Clough John Lesson 70

Restoration of Peter – John 21

Turn to the last chapter of the Gospel of John; John 21. It’s always interesting how if you teach verse by verse, chapter by chapter how it’s uncannily true that there’s a sequencing, a very strange sequencing, I’ve never been able to really figure out how it is that God the Holy Spirit could have written the Scriptures 2000 years ago in precisely the order in which the Holy Spirit works today. It’s interesting that we’ve come this Sunday to the last of the Gospel of John; we began in April of 1975 in this Gospel and now we’ve come to the end. We’ve gone through the incarnation of the Word, the evidences for the life of Christ, and interestingly just precisely at this time we begin to have interest in prayer groups for evangelism, as if the Holy Spirit has worked to infuse the content of the gospel and the life of Christ into our souls and now this will spill out into the work of witnessing and evangelism.

In John 21:1, we find the last episode of this Gospel. This Gospel could have ended with John 20:31 but it didn’t. God the Holy Spirit saw that extra things had to be done; on a purely human plain John the Apostle did not write a two volume work like Luke, he didn’t have an “Acts.” So therefore there has to be some sort of a transition from the Gospel into the Church Age. And John 21 provides the transition, because by the end of chapter 21 the apostles are operating as a team and certain vital truths have been taught by Jesus Christ. So John 21 is not superfluous, there is a definite reason for this.

It begins in Tiberias, the Sea of Tiberias, or the Sea of Galilee, or Lake Chinnereth as it is called in Israel today. This area, once again in our series of John, to gather the geographical situation so we can appreciate the scene set before us, let’s look at the Sea of Galilee, how it looks today and look at some of the scenes around that lake. [He shows slides] Galilee is far to the north of Jerusalem; the other scenes of Christ post-resurrection appearances in this Gospel all were way south; this is about 80 miles north in the area of Galilee. This is where Mary came from, Mary of Magdala; Magdala is located in the southeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. Apparently John 21, the sons of Zebedee who have a fishing business located just to the northwest sector are moving out in the sea; they don’t get very far out, in John 21 the boats never proceed further than 100 yards off shore. This is the site of ancient Magdala; here is Tiberias; this is the north end of the Sea of Galilee with the plains of Bethsaida right here. In the ancient times there were lots of buildings located along the coast and this is where the sons of Zebedee had their fishing business. That’s where the scene occurred that we’re going to look at in John 20.

John 20:1 shows and emphasizes that it was here that Jesus Christ showed Himself, so this is one of the great post-resurrection appearances. [1, “After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and on this wise showed he Himself.”] Verse 2 lists all of the seven disciples, notice how definite the Apostle John is; John doesn’t leave anything to vagueness; John is a very precise observer, he lists them all, notice Thomas, the man who doubted Christ, Nathanael of Cana, the man who the Lord apparently really enjoyed from His remarks in John 1; the sons of Zebedee, and two unnamed disciples. [2, “There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples.]

Now in John 21:3 there’s a picture of a man who is purposeless; the whole scene of chapter 21 is getting the apostles on the track; they’re not tracking. Even though the Christ has resurrected, even though He’s appeared to them, He’s assured them that the promises are true, they’re still not tracking with what the Holy Spirit wants them to do. And so it’s interesting that when men face this problem in their lives where it seems like the immediate purpose has gone out they revert to their past behavior patterns. These men were fishermen; their business for the last three years was not fishing, it was rather fishing for men. And so for three years that business relationship had been interrupted. Now, three years later, when everything seems to be vague, they’re wandering around not knowing what to do, Peter suggests to them, let’s go fishing and they said to him, [3, “Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him,] We also go with thee.”

There’s a principle about that passage, a principle that many times in your life you’ll find yourself using, the principle of work therapy. Part of the curse, when God purged the earth He said to Adam, in the sweat of your brow you’ll bring forth bread. Why? Because for X amount of production, now there had to be Y amount of work; there had to be a greater amount of work for X amount of production after the fall than before the fall. That partly is grace because you see, if sinful man could produce X amount of work with very, very little effort, the kind of very little effort used before the fall, if sinful man could get away with such little effort and such maximum output there’d be so much leisure time that we would destroy ourselves. And so therefore it’s significant that the very curse that God imposes upon creation is work therapy; it is a system of forcing us to physically cope with the earth.

