Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good. If you're new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I'm the worship pastor out here. And I don't know why, just to let you in on a little secret and give you a chance to laugh at me, whatever. I don't know why, whenever Nate's up here consistently and I come up here, one of my first instincts is to say, I'm not Nate. Like, you guys didn't know that. Like, for some reason, you thought, man, what happened to Nate over there? He just got a lot better looking suddenly. And I mean, maybe, maybe, but hey, really glad to be here. Nate, thanks so much, man, for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. To kind of launch us in, get our minds going in the direction that we're headed today. Have you noticed how the mistakes that we make speak so much louder to us than the right things that we do? To kind of give you an idea, so several years ago, my wife and I, we went to Miami, and I had been on this venture and this journey for a long time, trying to learn Spanish, trying to just get better at it. And I was doing the Rosetta Stone thing, all of that. I was doing really good. I could say, like, going to Mexico in October with the mission trip, I would have been perfectly fine asking where the bathroom was. I'm just good. I wouldn't know where they were telling me to go, but I could ask where it was, right? So I was halfway there. But I remember we went to Miami. And if you've never been, it's a culture that's largely influenced by the Latin culture, the Cuban culture down there. And so just the places that we went, I got to speak a lot of the Spanish that I knew, like restaurants and stuff, right? That was good. But when we got back, I was just, I was kind of feeling, like I was having a lot of confidence and I wanted to impress my wife, who is the love of my life. And so we were out one day and I was hungry and she was hungry. I was like, you know what? I know how to say I want to go to Five Guys. That was before the burgers cost 45 bucks. And so I was like, so I want to look at her with all the confidence that I could muster. I looked at her dead in the eyes and I said, quiero cinco hombres, right? Sounds good, right? But if you speak Spanish, you know what I said to my wife was not I want to go to Five Guys. What I said to my wife was, I want five men. And it was not what I meant to say to her because I did not want five men. I wanted to go get an overpriced bacon cheeseburger, right? And you know what I did after that? I did not say Spanish words that I did not understand until, what's funny is this true story. I tried it again last week. But let me encourage you. If you're trying to learn Spanish, don't use the words that you hear on video games because you could end up saying not good words in front of your grandma-in-law who does know very good Spanish. And she looks at you like, did you mean to say that? And I don't know. I just heard like she was getting shot at. And then I repeated what she said and it was whatever. But what's really funny about this, right? Like that, it struck me this week how vivid that memory was. And it's funny. We laugh about it. We can do whatever. Like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it really struck me how big of a mistake or how the mistake stuck with me all of these years. Isn't that true for all of us? We have these goals. We have these things and these places that we try to get to in life. And isn't it true that the failure en route to that goal, it seems to keep coming back over and over and over. It seems to play on repeat. And this isn't just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. But if you're a Christian, it's not just the goals that you have, is it? It's also who Christ has asked you to become. And so on the other side of those shortcomings, on the other side of those mistakes, man, it seems like that's an easy thing to point to. It's when the voice of shame starts to speak pretty loudly on repeat. I know what you did. You think they're going to accept you at church if they find that out? In this series, we're talking about emotions. Emotions that can overwhelm and emotions that can kind of take control and move you into being something you've never really wanted to be. And what I would argue is that a lot of the emotions that we're talking about, they're not to be demonized. Like the emotions that we experience aren't bad things. Like anger, for example. Anger left unchecked will completely wreck havoc in your life. But without anger, you would also not have passion. You would not be moved to act. Yesterday, we went to a lot of people at Grace Serves. We went to Rise Against Hunger. Without anger causing someone to be passionate about world hunger, they would not have that ministry. Fear, fear, unchecked, it will immobilize you. But it's also caused people to create a lot of safety in our world that we never would have seen otherwise. So a lot of these emotions are not bad, but shame, shame has no place in our world. I truly believe that shame is one of the most often used and effective tools of our spiritual enemy, consistently pointing at where we fell short. And the reason why shame is so powerful in our life is because shame not only points to your mistakes, but it identifies you by them. Like you are the sum total of the things that you have done wrong, and it plays on repeat. And so what's heartbreaking about this is our lives are often wrapped around, our identity is often wrapped around that one season in life, that one mistake, that one thing that you did or that one thing that was done to you. And we try as hard as we can, except we just can't forget it. That's what I want to talk about today. Because here's what we have learned. You can't quiet that voice. So how do you keep it from being so overwhelming? And if we're going to look at the life of anyone who has messed up time and time and time again, who else could it be except for Peter? Some of you thought I was going to say me, and that's not nice. Stop it. Right? But we're going to look at Peter. And to catch you up with where we are in the story, we're going to be in Matthew. But to catch you up with where we are, we're actually just within a few hours of what Nate talked about last week with Jesus in the garden. It started in the upper room with the Last Supper where Jesus is Jesus is predicting actually Peter's denial. Jesus says to Peter, hey, Pete, you know, listen, in a few hours, like you, actually, he says, all of you are going to abandon, turn your back and going to leave me. And Pete says, no, no, not me. Not me. I'd never do this. Well, Peter, funny, I love you. But it's not very smart to argue with the guy who can read your mind. But yes, you will do. This is something you're going to do. They move forward. They go into the garden, and Jesus simply asks them, hey, let's just stay awake and pray with me for a little bit. Jesus goes off to pray. It's probably interrupted by Peter snoring, and he comes back, and Peter's asleep. It does that twice. Then they move forward. Jesus is arrested. The guards come. Peter chops off the ear. Jesus puts it back on his head, so there's another correction. And then they go to the court. And that's where we're going to pick it up. In Matthew 26, we are met with this scene. Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean too. He denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, when Peter, when it says that Peter cursed with an oath, that's not the same kind of cursing that we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic, right? This was more along the lines of, may God strike me dead if I'm lying. That was how firm Peter was in saying, I don't know this man. And so he broke. The account of Luke actually tells us that Jesus and Peter made eye contact. And it was at that moment that he broke. And here's one of the reasons why I think that shame is such a powerful tool is because it's so easily mixed up with conviction, right? Like both shame and conviction point immediately at the thing that you don't want to see. The thing that you don't, it points at the mistake. And both make you feel bad about it. And so as a Christian, how do you discern the difference? Like which one is shame? I don't know what to do. And you end up just kind of stuck in the same spot. But the best way that I can come up with to describe the difference is this. Shame disqualifies, and conviction invites. Shame is always going to disqualify you from wherever it is that you're trying to go. Wherever it is that you're trying to accomplish, shame is going to look at you and say, you, you, you, you don't, you can't go there. Like, really? Like, you think that you can do that? But conviction is the opposite of a tool used by the enemy. It's the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life. And it's always inviting us to something. It's always inviting us to what's next. That's the difference. Shame points at our mistakes and shows us how we can never be anything other than that. While conviction points at our mistakes and says, hey, here's what's coming. This is where we go from here. This is what's next in our life. What's fascinating to me about this, like we just talked about where this scene began, there was three to four mistakes, probably about seven to eight if you include the three different times that Peter denied. This is at the end of the Gospels. This is at the end of the three-year window into Peter's mistakes. What has happened every single time? He's dropped the ball. This is what he's known for. He's the guy who messes up. He's the guy who puts his foot in his mouth, except he gets back up and he follows Jesus. He gets back up and goes where Jesus asks him to go over and over and over again, except for this time, it changes. We don't know exactly where Peter went after this moment. We don't know exactly what happened. But all four of the Gospels go to the next scene, which is Jesus' crucifixion. And at the scene of the cross, it lists several of the people who were there, most of which are some of the women who were following Jesus at that point in time. And the Gospel of John tells us that John was there as well. You know who wasn't mentioned? Peter. Like, we can't tell you exactly where Peter went, but with a pretty good amount of certainty, we can tell you where he wasn't. Probably the place that he wanted to be the most. The place with his best friend to support. I don't think Peter was merely flexing when he told Jesus, no, I won't deny you. But what we see is that shame disqualifies us from everything that Jesus invites us to do. Can we stop for a second? And like, it's easy to point a finger at Peter and say, yeah, Peter, you should have just went, man, you're forgiven, like all this other good stuff. But can I ask you, like, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to do? Where is Jesus inviting you in your life that you have convinced yourself that you don't deserve? Where in your life is it this accusation of shame that you could not lead your family towards Jesus? Why would they ever respect you? Who knows you better than them? Why? Do you really think you can go to church? Man, hypocrite. How dare you show your face there? Do you really want to try to have more spiritual disciplines in your life? Like, why are you faking it? That's not you. It's the voice of shame disqualifying you from where Jesus is inviting you. And here's what's true. In your life and in my life, we will never, we will never out-talk shame. I hate that. I remember when I was younger, there was a lady who told me that I had the gift of gab. What I really think she was saying is, Aaron, shut up a little bit, man. But here's what's true. You'll never out-talk and out-convince yourself of why shame is wrong. Do you know why? Because you're you. Like, who knows you better than you? As we try to move past this moment, what are you reminded of? Well, another one. For every one failure, we've got 40 others. And that's where our mind keeps going to, which is why I love what Jesus' response was. To all of this, Jesus shows up in the gospel of John chapter 21. Now, you have several of the disciples who have already went off. and I believe, and there's a lot of people who do believe, that what we're about to read is evidence that Peter went back to his old lifestyle. Peter went back to his old job. It doesn't mean that he is no longer caring for Jesus. He doesn't love Jesus anymore. It doesn't mean that even a little bit, but it just simply means maybe he felt like he couldn't do what Jesus is asking him to do. He couldn't be the person who Jesus was asking him to be, so he will sit into what he did before he knew Christ with a love for Christ. And then Jesus shows up on the beach. Jesus shows up while these guys are out there fishing. They go out fishing throughout the night, and they have been fishing all night. They haven't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the beach and says, hey, guys, you have any fish with you? And no, we haven't. And then we have, I skipped a slide. You can go ahead and jump to the verse, just so you can have the feel, and it says this. To become who Jesus, no, go back one, I'm sorry. What we're to do, let's start over. Let's roll the bumper. And so to become who Jesus says we can be, we must correct who shame says we are, right? Like that's the next point. I think it's at the bottom of your page, whatever. It'll be fine. So, but Jesus shows up on the beach, points at these guys and says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. What did he say? He said something. You guys messed me up so bad again. Where am I at, Nate? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. So Jesus shows up on the beach. These guys have no clue that it's him. They've been fishing all night, and Jesus asked them, hey, do you have any fish? He says, no. So he says, hey, throw your net on the other side of the boat. They throw the net down, and then there's so many fish, they could barely haul it in, and then something clicked. We don't know exactly what was going through Peter's mind, but we do know there was something different in this moment., he tied his outer clothing around him, for he had taken it off and he plunged into the sea. All right, so we can't breeze past all of that yet. Like we got to bring some attention to something because I love fishing. I do. I know a lot of you love fishing. I would love to go fishing with you unless you fish like Peter, which is no fish and in your underwear. Like that just, it's weird. Maybe if you catch fish, sure, I can get past the other thing, but just that's what's going on. Have no clue why it's in there, but John wrote it. So maybe he's just pointing out, look at this dummy, right? So who knows? But something happened in this moment. Something happened. This is the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And not once do you see this type of a reaction from Peter. So much so, he was so excited to see his Lord that he couldn't wait for the boat to go 100 yards to shore. He jumped out and swam just so he could get there. Peter remembered something. If this story sounds familiar to you, it had to to Peter as well. This is very similar to the very first invitation from Jesus to Peter, where he was sitting out in the water, very similar scene, all night fishing. Clearly, Peter's not very good at it. All night fishing, no fish. Jesus says, throw it on the other side. And they couldn't even bring in all the fish. So that happened and Peter remembered and it drew him to Christ. Some of you may know my story. Some of you don't. I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. So really what that meant is I knew how to act like a good preacher's kid on Sunday morning, right? So I learned all the do's and all the don'ts. But the moment I had, the moment I had an opportunity to split and kind of leave the church was when I was 16. My parents divorced, and I took the path of least resistance. My entire family left the church and for the next several years of my life. It wasn't that I was ignoring God. I just didn't think of God. It wasn't a conscious decision saying, okay, I don't want anything to do with you. I was just living my life, doing my thing, doing what I wanted to do until I was about 19, 20 years old, had a car accident that should have killed me. And I remember whenever I went into the hospital, I was in the hospital for several weeks, had a shattered kneecap, a severed femur head in my left hip. If you're wondering why I walk with such a strut, that's the reason. But I remember while I was sitting at the hospital, the several years that I had spent just kind of doing my own thing, no consciousness of Jesus or God or anything along the lines of that, not one of the people that I knew hung out with anything, no one showed up. The people who did show up were the people from years and years ago. People that I went to church camp with, friends that I grew up in church with, some of my father's pastor friends, they showed up and they prayed with me. And this, I'm not saying anything about any of the people, but what that was is God reintroducing himself into my world. He began wooing me. And so I started this back and forth journey, right? Like this, this, this back and forth. Okay, God, I'll do the right thing. I'll do it, do it, do it, mess up. And then I kind of run off and then do my own thing again. I can't do that. Mess up, do it, do it, do it, run off, do my own thing again. And it was like this for a very long time because I reverted to what I knew. Like you have to be good enough. You have to be awesome enough. You have to be all of these other things. And then I remember I went to visit a lady named Carol McCraw, the same one who told me I talk a lot. She was a worship leader in our church growing up. And I went honestly, just simply to say hi. She was a very important person to our family. And I remember when I walked in and simply said hello. She saw, she was playing piano as the music was getting started, and she saw me. She got up, she ran, and just gave me a hug. And it was in that moment, it felt like God wrapped his arms around me, and there was nothing that I did. Now, I clearly wasn't carol, but God used her in a pretty big way because it was in that moment I surrendered my heart, and I could do, man, there was such a love for Jesus, and then I'm telling you, over the next several years, we can sit down and have some coffee or something at some point in time. But it's this journey of falling short. And it's these moments of shame floods my mind. And I consistently go back to this moment where all I did was walk into a place with no intention of seeing Jesus, simply to visit a friend. And