Fifth Sunday after Trinity
July 17th, Year of
Our + Lord 2022
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s
Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South
Dakota
Luke 5:1-11
The Upside Down and Backwards Way of the LORD
Audio of this sermon is available HERE.
Lord, are you sure
this is going to work?
I had had
enough. Not so long before, on Mt. Carmel,
it seemed like we were winning, and I was so stoked. I mean, my name is Eliyahu, I think you pronounce
it “Elijah.” Eliyahu or Elijah, either
way, my name means “Yahweh is my God,” or “the LORD is my God.” And the LORD of Israel was my God; I was
happy to be His prophet. At Mt. Carmel,
the LORD arranged a competition, the false god, Baal, and his prophets, matched
up against Yahweh, the LORD, and me. The
challenge was for the prophets to call on Baal to send fire down from heaven to
consume their sacrifice, then I would do the same with the LORD, and we would
see who the True God really was.
Those false
prophets arranged their sacrificial bull on the wood of their altar, and prayed
to Baal to send down fire to consume the sacrifice. All day they cried and wailed and even cut
themselves, begging Baal to rain down fire.
But nothing happened. Because,
duh, Baal is just an idol, a carving made from wood, an imagined god, existing
only in the minds of his worshipers.
Baal’s prophets prayed fervently, but not even a spark fell from the
heavens.
As the
evening drew near, I ordered that four jars of water be poured over my bull and
the wood that was laid out on my altar.
I ordered water to be poured over it, three times, for the Holy, Holy,
Holy LORD. And of course, four jars
three times makes twelve, the number of Israel.
On top of the excellent Hebrew symbolism, the meat and the wood were clearly
soaking wet. Only then did I pray to
Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Immediately fire shot down from heaven, burning up the bull, the wood,
and vaporizing the water. The people
fell on their faces and shouted, “Yahweh, He is God, Yahweh, He is God.” What a great moment. Israel had wandered far from the LORD. But now, surely, God’s people would return
to Him, humbled, but newly faithful.
What a rush. What a moment.
It didn’t
last. Despite the defeat of her prophets
and her idol, the wicked Queen Jezebel was not overthrown. The fervor of the people for the true God,
Yahweh, didn’t last. In fact, Jezebel
swore that day an oath to put me to death.
When I heard of her threat, I gave in to fear, and I ran. I just wanted to die, to be done fighting the
good fight, to rest with my fathers. But
the LORD would not let me die. After 40
days, I ended up at Mt. Horeb, also called Mt. Sinai, the mountain of the
Moses, the very place where the LORD met him to deliver His covenant and His
Word to His new people, Israel. There,
the LORD taught me an essential lesson, a truth that will still serve you well,
today.
The LORD
God is almighty, eternal, all-knowing, the source of all light and power and
glory. So, we assume, His ways and His
works will be uniformly impressive. We
weak, fallen, needy creatures, are always impressed by powerful sights. And we form our expectations of God
accordingly. But God is not like us. He does not need to impress us. Certainly, He does not worry about our
expectations. So, the LORD came to me at
Mt. Horeb and asked me what I was doing.
I whined about all that I had suffered, and how I was the only faithful
Israelite left. The LORD was not
impressed with me, but He was gracious.
He commanded me “Come out of your cave and stand before me.” He wanted to teach me something.
I hung
back, as I was afraid of standing before the LORD. And for good reason. First there came a wind that could fracture
rocks. Then earthquakes shook the ground. Then fire blazed. It was awesome. But the LORD was not in any of these. Then, a low whisper, a still, small voice
called to me, the very voice of the LORD God Almighty. I covered my face, and came out, for I knew
it was the LORD. Patiently, He inquired
of my complaint, and He heard my complaint.
I thought
I was the only faithful one left. I
thought that God’s word had been utterly rejected, by everyone else. My life was in danger; my ministry was a
failure; evil was winning the day.
No. Do not think so highly of yourself, counseled
Yahweh. Go, appoint new kings, and a new
prophet, to take your place. And do not
doubt that I have sustained a remnant of faithful people for myself, 7,000 in
Israel who have not bowed the knee and kissed Baal. Everything my eyes and ears could take in,
all that I could perceive screamed that the way of faithfulness to the LORD had
been defeated.