There have been times that I have seen Christians in the counseling process so distraught, so under mental pressure, so confused, so overwhelmed by their emotions that they have literally had to go and pick weeds out of their front lawn to get their stuff together. But it worked, just to go do something simply physical that’s tiring, it’s not a cop out if it’s done as unto the Lord; it’s a way of restructuring your whole emotional pattern that’s all screwed up and when a person is in deep problems that has got to happen. You can’t just sit and toss and think about your problem; you’re not built to do that; your body must do something physically or you’ll fall apart. There comes a time when work therapy is absolutely necessary. There is nothing inherently faithless about verse 3; it’s a good sound biblical action when purpose seems to have gone out of your life and you kind of wander around, wondering what God wants you to do; the best thing to do is get busy at something productive. God will take it from there. The man who led me to Christ had an expression he often used when he was teaching us divine guidance. He said you know, God cannot steer a parked car. And his principle was that if you get lowly, trust in the Lord while you do, the guidance will come, but don’t sit around waiting for the guidance to come ahead of time because it won’t, you’ll be sitting there at the rapture.

So verse 3 has all the disciples finally going into sort of a work therapy in lieu of any particular divine guidance at the moment. [“…They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.”] They go forth, probably in the early morning before sunrise, because it says that night they caught nothing, still [can’t understand word] on the Sea of Galilee.

John 21:4, “But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.” Again, John in his very cryptic way of writing doesn’t have Jesus walk down to the shore; he just has it suddenly we looked at the shore, only 100 yards away, he says, basically it was 300 feet, you can compute this from the number of cubits that are given in the passage, one cubit equals 18 inches. So they are only 100 yards away, one football length away from the beach, and they look out there and suddenly there’s a man there, and the emphasis is that the man didn’t walk to the beach, He just was standing on the beach; an amazing way that Jesus has of appearing. The disciples did not know, however, that it was Christ as many times had happened. He looked like Jesus but yet something was different about Him.

And so verse 5, Jesus yells across the water, “Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any food? They answered Him, No.” Now I think you’ve studied the Gospels enough to know that John has a little friendly way of prodding us with his words, how John will take a word that means three different things and all three meanings are true; the normal straightforward meaning, Jesus appears to be just asking have you caught any fish? That’s what it appears to be and that’s what He was asking, but He was also asking something else: do you have anything that satisfies the deepest hunger you have, children? He calls them children an odd phrase to shout across a hundred yards of water out to some professional fishermen: children, don’t have any food. Why these strange words? Because Christ is drawing attention to the spiritual problem that has to be solved in their life before they can go on as the apostles that will lead the Church.

And so [6] “He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and you’re going to find some. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.” Now we have to be careful what is supernatural about this and what isn’t. What has been observed, right on the Sea of Galilee, by men who have gone off shore to fish that an observer walking the beach can see, because of the angle you can see the schools of fish in the water better than the person in the boat, and so it happens that even today oftentimes the close-in fishing is guided by men on the beach. So the very fact that Jesus cast your net on the right side of the boat by itself doesn’t argue anything supernatural. That happens time and time again.

But what is interesting is that all of a sudden there was this multitude of fishes, and then there’s the remark in verse 7, “Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord.” And notice what Peter does; as soon as he heard that it was the Lord, [“Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord,] he girt his fisher’s coat unto him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea.” Now there’s the final picture you have of these two great disciples of Christ. One is the quiet meditative reflective thinker, the one who’s the perceptive observer. And then there’s Peter, the activist. Both are needed…both are needed! Don’t try to mimic one and say John is more spiritual that Peter or Peter is more spiritual than John; it’s not true, they’re both spiritual and they both can be carnal but they have two different personality patterns and it would be wrong of John to try to imitate Peter, he wouldn’t be a good activist. And Peter, it would be wrong for him to sit by and try to think something through like John can. That just doesn’t fit Peter. So here you have some men in their stereotype roles, as we’ve seen time and time again in the Gospel, John perceives, he’s sharp. He looks at that man and there’s something about that yell that comes across the hundred yards of water that he recognizes. There’s something about the fact that when they dip the net in and they can’t pull it up because the force of the text is these guys can’t lift the net up onto the boat, they have to drag it in the water the hundred yards to shore. There’s something peculiar in all that, and John who has a spiritual eye among those seven men, he knows, he said that word, and he knows who gave him the advice. That’s why he said, “it’s the Kurios.” Then Peter acts.

