APPLICATIONS FROM LUKE 4 AND 5

Today we resume the study of the Gospel of Luke – Luke 4 : 14-30, in the church.
It is helpful to review the earlier chapters in order to understand the text and context of the passage we are studying.
Luke had painstakingly embedded the account of Jesus of Nazareth in the immediate historical context. He had provided clarification of Jesus’ identity and His mission, for He has come as Saviour in fulfilment of what God had promised to Israel. His qualification has been confirmed not only by angelic, prophetic and divine word, but also by His genealogy and through His testing by Satan in the wilderness. In His baptism by John the Baptist, the Father declared that Jesus was His beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove. Hence Jesus was commissioned by God the Father and anointed, and empowered by the Spirit to inaugurate the kingdom of God and the New Age.

Here in Luke 4:14-30, Jesus, in a sense, was declaring His manifesto, and the beginning of His public ministry. After reading Isaiah 61:1-2 in the synagogue, Jesus announced in verse 21 that this Scripture has been fulfilled in the hearing of the people present. Jesus was making a direct claim to be the Spirit-anointed Saviour and Messiah from God to accomplish God’s salvation of His people.
Jesus has come to announce God’s rescue from the consequences of the sinful rebellion of God’s people as well as that of the Gentiles”; the priority of His ministry is not first and foremost to meet immediate social or physical needs – He has come above all to announce the coming Kingdom of God by verbal proclamation (placing priority on the Word of God).
The context of Isaiah 61 demands that the ‘poor’ here is primarily a spiritual category referring to those under God’s just judgment. The ‘blind’, the ‘captives’ and the ‘oppressed’ in Isiah also refer to God’s people experiencing the wrath of God, as a result of their rebellion against Him – it took the form of spiritual blindness, poverty and captivity, when they were defeated by the Babylonians and deported and exiled to Babylon (noted In Isaiah 58:6; Isaiah 60)

The Nazirites Jews in the synagogue were taking offence at Jesus, the son of a local carpenter, whose birth was surrounded by an infamous rumour, making a preposterous claim (verse 22), and His excluding the prophecy of God’s judgment upon their enemies. They wanted Jesus to judge and overthrow the enemies (as their understanding of the role of the coming Messiah), whereas Jesus spoke instead of God’s grace to all people, including the Gentiles (who were regarded as ‘enemies’ and ‘untouchable sinners’).
Jesus then pointed His listeners to the work of Elijah and Elisha. While those great reforming prophets were rejected by God’s people, they were recognised and welcomed by the most unlikely individuals from among the Gentiles, the widow of Zarephath and Namaan. By using these two examples, Jesus was introducing a ‘window’ of grace and favour for those who will respond rightly to the Lord’s anointed; He has come also as a ‘light for revelation to the Gentiles (Luke 2:32) and this infuriated His listeners (verse 28-30), and they attempted to murder Jesus as the early stage of His ministry.

As we go on further in our study of the Gospel, we will notice that Jesus came to fulfil the eternal salvation plan of God, not by might and power in overcoming armies, but by suffering, as a servant, and dying at the cross as a substitute for the sinner, in the ‘great exchange’, paying the penalty of our sin, destroying the work of the devil, breaking the power of sin, and destroying ‘death’. He came in His incarnation, God becoming man, and as the God-man, Luke traced Jesus’ development as a child at 12 years old until his commission at 30 – showing that at every point of His development, He grew in favour with God and man, being perfect and sinless at every stage of His development as the perfect man. He opted to experience the world through the limitations He took upon Himself in order to be fully man even though His divine attributes were still present in Him but not voluntarily exercised by Him.
As such, He experienced time and space within the confines of a normal human being and became the perfect example of how a man should live before God. As fully man and sinless, He could take the place of sinful men and die on behalf of sinners. He did all these as a human, totally dependent on the power and presence of the Holy Spirit – Jesus the man was continually energised by the divine power of the Spirit of God, and He was fully obedient to the Father’s will and did all that was pleasing to the Father all the time.

As Christians and disciples, we are called to follow Jesus – His dependence fully on the Spirit serves as an example for us to emulate as we seek to walk by the Spirit and be constantly filled by the Spirit to live a life pleasing to the Triune God. Although we cannot be sinless as pilgrims in this world, we can make progressive steps in our transformation (by the Spirit) to become more like Jesus, and the consummation would come when Jesus comes again.

