Luke 5:1-39 - Exposition

The association of Jesus and these chosen men seems to have commenced as follows: Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew (sons of Jona), John and James (the sons of Zebedee and Salome), belonged to fisher families dwelling on the banks of the Lake of Gennesaret. They seemed to have been fast friends, at times even partners in their occupation. Sharers with many others of the youth of Israel of their time, in a passionate hope that the hour of the long-promised deliverance from the yoke of their foreign oppressors was at hand, the four became disciples of the Baptist, and by him they were referred to Jesus, who in mysterious but exalted terms was pointed out by the great desert preacher, John, as "the Lamb of God," the Glorious, the Expected One ( John 1:35-43 ). They joined the Master at the bidding of John, and for a time were associated with him. Still at first they were only with him apparently at times, leaving him and returning to their homes and occupations, waiting for some definite and imperative summons to join his cause permanently. The summons in question is related in this chapter. The time was now come when the Lord deemed it fitting that he should surround himself with a company of disciples or pupils who should be constant witnesses of his works, hearers of his words, and thus be trained up for the great task of continuing his mission when he should have returned to his home in heaven.

We read these Gospels as the story of the Master's life often without thinking how much of that life is never told. After all, we only possess a few representative incidents—the events which the twelve and their first friends had selected as the themes of their sermons and discourses in Jerusalem, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, and the great centres of early Christian activity. Here, after the story of one sabbath day's blessed toil in Capernaum, follows a sentence which passes over, in a word or two, many days of quiet teaching in populous towns and villages of the once rich Galilee, and then the evangelist gives us with some detail the account of a morning by the lake, where he preached from a boat to the crowds on the shore, and then went out a-fishing, and, after the fishing, bade the fishermen leave all and come with him, and he would give them a new work.