Broadway Christian Church

4-24-16

Pastor Ryan David Cochran

“Do You Believe?” Jesus’ Appearance to Peter

John 21:15-19

“I once was a sinner, but now I am a sinner saved by grace. I once was lost and abused, but now I am saved by Jesus. I once was prideful, but now I am humbled. I once was disowned by my family, but now I am found by a loving Christian family. I once was living a lie, but now I am a free man. I once was judged mental and unacceptable, but now I am kind and loving and giving. I once was in the dark, but now I am in God’s light. I once was condemned, but now I am free. I once was filled with shame, but now I am transformed by His love.”

These were some of the testimonies that were written on Easter Sunday, about five weeks ago. These are your testimonies of what you once were, but what Christ has made you and is making you into. This morning, if you didn’t have a chance to write those out, I invite you during our closing song, to take one of the blue cards and write, “I once was_____ but now I am______,” and bring it up to the cross this morning. We would love to have that. It’s been great. They have been sitting on my desk for the last month and it’s been great for me to read. I invite you to do that today if you’d like.

Would you pray with me: “Lord, we thank you for this morning and what you’ve been doing in our hearts and our minds. I pray that you would continue to speak to us now through your Word. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Jesus and Peter

If you know the Gospel stories, you know the character of Peter really well. You know what his character was like. He was a very bold and brash man, often the first to speak among Jesus’ disciples, which was often a word just at the right time, but was often a word not “quite” at the right time, right? We know that Peter really had a strong commitment to his Lord. On that night when the disciples were in the Upper Room and it was that night that Jesus was going to be betrayed, Jesus told His disciples, “I’m going to be arrested, I’m going to be bound, I’m going to be taken to the cross, crucified and put to death.” Do you remember what Peter said? “I’m going to go with you! I’m going to die with you.” Jesus looked at him and said, “Peter, on this night, not only will you not die for me or with me, you are going to deny me three times.”

Just a few hours later they were at the Mount of Olives and Jesus had been praying and the soldiers came to arrest them. I imagine Peter thought, “This is the moment. The Roman soldiers have come to arrest Jesus. This is the moment where I am going to prove to Jesus that I would die for him.” So he takes out a sword and standing in front of this battalion of Roman soldiers, he goes and he cuts off one of the servants’ ears. “This is my moment to show Jesus that I’m going to die for Him. Jesus says, “Peter, put away your sword. I have a suffering to go through and I will endure it.”

Just a few hours later, this same man, Peter, has been following Jesus. He has been arrested and they are in the courtyard of the high priest and there is this kind-of gateway that John and Jesus have gone into. Jesus is being questioned, spit upon and ridiculed. Peter is on the outside and he goes up to the gate and there is a servant girl there and she is about to let him in and she says, “are you one of his disciples, too?” Peter, all alone in that moment, this man who just hours before said, “Jesus, I will die with you,” has his first denial to this servant girl. “No, I don’t know him.”

Peter and the Charcoal Fire

- Failure – Repentance – Restoration -- Calling

A few minutes later, Peter and some others are standing around a charcoal fire. This is a really unique word in the Greek, it’s the word “anthrakian,” and it means charcoal fire. It’s used only two times in the whole New Testament and this is the first time. Peter and these people are standing around this charcoal fire and one of them looks at Peter and says, “Hey, aren’t you one of His followers, too?” A second time Peter says, “No, I don’t know Him.” A few minutes later, another one says, “I know—I saw you up on the Mount of Olives. You were there!” Peter says, “No, I do not know the man!” As it’s early in the morning, at that moment a rooster crowed. Jesus had said, “Peter, before a rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” At that moment a rooster crowed.

