All right, well, good morning
and welcome to our continuing study in the book of Luke. And
we're beginning chapter five today. And when I first started
out, I was looking at this and I was saying, okay, I got nothing. And then the Lord began to connect
the dots for me. And then it was like he was feeding
me with a fire hose. So hopefully we'll be able to
move through this a little bit today. And so today we'll be
looking at Luke chapter 5, verse 1 through 11. We'll read through it first real
quick. And it came to pass, Luke chapter 5 verse 1, that as the
people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by
the lake of Gennesaret. Remember that he had been up
in this other area, and then he told his disciples he must
preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore
am I sent in chapter 4. So he's up here in this area
of the lake. And he saw two ships standing
by the lake, but the fishermen were gone out of them and were
washing their nets. And he entered into one of the
ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust
out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the
people out of the ship. Now, when he had left speaking,
he said unto Simon, launch out into the deep. And that's the
title of our message today. Launch out into the deep and
let your nets down for a draught. And most of your translations
say, let down your nets for a haul. And Simon answered unto him,
Master, we've toiled all the night and have taken nothing.
Nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the net. That's kind
of how I felt. I said, I got nothing. And he says, well, let
down the net. Get ready for a haul. And when
they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes in
their net break, and they beckoned unto their partners, which were
in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And
they came and filled both the ships so that they began to sink.
And when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees
and saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For
he was astonished. And all that were with him at
the draught of the fishes, which they had taken, And so was also
James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Those were his partners with
Simon. Then Jesus said unto Simon, Fear
not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had
brought their ships to land, they forsook all and followed
him. And so as I was kind of outlining this and the usual
outlines call, break it down like the calling of the disciples,
the miracle of the draught of fishes, the cleansing of a leper,
the healing of the man taken with a palsy next, and then the
calling of Matthew, Levi, the publican, and then it closes
out with a parable about fasting. But I just became consumed with
this first part here, these first 11 verses. And I said, what else
is in there? And it's not just about the call
of the disciples. You know, there's always so much
more than we think. And he says, launch out into
the deep. And that's just a metaphor for
the gospel. And just so many things came to me
through this study. I think about the things that
Norm's taught us from Zechariah and Malachi and Levi and all
those things. And in Isaiah 28, 9, he has a
tremendous vision of the Lord God, the Lord of hosts, And he says, whom shall he teach? And he says, line upon line,
precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. And so what we
learn in Zechariah, what we learn in Levi helps us understand about
Luke. And what we learn in Luke helps
us understand maybe what we learn in Leviticus and so forth. What we find out is there's always
so much more than we think. If we look to Jesus, as Norm
said Wednesday night, the Lord of hosts, God almighty, and pray
for him to reveal more of himself to us, we will see more and more
of him. And we will see more of free
and sovereign grace if we seek him like hidden treasure. So
today, There's kind of a challenge here for us to resolve, to let
go of our conceptions of the Lord God Almighty. He's not like
a genie in the booth on the pier that you put your quarter in
and make a wish. He's more than we can measure.
He's greater than we can imagine. His eternal love for us cannot
be reckoned in our finite minds, really, and yet He gives us glimpses
through a glass, darkly, as Paul said, and even then, Without
revelation, it's incomprehensible because He is magnificent. He's just so much more. When
we look to Him, we're never disappointed. So if we look in this block of
Scripture in Luke from verse 1 to 11, I pray that the Lord
would be pleased to open our eyes a little to see more of
Him in His glory. And usually we find the physical
teachings we're doing of Jesus metaphorically speak to a more
spiritual application. He's just not doing stuff. He's
not doing healings. He's not doing things just because
He can. He's doing them for a spiritual
purpose for the church. And in the first few verses,
we're introduced primarily to Simon Peter, and then later in
verse 10, James and John, the sons of Zebedee. But we find
out they've had a relationship before what's recorded here in
Luke. And if we turn over to John chapter
one, we have a little preface to our lesson today. They already
had a relationship. And that was between Jesus and
these men from eternity. And as we looked there in John
chapter 1 and back to Luke 5, two verses that I'd like us to
keep in mind, keep in view as what transpires here in Luke.
