For 25 Years I’ve Gone to Church

We’re closing out our nearly two-year study of John with Jesus’ public recommissioning of Peter. Michael Card’s book “A Fragile Stone” helped me to see two things I had missed:

1. Though Peter was not the first Pope, Jesus did choose him to be one of the two most important leaders of the early church, the other being Paul.

2. Jesus had a secret individual meeting with Peter after his betrayal. (See (1 Corin. 15:5) We don’t know what was said, but we do know that Peter seems eager to be with Jesus by jumping out of the boat and swimming to him. He seems to feel forgiven. But this scene seems to be the recommissioning of Peter in front of the apostles.

It was around a fire that Peter betrayed Jesus.

Now, it is around a fire that he is recommissioned.

This was a quote from this week’s sermon I’d like all to consider how to apply this week: “The righteous are those who disadvantage themselves to advantage others; and the wicked are those who disadvantage others to advantage themselves.”

Icebreaker:

How does Golde first respond to Tevye’s question? How might a defensive lukewarm Christian respond if asked, “Do you love Jesus?” What would you say is the true evidence of love in marriage or in our marriage to Christ?

Sermon Link: 

This is one you can watch or listen to. The transcript will be divided below for you.

https://gospelinlife.com/sermon/feed-my-sheep/

Sunday:

1. Answer the above “ice-breaker.”

2. How did you experience the love of Jesus last week?

Monday: The Texts   Mark 14:27-31 & John 21:15-25

3. Read Mark 14:27-31

1. What prophecy from Zechariah does Jesus quote?
2. How does Peter think he is stronger than all of them?
3. What does Jesus say Peter will do? How does Peter respond?

4. Read John 21: 15-17

1. What question does Jesus ask first, and why? How do you see the Surgeon’s knife?
2. Why do you think He asks three times?
3. How does Peter respond each time?
4. What command does Jesus give each time Peter responds?
5. What exactly is Jesus commissioning Peter to do? Find 2 examples of Peter doing this in Acts.
6. What should your life look like if you truly love Jesus? Consider His commandments, His gifting of you, and how you are dying to yourself to benefit others.
7. Are you growing in this?

5. Read John 21:18-25

1. What is Jesus telling Peter about his death?
2. How does Peter respond, and what does Jesus tell him? How should we apply this?
3. How does John close his gospel in verses 24-25? Thoughts?

Tuesday: Peter’s Problem

Watch or Listen and Read:

Otherwise, I just want to add my thanks to those of you who are participating in the ‘Rise’ campaign. It’s a true game changer, and it’s moving right on. This year, we’ve been mainly spending time looking at Jesus in the book of John, preparing His disciples to go out into the world to represent Him, and most of the time, that preparation takes the form of teaching. So what we’ve really seen over and over is Jesus teaching His disciples, but sometimes the preparation takes the form of counseling. Sometimes, Jesus comes in as a counselor and liberates us from the things that bind us and keep us from being what we should be, and if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, not only will you need to be taught by Him, you will need what I’m going to call here that kind of surgical counseling that He does on Peter. So, we’ll see what that is as we go along. So, let’s just notice that Peter’s got a problem, he’s got a big problem and Jesus does surgery on that problem and then heals him.

 Okay, so let’s take a look at the depth of Peter’s problem.

The surgery Jesus does on Peter’s problem and how it’s healed.

