(God Can Solve Every Problem) Miraculous Catch of Fish — Zac Poonen

The Eight Signs in John's Gospel

What we were looking at. The Gospel of John was one of the last books of the New Testament and of the Bible written and John wrote it when he was around 95 years of age and he looked back to the time when he had walked with Jesus and to the life of Jesus on earth and he selected out of all the hundreds of thousands of miracles that Jesus did he selected eight of them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and he called them signs.

He never uses the word miracle in the whole Gospel. Now we know they were miracles. They were supernatural manifestations of God's power but it's interesting that John calls them signs which means at least eight out of Jesus' miracles had a specific message.

Something for our daily walk with the Lord and those miracles have a spiritual message to our hearts. So what we were looking at last Sunday and today were these eight signs and we looked at seven of them.

The first was the water being turned into wine. Speaking of a life without the joy and the power of the Holy Spirit coming into that life of joy and power. We saw then secondly the healing of the royal official's son in John chapter 4.

Speaking of the power we have in prayer to pray for someone else who doesn't have faith for himself to bring that person to salvation. Or healing or whatever the need is. And then we looked at the miracle of the man who was healed at the pool of Bethesda.

He had been there for 38 years and had given up all hope and he was healed by the power of the Lord teaching us how we are to walk and not be lame spiritually. And then we saw the fourth one was the feeding of the multitude where with limited resources God can still use us to be a blessing to thousands.

And this morning we looked at Jesus walking on the water. Peter walking on the water speaking of the power God gives us to overcome the law of sin in our lives which is similar to the law of gravity. And then we looked at the man born blind whose eyes were opened.

Speaking of spiritual vision that the Lord gives us. And then the seventh one was the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Speaking of God bringing us to spiritual life and setting us free from the bondage of the grave clothes of traditions and the law etc.

The Miraculous Catch of Fish in John 21

So now we want to look at the last one which is in John chapter 21. The eighth and final sign. And this is the one miracle that Jesus did after his resurrection. All the other miracles were done before he died.

And this is the one miracle that Jesus did after his resurrection. It was almost like a final message that he was giving to his disciples and to all of us. And it's the miracle of the miraculous catch of fish rather when the disciples had toiled all night and caught nothing.

Now this is a miracle that was repeated. Once before in Luke chapter 5 we read something similar where they hadn't toiled all night but they had been toiling and they hadn't caught any fish. And the Lord told them to launch out into the deep and they caught a big catch of fish that time.

And it's interesting that the Lord had to repeat this miracle because he had called them to be fishers of men. And he was teaching them some principles in fishing for men. And also it has application to many other areas of our Christian life.

We'll come to that as we look at it. Now it's very interesting to see that most of Jesus' disciples were fishermen, at least a large number of them. And I think there was a reason why he chose fishermen.

First of all they were very simple people. They didn't have all the complications of people who had studied in Bible seminaries and all. There were a lot of people like that in Jesus' time and it's interesting that Jesus didn't go to this seminary that Gamaliel was running in Jerusalem to find his disciples.

He found them among fishermen but more than that they were hardworking people. Their livelihood came out of fishing and they had to work very hard. And if they didn't catch fish one day they'd have to perhaps work all night.

And Jesus was emphasizing there that that is the type of person he calls for his service. One who is willing to work hard, one who is willing to be persistent. I mean he can't come home without any fish.

His whole family depends on catching fish for survival. And the Lord was saying that those who serve him must have that attitude in seeking to win people to Christ or build a church or whatever our calling is.

Hardworking, people who are willing to dirty their hands, who are not afraid of dirtying their hands, who are persistent. That's the type of person whom the Lord calls. And here we read of a time after the resurrection and you remember in the days immediately before that how Peter had denied the Lord three times.

Hope for Those Who Have Failed

And I think he had come to a place of despair. He'd given up all hope that anything that he would ever be able to serve the Lord again because he'd failed the Lord so badly. And there's a message in this miracle especially for those who feel that they've failed the Lord badly.

They've let the Lord down so badly that they wonder if anything good can ever come out of their life anymore. Maybe they failed in the ministry, maybe they've fallen into sin so often and they've given up hope of ever being able to live a godly life.

