An Encounter with Jesus: Peter Encounters Jesus

Thank you. I'm so texting Leslie about the fact she said I wasn't perfect.

I want to give you just a heads up. I am recovering from

being sick. So if I sound a little bit different, if I seem

like I have a little bit less energy, if I'm not yelling as much,

some of you will probably appreciate that. That's why I'm also just so

that I don't spread any germs. I won't be greeting in the lobby like

I normally do. After the service, I'll I'm being quarantined by my staff

to my office someone's phone. But we are starting a brand new series today.

It's going to last us several months. We're calling it an Encounter with

Jesus. What you're going to see us talk about are these different people who

were heading one way in their life and at just the right moment, Jesus

crossed their path and everything changed. One of the things that I say about

those of us Adventure is we're all radically different. We have radically different upbringings,

not a lot of similarities, But the one thing that we all have

in common is that at just the right moment, Jesus crossed our path and

he changed everything. And you're gonna hear one story after another from the Gospels

of people that encountered Jesus and then belief in Jesus changed everything. I think

the part that you're gonna love the most is when you think about your story

and you hear their story, you are going to relate to it a lot.

I want to ask everyone to buy your heads, close your eyes.

I want you to repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say Dear Jesus,

es to my heart, changed my life in Jesus' name. Amen. I

want you to turn to Luke chapter five. I'm gonna start reading from verse

one. In a moment, I'm gonna introduce you to somebody who's familiar to

you. You hear his name often at church. We know that he is

one of the disciples. But this is the moment where Peter became a follower

of Jesus. This is that pivotal moment where Peter made the life change to

lay down everything and from this moment forward began following Jesus. A little backstory

on Luke five, when we're introduced to Peter, sometimes the Bible calls him

Simon. Other times he's called Peter I'm gonna use Peter, which is more

familiar to everyone. So this gospel is gonna call him Simon, I'm gonna

call him Peter. So if there's any confusion, you understand that it's the

same person. At this point, Peter was likely in his mid twenties.

Now today when we hear about somebody in their mid twenties, we think that

kid, they're still a kid. But in the mid twenties, two thousand

years ago, you were like fully into adulthood. At this point in Peter's

life, he was fully engrossed in his career. He was a commercial fisherman,

he'd been doing it for years. Peter was married, so this is

a family man, married in his career, way into his adult life.

We know that of Jesus' disciples, Peter was one of the older ones,

and most of his disciples were teenagers, but Peter was older. So the

setting begins in the morning. Peter had just finished fishing for an entire night

and was cleaning his nets in his boat on the shore. Every fisherman who

makes a living fishing on the Sea of Galilee knows you fish at night in

shallow water, and every fisherman who cares cleans his nets afterwards, because what

happens if you don't clean your nets is the debris from the fish and the

debris from the water in that hot sun will dry and it smells terrible.

Peter's a married man. He ain't bringing smelly nets home to his wife.

He was making sure those nets were clean. There was also a way that

you would make fun of people if they had smelly nets back then, you

would call them, oh, that's the guy with the foul net. So

a fisherman who has pride in what he does is cleaning his net afterward.

Now Peter had been fishing all night long, cleaning his nuts. Now what

do you think is on Peter's mind at this moment. I want to go

home and go to bed. Been a long night at work. I'm ready

to get some sleep, ready to take a shower, you know, do

whatever I possibly can at that moment. I have a boat. Every time

I take my boat out into Puget Sound, it doesn't matter how long I've

taken the boat out, can be a half hour or five hours. I

have to do something immediately when I get back. I have to wash off

my boat. I have to clean all the debris off of my boat,

and I have to get all the salt off of my boat. And I

have to run water through my motor to clean out my motor from the salt

water. Because if I don't do that. Number one, it could ruin

my boat. Number two, it will stink, And I don't have an

option. I don't think you know what I want to do. I want

to go boating tomorrow so that I can spend an hour cleaning my boat afterwards.

No, once I'm done with the boat, I want to take a

shower and move on with my day. But I have to clean the boat.

So you're cleaning the boat, waiting to get done so that you can

go on with your day. To some degree, I relate to Peter Well.

