'Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.'
Now there is nothing more remarkable in the whole narrative than the
matter-of-course fashion in which our Lord takes the disposal of
these men, and orders them about. It is not explicable unless we
fall back upon what Luke does not tell us, but John does, in his
Gospel, that this was by no means the first time that He had come
across Peter and Andrew his brother, or James and John his brother.
We do not need to trouble ourselves with the chronological question
how long before they had been drawn to Him at the fords of Jordan by
the witness of John the Baptist, and by the witness of some of them
to the others. The relationship had been then commenced which is
presupposed by our Lord's authoritative tone here. It leads in the
incident of my text to a closer discipleship, which did not admit of
Simon and John hauling or cleaning their nets any more. They had
been disciples before in a certain loose fashion, a fashion which
permitted them to go home and look after their ordinary avocations.
Hence-forward they were disciples in a much more stringent fashion.
It was because they had already said 'Rabbi! Thou art the Son of
God! Thou art the King of Israel,' that this strange imperative
command, inexplicable, except by the supplement of the last of the
four Gospels, came from Christ's lips and secured immediate
obedience.
If we thus understand that His authority follows on our
discipleship, and that the words of my text, first of all, insist
upon and assert His right to command and absolutely dispose of the
activities, resources, and persons of all His disciples, we have
learned something that we only need to practise in order to make our
lives noble with a strange nobility, and blessed and sweet with an
unearthly sanctity and blessedness.
Further, the words of my text not only declare for us thus the
absolute authority of Jesus Christ over all His disciples, but also
reveal His sweet promise and gracious assurance that He cares to
guide, to direct, to prescribe spheres, to determine methods, to
lead those who docilely look to Him and wait upon Him, in paths in
which their activity may most profitably be employed for Him and for
His Church. If there is anything that is declared to us plainly in
the Scriptures, with regard to the relationships between men and
Jesus Christ, it is this, that a docile heart will always be a
guided heart, partly by inward whispers, which only they disbelieve
who limit God in His relation to men, beyond what they have a right
to do; and partly by outward providences which only they disbelieve
who limit God in His power over the external world, beyond what they
have a right to do. He will guide, sometimes with His eye, to which
the loving eye flashes back response; sometimes with His whispered
word, when the noises of earth and the pulsations of self-will are
stilled; sometimes with His rod, which the less sensitive of His
sons do often need; sometimes by successes in paths that we venture
upon tentatively and timidly; and sometimes by failures in paths
into which we rush confidently and presumptuously; but always, the
waiting heart is a guided heart, and if we listen we shall hear
'This is the way, walk ye in it.' And sometimes it is God's will
that we should make mistakes, for these too help us to learn His
will.
But, further, and more particularly, I do not think that I am unduly
reading too much meaning into this story, if I ask you to put emphasis
upon one word, 'Launch out into the _deep_.' As long as you keep
pottering along, a boat's length from the shore, you will only catch
little fishes. The big ones, and the heavy takes are away out yonder.
Go out there, if you want to get them. Which, being translated, is
this--The same spirit of daring enterprise, which is a condition of
success in secular matters, is no less potent a factor in the success
of Christian men in their enterprises for Jesus Christ. As long as we
keep Him down, within the limits of use and wont, and are horribly
afraid of anything that our great-grandfathers did not use to do,
there will be very few fish in the bottom of the boat.
Oh, brethren! if one thinks of the world into which it has been
God's providence to put us, a world all seething with new
aspirations and unrest--if we think of the condition of the great
city in which we live, which is only a specimen of the cities of
England, and of the tragical insufficiency of Christian enterprise
and effort, as compared with the overwhelming masses of the
community, surely, surely, there is nothing more wanted to make
Christian people wake up from their old jog-trot habits, and cast
themselves with new earnestness, new daring and enterprise, into
forms of service which conscience and sober wisdom may approve. Of
course, I do not forget that any such new methods must each approve
themselves at the tribunal of the Christian consciousness. It is no
part of my business here to descend into details and particulars,
but I do want to lay on my own heart, and especially on the hearts
of the members of the church of which I have the honour to be the
pastor, and also upon all other Christian people whom my voice may
reach, the solemn responsibility which the conditions of life in our
generation lay upon Christian men and women, 'Launch out into the
deep and let down your nets.' I believe, for my part, that if all
the good, God-fearing, Christ-loving men and women in Manchester
were to hear this voice sounding in their ears, and to obey it, they
would change the face of the city.