

Here is the key:

Ephesians 6:11 (NKJV) — 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

 Now the word “wiles” is a very interesting Greek word.  It gives us the English word “method.”  It literally means deceit or trickery.

It basically says, “Look out for the tricks of the devil.” Satan is the master of deception.

The devil has even deceived us in the way we think about him. 

We conjure up the picture in our mind of a little man wearing long red underwear, with horns on his head, a forked tail and a pitchfork in his hand, walking around looking for somebody bending over.

A lot of people think of that kind of devil and think to themselves, “I can’t believe in that kind of devil.”

Well, I’ve got news for you.  I don’t believe in that kind of devil either.

The Bible says:

2 Corinthians 11:14 (NKJV) — 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

I think if we saw the devil today that it would shock us how attractive he would look.  It would even shock you how nice and generous he could seem to be.  You would never know that he is the most wicked, treacherous force in the universe.

I want you to understand this devil is interested in darkness and wickedness.

We hear people say all of the time: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”  Well, I think we ought to add to that this reminder: “Satan hates you and has a terrible plan for your life.” 

You mark this down.  The devil is doing everything he can right now to either take you to hell or, if you’re going to heaven, to make that trip as miserable as possible.

“God wants you to be happy and holy. 

Satan wants you to be depressed and dirty.” 

If you’re not saved, he’ll do everything he can to make sure that you never get saved; and if you are saved he’ll do everything he can to make you sin and cause you to lose the joy of your salvation.

As I talk about the devil, I realize that many of us could be intimidated because he is powerful.  But he isn’t “all-powerful” and it’s important to know who your real enemy is.

In the next blog post we will talk more about how to defeat him.