Here in Luke 4, we see Jesus, anointed by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, overcoming Satan in the temptations in the wilderness, starting His public ministry, and henceforth continuing this ministry in the power of the Spirit, and doing all things pleasing to the heavenly Father at every point and juncture of His ministry and mission. From Luke 4 henceforth, we shall see Jesus teaching, preaching and doing all things in intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit, fully pleasing to the Father, and as He headed towards Jerusalem and the cross, He know that this was the path, for the joy set before Him, he must take to carry out the eternal salvation plan of the Triune God.

For disciples of the Lord Jesus, the apostle Paul wrote that it has been granted to us on behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for Him (Philippians 1:29). This is part of the call to “deny ourselves, to carry the cross, and to follow Him”. This is part and parcel of being ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘light of the world’; the church exists to fulfil God’s plan and desire to bring ‘the rest of His sheep’ into the fold. We do this collectively, as a body of Christ, not just by sharing the gospel with our words, but also with our lives, with our Master, the Lord Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith, and also the faith of others whom He brings into His new community and humanity!

THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS FROM LUKE 4:14-30
15 July

Jesus read Isaiah 61:1-2 in the synagogue and declared that ‘this part of scripture is fulfilled in Him’ in the hearing of those present.
Notice that Jesus, in reading this passage, applied the following to Himself:
-The Spirit of the Lord is upon Him; the Lord has anointed Him;
– He is to proclaim the good news;
– The good news encompasses freedom for the prisoners (freedom from bondage); recovery of sight for the blind; freedom for the oppressed; restoration for God’s people (as in the Jubilee).

To understand fully what Isaiah 61:1-2 means in the book of Isaiah and the implications and applications for the church today, we need to examine the final section of Isaiah and it is basically centred on chapters 59-62. At the heart of this central section, we hear the voice of the Lord’s anointed describing his ministry of grace and judgment (61:1-3) and the repercussions which will follow for it (61:4ff). The substance of its message is that the Lord will triumph over all his enemies and that he will achieve this through an appointed agent, commissioned with divine authority and anointed with divine power. This is similar to that of the Immanuel figure in chapters 1-39 and the servant in chapters 40-55, where in both cases divine enabling is granted to a human figure to carry out God’s purposes in the face of determined opposition.
Jesus, in saying that this portion of scripture is fulfilled in him, is effectively saying that he is the long awaited Messiah and Saviour prophesied in Isaiah; he is the appointed agent, commissioned by God with divine authority and anointed with the divine power of the Holy Spirit to bring about God’s eternal plan of salvation and triumph over the enemies. He is the Immanuel, the servant in Isaiah 53 (bringing the good news (the gospel)).

The promises in the great gospel chapter 53 of Isaiah do not focus only on the gathering of a multitude of new believers into covenant relationship with the Lord, through their repentance and his mercy and pardon. They also speak of the renewal of the whole created order; as God’s people are led into a new world, the consummation of God’s promises and the restoration of all that was lost in Eden (the final Jubilee).

This raises the issue of the behaviour appropriate to men and women of faith in the waiting period, as we have seen, from the beginning of the book of Isaiah. It seems at first to return us from free grace to a form of works religion (note the exhortations from God to His people to maintain justice and do what is right from the mouths of the prophets).
However, we learn that this is impossible for sinful human beings to fulfil, and so are we not back with the insoluble problems of the start of the book of Isaiah? Isaiah’s answers to these questions would be ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Our human inability to extricate ourselves from our sin and its effects will certainly be reiterated in the closing chapters of Isaiah, but in chapter 56, we already know the wonderful solution to the problem of human sinfulness provided in the servant’s work. “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6b).
It is in the light of the assured consummation of the servant’s work, in the eternal kingdom, that we are brought back to the necessity of personal covenant obedience, if covenant blessings are to be personally enjoyed in the present. So the chapters 56-66 of Isaiah (with 62 in the middle) expose once again the ingrained nature of human rebellion, but alongside it runs the free offer of boundless mercy and covenant relationship to the repentant.

Jesus’ stops reading the scroll of Isaiah 61 in Luke 4 before the full run of the paragraph runs. He concludes with the phrase ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ but does not read on further to ‘and the day of vengeance of our God’. This is because the opening sentence of his exposition is: ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’ clearly pointed to what he had read as being fulfilled in his Galilean ministry. But it was not yet the day of vengeance. Indeed that part of the prophecy would await a fulfilment in principle at the cross, when he bore God’s wrath on our behalf, and in final execution when, as the risen and anointed conqueror of Isaiah 63, he will trample the rebellious nations in his wrath.
These highlight the alternatives of God’s wrath and judgment and are in turn enclosed by Isaiah’s appeal for godly living in the waiting time, before the final separation of the sheep and the goats as the end of this world.
Similarly, the church is exhorted to godly living and holiness as we wait for the promised return of Jesus; we are now called to live holy lives, marked by ethical righteousness, conscious of the great day that is coming.