John 21:8, “And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,)” and from this you can compute the hundred yards, “dragging the net with fishes,” showing that the net was fantastically heavy at this point, John is even very astute and he’ll give us the exact number of fish in a moment. Verse 9, “As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.” Now isn’t that astounding; the God-man Savior has prepared breakfast for hungry men. There you have the paradox of the hypostatic union, you have struggles doing the lessons in the family training, trying to get all those attributes together with the humanity of Christ locked in one person, one ego. How does it all happen, and we don’t really quite know but just look at the data that you get in Scripture. This is the God who created the universe, and what does He do? He has some coals and fish and bread and prepares breakfast for hungry men. You see how human it is; Christ does not lack true humanity, it’s real humanity. We’d say today in our vernacular, in our particular diet He fried them some eggs or something; He had coffee. Of course they had a better diet here, no cholesterol in this and no sugar in it.

So Christ prepares the breakfast. And it’s very interesting that the theme of John 21 seems to be the theme of feeding; it occurs three times to Peter, the disciples are fishing for food that’s got to be eating, Christ prepares a breakfast that’s going to be eaten, and then He asks them, have you any food. It seems that food is the topic of John 21, all kinds of different kinds of food. You notice Jesus feeding the disciples in at least three ways: first he’s feeding them physically, that’s verse 9, He’s physically prepared them a sufficiently large breakfast. But He’s done more than that, through His advice He has given them fish for food for other men who will consume that physical food. And then again before the passage is done Christ will feed them spiritually. And therefore throughout John 21 Christ sets up a model that He’s going to shortly ask Peter certain questions and then He’s going to tell Peter, “Peter, feed My sheep.” While Christ is telling Peter to feed the sheep, Christ Himself is feeding the sheep, the little children that have no food. Jesus Christ, then, while He teaches He gives a model of what it is He’s teaching. Just like we read in the communion service, how when He taught confession He had to literally wash the feet because it was a dramatic way of portraying doctrine.

Now in verse 10 Christ, knowing the attraction will then come more to Him tells them to get the net up on the shore. “Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.” There is no evidence that they have to bring the fish to supplement the fish that Christ has; it’s just an evidence of getting it on shore so the fish won’t get out of the net and so on. Verse 11, “Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes,” notice how particular John the Apostle is, that astute quiet reflective observer, he counted all the fish, he said there was “an hundred and fifty and three: [and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken].” Isn’t that interesting, you can see John, the man who went into the tomb, who noticed the linen, kind of paused there and reflected on it, and you can just see him coming over to the net, picking it up and saying I wonder how many fish there are in this net; never saw it so full before, let’s see. And getting all the disciples on their hands and knees on the beach counting, 1,2,3,4,5,6, this went on or else he wouldn’t know exactly how many fish it was. And you can wonder what the expression must have been on the Lord’s face as He stood over them watching these seven men on their hands and knees working through the net, sorting the fish out and counting them.

So [12] “Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples dared ask Him, Who are Thou? knowing that it was the Lord.” They’re just rather kind of stymied with this whole thing, they’re subdued. Verse 13, “Jesus then came, and takes bread, and gives them, and fish likewise.” You’ve heard of the Lord’s supper, if you want a facetious title for this, this is the Lord’s breakfast. [14] “This is now the third time that Jesus showed Himself to His disciples, [after that he was risen from the dead.]” now comes the interesting part, this last chapter of John gives the most tremendous picture of confession and restoration from sin. Since we haven’t gone through a particular doctrine recently it’s good that we review what we mean by confession and restoration.

There are three principles of confession and restoration, principles that control every single counseling problem that a Christian has that’s not physically based, of course, any spiritually based problem is involved in these three areas of confession of sin. The first thing that must happen for a Christian to be restored to fellowship is that he must first be convinced that he has sinned. It’s very simple but it isn’t so simply as you can all tell when you drop the poker face; you know very well that when you’re out of fellowship that’s the last thing you want to admit, that in fact you have sinned. We call this operation fig leaf, cover-up; that in fact Lord, I really haven’t sinned, you see, it was this was this way. And the Holy Spirit constantly working us over through our conscience and then through bodily emotions, no it wasn’t this way; you sinned; but it was this way, you see…; but you sinned, but, but, but, the motorboat Christian. But we get through the first problem is conviction of the sin. This is why David in Psalm 51:3 says, “My sin is always before me.” Now that’s the biblical answer to non-biblical counseling procedures. Dr. Jay Adams remarks in his book: “Counseling experience underscores the biblical idea that most people really do know why they’re in trouble, even when they first deny it. Whenever biblical counsel’s operate on the assumption that this is so they find most people drop their defenses and tell it like it is.”