First one is from John 10, 27. He says, my sheep hear my voice
and I know them and they follow me. And the second one is from
Hebrews chapter four, verse 13, where it's written, neither is
there any creature that is not manifest in his sight. but all
things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we
have to do. So now turn with me over to John
chapter one for a little background on these men as these men are
called by the gospel. So join me in John chapter one,
verse 35. And again, the next days after John,
these fellows that we're looking at had been kind of in association
with John the Baptist. The next day after John stood,
and two of his disciples, looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said,
Behold, the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him
speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them
following, and saith unto them, What seek you? And they said
unto him, Rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted Master,
Where dwellest thou? They didn't know what they asked. They were thinking in physical
terms. Where dwellest thou? And he saith
unto them, Come and see. And it was a much more spiritual
come and see than just a, oh yeah, I live over here on East
21st Street or in a tent somewhere. Come and see. They came and saw
where he dwelt and abode with him that day, for it was about
the 10th hour. It's interesting to me that the
gospels record so much detail. It was a certain day and it was
at the 10th hour of the day, even the time is even recorded
for us. And in verse 41 of the two, which
heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, which was Simon
Peter's brother. He first findeth his own brother
Simon and saith unto him, we have found the Messiah, which
is being interpreted the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus.
When Jesus beheld him, he said, thou art Simon, the son of Jonah,
and thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a
stone. The day following, Jesus would
go forth into Galilee and find a Philip and say unto him, follow
me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida,
a city of Andrew and Peter. And Philip findeth Nathanael,
and saith unto him, we have found him of whom Moses and the law
and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And that's what our pastor always,
he takes us to Levi, he takes us to the prophets, he takes
us to the Psalms and preaches Christ. In verse 46, Nathanael
said unto him, can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?
And here's a key thing that we find that the Lord had said back
in verse 39, Come and see. And that's what pastors do. That's what anybody that's declaring
the gospel does. They take the scriptures and
they say, come and see. And Jesus saw Nathanael coming
to him and said unto him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile. Nathanael saith unto him, when
knowest thou me? And Jesus answered and said unto
him, Before Philip called thee, when thou was under the fig tree,
I saw thee. And Nathanael answered and saith
unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King
of Israel. You know, he thought he was alone
in that. fig tree. He was maybe praying
to the Lord, maybe deep in meditation, maybe contemplating who knows
what. But the Lord had his eye on him from all eternity. And
he said, I saw thee. And you know, He called Him the
Son of God, the King of Israel, and the Lord could have said
the same thing to Him that He said unto Peter. Flesh and blood
did not reveal that to you, but My Father, which is in heaven. And in verse 50, Jesus answered
and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the
fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things
than these. you haven't seen anything yet. There's always more to Jesus. So when we come to chapter 5
in the Gospel of Luke, as Jesus is preaching to a great multitude
to the point that they were pressing on Him, they were just so close
He couldn't budge hardly, to hear the Word of God, it was
according to His purpose and the determinate counsel of God.
For He said as we close chapter 4, He said, preach the kingdom
of God to other cities also for therefore am I sent. And so he
preached in the synagogues of Galilee. Then that's the closing
two verses from Luke chapter four, verse 43, 44. So he must
needs go there. He must needs go to Samaria.
He must needs go to Jericho because he said to Zacchaeus, I must
abide at thy house today. He must needs go to Galilee. And I kind of glossed over this
a little bit in my first version of this thing, as I was telling
Norman and I felt it necessary to, I felt compelled to go back
and explore this a little bit more in Samaria. And so let's take a quick side
trip to John chapter four, where he must needs go to Samaria. In John 4, verse 3, it says,
he left Judea and departed again into Galilee, and he must needs
go through Samaria. He had one of his flock there. He had a sheep there. And he
had his eye on her just the same as he did Nathanael, just the
same as he did Peter, just the same as he does with all his
people. He cometh to a city of Samaria,
which is called Sychar, verse five, near the parcel of ground
that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus,
therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the
well. And again, we have a specific time. It was the sixth hour.
