Lord, we thank you for your word.
Lord, we thank you for the stories of Jesus
and the character of Jesus,
for how deeply you love us.
Lord, I pray that as we hear from your word today,
that you would speak to us
and that you would be at work.
In Jesus' name, amen.
So I know at least a few of us here
are Marvel movie fans.
And for those of you who don't know,
the kick of superhero movies
for the last 10 years or so
are mostly put out under the brand of Marvel, right?
And so these stories are often compelling,
but they've also got,
have like achieved their own frameworks at this point
where we kind of know what's gonna happen in the movie
and there are certain key things
that they always bring up.
And one of those things
that there's often an after credits scene now.
So literally fans will sit in the theater.
And I shouldn't say fans,
I should say me too, because I do this.
And so you'll wait for five minutes
for all the credits to scroll by
so that you can see a little 30 second clip
that kind of concludes some side story
or it ties into something
that's happening in the future.
One of the most popular ones
is at the end of like the,
one of the movies
and all of the superheroes
are sitting in like this local restaurant
and they're chowing down on food
and they're in like their full outfits and everything.
And it's just like this really weird, corny scene
that just fulfills some offhanded comment
that a character made earlier in the movie,
you know, after they win the battle,
they're like, hey, you wanna go get food?
Basically.
And so John 21 is a bit like an after credits scene.
Everything is kind of wrapped up nicely in John 20
for Jesus's story.
He's resurrected.
He reappears to the disciples.
He commissions them to go out as he was sent out.
But John 21 in this chapter,
John wraps up a few loose ends, right?
What happens to Peter after he denies Jesus?
And what happens to John, the author of the book?
And as John answers these questions,
he communicates his last message to Jesus's followers,
that Jesus loves generously,
restores fully and calls uniquely.
And so we see his generous love in the first story
where they go out and fish
and Jesus provides a lot of fish for them.
And so this section is bookended in verses one and 14,
that this is of Jesus revealing himself.
So I really see the purpose of this section
is it's another testimony to Jesus's revelation
of himself after he was resurrected.
It's another piece of John's claim
that Jesus truly died and rose again.
But each of these times that Jesus appears,
he does it with a little bit of a different purpose.
And so the first time he appears to Mary, right?
Just outside of the tomb.
And he sends her to go and tell everybody else
that he's resurrected.
And then the second time he appears as proof
of his resurrected body
for most of his disciples in a room.
And then the third time,
second time to his disciples directly,
he appears for the benefit of Thomas
to really care for him,
someone who has doubted that Jesus is really rose.
And so this last time here,
Jesus seems to reveal himself
to demonstrate his ongoing love for the disciples
and his generous provision for them.
And so Peter, who is a fisherman by trade,
goes out to fish
and the other disciples go along with him.
And this is likely either to feed themselves,
maybe they're hungry,
or they could be catching extra fish
to go out the market
and try to make some money.
Now, fishing is probably a little bit different
than most of our careers here
for those who are working.
Fishing is literally like hand-to-mouth work.
And so for a lot of us working,
you know, academics or tech or business,
if we have a down day
where we're not as productive,
we don't get a tenth of our paycheck cut out
or something in that two-week period
or however your payment system works.
But with fishing, you know,
if you go out and spend an all-nighter
fishing on the lake
and you don't catch anything,
then you have made no money at that point.
It would be like if I showed up to work one day
and didn't get a lot of work done
and my manager came up and was like,
yeah, sorry, we're not paying you today.
You didn't get everything done.
Like, what? Are you serious?
So this is a devastating evening for the disciples
to spend all night out on the lake
and to catch nothing.
And so this kind of frames Jesus' appearance
and question as he comes up to them.
And so it's kind of in the morning dusk,
so they probably,
when it says the disciples didn't recognize Jesus,
it's probably legitimately,
like, they're a few hundred yards off from shore.
They probably can't quite see him in the morning haze.
And so there's this guy standing on the edge of the beach
after all night out fishing.
He's like, hey, have you caught any fish?
And the disciples are probably like,
oh my gosh, no.
And Jesus says,
oh, well, why don't you just throw the net
on the other side of the boat?
And if you don't know this is Jesus,
this sounds like, are you serious?
Like, I don't know if there's an exact phrase for it,
but there's kind of fisherman's folklore
where people have these ideas
that they're good fishermen,
but the reasons that they are
are probably not connected to reality at all.
