All right, well, lesson 12, back to Peter. We got two more lessons on Peter, then we'll pick back up with, I don't forget somebody's name. No other name, no name. I haven't said the lessons on it, because Dennis has been doing them. We'll get back to that. Well, this is a lesson on a restoration. And John 21, one through 19, of course, now this is the time when Christ had resurrected, and I get, and he'd already presented himself to the disciples, but there was at least a short time in there, I guess that they didn't see him, I don't know. But they'd sort of given up, at least Peter had. You know, we blame things on Peter, because he's the first one to do it, right? But most of the time when Peter, most of the time when Peter slips up, the rest of them just follow him and do the same thing. And we do that, don't we? We'll look at somebody else. So that's the good Christian there, and they're doing it, so I can do it. That's not what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to look at Christ, right? And then do what he does. But a lot of times, that's not what we do. So John 21, one through 19, after these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And on this wise showed he himself. 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. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, we also go with thee. They went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, children, have ye any meat? They answered him, no. So one thing that I've thought about several times reading this scripture right here, have you ever thought about how the disciples heard Jesus speaking to them the times they were on a ship and he was on the shore? Now he is 300 feet, they are 300 feet out in the water on a ship and they can hear Jesus. I don't know if you've ever been on a football field or not and one end zone and try to talk to somebody and the other end zone, you're gonna shout as loud as you can and they might hear you. Of course, we know it's because Jesus is speaking. He didn't actually have to give an audible voice and he could have told them. He has that ability. So we see here that Jesus calls on us, gets our attention. And this time he is using an audible voice to do that, but he uses that Holy Spirit to do that with us. And the thing is, are we where we can hear him? Are we willing to listen to that call? Plus you had the sound, they were on a ship, and you had the sound of the water splashing against the ship. So physically speaking, humanly speaking, almost impossible to hear, but of course it's Jesus doing the talking. And they're also, when they call back to him, of course he can hear them. And he said to them, cast the net on the right side of the ship and you shall find. They cast therefore and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loves saith unto Peter, it is the Lord. "'Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, "'he girded his fisher's coat unto him, for he was naked, "'and did cast himself into the sea. "'And the other disciples came in a little ship, "'for they were not far from land, "'but as it were 200 cubits dragging the net with fishes. "'As soon as they were come to land, "'they saw a fire of coals there, "'and fished thereon and bred. Jesus said unto them, bring of the fish which ye have now caught. Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land full of great fishes, a hundred and fifty and three. And for all, there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, come and dine, and none of the disciples does ask him, who art thou, knowing it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus showed himself to his disciples after that he was risen from the dead. Now, we don't know the length of time from the time of resurrection till now. Could have been a few days, could have been a couple of weeks. All we know is it's less than 50 days, right? We know it's not Pentecost yet, so it's somewhere in between there. To me, reading through it, it seems like it's early on after the resurrection. He'd already showed himself twice. In verse 15, so when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he had said unto him the third time, lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, feed my sheep. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkest whither thou wouldest. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, follow me. So Jesus is again, he is given restoration to Peter. He is allowing him, excuse me, sorry. He is allowing him once again to go into the work of the Lord. So, As well as the overview, we go back to the beginning of the scripture and we see that Peter, for whatever reason, is restless, didn't know what to do, so he goes back to fishing and some of the disciples follow him. We're reminded once again that without the Lord, we can do nothing because they didn't catch anything, right? Much as he had done earlier in their education, Christ gave them a miraculous catch. So this is nothing new, right? A miraculous catch of fishes is nothing new to the disciples, it's nothing new to us. That's one of the things that's easy to remember about the New Testament. We know this has happened before. With this, they knew the Lord had fully returned to them. And with love and compassion, Christ showed Peter the way to return to him. So this is really the first thing that Jesus did for them was to give them miraculous catch of fishes. And here he is now after the resurrection, and right before he ascends into heaven, and he does it again. So three things we're gonna... Try to make sure that we understand through this lesson is to understand that failure in the Christian life need not be final. We're all gonna fail to a certain point all through our lives. But we don't really totally fail until we quit. But we don't wanna quit. Jesus is always there to pick us back up. Realize that Jesus never runs out of love for his own. He doesn't stop loving us just because we act like we don't love him. He still loves us. Choose always to run to Christ in repentance