Matthew 4:18-22

Matthew 4:18

Jesus and the Fishermen.

Observe here

I. Jesus called the Galilean fishermen. There was nothing novel in the calling of men from a lowly condition to the performance of a high and holy task. The men who were to stand at the head of this great movement were men of the people, men who had not enjoyed any special privileges. It ought to be enough to establish the certainty of the heavenliness of Christ's Kingdom, that He used no artificial means in laying its foundations so firmly in the consciousness of the world, and that this was done through the instrumentality of fishermen, and that He appealed to them as He does to all, to the willing mind and the responsive conscience, and did this through furnishing them with a new and holy ideal of human life.

II. He called them for a specific purpose. "I will make you fishers of men." Thus He spake to them in familiar words; but familiar words when used by Him were charged with unfamiliar meaning; they contained the revelation of God's heart and of man's destiny. He who knew as no man knew enlisted the ordinary in the service of the extraordinary, and without injury to His theme translated the spiritual into the terms of the material. Christ promised that His disciples should catch. "I will make you fishers of men." They would have to vary their manner of using the net He furnished them with; they would not catch as many as they desired, but would at length succeed, because the net was the right kind of net, and they themselves would be prepared for its use.

III. How they were to be fitted for this work: "Follow Me." They were to wait on Him, to go in and out with Him from the beginning, to apprehend the meaning of His words and the spirit in which they were conceived. They must know Him; this was their first, their great, business in life. He taught His doctrine in the practice of it, and the practice of it in the patience and heroism of His own life. They were to know all they needed to know, be all they ought to be, and do all required of them to be done, by following Him.

J. O. Davies, Sunrise on the Soul,p. 3.

References: Matthew 4:18. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 17; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 283; H. W. Beecher, Sermons(1870), p. 311.Matthew 4:18. Parker, Inner Life of Christ,vol. i., p. 139.