Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning. 9:30.
[00:00:06] Good morning. If I have not had the chance to meet you, my name is Michael Fueling. I'm the lead pastor here at the village church. And if you have a Bible, open it up to the Book of John. We are going to be in chapter 21 this morning.
[00:00:21] All right, so one of the most difficult experiences is that of failure.
[00:00:29] And there are levels of failure. Some are small and they fade quickly. Some linger. There is the failure of letting one of your teammates down or your entire team. You make a really big mistake in a game and you feel like you're the reason that you lost it for everybody. Maybe you're on a team at work, you did not come through and everyone said suffers the consequence because of your failure.
[00:00:57] There's the failure that leads you to losing something that you need or love.
[00:01:02] There's the failure that leads to maybe you getting fired from a job. The failure that leads to you getting kicked off of a team. The failure that maybe led you to getting expelled from school.
[00:01:15] And then there are the failures that deeply affect, affect the people you love.
[00:01:21] When you fail your spouse because of a terrible decision that you willingly made, where you lose a friend because you betrayed them, where you're letting your children down because you did something, or maybe there's something you did not do.
[00:01:39] Failing big and facing the ones that you love, it's one of the most difficult experiences in life. And one of the worst parts of big failures is that suddenly thousands of good moments are swallowed up by one awful moment.
[00:02:00] So most people, they're aware of Peter in the Bible, his really big failure. He denied Jesus how many times?
[00:02:07] Three.
[00:02:08] Most are not aware of the weight of Peter's failure in its cultural and relational context. What I want to do is I just want to take a moment and I want to put it into perspective before we jump into John 21.
[00:02:22] Peter's failure was devastating on a bunch of different levels. Number one. In a moment, Peter failed as a leader. Peter was not just the oldest of the disciples. He was not just the leader of the three. He was the leader of, of the 12. Number two.
[00:02:40] Peter failed to live up to his bravado. Have you ever competed with somebody or done something? You just speak really high of yourself and you're just kind of maybe a little bit too arrogant or competitive and then you fail miserably.
[00:02:52] Peter, he's very funny. In John chapter 13, verse 37, Peter said to the Lord, lord, I will lay down my life for you.
[00:03:03] And Peter, let's just say he did not live up to his bravado, Peter failed. Number three is Jesus friend. And this wasn't just a letdown to Jesus. This was betrayal. This was abandonment in Jesus worst moment. And there is a really unique heartache that comes with letting down the people you lead, letting down the people you love, letting down your team, letting down your friends, and knowing everybody knows you did it. I did it.
[00:03:32] Number four, Peter's failure. It wasn't just horizontal, but it was also vertical. Peter failed in his calling. Peter had a responsibility. Your job is to follow Jesus, your rabbi, no matter where he goes. And if he calls you to lay down his life for him, you do it. That's it. That's the job. And Jesus wasn't just any rabbi. He was actually Peter's God. Which brings us to number five. Worst of all, Peter failed his God. He did not just abandon Jesus, he denied Jesus. Do you remember when Jesus said, if you deny me before men, I'll deny you before my Father. This was a huge moment of failure. I want you to just listen to how Luke describes the failure. In Luke chapter 22, Luke says this. Immediately after he denied Jesus the third time, while Peter was still speaking, the rooster crowed and the Lord turned. This is interesting. Like, Jesus is going through a lot in this moment. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter, and Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times. And listen to this.
[00:04:35] And he, Peter, went out. And Peter wept bitterly.
[00:04:41] All right, so in our cultural moment, we are increasingly scared of letting people experience the weight of their actions.
[00:04:51] Jesus is not scared to let people experience the weight of their actions. There is kind of an emerging cultural impulse in us. We'll call it the residue of woke ideology. And it kind of leaves us with this sense of, like, it's wrong to let people to struggle and to suffer the consequences of their decisions.
[00:05:14] Every single day. Jesus lets people suffer the weight of their decisions.
[00:05:21] This. This is hard. But God's will is that we would reap what we sow. By the way, that's in the Bible, and it's in there a lot.
[00:05:32] Because the process of reaping consequences forces us to face the reality of what we've done and, God willing, not repeat it. When we take away too soon the consequences of behavior, people don't learn their lesson. They don't just repeat the behavior, but they amplify it.
[00:05:57] And so when people fail big, the two most common responses, number one, they make excuses, and then, number two, they blame Someone else, not you guys, everyone else, of course.
