12202020 Jesus Last Catch Al Robertson

good morning church what a blessing to be together with you here today uh you know last week we i talked about a lot of really cool things with this glorified body we're going to have one day but you know at this point i would just like one that you wouldn't have to have kleenex no mucus and they're going to be great one day in that glorified body it's going to be fantastic so we're so glad you're here today welcome fellowship center also to our live stream audience it's always good to have you guys with us today this past sunday night we were able to get together with our transformation houses two of our women's recovery houses for a little christmas get together and it was a great fun evening and it was just a good time to be together with some of our church leadership and these sisters in christ and one of the sisters who's a graduate of transformation who would told the story her story or testimony of a year ago when she was just almost ready to walk away but she didn't and there she was sunday night telling a story of what christ had done and redeemed her life and i just wanted to let you guys know thank you megan for sharing your testimony last week and megan uh is on our live stream team and is responsible live streamers for being able to get this out to you every week so how about a little round of applause for a life that's changed and is now serving god what a blessing i also want to mention our 2021 marriage refresh i mentioned it last week uh we are up and ready now uh we're going to be limited to i think about 50 couples we're going to do it instead of late to gray this year we're in toledo bend because we can get a few more people in down there so uh be sure and go on to the church website and register or if you see one of the couples here the tomlinsons or the kirby's or elise and i or the leads be sure and find out what you need to do to get registered to get signed up we're going to have a wonderful time and it's a valentine's day weekend it's a great three day event together so be sure and get signed up for that so our scripture reader today is bailey k stone bailey if you'll come on up bailey is a 13 year old who goes to ocs and she is a stone cold killer of deer she's killed how many this year she's killed four deer this year which is pretty impressive she's a better shot than me and uncle sai uncle sai can affirm that right uh and she's a really good uh at a lot of other things she likes to draw she likes to cook so she's a woman with many talents and so she's going to read our scripture today mark 1 16-20 as jesus walked beside the sea of galilee he saw simon and his brother andrew casting a net into the lake for they are fishermen come follow me jesus said and i'll send you out to fish for people at once they left their nets and followed him when he had gone a little further he saw james son of zebedee and his brother john in a boat preparing their nets without delay he called them and they left their father zebedee in the boat with the hard men and followed him thank you bk you go take that with you tonight i didn't mention she also likes to listen to queen with her pap that's me uh so it's a great blessing for to be able to share last night bailey asked me she said pap are you going to preach this text that i'm reading and i said no i'm preaching out of john 21 and luke 11. she said so you've got me just reading some random text and i realized this first time i've been grilled by a scripture reader because this is what granddaughters do right but i will tie to mbk trust me i'm a professional i've done this before uh today uh our story is really a full circle story uh and i love full circle stories right a lot of hollywood stories are based on this you know you start out in a good place maybe it's a relationship with somebody and then you lose your way somewhere along the way and then you finally get back uh to what's good and to what's right and into the person that you love and that's kind of what happens today we're going to be in john chapter 21 if you'd like to turn there and then also in luke 11 a little bit later when i was four years old we moved from ruston when dad graduated tech to junction city arkansas you also had junction city louisiana because the state line runs right through the middle of town and we moved on to the school campus because dad was a teacher and a coach while he was working on his master's mom worked for the superintendent's office and so we were able to live on school grounds they had a couple of houses and across the street there was a preacher and his wife and they were probably in their late 60s at the time maybe even 70. kind of in a retired mode but preaching at the little junction city church of christ and so they met me because the kids in my neighborhood you know the school was there as well so we were always out playing and and they saw me play it and they asked me if i wanted to go to vacation bible school and i was like well what is that you know it had the word school in it and i was kind of excited about that because i was only four and they said you know we get to have kool-aid and cookies and talk about jesus and i thought what's better than that right especially at four years old so they asked mom and dad if i could go and they said yes and that began a five-year relationship with this older couple who were kind of like my grandparents i guess could have even great grandparents at the time and they instilled in me so many good things during that