Now, I want to, I'm going to
go back to the book of John in just a little bit, but I want
to begin in the book of Matthew chapter 11. So if you would go
to Matthew chapter 11, and I'm gonna be going from Matthew 11
to the end of John, John chapter 21, and I'm also gonna be making
reference to that passage I read to you in the book of Luke chapter
five. And so you might want to put
a bookmark or a ribbon in especially John chapter 21 and also Luke
chapter 5 because those, and I'm sure you noticed as I read
that passage in Luke chapter 5, it has quite a bit of a parallel
to the portion of scripture that we dealt with last Wednesday
evening, when the disciples had gone fishing, at least seven
of them had gone fishing, and the Lord Jesus then appeared
to them. And that's very, very close to
what we just read in Luke chapter five. But I'm going to begin
in Matthew 11 because I want to make a couple of needed points
here, a couple of observations. And let me just say that our
Lord's entire life, all of his life, was a sermon. He was the prophet of God who
is mighty in word and in deed. And he's mighty in his words
and in his works. Now we know that his works attested
to his identity as being God. It showed that he was all powerful
and that he had all authority over all things. I just read
to you there from Luke chapter five, this is the Lord who controls
all the fishes in the lakes and in the seas. He said, launch
out into the deep. Generally, from what I've read
about the Sea of Galilee and Lake Gennesaret, that the fish
weren't in the depths of the water, they were nearer to the
shore. But you see, our Lord, he's sovereign
over all of his creatures. And so he says, launch out into
the deep. And they did, and they cast their
nets. And of course, they couldn't hardly bring all the fish in
that had swam into the nets. And it was our Lord Jesus who
sovereignly governed those fish. And this was a massive school
of fish. And they just all, they all congregated
right into the net. Why was that? That's because
our Lord sovereignly ruled over them. You get over into the book
of Exodus. There in the book of Exodus,
you know, the Lord showed his authority over frogs, flies,
lice, locusts. They came when he said to appear. And when he said, go away, they
went away. This is our Lord. This is our
Lord who is sovereign over all things. He's mighty in His works,
and He's mighty in His words. What He spake, His words were
weighty. He never had empty words. He
never used useless words. He was never speaking just to
fill up some airtime, as it were. Every word that came forth from
him was like, well, it was sweeter than the honey to the taste of
his people. But not only His words were very
precious, and not only do we learn and did the people in the
New Testament who were near Him, not only did they learn, if the
Spirit of God opened their ears, not only did they learn from
His words, but they also learned from His works. Because as I
said, every, every work that our Lord performed was indeed
a message. It was full of meaning. In fact,
sometimes I think that maybe we could gather as much, if not
even more, from the Lord's works as we did from his words, because
all of the works had spiritual meaning to them, and they were
full of value to those who have spiritual perception to see them. Here in Matthew chapter 11, John
the Baptist is in prison. He sends a couple of his disciples
to Jesus of Nazareth. And I'll just read the text here.
Look at the second verse, Matthew 11. I'm sure you're there by
now. Now when John, that is John the Baptist, when John had heard
in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples
and he told them to say to him, art thou he that should come
or do we look for another? Jesus answered and he said unto
them, go and show or manifest or reveal to John again those
things which you hear, there's his words, and you see, that's
his works. Well, what works? Well, number
one, the blind receive their sight. Isn't there a sermon in
that? Isn't there a message in that?
There's a message of man's inability, man's blindness. I'm not talking
about physical blindness now, we're talking about spiritual
blindness. Man's inability to see and perceive the identity
of God The attributes of God? The nature of God? The omnipotence
of God? They were blind. And we're all
blind by nature. And blind to see our own condition. We're sinners who are alienated
from God. We're laden with iniquity. We
can't even see our own defilement. We can't even see how rotten
our righteousnesses are, righteousnesses upon which we naturally lean
on and trust. But we're blind to our own defilement. And then we're blind to the beauties
and the glories of Christ Jesus. We're blind to who he is. We're
blind to the necessity of him coming into this old world. We're blind to what he did. Oh, people are very much aware, pretty
much at least, of the fact that he died, but men are blind as
to the reason that he died. The reason that he suffered.
It was that God might be just and justify the ungodly, but
we're blind to that. And this is what the Lord Jesus
says to these disciples. You go back and you tell John,
the blind received their sight. There's a sermon. That's a whole
sermon in that. But he's just beginning. He says,
and secondly, the lame walk. That's another mighty work of
our Savior. The lame walk. That shows our
inability to come to Christ. Our Lord Jesus said, come unto
me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest.
