II.  God May Require What Seems Unreasonable

Jesus has been preaching and as the people start to crowd around Him, He sees two ships pulled up to shore and
the fishermen are washing their nets. They are done for the day and have caught nothing the night before.

Jesus then gets into Simon’s (Peter’s) boat and asked if he would push off shore for a small distance. He then begins
to teach the people from Peter’s boat. Now when He is done, He tells Peter to go out into the deep water and let
down his net for a draught...(the depth a vessel sinks in the water)

   In my opinion, Jesus is telling Peter he is going to catch enough fish to sink his boat.

  TALK ABOUT UNREASONABLE

I can almost read Peter’s mind, can’t you?  (because we think the same thing Peter would!)

Come on, Jesus, we have been out there all night and haven’t caught anything. All I’ll get out of this is,
I’ll have to wash my nets again.

First of all, it’s the wrong time of the day to fish. Everybody knows that fish bite better at night and you
catch more in the shallows than in the deep water.

AND ANOTHER THING, He’s a carpenter and a sometimes preacher and teacher and He’s telling me,
a professional fisherman how to catch fish!

PLUS…He’s telling me to throw my net off the wrong side of the ship…[John 21:6]

BUT PETER OBEYS and reaps the Blessing…he catches so many fish that it almost sinks TWO BOATS!! 

God tells Noah to build an Ark…also UNREASONABLE 

Noah is 500 years old when his sons are born. His sons are now married so I would guess that Noah
is around 530 years old at this time since children stayed at home until they were 30 yrs. or so old.

  (Isn’t God good in this day and age?)    It takes Noah around 70 or 75 years to build this Ark    [Genesis 7:6]

How many of us would stick with anything that God tells us to do that long?

 Building the Ark is bad enough but they have to fill it with food and animals. Can you imagine the taunting
and jeers that Noah had to endure? …Would you like an example?…

*Remember Y2K?…How many of us had a good laugh at *that and made fun of the people who prepared? Did it
ever *occur to you that, just maybe, God’s people who were *praying turned that around? And think about this,
Who would you have went to or where would you have gone if all of the Y2K things had happened? I don’t think it
would take much imagination to figure that one out, do you?

It doesn’t say so in the Bible but history tells us that it never rained in that section of land where Noah lived and he
was miles from any water that would float an Ark.  UNREASONABLE?

But Noah OBEYED and he reaped the blessing..[Gen.7:23]