The first thing you notice when Chris Shaw speaks is that he's missing his two-front teeth. He's kind of got to tell you he didn't come from money. It's all he can do to put food on the table for his kids. But nonetheless, on Wednesday night, Chris went out and bought that 98 Ford Ranger he'd been nine. There's only a thousand dollars but for a man like him he had to negotiate with the owner so he could make a hundred dollar installments. So having made his first down payment he drove away with only $28.96 left in his bank account. But he knew that truck needed some work so he got out the next morning and drove to the repair shop. Chris, we got some bad news. You need a new engine. His thousand dollar truck needed a $3,500 engine. He said for a guy like me that might as well be three million. And then his girlfriend called. She said, you hear the news? No. Our gas station. Break time. Sold the winning ticket in the lottery. I already checked my numbers. Did you check yours? Nope. Now is there any other reason I'd be telling you this story? $258 million. Reporters showed up and they said, what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do? I don't know. I guess I'll pay some of those bills and maybe I'll take the kids to the business. I'll probably get that engine from my truck, too. Are you serious? I mean, yeah, there's nothing like a 98 Ford Ranger with a brand new engine in it. Chris, buy a new truck, buy a whole dealership if you want to. When you get a limo, you never have to drive again, buy a jet and fly the kids to Disney. You want to grab the guy and say, buddy, look around you. There's a reason all these reporters are here. You've been giving virtually unending riches. But what are you going to do about it? How has this event changed things? How are you going to live in light of this new reality? Are you really going to go back and just do the same things you've always done? Welcome to John 21. Page 1687 in your Pew Bible, the greatest event in history just happened. What now? I don't know. Let's go fishing. Starting at verse 1, here God's word, after where Jesus appeared again to the disciples by the sea of Tiberius. It happened this way, Simon Peter, Thomas called didimus, Nathaniel from Cana and Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, as James and John, and two other disciples were together. I'm going out to fish, Simon Peter told him, and they said, we'll go with you. So they went out, got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. In the morning Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples didn't realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, friends, haven't you any fish? No they answered. He said, throw your net on the right side of the boat and you'll find some. When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, it's the Lord. Soon as Simon Peter heard him say it's the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him for he had taken it off and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, but they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it and some bread. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish you have just caught. Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. None of the disciples dared ask him who are you, they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. This is God's word, let's pray. Father, why do you care so much about fish? We pray you show us that this morning. Your name. Amen. Two weeks ago, we were looking at the last section and it sounded like the end of John. It was the big climax, big finish. He even talked about why he wrote the book. So what's all this stuff? I mean, the commentators argue about this bonus chapters, they call it this epilogue, why is it even here? I mean, it comes to a climax and then you just get these two weird stories, fish in, and as we'll see next week some tough words for Peter. Why does John include this? We know, we talked about it last week, he's being very selective about what he's included. This isn't just thrown in there, what's he up to? This whole book, as he told us last time, was about getting people to see and believe and who Jesus is. And now the focus changes. This isn't the day new month, it's not the end of the action, it's not the end of the story. He's saying, this is the beginning of the next story, there's an excitement and enthusiasm. The greatest event, the history has just happened, what are we going to do now? John tells us in two words, fish and shepherd. So that's what we're going to do the next two weeks. This week we're going to talk about fishing. There's some sophisticated sense of pride as a preacher that I don't like to use all the same letters to start on points, but this week I got three T's for you. Team task target, what does a resurrection tell us? It gives us a new team. When I was about 10 years old, I still remember going to the movie theater, and this is before the days of stadium style seating, I sat down and all these people came and sat in front of me, and they were full grown adults, they were taller than me, so now I had a good view of the screen, now I can't see it. And I remember thinking, it hit me very clearly, that it wouldn't be all that bad up their head to just roll it off. I mean, then I could see the screen, it would make my life easier, and never mind the fact that that would be pretty hard for them, but that's the default setting of the human heart. My preference is, matter more than your