rather than away in shame. And a lot of times that's what, I know independent Baptists, that's what I know. So I know that's what a lot of independent Baptists that I believe are saved, they mess up. Instead of running back to Christ, they run from Christ in shame because they're in shame of the other Christians. And they don't want to face them. Instead of going back to God and facing Him and saying, I'm sorry, God will restore them. So three points that we're going to talk about is the futility, the feasting, and the forgiveness. What we want to see here is, through this, is how we ought to deal with others. With continual patience, love, long-suffering and you see that that's exactly what Christ had for Peter was he was just patient he just he was just waiting continue to love him and he was very long-suffering and that's the way he is with us he's long-suffering with his children we're gonna read this illustration here A young mother shared this story. Tonight my daughter took a very scary tumble of almost six feet off the bench on our deck to the grass below. After months and months of telling her, no ma'am, get down, you'll fall, and physically removing her from the temptation to climb up and over it dozens and dozens of times. She sneaked one by mommy and got the scare of her little two years of life. She was miraculously spared any injuries, just shaken up a bit. I suppose it could have made me upset with her, but I wasn't. I was sad for her and with her. I didn't say, I told you so. I simply held her close, sighed a thankful prayer of relief, dried her tears, and reminded her of the importance of obeying what mommy and daddy tell her. Thinking about it now, it's a reminder of how God is with me when I disobey. I know exactly what my biggest temptations are, and yet I won't stay away from them. I try to get as close as I can without getting hurt. However, there are always consequences for disobedience. When I am battered and bruised and crying tears of pain and repentance over the mess I've made with my own hands, the Lord doesn't leave me to cry alone. He picks me up, dusts me off, and reminds me that He loves me and that obedience to His words keep me safe. Psalm 119 and 11 says, thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And it's God's word that will keep you from sin and God's word that will keep you to fall into temptation. It's when we refuse to listen to God's word. Now Jesus didn't wait for Peter and the others to get to shore and say, Peter, what in the world was you thinking? He could have, couldn't he? That might have been what we would do, right? I see Peter out there. You wait till he gets up there. I'm gonna let him have it. But that's not the way Jesus works. Where there once been doubt, there would again be delight. Where there was failure, there'd be victory. And Christ wants us to see in our lives, and this is what we ought to endeavor to see in the lives of those who are under our influence. These people are watching us. So we'll get to point one, the futility. The futility, that's the incapability of producing the desired result. So when we try to do the Lord's work in our own hands, it's not gonna work. Or we may see some progress, but it's not gonna work. We see the disciples defeated and discouraged because their master was gone. They'd gone back to what they knew best, fishing. You know, Satan tries to tempt us so that we will be discouraged when we fail. He wants us to fail. He'll help us fail. Any way that he can, he'll help us fail because he wants us to get discouraged because as long as we stay discouraged, we're not gonna do anything for God. And when we have times of physical weakness and doubt and there's trouble in our lives, That's when we're most likely to fall to temptation. Just like when he come and tempted Christ in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. That's when he's going to hit us. That's when he'll hit us when we're the weakest. So be careful when you're physically weary or emotionally distraught not to allow Satan to win that victory. because it's when we are weak that we actually can be the strongest if we look to God for our strength. Peter said, I mean, Paul said, Paul rejoiced in weakness for it kept him dependent on the Lord in 2 Corinthians 12, seven through 10. Unless I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me. lest I should be exalted above measure. But isn't that the way we are? We have some victories with Christ, and the flesh starts saying, look what I did. No, you didn't. I did. God did. And for this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. And when Paul understood that, that it was through this weakness that he knew that this is what it was going to take to get him into position to do what God had for him to do. He said, most gladly therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I mean, when we go through times of difficulty and circumstances in our life and we say, well, I could do a lot better if this wasn't on me. If I didn't have this problem, I could do a lot better. You can do it through Christ. If you're in God's will and a circumstance or a problem comes upon you, and you're in God's will and you stay in God's will, then you can do whatever God wants you to do. It's when we get out of God's will. Now, I'm not saying you can be out of God's will and then, hard problem, you mean you don't go to church, you don't read the words, you don't pray, and then something bad happens. No, you're not gonna be able to do anything. But if you're in God's will and something comes on you, a circumstance, a sickness, somebody, a person comes against you or whatever, speaks against you, Stay in God's will and you can still fulfill the things that he wants you to do. Letter A, the disciples were faithless. Well, they'd given up, right? There they were, Christ had resurrected. He wasn't around right then. And they said, Peter said, well, I'm gonna go fishing. Looks like, you know, everything's over. I'm gonna go fishing. That's