Okay, first of all, the depth of Peter’s problem; now, obviously, what if you know nothing else about the book of John, where we started would be and what Jesus is doing with Peter would be pretty inexplicable, but I think most people do know that Jesus was arrested. And when He was arrested and taken to trial and then taken to His death, His disciples scattered. But at one point, Peter was publicly confronted and asked, ‘Are you a disciple of that man who’s being taken off to death? Aren’t you one of His disciples?’ And three times he was asked that, and three times he denied that he was. Now what? So why is this a big problem? Well, it is. and let me talk to you about how grievous a problem it is and how deep it is. First of all, what Peter did was incredibly grievous, for several reasons. One, Peter wasn’t just one of the twelve disciples, he was actually one of the three. Peter, James and John were, in a sense, Jesus’ inner circle. He gave them more input, more love. So Peter was really as close as a human being could be to Jesus. Secondly, Peter was the only one who swore and swore that he would never deny or abandon Jesus. You know, the other disciples weren’t great shakes, but at least they weren’t so stupid, and so out of touch with who they were, and that they would have done what Peter did. What Peter did was he swore that he loves Jesus more than all the other disciples. He said, ‘If everyone else abandons you, I will never abandon you. I will go with you even to prison and a death.’ It was a public claim and it was his way of saying to Jesus, ‘I love you more than the rest of these guys. I’m more loyal than the rest of these guys. I will never abandon you.’ So Peter, when he denied Jesus, he did exactly what he said he never would do. So it was one of the inner circles he had claimed he never ever would do it. Don’t forget the other thing is he did it three times, and I think it’s fair, sometimes you can get caught off guard. Sometimes you can do something once … you slip, you’re scared, you know, you’re caught off guard. It’s fair to say, you know, ‘that wasn’t me. That just wasn’t me. I’m not like that. That wasn’t me.’ But when you do it three times, that’s you. That is you! That is who you are. That is that’s who you really are. So he did it three times; he claimed he never would do it; and interesting, there’s a professor of the New Testament it or was a professor of New Testament at St. Andrews, Richard Bauckham. Does a very interesting commentary on Mark in the book of Mark. Jesus being denied by Peter, three times, is mentioned in all the Gospels but in the book of Mark, it adds that the third time Peter denied Jesus, he called down curses. Now Richard Bauckham says, ‘All right, why, and what does that mean?’ And the answer is, if you’re calling down curses, you’re calling curses on somebody. So was he calling down curses on his interrogators? No. Since these are the people that could haul you off to prison. No, he was not calling down curses on the interrogators. Was he calling down curses on himself? No, that would look kind of suspicious if he’s trying to say, ‘Hey, I have nothing to do with this guy.’And so, Richard Bauckham says, Peter must have been calling down curses on Jesus! And why would he do that? Well, because in that shame and honor culture in which high loyalty was so important, far more important than we experience here, we live in an individualistic culture … We don’t even stay with our companies more than a few years, you know? But in that time and place, loyalty was everything, and for Peter to call down curses on Jesus would have been proof to anybody listening. There is no way that if you’re a follower of that man, you would never do such a thing; that’s so cowardly. And even though I tried to just show you that, you know, a shaman honor culture’s somewhat different. I think we can all identify with how grievous this is. I mean, if it was somebody you owed everything to, somebody put you through college, or, you know, for free, or something like that … and if you would have abandoned them to death in order to save your own skin, how would you feel about yourself? This is unforgivable This is not only unforgivable from the outside, it’s unforgivable from the inside, how could you ever forgive yourself? How could you ever, ever get past this? Do you see Peter’s problem? I hope you do. Now, before moving on, let me just say how does this relate to us … I would think that there’s probably some people in this room surely that have something like this in your past. Some regret something you can’t get past. Something that it makes it very difficult, it makes it very difficult for you to live with yourself. Then you know exactly what we’re talking about here and you are very eager for the rest of the sermon to see what Jesus does. But for the rest of us who might not right now feel that way about any one particular thing, let me warn you. There’s a great verse in Jeremiah 17:19 nine, ‘the heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?’ The heart is deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?

Now, the trouble with the word ‘righteous’ and ‘wicked’ for us when we read it, especially in the Old Testament, it doesn’t compute much to modern people. But Bruce Walski, a great Old Testament scholar who understood the Hebrew, understood biblical Hebrew better than anyone in the world, said that if you want to understand the real definition of the word ‘righteousness’ and ‘wickedness’ in the Old Testament, he says, remember this … The righteous are those who disadvantage themselves to advantage others; and the wicked are those who disadvantage others to advantage themselves. So when the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know, this is telling you and me that you are more wicked than you dare believe; you are more wicked than you can possibly admit to yourself right now. You are more capable of disadvantages to others to advantage yourself, you’re more capable of cruelty, of exploitation, of lying, of doing things that you know harm other people, to save yourself. You are more wicked than you ever dare believe. and as time goes on, it’s going to come out. There might be horrible situations where you do something like what Peter did; there’s most likely smaller situations, but they will come out and you will need what Jesus is giving to Peter.