five-year period of time mom and dad weren't christians yet our home was not a place of peace but boy when i would go over to the leighton's house there was tea cakes and there were stories about jesus and we sang songs and they just poured into this kid out of this tough family and tough situation of course as i've told you before i was like the ephesians church in revelation 2 4 i've i wound up forsaking my first love we came here to white suprema mom and dad became christians our lives were great but i lost my way as a teenager and became a prodigal son and left the area for getting my first love whenever i came back to the lord into my family and finally was seeking and searching again we wound up here at wfr eventually i got married i had two young daughters this church embraced us and loved us and eventually i went to the white sphere road school of biblical studies in 1988 i was 23 years old i was in class one day that first year and carl allison came over he was our director and he pulled me out of class which you never liked to get pulled out of class right usually means something bad's happened you're in trouble somebody found something out about your past i don't know what's going on i'm a little nervous about it and he said there's a couple that's here to see you and they've been 15 years since i'd seen the leighton's so we came down and met right over here in this in the old foyer with the polls for those of you that remember and there they were now they were in their 80s much older and i came up to them and i instantly of course recognized who they were even after all these years and we hugged and they told me they had been kind of following our story and they knew that mom and dad had become christians they knew we were at white's fair road they knew i was in the school and they were so proud of the man that i had become you know i'm older now back then i was younger so any emotion i had i just pushed it down but if i had had that moment today i would have wept with this couple who had poured into me they also told me it's not only a hello but it's a goodbye we're heading up to cersei where our daughter's going to take care of us we can't take care of ourselves anymore and that was it last time that i talked to this couple you know another reason i'm looking forward to heaven is being able to thank people like that who had an impact and willing to pour themselves into someone else's life i see that happening here all the time i can't wait for the reunion to take a few years and just catch up right what's eternity but for catching up today's story is like that it's a full circle story it's a story about some people who had been through a lot and needed to remember their first love it's a it's a story of amazement and awe but it's also a story of appreciation and acceptance and isn't that what the christian experience really is we're amazed that the god of the universe would send his son and love us we're in awe of who he is and what he does and yet we're so appreciative that he's willing to take us back even when we lose our way i'm of the opinion that john could have ended his book on the last chapter and it would have been a great book i mean it ends with thomas saying my lord and my god he talks about all the other things that happened that weren't written down the other gospels basically in there with the great commission as well but john had a personal intimate story that he felt important enough to include for us to be able to be inspired by and i think that was the reason there's a john 21. let's look down at verse 1. after where jesus appeared again to his disciples this is the third time remember by the sea of galilee and remember there's been a lot of great moments on the sea of galilee right peter got out there and did a little walking around until he started sinking jesus calmed the seas there so it happened this way simon peter thomas also known as didymus nathanael who we also know as bartholomew from canaan galilee the sons of zebedee there's the sons of thunder and two other disciples were together peter tells them i'm going out to fish and they said well we'll go with you so they went out got the boat but that night they caught nothing and so when i look at this i i try to look at it from a practical standpoint a lot's happened jesus is back they know that they're not sure of the future and i think more than anybody else simon peter no doubt about is feeling some real angst about what's going to happen next and so you know when we're in the midst of chaos we we like to go back to the things we're familiar with right to find some peace and that's what these guys did they're fishermen i always find it ironic that one-third of the apostles at least one-third of the apostles and disciples were fishermen that was their business i think my family can relate to that so much because we were commercial fishermen for so long that lifestyle we get it and it is a faith-based lifestyle because we spent a lot of time praying for god to send fish into nets and he did amazingly over and over and over again when this particular night there's seven of them that go out on the boat and i think they're kind of sticking together for peter's sake they're trying to help him because they realize he's not quite got it right with the lord yet and you even got james and john who you remember there was a time when their mom came in and she was going to make sure the choice cabinet positions in jesus's regime were taken by them right one son on the left