One morning, Peter's cleaning his nets, anxious to go home, and

this happens. Are you guys with me? Verse one? So's one day

as Jesus was standing by the lake of Genessaret. By the way, this

is also the Sea of Galilee. Sometimes it's called the Lake of Ganessaret.

Most of the time it's called the Sea of Galilee. It's most familiar as

the Sea of Galilee. So I'm gonna call it the Sea of Galilee.

Uh So he's by the Sea of Galilee. The people were crowding around him,

and they were listening to the word of God. Jesus saw at the

water's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets.

He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon. Remembered

Simon or Peter, same thing that belong to Peter, and he asked him

to put out a little bit from shore. Then he sat down and he

taught the people from the boat. Belief changes everything. I want to talk

to you today about the progression of belief. You were here today and many

of you are at a certain spot in your progression towards belief. So many

important things from these first three verses that I bet you've never thought of before.

I teach homiletics at Northwest University, which means I teach how to preach

the Bible. One of the things that I try to challenge the students that

I have with is you have to learn to ask questions when you read the

Bible that normal people would ask, but Christians don't ask. Christians don't ask

because they're so familiar with these verses. They don't think to ask questions.

Okay, did Peter know Jesus beforehand? He likely knew who Jesus was.

Likely maybe they'd met before. But here's some differences. Peter is a fisherman.

What Peter knows about Jesus is that Jesus is a carpenter. Okay,

when we think of people in their careers, we divide them into one of

two categories. We say, this person's a white collar worker or they're a

blue collar worker. Now, whether you're blue collar or white collar, that

doesn't it isn't a really great description of what you do. Is it?

Like, let's pretend I have a white collar job. What does white collar

mean? It basically means I work a desk job. My hands aren't dirty,

and I have a bunch of like pieces of paper on a wall that

allows me to sit behind a desk. But just because I have a white

collar job doesn't mean you want me to program your computer. Like you could

think, Okay, I need some work done on my computer. I should

ask Brandon, he's a white collar worker. If you need me to exegete

a verb in Hebrew, ask me you need me to perform a wedding ceremony.

Ask me, but if you want me to like program something or engineer

something, I can't do that. The same thing applies over there. You

can I take someone who is a software engineer and say hey, I want

you to work on this Boeing seven point thirty seven max plane. Those things

don't cross over to an outsider. They think white collar is white collar.

Same thing applies to blue collar. Like if you are somebody and you are

a trained carpenter, that is your skill. You were really good at it,

You've been doing it, maybe your dad taught you. You've been doing

it for a long time. When somebody randomly calls you, and I bet

this happens, and they say, hey, my car broke down. Can

you come over and fix my car, you're probably thinking, hey, I

hang drywall. Why don't you call a mechanic. Now, some of you

you can do a little bit of both. But for they're very different and

very broad. Peter and Jesus fishermen carpenter their blue collar, but they stay

in their own lane. They don't cross over. I like to describe it

this way. If you are firmly a white collar person and you're hanging out

at a bar and a group of bikers show up, you have a feeling

about those bikers. If you're the same white collar person at a bar and

a group of truckers show up, you have a very similar feeling about those

truckers that you do the bikers right. But bikers and truckers don't feel the

same way about each other. Like the bikers aren't hanging out outside around their

Harley's hoping that a bunch of truckers come and sit on their bikes. I

mean, I want you to picture this setting. Trucker pulls in a bunch

of bikers, they're hanging out around their motorcycles, and his trucker walks over

and goes dude, killer bike and hops on the bike. That's not gonna

work. The same thing applies in reverse. You're not gonna have a biker

walk up to some dude's Peter Bilt. I've always wanted to sit in one

of these, climb in it and start messing with the shifters and the gears

like they don't cross over. Those things will lead to fights. Why did

Jesus think he could get in Peter's boat? Did you ever think about that

one? Peters minding his own business, cleaning his nets because he wants to

go home, looks up, sees Jesus and he goes, that's that carpenter.

