So we looked at um the great Easter resurrection passage in uh the Gospel of John last week. We’ve been going through the Gospel of John better at well over a year and we’re going to finish it off this morning in chapter 21, but we read that, you know, the great climax of the resurrection appearances of Jesus to the ones he loved and the end of chapter 20, that would seem to be an excellent way to end the Gospel of John because John wrote, “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” That would seem like a pretty good place to let the credits roll on the Gospel of John, but many of us are familiar with lots of movies and books that, you know, there’s a dramatic climax, it builds to a climax, and then there’s a postscript afterwards that kind of shows the life, the ongoing life of some of the some of the characters involved. You know, there’s in The Lord of the Rings the hobbits return to the Shire and Wesley and Buttercup ride off to freedom and they’re in a long embrace and Hannibal Lecter prepares to have an old friend for dinner and Bruce Wayne, he’s presumed dead, he saved Gotham, but he’s shown living a quiet life in Florence, Italy. So the Gospel of John has a similar epilogue, ties up some of the loose ends, follows the climax of the resurrection because there’s something very important that needed to happen to expedite the Christian church. One of its key leaders, one of the apostles, remained in need of special restoration and recommissioning. Rehabilitation stories are always very inspiring. You know, Craig McTavish has been a hockey fixture in this city for more than 40 years. He played nine seasons for the Oilers, won three Stanley Cups with them. He coached the team for another eight years. He served as GM for two. Today, he’s still a regular commentator on the broadcast. Some of us can remember how he first came to be an Edmonton Oiler. He’d been drafted by the Boston Bruins. He worked his way through the minor leagues to a regular roster spot and at 25 years old, he was kind of living the life that a lot of young athletes aspire to. He had fame and he had money. He had freedom. But January 1984, McTavish had been out drinking and he became drunk enough that they cut him off from bar service and he got in his car and at high speed he caused a multi-vehicle accident. He struck the rear of a vehicle being driven by a 26-year-old woman from Maine named Kim Radley. Devastating impact and she died of her injuries a few days later. Now, McTavish was charged with vehicular homicide. He was given a mandatory one-year prison sentence without parole. So, he was housed in a Massachusetts prison that had been built in 1812. He was given a 5×8 cell and a bucket for a toilet. And those were pretty low days. He was 26 years old. His future looked pretty dim. Why would anyone take a take a chance on a marginally skilled hockey player with that kind of thing in his past? Now, during his time in prison, the Christian parents of the woman he’d killed went to visit him and offer him forgiveness, which led to an ongoing relationship between him and her family. And McTavish said he was very nervous about meeting them initially, but it was a turning point for him. He says he can’t say enough about that family. They were unbelievable. The father said, “Kim would want this young man to pick up the pieces, be a lot wiser, and make something of himself.” And their forgiveness, it didn’t relieve Craig McTavish of all his guilt, but it shaped the way he could carry that for the rest of his life. While he was in prison, he was wondering how fans would react if they ever took him back. The Boston Bruins cut McTavish loose and in a move that was pretty controversial at the time, the Oilers offered him a second chance. As he left prison, McTavish said, “It’s not over. It’s not behind me. So many things remind me of my terrible mistake, but the Oilers gave him 10 more years as a hockey player and a long career afterward and many opportunities to speak publicly about what he’d done, addressing high school groups of kids and talking to them about drinking and driving.” The epilogue to the Gospel of John is a great passage for any of us this morning who feel like we’ve been put on the shelf when it comes to having any kind of meaningful place in the story that Jesus is doing in the world. Maybe we made one very bad mistake or a or a series of mistakes or we have this ongoing sinful habit that we just can’t shake or we just have a pattern of regrets and apathy that leaves us feeling disqualified from doing anything significant for our Lord. We’re in need of hearing Jesus speak words of restoration over us. We’re in need of being recommissioned, being assured that our past hasn’t determined our future and that we haven’t retired or aged out of meaningful ministry. So, we’re in need of reassurance that God might still want to accomplish something in us and through us if we follow him despite our past or whatever condition we’re in right now, we might still serve Jesus faithfully and fruitfully in the years that we have left on the planet. Now, the grizzly details of Peter’s denial of Jesus are laid out for us in the Gospels. Really sad way to cap off his 3-year internship with Christ. Peter, along with James and John, they were the disciples most closely associated with Jesus. Gave Peter access to some experiences that the other disciples didn’t receive. And at times, Peter seemed to be riding this great wave of success. You know, he was the first of the disciples to boldly declare