Well, why don't we come? Well, we have neither the will
nor the ability to come to Christ. We're lame. We're lame. John 5, 40, the Savior says,
you will not come to me. John 6, 44, he says, you cannot
come to me. We won't come, we can't come.
What's the reason for that? Lameness. But it's the same Savior who
gives the gift of sight, who gives the ability to draw
near to Him. As it were, He heals us of our
lameness. And then here's another sermon.
The lepers are cleansed. There's another message right
there. Leprosy, that's us, that's our
defilement. But He's the one who cleanses
us. He washes us. He makes us to
be whole. The deaf hear another sermon. The deaf hear. You know, you
preach the gospel to people and people who are unbelievers, they're
really deaf to the message. And you may preach the threats
of God, the threat of everlasting judgment. That doesn't really
move people. Why not? Because they're deaf.
They really don't hear it. They can't perceive what is being
said. They don't understand the reality
of judgment. And if you preach them the sweetness
of the gospel, of forgiveness, of righteousness, of a gracious justification,
if you preach to them the wonders of being with the Lord Jesus
forever and ever, they can't hear that either. What is the
problem then? Deafness. Men and women and boys
and girls are spiritually deaf. It's the Lord Jesus who enables
us to hear. Do you hear his voice? Do you
hear him speak? Do you hear what he has to say
in his word? The hearing ear and the seeing
eye, the Lord gives them both. And then he says, the dead are
raised up. Here's another sermon. Here's
a sermon in his work of raising the dead. What could Lazarus do? Nothing. He couldn't give himself life.
Well, what about us? And I know we're responsible.
All men and women are responsible to believe the gospel, to believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God's commandment that
you believe in him whom he has sent. God commands all men everywhere
to repent. Well, why don't they? Why don't we? Why didn't we years
ago? Because we were dead. And you see in each of these
miniature sermons, We have the inability of the sinner, the
inability of you and me, but it is over against, said over
against that is the ability of Christ Jesus to right that which
is wrong, to make whole those who are sick and to raise to
new life those who are dead. How can he do that? Because he
is life. That's the reason. And he says, the poor have the
gospel preached to them. They hear, that's his words. So here's what I'm endeavoring
to said before you is that every miracle of our Lord Jesus is
a message. It's a message. And I'll show
you that tonight as you go back to John chapter 21. Go back to
John chapter 21. Our Lord's miracles were messages. Every single one of his works
were full of truth. His miracles were, they were
sermons preached in deeds. And since I mentioned that to
you and I've kind of worked on that a little bit, now you go
through, you who are the people of God, you could go through
this evening and go through miracle after miracle. And as you consider
the wondrous works of the Lord Jesus, the mighty works that
he wrought, you will see in every single one of them a wonderful
sermon. Now, John chapter 21. Let me read, I'll tell you, I'll begin
in verse three, just to kind of refresh your memory. John
chapter 21, verse three, Simon Peter said to the other disciples
who were with him, there were seven of them in all, and I think
it's worth noting, And I'll just touch on this and pass over it.
In both of these instances, when the Lord Jesus causes a great
catch of fish, in both of them, it is Peter who is kind of at
the, stands out anyway. He's the one the Lord spoke to
back there in Luke chapter five. Here is Simon Peter and he says
to the other six apostles who were with him, we don't know
where the other ones were at this point, but he says to them
in verse three, I go a fishing. I'm going back to my former livelihood. We would assume, we know that
John was there and, Also James, and of course there was these
other men who are mentioned. But I mentioned James and John
because there in Luke chapter five is Peter, James, and John
again. So he says, Peter says, I go
fishing. They say unto him, we also go
with thee. They went forth, they entered
into a ship immediately and that night they caught nothing. Now
there's a parallel there because in Luke chapter five, Peter said
to the Savior, we have toiled all night. These men worked the
graveyard shift. They did it in Luke chapter five,
this is the way it is here in John chapter 21. They worked
the graveyard shift and they caught nothing. Another parallel,
they caught nothing back in Luke chapter five. Now when the morning
was now come, as it was getting daylight, Jesus stood on the
shore. But the disciples knew not that
it was Jesus. Then Jesus said of them, children,
and I love this, have ye any meat? I love the way he addressed
them. And next Wednesday, I'm really
going to work on that, the Lord willing. Children, the pity in
his voice, the love in his voice, the tenderness in his voice.
