Have you ever been in a situation Where you blew it so badly. That you were sure that you were an outcast forever.
Well, I did exactly this when I was in high school. I was in a homeroom where I was together with all of the friends that I'd gone through elementary school with and gone through junior high school with. But my behavior was terrible. I mean, I was totally out of control. And so my homeroom teacher, who was a real grouch just to begin with, anyway, she finally got so fed up with me that she had me transferred out of her homeroom and over into E-Wing.
Now, in my high school, E Wing was a really tough place. I mean, just about everybody in E-Wing was majoring in shop. You understand what I'm saying? And in my high school, virtually everyone in E-Wing could vote. You understand E-Wave.
Yeah?
Okay. And I knew nobody over in E-Wing. I felt like a complete reject. And every morning when I would walk into homeroom class over in E-Wing, it was like there was a big neon sign posted right over the door that would flash out to me as I walked in: Solomon, you're a failure.
Solomon, you're a failure.
Solomon, you are a failure. Failure.
Now, remember, we're in a series of messages entitled People Jesus Met. And today, Jesus meets a man who felt this very same way. We're going to go back 2,000 years, and we're going to see exactly what happened at that meeting. And then we're going to bring all of that forward and we're going to talk about: well, what difference does that make for you and me today?
So, our passage for today is John chapter 21, and we begin at verse 1. Here we go. The Bible says verse 1. After these things, Jesus appeared again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, that is, the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way.
Simon Peter and Thomas and Nathanael and James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. And Peter told them, I am going out to fish.
So they said, We'll go with you. Here in John 21, folks, we learn that after Jesus' resurrection, Peter had gone back to the Sea of Galilee. He had gone back to fishing. You say, Well, now, wait a minute, Lon. Why would Peter do this?
I mean, I thought that Jesus told him to go be an apostle. I thought Jesus told him to go be an evangelist. I thought Jesus told him to go lead the church.
Well, the reason Peter did this and went back to fishing is because he had denied the Lord three times. Remember, Matthew chapter 26, verse 75 says, Then Peter remembered the words that Jesus had said to him. Jesus said, Before the rooster crows, you, Peter, will deny me three times. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. The truth is, Peter felt like a complete failure.
He felt utterly disqualified to be an apostle. He felt utterly disqualified to serve the Lord, so he decided to go back to the one thing that he did well, and that was fishing. Verse 3 continues.
So they all got in the boat. But that night, they caught nothing. Man, poor Peter, even in fishing, he's a failure. Poor guy. Verse 4.
And early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize it was Jesus.
So Jesus called out to them and said, Friends, haven't you caught any fish? And they answered, No. Then Jesus said to them, Throw your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some. And when they did this, they were unable to haul the net in because of the great number of fish. Then John said to Peter, It's the Lord.
Now, what made John so certain that this person standing on the shore was the Lord?
Well, it was because, my friends, in Luke chapter 5, Jesus had done this very same miracle for these disciples. Luke chapter 5, verse 3 says, Jesus was in Peter's boat, and after he finished teaching, Jesus said to Peter, Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. But Peter answered and said, Master, we worked all night and caught nothing. See, I told you he was a bad fisherman. He was.
Verse 5, but at your bidding, Lord, I will let down the nets. And when he did this, they enclosed such a great quantity of fish. That their nets began to break.
So here in John 21, as Yogi Berra says, it was like deja vu all over again. Verse 7. And as soon as Peter heard John say, It is the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat. towing the net full of fish with them, for they were only a few hundred yards from shore.
And when they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, along with some bread. And Jesus said to them, Come, come. and have breakfast. But none of the disciples dared ask him, Who are you? For they knew it was the Lord.
Now, all of this took place at a beautiful spot on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, right near Capernaum, a place called Mensa Christi, which means in Latin the table of the Lord, honoring, of course, the idea that the Lord set a table for the disciples, and they all sat down and ate breakfast. There's a little church there today, right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it surrounds a big rock that tradition says is where the Lord Jesus built the fire, where he cooked the fish, and where he cooked the bread for breakfast that morning. It's an incredibly serene and beautiful place. If you ever go to Israel with me, we'll take you there and we'll read the story of John 21 together. But let's go on.
Verse 15.