6. What stands out to you and why?

7. Find 3 reasons from the above that explain why Peter’s behavior was especially grievous. (Elaborate on Peter’s role, on his calling down curses, and his repeating the sin 3 times.)

8. Meditate on this and explain how you could apply this to your life in so many ways, and how you could today. The righteous are those who disadvantage themselves to advantage others; and the wicked are those who disadvantage others to advantage themselves.

Wednesday: Spiritual Surgery (Part A)

This section from Keller reminded me of Paige’s outline of Ruth with the Lord’s hands: the Surgeon’s hands who wields a knife to heal, but even the Surgeon’s hands are the tender Shepherd’s hands.

So secondly, what is the surgery that Jesus does to Peter? Well, I’m using the word surgery even though you may notice that that’s not a metaphor in the text, but I’m using the word, the metaphor, to bring out what I think isn’t in the text. So let’s take a look and see what Jesus does. When they finished eating, Jesus says to Peter Simon, son of John, ‘do you love me more than these guests?’ ‘Lord, you know, I love you.’ ‘Feed my lambs. Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ ‘Yes, Lord, you know, I love you.’ ‘Take care of my sheep. Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ ‘Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.’ ‘Feed my sheep.’ Now, what is Jesus doing? What a model of what He will do for anybody who comes to Him and discovers that you’re more wicked than you knew? First of all, Jesus is making Peter painfully retrace His steps. Now, before showing you exactly how He’s doing that, let’s step back and realize what He’s doing. Let’s talk about what Jesus is not doing; He’s not saying, ‘Hey, I’m a God of love, and I just accept everybody. Nobody’s perfect. To err is human; whoops! and therefore, I just love you; and let’s not worry about it … let bygones be bygones. I’m a God who just accepts everyone.’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls that cheap grace and he says cheap grace never changes anyone. Now Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as you know, was a German minister during World War II, and in Germany, and he was executed for his opposition to Hitler. And during World War II, he wrote a book, it was equipping ministers by the way, in seminary, and it was called The Cost of Discipleship. In the book, he wrestles with the question, ‘why was it that most of the German church was willing to capitulate to Hitler? Why was it that most of the German church was willing to sign a loyalty oath to Hitler? Why?’ And He decided it was the concept of what he called, ‘cheap grace’. Now, ‘cheap grace’ is simply this. We believe in a loving God, a gracious God, but sin is no big deal. That’s cheap grace. Sin is no big deal. God just loves us and accepts us. No big deal. And by the way, in New York City, there’s a lot of people say ‘I believe in God, but you know, I don’t even like you talking about the word sin … sin, and who’s to say what is sin? And I believe in a God who just accepts everyone and loves everyone regardless.’ And Bonhoeffer said that a culture saturated with the idea of cheap grace rolled over for Hitler. Because when Hitler came into power, people said, ‘Well, maybe this isn’t the best, and this guy’s not the best, and maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. But you know, God forgives. Why should I stand up and call out evil and get my head taken off? Literally, you know, God will accept everybody’. And Bonhoeffer says, here’s the irony … is that, it’s not the Gospel at all. And if you have a God for whom sin is no big deal, then love is no big deal. Now there is a God who doesn’t take sin seriously. Isn’t that a loving God, because just to accept people, what does that require? Nothing! But the God of the Bible is a Holy God, He’s a just God, He is to pure than can even His eyes can’t even behold iniquity. and He had an idea … He wants to love us. So how can He love and forgive us? Only through the expense of grace, costly grace, by Jesus Christ going to the Cross and taking the divine judgment. You see, and here’s what’s so ironic … Only a God who hates sin, who sees the seriousness of sin, only that God is a God whose love is electrifying, astounding, costly, and therefore, when I just choked, I just did a theological thing on you. Theologically, the holier your concept of God, the more electrifying and costly His grace to save us, so you can embrace us, and accept us and love us. But it’s also true personally. It’s also true in the heart. You will never be electrified by the love of God unless you see the depth and the seriousness of your sin. In fact, to the degree you see your sin in the darkest colors, to that degree, will the grace of God feel precious, and be amazing … amazing love. How can it be without ‘my God’s just died for me.’ It’s not amazing unless you see how bad your sin is, and that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. Look how painful it is … first of all, it’s not in the text … But, if you were here last week, in chapter 21:9, Jesus has appeared after the Resurrection to the disciples on the beach, and He calls them to eat around a coal fire. Verse 9, we didn’t read it here today … Peter denied Christ around a fire. Jesus brings them back to a fire. Peter denied Christ three times. Peter is asked by Jesus three times, ‘do you love me?’ In fact, look at the first question. He says, ‘Peter, do you love me more than these?’ So Jesus is just going back to what? Peter’s denials, He’s going back to his claim that ‘yes, I love you more than all these other guys. You know, I’m more loyal than all the rest.’ I mean, Jesus is just taking him back to his claim. He’s walking him through it, and you say, ‘wow! that’s hard.’ Yes, it is. Look at verse 17. It says, ‘Peter was hurt.’ I mean, not just once, not just twice, three times. He was hurt. It was hard and you say, ‘Boy, He’s twisting the knife.’ No, He’s not twisting the knife, but He’s using the knife because He’s a surgeon; and if He is merciful to you, you will feel that knife coming in. You will see your wickedness at some point. Now the way God puts that knife in you is the Bible, the Holy Spirit. Some really good friends, your best friends, you know, better is, you know, ‘open rebuke than hidden love.’ Friends will tell you about what’s wrong with you. So through friends, through the Holy Spirit, through the Bible, and just through life circles … Chances are, at some point, in will go the knife because Jesus knows there’s no way you’re going to be healed and electrified by my love unless you see the depth and seriousness of what you’ve done. So the first part of the surgery is in goes the knife. But here’s the second part now. Sorry about the metaphor and please, physicians, you know, bear with me because I’m a layperson. But you know, sometimes, the doctor cuts into you and you’re not under general anesthetic, in which case you need to hold still. You know, I mean, I’ve never actually had a doctor, you know, I remember one time a doctor was saying that hold still or I’ll probably cut your entire toe off. And he doesn’t usually say that. But I mean, obviously, I can’t start doing this, I need to hold still if he’s working on my foot. He’s working on something like that. And so to extend the metaphor, when the knife comes in, and when Jesus shows you your sin, you need to hold still, so that what happens actually doesn’t just wound you but heals you … and how do you do that? Through repentance. Repentance is holding still under the knife. Now, there’s a great verse in 2 Corinthians. Second Corinthians verse 10. It goes by very fast, but it’s a life changing insight, and this is where Paul says, ‘godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and no regret. But worldly sorrow brings death.’ Godly sorrow leads to repentance and to salvation and no regr9et, but worldly sorrow brings death. Very interesting. Godly sorrow is repentance, and real repentance, according to Paul, liberates. But there’s another kind of remorse, another kind of sorrow in the face of your sin that actually leads to woundedness so they spend the rest of their life being angry and bitter and hating themselves. Do you see what I mean? So I’m using the metaphor. When the knife goes in and you see you’ve done something wrong, repentance is being still under the blade so that you actually are healed.But there’s another kind of worldly sorrow, and another kind of remorse that actually makes things worse. So which kind is Peter responding with? Its true repentance, of course, but you can sort of see it, because there’s two things Peter does not do. That will tell you the difference between true repentance and godly sorrow, godly repentance and worldly sorrow. The one thing he does is he makes absolutely no excuses at all, there’s not any defensiveness; so for example, ‘do you love me more than these?’ ‘You know that I love you.’ ‘Do you love me more than these?’ ‘You know that I love you.’ Now the second time he could have said, ‘Excuse me! What? I already told you, of course I love you!’ I mean, even there, you’re starting to get defensive. Or he could have said, ‘Why are you rubbing it in? I’ve already admitted it.’ Or he could have said, ‘hey, my life was on the line! cut me a break.’ There’s all sorts of ways he could have made excuses, been defensive, but no, he absolutely receives whatever Jesus says.

9. Why did Bonhoeffer feel German Christians capitulated to Hitler? What does cheap grace mean? Have you been guilty of that? Share.

How does Jesus make Peter retrace his steps? Why?

10. Share a time when the Word, the Spirit, or a Christian friend helped you to see a sin you had not truly owned.

11. What does Keller mean about staying still beneath the surgeon’s knife?

Thursday: Spiritual Surgery (Part B.)

