In the 1944 film, “It Happened Tomorrow,” Dick Powell plays
the role of Lawrence Stevens, a downcast journalist whose career takes an
unexpected turn when he gains access to tomorrow’s newspaper containing news
stories about things that have yet to happen. As one might expect, knowing the
future turns out to be more of a burden than a blessing as the story unfolds.
It is an appealing plotline that resurfaces often in television, movies, and
novels. We are drawn to this idea because there is something inherent in all of
us that longs to know what the future holds. The Bible tells us clearly of some
things will definitely happen in the future, though the specifics of when and
how those things will take place are often not spelled out in great detail.
But, for the most part, the specific details of what the future holds for each
of us individually have been hidden from us. This is something for which we can
thank God! Imagine if, ten years ago, you had been told all that would take
place over the next decade. You may have been overwhelmed to consider the
circumstances that would transpire. God, in His wisdom, has not revealed the
future to us in detail; but in His providence, He prepares us day by day to
face the future as we walk with Him by faith. He gives us just enough light for
the next step we take as we follow Him.
In our text today, Peter becomes an exception to this
general principle. In a private conversation with the Risen Lord Jesus, Peter
is told of his own future. Jesus tells him in verse 18, “When you were younger,
you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old,
you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you
where you do not wish to go.” Some have understood this to be a proverb about
the nature of human life. In our youth, we are free from care and live
independently, doing whatever we want to do; but in our old age, we become
frail and have to be helped along and cared for by others. However, this
interpretation sorely misses the obvious point of the statement. For one thing,
John tells us plainly that the statement was intended to signify “what kind of
death” Peter would experience (v19). The place “where you do not wish to go” is
death. In the first century Roman world, the phrase “stretch out your hands”
referred euphemistically to crucifixion, as the condemned criminal would have
his hands stretched out and tied to the horizontal beam of the cross, before
being compelled to carry it on one’s shoulders to the place of execution. There
it would be fastened to the upright beam, and the hands would be nailed in
place before the cross was raised and positioned in the ground. John knew that
is what these words meant. Peter knew it too. Likely all those who originally
read these words would have understood it plainly, even without John’s
explanation in verse 19.
As the text unfolds, we find truths which are applicable,
not just to Peter but to all of us. All of us are called to follow Jesus into a
future which we may not know, but which He does. And as we follow Him into that
future, He is able to bring glory to Himself. Understanding these truths here
and now enable us to follow Jesus into future glory.
So, we begin with the first of these truths …
I. Only Jesus knows our future (v18)
I’m sure many, if not most of us, have been in a situation
where we were giving care to a loved one who was drawing near to death. During
those times, we hear professionals tell us how many days, weeks, or hours we
may expect our loved one to live. For four months following my stepfather’s
stroke last December, nearly every day, a different doctor would come in and
tell us something different. One would say, “I think we are looking at a few
days here.” Another would say, “In six weeks, I believe the worst of this will
be behind us.” Back and forth they would go, and with every report, emotions in
our family swung like a pendulum between grief and hope. But, with every
report, as soon as the doctor left the room, I would remind our family members
of this one truth: “There isn’t anyone in this hospital who knows what tomorrow
holds. That is only known by God.” In the end, he lived longer than many
expected, and died faster that many predicted. But God was not taken by
surprise at any point in the journey. He knows our future.
The Psalmist said, “In Your book were all written the days
that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (Psa 139:16).
That means, before we ever lived the first day of our lives, the Lord already
had the final day marked on His calendar, and He knew the details of every day
in between. Jesus said, “Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to
his life?” (Mt 6:27). It is impossible to do anything that will add more days
to our lives. The Lord already knows them all. I believe it is possible to add
life to our days, so that we have strength and energy to serve the Lord and
walk with Him all the days that we have, but He already knows what the future
holds for each of us. He could tell Peter in exact detail how he would die. He
would face a death by crucifixion, just as the Lord Himself endured.
Now, we need to be very clear about something. Just because
the Lord knows our future does not mean that He has any intention of telling us
about it. That He told Peter does not mean that He will tell anyone else. In
fact, if we rightly understand the book of Job, we will see that the Lord may
allow terrible things to happen to us without warning or explanation. And it
goes along with this that just because the Lord hasn’t disclosed details about
our future to us does not mean that He does not know. He knows. He has planned
it all by His sovereign design, causing or allowing various things to come into
our lives to accomplish His purposes which are known only to Him.
