Go Away LORD! (Luke 5:1-11)

‘Jesus Calls a Sinners to be his Disciple'

¹ After healing Simon Peter’s Mother-in-law and many other as well as casting out many demons, Jesus goes down to lakeshore. Jesus visited a variety of places where the people were and here we find him at the lake with people crowding all around him. Some may have hoped to be healed; others may have wanted to see a miraculous sign, but were told that the crowd around Jesus wanted to hear the ‘word of God’.  So Jesus was teaching the people and they were hearing the ‘word of God’!

² The people are crowding in on Jesus and he sees two boats by the water’s edge; which the fishermen had left there while they cleaned their nets. ³ Jesus had been sent to preach and here we find him concerned that people could hear his ‘kingdom gospel’. Then Jesus gets into Simon’s fishing boat and tells Simon to push the boat a little from the shore. He does and Jesus teaches the people from the boat; the water and the shore making a kind of natural amphitheater. Then when Jesus finishes teaching the people he makes a peculiar request.

Simon had used his resources and his vocation to help enable Jesus to teach the people. Then when Jesus finished his teaching this prophet, Rabbi, and “would be” Messiah tells the experienced fisherman, Simon, to the put the boat out into the deep waters and to let down the nets for a catch. After a long night of fishing all night with nothing to show for it Simon puts the boat out into the deep waters and lets down the nets for a catch. For Simon this sounds rather futile since they caught nothing all night and the fish don’t feed during the day. Yet, Simon will do it not because it makes sense, but because Jesus said so! Simon is a knowledgeable fisherman and Jesus is not, but Simon listens and obeys what Jesus tells him to do! 

This prophetic teacher of ‘good news’ to the poor and liberation for the oppressed tells this experienced fisherman who has labored all night to no avail to set out in the deep waters and let down the nets for a catch. ⁵ Simon would likely have thought the request to be a waste of time but he did it out of respect for Jesus, who he calls Master. Simon says, “Because you say so, I will let down the nets.” Oddly, when Simon listens and obeys Jesus they catch an extraordinary once in a lifetime catch. ⁶ When Simon did what seemed like a waste of time because Jesus said so it resulted in the biggest catch of fish they had ever seen in their lives. The catch was so large that their nets were tearing. They couldn’t contain all the fish and so they call for their fishing partners in their boat and they filled both boats until both boats were sinking down.

⁸ The catch astonished Simon Peter, his companions and to his fishing partners, James and John. Seeing the extraordinary catch Simon falls down before Jesus’ knees. Evidently, Simon fell before Jesus’ knees since Jesus would have been surrounded by the fish in the boat. Simon can only say, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” The astonishing catch gave Simon a sense of his own unworthiness to be around such a ‘holy man’ like Jesus.  ⁹ Simon saw himself as a sinner who could contaminate a holy man who was so close to God like Jesus was. However, Jesus assures Simon by saying “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” ¹¹ So then we see that the pull their boats up on shore, and the leave all behind and they followed Jesus.