existence, and if you get in my way, just get out of the way. Now I wonder if some of you have had that same thought in church. I don't want you to miss it. This is why verse two is really something in our eyes, skip over so easily. These seven guys are together. Now, they're a lot different from each other. And before they had Jesus, and he kept them together, but even as the Old Testament prophesied, strike the shepherd in the sheepful scatter, they didn't scatter, they're together. Why? Understand this, and we saw a few weeks ago, Thomas, he's a skeptic, he's a pessimist, it's his mentality, he's an empiricist, I don't want, I'm not going to believe until you show me, show me the holes in his hands, show me his side. He's a doubter. But then you got Nathaniel, in the beginning of John, we found out Nathaniel meets Jesus, Jesus says, I saw you under the fig tree, he said, oh, you're the son of God. Jesus looks back at him and says, I haven't done anything yet, you know? You believe too easily, Nathaniel's superstitious, he's capped in easy belief, and now if you've ever met people of that different temperament, that different disposition, they don't normally get along that well. One's an optimist, one's a pessimist, they push on each other. Same thing with Peter and John. John's the rationalist, he's a thinker, he's the guy who sits on the boat, he puts things together fastest, it's Jesus. He's just thinking out loud, he's not going to do anything, Peter dives in the water, swims straight over there. I mean, John's the guy who walked up the tomb, but he wasn't going to go in, he looks at the grave close, he deduces, he thinks about it. Peter's a guy who comes charging in late, runs right into the tomb, he's the guy who whipped out his sword and chopped off an ear. I mean, these people don't get along in church, Peter's the one who's like, well, let's get something done. And John's guy's like, we need a study committee, let's form one and think about it. These guys get aggravated with each other, and here they are, all hanging out together. They don't miss it. Now of course, Peter's the leader, he says, let's go fishing, and they all say, okay, let's go fishing. Now, they don't miss some of you, they're like, that's great, the guys go fishing. This isn't Bass Pro angling, they're not sitting back on the boat and casting the reel. They're throwing nets, they're going all night, and they're not out for individual fish, they're not looking to make a couple of big ones in real men, they're out for bulk. And if you're thinking TV shows, there's a lot less build dance and a lot more deadliest catch. And they're not in the freezing cold waters of Alaska, but this is hard work all night long. So when Peter says, let's go fishing, everybody says, okay, these guys have different temperaments, why would they want to go fishing with them? See, it was more important to them to be together. It didn't matter what they were doing. They want it to be together, why? Because people who are experiencing the resurrection of Jesus Christ want to be with people who are experiencing the resurrection of Jesus. Understand that? I want to lay that out there to you, because this is something Americans really struggle with. This is our doctrine of church. We're individualistic. If I'm good with God, it has seventh grader look me in the eyes in New Jersey and say, I can worship God at home, why come to church? What about, you know, give me a reason. And this is what he's missing, why is it that they want to be together? CS Lewis talks about it in his book, The Four Loves, he had two good friends, he hung out with a lot. One guy named Charles, one guy named Ronald, and he writes, you know, I really enjoyed being with him, but sometimes I got frustrated because I really wanted to get some quality time with Ronald, and I found that Charles would say things, he would crack a joke and Ronald would laugh, and I couldn't make him laugh like that. And it frustrated me that he was getting some of Ronald's attention, and I wasn't getting it, and when Charles got sick and died, he felt, okay, now I'm going to get more of Ronald. And what he found is with Charles out of the picture, there was a part of his personality he didn't have access to anymore, he couldn't draw that out, he didn't have the same temperament that drew out a different side of Ronald's character that he hadn't seen. And he realized, with Charles gone, he didn't get more of Ronald, he got less, you see that? These guys have different temperaments, they have different angles on Christ, and they're realizing. It's not just about me and Jesus, it's about us together, and I don't just have one angle on it, when I hear from you, I get your angle on Christ. And instead of it being a two-dimensional picture, now we're picking out the diamond and spinning it around and lights sparkling through, and we're going deeper because we're together, and pursuing. This is hard work, y'all. I mean, it's difficult to be together. You know what, in your most basic relationships and marriage and just friendships is difficult. But this is why the church should be a place where people who have no business being together are found together. The world would look and say, what in the world, why are those people together? I want to press this a little bit up. I think people look sometimes and say, well, GK Chesterton has said, the biggest argument against Christianity or Christians, they're the problem. People look at us and say, well, of