But no,
the LORD corrected me. He reminded me, “My
faithfulness has no end. I will prevail,
despite how bad everything seems to you, right now.”
Your man
Luther called this the Theology of the Cross.
That God usually hides His power, mercy and victory under things that
appear to be weak, cruel and defeated.
The Glory of the LORD is hidden under opposites. Christians are called to look through the
surface of things and realize that the LORD, Yahweh, He truly is great, the
only One who is great. And He will
prevail, for His Name’s sake, and for your blessing.
This is
what Simon Peter learned from the LORD Jesus.
A Jewish fisherman’s common sense led Peter to acknowledge Jesus as a Master,
as a special teacher. But then Jesus
gave ridiculous fishing advice to a professional fisherman. After borrowing Peter’s boat as a make-shift
pulpit, Jesus tells Peter: “Put out your nets for a catch.”
Oh man,
here we go. Fish in the sea of Galilee
are hard to catch. Successful fishermen know
to cast their nets at night, in the very deepest water. Not at midday a few feet away from the shore. But, this fellow Jesus can really preach.
(Luke doesn’t specify the content of His boat sermon, but I think Jesus
preached about Elijah and the still small voice.) Reluctantly, Peter agrees: "Master, we toiled all night and
took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets."
The LORD is
mostly present in His still, small voice.
But, at critical moments, He will do spectacular things, to get people
to pay attention. Despite the wrong hour
and the wrong place, Peter cast his nets, and within seconds they were bursting
with fish. The LORD of heaven and earth
has command over the schools of fish, the birds of the air, and over the lives
of men. Peter, a simple, honest
believer, realized that the Master he had grudgingly obeyed was actually the
LORD God Almighty. He fell to his
knees: "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man."
All of
that may seem upside down to you. But
what comes next is so much more counter-expectational. Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." Of
all the potential ministers among all the people of the earth, God was choosing
an uneducated, smelly fisherman from the backwater region of Galilee. Choosing him to be a foundation stone in His
Church. Of all the men Jesus would
eventually call as His disciples, in training to be His Apostles, His sent
ones, not one of them was worthy. None were
good candidates for the task. That the
men called into the LORD’s inner circle should be so unworthy shocks our
sensibilities.
And this
was a good warm-up for the main event.
For as unlikely a bunch of candidates as were Peter, Andrew, John, James
and the rest, the upside-downness of God’s way of salvation is so much
stranger. As Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, “For
since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it
pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For
Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a
stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
God could
have destroyed all evil, in an instant, as soon as it entered into this
world. But that would have meant Adam
and Eve would have been destroyed, cut off from God and every good thing forever,
and we would never have been born. God
didn’t want that. He wanted you. So, instead
of destroying all evil, and humanity along with it, the LORD Almighty decided
to take our problem, our weakness, our sin, into Himself. Jesus stood in our place as the Sinner, in order
to destroy sin’s power to separate us from Him, forever.
The net
that Peter cast into the shallow waters was a regular 1st century
fishing net. The net that Jesus taught
to Peter, and to all His Church, to be cast into the world, is His very
upside-down and backwards story of salvation by grace, through faith in Jesus,
crucified, and resurrected. He who knew no sin became sin for
us, that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. No human
would ever have imagined such a way of salvation. But God, before the foundation of the world,
rejoiced to commit Himself to this plan.
What does
it mean to be a Christian? It is to know
your sin and the just condemnation that you deserve, but also to know, trust
and cling to the free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that Jesus lived and
died and rose again to deliver to you.
The same
God who rescued me from Jezebel and preserved 7,000 faithful in Israel, the
same LORD who called and used Peter to build His Church, this same God is on
your side, and will be with you when things seem to be falling apart. Listen to His still small voice, hear His
Word, whenever you can, and through it, the Holy Spirit will strengthen you and
maintain your faith.
How does
God grow His Church? Through the
net-casting of His forgiven children.
Pastors from pulpits, parents at bedtime, and Christians in their
everyday lives are moved by the Spirit of Christ to speak of God’s cross-shaped
love, in still small voices of truth.
This doesn’t always seem like such a good plan to us. But it is the LORD’s plan, and He makes it
work, perfectly.
And so we
cast our nets, and the Holy Spirit continues to draw sinners to the Holy One,
Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.
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