And there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. And that was an odd time of day,
because it was in the heat of the day. It was a time when not
many other people were there. And she was a woman that was
not looked upon with favor. And so she came there probably
at that time every day, because that was when she would get the
least amount of grief from people. And lo and behold, the king of
kings, the lord of hosts, is sitting there on the well. But
she doesn't know him. She recognizes him as a Jew. She comes to the well and this
well, the well was the center of the city. The well was the
life of the city. Everybody had to go to the well
for their water. And as she comes to the well,
Jesus saith unto her, give me to drink. For his disciples were
gone away into the city to buy meat. I don't believe that that
was accidental. I think that that was purpose
because he wanted to be alone. And that's where people need
to be. They need to be alone with Jesus. And Jesus. He asked her, give me to drink.
Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, how is it that thou
being a Jew askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria?
For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. They were
kind of a mixed breed people and the Jews disdained to have
anything to do with them. And Jesus answered and said unto
her, if thou knewest the gift of God. You know what the gift
of God is? By grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. If thou
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee,
give me a drink, thou wouldest ask of him, and he would have
given thee living water. And the woman saith unto him,
sir, thou has nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence hast thou this living
water? Now deep here, that is in our
title of our message today, launch out into the deep and let down
your nets for a drought. Now there's two usages of this
and it's translated deep many times. And one time it's translated
when Jesus cast out some demons out of the pigs and they went
They said, don't command us to go off into the deep, which is
really, it should be translated the abyss or the bottomless pit.
But here, this deep, it's really an interesting
word and it's the basis of our study in Luke today. And a little
etymology of this word is necessary for our understanding and here
in John, This deep is an adjective which is attached to and describing
the well of Jacob. It's the source and center of
life in this city. And it's from the Greek word
bathos. And that, it means profound. It's profundity. It's very, very
deep. It's, by implication, a depth
that's beyond understanding. And so here we have this adjective. And that is from the root word
base, basis. Where we get the word basis from? Well, mathematics is the basis
for algebra. It's the foundation upon which
something is built. It's the root of it. It's the
main thing. And so that's where we get this
word, this Greek word basis is the foot or the foundation of
something. And here we have her saying,
the well is deep. And she knows not what she's
talking about really, but the Holy Spirit has recorded that
for us. and cause us to kind of look
into that a little bit. And Jesus is about to take her
in to the deep. And remember we said originally
that the deep is nothing more than the gospel. And the gospel
is so expansive. It's as simple and as complicated
as the Lord himself. There's so much more to it than
we can imagine. But it's so simple that anyone
can have it. Jesus is about to take her into
the deep. He's in the process of revealing
himself to one whom he has known and loved from all eternity. And he's meeting her at the sixth
hour. And she says, art thou greater than our father Jacob,
which gave us the well and drank thereof himself and his children
and his cattle? And Jesus, he unlocks a little
bit of the deep for her and he says, whosoever drinketh of this
water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up
into everlasting life. And you know, you think about
the Lord. He knew that back when he caused Jacob to have that
well dug. That at this very sixth hour
on this very day, when he must needs go into Samaria, that he
would meet one of his sheep there. and he would unlock to her the
well of water springing up into eternal life. The woman said
unto him, sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come
hither to draw. And Jesus said unto her, well,
go call thy husband and come hither. And the woman answered
and said, I have no husband. And Jesus said, thou has well
said, I have no husband. For thou has had five husbands,
and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband, in that thou
said is truly. I saw you under the fig tree."
