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Hey church, it is Devo Time. So if you've got your Bibles, we're going to be in John
Chapter 21, where we're going to talk about Jesus after the resurrection and his encounter with
the disciples. So John 21, beginning of verse 1, says after this, the this there is that Jesus
has been crucified, dead, buried, resurrected from the grave. And after this, Jesus revealed himself
again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberius.
And he revealed himself in this way.
Simon Peter, Thomas, called the twin, Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee,
that's James and John, and two others of his disciples were together.
And Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing.
And they said to him, we will go with you.
And they went out and they got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Now, I think when Simon Peter is doing this, you've got to understand what's going on in the life of Peter at this point.
Back at the last supper, Peter's sitting at the table and Jesus says, one of you is going to betray me.
And Peter's like, no way, Lord, not me.
It would never be me.
I would die for you.
And then Jesus says, before the alarm clock goes off tomorrow, you're going to deny me three times.
And Peter makes this audacious promise.
And then if you're new to Bible study, spoiler alert, Peter denies Jesus three times.
and then locks eyes with him, makes eye contact with him after the third one,
and the Bible says that he weeps bitterly.
And then they take his Lord and His Savior and crucify him dead and buried.
On the third day, he's resurrected, but at this point,
I think Peter is not just going fishing like I go fishing, like, hey, this is a fun hobby and a thing to do.
But when Peter first became a disciple, he was a fisherman.
And so sometimes what happens when,
when we don't understand what God is doing.
Sometimes we can have a tendency or a propensity
to return back to some old lifestyle,
to some old habit, to some old way of life.
I mean, because Peter maybe look at it this saying,
all right, I know Jesus died and even came back from the dead,
but what in the world am I going to do?
How can I make a living?
I mean, what am I going to do with my life?
I don't know exactly what this whole Jesus thing is about,
because Jesus has yet to give them the great commission.
And so he goes fishing.
Fishes all night, they catch nothing.
And just as the day was breaking,
Jesus stood on the shore,
yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
And Jesus said to them, children, do you have any fish?
This is how we know that Jesus is about to jack around with the disciples.
Because he calls them kids, like children, kids.
And Jesus already knows that they don't have any fish,
because he knows all things.
All authority in heaven and earth has been put under,
him. And so he calls out to them, do you have any fish? And they answered, no. And he said to them,
cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some. Now, here's what's crazy.
Peter is a professional fisherman. He's been fishing all night. I mean, there's not a lot of
distance between the left side of the boat and the right side of the boat. And I wonder if Peter in
this moment is looking at the other guys in the boat and saying, does this fella on the shore realize
that under the boat there are no sides of the boat,
but
he decides to do it anyway. So
they cast it. And now
they were not able
to haul it in because of the
quantity of fish. The disciple
whom Jesus loved, that's John
in the book of John. The disciple
whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter
it is the Lord.
And when Simon Peter heard
that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment
for he was stripped for work and he threw
himself into the sea. And the
other disciples came in the boat dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the
land about 100 yards off. By the way, just a side note, this is just a leadership principle,
doesn't have anything to do with discipleship or whatever. Don't ever let your vision get you too
far out ahead of your people. Notice what Peter did? Peter got all zealous and all gung-ho and was like,
I'm going to go be with Jesus, which is a good thing, but he abandoned his people to do all the work.
Your people will despise you if you do that. The way Jesus says,
we are supposed to lead is to be a servant. Okay, back to the text. So Peter dives in, goes,
swims to Jesus, 100 yards, the other guys drag in all the fish, verse 9. When they got out of the boat
and onto the land, they saw a charcoal fire in place. Here's why this is important. Most of the time,
you wouldn't use a charcoal fire. You just use like a regular wood fire, like logs and that kind of
stuff. Well, the place where Peter last denied Jesus, the Bible says that there were some men and women
warming their hands around a charcoal fire. And now what Jesus has done, again, though he's appeared,
I think this is the third time he has appeared. Peter has seen him a couple of times.
