Launch Out Into the Deep

Passages: Luke 5:1-11; Luke 5:12-39; John 5:1-47

By the lake of Gennesaret, a crowd presses in so tightly that Jesus gets into Simon's boat to teach, then tells him to push out into deep water and let down his nets — and the catch is so large it nearly sinks two boats, leaving Simon Peter, James, and John to leave everything and follow him. In one of the towns, Jesus cleanses a man full of leprosy with a touch, and in Capernaum, when four friends can't get a paralyzed man through the crowd, they lower him through the roof instead. Up in Jerusalem for a feast, Jesus finds a man who has waited by the pool of Bethesda for thirty-eight years — sick, but with no one to help him into the water when it stirs — and heals him with a word, on the Sabbath, for the first time openly provoking the religious leaders' anger.

We are in a Luke-John Harmony. Today's episode covers: Luke 5:1-11; Luke 5:12-39; John 5:1-47 (The Miraculous Catch of Fish; The Leper, the Paralytic, and the Call of Levi; The Healing at Bethesda).