Luke 5
Jesus foretells where fishermen can catch the most fish
Then he stood by Gennesaret lake and a crowd gathered around, pressing in on him as they listened to him teach God’s philosophy. Some fishermen had pulled 2 boats up onto the shore where they were washing their nets, so he got into one (which was Simon’s) and asked him to push it off shore just a little bit. Then he continued teaching from the boat. When he finished teaching, he told Simon,
“If you go to the deeper water and lower your nets, you’ll catch some fish.”
Simon replied, “Master, we’ve been working hard all night and didn’t catch anything, but I’ll try it anyways.” When they did this, they caught so many fish that their nets started ripping. There were so many fish that they had to signal to their coworkers in the other boat to come help them. They came over and both of the boats were filled so high that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell flat at Jesus’s feet and said, “Withdraw yourself from me, Ruler, because I am a wicked man!” He and his team—including his partners James and John (Zebedee’s sons)—were filled with amazement at how many fish they had just caught. Jesus told Simon,
“Don’t be scared, because from now on you will catch men.”
When they brought their boats back to the shore, they left everything and followed him.
Jesus heals man with skin disease
When he was visiting one of the cities, there was a man completely covered with a skin disease who fell on his face when he saw Jesus and begged, “Ruler, if you wish, you can cleanse me.” So he reached out his arm and touched him, saying,
“I wish. Be clean.”
Then the disease went away immediately, and he told him not to tell anyone.
“Go present yourself to the priest and make an offering for your cleansing just like Moses ordered. That will prove to them what happened.”
But the news about him continued to spread farther and farther. Large crowds would gather around him to hear him speak and be cured of their diseases, but Jesus would often seclude himself in the wilderness to talk to God.
Jesus pardons someone’s faults
One day when he was teaching in front of some church leaders from all around Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem, the Ruler’s healing power was with him. Some people carried a paralyzed man [who probably had a stroke] on a stretcher. It was so crowded that they couldn’t get to Jesus, so they went up to the roof, removed the shingles, and lowered his stretcher down right into the middle of the crowd to Jesus. Seeing how strongly they believed, he said,
“Sir, all the ways that you’ve missed the mark have been sent away.”
Trying to make sense of it, the reporters and church leaders started saying “Who does he think he is, insulting God like that? No one can pardon faults except God!” But Jesus was aware of their concerns and responded,
“Why are you trying to make sense of this? Is it easier for someone to say, ‘Your faults have been pardoned,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? Just so you can know that Humanity’s Son is qualified to pardon faults on earth,” he turned to the feeble man, “I declare to you: get up, pick up your stretcher, and go home.”
He immediately stood up in front of everyone, picked up his stretcher, and went home magnifying God. Everyone else was struck with fear and couldn’t stop magnifying God, saying
“The things we’ve witnessed today are simply unexplainable.”
Jesus calls a corrupt tax collector
After that He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting in the tax booth. He told him, “Follow me,” so he got up, left everything behind, and followed him.
Levi held a huge reception feast for him at his house with a massive crowd of tax collectors and other people.
The corrupt are the ones who need help
The church leaders and their secretaries started muttering to his students,
“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and corrupt people?”
Jesus answered them,
“Healthy people aren’t the ones who need a doctor—the sick people are. I didn’t come to address the people who already follow the rules, but I came to change the minds of the wicked.”
Jesus’s students celebrate with him while he’s here
They replied,
“Johns students frequently go without food and plead with God, and people who study under church leaders do the same, but yours eat and drink.”
Jesus answered,
“At a wedding you can’t prevent the groom’s followers from feasting, can you? But one day the time will come when the groom is taken away from them and that’s when they’ll practice fasting.”
The new is incompatible with the old
He also made an analogy:
“No one cuts up a new shirt to make a patch for an old shirt, because that would ruin the new one, and the patch wouldn’t even match the old shirt.
No one puts new wine into a leather pouch that’s old, because when it ferments, the wine would burst the old pouch, both spilling the wine and ruining the pouch. New wine needs to be fermented in a leather pouch that’s new.
No one drinks old wine and then wishes they had new wine, because the older wine tastes better.”