Have you any meat? Have you caught anything? Now
we know, I know, and each of you know, the Lord Jesus, the
Lord our God, never asks a question for information. It is to bring
to their awareness even more of the fact that they had worked
all night, had nothing to show for it. And he said unto them,
verse six, cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye
shall find. They cast therefore, and neither
were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Now, There are several things
I think we can learn from this miracle and the one in Luke chapter
five. Let me just give these to you
briefly. First of all, the casting of
the net. It pictures the preaching of
the gospel. If you would, go to another passage
in Matthew chapter 13. Look at Matthew chapter 13. And
this, you know, the Lord, the parables of Matthew chapter 13,
I'm sure you're familiar with them. As we go back here to Matthew
chapter 13, I'll begin reading at verse 47. Now, and I'll say this before
I begin to read, the fish of Luke chapter five and John chapter
21, they didn't just jump into the net. Labor was involved. There were
ships or boats, fishing boats, nets, fishermen. They didn't just all of a sudden
appear fish for these men. They worked, they worked at it. They labored casting out a net
Now, let me read Matthew 13, 47. Again, the kingdom of heaven
is likened to a net that was cast into the sea and gathered
of every kind, which when it was full, they drew to shore
and sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the
bad away. So shall it be at the end of
the world. The angels shall come and they
shall sever the wicked from among. the just and shall cast them,
the wicked, into the furnace of fire. There should be wailing
and gnashing of teeth." Here in this parable, our Lord likens
casting a net into the sea to preaching of the gospel. Preaching
of the gospel. It's not easy work. It involves
commitment. It involves labor. In both of these passages, these
fishermen worked all night. All night. And as we cast out
the gospel net, we cast it into the sea of mankind. Because we don't know who the
people of God are. We don't know who the elect are.
Now I know God, there was an election of grace and God has
a chosen people. There's no question about that
and you're a fool to deny that. Because the Word of God is full
of sovereign grace. God chose a people unto salvation. But we don't know who they are. How are they going to be identified? How are we going to know who
they are? They will receive the gospel. They will believe the message.
That's how we'll know. You see, if you're seeking to
know your election, you can only know your election by believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the evidence of it. So we cast the gospel net out
into the sea of mankind. In this parable, we find that
the net caught good fish and bad fish. Because there are many
people who make professions of faith, they perhaps get emotional,
they get afraid of going to hell, and they think, well, I need
to do something, I need to get into church, and they make a
false profession of faith, they're the bad fish. But our duty, our commitment
is not, or our, Responsibility is not to decide who the good
and who the bad are. No, that'll be settled at the
end. That's what it says. The angels will do the separating
according to the commandment of Christ Jesus. What is our
duty? What is our responsibility? Cast
out the gospel net. That's our responsibility. And then we trust the Lord to
bring his people in and it will be through the preaching of the
gospel, through the casting of the net. Now here's the second
thing I wanna mention to you. The instruction learned from
casting out the net for fish in John chapter 21 was a repeated
lesson from Luke chapter five. I would remind you of this, that
passage of scripture in Luke chapter five, that happened right
at the beginning when our Lord was revealing himself to his
apostles. It's at the beginning of their
ministry. Okay, at the beginning of their
ministry. Because I read there in Luke
chapter five, that that's when the men forsook all and followed
him. That's when he said to them,
fear not from henceforth thou shalt catch men. These were men who were used
to casting a net into the sea and catching fish. And our Lord
Jesus said to them, when he called them, he said, follow me and
I'll make you fishers of men. Now that was at the very beginning
of their ministry. Well, what about this over here
in John chapter 21? This is at the very end of his
earthly ministry to them. The one happened at the beginning
of their ministry, the Savior, He called them to be casters
of the gospel net. And in John chapter 21, this
is at the very end of his ministry. And remember, we've already said
this, that after our Lord's resurrection, in between that time and his
ascension, he only revealed himself, he only taught, he only spoke
to his people. So this is our Lord Jesus in
John chapter 21. He is instructing once again,
his disciples in the art of fishing, not for fish. Literally that
was it, but the art of fishing for men. Because remember, we're
looking for a message. We're looking for a sermon in
this miracle. You see, every one of our Lord's
miracles, here's a good way to express it, was an object lesson.
