Let Down Your Net John 21: 4-14
But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt [his] fisher's coat [unto him], (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them,” Bring of the fish, which ye have now caught.” Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, Come [and] dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his disciples, after that he was risen from the dead.
Often, when people are placed in a position of authority, their personality seems to change! Where previously they had been friendly and down-to-earth, suddenly they become bossy and unreasonable! There is a good example of this in our Bibles. The kingdom of King Solomon was the golden age of ancient Israel, but once he transferred his power to his son, Rehoboam, that man became ruthless and unyielding. When the people asked him to lighten their taxes, he replied, “My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. 1 Kings 12:11. Power many times tends to corrupt.
This was never the case with our Savior. The writer to the Hebrews tells us, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. Jesus is eternal, He has neither beginning nor end, but these words tell us even more. They tell us that He is always the same. He is the same after His resurrection as He was before. He was born a humble infant, a man among men. He went about doing good to His fellowman, urging people to repent and to find in Him forgiveness. His own people, however, despised Him, rejected Him, and perpetrated the greatest crime in the history of the world. They put to death God’s only Son. Judging by the standards of our world, we could easily have expected our resurrected Lord to set up a world court, where He would try His captors and execute them for their crime in the name of justice.
What happened is the exact opposite. Instead of condemning humankind, we read that Jesus loved humankind, “for God so loved the world that whosever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3: 16 When Jesus appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, He did not appear as an untouchable Lord and Master, but He appeared as He had been before, as one who humbly came to seek and to serve. “He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” Luke 22:26. He bore no airs of the authority that was rightfully His, but as the Prophet Isaiah had prophesied, “a bruised reed He would never break, and smoking flax He would never quench.” Isaiah 42:3 Each individual sinner had always been important to our Savior; their problems are His problems, their concerns are His concerns. Think of His meeting with doubting Thomas. He did not enter the room on that Sunday after Easter and denounce Thomas for his unbelief or ignore him. Instead, in a kindly way, He called him by his name, and then in an act of unbelievable humility, the Almighty Lord let this sinful man touch the scar marks on His body. Jesus’ greatest concern was not to show His power, but that this doubting disciple would not lose his faith.
It is the same way with our text. One morning, while seven of His disciples were fishing on a lake, Jesus appeared on the shore and called out to them, “Children, have ye any meat?” They answered Him, “No,” supposing that He was some stranger walking along the beach. They had been fishing all night and hadn’t caught a thing. When the voice came back, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find,” they tried that. They had nothing to lose. To their great surprise, the net was so full of fish that they were not able to get it into the boat. At once, the Apostle John recognized that the stranger on the shore could be none other than Jesus, and so he called out to the Apostle Peter, “It is the Lord.” Peter never changed. He was always the first to act and the first to talk. He immediately abandoned everything, boat as well as fish, put on a shirt, jumped into the water and headed straight to Jesus.
In the meantime, the remaining disciples were left to struggle with a net so full of fish that they couldn’t get it into the boat. In an effort to get to see Jesus, they dragged the boat, net and all, some 300 feet to shore. Their astonishment didn’t end with this miraculous catch of fish. There, on the shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish roasting on it and nearby a basket of bread. Immediately Jesus turned them to the work at hand and said, “Bring the fish to shore,” whereupon Peter returned to the boat and helped the others drag the net onto the beach, where they counted their catch – 153 large fish. This was undoubtedly the best day’s work of their lives.
When their catch was safely stowed away, Jesus called out to them, “Come and eat.” Once they sat down, He served them a wonderful breakfast of roasted fish with bread, but apparently, no one spoke a word. They would love to have started a conversation by asking Him, “Who are you,” but they knew who He was. That’s the point of the text. This was more than the Son of Man with whom they had lived. This was their resurrected Lord who had a body no longer confined to time and space, who had all power in heaven and in earth, and in whose hands were the issues of life and of death. He shouldn’t be making them breakfast; they should be making breakfast for Him.
The truth of this text is overwhelming. “Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and to day, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. The same Jesus that was here on earth is at the right hand of the Father with this difference, that He is no longer confined to the land of Palestine or to the limits of our clock. Him, whom thousands and thousands of angels worship day and night, “Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing,” Revelation 5:12, that Lord is our Lord, and He is with us this morning. Although He is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, His love for humankind and particularly for His children hasn’t changed. His love for us doesn’t stop with the forgiveness of our sins through His sacrifice on the cross. He walks by the shores of our lives every day and blesses the work to which we put our hands. He puts the food on our tables, and He supplies our every need. Think of the touching picture from Psalm 23, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” Jesus is no stranger on the shore, but almighty God who will do anything and everything for His children.
No wonder the world is so miserable. They talk about Jesus but they don‘t know Him. They know He was born in a stable, they know He was a great moral leader; they know He died on a cross. They know all about His life, but they know nothing of His resurrection, of His redeeming love for them. How often, in the last week, haven’t we heard, even from officials of government, the blasphemous remark that Mohammed and Jesus are equally great men of God, each in their own right? The Apostle Peter set the record straight when he preached, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
Today’s beautiful text is a call to repentance in a very positive way. Although God’s holy law condemns us for our failures, in this text, the Savior overwhelms us with His love. Just as our almighty Lord humbled Himself to make breakfast for His undeserving disciples, so He has prepared an even greater feast for His repentant children. In the holy Sacrament, He gives us the very body and blood given and shed on Calvary’s cross. No matter how grave our sin, no matter how often we slip, we have in the Sacrament forgiveness, and strength for a new life, and the hope of everlasting life in heaven. “Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and to day, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8.