But there’s another thing he doesn’t do … He doesn’t make excuses. But on the other hand, he doesn’t grovel, either. He doesn’t say, ‘Oh, I’m terrible. I’m awful. I don’t want … why do you even have anything to do with me? I’m so unworthy. I’m unworthy.’ He’s not doing that either, and that’s the difference. You see, real repentance is repentance for sin. But what Paul calls worldly sorrow is a kind of self-pity. In self-pity, you’re really upset, but you’re upset about yourself. You’re upset about the mess you’ve gotten into, you’re upset about how you feel, and what you’ll do is, all you know is ‘I just gotta get God to let me go. He’s keeping me feeling guilty. I’ve got to do something, I have to appease Him, I have to, I have to grovel, I have to do whatever.’ It’s all about you. You’re looking at God only as someone who can kind of get rid of the pain, and you’re all upset about the pain, but in real repentance, it’s all about Him. What is upsetting you? It’s sorrow, repentance is sorrow here upsetting you, is that you have wronged Him, that you hurt Him that you aggrieved Him, that He’s in pain; and so when you see that, then you just stay still. You receive whatever, you know, if you’re going to be saved, it’ll be by grace, not by trying to somehow weasel out of Him. Some kind of, you know, forgiveness … because you’ve been so abject and so, you know, and talk so much about whether you are … No, Peter stays still, and as a result he’s healed. Now do you see how it works? My goodness. Basically, Jesus says three times. ‘Peter, do you love me?’ and when Peter says, ‘Yes, I love you’, you know what’s really going on there? Let me give you another way of putting it. Jesus says, ‘Peter, you failed me.’ And each time Peter says, ‘Yes, I did!’ ‘You failed me.’ ‘I failed you. I failed you. I failed you.’

And look at what Jesus does as soon as Peter responds, and he’s responding with repentance immediately … As soon as Peter responds, repentantly, every single time what does Jesus say? ‘Feed my lambs; Feed my sheep; take care of my sheep.’ What is that? Well, who are the sheep? Who are the lambs? Well, the lambs and the sheep, of course, are His people, the church; and to take care or to feed, Jesus uses words like poinmainos, which has to do with shepherding and shepherds were the leaders; I mean every king was often called a shepherd and pastors were of course called shepherds. And here’s what’s going on. Jesus says, ‘You failed me.’ Peter says, ‘I did fail you’ and Jesus says, ‘right, you failed me. You failed me utterly.’ Okay? ‘You’re in charge now. You failed me terribly; Now, you’re the leader. You’re the biggest failure, now you’re the top leader.’ What? The moment Peter responds to repentance, Jesus Christ drives down into his heart of hearts with the most incredible love and affirmation. and here’s Jesus’ message. ‘Peter, you are the biggest failure of all the surviving disciples, you’re the biggest failure; and therefore, because you’re plunging your failures in my grace, you will be the best leader’. Plunge your failures into my grace, and they become like lead turned to gold. You say ‘How could that possibly be?’ Well, it’s because of this. What do you want in a leader? Don’t you want a leader who understands the human heart? Don’t you want a leader who’s not overconfident? But don’t you want a leader who’s not under-confident. You see, when your identity is rooted in Christ, not in your performance, you’ve got confidence. Now that you know that you’re a sinner saved by grace, you understand the human heart. Now you can take heart, you can take criticism, the simple fact is this religious morality says ‘if I’m strong and I don’t do anything wrong, then God will bless me.’ But the Gospel is only when I admit I’m weak, only when I see that I’m a sinner saved by grace. Do I see what God has done for me, and I get connected with the favor of God? See, religiosity says it’s strength that connects you to God’s grace, but the Gospel says it’s weakness that connects you to God’s grace. Paul says that ‘when I’m weak, then I’m strong. Only when I’m weak am I strong! Only to the degree I see that I’m weak, am I strong.’ And that actually means because you’re the biggest failure and you’ve come to me and you’ve come under my knife, and you’ve responded in repentance, okay? I’ve mixed the metaphor. You’ve pledged your failure into my grace, you’ll be the biggest leader, the best leader of them all. Peter’s healed and he can heal you.

