F4F | Dustin Stradley and Why This Doesn't Make Sense

Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Rosebro. I am your servant in Jesus Christ, and this is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the

Word of God. No shortage of crazy things being said out there. Now, if you've ever been told that, listen, God is gonna call you to do something, man, and it's not gonna make sense.

In fact, the less sense it makes, the more possible and more probable it is that God is the one telling you to do that thing.

Yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below. Don't forget to like the video and ring the bell.

You've been taught something that the Scriptures do not teach. Case in point, we're heading down to Elevation Church.

This is where Stephen Furtick holds court as the vision casting leader, and of course it's the summer months, which means that it's time for the guys who play

AAA for Elevation Church to come up to the big league and kind of do their thing.

Yeah, that's how this works. So we're gonna be listening to one of the campus pastors at Elevation Church. His name is Dustin Stradley.

I think he was a first -round draft pick for Furtick a few years back, but anyway, he's gonna be supposedly preaching on the

Gospel of Mark and the account of Jesus telling Peter to cast his net on the other side of the boat, and it's gonna be all about you and Dustin Stradley, and it's not gonna be about Jesus.

And this makes perfect sense, because I'm sure that if Dustin was a fellow who would preach

Christ and preach the Gospels the way John said that these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in his name, then he wouldn't have been a first -round draft pick for Stephen Furtick, I'm just saying.

So let's head over there, shall we? And I'm gonna start off early in the sermon, because there's kind of a flow to this thing.

We're not listening to the whole thing, so don't worry about that, but we'll be listening and doing some comparative work along the way, so buckle up, here is

Dustin Stradley, and this doesn't make sense. But if I can share with you real quick, as we were singing that last song, thinking about God moving mountains, we were not just singing lyrics and going through the motions of singing another song.

You were singing something other than lyrics? You were singing something that transcends lyrics?

What were you singing? But I started to think about the mountains that God has moved in my life.

What was the name of the mountains? What were they named? Everest, Kilimanjaro, Krakatoa, what were the names of those mountains?

We're moving allegorical mountains now, which is kind of par for Stephen Furtick's chorus. Even over the past couple of weeks, what it took for me to get here to this stage today, it wasn't any big life circumstance or anything that happened, but the battles that I faced over the past couple of weeks, the resistance that I faced.

Were the communists involved? Maybe the Chinese army or something. I know it was

Iran. Yeah, see Iran shot down the elevation drone or something, right? To get here today, it wasn't a battle in front of me or a battle around me, it was a battle inside of me.

And oftentimes those are the hardest battles to fight. But I thought about what pastor preached last weekend as he was laying right here on this stage.

And he said, if the battle is too big for you, it's not yours. The battle is the

Lord's. And what battle are we talking about exactly?

And on Wednesday, I was laying face down on a couch in tears and in frustration. Just all of these insecurities and my mind just out of control.

But in that moment, I vividly remembered that picture of surrender that pastor

Stephen showed us last weekend. And that our battles are not going to be won by fighting and working as hard as we can in our own effort.

But it's gonna come through surrender. It's gonna come through worship. And that's what I've been hearing today already.

You've been hearing things? Okay, yeah, this doesn't sound weird at all.

It's people who came ready to surrender. Wave the white flag there at an elevation over there.

Surrendering. It's about time. Yeah. People who came ready to worship. That's how we see victory.

That's how we fight our battles. And it's an honor to continue in the flow today to see what

God wants to speak through me. Continue in the flow to see what God has to speak through you.

Okay? Nothing to lose at this point. At this point, I'm here and I'm ready to open my mouth and allow

God to speak through me into you. I feel like I am here on an assignment, but I believe that you are also here on an assignment.

And if you open your heart and open your mind, God's gonna deposit into you exactly what you need. If I open my heart and my mind,

God's gonna deposit. This is just mmm.

You know, so this kind of means whatever you want it to mean. It just depends on who you are as to what it means. I mean, it means one thing to your neighbor, it means another thing to you.

Okay, so open your heart and mind so that God can make a deposit. So Ballantyne, I need you to help me welcome all of our locations, all of our campuses tuning in.