But we must be conscious of the dangers of formal religion and external conformity. We must not carry the heavy burdens that everything depends on our efforts, energy or abilities. Serious Christians want to live in the waiting time as citizens of heaven, seeking to bring others with them into the eternal kingdom. But it can so easily degenerate into a form of works religion, motivated by guilt and characterised by frenetic activity and stress.
Christians are those who are saved by grace through faith; and faith is the response to God’s prior initiative in grace.
Yes, while we have a responsibility to live godly lives, to God’s glory, in God’s world, while we wait for our hope to be fulfilled in Christ’s return, the ability to do this is God’s alone and is the free gift of his amazing grace. The external conformity of works-based religion is as much a spiritual dead end as the pagan idolatries. Godly living in the ‘now’ is all about developing our relationship of faith and obedience with our rescuing Lord in the light of the ‘not yet’ of his eternal reign.

A SPECIFIC RELEVANT APPLICATION FROM LUKE 4:14-30
16 July

In the passage, it was written that Christ came to his hometown as Messiah. The initial response appeared favourable. But when Jesus announced his kingdom agenda, his words were met with anger and rejection.

Jesus’ promise to extend God’s grace to the Gentiles aroused the negative response; the Jews’ desire for vengeance which sustained Israel was now ‘dashed’ – the neighbours’ angry arousal was so intense that it took on a ‘murderous wrath’ towards Jesus. Although they took Jesus to the edge of a cliff to throw him down to his death, the Lord simply walked through the crowd and went his way.

We may be wondering why such a sudden change can occur so dramatically.
If Jesus was the Messiah appointed by God, surely he must be allowed to set his own agenda, especially when the agenda is rooted in Scripture. If Jesus is Lord, the proper response is to obey and follow his lead.

Yet how often we, ourselves, who acknowledge Jesus as Lord find ourselves reacting as these Nazareth neighbours did? How often do we insistently demand that God follow our agenda – meet our needs, answer our prayers, satisfy our desires, proceed according to our schedule – rather than humbly seek to understand and then do His will?
The angry mob tried to force Jesus up the hill because it was unthinkable that he should offer God’s grace to the Gentiles. It may be that what God intends to do in our lives is something we too may find unthinkable at first.
When Christ makes his will known, we must resist the impulse to rebel. For every rebellion is a symbolic effort to force Jesus up that hill and cast him from the throne of our heart, Jesus is Lord and God. And wonderfully, his agenda is one of overflowing grace; surely we can trust our God of love, and gladly submit to his will.
And grace means unmerited favour; it means receiving favour which we do not deserve – in fact, we deserve the very opposite and negative response from God. In Luke subsequently, we would read of the response of the centurion. The leaders of the Jews told Jesus that this centurion of the Italian cohort deserved a positive response from the Lord as he showed favour to the Jews. The centurion himself told Jesus that he did not deserve the presence of Christ – he requested that Jesus’ words were sufficient to heal his servant – here was one commended by the Lord for his faith, and surely he was also one who understood what grace was all about. What about us?

LEARNING FROM THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS IN RELATION TO LUKE 4:14-30
17 July

In the first part of Luke 4, we noted that the Holy Spirit ‘sent’ Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Here we see Jesus, the God-man, responding to the temptations as the man.
The Lord’s response to the temptations illustrates for us what is completely different from that of the Nazirite neighbours in the synagogue who attempted to murder the Messiah.
In the first temptation, when Jesus was hungry, without food for some 40 days, the devil tempted him to change the stone into bread; after all, he is the Son of God. It is a temptation to gratify the self – in this case to satisfy hunger, which is legitimate, but Jesus knew that satisfying physical hunger without living by the Word of God would be tantamount to putting self before God. Various ones of us in such situations may rationalise that what we seek are legitimate, and in pursuing them, we completely put God and His instructions and Word out of the picture.
Is it not true that those who indulge in immoral relationships like adultery, promiscuity, and unnatural sex insist that they are just meeting their sexual needs (hence gratifying these desires) and completely ignore the call from God to pursue holiness and purity of life? There is no place for self-denial and God’s values in the lives of such so-called believers who continue to indulge in such relationships and yet they expect God to continue to accept them and their behaviour. The apostle John clearly states that God is light and there is no darkness in Him; those who continue to remain in darkness cannot expect to live in the light.