And Peter knew his problem. He didn’t require great psychoanalysis to determine what kind of bad dreams or sexual repressions he had as an adolescent. His problem was he denied the Lord three times. He knew this; he knew that he had sinned, there was no problem in identification. Sometimes there is in just learning what the pattern is and sometimes this requires help from a more mature Christian. But it doesn’t require 16 years of psychotherapy at $50 an hour, even if you could afford it; that is totally unnecessary to undergo spiritual restoration. It’s a waste of money, just buries the problem. Conviction of sin, that’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to do; the easiest way to put yourself in a place where He’ll do it is read the text. That’s why I say often times if you are so shattered sometime just go some place, quiet, peaceful, away from all bodies and open up the Psalms, open at Proverbs, open at some place where you can get your physical eyeballs on the physical text and read. That’s the way you put yourself in the position to get convicted of the particular sins that must be confessed.

Now it’s interesting but God the Holy Spirit is very, very flexible. He never works in two people’s lives the same way; never! He’ll work in a husband’s life differently than He works in his wife’s life. He will convict and you can think of, say, 55 different sins, and you just don’t go gee, I wonder, I kind of know I splattered all over the wall here, but what is the one that the Holy Spirit is after? And it’s the most marvelous thing to behold, that the Holy Spirit is quite selective in the particular sins He convicts of. I have noticed for example in people in what we will call gross behavior patterns that it is not the gross behavior patterns the Holy Spirit convicts them of; it is prior mental attitude that led to that gross pattern. And it’s a particular thing; it’s not a general thing, it’s a particular thing. And once that is spotted and once the person is really convinced that he can confess it by faith, the problem is well on the way to solution. So the key thing in this first step is that you can’t use 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins,” if you’re not first sure that you’ve sinned. You can’t, in other words, use 1 John 1:9 as a stab, well I don’t know what the problem is, I’ll just run through 1 John 1:9 a couple of times. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work! You’ve got to use 1 John 1:9 by faith and you can’t operate by faith unless you’re first convinced of the particular sin. So conviction of sin is the key.

Now the next thing; the next thing beside the conviction or we will say the convincing is the actual confession. 1 John 1:9, but at this point even after we’ve been convinced of our sin, there’s the subtle struggle of blame shifting. Well, I’ll admit Lord that I’ve sinned, but you know, dog gone it, it was that person, if they hadn’t have been there it wouldn’t have happened; and if it wasn’t for this little situation that developed it wouldn’t have happened, and if it wasn’t for that little situation it wouldn’t have happened. You know what the verse is that just tubes all that stuff right down the drain? 1 Corinthians 10:13, “There has no testing taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful who, will never permit you to be tested above that which you are able.” But God, the circumstances, and the Lord says but I am in charge of the circumstances, I said I would never permit you to be tempted above that which you are able. So 1 Corinthians 10:13 is a good backup verse to use at this point with 1 John 1:9 because it just cuts out from under us all temptation to blame-shift, because as long as you’re blame-shifting you can never really confess properly. We’ve got to be free of blame-shifting in order to reach the point where in good conscience we can confess. So that’s the second thing; there can be no excuses, why my problems are so unusual they demand a special dispensation in the middle of the church dispensation.

And now the third thing, and this is what you see operating in John 21, restoration. Now restoration, true, we are in fellowship instantly when we confess our sin. But I’m sure all of you at some time or another have had the joyless experience of confessing a sin and finding yourself two minutes later back in the same deal and you begin to suspect 1 John 1:9 doesn’t work or you’re not understanding it or applying it properly. Something is screwed up some place. Now why does this phenomenon happen? It happens because of a verse that we have read again and again Sunday mornings in Psalm 51 where David says that in sin did my mother conceive me, but in the inward parts God, you desire truth. David’s talking about the fact that a particular sin can be related to a pattern that keeps cropping up, and so we confess this point act or point thought, restored to fellowship; two minutes later, boom, there we are again, then again, then again, then again, then again, then again, then again and again, again, again, again, again, again. Now the Holy Spirit doesn’t want us to go on this thing forever so what does the Holy Spirit finally do. What He usually does in our lives is we’ll come along this thing, we’ve got a lot of other hairy garbage down in here that we’re working with and so we come up here and finally the day dawns when this stuff has been relieved enough so we can… the smoke is clear down here so we can see the target a little bit better, and so we come to confess our sin one day and it just doesn’t seem like there’s a freedom that the conscience has been cleansed. It doesn’t seem to work.