course, I don't want to believe that junk. If that's what it looks like, why is that? I mean, they're looking at the bride of Christ and saying, oh my goodness, but I think we look at the bride of Christ sometimes and say, well, but Jesus loves such an ugly woman. What's wrong with our eyesight? I had a friend call me, a good friend called me this last month and said, Russ, I need your advice. I need some help. He said, okay, he's been married less than a year. He said, I want to get my wife on the phone. I was like, is everything okay? You know, he said, yeah, our marriage is going great. I said, the problem is my brother. See, he and his brother were very, very tight for many years. And now he's gotten married and his wife will walk into the room and his brother gets up and storms out. He doesn't even want to see her, can't stand her, can't stand her presence. She's becoming more and more evident that he thinks he's losing his brother because of this woman. And he can't stand being around her. And what my friends trying to say is, don't you see, she's with me, we're together. My bride, you can't love the groom and hate the bride. I'm leaving and cleaving. This is who I am, who I'm becoming. I've wrapped myself up with her. If you want to know me, know my bride, you can't separate us. See, brothers and sisters, that's why we gather on a weekly basis. He said, pray, our father, so many of the commands in scripture, we lose in the English because you is the same and singular as it is in the plural, but he's saying, y'all, y'all rejoice together, y'all do this, together, we're going to fish it. We, I'm going fishing, we're coming with you. I may hate fishing, but I want to be with you because I want to see more of Jesus. Next time somebody's aggravating the hound out of you in church, what's Jesus showing you about himself? We were meant to be together and already told you that our any of it is, if the church looks like that, if people look and say, why are those people together, then they're going to begin to wonder about our God. All right, that's our team and it leads into our task. The task of fishing, our net, a lot of it is how we do team, but here it is, the greatest event in history, Jesus is the hinge of history and what is Peter want to do, fish. I'm going to venture out a little bit here. I'm going, maybe going out a little beyond myself, but I think what Peter's up to, we already said he's a man of action, Jesus just tells him to go to Galilee and wait. He goes to Galilee, he's a man of action, he's not going to sit on his hands. What's he going to do? The last memory he has, he's met up with Jesus twice now with a group, but they haven't had the heart to heart yet. His last memory with Jesus is the biggest failure in his life and it has to be haunting him. Jesus told us to go here, he's going to meet up with us. He knows he's got this pile of mess over here. What do you do when you got a big mess in your life? And it's too big for you to fix. Well, I don't know about you but sometimes I'll find something I'm good at and I'll launch into it. I think that's what Peter's doing. He's a fisherman, it's his strength, it was his old career. I'm not going to sit around here, I'm going to do, I'm going to go fishing, but he's dodging. We probably call this careerism. I'm going to bury myself in my, I'm going to be a success. I mean, we even asked the question, we were finding out about somebody one of the first questions we asked, well, what do you do? Well, how does that matter? Well, what do you do? That's my identity. It's in what I do. Now look at this, Christ comes and he doesn't chastise them. It's interesting. He comes and he's, he does what Jesus often does, he asks an irritating question. He says, you caught any fish yet? You know, I have a liberal professor in college who said, see, God's walking in the garden and he says, Adam, where are you, Adam, why aren't you cloned? He says, God doesn't know, God doesn't know, he knows full well. He's asking an irritating question because he's after something. Jesus knows, they haven't caught any fish. He's obviously in control of it, but what happens next? But he's asking an irritating question to get at something. It's like, for those of you who are big football fans in the SEC country, you had a big loss the day before you walked into church and they said, hey, Joe, when yesterday, you know, don't ask me that question. That's what he's doing. He knows full well. They're failing. He's saying, Peter, how's that going for you, building your identity on your strength? What happens when you fail and the floor kind of slides out from Andrea? What now? Then he tells him. He doesn't say, you're so bad. He says, throw the nets over the side. See, even in the little things, what was their result without Jesus? Nothing. What was their result with him? Incredible. John 15.5, Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing. Even in the little things, even in the little things. All right. Look at what he's doing here, though. I don't know how to reclaim a title like Fisher's of Men because I think some of us hear that and we're thinking biblically already. And there is a sense in which Jesus has uniquely chosen fishing, and we'll get back to that in a second. But what he's doing is taking a bunch of guys, most of whom were fishers and he's reclaiming their career. You have built your identity on what you do. I'm giving you a new identity. And now what you do is just an expression