Verses 1-39
Chapter 5
5:1-11 Jesus was
standing on the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret while the crowds pressed
in upon him to listen to the word of God. He saw two boats riding close
to the shore. the fishermen had disembarked from them and were washing
their nets. He embarked on one of the boats, which belonged to Simon,
and asked him to push out a little from the land. He sat down and
continued to teach the crowds from the boat. When he stopped speaking,
he said to Simon, "Push out into the deep water and let down your nets
for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have toiled all night long and
we caught nothing; but, if you say so, I will let down the nets." When
they had done so they enclosed a great crowd of fishes; their nets were
torn with the numbers; so they signalled to their partners in the other
boat to come and help them. They came and they rifled both the boats so
that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this he fell at Jesus'
knees. "Leave me, Lord," he said, "because I am a sinful man." Wonder
gripped him and all who were with him at the number of fishes they had
caught. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee's sons, who were
partners with Simon. Jesus said to Simon, "From now on you will be
catching men." So they brought the boats to land and they left
everything and followed him.
The famous sheet of water in Galilee is called by three
names--the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias and the Lake of
Gennesaret. It is thirteen miles long by eight miles wide. It lies in a
dip in the earth's surface and is 680 feet below sea level. That fact
gives it an almost tropical climate. Nowadays it is not very populous
but in the days of Jesus it had nine townships clustered round its
shores, none of fewer than 15,000 people.
Gennesaret is really the name of the lovely plain on the west
side of the lake, a most fertile piece of land. The Jews loved to play
with derivations, and they had three derivations for Gennesaret all of
which show how beautiful it was.
(i) From kinnowr (Hebrew #3658),
which means a harp, either because "its fruit is as sweet as the sound
of a harp" or because "the voice of its waves is pleasant as the voice
of the harp,"
(ii) From gan (Hebrew #1588), a garden, and sar (Hebrew #8269), a prince--hence "the prince of gardens."
(iii) From gan (Hebrew #1588), a garden, and 'osher (Hebrew #6239), riches--hence "the garden of riches."
We are here confronted with a turning point in the career of
Jesus. Last time we heard him preach he was in the synagogue; now he is
at the lakeside. True, he will be back in the synagogue again; but the
time is coming when the door of the synagogue will be shut to him and
his church will be the lakeside and the open road, and his pulpit a
boat. He would go anywhere where men would listen to him. "Our
societies," said John Wesley, "were formed from those who were wandering
upon the dark mountains, that belonged to no Christian church; but were
awakened by the preaching of the Methodists, who had pursued them
through the wilderness of this world to the High-ways and the Hedges--to
the Markets and the Fairs--to the Hills and the Dales--who set up the
Standard of the Cross in the Streets and Lanes of the Cities, in the
Villages, in the Barns, and Farmers' Kitchens, etc.--and all this done
in such a way, and to such an extent, as never had been done before
since the Apostolic age." "I love a commodious room," said Wesley, "a
soft cushion and a handsome pulpit, but field preaching saves souls."
When the synagogue was shut Jesus took to the open road.
There is in this story what we might call a list of the conditions of a miracle.
(i) There is the eye that sees. There is no need to think that
Jesus created a shoal of fishes for the occasion. In the Sea of Galilee
there were phenomenal shoals which covered the sea as if it was solid
for as much as an acre. Most likely Jesus' keen eye saw just such a
shoal and his keen sight made it look like a miracle. We need the eye
that really sees. Many people saw steam raise the lid of a kettle; only
James Watt went on to think of a steam engine. Many people saw an apple
fall; only Isaac Newton went on to think out the law of gravity. The
earth is full of miracles for the eye that sees.
(ii) There is the spirit that will make an effort. If Jesus said
it, tired as he was Peter was prepared to try again. For most people
the disaster of life is that they give up just one effort too soon.
(iii) There is the spirit which will attempt what seems
hopeless. The night was past and that was the time for fishing. All the
circumstances were unfavourable, but Peter said, "Let circumstances be
what they may, if you say so, we will try again." Too often we wait
because the time is not opportune. If we wait for a perfect set of
circumstances, we will never begin at all. If we want a miracle, we must
take Jesus at his word when he bids us attempt the impossible.
5:12-15 While Jesus
was in one of the towns--look you--a man who was a severe case of
leprosy saw him. He fell before him and besought him, "Lord, if you are
willing to do so you are able to cleanse me." Jesus stretched out his
hand and touched him. "I am willing," he said. "Be cleansed."