So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Peter, Simon, Do you love me more than the rest of these? That is the rest of the disciples sitting around that rock. And you say, well, Lon, why in the world would Jesus ask Peter a question like that?
Well, friends, it's because Peter had boasted this exact thing on the night just before Jesus was arrested. Remember, he said, Matthew 26:33, he said, Even if everybody else falls away because of you, Lord, even if all these other yellow-bellied disciples run away and don't stick with you, Lord, I will never fall away. But that's exactly what he did, right? He did exactly what he said he wouldn't do. And this is what Jesus is referring to here in John chapter 21.
And Peter replied, Yes, Lord. You know that I love you. And Jesus said, Well, feed my lambs.
So again Jesus said, Peter, do you truly love me? And Peter said, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And Jesus said, Well, then take care of my sheep. And finally, a third time, Jesus said, Simon, do you love me? And Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, Do you love me?
So Peter said, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. And Jesus said, Well, then feed my sheep.
Now, what in the world was Jesus saying to Peter here? He was saying to Peter, hey, Peter, you blew it. You denied me three times. You failed. And all of us sitting around the rock this morning here, we know that you failed.
In fact, Peter, Jesus says, I hate to tell you this, but I'm going to write it in the Bible so the whole world knows that you failed. But Jesus says, I came here to tell you something today, Peter. I came here to tell you that I still love you. in spite of your failure. And I came here to tell you.
That you still have value and worth to me. And I came here to restore you to the ministry, Peter, and to tell you that you're not disqualified and you're not rejected in spite of your poor performance. You know what I love about this story? I love who came looking for who here in John chapter 21. Don't you love that?
Don't you love the fact that Peter, after he failed and after he slinked off into shame and to hide away from the Lord in disgrace, don't you love the fact that just like Adam and Eve in the garden, God came looking for Peter? To forgive him. God came looking for Peter to shower him with unconditional love, and God came looking for Peter to restore him to the ministry. And as a result, Peter went on to become the great man of God that we all know, and the great man of God that we all remember because of this encounter that he and the Lord had in John chapter 21.
Now, this is as far as we're going to go in our passage because we're going to stop now and we're going to ask our most important question.
So, All of you at Loudoun, and And all of you at Prince William, and everybody at Bethesda, and all of you guys in the Edge and around the world on the Internet campus, and all of us here at Tyson's, are we ready? All right, remember what we said? A deep breath helps, so let's all take a big, deep breath. Woo! Ready, one, two, three.
Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? Say, mensa Christie, Pensachristi. Why do I care about this place? And what difference does any of this make to me?
Huh?
Well, let's see if we can help with that connection. I was reading an article a while back from Time magazine about suicide, and I would like to quote to you from that article. Here we go, and I quote. She was never really wanted by her dad. He told her many times, especially when he was angry, That he wanted a boy Or no child at all.
But not her. She could never seem to do anything right. She was never hugged or told that she was loved. When she misbehaved, she was yelled at and rejected. She began to feel bad about herself.
Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she was defective. Maybe it would have been better if she had never been born. When she became a teenager, she ran away from home. She walked the streets and let men use her and got pregnant and had an abortion.
One time she even got so desperate that she called home. Her dad just said that she'd been bad news from the day she was born. They found her hanging with a white bedsheet around her neck. There was a note on the ground, and it read. To mom and dad, I never did develop into a real person.
There was nothing of lasting worth or value to my life. I am a bomb of frustration and should never marry or have children. It's best to just diffuse the bomb harmlessly Now End of quote. Folks, did you know that every sixty seconds someone in the United States of America attempts suicide? Did you know?
That every day seventy of them succeed. Did you know? That suicide is the number nine cause of death overall in America, but for people under 30, it's the number three cause of death, and for teenagers, it is the number two cause of death. And did you know that four out of five people who succeed in taking their own life have tried it? Before Now, what does all this tell us?
Well, it tells us that our world is teeming with people who feel unworthy Unwanted Unlovely And unloved. In fact, many of us here have struggled with these kinds of feelings.
So let's ask the question: what causes people to feel this way about themselves? I mean, little babies don't come out of the womb feeling like this. People aren't born feeling like this.
So, what happens to us that makes us feel this way about ourselves?
