FISHERMEN

“Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  Matthew 4:19.

There are countless methods of studying scripture.  PARDES is one of the most useful I’ve discovered.  PARDES is an acronym which stands for the following:

Peshat, which means the literal meaning, what you read is what it is. You must never lose sight of the literal meaning.

Remez, the spiritual hint.  It triggers something inside you, a hidden meaning beyond the literal sense.

Drosh, a homiletic process of making connections between different parts of scripture.

Sod, this is where everything you read points you to Messiah.

Jesus was a master at Drosh.  As he spoke, he was constantly alluding to various parts of the Torah.  None of this was lost on those hearing.  From the time a boy was three; his mother began teaching him Torah.  Jesus only had to hint at a few words or concepts and those listening knew immediately what he was referencing.

In Matthew 4:19, when Jesus tells Simon Peter and his brother Andrew to come follow him and he’d make them fishers of men, we, as gentiles, take it on the level of Peshat, the literal meaning.  We reason that here were two fishermen plying their trade and Jesus uses a euphemism that they would identify with.   However, he is saying so much more.  When Jesus mention fishers of men, the minds of Peter and Andrew immediately went to the book of Habakkuk where the prophet is talking to God about how the nations catch men like fish in order to destroy them. 

“You have made people like the fish in the sea,
    like the sea creatures that have no ruler.The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net,
he gathers them up in his dragnet;
    and so he rejoices and is glad.”

Jesus is telling them, “follow after me, learn of me, I’ve come to bring life, shalom (completeness), to do a new thing.”  He’s letting them know they are turning things around; they will now bring healing to the nations.  Jesus came to the Jews with the good news who in turn would take it to the nations. 

Rest assured, Jesus is still in the business of turning lives around.