The second temptation was for Jesus to avoid the cross and to just worship the devil in order to be given all the authority and splendour that the devil possessed. Jesus’ response was that we must worship God and serve Him only. There should be nothing else and no one else that we worship. The thing or person we worship, apart from God, becomes our idol and our ‘god’. There is no room for any compromise whatsoever; this implies not claiming God’s glory for ourselves and not seeking to be our own god in all that we do or serve.
Some believers are prepared to compromise if they can get even a fraction of what the devil offered Christ in the wilderness. In the garden of Eden, Eve, as well as Adam were told that they will not die; instead they shall be like God, knowing good and evil – their desire to be like God brought them down the road to rebellion and disobedience, resulting in sin and corruption. Who or whom do we worship? What is it that matters most to us – that which we cannot live without, that which occupies our minds and hearts the first thing we wake up each morning? Beware – that is our god, our idol which we worship and adore.The Nazirite neighbours of Jesus worshipped their status and belonging to Abraham – they saw themselves as God’s special people – they could not tolerate the thought that those whom they despised and considered as ‘dogs’ should be on equal standing with thiem – in fact, they desired that they be destroyed and annihilated by the Messiah when he appears. Are we being consumed by hate, jealousy, and envy – are we putting ourselves on the pedestal and expecting others to cower at our feet?

The third temptation Jesus encountered from the devil: he was asked to throw himself down from the highest point of the temple and expect God to deliver him through the angels (and this temptation was buttressed with a quotation from the Scripture).
Jesus replied that one should not put the Lord God to the test. In other words, the Christian should not take the person of God and His grace for granted. It is true that God would protect and deliver His people when they encounter danger in their faithful service to carrying out God’s will and service. But it is foolish to purposefully put ourselves in danger with the false assumption that God is obliged to deliver us because we are His children.
An incident involving a missionary may help to illustrate this. This particular missionary came across a procession which involved some mediums in a temple – he was curious and approached closely with his camera to take ‘some shots’. Subsequently, he encountered deep spiritual ‘darkness’ and could not get out of it until many believers prayed for him.
We need to remember that we have a formidable enemy in spiritual warfare – let us not be too confident and put God to the test by involving ourselves in situations and actions without God’s approval or permission, and lose our vigilance by allowing ourselves to be open to the manipulation of the enemy. We need to keep step with the Holy Spirit and walk in His ways and directions. Without Him, we are truly vulnerable to the attacks of the evil one.

How did the Nazirite Jews, who were neighbours of Jesus, and probably knew Joseph and his family, end up with a murderous intention which actually could have murdered Jesus early in his ministry? Saul, before he became Paul, also sought to imprison and even kill the early Christians – he thought he was acting on behalf of God. Paul and the Nazirite Jews probably thought they were being zealous for God. Zeal in the wrong direction and with the wrong motivation and understanding may end up with tragedy. Know our proper place before God – do not put Him to the test – recall the Israelites in the wilderness complaining and murmuring against God and truly acted as those who were ungrateful and continually put God to the test until many of them were destroyed in the wilderness, without ever entering the land of Canaan/

THE THEOLOGICAL CERTAINTY OF THE GOSPEL OF LUKE (AND THE OTHER 3)
19 July

Our previous study of Luke 4:14-30 brings out the essential clarity of Jesus’ mission as he read Isaiah 61:1-2 and pointed out that the Scripture is fulfilled in the presence of the hearers in the synagogue in Nazareth.
Following this, we would be seeing Jesus’ manifesto and agenda for his ministry worked out in his actions and interactions with various ones. Briefly, we will be seeing Jesus showing his authority and power to drive out demons, to heal sicknesses, to overthrow the devastating effects of sin and even to forgive sins. At the same time, the hostility he encountered in the synagogue at Nazareth is followed by a growing taking of offence among the religious sinners. Luke records the rising opposition to Jesus and, at the same time Jesus’ exposure of his opponents’ hypocrisy. The exposure of the Jewish establishment’s true nature is necessary in order to strengthen confidence in the Gospel.

As we study the following chapters, there may be queries regarding the meaning of the actions and miracles of Jesus and how to explain and interpret them. What happened to the Messiah subsequently at the hands of the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities also remains an enigma for many.