Or in other ways made a mess of your life and come to rock bottom. And isn't it interesting that the last message that Jesus gave before he went up to heaven through a miracle was a message for those who felt hopeless, who felt they'd hit rock bottom and that nothing good could ever come out of their life.

I think the Lord looked through 20 centuries and saw that there would be many among his people who would feel like that at different times, who'd feel like giving up. I'm amazed at the number of times that the Apostle Paul says in his letters, we don't give up.

Even though it's like this, we don't give up. Which means he was tempted to give up. That's a temptation that comes to the greatest of saints. And the message in this miracle is, no matter how much you've failed, don't give up.

The Lord can still do something with your life. Something wonderful and glorious, not something small, something big. And that's what we see in this. So if any of you feel like that, then this message is for you.

I've certainly felt like that many times. It's for me. And it says here in verse 2 that there were together Simon, Peter, Thomas, these were all disciples of Jesus, the sons of Zebedee, James and John and two others of the disciples.

And verse 3, Simon Peter said, I am going fishing. Now I want to paraphrase that. You've got to understand. He wasn't just saying, well, I'm going to go and catch some fish tonight. He wasn't going for some relaxation.

What he meant was, I finished with being an apostle. I'm going back to fishing permanently. I know the Lord called me three and a half years ago to leave my boat and my fishing job and to serve him. I tried that.

I tried it for three and a half years and I'm a failure. So I want to go back to my old profession because there at least I had some success. And these other disciples, you know, when you get one discouraged person, it's very easy for him to infect a lot of others with that discouragement.

And that's why I say, whenever you're discouraged, it's good to keep our mouth shut and not infect other people with how we feel. And these other fellows, they say, yeah, we also feel like that. Or giving up, being apostles, that's not our calling.

We also will come with you. And they went out and they decided to go back to their fishing. That's the temptation I was speaking about, you know, giving up on following the Lord, giving up on something you tried, you sincerely tried.

These folks were sincere. They had sacrificed much. They had sincerely given up everything and they were trying to follow the Lord and they had made a mess. They had failed. And they said, well, let's go back to something in which we've got some experience.

And so they went out and they got into the boat, verse 3, and that night they caught nothing. That's interesting. That if you go away from that which the Lord calls you to, you're going to be a failure there too.

Even if you think that's the area where you've got a lot of experience. You know, Peter thought, well, there's one thing I'm good at, fishing. Let me go back to that. And the Lord said, okay, go ahead, try.

And he was going to be a failure there. He tried all night and he caught nothing. And he was wondering, what's happening? I've never had a night like this. And then it says, when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach.

And then we know that later on he told them, verse 6, cast your net on the right side. And they cast it and they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. What's the lesson that we're to learn from this?

Failure, Dependence, and God's Calling

God seeks to break us in our strongest points. Peter thought, well, I'm a failure as an apostle. I'm no good at being a preacher, but let me go back to fishing because there I'm okay. And God says, you'll never be a success at anything if you don't stick to the calling I gave you to.

And that's good for us. You know, it's a mark of God's love that when we try our hand at something other than what God has called us to, we fail. When Jonah went away from what God had called him to, there was calamity.

There was a storm. And that's good for us. It's because God loved Jonah that he faced that storm. It's because God loved these disciples that he allowed them to fail that night and to catch nothing. And it's because God loves you that he allows you to fail so that you can come back to him.

Once the Lord has laid a hold of you with his love and has a purpose for your life, I want to tell you this, my dear brothers and sisters, from the many, many cases that I've seen in my life, my own experience, you'll never be a success at anything else.

To follow Jesus is the greatest thing of all. And so, Simon Peter toiled all night and caught nothing. Let's assume they went to fish at about 6 o 'clock in the evening. And Jesus did not come till the day was breaking, around 5 o 'clock in the morning.

Eleven hours he allowed them to fish. And then he comes to them and asks them, well, children, you don't have any fish, do you? Who said Jesus didn't have a sense of humor? He knew very well they didn't have any fish.

And they said no. I've noticed this as you study through the miracles that Jesus did and the way he dealt with people. Even where he knew the answer, he wanted them to admit it. He wanted them to acknowledge their need.