[00:06:10] And this is the pathway of pride and deflection. And it will never result in your healing. It will never result in reconciliation, truly. And it will never result in getting the future that you want. There is a pathway, though, when you're in the middle of big failure that will actually get you to the other side. That will get you to the other side of healing and possibly even restoration. And the pathway, it's two words, humility and ownership. And if you are ever gonna get a shot after a big failure of getting back to some version of a new normal, if you ever want a shot at getting things reconciled with the people you broke in your life, it's gonna require humility and ownership. Not one, but both of these. Now back to Peter. No one made Peter fail. No one. Peter chose failure. Peter chose to fail all by himself.
[00:07:03] And there are natural and appropriate consequences to Peter's decision. So when you get to John, chapter 21, Jesus has not erased the consequences of Peter's failure. In fact, Peter is sitting in this text in the consequences of his decision. And when you kind of understand what's going on in John 21, and it's really painful to watch what Peter is going through as he wallows in his failure, here's what we're going to discover.
[00:07:30] We're going to discover that Jesus is not going to let Peter's epic failure define his future. Jesus is going to intervene, and he's going to do it at just the right time. So we get to John, chapter 21, a little brief context. We're going to start in verse 15.
[00:07:45] We are about a week after the resurrection, maybe a little bit more. We're in this period of 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. And Jesus shows up and seven of the disciples, including Peter, they're fishing. They're going back to their original occupation, if they will. And so they're up all night, and I don't know how long Jesus has watched them, but they're not catching anything. And so Jesus tells them, hey, throw the net over to this side. And they get a whole bunch of fish. They realize it's him, they run back in. Morning comes and Jesus makes them breakfast. They have a meal, and we don't know what's talked about at the meal.
[00:08:21] John, chapter 21, verse 15 starts after breakfast is over. John 15 says, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? I want you to notice here the comparison.
[00:08:40] Do you Love me more than these. Who are these?
[00:08:45] These are the other six disciples who are with him. And so you're gonna notice something here. Jesus is pretty much the king of callbacks. And so Peter kind of had this history of saying over the top things. We talked about his bravado earlier. And Jesus is going to kind of bring those right back and put them right back in front of him. And so one of my favorites is in Matthew 26, verse 33, it says that Peter answered Jesus, though they all fall away because of you talking about the disciples, I will never fall away. I don't know about y', all, but, like, try not to compare yourself to a whole bunch of other people when it comes to your Christian walk. Though they all disobey, I will never disobey you. So Jesus responds to Peter is immediate. Verse 34, Jesus said to him, truly, truly, I tell you this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me how many times? Three times. Let's go back to John 21, verse 15.
[00:09:40] Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
[00:09:46] Now, I want you to look at the word love. If you're new to the Bible, the New Testament was originally written in Greek, and there are a bunch of different Greek words for love. And this will become very important to understanding what is actually going on in John 21.
[00:10:00] Here, Jesus uses the word agape.
[00:10:03] And agape, at its core, it means sacrificial love. And the way John uses this word, he uses it to describe a loyal, devoted love, the kind of love that will go to the limits. In other words, Jesus looks at Peter and asks him, peter, do you love me enough to die for me?
[00:10:29] Verse 15 goes on, and Peter gives a very unexpected answer.
[00:10:35] Peter said to Jesus, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Now, you cannot see this in English, but Peter uses a different word for love than what Jesus used. Jesus used the word agape.
[00:10:52] Peter, do you love me? With a I will love you to the limits to death kind of love.
[00:10:58] And Peter's response is, I love you with a phileo kind of love. And phileo simply means a relational love, a friendship love, a love that implies unity and connection.
[00:11:10] This is like going up to the girl that you really, really are in love with, and you say, I just want you to know I love you. And she says, I like you too.
[00:11:27] So put yourself in Peter's shoes for a moment. If you're Peter, how.
[00:11:31] How could you possibly, with a clear conscience, look at Jesus and say, I agape you.
[00:11:40] When you have proven publicly that you don't.
[00:11:45] And I appreciate this. In this moment, Peter has no more bravado.
[00:11:50] He has no more trying to prove something. He's not comparing himself with anyone else. He doesn't say, I agape you no good intentions. In this moment, Peter is broken. He is humble. Peter tells the truth.
[00:12:04] I don't agape you. I couldn't say that with a clear conscience if I tried.
[00:12:10] But I do love you. I do phileo you.
[00:12:15] I will lay down my life for you. And now Peter understands, no, I don't have agape for you yet. Now you might be tempted to think that Jesus is shaming Peter. He is not. You might be tempted to think that Jesus is just throwing his greatest failure back in his face and rubbing it in. Jesus is not.