Blakeney campus, Lake Norman, UC, Matthews. My favorite campus,

Roanoke, Virginia. It's my family, our eFam tuning in online in living rooms, coffee shops around the world.

It's amazing what we get to be a part of. I hope that we never take that for granted. But I want to go ahead and dive into the

Word of God. Thank you, choir. Were they not incredible, by the way? I believe that wherever you are,

God's gonna speak something into you today. We're gonna dive into the book of Luke chapter 5. All right, so our governing text is gonna be

Luke chapter 5. Now, I'm gonna show you something from the opening to the Gospel of Luke.

Let's get that out of the way right now. And you remember in a recent lesson that we did here on our channel, we talked about the fact that the

Gospel of John chapter 20, that John himself says, these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you would have life in his name. This is, yeah, that's what the reason of the

Gospels are being written for. Now, Luke actually talks about why he, you know, took pen and parchment together to pen out his gospel.

Now, Luke wasn't an eyewitness to these things, but what he ended up doing was kind of old school

Greek historian style. He interviewed all the eyewitnesses and then compiled his accounts into what has become the

Gospel of Luke. Here's what it says. Now, in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the

Word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent

Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught.

So Luke, he wants his readers to have certainty regarding the things that they have been taught, in particular

Theophilus, which means lover of God. Fascinating kind of double entendre there.

This is the guy, the patron who helped fund the writing of the Gospel of Luke, and so that,

I mean, that's what scholars, many of them, believe about Theophilus. But it's also then written to us, and we note then that these things are written so that we may have certainty regarding the things we've been taught, and certainty regarding what we've been taught regarding whom is a good question, and that would be none other than Jesus Christ himself.

So all of that being said, let me head on over to Luke chapter 5, and we will go ahead and just, you know, leave the biblical text there for a second as we let

Dustin Stradley explain, well, at least read this out before he gets to the explanatory portion of his sermon.

If you have your Bible, you can pull it out. If not, you can cheat off your neighbor. I don't condone cheating in school, but you can cheat off your neighbor in this instance.

I'm going to dive in right now. So one day as Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, the people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God.

He saw at the water's edge two boats left there by fishermen who were washing their nets.

He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, also known as Peter, and asked him to put out a little from the shore.

Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water.

Let down the nets for a catch. Simon answered, but master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything, but because you say so,

I will. Elbow your neighbor and say, because he said so, I will.

Let down the nets. And when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.

I love the word of God. He is so faithful. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus's knees and said, go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man.

Note he's reading the entire account, and I got to give him some points for that, so I'll give him three points for reading out the entire passage and not just part of the story.

Oftentimes when we hear those who are vision -casting leaders and seeker -driven in attractional churches, if you can call them churches at all, reading an entire account is not something that happens with any kind of frequency, so you got to give

Dustin props for reading out the entire account. For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, don't be afraid.

From now on you will fish for people. You will fish for people. So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything, and followed him.

I need you to turn to your neighbor and look at them with the most confused look on your face, and help announce my title.

Say, this doesn't make sense. All right.

The poor timing, I guess, on his part, because the job of a pastor is to preach the

Word and to help somebody understand the proper sense of what's going on in the text, so you got a guy reading out a biblical text, a portion from one of the

Gospels, and goes, this doesn't make any sense. That doesn't exactly create confidence in me that the preacher is gonna rightly handle the text.

Now let's take a look at the account, and we're gonna note a few things here. I've preached sermons on this before, and I think it'll be helpful by way of just comparing and contrasting.

We'll put a link down in the description of the video, where you can go to the

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church website. I am an ordained pastor, and you can hear one of my sermons on this text, so you can kind of do a comparing and contrasting as far as how does it sound different when somebody exegetes?

Now, I'm gonna point something out here. In doing sermon prep for a sermon like on Luke 5, a book that I have found to be extremely helpful is written by Bailey.

Yeah, this is Ken Bailey. The late Ken Bailey wrote this book, and I can't recommend everything in it, but the best way

I can put it is that this is just a great scholarly look at what cultural things do we not understand as far as how the

Middle Eastern cultures, which is an Eastern culture, how they think differently than we do.

