April 18, 2004

Rev. John W. Fowler

Scripture Lesson: John 21:1-19

On this the first Sunday after Easter, one of my favorite Resurrection appearances of Jesus in the Bible is Jesus appearing to His Disciples in John, Chapter 21, especially His reinstating Peter as the leader of this group of Disciples. I want you to think for a few moments today about following Jesus.

It makes a difference which directions that you follow. When I lived in Caroleen, a little mill village, I had two churches. We would have our big district meetings up in Morganton and what I remember about going to Morganton is that I would just wander around a lot and get lost, because I just couldn’t find First Church of Morganton. Inevitably I would stop in a convenience store—which I like doing—and they would always give me perfect directions to First Baptist in Morganton. The only problem is that, like most downtowns in little towns in the nation, there are First Baptists, First Methodists First Presbyterians, but I couldn’t find First Methodist, I am embarrassed to say.

When I went through Atlanta the last time, as does happen a good bit, I got lost. Somehow I lost I-85 and I had to find it again and so I went into this store and this little fellow—apparently this had happened before—just gave me great directions. Not only did he give me good directions but he did it in a way that I could understand, and I appreciated that. Right back on the road.

Today the greatest life that you can live is following Jesus Christ, following His directions for your life. It is the abundant life He spoke of. It is the abundant life of the Good Shepherd loving you. It is the life that Peter chose to follow.

John, Chapter 21 verses 1-19:21

His name is Kwame Jackson, and he had the distinction of being runner up in The Apprentice— almost got Donald Trump’s $250,000 a year job. So close. What got my attention is that he not only grew up in Charlotte, but he also went to my high school, East Mecklenburg. I guess that makes him about the most distinguished alumnus now. He also went to Carolina, which is OK, and he apparently made much better grades than I did because he also got an MBA from Harvard, which I didn’t, and didn’t aspire to in college, and still don’t. But he is an ambitious young man. Is he upset? No, he just thinks that winning would be the gravy on the potatoes, but he knows that everybody in America knows who he is. He is all set to start a company, Legacy Communications. It is a film production company. He is looking for investors if any of you want to turn over your millions to him. He is ambitious. He has got a plan. But also, when asked, “Twenty-five years from now, what do you want to be doing?”

He said, “Well, I want to be healthy. I want to have a family of some sort.” (I’m not sure what that means, but he wants a family of some sort.) And he wants to be retired and fishing. And he says, “If I am not retired in twenty-five years, then the Kwame Jackson life plan has gone awry.” This is a young man who knows exactly his life plan and where he wants to go, and in some ways we admire that a great deal.

There was another young man I want to share with you, though, who had a life plan, and some one changed it, as he is prone to do. He is a business man, a fisherman, married, family, probably a mortgage. I mean—his life— he had settled in. But then he heard someone say, “Follow me. I will make you fishers of men.” He did something very radical. He left everything and followed Him. His name was Simon Peter.

I want to share with you three faith lessons I believe that we can learn about following Jesus— that we learn from Simon Peter’s life— that are so important this Sunday after Easter, as we are to witness to the Resurrection that Jesus lives. You ask me how I know He lives, He lives within our hearts.

The first lesson I find in Peter’s life is his call to be a Disciple. For anyone who’s going to follow Jesus, it is a call to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ, a learner. That means not only being converted, but you are growing and maturing in this relationship with Him. When Jesus called Peter, He was preaching. There were great crowds when He was preaching. Jesus, the common people heard gladly. It is a good problem to have. He borrowed one of Simon Peter’s boats and He set out the boat a little bit and He preached and they listened to Him preaching the Word. Then He told Simon, “Why don’t you go back out fishing? Launch out into the deep.”

Well, Peter didn’t know about that. He had been fishing all night, hadn’t caught anything. “This man is a carpenter. He is a good preacher, but what does He know about fishing, I mean, after all, I am a professional.”

He said, “Well, Lord, we have fished all night but at Your word we will let down the nets.” Kind of humoring Him. It is daytime. Fish aren’t biting. Well, when Jesus is around, the fish are biting. They are there. And they have such a great catch of fish when they let the nets down. They had to get their partners to come just to get the fish in. And then both boats are about to sink. I have been fishing. I’ve never had a problem of my boat sinking because I have caught so many fish. I don’t know about you.

