Sermon at Grace Episcopal on by Lynette

Feb 7 2010

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13] Psalm 138 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Luke 5:1-11

Three weeks ago I asked four questions: Are we making God famous? Are we fruitful? Are we fulfilled? Are we faithful?

Today we will concentrate "Are we faithful?"

Faithfulness is staying true to a promise, a direction or a person. Sometimes people use the words loyal or steadfast when speaking of faithfulness.

Did you know that faithfulness is a characteristic of God? The Bible is full of references to the faithfulness of the LORD.

As Moses leads the people out of slavery, God comes to visit in a cloud and proclaims, "The LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished;" (Exodus 34)

Later, Moses recounts God's hand in freeing them saying, "Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands" (Deuteronomy 7)

And of course Psalm 36 has these familiar lines "Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies."

And one of my favorites comes from 2 Timothy. It probably was one of the earliest praise songs, "If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful-for he cannot deny himself."

God's faithfulness runs so deep that to be disloyal would be to turn His back on His very nature. Even when we double-cross the Lord, He faithfully loves us and wants us to come back to Him.

But let's be honest. There are times where each of us has drifted away, turned our back, or even run as far from the Lord as we can. And in those times of loneliness and struggle we often feel that God won't take us back because of the things we've done.

There is a reason for that. We cannot see His faithfulness when we are faithless. Did you hear me? We start out blind to who God is and what He is doing. It isn't that He is hiding. But He shows His faithfulness to us when we ourselves choose to be faithful. (Psalm 18 - To the faithful you show yourself faithful, to the blameless you show yourself blameless).

Why is that? "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2).

Faithfulness is a choice. And when we choose to believe God and be faithful we can see the world through His eyes. To be faithful we have to consciously decide that we will hold on and not stray, even when we don't understand. And being faithful isn't always easy. Sometimes it's easier to stray. So you have to decide that no matter what it takes, and no matter how hard things seem, you will be faithful.

It's like honesty; it doesn't happen by accident. You have to decide to be honest before the trials come or else it will be easy to lie to avoid harsh consequences.

It's like the 2 twins who were born by the ocean. One always sat facing makai, looking at the ocean. The other turned and always looked mauka. Being on the mainland they were nicknamed Towards and Away. One day they went fishing and didn't come home. After 3 days, as their parents were frantically searching, Towards walked up the driveway with disheveled clothes, and smelling like a brewery. The parents were immediately suspicious. When they demanded an explanation, he told them how he had hooked a huge marlin and fought in for 2 days. Then the great fish pulled him out of the boat and dragged him for hours. He recounted how he was almost eaten by sharks but managed to be picked up by a passing boat, barely alive. His mother said, "Right! That must have been some fish to fight you like that." To which the boy replied, "Yeah but you should have seen the one that… got Away!"

Faithfulness and honesty can be so difficult that sometimes you might even wonder if it's worth it.

It's SO worth it. The Bible is clear that the Lord loves it when we are faithful.
Proverbs 14 says it clearly, "The faithless will be fully repaid for their ways, and the good man rewarded for his."

Do you remember Jesus' teaching about the parable of the talents in Matthew 25? One servant got 5 talents, one got 2 talents and the last servant received 1. Each was told to do whatever they could while the Master went on a trip. The guy with 5 invested and got 5 more. The one with 2 took care and got another 2. The servant with one talent buried it and got called lazy and received a scolding when the Master returned. But listen carefully - Jesus defined the successful servant in these terms. "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness." The faithful servants were rewarded with even more blessings!

The long-term benefits of being faithful to the Lord and His Word are terrific. If we are faithful and open our hearts to Him, every relationship we have will benefit. We will find our families, our marriages, our relationships with our children, and our friendships will all be blessed.
And there are 3 results that will grow when our lives are rooted in faithfulness to the Lord. And I bet you know what they are! We will find that we are fruitful, fulfilled, and we are making God famous.
Fruitfulness, fulfillment, and glorifying God with our lives are the results of the choice of faithfulness. We cannot be fruitful unless we are faithful. We cannot make God famous unless we are faithful. And we will not experience the abundant life and find the contentment that Jesus promised unless we are faithful.