How’s Jesus able to do this? You know, I love the place here in verse 18 where Jesus says to Peter, ‘solemnly I say to you’, He says,’ very truly I say’, He says, ‘when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted, but when your old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then He said to him, ‘follow me!’ Now, it even tells you when we read this, He says, ‘they will stretch out your hands and take you where you don’t want to go.’ We said ‘What is that?’ It’s a metaphor for crucifixion. It was a way of talking about crucifixion, and of course, the passage tells you just because it means John wanted everybody to know what that meant. But when Jesus says, ‘follow me’, He’s reminding us of this. This is a metaphor for how all Christians ought to live. What does it mean to be a Christian, to take up your Cross? What does this mean? Before you’re a Christian, you’re like this. You dress yourself and you go where you want. You know, basically, you might help the poor here or there. Give to charity … Basically, your life is just ‘’I want to figure out how I can, you know, maximize my life and be as happy as I possibly can. I have to become a Christian.’ You take up your Cross, you know, to have your hands nailed. Open … means you’re vulnerable, you’re exposed. To take up your Cross means what? You no longer go where you want to go, you no longer do what you want to do.

You always say, ‘How can I be serving the people around me? How can I be serving my master?’ Your hands are nailed open, you’re exposed. Your wallet is exposed, your schedule is exposed, your emotions are exposed, you don’t defend yourself. You open up to the people, to the lambs, to the sheep, to the people around you. You care about people, you don’t live for yourself anymore. You live for Him. You’re not your own. You’re bought with a price. How was it that Peter, that selfish, self-absorbed guy, three times he did it and became such a great shepherd? The answer is: he saw that Jesus’ arms had been nailed open for him and that enabled him to live the rest of his life nailed open for everyone else. Now let’s close this way. Maybe it’s practice, I can be and take a couple minutes to do it. Number one, first of all, Peter literally, probably did get crucified. Some of you’ve heard, even though nothing in the Bible tells us what happened to Peter, in the end, there’s enough evidence that Peter probably actually was literally crucified for his faith. and so he followed his master quite literally.

12. What is the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow?

13. How does Peter demonstrate godly sorrow, true repentance? And what is Jesus’s response?

14. Why is groveling religiousity rather than repentance? 

15. Explain how Jesus’ words to Peter about the kind of death he will die is a metaphor for the Christian life.

Friday: So What About Him?

