John 21. This will be our last Sunday, at least in this study, turning to the gospel written by John. Some of you say, amen, praise the Lord. He's going to move on to something else. But for me, that's just how I feel about it. It's a little sad. I've been spending my time with John all week, every week for a long time, and I'm going to miss him a little bit. I believe if I've counted correctly, this morning will be the 77th time I've asked you to turn with me to the gospel of John. So it's been a good journey. John chapter 21, and we'll begin reading this morning with verse 15. So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish. This he spoke signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, follow me. Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on his breast at the supper and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you? And Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, but Lord, what about this man? Jesus said to him, if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me. Then this saying went out among the brethren that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die. But if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? This is the disciple who testifies of these things and wrote these things. And we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things that Jesus did. which if they were written one by one, I suppose that not even, or that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen. Would you pray with me? Lord, we are thankful to gather in this place once again to look to your word. We thank you for the time that we've had to spend in John's gospel, his message about the Lord Jesus. And now as we turn to this passage today, I pray that Your Holy Spirit would work in our midst, open our eyes and our ears that we may see and hear Your Word, and open our hearts that we may receive it and be changed by it. Lord, I ask You to do Your work today. Should there be someone here who doesn't know You, may they be saved. And for those of us who have known You, may we be challenged by this question. Do you love me? Lord, make the change in our hearts that only you can and be glorified in our time together. I pray in Jesus name. Amen. As a Christian, no doubt in your own personal walk with the Lord, you've had times where you've experienced guilt, maybe disappointment in your own self. in your own ability to follow Jesus, maybe that sense that you are far from God. And if you as a Christian have felt those things or had those experiences, I would like to at least encourage you in this that you are not alone. We all at some point have that sense that God is far from us, that we have failed God, that we've walked away, that we've let him down. whether the felt distance has been a gradual process. You know, we think of a time when we were really close to the Lord, that we loved His Word, that we loved to pray, we loved going to church, we loved talking to other people about the Lord. And over time, it seems that that love has faded. Whether it's been a gradual process or maybe it was a devastating event, some grand failure, One moment in time when you knew you blew it. We've all slipped on our end of our relationship with God. And just another word of encouragement for you, you will do it again. No matter how far we go in our Christian walk, we will not be perfect until the day that we see him face to face. We know that God still loves us during those times. That He hasn't done anything wrong. We know that the problem is with us, but we've all been in those times where we really wonder if things will ever be the same. Will they ever be like they once were? Will I ever have that closeness with the Lord as I had before? Surely, if ever a follower of Jesus felt that way, we could say it about Peter. Peter felt that way. Closeness with the Lord. Closeness with Jesus must have seemed like such a long time ago. We don't know exactly how many days have passed at this point when Jesus meets them by the sea. But it hasn't been all that long ago that Jesus called him. Three years before actually. to follow him. It hasn't been all that long ago, really, that Jesus said, who do you say that I am? And Peter made that confession. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. And even in the upper room, having his own feet washed by the Lord, and he felt so confident, so committed that he would say to Jesus, I'll never leave you. It really hasn't been all that long ago that he felt close to the Lord, but now it seems like something in the distant past. Could things ever really be the same? He had denied Jesus. He had abandoned him. Would their relationship ever be as good as it was? It's a fair question. You know, last week we looked at the first 14 verses of chapter 21, how they had gone to Galilee to wait for Jesus. And Peter, being the impatient sort, says, I'm going fishing. Six other disciples went with him. They're out. They fish all night. They catch nothing. Jesus comes to the shore. They don't recognize him as Jesus. But he says, do you have any fish? The question that no fisherman wants to hear when he's caught no fish. They said no. And he said, well, cast your net on the right side of the boat. So they did. They obeyed and they brought in more fish than they could pull over the side of the boat. One hundred and fifty three, to be exact. And they come to the shore and they find that Jesus, in verse 9, then as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it and bread. Jesus had prepared breakfast. He said in verse 12, come and eat breakfast. Yet none of the disciples dared ask him, who are you? Because they knew it was the Lord. Verse 13, Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish. This was a welcome home, if there ever was one. A delicious breakfast of broiled fish and toast. Anybody ever had fish and toast for breakfast this week? No? Okay. I bet it was good. But after this display that Jesus has made, preparing breakfast for His disciples, this display of grace and provision, He turns to Peter. Peter needs individual attention. Some of us know what that's like being that student in school. You just needed some one on one time. Maybe the rest of the disciples were OK. They got the picture. Jesus loves us. He's taken us back. He's here with breakfast. But Peter took a step further than the rest in his denial, didn't he? He went further than they did, and he needs special attention from the Lord. Jesus needs to confront him and instruct him personally. Verse 15, where we pick up today, when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, or John, depending on your translation, do you love me more than these? Now the big question that all the commentators ask is, what or who are the these? What is Jesus asking exactly? Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these? There are three of the most common interpretations. One, Jesus is asking, do you love me more than you love these other men? They're all gathered around this fire together. They hear Jesus ask the question. That seems like a no-brainer of a question. They've seen the resurrected Christ. I don't know why Peter would have any kind of special love for these men that he doesn't have for Jesus. So I don't think that's the interpretation. Another is that Jesus is asking Peter, do you love me more than you love these things? Talking about the boat, the nets, the fish, your career, your occupation, your family business. And that's a fair question. Really, both would be. And we need to ask ourselves, as if Jesus would ask us, do you love me more than these? And we could consider our relationships. We could consider the people in our life we're closest to. Do we? Yes, we love them. But do we love the Lord more than we love them? And we could ask the same of ourselves, of our occupation. You know, we love the Lord and we love our work, but do we love Him more than anything? More than our work, more than our desires, our dreams, our goals, our ambitions, our possessions. But I think the question that Jesus is asking Peter is, do you love me more than these men love me? Try asking your kids that. Do you love me more than your brother? Do you love me more than your sister? How will that go? And we know the disciples, how they've behaved in the past. When they heard this question, I bet they perked up. Well, what's Peter going to say? This is the interpretation I prefer. Do you love me more than these other men loved me? Because that's exactly what Peter claimed before Jesus' death. Back in chapter 13, Simon Peter said to Him, Lord, where are You going? Jesus said, where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward. Jesus is going to the cross and He says, none of you are going to come with Me. You can't. You won't. You'll leave Me. You'll abandon Me. And Peter says, Lord, why can I not follow You now? I will lay down my life for Your sake. The other Gospels record, Peter said, Lord, if all these other men Abandon you. He said it right in front of them. If they all abandon you, I will never leave you. I will die for you. And Peter made the claim. I love you more than they do. And now Jesus, after Peter has failed, after he fulfilled Jesus' words, before the rooster crows, you'll deny me three times, Peter. Jesus asks, do you love me more than these men? Also note that Jesus calls Peter, what? Simon. He calls him Simon, son of Jonah. Now when Peter's brother Andrew, back in John chapter 1, had heard John the Baptist proclaim, behold the Lamb of God, and he pointed Jesus out as the Messiah to come, Andrew followed Jesus, but John tells us that he first found his brother Simon, and said, we've found the Messiah. He brought Peter, he brought his brother Simon to Jesus. And when he came to Jesus, Jesus said to him, you are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas, or Peter. The word means a stone. When Peter became a follower of Jesus, he was given a new identity. He was no longer known by what he had been or who he had been, but he was known by what Jesus was making him into. The last thing you would call Peter by his own personality is a rock, sturdy guy, immovable. He's proven over and over again over the last three years that he's the furthest thing from that. But His new identity, that new name that Jesus has given Him, is what He is making Him. It's what He's becoming. When we follow Jesus, at the moment of salvation, we are given a new identity. Our identity is no longer who we are or what we have been, but we are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. It doesn't matter what you were before Christ, it's what he's making you now. Peter has been going by this new name for three years, and now Jesus looks at him and says, Simon. He called him by the old name. Peter, your conduct, You're living like the old man. The way that you've carried yourself and the things you've done in recent days do not line up with who you are as a follower of Jesus. You have gone back to living like you were before you knew Jesus. Hearing Simon, son of Jonah, was probably uncomfortable for Peter. He hadn't heard Jesus call him that in a long time. It was maybe even painful. But before there can be restoration, sin has to be confronted, doesn't it? God doesn't just show up and say, you know what, yes, you made a mistake, you sinned in the past, whatever, it's gone, don't worry about it, go on and live your life, do better going forward. Yes, He washes away our past, He wipes the slate clean. But before restoration can happen, sin has to be confronted. You can't receive forgiveness from God until you acknowledge before God that you need His forgiveness. You can't be restored until you're willing to acknowledge and admit that you have walked away, that you have rebelled, that you have sinned. And Jesus is confronting Peter with his own sin by simply calling by that old name. Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these men? Confronted with his failure, confronted with his sin, he gave a good answer. He said, yes Lord, you know that I love you. You know that I love you. Now some people, and you've probably heard this before, look at those words for love and make a distinction. And John does use a different word. When Jesus says, do you love me? He uses the word you would know you've heard agape. The verb is agapao. That intentional choice of a love, that unconditional love. And then Peter responds and he says, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And he doesn't use agape, he uses the word phileo. A warm, natural, brotherly love. You know the name Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. But as we read through John's gospel and the way he uses those words, he uses them somewhat interchangeably. They do have their own nuances, but I don't think it's significant here in this passage. I don't think Jesus is trying to call Peter to some kind of greater love. Verse 16, Jesus says to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, says the exact same thing. Do you love me? He drops off the more than these. Peter responded in the same way, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. But then he asks a third time, verse 17, he said to him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? And Peter was grieved because he had said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. Now, I have this feeling and some of you husbands will will have this same feeling that should I live to be 99 years old and Kelby lives to be 98 at some point while we're sitting in our wheelchairs in the nursing home, she's probably going to look at me and she says, Do you still love me? We need to hear it, right? You need to hear that you that you're loved. And it probably really bothered Peter. Sitting here with the other disciples around this one breakfast and one conversation, he asked three times, do you love me? He was grieved. It bothered him that Jesus just kept asking. Why did he do it? Why did Jesus ask him three times? I don't think it takes a genius to figure it out. How many times did Peter deny Jesus? Three times? I can just hear Peter now, and this is my own imagination. Why does he keep asking me? He's asked me over and over again. I've told him now three times. Oh. Last time Peter was gathered around a fire like this, he denied Jesus three times. He cursed, he swore, he said, I don't know the man, I've never met him, don't have anything to do with him. And now, gathered around this fire, with the other disciples and Jesus at breakfast, Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to affirm his love for Jesus three times. One for each time that he denied Him. This tells me that regardless of the size of your failure, regardless of the number of your sins, regardless of how far you may feel from God, there is grace enough to restore you. Could you ever really go further than Peter went in denying Jesus? I don't know. I don't think so. And he had grace for him. He has grace for you. Peter relied on Jesus' omniscience here, didn't he? He said, you know that I love you. His actions had proved him to be a sinner and a failure, but thankfully Jesus knew his heart. Now, when we think about omniscience, sometimes it's scary because we think, well, Jesus knows those sinful thoughts that I have. And we try to put on a good front on the outside, but we can't hide what's on the inside. And he sees it and that scares us. But think of it another way. How comforting is it to know that even though we sin and we fail over and over again, he knows our hearts and he knows how much we really do love him, even if we can't show it outwardly like we want to. You know, before Peter had denied that Jesus really knew what was inside of him, Jesus says, Peter, you're going to deny me. And Peter says, no way. You don't know me. You don't know me any better than that. I'll stand with you. Peter's learned that lesson. And now when Jesus asks, Peter says all three times, you know that I love you. Yes, I failed you. Yes, I sin. Yes, I've fallen away and I've gone so far. But you know, my heart, you know that I love you. Peter's failure was greater than that of the other disciples, and that meant he needed more grace. And the more grace he was shown, the greater his love for Jesus. Remember, Jesus taught that the one who is forgiven much loves much. The more that you realize how much God has washed from you, the more you realize how much you've been forgiven, the greater the love that you'll have for the Lord. And for some of you, you think, well, I've lived a pretty decent life. You know, I don't have that much for God to forgive. You don't know yourself. Because we have all been forgiven much. And when we realize that, we will love much. Notice that the heart of the issue is love. You know, if I had confronted Peter, I would have asked him some different questions. I might have said, do you love me once? But somewhere in there, I said, Peter, are you sorry? Simon, do you promise you'll never do it again? I mean, that's what we do with our kids. But the issue is love. Because love will motivate obedience. Love motivates us to serve and obey. Jesus has instructions for Peter. And I believe that these commands that he gives here carry on to us 2,000 years into the future. So that was a lot of introduction. Let me give you three points. Number one, these commands that Jesus gives to Peter and to us, one word each. Number one, feed. Notice after each time that Peter confessed his love for Jesus, Jesus said to him, verse 15, feed my lambs. Verse 16, tend my sheep. Verse 17, feed my sheep. One thing that you should notice about this is that the sheep, belong to Jesus, not to the church. He said, feed my sheep. When we do ministry, we do the work of the church, and Peter and the rest of the disciples about to embark on this journey as disciples after the ascension, the church is established. Peter must remember that these sheep, those to whom he is ministering, those he has instructed to feed, belong to the Lord. Pastors have to know that the people they shepherd, the people we stand before and preach to, do not belong to us. You are not my sheep. You belong to the Lord. You are the Lord's sheep. Whoever it is to whom you minister, whether it's in Sunday school or some other kind of ministry outside the church, or even some of you ministering in your own home. to your spouse, to your children. You have to know this. Those sheep who have been entrusted to your care belong not to you, but they belong to the Lord, and we should treat them as such." But the instruction that he gives here is to feed. Feed, tend, care for the sheep. The work that flows from love for Jesus is feeding and tending the flock of God. Remember what Paul told Timothy. He said, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead in His appearing and His kingdom. Here's the command. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. You have a ministry, you have a responsibility to other Christians, and that is to preach and to teach the word, to feed the sheep. That comes first to pastors and teachers, but I think it applies to all Christians. We have a responsibility to teach and preach the Word of God. He told Timothy, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things that you heard from me among many witnesses. Commit these to faithful men. who will be able to teach others also. We see that process of the Word of God being passed from one to the next. It started with Paul. He passed it along to Timothy. He said, Timothy, pass it to faithful men who will teach others also. It's an ongoing process of Christian to Christian, Christian to Christian, teaching the Word of God, discipling one another, helping each other to grow in love and maturity for the Lord. That's the practical work God has called us to. He said, feed my sheep. As an aside, I'll just say this blows the seeker-sensitive movement of churches out of the water. They shouldn't exist. You've got those churches and pastors out there who have this idea that we should create church to be in such a way that we entertain, we attract people, we do all kinds of stuff to get people into the door. We'll do a series of sermons on how to manage your money, how to have a better marriage, raise your kids well, and then we'll slip in some Jesus at the end because these people are just seeking. I'll just go ahead and tell you how many people would show up to church if we really were looking for seekers. Romans 3, Paul said, there is no one who seeks after God. Seeker sensitive churches, if they were really seeker sensitive, would be empty. The people who are there are just being entertained. The work of the church, the work of ministry is not to entertain and to throw a party and try to just attract all the people to come. The work that we do and the worship that we have here on Sunday morning is for the feeding and the tending of God's sheep. That's what we're here for. I'll get off that hobby horse now. Number two. Number one is feed. Number two is follow. Verse 18, Jesus says, Most assuredly, I say to you, When you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished. But when you're old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish." This he spoke signifying by what death he would glorify God. When he had spoken this, he said to him, follow me. The command is to follow. And the command comes to us the same way as it did when He first called Peter. He said, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And now here at the end of Jesus' ministry, He calls Peter once again to follow me. But He gives him an extra bit of detail this time. He gave him an idea of how he was to die. Tradition tells us that Peter, as an old man, was carried to be executed for preaching the gospel of Jesus, and he was crucified. Thus Jesus said to him, you will stretch out your hands. And Peter, feeling unworthy to die in the same way as his Lord Jesus, requested that he be crucified upside down. And even in his death, John says he would glorify God. This is actually, this might surprise you, this is actually probably encouraging for Peter. He had failed before. He had said, I'll go with you, I'll die for you, and he failed. And now Jesus has told him, and he can live confidently, that God will give him the grace to stand firm even to the death. He doesn't have to wonder. He doesn't have to fear. I wonder if I'll do that again. I wonder if I'll fall away again. I wonder if I'll deny him again. Jesus has told him how he would glorify God in his death. This isn't the exciting part of the message that we preach, but it is a wonderful and beautiful part. It isn't the part that everyone wants to hear. But Jesus said in Matthew 16, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it for a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? That's the question for you. What will you give in exchange for your soul? Nobody wants to be persecuted. But the love that we have been shown, the forgiveness that we have been granted, the love that we have for the Lord should be such that we will take up our cross, deny ourselves, and be willing even to lay down our lives, should we be called upon to do so, for the sake of the name of the Lord Jesus. God has a purpose in Christian suffering. There's more than this, but I'll just give you a couple of purposes. One, suffering gives boldness to other believers. You in the adult Sunday school classes have been studying the book of Philippians. You remember chapter 1, Paul said, I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me, His persecutions, have actually turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel. So that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and to the rest that my chains are in Christ, and most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident in my chains, are much more bold to speak the Word without fear. One of God's purposes in Christian suffering is that the suffering of one would motivate others to have boldness and stand up and proclaim. Paul saw it in his own ministry. We've seen it throughout the history of