fishing

Learning Something New Every Day

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I’ve been listening to The Bible Podcast by Tara-Leigh Cobble on Audible lately. It’s really supposed to supplement a daily reading Bible plan, but since I’ve been reading the Bible on a different plan, I’m basically listening to the segments straight through. It’s been like getting a crash course on the entire Bible in five-minute segments.

One thing I learned blew my mind a bit. It was after Jesus rose from the grave and met the disciples while they were fishing unsuccessfully. He told them to cast the net on the other side, and when they did they caught 153 fish, nearly breaking their net.

Apparently, there are 153 different kinds of fish in the Sea of Galilee, so they caught one of every kind. That harkened back to Jesus telling these disciples that soon they would be fishing for people instead of fish. This was a visual way of telling them that the gospel they preached was to be for everyone.

That means that in heaven there will be people from every single people group, language, skin color, ethnicity, country, and race. When Jesus returns, there will be no more unreached people groups left. Every one will have heard the good news. That means that this mission Jesus gave to us, His church, will not fail.

That should give us greater joy and hope. We can share the good news knowing that it’s never in vain. While not everyone will believe our message every time, we can know that what we preach and teach never returns void. We can labor with the confidence that God is at work mightily through what we do in the strength and power of His Holy Spirit in us.

I love the scene in Revelation when the heavenly throne room is crowded with people from every tongue, tribe, and race. I don’t know if we’ll each be singing in our heart languages and understand each other or if we’ll have a new heavenly vocabulary that we all share. But I do know the song will be the same and the God we sing to will be the same and the eternal praise that comes from joyful lips and hearts will be the same.

“I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:

The slain Lamb is worthy!
Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!
Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!

Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:

To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength,
For age after age after age.

The Four Animals called out, “Oh, Yes!” The Elders fell to their knees and worshiped” (Revelation 5:11-14, The Message).

Sinking Boats and Community

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 “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon answered “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets started to tear. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they were about to sink” (Luke 5:4-7, NET).

I believe God spoke to me this morning during the sermon. What He said wasn’t part of the sermon, but it was in the text that my pastor was reading. It had to do with the disciples in the boat as they obeyed Jesus’ command to cast out their nets.

I believe that this text shows the importance of community. Without the other boat nearby, Peter’s boat surely would have capsized. If he didn’t have the support of fellow disciples, there’s no way he could have brought in that catch of fish.

That’s how it is with modern disciples. Often, it’s not our failures that sink us but rather our successes. I think that is worthy of a repeat: it’s not when we fail that can cause us to go under as much as it is when we succeed without a proper foundation or framework underneath us.

We need community. We need people who will tell us the truth and not always what we want to hear. We need people who can help us put both failure and success into their proper perspectives. So many times, a believer alone can take his or her eyes off of Jesus when there’s an unexpected failure or success. We can focus on the event rather than on God. We need people around us reminding us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, not what’s right or what’s wrong.

Lord, help us to lean on each other in community so that we won’t give up when we fail or get puffed up when we succeed. Keep us in the humility that doesn’t make us think more or less of ourselves but rather helps us think of ourselves less and the people around us more. Amen.