and one son on the right so i always wondered when jesus calling the sons of thunder maybe she was the thunder right because she was willing to come in and try to set this up remember the other disciples were indignant and furious with this power play and yet here they are in the boat together i often wonder who the other two disciples were because john doesn't tell us i have to think one of them was andrew andrew played such an important role in peter's development he was a man of vision of opportunity he he was a man that was able to set up moments that helped show the greatness of christ you remember in john chapter 1 he was the one who brought peter to jesus to meet him for the first time i know that andrew looked at his brother and said oh lord if you get this guy turned in the right direction great things are going to happen it makes me think about that video that they did uh i think you can go to wfr church discipleship on youtube and you can watch it mike showed it here before it's about my aunt jan who took bill smith to a bar to share the gospel with my dad because jan said oh bill if you can get this guy to christ he will lead thousands to the lord and she was right he wasn't ready that first time at the bar but when he was ready guess who we went back to good old bill smith who shared the gospel in for three straight nights until he got it until he understood about first love and in the video then it talks about dad's role in mentoring mac who started our celebrate recovery and then mack's role in mentoring chad johnson who ironically has the ministry now guess what we call it fishers of men leading hundreds and thousands of people to a closer walk with christ that was andrew's mindset you remember it was andrew in john chapter 6 that while jesus said you know what we're going to do today we're going to feed all these people 5 000 plus and all the disciples looked at him like he was crazy one of them said eight months worth of wages wouldn't even give him a bite and it was andrew who said you know lord i got a kid here with five loaves and two fish maybe and what happened miraculous not only were five thousand plus people fed and their bellies full but twelve basketfuls picked up see that's a man with vision that sees possibility maybe that's what one of your gifts are it was andrew who in john chapter 12 when some greeks showed up in a jewish only bible class situation and they said we want to see jesus andrew took him to see jesus that's a man of vision ten years later guess who his brother would be sharing the gospel with the very first time the greeks thank god for guys like andrew because if not for that we wouldn't be here right this was a man who had an ability to see things he wasn't a man of action like peter and the reason i bring this up is because many of you feel like sometimes you know i just don't really have that much to offer i'm not like a feel or i'm not like this guy or that guy and yet you may be the vision setter you may be the one that makes the opportunities for christ to do great things the introducer of people that show christ power there's a lot of gifts in the kingdom of god don't fret over what you don't have ask christ to use what you do have what a blessing that we get that but it was peter who initiated the outing and i think was because he was unsettled obviously first because of the whole denial thing right he wept he's ashamed imagine jesus shows up in those two settings but we don't read anything about him saying anything specifically to peter so he's excited like everybody else jesus is back and man we're excited about that but you know he's got to be thinking oh but we i left it in such a bad way which next week we'll talk about more he's unsettled because what does he do now that's why i went back to the boat where else would i go i guess we just go back to fishing again i thought we had this whole thing we were going to do about the kingdom guess it's not going to happen ever been there before you got a career choice you got a job choice you got this choice you got that choice you said what lord what am i supposed to do it makes us unsettled he has a gift of boldness which i've noticed that bold people who are really impactful and powerful usually have a lot of weaknesses to go along with it it's just the nature of it we know that of course he's impatient he's impulsive he's insensitive to other people which is going to get him into trouble with paul later on in the first century but he's a man who's bold enough to speak his mind you know peter's the only one who rebuked jesus which didn't go well i wouldn't do that but i mean he was bold enough to try it never lord in redneck's terms i would call him a get er done sort of guy but you know with every getter done sort of guy is also the guy that says hold my fermented grapes and watch this right there's always that balance of doing something and doing something not too smart so let's look back at john 21 and see what happens early in the morning jesus stood on the shore but the disciples did not realize it was jesus oh jesus jedi alert he's turned himself into somebody else they don't recognize him he calls out to them friends haven't you any fish you know there's nothing worse than somebody standing on the bank when you hadn't called anything and said where's the fish we know that guy right no they answered he said well throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some that's even worse the guy that tells you then how to do your business but you