it was in that moment, like I'm drawn to the compassion of God because of that personal experience. I'm drawn to the love of Christ in that moment because I realized I didn't deserve anything. Like I think about my past and I cringe, But the love of Christ accepted me for who I was and walked alongside of me. I believe that's what's happening in Peter's world right now. Maybe he went back to his old lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe they were hungry and they went fishing. But there was something in this moment that when he saw Jesus, he saw, oh wait, like something clicked and he remembered. He remembered the love that Jesus has for him. He remembered the last three years, not for the failures that he experienced, but for the Christ who picked him up, for the Christ who invited him into something different, for the Jesus, for the man who helped, who walked along the water with him, for the man who never gave up on him. And Peter saw, and he remembered, he didn't go to the beach, and he wasn't met with a stern rebuke. He wasn't met with some disappointed speech. He was met by his best friend who cooked breakfast for him. He got to hang out. Then he asked him the same question three times, right? He says, hey, Pete, do you love me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. Hey, Peter, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Why are you asking me this? Like, Peter, because you need to remember. You were never, never with me because of how awesome you are. But I want to do something in and through you that will blow your mind. Then I have to believe that it popped back in Peter's mind when Jesus said, hey, I'm building a church and you are the rock on which I will build this church. Peter remembered not the failures that he had, but who Christ said he is. He didn't remember the mistakes that he's had. He remembered the promises of his Lord and Savior. Man, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to? How different would your world look if when the voice of shame started to creep up, you hushed it with the promises of God? How much more boldly and confidently could we walk into what Ephesians 3.20 tells us? That the same God who is working in you is working through you. How much more boldly could we run into that? If when shame said you don't deserve it, you say, I know. But in Christ, I am chosen. In Christ, I'm a child of God. Yeah, but they'll never accept you. They shouldn't. But in Christ, I am completely forgiven. You'll never change. In Christ, I am a new creation. I think that's why Peter told us in 2 Peter that you were chosen and dearly loved. What a shame robbing you from the joy of your salvation, the freedom in Christ. So at the bottom of the bulletin, there's one more blank, and we'll put it on the screen. It simply says this, I am blank in Christ. Now at the bottom of that, we've listed several things, but you can go through those on your own, or you can look throughout Scripture. But what I want you to answer is this. What do you need to know of the promise in Christ? Who do you need to remind yourself are? Who do you need to remind yourself that you are in Christ to hush the voice of shame in your life? Is it that you're new? Is it that you're forgiven? Is it that you're chosen and dearly loved? If you look through that and you don't see it, shoot me an email. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to help you find whatever it is in your world that will quiet the voice of shame. But maybe put a piece of tape on that. Write it on a sticky. Put it on your dash. Put it on your whatever you need to. Wherever you need to put this so you can remind yourself not simply who you are, but who the Savior of the world says that you are. Who the God who created the heavens and the earth claims that you, his child, is. How different would your world look if we didn't settle with the accusations of shame? But we boldly corrected it with the promises of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for your forgiveness that we do not deserve, Lord. As we go throughout our week, as we go throughout our life and inevitably fall short of what it is that you've asked from us, God, would you just send your Holy Spirit to remind us of your promises? Remind us of who you see us as. God, help us to find our identity in your love and in your grace and not our failures. We need you, Father, and we trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good. If you're new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I'm the worship pastor out here. And I don't know why, just to let you in on a little secret and give you a chance to laugh at me, whatever. I don't know why, whenever Nate's up here consistently and I come up here, one of my first instincts is to say, I'm not Nate. Like, you guys didn't know that. Like, for some reason, you thought, man, what happened to Nate over there? He just got a lot better looking suddenly. And I mean, maybe, maybe, but hey, really glad to be here. Nate, thanks so much, man, for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. To kind of launch us in, get our minds going in the direction that we're headed today. Have you noticed how the mistakes that we make speak so much louder to us than the right things that we do? To kind of give you an idea, so several years ago, my wife and I, we went to Miami, and I had been on this venture and this journey for a long time, trying to learn Spanish, trying to just get better at it. And I was doing the Rosetta Stone thing, all of that. I was doing really good. I could say, like, going to Mexico in October with the mission trip, I would have been perfectly fine asking where the bathroom was. I'm just good. I wouldn't know where they were telling me to go, but I could ask where it was, right? So I was halfway there. But I remember we went to Miami. And if you've never been, it's a culture that's largely influenced by the Latin culture, the Cuban culture down there. And so just the places that we went, I got to speak a lot of the Spanish that I knew, like restaurants and stuff, right? That was good. But when we got back, I was just, I was kind of feeling, like I was having a lot of confidence and I wanted to impress my wife, who is the love of my life. And so we were out one day and I was hungry and she was hungry. I was like, you know what? I know how to say I want to go to Five Guys. That was before the burgers cost 45 bucks. And so I was like, so I want to look at her with all the confidence that I could muster. I looked at her dead in the eyes and I said, quiero cinco hombres, right? Sounds good, right? But if you speak Spanish, you know what I said to my wife was not I want to go to Five Guys. What I said to my wife was, I want five men. And it was not what I meant to say to her because I did not want five men. I wanted to go get an overpriced bacon cheeseburger, right? And you know what I did after that? I did not say Spanish words that I did not understand until, what's funny is this true story. I tried it again last week. But let me encourage you. If you're trying to learn Spanish, don't use the words that you hear on video games because you could end up saying not good words in front of your grandma-in-law who does know very good Spanish. And she looks at you like, did you mean to say that? And I don't know. I just heard like she was getting shot at. And then I repeated what she said and it was whatever. But what's really funny about this, right? Like that, it struck me this week how vivid that memory was. And it's funny. We laugh about it. We can do whatever. Like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it really struck me how big of a mistake or how the mistake stuck with me all of these years. Isn't that true for all of us? We have these goals. We have these things and these places that we try to get to in life. And isn't it true that the failure en route to that goal, it seems to keep coming back over and over and over. It seems to play on repeat. And this isn't just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. But if you're a Christian, it's not just the goals that you have, is it? It's also who Christ has asked you to become. And so on the other side of those shortcomings, on the other side of those mistakes, man, it seems like that's an easy thing to point to. It's when the voice of shame starts to speak pretty loudly on repeat. I know what you did. You think they're going to accept you at church if they find that out? In this series, we're talking about emotions. Emotions that can overwhelm and emotions that can kind of take control and move you into being something you've never really wanted to be. And what I would argue is that a lot of the emotions that we're talking about, they're not to be demonized. Like the emotions that we experience aren't bad things. Like anger, for example. Anger left unchecked will completely wreck havoc in your life. But without anger, you would also not have passion. You would not be moved to act. Yesterday, we went to a lot of people at Grace Serves. We went to Rise Against Hunger. Without anger causing someone to be passionate about world hunger, they would not have that ministry. Fear, fear, unchecked, it will immobilize you. But it's also caused people to create a lot of safety in our world that we never would have seen otherwise. So a lot of these emotions are not bad, but shame, shame has no place in our world. I truly believe that shame is one of the most often used and effective tools of our spiritual enemy, consistently pointing at where we fell short. And the reason why shame is so powerful in our life is because shame not only points to your mistakes, but it identifies you by them. Like you are the sum total of the things that you have done wrong, and it plays on repeat. And so what's heartbreaking about this is our lives are often wrapped around, our identity is often wrapped around that one season in life, that one mistake, that one thing that you did or that one thing that was done to you. And we try as hard as we can, except we just can't forget it. That's what I want to talk about today. Because here's what we have learned. You can't quiet that voice. So how do you keep it from being so overwhelming? And if we're going to look at the life of anyone who has messed up time and time and time again, who else could it be except for Peter? Some of you thought I was going to say me, and that's not nice. Stop it. Right? But we're going to look at Peter. And to catch you up with where we are in the story, we're going to be in Matthew. But to catch you up with where we are, we're actually just within a few hours of what Nate talked about last week with Jesus in the garden. It started in the upper room with the Last Supper where Jesus is Jesus is predicting actually Peter's denial. Jesus says to Peter, hey, Pete, you know, listen, in a few hours, like you, actually, he says, all of you are going to abandon, turn your back and going to leave me. And Pete says, no, no, not me. Not me. I'd never do this. Well, Peter, funny, I love you. But it's not very smart to argue with the guy who can read your mind. But yes, you will do. This is something you're going to do. They move forward. They go into the garden, and Jesus simply asks them, hey, let's just stay awake and pray with me for a little bit. Jesus goes off to pray. It's probably interrupted by Peter snoring, and he comes back, and Peter's asleep. It does that twice. Then they move forward. Jesus is arrested. The guards come. Peter chops off the ear. Jesus puts it back on his head, so there's another correction. And then they go to the court. And that's where we're going to pick it up. In Matthew 26, we are met with this scene. Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean too. He denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, when Peter, when it says that Peter cursed with an oath, that's not the same kind of cursing that we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic, right? This was more along the lines of, may God strike me dead if I'm lying. That was how firm Peter was in saying, I don't know this man. And so he broke. The account of Luke actually tells us that Jesus and Peter made eye contact. And it was at that moment that he broke. And here's one of the reasons why I think that shame is such a powerful tool is because it's so easily mixed up with conviction, right? Like both shame and conviction point immediately at the thing that you don't want to see. The thing that you don't, it points at the mistake. And both make you feel bad about it. And so as a Christian, how do you discern the difference? Like which one is shame? I don't know what to do. And you end up just kind of stuck in the same spot. But the best way that I can come up with to describe the difference is this. Shame disqualifies, and conviction invites. Shame is always going to disqualify you from wherever it is that you're trying to go. Wherever it is that you're trying to accomplish, shame is going to look at you and say, you, you, you, you don't, you can't go there. Like, really? Like, you think that you can do that? But conviction is the opposite of a tool used by the enemy. It's the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life. And it's always inviting us to something. It's always inviting us to what's next. That's the difference. Shame points at our mistakes and shows us how we can never be anything other than that. While conviction points at our mistakes and says, hey, here's what's coming. This is where we go from here. This is what's next in our life. What's fascinating to me about this, like we just talked about where this scene began, there was three to four mistakes, probably about seven to eight if you include the three different times that Peter denied. This is at the end of the Gospels. This is at the end of the three-year window into Peter's mistakes. What has happened every single time? He's dropped the ball. This is what he's known for. He's the guy who messes up. He's the guy who puts his foot in his mouth, except he gets back up and he follows Jesus. He gets back up and goes where Jesus asks him to go over and over and over again, except for this time, it changes. We don't know exactly where Peter went after this moment. We don't know exactly what happened. But all four of the Gospels go to the next scene, which is Jesus' crucifixion. And at the scene of the cross, it lists several of the people who were there, most of which are some of the women who were following Jesus at that point in time. And the Gospel of John tells us that John was there as well. You know who wasn't mentioned? Peter. Like, we can't tell you exactly where Peter went, but with a pretty good amount of certainty, we can tell you where he wasn't. Probably the place that he wanted to be the most. The place with his best friend to support. I don't think Peter was merely flexing when he told Jesus, no, I won't deny you. But what we see is that shame disqualifies us from everything that Jesus invites us to do. Can we stop for a second? And like, it's easy to point a finger at Peter and say, yeah, Peter, you should have just went, man, you're forgiven, like all this other good stuff. But can I ask you, like, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to do? Where is Jesus inviting you in your life that you have convinced yourself that you don't deserve? Where in your life is it this accusation of shame that you could not lead your family towards Jesus? Why would they ever respect you? Who knows you better than them? Why? Do you really think you can go to church? Man, hypocrite. How dare you show your face there? Do you really want to try to have more spiritual disciplines in your life? Like, why are you faking it? That's not you. It's the voice of shame disqualifying you from where Jesus is inviting you. And here's what's true. In your life and in my life, we will never, we will never out-talk shame. I hate that. I remember when I was younger, there was a lady who told me that I had the gift of gab. What I really think she was saying is, Aaron, shut up a little bit, man. But here's what's true. You'll never out-talk and out-convince yourself of why shame is wrong. Do you know why? Because you're you. Like, who knows you better than you? As we try to move past this moment, what are you reminded of? Well, another one. For every one failure, we've got 40 others. And that's where our mind keeps going to, which is why I love what Jesus' response was. To all of this, Jesus shows up in the gospel of John chapter 21. Now, you have several of the disciples who have already went off. and I believe, and there's a lot of people who do believe, that what we're about to read is evidence that Peter went back to his old lifestyle. Peter went back to his old job. It doesn't mean that he is no longer caring for Jesus. He doesn't love Jesus anymore. It doesn't mean that even a little bit, but it just simply means maybe he felt like he couldn't do what Jesus is asking him to do. He couldn't be the person who Jesus was asking him to be, so he will sit into what he did before he knew Christ with a love for Christ. And then Jesus shows up on the beach. Jesus shows up while these guys are out there fishing. They go out fishing throughout the night, and they have been fishing all night. They haven't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the beach and says, hey, guys, you have any fish with you? And no, we haven't. And then we have, I skipped a slide. You can go ahead and jump to the verse, just so you can have the feel, and it says this. To become who Jesus, no, go back one, I'm sorry. What we're to do, let's start over. Let's roll the bumper. And so to become who Jesus says we can be, we must correct who shame says we are, right? Like that's the next point. I think it's at the bottom of your page, whatever. It'll be fine. So, but Jesus shows up on the beach, points at these guys and says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. What did he say? He said something. You guys messed me up so bad again. Where am I at, Nate? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. So Jesus shows up on the beach. These guys have no clue that it's him. They've been fishing all night, and Jesus asked them, hey, do you have any fish? He says, no. So he says, hey, throw your net on the other side of the boat. They throw the net down, and then there's so many fish, they could barely haul it in, and then something clicked. We don't know exactly what was going through Peter's mind, but we do know there was something different in this moment., he tied his outer clothing around him, for he had taken it off and he plunged into the sea. All right, so we can't breeze past all of that yet. Like we got to bring some attention to something because I love fishing. I do. I know a lot of you love fishing. I would love to go fishing with you unless you fish like Peter, which is no fish and in your underwear. Like that just, it's weird. Maybe if you catch fish, sure, I can get past the other thing, but just that's what's going on. Have no clue why it's in there, but John wrote it. So maybe he's just pointing out, look at this dummy, right? So who knows? But something happened in this moment. Something happened. This is the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And not once do you see this type of a reaction from Peter. So much so, he was so excited to see his Lord that he couldn't wait for the boat to go 100 yards to shore. He jumped out and swam just so he could get there. Peter remembered something. If this story sounds familiar to you, it had to to Peter as well. This is very similar to the very first invitation from Jesus to Peter, where he was sitting out in the water, very similar scene, all night fishing. Clearly, Peter's not very good at it. All night fishing, no fish. Jesus says, throw it on the other side. And they couldn't even bring in all the fish. So that happened and Peter remembered and it drew him to Christ. Some of you may know my story. Some of you don't. I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. So really what that meant is I knew how to act like a good preacher's kid on Sunday morning, right? So I learned all the do's and all the don'ts. But the moment I had, the moment I had an opportunity to split and kind of leave the church was when I was 16. My parents divorced, and I took the path of least resistance. My entire family left the church and for the next several years of my life. It wasn't that I was ignoring God. I just didn't think of God. It wasn't a conscious decision saying, okay, I don't want anything to do with you. I was just living my life, doing my thing, doing what I wanted to do until I was about 19, 20 years old, had a car accident that should have killed me. And I remember whenever I went into the hospital, I was in the hospital for several weeks, had a shattered kneecap, a severed femur head in my left hip. If you're wondering why I walk with such a strut, that's the reason. But I remember while I was sitting at the hospital, the several years that I had spent just kind of doing my own thing, no consciousness of Jesus or God or anything along the lines of that, not one of the people that I knew hung out with anything, no one showed up. The people who did show up were the people from years and years ago. People that I went to church camp with, friends that I grew up in church with, some of my father's pastor friends, they showed up and they prayed with me. And this, I'm not saying anything about any of the people, but what that was is God reintroducing himself into my world. He began wooing me. And so I started this back and forth journey, right? Like this, this, this back and forth. Okay, God, I'll do the right thing. I'll do it, do it, do it, mess up. And then I kind of run off and then do my own thing again. I can't do that. Mess up, do it, do it, do it, run off, do my own thing again. And it was like this for a very long time because I reverted to what I knew. Like you have to be good enough. You have to be awesome enough. You have to be all of these other things. And then I remember I went to visit a lady named Carol McCraw, the same one who told me I talk a lot. She was a worship leader in our church growing up. And I went honestly, just simply to say hi. She was a very important person to our family. And I remember when I walked in and simply said hello. She saw, she was playing piano as the music was getting started, and she saw me. She got up, she ran, and just gave me a hug. And it was in that moment, it felt like God wrapped his arms around me, and there was nothing that I did. Now, I clearly wasn't carol, but God used her in a pretty big way because it was in that moment I surrendered my heart, and I could do, man, there was such a love for Jesus, and then I'm telling you, over the next several years, we can sit down and have some coffee or something at some point in time. But it's this journey of falling short. And it's these moments of shame floods my mind. And I consistently go back to this moment where all I did was walk into a place with no intention of seeing Jesus, simply to visit a friend. And it was in that moment, like I'm drawn to the compassion of God because of that personal experience. I'm drawn to the love of Christ in that moment because I realized I didn't deserve anything. Like I think about my past and I cringe, But the love of Christ accepted me for who I was and walked alongside of me. I believe that's what's happening in Peter's world right now. Maybe he went back to his old lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe they were hungry and they went fishing. But there was something in this moment that when he saw Jesus, he saw, oh wait, like something clicked and he remembered. He remembered the love that Jesus has for him. He remembered the last three years, not for the failures that he experienced, but for the Christ who picked him up, for the Christ who invited him into something different, for the Jesus, for the man who helped, who walked along the water with him, for the man who never gave up on him. And Peter saw, and he remembered, he didn't go to the beach, and he wasn't met with a stern rebuke. He wasn't met with some disappointed speech. He was met by his best friend who cooked breakfast for him. He got to hang out. Then he asked him the same question three times, right? He says, hey, Pete, do you love me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. Hey, Peter, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Why are you asking me this? Like, Peter, because you need to remember. You were never, never with me because of how awesome you are. But I want to do something in and through you that will blow your mind. Then I have to believe that it popped back in Peter's mind when Jesus said, hey, I'm building a church and you are the rock on which I will build this church. Peter remembered not the failures that he had, but who Christ said he is. He didn't remember the mistakes that he's had. He remembered the promises of his Lord and Savior. Man, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to? How different would your world look if when the voice of shame started to creep up, you hushed it with the promises of God? How much more boldly and confidently could we walk into what Ephesians 3.20 tells us? That the same God who is working in you is working through you. How much more boldly could we run into that? If when shame said you don't deserve it, you say, I know. But in Christ, I am chosen. In Christ, I'm a child of God. Yeah, but they'll never accept you. They shouldn't. But in Christ, I am completely forgiven. You'll never change. In Christ, I am a new creation. I think that's why Peter told us in 2 Peter that you were chosen and dearly loved. What a shame robbing you from the joy of your salvation, the freedom in Christ. So at the bottom of the bulletin, there's one more blank, and we'll put it on the screen. It simply says this, I am blank in Christ. Now at the bottom of that, we've listed several things, but you can go through those on your own, or you can look throughout Scripture. But what I want you to answer is this. What do you need to know of the promise in Christ? Who do you need to remind yourself are? Who do you need to remind yourself that you are in Christ to hush the voice of shame in your life? Is it that you're new? Is it that you're forgiven? Is it that you're chosen and dearly loved? If you look through that and you don't see it, shoot me an email. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to help you find whatever it is in your world that will quiet the voice of shame. But maybe put a piece of tape on that. Write it on a sticky. Put it on your dash. Put it on your whatever you need to. Wherever you need to put this so you can remind yourself not simply who you are, but who the Savior of the world says that you are. Who the God who created the heavens and the earth claims that you, his child, is. How different would your world look if we didn't settle with the accusations of shame? But we boldly corrected it with the promises of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for your forgiveness that we do not deserve, Lord. As we go throughout our week, as we go throughout our life and inevitably fall short of what it is that you've asked from us, God, would you just send your Holy Spirit to remind us of your promises? Remind us of who you see us as. God, help us to find our identity in your love and in your grace and not our failures. We need you, Father, and we trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good. If you're new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I'm the worship pastor out here. And I don't know why, just to let you in on a little secret and give you a chance to laugh at me, whatever. I don't know why, whenever Nate's up here consistently and I come up here, one of my first instincts is to say, I'm not Nate. Like, you guys didn't know that. Like, for some reason, you thought, man, what happened to Nate over there? He just got a lot better looking suddenly. And I mean, maybe, maybe, but hey, really glad to be here. Nate, thanks so much, man, for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. To kind of launch us in, get our minds going in the direction that we're headed today. Have you noticed how the mistakes that we make speak so much louder to us than the right things that we do? To kind of give you an idea, so several years ago, my wife and I, we went to Miami, and I had been on this venture and this journey for a long time, trying to learn Spanish, trying to just get better at it. And I was doing the Rosetta Stone thing, all of that. I was doing really good. I could say, like, going to Mexico in October with the mission trip, I would have been perfectly fine asking where the bathroom was. I'm just good. I wouldn't know where they were telling me to go, but I could ask where it was, right? So I was halfway there. But I remember we went to Miami. And if you've never been, it's a culture that's largely influenced by the Latin culture, the Cuban culture down there. And so just the places that we went, I got to speak a lot of the Spanish that I knew, like restaurants and stuff, right? That was good. But when we got back, I was just, I was kind of feeling, like I was having a lot of confidence and I wanted to impress my wife, who is the love of my life. And so we were out one day and I was hungry and she was hungry. I was like, you know what? I know how to say I want to go to Five Guys. That was before the burgers cost 45 bucks. And so I was like, so I want to look at her with all the confidence that I could muster. I looked at her dead in the eyes and I said, quiero cinco hombres, right? Sounds good, right? But if you speak Spanish, you know what I said to my wife was not I want to go to Five Guys. What I said to my wife was, I want five men. And it was not what I meant to say to her because I did not want five men. I wanted to go get an overpriced bacon cheeseburger, right? And you know what I did after that? I did not say Spanish words that I did not understand until, what's funny is this true story. I tried it again last week. But let me encourage you. If you're trying to learn Spanish, don't use the words that you hear on video games because you could end up saying not good words in front of your grandma-in-law who does know very good Spanish. And she looks at you like, did you mean to say that? And I don't know. I just heard like she was getting shot at. And then I repeated what she said and it was whatever. But what's really funny about this, right? Like that, it struck me this week how vivid that memory was. And it's funny. We laugh about it. We can do whatever. Like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it really struck me how big of a mistake or how the mistake stuck with me all of these years. Isn't that true for all of us? We have these goals. We have these things and these places that we try to get to in life. And isn't it true that the failure en route to that goal, it seems to keep coming back over and over and over. It seems to play on repeat. And this isn't just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. But if you're a Christian, it's not just the goals that you have, is it? It's also who Christ has asked you to become. And so on the other side of those shortcomings, on the other side of those mistakes, man, it seems like that's an easy thing to point to. It's when the voice of shame starts to speak pretty loudly on repeat. I know what you did. You think they're going to accept you at church if they find that out? In this series, we're talking about emotions. Emotions that can overwhelm and emotions that can kind of take control and move you into being something you've never really wanted to be. And what I would argue is that a lot of the emotions that we're talking about, they're not to be demonized. Like the emotions that we experience aren't bad things. Like anger, for example. Anger left unchecked will completely wreck havoc in your life. But without anger, you would also not have passion. You would not be moved to act. Yesterday, we went to a lot of people at Grace Serves. We went to Rise Against Hunger. Without anger causing someone to be passionate about world hunger, they would not have that ministry. Fear, fear, unchecked, it will immobilize you. But it's also caused people to create a lot of safety in our world that we never would have seen otherwise. So a lot of these emotions are not bad, but shame, shame has no place in our world. I truly believe that shame is one of the most often used and effective tools of our spiritual enemy, consistently pointing at where we fell short. And the reason why shame is so powerful in our life is because shame not only points to your mistakes, but it identifies you by them. Like you are the sum total of the things that you have done wrong, and it plays on repeat. And so what's heartbreaking about this is our lives are often wrapped around, our identity is often wrapped around that one season in life, that one mistake, that one thing that you did or that one thing that was done to you. And we try as hard as we can, except we just can't forget it. That's what I want to talk about today. Because here's what we have learned. You can't quiet that voice. So how do you keep it from being so overwhelming? And if we're going to look at the life of anyone who has messed up time and time and time again, who else could it be except for Peter? Some of you thought I was going to say me, and that's not nice. Stop it. Right? But we're going to look at Peter. And to catch you up with where we are in the story, we're going to be in Matthew. But to catch you up with where we are, we're actually just within a few hours of what Nate talked about last week with Jesus in the garden. It started in the upper room with the Last Supper where Jesus is Jesus is predicting actually Peter's denial. Jesus says to Peter, hey, Pete, you know, listen, in a few hours, like you, actually, he says, all of you are going to abandon, turn your back and going to leave me. And Pete says, no, no, not me. Not me. I'd never do this. Well, Peter, funny, I love you. But it's not very smart to argue with the guy who can read your mind. But yes, you will do. This is something you're going to do. They move forward. They go into the garden, and Jesus simply asks them, hey, let's just stay awake and pray with me for a little bit. Jesus goes off to pray. It's probably interrupted by Peter snoring, and he comes back, and Peter's asleep. It does that twice. Then they move forward. Jesus is arrested. The guards come. Peter chops off the ear. Jesus puts it back on his head, so there's another correction. And then they go to the court. And that's where we're going to pick it up. In Matthew 26, we are met with this scene. Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean too. He denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, when Peter, when it says that Peter cursed with an oath, that's not the same kind of cursing that we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic, right? This was more along the lines of, may God strike me dead if I'm lying. That was how firm Peter was in saying, I don't know this man. And so he broke. The account of Luke actually tells us that Jesus and Peter made eye contact. And it was at that moment that he broke. And here's one of the reasons why I think that shame is such a powerful tool is because it's so easily mixed up with conviction, right? Like both shame and conviction point immediately at the thing that you don't want to see. The thing that you don't, it points at the mistake. And both make you feel bad about it. And so as a Christian, how do you discern the difference? Like which one is shame? I don't know what to do. And you end up just kind of stuck in the same spot. But the best way that I can come up with to describe the difference is this. Shame disqualifies, and conviction invites. Shame is always going to disqualify you from wherever it is that you're trying to go. Wherever it is that you're trying to accomplish, shame is going to look at you and say, you, you, you, you don't, you can't go there. Like, really? Like, you think that you can do that? But conviction is the opposite of a tool used by the enemy. It's the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life. And it's always inviting us to something. It's always inviting us to what's next. That's the difference. Shame points at our mistakes and shows us how we can never be anything other than that. While conviction points at our mistakes and says, hey, here's what's coming. This is where we go from here. This is what's next in our life. What's fascinating to me about this, like we just talked about where this scene began, there was three to four mistakes, probably about seven to eight if you include the three different times that Peter denied. This is at the end of the Gospels. This is at the end of the three-year window into Peter's mistakes. What has happened every single time? He's dropped the ball. This is what he's known for. He's the guy who messes up. He's the guy who puts his foot in his mouth, except he gets back up and he follows Jesus. He gets back up and goes where Jesus asks him to go over and over and over again, except for this time, it changes. We don't know exactly where Peter went after this moment. We don't know exactly what happened. But all four of the Gospels go to the next scene, which is Jesus' crucifixion. And at the scene of the cross, it lists several of the people who were there, most of which are some of the women who were following Jesus at that point in time. And the Gospel of John tells us that John was there as well. You know who wasn't mentioned? Peter. Like, we can't tell you exactly where Peter went, but with a pretty good amount of certainty, we can tell you where he wasn't. Probably the place that he wanted to be the most. The place with his best friend to support. I don't think Peter was merely flexing when he told Jesus, no, I won't deny you. But what we see is that shame disqualifies us from everything that Jesus invites us to do. Can we stop for a second? And like, it's easy to point a finger at Peter and say, yeah, Peter, you should have just went, man, you're forgiven, like all this other good stuff. But can I ask you, like, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to do? Where is Jesus inviting you in your life that you have convinced yourself that you don't deserve? Where in your life is it this accusation of shame that you could not lead your family towards Jesus? Why would they ever respect you? Who knows you better than them? Why? Do you really think you can go to church? Man, hypocrite. How dare you show your face there? Do you really want to try to have more spiritual disciplines in your life? Like, why are you faking it? That's not you. It's the voice of shame disqualifying you from where Jesus is inviting you. And here's what's true. In your life and in my life, we will never, we will never out-talk shame. I hate that. I remember when I was younger, there was a lady who told me that I had the gift of gab. What I really think she was saying is, Aaron, shut up a little bit, man. But here's what's true. You'll never out-talk and out-convince yourself of why shame is wrong. Do you know why? Because you're you. Like, who knows you better than you? As we try to move past this moment, what are you reminded of? Well, another one. For every one failure, we've got 40 others. And that's where our mind keeps going to, which is why I love what Jesus' response was. To all of this, Jesus shows up in the gospel of John chapter 21. Now, you have several of the disciples who have already went off. and I believe, and there's a lot of people who do believe, that what we're about to read is evidence that Peter went back to his old lifestyle. Peter went back to his old job. It doesn't mean that he is no longer caring for Jesus. He doesn't love Jesus anymore. It doesn't mean that even a little bit, but it just simply means maybe he felt like he couldn't do what Jesus is asking him to do. He couldn't be the person who Jesus was asking him to be, so he will sit into what he did before he knew Christ with a love for Christ. And then Jesus shows up on the beach. Jesus shows up while these guys are out there fishing. They go out fishing throughout the night, and they have been fishing all night. They haven't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the beach and says, hey, guys, you have any fish with you? And no, we haven't. And then we have, I skipped a slide. You can go ahead and jump to the verse, just so you can have the feel, and it says this. To become who Jesus, no, go back one, I'm sorry. What we're to do, let's start over. Let's roll the bumper. And so to become who Jesus says we can be, we must correct who shame says we are, right? Like that's the next point. I think it's at the bottom of your page, whatever. It'll be fine. So, but Jesus shows up on the beach, points at these guys and says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. What did he say? He said something. You guys messed me up so bad again. Where am I at, Nate? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. So Jesus shows up on the beach. These guys have no clue that it's him. They've been fishing all night, and Jesus asked them, hey, do you have any fish? He says, no. So he says, hey, throw your net on the other side of the boat. They throw the net down, and then there's so many fish, they could barely haul it in, and then something clicked. We don't know exactly what was going through Peter's mind, but we do know there was something different in this moment., he tied his outer clothing around him, for he had taken it off and he plunged into the sea. All right, so we can't breeze past all of that yet. Like we got to bring some attention to something because I love fishing. I do. I know a lot of you love fishing. I would love to go fishing with you unless you fish like Peter, which is no fish and in your underwear. Like that just, it's weird. Maybe if you catch fish, sure, I can get past the other thing, but just that's what's going on. Have no clue why it's in there, but John wrote it. So maybe he's just pointing out, look at this dummy, right? So who knows? But something happened in this moment. Something happened. This is the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And not once do you see this type of a reaction from Peter. So much so, he was so excited to see his Lord that he couldn't wait for the boat to go 100 yards to shore. He jumped out and swam just so he could get there. Peter remembered something. If this story sounds familiar to you, it had to to Peter as well. This is very similar to the very first invitation from Jesus to Peter, where he was sitting out in the water, very similar scene, all night fishing. Clearly, Peter's not very good at it. All night fishing, no fish. Jesus says, throw it on the other side. And they couldn't even bring in all the fish. So that happened and Peter remembered and it drew him to Christ. Some of you may know my story. Some of you don't. I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. So really what that meant is I knew how to act like a good preacher's kid on Sunday morning, right? So I learned all the do's and all the don'ts. But the moment I had, the moment I had an opportunity to split and kind of leave the church was when I was 16. My parents divorced, and I took the path of least resistance. My entire family left the church and for the next several years of my life. It wasn't that I was ignoring God. I just didn't think of God. It wasn't a conscious decision saying, okay, I don't want anything to do with you. I was just living my life, doing my thing, doing what I wanted to do until I was about 19, 20 years old, had a car accident that should have killed me. And I remember whenever I went into the hospital, I was in the hospital for several weeks, had a shattered kneecap, a severed femur head in my left hip. If you're wondering why I walk with such a strut, that's the reason. But I remember while I was sitting at the hospital, the several years that I had spent just kind of doing my own thing, no consciousness of Jesus or God or anything along the lines of that, not one of the people that I knew hung out with anything, no one showed up. The people who did show up were the people from years and years ago. People that I went to church camp with, friends that I grew up in church with, some of my father's pastor friends, they showed up and they prayed with me. And this, I'm not saying anything about any of the people, but what that was is God reintroducing himself into my world. He began wooing me. And so I started this back and forth journey, right? Like this, this, this back and forth. Okay, God, I'll do the right thing. I'll do it, do it, do it, mess up. And then I kind of run off and then do my own thing again. I can't do that. Mess up, do it, do it, do it, run off, do my own thing again. And it was like this for a very long time because I reverted to what I knew. Like you have to be good enough. You have to be awesome enough. You have to be all of these other things. And then I remember I went to visit a lady named Carol McCraw, the same one who told me I talk a lot. She was a worship leader in our church growing up. And I went honestly, just simply to say hi. She was a very important person to our family. And I remember when I walked in and simply said hello. She saw, she was playing piano as the music was getting started, and she saw me. She got up, she ran, and just gave me a hug. And it was in that moment, it felt like God wrapped his arms around me, and there was nothing that I did. Now, I clearly wasn't carol, but God used her in a pretty big way because it was in that moment I surrendered my heart, and I could do, man, there was such a love for Jesus, and then I'm telling you, over the next several years, we can sit down and have some coffee or something at some point in time. But it's this journey of falling short. And it's these moments of shame floods my mind. And I consistently go back to this moment where all I did was walk into a place with no intention of seeing Jesus, simply to visit a friend. And it was in that moment, like I'm drawn to the compassion of God because of that personal experience. I'm drawn to the love of Christ in that moment because I realized I didn't deserve anything. Like I think about my past and I cringe, But the love of Christ accepted me for who I was and walked alongside of me. I believe that's what's happening in Peter's world right now. Maybe he went back to his old lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe they were hungry and they went fishing. But there was something in this moment that when he saw Jesus, he saw, oh wait, like something clicked and he remembered. He remembered the love that Jesus has for him. He remembered the last three years, not for the failures that he experienced, but for the Christ who picked him up, for the Christ who invited him into something different, for the Jesus, for the man who helped, who walked along the water with him, for the man who never gave up on him. And Peter saw, and he remembered, he didn't go to the beach, and he wasn't met with a stern rebuke. He wasn't met with some disappointed speech. He was met by his best friend who cooked breakfast for him. He got to hang out. Then he asked him the same question three times, right? He says, hey, Pete, do you love me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. Hey, Peter, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Why are you asking me this? Like, Peter, because you need to remember. You were never, never with me because of how awesome you are. But I want to do something in and through you that will blow your mind. Then I have to believe that it popped back in Peter's mind when Jesus said, hey, I'm building a church and you are the rock on which I will build this church. Peter remembered not the failures that he had, but who Christ said he is. He didn't remember the mistakes that he's had. He remembered the promises of his Lord and Savior. Man, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to? How different would your world look if when the voice of shame started to creep up, you hushed it with the promises of God? How much more boldly and confidently could we walk into what Ephesians 3.20 tells us? That the same God who is working in you is working through you. How much more boldly could we run into that? If when shame said you don't deserve it, you say, I know. But in Christ, I am chosen. In Christ, I'm a child of God. Yeah, but they'll never accept you. They shouldn't. But in Christ, I am completely forgiven. You'll never change. In Christ, I am a new creation. I think that's why Peter told us in 2 Peter that you were chosen and dearly loved. What a shame robbing you from the joy of your salvation, the freedom in Christ. So at the bottom of the bulletin, there's one more blank, and we'll put it on the screen. It simply says this, I am blank in Christ. Now at the bottom of that, we've listed several things, but you can go through those on your own, or you can look throughout Scripture. But what I want you to answer is this. What do you need to know of the promise in Christ? Who do you need to remind yourself are? Who do you need to remind yourself that you are in Christ to hush the voice of shame in your life? Is it that you're new? Is it that you're forgiven? Is it that you're chosen and dearly loved? If you look through that and you don't see it, shoot me an email. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to help you find whatever it is in your world that will quiet the voice of shame. But maybe put a piece of tape on that. Write it on a sticky. Put it on your dash. Put it on your whatever you need to. Wherever you need to put this so you can remind yourself not simply who you are, but who the Savior of the world says that you are. Who the God who created the heavens and the earth claims that you, his child, is. How different would your world look if we didn't settle with the accusations of shame? But we boldly corrected it with the promises of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for your forgiveness that we do not deserve, Lord. As we go throughout our week, as we go throughout our life and inevitably fall short of what it is that you've asked from us, God, would you just send your Holy Spirit to remind us of your promises? Remind us of who you see us as. God, help us to find our identity in your love and in your grace and not our failures. We need you, Father, and we trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Good. If you're new, if you're visiting, my name is Aaron. I'm the worship pastor out here. And I don't know why, just to let you in on a little secret and give you a chance to laugh at me, whatever. I don't know why, whenever Nate's up here consistently and I come up here, one of my first instincts is to say, I'm not Nate. Like, you guys didn't know that. Like, for some reason, you thought, man, what happened to Nate over there? He just got a lot better looking suddenly. And I mean, maybe, maybe, but hey, really glad to be here. Nate, thanks so much, man, for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. To kind of launch us in, get our minds going in the direction that we're headed today. Have you noticed how the mistakes that we make speak so much louder to us than the right things that we do? To kind of give you an idea, so several years ago, my wife and I, we went to Miami, and I had been on this venture and this journey for a long time, trying to learn Spanish, trying to just get better at it. And I was doing the Rosetta Stone thing, all of that. I was doing really good. I could say, like, going to Mexico in October with the mission trip, I would have been perfectly fine asking where the bathroom was. I'm just good. I wouldn't know where they were telling me to go, but I could ask where it was, right? So I was halfway there. But I remember we went to Miami. And if you've never been, it's a culture that's largely influenced by the Latin culture, the Cuban culture down there. And so just the places that we went, I got to speak a lot of the Spanish that I knew, like restaurants and stuff, right? That was good. But when we got back, I was just, I was kind of feeling, like I was having a lot of confidence and I wanted to impress my wife, who is the love of my life. And so we were out one day and I was hungry and she was hungry. I was like, you know what? I know how to say I want to go to Five Guys. That was before the burgers cost 45 bucks. And so I was like, so I want to look at her with all the confidence that I could muster. I looked at her dead in the eyes and I said, quiero cinco hombres, right? Sounds good, right? But if you speak Spanish, you know what I said to my wife was not I want to go to Five Guys. What I said to my wife was, I want five men. And it was not what I meant to say to her because I did not want five men. I wanted to go get an overpriced bacon cheeseburger, right? And you know what I did after that? I did not say Spanish words that I did not understand until, what's funny is this true story. I tried it again last week. But let me encourage you. If you're trying to learn Spanish, don't use the words that you hear on video games because you could end up saying not good words in front of your grandma-in-law who does know very good Spanish. And she looks at you like, did you mean to say that? And I don't know. I just heard like she was getting shot at. And then I repeated what she said and it was whatever. But what's really funny about this, right? Like that, it struck me this week how vivid that memory was. And it's funny. We laugh about it. We can do whatever. Like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it really struck me how big of a mistake or how the mistake stuck with me all of these years. Isn't that true for all of us? We have these goals. We have these things and these places that we try to get to in life. And isn't it true that the failure en route to that goal, it seems to keep coming back over and over and over. It seems to play on repeat. And this isn't just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. But if you're a Christian, it's not just the goals that you have, is it? It's also who Christ has asked you to become. And so on the other side of those shortcomings, on the other side of those mistakes, man, it seems like that's an easy thing to point to. It's when the voice of shame starts to speak pretty loudly on repeat. I know what you did. You think they're going to accept you at church if they find that out? In this series, we're talking about emotions. Emotions that can overwhelm and emotions that can kind of take control and move you into being something you've never really wanted to be. And what I would argue is that a lot of the emotions that we're talking about, they're not to be demonized. Like the emotions that we experience aren't bad things. Like anger, for example. Anger left unchecked will completely wreck havoc in your life. But without anger, you would also not have passion. You would not be moved to act. Yesterday, we went to a lot of people at Grace Serves. We went to Rise Against Hunger. Without anger causing someone to be passionate about world hunger, they would not have that ministry. Fear, fear, unchecked, it will immobilize you. But it's also caused people to create a lot of safety in our world that we never would have seen otherwise. So a lot of these emotions are not bad, but shame, shame has no place in our world. I truly believe that shame is one of the most often used and effective tools of our spiritual enemy, consistently pointing at where we fell short. And the reason why shame is so powerful in our life is because shame not only points to your mistakes, but it identifies you by them. Like you are the sum total of the things that you have done wrong, and it plays on repeat. And so what's heartbreaking about this is our lives are often wrapped around, our identity is often wrapped around that one season in life, that one mistake, that one thing that you did or that one thing that was done to you. And we try as hard as we can, except we just can't forget it. That's what I want to talk about today. Because here's what we have learned. You can't quiet that voice. So how do you keep it from being so overwhelming? And if we're going to look at the life of anyone who has messed up time and time and time again, who else could it be except for Peter? Some of you thought I was going to say me, and that's not nice. Stop it. Right? But we're going to look at Peter. And to catch you up with where we are in the story, we're going to be in Matthew. But to catch you up with where we are, we're actually just within a few hours of what Nate talked about last week with Jesus in the garden. It started in the upper room with the Last Supper where Jesus is Jesus is predicting actually Peter's denial. Jesus says to Peter, hey, Pete, you know, listen, in a few hours, like you, actually, he says, all of you are going to abandon, turn your back and going to leave me. And Pete says, no, no, not me. Not me. I'd never do this. Well, Peter, funny, I love you. But it's not very smart to argue with the guy who can read your mind. But yes, you will do. This is something you're going to do. They move forward. They go into the garden, and Jesus simply asks them, hey, let's just stay awake and pray with me for a little bit. Jesus goes off to pray. It's probably interrupted by Peter snoring, and he comes back, and Peter's asleep. It does that twice. Then they move forward. Jesus is arrested. The guards come. Peter chops off the ear. Jesus puts it back on his head, so there's another correction. And then they go to the court. And that's where we're going to pick it up. In Matthew 26, we are met with this scene. Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean too. He denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about. Now, when Peter, when it says that Peter cursed with an oath, that's not the same kind of cursing that we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic, right? This was more along the lines of, may God strike me dead if I'm lying. That was how firm Peter was in saying, I don't know this man. And so he broke. The account of Luke actually tells us that Jesus and Peter made eye contact. And it was at that moment that he broke. And here's one of the reasons why I think that shame is such a powerful tool is because it's so easily mixed up with conviction, right? Like both shame and conviction point immediately at the thing that you don't want to see. The thing that you don't, it points at the mistake. And both make you feel bad about it. And so as a Christian, how do you discern the difference? Like which one is shame? I don't know what to do. And you end up just kind of stuck in the same spot. But the best way that I can come up with to describe the difference is this. Shame disqualifies, and conviction invites. Shame is always going to disqualify you from wherever it is that you're trying to go. Wherever it is that you're trying to accomplish, shame is going to look at you and say, you, you, you, you don't, you can't go there. Like, really? Like, you think that you can do that? But conviction is the opposite of a tool used by the enemy. It's the voice of the Holy Spirit in our life. And it's always inviting us to something. It's always inviting us to what's next. That's the difference. Shame points at our mistakes and shows us how we can never be anything other than that. While conviction points at our mistakes and says, hey, here's what's coming. This is where we go from here. This is what's next in our life. What's fascinating to me about this, like we just talked about where this scene began, there was three to four mistakes, probably about seven to eight if you include the three different times that Peter denied. This is at the end of the Gospels. This is at the end of the three-year window into Peter's mistakes. What has happened every single time? He's dropped the ball. This is what he's known for. He's the guy who messes up. He's the guy who puts his foot in his mouth, except he gets back up and he follows Jesus. He gets back up and goes where Jesus asks him to go over and over and over again, except for this time, it changes. We don't know exactly where Peter went after this moment. We don't know exactly what happened. But all four of the Gospels go to the next scene, which is Jesus' crucifixion. And at the scene of the cross, it lists several of the people who were there, most of which are some of the women who were following Jesus at that point in time. And the Gospel of John tells us that John was there as well. You know who wasn't mentioned? Peter. Like, we can't tell you exactly where Peter went, but with a pretty good amount of certainty, we can tell you where he wasn't. Probably the place that he wanted to be the most. The place with his best friend to support. I don't think Peter was merely flexing when he told Jesus, no, I won't deny you. But what we see is that shame disqualifies us from everything that Jesus invites us to do. Can we stop for a second? And like, it's easy to point a finger at Peter and say, yeah, Peter, you should have just went, man, you're forgiven, like all this other good stuff. But can I ask you, like, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to do? Where is Jesus inviting you in your life that you have convinced yourself that you don't deserve? Where in your life is it this accusation of shame that you could not lead your family towards Jesus? Why would they ever respect you? Who knows you better than them? Why? Do you really think you can go to church? Man, hypocrite. How dare you show your face there? Do you really want to try to have more spiritual disciplines in your life? Like, why are you faking it? That's not you. It's the voice of shame disqualifying you from where Jesus is inviting you. And here's what's true. In your life and in my life, we will never, we will never out-talk shame. I hate that. I remember when I was younger, there was a lady who told me that I had the gift of gab. What I really think she was saying is, Aaron, shut up a little bit, man. But here's what's true. You'll never out-talk and out-convince yourself of why shame is wrong. Do you know why? Because you're you. Like, who knows you better than you? As we try to move past this moment, what are you reminded of? Well, another one. For every one failure, we've got 40 others. And that's where our mind keeps going to, which is why I love what Jesus' response was. To all of this, Jesus shows up in the gospel of John chapter 21. Now, you have several of the disciples who have already went off. and I believe, and there's a lot of people who do believe, that what we're about to read is evidence that Peter went back to his old lifestyle. Peter went back to his old job. It doesn't mean that he is no longer caring for Jesus. He doesn't love Jesus anymore. It doesn't mean that even a little bit, but it just simply means maybe he felt like he couldn't do what Jesus is asking him to do. He couldn't be the person who Jesus was asking him to be, so he will sit into what he did before he knew Christ with a love for Christ. And then Jesus shows up on the beach. Jesus shows up while these guys are out there fishing. They go out fishing throughout the night, and they have been fishing all night. They haven't caught anything. Jesus shows up on the beach and says, hey, guys, you have any fish with you? And no, we haven't. And then we have, I skipped a slide. You can go ahead and jump to the verse, just so you can have the feel, and it says this. To become who Jesus, no, go back one, I'm sorry. What we're to do, let's start over. Let's roll the bumper. And so to become who Jesus says we can be, we must correct who shame says we are, right? Like that's the next point. I think it's at the bottom of your page, whatever. It'll be fine. So, but Jesus shows up on the beach, points at these guys and says, hey, listen, here's what's going on. What did he say? He said something. You guys messed me up so bad again. Where am I at, Nate? I'm just kidding. Don't do that. So Jesus shows up on the beach. These guys have no clue that it's him. They've been fishing all night, and Jesus asked them, hey, do you have any fish? He says, no. So he says, hey, throw your net on the other side of the boat. They throw the net down, and then there's so many fish, they could barely haul it in, and then something clicked. We don't know exactly what was going through Peter's mind, but we do know there was something different in this moment., he tied his outer clothing around him, for he had taken it off and he plunged into the sea. All right, so we can't breeze past all of that yet. Like we got to bring some attention to something because I love fishing. I do. I know a lot of you love fishing. I would love to go fishing with you unless you fish like Peter, which is no fish and in your underwear. Like that just, it's weird. Maybe if you catch fish, sure, I can get past the other thing, but just that's what's going on. Have no clue why it's in there, but John wrote it. So maybe he's just pointing out, look at this dummy, right? So who knows? But something happened in this moment. Something happened. This is the third time that Jesus has appeared to the disciples. And not once do you see this type of a reaction from Peter. So much so, he was so excited to see his Lord that he couldn't wait for the boat to go 100 yards to shore. He jumped out and swam just so he could get there. Peter remembered something. If this story sounds familiar to you, it had to to Peter as well. This is very similar to the very first invitation from Jesus to Peter, where he was sitting out in the water, very similar scene, all night fishing. Clearly, Peter's not very good at it. All night fishing, no fish. Jesus says, throw it on the other side. And they couldn't even bring in all the fish. So that happened and Peter remembered and it drew him to Christ. Some of you may know my story. Some of you don't. I grew up in the church. I wasn't a Christian at all. My father was a pastor. So really what that meant is I knew how to act like a good preacher's kid on Sunday morning, right? So I learned all the do's and all the don'ts. But the moment I had, the moment I had an opportunity to split and kind of leave the church was when I was 16. My parents divorced, and I took the path of least resistance. My entire family left the church and for the next several years of my life. It wasn't that I was ignoring God. I just didn't think of God. It wasn't a conscious decision saying, okay, I don't want anything to do with you. I was just living my life, doing my thing, doing what I wanted to do until I was about 19, 20 years old, had a car accident that should have killed me. And I remember whenever I went into the hospital, I was in the hospital for several weeks, had a shattered kneecap, a severed femur head in my left hip. If you're wondering why I walk with such a strut, that's the reason. But I remember while I was sitting at the hospital, the several years that I had spent just kind of doing my own thing, no consciousness of Jesus or God or anything along the lines of that, not one of the people that I knew hung out with anything, no one showed up. The people who did show up were the people from years and years ago. People that I went to church camp with, friends that I grew up in church with, some of my father's pastor friends, they showed up and they prayed with me. And this, I'm not saying anything about any of the people, but what that was is God reintroducing himself into my world. He began wooing me. And so I started this back and forth journey, right? Like this, this, this back and forth. Okay, God, I'll do the right thing. I'll do it, do it, do it, mess up. And then I kind of run off and then do my own thing again. I can't do that. Mess up, do it, do it, do it, run off, do my own thing again. And it was like this for a very long time because I reverted to what I knew. Like you have to be good enough. You have to be awesome enough. You have to be all of these other things. And then I remember I went to visit a lady named Carol McCraw, the same one who told me I talk a lot. She was a worship leader in our church growing up. And I went honestly, just simply to say hi. She was a very important person to our family. And I remember when I walked in and simply said hello. She saw, she was playing piano as the music was getting started, and she saw me. She got up, she ran, and just gave me a hug. And it was in that moment, it felt like God wrapped his arms around me, and there was nothing that I did. Now, I clearly wasn't carol, but God used her in a pretty big way because it was in that moment I surrendered my heart, and I could do, man, there was such a love for Jesus, and then I'm telling you, over the next several years, we can sit down and have some coffee or something at some point in time. But it's this journey of falling short. And it's these moments of shame floods my mind. And I consistently go back to this moment where all I did was walk into a place with no intention of seeing Jesus, simply to visit a friend. And it was in that moment, like I'm drawn to the compassion of God because of that personal experience. I'm drawn to the love of Christ in that moment because I realized I didn't deserve anything. Like I think about my past and I cringe, But the love of Christ accepted me for who I was and walked alongside of me. I believe that's what's happening in Peter's world right now. Maybe he went back to his old lifestyle. Who knows? Maybe they were hungry and they went fishing. But there was something in this moment that when he saw Jesus, he saw, oh wait, like something clicked and he remembered. He remembered the love that Jesus has for him. He remembered the last three years, not for the failures that he experienced, but for the Christ who picked him up, for the Christ who invited him into something different, for the Jesus, for the man who helped, who walked along the water with him, for the man who never gave up on him. And Peter saw, and he remembered, he didn't go to the beach, and he wasn't met with a stern rebuke. He wasn't met with some disappointed speech. He was met by his best friend who cooked breakfast for him. He got to hang out. Then he asked him the same question three times, right? He says, hey, Pete, do you love me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lord, I love you. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you. Feed my sheep. Hey, Peter, do you love me? Yes, you know I love you. Why are you asking me this? Like, Peter, because you need to remember. You were never, never with me because of how awesome you are. But I want to do something in and through you that will blow your mind. Then I have to believe that it popped back in Peter's mind when Jesus said, hey, I'm building a church and you are the rock on which I will build this church. Peter remembered not the failures that he had, but who Christ said he is. He didn't remember the mistakes that he's had. He remembered the promises of his Lord and Savior. Man, what is shame keeping you from that Jesus is inviting you to? How different would your world look if when the voice of shame started to creep up, you hushed it with the promises of God? How much more boldly and confidently could we walk into what Ephesians 3.20 tells us? That the same God who is working in you is working through you. How much more boldly could we run into that? If when shame said you don't deserve it, you say, I know. But in Christ, I am chosen. In Christ, I'm a child of God. Yeah, but they'll never accept you. They shouldn't. But in Christ, I am completely forgiven. You'll never change. In Christ, I am a new creation. I think that's why Peter told us in 2 Peter that you were chosen and dearly loved. What a shame robbing you from the joy of your salvation, the freedom in Christ. So at the bottom of the bulletin, there's one more blank, and we'll put it on the screen. It simply says this, I am blank in Christ. Now at the bottom of that, we've listed several things, but you can go through those on your own, or you can look throughout Scripture. But what I want you to answer is this. What do you need to know of the promise in Christ? Who do you need to remind yourself are? Who do you need to remind yourself that you are in Christ to hush the voice of shame in your life? Is it that you're new? Is it that you're forgiven? Is it that you're chosen and dearly loved? If you look through that and you don't see it, shoot me an email. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to help you find whatever it is in your world that will quiet the voice of shame. But maybe put a piece of tape on that. Write it on a sticky. Put it on your dash. Put it on your whatever you need to. Wherever you need to put this so you can remind yourself not simply who you are, but who the Savior of the world says that you are. Who the God who created the heavens and the earth claims that you, his child, is. How different would your world look if we didn't settle with the accusations of shame? But we boldly corrected it with the promises of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness. Thank you so much for your love. Thank you so much for your forgiveness that we do not deserve, Lord. As we go throughout our week, as we go throughout our life and inevitably fall short of what it is that you've asked from us, God, would you just send your Holy Spirit to remind us of your promises? Remind us of who you see us as. God, help us to find our identity in your love and in your grace and not our failures. We need you, Father, and we trust you. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well, good morning. It's good to see all of you. I know those lights hit you, they're bright, goodness gracious. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here, and it's so good to see you. Thanks for being here for the second service and for the last part of our series in John. When we started the series in February, this is, I think, 12 weeks, so it's been one of our longer ones, but I hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope, and my prayer for you has been that you now, as we leave the series, feel a little bit closer to Jesus than you did when we started, that you know him better than you did when we started. I know that there are some themes from the book of John that I will probably always remember that stuck out to me as we went through it as a church this time around. I hope that you can relate to that. Originally, when we had planned the series, we wanted to end it on Easter. At the end on Easter Sunday, that'd be the resurrection story. That's the end of the story of Jesus. Boom, we're done. It's a nice, clean, tidy ending. But as I was studying the book, there's a story in John that's unique to the book of John. It's not in the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, or Luke. It's just in John almost as an addendum. And it's the restoration of Peter. And it's to me one of the most hopeful, life-giving, inspiring, restorative messages and stories that we find from the life of Jesus. And so I thought if it's good enough to be an addendum for John, then it's good enough to be an addendum for grace. And so we came back one extra week in John to look at this story of the restoration of Peter. To appreciate the story, we need to understand what goes into this moment. Eventually, we're going to get to John chapter 21. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there and we're going to be at the end of that chapter. If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back in front of you. If you don't like that option, there's a free one on your phone just seconds away. All right. To understand the story at the end of John, we need to understand who Peter was and what's going on in that story. Peter was kind of the de facto leader of the disciples. Many people think he was probably the oldest disciple. He was, some believe, the only one with a wife when they were called. He was a little bit further on in life than the rest of the disciples were. Peter was one of these guys that would always talk first and think later. He was a ready, fire, aim kind of guy. He's my people. I understand Peter, right? When Jesus walks on the water, what does Peter do? He jumps out of the boat. Well, shoot, I'm doing this too, right? Peter always just said things with confidence and everybody around him was like, well, I guess that's right. Jen asked me, my wife asked me sometimes, like, how do you say things with so much confidence? Like, how do you know that to be true? And I'm like, I don't. I'm just saying it. And people seem to go along with things. That's Peter, man. I can relate to him. He just always the first to answer, always the first to have the idea, always out front, kind of regardless of consequences. One of my favorite stories to kind of illustrate the character of Peter, one day Jesus decides, he gathers the disciples together and he says, hey, you guys, I'm going to wash your feet today. Which is like, that's the lowest of the low job. That's like the summer intern as the servant job. That's what you do. And so Peter, responding with some pomposity, with some piety, says, no, Jesus, never. I can never let you wash my feet. I will never let that happen. And Jesus looks at him and he says, okay, Peter, but unless I wash your feet, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And then Peter immediately does a 180. Well, then don't stop at my feet. Wash my head and my hands as well. Like that's Peter, okay? And so at the Last Supper, right before Jesus is arrested and tried and crucified, the last time they spend some good time together, Jesus looks at Peter, the leader of the disciples, and he tells him, before the rooster crows in the morning, you will have denied me three times. And Peter's response is what you would expect Peter's response to be. Never, Lord. I would never deny you. I would not do that. And Jesus says, you're going to. And Peter says, this is a loose paraphrase, agree to disagree, which you never want to agree to disagree with Jesus. You're not in a good spot when that's what you choose. So they leave. Jesus goes and he prays. He brings Peter to pray with them, but Peter falls asleep. John falls asleep. James falls asleep. And then Jesus gets arrested, and he's taken off to the courtyard of the high priest, a guy named Caiaphas. And three weeks ago, we talked about this in the crucifixion story. It was in the courtyard of Caiaphas where Jesus is put on trial, and there were two disciples that actually followed him there. The rest of the disciples dispersed. They ran away. They started worrying about their own necks, and so they ran away to hide so that they wouldn't get arrested too. They figured if they're arresting Jesus, then they're coming for us next, right? And so they all dispersed except for two disciples, Peter and another unnamed disciple, make it to the courtyard of Caiaphas' house. And it's in this courtyard that Jesus was put on trial, that he was falsely accused, that they told lies about him. The one person who's ever existed who deserved this treatment least was getting this treatment. They were blindfolding him and punching him and saying, who hit you, Jesus? You're a prophet. Prophesy about who hit you. And then Jewish tradition says that they were ripping out his beard. So he's beaten up and he's in a moment where he is incredibly loved. This is a man that Jesus has followed every day for three years. He loves this man. He cares for nothing on earth more than this man, and now he's watching him suffer in this way. And Peter's around a campfire as this is happening. And when he gets there, the Bible says there's a servant girl who looks at him and says, hey, don't you know him? Aren't you like in his little group? And Peter says, no, I've never met the man. That's one. A little while later, somebody else says the same thing. Hey, haven't I seen you with him before? Peter says, no, I don't know what we're talking about. I've never met the man. That's twice. And then the Bible says about an hour after that, someone really begins to press him. Hey, aren't you from Galilee? I can tell by your accent, you have to know that man. And Peter gets emphatic. No, I swear I've never met him. And then it says that this is actually, there's this passage in Luke. That's to to me, one of the most intense passages in Scripture. It's something that you may have read before, but we kind of gloss over it. But look at what it says in Luke. Chapter 22, verse 60, it says, But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you are talking about. That's the third time. And immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And then verse 61, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? The time when Jesus most needed people around him who loved him. You are his leading disciple and you just denied him three times because you're scared. And his bloody face turns and looks you dead in the eye. Peter remembered the saying of the Lord how he said to him, before the rooster crows you'll deny me three times. And he went out and he wept bitterly. Can you imagine how Peter must have felt? He had betrayed his Jesus. He had let him down. He had denied him. He had told Jesus over and over again, you can count on me. For three years, Jesus had been prepping him and training him and grooming him to take over the church, to step into his ministry. He was to see Jesus and to help lead the church after Jesus' death. And in the moment when he most needed him, he betrayed him and he let him down. And Jesus turned and looked at Peter. You cannot imagine that eye contact. It says he went away and he wept bitterly. I love this story because I so identify with Peter. And to me, if you're a believer, if you're a Christian, then you can identify with him too. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, then the good news is that you don't have to feel bad about any of this. You can just take it all in and watch us as we squirm and feel bad. But if you're a believer, then you know this feeling too. If you're a believer, then you know what it is to feel like you've betrayed Jesus, don't you? Has there ever been a time in your life, maybe in a corporate setting, maybe around some clients, maybe with some new friends that you've made, maybe with some old buddies where you kind of fall back into who you used to be, where you took that part of your identity, your Christianity, and you kind of tucked it away back here and kind of didn't wear it on your sleeve for that week or for that night or for that season because you didn't really want them to know who you were associated with? Have you ever in your life tucked away your identity as a believer because you were kind of ashamed and embarrassed if people were to find out that that's who you were because you had not been acting that way? Can I just tell you? I hope that you don't get too disappointed in me for this, but I've been doing ministry for about 20 years. There have definitely been times in my life when because of how I had been acting or what I had been saying or doing or whatever it was, I kind of tucked away my identity as a pastor. I didn't really want to share it with the group of people that I was with. So when Peter betrays Jesus and denies knowing him, I can relate. When we get this sense of betrayal, I've let my Jesus down. To be a Christian is to be familiar with that. I think we've all had different times and different seasons where we feel like we've let Jesus down a little bit. Maybe we've told him. Maybe we've been moved in worship. Maybe we've been moved by a sermon, probably at another church, and we decided that what we were going to do, we were going to start a new discipline. We were going to start a new thing. We had been moved to conviction. And we say, yes, Jesus, I'm going to get up and I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to get up early. I'm going to make time for you. I'm going to spend time in prayer. I'm going to spend time in your word. That's going to be a discipline in my life. And so we get up and we start to read it. We're following along, but maybe we don't really understand it. We don't hear the angels audibly sing. And so we think we must be doing it wrong. Or we wake up and we kind of do the drop and flop. Like, Jesus, you just show me what you want me to read. And it turns out that because Psalms is in the middle and it's the longest book in the Bible, that God wants us to read Psalms like a lot. So we just, we read that, right? And we don't really know what's going on or what's happening. And for whatever reason, we fall away from that discipline. And then we've told Jesus for however many times, this is going to be a part of my life. And then we fail. And we betray him and we let him down. Or we tell him that we're going to start to give. We understand that believers should give generously, that we should be conduits of God's generosity to us, that we're stewards of the resources that he gives us, and that we should be generous to those that we think Jesus would want to help and serve. And we commit to do this, but things come up and then we don't, and we fall away from that discipline or from that commitment. And we hesitate to even make the commitment again because we messed up the last time, and we don't have much reason to believe that we're going to do better the next time. Right? Or we have things in our life that we don't want there. And so we tell Jesus, I'm done with that. I'm drawing the line in the sand. I'm not going to do that thing again. I'm moved. I'm convicted. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for who I am. I don't want that to be a part of my life. I don't want that to be a part of who I am. Jesus, I'm done with that. I'm moving on by the power of your spirit. Please allow me to be done with that thing. And we move away from that thing. And then three days later or weeks later or maybe months later, we fall back into the thing. So I wonder this morning, have you ever felt like you've betrayed Jesus? Can you relate to Peter? Aren't you glad that in the moment of the height of your betrayal, Jesus isn't looking you in the eye? I think we can all relate to Peter in this moment. The good news is that it gets better. But I think that we can all relate to this idea of letting Jesus down, of betraying him and feeling what Peter must have felt when God looked at him and he went away and he wept bitterly. Which, by the way, when you're confronted with your sin, that's the appropriate response to go away and to weep bitterly. That's a good and right response. And I don't believe that God would steal that response from Peter. I don't think that God would go to him and say, hey, you don't need to do that. I think that's the good and right response when we realize who we are. But he goes away and he weeps bitterly. And then we pick up this story in John chapter 21. In John chapter 21, Jesus has died, he's resurrected, he's appeared to the disciples a couple of times, and then in John chapter 21, he appears to them while they're fishing. And it's interesting to me that they're fishing. Because if you think back, my Bible scholars in the room, you know the answer to this. At the beginning of Jesus' ministry, when he's calling the disciples, and he goes to this guy named Simon, son of John, and he renames him Peter, and he says, come and be my disciple. What was Peter doing? He was fishing. For three years while he followed Jesus, what did he not do anymore? Fish. Why? He had a new job. His new job was to follow Jesus. His new job was to be in ministry. His new job was to do what Jesus did, to go around telling people about Jesus, to cast out demons and to perform miracles and to teach the people of Israel about the Messiah that was now here. That was his new job. And so for three years, he hadn't done his old job. He walked away from that because that wasn't him anymore. But after Jesus dies and Peter is walking around with this shame because he let his Jesus down, what does he do? He goes back to his old job. He disqualifies himself. Peter should have been leading the church. Peter should have been gathering the disciples together and saying, hey, this isn't over. Jesus has risen from the dead. We need to continue to serve him. We need to continue to build his kingdom. We have a purpose. We're not done, guys. But instead, what does he do? He gets back in the boat. What I want us to see is that Peter allowed his shame to shrink his vision of what Jesus wanted him to do. He allowed his shame, he allowed what he had done and how badly he felt for it to shrink his vision about what Jesus wanted him to do. Jesus had purposed him and prepared him and groomed him to lead his church. It's what Jesus wanted him to do. It's why he was working with him for three years, why he was putting up with all of his Peter-isms so that he could lead the church. And Peter, because he felt bad, because he felt shame, he walked away from that. He disqualified himself, which in all honesty is the exact same thing that we would do. Would you look at Peter after he betrayed Jesus at the height of his need and go, yep, you're still the guy. You should still lead the church. Would you still want that guy to be in charge of everybody? Would you still want that guy leading the council of the disciples like he is in Acts along with James? Is that what you would still want? Wouldn't you think that Peter would need to enter into some sort of probationary period? Okay, you're good, Peter, but we're just going to keep our eye on you for a minute. Wouldn't you do what Peter did? Wouldn't you step away and kind of slink away quietly and be like, I'm so sorry that I messed up. I understand. I don't even expect you to reinstate me anymore. I'm just going to fish and I'm going to love on you the best I can. Wouldn't you expect that of Peter? Doesn't that seem like the fair human reaction? Don't we do that to ourselves? When we mess up and we know who we are, we know where we come from and we know the we bring into every room, and we know the things that are hiding in the corners and the shadows of our life. When we know those things, don't we do what Peter did and disqualify ourselves? Don't we allow our shame to shrink our vision for who we are and what God created us to do? Can I just tell you that I think the Bible teaches that every one of you who are believers were created, and the non-believers too, we're just waiting for you to get on board. You were created with a purpose and with a set of gifts, with the sole intention of building God's church. With the sole intention of going to heaven one day and on your way there bringing as many people with you as you possibly can. That's the only reason you're alive. It's the only reason you walk on the face of the earth. The Christian life is a progressive revelation of just how true that is. Hopefully you realize now it's more true than you did five years ago and hopefully more than 10 years ago. The only reason you're here, the only reason that Jesus doesn't snatch you into heaven the instant you are saved is to leave you here so that you can bring as many people with you as possible on the way. And I believe that God has imbued each of you with a set of gifts. I believe that God has uniquely prepared you in your life through the circumstances that you have walked through to be effective at reaching other people. And I believe that God has a big vision and a big plan for how he wants to use you in his kingdom. I believe those of you who have jobs that you are the pastors of those teams. That God has put you there to be a light in the dark places, to encourage the other light that is there and to cast light on those who might not know him yet. That simply by watching you, they may give glory to the Father who is in heaven. Those verses are all over scripture. But what do we do? We know our past. We know who we are. And so we allow our shame to shrink our vision of who Jesus created us to be. We excuse those things away. If I said that, I would never be believed. They're going to think I'm a hypocrite. Maybe we want to start a devotional with our kids at the house. Maybe we just want to start exposing our children to Scripture in the home, but then we have that thought, yeah, buddy, but you don't even read the Bible every day on your own, you hypocrite. Well, start then, and then start the Bible study, man. God has these things that I believe He wants us to do, that He's purposed us to do, but we back off of them because of our shame, because we know who we are. And then we just exist in these little holes. God, I'm not going to do that thing. I'm just going to be a fisherman. I'm just going to work in sales. I'm just going to work in accounting. I'm just going to have my job. I'm just going to do my thing. I'm going to go to church and be a good Christian. But that work that you have to do in the kingdom, that's for other people who haven't messed up. And listen, if that's true, if the only people who get to do ministry and get used in God's kingdom are those who have never let Jesus down, then the church would be run by four-year-olds, man. We've got just a slight upgrade here. But that's what we do. We allow our shame and how we feel about ourselves to shrink our vision about what God wants us to do, which is why Jesus's response to Peter is so