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[00:00:00] If you have gone through some challenging situations, this podcast is for you. You may be finding yourself that you need to be put back together again. This is the podcast for you today.
[00:00:13] Let's get going.
[00:00:20] God doesn't design us to fit. He designs us to be.
[00:00:27] Hey, everyone, it's Ryan Robinson. Welcome to Shifts and Ladders. Glad you can join. Today we're just going to jump right into the topic. We talked before about broken nets and handling your brokenness. And we really jumped in, in the book of Luke to talk about the first encounter. I believe it's Luke, chapter five, verses one through six, where we talked about and observed Jesus telling the disciples to throw their net on the other side. And essentially once they threw their net, after being up all night not catching anything and actually getting ready to pack it up, they go back out on the Word of God and do what he said to do. And they came out with such a huge amount of fish that the nets, the Bible says, began to break. And they needed to get people around them that they were in relationship and connection to, to help them. Once they got this provision, they recognized. And Simon Peter said this. He said, have mercy on me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. And then he says, you guys are fishermen. Jesus says, y'all are fishermen. I'm going to teach you to be fishers of men. Which is really dope how he flipped that, you know, taking a skill that they've used to create a living, to now repurpose that for his ultimate purpose. Okay. Which is powerful. Sometimes the blessings of God make us aware of our brokenness. And essentially because of this particular miracle that took place, they dropped their nets and started following Jesus. Okay, why are we bringing this up? A lot of times, and I'm really focusing on the nets, the nets in our lives, a lot of us look like we're keeping it together, but because of the weight of things, we're actually snapping.
[00:02:28] Blessings without the level of provision and safety and connection to an ultimate source will break you. That's why Simon Peter ultimately said, like, he recognized that he was not worthy of such a catch, let alone being worthy of such a God, a person like Jesus, and it made him conscious of how much he needed to work through and work on.
[00:02:58] And many of us have and are broken nets. There's areas, whether it be in your confidence, whether it may be in your self esteem, whether it may be in your execution of your dreams, whatever it may be, there may be areas where you are breaking.
[00:03:20] But I got good news for you.
[00:03:23] If you drop the nets and start following Jesus. There is something there for you to be encouraged by. So we're going to go to the next example of a net in the gospel, but we're going to go to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John is probably, they call it the fourth gospel because it gives so much detail of miracles, signs, and wonders that really point and show that Jesus is indeed the Messiah.
[00:03:57] And you actually don't see this particular example in the other three gospels. Okay, so fast forward to this scripture and we're going to go to John, chapter 21, the last chapter, verses 6 through 11. And to provide a little bit of context there, and I'll read it in a bit. It is fast forward three years from the time Jesus first met the disciples out in the boat. At this point in time, they are hearing or Jesus had been crucified and they had gone through all this time seeing all the miracles, signs, and wonders, all the things that Jesus had done. They had seen it, they had been built up. And they also witnessed and ran from Jesus during his execution.
[00:04:54] There had been rumors at this time that there had been appearances of Jesus showing up in around Jerusalem.
[00:05:05] And the disciples find themselves yet again going fishing after everything that they had gone through with Jesus. They were not going out and preaching the gospel. They were not healing the sick and giving the blind sight. They were going back to what they they knew best.
[00:05:30] And if anything like that happens to you, you would go back because the person that represented your hope, the faith that you gained, was no longer there. You'd probably go back fishing too, because at least you know that you can rely on that. And many of us rely on something in a past season that we really don't need anymore. But Jesus is so good. Like, I'm gonna read it so y'all can see this.
[00:06:04] And keep in mind the nets. Okay? All right, so we're in John chapter 21, starting at verse six. Actually, let me start at verse three. Let's start verse three. We'll go to verse three. It says, Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing.
[00:06:21] They said to him, we're going to go with you also.
[00:06:24] These are the disciples, seven of them, actually.
[00:06:28] They went out and immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing.
[00:06:35] But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore. Yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, children, you have any food? They answered, no. And he said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat. You will find some. So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish. Catch it. Okay. They didn't have any people around this time.