Immediately the leprosy left him. Jesus enjoined him to tell no one.
"But," he said, "go and show yourself to the priest, and bring the
offering for cleansing, as Moses's law laid it down, to prove to them
that you are cured." Talk about him spread all the more; and many crowds
assembled to listen to him and to be cured of their illnesses.
In Palestine there were two kinds of leprosy. There was one
which was rather like a very bad skin disease, and it was the less
serious of the two. There was one in which the disease, starting from a
small spot, ate away the flesh until the wretched sufferer was left with
only the stump of a hand or a leg. It was literally a living death.
The regulations concerning leprosy are in Leviticus 13:1-59; Leviticus 14:1-57.
The most terrible thing about it was the isolation it bought. The leper
was to cry "Unclean! Unclean!" wherever he went; he was to dwell alone;
"in a habitation outside the camp" (Leviticus 13:45-46).
He was banished from the society of men and exiled from home. The
result was, and still is, that the psychological consequences of leprosy
were as serious as the physical.
Dr. A. B. MacDonald, in an article on the leper colony in Itu,
of which he was in charge, wrote, "The leper is sick in mind as well as
body. For some reason there is an attitude to leprosy different from the
attitude to any other disfiguring disease. It is associated with shame
and horror, and carries, in some mysterious way, a sense of guilt,
although innocently acquired like most contagious troubles. Shunned and
despised, frequently do lepers consider taking their own lives and some
do."
The leper was hated by others until he came to hate himself.
That is the kind of man who came to Jesus; he was unclean; and Jesus
touched him.
(i) Jesus touched the untouchable. His hand went out to the man
from whom everyone else would have shrunk away. Two things emerge.
First, when we despise ourselves, when our hearts are filled with bitter
shame, let us remember, that, in spite of all, Christ's hand is still
stretched out. Mark Rutherford wished to add a new beatitude, "Blessed
are those who heal us of our self-despisings." That is what Jesus did
and does. Second, it is of the very essence of Christianity to touch the
untouchable, to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable. Jesus
did--and so must we.
(ii) Jesus sent the man to carry out the normal, prescribed routine for cleansing. The regulations are described in Leviticus 14:1-57
. That is to say a miracle did not dispense with what medical science
of the time could do. It did not absolve the man from carrying out the
prescribed rules. We will never get miracles by neglecting the gifts and
the wisdom God has given us. It is when man's skill combines with God's
grace that wonder happens.
(iii) Luke 5:15
tells us of the popularity Jesus enjoyed. But it was only because
people wanted something out of him. Many desire the gifts of God but
repudiate the demands of God--and, there could be nothing more
dishonourable.
5:16-17 Jesus withdrew
into the desert places and he continued in prayer. On a certain day he
was teaching and, sitting listening, there were Pharisees and experts in
the law who had come from every village in Galilee and from Judaea and
Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was there to enable him to heal.
There are only two verses here; but as we read them we must
pause, for this indeed is a milestone. The scribes and the Pharisees had
arrived on the scene. The opposition which would never be satisfied
until it had killed Jesus had emerged into the open.
If we are to understand what happened to Jesus we must
understand something about the Law, and the relationship of the scribes
and the Pharisees to it. When the Jews returned from Babylon about 440
B.C. they knew well that, humanly speaking, their hopes of national
greatness were gone. They therefore deliberately decided that they would
find their greatness in being a people of the law. They would bend all
their energies to knowing and keeping God's law.
The basis of the law was the Ten Commandments. These
commandments are principles for life. They are not rules and
regulations; they do not legislate for each event and for every
circumstance. For a certain section of the Jews that was not enough.
They desired not great principles but a rule to cover every conceivable
situation. From the Ten Commandments they proceeded to develop and
elaborate these rules.
Let us take an example. The commandment says, "Remember the
Sabbath day to keep it holy"; and then goes on to lay it down that on
the Sabbath no work must be done (Exodus 20:8-11).
But the Jews asked, "What is work?" and went on to define it under
thirty-nine different heads which they called "Fathers of Work." Even
that was not enough. Each of these heads was greatly sub-divided.
Thousands of rules and regulations began to emerge. These were called
the Oral Law, and they began to be set even above the Ten Commandments.
