Hand Picked

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

HAND-PICKED

Luke 5:1-3

5:1 One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, 2 he saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

NIV

Yes, we are coming to the great event of Simon finding out about the power of Jesus over His created world, but first, we should spend a little time about the foreknowledge of Jesus. There were two boats at the water’s edge and of course, Jesus could have picked either one. We know from the rest of this narrative the other boat belonged to Simon’s partners James and John, the sons of Zebedee. We do not think this is just a coincidence that Jesus was there, because we know that all three men would end up being some of the disciples of Jesus, and yes, actually being three of the twelve apostles. There is just one Jewish custom that is shown to us here, in that Jesus sat to teach the people. This was common for a Rabi to sit when they taught the people. However, the truth we want to focus on is the foreknowledge of Jesus in first picking the place to be, and second picking the boat of Simon to sit in so as to teach the people. This leads us to think that it is also not a coincidence that we are sitting at the feet of Jesus learning from him, or that we are among the people listening to his teaching. What this means, is that we did not pick Jesus, but that Jesus picked us. We know that sounds a lot like predestination, but this is not that, for God wants all men to come to the knowledge of salvation through the redemptive act of Jesus. In fact, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to convict all men of their need for repentance. Therefore, in that sense, God has predestined all men to know Him and accept His grace. Still, we also believe there are some who are picked by God for special purposes as we are seeing here, with his picking of Simon’s boat. What we can see, is that God was not done picking those twelve for we know of others, that he picked for a special calling. We could name some of them, but what we want to come to is regarding our own calling. We are not sure about others that we fellowship with, but we are certain because of all the circumstances and leadings throughout our time with Jesus, but surely some of them are like we are, that He picked us and has told us to put out in the deep, so to speak. Simon was not looking for Jesus, but Jesus was looking for Simon, and we firmly believe Jesus was looking for us, hand-picking us for His purpose.