[00:07:08] Therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, it is the Lord. Now, when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he had removed it and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from land, but about 200 cubits dragging the net with fish. Then soon as they had come to the land, they saw a fire of coals there and fish laid on it and bread. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish which you have just caught. Simon Peter went up, dragged the net to land full of large fish, 153. And although there were so many, the net was not broken.
[00:07:57] Jesus said to them, come and eat breakfast. Yet none of the disciples dared to ask him, who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord.
[00:08:07] Okay. And then it goes on to say a couple things about. This was the third time that Jesus had been. Had been seen. So again, nets, boats, staying up all night, throwing it on the other side, multitude of fish, but this time the nets did not break.
[00:08:32] So what was so different about the nets in the beginning and the nets in the end? Okay, I want to say this, that Jesus has a way of restoring purpose in our lives. That's really the first piece here. Okay. Because at the end of the day, when it came down to it, the disciples went back to what they knew.
[00:08:57] But Jesus replied and responded to what they knew and really encouraged them to get back into what they were initially called to go away from. Right. They were fishers of men. They weren't fishermen anymore. They had been walking with Jesus for three years on how to do this thing as best as they could. They had been taught by the rabbi, Jesus Christ. They've been showing, been shown the power of the Holy Spirit operating in his life and seeing all these things happening. But what we do when it appears that there's no hope, we go back to what we are most familiar with because we can at least trust that that worked.
[00:09:46] And unfortunately, and for fortunately for us, we get to see that Jesus, no judgment, found them doing what they were doing when he first found them out fishing all night doing what they knew how to do, but doing it with no results and doing it without the guidance of Jesus.
[00:10:14] I would say there's a couple of points that I want to bring up is that Jesus turned a night of disappointment to a night of abundance, just like that.
[00:10:29] And him showing up unannounced, asking for food and knowing where to get it shows how much God really is in the details of our lives.
[00:10:48] To the point where if a blessing could be on the other side of the boat, and even though you might have seen this before, God can do that thing again.
[00:11:02] And it's so powerful for us to be reminded that it doesn't. It only takes obedience for us to actually experience the things that God has in store for us. The Bible says that obedience is better than sacrifices. In 1st Samuel, it is easier as a kid, it's easier to follow instructions than to actually do something.
[00:11:30] Like, I don't know, if you're a kid, you sell something or you try to replace something, or even if your parents told you not to do something.
[00:11:41] Let me get an obedience example here. If your parents told you not to do something, but you find yourself doing it anyway, it's best to just tell your parents, I didn't do it, or I did something wrong, than to play around and make something up.
[00:12:01] It's just best to wait. It's just to not even be in the place in the first. Be in the spot in the first place, to be honest.
[00:12:09] But what it did for the disciples, it renewed trust because they had saw Jesus crucified on the cross. They saw him crucified, they saw him dead.
[00:12:20] So when your initial hope in something, someone initially dies, what are you left with?
[00:12:30] And this, I think many of us can relate to this.
[00:12:35] You might have had a career path that you thought was going to turn out great, but actually didn't. It failed.
[00:12:41] You had something that you enjoyed doing, but it wasn't fun anymore.
[00:12:49] But Jesus restores this kind of hope just by. He didn't say that it was him. He just told them to go to the other side and just reminded the disciples that God is that kind of God that really, really cares for us and actually does position us to do what he asked us to do.
[00:13:11] But that's not the crux of this scripture.
[00:13:16] It is the fact that nets held together this time. They didn't have help. They didn't have dahomeys. They were all labeled Jesus lovers at this point in time. So they probably didn't have any friends anymore except the disciples that were there with them in the boat. They also, in this case, did not have enough strength to actually pull in the catch by themselves. So it was just a lot. They couldn't help.
[00:13:51] They couldn't get help.
[00:13:54] So when everyone gets out the boat and starts pulling in the nets, the Posture of the net is different.
[00:14:06] Instead of the net getting pulled into the boat and the abundance of fish sinking the boat and calling for help there, there's no help here. But they had to drag the net from the sea or from the sea to the shore, which automatically says, there's going to be more friction, there's going to be more rocks. There's more opportunities for the net to actually be broken because it is not in water, where there is no friction, is getting pulled to shore where there is potential for big damage. Especially with them being businessmen and knowing how to handle nets.
