At the Table Pt. 5 :: Restoration

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church Podcast. We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying rooted in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his awe-inspiring love. In this time of social distancing, we're not currently gathering in person, but we invite you to stream the video from our weekend services online. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at VineLife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Vine Life. Again, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Good morning, Vine Life family. It was so wonderful to be with you several Friday nights ago when we were in person and worshiping the Lord together. And I'm so looking forward to being with you again on July 19th, Sunday night, and we'll do the same thing. It's such an important time that we're in, though, in the church. And I'm just really relishing this time before the Lord worldwide, even. So we are going to continue today with our series on At the Table. And we're doing breakfast on the beach with Peter and Jesus this morning. So we're going to walk through three different scenes with the Lord and Peter in Scripture. And as I read, I'm just going to help with us imagining what's going on with Peter in his life. So let's begin with John 13, 33 through 38. It says, Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek me. And as I said to the Jews, now I will say to you, Where I'm going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. And Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? And Jesus answered, Where I go, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me later. And Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you right now? I will lay my life down for you. And Jesus answered, Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly I say to you, a rooster will crow, a rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times. So um so the Lord is letting Peter know that uh he knows what's going on in Peter's heart. And Peter has no clue. And Peter is just filled with zeal to follow the Lord and to do whatever it takes, even to lay down his life. And I'm sure, like Peter, we can all relate to being zealous and having dreams and thoughts that we were going to follow him and do these things, and then it turned out quite differently. Um, but in Peter's heart, he's saying, I'm I'm doing this, I'm laying my life down for you. And the Lord is telling Peter, you cannot follow me, but you will follow me later. So I just want us to pay attention to that. So the next scene then that we're going to look at is the scene where Peter has already been through uh Gethsemane with the Lord. The Lord has um asked them to wait and to stay awake and pray as he goes and he asks the father to take the cup. So he's been through all of this, and then the soldiers come and arrest Peter. I mean, arrest Jesus. And um, and so Peter is has watched all this happening, and all the disciples fled. But Peter follows along as they're taking Jesus into custody. So let's pick that up. This is in Luke 22, 54 through 62. Having arrested Jesus, they led him away and brought him to the house of the high priest, but Peter was following at a distance. After they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter was sitting among them. And a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight and looking intently at him, said, This man was with him too. But Peter denied it, saying, Woman, I do not know him. And a little later another saw him and said, You are one of them too. But Peter said, Man, I am not. And after about an hour passed, another man began to insist, saying, Certainly, this man also was with him, for he is the Galilean. But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you're talking about. And in a version in Matthew, it even says Peter's cursing now, as he's denying him. And immediately while he's finishing saying, I do not know him, a rooster is crowing. And at that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord and how he had told him, Before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly. So this is just the worst night in Peter's life, where everything he thought he was going to hold and carry for the Lord just slaughtered. And what makes matters worse is we can imagine with Peter is that he's sitting by the coals for we know for over an hour, looking into the fire, listening to the questioning of Jesus and the beatings of Jesus, not too far away, not too far away so that the Lord could still look and see Peter when the rooster crowed. And we know that Peter is devastated because he've just been shown what is actually truly in his heart or what capacity he actually has in laying his life down for the Lord, which he does not have. And so then we know that Jesus is crucified and he's resurrected, and he appears to the disciples and to Peter a few times. But now we're gonna pick up this scene, and I want you just to close your eyes as we read this third scene. Um and it's on the beach. Um and a beach, before we go into the scripture, the beach is symbolic in scripture, in visions, in dreams, it's a place where something ends and something begins. So if we're looking at it literally as an ocean and a beach or a lake and a beach, we could say that the land ends and the water begins. Or we could say that the water ends and the land begins. But it's this place of boundary in the middle where something is ending and something is beginning. And that is right where we find Peter and the disciples with Jesus on this third manifestation of him. You see, Jesus' time on the earth and his ministry on the earth is finished, and yet something has yet to start to begin. The church age has yet to begin here. And this is where we find them in this scene, in this place of boundary. After these things, Jesus manifested himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and he manifested himself in this way. Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus and Nathaniel of Cana and Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. So if you count that all up, it's like seven disciples are there. And Simon Peter said to them, I am going fishing. And they all said, We're gonna come with you. And they went out and got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing. Now, a lot of people have said that when Peter says, I'm going fishing, he's kind of reached the place of I'm going back to what I knew before this whole thing with Jesus happened. I'm gonna go back and pick up where I was. And the disciples were with him said, Well, we'll come with you. And so here they are in the boat, um, in that place. But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach, and yet the disciples did not know what that it was Jesus. And so Jesus said to them, Children, do you have any fish? Do you have any? And they answered, No. And he said to them, Cast the net on the right hand side of the boat, and you will find a catch. And so they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of the fish. Therefore, the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It's the Lord. So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and he threw himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards away, dragging the net a full of fish. So when they got to the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it. And bread was there. And Jesus said to them, Bring some of the fish that you have now caught. And so Simon Peter went up and drew the net to the land full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. And Jesus