So let's look at faithfulness in action.

Last week we had an awesome lunch after Kahuala'i's baptism. Fresh fish! So much work went into the catching and the preparing and the serving. So it's kind of cool our gospel this morning is about faithful fishermen!

Luke paints the scene so as to make us imagine a typical seashore . . . sand gleaming in the sun . . . water dark blue against a lighter sky . . . two fishing boats drawn up, with sails down and wrapped . . . men on shore, moving around, repairing nets.

But there is something exceptional about this seashore. Jesus is there. There is a crowd and an air of excitement and anticipation with people saying, "I wonder what Jesus will do today. Will He heal someone? What will He say?"

The people are pressing in so tightly that the Master stands at the water line. Jesus grabs Simon's boat and pushes it into the water to use as a pulpit. This separated Him from the people, placing Him high so all could see. With the water and wind behind Him, an amphitheater effect was created. It carried His voice to the far side of the crowd clearly. Even the other fishermen paused to listen. We don't know the subject of that day's teaching; but once He had finished, Jesus quietly turned to Peter and said, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

This is a command that may have sounded pretty crazy to a fisherman who had worked hard all night. After all, Simon Peter was the expert. He was the fisherman; Jesus was a carpenter.

Not only was Simon a fisherman but we have every reason to believe he was a very skilled fisherman. We know that he had been raised on the Sea of Galilee and that his family fished for a living. They knew those grounds. Peter understood fish. Also Peter understood that there were times when fishermen did not catch fish. He was tired. He had fished all night and had caught nothing. As far as Simon Peter knew, Jesus only ate fish. He didn't catch them.

For all he knew Jesus was like the guy proudly hanging his string of 5 Oama down at the wharf when a guy drove buy with a 400 lb marlin on his truck. The shore caster called out, "So what brah! You only caught one?"

The direction from Jesus to go out and fish again seemed so foolish that even when Luke recorded the incident years later, he noted that Peter made excuses. "Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!" Simon was saying, "Lord, we've been out there all night. There are no fish in those waters. We've already tried. Our muscles ache. We are tired. Besides, Lord, the sun is well up. Fishing is always poor during the heat of the day. If you can't catch fish at night, especially during the early morning hours when they come near the surface for feeding, then surely you can't catch them now."

How easy it is to think that God's commands are foolish, irrational, without meaning. We may not say so, but deep in our hearts, we begin to doubt - concluding that the Master really does not understand the situation.

But Peter knew enough about Jesus to put his faith in action.
According to this passage we see two things:

1. GOD NEVER GIVES FOOLISH COMMANDS
God is smarter than we are. As my friend Waxer used to say, "He's God. You're not. Get used to it."

2. FAITH IS A CHOICE. Simon could choose whether or not to do what Jesus asked. He could choose to believe that catching fish was still possible, despite what his experience and his circumstances told him.

What we do know is that Simon's faith came through. It came in spite of initial doubt. After he said they'd worked all night and caught nothing, Peter looked at Jesus and said "But at your word I will let down the nets." He was faithful to follow through. The boat went into deep water and they dropped their nets.

For Simon Peter and for us, hope may be dim; the possibilities may seem utterly beyond all expectations; but we must not give up. To be faithful we need to look beyond the human possibilities. Instead we need to look to the Master's face, look into His eyes and choose to put our faith into action.

Now the Sea of Galilee isn't a large body of water. On a clear day, from the center of the lake, I'm told, you can always see the shoreline. So it didn't take long to reach deep water. And there, Peter lowered his nets.

Fish!
Simon felt the tug of the net. His helpers took a firmer grip and they pulled together.
More fish!
Suddenly there were so many fish that Simon called for help to gather the catch! There were 2 boatloads of fish!

GOD IS FAITHFUL - "HE CANNOT DENY HIMSELF"

What He says will come to pass. It is going to happen. Count on it.