that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the one that Israel had been waiting for. Also times in those that three-year internship where where Peter had walked and and talked like a fool. You know, he he was the one who stepped out boldly and confidently on the water when he saw Jesus walking on the water and and then he saw the wind and the waves and began to became afraid and he sunk and Jesus had to rescue him from drowning. And on the Mount of Transfiguration where Jesus was shining and there was Elijah and there was Moses. Peter’s idea was, “Well, let’s build some shelters here, some some ways to preserve this moment and everyone considered his suggestion irrelevant and just ignored it.” And Peter once even took Jesus aside and rebuked him for talking so negatively about being killed and needing to rise from the dead. Peter told Jesus, “That’s never going to happen.” But Jesus sharply reprimanded him for being a tool of Satan and even making that suggestion. In the Gospel of Mark, finding his disciples asleep in the garden, Jesus singled out Peter and said, “Peter, are you asleep? Couldn’t you watch for 1 hour? Watch and pray so you won’t fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, body is weak.” And on the night of the Last Supper, Peter looked around the room at all the other disciples. He said, “Jesus, even if these guys all fall away on account of you, I never will. You know, I can’t speak for these other guys, but I’ll lay down my life for you. I’ll go to prison and I’ll die for you.” So, various vignettes in the Gospels show Peter as a man pretty out of touch with reality, sadly out of touch with his own vulnerabilities. The other disciples, they’re not portrayed as as particularly astute or spiritually sensitive, but none of them blustered or boasted quite like Peter did. Jesus told Peter in the upper room, “You’re going to fail me. You’re going to deny knowing me. You will prove to be a coward. You won’t be the warrior that you think yourself to be. A few hours later, Peter did try to make good on his hollow boast by cutting off the ear of a guy that was in the party that came to arrest Jesus, but shortly afterward, he denied knowing Jesus not once, not twice, three times. Peter had once heard Jesus say in Matthew 10, “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge him before my Father in heaven, but whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” And isn’t that exactly what Peter had just done? I mean, the moment Peter denied Jesus for the third time, the rooster crowed as Jesus said it would, and from a distance, Peter and Jesus locked eyes, and with that, Peter just fell apart. He broke down and he wept bitterly. So, how how do you deal or how do you move on from a personal and moral failure like that when when what you’ve done seems unforgivable from the outside, but it’s also unforgivable from the inside? So, all your self-esteem sinks it to the bottom. How do you avoid just living a haunted hollow life after that? You know, Judas, who betrayed Jesus, he certainly couldn’t move on from it. He was seized with remorse. He gave the money back that he’d taken to betray Jesus, then he went out and committed suicide. He couldn’t live with himself or or move on in life in any way. Michael Valdivinis is a secular clinical psychologist. He writes about what’s called moral injuries caused when people are forced into a conflict between their inner moral beliefs and their behavior. It’s like when a soldier is ordered to do something that violates their conscience, their inner moral code. Peter may have felt like Jesus left him in an impossible situation because in the upper room, he was talking about his bravery and his courage, but Jesus said, “You’re going to be a coward instead.” And it was like it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Michael Valdivinis says that people who suffer from moral injury have a rupture in their inner self. Their Their injury is a violation of their deepest values and it leaves them feeling as if they’re an irredeemably bad person. So, we don’t know exactly how Peter processed his failure internally, but Jesus had also told Peter in the upper room that he had prayed for Peter, that his faith would not fail, and that when it was over, when Peter eventually turned back, Peter’s job would be to strengthen his brothers. So, that brings us to this great beach scene in Gal- in Galilee in John 21. And we don’t know how Peter felt about fitting in or where he fit with the rest of the disciples at the time following his denial of Jesus, but he was given a direct personal invitation to go and be there with him. The end of Mark [clears throat] chapter 15, an angel told a group of women to convey a message to the disciples. Go tell his disciples and Peter that the risen Christ will meet them up in Galilee. As if to say, “Don’t leave Peter out. Make sure he comes. He needs to be there, too.” Peter might not have felt like he really belonged with the disciples at that point, but he’s singled out by Jesus, by the angel to be given a personal invitation. And as we saw last week following the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples twice in Jerusalem, once on Easter evening and 1 week later when Thomas was also present. Verse 14 of our passage this morning, John specifies this is going to be the third time now that Jesus met with his disciples. And it would take place where it all began, the Sea of Galilee, 125 km north of Jerusalem. This was the region where Jesus had first called his disciples to follow