In that light, it is helpful to examine the book of Isaiah again, particularly Isaiah 52:13-53:12. The most convincing argument for the identity and mission of the ‘Servant of the Lord’ emerges from a straightforward exegesis of this passage. Other passages from other OT and NT books also support the argument.
Isaiah 53:3 sums up with five sad statements on the nature of the Servant’s rejection (recall how Jesus was nearly murdered at Nazareth):
1) he was rejected 2) he was forsaken by mortals 3) he was regarded as an offence by those around him 4) he was despised 5) many concluded that he must have been judged by God, when they saw his sufferings. The rejection may have started at Nazareth but we will see the rejection increasing in intensity until he was crucified at Jerusalem.
The Servant bore the punishment that was due to be paid by all mortals. Instead of us, the Servant took up “our infirmities” or our “calamity”, as the Servant addressed the objective side of humanity’s problems. The Servant takes all the distress and calamity that came to our bodies, souls, and spirits, which sin had aroused and left us to deal with. The Servant also addressed the subjective side of our sin problems when it says he “carried our sorrows” (vs4). Yet, despite what all of this accomplished, most mortals gave no esteem or regard for this Servant. In fact, most concluded that he had been ‘stricken by Good, smitten by him, and afflicted’ (vs4). The Servant must have done something bad personally for that must be why God deals so harshly with him in these judgments.

However, God does not agree with this estimate given. In Isaiah 53:5, we note what God had done – there are four expressions of what God did to the Servant: 1) ‘he was pierced’ with the nails that went into his hands and feet,
2) ‘he was ‘crushed’ or ‘bruised’ by the thrust of the spear in his side, the slap on his face, and the effort of dragging the cross
3) he took ‘the punishment that brought us peace as he faced the crucifixion alone, and
4) he took the welts and stripes we should have received as Pilate had him scourged and the soldiers smote him on his head with a reed. But all of this was for “our transgressions,” “our iniquities,” our “peace,” and our “healing.”

But when the text of Isaiah 53 says that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer” (vs10), it was not some sadistic type of pleasure in which the Father reveled in watching his Son die in agony. Rather, it was the prospect of fulfilling the great purpose of God in HIs salvation man for humanity, the plan conceived by the Triune God before the creation of the world, in His love, mercy and grace.
As we examine Isaiah 52:13-53:12, we see the identity and ministry of the Servant of the Lord (the Messiah and Son of God) – it is the most complete statement of the design, purpose, and significance of the death and resurrection of the Servant ( the resurrection and exaltation of the Servant seen in 53:10-13). We see the ‘parallels’ in the account of the Gospel of Luke as we move on from Luke 4:30 to the end of chapter 24. In Luke 24, the Lord Jesus himself said to the disciples after his resurrection: “This is what I told you while I was still with you: everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, ‘Thisis what is written: the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” (verse 44-47)

In the next study Luke 4:31-44, we see Jesus driving out an evil spirit and healing many of their illnesses. He also healed Simon’s mother who was suffering from high fever by rebuking the fever, and in subsequent chapters, he healed a paralysed man and one with leprosy and performed many other miracles which astounded the crowd.
His healings point beyond themselves to the cross and his initiation of the new covenant in his blood that is poured out for the forgiveness of sin. All sickness and death is ultimately rooted in the entrance of sin to human existence, so Jesus’ entire ministry in his inauguration of the kingdom of heaven begins to reverse the cycle of death and suffering.
When John the Baptist was imprisoned, he sent his disciples to query Jesus whether the latter was the Messiah. Jesus reiterated to John that the way his ministry has unfolded is in line with the prophetic promises.
The prophecies regarding the messianic ministry: ‘the blind receive sight (Isa. 29:18, 35:5), the lame walk (Isa.35:6), those who have leprosy are cured (cf Isa. 53:4), the deaf hear (Isa. 29:128-19), the dead are raised (Isa. 26:18-19) and the good news is preached to the poor (Isa. 61:1).

We need to recall that Jesus is fully God and fully man in the chalcedon orthodox definition: The only begotten recognised in TWO NATURES, WITHOUT CONFUSION, WITHOUT CHANGE. WITHOUT DIVISION, WITHOUT SEPARATION, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person, but one and the same Son and only begotten God the Word , Lord Jesus Christ.
In his days from a baby to a boy, and to the commissioning and testing in the wilderness, we see Jesus as fully man growing in wisdom and in favour with God and man; and also triumphing our Satan in the temptations, filled with the Spirit and fully dependent on the Spirit, seeking always to please the Father. In the healing ministry and in his miracles, we see the authority and power of the one, fully God. Even the evil spirits recognised him as the Holy One, the Son of God. As fully God, we shall see that he claims authority over the meaning of the Sabbath and even the power and authority to forgive sin.

