John: Restoration
Associate Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline concludes our sermon series with John 21:15-25. Discussion points: Jesus’s restoration of Peter changed the trajectory of the rest of his life; because everything comes from and belongs to God, our sin is always ultimately against him; Jesus pursues us to seek restoration.
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Scripture reader: [John 21:15-25] When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes lord, you know that I love you. He said to him tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. 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. This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, follow me.
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man? Jesus said to him, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things and we know that his testimony is true. Now, there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: Good morning. I hope everyone's doing well. I am because my five week old slept through the night. So yeah, Emmanuel made a good joke. He was like that dude's got spiritual disciplines down fasting already, man. He's just crushing it. I slightly think a five week old, I don't know if they're supposed to sleep for the night just yet, but we'll kind of take it.
So yeah, good to be back with you guys. Really love being here. Always love connecting with you all. You guys have had me multiple times over the years and see you through that, see you through some network events and things like that. So it's always good to be back. I always enjoy being in this building. It's beautiful, it's wonderful and maybe most of all I enjoy being able to drink coffee while I worship. Because if you've ever been to our our, our church on a Sunday morning in Brookline, we can't bring coffee into the auditorium, not our rule, the school's rule. So I enjoy that here.
But also want to say too if, if you're new as well, The lead pastor here Fletcher, he's on sabbatical. You may or may not know that super grateful that he gets to go and take that break. But I also wanna say pastors, they do church staff in general just do so much more behind the scene. And so when the, the, the one kind of full time person goes and gets a sabbatical, we're grateful for that. But that also means there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done. And so I just want to say, it's really awesome to see that you guys as a church are continuing to thrive continuing to just do good things So that's thanks to the church staff, the, the the leaders here, the volunteers here. And so it's no, no small feat that you have a lead pastor that can go and take a two month sabbatical, which is good and he should be able to do that. And we're glad he can do that, but then the church still functions wonderfully. So that's God's kindness to you all.
So we the CoaH network have been in the book of John now for quite some time. And some of you are probably sad to hear this and some of you are glad to hear this. But we're at the end. we're at the very end of the book of John. This is the last part, the last passage, the last thing we'll be covering. and John's gospel, in my opinion, at least is the most unique out of the four gospels. Matthew Mark Luke and John. And it was likely written much later than the other gospels at a time in which those other gospels have been existence for some time. Even some of the letters in the New Testament that we see have been circulating the churches for some time. So this idea that churches would read these letters, these accounts and talk about them in church already existed and then enters in the gospel of John.
And we've worked through some really incredible things so far just to catch you up. If you've missed the past eight years, we've seen him turn water into wine, Jesus. Right. We've seen him teach about what it means to truly know God. We've seen him break cultural norms and love and give value and, and support people that society at that time kinda didn't. Right. We've seen him heal the sick. We've seen him, raise people up from the dead. We've seen him feed 5000 people with, with bread and fish kinda out of thin air. We've seen him walk on water, right? We've seen him die and then we've seen him raised from the dead and all of this was written John 20 if you remember his little thesis statement, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that by believing you may have life in this, in his name.
So how does John the most again, in my opinion here, the most unique gospel, the gospel that shows these incredibly high miracles, the gospel that shows these incredibly deep teachings from this person, this this God in the flesh. Jesus, how does it end? How does it wrap up? Like what, what does John want us to focus on? What's his concluding note? Interestingly, the gospel of Matthew and the Great Commission, right? Go make disciples of all nations. The gospel of Mark ends with Jesus empowering his disciples to go and do that same thing and then he ascends into heaven and sits at the right hand of God himself. The gospel of Luke ends with this little story called the road to Emmaus. If you ever heard of it, it's, it's, it's a beautiful story. Two men walking down a road, the resurrected Jesus appears to them and shares with them, walks them through the scriptures and shows them how every single part of the Bible points to him and then ends with him, blessing his disciples as he's literally carried up into heaven.
In other words, in these three gospels, three fitting ends to what is a crazy, wonderful, magnificent journey. Three, very fitting, somewhat dramatic in a good way, beautiful ends. But John quite honestly, not so much, at least on the surface again, John, more than any of the gospels are are is full of these magnificent kind of reality shifting miracles and acts of Jesus. Yet it ends quite unexpectedly with just a small conversation. It doesn't seem to fit, does it? But we were mistaken. It would be very mistaken if we didn't think that this conversation with the resurrected Jesus is just as grand and just as magnificent and just as reality shifting as the miracles and just as important for our lives. Why? Well, because odds, odds are you, you probably aren't going to see an in person, Jesus doing an in person miracle before you die. It's not impossible like he might return in this lifetime. I kind of hope he does like maybe after the next two Avengers movies, I wanna see Downey as Victor von Doom. Like let's get that of the way first, right?