Oh, he's kind of into teaching now too. So he sees a

bunch of people gathering around Jesus and Jesus as the crowd is getting bigger,

Jesus is kind of stepping away and eventually gets as far back as he can.

He's at the shore, and Jesus, as the crowd is coming in,

thinks, I gotta get some space here. I'm gonna go hop in

this boat. Why did Peter let him in his boat. I don't know

about you, but I think that's rude. If I am finishing up a

day of fishing or crabbing and I'm starting to clean my boat and some random

person just hops in my boat and sits down, I'm like, what's the

deal. We're talking about the progression of belief. This is the way belief

starts. Belief starts by you put your trust in someone. When trust has

not been abused, trust turns into faith. When faith has not been misplaced,

it can develop into belief. But each one of those happen at different

levels. Let me explain it to you this way. When you meet somebody

for the first time, you trust their intentions are good. You're sitting in

a church service, probably five hundred people in this service, you met probably

two thirds of the people here. You don't know who they are. When

you see them in the lobby, you just trust that they don't have ulterior

motives. You trust when you drop your kids off in the kids ministry that

these workers are going to treat your kids fairly, that they're going to take

care of your kids, they're not going to lose your kids. You trust

them. Sorry, You trust someone until they abuse your trust, and when

they abuse your trust, you don't trust them from that point on. So

Peter in this moment he trusts Jesus. He knows who Jesus is. Jesus

is a carpenter, he's met him before, knows he's a good guy.

And so when Jesus looks at Peter and says, hey, do you mind

if I stand in your boat while I talk to this crowd, Peter's working

on his nets, and it probably went something like this, Hey, sure,

dude, go ahead. I'm just finishing up some last minute tasks before

I head home. So Jesus gets in the boat, continues to teach.

Peter's continuing to clean his nets, but Peter's listening to what Jesus is saying,

and as he hears what Jesus is saying, something begins to happen in

his heart. Peter trusted Jesus enough to let him in the boat. But

then Jesus pushes it a little bit. He says, hey, people are

still out and around. Can you push a little bit out onto out into

the water. Can you go out a little bit into the water. This

is when trust transitions into faith. Trust not misplaced earns faith. So here

you get an idea that Peter is beginning to put some faith into Jesus.

You know, standing on the boat on shore while he's finishing up cleaning his

net is one thing, but pushing off shore is a total other. Why

did Peter allow Jesus to let him do this? Because the short amount of

trust that Peter gave Jesus, Jesus didn't abuse. Let me tell you how

this could have gone. This could have gone where Jesus went all well,

Peter on Peter man, I could just picture it. In twenty twenty four,

Hey, can I can I come on your boat and teach. Yeah,

sure, come on in, picks up a fish this house of Saul

murderer, starts throwing him into the water. Then he pulls out a can

of spray paint starts spray painting over everything. Murderer. Peter's not going out

any further with this guy. This guy's getting off Peter's boat. But Jesus

didn't misuse the trust, so Peter pushed out a little bit. Romans ten

seventeen is this powerful verse that says faith comes from hearing and hearing through the

Word of Christ. Just picture the setting. Remember this really happened. This

isn't a metaphor. So Peter's cleaning his nets, says, all of this

is happening, and the crowd is getting bigger. Jesus standing on his boat,

he's teaching, and he's hearing the words that Jesus is saying. Faith

comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of Christ. And as he's hearing

Jesus talk, faith is welling up inside of his heart. And when Jesus

says, can you push out a little bit further, Peter says, I

think I can do that, So he pushes the boat out Jesus. Peter

finishes cleaning his nets, and he just sits down. He listens to Jesus

teach. Jesus finishes teaching. This is when it gets real. Verse four.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon or Peter, put

out into deep water and let down the nets for a catch. Starts by

putting your trust in. Then you put your faith in. Then it transitions

to belief. Belief in Jesus changes everything. Peter is a professional fisherman.

Jesus is a carpenter. Stay in your lane. The carpenter looks at the

professional fishermen and says, hey, just go out into the deep end,

throw your nets over. The fisherman is thinking, this is what I do

for a living. You fish in shallow water at night. You do not

fish in the deep end in the light of day. This makes no sense.