him. As Matthew 4 describes it, you know, Jesus was about to enter public ministry and he was walking along the the beach of the Sea of Galilee and he saw Simon Peter and his brother Andrew casting their net into the lake, and he said to them, “Come, follow me. I’ll make you fishers of men.” And they dropped their nets, and they followed him. So, Simon Peter traveled north with the rest of them where it all began. And maybe because he was a married man, and he had um other mouths to feed other than his own, Peter decided to go out do a little work and do some fishing. And we read that six of the other disciples got in the boat with him. Early on, very early on in his relationship with Jesus, Luke chapter 5 records that Jesus was in Simon Peter’s boat. Peter had had a tough night fishing. He hadn’t caught a thing. Jesus told him then to let down his net in deep water. And Peter wasn’t at all excited about that. He said, “Master, we worked hard all night. We haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I’ll let down the nets.” When he did, the nets were suddenly so full of fish, they began to break and and uh were boat was so loaded down, it began to sink. Now, Peter’s reaction at that time, very strange, because he didn’t laugh with joy or amazement, and he wasn’t adding up all the money he was going to make off that enormous catch. Instead, it says he fell down at Jesus’ knees, “Go away from me, Lord. I’m a sinful man.” Think about that. In that early stage of his life with Jesus, being around Jesus was kind of challenging or crushing to his identity. Like most of us, Peter probably thought of himself as a good guy. His identity, it wasn’t it wasn’t achieved identity. It was built on his own competence, his capability. He was courageous. He was someone who could take care of himself. He didn’t see himself as particularly sinful or weak or dependent. But when that first miracle of the fish happened, he begged Jesus to get away from him, to leave him alone, because Jesus was interfering with the signal that Peter was broadcasting to himself and to other people about who he was. So, he said something to Jesus like, “I just I can’t breathe when I’m around you. I feel so inadequate in your presence. You need to leave me alone so I can go back to feeling okay about myself.” And for any of us to maintain a false, self-deceiving identity, it always requires distance from God because he’s going to show us unsparingly who we really are. So, you take that event. Now, fast forward 3 years and we see Peter fishing once again all night long, again catching nothing. And a figure he didn’t recognize called from the beach, “Let the nets out on the other side of the boat.” Fishermen can be very superstitious. They always think the last cast of the day is going to bring in the big one. And Peter complied with the request. He threw the net once more in deep water. Same thing that had happened 3 years earlier. Nets became so full, they couldn’t even haul them in. To Peter, this felt awfully familiar. This was the Lord. But this time, instead of falling down and begging Jesus to leave him alone, Peter couldn’t wait to get near him. So, he grabbed his coat, he jumped in the water, and he moved as fast as he could to be with Jesus. So, you see the difference. A false identity is based on personal achievement. “Get away from me, Jesus. You’re hurting me. Being around you is a big hit to my self-esteem. I feel fragile when I’m near you. I need to keep you at arm’s length because you make me think about myself too much and I what I see isn’t very pretty. So, to maintain my inner equilibrium, I just need distance from you.” That’s how everyone needs to operate if their identity is an achieved identity based on things that they’ve done. But a received identity is so different because it recognizes that we’re failures, but Jesus is a restorer. And a healed identity can’t wait to be with Jesus, can never spend too much time with him. And I achieved identity requires a lot of maintenance, a lot of hiding truth from other people. A received identity can let go of that stuff knowing that the only thing matters about me is what Jesus thinks of me. In salvation terms, the achieved identity it tries to work for everything we can get from God. But a received identity can just rest in his grace. Now, by this point, Peter seems to have wept out a lot of his failure, a lot of his false identity, and he can’t wait to be with Jesus. And then comes a very beautiful scene. This is breakfast with Jesus on the beach. Jesus is the host. He’s the one who’s done the cooking. There’s fresh fish, there’s bread. It’s warmed over a fire of coals. And at Jesus’ request, the hungry fishermen gather some more of the fish that they’d just caught to add to the meal. If you feel like a failure, if you feel like God’s rehabilitation project, just linger with this scene for a moment. Yes, Peter had denied Jesus, but the other disciples had all deserted him as well in the Garden of Gethsemane. None of them had stayed awake to pray with him. There were no heroes among the disciples that night. So, consider consider how much Jesus must love you. If you failed him, and he’ll come to you, and he’ll even cook you breakfast. Luke chapter 22, Jesus had asked his disciples a pointed questions. They were arguing with one another about who was the greatest. And Jesus said, “For who is greater, the one who’s at the table or the one who serves? Well, the one who’s at the table, but I am among you as one who serves.” Jesus was saying he had come