Again, let us take an actual example. One of the works forbidden on the Sabbath was carrying a burden. Jeremiah 17:21-24
says, "Take heed for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden
on the Sabbath day." But, the legalists insisted, a burden must be
defined. So definition was given. A burden is "food equal in weight to a
dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one
swallow, oil enough to anoint a small member, water enough to moisten an
eye-salve, paper enough to write a custom-house notice upon, ink enough
to write two letters, reed enough to make a pen" . . . and so on
endlessly. So for a tailor to leave a pin or needle in his robe on the
Sabbath was to break the law and to sin; to pick up a stone big enough
to fling at a bird on the Sabbath was to sin. Goodness became identified
with these endless rules and regulations.
Let us take another example. To heal on the Sabbath was to work.
It was laid down that only if life was in actual danger could healing
be done; and then steps could be taken only to keep the sufferer from
getting worse, not to improve his condition. A plain bandage could be
put on a wound, but not any ointment; plain wadding could be put into a
sore ear, but not medicated. It is easy to see that there was no limit
to this.
The scribes were the experts in the law who knew all these rules
and regulations, and who deduced them from the law. The name Pharisee
means "The Separated One"; and the Pharisees were those who had
separated themselves from ordinary people and ordinary life in order to
keep these rules and regulations. Note two things. First, for the
scribes and Pharisees these rules were a matter of life and death; to
break one of them was deadly sin. Second, only people desperately in
earnest would ever have tried to keep them, for they must have made life
supremely uncomfortable. It was only the best people who would even
make the attempt.
Jesus had no use for rules and regulations like that. For him,
the cry of human need superseded all such things. But to the scribes and
Pharisees he was a law-breaker, a bad man who broke the law and taught
others to do the same. That is why they hated him and in the end killed
him. The tragedy of the life of Jesus was that those who were most in
earnest about their religion drove him to the Cross. It was the irony of
things that the best people of the day ultimately crucified him.
From this time on there was to be no rest for him. Always he was
to be under the scrutiny of hostile and critical eyes. The opposition
had crystallized and there was but one end.
Jesus knew this and before he met the opposition he withdrew to
pray. The love in the eyes of God compensated him for the hate in the
eyes of men. The approval of God nerved him to meet the criticism of
men. He drew strength for the battle of life from the peace of God--and
it is enough for the disciple that he should be as his Lord.
5:18-26 Now--look
you--there came men bearing on a bed a man who was paralysed, and they
were trying to carry him in and to lay him before Jesus. When they could
find no way to carry him in because of the crowd they climbed up on to
the roof and they let him down, bed and all, through the tiles right
into the middle of them in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith,
he said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." The scribes and Pharisees
began to raise questions. "Who," they said, "is this who insults God?
Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus was well aware of what they
were thinking. He answered, "What are you thinking about in your hearts?
Which is easier--to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Rise
and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on
earth to forgive sins (he said to the paralysed man), I tell you rise,
take up your bed, and go to your own house." And immediately he stood up
in front of them and lifted up the bedding on which he was lying and
went away to his house, glorifying God. Astonishment gripped them all
and they glorified God and were filled with awe. "To-day," they said,
"we have seen amazing things."
Here we have a vivid story. Jesus was in a house teaching. The
Palestinian house was flat-roofed. The roof had only the slightest tilt,
sufficient to make the rain water run off. It was composed of beams
laid from wall to wall and quite a short distance apart. The space
between the beams was filled with close packed twigs, compacted together
with mortar and then marled over. It was the easiest thing in the world
to take out the packing between two beams. In fact coffins were very
often taken in and out of a house via the roof.
What does the passage about forgiving sins mean? We must
remember that sin and suffering were in Palestine inextricably
connected. It was implicitly believed that if a man was suffering he had
sinned. And therefore the sufferer very often had an even morbid sense
of sin. That is why Jesus began by telling the man that his sins were
forgiven. Without that the man would never believe that he could be
cured. This shows how in debate the scribes and Pharisees were
completely routed. They objected to Jesus claiming to extend forgiveness
to the man. But on their own arguments and assumptions the man was ill
because he had sinned; and if he was cured that was proof that his sins
were forgiven. The complaint of the Pharisees recoiled on them and left
them speechless.
The wonderful thing is that here is a man who was saved by the
faith of his friends. When Jesus saw their faith--the eager faith of
those who stopped at nothing to bring their friend to Jesus won his
cure. It still happens.
(i) There are those who are saved by the faith of their parents.
Carlyle used to say that still across the years there came his mother's
voice to him, "Trust in God and do the right." When Augustine was
living a reckless and immoral life his devout mother came to ask the
help of a Christian bishop. "It is impossible," he said, "that the child
of such prayers and tears should perish." Many of us would gladly
witness that we owe all that we are and ever will be to the faith of
godly parents.