know amazingly the disciples and maybe it's because you know most fishermen they do listen and want to try new things right you're over here hanging out the honey hole and somebody says you know if you take a chartreuse whatever and you spit on it you throw that in there you'll catch them those guys you know well let's try it so they do it when they did they were unable to haul the net in because the large number of fish you know what the old boy was on to something now look what happens next verse seven the disciple whom jesus loved we know that's john said to peter it is the lord he got it he just transported back in his mind three years to another catch we'll talk about a minute and he said that's got to be jesus because he tells you to throw out you'll catch some over there that's what happens he saw it as soon as simon peter heard him say it is the lord he wrapped his outer garment around him most people take their clothes off when they're going to jump in the water he puts his own and jumped into the water hold my fermented grape watch this i don't know what he thought do you think he was going to walk over to him maybe it was the sea of galilee he didn't think he just jumped in the other disciples followed in the boat towing the net full of the fish so they're just towing this along they weren't far from the shore about a hundred yards when they landed they saw a fire of burning coals with fish on it and some bread jesus had brought fish and bread you realize this is the second out of three appearances that jesus is eating fish praise the lord there's going to be fish fries in heaven folks i mean there's no doubt about it we'll be like him right jesus said to them bring some of the fish you've just caught so peter i guess he realizes i don't know why i'm in the water climbs back into the boat helps drag the net ashore it was full of large fish 153 john countered them and recorded it in scripture why because fishermen love numbers right you guys know caught a big old bass out on katie how big 10 pounds and six ounces i mean we got it down to the ounce right man we tore those crappie up how many did you get a hundred a hundred we used to count them in pounds you know why because pounds meant money 100 pounds of catfish 70 bucks we knew exactly what it was i mean even jeff little four-year-old jeff he knew how much you could get before buffalo john mentions 153 but but catch this but even with so many the net was not torn which is different from the luke 5 count that we're going to look at next turn over to luke chapter five because this story is about coming around and i want to read what happened the first time and i want you to see the comparison and it really to me brings to life so much of what jesus was trying to do with the disciples luke chapter 5 and verse 1. one day as jesus was standing by the lake of gethsenorate which is also galilee the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of god so he's giving them a little lesson he saw at the water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets when i every time i read this my mind goes back to when i was a kid and hoop net strung all out in the woods there on the riverbank and dad cleaning those nets and mending them because one torn net could be money getting out of there all that time he spent making sure we were taken care of here were these guys doing the same thing he got into one of the boats the one belonging to simon i don't think this was an accident and he asked simon to put out a little from shore and he sat down and he taught the people from the boat sound travels across water and so jesus made him a little amphitheater here but he does it in peter's boat we we call this directional dialogue it's when you're sharing with somebody but maybe this person is not ready but maybe this person over here is hearing every single word which by the way that's why you share jesus because you never know who god's put out there to listen i love the story jase tells about when kevin mcintosh came to christ they were he went in and have a bible study and macintosh was sitting there with two or three other guys and whose students he's broke out the bible matt just gets up and walks around the corner and the other room starts playing a video game hang on time for no bible study so jesus share i mean jesus jason shares with the two guys that are here and these guys say we don't want to do anything with that we're going to go find a beer joint and they get up and walk out and jason's like well i guess that was a bust and mcintosh comes around the corner and said i think i'm ready see he was listening to the good news story being told but he wasn't present but he was listening that's what god does he brings hearts into those places where people can share if we're willing to give them the opportunity that's what peter was doing he's listening verse four when he had finished speaking he said to simon put out in the deep water and let down the nets for a catch that's why john recognized him simon answered master we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything but because you say so i'll let down the nets you know what translated that means okay i mean he's a powerful preacher he don't know anything about fishing when they had done so they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break why no number this time because fish are getting out of the net nobody counts the ones that gets away right so they signal their partners in the other boat they helped filled up the boat