from heaven to earth to be their busboy. And even after being raised from the dead and victorious over sin and death, he was still serving sinful people. How much must Jesus really love you? But Jesus had more for Peter that day than breakfast. It involved surgery. Jesus was going to have to open Peter’s wound up once again and make him the healthy leader that Jesus wanted him to be. Scene is very dramatic. Jesus and Peter took a long walk on the beach and three times Jesus asked Peter the same question. Very solemn occasion because Jesus didn’t use the nickname that he’d given Peter. Peter’s not a proper name. No parent would have named their child Peter. It It means it’s Petros. It means rock or rocky. So instead of his given name of Simon, Jesus had given him this nickname and he was known by that by everyone after that. But walking on the beach, Jesus reverted back to Simon’s formal name, Simon son of John. And the first time Jesus asked this question, he asked it in a way that invited Peter to compare himself again to the other disciples. Simon son of John, do you really love me more than these? Remember Simon Peter had essentially said in the upper room that he did love Jesus more than any of the others. Nobody was as faithful and true and committed and passionate and as sold out as he was. On the beach Jesus was asking him, Peter, you still going to tell me that you love me more than anyone else? That you’re more sold out in your devotion, more passionate? That you’re a better man than all these other men? You’re going to stand by what you said before? Peter just couldn’t go there. Not now. Not after what he had done. So all he could say at that point was, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus said, feed my lambs. Second time Jesus said, Simon son of John, do you truly love me? Again Peter answered, yes Lord, you know that I love you. And Jesus said, take care of my sheep. Third time that a surgeon’s really digging his scalpel into the wound even more deeply. And Jesus asked, Simon son of John, do you love me? And we read that this this really hurt. Peter was hurt by this repeated interrogation. It was probably too reminiscent for him of the three identical questions that were asked him when he denied knowing Jesus. Peter had no defense at all to make. He feels the scalpel cutting into him. And all Peter could say, “Lord, you know all things.” As if to say, “Jesus, I can’t hide anything from you. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not. I used to try to do that with you. I boasted that I was strong and brave, but you knew how weak I was. So now I give up. I just can’t do that anymore.” When Peter, wounded by that questioning, he put his hands in the air and said, “Lord, you know all things. I’m not hiding anything from you. You know that I love you.” And that’s when Jesus gave him the third affirmation of restoration and future ministry. And he said, “Feed my sheep.” And with that, the surgeon could begin sewing up the sutures and closing the incision. And of course, we all know that Peter would spend the rest of his life feeding the lambs and taking care of Jesus’ sheep. Peter was initially told that if he followed Jesus, Jesus would make him into a fisher of men. Second part of the commission he was given was to be a shepherd and to look after the flock of believers that Jesus would give him responsibility for. So I apologize in advance for this next slide, but being a fisher of men and a shepherd of the flock meant that by hook or by crook, Peter was going to serve Jesus for the rest of his life. I’m sorry for that, but you’ll remember it the rest of your life now, too. So Peter wound up, he took his responsibilities very seriously. As for shepherding the flock, he took that role completely responsibly, and he instructed all local church elders in his letter, 1 Peter chapter 5. And this includes the elders of Knox Church. He said, “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings, one who also will share in the glory to be revealed, be shepherds of God’s flock that’s under your care, serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you’re a willing as God wants you to be, not greedy for money but eager to serve and not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. Then when the chief shepherd appears you’ll receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. The flock always belongs to Jesus but he delegates responsibility to local church leadership to shepherd and to look after those in the Christian church. Now having told Peter three times to look after Jesus’ flock on his behalf Jesus then unveiled for Peter exactly what that ministry was going to cost him. He said to Peter, “I tell you the truth when you were younger you dressed yourself, you went where you wanted but when you’re old you’ll stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” And John the gospel writer adds this editorial comment, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.” Then Jesus said to Peter, “Follow me.” As picture of Peter as an older man forced to stretch out his hands unmistakable indication that Peter’s going to follow his Lord in being violently martyred through Roman crucifixion. Widely understood that Peter’s execution occurred about three decades later under the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero in about the year 65 AD. So Peter lived, he served Christ, he ministered to God’s people under a sentence of death for three decades. Writing to Christian believers in his letter of second Peter