[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the preaching ministry of the Agape of Abdis Church in George South Africa.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's get everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get everybody situated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, children, I want you to imagine that your mother or your father tells you to go clean your room.
[SPEAKER_00]: you and your your little brother, your little sister.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you both obey and you go and you clean up your rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you come back and tell your mom it's all done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll clean that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your mother gives you two pieces of candy to say thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got some reward for doing a good job and you're happy, but then your mother gives your little brother or your little sister three pieces of candy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do you say?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's not fair, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you want to say, maybe you didn't say it, but you're going to want to say, that's not fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're not happy anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: because your little brother, your little sister, got more than you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you may be thinking, well, after all, I'm older, I should get more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you may be thinking, well, I'll always do a better job of cleaning my room than my brother or sister.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I should get more than they get.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, in the message this morning to your parents, we're going to be seeing from the Gospel of John, right at the end of the book,
[SPEAKER_00]: that Jesus is teaching Peter one of the disciples that he is to follow in obeys Jesus, no matter what the Lord wants to give or do with John and one of the other disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we learn that following in obeying Jesus is the most important thing, regardless of what
[SPEAKER_00]: happens with someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to make sure that we keep our focus on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, children, God wants you to have a good attitude and to obey your parents, even when you think it's not fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or it's not going the way you want it to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when you obey them,
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you can go to your classes now and we'll see you in a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Find your place, if you will, in John chapter 21, we've come to the end of this series and it's been about a year and a half since we started and so
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like leaving a saying goodbye to an old friend, because it's been a great blessing to work through this gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so today this morning we want to see how John, the leading of the Spirit of God, closes off this gospel, this letter concerning the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think back to chapter 13, you'll remember there that Jesus was preparing as disciples for his crucifixion, he's getting ready to return to his father in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in John chapter 13 verse 36, in following, we read Simon Peter said to him,
[SPEAKER_00]: Where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Peter said to him, Lord, why can't I not follow you right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: I will lay down my life for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Truly, truly I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny me three times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we saw how that Peter was very confident in himself that he would not, then out of the Lord, he would not fail because he loved the Lord and he was willing to die for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we know that he did fail on that night and he did do just as the Lord had said,
[SPEAKER_00]: And on the resurrection morning, that day of Christ's resurrection, Jesus met with His disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: He appeared to them and we were told that He also appeared to Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the Lord not only provided a personal, you could say, a restoration of fellowship with Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: ministry before the other disciples as well and we've we've seen that in the last last message.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as Jesus had called him and the other disciples at the beginning to follow him here Peter is recommission to that task to be a shepherd to the flock of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: would need to follow Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: To do the work of the ministry means that we must follow Jesus and this commission for Him is the same commission for us for us that belong to the Lord to serve the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: We must first and foremost follow Jesus and so
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean though if, you know, if I say follow Jesus, that might mean something you and something else to somebody else, but even when Jesus was here on earth, following him was more than just physically following him around, there was this spiritual dynamic to following Jesus, which basically meant the same thing as being a genuine disciple of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I want to think of two things in particular here that following Jesus implies, it's a repentance in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it begins, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: As we come to faith in Christ, we trust Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a repentance in faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: The repentance is
[SPEAKER_00]: is by the working of the Spirit of God coming to the conviction of the truth of God's Word, what the Bible reveals about Jesus, what the Bible reveals about us as sinners, and that Jesus died for us took our sins away in His death, and that we turn
[SPEAKER_00]: based on that conviction that work of the Spirit of God in us, we turn from trust in ourselves, trust in anything else, to trust in Him alone for our salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So repentance and faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a fact that we have a new master and a new Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we come to faith in Christ,
[SPEAKER_00]: We are transferred from the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of Satan, to the Lord's kingdom, his rule, of his kingdom of light.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're delivered from the bondage to sin and we're empowered and set free by the Spirit of God to live for Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so just as we begin in faith,
[SPEAKER_00]: Following Jesus, that is how we continue.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're to follow Jesus in the same way which we begin following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: The righteous shall live by faith as Paul likes to quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want us to look at two aspects of, or two requirements of following Jesus in first of all,
[SPEAKER_00]: Following Jesus requires a full commitment to Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at our text and we'll read together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll follow with me, hopefully.