Before we think it unfair of God that He has disclosed
Peter’s future to him, but does not normally do this for us, we need to
consider the ramifications of such knowledge. Notice what Jesus did not tell
Peter. He told him how he would die,
but He didn’t tell him when or where, or even why. According to tradition,
Peter died under the persecution of Emperor Nero in Rome around 67 AD. That being so, it means
that Peter lived for over 30 years with this knowledge hanging over his head. But
this knowledge did not cause Peter to waver from his faith as he followed
Jesus. He continued to live for Him and serve Him, to shepherd the Lord’s flock
and proclaim the Lord’s message, never knowing if any particular day might be
his last, but knowing that he would suffer in the same manner as his Master at
some point when the end of his life came. He knew what the future held, and we
do not, but in either case, it is more important that we know the One who holds
the future, and who knows it perfectly because He is choreographing our lives
to accomplish His purposes in and through us.
Peter’s knowledge of how
he would die does not really give him that much advantage over the rest of
us. After all, we all know that, unless the Lord hastens His return, we will
all die. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed unto man once to die, and
then the judgment. We may not know how (as Peter did), but like Peter we do not
know when, where, or why. Therefore, we must not be hindered in our efforts to
live for Christ and to serve Him. The English Puritan Richard Baxter lived most
of his life in ministry at the center of controversy. He was persecuted and
imprisoned for his convictions, and forbidden from continuing on in his
pastoral role of his church. But he never ceased proclaiming the message of
Jesus Christ. He famously said, “I preached as never sure to preach again, and
as a dying man to dying men.” This is how we must all live. We never know which
day will be our last, but we know that there will be a last one. The Lord is
the only one who knows when, where, or how it will happen. It is not our
responsibility to know the details of our own deaths, but rather to live each
day of our lives faithfully in His service.
This brings us to the second truth disclosed in this text:
II. Jesus is able to bring glory to Himself through our
lives and our deaths (v19a)
God is always relentlessly pursuing His own glory. The
Westminster Catechism opens with the familiar statement that the chief end of
man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The chief end of man is to glorify
God because there is no greater aim in life than to bring glory to God. This is
man’s chief end because it is God’s chief end. The greatest thing God can do in
the world is to bring glory to Himself. And, in so doing, He graciously chooses
to use the likes of us. Just as the Lord Jesus harnessed every moment of every
day of His earthly life as an opportunity to bring glory to His Father, so we
too can bring glory to God as we walk with Jesus through the ordinary and
extraordinary moments of life. But as Jesus drew near to His own death, He
spoke of even death as an occasion through which His Father would be glorified
in Him. At the Last Supper, after Judas left the room to go out to set the
betrayal and arrest of Jesus in motion, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man
glorified, and God is glorified in Him” (Jn 13:31). In His High Priestly
Prayer, which He prayed just hours before His death on the cross, Jesus said,
“Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You”
(17:1). And here as the Risen Lord speaks privately to Peter on the shores of
the Sea of Galilee , He speaks of how Peter
himself will be crucified. John says, “Now this He said, signifying by what
kind of death he would glorify God” (v19).
Throughout his life, Peter had glorified God in many ways.
Walking away from a lucrative career as a fisherman to follow Jesus was a
God-glorifying step of faith. When Jesus asked His disciples who they understood
Him to be, Peter spoke up saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living
God,” and that confession of faith brought glory to God. Though he would falter
and fail the Lord in his denials and defection, his restoration to Christ by
his threefold confession of his love for Him in the previous passage brought
glory to God for His matchless grace. Today is the Day of Pentecost, which
commemorates that day recorded in Acts 2 when God poured out His Holy Spirit
upon the followers of Jesus. And on that day, Peter preached boldly to the
gathering of those from many nations in Jerusalem ,
and God was glorified as thousands were saved under Peter’s preaching. And as
the days of Peter’s life played out, he continued to bring glory to God,
serving Him faithfully as a pastor and a preacher. But as Peter’s death drew
near, God was not finished using Peter as a vessel of His glory. Through the
horrendous ordeal of crucifixion, God would bring glory to the Lord Jesus
through the death of Peter. His steadfast faithfulness to Christ in the face of
persecution and death brought glory to Christ, who empowered and enabled Him to
endure this suffering while holding on to Jesus by faith without wavering. What
Peter had promised to do earlier, to lay down his life for Christ, he was
powerless to do in his own strength. But, endued with power from on high by the
indwelling Holy Spirit, Peter was able to live up to his words and glorify God
by remaining faithful unto death.
