JUL 26 2015 | Matthew 13

Sea Change Church · "Matthew 13" · Adam Stadtmiller · July 26, 2015
Matthew 13
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Wonderful to be together in worship here this morning. You want me to do this? I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, no, I am. Let me let me say just before we read this section, many of us know we've been journeying through the Gospel of John and we have been taking seriously. I have watched and listened with interest, plant with purpose. What a wonderful initiative really is.

May I say real simply that Pastor Adam is about to preach with purpose. And that's not just a spin on words. Jesus said that when the word goes forth, the word of the kingdom, Matthew chapter 13. I used to begin my classes at USD with this passage. There's a choice involved. The word goes forth. The sower sows the seed. And there's a choice. When the sower sowed the seed as Jesus described it, the word goes out. Sometimes it's hard soil. It's a hardened path.

May I say very simply, and maybe you can identify, there are moments where I need to say, Lord, take the hardness of my heart away. Take away my resistance. I feel like my heart has been inoculated against listening because of the sea of words that are going on out there. Lord, help me to find a word for me. Take away the hardness of the heart.

And the best seeds sown on hard soil, it's not going anywhere. There's a second type of soil. And that's rocky and shallow. That means there's all kinds of heavy obstacles just below the surface. Shallow determination that this isn't going to go deep and claim a deep root. Sometimes I confess to you, I'm a little shallow. I say, Lord, I need to pray that your word will reach more deeply into my life.

And what good roots do? They break up the rocks. And those roots get strong. They break up the soil themselves. Some of us may need to offer that prayer. Lord, help me not to be hard-hearted or hard-headed. Help me, Lord, not to be shallow in imitation of so much of what pop culture does. The third, competition. It takes root. But there's all kinds of other things growing.

And busyness, preoccupation, catch you later, Lord. Those kinds of things can be active. And the competition in life can choke out the word. So it becomes unfruitful. But then there's the good soil. The good root is prepared. It's ready. It's receptive. And that's who we're called to be. We have a choice this morning, don't we? Pastor Adam's going to be preaching with purpose.

I appreciate that, brother, about you. Whether I talk like this or I talk like this, I appreciate that. And this is the word of the Lord to us from John chapter 21 as we draw toward a close of our study here. After the meal there by the Sea of Galilee, it says, When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?

Yes, Lord. You know that I love you. Jesus said, feed my lambs. Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you truly love me? He answered, yes, Lord. You know that I love you. And Jesus said, take care of my sheep. The third time he said to him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And Peter was hurt, wounded, because Jesus asked him the third time, do you love me?

He said, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. And Jesus said, then you feed my sheep. I tell you the truth. When you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted. When you're older, you'll stretch out your hand and someone else will dress you, lead you where you don't want to go. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter himself would glorify God.

And he said to him, you follow me. And then Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, John, was following them. This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, Lord, who is going to betray you? Peter saw him and said, Lord, what about him? And Jesus answered, if I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?

You must follow me. Because of this, a rumor spread among the brothers that this disciple would not die, but Jesus did not say he would not die. He simply said, only said, if I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? Lord, we pray this morning that as Pastor Adam preaches with purpose, if we are hardened, if we are tempted to be shallow, Lord, if we're preoccupied by other things growing, sometimes growing crazy in our lives, that you will reach into the soil of our lives and change us by your word and spirit and grace so that we might be good soil for this life-giving word that's coming.

We pray this for your kingdom's sake and to your glory, Lord. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jim. Fantastic. Well, if you have your Bibles, open them if they're not already. Well, I hope you're enjoying, I want us to become students of the word, and I hope you're enjoying and seeing that I am intentionally using different versions of the Bible as we preach through it.

I think I got too stuck in one version for like 15 years of my Christianity. I am preaching right now on the New American Standard Bible, and if I was you, I would take a little bit of your personal time and look at the different versions and the difference between them. Now, Jim was reading out of the NIV, and I think it was the 1984 edition, which is the one, like I said before, that they started doing the gender-neutral edition.