He would ask a blind man, what do you want me to do for you? I mean, even I didn't know what a blind man wants when he comes to Jesus. No need to ask. And they would say, we want our blind eyes to be open, as if that was something great which nobody else knew.

But the principle there was Jesus wanted those people to admit, Lord, I'm blind. Lord, I've got no fish. I've tried all night and I've been a failure. It's the first step to victory, to success in the Christian life.

Honest acknowledgement of failure. And I never tire of proclaiming this message. That the first thing God requires from us is not purity. It's not even repentance. It's honesty. Acknowledging our condition.

Now why has God made that the first condition? Because that's the easiest thing for any of us sitting here or anywhere in the world to do. Purity can take years. Even repentance and restitution can take time.

But honesty? To acknowledge that you've been a failure? How long does that take? To acknowledge that you're defeated? To acknowledge your sin? How long does that take? That's the first thing. Have you got any fish?

No, Lord, we haven't got any. And he said to them, cast the net on the right hand side of the boat and you will find a catch. Now they had cast their net on the left side and the right side and the front side and the back side for 11 hours.

And assuming that they cast it one side and tried for five minutes and they cast it on the other side, they must have done that a hundred times in 11 hours. And they had caught nothing. But look at their response there.

As soon as they heard that, they did it. There's a verse in the Old Testament in the book of Proverbs which says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean upon your own reason. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.

Do you know the greatest enemy to obedience to the Lord? It's very often our reason. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your reason. If the Lord tells you to do something, if God's word has told you to do something, do it and you'll never regret it.

Don't argue with God when he's told you to do something. When you feel an urge in your spirit, in your heart, the prompting of the Holy Spirit to do something, do it immediately. And that's what we see here.

Even though they had done it so many times, when the Lord told them to do it, they did it. And they were not disappointed. They caught such a great number of fish, it says, they couldn't even pull it in to the boat.

God Meets Us at the End of Ourselves

And that's always God's way. Now the question that we can ask ourselves is, why does the Lord allow them to fail for so long? Why didn't he come earlier when he knew very well that they were not going to catch any fish?

Why didn't he come at least at 7 o 'clock the previous evening? They tried for one hour. And there's a reason for that. There's a principle here in God's dealings with man. That God comes to help us when we've come to an end of ourselves.

This is a principle that we've seen even before. The man at the pool of Bethesda had been lying there for 38 years. He was the one person sitting there in Bethesda among the multitude of people who were sick, who had completely come to an end of himself.

He sat there thinking, well there's hope for everybody else, not for me. And that's the one the Lord picked up. And I can imagine that these disciples as they fished for one hour, two hours, they thought, well we'll make it, we'll make it, we'll make it.

Six hours, seven hours, ten hours, they still thought there's some hope. By the time they had fished for 11 hours, they said there's no hope. And when they had come to an end of themselves, that's the time the Lord came and met with them.

There's a wonderful message here. It's when we hit rock bottom. When we've come to a place of total failure. When we realize, Lord, there's no way I'm able to live this life. That is the time the Lord comes and meets with us.

When they've given up all hope. That's the time when they were ready to pack up their nets and go home. It says that the Lord appeared there. There's a reason for this. Many a times, there's an answer here to a problem that many Christians face.

Why is it that I try so often, let's take the matter of overcoming sin. Here's a sincere Christian, let's say, who sees in God's word a command like, there's a command in Ephesians 4 .31 which says, put away all anger.

Now if I put away all anger, how much anger is supposed to be left in my life? Zero. Right? Okay, a person takes that seriously and says, I'm supposed to put away all anger from my life. And he tries, and he fails, and he tries, and he fails, and he tries, and he's very sincere, he grits his teeth, he makes New Year resolutions, he does everything, and he fails.

And he fails, and he fails, and he fails, and he fails. And he thinks, well, I'm failing because I'm so weak. No, he fails because he's strong. God has to make him weak, and he has to make him weak through failure.

And I often use this illustration. Think of a patient who comes into a hospital who's sick. And the first day he's losing his temper, the doctors and the nurses and everything. But as he gets sicker and weaker and weaker, he doesn't lose his temper so often.