But you likely won't see in this life an in person, Jesus doing an in-person miracle, but you will sin, you will misstep, you will hurt other people intentionally and unintentionally, you will hurt God. Benjamin Franklin, right? The only thing certain life is what? Death and taxes and sin. He says that you should look it up. But then the question lingers. What will you do about it? Maybe more importantly, what can you do about it in this little conversation that we just read between Jesus and Peter answers the question. How does God deal with it? How does God respond to our sin? It answers the question if we are in Jesus, what is God's heart towards us after we sin? If we are in Jesus, how does he respond to us when we continuously sin?
What does he say to Peter? He says, if you love me despite your sin, do the work I've called you to do and continue to follow me. Many of you probably know Peter's story, right? He goes on to write two books of the New Testament that are included in the Bible you have today. He despite Paul kind of being the more popular one, it's actually Peter, that's kind of the leader of the apostles after Jesus ascends into heaven. And yet it was also Peter who denied Jesus three times. I know the disciple did that based on what we see in scripture. At least, what does that tell us? Well, it tells us what happened in this conversation between Peter and Jesus and put Peter on a different trajectory. It rewrote his wrongs and use them for God's good.
This is something we see crystal clear in scripture and something that if we step back and reflect, we see clearly in our lives as well. And so for you, for me, we've sinned, you've sinned, you've messed up. You think you've done? What's an irreversible wrong to someone beside you or to the God above you? You've broken God's heart. What does he say to you? He doesn't say leave and never come back. He doesn't say you better pony up and right your wrongs. And then, and only then can we be in any sort of relationship together? No, we see that God graciously restores us. We see that restoration rewrites our story. It changes our trajectory, right? Jesus by restoring Peter rewrote his story from one of sadness and betrayal. One that left Peter with a bitter taste in his mouth for the very thing that he had done to one of a great love for God and the expansion of God's kingdom.
So our main point for today is this restoration rewrites your story and two things we'll look at from this passage as we consider that idea first, what does God do in this restoration process? And then what does God want us to do in this restoration process? We see that if we're willing God restores and we see that if we are willing, we will follow Jesus. Again, God restores and we follow.
So first God restores. It's important to note first and foremost, to be crystal clear. God is ultimately the one that does this. Why? Well, partially because only God can right. Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death, eternal, spiritual, absolute death. What can you do against that? What can, what can I do against that? Absolutely nothing. Yeah, we try, don't we in ways that we don't even realize we're trying to, right? We ignore what we've done and try to course correct. Like maybe this is you kind of in your mind. You've, you've sinned, you've done something wrong, you say, OK, I've messed up once. But if I never do it again, then this first one, OK, we're good, right? We try to balance the scales. Well, I did this last night. So today I should, I should probably go to church or I should go to a small group or I should open my Bible as if they cancel each other out. Brother. I'm gonna serve at church as much as I can to do two things. One, hope that God sees my service and not my sin. And to just kind of keep my mind off of the things that I'm struggling with.
But what happens when you like Peter, inevitably you wrong, not just the person beside you, your spouse, your coworker, your friend, not just yourself, but the God of the universe. And side note, you might think that you like that sounds like something that would take a lot to do to offend God, but it doesn't, and that doesn't speak to the fragility of God that actually speaks to the perfection and holiness of God.
By the way, King David, he grasped this in one of his psalms where he says against you and you alone have a sinned. Now in his proper context, that's not David saying that his sin doesn't affect other people or there's not consequences for his sin. But rather, ultimately, at the end of the day, it harms God.
Chad Bird, he's an author and theologian expanded on this idea. He kind of has this piece of writing where he's like pretending to be David in this scenario and kind of inserts his own mind and his own thoughts with this salmon mind. He says for it is his God's, it is his law. I have broken his office, which I have failed his people against whom I have sinned. All is from him. So all I have taken, I have taken from him, all others against whom I have sinned. I have sinned because they are of Him.
So then back in our passage, this is even more of a reality for Peter. Is it not? He didn't just sin against the God? He couldn't see, he sinned against the God. He could see he sinned against the God that was standing right in front of him. He sinned against the God that just lived a beautiful life with him over the past three years. And while you and I don't see Jesus face to face in the same way, we sin against Him all the same just because we can't look into his eyes, doesn't make our sin any less drastic than Peter's. And yet, and this speaks to the character of Jesus of God.