Has Jesus ever asked you to do anything that does not make sense?

Oh? The thing I love about Seattle. Oh did you know that our

area per capita is the most educated area in America? Seattle area. That

you're sitting by people that have a multitude of degrees. One of the highlights

Morgan mentioned that we have one on one happening next week. I love one

on one because I love meeting all of you, meeting all the new people

that God is bringing here. I'll hear someone's job and I'll immediately think,

Wow, you don't just get that job. And so then I followed up,

I said, where'd you go to school? And they'll say, well,

I got my bachelor's from here, I got my graduate studies here,

and this is where I got my PhD. And over and over again,

I'm overwhelmed by how smart all you people are. But that is Western Washington,

that is our area. You're surrounded by intellectuals and engineers, designers,

highly educated people. But the Holy Spirit is beginning to move in this very

highly educated culture. But here's the challenge that people in Seattle have. They're

willing to wade into the water. They're willing to wade into faith because when

they wade in, they're willing to explore it and ask questions. And as

long as their questions are answered, as long as it makes sense, as

long as there is a logical conclusion, as long as after all of their

research they conclude something similar to what the preacher has to say, they'll keep

going. But one of the challenges that you have working with people in our

region is that you guys spend a lot of time waiting in water. There

comes a point where you got to jump into the deep end. There comes

a point when you need to throw out all logic and all rationale. You

need to do something that doesn't make sense to take the next progressive step in

your relationship with Jesus. There comes a point where even though you're a fisherman

and you're good at this, and you fish at night in the shallow end,

you're willing to throw your nets in the light of day in the deep

end. I sharing this story with permission. The coffee is gonna look just

so awesome on the online stream video. So my sister and I were born

in Montana. Where we were born, there's not a lot of water around

us. So when we moved to Seattle and we moved to an area where

there's water everywhere, guess what, we did not know how to do.

We did not know how to swim. So my parents did what they're supposed

to do. They got us in swimming lessons. So for years, my

sister and I took the same swimming lessons. We learned the same strokes,

the same kicks. But if you were to ask both my sister and I

today, can you swim or can you not swim? I would say I

am a very proficient swimmer. I'm a really good swimmer. My sister,

I asked her specifically. This is her quote. She says, I can

dog paddle in a pinch for forty five seconds, but after that I'm drowning.

I'm pretty good in it. No, she she didn't learn how to

swim, So what was the difference. We had the same classes. When

you take swim lessons, they teach you these strokes, they teach you these

kicks in the shallow wind. So as an intellectual, you know that at

any moment, if this gets difficult, I can just stand up and everything's

great. You know how I learned how to swim. Finally, my parents

best friends when they first moved here, had a swimming pool, and the

first time we went to their house, my dad's buddy, bless you,

my dad's buddy, Jim, grabbed me. Didn't without not with my permission,

not with my parents' permission. He just did what you do to the

young boy. He grabbed me and he threw me into the pool. He

didn't know that I could barely swim, and he didn't do it to my

sister. He did it to me. So he throws me in the deep

end. And I still to this moment remember it like it was yesterday.

I am splashing around. I don't know what it looked like to everyone else.

I think everybody thought, somebody can do some of that. Kid's gonna

drown right now. And as I'm flailing in the water, all of a

sudden, muscle memory kicked in. I started doing those strokes that I had

learned in those lessons. I started kicking and next thing I knew that I

found out I could swim. I've never had an issue swimming from that day

forward. By the way, I'm not saying that that is a good parenting

idea, just throw the kid in. I'm not saying to do that.

But I don't know if I ever would have jumped in the deep end if

Jim had not thrown me in. We spend so much of our faith just

wallowing in the shallow end in church. There is going to come a point

you need to jump in the deep end, even when it doesn't make sense.

What Jesus asked Peter to do was flat out stupid. What Peter should

have done in that moment is looked at him and said, Hey, if

I need advice working on my foundation, you're the guy I'm going to.

But I know how to fish. Stop telling me to do my job.