You can talk about the differences there of how they are kind of changing some of the meanings. Some Bibles I really want you to take a look at if you get a chance is the English Standard Version. Really enjoy, and I get a lot out of the English Standard Version. Obviously, the King James Bible, the New King James Bible, the Holman Christian Standard Bible has become a favorite of mine.

I really like that. And then obviously, I'm using the NIV as well because I think that the new translation of the NIV, where I think they've aired some by making it too inclusive, I think there's some places where they have gotten the wording right. And I've mentioned this three weeks in a row where it says man, but God really meant mankind. He meant men and women.

And so they have fixed that. There's just other places where they've removed men where it was speaking directly to men. I have an issue with that, especially in a culture that's trying to de-genderize society, that's saying that there's no difference. And I believe that there's beautiful, amazing differences between men and women, and they're glorious, as a matter of fact.

So just let you know that that is why you'll see that. And I hope you are enjoying it. And as you hear Jim read it, and perhaps you're in a different version, does your mind kind of ping? Whoa, that word's a little bit different. What does that mean? And that's a great way to study the Word of God. Let me give you a biblehub.com. We'll put 25 different versions in front of you on the internet.

You want to know a verse? If you're thinking about a verse, look it up on biblehub.com. I'm trying to equip you to be students of God's Word and not just dependent on me. So you can look and say, Adam, I love what you said in the Scripture because it resonated with what God told me. Or I completely disagree with you because, look, I think you might be off base on that.

That's totally cool because I realize that I'm not perfect in my preaching. With that said, we are coming to the end of John today. Man, I have had so much fun. A year and a half, we've done a few other series in between to kind of take a little break. And I believe in preaching like television. And what I mean by that is you have a season of how many episodes?

15, 16 episodes and then you take a break. And so I've done that. We've gone through Joshua in between John. We did a series on rest. We did a series on giving. But now we're coming to the conclusion of my favorite book in the Bible, the book of John. I just love, I love John. I love how he talks like he's around a campfire. I love his attention to people.

I love the detail work he does with the scriptures, the themes of light and truth, his relationship with Jesus. It's amazing. And so we're finishing that today. And I'm a little sad. But when I get back, which I'll be out three Sundays, but when I am back, we're going to be in for a new series on the book of Acts. And I know, Clay, that'll put a smile on your face as I know that's one of your favorite books.

And mine as well. We are going to be looking at how a church births. And we are birthing a new work here in an older environment, meaning there's something that God has done here before. And I'm excited. We had our Holy Spirit revival week of prayer, not this last week, but the week before. I want to do that again in the fall. Matter of fact, I think I want to do it quarterly where we get together every night for a week and we just pray and ask God.

We asked God that week that it would rain. Oddly it rained. A lot. Okay? We asked God that that cross would stay on the hill. And the night after we prayed that, and people have been praying that for a long time, but I don't know if you saw the Soledad cross. It looks like it's staying on the hill. It was transferred into private hands. And so do I think our prayer, am I audacious and bold enough to think our prayer might have pushed that over the edge?

Yes, I am. If you don't have, you don't ask. But I know a lot of people have prayed for those things. So we have a book of Acts that we're going to be going into. I'm excited about that. And then in October, starting the first week of October, I'm going to be doing a series on human sexuality. I'm going to be doing four weeks on human sexuality, on the creation of man difference, and then all aspects of it in our culture.

I'm very excited. I think that the church has such a beautiful story to tell about God's desire for men and women and creation. And I just, I can't wait to get into it. So that's October 1, and it's going to be great. So be praying for both of those series as I get into them. Well, let's talk about John. Jesus, thank you for the scripture. Bless it.

Now let me preach with fire, God. Let me preach with compassion, with sensitivity. Give me words beyond that I prepared. And Lord, be here in Jesus' name. Amen. We know you're already here. Okay, so in this story, we have one of the most amazing stories of reconciliation, of repentance. We see that John had jumped into the water in a massive movement, a physical movement of repentance.

Remember, he was out on the water fishing. He had given up fishing for men, which Jesus had called him to do. He said, no, you will no longer fish for men, but you will fish for mankind. He says, excuse me, you will no longer fish for fish, but you will fish for mankind. Meaning that you will go out and win people for me. Well, after denying Christ and after feeling rejected and the cock crowing three times, Peter gave up.