[SPEAKER_00]: And John 21, I want to begin in verse 18 so we can get the context there of what's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: John 21, verse 18, truly, truly I say to you,
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking to Peter here after he just got through, you know, commissioning to feed my sheep.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, truly today I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you were old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: This he said to show about what kind of death he was going to glorify God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after saying this, he said to him, follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them.
[SPEAKER_00]: The one who also had leaned back against him during supper and had said, Lord, who is it that is going to betray you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus said to him, if it is my will that he remained until I come,
[SPEAKER_00]: What is that to you, you follow me?"
[SPEAKER_00]: So the saying spread abroad among the de brothers, that this disciple was not today, Jesus did not say to him that he was not going to die, but that if he, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things,
[SPEAKER_00]: Now there are also many other things that Jesus did, where every one of them to be written I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I see here as Jesus is speaking to Peter and he's emphasizing this need to follow him
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was saying, the first point there, I want you to think about, is that this requires the full commitment to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 18 and 19, Jesus is telling Peter that it's going to be very costly for him to follow Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice again, those verses, he says, truly, truly I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That, that reference there to girding yourself and as I read in the ESV, the dressing yourself, I think the ESV end in I've really didn't help us in you there.
[SPEAKER_00]: with translating that dress yourself, the girding, many of you will understand that, it's like a belt that you tie around your waist, pull up the loose garments when you're getting ready to, you know, for activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's certainly related to dressing yourself, but John here is making a play on the word gird.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you translate it dress, you've kind of missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's when you're young Peter, you used to gird up yourself and just do whatever you want to do Go anywhere you want to go But when you get old someone else is going to gird you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other someone else is going to tie you tie you up And take you where you don't want to go That's that's what John is riding here and what Jesus is telling a Peter and to make the point clear
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying he said, signifying, he said this by signifying what kind of death he would glorify God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's no question he's talking about that Peter is going to be, is going to die martyr for the Lord and that reference there to you will stretch out your hands is a
[SPEAKER_00]: and so it's it's very likely that Peter understood that at the time that he is going to to be a martyr and it doesn't seem like a very good recruitment method here does it he's like Peter I want you to follow me but you're going to be martyred and die of terrible death but just follow me
[SPEAKER_00]: But this message of total commitment is not something you is it is something that Jesus has been saying from the very beginning of those that would be a disciple those that would follow Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think back now I want to read for you to Luke 9 and verse 23 and 24.
[SPEAKER_00]: Luke 9 23 and he was saying to them all this is Jesus speaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the full commitment to the Lord that Jesus is talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said this on different occasions and different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for us, we may never experience martyrdom for our faith, but to follow Jesus requires from us the same commitment of faith, the same devotion to the Lord as He's calling upon Peter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you think about what Jesus is telling Peter, we might ask the question,
[SPEAKER_00]: in his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says when he's old and Peter doesn't know how long that is, I mean you know what constitutes when you're old and so he's basically living the rest of his life with that knowing that at some point he's going to be taken and crucified for his faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean that's the kind of information that most of us don't want to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might want to know
[SPEAKER_00]: But how we're going to die, or even how soon?