I know how to fish. But what does the Bible say? Peter answered,

We've worked harled all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say

so, I'll let down the nets because I put some trust in you and

you didn't abuse it. Because I put some faith in you, you've earned

something a little bit beyond I put my faith in you, and it's paid

off and it's worked. I'm gonna listen to you even when something doesn't make

sense. So he pushes out into the deep end and he throws his net

overboard church. There is gonna come a point you need to jump into the

deep end and do something that doesn't make sense, because Jesus is gonna ask

you to do things that doesn't make logical, rational sense to you. He's

gonna say, come forward during that alter call, come early and serve in

the kids ministry. You need to start tithing and every one of these things.

Your rational logical waiting in the shallow end mind is gonna tell you every

reason why that is not a good idea. You're gonna eventually need to be

like Peter and say I shouldn't do this, but because you've told me to

do so, I'm gonna do it. So Peter drops his nets into the

deep end verse eight. When they had done so, they caught such a

large number of fish that their nets begin to break. So they signaled their

partners in another boat to come and help them, and they came, and

they filled both of the boats so full that the boats begin to sink.

Trust, faith, belief, belief changes everything. That line, we have

one thing in common. At just the right moment, Jesus crossed our path

some of you. Jesus keeps wandering in front of you. He like walks

by you over and over again, and you're like, eh, I gotta

think about that one. Yeah, I'm not sure, next week, next

time, another moment, and eventually you gotta say, all right, Jesus,

because you say so, I'll do it. I'm gonna jump in.

That is when that faith goes to belief. That is when the head and

the heart connect that is when belief changes everything. Oh my gosh, could

you imagine being Peter that day. Peter didn't know when he went to work

that night how much everything was gonna change. Finish the night of fishing,

clean in his nets, doing what he does every single day, Jesus cal

him. Stands in his boat. Peter's thinking, kind of rude, but

whatever, and he says, we push out a little bit. That's bold,

but I guess, and he's hearing him teach. He said, I

kind of like this dude. Like what he has to say that makes me

feel good, come getting the like warm fuzzies and stuff. Actually like making

me teary eye a little bit, the stuff he's saying. And he finishes,

and he says, now I want you to go in the deep end

and toss your net. And Peter's like, how, I mean, what's

an extra ten minutes? Why not? So he pulls out, expecting nothing

to happen, throws his net in, and he sees that there's nothing short

of a miracle like this shouldn't happen. And as he's trying to figure out

all these fish in that moment, it hits Peter, this isn't a carpenter.

This is the Messiah that had been promised. The Messiah's standing on my

boat. What am I going to do about it? And it says when

Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and he says, go away

from me, Lord, I'm a sinful man. Belief in Jesus changes everything.

Peter went to work that night any other night. But by the time

he got home from work and told his wife how the day went, here's

what happens next. Jesus said to Peter, Peter, don't be afraid.

From now on, you're gonna fish for people. Peter got up, went

to work, came home. Wife says, honey, how's your day.

I don't know how to explain this one to you. I quit fishing today.

You did what? Yeah, I'm gonna become a preacher now. Oh.

Believe in Jesus changes everything. This last verse I highlighted it. You

should two. This last verse is where next week's sermon will begin. So

they pulled their boats up on shore. They left everything and followed him.

Jesus said, Peter, your destiny was never to fish. Your destiny was

to become a fisher of men. Fishing is only supposed to be your hobby.

You're only supposed to do it for fun. Now I'm gonna show you

what you have been created to do, called since birth to do. Come

follow me and I'll make you a fisher of men. Peter and the other

boat guy pulled their boat up on the shore, threw down their nets,

turned away, and walked away from their past life. Belief in Jesus changes

everything. I want you to buy your heads, close your eyes. I'm

gonna pray for you in just a moment, but I'm gonna give you assignment.