Ken Bailey's book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, does a bang -up job, great job of kind of working out where's the conflict here, and why is

Peter reacting the way he has? And so what we'll do is we'll put a link down in the description to this book.

If you don't own it, you can buy it on Kindle, and it's very inexpensive, worth the read if you are considering being any kind of a teacher in Christ's Church.

This would be, if it's not mandatory reading in your seminary, make it mandatory for you because it's actually quite helpful, so you know at least some of my source material.

So a little bit of footnote work here. So coming back then to the text, we're gonna note that Peter is in partnership, it looks like, with John, the

Zebedee brothers, John and James, the Zebedee brothers, and as a fisherman on the

Sea of Galilee, there are a few types of fish that they would be fishing for, and so we'll note that normal fishing takes place at night.

This is a normal time to catch the fish, not during the day, and you're waiting for the fish to come up into the shallows, and so when

Jesus says, put out into the deep in the middle of the day, this makes, I agree, this makes no sense.

This is not how you catch fish. And so the question is, why then does

Peter, when they catch this huge amount of fish, say, away from me

Lord, I'm a sinful man? What is it about this that is convicting Peter of his own sinfulness?

And so we'll talk about that as we quickly work our way through the text. So I'm gonna backtrack, this is the

English Standard Version, I'm using the SV, but any good modern translation is probably gonna get you really close to what you're looking for here.

It says, on one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on Him, that's Jesus, to hear the Word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret.

Again, these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you might have life in His name.

So He, Jesus, saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

Yeah, they got skunked the night before. So getting into one of the boats, which was

Simon's, He asked him to put out a little from the land, and He sat down and taught the people from the boat.

So you're gonna note here that Peter gets to hear a Jesus sermon up close, personal, and is probably having to keep the boat in one spot so that the acoustics work out well.

And not that I've been to the Holy Land, but I've spoken with people who've been to the Holy Land who claim that there is a site near Capernaum where it creates a natural amphitheater with the water and the shore and stuff like that, and they think this is a highly likely place for where this took place, and because it's a natural amphitheater, you can be out just a few feet from the shore, and when you speak, everybody up in the natural amphitheater can hear you very well.

It's weird how acoustics work, but anyway, that's a little side note there. So Peter is hearing a

Jesus sermon, so he's hearing the Word of God. He knows that Jesus is a holy man, that he's a man of God, and so he hears a

Jesus sermon. So when he had finished speaking, he said to Peter, so no sooner does

Jesus finish the sermon, he says, put out into the deep, let down your nets for a catch. Now, Simon's a fisherman for a living, he knows his craft, and like any good fisherman will tell you, some days are good, some days you just totally get skunked.

This is how it works, right? But he makes his living as a fisherman.

This is his profession, so he knows his craft, and what Jesus is saying is not what you would consider to be professional fishing craft, if you would.

And you know, for middle of the day, letting down your nets into the deep, no, no, no, no, that's not how you catch fish, at least according to professional fishing craft on the

Sea of Galilee at the time. So Peter will push back initially, and Simon Peter said,

Master, we toiled all night and we took nothing. Notice he's not calling him

Lord yet. Uh -huh. Yeah, that's kind of fascinating. Master, we toiled all night, we took nothing. But at your word,

I'll let down the nets. So he's gonna humor this rabbi from Capernaum, from Nazareth, and so when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.

They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help. Now, Ken Bailey kind of points out the fact that he didn't whistle and shout, hey, we need some help out here.

The fact that he's secretly signaling to the Zebedee brothers, you got to get out here and help me, he doesn't want to draw attention so that the other fishermen don't come and nab their fish, because being a fisherman is a competitive trade.

And so, you know, he signals, hand signals to his partners so that they would come and help, and so they came and they filled both the boats so that they began to sink.

Now, think of it this way, and this is where the comparative point comes in, is that if Jesus has the ability to pull off a miracle like this, where he can go against all the conventional wisdom and professional tradecraft of fishermen, and at any moment encircle such a large number of fish that the boats are nearly sinking,

Jesus, if he chose, could be the wealthiest man on the whole

Sea of Galilee, and yet he is a poor itinerant preaching rabbi.