Well, I've been a pastor for over 30 years now, and I've counseled with hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people, about every problem you could imagine. And looking back on it, I am convinced that above all else. What makes people feel bad about themselves, what causes people to feel unworthy and unwanted and unlovely and unloved, is conditional love, performance-based love.
So let's define. What is conditional love? Conditional love simply means that when we perform correctly, we get loved, and when we perform incorrectly, we get rejected.
Now, friends, this is exactly how the rabbis in Jesus' day loved people. This was the gospel of the rabbis: namely, that if you look right, if you act right, if you smell right, if you dress right, if you talk right, if you tithe right, if you eat right, if you go to the right places, and if you hang out with the right people, then we'll love you. And if you don't do all of this, then we will reject you and condemn you and ostracize you. And you know, many of us here know a lot more about the gospel of the rabbis. Many of us here know a lot more about conditional love than we wish we knew.
Many of us grew up in homes where, as a child, we experienced this kind of conditional love. Many of us experienced it at school, where people mercilessly picked on us and made fun of us and embarrassed us and rejected us, all because we didn't act the way they wanted us to. And many of us still experience it today as adults. Oh, it may be a little more sophisticated than it used to be, but it's still the gospel of the rabbis. And the real problem here is that when we're living under the gospel of the rabbis, it is inevitable that we're going to feel badly about ourselves because we're all incorrigible sinners, which means that our performance is always going to come up short, just like Peter's did.
And all of this now leads us to ask a second question. And that question is, how do we heal? From these kinds of bad feelings? How do we fix the damage that comes from conditional love?
Well, there's only one way to do it, my friends. It's the way Jesus did it for Peter right here in John 21. The only way to heal from and fix the damage that comes from conditional love is to be showered with unconditional love. God's unconditional love. And this is the great news of the Bible, my friends, namely, that God operates on a different gospel than the gospel of the rabbis.
God operates on the gospel of Jesus. And the gospel of Jesus says: even if you look bad, even if you act bad, even if you smell bad, even if you dress bad, even if you talk bad, even if you tithe bad, even if you eat bad, and even if you perform bad, I still love you just as much as if you'd gotten it all right to start with. And what we said earlier was that here in John chapter 21, we see the gospel of Jesus in action. We see the Lord Jesus Christ opening his arms wide and loving Peter with an unconditional love that renewed and reclaimed and redeemed Peter, that restored worth and dignity to Peter, and that healed Peter's broken world.
Now The Bible says That this is precisely how Jesus wants to love you. And precisely how he wants to love me. And precisely how he wants to love every person alive. You say, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, stop, Lon. Stop.
What do you mean? Stop. Why did you say it like that? What do you mean God wants to love me that way? God wants to love everybody in the world that way.
Why'd you say it like that?
Well, friends, I said it like that because God is a holy God. God is a righteous God, and His holiness prevents Him from loving us this way until our sin has been justly dealt with, until our sin has been forgiven in the courtroom of heaven, until our sin has been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. Then and only then is the righteous, holy God of the universe set free to love us with His supernatural, everlasting, unconditional love. Ah. But man, for those of us who have accepted Christ, for those of us who have let the blood of Jesus cover our sin, listen to what the Bible says.
Romans 8, verse 38. For I am convinced, the Bible says, that neither death nor life, Nor angels, nor demons, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other thing in all creation.
Well, that pretty well covers it. Not even our own bad performance, nothing. Shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is found in Christ Jesus our Lord. The point, my friends, is that God's unconditional love is dispensed at only one location in the universe, and that is, what did the verse say, in Christ Jesus our Lord. But for those people who are in Christ Jesus our Lord, for those people who've embraced Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, friends, God's love for us is so deep and is so wide and is so fathomlessly unconditional that it literally defies human comprehension.
And God's free to show it to us if we're in Christ. You know, I never really got this until I became a parent. Only then did I fully understand how, even when children perform poorly. You can still love them unconditionally. And the reason we love our children unconditionally, even when their performance is not everything we want, there's only it's one simple reason, and that is simply that they're ours.
That's why we love them that way.
Well, you know, the Bible says that when we become born-again believers in Christ, we become God's children, His personal children, through faith in Christ. And now, Because we're his. He's able to love us unconditionally with a love and to a degree that is orders of magnitude above the way any human parent has ever loved any human child.