[00:12:36] If you are going to move past a big epic failure, what will be required of you? And Jesus knows that for Peter to move past this big epic failure that Peter must face not just the failure, but the people that he failed. And there is no other way. Verse 15, Jesus responds, Feeding my lambs. And here's a question. Can we have a little bit of fun just for a moment? There's two interpretations of what lambs refers to.
[00:13:10] I'll give you the. Probably the one that most people are expecting. And then actually our preaching team, as we kind of went through this, we were like, we don't actually think when he asked this question. This time, this is actually what he means. So you can feel free to disagree. So for fun, we'll talk about it. Two fascinating interpretations. Interpretation number one, the Jesus lambs are the people who are going to come to faith in Peter's future ministry. Peter, I want you to be their pastor. I want you to be their shepherd. I'm not done with you yet. I think that's what he means in a little bit. But here, actually, this is the only time in the Book of John the word lamb is used. In fact, it refers to a young, like, young lamb.
[00:13:48] And it would appear. This is what I think. I think what Jesus is saying. Do you see the other disciples?
[00:13:52] They're the lambs. Peter is the oldest. They were all teenagers between probably the ages of 15 and maybe 20 years old.
[00:14:00] And Jesus is kind of their senior, their elder, if you will. And he's like, listen, Jesus or Peter, I'm gonna reinstate you into your pastoral leadership position over the disciples. And you can feel free to disagree with that. But I think we'll see a little bit later that that might be a little more plausible. So verse 16, Jesus asked a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Same Greek word he used the first time, agape. Do you agape me? The only difference is that Jesus took away the comparison.
[00:14:32] All right, Peter, forget about the other guys.
[00:14:36] Forget about what happened.
[00:14:38] Do you agape me?
[00:14:41] Do you love me with the kind of love that will go the limits?
[00:14:45] Do you love me with the kind of love that would die for me?
[00:14:50] And Peter responds in verse 16 exactly the way he did in verse 15. He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. You know that I phileo you. Still no admission of agape.
[00:15:05] Peter cannot bring himself to look at Jesus and say, I agape you.
[00:15:11] Verse 16, in kindness, Jesus accepts his answer. And he said to him, tend my sheep.
[00:15:18] Now, every time sheep is used in John, metaphorically, it's used to refer to the people who are going to come to faith in Jesus. And so clearly now he's saying, I don't want you to just pastor the 11 or the 10.
[00:15:33] I want you to pastor all the people who are going to come to faith in me through your future ministry and the ministry of the 11. This is what I want for you. And no, it doesn't mean that he's going to be the Pope. FYI, What I love here is that Jesus accepts his humble answer. And he accepts this humble answer by saying, not just I want you to lead the disciples, but I also want you to pastor and to shepherd people.
[00:16:01] And this is a really just amazing moment. And right now, we still have this. Do you agape me? No, but I phileo you. In verse 17, we find another linguistical twist here. Here's what Jesus said to Peter, says the third time, simon, son of John, do you love me? Now, Jesus changes his language, and he simply asks Peter, do you phileo me?
[00:16:24] And if all Peter has in this moment is phileo, that's it. Jesus is like, I'll take it.
[00:16:31] And so verse 17 continues.
[00:16:34] Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? Do you phileo me? And he said to him, lord, you know everything.
[00:16:41] You know that I love you, that I phileo you. And there are three things going on here that grieve Peter. Number one, it's really hard to face people that you failed.
[00:16:54] Number two, it's really hard to receive forgiveness in front of the people you've failed.
[00:17:02] And number three, Jesus being the king of callbacks, he didn't have to bring up all the details of Peter's denial.
[00:17:11] He just had to ask him Three questions. And by the time you get to the third question, you know exactly what he's talking about. And he probably remembered in that moment when he made eye contact with Jesus, and he's like, listen, do you love me?
[00:17:27] I phileo you. Do you love me? I phileo you. Do you phileo me? I love you. Yes, I phil you.
[00:17:36] Jesus responds at the end of verse 17, Feed my sheep, Peter. I forgive you, Peter. I bless you, Peter. I reinstate you.
[00:17:49] We've got work to do and wallowing, and your forgiven failure will not get it done. Get over it and let's go. You're forgiven. Move on. Essentially, I want you to look at verse 18, because it's plausible that you may have misunderstood what Jesus was trying to communicate in this next verse. Relationally, Jesus said to Peter, 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. In other words, crucifixion, you will die. Verse 19. This he said to show by what kind of death he, Peter, was to glorify God.
