Jesus Christ had four disciples who were fishermen, and out of them
He made four fishers of men. The obligation is universal.

I. The Law of Service.

'Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.'
Now there is nothing more remarkable in the whole narrative than the
matter-of-course fashion in which our Lord takes the disposal of
these men, and orders them about. It is not explicable unless we
fall back upon what Luke does not tell us, but John does, in his
Gospel, that this was by no means the first time that He had come
across Peter and Andrew his brother, or James and John his brother.
We do not need to trouble ourselves with the chronological question
how long before they had been drawn to Him at the fords of Jordan by
the witness of John the Baptist, and by the witness of some of them
to the others. The relationship had been then commenced which is
presupposed by our Lord's authoritative tone here. It leads in the
incident of my text to a closer discipleship, which did not admit of
Simon and John hauling or cleaning their nets any more. They had
been disciples before in a certain loose fashion, a fashion which
permitted them to go home and look after their ordinary avocations.
Hence-forward they were disciples in a much more stringent fashion.
It was because they had already said 'Rabbi! Thou art the Son of
God! Thou art the King of Israel,' that this strange imperative
command, inexplicable, except by the supplement of the last of the
four Gospels, came from Christ's lips and secured immediate
obedience.

If we thus understand that His authority follows on our
discipleship, and that the words of my text, first of all, insist