What Jesus does is he recreates this charcoal fire scene. It says he saw a charcoal fire in place with fish,
laid out on it and bred.
And Jesus said to them,
bring some of the fish that you have just caught.
And so Simon Peter went aboard
and he hauled the net ashore
full of large fish, 153 of them.
Do you know why the Bible says
that there are 153 fish?
Because there were 153 fish.
This isn't a make-believe.
This is not like allegory.
You see, this is actual history.
Have you ever gone fishing
and not counted your fish?
That's what you do.
and so that's why these kind of details are in the Bible because they actually happened
and although there were so many the net was not torn and then Jesus says to them come
and have some breakfast and none of the disciples dared ask who are you they knew it was the
Lord now this is important this is not this is not a ghost ghost don't eat fish and bread for
breakfast. This is not imagination. Imaginary people don't have to eat. Jesus was physically and literally
bodily dead in the grave for three days. And now Jesus is literally physically and bodily resurrected again.
This isn't a dream. This is not allegory. This is just fact. And though he was dead, now he is alive,
he still is hungry, and he eats some breakfast.
And Jesus came and he took the bread and he gave it to them and so with the fish.
Now this was the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
And when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peters, Simon, son of John,
do you love me more than these?
And he said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
And he said to him, feed my lambs.
And then the Bible doesn't say how much time passes.
But verse 16, and he said to him,
a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
And he said, yes, Lord, you know that I love you.
And he said to him, tend my sheep.
Verse 17.
And he said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
Now, Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me?
You see, Peter gets it now.
Peter's always a little slow on the uptake, right?
And then Peter's sitting there across from Jesus.
On the third time, he goes, oh, okay, I got.
get it, Lord. I see what you're doing here. We're sitting by a charcoal fire. I was by a charcoal fire
the night that you were betrayed and put on trial. And I was asked three times, are you a disciple of Jesus?
And I said, three times, I am not, I am not. And then one time he curses and said, I am not.
And now you're asking me three times, do I love you, do I love you, do I love you? Do I love you?
You see, one of the things that I need you to understand is that Jesus meets us right where we are.
Jesus meets us right in our failures, right in our struggles, right in our addictions, right in our
bad habits. Jesus meets us right in our denial of him, right in our broken promises.
Jesus meets us in the places that we are most ashamed of. Jesus meets us in those places where we
promised God last week that next week we would never, ever, ever do that thing again. And yet we
can't seem to quite pull it off. And in those very moments, Jesus meets us. He's not a
ashamed of us, he doesn't run from us, he meets us right there. And no matter how big and how bad
and how shameful our sin is, we can never out sin the cross of Jesus Christ. Now, that is not a
license to sin that should be a license from sin, freedom from sin, that Jesus knew exactly what
he was getting when he chose you and he paid for you and adopted you anyway. And he looks at
Peter and says, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? Peter picks up on what he's doing.
He's grieved because he said to him a third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, do you know
everything? You know that I love you. And Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Then he goes on to say,
truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted,
but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you
where you do not want to go.
And then in parentheses,
the Bible gives commentary
to what Jesus is talking about.
John wants to make sure
that none of us missed this.
This was said to show
by what kind of death
Peter was to glorify God.
Jesus is reinstating Peter,
saying, my grace is sufficient for you.
That when you denied me,
that did not disqualify you
because your faith is not up to you.
Your faith is a gift from me.
Your salvation is a gift from me.
And so as he reinstates Peter, he gives him three chances.
Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?
And when he says, Lord, do you know everything? You know that I love you.
And he says, okay, Peter, when you were young, you used to go where you wanted to go and dress however you wanted to dress.
But now, as you are surrendering your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you see, Jesus said, the world hated me, it's going to hate you.
In this world, you will face troubles of many kinds.
