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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Launch out into the deep.’
Luk_5:4
I. To whom should these words be addressed?
(a) Disappointed workers.—As it was with Peter, so it has often been with Christ’s servants since, and we may surely learn some lesson from our Lord’s command on such an occasion. Let us dare a little more, venture a little further for Christ than we have ever done before.
(b) Desponding believers.—There is another kind of deep besides the deep of service. There is the ocean of God’s faithfulness. Launch the little craft of your faith and life on the mighty ocean of Divine love. How little we trust Christ!
(c) All faint-hearted voyagers over life’s troubled sea. Christ’s word to every troubled mariner is, ‘Fear not! launch out, and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.’
II. The command.—What does obedience to it involve? Why is it not more readily obeyed?
(a) It demands consecration.—If a boat is to be launched out into the deep, the first thing needed is to weigh anchor. There must be a casting aside of every weight. There must be unreserved consecration to Christ.
(b) There must be courage—to brave storms, to face the unknown, to stand alone, to withstand the obstacles which confront him who ventures on a new departure.
(c) Confidence is needed. ‘Nevertheless at Thy word’—there was faith. St. Peter had such confidence in Jesus Christ that it enabled him to put aside every other consideration.
III. How is obedience rewarded?—What are the rewards given to the man who trusts, who obeys?
(a) Success in service. St. Peter could not draw in the net for the multitude of fishes.
(b) To the despondent there shall be salvation. When we trust Christ fully we shall be rewarded by such a revelation of His fullness that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
(c) A revelation of the Saviour. St. Peter knew that day that Jesus was the Lord. We want such a revelation of power as will convince men that it is not man but God who is working in our midst.
(d) A renewal of devotion. ‘When they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed Him.’ Do you not desire devotion like that?
—
Rev. E. W. Moore.
Illustration‘Years ago, standing at the pier-head in Lowestoft harbour, I watched a large fishing-smack working its way out to sea. The sailors fastened a hawser to one of the bulkheads of the pier near where I was standing, and made the other end fast to their vessel. Then they hauled the craft hand over hand till they reached the harbour and could feel the swing of the tide under her. Then the rope, which before had been a help, became a hindrance. “Throw her off, sir!” they cried to me, as the sails went up and the good ship caught the breeze—“Throw her off!” I lifted the heavy cable, and the next moment, like a thing of life, the vessel darted over the waves. Ah! there is many a man held back to-day like that vessel, by cords, not sinful in themselves, nay, which, it may be, have once been useful to him, but now are holding him back from God. Throw off the tie that binds you to the shore, throw it off and let the good ship go!’
CHRIST AND CHRIST’S WORLD
I. The words impress two great principles for the guidance of the Church’s life, viz. the principle or spirit of venturesomeness, ‘Launch out into the deep,’ and the principle or spirit of order, ‘Let down your nets for a draught.’ It is through the interaction of these two principles that the Lord can permanently bless His Church, and place His work upon a sure foundation. They are often separated, to the sure detriment both of the one and of the other. Not a few are venturesome and not orderly; not a few are orderly and not venturesome; not a few launch out into the deep, but have no nets to let down; not a few have nets, but have no deep into which they can let them down. Both principles have brought forth giants by which they are severally personified; but both principles are most honoured when giants can combine them in their due proportions.
II. The meaning attached to this command by the individual Christian will in each case be coloured by his own experience. What he means by ‘launch out’ will be modified for him by what he means by ‘the deep.’ Shall ‘the deep’ mean for us ‘Christ Himself,’ as the preparation for sailing into all other unknown seas? What a deep this! Christ in the fullness of the Godhead, in the fullness of the Manhood; Christ in ‘the love that passeth knowledge’; Christ in the power of His redeeming blood, in the power of His resurrection and of His intercession; Christ in the filling of His Holy Spirit, in His all-enabling enduement. To know Him with the grasp of that experience which can say, ‘I can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth me,’ that is to enter upon a deep indeed, full of untrackable riches, full of inexpressible peace, full of unknown sources of power ready to be applied. We are, alas! content with cupfuls of Christ, while we may possess oceanfulnesses of Christ. ‘Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord.’ And if in the first instance Christ Himself be for us ‘the deep,’ then ‘launch out’ will have a corresponding meaning. What are those cables that bind us to the shore that must be cut? What is that anchor that must be weighed, that can touch bottom, and which stands between us and ‘the multitude of fishes’? Not a few who have Christ are still afraid of Christ. He goes before, they follow Him up to a certain point, so far as they can ‘touch bottom,’ so far as they can lengthen their own anchor chains, and calculate. In presence of the unknown deep they hesitate. But ‘launch out,’ cut away all cables and all self-forged anchors, and out into the deep, ‘where no anchor but the Cross can hold,’ but that will hold. The most universal impediment to advance amongst Christians is ‘timidity’—not so much faithlessness, as the unexpressed fear that Christ cannot be to them all He promises to be, the fear that Christ cannot be to them more than self, and the interests that gravitate round self; that He cannot be to them more than their little pleasures, their home circle, their comforts, their books, their business, their gains. Their fear is that Christ is not ‘all and in all.’ Therefore they cannot ‘win Christ’ because they will not launch out into Christ. But launch out and win.
III. Christ and Christ’s world.—That ‘the deep’ should mean for us also ‘Christ Himself’ is one thing; that it should mean for us ‘the world for which Christ died’ is scarcely another thing, for when we are Christ-centred we must be world-absorbed, and the words must keep ringing in our ears, ‘As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.’ The Church hears much of laying hold on Christ, but the Church does not hear as much as it ought of laying hold on Christ’s world. Congregations like to hear a Gospel sermon about how Christ saves them, but not a few congregations shrink from a Gospel sermon about how Christ saves the world. The two thoughts go hand in hand and are inseparable. ‘The Church,’ as it has been expressed, ‘is self-centred, and therefore self-absorbed; she needs to become Christ-centred, and she will be world-absorbed.’ To know in ever-increasing degrees the love of Christ, is to know in the same degrees Christ’s love for the world.
IV. Two unfailing sources of encouragement.—To nerve us for this supreme decision, ‘to launch out,’ the text offers, amongst others, two unfailing sources of encouragement.
(a) The first is that Christ Himself is in the ship in which we sail, and in the deep into which we sail. He tells us to do nothing in which He Himself does not all along stand by our side, in sunshine and gloom, in storm and calm, in success and disappointment. He bids us enter upon no untried path where He is not and has not gone already; for ‘if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.’
(b) The second source of encouragement is that if we do what Christ tells us, sooner or later, in one way or another, our nets shall enclose a great multitude of fishes, and that ‘take’ will with Christ be a reward unspeakable rendered to the spirit of faith and obedience. It may be that we shall witness in this life so great a multitude granted to our toils, that our nets shall be in danger of breaking; on the other hand, it may be that this source of encouragement is denied us until the Resurrection morning.
But upon that morning-dawn Jesus Himself shall stand in visible person upon the shore; the fishes we have now caught, still in the water, out of sight, will all be found then to be great fishes, all perfected, all numbered one by one, and not one lost. The net, the perfected Church, then in no danger of breaking, will draw them all to the eternal shore, and we and they shall receive together the invitation of our glorified Lord and Master, ‘Come and dine,’ and shall experience to the full the meaning of the promise, ‘Ye which have followed Me … shall receive one hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.’
Rev. H. Percy Grubb.