Fishers of men
Scripture References: Matthew 4:12-20, Jeremiah 16:10-18, 2 Kings 15:29, Isaiah 9:1
Introduction:
18 While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. -Matthew 4:18-20 ESV
I came across an article this week showing a local stream being stocked with trout. It’s that time of year for the region and with our annual ‘Day at the lake’ event coming up, I guess I have fishing on the brain.
The image of buckets of fish being dumped into a stream to spread out and scatter through the waterway brought up two images from Scripture. Surprisingly, the ‘fishers of men’ passage from Matthew (cf. Mark 1:16-18 and Luke 5:9-11) referenced above, was not the first one that came into my mind.
My current studies in personal devotion time have been in the book of Jeremiah. While reading through Jeremiah 16, I came across a similar image that brings a deeper resonance to these words of Jesus…images that likely would have echoed in the ears of the original audience hearing the words of Jesus: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Devotional:
In earlier devotionals, we had covered how deep Israel’s sin problem had become. The prophets consistently call the people to repentance for their sin, idolatry, oppression and bloodshed. The consequence for rejecting the word of the Lord and persistence in breaking their covenant? Judgement, devastation, destruction and exile from the land.
This is what Jeremiah speaks of in the first section of Jeremiah 16…
10 “And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ 11 then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, 12 and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. 13 Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’ -Jeremiah 16:10-13 ESV
The Lord anticipates the response Jeremiah will receive from the people…‘What did we do so wrong to deserve this?’. This of course is an ignorant response, as the people know full well why this judgement has come upon them. They’ve been told countless times before. God tells Jeremiah exactly how to reply…’your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods’…’and because you have done WORSE than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me.’
They will now be ‘hurled’ out of this land into foreign lands to serve other gods. After all, this is what they have chosen to do in the land of promise. God’s judgement has come. Yet despite the impending judgment and exile being prophesied…we are given a hope for the future…
14 “Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ 15 but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. -Jeremiah 16:14-15 ESV
The Lord through his prophet tells of a ‘New Exodus’ event. One that, in a way, will overtake Israel’s exodus from Egypt in scale. In our first exodus, the people are delivered and brought out of captivity from a single nation (Egypt). In this new exodus event being foretold, the Lord will gather his people from many nations where they had been driven into captivity. This is where our fishing images come in…
16 “Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. 17 For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. 18 But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.” -Jeremiah 16:16-18 ESV
‘Behold, I am sending many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them.’ When I came across this verse in my study, my mind immediately went to the words of Jesus calling his first disciples to become ‘fishers of men’. I am certainly not the only one to note this connection. This is widely noted by biblical scholars, theologians and commentaries. A couple brief examples…
Faithlife Study Bible commentary – Matthew 4:19:
“I will make you fishers of people probably describes a change of vocation. Whereas they used to draw fish from the sea, they will now draw people into God’s kingdom. This image may be an allusion to Jer 16:16. However, the image in Jeremiah is negative and speaks of eschatological judgement. Jesus may be adding a positive twist to borrowed prophetic imagery.”1
D.A. Carson in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary on Matthew:
“The metaphor ‘fishers of men’ glances back to the work of the two being called. It may also be reminiscent of Jeremiah 16:16. There Yahweh sends ‘fisherman’ to gather his people for the Exile; here Jesus sends ‘fisherman’ to announce the end of the Exile and the beginning of the messianic reign.”2
What is particularly fascinating about the wording in Jeremiah 16, is that there are elements of both judgement and hope surrounding this image of ‘fishermen’. On one hand, Israel is being ‘gathered’ for judgement and sent into exile. On the other hand, we have this promise of a New Exodus where God will ‘gather’ them once again from the nations where they are scattered and one day bring them home. This is where Jesus’ call becomes very interesting…
If we back up just a few verses in Matthew 4, we read what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah is fulfilled by Jesus starting his ministry by the sea of Galilee, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali (Matt 4:12-17). Why are the territories of Zebulun and Naphtali so important?
These regions are where the sea of Galilee sits…Galilee is the region where Scripture details the first round of deportations happening after Assyria conquers the northern kingdom of Israel (see 2 Kings 15:29, Isa 9:1). This is where the exile started!
This is precisely why Matthew makes a point to call out this fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. The narrative sequence of the gospels when Jesus begins his ministry can be laid out like this:
-Jesus is baptized in the Jordan
-Tested in the wilderness
-Announces that the kingdom is now at hand
-Calls fisherman (beginning where the exile started)
-Begins gathering Israel
The fishing had begun!
What does this mean for us?
To answer this question and highlight this ‘fisherman’ connection from Jeremiah 16:16, Old Testament scholar, Chad Bird beautifully puts it this way in his book: ‘The Christ Key’: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament:
“’Behold I am sending for many fishers declares the Lord, and they shall catch them’…When God says he is “sending” for them, the Hebrew verb is shalach, the Greek equivalent of which is apostello, from which we get our word “apostle” (sent one). This is the prophecy that Jesus echoes when he calls his soon-to-be apostles away from their nets. He will shalach or apostello them to be “fishers of men”. They will cast their nets into every body of water imaginable. The hunters will scout out every forest, mountain hill, and plain to search for the lost. For what purpose? To bring them home from exile. Missions, evangelism, and every form of proclaiming the gospel are all about “exodusing” people from captivity. Hunting them. Fishing for them. Bringing them home to God.”3
What a statement! Gathered for judgement…then re-gathered for redemption.
As we approach another ‘Missions Sunday’ at First Baptist Church, my hope and prayer is that we all see ourselves as “fishers of men”. I also pray that we understand the gravity of what that really means. We are part of God’s redemptive story. Not as mere spectators, but as full participants and partners in the work of proclaiming the Gospel.
Let’s sing this one loud during service on Sunday…
“Now this gospel truth of old
Shall not kneel, shall not faint
By His blood and in His name
In His freedom I am free
For the love of Jesus Christ
Who has resurrected me.
Praise the Father, praise the Son
Praise the Spirit, three in one
God of glory, Majesty
Praise forever to the King of Kings” – King of Kings
Amen.
Sean Wagner
- Matt 4:19. Barry, John D. Douglas Mangum, Derek R. Brown, Michael S. Heiser, Miles Custis, Elliot Ritzema, Matthew M. Whitehead, Michael R. Grigoni, and David Nomar. 2012, 2016. Faithlife Study Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press. ↩︎
- D.A. Carson, “Matthew”, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol 8, Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 119. ↩︎
- Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament (Irvine, CA: 1517 Publishing, 2022), 99. ↩︎