OK. Stop. Take a breath. Change gears. Now it's time to figure how we can apply it.

This story reminds us that it's our responsibility is to be faithful and launch out; to move out into the deep. To continuously be doing what Jesus commands even when it doesn't appear to make sense to us.
Not excuses, but action - that's what we need in today's world! I'd like to suggest at least three ways each of us can launch out:

1. We can give ourselves to fervent prayer. We forget the power of this mighty weapon, or we grow disheartened and discouraged and give up. There is a reason we are told to pray without ceasing. Prayer changes things because it opens us up to the mighty power of God. When we pray, we are filling our tanks and our situations with the Holy Spirit.

Dave Wilkerson started with prayer and God has led him into a multifaceted operation which ministers to thousands of troubled youth and drug addicts. John Wesley traveled thousands of miles on horseback with the gospel, literally changing the face of the world in terms of religious impact. But back home was a mother on her knees praying for her son and for the lost. Always continue to keep on praying.

2. We can make everything we have available for the Lord to work with. When we offer all our resources and ourselves for the Lord's service, it is like the servants with the talents. God will take our talents and multiply them. We may have 5. We may have 2. We may have only 1. But if we give them to Jesus, He will bring the blessing. If we bury them, all we will have is dirty talents. Yuck.
A rich young ruler, confronted with this dilemma, turned sadly away. He wanted to hold back. He wanted to be faithful with some and unfaithful with others. That's like saying, "Take a deep breath but only use your right lung." We cannot.
We must say yes to the Master. Let us give to the Lord all that we have, including our families, our treasures, and even our future.
See, Jesus has a way of taking our gifts, even when we're tired and discouraged, and turning them into miracles. Whether we drop a net in strange waters or give Him a few pieces of bread and some fish or bring a friend to hear His words - each act of faith and submission can be the basis for a miracle. Wouldn't it be sad to reach heaven and see a list of the miracles God was intending to shower on us if only we opened our hands and released those things that we hold on to for dear life?
So often, when we least expect it, God does the seemingly impossible. I remember so many times in my ministry praying and working with people for months, sometimes for years but not giving up. Quite often when I was really not expecting it, God grace has made a breakthrough. And it wasn't me. It was all the Lord.

3. We must live out our faith. It is not enough to say, "Yes, Lord, I'm sure there are fish somewhere in the lake. And they'll still be there tomorrow for someone else to catch." Jesus wants us to "launch out" now. He wants us to put faith into action now.

I remember the story of a new convert who decided to test the effectiveness of prayer. Kneeling at the church's altar he prayed for God to give shoes to a little girl he had seen barefoot that morning. Some time later he drove by her home to see if she had her new shoes. Barefoot. So he prayed again for the Lord to give her new shoes. She still had her toes twinkling. This routine went on for a number of days. Still no shoes. Finally, again at the altar the man said, "God, I'm giving You one more day. If You don't give that little girl some new shoes by tomorrow, I'm going down to the store and buy them for her myself."
Faith must be put into action.

Remember, God has a plan and a purpose for each of us. If we can't pilot the ship, then we can prepare meals for the crew. If we cannot swim or fish, then we can mend the nets. If we can't mend or cook, we can paint the boat. If we can't do that, we can clean the fish. We each have a task to perform in the Kingdom, and God can help us to do it well if we faithfully offer ourselves.

God never makes foolish commands. We humans are prone to make excuses. Faith can bring the unexpected miracle if we pray, if we make our resources and ourselves available, and if we put our faith into action.
Faithfulness is a choice. And when we make the choice to stay true to the Lord and His Word, we will discover that there is joy and fulfillment that begins to overflow in all parts of our lives. And we will find that suddenly our lives will become more fruitful. And as we choose to faithfully follow Him, with our actions, we will begin to make God famous. So let's launch out into the deep. Let's decide to be faithful.
When we take the leap of faithfulness, we will find ourselves landing in the arms of Jesus Christ and will realize that we are on the verge of even greater miracles, in Jesus' name. Ready? Go! Amen

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