said to them, Come, let's have breakfast. None of the disciples ventured to question him. Who are you? Knowing that it was the Lord Jesus. And he came and took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus was manifest to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. So I just want you to imagine this scene. Peter was in the courtyard of the high priest. And we know it's an hour and more, we don't know how long, but for that over an hour time, he is sitting with the coals, with the sight of the coals burning, with the sound of them crackling, with the smell of the coals, and he is hearing the Lord being questioned and beaten. And he is denying the Lord. And so now Jesus has prepared some coals for breakfast. And Peter's coming and he's eating around the coals in the fire, and he's hearing and smelling and seeing the sight. And what we would call an inner healing is that Peter is pretty well triggered at this moment because it is the same scenario from which his worst disaster took place and it's happening live right now with Jesus, um, with the fire. And so they finished, they finished breakfast, and Jesus says to him, Peter, do you love me? And this love that Peter is asking, I mean, that Jesus is asking Peter is agape love. Agape love is the love from God that we give ourselves. We give ourselves over to something with agape. It's from the Lord. We can agape give ourselves over to something that isn't the Lord. Um, there are many scriptures that have agape, like the Pharisees loved the chief seats, and they agopied those things to have favor with man. So it has this connotation of you're gonna give yourself over to that. And so Jesus is asking Peter, Peter, do you give yourself over to me in love? And Peter answers him, Yes, Lord, I love you, but this love is phileo. It means brotherly love, it means I love you in relationship. I love you as my friend, as my teacher, as my father, I love you. It's a different kind of love than giving over. And of course, Peter is not about to say to the Lord, Yes, I love you, to give myself over to you when he's just been through what he's been through, and he's triggered right back into the moment in this moment. And so then Peter, and then so Jesus says to him, Tend my lambs, feed my little ones, Peter. And then Jesus looks at Peter again and he says, Peter, do you agape me? And Peter says, Yes, Lord, I phileo you once again. And then Jesus says, Shepherd my sheep, care for, uh nurture, heal them, look after them. And so then Jesus says again to Peter a third time, He says, Peter, do you phileo me? So now Jesus is coming down to where Peter is saying, This is this is where we really are in real Lord. I phileo you. I I've proven I don't agape you. So now Jesus says to Peter, Do you phileo me? So now Peter is very grieved, and he says, Do you phileo me? Which is really the question that's in his heart right now, going through this trigger. He says, Lord, you know everything. You know that I phileo you. And Jesus says to him, feed my sheep, tend my sheep. Um and so here is this moment on the beach where the Lord is um bringing Peter back through his worst nightmare, and he's discussing what's at the core do you love me? And he's telling him, I want you, this is what I want you to do. Then he finishes it um and he says, This truly, truly I say to you, Peter, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished. But when you grew old, you stretch your hands out, and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go. Now, this he said, signifying what kind of death he would glorify God with. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, Follow me. So Jesus is telling Peter right here, amongst the coals, Peter, when you are old, you are going to give yourself up for me. And you won't want to, but you will give yourself up. Now you follow me. And uh that is uh that is an enormous uh weight off of Peter's shoulders because the Lord is prophesying to him, this is what is gonna happen. He prophesied to him before, no, Peter, you're gonna deny me three times before the rooster crows, and there it was. And now Peter knows that he does agape at the Lord. Um I know for me, I have many times denied the Lord, and there have been many times where I have been sifted, and not just between the Lord and I, but publicly. And I'm sure the same for each of you, because uh the Lord says in Revelation that those whom he loves, when he's speaking to the churches, those whom he loves, he disciplines and proves, reproves, um, to help us to gain capacity to really fulfill and take what he's called us to do and to live it out. Um, so we go through a sifting. And I want to just close um this morning with talking about this place on the beach, um, this place where something ends and something begins, because I believe that worldwide we are in that place where something is about to end and something is about to begin. And I hear the Lord um asking, um, like he did to the churches in Revelation, he where he's knocking, he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and he's speaking to the us, the church. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with me. And so I'm wondering this morning for me, for us, um, if there are places that we have denied the Lord. It could be subtle, it could be blatant, it could be in any different area, but we haven't had that eye-to-eye breakfast with the Lord, dinner with the Lord, uh, over it. And we are about to be prepared to move into something new. And I think the Lord wants us to be still and hear him knocking at the door of our hearts so that he can come and prepare that table that is um just feels like, senses like, tastes like, smells like, looks like something that happened when we denied him. Um, but he's got a higher purpose, a higher call. He wants to call us up into who we really are, into what we are called to carry. And so I'd like to just uh ask the Holy Spirit to come while we're just waiting. And I want you just to feel your heart right now. Lord, the door to our hearts. We ask that uh they would be soft, that we could feel them, that we could hear the knock on those doors in our hearts, that we would open to you, Lord, that you would come in and dine with us, each of us, Lord, in our own scenarios, in our own different ways, that we thought we would move ahead and uh follow you in some way that's awesome, but fell very short from that, Lord. And Lord, that we would have that eye to eye with you, where you would tell us who we are and what we are going to do, that we can follow you right now in this place in Jesus' name. Amen. So that is um between the Lord and us in terms of restoration and purpose. But as we look around to those the Lord has asked us to watch over, to tend, to feed those people in our lives, the Lord extends an invitation to each one of us to speak to them about who they truly are, um, what is truly in their hearts, and the capacity of what the Lord wants to do as He shows that to us for them. Um we have that opportunity around us all the time. And so let's just end with praying uh for those the Lord has given to us to feed and to watch over and to uh look after. So Lord, we we do just get quiet, and as priests before you, Lord, we carry people in our hearts before your throne. And Lord, we want to be available to you to speak life and truth, and to encourage others to follow you, to put their eyes on you, and to see themselves like you see them, Lord. And so we ask for that sensitivity and the sense of being present with what you're doing in those you've given to us, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.