Luke 5:8

GOD AND OURSELVES

‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’

Luke 5:8

If the first lesson which was learned by Simon in the school of Jesus Christ was the lesson of holy confidence, the second, which rapidly follows, is the lesson of holy fear, the reverent remembrance of the difference between God and ourselves. In other words, ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me,’ while I remember the Master’s injunction, ‘Without Me ye can do nothing.’

In various ways, at different times in our lives, we are tempted to think that we can do without God.

I. The fear of God.—To gainsay God—with all reverence be it said—is to despise God. To distrust God is to be guilty of the most lamentable ignorance of God. Fear God man must, and ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ Fear Him we must, either with the fear of a terror which hides itself before the face of a power it will not acknowledge and reverence, or with a holy, loving fear which grows and grows into that perfect love which casteth out fear.

II. St. Peter’s opportunity.—What has the Bible been to us? Surely the record of how God was bringing back men to the knowledge of His love and His care. So in St. Peter’s case many and many were the resolutions which he made how rigidly he would serve his Lord in the coming days. Well, he shall have the opportunity. God sends a multitude of fishes. And that man is face to face with the great lesson given in the startling contrast of his weakness with the power of God, his lukewarmness and Christ’s generosity, of his fickleness and the eternal constancy of God.

III. We have toiled all night in the storm of our passion, in the darkness of our ignorance, for fame, for money, and for happiness—good if sought in God’s way, but sought alone, without God, what does it bring? We achieve the fame, and then we learn that man’s life is but a vapour that passeth away. We get our money, but ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.’ We seek our happiness, and find it, only to realise that no sooner have we grasped it than fresh cravings are evermore arising, and satisfaction and rest and peace are as far off as ever. Ah! and then—are there not some who will bear me out?—there comes a cry for succour in our need, no set language but a cry to God; and when the storm is over and the earthquake is no more there is the still small voice which says, ‘Launch out once more, not in your own strength, but in Mine,’ and we realise that though we forget God He never forgets us, and our extremity is God’s opportunity. When we feel the contrast between our lukewarmness and God’s generosity—how little time, how little money, how little work for God, and yet His power has been with us all the while—we recognise our fickleness and God’s constancy; so many resolutions made only to be forgotten, and in the felt sense of that contrast we too fall down and say, ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’

—Rev. Canon Pollock.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

CONVICTION OF SIN

Our Lord here proclaims to St. Peter by a significant act many things on which his heart may feed.

I. The meaning and object of this miracle.—It taught more than all others God’s personality. At the bottom of all things here there is a law. It is the tendency of habit to look upon law, and see nothing below it. A miracle breaks the continuity of these laws by a higher law—an interruption, not a contradiction of law.

II. The effects produced by it on St. Peter’s mind.—The effect ended in the production of a sense of sin, ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ This was not mere wonder, nor was it curiosity, or surprise; it was the sense of personal sin.

(a) The cause of this impression. The impression was produced by the pure presence of Jesus Christ. Wherever the Redeemer went He elicited a strange sense of sin. This, too, is the case wherever Christianity is preached.

(b) This conviction of sin in Peter’s bosom was not remorse or anguish for crime, but of inward devotedness.

Rev. F. W. Robertson.