But Peter’s response is, “Lord, depart from me. I am a sinful man.”

Why is he a sinful man? He didn’t believe Him. Unbelief. “Lord, what can you do with me?”

Well, plenty. He said, “Don’t be afraid, Simon. From now on you will be catching men.” And he followed Him.

Peter was a leader. He also had daring faith. He tended to leap before he looked. When they were on the boat one night and they saw this ghostly figure walking on water, they were afraid. Then they realized it was Jesus. Peter said, “Lord, if it is You, let me come to You.” (Peter caught on that Jesus likes that kind of thing.)

“Fine. Get out of the boat and walk on the water to Me.”

So he did. But then after a while, Peter realized—I’m walking on water. I’ve never walked on water before. He starts sinking. He takes his eyes off Jesus. He says, “Lord, save me,” and he reaches out his hand and Jesus takes it and says, “Why did you doubt?”

So oftentimes that’s the way it is; we keep our eyes on Jesus, things go well, but when we take our eyes off of Him we begin to sink. He was the one who, when Jesus said, “What do people say about me?” (Jesus wasn’t afraid to do that) Peter said, “Well, some say Elijah; some say Jeremiah; some say one of the prophets; some say John the Baptist.”

“But who do you say that I am?’

Peter didn’t wait for the rest. He said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

And Jesus told Peter,

He’s just an ordinary fisherman. The Lord is going to build this church, not just on Peter, but on this revelation that Jesus is the Christ. Sometimes, though, Peter had to be rebuked. Not long after that Jesus began to say very clearly that He was going to Jerusalem, that He was going to suffer; that He will die, be crucified. Peter took him aside and said, “Lord, this should never happen to you. No. This is wrong.”

And He said, “Satan, get behind Me,” to Peter. “You do not think of God, but you think in the ways of men.”

And He began to explain to him about the cross, and Peter didn’t quite grasp it. Or they went up on the mountain, the Transfiguration, and they had this incredible spiritual experience—Moses and Elijah are there—and the cloud of the Lord, the glory of the Lord descends upon it. Peter says, “Lord, this is wonderful. Let’s build booths— one of You, one for Moses, one for Elijah.”

Then he hears this voice, “This is My beloved Son; Listen to Him.” Peter was a great man of faith. He was called to be a Disciple.

This past week I was reading a book, Higher Calling. Evelyn Husband wrote it with her husband. It also tells the story of Rick Husband. Rick Husband was the commander of the space shuttle, Columbia, that exploded on re-entry over Texas, a little over a year ago. Rick, according that that story, had a definite calling upon his life. When he was four years old he was already excited about airplanes. When the space shuttles would come back, on television, I can remember that, growing up. (That was a big event that you watched Walter Cronkite on TV when they would land.) And Rick would get his parents and say, “Find the camera. We want to take a picture of this.”

They didn’t laugh at him. He was very serious. He kept pestering them for flying lessons and finally—they wouldn’t let him until he was seventeen—he was just a natural at it. His life plan was to be an Astronaut and NASA sent him a letter, when he was eighteen, about all the requirements—a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, a thousand hours of flight time—I mean, that is where he was heading and he knew it would take him seven or eight years; that’s all right. That is what he was destined to do; that is what he was called to do.

But Rick had a higher calling in his life, it was obvious. Especially after a time they spent in England, he had a renewal of his faith in Jesus Christ. This was a man who, when he was in space, he videotaped family devotions for his children with the little devotional book they would read out of, so his children could put that in a VCR and see Dad speaking to them and reading from the Bible book that they had. He was like that. His mission statement was Proverbs 3:5 and 6.

And also Colossians 3:23:

This was a man who obviously loved the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a higher calling. His wife, Evelyn, has a calling now. It really is a calling that she would not choose. No one chooses it. It is the calling to be a widow and a witness to how God helps you through that grief and can help you through the most difficult of times. In that book she shares how painful it has been. Just because you love the Lord does not mean that you are going to bypass grieving for your husband or your wife, but God has been there for her. God has given her a platform to speak. She has actually spoken at the Billy Graham Crusade and other conferences, but she watches her schedule because she feels that her primary calling is to be a mother to her three children.

