Text:
‘Go
away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man’ Luke 5.8
These verses
in Luke’s gospel are so familiar aren’t they ?
As Jesus
walks along the shore of the
Jesus steps
in to a boat
belonging to Simon Peter, and asks him to push the boat out a little, tells
Peter to put out the nets, and when Peter does so, the net is so full, it is
nearly bursting. When they come into land, Jesus calls not only Peter but
another two fishermen James and John to come and follow him. Saying, From now
on, you will be catching men...............
Many of us
can, I am sure, remember in Sunday School, or in a
mission hall somewhere, or on the beach in summer as children,
singing that old
chorus I will make you fishers of men
So, yes these are familiar
verses here, the familiar story of the calling of the first three disciples.
And because we have heard them so often, these verses, perhaps, have become
hard to hear, like a path beaten on dry ground, hard. Hard for us to hear
afresh, hard for us to understand fruitfully
Walter
Brueggemman, an expert on the Bible, an author of many books, is well aware of
the way we become all too familiar with the gospel
the way in which
we can slowly lose touch with its wonders,
The
gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted,
as though
it contained no unsettling news.
its...
truth gets trivialized and flattened......
Actually, if we turn back to
Luke 5, there is something not so straightforward,
But unsettling, puzzling,
mysterious.........
verse
8: when Simon Peter saw the nets nearly bursting, the boats just about
capsizing with the weight of the catch...... falling on his knees, he said to
Jesus “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
Here is something not quite so
straightforward,
but
unsettling, puzzling, mysterious.........
that
will open up to us fresh avenues of the healing life giving gospel........ those words of Peter:
“Go away from me Lord, for I
am a sinful man!”
If you read the gospels
through, you will discover that when
Peter says “......I am a
sinful man!”
he is,
in fact, telling the truth about himself......
so
the question is:
if
Peter’s words are true about himself and he is, just as he says: “a sinful
man!”
then
- not to put too fine a point on it........
why
is Jesus calling him to be a disciple ?
Why is Jesus inviting Peter to
accompany him for the next three years,
when
Peter has said in the first couple of hours - Go away from me Lord, I am a
sinful man ! Peter has glimpsed the holiness, sinlessness of the Lord Jesus,
but at the same time has seen his own utter sinfulness.........
so -
not to put too fine a point on it........
why
is Jesus calling him to be a disciple ?
If we follow this through
it may
be that the Lord will open up to us fresh avenues of the healing, life-giving
gospel here.
We read this about the grace
of God, Psalm 103 says:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
transgressions from us...
and
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
Don’t we see that all the way
through the Bible ?
Read of King David, who had
walked with God, sins, commits adultery, and a whole lot of other things. Couldn’t get much worse than
that. Then, David realises what he has done, in God’s sight, and cries
out in agonising guilt, his sense of sin, in the sight of God: We read that David longed for forgiveness. and turning in sorrow, contrition to the living God, he found forgiveness for himself, that is, and
his relationship to God was restored.
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
Last week, remember how
four
men brought a friend, who was lying paralysed on a mat,
Jesus said to him:
Friend, your sins are forgiven...............
Jesus simply declared to that man,
that powerless man
your sins are forgiven...............
a
word of grace and forgiveness and power...........
and
lifted the burden of guilt from his heart.......
The man,
was set free, that terrible burden of guilt fell away from him, and he took up his
mat and walked, restored. With those words, Friend, your sins are forgiven,
Jesus healed his very soul.
Here, lying on the mat was a
man not looking for God’s grace, but who
received it....... he was a sinner, undeserving, yet receiving the gift of God,
guilty but the sheer grace of God came to meet him in Jesus.
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our
transgressions from us...
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
Now, we can follow this wonderful
theme right through Luke’s gospel.............
where
sinners, undeserving, receive the gift of God,
the guilty
receive the sheer grace of God in Jesus.
In the parable of the prodigal
son, the son
sets
off with his father’s money,
blows
it all on things we needn’t go into,
and
then,in despair - turns back for home,
fearful
at the thought of what his father is going to say !
yet
when the son gets near home, the father is waiting at the top of the long and
winding road to the house,
and,
and - runs down to grab hold of the boy and hug him, as if he will never let
him go ! This, says Jesus, is what God is like ! what God’s grace and love are like
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
or think
of that poor woman who came weeping
to
see Jesus in a teacher of the law’s house
burdened
by all her own remorse, regrets, sorrows,
the
teacher of the law was, it seems, most embarrassed.