(ii) There are those who are daily saved by the faith of those
who love them. When H. G. Wells was newly married and success was
bringing new temptations to him, he said, "It was as well for me that
behind the folding doors at 12 Mornington Road there slept one so sweet
and clean that it was unthinkable that I should appear before her
squalid or drunken or base." Many of us would do the shameful thing but
for the fact that we could not meet the pain and sorrow in someone's
eyes.
In the very structure of life and love--blessed be God--there are precious influences which save men's souls.
5:27-32 After that
Jesus went out, and he saw a tax-collector, called Levi, sitting at his
tax-collector's table. He said to him, "Follow me!" He left everything
and rose and followed him. And Levi made a great feast for him in his
house; and a great crowd of tax-collectors and others who were their
friends sat down at table with them. The Pharisees and scribes
complained at this, and said to the disciples, "Why do you eat and drink
with tax-collectors and sinners?" Jesus answered, "Those who are
healthy have no need of a doctor but those who are ill have. I did not
come to invite the righteous but sinners to repentance."
Here we have the call of Matthew (compare Matthew 9:9-13).
Of all people in Palestine the tax-collectors were the most hated.
Palestine was a country subject to the Romans; tax-collectors had taken
service under the Roman government; therefore they were regarded as
renegades and traitors.
The taxation system lent itself to abuse. The Roman custom had
been to farm out the taxes. They assessed a district at a certain figure
and then sold the right to collect that figure to the highest bidder.
So long as the buyer handed over the assessed figure at the end of the
year he was entitled to retain whatever else he could extract from the
people; and since there were no newspapers, radio or television, and no
ways of making public announcements that would reach everyone, the
common people had no real idea of what they had to pay.
This particular system had led to such gross abuses that by New
Testament times it had been discontinued. There were, however, still
taxes to be paid, still quisling tax-collectors working for the Romans,
and still abuses and exploitation.
There were two types of taxes. First, there were stated taxes.
There was a poll tax which all men from 14 to 65, and all women from 12
to 65, had to pay simply for the privilege of existing. There was a
ground tax which consisted of one-tenth of all grain grown, and
one-fifth of wine and oil. This could be paid in kind or commuted into
money. There was income tax, which was one per cent. of a man's income.
In these taxes there was not a great deal of room for extortion.
Second, there were all kinds of duties. A tax was payable for
using the main roads, the harbours, the markets. A tax was payable on a
cart, on each wheel of it, and on the animal which drew it. There was
purchase tax on certain articles, and there were import and export
duties. A tax-collector could bid a man stop on the road and unpack his
bundles and charge him well nigh what he liked. If a man could not pay,
sometimes the tax-collector would offer to lend him money at an
exorbitant rate of interest and so get him further into his clutches.
Robbers, murderers and tax-collectors were classed together. A
tax-collector was barred from the synagogue. A Roman writer tells us
that he once saw a monument to an honest tax-collector. An honest
specimen of this renegade profession was so rare that he received a
monument.
Yet Jesus chose Matthew the tax-collector to be an apostle.
(i) The first thing Matthew did was to invite Jesus to a
feast--he could well afford it--and to invite his fellow tax-collectors
and their outcast friends to meet him. Matthew's first instinct was to
share the wonder he had found. John Wesley once said, "No man ever went
to Heaven alone; he must either find friends or make them." It is a
Christian duty to share the blessedness that we have found.
(ii) The scribes and Pharisees objected. The Pharisees--the
separated ones--would not even let the skirt of their robe touch the
like of Matthew. Jesus made the perfect answer. Once Epictetus called
his teaching "the medicine of salvation." Jesus pointed out that it is
only sick people who need doctors; and people like Matthew and his
friends were the very people who needed him most. It would be well if we
were to regard the sinner not as a criminal but as a sick man; and if
we were to look on the man who has made a mistake not as someone
deserving contempt and condemnation but as someone needing love and help
to find the right way.
5:33-35 They said to
him, "John's disciples fast frequently and pray. So do the disciples of
the Pharisees; but your disciples eat and drink." Jesus said to them,
"You cannot make the children of the bridechamber fast while the
bridegroom is with them. But the days will come--and when the bridegroom
is taken away from them in those days they will fast."
What amazed and shocked the scribes and the Pharisees was the
normality of the followers of Jesus. Collie Knox tells how once a
well-loved chaplain said to him, "Young Knox, don't make an agony of
your religion." It was said of Burns that he was haunted rather than
helped by his religion. The orthodox Jews had an idea--not yet
altogether dead--that a man was not being religious unless he was being
uncomfortable.