So let me say in conclusion. That one of my very favorite verses in the Bible is 2 Timothy 2, verse 13. It says this. Even if we are faithless, He, God, remains faithful. Why?
God cannot deny who He is. In other words, as followers of Jesus Christ, God's love for us, my friends, doesn't depend on our being faithful to Him. In fact, it doesn't depend on us at all. God's love for us depends on God and who God is. And that's why it's unconditional, and that's why it's unwavering.
Because it's based on God's character and on God's attributes and on God's faithfulness and on God's immutability. And so If you're a follower of Jesus here today, And you fail. Maybe you have failed badly. Maybe you've slept with your boyfriend or your girlfriend. Or you've had an abortion.
Maybe you've cheated in school or lied at work. Maybe you've committed adultery, or maybe you have a raging pornography problem. Maybe you've betrayed a good friend, like Peter betrayed the Lord Jesus. Or maybe you said something really terrible about another person that caused unbelievable carnage. And damage.
And because of what you've done, people have told you that you're worthless to God and that you're useless to God, and frankly, you feel like you deserve God to brand you as an outcast forever. Friends, I'm here to say to you: listen to the word of God today. The rest of this world may be willing to put you on waivers, but God is not. God wants you to know that He still loves you unconditionally, regardless of what you've done. That He, you are still as precious to Him as you have ever been, regardless of what you've done.
And God wants you to know, my friend, that even if there are some lingering consequences from your actions, That God is willing to stand with you. And he's willing to walk with you through those consequences and see to it that you and he together make it.
Now, for many of us as Christians. This is very difficult for us to accept. And the reason is because nobody's ever loved us this way. We don't know what this feels like. I mean, we hear it in our ears and we hear it in our head, but in our heart, we're not even sure it's true because we've never experienced anything like this in our whole life.
Hey, I got to tell you, when I was 22 years old, no one had ever loved me like this. Not my father, not my mother, not my brother, not my friend, certainly not my homeroom teacher. No one. Ever loved me like this? Listen, I made a lot of wrong decisions in my life, but the greatest right decision I ever made.
Was the decision at twenty two years of age, to open myself up one hundred percent to the healing love of Jesus Christ in my life, and to keep opening myself up to it as the years have gone along. And so I'm here to tell you today. To declare to you today that there is a great physician. I'm here to declare to you today that there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. I'm here to declare to you today that there is a healing, restorative, supernatural, unconditional love that God is yearning to pour all over your soul.
If you'll just let him. And I'll tell you why so often we don't let him. It's because we got our guard up. And the reason we got a guard up. is because we've been heard.
And we've decided we're not going to let anybody. Get close enough to us to hurt us again. We're not going to let anybody go deep enough into our heart. to hurt us again.
Well, friends, I'm here to beg you to make an exception. I'm here to beg you. To make an exception with God. And let God in. I'm here to beg you to believe what God says in the Bible about the way He loves you.
To believe it. And to lower your guard. and let him prove it to you. And you know, the beautiful thing is, you lower your guard a little bit, and he proves it, so then you lower it a little more, and he proves it more, and you lower it a little more, and he proves it more, and before long. Man, he's got his arms wide open, and you're Peter in John chapter 21.
And he's just going to take you and hug you and love you and heal you. This is how God loves his children. The same way you love your children. And so, my friends. May God help us all do this.
God will come in and heal your soul at a level that no scalpel, no drug, no therapist can ever get to. if you'll just give him a chance. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for talking to us today. And telling us about how you love every single.
Child In Christ that you have. Lord, your love doesn't make any sense except that. We're yours, and you love us 'cause we're yours. And I pray you would help us all believe this today. Not just believe it in our head.
But believe it enough in our soul that we're willing to drop our guard and give you a chance to prove it in our lives.
So, Lord Jesus, come in and carry out a healing work in our hearts and make us. Into healthy Whole people no matter how badly we've been damaged. by conditional love. And we thank you that you love us just like you loved Peter in John 21. Help us appropriate that love.
Lord, change our lives because we were here today. And we sat under the teaching. of the eternal Word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what did God's people say?
Yeah.