of who you are. For some of you, your identity is how well you write a legal brief or your identity is how well you love your kids or how well you love the people at your office or how much success you've had financially. What do you build it on? Christ says, watch me reclaim your strength. Watch me show you you've got nothing without me and then watch what I do with you once you realize it. What if instead of Fisher's of men, he put your career? What is it? He's plug it in there. What if lawyers weren't about how well I can do this or that? Not restoring God's justice in the world. If a doctor wasn't out to make a name as the best around, but was about restoring, not just physical health, but even more, I can remember in Chattanooga, some of the best doctors had the worst bedside manner. Why? I don't have time for you. Is it really about healing? Well, I'm not a lawyer, doctor Russ. Martin Luther King said, if you're a street sweeper and you sweep the street for God's glory, people will turn and say, why is he taking pride in sweeping the street? I love the way Ray Cortese put it. He said after he was making a point like this, a guy in his church came up to him and said, Ray, I'll work at a sewage plant. How's God going to redeem that? He said, are you kidding? You get down in the filth and you clean it up so we don't have to live in it. That's the gospel. He's like, that's what Jesus did. He came into our filth and cleansed himself. You are the minister of sewage. That's what he does. He went on to say, there are millions of kids dying in this world because they don't have potable water and you make it possible for our children to live and exist and thrive. When God reclaims what you do for him, it changes your focus. Instead of building our identity on something else and just being a vacuum that sucks in, we begin to be a river where the water flows through us. There's a reason it's called the Dead Sea, all the rivers flow in and nothing comes out and it's just death. Up until the 1930s, they tell me that Lake Okeechobee, the land around it was one of the most fertile in the world because every few years it would just flood and all the sediment and the nutrients on the base of that lake would spill out on the land all around it and it was great farming land. Incredibly fertile. Then a couple of hurricanes hit in the 30s and they, well, people are dying and we've got to build the dikes higher and then more hit in the 60s and they built huge ones. In the last decade, they started realizing the land's not as fertile and they went in and did some soil studies. It's poisonous on the bottom of that lake now. It's four times the legal limit of soil that you can remove and put somewhere else. They don't have a place to put it, it's so poisonous. Deadness because it's just flowing in and not out anymore. We were designed to overflow and when what we do is turned in ourselves, it kills us. We were designed to be outward. If I don't want to be just that generic with fishing, there's actually an offensive metaphor here. In a politically correct society, you're not supposed to tell people something's wrong with them but the Bible just comes right out and says that Jesus is saying when ancient people would have recognized fishing is kingdom language. The water is a symbol of darkness and chaos and disorder and Christ is saying, you move from a kingdom of chaos and darkness into one of light and order under my lordship, under structure and purpose and life. It's a change from darkness to light, from chaos to order. If you've ever seen the movie Shindler's List, it's under the Nazi regime, the entire movie is in black and white. It's horrible, horrible the things the Nazis did. But if you watch the movie, there's one thing in it that's in color. You remember? The red dress. How could you forget that little girl's red dress? And it just pops up in the background. You're watching in boot, there it is. There it is. There it is. Color in the midst of a dark, dreary place. That's what the church is meant to be. The people would look and say, there it is. Why is there color there? Life. That's what fishing is about. If we're from a different kingdom, it looks very different. Wow. Well, it has to do with our target. Apparently, what's what's Peter after? I just, I don't know if when we read it, we quite get it. John obviously expects people to know this other story. We get it from Luke and Luke five with the call of many of these disciples. It's almost the exact same story. Jesus is just starting his ministry. People are crowding around him. It's so tidy as to get on a boat. Peter's boat and has to push all from shore and he preaches for a while. And then after he preaches for a while, he turns to the fisherman who sat there been up all night, who probably ready to call it today. And he says, let's go out in the middle. Alright, if you say so, I'm a fisherman. You know, he's listening to a preach. He's like, you're a holy man, let's do this. And they go out and they throw the nets over and it's more than they can pull in. So aside from Jesus being in the boat then versus on the shore, these are virtually the same stories except for Peter's reaction. Because in Luke five, his relationship with Jesus is just beginning. He hits his knees and says, depart from me, Lord. I am a sinful man. Go away. He's listened to him preach for a while. And he knows this guy is telling the truth about him in a way he wasn't ready to handle. The floor has slipped out from