not showing much faith. Jesus died, was buried, risen, shown himself twice already, and commanded them to follow him and be fishers of men. That was still their command. They still had the same command. But like us, sadly, disciples were still lacking faith. Remember, there was a time when Peter said, lo, we have left all and have followed thee. But he's not following Christ now. He was saying that they had surrendered all to follow Jesus, but now instead of going forth in that same faith, he had chosen to go back, backwards. That's what we call backsliding, right? We go back to where we, just to go back to where you were with the Lord yesterday is backsliding. We should go forward. Now we're human, we're not, you're not going to, every day of your life, you're not going to get closer to the Lord. But what we need to do is realize that we're not closer to the Lord than we were yesterday and do something about it. As Christians, we must always remember that we also believe what Peter said in John 6 and 68. Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of life. And we believe and are sure that thou art Christ, the Son of living God. And when you were saved, you were sure of that, and you're sure of it now. But when things come against you, we forget what God has done for us. And we start looking at what Satan has come up against us, what our flesh has put up against us, and we don't think about what God has done for us. Sometimes people look back at what we call the good old days. You know, if the good old days were really that good, right there where about Miss Diana sitting, you know where to be there? Big pot-bellied stove to keep us warm today. That's not good old days to me, right? I mean, I've seen churches, old churches, that potbelly stove in the center of them. And I think, man, I'm not going to church here. So the good old days sometimes are not really the good old days. And the Israelites, they're the example of this, that God had brought them out of Egypt and took them out of all that and everything, and then they wanted to go back. I said, all the same about all the food we had back there. We didn't have any problem with water back there. We should have never left. We should never let Moses talk us into coming up here to start with. When Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, first person to fly across the Atlantic in 1927, he said that all the way, as soon as he got in the air, you know, he was, It's almost like, well, I don't know if I've done the right thing or not. And he said, I don't know if I'm going to make it. That's a long way. And doubts started coming in. But then he said, once he got halfway, he said, I can make it. He said, I'm closer to the other side. Remember, once you've crossed from death unto life, you are closer to the other side. And you can make it all the way, because God is with you. And then B, the disciples were fruitless. Of course, we see that they didn't catch anything. All night long, they didn't catch anything. They went back to their old life and were fruitless. Not only were they fruitless in their old life, they were also fruitless in their new life. They weren't doing anything for God either. They weren't doing themselves any good, and they was not doing God any good. This way of life was familiar to them, this fishing. To us, to the human, familiar feels safe, right? Well, I feel safe because of my surroundings. I know all my surroundings. I know what's going on. I can sort of predict what's going to happen, and I feel safe. They know exactly what to do and how to do it. They worked hard all night long, but didn't do them any good. Satan tries to tell us that if we go back to where we were comfortable, everything's gonna be all right. That's what the flesh wants us to do. Our flesh wants to be in a comfort zone. Many Christians leave God's will to look for an easier way, only find that at the end of the rainbow, there's no pot of gold. The easiest way is to stay in God's will. In Psalm 1611, thy presence In thy presence is fullness of joy. Walking with Christ, we realize there's peace and fulfillment that we can never achieve in the world. We're never going to be able to get to that place of joy in the world that we already have in Christ. Satan only wants us to see the good part of the good old days. To get from the so-called good old days to the present day, we had to go by Calvary, right? To get from our past life, when we were lost, to get to our life now, where we're saved, you had to come by Calvary. The next time he tries to get you to go back to the good old days, just stop when you get to Calvary. All right? I know I went there before, but there was some place I come by, and the reason I don't go back there anymore, because Christ has saved us. Psalm 84 verse 10, for a day in the courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. One day a man was fishing in a puddle, and somebody said, don't you know there's no fish in there? He said, yeah, but it was close and handy. That's a fisherman right there, but he just likes fishing. But you know, a lot of times we do things that's, well, this is easy. But what are you accomplishing? You're not accomplishing anything. If you want joy and satisfaction and true meaning of your life, look in the right place. We need to be in God's will. Our problem is not that we're fishing in the wrong place. We're in the world and that's the place to fish, right? We are in the world, not of the world, but in the world. Our problem is, instead of catching the fish in the world, we've allowed ourselves to become the bait and get swallowed up by the world. You know, a fisherman, if a fisherman, he doesn't just stick his hand where it might be a shark, right? If he's shark fishing, he's not gonna become the bait. He's gonna make sure he catches the shark. Well, we're out there and Satan's the shark, but sometimes we allow him to become his bait. Verse five again, then Jesus says unto them, children, have you any meat? They answered him, no. That