Our Scripture this morning is John Chapter 21. I would encourage you to turn to that passage with me. We have been looking at Jesus’ appearances to His disciples after His resurrection over the last few weeks. We have been seeing that Jesus meets each of His disciples right where they are. He brings to them exactly what they need in their moment of grief, fear or distress. We see that Jesus came to Mary in her grief and He comforts her. We see that Jesus came to the disciples as they are in the Upper Room with the doors locked in fear of the Jews. He comes into their fear and He calls them to mission.

Last week we saw that he came to Thomas in his doubt and makes him a man of great faith. Thomas makes a great confession of who Jesus is. Today we are going to look at Jesus’ appearance to Peter. Here, Jesus meets Peter in Peter’s failure, and He restores Him and He calls him to a good work.

At the beginning of John Chapter 21, in the first half of this story, Peter is with six of his friends. There are seven of them. It is evening and Peter says, “I am going to go fishing.” They all say, “yes, we will go with you.” So they all get on the boat and they fish all night long and John says that “even though they fished all night long, these professional fishermen—Peter, James and John—they don’t catch anything at all.” Then John says in verse 4: “Early in the morning, that time when roosters crow, Jesus is standing on the edge of the lake and he says, ‘Friends, do you have any fish?’ ‘No, we haven’t caught anything all night long.’ Jesus says, ‘throw your nets to the other side, you are going to catch a load of fish.’” So they do. They throw their nets to the other side of the boat and they catch the largest catch of fish they have ever had—153 fish. I’m not a fisherman. If you are, I don’t know if you’ve ever caught 153 fish, but that’s a lot of fish!

When it happens, Peter recognizes, “It’s the Lord.” It says that Peter throws himself into the water and goes swimming to the shore. He gets to the shore and Jesus is there preparing breakfast for them around a charcoal fire. This is the second time and last time that this word is used in the New Testament--Peter and the other disciples around this charcoal fire. Jesus meets Peter in this story in his failure. At that time of the day when the roosters crow, early in the morning, and around a charcoal fire—in that moment Jesus walks Peter through repentance, restoration and a calling to a good work.

John Chapter 21 and Our Calling

John Chapter 21, verses 15-17: “When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?’ ‘Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘feed my lambs.’ Again, Jesus said, ‘Simon, son of John, do you truly love me,’ and he answered, ‘yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘take care of my sheep.’ The third time He said to him ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him a third time, ‘do you love me?’ He said, ‘Lord you know all things. You know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ‘Feed my sheep.’”

There is an interpretation of this story that you’ve perhaps heard before. Sometimes preachers hear things and they think they’re really neat and so we keep talking about them and they kind-of take on a bit of life of their own. For one example, we have the story of Jesus saying, “The rich will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that it’s more difficult for a camel to enter in through the needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” So there has been this thought, and it just grew, that there was a gate in Jerusalem called, “The Needle’s Eye.” That thought grew and became a part of the mythology of the church. This is not true. There is no gate called “The Needle’s Eye.”

I think that the interpretation here in this story has become a part of the evangelical mythology, and that’s that there are two different words in Greek for love—agape and phileo—and the way that Jesus uses these words in this text gets changed throughout the course of their conversation. It’s true that the Greek reads: “The first time that Jesus asks Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ He says, Simon, son of John, do you agape me?’ Peter responds, ‘yes, Lord, I phileo you.’ The second time, Jesus asks again, ‘Simon, son of John, do you agape me?’ Simon Peter responds, “Yes, Lord, I phileo you.’ Then the third time Jesus then says, ‘Peter, do you phileo me?’ Peter says, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I phileo you.’

There has been a lot of discussion about the two different words of agape and phileo, and I don’t want to get into all of it. It’s simply to say that the interpretation that is often told is that agape is this kind-of rich, divine, eternal kind of love and that phileo is a worldly or brotherly kind of love, and it might be rich and intimate but it kind-of fades away. I just want to say that in the New Testament stories, agape and phileo don’t quite have that strong of a distinction between one another. In fact, even in the Gospel of John, Jesus has said to both agape the Son, as well as to phileo the Son. God is said to agape the disciples and also to phileo the disciples. The distinction that has been made between these two words—agape and phileo—is not quite as strong as perhaps some preachers have tried to make it. In addition to that, Peter and Jesus were probably speaking in Aramaic in this conversation, so there probably wasn’t this distinction between these two different kinds of love.