They had systematised their religious observances. They fasted
on Mondays and Thursdays; and often they whitened their faces so that no
one could fail to see that they were fasting. True, fasting was not so
very serious because it lasted only from sunrise to sunset and after
that ordinary food could be taken. The idea was to call God's attention
to the faster. Sometimes they even thought of it in terms of sacrifice.
By fasting a man was in essence offering nothing less than his own flesh
to God. Even prayer was systematised. Prayer was to be offered at 12
midday, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Jesus was opposed radically to religion by rule. He used a vivid
picture. When two young people married in Palestine they did not go
away for a honeymoon; they stayed at home, and for a week kept open
house. They dressed in their best; sometimes they even wore crowns; for
that week they were king and queen and their word was law. They would
never have a week like that again in their hard-wrought lives. And the
favoured guests who shared this festive week were called the children of
the bride-chamber.
(i) It is extremely significant that more than once Jesus
likened the Christian life to a wedding feast. Joy is a primary
Christian characteristic. It was said of a famous American teacher by
one of her students, "She made me feel as if I was bathed in sunshine."
Far too many people think of Christianity as something which compels
them to do all the things they do not want to do and hinders them from
doing all the things they do want to do. Laughter has become a sin,
instead of--as a famous philosopher called it--"a sudden glory." Robert
Louis Stevenson was right, when he wrote in The Celestial Surgeon:
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!
(ii) At the same time Jesus knew there would come a day when
the bridegroom would be taken away. He was not caught unawares by death.
Ahead he saw the cross; but even on the way to the cross he knew the
joy that no man can take away, because it is the joy of the presence of
God.
5:36-39 He spoke a
parable to them like this: "Nobody puts a patch from a new garment on an
old garment. If he does the new will tear it and the patch from the new
will not match the old. No one puts new wine into old skins. If he does
the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins
will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new skins, and no one who
drinks old wine wishes for new for he says, 'The old is good.'"
There is in religious people a kind of passion for the old.
Nothing moves more slowly than a church. The trouble with the Pharisees
was that the whole religious outlook of Jesus was so startlingly new
they simply could not adjust to it.
The mind soon loses the quality of elasticity and will not
accept new ideas. Jesus used two illustrations. "You cannot put a new
patch on an old garment," he said, "The strong new cloth will only rip
the rent in the old cloth wider." Bottles in Palestine were made of
skin. When new wine was put into them it fermented and gave off gas. If
the bottle was new, there was a certain elasticity in the skin and it
gave with the pressure; but if it was old, the skin was dry and hard and
it would burst. "Don't," says Jesus, "let your mind become like an old
wineskin. People say of wine, 'The old is better.' It may be at the
moment, but they forget that it is a mistake to despise the new wine,
for the day will come when it has matured and it will be best of all."
The whole passage is Jesus' condemnation of the shut mind and a plea that men should not reject new ideas.
(i) We should never be afraid of adventurous thought. If there
is such a person as the Holy Spirit, God must ever be leading us into
new truth. Fosdick somewhere asks, "How would medicine fare if doctors
were restricted to drugs and methods and techniques three hundred years
old?" And yet our standards of orthodoxy are far older than that. The
man with something new has always to fight. Galileo was branded a
heretic when he held that the earth moved round the sun. Lister had to
fight for antiseptic technique in surgical operations. Simpson had to
battle against opposition in the merciful use of chloroform. Let us have
a care that when we resent new ideas we are not simply demonstrating
that our minds are grown old and inelastic; and let us never shirk the
adventure of thought.
(ii) We should never be afraid of new methods. That a thing has
always been done may very well be the best reason for stopping doing it.
That a thing has never been done may very well be the best reason for
trying it. No business could exist on outworn methods--and yet the
church tries to. Any business which had lost as many customers as the
church has would have tried new ways long ago--but the church tends to
resent all that is new.
Once on a world tour Rudyard Kipling saw General Booth come
aboard the ship. He came aboard to the beating of tambourines which
Kipling's orthodox soul resented. Kipling got to know the General and
told him how he disliked tambourines and all their kindred. Booth looked
at him. "Young man," he said, "if I thought I could win one more soul
for Christ by standing on my head and beating a tambourine with my feet I
would learn how to do it."
There is a wise and an unwise conservatism. Let us have a care
that in thought and in action we are not hidebound reactionaries when we
ought, as Christians, to be gallant adventurers.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)