Everything is naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom
we have to do. He knows His sheep. He knows
all about them and He sees them. And she said, I perceive you
are a prophet. Our father's worshiped in this
mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is a place where men
ought to worship. She's not ready to enter the
deep. She's holding back. She's saying, oh, I can't go
there. And Jesus saying in her, woman, believe me, the hour cometh
when you shall neither work in this mountain nor in yet in Jerusalem
worship the father. He says, you worship, you know
not what. And that's where we are when
we're in unregenerate state. And even after we're saved, we
don't have a full comprehension of the Lord of hosts, the Holy
One of God. He says, you worship, you know not
what we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews,
but the hour cometh and now is when true worshipers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth. For the father seeketh such to
worship him. God is a spirit. There is a spiritual
truth for us to contemplate. In the scriptures, he says, you
thought I was altogether such a one as yourself, but I'm not. I'm God Almighty. I'm the Lord
of hosts. I am the Holy One. God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And the
woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah hath come which
is called Christ, and when he is come, he will tell us all
things. And you know how this ends up. She
goes away, and you know what she says? She says, come and
see. Come and see. Come and see a
man that told me all things ever I did. Is this not the Christ?" Jesus said to her in verse 26,
she said, I know that Messiah is coming. And He says, I am
He. I am. And again, flesh and blood did
not reveal that to her. But the Lord God of hosts, the
Holy Spirit revealed that in her. She is in the deep. Come and see. And that's what
we all do when we've been regenerated. We want to tell people about
the gospel, and all we can do is say, come and see. And that's
what our pastor does whenever he preaches. He just says, here's
the gospel. Come and see. You know, Philip,
I was thinking of our pastor this morning, and one of the
things that I just love the most about him is whenever he comes
to a scripture or whenever somebody comes to him with a scripture,
he's just like Philip. He starts there and preaches
unto them Christ. Philip, if you were to look over
in Acts, the eighth chapter, we find Philip and the Spirit. He's been preaching the gospel. He said to his brother, come
and see. Now he's been preaching to the people in Azotus, I think
it is. And he said, come and see. He's
preaching the gospel and the Spirit of the Lord. The God Almighty
has his eye. He sees this Ethiopian under
his fig tree and his chariot heading down to Egypt, having
come to Jerusalem to worship whom he knew not. You worship
you know not what? Well, he's about to find out.
And the Spirit of the Lord sent somebody
with the gospel to him. the Spirit of the Lord said,
Philip, go join thyself to this chariot. And he went there, and
the Ethiopian was reading from the book of Isaiah. And Philip
said, well, do you understand what you read? And he says, no,
not really. How can I, unless some man guide
me? And Philip started at the same
scripture there and preached unto him Jesus. And the Holy
Spirit unlocked things for him. He saw Christ. And it's like
Jesus said, he began at Moses and the prophets and all the
scriptures and expounded to them the things concerning himself.
And so Philip has given him the key, and the Spirit has allowed
him that key to unlock and to launch into the deep and see
Jesus, not just in Isaiah 53 or wherever, but in all the Scriptures. And when I was reading this,
I thought, this is the same thing. This is the same thing. The eunuch
says, here is water. And water, here's the water of
the word. What doth hinder me to launch
into the deep? And Philip says, if thou believest,
if thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest. And he says,
it was just like when When the eunuch said, is this guy that
wrote this talking about himself or some other? And Philip said, come and see.
And that's what our pastor does. He brings, you bring him a scripture
and he's going to say, come and see, here's the Christ. And so now he must needs go to
Samaria. He must needs go to the Sea of
Galilee and gather there the ones whom the father had given
him from before the foundation of the world. In John 17, he's
praying to the Father about these very ones. He says in verse 11,
I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I
come to Thee, Holy Father. Keep to Thine own name those
whom Thou has given me, that they may be one as we are. While
I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name. Those
that Thou gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost, but
the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
He gathered those whom the father had given him and he's in the
process of sending them forth in the world to declare the very
gospel of himself as he died for their sins according to the
scriptures. He's about to send them out with
the word, come and see. In verse 18 of John 17, he says,
as thou has sent me into the world, even so have I also sent
them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify
myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
And neither pray I for these alone, but for them also, which
shall believe on me through their words. Just as Philip was gonna
go down to that Ethiopian eunuch and started the same scripture
and preaching to them Christ, Come and see, launch into the
deep. He's chosen by the foolishness
of preaching this to save them that believe. And now with that
in mind, we turn back to Luke 5, where we find Jesus as he's
about calling these fishermen, these ones who had been given
him from eternity by the Father, men whom he had his eye upon
and loved eternally, and men about whom he says, I know them
and they follow me. And isn't that just what we read? He said, follow me and they forsook
all and followed him. And men whose deepest and innermost
thoughts were manifest unto him, their faults, their misgivings,
their doubts, yet he sees them only through the eyes of eternal
love, through the gospel of his blood that was shed for them.