And this miracle was a miracle that shows who

Jesus is, that he truly is the Lord of Creation. And this rocks

Peter's boat, pun intended, that's the point. This miracle rocks his world, rocks his boat, and makes him realize that Jesus is more than meets the eye, and that this guy truly must be from God, because in his own sinful nature he knows that if he had powers like this, he would use them for his own advantage, and yet that's not the point of the miracle, you know, there's something else going on here.

So when Peter saw this, he fell down at Jesus's knees, saying, depart from me,

I am a sinful man, O Lord. Now, good confession. He's confessed that he's sinful, and that he doesn't deserve to be in the presence of Christ.

And this whole thing has rocked him, and so for he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were

James and John the sons of Zebedees, who were partners with Simon. And watch what Jesus says, do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid. And so this has really freaked

Peter out, to where the first thing that Jesus has to say to him is, don't be afraid.

Although he properly recognizes that Jesus is holy and that he is not, Jesus comforts him and assures him, and then he says, from now on you will be catching men.

You're gonna put away the fishing business as you know it, and you, in the very near future, your job is going to be to cast the net of the gospel.

To proclaim me, Jesus is talking here, to proclaim Christ and him crucified for the forgiveness of sins, and by casting the net of the gospel, he will then be drawing men into the boat of the church for salvation.

That's kind of the idea. And so when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything, and they followed

Jesus. And you're gonna note here, they catch the biggest catch you can possibly catch, without sinking two boats, and this close to sinking them both.

And rather than sitting there going, man we can't wait to go out tomorrow with Jesus telling us where the fish are, we are gonna be rich!

We're gonna be loaded! No! Instead it's, that's it. We're done. We're with Jesus.

Now, you can say that doesn't make sense, but it does. Because you know, Jesus says later to his disciples, you didn't choose me,

I chose you. And so there's so much more going on here than what we're gonna hear

Dustin preach about. Yeah, and this is kind of unfortunate, because Dustin is a disciple of Stephen Furtick, and being a disciple of Stephen Furtick means that he thinks that the

Bible is about him, not Christ. And so where Dustin is going to err is in his fundamental presupposition and assumption about why this text was written.

In his way of thinking, this text was written because, well, I'm just like Peter, and God's going to ask me to do something crazy that doesn't make any sense, and so I need to be ready for when

Jesus tells me to do that thing. But that's not what this text is about at all.

So we continue. ...turn to your second option, not gonna get into why, with a confused look on your face and say, this doesn't make sense.

Jesus, we are honored to be in your presence. It doesn't make sense, God, that you would choose someone like us.

It doesn't make sense, God, that you would send your

Son into this world for our freedom, God. Freedom from what?

But we're thankful you did. We're thankful that we get to be in your presence. It's in Jesus' name that everybody said.

Amen. You can go ahead and take a seat. I'm just learning in life that there are many things that don't make sense.

Maddie and I have been married for 338 days, 22 hours.

For instance, it doesn't make sense that you would talk about your marriage here when you're supposed to be exegeting this text, and your marriage isn't going to help me properly understand this text at all, nor is it going to point me to Christ.

What are you doing? This doesn't make sense. 37 minutes, 14 seconds.

But who's counting? I remember last July when I saw this beautiful woman of God coming down the aisle, and this white boy jumped as high as he could jump, which is not too high, and yelled,

Hallelujah! It's a true story, as she was coming down the aisle. Because in my mind, it did not make sense that a woman like this, a thoughtful, encouraging, intentional, anointed, empathetic woman of God, like this, would want to marry someone like me.

With all of my issues, and all of my imperfections, and four months into marriage, we were having coffee one morning, and Maddie said,

Hey babe, I've been listening to this new album. I think you'd really like it. I said, Oh yeah? Who's it by?

And she said, Sir Mix -A -Lot. I said, Like Sir Mix -A -Lot from the 80s, 90s rapper, producer

Sir Mix -A -Lot? She said, Yeah. I said, Babe, I didn't know you rolled like that. That's amazing.

Like, what's the name of this album? She said, Well, you were singing it all night last night. It's called

Sir Snores -A -Lot. Now my wife can call me whatever she wants.