Well, surely 1 John 1:9 must work. Well, then what’s the problem? The problem is that the Holy Spirit has in effect told us at that point, I want you to begin working on the pattern that keeps causing this problem. Now up to this point in your life the Holy Spirit is insinuating in our lives, up until this point I’ve let you get away with it, for the reason that you had all this other garbage that you’re working with. Well, now that you’ve deposited that in a proper receptacle let’s go to the next problem. And the next problem is we’ve got to make some changes; changes in basic behavior patterns. And so this requires some extensive restoration and training. Now we’re not talking about getting back in fellowship, we get back in fellowship with 1 John 1:9, but after we get back in fellowship the Holy Spirit wants us to understand the training program that He’s going to put us on, sort of a spiritual diet until He can move this problem out of our lives. Sometimes this takes years to do; you’ve got to be patient with yourself, you get discouraged so soon by saying well gee, you know, I’ve got into doctrine and I still have this problem, it’s been going on year after year. Don’t worry about it, the Holy Spirit will not sanctify instantly. As I have said before, not facetiously, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t think like an American, and that’s an American trait we’ve got; we want sanctification yesterday. That’s not the way the Spirit works; He’s patient, long-suffering, and He works this way.

Now this is a good example of what’s about to happen to Peter. See, Peter denied the Lord three times. Has the Lord met Peter before here? Sure He has. Didn’t He appear to Peter back in Jerusalem. Well, when the Lord first appeared to Peter back in Jerusalem if Peter needed restoration why didn’t Jesus get going with it, get started, you know, roll up the sleeves, operate on Peter. Because it wasn’t time to operate on Peter. Now is the time to operate on Peter. We don’t know why; God in His sovereignty said it wasn’t the time to do it Peter, don’t worry about denying Me. We’ll talk about that later; Peter had confessed his sin, back in fellowship, but there was a flaw in Peter’s soul that needed repair. Because if this little flaw in Peter’s soul was not repaired Peter could not operate as an apostle in the Christian church. He had to have this little repair job and that’s what’s going on here; very eloquent picture of how God repairs us. Remember, Christ in heaven is the same person you see here, so this picture you see here is a very good indication picture of how He works in all of our lives today.

John 21:15, “So when they had dined,” notice that, the Lord’s in no hurry to do it; if the Lord acted like us He’d say now hurry up, before you can have breakfast Peter, there’s something I want to talk to you about. No, it’s just a relaxed way, get comfortable Peter because here it comes. “Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, do you love Me more than these?” A very astute way of placing it because this harps back to an incident in Peter’s life, an incident that we find in the previous Gospel. Turn back to Luke 22:31; we have to get a little spiritual background on Peter’s problem. We tend to view things a little too simply at times. Maybe in eternity after we’ve gone to be with the Lord He’ll very graciously come to you and say something like this; you know that problem that you were bugging Me about, all those times you prayed well God, why can’t You do this, right now! Well, I’m going to show you why I didn’t do it “right now” when you wanted it done. And I’m going to show you, it’s as though He could draw the curtain back and show us all the cause effect, all the complicated factors that were involved. Fortunately for us God did do this at one time and He did it with Peter, just to show us that these individual point acts, point problems, aren’t point problems. They’re tied in with the cosmic flow of history.

In Luke 22:31 the Lord says to Peter, this is ahead of… ahead of, before it happened, his denial. He said, “Simon, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.” A satanic attack; why a satanic attack? Peter’s denial was the result of a satanic attack? You bet it was. Why was it? Well, from the theology of the Scriptures we know one thing about Satan; we know many things about Satan but one in particular as it pertains to us, He doesn’t like us using his equipment for God’s service. And his equipment is the autonomous attitude that we’ve got it within ourselves to fulfill God’s purposes in our lives; the autonomous spirit that says, well I’ve got enough power to do God’s will. Sometimes it comes piously; well I walked the aisle and gave my life to Christ and I got filled up with power, blub, blub, blub, blub at the front, and now I walk back home and now I’m filled up with the Spirit, I carry it around like I would carry water in a glass. In other words, this water is totally disconnected to the heavens, it is all wrapped up in my private little package. See that, I’ve got power there. Now that is a pious way of being quite autonomous, quite unbiblical and apparently this is what Peter’s problem is. He’s confessed that Jesus is the Christ, he has made spiritual advance but he’s somehow got a fathead that he carries around within him at all times, sufficient resources. He may gloss it up like certain abhorrent theologies do by saying that the Spirit indwells me to the point that the Spirit is sort of mine now. See, the indwelling Spirit is never yours. He’s never mine. He’s always the Fathers. He never comes under our control; He’s not attached, like you’d buy an accessory for your automobile and drive around. That’s not the indwelling Spirit. But that’s the picture a lot of Christians have; the picture Peter apparently had.