[00:14:54] You know, it's easy to handle an empty net when you got nothing in it, but when you have a whole abundance in it, you can really damage your tools. And the Bible makes it very clear that there was 153 large fish and the nets did not break, break.
[00:15:23] Ladies and gentlemen, what we are finding here in the Scripture is that after three years of going through all the learnings that they've gained, they've come to find out that they are actually better in a way, different place than they were when they first met Jesus.
[00:15:48] The nets in totality represent. Again, I mentioned this before, but I want to mention it again.
[00:15:55] The nets represent our.
[00:16:01] Our emotional connectivity, our spiritual connectivity, our soul, body, spirit.
[00:16:09] It represents who we are.
[00:16:13] And unfortunately, some of us are fragile in places where we do begin to break. We could snap, essentially, let's be honest, you might have snapped on somebody yesterday. So let's keep it 100.
[00:16:29] But what I really want us to be encouraged by is the fact that these nets didn't break because now they had been fortified, the disciples had been fortified, they had been mended.
[00:16:45] They have been mended by the teachings of Jesus to be able to witness and see what it is like when we do it the king's way, when we do it in the way the kingdom of God had and has intended us to be. That you can actually get pulled out of the sea, you can get put across sharp rocks, shells, all kinds of stuff. Still carry a blessing and do not break.
[00:17:21] And I think that is so important for us to see because Peter's a different guy now than he was in the beginning.
[00:17:31] He's stronger. And this is what's crazy.
[00:17:36] Sometimes we will never understand how much we have grown until we have actually gone through turbulent and treacherous situations.
[00:17:48] Your resilience may be higher, but the only way you can test resilience if you actually go through resistance.
[00:17:55] So don't get it twisted just because you're actually going through challenging situations. Right now, that is actually a way to show you and express to you. And God is using this situation to reveal not just how good he is, but actually how strong you are. You might have gone through a tough season at one point. What used to bother you in one season may not bother you in the next season. But the only way you know that it doesn't bother you is if you actually have to go through that season again.
[00:18:32] But now you're going through it with strength and being fortified, being mended, being together.
[00:18:41] Understand that you can handle what's going on.
[00:18:45] There's one last piece that I want to focus on and then we'll close for this.
[00:18:50] Before there was a multitude of fish, there was no number. But in this one there is 153 fish.
[00:19:02] Why is 153 the most. Isn't that the most random number?
[00:19:11] Well, it isn't.
[00:19:14] And let me tell you why in Hebrew. Hebrew is an alphanumeric number. So for every letter there is a corresponding number.
[00:19:29] 153 symbolizes divine completeness, abundance and provision, emphasizing Christ's redemption to fully gather, unite people and believers from all nations and backgrounds. Okay.
[00:19:49] It is actually a universal sign of completeness.
[00:19:56] And this is, this is what's crazy about this phrase. I gotta make sure I got it here.
[00:20:03] This is the sign in the Gospel of John that says that Christ is the Son of God.
[00:20:14] That's what it means in Hebrew. That total of 153 means that he is. That means sons of God, saying that Jesus is the Son of God.
[00:20:29] So that exact number highlights the unity. It highlights the divine strength and highlights the completeness of. After you've gone through all of the situations when you've almost been broken, when you recognize that. That you're a sinful man, when your nets were breaking now because you've been with the Son of God, you've been with Jesus, you spent time with God. You are now built to handle the things that God has been preparing you for in advance.
[00:21:11] I'm a close with this thought. What areas in your life need mending and strengthening from Christ?
[00:21:22] And how might God, let's be more specific, how might Jesus be directing and guiding you to trust him again, despite the disappointment you have experienced in the past?
[00:21:40] I'm truly believing that no matter if you had your nets broken or you feeling broken right now and you're feeling mended today, this is the key to trust and rely on Christ. Beyond your own strength and your mind, he's calling you to do something different.
[00:22:03] He's calling you to say and causing you to say, hey, listen, trust me.
[00:22:09] And we'll talk a little bit about that later on. But I want you to, if this has been a blessing to you, share this with somebody.
[00:22:20] We're on YouTube, Spotify, everywhere. Share this with someone. I know someone's going to be needing this because the only way you can make a shift in your life is if you have been going through this process of being mended back again.
[00:22:40] With that said, we'll catch you in the next pot.