And we know that he took people with him. And I said last week, it's impossible, we are communal people, that it's impossible to fail alone. They say right now in culture, you know, hey, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, you can do whatever you want. I want to say this. God didn't create us to be islands unto ourselves. It always hurts someone else.

It is impossible to act without all of humanity, in my opinion, being affected by it. Because God doesn't look at us only as individuals and he knows you as an individual. Let me just say this. He knows your name. He loves you individually. And he thinks about you with every breath. But at the same time, he sees us as a people. He sees us as a whole.

And so Peter quits on Jesus. Jesus. And then in a moment, when the sun rises after a night of unfruitful fishing, Jesus comes to the shore. You remember the story from last week. And Jesus walks out on the shore and he says, children. It's classic, right? Children. You know, I said, if my father calls me child, I don't mind. And if anybody's going to call me child, Jesus, please call me child every single day.

And I don't think Jesus was saying, hey, little kids, why don't you figure it out? I think he was saying children. Children. And he called them. And then who recognizes him immediately from 150 yards off the shore? Who is it? It's John. And I talked last week and I said the reason he was able to recognize him is because he understood his belovedness.

And that as we see the first people who saw Jesus after his resurrection and realized who he was, was Mary. Mary, Mary, who had gone to the tomb and was also had seen herself as beloved and was forgiven as well. And John. And that often, the more we understand our belovedness, the more we will see Jesus manifest himself to us. So I'm catching us up on last week.

Peter's in the boat. And as soon as John says, it is the Lord, what does Peter do? Jumps in the water, dives into Galilee and swims like mad to get to Jesus. I want to say that's his prayer of repentance. That is a, you know, not every prayer is uttered in a word. Not every prayer is a thought. Not every prayer is a heart's groaning. But sometimes a prayer is just jumping in the water and doing something physically.

And I want to say that as he jumped in the water and swam to Jesus, he was saying, Jesus, I'm so sorry. I ask, I love you. I got to get to you. You see, you don't come to Jesus unless you know that you, in Peter's circumstance, unless you know you want to be restored. And Jesus meets him on the beach and completely restores him. I want to say that there is no sin that Jesus cannot restore.

There is nothing that you can do. And the enemy wants to say that whatever you have done or you're stuck in a sin or this one horrible thing that happened to you can never be forgiven. I want to say it can all be forgiven. If we say that, then we say that humankind's sin, that mankind's sin is greater than God's work on the cross. Do you believe that your sin is greater than Jesus' work on the cross?

No. There is nothing you can do or have done that Jesus doesn't want to embrace you for and meet you on that shore. And so Peter jumps in the water. And here we have Peter not wanting to walk on water anymore because he doesn't care about walking on water. The days, I think, if you were to say, do you ever need to walk on water again as he was swimming to Jesus after that massive epic fail, I think he would have said, I don't need to walk on water anymore.

I'll just be a toilet cleaner for Jesus. I just got to get to Jesus. Just get me to him. And he meets him there. And so the story now is coming to an end because Jesus prophesied that this would happen. I don't know if you know that. Jesus had already told Peter that this moment was coming and this is a prophetic utterance into Peter's life. And so he spoke to Peter.

And look in your notes. In Luke 22, 31 through 34, look what he had said to Simon. And this is after Simon had declared that Jesus was Lord. So he had given the statement that Jesus was the Messiah. He's feeling really good about that statement. And he's feeling very bold in that statement. And Jesus says to him after he says that, he tells him, okay, but I want you to know that Satan is after you.

Look what he says. Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you. I love that. I put that in bold. Even Jesus prays, right? But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith might not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. But he replied, Lord, Lord, I'm ready to go with you to prison and to death.

Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me. You will deny three times that you know me. Look in the scripture at the title that Jesus uses to call Peter in these stories. You will see that sometimes he calls him Peter and other times he calls him Simon. As you'll see in the first passage that Jim read, he calls him Simon, son of John.