[SPEAKER_00]: But for Peter, I believe this would have been encouragement, not something that he would dread, but a real encouragement to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So not that Peter wanted to die, certainly not.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just said, it will bind you or encourage you and take you where you do not want to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not that Peter wanted to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been reassuring to him and encouraging to him to know that in the end he would not fail the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when faced again with this temptation, the fear that he would not fail, that he would honor the Lord, that he would bring glory to the Lord only in his life, but in his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I believe this is why Jesus
[SPEAKER_00]: is telling this to Peter and I believe Peter, as he walks along the shore there, we, by this time, they've gotten up and Jesus is walking along and Peter's walking with him and Jesus is telling him these things and it would have been a high point, I believe, for Peter, as he walked along the shore there, possibly along the coast
[SPEAKER_00]: is interrupted.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Peter notices behind him, John, who's following along behind them, and he, his focus on Jesus is interrupted by the thought of, what about John?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a full contentment in Jesus needed if we're going to follow him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice again in verse 21, and so Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man or what about John?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that moment when Peter's focused on following the Lord, he must be excited about
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the fact that he's going to live for the Lord, he's going to honor the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's going to be counted worthy to die for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what's going through his mind, but then he glances back, maybe a sound notices John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that just like us to get distracted?
[SPEAKER_00]: to wonder about somebody else, it's easy for us to take our eyes off Jesus and our devotion to Him and become fixated on something else or someone else around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to go to Hebrews chapter 12 and I've given you verse 2 and 3 there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hebrews 12 and I'm going to read from verse 1,
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it really is the challenge for us in our life and all the things here is using the analogy of a race, foot race.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, speaking of those believers that have gone before the testimony of the Old Testament record of saints
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, considering them or since we have them as a witness, laying aside every weight in the sin which so easily entangles us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and has set down at
[SPEAKER_00]: It's verse 3, 4, consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself so that you will not grow weary and fainting and heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go back to John, and verse 22, you notice there the answer that Jesus gives to Peter is, if I want Him to remain until I come, what is that to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: you follow me and the you there is in fact you follow me that's your job don't get fixated on what's happening with somebody else or what about them the Lord wants us to make sure that we're right with God that we are following God that we're obeying Him and we know that from Jesus
[SPEAKER_00]: that Peter's question about John was not just a healthy concern for John and without Jesus' answer we could assume that maybe John my Peter was just just worried about John or concerned about him in a good way and the Lord does commend us to be concerned about each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's many one-and-other passages in commands in the Scripture concerning our brothers and sisters in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're to pray for one another, we're to encourage one another, we're to admonish one another, forgive one another, and, et cetera, there's a big long list of one-and-others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's part of our responsibility to follow Jesus is being concerned about others.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's also an unhealthy looking to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that we can easily fall into that trap.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that our thinking of others is unhealthy when we take our eyes off Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the test.
[SPEAKER_00]: If our concern about others is becoming unhealthy because we're no longer focusing on Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we become jealous or invious of how things seem to be going
[SPEAKER_00]: Or we begin to compare ourselves with then, and it may be causes to become discontent or discouraged about what the Lord is doing with them and not doing with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says he had been reading about the famous British pastor Charles Spurgeon, most of you have heard of him or read something from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he writes and I quote, as I was out jogging, I prayed, Lord bless my ministry like you bless Persians.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as I
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles or John, and he says the thought hit me so forcefully that I stopped jogging to let it sink in.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Spurgeon was Charles's father.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a good and fateful pastor, but he would have lived and died in obscurity, except that he had a famous son.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God's sovereign plan, the famous son Charles was plagued with health problems and only live to 57, whereas the obscure father outlived his son in diet at 90.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God used both men.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord was saying to me, your job is to be faithful like John's virgin, and my
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I want to use you, as I use John Spurgeon, that's my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: You follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, speaking of Charles Spurgeon, I have a quote here in this regarding this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have come to the conclusion that instead of trying to set all my master's servants right at once, my first and most important work is to follow my Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thank my brother that it will be wise for you to come to the same conclusion in the quote.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, here's the question that we must
[SPEAKER_00]: ask ourselves, is Jesus enough, nor is Am I fully content in following Him?