It's just kind of,
oh, I know where the exact best fishing spot is.
Sometimes that's true
and sometimes it's just,
I caught a lot of fish there one time.
I know an older gentleman
who goes fishing regularly
and he takes another fellow with him
and the other fellow at one point
had a very poor fishing experience.
I think he caught like one fish
the whole time they were out there
and my friend caught like two dozen.
And ever since then he said,
oh, this guy, you know,
I think about the fish,
he couldn't catch a cold.
You know, it's just like,
that stigma is stuck to him at this point.
And so this feels like
that kind of fisherman's advice.
Like, oh, just, you know,
I always throw the net
on my right side of the boat.
It's going to work for you guys.
And so the disciples,
whether they're exasperated
or whether they just, you know,
all right, sure, whatever,
they throw the net on the other side.
And the results are quite different
than the typical fisherman's advice, right?
The net fills up instantly with fish.
And so John, for John,
it instantly clicks.
He says, this is the Lord.
And for Peter, as it usually doesn't,
it doesn't instantly click.
But as soon as John says it,
Peter is out of the boat
and swimming to shore,
leaving the others to drag the net
a few hundred yards into shore.
And so thankfully,
Peter's not completely rude.
And he actually,
when they get the boat in,
he comes back and helps drag the net
up to shore.
And so they sit
and they eat with Jesus
and it's just this overwhelming thing.
And in verse 12,
it's phrased a little strangely
and I want to point it out.
You know, Jesus says,
come and have breakfast.
Now, none of the disciples dared ask him,
who are you?
They knew it was the Lord.
And it feels kind of weird.
It's like, why would you think about asking
if you know it's the Lord?
Like, what's going on here?
And I think it's really an expression,
probably, of just the emotions
that they felt at that time.
Like, here is a man
who has only appeared to them
a couple times
and that they saw die, right?
And he's sitting on the beach
cooking fish.
Like, we are so used to hearing the story
that the disciples,
like, this is the first time
that they've seen Jesus
really interact with material,
not, like, phase into a room magically,
like, through a locked door.
So it's, like,
a really typical experience
and I think this is just the expression
of, oh my gosh,
like, this is the Lord.
And you kind of want to ask
because he should be dead,
but here he is.
And so I think that's the expressiveness
that's going on there.
And so I mentioned
that the purpose for this section
is another testimony
to Jesus' resurrection.
But I think that the message
of this section seems to be
that Jesus simply loves his disciples
and loves caring for them.
You know, he gives them
an overabundance of fish.
So 153 could easily be
over 1,000 pounds, right?
And yet the net is not torn
that they're catching the fish with.
And he also cares for them
and he prepares breakfast for them
after a long night of work, right?
He's already cooking the fish on the shore.
It's not necessarily the fish they caught.
He's gone out and caught some
and has prepared something
specifically for them.
And we have no real given reason.
There's no allegory.
There's no symbolism.
It's simply that Jesus loves his disciples
and cares for them.
And I think that it's much like
washing his disciples' feet earlier.
He's showing that he still serves them
and is going to provide for them
after his resurrection.
And I think it's worth highlighting
this generous provision here
because in our modern world,
I think the common word for it
is networking.
But there's a lot of aspects in life
where we're pushed to build relationships
with people so that we can get
some sort of advantage from them later.
So it's making connections
or getting to know somebody.
And often we think about,
okay, if I get to know this person,
what can I possibly get from them
in the future?
And I think that Jesus challenges
that conception.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't
do those things.
I am saying that we need to go out
and love much like Jesus did
without much benefit to ourselves.
And so when I was a staffer
at college camps,
one of my camp directors
would ask the question regularly,
when was the last time
that you did something
for someone else
when you received
absolutely no benefit for it?
Like it was of no selfish motivation.
Nothing was really returned to you.
And every time that I remember
that question,
I can't think of the last time
that I have selflessly
served somebody in that way.
And I think that Jesus
sets the example for us here
of doing this,
but he also shows us
that this is how he continues
to love us
with this provision,
this true care for us.
And so one of the ways
in this story
that Jesus goes on
to uniquely love his disciples
is by restoring Jesus
after he denied,
or by restoring Peter
after he denied Jesus three times.
And so moving into 15 through 19,
this is kind of,
this is the counter passage
to Jesus's three,
or man,
I'm going to keep saying this,
Peter's three times denying Jesus
when Jesus was at trial.