The words of Jesus stayed with Peter over the next three
decades. He lived to see oppression and persecution arise against the Christian
faith. He saw local skirmishes, regional uprisings, and the first of many
imperial pogroms. The Roman historian Tacitus records the maniacal rage that
Nero poured out on the Church, saying that the execution of them became
something of a sport. They were wrapped in the hides of animals and thrown to
wild dogs to be eaten. They were set on fire and impaled in Nero’s garden to
illuminate a festive chariot race, with Nero himself participating in the
games. And of course, they were nailed to crosses, as even Peter himself would
be, according to the Lord’s own word. Peter saw the build up over the decades,
and saw his friends – his brothers and sisters in the faith, from his fellow
apostles to the members of his own church – suffering through these horrific
ordeals. He wrote to suffering Christians in his first epistle,
Beloved,
do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for
your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the
degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also
at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are
reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory
and of God rests on you. Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or a
thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a
Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name. (1
Pet 4:12-16)
He knew that the Lord’s word would be soon fulfilled in his
life. In his last epistle, he said “[I know] that the laying aside of my
earthly dwelling is imminent, as also our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to
me.” How it must have encouraged those who suffered alongside of Peter, and who
suffered for Christ after his death to know that he remained faithful to Christ
and that his death was used to bring glory to Jesus! And it has this effect on
those who suffer for the sake of Christ today, and who endure in faithfulness
until death.
Matthew Henry said, “it is the great concern of every good
man, whatever death he dies, to glorify God in it …. When we die patiently,
submitting to the will of God,--die cheerfully, rejoicing in hope of the glory
of God,--and die usefully, witnessing to the truth and goodness of religion and
encouraging others, we glorify God in dying: and this is the earnest
expectation and hope of all good Christians.”[1]
Death may come by natural causes, or it may be precipitated
by persecution of our faith, but however it comes, may we be found faithfully
clinging to Christ in that moment, that our deaths may glorify God as much or
more than our lives have. When we look at a map of the most unreached people in
the world today, we see that the greatest concentration of them are found in
hard places where the Gospel is suppressed and Christians are persecuted.
Someone asked me recently about the safety of traveling to a country that the
State Department has listed on its “Do Not Travel” list. I responded that I
don’t know that I’ve ever been to a country which was not on that list. But my
prayer, and my confident assurance, is this: that God is able to bring at least
as much glory to the Lord Jesus through the deaths of His people as He can
through their lives, and if He should will that my death be used to bring Him
glory, then I cannot ask for more in life. We will not all die as martyrs, but
we can all bring glory to Jesus – whether we live or whether we die – by
holding fast to Him in faith and having a ready testimony on our lips to share
with others in life and in death. As Paul says in Romans 8:13, “If we live, we
live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live
or die, we are the Lord’s.”
We come now to the third truth here in this text:
III. The task of every Christian is to follow Jesus
(vv19b-23)
The first recorded words in the Gospels that Jesus spoke to
Peter are found in Matthew 4:19. The words were simple: “Follow Me.” The last recorded
words in the Gospels spoken to Peter by Jesus are the same: “Follow Me.” The
Christian life is most often described in the New Testament by verbs and not
nouns. It is to follow Jesus, it is to walk, to go, to serve, to do. The New
Testament is clear that we do not become Christians by what we do, but once we
have been saved by grace through faith, our lives in Christ are described in
terms of action. We are on a mission with Christ and for Christ. We follow Him,
come what may, in good days and bad days. The present imperative tense of this
verb in our text indicates that we are always to be following Him, going where
He goes, doing what He does. It was the first calling of Peter, and the last
calling of Peter, and it is the same for each of us as well.