so much that they began to sink when jesus tells you to do something do it he knows more than you do he created fish simon peter saw this verse 8 he fell at jesus needed it needs and here's an interesting thing he says go away from me lord i'm a sinful man you know what i love about peter he's got his boldness he's got his weaknesses but he has the understanding that jesus is great and worthy and he is not that's the first step to changing your life is that realization go away from me lord i'm a sinful man see that's your first love your first love is recognizing that you are not worthy to save yourself you can't do it and as long as you try and as long as you beat your head against that wall you're going to fail over and over and over again but when you come in and fall down at the feet of jesus and say i'm a sinful man i'm a sinful woman then you're ready and i think that's what this was about a returning to the first love look back at john 21 and verse 12 jesus said to them come and have some breakfast now he's still a mystery man the reason i know this is look at the next line none of the disciples dared ask him who are you because he didn't look like jesus but they knew that he was jesus and this takes me back to what he told thomas remember when he told thomas in the last appearance you see me and believe but blessed are those who do not see me and believe here's that moment for this first group of seven he doesn't look like jesus but they know he is jesus you see he's prepping them because he knows that they're gonna have to go out from this moment and at first they're gonna talk to people who had seen jesus but it ain't gonna take long before he gets into the greeks that he's gonna they're gonna be talking to people who don't know and have never seen jesus and yet they're gonna have to convince them by their witness and their testimony that he really is jesus he really did raise from the dead he really is at the right hand of the father and he's really coming back and to do that they had to recognize them themselves first and this is the first time we see him do it they knew it was the lord just like i do standing here today i have no doubt i'm not perfect i make plenty of mistakes but i have no doubt about one thing jesus was here he died for us he was raised for us and he left here to mediate for us i know that and i've never seen him except when i've seen him in you jesus came he took the bread he gave it to them and he did the same with the fish this was now the third time jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead so even though jesus looked like someone else they knew it was him jesus seems to love threes third appearance third time was the charm they got it they're ready and they're about to go on the biggest adventure of their lives one that would end in death physical death for them because of their faith but glory at the right hand of jesus what a blessing so today's lesson is for potential peters because there are some of you out here out there that you you know you have gifts and talents you know you have great things that you could be doing to advance the kingdom of god to win others but you have lost your way you've forgotten your first love you haven't gone all in you hadn't fallen down at his feet and said go away from me lord i'm a sinful man but he won't go away maybe today's the day to confess your allegiance yeah but i got a lot of weaknesses yeah so did peter you know what paul said in 2 corinthians 12 my power is made perfect in weakness because then you have to depend on me he knew you peter's out there that some andrew has brought to hear today may be your day to the prodigals i know there's a few of those i was one for a while you follow the evil one into a trap you're there you want to get out you say what i need to do get out the hardest step is the first step but once you get to rolling it's amazing i can promise you one thing if you're connected to the whites ferry road church you're connected to a church that loves when people come home we welcome you we're not going to give you a list of rules we're not going to throw rocks at you we're going to say welcome home let's get to work let's kill the fat and catfish and have a celebration and today may be to the lukewarm that can happen to any of us you know we get comfortable we get into church stuff and arguing about this that and the other and we forget our first love is the call to christ to impact our culture romans i mean revelation 2 and 3 are full of churches that became lukewarm that forgot their first love if you're lukewarm today may be the day to remember why you became a christian in the first place to be filled again with wonder and awe and how great our god is i love this story it's a story about fishing but it's a story about coming back full circle to remembering who jesus is for us so if you're out there in live stream land and you come to that point today today's a good day to confess jesus lord to become a son or daughter of the almighty god if you're in the fellowship center if you're here in our worship center i want to encourage you if you have any need at all this is the place these are the people why don't you come while we stand in while we sing

Channel: Whites Ferry Road Church

Views: 2,085

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Whites Ferry Road, WFR, WFR CHURCH, Church of Christ, Duck Dynasty Church

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Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 28 2020