missions. There's so many examples. I read one just this week of a man in the early 1980s in Columbia. Took a bullet to the chest. because he loved Jesus and because he had gone there as a missionary to preach. And the missions agency that sent him said that the year following his death, their applications of people who wanted to go abroad and preach doubled. It doesn't make sense to the world. It's not logical that one person should die for the gospel and other Christians say, I want to go too. But that's God's method. When people see that we preach something that's worth dying for, it's attractive. So whenever you go through whatever suffering it is, you probably, in the United States, may never have a gun put to your head or to your chest to renounce the name of Jesus. It might happen. But whatever suffering you endure, you do it joyfully. You do it giving glory to God. And it's going to scream to the rest of the world that Jesus is more valuable than my life. Jesus and His gospel is more valuable than my comfort. And that's a gospel that's worth preaching. Another purpose that he has in suffering is that it does show God is most valuable. I jumped ahead of myself. Jesus is more valuable than your health. He's more valuable than your job, than your family, and even your own life. Jesus says, follow me. And here's the disclaimer, you're probably going to suffer. Number three, one was to feed, two was to follow. Number three, focus. Verse 20, then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following. He's talking about John. Peter, verse 21, seeing him, said to Jesus, but Lord, what about this man? That's all of us, isn't it? Jesus says, Peter, you're gonna die. Now follow me. And they get up, I see them walking away from the fire, and they walk right past John, and Peter says, hey, what about him? What about John? I mean, is he going to die too? What's he going to go through? I kind of wonder if there was some kind of competition between John and Peter. I don't know. But John does take pains to mention that he beat Peter to the tomb when they ran. He was faster than the other. Now, Peter, hearing of what he's going to go through, wants to know what's going to happen to John. And Jesus just gives Beautiful answer. Like a good parent. Jesus said in verse 22, if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me. What's it to you, Peter? If I say he's not going to die until I come back, what's it to you? To quote my mother, it's none of your business. She'd be proud. Okay, you've told me what's happening to me. Now, what about him? And one of the greatest temptations in Christian ministry is comparison. To put ourselves up against someone else and see how we're doing based on what they're doing. Let me just say it gently. Mind your own business. Be concerned only with God's plans for you. Don't worry about his plans for somebody else. Don't compare the fruit of your ministry. Well, you know, I saw this many people come to know the Lord, and he or she, they saw this many people come to know the Lord. I must not be doing something right, or I'm doing better than they are. Listen, the fruit's not in your control anyway. God's the one who brings the fruit. Don't compare fruit. Be faithful. Be obedient to what He has called you to do. Don't be distracted by comparing your work to that of another. Competition, comparison, they have no place in church ministry. They have no place in the work that we do. So the command is this focus, you follow me, Jesus says. John ties up one last loose end before he closes the book. Verse 23, he says, then this saying went out among the brethren, that this disciple would not die. I guess church people have always gossiped. And they rarely get it right. They heard Jesus say, if I will that he remain till I come, what's that to you? They said, did he say John's not going to die? Did he say that John's going to be around till I come back? And you know what? He's the only one that wasn't a martyred. He was exiled to this island to be in solitude. They probably thought that's what was going to happen. He's going to live on that island until Jesus comes back. But John adds verse 23 here, just to make sure that it's clear. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die. But if I will, that he remained till I come. What is that to you? Verse 24, this is the disciple who testifies of these things and wrote these things. And we know that his testimony is true. This seems a little self-serving for John to say, I wrote this and I know it's true. But John being a Jew knows the value of an oath and the consequences. Should he be telling a lie? And he makes his promise, he swears before these readers and before God that what he has said, what he has written, every word of it is true. And in verse 25, he says, there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. I mean, we can barely contain everything that's in John. We've been given what we need. Amen. As we evaluate our obedience to these commands, to feed, to follow, to stay focused, we have to hear Jesus' question for ourselves and give an answer. So the question from Jesus to you is this, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? If you do, obey. If not, what's not to love? Forgiveness is waiting. Scripture says that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. All that the father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast him out. If you come and experience the forgiveness of the Lord, he'll remove your guilt, he'll grant you everlasting life and love for him and gratitude to him will motivate you to live your life for him. Do you love him? Would you stand and pray with me? Lord, thank you for the time we spent now in your word. I pray that your word would do its work in our hearts now. That each of us would evaluate ourselves. Whether or not we are living in obedience to you. And that flows out of the question of whether or not we really love you. So Lord, do your work in us now, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.