So I just got to ask, I mean, what is the purpose of this portion of the sermon? How is it helping the people at Elevation properly understand the true sense of this text, and the reason for which it was written?

Which is to point us to Christ, and to give us certainty about the things that he did and accomplished.

But with all of my habits, and all of my annoyances, like, she wants to be married to someone like me?

Doesn't make sense. There's something else that doesn't make sense. Mathematics. I hated math.

I mean, it goes without saying. It's a dark art. Growing up, still do, to this day. In college,

I had a full semester of math classes, except for one class. That semester,

I got a 0 .4 GPA. The only reason I didn't completely fail was because I had volleyball, and that resurrected my

GPA slightly. The following semester, I improved. I got a 0 .5 GPA. We're learning a lot about Dustin Stradley here.

That much about Jesus. Yeah. Out of college. But my dad, who is 6 foot 4, 270...

Dustin, I just gotta ask you, do you or any of your friends have miraculous powers to cause fishermen on the

Sea of Galilee to bring in the catch of a lifetime? I mean, don't you think that's a huge miracle, and wouldn't you like to know a little bit more about that guy?

I mean, at least if I were there at Elevation, I'd be wanting to hear about Jesus, because it's like, who does that?

You, I mean, you sound like me in this sense. I mean, we're sinners.

We fall short. We're, you know, we're the problem. You're not the solution.

Jesus would be the solution for our combined problems here. 70 -pound country boy from Thomasville, North Carolina, where I grew up.

He's brilliant when it comes to math. So we would sit down at the dinner table, and he would teach me long division, mathematics, you know, 101, multiplication, and all the things.

And I remember my dad just telling me, like, hey boy, man, if you just take this and you divide that number right there, boy, and you carry the two over here, and you just add 16 right there, boy, you know, take that right there.

Is this the stand -up comedy portion of the sermon? If you meet my dad, it's exactly what it sounds like.

And I said, dad, this does not make sense. Shut up, boy. It doesn't have to make sense to work.

And I've realized more and more that it doesn't have to make sense to work. That's what

I love about our church is unashamed when we talk about tithing. It doesn't make sense for me to take my hard -earned money and just bring it.

Yeah, tithing is an old covenant. Yeah, the Mosaic Covenant requirement.

Tithing is not a new covenant command. And give it back to God. But God said, when we trust him with what he's placed in our hands, that he will open the floodgates far beyond anything we can imagine.

Yeah, far beyond we can think or imagine. That's taking Ephesians chapter 2 way out of context.

Ephesians 2 is nothing at all to do, or is it 3?

Yeah, either way. Yeah, that benedictory thought from Ephesians has nothing to do with tithing.

It doesn't have to make sense to work. And obeying God's Word doesn't always make sense.

Now, note here, obeying God's Word. So, obeying falls into the category of the law.

Now, Scripture is very clear. There are certain commands that we are to obey, and because we don't, and you know, that's the reason why we fall short, that in each and every instance where we have not obeyed

God's voice in Scripture, in the commands that he's commanded us, we fall short of the glory of God and we invoke his wrath and punishment, and this is the reason why

Christ has to bleed and die for our sins. So it's important to note, then, in properly handling the

Bible and rightly dividing it, you have to rightly divide it between the law and the gospel. That means you have to preach the law in all of its severity, and make it very clear that God has commanded you to obey these things, thou shalt not and thou shalt have to be front and center, and all the ways in which we haven't done that, we have to call it what it is, not a slip - see, not an oopsie, not a whoopsie or a mistake, it's a sin.

And Christ has bled and died for those sins, and so the gospel then tells us that we are forgiven for the sake of Christ, because he has gone to the cross, suffered our punishment in our place, and so then the call of the gospel is to repent, to change your mind, and to believe and trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and then

Christian sanctification is bearing fruit in keeping with that repentance, recognizing then that those commands that we have not kept still tell us what a good work is.

And so we embrace and we love God's law so that we can strive then in our daily

Christian walk to mortify our sinful flesh, and to put the old man to death, and bring the new man forth in good works in love towards neighbor, in love towards God.

That's the idea, but that's not what I'm hearing here. But it always works, and as I was looking at this passage, there's so many things about Peter, and specifically in this story, that just don't make sense.

