ON a previous page (77) we gave a picture of the receipt of custom as managed in the olden days in Palestine; now we give one of a fisherman casting a net into the Sea of Galilee. How often did such scenes pass before the eye of the blessed Lord when He was a Man upon earth!
The fisherman was quite another character of man from the publican. He had learned by observation the ways of the fish and their habits, and how to catch them. He was a man, hardy and quick, ready for work by day or night. We portray him casting his net into the sea, flinging it out to compass the fish his tutored eye detects sunning themselves or asleep in the shallows of the lake. There are other fishermen in their boats, mending their drag nets.
On our own coasts the fishermen have various kinds of nets for the different sorts of fish they pursue at the changing seasons of the year. The meshes must be large or small, according to the size of the fish. On the Lake of Galilee, too, there were different kinds of nets in use, for those waters are wealthy in fish, and were once thronged with fishing boats. Now both the lake and its shores are almost forsaken.
As the Lord sat in the boat on the sea and taught the multitudes on the land, in order to illustrate His teaching to them He used the labor of the fishermen and the drag net, so familiar to their eyes―the “net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: which, when it was full, they drew to shore.” (Matt. 13:47-48.) This you have probably seen on our own coasts―you have seen the fishermen shoot their net from the stern of the rowing boat, leaving one end of the net in the hand of a man on the shore, and then you have watched them row round in half a circle till they come to shore again. All the while the net has been dragging along the bottom, gathering of every kind―some good, some bad. Such is the work effected by the preached word―all sorts of men are enclosed by it, but not all are really saved. The good will be reserved for glory; the bad will be cast out.
The world at large is manifestly before us in the “sea,” and the Lord’s call of fishermen to become fishers of men―evangelists, we might say―opens up the thought of various emblems of their spiritual calling from their secular occupation.
As it was with Matthew the publican, so it was with the fishermen, the brothers Simon and Andrew, and the brothers James and John; they all left their occupation immediately at the call of Jesus, and followed Him. A distinct call each one had from Himself, and so they became His special followers.
Four of the Lord’s apostles were fishermen, and of these four Peter, James and John were the three who were the most prominent amongst the twelve. Matthew the publican wrote the first gospel, John the fisherman the last, also three epistles and the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter and James, both fishermen, wrote, the one two epistles; the other, one. These eye-witnesses of the Lord’s ways had Him with them in the circumstances of their daily life.
The fishermen were homely men. Zebedee, the father of James and John, had some hired servants, but they were all far from being rich; the fare they partook of, and the manner of life they led, was of the simplest and humblest kind.
Jesus, the Lord of all, shared with them, and He was frequently with them in their little ships. These great apostles were weather-beaten men who pulled the oars, and steered their boats over the lake, and toiled all the night for their fish. Once, we remember, on a stormy night, when the Lord was weary, He slept in the hinder part of the ship on a boat-cushion, and they awakened Him to save them from the waves, and He bade the sea be still. He chose for His apostles men who were neither great nor mighty, but plain and unlearned persons. Such was His way, such the purpose of God.
The apostle Peter returned to his fishing at the Lord’s death, and with him for that night’s work went Thomas and Nathaniel, James and John. Jesus, risen from the dead, stood on the shore and called them again from their nets to His service, and they became for His sake indeed fishers of men, and so fulfilled their apostolic mission.
How simple were the surroundings of an earthly kind that encompassed the Son of God! Little do we realize such things. His humbling Himself so as to become a man we in some measure apprehend, but His humbling Himself as a man is little in our thoughts. But what a voice to us may be heard in the few barley loaves His disciples had brought; in the Lord and Peter not having the small coin for the Temple tribute, which Peter, at His bidding, found in the fish’s mouth! How such things teach us of His poverty! If by picturing to ourselves the fishermen of Galilee we are enabled to conceive ever so little of the ways of Jesus on earth, we shall not have written or read these pages in vain.