morning, Jesus stood on the shore and called to the weary disciples, frustrated as fishermen, and said, children, have ye any meat? Today, we might say, any luck, boys? Have any luck? Catch anything? It must have been more than a bit humiliating to admit to a stranger, when he asked the question, they didn't know who he was, to admit to a stranger that they didn't have anything. But it was obvious they didn't have anything. Later, we'll see that they were even more embarrassed when they realized it was the Lord that asked them. You know, this reminds me of a place where I used to work. This guy, he was always cutting up and he loved to make the foreman mad. Whatever he could do to, you know, just to get him in a tizzy, so to speak. So one day I looked over and he was in the bay working beside of me. And he had a, when you drain the antifreeze out of a big tractor, road tractor, it's 12 gallons of antifreeze. So, and we used to cut off 55 gallon barrels about that tall and drain the antifreeze into them. So he's sitting there with his back to the office and he's got some kind of, I think he's got a telescopic magnet with a string on the end of it down in that antifreeze, just sitting there. And he knows the foreman's coming, because the foreman's walking the shop, seeing how everybody's doing and everything. And he knows he's behind him. The whole time he knows he's behind him. I look over and see what he's doing, and I look down. He's about to bust out laughing. And then the foreman, what are you doing? Get back to work. And he just, he loses it. But he was having fun. Right? That was what he was familiar with. Whatever he could do. So, if he had ever put his mind... By the way, this guy was lost in, but he's saved now. I've seen him in a restaurant one day, and he's saved now. But if he put his mind to his work, like he did getting out of work. You ever seen anybody like that? I used to work with another guy that was the absolute master of getting out of work. He would work an hour getting out of 15 minutes of work. because that's what he wanted to do. But we should have the desire to do what we are left here for, just like the disciples should have the desire to follow Christ and to become fishers of men. Now it was Peter that led them into it. He had been the first to say, I go fishing, and the other disciples had followed him. As believers, we need to realize that our actions have consequences. And we try to teach young people this, and we all teach ourselves this, that there is somebody following you. I've only been saved six months. There is somebody following you. I've only been saved two weeks. There is somebody following you. And when you mess up, you need to get right. Because somebody is falling down the same road. Peter took half of the disciples with him. when he went out of the Lord's will. This was a story in the Reader's Digest. A widower named Scott Katt had a secret life as a bank robber. He was robbing banks and he realized he could do a better job if he had some help. So who did he get to help him? His son and his daughter. Now they thought, well, we shouldn't do that. I can't believe dad's a bank robber. But dad's a pretty good job at it. He's doing pretty good at it. And after all, he's one of those, dad, we should do what he asked us to do. Well, it worked for two robberies, and they got caught on the third one. So you see, no, we wouldn't do that, would we? But when we go out of God's will, We have people watching us, especially if we have children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, neighbors, other Christians in the church. They're watching us, I mean all of us, to see what we do. And we will have people to follow us. And then two, we'll start into this. The feasting. Let's see. I'm going to go ahead and just go down to read 5 again. This is Luke 5, sorry, Luke 5 and verse 5. And Simon answered and said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net. And this is going back, of course, to the first time that they, that Jesus give them a miraculous draft of fishes. And again, They were doing what they were comfortable doing. And when they done this, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes and their net break. And they beckoned into their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And of course, they brought the fish to land and they forsook all and followed Jesus. The disciples had abandoned their call to follow, but the Savior never abandoned them. So for three and a half years, they followed Jesus. Yeah, they messed up a little bit along the way sometimes, but they followed Jesus, but now they've gone back, or all the way back to the very beginning, and went all the way back, and went back to their old life. Where are we at in our walk with Christ? Pastor said recently, are you as close to Jesus as you have been? Well, that's where you wanna be. You wanna be able to look to be, you wanna be able to say that today, I am as close to Jesus as I have ever been. So what if we're not? Were these disciples out on the water, were they as close to Jesus as they'd ever been? Absolutely not. There's no doubt, they absolutely were not. What did they do? As quickly as they could, they come to Jesus. Peter jumped in. They swam. The others got off the big boat. It says they got onto a little boat. Now, I'll tell you from that that the other boat was too big to come to the shore. They must have got on at a dock somewhere. So they got onto a little boat and come to the shore. They got there as quick as they could, and they brought the fish with them. So when you're not where God wants you to be, then as quick as you can, get back to him. We'll pick up there next week. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this day that you've given us. Thanks for all your many blessings, Lord. Lord, help us to stay in your will, but Lord, when we get out, Lord, when we get out, help us to recognize that and get back to you as quick as we can. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.