3 passages

Luke 5
1 One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God.

2 He noticed two empty boats at the water's edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets.


3 Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water.

So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there.


  4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish."


  5 "Master," Simon replied, "we worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing.

         But if you say so, I'll let the nets down again."


6 And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear!


7 A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking.


  8 When Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said,

        "Oh, Lord, please leave me—I'm too much of a sinner to be around you."

9 For he was awestruck by the number of fish they had caught, as were the others with him.


10 His partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were also amazed.


  Jesus replied to Simon, "Don't be afraid! From now on you'll be fishing for people!"

11 And as soon as they landed, they left everything and followed Jesus.



The longer I'm around Jesus, the more I realize how sinful I am.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Luke 5
27 Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector's booth.

        "Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him.

28 So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.


  29 Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor.

Many of Levi's fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them.

30 But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus' disciples,

        "Why do you eat and drink with such scum?*"


  31 Jesus answered them, "Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do.

32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous,

       but those who know they are sinners and need to repent."


The longer I live, the more I like hanging with people like were at Levi's house, and the less i like hanging with people like the Pharisees.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


1 Corinthians 6
  18 Run from sexual sin!

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does.

For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

19 Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit,

        who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You do not belong to yourself,

     20 for God bought you with a high price.

So you must honor God with your body.


We live in a sex-soaked culture.

We've become SO jaded to the blatant sexual sins all around us (& within us) that we don't even think about it anymore.

I don't see a lot of "honoring God with our bodies" going on these days.

Sometimes, when God looks at how far we've gone down the tubes sexually, I think one day God is gonna have to apologize to Sodom & Gomorrah.