Because You Said So

Some instructions make sense before you ever follow them. If it’s raining, grab an umbrella. If the gas light comes on, stop for gas. Nobody needs a theology lesson for those. But there’s another kind of instruction, the kind that doesn’t make sense from where you’re standing. With those, we want an explanation. We want to know why, how it’s going to work, what happens next, and ideally a guarantee that if we do what’s asked, everything will turn out the way we hope. That approach works fine right up until you start following Jesus. Sometimes God’s Word makes complete sense, and sometimes it runs directly against what you feel, see, and what your experience is telling you. At some point, trust has to answer a question: does God have to explain Himself before I obey Him?

Luke 5 opens with Peter at the end of a long, failed night. He and his partners have fished until morning and caught nothing. They’re washing their nets, which tells us everything we need to know. As far as Peter is concerned, this fishing trip is over. Then Jesus steps into his boat. I love that Jesus starts with something Peter already has. He doesn’t send Peter off to find something more spiritual. He gets into a fishing boat. Peter’s work, his livelihood, the thing that had become common to him, becomes a platform for eternity. We tend to separate what we call spiritual from everything else, but Jesus doesn’t. He can use a boat, a business, a house, an ability, or an opportunity. He can use whatever we place under His authority.

Jesus first asks Peter to push out a little from the land so He can teach. Peter does it. Then, when the teaching is over, Jesus gives a different kind of instruction: “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Peter’s response is one of the most honest lines in the story: “Master, we’ve worked hard all night long and caught nothing.” He doesn’t pretend. He doesn’t put on a smile and call it a wonderful idea. He tells Jesus the truth. We tried. We worked. We’re tired. Nothing happened. Trust doesn’t require you to lie about what you see. Peter gives Jesus the facts, but he doesn’t give the facts the final word. “But if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.”

That’s the heart of this message, and it’s where the title comes from: because You said so. Peter has experience on one side and the word of Jesus on the other. Experience says there’s nothing out there. Jesus says put the nets down again. Peter has to decide whose word carries more weight. Proverbs 3:5 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and lean not on our own understanding. It doesn’t say we won’t have understanding. It says don’t lean on it. Understanding is valuable, but it was never designed to carry the full weight of your life. Too often we reverse the order. We say, “God, help me understand this, then I’ll trust You.” God says, “Trust Me, even when you don’t understand.” We’ve been waiting on an explanation when God has already given an instruction.

That doesn’t mean every idea that pops into our heads came from God, and it doesn’t mean we ignore wisdom or godly counsel. Peter isn’t following an impulse. Jesus spoke. Godly trust isn’t confidence in our feelings. It’s confidence in God.

Here’s why this matters: we can become more committed to clarity than to trust. We know what Jesus says about forgiveness, but our situation feels different. We know what He says about loving our enemies, but He doesn’t know what they did. We know what He says about purity, generosity, reconciliation, prayer, and putting His kingdom first, but when it gets personal, we build a case for why obedience doesn’t make sense. It’s rarely that we don’t know what God said. It’s that we’re waiting for His Word to agree with us before we obey it. Clarity feels like control. If I understand the plan, I can calculate the risk and decide whether I like the outcome before I move. Trust takes some of that control away. When Peter lowered those nets, all he had was the word of Jesus.

Notice, too, that Peter’s first act of obedience was small. Move the boat out a little. But the same boat he surrendered for the small instruction became the place where Jesus met him with a deeper one. We spend a lot of time asking God for the big assignment while ignoring the small act of obedience sitting right in front of us. We want the five-year plan, and God is dealing with the phone call we need to make today. Don’t despise the little push from shore. You don’t know what God is developing in you through simple obedience.

When the nets come up, they’re so full they begin to tear, and two boats start to sink under the weight. It would be easy to preach this as “obey God and He’ll fill your boat,” but that misses the point. Look at what Peter does next. He doesn’t grab the fish. He falls at Jesus’ knees and says, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!” Earlier he called Him Master. Now he calls Him Lord. The miracle wasn’t about improving Peter’s fishing business. Jesus was revealing Himself. Peter thought the issue was fish, but Jesus was after Peter. And in verse 11, they leave everything, including the biggest catch of their lives, to follow Him. The miracle wasn’t something to build their lives around. It pointed them to the One their lives should be built around. Obedience isn’t a transaction where I do what God says so He owes me what I want. Obedience is surrender to the One I trust.

So what do we do with this? Obey what you already know. You may not need another word from God right now. You may need to respond to the last thing He said. Some things don’t require more prayer. We don’t have to pray about whether to forgive, tell the truth, serve others, or put God first. There are plenty of decisions that need wisdom and counsel, but when God has clearly spoken, trust stops negotiating. Peter gives us the language: I’ll forgive, because You said so. I’ll stay faithful, because You said so. I’ll serve when nobody notices, I’ll open my hand, I’ll walk away from what’s pulling me from You, and I’ll take the next step when I can’t see where it ends, because You said so. That isn’t blind faith. It’s trust built on the character of the One speaking. If I have to understand everything before I obey, my understanding is still in charge.

There’s one more scene that completes the picture. In John 21, years later, after Peter has followed, failed, and denied Jesus three times, he’s back in a boat. Once again they fish all night and catch nothing. Jesus stands on the shore, unrecognized, and tells them to cast the net on the right side. Again the net fills. In Luke 5 it was deep water. In John 21 it was the right side. It was never about the location. It was about His word. If Peter had turned Luke 5 into a fishing formula, he’d have spent his life hunting for deep water. Trust isn’t in a method. It’s in Him. Outdated trust keeps asking God to repeat the last thing He did. Mature trust asks, “God, what are You saying now?”

And there’s another difference. In Luke 5, Peter sees Jesus’ power and says, “Go away from me.” In John 21, after the worst failure of his life, Peter hears “It is the Lord!” and jumps into the water to get to Him. Something changed in Peter’s trust. He’d learned that failure isn’t a reason to run from Jesus. It’s a reason to run toward Him. Jesus doesn’t hand him a list of penalties. He feeds him, restores him, and gives him one instruction: “Feed my sheep.” The man who once said “Go away from me” discovers that his failure didn’t cancel his call.

That’s the Jesus we trust. Not because we always understand what He’s doing, not because obedience brings instant results, and not because following Him guarantees an easy life. We trust Him because He went to the cross for us, carried our sin, defeated death, and rose again. So stop fixating on the instruction and look to the Instructor. Bring your questions. Bring your frustration. Peter did. Trust isn’t pretending you have no questions. Trust is deciding who gets the final word. Where in your life does your answer need to become, “Jesus, because You said so”?