And I think that Peter's denial
of Jesus carries a special weight.
This isn't just saying,
oh, I don't believe in Jesus.
He's not, you know,
he's not real.
This is someone
who followed Jesus
for three years
and had a pre-built relationship
with him.
And they had had exchanges
and they had gone
through things together.
And then at the first sign
of real challenge
and difficulty,
he's denied him
and said,
no, I don't know this man.
It reminds me a little bit
of kind of flare-ups
that we have
in the relationships
with people that we care about.
A kind of funny
but also sort of dangerous one sometimes
is if you're arguing
with your spouse
or significant other
and you say,
oh, you remind me
of your parents.
Don't say that.
Another thing is,
you know,
I think of children
that get so upset
and just riled up
and they're like,
I hate you, mom or dad.
Or, you know,
and they just say that
and they stomp off.
And that's not like serious
in that moment,
but that's painful
to the parents.
Or, you know,
a really powerful thing
can be when a parent
expresses disappointment
in their children
in really strong terms.
You know,
unintentionally,
maybe in the heat
of the moment,
but those things
chip at the relationship
that have been built up
over all that time
and it's a swift swing.
It's, you know,
it's really taken
a chunk out of it
and it's to test
the endurance
of that relationship.
And I think that
those are all kind of
little types
of what Peter
has done with Jesus.
You know,
they've built
that relationship together
and now he's denied Jesus.
And so Jesus is working
on not just forgiving
Peter for this,
not just brushing
it under the rug,
but we'll see
that he actually
restores Peter
and we'll get into that
a little bit more
in detail.
But one of the first things
I want to talk about
with this section
is verse 15.
And there's a couple
things going on here
that I want to stop
and really examine.
First,
it seems like
the conversation
between Jesus
and Peter
probably happened
by the campfire
with all the other
disciples sitting around.
I know in verse 19
or verse 20
it talks about
Jesus is walking
down the beach
with Peter
and John's behind them.
But in verse 19
it seems to indicate
that Jesus says,
follow me
and that's when
they get up
from after breakfast
to walk down the beach.
And so this seems
kind of awkward.
Jesus is asking
these questions.
It's kind of like
you don't want to be
in the room
when a parent
is disciplining their child
or chewing them out.
That's just an awkward moment,
particularly when you're
growing up as a kid.
If your friend
is getting beat down
by their parents,
you're doing something wrong.
It's like you don't
want to be there
in that moment.
So it feels awkward to us
but I think that it fits
with the story so far.
Peter is really
one of the main characters
in John besides Jesus.
And he often seems
to be kind of set up
as the de facto leader
of the disciples.
He often speaks for them.
He's the one
that publicly spoke
for the disciples
when a bunch of people
stopped following Jesus
in John 6.
And Jesus turns
to the disciples
and said,
are you going to leave me?
And Peter's the one
that speaks up
and says,
who else would we go to?
You are the one
with the words of life.
Peter publicly chopped off
the ear of the servant
in the garden.
And Peter also publicly
denied Jesus three times.
So a lot of Peter's actions
have been in front
of these disciples already.
So it makes sense
that his restoration
would happen in front
of all of them as well.
A second kind of confusing
thing about the verse
is that there's
an undefined pronoun
that Jesus uses
in the first question.
And Jesus says,
Simon, son of John,
do you love me
more than these?
And so it's,
no one's like exactly sure
what these is,
but there's only
so many things
it could be.
And I think the two
main things are,
it could either be
the fish that he had
just caught,
or it could be
the disciples
who are sitting around him.
Once again,
the choice of the other
disciples seems kind
of awkward at first,
like playing favorites
or something.
But it probably fits
better with the story.
And so the fish,
what the fish has
going for it
is the explanation
for the pronoun
is that it's
the less awkward
of the two.
You know,
okay,
do you love me
more than the fish here?
But there seems
to be no story
and context for that.
Right?
There's never any
conflict between fishing
and following Jesus.
And in fact,
when the disciples
are called from fishing,
they always leave
to go to follow Jesus.
And Jesus just blessed
them with 153 fish.
So it seems a little weird
to come back
and ask the question
that way.
So the more awkward
explanation of the disciples
seems to sit correctly.
And I think that this is
expressing not literally,
Peter,
is there like some
quantifiable more amount
of love that you have
than the rest of the disciples?