So Satan says un-huh, Peter’s going to do a work for the Lord and that attitude of autonomy is mine, I’m not going to let Peter use my attitude and my spiritual equipment to serve the Savior; none of that, so I demand… because remember what it says in verse 31, “Satan has desired,” that means Satan has come before the Father and he said Father, for Satan apparently addresses the Father as Father, he has said I want Peter; I want Peter because I have a right, I have a right and a claim in his soul; Peter is going to serve you my way. Now if there’s any service that goes on in the planet earth my way it’s not going to be for You, it’s going to be for me, so therefore I desire to have him.

But Luke 22:32 shows what Christ did to head Satan off at the pass, the most marvelous ministry on our behalf. Here you have a picture of your eternally securing Savior. Jesus Christ, as high priest, keeps you saved. This is where fatalism has crept into evangelicalism; you think of eternal security only as an empty decree. Well, once we believe in Jesus it’s all over. Yes, God promises that He will keep us eternally secure. That’s correct. But has it ever dawned on you how God keeps us secure. He keeps us secure by a constant intercessory ministry of Christ, taking the finished work of the cross and keeping it applied to your account. You say I never heard it put that way; well you’ve never read your Scriptures then because it’s put that way in Hebrews. “Christ is able to save to the uttermost those that come to God by Him,” as a high priest. In Romans 8 it says Jesus Christ makes intercession for us. Jesus Christ lives to make intercession. Why make intercession if our security is somehow automatic and guaranteed apart from the continuing work of Christ in heaven. And so Christ here in verse 32 shows us how He even today keeps us saved.

“But I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not.” Now isn’t that an interesting prayer. Christ prays that Peter’s faith is going to go down to zero but it’s not going to hit the zero mark and it’ll come back up. See, this is a picture of being out of fellowship. This is why when you get out of fellowship you don’t lose your salvation. If Christ did not pray this prayer on our behalf, when you sin, when I sin, we get out of fellowship, we go to zero, because faith does diminish when you’re out of fellowship. Technically speaking, theologically you can only believe one thing when you’re out of fellowship and that’s 1 John 1:9. You’ve only got enough faith left to get back in fellowship. Then you get back in fellowship the faith circle expands once again, but there is that dynamic relationship. And so Christ says “I prayed, Peter, that your faith fail not. And when you are converted,” now that’s not salvation here, that’s restoration, “strengthen your brethren.” And then Peter, completely ignoring the Lord, as though the Lord had been talking in another room on a different channel, he says, well, “I’m ready to go with you, both into prison and to death.” See, the over-confidence, the fact that he carries around autonomous spiritual power sufficient for the task, I’m ready for Lord, got it all inside here, let’s go. That’s the way Peter operated.

Now in Matthew the same incident is reviewed but from a different perspective. In Matthew 26:33, and it was this particular claim that Christ reminded Peter ever so graciously in this confrontation on the beach in the morning. During the time when Peter was blowing smoke all over the place he made this brilliant statement. “Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, I will never be offended.” In other words, Peter was saying I love you so much, I love you more than the other men here. This is why, as we return to John 21, when Jesus walks up to Peter this time He says Peter, do you love Me more than these? After Peter has had this shattering experience of being the only disciple that denied the Lord, the man who at one moment said he was better than everyone else, all the other Christians are down here, I have my own totem pole. He found out very quickly that of all the disciples he was the one that blew it the most. So now the Lord comes to him and He addresses directly the problem because there’s a theological hang-up in his soul that has to be repaired and until this theological hang-up which has led to his individual personal acts of sin is repaired, he’s going to deny the Lord again and again and again in history. He cannot have this kind of power in a glass theology; that’s got to go. So the purpose here is to straighten Peter out in his basic doctrine. There’s a problem here that is leading to the individual sin.

So the first thing the Lord says, Peter answers, and the answer is indeed remarkable. The answer is remarkable because it shows that Peter’s grasped the point. He says, “Yea, Lord; You know that I love You.” Now the reason that answer is remarkable is because he doesn’t say I know I love you. It’s a deference to God’s omniscience. Peter now has become aware that he is not master of his own mind and heart; he cannot look down into the caverns of his heart and say well, I’ve done a heart examination today, and I don’t see any crud down there, so therefore I say that I’ve got the power. No, he’s a man that is now becoming grace oriented, he is admitting by this very statement, “You know” that he doesn’t know. The assets, in other words, are slowly being transferred from a heart-centered theology to a heaven-centered theology; he looks up, not in.