And you know how valuable object lessons are. And our Lord used
object lessons to give tremendous instruction to his followers
during his ministry. The object lesson might be bread,
it might be water, It could have been anything and he used a number
of things to teach and through these works that he did, his
works and his words, all of them set forth the truth. Our Lord
is ready to lead these men. In fact, just a page or two over
in the book of Acts chapter one, he's going to give them some
final instructions and then he's going to send back to heaven. But you see, nothing really,
certainly not the message and not the means, the means have
not changed since he anointed them to preach. And even here
at the end of his time of instruction with them, before he goes back
to glory, the means is still the same. It hadn't changed. What will be the means? cast
out the gospel net. That's what he told them at the
beginning of their ministry. And now he is ready to leave
them and he is giving to them some last words of wisdom. He's still teaching them. They must continue to cast out
the gospel net. Now, perhaps in both cases, in
Luke chapter 5 and here in John chapter 21, perhaps there were
those who observed these men fishing with no success. Maybe
somebody went for a late night walk or an early morning walk
and they see these guys and they say, hey, how's the fishing out
there? And they said, no good. No good. And maybe the person on the shore
who was yelling out to the fishermen out in the boat who are still
casting their net and coming up absolutely empty, maybe that
person on the shore might suggest to them, maybe you wanna try
another method. You see, that's what people do
in religion today. Preaching the gospel. Hey, I've
been preaching for a long time, and over the years I have noticed
this, and today you can really see it. Preaching is demoted
now to just give a little short devotional. Preaching has been
replaced by entertainment, programs, committees, gimmicks, Excitement. I'll tell you what we need, preacher.
We need more music that will get the foot stomping. And get
people to clap in their hands. Preacher, the old songs, that
was for another generation. We need to get with, we need
this new, the new music. And we need some exciting instruments. We need to get people more involved
in the service. And why don't you have somebody
up here with a tambourine and get brother Joe, give him a tambourine
and let's get some excitement in our service. Maybe things
will happen then. No, we'll just keep casting the gospel
net. See, there's always somebody
who's ready to do things different. We need to change our approach.
No, no. I like Jeremiah's words, seek
for the old paths. Well, what was it that worked
in days gone by? What worked in the Reformation?
What worked in the days of Spurgeon? and the Spurgeon of our day,
Brother Mahan. What worked for him in his ministry? And y'all said under his ministry,
and of course I learned from his ministry, what worked then?
What did he do? Programs, gimmicks, excitement? No. He had the gospel net and
he faithfully cast it out. Trusting the Lord, to cause the
fish to swim in. We cast out the gospel net. You see, I know that men who
cast the gospel net are sinful men. I'm one of them. So we read in 2 Corinthians,
we have this treasure in earthen vessels. but it's that the glory of God
would be manifested, the greatness of God, the greatness of Christ
Jesus will be seen in that he uses nobodies to preach to everybody
the glories of somebody, Christ Jesus. You've probably seen signs on
churches. They'll have the church where
everybody is somebody. We're nobodies. We're nobodies. He's the somebody, he's all things. He's all in all to the people
of God. And our business, our sole business
is to faithfully cast forth the gospel net. Our duty is clearly set before
us in this word picture, in this object lesson. What were the men doing to begin
with? Casting out the net. What are
they still doing here in John 21? Going about it the same way. Hey, this is the right way. please God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. And then notice this,
here's something else I wanna show you. And if you would go
back to Luke chapter five with me. And I'll read it if you can't
get there quick enough. In Luke chapter five, here's
the third thing I wanna show you. The casting out of the gospel
net, it does mean that we are to be always inspecting the net
that we're using, making sure there's no debris in it, that
there isn't a rip in the net. Now the gospel net is perfect,
but it's handled by imperfect men. That's why we must always
be on guard and inspect the net. Look how it begins here. Luke
5, and it came to pass that as the people pressed upon him to
hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and
he saw two ships standing by the lake, but the fishermen were
gone out of them. They were washing their nets. Washing their nets. You don't
want any debris in the nets. You don't want anything faulty
about the nets. And we must all, we must consistently
do this kind of step back and examine the net that we're casting
out. Because we know, we know how
easy it is for error to slip in because we've seen it happen
to others. So what must we do? We must evaluate,
inspect, examine, using the microscope of the Word of God, the gospel
net that we're casting out. Is it still the pure net? Is it only the grace of God? Because you see it's so easy
for works to slip in there. This was the issue in the Galatian
church. These Judaizers, they kind of
slid into the congregation and they didn't out and out deny
the deity of Christ Jesus. They didn't do that. They didn't
deny his death upon the cross of Calvary. They just added to
it a little bit of works. Here's the apostle Paul. He comes
along and says, you need to examine your net. You got some seaweed
in your net. Yeah, the net's picked up some
debris. Need to get rid of that. And
make sure we're casting out the gospel net faithfully, but always
casting out the pure gospel of Christ Jesus, of the grace of
God. And then here's something else I wanna show you. Fourthly,
the casting out of the net of the gospel is useless and powerless,
and perhaps powerless is a better word to use, apart from the presence
of the Lord Jesus. You see, in both instances, here
in Luke chapter five and in John chapter 21, when they were casting
the nets out, he wasn't there. He wasn't present. Now he comes,
he had been preaching in Galilee and at the end of Luke chapter
four. And then of course he comes to
this Gennesaret and that part of the Sea of Galilee or the
Lake of Tiberias, it's called also. He came to that part and
there were the ships and the ships were empty. They were already
back to shore. He hadn't been there when they
were fishing. And here in John 21, they'd been out all night
fishing, and they hadn't caught anything then, and He wasn't
there then. And we learn a valuable lesson.