Things about Peter that don't make sense. This text isn't about Peter.

The whole gospel of Luke is written about Jesus. Peter is there, and this is written about Jesus.

Peter's the supporting character. He's not the main role. Like Peter, who is a pro fisherman, and doesn't catch any fish at all.

Peter, bro, you've got one job. This is all you do, to provide for your family and catch the fish.

It didn't make sense for Peter. He was fishing all night long, couldn't catch a thing.

Which is when you fish on the Sea of Galilee in the time of Peter.

And how many of you have been working so hard in this season, yet it's still not working? When did me working hard in this season have anything to do with what's going on in Luke 5?

Where'd you come up? Here's the thing. This is the reason why he's made it about Peter. The reason why he made it about Peter, not

Jesus, is by making it about Peter, he can make it about you, me, himself. And that's a problem.

You're going to the gym six days a week. Sugar -free, gluten -free, dairy -free, all the frees.

Yet you still don't have a six -pack. While Phillip here eats McDonald's all day long, drinks

Coca -Cola, and has a 12 -pack. Doesn't make sense. Not bitter about it, promise.

You've applied for 20 jobs over the past two months. Yeah, you applying for 20 jobs has nothing whatsoever to do with Luke 5.

The text is about Jesus, not you. Yet you're still unemployed. Doesn't make sense.

God, I'm pouring everything I have into my kids, yet they're still running wild. Doesn't make sense.

Actually, it does, because Scripture is clear that we're born dead in trespasses and sins.

That we are born with a corrupted, sinful nature, bent in on itself. So every one of my kids, when they were born, they weren't born

Christians, they were born pagan. Yeah, so yeah, that makes perfect sense.

It also didn't make sense that Jesus shows up after Peter had been fishing all night, didn't catch a thing.

What doesn't make sense about that? Tells him to throw the nets right back into the same empty waters that he had been fishing in.

Now, Peter... No, actually, if you do your homework, you'll note that casting your net into the deep, it doesn't make any sense.

That's not how fishermen operate on the Sea of Galilee in the time of Peter. Peter responded very politely, very honoring, very obedient.

I would like to think that I would do the same, but maybe not. Like, Jesus, bro, you're really good at what you do.

The whole healing thing, changing the world, it's amazing. But stay in your lane.

I'm good at this fishing thing. I mean, that's not out of bounds. I mean, that's kind of what

Peter was getting at. He, you know, Dustin here just took it a little bit farther, turned it into a comedy routine, but okay, yeah.

I've been fishing these waters all night long and there's nothing in the water. But then he responded and he said, but because you say so,

I will. And then Peter began to pull in so many fish that the nets begin to break, the boats begin to sink.

Come on, boys, we don't even have enough room in our boats. So much blessing, more than he even thought possible.

It was Peter's obedience that prompted God's provision. No, no, no.

Jesus made a promise. Cast your, you know, and it was an implied promise, you know, head out to the deep and cast your nets out for a catch.

The reason why this happened is because Jesus said so. It wasn't

Peter's obedience. So you're gonna note, this is 180 degrees backwards. And it works out this false idea, well, your obedience causes

God to, yeah, no, this is a mess. This is just a hot mess. Breakthrough is always on the other side of obedience.

But obeying God... Yeah, now this is painful. Breakthrough is on the other side of obedience.

Can you point me to a single day where you have obeyed God perfectly and sinlessly?

Bet you can't, because Scripture says you can't. So God's Word, it doesn't always make sense, but it always works.

And there's something... God's Word doesn't always make sense, but it works? What? Interesting about Peter that also didn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense that Jesus would choose someone like Peter. This text isn't really about Peter.

It's about Christ, and he chose Peter to be his right -hand man, his disciple.

Peter doesn't have a religious background. He's an interesting guy, and maybe a little bit all over the place.

And I feel like I relate to Peter in some ways, but it doesn't make sense that God would choose someone like Peter.

And as we look at... Now, a little bit of a note here. You could talk about the biblical doctrine of predestination.

God choosing us might be worth a look at this, you know, because my question would be, why did

God choose you? And what did He choose you for? You know, maybe repentance, faith, salvation.