What he's saying is,
Peter, you know,
is the passion
that you've shown for me,
is that true?
Because Peter,
as we said before,
Peter's frequently
representing the rest
of the disciples
and even does
outlandish things
above and beyond them.
A few others of them
is that when Jesus is
washing the disciples' feet,
you know,
Peter says,
okay, whoa, whoa,
don't wash my feet.
This is crazy.
And Jesus says,
no, I have to wash your feet.
And then Peter's like,
okay, fine,
but can you wash
my hands and head too?
And Jesus is like,
just calm down.
It's gonna be fine.
So Peter's like always
showing that exuberant passion.
And Peter says,
I will lay down my life
for you during the Last Supper,
which ends up not being true,
but then ends up
being true later also.
And then Peter is the one
who also barrels
into the tomb head first.
We talked about this
in our community group
a little bit last week.
That's like,
you have no idea
what's in there.
This dead body possibly
could be really bad.
And Peter just,
boom,
like straight into the tomb,
like right by where
Jesus was laying
looking for what's going on.
So I think the question here
is not that quantifiable
love question,
but is that passion
and exuberance
that you've shown,
is that there?
Do you love me?
And so Jesus and Peter
go back three times.
There's slight differences
between all the questions
and answers,
but they're almost
all identical.
And Peter gets exasperated
by the third time
the question is asked.
And that kind of makes sense.
You know,
you can say what once
if you didn't hear
what somebody said,
but like if you don't hear
them the second time,
like you don't get another chance.
You just have to pretend
you understood
what they said.
So like there's,
it feels like there's always
room for like that
clarifying question,
but the third time is like,
Lord, you know everything.
You know that I love you.
And I think that the reason
that Jesus asked him three times
is not just because symbolism
works well and you know,
you denied me three times,
so I have to ask you three times
and that's how it's going to work.
I think that there's real
restoration at work here.
The answer to the question
or the answer to Peter's answer
is not,
okay, you know,
it's not,
do you love me?
I love you.
I forgive you.
It's,
do you love me?
I love you.
Feed my sheep, right?
Jesus is doing,
Jesus is doing more
than just saying,
don't worry about it.
He's really saying,
I'm restoring Peter
back to the commission
I've given him
to the church fully
from that point of denial.
And so I really think
that each statement of denial
is replaced with a call to serve.
I think that the correct illustration here
is probably something
about restoring like old paintings
and I looked at that a little bit
when I was looking for like illustrations
but I really don't understand enough
about paintings.
So maybe some of you do,
it's like super meticulous
the work they do
to like restore a painting
to look the way it used to
but not too much
and there's like these fights about,
oh no,
they made it too bright,
that looks too much better.
Like whatever,
I don't know.
Car restoration is another thing
where you have like a vintage car
that you restore
that's drivable
so you can go and show it at shows.
The thing that I know about
is video games
so I'm gonna share that with you.
And so about 30 years ago,
you guys probably,
a lot of you remember this,
like the big TVs called CRTs,
like when we didn't have HD TVs
that were skinny
and attached to the wall
and you had to like lug them around
like this to be able to set them down
and the screen was only that big anyways.
Older video game systems
were designed to run on those TVs
and so if you find a way
to finagle a 30 year old video game system
onto an HD TV,
you're gonna find out
it doesn't look very good,
and it doesn't respond very well.
And so there's this thing
called emulation
which is careful,
tedious redesign
of both the original systems processor
and the game itself
to be able to run it
on modern TVs.
And so one of the biggest gaming companies,
Nintendo,
made a small little emulator
basically like that
and reproduced,
you know,
the exact game
as it was before.
And so it handles
absolutely beautifully
but it also acts
exactly like the game did
and so it's restored
in that sense.
And so Jimmy can actually attest to this.
He was over at our house
one afternoon.
I think we were just
like hanging out afterwards
and Jimmy,
like I showed it to Jimmy
who had grown up with this system
and he's like,
this is amazing.
He's kept being like,
okay, just one more level.
Like if we're like,
he was like,
I'm just gonna try one level up front
and then like 10 minutes later
he's like,
okay, I gotta stop for sure now.
But it works exactly like it did.
It was restored fully.
And so when we think of restoration,
we think of hard, tedious labor
to bring something back to where it was.
This is not just a brushing under the rug.
Jesus is really working on Peter here
to restore him.
And so once Jesus restores Peter
from his past mistakes,
he also gives him a future purpose
to glorify God in his death.