And there will come a day, Peter, we're going to be.
somebody else will dress you and you will stretch out your hands. And John wants us to know this was to
show by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. Church history tells us that Peter was crucified
for his faith. He was crucified. And yet on the way to the cross, Peter, again, Peter, who was
the same one that was afraid to even mention that he knew who Jesus was just a few chapters ago,
if you turn over to the book of Acts, Peter is going to be standing in front of the Pharisees and the Sanhedron,
and they beat him because he keeps preaching in the name of Jesus, and they say, hey, you can do whatever you want to do,
but you've got to stop talking about this Jesus stuff. And Peter, in front of the people that could kill him,
say, you determine what you've got to do, but I cannot stop talking about what I have seen and heard.
You know what he saw? You know what he heard? He had breakfast with Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. And then one day at the end of his life,
Peter is going to be arrested because of his faith.
He's going to be put on trial and he's going to be crucified.
And on the way to the cross, church history tells us that Peter said that he was not worthy
to die the same way his Lord died on a cross.
And the Romans said, that's fine, we can fix that.
So they just turned him upside down.
Now get this.
Jesus is saying, essentially, it would be better for you to follow me.
me from this day forward and your life here on earth in brutally and tragically. And it would be better
for you to follow me to a place that leads to an upside death on a cross than it would be for you to go
your own way, gain all this world has to offer and yet forfeit your soul. And then it says,
and after saying this, Jesus said to Peter, follow me.
Now, here's why I think he said, follow me.
Because you want to take a big guess on what the very first two words Jesus ever said to Peter?
Peter was met by Jesus on these same Galilean seashore.
John calls it the Sea of Tiberius.
Tiberius is a little town on the sea.
of Galilee. We find out in Matthew
chapter 4 that Peter,
his name was Simon at that point, that he
is walking along the seashore
and Jesus
comes walking up.
And the very first words Jesus ever
utters to Peter is this,
follow me
and I will make you fishers of men.
Now three, three and a half years later,
Jesus and Peter are sitting on that
same Sea of Galilee
bank.
after Peter probably thinks he has utterly disqualified himself
because he couldn't keep his promise to Jesus,
that he denied Jesus out loud in front of Jesus.
Jesus saw him do it,
busted him doing it on the third one,
and he's probably thinking I'm out.
You ever feel that way?
I mean, you ever, like Peter,
do you ever mess up the same way with the same sin,
struggling with the same thing over and over and over?
And the enemy begins to whisper in your mind
that you are condemned, unfit for use,
that God wants to have no part of you
or no part with you?
Well, do you know what Jesus' response to that is?
He meets you right in the muck and the mire.
He meets you right in the midst of that sin and shame.
And what he does with Peter is he says,
hey, why don't we start over?
You see, when I died on the cross for your sins,
your slate was wiped clean.
but even more than that, even better than that,
I didn't just give you a blank slate to start over and try again,
because let me tell you, sometimes you'll hear this phrase,
God is the God of second chances.
Oh, help us. I hope not.
Because guess what would happen if I had a second chance?
I would just screw up again, and a third chance again,
and a four chance again.
I don't need a second chance.
I need a new life.
And this is what Jesus is offering to Peter.
He goes, let's from this point over, you are forgiven.
I am re-inviting you in because there is no thing that you could ever do to disqualify yourself from being mine.
Peter, follow me.
Let me pray for you.
Our good and gracious Heavenly Father, God, I thank you for your lavish grace that you continuously pour upon us.
God, I thank you that no matter how many times we sin and stumble and fall, that your grace is sufficient for us.
And God, I pray against any kind of, uh,
twisted bad theology that somehow would lead someone to believe that they have a license to sin,
but your gospel and your grace gives us freedom from sin. Because when we stumble and fall,
when we sin, when we break our promises, we can run to you, we don't have to run from you.
God, and I thank you, Jesus, that you are a treasure greater than anything this world has to offer.
And by the power of the Holy Spirit, God, would we follow you? We pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.