First of all, following Jesus is a call to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ. And secondly, it is a call to change. As He calls us to be a Disciple He is going to cause us to change along the way. Peter’s crisis point came when he denied his Lord. At the Lord’s Supper, Jesus had predicted that they would all fall away, and especially Peter. He said, “Peter, before the cock crows twice you will deny Me three times.”

“No, that will never happen.” And Jesus said, “I will pray for you. Satan hath demanded to sift you like wheat. I pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

Then He went out into the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed and Peter kept falling kept falling asleep at that pray meeting. Other people did. And then, they came. It really was happening. Well, he took out a sword and he cut off one of the servant’s ears. He probably ducked and that’s how Peter got his ear. What does Jesus do? Does He commend him for his valiant courage? No. He rebukes him.

He said, “Do you not think that if I could call My Father He would not send twelve legions of angels?” He puts his hands on the man’s ear and restores it and then He goes away to be arrested. Well, he is bewildered. He follows Jesus, but at a distance. Some people are like that, you know. They don’t want to get too close to Jesus and he followed at a distance and was finally admitted to the courtyard.

They recognized his accent. “Aren’t you a Galilean? Aren’t you one of them?”

“No, not me.”

Someone else asked him a little while later while he was warming himself around the fire. “Aren’t you one of the Disciples?”

“No.”

The third time, finally, he is asked by one of the servant girls, “Surely you are one of the Disciples.”

“No.” And it says he started cursing and denying, and Luke’s gospel says Jesus apparently was in view and looked right at him that third time he denied Him.

Do you ever deny the Lord? Have you ever done something you feel like you have let Him down? He went out and wept bitterly. The good news about Peter, though, he did have remorse. He didn’t explain it away, “Well it’s been a bad day; well, you just don’t know the pressure I am under..” He didn’t try to rationalize it. He realized he had done wrong. He repented. Repentance means to change your mind. When Jesus calls the Disciples to “repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” not only can we change our mind about our sin nature but we change our mind about just wanting to be the same old person all the time. God is going to be after you for you to grow, to blossom as a child of God.

In the spiritual classic, In His Steps, Charles Sheldon wrote about a young man...(tape change)...he had been to the parsonage, apparently he has been to some of the homes in the community wanting some help, wanting some help, wanting some work and doesn’t get a real warm reception. But then this man stands up at the end of the service—they had been having their normal service—and says, “You know, I have been listening to you sing hymns about following Jesus and preaching about following Jesus and what I want to know, what does it mean to follow Jesus. I don’t understand that.” And then he collapsed, this man, this stranger that nobody knew. Soon after that he died.

The congregation was shaken, maybe because of that question: What does it mean to follow Jesus? They began to think about that, to really take it seriously. Then they came up with the phrase, What Would Jesus Do? The began to believe that following Jesus means that no longer do we just go about our everyday lives, just doing what we want to do. We ask, “What would Jesus do in the situation?” And they began to change. Business people began to change. The church began to change. Why? Because they began to take seriously Jesus’ changing them, changing their lives. It still happens today when we ask, “What would Jesus do?” He will change us, and always for the better. Sometimes it’s painful; sometimes we struggle; sometimes we don’t want Him to change that attitude or habit that has come into our lives.

Following Jesus is not only a call to be a Disciple or a call to change, but it is also a call to serve Him. Jesus Christ created you with a purpose in mind: He wants you to serve Him. Serve Him with joy; serve Him with effectiveness; serve Him and share your witness to the Resurrection.

In John, chapter 21, it says that Peter, while he was tired of sitting around waiting for Jesus to come back said, “Well, I’m going fishing.” And Peter was like this. If he went fishing, then about six or seven more of them would go fishing with him. And so they go out fishing, and they don't. I wonder if Peter began to remember a night three years ago when they hadn’t caught anything. But it is early in the morning and they see someone along the sea shore. They don’t recognize him but He says, “Haven’t you got any fish, friends?