Now, at a young age, I suppose most of us learned to play a
game called “Follow the Leader.” When you are following the leader, you have to
keep your eyes on the leader so you will know where the leader is going, and
you keep moving forward in step with the leader. Take your eyes off the leader
for a moment, and you miss the next step, and you lose. We all know how that
game goes. Now, notice here in our text that in verse 19, Jesus tells Peter,
“Follow Me,” and what does it say next? “Peter, turning around.” No, Peter, you
lose. You took your eyes off the Leader. You would think he would’ve known
better. Remember when Jesus walked on the water – it was actually this same
body of water where they now stood – and Peter said, “Lord, if it is You,
command me to come to You on the water.” And Jesus said, “Come!” And so Peter
did, and he walked on the water too. But the Bible says, “seeing the wind, he
became frightened,” and he began to sink. He took his eyes off of Jesus and
started going under. But here, it was not the wind that caught Peter’s
attention.
Verse 20 says, “Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom
Jesus loved following them.” This is John’s customary way of referring to
himself throughout this Gospel. Rather than fixing his gaze unflinchingly on
the One who commanded him to follow, Peter became distracted by another
follower of Jesus, and asked, “Lord, and what about this man?” In other words,
“OK, Lord, so I’m going to die a horrible death later, but tell me, what is
Your plan for John?” Isn’t that the way it so often goes? Jesus has given us
very simple instructions: “Follow Me.” But we get distracted wondering and
worrying about what someone else is doing, measuring ourselves against them and
making comparisons. Notice Jesus’ answer in verse 22: “If I want him to remain
until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!” That is a very polite way of
saying, “None of your business!” And that is what the Lord would say to any of
us when we become overly concerned with what He is doing with any other
Christian.
There are times when we become envious of the blessings of
others. There are times when we get discouraged because we see another
Christian receiving the applause of men and having dramatic results and
fruitfulness in their ministries. We may drift away from what the Lord has
called us to do and begin to imitate and emulate their methods and try to copy
them. There are also times when we get distracted from following Jesus by the
faults and failures of other Christians. We may be tempted to give up on
following Jesus because so many others seem to be disingenuous hypocrites. But
notice that Jesus never said that we should follow anyone else but Him. We are
not to let the successes and failures of other followers deter us from this
task. It is none of our business what He does with them, for them, through
them, or in spite of them. It is our business to follow Him, no matter what
others do. Stop with the comparisons, the competitions, and the copying. Just
follow Him.
Here on the day of Pentecost, it is appropriate for us to
remember that every follower of Jesus has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit and
gifted for service in unique ways. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that
there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; varieties of ministries, but
the same Lord; varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in
all persons. But he says, “to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit
for the common good.” We do not all have the same gifts, the same ministries,
or the same effects, but we all have the same Spirit, empowering us for service
to the same Lord Jesus, with varying effects, all of which bringing glory to
the same God who uses each one uniquely as He sees fit according to His perfect
will. That is why we need one another in the church, and why there can be no
Lone Ranger Christians. Where one is weak, another is strong; where one lacks
ability, another is granted ability. We help one another follow Christ as we
follow Him in the way that He has called and equipped each one of us. If
another has a different gift, a different ministry, or a different
effectiveness, it is none of our business! We should give thanks to God, and
keep on following Jesus in the way that He has gifted, called, and blessed us.
Peter’s calling is to serve the Lord for the next three
decades, and then embrace the cross. John’s calling is different. Jesus says,
“If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” John is careful to
point out that Jesus did not say that
he would not die, but only “If I want him to remain until I come.” That little
word “if” is very important. How many Christians have fallen into erroneous
belief or practice due to a sloppy handling of God’s Word, by which they
overlook important little words, or assume a meaning of the Scriptures that God
never intended? Following Jesus demands that we keep our eyes on Him, and the
best way for us to do that is with an open Bible, giving careful study to
exactly what He has said, taking notice as well of what He has not said. His
word is our guide as we follow Him, but it will only guide us as we give
careful study to it, ensuring that we understand it correctly.
Follow Me.
It is a pretty simple thing, isn’t it? There is no promise that it will always
be an easy road. The road of Jesus’ earthly life was not free from troubles and
suffering, and He has not promised that ours will be either. He alone knows
what the future holds, and that fact should enable us to entrust our future
into His hands. He knows what our lives will entail, and He knows how they will
end. And in either case, He is able to use us to bring glory to Himself if we
will but follow Him, come what may. Follow Him on the good days. Follow Him on
the bad days. Follow Him no matter what others may be doing. Follow Him, and He
will use you in life, and in death to bring glory to Himself.
[1] http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/mhm/john-21.html
No comments:
Post a Comment