We'll get to that and the importance of that in a moment. But Jesus never puts a word out of place. And in the way that he calls him, he is saying different things according to the title in which he calls him by. We'll get into that in just a moment. First thing I want to say here is Satan is after believers. Satan is trying to destroy anyone who makes a confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And so he is trying to take Peter out. This is so interesting. Look at Luke 22, 31. It shows God's sovereign protection. I don't know if anybody else is afraid of the devil. I want to encourage you, don't be afraid of the devil. The devil is on a short leash, okay? There's so many believers that I've seen that are fascinated with the enemy. They're fascinated with what the devil is doing.

They're fascinated with the devil's plans. They're worried that the enemy is going to take their life out. I want to say that this shows that Satan can do nothing unless he asks God to do it. Now there's only one way that Satan can attack you without God's permission. And I think even then he has to have God's permission. And that's if you step in and allow it.

Does that make sense? Because you are under God's divine protection. So look at what it says. It says in that scripture that says Satan has done what? He has asked that he may sift you. I want to say that you are completely... Let me just say this to you. If you ever feel unprotected, if you ever feel like God doesn't have your back, let me say that the enemy cannot attack you without asking to do so.

We also see in that scripture in Luke 22 where Jesus prophesies the fall of Peter that he allows the fall to happen. Look at what it says in the Luke 22 passage there in the notes. It says, I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. Now here's what's interesting. What could he have prayed? What could he have prayed when Satan asks that I can sift Peter?

Peter. God don't allow Peter to be what? Sifted. Do not allow Peter to fail. Why doesn't Jesus pray that? Why wouldn't God just protect us divinely? I want to say that God uses all things for his purpose. And by the way, Satan is a puppet of God, okay? Satan thinks that he crucified Jesus and wins, but all Satan did was allow a greater glory to come.

I want to say that Satan wants to take you out, but Romans 8, 28 says all things will work together for what? For good, for those that love God and are called according to his purposes. Every time Satan thinks he wins, he loses because he's on a short leash. But God allows sifting. I want to say Jesus doesn't have a problem with your life being sifted no matter how it happens.

You see, he's going to take that wheat and he's going to make bread. I want to say one of the most obnoxious things is a believer that's not been sifted. One of the most obnoxious things you can see is a believer who has not been sifted. I want to say thank God for sifting. Thank God for the hard times. Now, if you had hard times in your life, you've come out of it, and you end up thanking God for these hard times.

You see, Jesus knew that Peter needed to be sifted. Peter would have been obnoxious. Could you imagine Peter running the church without having had this experience? Can you imagine Jesus dying and Peter never had? Where would the church? The church probably would not have sustained. What direction would he have taken the church in? He was an obnoxious guy.

I want to tell you, the wisdom you see with Peter, and he still made some mistakes. We'll see in the book of Acts some decisions that he made. But he's a completely different guy after his failure and his reconciliation with the Father than before. Thank God for brokenness. Thank God for brokenness. And this is why we need to thank God with our suffering.

When Paul is in prison, what is he doing? He's singing. He thanks God. He glories in the suffering. Does anybody want to suffer? No. Did Jesus want to go to the cross? No. But it says that for the glory, he endured the what? The shame and the suffering for the glory that was what? Set before him. I want to say all suffering, everything that you're dealing with right now, if you have suffering in your life, it is going to be made into wheat.

That God is going to bake bread. There's going to be a fragrance of your life and it's going to be turned into a greater glory. If we consider him in all of our ways. And I would say sometimes even when we don't consider him, he still takes care of us. God still loves us. He still cares for us. And so here we have Peter. And Jesus doesn't pray that he won't fail.

He prays that his faith won't fail. Because Jesus cared more. And there's a sentence there. Jesus shows praise not that Peter won't fail, but that he'll be converted by the fall. I want to say one of the things that I love is when God takes a failure of mine and he converts me in a deeper way because of it. Jesus wants to take all your suffering and he wants you to be converted by it.

And he says there's one thing I don't want to have happen. Don't, and he says to the father, don't let his faith fail. Don't let his faith, in that moment, don't let his faith fail. Allow him to go through it. I'm still going to protect him. But don't let his faith fail. I want to say to you, if you are in a difficult time right now and you're struggling, don't fail.