under him. His identity, everything that covers him that makes him feel like I'm worthwhile. Christ has exposed that failure over there. The lustre on the shine over here of fishing is gone. And just like then, he'd been failing all night and Christ takes him out and shows him not only am I telling you the truth spiritually, I'm over all the physical stuff too. And Peter just wants him to go away. Have you ever just wanted God to go away? He not only asked irritating questions, he digs in because a surgeon has to get the nasty apt. God comes after us. But what's the difference between that day three years before when Peter says, just go away, Jesus. And now when he hears it's Jesus and he dives in and it's from straight to him. I mean, up until a couple of weeks before, he still was messing it up. He still didn't get it. He even denied Jesus three times. What has happened in the three weeks since then? The resurrection? And Peter's just starting to get it. He gets up on the shore and what's Jesus doing? Cooking breakfast. I love that. Hey fellas, got some fish on the grill over here. He's cooking on breakfast, which lets him know I've already got some fish. I didn't need your fish. But when they come up with there, he's like bring them all in. He uses their stuff even though it doesn't need it. But they get up there. They all sit down. They don't even have anything to say. They know that's Jesus, but we're not entirely sure we knew who he was at the beginning. And then they just wait. He gets the bread out, breaks it, passes it out to him, gets some fish, passes it out to him. What are they remembering? He did that with 5,000. He did that with 4,000. And just a couple of weeks ago, the last time he broke bread with us, he told us, why? This is my body. Broken for you. It's what we're going to celebrate tonight. The meal that we eat in Christ. That he provides for us. Peter who's been stripped bare is realizing everything I saw that was so horrible was Jesus taking my place. He was stripped so that I could be clothed. He was broken so I could be made whole. He was cast aside as worthless so I could be brought in and treated like royalty. Come to breakfast, Peter. Come to breakfast. I want you to leave here this morning with one solid picture of what fishing is. Steve Shelby is a pastor in Richmond. His parents were in town one weekend and they had a family emergency. They had to go to the ER. His dad was okay but he was in a lot of pain. If you ever been to the ER once they realized you're okay, it might be a little while before you get immediate treatment. So they brought him back in a room. I sit him down. He has to change into that hospital gown. It's awkward he's sitting there and he keeps getting hit with waves of pain and the families kind of gathered around holding him in the chair because it's hurting him so much. The nurses just wait. There were as nice as they could be but they said you just got to wait. Steve said he went over the sink. He was washing his hands in another wave of pain, hit his dad and it was so big. He jumped up out of the chair and ran out of the room down the hallway to the nurses station. The gown wasn't tied in the back and it's just flowing. He takes off running after his dad. He's like whoa you know it's wrong to grab the strings to try and tie it up and his dad just tearing off and gets to the station and says I need help and I need it now. And he realized that he's tying his dad's back. You didn't care that you just lost all your dignity. You get it then. You get it more than anybody else here. You knew you needed help and you knew where you needed to run to get it. That's us. That we run screaming at the top of our lungs. I need help with our soul exposed straight to Jesus because he's the only place where he sees all the way to the bottom of our mess and still loves us to the skies. That's what the cross is. And Christian fishing is not taking the Bible or taking Jesus and beating other people over the head. It is us admitting how deeply we need him and running soul naked to Jesus so that other people look and say what is that food doing? And when enough of us are moving that way, they start to look where those idiots go. And others will come. And Jesus says come in. Sit down. I love you. Welcome home. Let's see. Jesus no matter how we put it, it scares us to death that people would see us down to the bottom of our souls. So much of my life is covering up the nasty to pretend I'm okay. So much of the sound is saying we're Christian and faking it. Faking our goodness. Let it help us admit how much we need you that beggars would lead beggars to food that we would run straight to the only place we can get help. We need help even seeing that Jesus. I have no doubt there are people in this room who Christians have hurt who just don't want anything to do with you. Lord show us that the broken people that hurt him need you just like he or she need you. I pray that today would be the day they won't run to you. Lord many of us have spent our time lately hiding from you as if we can hide but help us to run back into your presence and be fed and be loved. Lord show us that our life calling is to fish and to love being together and being with you. We ask you to bless us not for our own sake but that we would be together for others running toward you. In your name we pray. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit close us in His joy and we would run like idiots who know our will go in His peace.