But Jesus said to her........
Your sins are forgiven !
And light began to fill her soul, the forgiveness of God through Jesus began its healing
work.
Or think of Zacchaeus,
Zaccheus, a man with criminal
accusations against him,
climbed a tree to see Jesus,
but Jesus Christ called him down by name; saying I must come to your
house today
Saying to the crowd 'I have
come to seek and save the lost'; Jesus
calls Zacchaeus.
This is the grace and love of
Jesus Christ............
love
and grace
But now here’s a thing - all
these are accounts of the grace and love of God in Jesus in the gospels, and in
most of them - we also read of the complaints......... of the onlookers !
When Jesus says to the man
lying on the mat Friend, your sins are
forgiven...............
the
teachers of the law are very unhappy, they complain and say to themselves,
that’s not right
saying
who can forgive sins but God ?
When Jesus says to the woman
weeping the house of the teacher of the law
your sins are forgiven...............
the
teacher of the law says to himself, doesn’t Jesus know what sort of woman she
is ? She’s a sinner, he complains.
When Jesus calls Zacchaeus out
of the tree where he is sitting to get a better view, and
says,
in grace and love, I am coming to your house,
the
crowd complain.... they say Jesus has gone as a guest to the home of a
‘......... of a what ? a sinner !
even
in the story Jesus told of the prodigal son, when the father hugs him
and
gives orders for a big party,
the
older brother stands in the background complaining that he has never had a party.......
grace and complaining, right there throughout the gospel !
grace
and complaining
Some perhaps many would say
why should David be let off ? for
adultery and worse - look at all the pain and sorrow he caused. He was supposed
to be king - What about the example he set the whole kingdom.
Look at the prodigal, the
money wasted, he blew it all, so the whole thing is
his own fault. Why the hug when he gets home ! Why the
party ? and Zacchaeus -
hadn’t he been taking a slice of people’s taxes for himself ? Why should Jesus
go to his house ?
Well, all we can say is that King
David, the paralysed man, the weeping woman, the prodigal son, Zacchaeus........
all of these discovered just this:
That the Lord is compassionate and gracious,
as far as the east is from the west, so far had He removed their
transgressions.......
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
and these
men and women were healed, forgiven and
restored to God....
The New Testament in fact proclaims
this miracle
that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save
the world … says John 3.17
All all the way through the gospels we see Jesus, pure in heart, the sinless
One among sinful men and women.
Jesus sees all the secrets of the human heart, He knows the wickedness, the
hypocrisy, the sinfulness of those whose company He keeps, he
knows that they are sinners,
but
says Jesus:
I have come not to call the
righteous, but sinners.
All the way through the
gospels – we see Jesus in the company of sinners, those who never bother with
the law, those outside of religious life - the weeping woman, Zacchaeus and many
others.
But all the way through the gospels, Jesus is not far away or at a
distance, but among the outcasts, present among them. Sent by the Father in
heaven, He has
come seeking the lost sheep, wandered far..........
scattered over the face of the earth......... You
see, if Jesus has come only for the righteous,
if Jesus Christ in His holiness will have nothing to do with sinners,
then men and women like ourselves, sinners, have no hope for sin is rooted
in our human nature.
What, said John Calvin, a wonderful picture of God's grace is here,
God has sent His Son, Jesus and
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........
because, if He did, says Paul,
not one of us could stand in His holy sight.........
for we are all sinners ! This is our condition, this is our drastic situation !
But the New Testament proclaims
this,
in
Jesus, the New Testament declares, God has acted decisively to do something
about our situation, at the Cross. There the sin and guilt that burdens our
hearts was dealt with once and for all. Because, at the Cross, our sin and the condemnation that should have been
ours
was
laid on Jesus Christ.
Christ Jesus has taken all the
sin of the world upon His shoulders, taken it away once and for all at the
Cross.
Christ died for sins, once for all,
the righteous for the unrighteous,
to bring you to God...........says Paul.
This is a true saying, Paul writes to Timothy to be completely accepted and believed, Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners !
Through the Cross we are
brought into the presence of the Holy God - we are redeemed.
for,
listen once again to these wonderful words of Psalm 103:
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.........