I've said it over and over again here. It's an anthem in this church. We do not lay down in the valley of the shadow of death. It says though we what? We pass, though we walk through the valley of the shadow. Keep walking. One step in front of the other. Because where are you going to lay down according to Psalm 23? Quiet waters. Still waters. Green pastures.

And at the end of Psalm 23, and I don't mind that I'm repeating myself, it says we will dwell as sheep where? In the house of the Lord forever. Put your chin up. Look to heaven. And believe that God is working this out. Satan in your life is on a short leash. He has to ask everything. Lean on God. And God will protect you and rescue you no matter what your circumstances are.

Don't let your faith fail. Don't give up hope. Hope. Hope is a spiritual commodity. Hope. Worship. You want to know one of the best ways to fight discouragement? To fight hopelessness? To dance. To sing. And if you can't dance, sing. And if you can't sing, lift your hands to the Lord. Let your heart sing. In the midst of your suffering, we stand up and we praise God and say, you are worthy.

You are good. I believe in you. I worship you. And I want to say, something spiritual happens. I want to say, when you pray, I want you to know the heavens move. When you worship, the heavens move. Worship is a spiritual weapon. The Word of God is a spiritual weapon that will encourage you. Let me ask you, are you using those weapons? If you're encouraged, oh yeah.

If you're going to lay down and quit, I want to say, go pick up your weapons. Begin to worship the Lord today. And Peter did that. He said, you know what? I'm swimming to Jesus. I'm swimming. And so Jesus meets him here and Jesus reinstates him. But Peter, but excuse me, Jesus had seen it coming. And so know right now that we're finishing something that Jesus had already foreknew would happen for his purposes.

Let's go to the second point there in bold. It says, this story illustrates the love and the redemptive grace of God. Isn't God good? Isn't God good that he picks us up out of gutters? I'm coming up on 20, I think 26 or 27 years here in September where I was laying in a gutter. How God redeems us out of the gutters in our life. I was literally laying in a gutter.

My life gone. Had congestive heart failure at one point. You've heard that story as well. Some of you haven't. OD'd on drugs. My life was in a gutter. And Jesus redeemed it. And he has taken me to a place far beyond anywhere I could have ever, as Ephesians 3.20 says, hoped or dreamed or imagined. Let me say that vision is great for your life. You can never hope or dream or imagine as big as what God has for you.

I'm sure that plant with a purpose has some great vision. You aren't even close to what God has hoped or what he has dreamed or what he has imagined or what you can see. God loves you and he wants to run after your life with you. He cares for you. Yeah. Amen. What I love is that Jesus is meticulous in the forgiving of Peter. See if you saw these things in the scripture.

First of all, the second calling of Peter. This is his second calling. Okay? It's not his first. It's his second. The second calling happens in the place of the first where he was cleaning his nets. It happens in the place that he first said that he was Lord. And he brought him back to that place and he says, Do you still think I'm Lord? I want to say after you fall down, after you fail, after you quit, after you go fishing, after you deny Jesus.

And there's nothing worse than denying Jesus. Because that is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Let me tell you, that's how I understand that scripture. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit means denying who Jesus is when the Holy Spirit reveals. That's how I understand the scripture. Okay? Peter did that, in my opinion. Now we can talk about that theologically, but I've done some reading.

It doesn't mean I'm right. But I don't think we can do anything because what allows us into heaven is faith in who? Jesus. He denied Jesus. And Jesus brings him back to this place. And he says, Well then again, you denied me, but even my grace is sufficient for that. Let me ask you again. And I want to say to you, maybe Jesus is going to ask you again.

Do you believe who I say I am? Maybe Jesus is asking you again about your marriage. Do you believe? And let me just ask you again. You might have given up yesterday. But let me ask you again. Are you ready to recommit today? You see, every day he will forgive us over and over again. His grace is sufficient. His grace is everlasting. It never fails us.

And he will ask you. And there is no sin, even if you deny him 10,000 times in the end, if you come back with a true heart and you say to him, You are my Lord. He says, Okay. Tend my sheep. And we'll get to that. And so he brings Peter here to the place of the first calling. And he restores him over hot coals. I think that's interesting. Peter denied him over a fire.