I find it incredibly beautiful that Jesus continues to break norms and in the middle of sin, he pursues, pursues you and me and he pursued Peter. What do I mean? Well, if I, if I sin against you and I know I sin against you, typically speaking in a perfect world who's responsible for initiating that conversation or that reconciliation so that apologies can happen. Typically it's me right yet in this scenario, it's Jesus who makes the first move towards reconciliation towards restoration. He starts the road to restoration. Jesus takes the first step, not Peter.
In other words, God doesn't wait with his arms crossed across the room watching you waiting for you to drag your butt back to Him. No, he pursues you, Peter wasn't the one that broke the ice. He wasn't like, hey, Jesus, you got a minute, man. I got something I want to talk to you about. I don't know if you remember that thing that happened. You know the thing you said was gonna happen. I said would never happen. And I said, like, I'll go you to, to the death. And then I said, I didn't know you a couple of times like no, what does it say?
Verse 15, Jesus said to Simon Peter such a small little five word line that has so much packed into it that speaks to the initiating, loving pursuit of God towards you in your sin. Jesus sought out this conversation regardless of what Peter had done. Tim Keller says, you need to hear in the center of your being, the voice of God saying, in spite of everything you've done, I love you. Some of us here today think the way to get right with God is to be the one to come back to him first. But we should realize it's not us pursuing God that makes us right with Him. It's him pursuing us. It's not us who need to chase God, but rather it's God who's chasing us. That doesn't mean we have no part to play, but it means that God's initiator, God's the one who ultimately restores.
Why does this matter? Well, when someone's disposition towards you is I will always pursue you and I will always love you. What does that provide you with security, comfort and understanding that nothing and no one can take away this relationship to you because it's God who's holding on, it's God who's pursuing, who can take anything from God that he is holding on to that. He says is his God does these things in this process of restoration. He does. So I'd have a love and compassion for us, but it should be noted should be noted that as God chases us as God restores us.
Sometimes, often times it's not easy. It's often something that involves pain. It involves solemn reflection because He will, he will remind us of what we've done. He will remind us of how we've gone astray, how we've sinned three times. What does Jesus ask Peter? 15, 16, and 17. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? What does this mirror? You guys know Peter's words to Jesus. I do not know you. I do not know you. I do not know you. I am not associated with this man. I am not one of his followers. In other words, I don't love you. I don't love you. I don't love you.
Jesus is reminding Peter of what He's done and it's not a bad thing. Why? Because it'll keep Him from doing it again. It's good for us to think and consider and be grateful for the fact that God doesn't just drop it when it comes to our sin, he does legally, he does eternally. Yes, he forgives immediately, but he's so much stronger and so much more powerful than just to forgive and forget in this moment. Why? Because he wants the best for us, he wants us to reflect, to ponder and to learn from our sin and more importantly, not fall into it again. And that can only happen when we acknowledge and he acknowledges it too. Jesus acknowledges the sin that Peter has committed while also acknowledging the restorative power of God.
Psalm 32 David again, when I kept silent, when I did not acknowledge my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all the day long for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. That's again, the pursuit of God. My strength is dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. This is what God does in restoration. This is how God rewrites our story.
Now, what do we do? What does Peter do there is if you look closely an act of repentance here as well by repentance is a part of restoration, right? That is a necessary ingredients to restoration, right? Just as God acknowledges what we have done in a loving and tender way for our good. We too have to acknowledge what we have done through repentance. Repentance, depending on your upbringing, depending on kind of how you view religion or kinda what you're walking into the door with. Probably sounds pretty uncomfortable, maybe offensive, maybe terrible. Maybe it brings up some memories of kind of hellfire and brimstone type of preaching, right? That paints a picture of repentance as nothing more than saying, stop it, you disgusting human being.
But Biblical repentance, the repentance God wants from you is not about what you've done, but rather whom you've done it against. In other words, repentance is primarily a relational activity, not a moral activity. Notice what grieves Peter. Verse 17, Jesus said to him the third time, Simon son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time. Do you love me? What grieves Peter here at the end of the day is not the thing He has done, but rather the person he has done it to if you are grieved over your sins, solely because you think is just some wrong you've done. You're missing the mark, not just about repentance, but about sin. Sin is sin because it's something that goes against God, not because it's some arbitrary rule. The end of repentance is entering back into a right relationship with God rather than right activity though that is part of it.
Kelly Needham has a really good article on TGC about this. She says repentance isn't primarily about what you're fleeing from, but whom you're fleeing to. In other words, there's a big difference between biblical repentance and worldly sorrow, biblical sorrow and sadness and worldly sorrow. To be fair. It is kind of difficult to emotionally untangle the two when you're going through those things. Right? But what I mean, well, you can feel genuinely sad for your sin, right? You can regret it. You can see it as destructive to you and hurtful to others, right? But you can still not repent because repentance is not primarily about the thing you have done but whom you have done it to.
