Breakfast With Jesus
Deuteronomy 11:13-15
John 21:1-24
Ready to go on alone, Peter abruptly announced with the tersest of speech, “I go fishing.” 6 of the other disciples chimed in, “We’ll come with you.” It sounded like a good idea. Over half the disciples were fishermen, and they were going back to the only thing they knew how to do. You see, a few days before, they had locked themselves in a room – terrified that they would be condemned like their Master had been. Now they were at least willing to come out together (albeit at night) on Galilee when no one could possibly see them.
It is interesting that with every appearance of their risen Lord, they gained more and more courage until the coming of the Holy Spirit granted them all the boldness they needed to obey Christ’s call upon their lives.
But at this point, they had only seen their resurrected Lord twice. So perhaps at this early juncture, it was nervous energy – to keep their minds on more earthly and ordinary things – that they fished all night till the next morning. They worked at catching fish until they were completely exhausted and frustrated. But they were not really obeying the commission that Jesus had given them in John 20:21 or to become fishers of men. (Mark 1:17)
Then at the end of a night they would have been happy to forget, daylight began to dawn, and as the morning star appeared on the horizon, they could barely make out the figure of a man standing upon the shore. His voice suddenly rang out over the quiet, glassy misty lake, “Children, you do not have any fish do you?” The man seemed to already know the answer.
Interrupting our plans, our busyness, our labor, our hunger and our doldrums, Jesus calls out to us and reminds us that we still need Him. We can work so hard on our projects thinking that by more effort and sweat, we will finally accomplish something. But Jesus reminds us that unless we are doing what He has called us to do, our efforts can remain fruitless. But when we follow His word, we discover that He has nourishment, fellowship, and a divine purpose to give us. “Breakfast With Jesus.” Let us pray…
One of the most picturesque narratives in the New Testament is when Jesus appeared to His disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is such a serene, pastoral scene to me especially since I have been there and stood on the Galilean shore. On a Sunday morning I was asked to preach while in a boat out on the Sea of Galilee, and so I decided to preach this very story so that everyone on that boat could look around and imagine more accurately just how it happened.
I can see it all now again in my mind’s eye. It is so well described by John that you can almost smell the fresh bread and taste the roasted fish cooking over a charcoal fire. After the disciples came in to shore, Jesus said so compassionately, “Come and have breakfast.” (Click on title above to see the rest of the message)