The real problem that I have with this interpretation is this. What the interpretation often says is that Jesus asked Peter, “do you agape” me?” Do you have this great, high, rich, eternal love for me and Peter isn’t quite able to say, “I agape you.” He is only able to say, “No I just have this lesser kind of love for you.” It’s like Jesus says, “Peter, do you love me?” and Peter says, “No, I like you.” The problem that I have with that interpretation is that it leaves Peter in his failure. It leaves Peter in a place of not quite being able to live up to what Jesus is calling Him to and I think that that is the exact opposite of what this entire text is all about. Here, Jesus is calling Peter and inviting Him into a rich, personal relationship with Him. Peter is confirming his love for Jesus.

I read an interpretation of this passage this past week by a pastor named Jim Kerwin, and I think he is spot-on. This is, I think, a way that we can read this text in a way that we can understand. We can interpret it this way: “Peter, do you love me?” Peter responds, “Yes, Jesus, you know that I love you as my closest and most intimate friend,” which is the phileo, the brotherly kind of love. “Peter, do you love me?” “Yes, Jesus, you know that you are my closest and most intimate friend.” “Peter, am I your closest and most intimate friend?” “Yes, you know everything, Jesus, you are my closest and most intimate friend.” In this exchange between Jesus and Peter, there is this invitation into a real relationship with Jesus after Peter’s failure, and Peter confirms—he doesn’t deny that he wants to be, and that he doesn’t not live up to the kind of love that Jesus is calling Him to. He is saying, “Yes, Jesus, I love you.”

Three times Peter denied Jesus around a charcoal fire and three times Jesus invites Peter to repent from his denials and express his devotion of love to Jesus, and Peter does. “Yes, Jesus, I love you. You are my closest and most intimate friend.”

I can only imagine the grief that Peter must have gone through that Friday night after hearing the rooster crow and Saturday morning waking up and hearing the rooster crow again. I can only imagine the feeling that he must have had. We saw that painting on Easter Sunday of Peter running to the tomb and the anticipation and excitement and also the worry that that painting reflected in Peter’s eyes. “I know I denied Jesus and if He is alive, is He going to accept me? Is He going to reject me? What is He going to say to me? He knows that I denied Him.”

You know what it’s like to be at odds with someone, especially when you’re the one who knew that you did something wrong, right? Your heart and your mind are just distant from that other person. You’re not sure if your advances, your desire to express friendship to them or kindness to them, whether those are going to be welcomed at all because you know that you wronged them and the only way for that relationship to be restored is for the person that has been wronged to open their arms and to invite them back in, right? It’s only when that other person says to you, “I know that you’ve done wrong,” or when that other person is the one who ways, “I’m going to come to you,” that that relationship begins to be restored.

That’s what Jesus does here for Peter. Peter is, no doubt, uncertain about what this relationship is like and here, in this moment, around this charcoal fire in this early morning, this time when roosters crow, Jesus restores Peter’s relationship to Himself. He does it in this unique way where three times Peter is able to turn away from his denial—to repent from his denial—and to express his love to Jesus. Jesus could have said, “Peter, you are forgiven,” and it could have been done with, but, instead, Jesus, in His very kind and tender way, gives him an opportunity three times to say, “Yes, Jesus, you are my closest and my most intimate friend.” He invites Peter into this restoration. “Peter, you did wrong and you know you did wrong, so turn from your hurt and your denial and express your love for me.” He knows that Peter’s heart is broken, that it needs mending, and so He, as the Great Physician, who knows exactly how to mend Peter’s heart, goes to him and three times, invites him to express his love for Him.