LUKE 5:1-11 Reflections on this passage
25 July

In the previous passage, we saw the Messiah starting his public ministry, healing illnesses and casting out demons in Capernaum. It is interesting to note that in the light of the healing, the people in Capernaum were seeking to keep him from leaving, but the Lord’s reply focused on his priority in his ministry: “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns” (Luke 4:42-44). The healing of illnesses and the casting out of demons was a confirmation that he indeed was the Messiah as prophesied in Isaiah; it was not however the main focus of his ministry – that has to do with the good news of the kingdom of God. In our context today, we must also focus on preaching the good news and the fulfilling of God’s commission to his disciples – healing and the focus on casting out demons should not be our main preoccupation. That is not to say that God cannot heal and that he cannot deliver people from the evil one; God desires to inaugurate a new godly humanity and community based on repentance and faith in response to the gospel, and we must take care not to be side-tracked by other peripheral issues. The glory should belong to God alone and not to those who proclaim themselves to be healers and performers of so-called miracles.

From Luke 5, we see Jesus concentrating on preaching the word of God – he has left Capernaum where so many were clamouring for healing and ‘miracles’. The crowd was gathering around him and he had to get into one of the fishermen’s boats (Peter’s) and put out a little from the shore, and continue proclaiming the Word of God to those gathered on the shore.

What transpasses subsequently is interesting:
Jesus told Simon Peter to put out his net into the deep water for a catch. Peter, a very seasoned fisherman, replied that he and his fellow fishermen had been working hard all night and had not caught anything. But because the Lord had told him to put out his net, he would do so – and the result was a large catch of fish that the nets began to break.
Peter’s response: ‘Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man!’ (vs8). Even Peter’s companions, including James and John, were astonished at the great catch.
Then followed the calling of Jesus to Peter, and by implication, also James and John (the sons of Zebedee) to follow him and be fishers of men.

Peter’s initial response to put out his net despite zero catch the night before clearly illustrates that we should never doubt that Christ’s way is best once we are clear that this is what the Lord desires and commands. We must acknowledge Christ’s authority (seen also previously in his casting out of demons from individuals and his healing of many illnesses; we must also not doubt the wisdom of the Lord. Peter might consider himself to be an authority on fishing, being a seasoned fisherman for so many years, and he would have thought that if the whole night before did not yield any catch, surely, one could not expect any catch the next day. Peter thus obeyed the Lord’s instruction, perhaps reluctantly.

We see the limitation of our worldly wisdom and reasoning; the Lord sees beyond what we see and He knows exactly the situation we are in. Obedience, with some reluctance, may be better than outright disobedience.

After the miraculous catch, Peter grasped the fact that the One speaking to him was Lord; he was suddenly overcome with the awareness of how far short he fell of what he knew he should be – he felt so unworthy that he asked the Lord to go away from him.
This sense of unworthiness is similar to the Beatitude “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. It is the one who realises his own unworthiness before God and His grace – it is the one who becomes aware of his own ‘spiritual bankruptcy” who is truly open and available to the mercy and grace of God. The spiritually proud (like the Pharisees) thought they were more than worthy, given their knowledge and background, but the Lord pronounced ‘woes’ unto them.
Indeed, Jesus was sent to proclaim good news to the poor; he was sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free (Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 4:18-19).

But what follows is even more interesting: instead of going away, the Lord Jesus invited Peter, James and John to follow him and to be fishers of men. This is Luke’s account of the calling of the first few apostles.
Jesus was calling ordinary fishermen, men of not great learning and status, to be his apostles. This is a most important reminder that God, the holy and transcendent almighty, becomes the Father of insignificant sinful mortals like us, sinners who are contrite in repentance and humble in fleeing by faith to Jesus for refuge. His fatherhood is absolutely ideal, perfectl, and glorious, free from all limitations, inadequacies, and flaws that are found in earthly parents.
And our heavenly Father is deeply committed to His children’s welfare, and more wise and generous in promoting it. God sees the heart, and He knows us and our potential, even though we feel so unworthy and insecure – Christ died for us even when we were enemies of the cross. Never ever doubt the love of the Triune God; never ever doubt His wisdom; never ever doubt His intention and goodness for the welfare of His people!!