And then by the time he's got tubes in his nose and here and there and his mouth and all, he's completely quiet. The weaker we become, when did he stop losing his temper? When he became weak. When he was strong, he was capable of getting angry.

God seeks to make us weak. We see that right through scripture. God could not use Moses when he was 40 years old. He was too strong. He was so strong that with one blow, he could kill an Egyptian. And he buried him under the sand.

And God said, you're too strong. You can't lead my people. I want you to lead my people, but you have one disqualification. You are too strong in yourself. And so God took him out in the wilderness and kept him there for 40 years.

And what was he teaching him? He had already learned all the clever things of the world in Egypt for 40 years, but he was teaching him something else which no university in the world can ever teach. He was teaching him to become weak.

And finally, it took God 40 years to bring Moses to the place where he could say, Lord, I'm not the man. I'm not capable of leading your people. And God said, that's the place I was wanting you to come to.

Now you can go out and deliver my people. You know, God's ways are not our ways. The more capable we think we are to serve the Lord, the more unfit we are to serve the Lord. That's what we learned from Moses' example.

But if God can so break us, where we recognize that all my knowledge and all my ability and all my intelligence is absolutely useless in God's service. It's faith I need. It's grace I need from God. That sense of need comes when we are weak.

And think what Moses could accomplish at the age of 80, which he could not accomplish at the age of 40. How long do you think it would have taken if he started killing the Egyptians one by one with blows to their face to deliver the Israelites?

He would never have accomplished in his lifetime. But when he was so weak and helpless, he would just lift up his rod over the Red Sea and bury the whole Egyptian army under that Red Sea. You see what God can do through a weak man, which he can't do through a strong man.

And that's right through scripture. You see in the case of Jacob, that when he was strong, God couldn't use him. And God kept him 20 years with a difficult life with his father-in-law till he became weak.

And he became so weak, God dislocated his hip so that he had to walk with a cane for the rest of his life. And God said, okay, now you will be a prince of God. You see that with Abraham. When he was strong, capable of producing children, God said, no, can't use you.

You got to come to the place where you're absolutely helpless. And then God gave him a son, the son of promise. Throughout scripture, it's the same lesson. When Paul was strong, God had to make him weak with a thorn in the flesh.

And when these disciples were strong, God had to make them weak. They thought they were good at fishing. God said, okay, I'll make you weak there. Till you realize that in everything, you have to depend on me.

Without Christ We Can Do Nothing

I believe one of the greatest lessons that Jesus tried to teach his disciples through the miracles was that word that he spoke to them in John 15. Without me, you can do nothing. And I believe that's one of the greatest lessons that he seeks to teach you and me.

And I want to tell you, there are not many Christians who've learned it. How many of us really believe that if I do not depend on Jesus Christ, all that I will accomplish in life will be a big zero. Without him, I can do nothing.

What does that mean? There are a lot of things I can do. What he meant was, I'll never be able to do anything of eternal value without him. And that's what these folks needed to learn. And that's what we need to learn in our life too.

So here's a person seeking for victory over sin, like I said, seeking victory over anger. And he tries and he tries and he tries and he tries. And he doesn't get it. What's the Lord seeking to do? The Lord's seeking to teach him, you cannot get it.

Any amount of gritting your teeth and any amount of determination and any amount of making resolutions is not going to help you to overcome anger. You have to come to the place where you recognize, I cannot make it.

I cannot overcome. It is impossible. You've got to toil all night and catch nothing and then you're ready for victory. Why does God do it like that? So that when we do get the victory, we don't become proud of it.

You know, that's the great danger. Anger is like, let's say, a ten foot pit or a hundred foot pit. It's very difficult to get out of a narrow hundred foot pit. And I try and I try and I try and scramble up and I always keep falling into it.

Then maybe one day God helps me and I come out of it and I get victory over anger. And having got victory over anger, if I fall into another thousand foot pit called spiritual pride, what sort of victory is that?

That's not victory at all. That's often what happens when a man accomplishes something. He becomes proud of it. He doesn't realize that that spiritual pride is a far deeper pit than whatever he got victory over.