And then Lord says, well then, “Feed My lambs, the prophet being, of course, the feeding of believers. And Peter in 1 Peter 2:2 says, “Desire ye the sincere milk of the Word as newborn babes,” to most college people that doesn’t mean a thing. I always enjoy it when a couple here has their first baby and they suddenly discover at 2:00 a.m. in the morning what it means when a newborn babe desires food. In some way it’s not the gentle please mama, Whaaaaah!!! that’s what it is and so this is the way Peter says believers are to respond in hunger for the Word of God. He says do this, demand it. If fundamentalists had done this all the liberal pulpits in America would be empty; force the guys to get hearing aids by this time, the congregation would be screaming and yelling for the Word of God. Peter says that’s the proper approach to use when you’re not getting fed; scream about it, scream your head off till someone decides to feed you.

John 21:16, again Christ is impressing this pattern; Peter has expressed the pattern in a concrete act and Jesus, in a very concrete training situation runs him back through, as though he’s redoing that event, but as He does it He forces Peter into the righteousness mold. And so “He said to him [again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas,] do you love Me? And Peter said unto Him, Yes, Lord; thou know that I love You.” And again Peter affirms that he trusts God to know this now. He’s not being the bold over-confident Peter he used to be. Again Christ follows it up, well then, Peter, you’re ready to feed My sheep [He saith unto him, Feed My sheep].” You’re ready for Christian service if that key to your soul is straightened out.

Now in John 21:17 “He said unto him the third time, [Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?] Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? And he said unto Him, Lord, You know all things; thou knowest that I love You.” Again, what has Peter been forced by the extremity of Christ’s constant badgering him and badgering him and badgering him, He’s got Peter angry enough to… apparently our spirits if we could see these things, which we have inside us, we build under some sort of pressure and what Christ is doing, He’s squeezing it, sort of like in exercise, when you build muscle tissue you have to build it by compressing it and expanding it and stretching it. The tissue has to have force applied to it before it grows and what Christ is doing, He’s putting him in a squeeze here spiritually to make the human spirit grow and so this last time that Peter confesses he overtly says I trust your omniscience. I go to Your complete omniscience, I cast myself upon You because I don’t know my heart that well. He’s gone from that base, well I know myself so much. Now this is very hard for us to do this because all of us are products of the west. And in the west we’ve had this heresy, borrowed from Socrates that says the key of all knowledge is “Know thyself.” And that’s exactly the wrong way to start. Calvin answered it you don’t start by knowing yourself; you start by knowing God and against the background of knowing God you know yourself. We cannot go the Greek way. But this is the way most of us go.

But there’s something else about that last part of verse 17 where it says, “You know all things.” We don’t know how many disciples were listening to this little conversation that went on, but I suspect John was because he picks up this very statement. Turn to his first epistle, John comes out, sure enough John comes out with the very same words that Christ spoke to Peter. 1 John 3:20, he’s dealing with exactly the same problem, the problem of Christians getting out of fellowship. “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” Then he says, “if our heart condemn us not,” we have faith. What does he say in verse 20? He’s saying if our heart condemn us, don’t try to cover it up. God knows it. Don’t fake it, don’t draw the fig leaf over and pretend it ain’t so, because He knows it. In other words, John here is commending the same openness before God that Jesus Christ demanded of Peter, and finally Peter admitted that he had to be wholly open here at this point; he had to walk in the light, being vulnerable to correction from the Holy Spirit through conscience.

Now as Peter is told and commissioned to go feed the sheep and become the feeding apostle, in verse 18 Christ carries on with another little interesting note. And you’d expect this kind of note would only be found in the Gospel of John. The other Gospel writers aren’t quite so personal, so intimate, as John is, but John has the most amazing statement in this chapter; a statement that maybe some of you have wondered about; what’s God’s plan for my life. Is there a plan for my life? He may not tell you all the plan for your life but there is a plan for your life and the proof of it is right here. In one verse Jesus Christ summarizes the entire life of Peter yet to be lived. This is a revelation of the fact there is a plan of God for every single believer. And so Jesus let Peter in, remarkable, he let’s Peter in on his future. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, When you were younger, you would gird yourself and you would walk where you wanted to: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee where you do not want to go. [19] This He said, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” We know from history what happened. Tertullian says that under Emperor Nero Peter was crucified; we have it from Eusebius that at the day Peter was to be crucified he turned to the Roman soldiers and said I cannot be crucified and said I cannot be crucified in the same position Christ was, and so he voluntarily was crucified upside down, and that is how the Apostle Peter died. It’s a prediction of his death. And so since Christ had predicted his death, Christ knows his life, He knows every point in between. Verse 18 is Christ’s own plan for Peter.

