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Jesus said, “From now on you’ll be catching men.”

᛭ INI ᛭

The Lord catches you, claims you has His own. You are His. He makes it so. He didn’t ask you, He just does it. No offer, just the Lord’s gracious working to capture you as His own.

Nobody wants that. What happened to consent? How offensive! But God is God, and you’re not. As fish brought from the depths into the daylight, we’re much more at home in the depths, the darkness. “People love the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil.” (Jn 3) In our feelings, our desires, our thoughts, and our actions we reject the Spirit’s Word through Paul: “do not think more highly of [yourself] than [you] should.” (Rom 12)

The Lord breaks through all of that. He’s the Lord, after all. Nothing happens apart from Him. No kingdom rises or falls without His command. The grass and flowers He grows whither and die “when the breath of the the LORD blows on it.” (Is 40) He feeds birds, even though they don’t farm. (Mt 6) And “no bird falls apart from your Father.” (Mt 10) Jesus pays no regard to your wants and desires, if He did you wouldn’t be saved. He catches you, in spite of you wishes, just as He did with those many fishes.

“The nets were nearly breaking.” Of course they were! Because of what such a large number were doing. Not just dead weight, but fighting, struggling, writhing themselves to get out of the net. The fish will do anything to get out of the net, to live as they so choose and not as the Lord, the Great Angler of the Fish, so chooses for them.

The Lord is familiar with such things, because He’s familiar with you. You, who do think more highly of yourself than you should. “I’m quite the catch! Not perfect, but better than most other fish. A prize that should be mounted on the Angler’s wall of fame.” Here’s some even more fishy thinking: “I allow the Lord to catch me. I choose the Lord to catch me.” Or, most subtle of all: “At least I don’t swim away. I’m a good little fish who stays in the Lord’s net.” A fish who wants to be caught, who’s ever heard of such a thing?

But that is how we think and live daily and much. We often swim off into the depths of sin, into the darkness to live apart from the Lord. It’ll all be okay because we’re mostly good little, well behaved fishes. “Kicking against the goads.” “Stiff-necked people.” Anything and everything to stay out of the Lord’s net. “I have a better life apart from the net! The Lord’s fishing time is too early. I’ve got other things going on.”

Free fish, aren’t free. “Free”—just a meaningless title! Really, just wild, unruly, selfish, endangered, dying fish. “Free will against God’s judgment fought; dead to all good remaining.” (LSB 556) Free fish are lost fish. The sinner lost in his sin. The dead lost in his grave. The religious lost in his religiosity. The morally upright in his morality. The pleasure-seeker lost in his pleasure. None of it’s life, but being dead while living.

The Lord won’t have that. Of such fish, Angler Jesus says “a fish in the depths is a lost fish, a fish that is not yet mine.” The Lord catches you, claims you has His own. You are His. He makes it so. He didn’t ask you, He just does it. No offer here, just the Lord’s gracious working to capture you as His own. He draws from the depths a catch that includes you. How kind of Him not to ask, how merciful! (So says faith.) He “justifies the ungodly.” (Rom 4) He forgives sinners, raises the dead.

So, the Lord says, “Put out your net for a catch.” and a catch, well, needs a net, and a net needs a fisherman to cast it. All such things go together—fisherman, net, and catch. So, the Lord also needs some fisherman, greenhorns really, sinners to be pastors and preachers. Young men He’s looking at you.

There’s hardly anything more offensive than His fishing crew. Offensive, because, well, who needs preachers? The Lord does. He has need of many things, not that He lacks anything. “Every beast of the forest is [His], the cattle on a thousand hills.” (Ps 50) Rather He sanctifies them for His use. “He has put all things under His feet.” (Ps 8)

The reason He has pastors and preachers is for you, for “faith comes by hearing through the Word of Christ.” (Rom 10) But “how shall they hear without a preacher?” Well, they won’t… Why not, like good little fishes, form a school with your friends, your family, your neighbors to swim headlong into the fisherman’s net?

Well, no fish wants to die. What comes of the fish in Luke 5? They’re just left behind! Apparently Jesus didn’t practice catch and release! (What is Jesus doing?!) Being caught in a net means death for a fish. You can understand their position. You don’t want to die either. The reason you often swim back off into the depths of sin. The reason why you don’t “take up your cross daily and follow [Jesus],” or “offer your body as a living sacrifice.” You don’t want to die.

But death is exactly the reason the Lord catches you. He’s angling for your death, your destruction. Why? So He can resurrect you. Jesus only raises the dead. Yes, the fish die when Jesus has them caught. Death is what happens when the Lord catches you. “I kill and I make alive,” says the Lord.

Death is the way of the old creation, and yet you are not just old creation, for “if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation.” (2 Cor 5) “You have passed from death into life.” (Jn 5) “I appointed you to bear abiding fruit.” (Jn 15) All these things are true because of how the Lord has caught you. And YOU’VE BEEN CAUGHT WITH THE WORD OF HIS CROSS.

Yes, His cross. But it’s not just Christ’s cross that has caught you. For there He was caught with your sins. No life without parole for Jesus, not with your sins—nope, executed! The nails hooked into His hands and feet for you. The cross isn’t even good bait! “It’s a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

And yet the cross saves, and truly saves when it’s preached! For “it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” The cross is like a net lying on a seashore, until it is cast around you by the preacher through the “Word of the cross,” the Word that delivers His cross right to you.

The Word of Promise rings out. The Word that gives what it promises. “Let down your net for a catch,” and there was. “I baptize you.” So you are! A new creation. “I absolve you of all your sins.” You forgiven. Also sermons for your ears to hear. “This is My body and blood” for your forgiveness, life, and salvation. His hook into your mouth as He draws you to Himself even “through the gate of death and the grave” “unto life everlasting.”

An uncaught fish isn’t a free fish who’s better off. It’s just one that Jesus hasn’t caught, yet. Anything you do or say that results in you skipping the net, or dodging the preacher casting the net, avoids the Lord who commanded the preacher to cast the net.

His Word, His net, brings death. Christ’s for you for the forgiveness of your sins. So also your death in love toward your neighbor. Death means new life where you’re Jesus’ and He is yours unto life everlasting.

For the Lord catches you, claims you has His own. You are His. He makes it so. He didn’t ask you, He just does it. No offer here, just the Lord’s gracious working to capture you as His own. A preacher with the Word of His Cross is how He does it. It’s cast again and again and again: around the Font, from the Lectern and Pulpit, through the Absolution, and before the Altar. Each time Christ says, “Hey, Dad! I’ve caught another one!”

᛭ INI ᛭