And the one thing that God seeks to do in our life is to lead us to a victorious life, to a life of useful service for him and to keep us humble at the end of it all. It's not difficult for God to bless us.

God can bless us and give us victory overnight. But the thing that God finds very difficult is to give a man victory in his life and to keep him humble at the end of it. God can use any of us mightily from this day.

But for God to use a man mightily and for the man to remain humble at the end of that period of usefulness is very very difficult. I've been around quite a few years and observed so many people in my lifetime who are in Christian work.

I want to say I can count on my fingers the ones whom I have seen my life, whom I can really respect as men mightily used by God and who still live in humility. It's very difficult. It's extremely difficult and that's the reason why God has to teach us this lesson of failure, failure, failure, failure.

So that one day when God does give me victory, I can recognize that that was not by my own ability or strength. Because I'm so aware of the years of failure in my life. We've got to experience failure and failure and failure in our ministry to recognize that without him I can do nothing.

So that one day when God gives me success, I realize Lord, that's not me. That's your work. So that there is the education that God seeks to give us in failure. So I want to say to any of you who are in that in-between stage of struggling and failing right now, don't get discouraged.

This is all part of God's education to lead you to a life of victory. Now this is something which the world cannot understand. In the world, there's no room for failure. You got to be a success if you want to be great in the world.

But in God's eyes, he has to take us through failure, repeated failure to educate us in humility which the world cares nothing for. He's got to allow us to face failure in our life, failure in our ministry, so that we recognize without him we can do nothing.

And you know you've learned the lesson when God can bless you and you're not proud of it. When God can bless you and you don't boast about it. When God can bless you and you can give all the glory to him.

And when you can have victory over sin and you don't look down on someone else who's defeated, then you know you've learned the lesson. But if you can get victory in some area or you've accomplished something spiritually in some area and you look down at someone, you know you haven't learned the lesson at all.

You came out of a hundred foot pit and fell into a thousand foot pit. You got victory over one thing and then you fell into spiritual pride. And spiritual pride is the deepest of all pits. It's the worst sin of all.

It's the thing the Pharisees were guilty of. And that's why Jesus said to them, you'll never escape the damnation of hell. So God has to give us victory, give us blessing in our ministry, blessing in our life, give us a very blessed marriage and keep us humble at the end of it all.

Humility, Grace, and Immediate Obedience

And there's a reason for that. The Bible says God gives his grace only to the humble. There's a law in God's dealings with man that he resists the proud. It's a law, it's like the law of gravity. It doesn't matter whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, God's laws work the same.

I mean if you jump off the roof of this building, the law of gravity doesn't bother about whether you're a believer or an unbeliever. You just fall down. It's the same with pride. The Bible says more than once in James 4 and 1 Peter 5, God resists the proud.

That's a law in all of God's dealings with man. And it doesn't matter whether you're a believer or unbeliever. The moment you become proud, God becomes your enemy. God's not your enemy. He's your friend.

He wants to support you and help you, but God's word says he resists the proud. And I picture it like this. When it says God gives grace to the humble, but he resists the proud, it means that if I live in humility, recognizing that I'm nothing in his eyes, God will get behind me and support me and push me along.

Can you imagine how fast I'll go when God's behind me, pushing me forward? And exactly the opposite happens the moment I become proud. God comes in front of me and pushes me back. And can you imagine how fast I go backwards when God's pushing me back?

This is the reason for backsliding. God's not pushing you forward. He's on the wrong side. I mean, the devil's already pushing me back. My lusts are pushing me back. And on top of that, if God himself pushes me back, there's no hope for me.

God gives his grace to the humble. And that's the lesson that he wanted these fishermen to learn. Many other times when they caught fish and they would have come home with this catch of fish and they'd have been proud of it, but not this time.

They knew that they had toiled all night and they caught nothing. But when the Lord told them, they obeyed immediately. And that's another thing I want to say, that the Lord works with those who will obey immediately without question.

I've seen people who are newly converted and right from day one, when they see something in scripture, they're going to obey it immediately. They see, well, I'm converted now and I've got to be baptized in water.

They don't think twice about it. They don't think about what their parents are going to say or what anybody else is going to say. They just go ahead and obey the Lord. And then they see something else in the scripture.