And so verse 18,
I mean verse 19 makes it clear
that that's what he's describing.
This is to show how he would glorify God
in his death.
Verse 18 is likely referring to crucifixion
when it says stretch out your hands
and being carried where you don't wanna go.
And this is kind of the early church.
That's the earliest records we have
is that Peter was the first one martyred
and that he was crucified.
It's also possible,
I would say likely that Peter
had probably already been martyred
by the time John had actually finished this gospel.
So he's probably describing at this point
both the prophecy and that it did happen.
And so what's interesting is that
this is a reversal of the previous experience, right?
John first lied to protect his own skin
when he was in slight danger.
But Jesus is saying,
next time that this happens,
you're going to risk your own life
and you're gonna give glory to God in doing it.
So there's a future restoration there as well.
One of the earliest instances of church martyrdom
that we have recorded
is of a bishop named Polycarp.
And he was put to trial before a proconsul
and then executed.
And the words that he uses are like,
this is what I picture like Peter standing up
before he was martyred.
And so the proconsul was insistent
and said,
take the oath and I shall release you to Polycarp.
Curse Christ.
And Polycarp said,
86 years I have served him
and he never did me any wrong.
How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?
And so that's just a reversal.
You know, Peter going from,
oh, I don't even know this man
to the example that Polycarp sets
and probably Peter said,
if we have the record,
of absolutely affirming his belief in Jesus,
even in the face of death.
So Jesus restores his past,
you know, sets his future
and then he gives him the open offer
to restoration in the present
with follow me, right?
And I think that this is probably a literally like,
hey, come on,
let's walk down the beach together,
follow me.
But John does a lot of this double meaning stuff
where it's, you know,
okay, come and follow me.
And so at this point,
oh, sorry,
follow me is kind of the way
that Jesus calls the disciples
back in John 1 originally too.
That's specifically the word he uses
when he calls Philip.
He says, you know, follow me.
So at this point,
Peter is fully back in the position
he was before denying Jesus.
And like I said before,
restoration is not trivial.
It requires extreme work.
And I think that work in this case
is the death and resurrection of Jesus,
that Jesus has died and come back to life.
To bear Peter's sin in this instance,
he can now call Peter back to restoration.
And I mean, this is really like,
this is one of the first actings
out of the gospel that we see
of direct forgiveness given to Peter.
Um, every time personally
that I wonder about whether God is,
God forgives me
or is like disappointed in me.
Um, this is the passage
that I come back to
because it's extremely clear to me
that Jesus is the one restoring here.
It's not about Peter coming back to Jesus.
It's about Jesus working to forgive him
even after he's denied Christ three times.
Um, and I hear two primary concerns
from kind of two groups of people
that might be wondering,
you know, is God disappointed in me?
Does God really forgive me?
Does he really restore me?
Um, and I think the first group
are, um, those who feel
that they've committed,
like, grievous faults.
Um, maybe they've hurt someone
in a very lasting way
or done something that was really wrong.
Um, and these people can,
you know, hear,
they might hear a Christian
who professes, like,
or confesses to, like,
small sins, like, um,
whatever it might be,
just, you know,
I struggle with pride
or, you know, I'm struggling with,
I got mad at somebody.
And they think to themselves,
oh my gosh,
what I've done is so much worse
than this.
Like, God's forgiveness
is not for me
or, like, God can't be pleased in me.
Um, and those people
never realize that Jesus
can restore people
from even the greatest of sins.
Um, the second group of people
are kind of the ones
that might be sharing about,
you know, I got angry at my neighbor
or something like that.
It's those who feel
they consistently struggle
with endlessly nagging
small faults.
And you may hear testimonies from,
they may hear testimonies
from people in the previous group
of, you know,
God bringing someone
out of drug addiction
or out of a strong belief
against Christianity
to believing in him.
And they might sit there
and think, okay,
God moves large things like that,
but he's never gonna come after me
in my small faults.
Um, these people
may never realize
that Jesus is more persistent
in his forgiveness
than we are in our wrongdoing.
Um, and the fact
that Jesus fully restores Peter
should be an encouragement
to all of us in that area.
You know, Peter has fallen
into both of these camps easily.
He's made a lot of boneheaded
small mistakes
along the way consistently.
And he's had the great mistake
of denying,
literally denying Jesus.
And keep in mind,
this isn't just some guy.