amazing. Look at what Jesus says in John chapter 21. I'm going to read you the whole conversation and then we'll talk about it a little bit. Jesus had shown up. They were fishing out on the Sea of Galilee. And that's louder than normal. They were fishing out on the Sea of Galilee. They had been out all night. They hadn't caught anything, right? And then Jesus appears on the shore after they bring the nets in. Still not catching anything. And they don't know it's Jesus. It's just some dude. And he's like, hey, cast your nets on the other side of the boat, which is ridiculous. It's almost like making fun of them. The boat's like 12 feet wide. It's not going to make a difference when they put them on the other side of the boat. But for whatever reason, they listen to the guy, they do it, and then they catch more fish than they've ever caught in their life. 30 years later, 30-plus years later, old man John still remembers that they caught exactly 153 fish that day. That wasn't a big deal to John. They pull in the fish, they go in, they have breakfast together, and then Jesus sidles up to Peter for a conversation. This is the first one-on-one conversation that they have had since Peter's betrayal. And let me just ask you before we read the conversation, what would you expect Jesus to say in that moment? What would you expect the conversation to be? Put yourself in Peter's shoes. You did that to Jesus. You've betrayed him. Put yourself in your own shoes. Take yourself to the place where you feel like you've let Jesus down the most. And right after letting him down for however many upteenth times you've done it, he comes up to you. He sidles up next to you and he puts his arm around you and you and him have a conversation. What do you expect him to say? I would expect him to go to Peter. I would expect him to come to me and say, hey, are you sorry? Right? Jesus is good. He's gracious. I don't think that we would expect Jesus to just come down hard on us. We don't know that in his character. But I think we would expect him to put his arm around us and look at Peter and go, hey, Peter, are you sorry for what you did? Isn't this what we do with our children? When Lily messes up, I've got a three-year-old daughter named Lily, when she messes up, which is more frequently lately because she's three, and apparently that's what three-year-olds do. And she hollers and she gets mad. What do I do? I pick her up and I hold her right here. I calm her down. And I say, Lily, are you sorry? And she says, yes, Daddy. I go, okay. And I put her down. I say, go tell your mom you're sorry. We forgive you. Isn't that what we do? Isn't that what we would expect Jesus to do to us? Hey, are you sorry? And then we would expect to go, yeah, I'm sorry. And we would expect to hear him say to Peter, okay, you're forgiven. Because he's Jesus and that's what he does, right? You're forgiven. That's what we would expect. But look at what happens. Verse 15, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Do you love me more than these fish? I see you've gone back to fishing. That's an interesting choice. I didn't know that you had a new career now. Do you love me more than these fish? Do you love me more than what you're doing? Interesting question. He said to him, yes, Lord, you know I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. Verse 17, he said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to somebody put it, you done boogered up, son. He messed up bad. He felt terrible. And he walked away from what God called him to because he felt like he had disqualified himself for messing up. And Jesus goes and he finds him. And we would expect Jesus to say, Peter, are you sorry? That's not what he says. He says, Peter, do you love me? Do I still have your heart or has this sin taken it from me? Do you love me? He says, yes, of course I love you. He says, good. Feed my sheep. This is a remarkable statement. Because in John 10, Jesus paints himself as the good shepherd. And he says that the sheep are his flock or the church or people who believe in him. His sheep are the Christians. And so the shepherd looks after the Christians. And so what he's saying is, Peter, for three years you watched me do ministry. You watched me tend to my sheep. And I told you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. I told you that one day I won't be here. When I'mores you. He doesn't just forgive Peter. He doesn't say, are you sorry? He says, do you love me? I know you're sorry. Because if you love me, then of course you're sorry. And then we would expect him to say, okay, you're forgiven, but sit over here in this probationary period. I'll keep an eye on you for a couple years and see if we can trust you again. That's not what he does. You're forgiven. You're restored. Go and do the thing I created you to do. Go and be the person I created you to be. He says, Peter, you may have disqualified yourself. You may have shrunken back from my plans for you, but I have not. I still have plans for you. I still want you to do these things. You are reinstated. You are restored. And he does it three times. I love the symmetry of those statements. How many times did Jesus deny Peter? Three. How many times did Jesus ask Peter if he loved him? Three. It's like he's saying, Peter, without even saying the words, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. You're forgiven. Go and work. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then you're forgiven. Go and be who I created you to be. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Okay, good, because that's three times that you said that. It's three times I've forgiven you. You can say it as many more times as you want to. I'll forgive you and restore you all those times. Now go and be who I created you to be. And I believe that he says the same thing to us this morning. I believe that he asks us the same question. Do you love Jesus? Grace, do you love Jesus? However mired in sin you might be, however much shame you might bring into the room, whatever might have happened in the past, whatever habits you bring, however many times you've made a commitment that you didn't keep, listen, put all that aside and let's just ask you grace. Do you love Jesus? Then go and be who he created you to be. Go and do the thing he purposed you to do. Say, but Jesus, I've done this and this and this. I'm not qualified. I used to be an addict. I used to do this thing. I'm mired in this right now. And Jesus says, listen, listen, listen, I'm not worried about that. Do you love me? Because if you love me, it means you're sorry. And if you've shrunk away, it means that you feel shame. And Jesus says, go and be the person that I created you to be. Go and do the thing that I intended for you to do. Quit disqualifying yourself. Quit feeling the shame that is not from me. And just answer the question, do you love me? Then go and do the thing that I purposed you to do. Go and feed his sheep. Go and build his church. Go and use the gifts that he's imbued you with. Go live out the reason that he leaves you here. Go and run your race. What I want you to understand this morning is Jesus is far more concerned with what he wants you to do than what you have done. He's already taken care of what you have done. He's removed that from you as far as the east is from the west. Because of that removal, you are free and have the freedom to operate in his love. And if you love him in return, then go and do the thing that he created you to do. Go and be who he created you to be. And that's where I would leave us at the end of the series in John with that simple question. After all the 12 weeks, after everything that we've experienced, after all that we've seen of Jesus, after what we know of him and how he loved us. Do you love him? Does he have your heart? If he does, grace. Go be who he created you to be. You're not just forgiven, you're restored. Let's pray. Father, we sure do love you. You sure are good to us. God, we can't fathom this idea that you would not just forgive us, but that you would restore us. Lord, if there are folks in here who walked into the room carrying a little bit of shame, God, if we are certain that if we could see you face to face, the first thing you would express in us is disappointment. God, I pray that you would take that from us today. That we would see that we are loved, that you care about us, that we would identify with Peter, not just in his betrayal, but in his restoration, that we would feel your arms around us, that we would simply respond to that question of, do we love you? Give us the faith to believe that you forgive us. Give us the eyes to see ourselves as you do. And give us the courage and the strength to go live out and be the people that you created us to be and do great things to the folks here at Grace. It's in your son's name we pray all of these things. Amen.
All right, well, good morning. It's good to see all of you. I know those lights hit you, they're bright, goodness gracious. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here, and it's so good to see you. Thanks for being here for the second service and for the last part of our series in John. When we started the series in February, this is, I think, 12 weeks, so it's been one of our longer ones, but I hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope, and my prayer for you has been that you now, as we leave the series, feel a little bit closer to Jesus than you did when we started, that you know him better than you did when we started. I know that there are some themes from the book of John that I will probably always remember that stuck out to me as we went through it as a church this time around. I hope that you can relate to that. Originally, when we had planned the series, we wanted to end it on Easter. At the end on Easter Sunday, that'd be the resurrection story. That's the end of the story of Jesus. Boom, we're done. It's a nice, clean, tidy ending. But as I was studying the book, there's a story in John that's unique to the book of John. It's not in the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, or Luke. It's just in John almost as an addendum. And it's the restoration of Peter. And it's to me one of the most hopeful, life-giving, inspiring, restorative messages and stories that we find from the life of Jesus. And so I thought if it's good enough to be an addendum for John, then it's good enough to be an addendum for grace. And so we came back one extra week in John to look at this story of the restoration of Peter. To appreciate the story, we need to understand what goes into this moment. Eventually, we're going to get to John chapter 21. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there and we're going to be at the end of that chapter. If you don't have one, there's one in the seat back in front of you. If you don't like that option, there's a free one on your phone just seconds away. All right. To understand the story at the end of John, we need to understand who Peter was and what's going on in that story. Peter was kind of the de facto leader of the disciples. Many people think he was probably the oldest disciple. He was, some believe, the only one with a wife when they were called. He was a little bit further on in life than the rest of the disciples were. Peter was one of these guys that would always talk first and think later. He was a ready, fire, aim kind of guy. He's my people. I understand Peter, right? When Jesus walks on the water, what does Peter do? He jumps out of the boat. Well, shoot, I'm doing this too, right? Peter always just said things with confidence and everybody around him was like, well, I guess that's right. Jen asked me, my wife asked me sometimes, like, how do you say things with so much confidence? Like, how do you know that to be true? And I'm like, I don't. I'm just saying it. And people seem to go along with things. That's Peter, man. I can relate to him. He just always the first to answer, always the first to have the idea, always out front, kind of regardless of consequences. One of my favorite stories to kind of illustrate the character of Peter, one day Jesus decides, he gathers the disciples together and he says, hey, you guys, I'm going to wash your feet today. Which is like, that's the lowest of the low job. That's like the summer intern as the servant job. That's what you do. And so Peter, responding with some pomposity, with some piety, says, no, Jesus, never. I can never let you wash my feet. I will never let that happen. And Jesus looks at him and he says, okay, Peter, but unless I wash your feet, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And then Peter immediately does a 180. Well, then don't stop at my feet. Wash my head and my hands as well. Like that's Peter, okay? And so at the Last Supper, right before Jesus is arrested and tried and crucified, the last time they spend some good time together, Jesus looks at Peter, the leader of the disciples, and he tells him, before the rooster crows in the morning, you will have denied me three times. And Peter's response is what you would expect Peter's response to be. Never, Lord. I would never deny you. I would not do that. And Jesus says, you're going to. And Peter says, this is a loose paraphrase, agree to disagree, which you never want to agree to disagree with Jesus. You're not in a good spot when that's what you choose. So they leave. Jesus goes and he prays. He brings Peter to pray with them, but Peter falls asleep. John falls asleep. James falls asleep. And then Jesus gets arrested, and he's taken off to the courtyard of the high priest, a guy named Caiaphas. And three weeks ago, we talked about this in the crucifixion story. It was in the courtyard of Caiaphas where Jesus is put on trial, and there were two disciples that actually followed him there. The rest of the disciples dispersed. They ran away. They started worrying about their own necks, and so they ran away to hide so that they wouldn't get arrested too. They figured if they're arresting Jesus, then they're coming for us next, right? And so they all dispersed except for two disciples, Peter and another unnamed disciple, make it to the courtyard of Caiaphas' house. And it's in this courtyard that Jesus was put on trial, that he was falsely accused, that they told lies about him. The one person who's ever existed who deserved this treatment least was getting this treatment. They were blindfolding him and punching him and saying, who hit you, Jesus? You're a prophet. Prophesy about who hit you. And then Jewish tradition says that they were ripping out his beard. So he's beaten up and he's in a moment where he is incredibly loved. This is a man that Jesus has followed every day for three years. He loves this man. He cares for nothing on earth more than this man, and now he's watching him suffer in this way. And Peter's around a campfire as this is happening. And when he gets there, the Bible says there's a servant girl who looks at him and says, hey, don't you know him? Aren't you like in his little group? And Peter says, no, I've never met the man. That's one. A little while later, somebody else says the same thing. Hey, haven't I seen you with him before? Peter says, no, I don't know what we're talking about. I've never met the man. That's twice. And then the Bible says about an hour after that, someone really begins to press him. Hey, aren't you from Galilee? I can tell by your accent, you have to know that man. And Peter gets emphatic. No, I swear I've never met him. And then it says that this is actually, there's this passage in Luke. That's to to me, one of the most intense passages in Scripture. It's something that you may have read before, but we kind of gloss over it. But look at what it says in Luke. Chapter 22, verse 60, it says, But Peter said, Man, I do not know what you are talking about. That's the third time. And immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And then verse 61, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? The time when Jesus most needed people around him who loved him. You are his leading disciple and you just denied him three times because you're scared. And his bloody face turns and looks you dead in the eye. Peter remembered the saying of the Lord how he said to him, before the rooster crows you'll deny me three times. And he went out and he wept bitterly. Can you imagine how Peter must have felt? He had betrayed his Jesus. He had let him down. He had denied him. He had told Jesus over and over again, you can count on me. For three years, Jesus had been prepping him and training him and grooming him to take over the church, to step into his ministry. He was to see Jesus and to help lead the church after Jesus' death. And in the moment when he most needed him, he betrayed him and he let him down. And Jesus turned and looked at Peter. You cannot imagine that eye contact. It says he went away and he wept bitterly. I love this story because I so identify with Peter. And to me, if you're a believer, if you're a Christian, then you can identify with him too. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, then the good news is that you don't have to feel bad about any of this. You can just take it all in and watch us as we squirm and feel bad. But if you're a believer, then you know this feeling too. If you're a believer, then you know what it is to feel like you've betrayed Jesus, don't you? Has there ever been a time in your life, maybe in a corporate setting, maybe around some clients, maybe with some new friends that you've made, maybe with some old buddies where you kind of fall back into who you used to be, where you took that part of your identity, your Christianity, and you kind of tucked it away back here and kind of didn't wear it on your sleeve for that week or for that night or for that season because you didn't really want them to know who you were associated with? Have you ever in your life tucked away your identity as a believer because you were kind of ashamed and embarrassed if people were to find out that that's who you were because you had not been acting that way? Can I just tell you? I hope that you don't get too disappointed in me for this, but I've been doing ministry for about 20 years. There have definitely been times in my life when because of how I had been acting or what I had been saying or doing or whatever it was, I kind of tucked away my identity as a pastor. I didn't really want to share it with the group of people that I was with. So when Peter betrays Jesus and denies knowing him, I can relate. When we get this sense of betrayal, I've let my Jesus down. To be a Christian is to be familiar with that. I think we've all had different times and different seasons where we feel like we've let Jesus down a little bit. Maybe we've told him. Maybe we've been moved in worship. Maybe we've been moved by a sermon, probably at another church, and we decided that what we were going to do, we were going to start a new discipline. We were going to start a new thing. We had been moved to conviction. And we say, yes, Jesus, I'm going to get up and I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to get up early. I'm going to make time for you. I'm going to spend time in prayer. I'm going to spend time in your word. That's going to be a discipline in my life. And so we get up and we start to read it. We're following along, but maybe we don't really understand it. We don't hear the angels audibly sing. And so we think we must be doing it wrong. Or we wake up and we kind of do the drop and flop. Like, Jesus, you just show me what you want me to read. And it turns out that because Psalms is in the middle and it's the longest book in the Bible, that God wants us to read Psalms like a lot. So we just, we read that, right? And we don't really know what's going on or what's happening. And for whatever reason, we fall away from that discipline. And then we've told Jesus for however many times, this is going to be a part of my life. And then we fail. And we betray him and we let him down. Or we tell him that we're going to start to give. We understand that believers should give generously, that we should be conduits of God's generosity to us, that we're stewards of the resources that he gives us, and that we should be generous to those that we think Jesus would want to help and serve. And we commit to do this, but things come up and then we don't, and we fall away from that discipline or from that commitment. And we hesitate to even make the commitment again because we messed up the last time, and we don't have much reason to believe that we're going to do better the next time. Right? Or we have things in our life that we don't want there. And so we tell Jesus, I'm done with that. I'm drawing the line in the sand. I'm not going to do that thing again. I'm moved. I'm convicted. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for who I am. I don't want that to be a part of my life. I don't want that to be a part of who I am. Jesus, I'm done with that. I'm moving on by the power of your spirit. Please allow me to be done with that thing. And we move away from that thing. And then three days later or weeks later or maybe months later, we fall back into the thing. So I wonder this morning, have you ever felt like you've betrayed Jesus? Can you relate to Peter? Aren't you glad that in the moment of the height of your betrayal, Jesus isn't looking you in the eye? I think we can all relate to Peter in this moment. The good news is that it gets better. But I think that we can all relate to this idea of letting Jesus down, of betraying him and feeling what Peter must have felt when God looked at him and he went away and he wept bitterly. Which, by the way, when you're confronted with your sin, that's the appropriate response to go away and to weep bitterly. That's a good and right response. And I don't believe that God would steal that response from Peter. I don't think that God would go to him and say, hey, you don't need to do that. I think that's the good and right response when we realize who we are. But he goes away and he weeps bitterly. And then we pick up this story in John chapter 21. In John chapter 21, Jesus has died, he's resurrected, he's appeared to the disciples a couple of times, and then in John chapter 21, he appears to them while they're fishing. And it's interesting to me that they're fishing. Because if you think back, my Bible scholars in the room, you know the answer to this. At the beginning of Jesus' ministry, when he's calling the disciples, and he goes to this guy named Simon, son of John, and he renames him Peter, and he says, come and be my disciple. What was Peter doing? He was fishing. For three years while he followed Jesus, what did he not do anymore? Fish. Why? He had a new job. His new job was to follow Jesus. His new job was to be in ministry. His new job was to do what Jesus did, to go around telling people about Jesus, to cast out demons and to perform miracles and to teach the people of Israel about the Messiah that was now here. That was his new job. And so for three years, he hadn't done his old job. He walked away from that because that wasn't him anymore. But after Jesus dies and Peter is walking around with this shame because he let his Jesus down, what does he do? He goes back to his old job. He disqualifies himself. Peter should have been leading the church. Peter should have been gathering the disciples together and saying, hey, this isn't over. Jesus has risen from the dead. We need to continue to serve him. We need to continue to build his kingdom. We have a purpose. We're not done, guys. But instead, what does he do? He gets back in the boat. What I want us to see is that Peter allowed his shame to shrink his vision of what Jesus wanted him to do. He allowed his shame, he allowed what he had done and how badly he felt for it to shrink his vision about what Jesus wanted him to do. Jesus had purposed him and prepared him and groomed him to lead his church. It's what Jesus wanted him to do. It's why he was working with him for three years, why he was putting up with all of his Peter-isms so that he could lead the church. And Peter, because he felt bad, because he felt shame, he walked away from that. He disqualified himself, which in all honesty is the exact same thing that we would do. Would you look at Peter after he betrayed Jesus at the height of his need and go, yep, you're still the guy. You should still lead the church. Would you still want that guy to be in charge of everybody? Would you still want that guy leading the council of the disciples like he is in Acts along with James? Is that what you would still want? Wouldn't you think that Peter would need to enter into some sort of probationary period? Okay, you're good, Peter, but we're just going to keep our eye on you for a minute. Wouldn't you do what Peter did? Wouldn't you step away and kind of slink away quietly and be like, I'm so sorry that I messed up. I understand. I don't even expect you to reinstate me anymore. I'm just going to fish and I'm going to love on you the best I can. Wouldn't you expect that of Peter? Doesn't that seem like the fair human reaction? Don't we do that to ourselves? When we mess up and we know who we are, we know where we come from and we know the we bring into every room, and we know the things that are hiding in the corners and the shadows of our life. When we know those things, don't we do what Peter did and disqualify ourselves? Don't we allow our shame to shrink our vision for who we are and what God created us to do? Can I just tell you that I think the Bible teaches that every one of you who are believers were created, and the non-believers too, we're just waiting for you to get on board. You were created with a purpose and with a set of gifts, with the sole intention of building God's church. With the sole intention of going to heaven one day and on your way there bringing as many people with you as you possibly can. That's the only reason you're alive. It's the only reason you walk on the face of the earth. The Christian life is a progressive revelation of just how true that is. Hopefully you realize now it's more true than you did five years ago and hopefully more than 10 years ago. The only reason you're here, the only reason that Jesus doesn't snatch you into heaven the instant you are saved is to leave you here so that you can bring as many people with you as possible on the way. And I believe that God has imbued each of you with a set of gifts. I believe that God has uniquely prepared you in your life through the circumstances that you have walked through to be effective at reaching other people. And I believe that God has a big vision and a big plan for how he wants to use you in his kingdom. I believe those of you who have jobs that you are the pastors of those teams. That God has put you there to be a light in the dark places, to encourage the other light that is there and to cast light on those who might not know him yet. That simply by watching you, they may give glory to the Father who is in heaven. Those verses are all over scripture. But what do we do? We know our past. We know who we are. And so we allow our shame to shrink our vision of who Jesus created us to be. We excuse those things away. If I said that, I would never be believed. They're going to think I'm a hypocrite. Maybe we want to start a devotional with our kids at the house. Maybe we just want to start exposing our children to Scripture in the home, but then we have that thought, yeah, buddy, but you don't even read the Bible every day on your own, you hypocrite. Well, start then, and then start the Bible study, man. God has these things that I believe He wants us to do, that He's purposed us to do, but we back off of them because of our shame, because we know who we are. And then we just exist in these little holes. God, I'm not going to do that thing. I'm just going to be a fisherman. I'm just going to work in sales. I'm just going to work in accounting. I'm just going to have my job. I'm just going to do my thing. I'm going to go to church and be a good Christian. But that work that you have to do in the kingdom, that's for other people who haven't messed up. And listen, if that's true, if the only people who get to do ministry and get used in God's kingdom are those who have never let Jesus down, then the church would be run by four-year-olds, man. We've got just a slight upgrade here. But that's what we do. We allow our shame and how we feel about ourselves to shrink our vision about what God wants us to do, which is why Jesus's response to Peter is so amazing. Look at what Jesus says in John chapter 21. I'm going to read you the whole conversation and then we'll talk about it a little bit. Jesus had shown up. They were fishing out on the Sea of Galilee. And that's louder than normal. They were fishing out on the Sea of Galilee. They had been out all night. They hadn't caught anything, right? And then Jesus appears on the shore after they bring the nets in. Still not catching anything. And they don't know it's Jesus. It's just some dude. And he's like, hey, cast your nets on the other side of the boat, which is ridiculous. It's almost like making fun of them. The boat's like 12 feet wide. It's not going to make a difference when they put them on the other side of the boat. But for whatever reason, they listen to the guy, they do it, and then they catch more fish than they've ever caught in their life. 30 years later, 30-plus years later, old man John still remembers that they caught exactly 153 fish that day. That wasn't a big deal to John. They pull in the fish, they go in, they have breakfast together, and then Jesus sidles up to Peter for a conversation. This is the first one-on-one conversation that they have had since Peter's betrayal. And let me just ask you before we read the conversation, what would you expect Jesus to say in that moment? What would you expect the conversation to be? Put yourself in Peter's shoes. You did that to Jesus. You've betrayed him. Put yourself in your own shoes. Take yourself to the place where you feel like you've let Jesus down the most. And right after letting him down for however many upteenth times you've done it, he comes up to you. He sidles up next to you and he puts his arm around you and you and him have a conversation. What do you expect him to say? I would expect him to go to Peter. I would expect him to come to me and say, hey, are you sorry? Right? Jesus is good. He's gracious. I don't think that we would expect Jesus to just come down hard on us. We don't know that in his character. But I think we would expect him to put his arm around us and look at Peter and go, hey, Peter, are you sorry for what you did? Isn't this what we do with our children? When Lily messes up, I've got a three-year-old daughter named Lily, when she messes up, which is more frequently lately because she's three, and apparently that's what three-year-olds do. And she hollers and she gets mad. What do I do? I pick her up and I hold her right here. I calm her down. And I say, Lily, are you sorry? And she says, yes, Daddy. I go, okay. And I put her down. I say, go tell your mom you're sorry. We forgive you. Isn't that what we do? Isn't that what we would expect Jesus to do to us? Hey, are you sorry? And then we would expect to go, yeah, I'm sorry. And we would expect to hear him say to Peter, okay, you're forgiven. Because he's Jesus and that's what he does, right? You're forgiven. That's what we would expect. But look at what happens. Verse 15, when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Do you love me more than these fish? I see you've gone back to fishing. That's an interesting choice. I didn't know that you had a new career now. Do you love me more than these fish? Do you love me more than what you're doing? Interesting question. He said to him, yes, Lord, you know I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, tend my sheep. Verse 17, he said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to somebody put it, you done boogered up, son. He messed up bad. He felt terrible. And he walked away from what God called him to because he felt like he had disqualified himself for messing up. And Jesus goes and he finds him. And we would expect Jesus to say, Peter, are you sorry? That's not what he says. He says, Peter, do you love me? Do I still have your heart or has this sin taken it from me? Do you love me? He says, yes, of course I love you. He says, good. Feed my sheep. This is a remarkable statement. Because in John 10, Jesus paints himself as the good shepherd. And he says that the sheep are his flock or the church or people who believe in him. His sheep are the Christians. And so the shepherd looks after the Christians. And so what he's saying is, Peter, for three years you watched me do ministry. You watched me tend to my sheep. And I told you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. I told you that one day I won't be here. When I'mores you. He doesn't just forgive Peter. He doesn't say, are you sorry? He says, do you love me? I know you're sorry. Because if you love me, then of course you're sorry. And then we would expect him to say, okay, you're forgiven, but sit over here in this probationary period. I'll keep an eye on you for a couple years and see if we can trust you again. That's not what he does. You're forgiven. You're restored. Go and do the thing I created you to do. Go and be the person I created you to be. He says, Peter, you may have disqualified yourself. You may have shrunken back from my plans for you, but I have not. I still have plans for you. I still want you to do these things. You are reinstated. You are restored. And he does it three times. I love the symmetry of those statements. How many times did Jesus deny Peter? Three. How many times did Jesus ask Peter if he loved him? Three. It's like he's saying, Peter, without even saying the words, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. You're forgiven. Go and work. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then you're forgiven. Go and be who I created you to be. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Okay, good, because that's three times that you said that. It's three times I've forgiven you. You can say it as many more times as you want to. I'll forgive you and restore you all those times. Now go and be who I created you to be. And I believe that he says the same thing to us this morning. I believe that he asks us the same question. Do you love Jesus? Grace, do you love Jesus? However mired in sin you might be, however much shame you might bring into the room, whatever might have happened in the past, whatever habits you bring, however many times you've made a commitment that you didn't keep, listen, put all that aside and let's just ask you grace. Do you love Jesus? Then go and be who he created you to be. Go and do the thing he purposed you to do. Say, but Jesus, I've done this and this and this. I'm not qualified. I used to be an addict. I used to do this thing. I'm mired in this right now. And Jesus says, listen, listen, listen, I'm not worried about that. Do you love me? Because if you love me, it means you're sorry. And if you've shrunk away, it means that you feel shame. And Jesus says, go and be the person that I created you to be. Go and do the thing that I intended for you to do. Quit disqualifying yourself. Quit feeling the shame that is not from me. And just answer the question, do you love me? Then go and do the thing that I purposed you to do. Go and feed his sheep. Go and build his church. Go and use the gifts that he's imbued you with. Go live out the reason that he leaves you here. Go and run your race. What I want you to understand this morning is Jesus is far more concerned with what he wants you to do than what you have done. He's already taken care of what you have done. He's removed that from you as far as the east is from the west. Because of that removal, you are free and have the freedom to operate in his love. And if you love him in return, then go and do the thing that he created you to do. Go and be who he created you to be. And that's where I would leave us at the end of the series in John with that simple question. After all the 12 weeks, after everything that we've experienced, after all that we've seen of Jesus, after what we know of him and how he loved us. Do you love him? Does he have your heart? If he does, grace. Go be who he created you to be. You're not just forgiven, you're restored. Let's pray. Father, we sure do love you. You sure are good to us. God, we can't fathom this idea that you would not just forgive us, but that you would restore us. Lord, if there are folks in here who walked into the room carrying a little bit of shame, God, if we are certain that if we could see you face to face, the first thing you would express in us is disappointment. God, I pray that you would take that from us today. That we would see that we are loved, that you care about us, that we would identify with Peter, not just in his betrayal, but in his restoration, that we would feel your arms around us, that we would simply respond to that question of, do we love you? Give us the faith to believe that you forgive us. Give us the eyes to see ourselves as you do. And give us the courage and the strength to go live out and be the people that you created us to be and do great things to the folks here at Grace. It's in your son's name we pray all of these things. Amen.