They need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And they will begin to seek God to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They're not bothered about theology and other things. They're seeking God. They see something in scripture and they're going to obey God.

And they see in scripture that they've got to overcome sin and they go after that. You know, that's the type of person who's going to make progress. He sees something and he says, God, I want that. And then I've seen certain other Christians, they get converted and they see something in scripture and they think about it and toss it around in their minds and say, yeah, we'll think about it.

It never goes well with them. Because that becomes their attitude to everything that God says. You know, the secret of the beauty of the universe is that the planets don't question God. The stars don't question God.

God put them in an orbit and they just keep going round and round. That's why there's such beauty in the universe. It's because of obedience. Instant obedience. Many thousands of years ago, God told the planets Saturn and Jupiter and Uranus and all the planets, you better go in this orbit.

And they've just been going round and round and round for years without question. That's the secret of beauty in the universe. That's how it is in scripture. God told Noah to build an ark. He did it. God told Abraham to leave, go to the Chaldees one night.

Next morning, he packed his bags and left. Right through scripture, you find these are the type of people whom God picked out. God told Peter to leave his nets immediately. He left his nets and followed.

He didn't think about it for a week. He left immediately. We read of Matthew, he was sitting in the tax office, writing his accounts and the Lord came to him and said, put your pen down and follow me.

He put his pen down and followed the Lord. That's the type of person whom the Lord uses and that's exactly what we see here. The Lord spoke something to them and they immediately put their net down and they were not disappointed.

And it says here in verse 7, that disciple whom Jesus loved. That's the Apostle John who wrote this letter. He called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was the one who recognized Jesus first. He said to Peter, it is the Lord standing on the shore.

And when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he, Peter was the impetuous type. I was saying that this morning. That God has introverts and extroverts in his church and he's got a place for both. John was the meditative type of person who thinks more, whereas Peter was the impetuous person who jumped out immediately.

He jumped out of the boat and he put on his outer garment and threw himself into the sea. And it's wonderful how God uses both these people for his work. And when they came to the sea, it says here, the other disciples came little boat and they had to drag the net full of fish.

Jesus' Care and Partnership in Ministry

And when they got out upon, verse 9, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it already and bread. This is an amazing miracle. Here we see Jesus and when they came home, he had already made breakfast for them.

You see his care. There's something wonderful about Jesus I see here. His care for the needs of his tired disciples. And he's just the same today. He created that fish. Where do you think that fish and bread came from?

Jesus, after his resurrection, he didn't go to any store to buy fish and bread. Where did it come from? There was a charcoal fire there. He created it. And then, here's another thing that we see so beautiful.

Not only his care for our earthly needs. You know, a lot of people think that Jesus cares only for our spiritual needs. It's not true. He's concerned that you have breakfast in the morning. And that's what we see here.

And there's something beautiful we see in verse 10. He had this fish and bread which he had created, breakfast made ready. And then he told his disciples, you bring some of the fish you caught as well.

You know, there are some Christians who are so fiercely independent. They don't need anybody's help. They say, I can manage everything on my own. I don't need your help. God's gifted me. I'm capable. They are useless in God's work.

Look at Jesus. He could create fish and bread. And yet, he tells his disciples, bring some of the fish you just caught. Let's put it together and let's make breakfast together. Do you see the humility there?

Do you see the way he gets them involved and gives them a sense of partnership in his ministry? That's the mark of a godly man. He doesn't make other people feel small and say, I don't want any of your fish.

I've already made some myself. There's something beautiful there. If you think about it, you'll see it. As I've said in all these parables, in all these miracles rather, Jesus would never do anything on his own.

He could have filled their boats with fish without their doing anything. But he wanted them to have a part in it. He said, you cast the net on the right side and you'll catch the fish. It's always a partnership.

Jesus said, take my yoke upon you. We've got to work together with the Lord. And that's what we see here. Even the breakfast. He'd made it. He said, bring some of your fish and we'll make breakfast together.

Loving Christ More Than Money

Then we read in verse 11. This is the only place in the gospels, by the way, where we're told the exact number of fish they caught and the type of fish they caught. He drew to the net to land full of large fish.