But then what does He conclude in verse 19, “After He had spoken the plan, He said unto him, Follow Me.” In other words, don’t get bent out of shape by the plan, follow Me day by day, week by week, month by month, don’t try to hop ahead of Me, you’ll get there, and if the trial isn’t duly harsh, such as Peter being crucified voluntarily upside down, if there is going to be that kind of trial in your life, you can safely bet that Jesus Christ will have prepared you for that moment when it comes, and so ultimately he returns to the statement, “Follow Me,” right now.

Well, Peter is kind of a curious man and so Peter turns about; you must notice how personal this conversation is. John 21:20, “Then Peter, turning about, sees the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrays thee? [21] Peter seeing Him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?” You told me the plan for my life, I’d like to know what the plan for John’s life is. [22] “Jesus said unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? You follow Me.” Now there is the most eloquent expression you can find in all of the Scripture for the doctrine of the privacy of the believer. Jesus Christ honors your privacy; He is not going to share His plan for your life with the public; it is not a public issue. It is not even an issue before your closest friends. Jesus Christ keeps the plan for your life as a private matter between Him and you alone; not you and your husband, not you and your wife, not you and your children, He keeps it with you. That is your own private, the first divine institution matter; it concerns you and you only, and therefore He keeps it this way.

Some of this summer were reading one of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles and one of them was The Horse and His Boy, and in the story at one scene the boy, Shasta, was riding the horse in the depths of night, there a mist, and all of a sudden he looked next to him and he saw the shadow of a lion; the lion of course in C. S. Lewis children’s stories is a picture of Christ. And so the little boy hears this noise and finally he begins to talk to this lion, he can’t really see the outline because it’s all misty and dark, and he begins to share with the lion his problem. And he had all this problem, the lions were chasing him before and all the rest of it, and he gives a big long sob story and the lion says, I don’t call you unfortunate. C. S. Lewis has at this point the boy doesn’t perceive it’s a lion, he just hears a voice out of the mist and so he said, “‘Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions,’ said Shasta. ‘There was only one lion,’ said the Voice. ‘What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night and….’ ‘There was only one but he was very swift.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘I was the lion.’ As Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued,’ I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so you could reach King Lune in time. I was the lion you do not remember, who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it might come to shore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you.’ ‘Then it was you, said Shasta, who wounded Aravis,’” this was the girl that was on the horseback with him. “‘It was I.’ ‘But what for?’” And like Peter, he asks the lion, what’s your plan for her life. What for, why did you wound Aravis? “‘Child,’ said the voice, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.’”

And then a few chapters later the lion reaches Aravis, the girl who in that affair was wounded slightly by the lion. And so he goes on and describes the situation, and he says: “‘It was I who wounded you,’ says Aslan. ‘I am the only lion who met you in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, and blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.’ ‘Yes sir, please….’ ‘Ask on my dear,’ said Aslan.” This is the lion speaking. “‘Will any more harm come to her by what I did?’ ‘Child,’ said the lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.’”

And that’s how C. S. Lewis captures the truth expressed here in John 21:22, that Christ only tells our story, He doesn’t tell the other story. Peter will only learn Peter’s story, not John’s. John’s story is a matter strictly between Christ and John. It’s very interesting that the Lord treats us as individuals and respects our privacy.

John 21:23 is there to show why this particular point was made, apparently John is an old man when he’s writing the Gospel and this saying of verse 22 had gotten around and had been distorted. Christians weren’t any better then at understanding the Word than we are now and so they had misread Christ’s words to mean that John wasn’t going to die until Jesus came back. That’s not what Jesus said; “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” In other words, mind your business, I have all sorts of plans for John. So verse 23 says, “Then went this saying abroad among the brethren,” by the way, that shows you the Gospel of John was written quite late, “that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, instead He said, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is it to you? [24] This is the disciple which testifies of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. [25] And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.” And thus the very personal close to a very personal and magnificent Gospel.

Next week we’ll begin something different; we’ll explain it at that time.