You know, I'm just saying, you know. Peter's life. I think that you're gonna find yourself saying some of the same things that Peter might be saying.

You and I both. It doesn't make sense that God would choose someone like you or choose someone like me.

And so I want to go through... It's not because I'm so great. No. It's because God had mercy on me.

Compassion, forgiveness, grace. A few things from the life of Peter that I think that you and I are both gonna connect with if you're honest with yourself.

This text is about Jesus. Because first, it doesn't make sense for God to choose you because of your failures.

Because of your failures. I want you to... They're called sins. They're not failures or slipsies or oopsies or whoops -a -daisies.

They're sin. And Christ has chosen us in Him despite them.

Because He's gone to the cross to bleed and to die for them. I want you to write that down.

Peter said, Master, we've been working our butts off all night long.

Haven't caught a thing. Peter was staring at failure.

It would have made more sense for Jesus to choose someone who is actually good at their job.

Really? Really? You're going to basically pan

Peter's entire career as a fisherman because he was skunked one night.

Really? You don't know what you're doing.

I mean, if I'm a NBA scout for the Charlotte Hornets, probably gonna pick the guy who's making the shots.

Okay, we're gonna note that Peter had business partners. James and John, the

Zebedee brothers. Yeah, I don't think they would have stayed in business too long if Peter couldn't bring the rain.

If you're not making any shots, not gonna pick you. It would have made more sense for Jesus to choose someone who was succeeding in this moment.

And Peter was standing in the middle of an empty boat looking at failure.

The empty boat to Peter represented failure. It represented being skunked for a night.

Not too uncommon for fishermen. Have you ever watched

Deadliest Catch? I mean, not that I've watched that many episodes, but I've watched enough of them to know, you know, sometimes those guys and those crab boats out in Alaska that sometimes they throw their pots out and they catch nothing.

It happens, man. And many of you in this season, you're standing in the midst of a failure.

Three weeks ago, you lost your job. You have no idea how you're going to provide for your family.

This text has nothing to do with you losing your job.

You failed that class. You don't even know if you're going to. It does nothing to do with you failing a class. Graduating now and now you're telling yourself you're so dumb and you don't know if you'll ever amount to anything.

You failed someone that you love so much. You failed at that opportunity that was given to you. Yeah, how about that part where, depart from me,

I'm a sinful man. So you'll note here, like I've said, since he's made this about Peter, he can make it about you and me.

And now all this nonsense comes in where he's engaging in narcissism. This is the, you know, this is

Stephen Furtick's, you know, standard technique that he's mastered. And, you know, for the last 13 years that he's been a pastor out there at Elevation Church, he's demonstrated, you know, he's taken every biblical text that he's touched and made it about himself.

And so Dustin here is a careful student of Stephen Furtick. But the thing is, his entire assumptions are 180 degrees off.

These biblical texts are not about me and you. These are about Christ. And this text,

Luke 5, isn't about Peter. Now granted, he's in there, but this text is still about Christ.

Notice he's choosing Peter. He's the one who performed the miracle. He's the one who said to Peter, don't be afraid.

From now on, you'll be catching men. This text is still about Jesus, not

Peter. And where we have connection points with Peter that we are also sinful, then it's comforting to us to hear

Christ say, you know, do not be afraid. Because Christ is the one who's gonna go to the cross to bleed and to die for Peter's sins, so that he can be forgiven.

Because remember, there's a time coming when Peter will deny Christ three times while Jesus is on trial, deny that he even knew him.

And yet Jesus said that anyone who does not, you know, doesn't proclaim me or, you know, in front of human beings before men,

I'll, you know, whoever disowns me before men, I'll disown him before the Father. That's what Jesus said. And yet Peter did that three times, and yet Christ forgave him, restored him, prayed for him, and had mercy on him.

So Dustin here is completely clueless. And the reason why he's clueless, sadly, the reason he's clueless is because he thinks the

Bible's about him. He thinks it's about you, thinks it's about me. But the texts are about Jesus.

These things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you might have life in his name.

Very tragic that Dustin here is a careful student of Stephen. Furtick, not.

Well, Jesus. So if you found this video helpful, all the information on how you can share it is down below in the description.

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