Nets

Children’s Sermon

9 February 2025

Hey, guys. I’ve got a question for y’all. Who likes to fish?

It’s very popular in Minnesota, isn’t it? And there’s a lot of ways to do it. You can go out on your Lund boat with a rod. You can use a spear through a hole in the ice from your fish-house. When our son was younger, he had a bow with a reel on it, so that he could fish by shooting arrows in the water.

Of Jesus’ 12 Apostles, four of them were fishermen. And they had a method all their own. They would go out on the lake, two by two—in boats about 30 feet long—and they would gather up in their hands these linen nets, folded up almost like a ball, then cast them out over the waters.

And the nets would open up in the air, like flowers blooming, so that when they came back down, when they hit the surface of the water, they’d cover a circle 25 feet wide. Then they’d pull the nets back in to see what they’d caught. Sometimes they got a lot; other times, a lot of times, nothing at all. Fishing like that is beautiful, but it takes patience and skill and wisdom.

And Jesus said, “These are just the sort of disciples whom I need, because now we’ll be fishing for men.” See, being a student of Jesus is kind of like casting those nets out on the waters. We throw love, and truth, and salvation, as widely as we can, trying to pull people up from the waters of death into the Light of Jesus Christ.

And sometimes we cast all day and all night and it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all. But we keep at it. We keep sharing goodness and beauty and truth. We keep giving to others the best that we can. And maybe someday we do so much good, and get such great results, that we honestly don’t know what to do with it all.

But even then, it isn’t really us who are fishing for people. It’s Jesus: in us and through us and with us. It’s Jesus who gathers all things unto Himself.

So if we would be His disciples, we have to be fishers of men. We have to keep casting out the love and the truth of our Lord, both Law and the Gospel. And we have to trust that the Word of God never returns empty, no matter how it might seem to us. You do the giving, the casting, and you let Jesus worry about the catching, the saving.

Just do good. Just be Jesus for others. Share with everyone the gifts and the grace that Jesus shared with us. And always remember that He’s with us in the boat, no matter what we may bring back to shore.

Sound good? All right. Let’s pray.