This is the man that goes on
to lead the early church, right?
And when I'm talking
about restoration,
I'm not talking about,
oh, you can now do
this little small thing.
No, Jesus fully restores him
back to the calling
that he had for him.
Um, so I think that
Jesus' restoration is powerful.
Um, I think that we often
think about restoration
as something that only happens
in heaven when things
are made right.
Um, and I think that God
is working that in each
and every one of us now.
And I would not run it past him
to, to, to work,
continue working in your life.
Ask him for these things
because he continues to restore.
Um, so I imagine this is all
kind of just swirling
through Peter's head,
um, including the statement,
wait, didn't Jesus say
I was going to die
a brutal death before?
Um, you know,
I can just kind of picture
that coming back to him
while they're walking
down the beach.
And Peter's like,
okay, but you know,
what about the guy behind me?
Like, is he going to have
to go through the same stuff
I am?
This sounds like,
you know, pretty rough
come to the end.
Um, and Jesus' answer
to Peter is pretty much,
yeah, don't worry about it.
Right?
He just is like,
you know, if he,
if it's my will
that he remain until I come,
what's that to you?
You follow me.
Um, and it appears
that John's purpose
for including this
is initially the rumors,
that rumors were spreading
that Jesus like would come back
before Peter died.
Someone took this out of context
and spread it around.
Um, and in contrast to Peter,
John was likely
the last apostle to be alive
as he was writing,
he was exiled
and writing Revelation,
uh, one of the latest books
in the New Testament.
Um, so it's possible
that people are sitting there
saying, oh my goodness,
John's still alive.
You know, you know,
in five, 10 years or so,
Jesus is going to come back
because he's pretty old
at this point, right?
We've seen in the past
that every prediction
of Jesus is coming back
that's before today
has all been wrong.
And it also gets people
really caught up in the,
oh, when's it going to happen?
Um, and so I could definitely
see John giving this statement
here to say like,
okay, calm down.
This is not what Jesus said.
You've misinterpreted this.
This is what he actually said.
He was just using me
as a possible example
of, um, Peter
to contrast Peter
not worrying about it
and just to follow after Jesus.
Um, and I think
what's significant to us
is how different
Peter and John's calling was,
right?
Even though that they both
have this main goal
to witness and glorify God.
Uh, John ends up being
the second most prolific author
of the New Testament
after Paul, right?
He provides some of the
most intimate testimony
of Jesus and the testimony
of his second coming again.
While Peter seems to be
the de facto leader
of the disciples,
as we mentioned,
but definitely goes on
to lead the church
and is at the front lines
of God's Spirit's work
in the church,
particularly when they come
to the Gentiles
and that wall finally falls.
The, it doesn't become
the Jews or God's
chosen people anymore,
but there are chosen people
from every tribe,
race, and nation.
And Peter's there for that,
right?
He's the one right there
experiencing it.
Um, as I mentioned before,
John, you know,
is called to live a long time.
Peter is called
to an early death.
Um, and something interesting
is that they both have
very different personalities.
Um, it seems like,
we don't know this for sure,
but it seems like Peter
and John were good friends
from the writing here
and the way that they,
that John describes Peter.
Um, we know the two of them
are working together,
but they are just
entirely different people.
Uh, John's usually
the first one to pick up
on something
and kind of think about it,
and Peter's usually
the first one to do something.
Um, but God is using
both of them
for the same purpose.
Uh, and I think that
there's both an encouragement
and a challenge to us there.
Uh, the encouragement
is that Jesus's call
on each of our lives
can look very different
from person to person.
So if you're looking
at somebody else next to you
in church
or someone else that you know,
um, don't measure
your spiritual success
off of whether you've
taken that same,
the exact same path
as somebody else, right?
It might look like
somebody's living
a better life than you are
or has gotten something
better than you have,
but Jesus's answer
to that is,
no, just follow me, right?
Um, and both of, uh,
I think, you know,
with this church,
you know, some of us,
we might be called
to extremes here.
Some of us may be called
to preach Christ
in countries that are
violently opposed
to Christianity.
Um, and some of us
may be called
to live long lives
and care for families
and injustices
in our own communities,
but both of these things
bring glory to God,
and God is pleased
with both of those callings.
Um, I think that the challenge
is that, you know,
in church,
where this isn't necessarily
like a friend group
that you get together
and pick,
this is, each of us
have been called
by God to himself,
and so there's gonna be
different personalities here.