saying, “I think it’s right to refresh your memory as long as I live in the tent of this body cuz I know that I will soon put it aside as our Lord Jesus has made clear to me.” All three of the other gospel writers record that Jesus had previously said not only to Peter but to all of his disciples, “If anyone including ourselves would come after me, must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. It’s hard to look at that verse and not conclude that the Christian life is always meant to be one of sacrifice and risk. If any of us wants a religion that has no sacrifice or risk, Christianity probably isn’t the best religion for us, not according to Jesus. And from Peter we learn that the risks, they don’t diminish as we get older. Peter was just waiting for that death sentence to close in on him. Those risks are not meant to diminish. In fact, it would seem that the more mature and experienced we become in following Jesus, the more resigned and comfortable we ought to be with the idea of taking risks and making sacrifices for his kingdom, whether it’s our money or our time or being bold in our relationships with others. We’re just not meant to slide off into a comfortable retirement when it comes to serving Jesus. The most mature Christians always ought to be the least cautious, the least fearful, because they’ve built up a track record of taking some risks and seeing Jesus come through in some very unexpected ways. So, may we never view risk as being incompatible with following Jesus. It’s meant to work the other way around. So, Jesus spread his arms out for us to pay for our sins on the cross, to transfer his righteousness to our account. He calls us to spread our arms out and take up our crosses and represent him and serve him in whatever years we have left on this planet. One last thing to notice from our passage this morning, you know, Jesus invited Peter personally to go to Galilee. He gave Peter the sign of a net full of fish, uh just as he had 3 years previously. He successfully restored Peter. He He talked to him about or gave him a received identity instead of an achieved identity, cooked breakfast for him, wielded the scalpel to get inside and drew out what needed to be drawn out from Peter so he could be recommissioned. Told Peter it’s going to cost you your life, your martyrdom is going to be full of excruciating shame and pain just as mine had been. And Peter not only received restoration and recommissioning from Jesus, but he needed one final lesson on the beach that day because Peter looked over his shoulder and he saw another disciple, presumably John the gospel writer, following from a distance behind them. Now, Peter had just received a crucifixion death sentence and he said to Jesus, “What about that guy? What’s going to happen to him?” And Jesus basically replied, “That’s none of your business. If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” See, Jesus doesn’t want any of us comparing our self-denial and our cross-bearing with that of any other Christian. Peter and John did end up working together. They had complimentary ministries. They had different gifts and talents. They had quite different ending to their lives. Peter was the unquestioned spokesman and leader of the early church. He preached that great evangelistic sermon on the day of Pentecost, saw massive results, thousands of people responding to the gospel message. Peter was also the one God chose to be on the scene when the Jewish people and young Samaritan believers and a family of Gentile believers all received the Holy Spirit. Whenever we observe Peter and John working together in the book of Acts, and they do work together, Peter’s always a spokesman, John’s always a background figure. Peter was a man of action. John comes across as more reflective, more of an abstract thinker. Peter only wrote two brief epistles. John wrote this entire gospel. He wrote three more epistles. He was also the one who received and recorded the final vision, the book of Revelation, which closes out the New Testament. And as for John’s ending, it appears that his gospel was written and distributed even after Peter had been killed. John was exiled on the island of Patmos when he received the the great book of Revelation, seemed to have been released eventually, and lived out a natural life in the city of Ephesus. So, comparing our lives or our set of problems or our ministry opportunities to those of anyone else, never a good idea. So, we began by considering our own position with Jesus, whether we feel like we’re on the shelf, we’re in need of rehabilitation, we need restoration, we need some recommissioning. Maybe we’ve lost a bit of our taste for self-denial and for bearing the cross, for sacrifice, for risk, and we need to have it rejuvenated in our souls. Wherever we’re at, you know, we move out the back end of the Gospel of John knowing that Jesus specializes in bringing fresh starts and new beginnings into people’s lives, including our own. So, we need to be a people who ask for it and who gratefully receive it. And let’s do that right now. Let’s just take a couple of moments in prayer. This is your personal prayer time with Jesus. You might want to consider any areas of life where you feel like you need to be restored by Christ. You want to thank him that he always has a new beginning available to you. And pray that your life will be characterized by greater self-denial, greater willingness to risk more as you grow in Christ. This is just your time with the Lord and I’ll close us off in a moment.