Just earlier. Remember, it was cold. It was cold. And he said he was warming himself over a fire. And you can imagine, it's 5 in the morning now. It's still the winter or early spring. And there he is over a fire again. And so he brings him to the scene of the crime. And he says, Do you love me? Three times. Now, if you've heard a sermon on this passage before, they talk about what the different loves mean.

Since every sermon I've ever heard on that preaches about it, go find one and listen to it. I'm not going to go over the different loves. Because I just can't even preach it again. I'm so tired. No, well. But I would say, go study that. But there's some real important meanings there of agape love and phileo and these different loves. Every time he says, Do you love me?

It means something else. I'm going to serve that into your court and let you, if you want to know about it, go search it on Google or whatever internet search engine you want to use. Peter denied him how many times? How many times did Jesus ask him? See, he's meticulous. Remember this instance? Let's take care of that. You know, I think we don't want to dwell on our sin completely.

But I think there's something powerful about going back to the broken area of our lives and just talking to God. Hey, there was this one really hard hurt, Jesus. And I just want to, can we look at that for a second? And I just want you to heal it. When my wife and I went away to this deliverance thing up in Bethel about six months ago it's been now.

And I've mentioned this a few times as well and I am repeating myself. But they went over all these past hurts. All these ungodly beliefs. And then they gave us scripture and godly beliefs to go along with it. And we asked forgiveness and went back for things, things in our marriage. And God began to heal us. There's something about, not that we want to dwell, but that Jesus just cares about every wound.

He wants to address every wound. Not to, you know, some people say, I don't want to bring all that up. That's old, that's past. I get that. It is. And when you ask forgiveness, it is all washed away. But I want to say there's power and there's intimacy about showing Jesus this one wound and saying, this one really hurt. And Jesus will touch it and he'll address it because Jesus touches lepers' wounds.

Jesus is not afraid of touching your wounds. And to go to Jesus individually and just take the time to go back and look into, like I said a few weeks ago, be willing to look into the tomb. Look into the dead place. Because remember, John and Peter and Mary, they're willing to look past the stone in their life that was rolled away, and we all have stones, and to look into the tomb.

And to look into the dead place because that's where resurrection happens. You see, resurrection happens in the dead place. And I want to say there is something powerful about going back and letting Jesus individually address and dress each of your wounds with his love and his grace and his forgiveness. I want to say it's not a bad, it's not a bad work of grace to do and to allow in your life to go back.

And so Jesus is meticulous in grace. You see, he wants to go to every part of your life and he wants to heap his grace about on it. You know, I think Jesus is cool with like, oh God, I ask forgiveness for all my sins. And he has the ability to, if you come forward and say, you know, you're not going to do that at the altar in one day, you know.

But Lazarus, remember, continued to have what removed? His grave clothes. And others helped him do it. And so if you come forward and say, I ask forgiveness for my sins, he can forgive you for all those sins. But he wants to heap grace upon each one of them and remind you you are loved. And if there's a deep wound that came from your father or your mother or something that happened in your childhood or helped you or perhaps you've been abused or sexually abused or some other thing, he wants to come and sit with you and say, I want to give you grace.

Because my grace is sufficient for it all and my grace is sufficient for that one wound that ails you. We want to heal it all. What I am finding is when I go to that place, God heals it and I give it to him. You know, it's going to be a lifetime work. This is a Sistine Chapel you're working on. Do you get that? Your life is a Sistine Chapel. I know we want it to be a Hungry Man Microwave Dinner.

Okay? Remember those? Used to love those little apple cornbread and all that? Love Hungry Man. They put it in the oven. TV dinners. What happened to those? Love the TV dinners. They are around, aren't they? Not in my house, but I'm going to get some. Salisbury steak. I am off topic. Remember the Mexican one? It had like that corn. Yeah, it was good. You were hungry?

I don't know what I was preaching about. God's so good. He wants to bless you and heal you. He's meticulous. What? That's right. Thank you. It's not a Hungry Man Dinner. It's a Sistine Chapel. Thank you. That's a good point. I don't want to lose it. It's the problem with the wandering ADD. Your life is a masterpiece. It's so beautiful. God looks at you. And it's a work of an eternity.

