Today’s Old Testament Scripture reading from Isaiah and the Gospel lesson from Luke are strikingly similar in content. In Isaiah, the LORD calls His prophet to serve as His divine mouthpiece; in Luke, Jesus calls Peter and the others to become His divine fishers of people. Both Isaiah and Peter confess their unworthiness before the LORD because they are sinful human beings. In both cases God demonstrates in a vivid way that every blessing in the LORD’s service must come from the LORD Himself. Accordingly, St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians underscores that all the gifts of God’s people to build the church come from God Himself.
Of course, the exception would be Jesus. Once when challenged by the Pharisees about His disciples “working” on the Sabbath because they picked some heads of grain to eat, Jesus made it known that He was “LORD of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:1-14). Obviously, Jesus wasn’t saying He agreed with the Pharisee’s man-made definition of what constituted work on the Sabbath. Rather, Jesus made the point that He is the LORD of God’s law and He came to fulfill God’s law as our Savior. The Sabbath law, as part of the Old Testament Ceremonial Laws, foreshadowed Jesus as the Law-Fulfiller and Sabbath Rest-Giver through the forgiveness of sins He gives.