Second Corinthians 7, Paul talks about this, right? Worldly grief and Godly grief, worldly grief for sin is primarily about ourselves and the impact it's had on ourselves and our own lives, right? My selfishness hurts my friends and my family and therefore my life, the addiction to porn makes you sad. It hurts your relationships, your anger causes you to lose control and lose your job. Therefore, you experience sorrow, there is sorrow there. But that sorrow is fundamentally about you and what it costs you. And the impact sin has on you.
But Biblical repentance, Biblical sorrow is not sorrow for something that's happened, its sorrow toward God for wronging Him. It's sorrow before God. For me being the type of person who did those sins. It's sorrow before God because of the relational cost of the sin and me continuing to do the very thing that Jesus died for. That's what biblical sorrow is. So, what do we do in this act of restoration? You repent. We don't just say, I'm sorry, I did that. We say I'm sorry, I did that to you at the end of the day. That is what sin is, but what we do doesn't just stop there. It's not just repentance, right? Which is good news.
Repentance is never fun, By the way, just throwing it out there. It's never easy per se, but it's necessary, but it doesn't stop there. Jesus has some specific things in mind for Peter. 15, 16, 17, what does he say? He says, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my lambs, my sheep, sorry, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. In other words, God still has something for Peter to do. And this, these instructions from Jesus to Peter are specific to Peter in the pastoral role. He will play with the kind of developing church. But notice Peter, despite what he's done, he's not disqualified from partaking in God's plan. And some of us need to be reminded that God still has so much to do in and through you despite the sins that have happened in your past, despite the sins you've carried into this room to say or to think otherwise is to downplay the power of God to downplay the power of God's forgiveness.
It's not to say that there aren't consequences to sin. That's not to say that certain sins wouldn't disqualify people from doing and leading and saying certain things, but it does not disqualify you from God's work. We see this in the life of Peter. We see this in the life of Paul who had Christians murdered, right? I'm sure many of you have seen this in your own life, right? We see that restoration rewrites our story, which includes rewriting our sins, which includes in spite of our sins, God using us for his good.
We also see as we start to wrap up restoration and really following Jesus in general requires submission to his plan no matter the cost. This is what the the the last 18 through 25. It's a little odd is talking about. Well, restoration rewrites our story. It rewrites Peter's story. It also puts him on a trajectory of great pain. Verse 18. Truly, truly, I say to you, this is Jesus talking to Peter. When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you were, 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. This. He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, follow me.
Not to spend too much time on this, but extra-Biblical sources point to Peter dying on the cross. Extra-Biblical sources in a way that's a little less convincing but still mostly convincing point to Peter being crucified upside down because he was not willing or thought he wasn't worthy to die in the same way that Jesus did. We must remember what we are restored to is a right relationship with God. Not an easy life. In fact, it's often the opposite. Is it not a right relationship with God more often than not, does not lead to an easy life. In fact, I would say the scriptures promise us, don't just tell us that it's likely to happen, but promise us a life of suffering, a life of bearing one another's burdens in a way that it costs us in a way that we have to endure the hate of the world. We can't just live in this Christian cocoon.
So as we close in some ways, this ending to John, this ending of the gospel of John, this magnum opus that is the gospel of John. It doesn't seem on the surface to match the magnitude of the rest of the story. Yet, if you look closely, it does, it's quite frankly another miracle that this great resurrection leads to restoration of you of me. Like sometimes I look at my life, the sins, I've committed, the things I've done, the things I've said, the things I've left undone. I consider those things I consider the possibility that a perfect God exists and the idea that my wrongs will be right and be rewritten, rewritten by him. Seems crazy. Sometimes. It seems like a more difficult feat than raising from the dead. But they're one of the same, aren't they? Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus' resurrection is what rewrites our story. It's what restores us. This is what he does do the Gospel through the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus. God restores and rewrites our story. Let's pray.
God, we are thankful for you, God, thankful that the last note in the gospel of John is one in which you rewrite a sinner's story, one in which you restore Peter. And we can look at that and know and be confident that you restore and you rewrite our stories. So God, I pray for anyone who comes in here today, carrying guilt, carrying shame, carrying the sins of they did five years ago or last night and realize that what you offer through your son is not condemnation, but rather restoration, salvation, and joy with you Jesus. God help you, help us to see you as beautiful, as good, as kind. Thank you for your word. Thank you for this beautiful gospel. Thank you for this account of your life, Jesus, that we got to go through it and look closely at the things you've said and the things you've done. Remind us that you still speak to us today. You still work today, that the same Jesus we read in the gospel of John is the same Jesus we know and love. In your name, Amen.