It's not even going to end. He's going to continue to restore you. You know, most people think you're going to be to heaven and everything's going to be done. We are still, even though we'll live forever, we're creatures that are not going to be all-knowing. Do you get that? We don't become God when we go to heaven. We become like him and that we live forever and that we're completely holy.

But God is going to blow you away for years with revelation about himself. He's going to say, hey, I just want to show you this rainbow I can do. Check it out for a million years. And you're going to be like, whoa, whoa, your glory, your glory. A million years. And after a million years, you're going to be like, wow. And you'll go, okay, now check this out.

I just want to show you love and mercy. Check this out. Bam. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And you're going to grow and understand. That's heaven. This whole thing of heaven is going to be boring is ridiculous. I'm serious. You're going to be blown away. It's all day, 24-7. It won't even be time. It's just going to be in his glory. I can't wait. If I could press a button, I used to think, like, if I could just stay on earth, God, let me just see my kids grow up and all that.

If I could press a button and have us all just end it now, I would. I want to go to heaven. I want to go to heaven. I don't need to be here anymore. Like, I want to see my kids get married and all those things, but not more than I want to see Jesus. And I felt like that was such an immature way to live for 20 years of my Christian faith. Oh, there's so much more I want to do on earth.

Dude, I've read the news. There's nothing much more I want to do on earth other than tell people about Jesus. I've got no other hope, nothing else I care about. You know, he's just good. And Peter is reinstated. Jesus calls Peter by his old name. This is so interesting. And I mentioned the name a moment ago. It says, John says, Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For this was not revealed to flesh and blood. Well, if you look up in the John 21 passage, you'll see the same thing happens. So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, who wrote that? John wrote that. Simon Peter. That's the new name, right, that he was called by. So John, the author, wrote that.

But that's not what Jesus said in the next sentence. Jesus says to him, Simon, son of John. Because he said, You've gone back from acting like Peter. I told you you had a new name. You were going to be one of the foundational parts of my church. I will build my church upon this rock. But he had gone away from it. And so Jesus comes back to Peter.

And he says, Okay, we're going to start over. I'm going to call you Simon, son of John. Because he started calling them children. And he goes, Now let's get back to who you were called to be. And maybe you've gone back to who you were. Jesus hasn't forgotten who you're supposed to be. And he calls you. And he's willing to meet you in that place of brokenness.

And say, Okay, whatever that prior name was, I will meet you there. And I'm going to meet you where you're at. But by the way, your name's Peter. Let me just reaffirm to you who you are. I want to say, Why do we spend time with God? Because he tells us who he is and who we are. He reminds us. Because I forget who I am every single day. Who I am. Who I'm supposed to be.

Who God has called me to be. The love of the Father. How much he has for me. I need to restore it that I am a son of the living God. Every single day. And when I go back to being old Adam, he comes back and he says, Hey, old Adam, I know you're here. And I can relate to you. And I can meet you in this brokenness. But by the way, by the way, let me just show you a picture of this.

Remember that? Remember when I called you away from the nets? Remember when you walked on the water? Remember when this? Remember when that? Remember when you came to the tomb? You looked in and you saw that I was gone? He's calling you back. I want to say, and if you have laid down in the valley of the shadow of death, get up. Walk. Go back to being who you are called to be.

Who God has called you to be. Imagine a church where all of us are walking in the identity of who God has called us to be. I want to tell you what. My identity is not self-determined. My identity is not, thank God, my identity is not self-determined. Because I am not God and I do not determine who I am. I become who God has said that I am. And that's the only thing when I want to be.

Because I don't even know who I am. In my inmost thoughts, I don't know who I am. The Father knows and he draws it out. And he has been introducing me to the true Adam for 45 years and will do it for an eternity. You see, when it becomes Adam is self-determining, who Adam is, then Adam becomes God. And I am not God. The authority of the Word of God tells me who I am and how I am loved.

And then God, as I come to understand this, lets me know who I am as an individual. That's the Christian story. It's the only story I want. Because when Adam has called the shots, Adam has messed it up. I say we are in a culture right now of crowdsourcing our values and our identity. You know what crowdsourcing is? Crowdsourcing is when you try to raise money for something.