Your assignment this week isn't want you to resonate through this, on this

chapter, this passage. Think about it, Think about where are you in

this faith process? Are you somebody who just trusts Jesus or you in the

faith portion but you're only willing to go so far as long as it makes

sense, And maybe he's challenging you to go deep want you to think about

it, and I don't want to challenge you to make the next step,

whatever it might be for you, Lord Jesus. I pray for this church

right here. May we be people that we strive and love knowledge, but

at the same time we want all of Jesus, and we're willing to do

things that don't make sense to challenge our faith, to grow in our faith,

to take us to a totally new dynamic spiritually. God. I pray

that throughout this week this message echoes in people's minds over and over and over

again. I thank you Jesus for this church in your name. I pray

Amen quickly. I promised you if you follow me on social media. Two

announcements. Here they are and then Morgan's gonna come up and close. The

first one is this, there's a survey that's going to pop up. You're

gonna get an email that also links to this survey this week too. But

if you're new to adventure, this might be new to you. But if

you're not new to venture, you know we have space issues, we have

parking issues. All you had to do on Easter Sunday is that evening go

to all the Mill Creek Facebook groups and see all the thoughts about everybody in

the community, about all the traffic adventure this weekend. Now we know it's

Easter, it is what it is, and there's a lot of people here

in a short period of time. But if you've ever driven around the parking

lot. You know, you got to come early, got to go to

another service. We have parking issues, so we and we have long term

plans to fix this, but long term plans take a while. So in

the intermediate, we know we need to add a fourth service and we would

like your input on when we consider doing that service. So this survey just

asks a few simple questions and this will help guide us. And we're not

going to add the fourth service until the fall because it's summertime soon hopefully,

and summertime you people all travel all summer, so I don't need a fourth

service then, but in the fall we will, and so this is going

to guide our directions and planning to the fall. So I tell this to

you for a couple of reasons. Number one, we want your input,

but number two, you can have hope that there's going to be space and

it won't be as crowded so for a while, and then we'll fill those

extra services and need to figure out something else, but there we go.

That's number one. Second announcement is this it's probably about five years ago when

Jim Armant was on our board. Jim was a great board member and he

championed a cause for a policy for our pastors and it became our rest and

Relaxation, our sabbatical policy for our pastors, And what ended up being approved

is that pastors, once they've served seven years venture are given a sabbatical to

rest and relax and recalibrate. It was two years ago when our board met

and we looked at all of the pastors on our staff that had qualified for

sabbaticals, and there were eight pastors on our staff that needed to take sabbaticals.

So two years ago the board put out a calendar of how these sabbaticals

would take place. So last year, six of our pastors in the summer,

this across all of our campuses took a sabbatical at the same time,

so they had them take their sabbatical, so as basically all my associate staff

took their sabbaticals last year, and then the board scheduled that Di and I

would take our sabbatical this year. So we are formally letting you guys know

that starting May one, Di and I are taking a three month sabbatical.

Thank you. We feel very honored for the opportunity. It was a real

joy to watch the staff take their sabbaticals and see them come back with renewed

fire and passion for the job and things like that. But when you hear

that Brandon and I are taking a sabbatical for that period of time, there's

probably a lot of questions that come. And so we have another QR code

for you to scan this week, and if you haven't already listened to it.

This week, Pastor Tony and I with Pastor Die talked about why pastors

take sabbaticals, and we talked about every question that you might have about this

sabbatical. What's going to happen for venture, why are we doing it now,

how does this work? What are you guys going to do? And

we answer all those questions. So, in all likelihood you're wondering some things.

This should clear up any and most of the questions that you have,

and if there are others, you can feel free to email us talk to

us again. Dian and I will be around for three more weeks. I

do want to just say this, and I say this on behalf of both

of us. This was tough for us to take a sabbatical right now,

primarily because pastors normally take sabbaticals when they're burnt out and frustrated. When everything's

going great, you want to keep preaching, like I'm sick, I should

not be preaching today. Why am I preaching because I'm really excited about this

sermon and I love preaching to you. So we are taking a sabbatical.

We aren't tired, we don't feel like we need rest. We'll probably find

out that it was really healthy for us and things. But we're really really

excited about our job, and that is what made this the most difficult timing

wise. But the board was very adamant. This was scheduled. We want

you to do this. We would rather that you went on a sabbatical when

you're excited about the church versus when you're burnt out or just dealt with a

major issue. So information on the sabbatical there, Thank you guys. Mister

Butcher. Yeah, just