[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever, whatever He has for me, how He leads me, is He enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we go back to these thoughts this morning,
[SPEAKER_00]: We must be on guard against the temptation to look around us, to seek contentment, some more else.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be in something or someone or whatever it is, God has given us many things to enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But our sufficiency, our contentment must be fixed on him, must be first and foremost
[SPEAKER_00]: following him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, John gives us a couple of concluding statements here from verse 23 down to verse 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Jesus had told Peter about John, well, this not, he says if it's, if it's my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: That gets told and retold until it got distorted.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got distorted to say that John was not going to die, and so in verse 23, John is setting the record straight, but that's not what Jesus said, but only that if it's my will that he remained until I come.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in verse 24, John identifies himself as the writer of this gospel, and this record
[SPEAKER_00]: sowning Lord Jesus Christ and we know that John had referred to himself many times as the other disciple or the disciple that Jesus loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: In various ways he's referred in the third person to himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's testifying here that he is the writer and he's giving testimony to his own writing that it is true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the true testimony concerning the Lord Jesus Christ and the good
[SPEAKER_00]: and then in verse 25 he reminds us that this testimony is a focused testimony over just limited in scope yet a specific purpose in mind and that there's many other things that Jesus did and said and so many things that it was too much to record and he uses the statement the world cannot contain all the books.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe he's just highlighting the magnitude of what Jesus did, of all that he told, of all that he did when he was here on earth and his first coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're also reminded, as you go back to verse 23, that he's coming again.
[SPEAKER_00]: His work is not finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: His redemptive work is finished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The price has been paid.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus continues to work, is working the person of the Spirit of God and our hearts, and our lives, to lead and guide us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, is the hip-reast for us, and He's coming again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a great expectation for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you may be thinking, this is kind of a
[SPEAKER_00]: anti-climatic conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at the end of chapter 20, that seems like maybe a better ending to the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's such a great, enforceable ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is this great,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's given over to us so that we might be witnesses of this gospel and just like Peter and John and the other disciples we must take this good news and live it and speak it and continue to follow the Lord Jesus Christ because we also need forgiveness like Peter did we also need renewal we also need to be reminded
[SPEAKER_00]: and to focus our attention on Jesus and our commitment to Him, to follow Him, that I believe is why chapter 21 is there, because this great, great, glorious gospel is by God's sovereign plan is handed over to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are empowered by the spirit of God, enabled, but nevertheless, God has chosen us.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's chosen to use us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, most of the new smartphones in their cameras, they have a what it's called a Portrait Mode, at least in my phone, it's what's called a Portrait Mode, and in Portrait Mode, the subject, if you focus on a subject, it comes into sharp focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the background, the things in people behind that person are kind of out of focus, a little bit blurry in the background.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe this is what we need when we look at Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need portrait mode so that we can be fully focused on Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when we fix our eyes on Him and consider Him and all that He's done for us,
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, all the other things and people, they find their rightful place in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have the balance that's needed in the priority that's needed in our life to keep the Lord a sovereign first in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: to follow him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 11, I want to close with the Romans 11, verse 36, the end of that chapter, were Paul, the end of his song, or you could say a doxology, a song of praise to the Lord, the last verse says, for from him and through him and to him are all things to him,
[SPEAKER_00]: forever a men.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is the challenge for us this morning as we think about following the Lord Jesus Christ that we might keep him in sharp focus in our life.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I ask men to come and we're going to have remembrance of the Lord and the Lord's table and communion and as they're coming I want to lead us close and sermon and prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father we do thank you and praise you for who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you Father that you are worthy of all our praise and you are worthy of our trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially in the times when we don't understand or we feel confused about your plan, that we know that you are a good and a righteous God who is working all things for good for your glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Father, I pray that we might fix our eyes on you fully committed to follow you fully content in who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray that you bless our remainder of the service, our time together this morning, and as we come to the elements of Lord's table, that it would help us to do just that, that we would focus on you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pray in Jesus' name, amen.