There's gonna be
Peters and John
sitting in this room,
and there's gonna be
all kinds of different
personalities too,
and you're not gonna get
along with everybody
right away.
I'm gonna be honest with you,
like, it doesn't work
that way.
You know that.
There are some people
you click with right away
when you meet.
There are some people
you're like,
I just, I don't get that person.
Like, how do they
even process life?
Like, it's just totally
out of left field.
Um, and Jesus provides
the framework for this too,
right?
Yeah, my calling
is on that person's life.
You follow me, right?
Um, and I think that
this ends up being a blessing,
and, um, I see people
who, there are
different recommendations.
Should you, like,
try to be mentored
by someone who's similar to you?
Should you try to be mentored
by someone who's different than you,
whether it's in work
or in church or in life
or whatever it might be?
Um, and personally,
like, all of my best mentors
have been people
that have processed things
entirely differently
than I have.
Um, Sean processes things
entirely differently than I do,
and I've really enjoyed
sitting under him
because of that.
And I can, all the people
that I've benefited from
most in, like, work or life
that I think back to
are people that are like,
they're, you know,
I'm processing life this way
and they're processing life
this way,
and it's just such a benefit
to see all of those
different perspectives
and the different ways
that people work.
Um, and so I think
that that's,
in God bringing together
all the different people
in the church,
that's part of his design.
Um, and a lot of personalities
are meshing together,
um, for the glory of God
ultimately.
Um, so in the,
the conclusion of this chapter,
come to verses 24 and 25,
uh, it,
John kind of includes this
as affirming his identity
as the writer.
You know, in John,
in verse 24,
he says,
this is the disciple,
this is the disciple
who's bearing witness
about these things,
the disciple who,
you know,
uh, Peter and Jesus
pointed back to.
Um, and so he's kind of,
he's kind of signing the letter,
he's kind of signing the letter
at this point.
Um, and he's bearing witness
about these things,
which are the things
that Jesus has done.
And these things
that he's done
in this chapter,
you know,
he's referencing that.
And a lot of the things
he's done in this chapter
are things he's done before
where he, you know,
loves generously,
restores fully,
calls uniquely.
These are themes
we've seen run through John.
But, you know,
Jesus has done miracles.
He's spoken truths.
He's both called people
to himself
and scared them away
from himself
by the things
that he said.
Um, and, you know,
John is,
John's ultimate purpose here
is that he's clearly
claiming to provide
an eyewitness account
to the greatness
of who Jesus is.
Um, so if you're here
and you're not a Christian
or you're not sure
what you believe
or you're kind of,
you're, you know,
you're not,
you're not quite sure
where you're at.
Um, a lot of these bold claims
that John makes about Jesus
I would just encourage you
to pay attention to
because he's making
real truth claims here.
He's not just saying
this is a cool idea
that I had about this guy
I met one time.
He's literally saying,
no, this is like
an eyewitness account.
This is the equivalent
of a news story
or a video reel
because they didn't have
those things back then.
This is literally
as accurate as you can get
at this point.
And so he's saying,
you know,
Jesus is real
and he's done these things.
Um, but I hope more so
for all of us,
um, that we see the beauty
of the things
that Jesus did too.
Um, particularly in this passage.
We experience very little
of the kind of love
and forgiveness
that Jesus demonstrates
in this passage.
But you know,
if you've ever had someone
that has worked with you
to restore you
after you've been beaten down
by something in life,
or if you've ever had
a moment, big or small,
where someone has come
alongside you
and loved you unconditionally
in a way that's not beneficial
at all to themselves,
then you've,
you've seen
that these are beautiful moments.
Like you can remember
those experiences
and you appreciate them.
And those are all
little pieces
of what Jesus' love
looks like
from this passage.
And the encouragement
to us is that
those are the things
that Jesus still does
for his people today.
So, let me pray for us.
Lord, I thank you
for your love for us.
Lord, I thank you
that you still
generously provide for us.
You still restore us.
You still work in us.
That you call
each one of us here
uniquely, Lord,
to different walks of life,
but to walk together in you.
Lord, I pray that
the words of John
would just ring in our minds
and our hearts
for years to come
just after going through
John together as a church.
Lord, I pray that there
would just be some truths
implanted in us,
maybe that we don't even
realize at this point,
that we would carry with us
for the rest of our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.