You crowdsource so we can go accomplish something together. I want to say we're in a season right now where people are looking and saying, what does the crowd think? Okay, that must be right. I want to say I know one thing is right, the Word of God. The Word of God tells me that I am beloved. I want to say the identity that this Bible paints for mankind, men and women, is so beautiful.

And when I read it and I see what it means to be a man of God, when I see, like Proverbs 31, what it means to be a woman of God, I stand in awe because they represent the beauty of the Father, the creative beauty of God. And so Peter, we have here being restored. He's called by name and God calls you. And then the final point is this, is that he's restored publicly.

You see, he denied him publicly. And I believe we live in a public faith. Do you get that? I don't think Jesus is looking for secret disciples, although if you are a secret disciple, he's cool with that. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were secret disciples for three years. And then they came out and took Jesus off the cross and put their lives at risk.

They said, no more secret discipleship. Now, I don't know how you're going to come out of the closet, but it's time to out yourself. It's time for Christians to come out of the closet and to say that we are believers. I was at a restaurant last night. Two tables around us held hands and prayed before their meal. And I thought, well, our meal isn't here yet, but don't worry.

I'm thinking to myself because we're going to join you in just a minute. And we all held hands. We bow our head and we take time to pray and honor God before our meal. I'm not saying I stood up and took a, say, anybody else want to join us? Okay. I've been with friends and they love to invite the server to pray with us. And that's just not me. Okay.

But nonetheless, it's time to have some Christian fervor and to do it in love. And so Jesus says to him publicly, and you can see it right here in this verse. It says, when Jesus reestablishes, do you love me what? Look at that verse 15, the third one. Do you love me what? More than these. Which means that's kind of hardcore, right? Like if I were to get Kai up and say, Kai, this is calling him out.

Kai, do you love me more than these? Yeah, well, Zach says he does. That's why I knew not to ask you. Imagine the audacity of that question. It's so rude. Such a rude question. Do you love me? But he said, you know what? And Peter had basically said that much, that I'll die for you. He was trying to be the number one. Remember they were positioning always to be the number one disciple.

I don't think Peter really cared about being the number one disciple anymore. I think after this moment of brokenness, and after you've been broken, let me just say, you don't really care about being the number one disciple anymore. Let me say God has done some beautiful breaking in my life. I don't care about being the number one disciple. I just don't.

I don't. I have a different fuel flowing in my blood now than I had five years ago. And God is so good. But Jesus asked him, do you love me more than these? And the reason he asked him that, because he wanted to take him back to that public confession and the public denial. He took him back to the scene of the crime, and he says to them, do you love me?

And he gave him the ability to restore meticulously that what was broken in the same way that it was broken. As I close, I want to say that every, almost every of my worst firsts in life, and I had a bunch of them because in my teens, I decided I was just going to, Frank Sinatra style, do it my way. That wasn't even the right tune. God has gone back to all those places and restored them.

I had this really bad experience happen at a lawn at a high school, at Valhalla High School, where it was just a bad experience, you know? And I went back. I was asked to preach at the high school. When I went, I thought it was inside. I went there, and the stage was set up on that exact same lawn. And I've told this story here before, but I preached the gospel from that exact place.

You see, God loves to take us back to the scene of the crime and redeem it. When I had my heart attack, I told this story a month ago where I went, and my mom had something with her, I guess it was like a year or so ago, and I went there, and I realized that it was right next to, in the emergency room, the little bed was right next to the bed where I had had my congestive heart failure.

And little did I know when I looked over through that curtain, because my mom was going to be okay, that there was a mother with her son, and my mom had picked me up when I had OD'd and taken me to the hospital with the paramedics that day. And they were in the exact same bed that I was in, a mom and her son. It was just me and my mom there when I was 19.

And I went over there, and they were having some issues, and I said, Can I pray with you? And I prayed with both of them. God took me to the exact bed, the exact place. There was a mother and a son there that were having similar experience to what I was having. And I got to come in 25 years later and say, Can I pray for you? And God redeemed that place of brokenness in my life, because He cares about each one, and He wants to do the same with you.

And it's going to be awesome when He does it. I'm done preaching.