When we're casting forth the gospel net, we must always be
aware we need His power and His presence. Otherwise, nothing
of any use will be accomplished. We got to have the presence of
Christ Jesus by His Spirit. We've got to have His power. It remains today as it was back
then. He said, without me, you can
do nothing. Go ahead and cast out the gospel
net, but if He's not here, You just using up time. It's all this. Remember what he said in John
chapter 12, and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.
This spake he of the death that he should die. By his death,
he drew men from every nation, effectually unto himself. And through the preaching of
the gospel as we lift him up, Through the proclamation of the
truth, he draws men to himself. See, this is very, very humbling. He says here in John 21, children,
have ye any meat? No. Had they been busy? Yes. Have they been faithful to their
occupation, their trade? Yes. They toiled all night. Was fishing
something that was new to them? No. Did they know how to fish? Don't
you men know how to fish? Hey, we were fishing when you
was knee high to a grasshopper. That's what Peter, James, and
John would say. We've always was raised as fishermen. You see, the Savior will not
desert the means. The means remains the same. casting forth the gospel net.
But he will remind us that though we seek to do everything exactly
right after all that we do without him, it's all futile. It'll come to nothing. He didn't condemn them. for where
they were fishing nor the manner in which they were fishing. They
were doing everything right, but they didn't have his presence
and they didn't have his power. Which leads me to say this, The
catching of the fish, both in Luke chapter five and here in
John chapter 21. The catching of the fish was
miraculous, but the means that was used was just ordinary. The catching of the fish was
marvelous, but the fishermen were just fishermen. They were
doing what fishermen do. The ships were just ordinary
ships. The nets were just ordinary nets. But you see, our Lord is very
pleased to use ordinary things because that way he gets the
glory. He sends Samson out against the
Philistines. If he had gone out there with
his fists raised, and just clean house with his fists. Everybody
would have been bragging on Samson's fists. Lord said, don't use your
fists, use the jawbone of an ass. Well, that's not very glorious. You know who gets the glory then?
You know who gets the credit then? The Lord does. Our duty is casting out the gospel
net, remembering that we're just fishermen. And we wanna do what fishermen
are supposed to do, cast out the gospel net. We're fishers
of men. Now, maybe some of you are thinking,
well, I'm no fisherman. I'm no preacher. I love hearing the gospel, but
pastor, as far as casting out the gospel net, I get tongue
tied. What can I do? You can be a supporter
of those who do fish. Sure. You say you can't preach? Can you pray? I could never put a sermon together.
Can you encourage? I could never set forth the truth
like a preacher of the gospel does. Can you give away a bulletin? Could you get a CD? or a DVD
and give it to a neighbor or a friend or relative and say,
you know, this blessed me. Would you listen to this or would
you watch this? And I won't even ask you what
you think of it. I just, I just, I was thinking about you and
I want, I want to give this to you. You can do that, can't you? You see in your own way, you
are assisting in casting out the gospel myth. And we always remember this. If any fish swims into the gospel
net, they will swim into the gospel
net due to the drawing power of our great God and Savior,
Christ Jesus. And they'll just swim on in. In fact, there's a, I'll just
give you this. In Luke chapter five there, it
says, when it talked about the great
multitude of fishes that they brought them to shore, the meaning
is it was a live catch. These fish aren't dead, they're
alive. They're alive. And it reminds me that Psalm
110 verse three, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy
power. And I'll tell you, he makes men
alive. And he can say, swim into that
net right there. And I'll tell you something else,
I'll leave this with you. In both Luke chapter five and
John chapter 21, both, Both the hauls of fish, both
loads of fish were taken to land. And I think that picture's everlasting
glory. All of the Lord's fish, all those he purposed to save,
he gonna bring them all to land. And this is what he's gonna use.
the casting out of the gospel net. Sure is a privilege to be
involved in this ministry, isn't it? And you should be thankful even
as I'm thankful that God would use folks like us in the labor of the truth. And
we'll ask him to give an increase according to his will. Let's
pray.