A new manifestation on an old scene.
I. THE OLD SCENE. This verse gets all its suggestiveness just as we remember the place which Jesus chose for this particular manifestation. Persons and time and place were all combined together into one complete lesson of truth. Capernaum stood on that sea, the one place that came nearest to a home for him who all the years of his public life had no true home. While walking on the margin of its waters, Jesus called his first disciples to become "fishers of men" (Luke 5:1-11). To the disciples of Jesus gathered on the shores of this lake everything should have been eloquent with stirring memories of their Master. Everything in the way of circumstance and association was made, as far as it could be, into a hook and a help.
II. WHAT WAS CHANGED SINCE THE COMPANY HAD BEEN THERE BEFORE? The interval could not have been very long; yet what momentous things had happened in it! There was no change to speak of in the scene; a spectator from some coign of vantage would have seen pretty much the same as before. Nor would there be much change in the disciples. A great preparation was going on; but the change itself had yet to come. But in Jesus himself, what a glorious change! The mortal had put on immortality, the corruptible had put on incorruption. A great gulf separated him and his disciples—an immense difference added on to all the differences existing before. Best of all, the difference was laden with hope and encouragement for all who could look at it in the right way. The change in Jesus heralded and initiated a change in every one of these disciples, and through them a change in many with whom they would have to deal.
III. THE ESSENTIAL JESUS STILL REMAINED. He had not to make confession of former errors and new discoveries. The change in Jesus was but a metamorphosis; the change in the disciples was a regeneration. Jesus would look different, for he had put on the body of his glory. Before long, the disciples, looking outwardly the same, would have been profoundly changed.
IV. THE NEED OF A NEW MANIFESTATION TO US IN THE OLD SCENES OF OUR LIFE. Most people have to spend their days among scenes that are as familiar to them as ever the shores of Galilee were to these seven disciples. Life may become very dull and monotonous in these circumstances. But a manifestation of Jesus will make a wondrous change. Then, and only then, will there be sense and comfort in the utterance, that "old things have passed away, and all things become new." The Galilaean cities are gone long ago; but humanity remains, needing all the manifestations of Jesus as much as ever it did.—Y.