 But notice when you know, one of the more comedic parts of the Bible is where basically Jesus says, you know, ‘Peter, you’re going to die for your faith!’ and Peter says, ‘huh?’ and looks around and sees John coming. ‘So what about him? Yeah, I’m going to die. What about Him? Is He going to die?’ And Jesus says, ‘What is that to you? And one of the things you have to keep in mind is if you follow Christ, He is going to give you what you need. One of the things you’re going to need is you’re going to need to see your wickedness, so He’s going to show it to you. You’re going to need to see your helplessness and your weakness, otherwise you’ll never be strong in Him. Never. But the point is some people will rather more literally experience crosses and some of the rest of us not as much, and what does that do to you? God is going to give you never more than you can bear, but just about as much as you can, and if you don’t have as much as this person or that person, what is that to you? So the first thing is don’t compare yourself to other people. Just say ‘Lord, where do you want me? I want to have my arms open. I want to be vulnerable to serve you and the people around me.’ And don’t worry about everybody else’s path. You’ve got your own path. You know, in the Narnia Chronicles, the Aslan Christ figure is always saying that ‘child, I only tell you your story. I don’t tell you anybody else’s story.’ That’s number one. Number two, the lambs and the sheep, one of the reasons why Jesus and the Bible always talks about the church as lambs and sheep is because it’s such an insult. You know, He doesn’t say ‘feed my cattle’, you know, He doesn’t say ‘take care of my dogs and cats’, you know, cats come up and they nuzzle you, but sheep are kind of like useless. They’re stupid, and they’re smelly, and they’re flea-bitten and all that sort of stuff and whenever Jesus talks about sheep, He’s talking about how human beings really are, and what that really means is, if you’re going to follow Jesus Christ, you need to be willing to deal with the kind of, how do I say, there’s an awful lot of people in your life that for you to take care of them, love them, serve them, is going to be unbelievably unfulfilling for you; you get almost nothing out of it. I’m throwing this in for the sake of a couple of you. Dick Lucas, he’s still alive, but he’s a pastor. He was a great preacher in England, at a church in London for many years. He’s still alive but I’ve listened to many, many recordings of his sermons and when he preached on this subject, when he preached on this text, John 21 ‘feed My sheep’, he tells a story that many years ago he came to Stony Brook school out on Long Island, a boarding school; and he did a whole week-long series of preaching and messages at the chapel, and the very first day, to his great distress the headmaster got up and said, ‘and by the way, Reverend Lucas is here all week to preach, but also if any of you want to talk to him personally about any personal matters as a pastor, he’s available.’ Now Dick Lucas was born in the 1920s, he’s a, you know, a Cambridge Englishman, and he’s a lifelong bachelor, and in the sermon I heard him preach, he said, to put it mildly, ‘I’ve always found children to be a trial and error!’ He listened to twelve to fourteen-year-old kids coming in, boys and girls, mainly talking about how they had this crush on somebody else and the other person didn’t really even know I exist,and here’s this, you know, Dick Lucas is sitting here saying, ‘Oh Lord! I could go to a play with somebody, I could go to a pub with somebody. Why am I here?’ And the second night after he was just despising them all, he was supposed to be preaching on John 21 and he saw the place where it said, ‘Feed my lambs’ and he was just knocked flat. And he almost, and by the way, you know, he’s a uncharismatic Anglican, so he doesn’t really hear voices, but here’s how he felt. He felt he heard Jesus say,’ I don’t get much out of my, you know, my relationship with you. You’re my lamb. Now you feed my other lambs. Please be patient with the people around you. Please be open to the people around you.’ Even the ones that are very rewarding, one last thing, and is the last thing. In Jesus Christ, God, the Father really loves you, and I do think, look, there’s two kinds of people out here, I think. I think the typical New Yorker is way overconfident, but down deep underneath, we’re all afraid that we’re not lovable. One of the reasons we’re working so hard is we’re trying to cover up the sense that we’re not good. Some of you are very, very aware of a kind of self-loathing in your life and it is very difficult for you to really believe that God or anybody else could really love you. This is a way of saying, ‘Yeah, He does.’ There’s a great poem by the great seventeenth century metaphysical poet George Herbert and it’s a poem about a dialogue between the Father talking to a soul who doesn’t live like a soul, who is sort of self-hating. And the soul is saying to the Father, ‘you can’t love me; I’ve tried so hard to improve myself, and I have seen no gains. So I don’t see why I’m worth even dealing with.’ And then the Father comes back and says, ‘Don’t you tell me you know who I should value who I should love. Because my Son Jesus Christ thought you were valuable enough to die for, then you are.’ Now this is really great English poetry, but here’s how it goes. This is the first stanza where the soul is telling God, you know, just forget about me and He says, it says: Man: “SWEETEST Saviour, if my soul Were but worth having, Quickly should I then control Any thought of waving. But when all my cares and pains Cannot give the name of gains To Thy wretch so full of stains, What delight or hope remains? The Father, God, says: What, child, is the balance thine, Thine the poise and measure? If I say, Thou shalt be Mine, Finger, not My treasure. What the gains in having thee Do amount to, only He Who for man was sold can see; That transferr’d th’ accounts to Me.” There’s a considerably less sophisticated children’s poem that goes like this, it says the same thing. The stars will live for a million years, for a million years in a day … But Christ and I will live in love when the stars have passed away. Let’s pray: Father, there’s so much anger toward you in the world. But I think it’s largely because we don’t believe you love us and your Son Jesus Christ, you prove that you do. And Father, a lot of anger at our own, at each other and ourselves because we don’t know the grace. We don’t experientially know … we say Jesus died for our sins, we don’t know what it means. We haven’t made it around. We haven’t been transformed by it. Father, thank You that you’ve shown us here how the surgery of the Gospel of knowing who we are and what your Son has done for us can change and transform us. Continually do that for us so that we can be conformed more and more into the image of your Son; in His name we pray. Amen.  

Saturday

16. What does Jesus tell Peter when he asks about what will happen to John? Why shouldn’t we compare our burden to the burdens of others?

17. Why are we called sheep or lambs?

18. What point was Keller making with the Dick Lucas story?

19. What are some ways you can know that you love Jesus?

20. What is your take-a-way and why?