Simon Peter said, “I’m going fishing.” “We’ll come, too,” they all said. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night. John 21:3
John 21 is an account of the last recorded time of Jesus with His disciples before He returns to heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father. It is a passage packed full of lessons about human nature, the true heart and nature of God, the patience of God and our ongoing relationship with Him once we choose to follow Him. Luke 5 tells us how Jesus met His disciples, by the shores of the Sea of Galilee by their fishing boats. And because God loves to, as I like to say, “bookends” His word, this passage is no different, so His time of earth with them is also coming to a close with a seashore scene.
Although Jesus has now lived with them again after His resurrection for almost 40 days, it was different. He wasn’t with them on a daily and close basis. He now met with them evrery now and then and for short periods of time. When He did it was in a teaching time of showing them how to see Him in the Scriptures. He was preparing them to learn how to see Him and relate to Him through the Scriptures and His Spirit. This apparently was leaving the disciples with an uneasy, unsure future because they were not fully understanding what was happening.
So what did impetuous Peter decide to do? God back to what he knew, fishing. And what did the others do when he announced what he was going to do? Because he was a leader, they said they would go along with him. Now, before we get to “judgie” with Peter and the others, let’s honestly put ourselves in his place. And if we are honest with ourselves, we often do the same thing. God shows Himself to us in powerful and amazing ways, yet when things don’t go the way we think of don’t understand what He’s working in our lives, we so often go back “to what we know to do” apart from Him. And just like with the disciples, it avails to nothing, because they fished all night, but caught nothing.
But I beleive there is also another perspective to see this from, a psoitive one. Peter was trying to go back to where he first met Jesus, he missed the closeness with his Friend and Master. He didn’t understand what Jesus was doing or what He was telling them and was beginning to become fearful, just like he did on the night Jesus was arrested. He knew how that ended, with him denying Jesus three times and he never wanted that to happen again. He was searching for an answer, and Jesus, was about to show up and use this as another defining teaching moment. It would bring everything into focus for all the disciples and show Peter how they would continue to follow and remain close to Him in the future to lead others to follow Him. We will continue to dig deeper into this passage this week, so we too can learn to see Jesus in His word.
Leave a Reply