[00:18:32] So, yes, Jesus tells Peter how he's gonna die. And some people kind of had this, like, intuition that, like, that Peter's punishment for denying Jesus three times was that he was now gonna have to suffer a terrible, painful death. And that is actually not what is happening here. In fact, there's no punishment. Jesus said this in front of everyone to show Peter the degree of not to which he will shame God like he did when he denied him, but the degree to which he will bring honor and glory to his name. Look at verse 19, the degree to which Peter will glorify God. And so Jesus looks at him and essentially says this, Peter, one day, soon enough, your love for me will be so big that. That you will not just live for me, you will agape me so deeply that you will willingly go to the cross for affiliation with my name. That what you did when you denied me three times, that epic failure will not be what defines you or your legacy, but you will bring glory and honor to my name, not just as your rabbi, but as your. Your God. In verse 18, after saying this, Jesus said to Peter, follow me.
[00:19:56] Let's go.
[00:19:57] Now, if you're Peter, this is a great story. And for fun, read what happens next. Because they have a little dialogue, Peter needs another little rebuke. But here's one of the most beautiful things.
[00:20:06] God will not let Peter Wallow in this failure.
[00:20:11] And I want to share with you two. So what's. And here's the first. What is the spiritual failure that you have yet to deal with?
[00:20:20] I want to just encourage you for a moment. Your failure can deflate you.
[00:20:25] Your failure can define you, or your failure can humble you.
[00:20:29] Which one? That is your decision, and only you can make that.
[00:20:35] How do I know if my failure has deflated me? Symptoms include wallowing, disconnection from people and God and or avoidance.
[00:20:50] How do I know if my failure has defined me? Symptoms include, you can't stop talking about becomes your personal brand and it's all you can think about.
[00:21:04] How do I know if my failure has humbled me?
[00:21:07] Symptoms include facing it, calling it what it is, learning your lessons, taking your consequences, and then seeking to move on so that you can help build the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
[00:21:27] One of the things I just appreciate about being a Christian is that when God saved me. When God saved you, he knew you would epically fail. Most people after they become Christians do have some moment of failure where you came to Christ because of course you knew that you were a sinner, but you probably didn't understand the depth of your sin for a little while. Most Christians have this moment after they become a Christian where they kind of have to come face to face with the depth and ugliness of their sin.
[00:21:59] And what I so appreciate is that our temptation is to wallow and to shame ourselves or to deflect and say it's not that big of a deal or to make it smaller than it is. But the Christians who overcome these things face them and this is just normal part of life. I and you, we are sinners and we do dumb things. And when we do dumb things, we don't make them smaller than they are or bigger than they are. We face them and we call them for what they are. And what we do is we say I'm sorry.
[00:22:29] And we look at the people maybe that we have hurt or failed, and we take responsibility for that. And there's consequences to that. We've all had to deal in our lives with personal consequences of our own failures.
[00:22:41] And then we try to move on, and we try to move on in forgiveness knowing that our God loves us, knowing. Knowing that our God wants to use us. Failure is just a part of the Christian life. But for so many Christians, we. We let it deflate us or define us when there is a much better approach, which is humility and ownership.
[00:23:05] So at number two, some failures disqualify you from Certain ministries. But no failure can disqualify you from being used by God as a pastor. There are a whole bunch of things that if I do them, then I will probably never be able to be a pastor again.
[00:23:26] There are a whole bunch of things that if you do, will probably prevent you from being in certain ministries.
[00:23:32] But does that mean that God can never use you again?
[00:23:36] I mean, if something happens and I end up in jail for the rest of my life, does that mean God's done using me? No. It does not matter where you put me, how big the fail is. It doesn't matter what circumstance I find myself in. God is offering forgiveness.
[00:23:50] God is offering healing. Now, I can't control my relationships with other people and what they do. I can't control the fallout of the decisions that you and I make. I can't control how it's all gonna pan out. But here's what I can tell you. I can tell you that even in your worst failures, when you go before God, it would be his joy and privilege to forgive you and to help you heal and to restore you. I wanna read you one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. It's definitely like, top two in the book of James. James, chapter four, verse six. I love this.
[00:24:23] But he gives more grace.
[00:24:26] And you might be like, I think he's out. I think I've pushed it too far. And you come back to this. But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud. But what does he give to the humble? He gives grace, help, support to the humble.