Jeremiah 31.3, we love that verse. It says, The Lord hath appeared
of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. Therefore, with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. Loved thee with an eternal love,
and kept his eye on each and every one. They've heard the
gospel. They were with John the Baptist.
And now they're about to experience so much more. He said to Nathanael,
because I saw you under the fig tree, thou sayest, I believe. He said, you're gonna see greater
things than these. The miracle, this miracle of
this fishes. Luke chapter five, verse four. Now when he had left speaking,
he said unto Simon, launch out into the deep. and let down your
nets for a draught." Now, as we learned from John chapter
five, that was used, deep was used as an adjective, but here
it's a noun. It's the same word, but it's
the noun form of that same word, profound. And, uh, There's so much more about
this than a supernatural big catch of fish that it represents. And the sheep who would hear
and believe on Jesus through their word, naturally, he says,
from now on, you're going to catch man instead of fish. But
there's so much more here. This is really about the revelation
of who and what Christ, the Lord God Almighty, the Lord of hosts
is. out into the deep. There's a
bit of a challenge to us in this verse to let go our conceptions
about Jesus to depart from where we are, which is what you do
when you launch. When we lived in Alaska, we launched
our boat all the time. We backed up to the river or
the ocean and we shoved off from where we were and we launched And the deep here is rendered
to us again from the Greek bathos. And so when you next jump into
your tub, you might think about this a little bit. However, in
the usage here in the Greek, this deep is a noun and the meaning
is really profundity, profoundness, a mystery that is so profound
and expansive in its depth as to be without measure. His ways,
you know, Paul said in Romans, and we'll read this a little
bit later here, his ways are past finding out. They're just
so expansive. Like the pictures, it reminded
me of the pictures from the Hubble telescope. You see a great specter
of grandeur, And beyond that is just more. And beyond that
is just more. And beyond that is just more.
And it just keeps going. And it's just a symbol of Jesus. There's just more. There's always
more than we expect. And then to those who sincerely
wish to grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, He
is pleased to show us more of Himself, and more of free grace,
and we are never disappointed. And no matter where we are in
our relationship with Jesus, there's always more. From the
babe that's new in Christ, to the one that's been all their
life. We go to Zechariah and we learn
something that helps us understand something in Luke. And we learn
something in Luke that helps us understand something in Leviticus
and Numbers. And there's no end to it. It just keeps expanding and expanding. It's when God cross starts dotting,
connecting the dots for you, there's no end to it. First Corinthians,
Chapter 2, verse 10 says, and he's talking about this, what
he calls in this case, a big mystery. And he said, I have
not seen or heard, neither have entered into the
heart of men the things that God had prepared for them that
love him. And that is the gospel, that is salvation, that is Christ,
that is, you know, we would see Jesus. But God hath revealed them unto
us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things. yea, the deep things of God. And there's that same word again,
the profound things, not just a measure of water, but the deep,
profound, the expansiveness, the manifold wisdom of God. It's
such a broad spectrum that we can't even see it, see it all. We can only see a glimpse, a
little bit of it through the glass darkly, as Paul said. And
most often, When we see something like this, when we experience
something like this, it's so wonderful in scope and expansiveness
that we say, kind of like David the psalmist, he said, it's too
wonderful for me. It's high. I cannot attain. I can't take it all away. It's
too much. And so sometimes we kind of draw
back from it a little bit because it kind of overwhelms us with
the wonderfulness of us, the grandeur of it. And, you know,
Paul wrote about that as we mentioned in Romans 11. Having launched
out from the physical things of this world and had knowledge
only of the Scriptures, he experienced the deep and he wrote to the
church of it. In Romans 11.33, he says, Oh, the depth, and it's
the same word, the profoundness, of the riches, both of the wisdom
and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments
and his ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of
the Lord or who hath been his counselor, who hath first given
to him and it shall be recompense unto him again. For of him and
through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever,
amen. You know what he's saying there
is God is working all things for good. of Him, and through
Him, and to Him are all things. And He's working them for good
to them who love God, who are the called according to His purpose.
That is the deep, friends. As believers, sometimes we're
a little afraid to launch into the deep because we're comfortable
where we are and it seems solid and not much is required or expected. When we go out in the deep, the
boat gets a little rocky and a little scary sometimes. We draw back and we're not really
ready to let go. And we rely instead on known
physical things and we tend to think one dimensionally. And,
you know, I appreciated so much what Wednesday night when Pastor
Norm was telling us about the Lord of Hosts. And he went to
a verse or two over in 2 Kings chapter 17 about Elisha and his
servant. And this servant was so filled
with anxiety because he got up in the morning and he saw that
they were surrounded by the enemy. And he went in and woke up Elisha
there in verse 15 of 2 Kings chapter 6. And he said, Alas,
my master, how shall we do? And Elisha, he's been in the
deep. He said, fear not, for they that
be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha
prayed and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may
see. He was just going to see what
was there all along, but he just didn't have the eyes to see it.
But they were there. And the Lord opened the eyes
of the young man and he saw, and behold, the mountain was
full of horses and chariots and fire round about Elisha. And they that be with us are
more. And there was also a verse that
our pastor brought out in his Malachi study from chapter three,
and usually this verse is tendered in a way to kind of monetize
the gospel, but in reality, it's just another way of launching
out into the deep. In Malachi 3.10, it says, bring
you all the tithes into the storehouse. that there may be meat in mine
house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I
will not open to you the windows of heaven and pour you out a
blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
You launch out into the deep, my friends, and then you get
ready for a haul. And this tithing is here, it's
just a metaphor for faith, exercising faith in the Lord. Bring it to
me, test me, and I'll give you a blessing that
you won't be able to take it all in. And when we launch out
into the deep, some important things happen which are not reversible. You get a right conception of
the Holy One of God, the Lord of hosts. And you can never go
back. Once you see the Lord of glory,
you can't go back. You are never the same. Your
view of yourself becomes clear and then your deliverance becomes
so much more precious because you see what you've been delivered
from and who delivered you. 1 Corinthians 1.30 says, But
of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom,
and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that according
as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. When
the true nature of the Lord is revealed to us, we look at ourselves
like Peter did here in chapter 5. He says, I've launched into
the deep. Lord, depart from me, for I am
a sinful man. Like Paul, this is a faithful
saying. He said, Jesus Christ came into
the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. That's how he
saw himself after he launched into the deep. Now unto the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and
ever, amen. That's how he saw it now. Like
Isaiah chapter six, he said, He had a vision. He said, I saw
the Lord high and lifted up on a throne. His train filled the
temple, and above it stood the seraphims. And one cried unto
the other, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole
earth is full of His glory. And he said, woe is me, for I
am a man of unclean lips in the midst of a people of unclean
lips. For my eyes have seen the King,
the Lord of hosts. And you know what happened? The
Lord took care of that. He flew one of the seraphims
unto me, having a live coal in his hands, which he had taken
with the tongs from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth
and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity
is taken away, and thy sin is purged. Thy sin is purged. And like Jeremiah, You know,
in Jeremiah chapter one, the word of the Lord came unto him
saying, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And
before thou came as forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee
and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. And you know
what Jeremiah said? He said, Lord God, I can't speak. I'm just a child. And the Lord
said, Say not, I am a child. For thou shalt go to all that
I send thee, and whatsoever I command thee shalt thou speak. Be not
afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith
the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth.
And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth."
Man. He's launched into the deep.
And he said, I don't know what to say. And the Lord says, I'll
take care of that. Once you launch out into the
deep and you see the King and His beauty, find that in Isaiah
33, 7, you can't go back to a lesser view of God. And the challenge
today is to launch out into the deep, to plumb the depths of
the profound riches of His grace to us. who are saved by grace
and called according to his eternal purpose. Launch out into the
deep, the deep of the gospel, and let down your nets for a
haul. And as always, my friends, be
free.