[00:24:43] And so, like, you have two options in your failure. One is pride. And here's what God will do to the proud. He will resist you. He will stand opposed to you. The things you want to do, the things you want to do for your name or even for the kingdom of God. If you refuse to repent, if you refuse humility, if you take the pathway of pride, God will take it as his personal responsibility to oppose you and what you're doing. I don't know about y'. All. I'm not interested in that. Like, I don't want the God of the universe opposing me. What I want is the God of the universe, God giving me grace out of his posture of humility. And so when people find themselves and their worst moments and their big fails, his grace is never exhausted. But he gives more grace. And he wants to support and to help those who choose the pathway of humility.
[00:25:40] I love that being in a true relationship with God begins with humility and ownership, but it does not stop with humility and ownership.
[00:25:51] Did you know that once you become a Christian, you're going to keep sinning? I think I've said this, like, 10 times. But in case you haven't figured it out.
[00:25:56] And you know what? Being a mature follower of Jesus requires ongoing humility and ownership. That's what it requires. And so when you came, became a Christian for the very first time, here's what you did. You came before God and you took ownership, and you humbled yourself and you said, I have sinned.
[00:26:17] I have sinned against my own mind, my own body. I've sinned against the people that I love.
[00:26:24] I've sinned against the God who designed me and made me.
[00:26:29] And you could probably think of multiple ways that you have sinned against yourself, others, and God.
[00:26:35] But when you became a Christian, you came before God and you took ownership. I did it. Nobody made me do it. I cannot blame my mom or my dad or my brother or my sister or my genes or my friends or the principal at school or my boss. I can't blame anybody. When I made the decision, I did that thing, and I was wrong. And this is why when we came to Jesus and we became a Christian, it requires humility and ownership of your sin. But. But it also requires you to believe that Jesus is actually wanting to forgive you because of what he did on the cross for your sins. And so when we came before Jesus, at the very beginning, we were like, I can't pay for this. My debt is too big. Will you pay my sin for me? I believe that, Jesus, you are not just God, but you're my God. And God's answer to you was yes, 100%, I will forgive you, and you will be mine. And then we became a Christian. And it's like the same process happens. You can't ever get saved again. That's done. That's once and for all and forever. But part of the Christian life is coming before our Holy God and saying, I have sinned again. Nobody made me do it. I am not gonna blame anybody for this. I take responsibility for my actions. I know you've already forgiven me, but I'm coming before you to say, look, will you forgive me? And I'm gonna believe what you said, that for anybody who came to Christ at that moment, once and for all and forever, I. I was forgiven.
[00:27:57] And part of becoming a Christian who grows is we do the same thing we did at the beginning, but we just keep doing it over and over again. This is part of how we grow up. It's also like parenting, right? You raise a kid and it's like, what do you want to see? Ownership, humility. And what does that actually create in you as a mom and dad? When your kids have ownership and humility, confidence, trust, the desire to give them more responsibility.
[00:28:24] And what's so striking is that if I were to look at most Christians and say, do you want to make an impact for Jesus Kingdom? Do you know who Jesus loves to give ministry opportunity to the humble?
[00:28:34] Those who take ownership.
[00:28:36] That very thing that makes your mom and your dad so proud and so excited about God loves when his children are humble and take ownership. And so I can't think of a better next step for you if you've never trusted in Christ to take humble ownership of your sin and ask God to forgive you. And his answer is, for anyone who believes in Jesus Christ and wants to make him their God, yes, 100%. And Fellows Church, for those of you, most of us in this room, you have trusted in Christ. If this hasn't been your pattern, if you've been a victim, if you've been wallowing, humility and ownership will be so pleasing to the heart of God. And he will give grace upon grace upon grace.
[00:29:24] There is more grace. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And I want the grace, the support and the help of my God. Amen. Village Church Amen. Let's pray together. Father, I want to just take a moment and say thank you that there is no failure too big that cannot be forgiven, covered and redeemed by the blood of Jesus.
[00:29:49] Would you teach us humility and ownership so that we do not have to unnecessarily amplify the consequences of our own sin that we chose? And I want to just say thank you that you have given us the Holy Spirit and forgiveness in Christ and so much more. The moment we believed, you've given us a new start and amnesty and adoption and your Holy Spirit and purpose. That's just the beginning and eternal life waits for us from the bottom of our heart. We just say we love you and we are so thankful and we say all of this only in the name of Jesus. Amenville Church Amen.
