Read and Believe in Jesus.

“What is that to you? YOU follow me.” John 21:23.

REVIEW – Back in Galilee, seven of the disciples decide to go fishing – their OLD occupation – while they wait for Jesus. This effort yields zero fish. Then Jesus appears and basically tells them how to do their job. They obey, and this time the reward is a humongous catch of fish. (Lesson one: without Jesus, we can do nothing. But submit to Him, and our efforts will be fruitful, 30x, 60x, or even 100x.)

Jesus had prepared some bread and grilled fish for breakfast. He could have multiplied His small amount to feed them all, but He asked the disciples to bring some of the fish THEY had caught to the meal. He finished cooking them, broke the bread, and passed around this “familiar” meal. (Lesson two: Jesus can use whatever we willingly give Him to further His Kingdom and bless others.)

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John 31:15-17.

After breakfast, no one left the circle; instead, they turned toward Jesus, perhaps expecting Him to give them more instruction. They all learned something that morning; it’s true, but it was to Peter that Jesus directed His words.

“Simon, son of John (bar Jonah), do you love me MORE THAN THESE?” (Notice that Jesus uses Peter’s “old” name, meaning he was “walking in the flesh, not the spirit.” Peter remembered how he had at one time boasted that, “Though THEY ALL fall away because of you, I WILL NEVER fall away!” Matt.26:33)

“Yes, Lord, You know that I love you.” Did he feel the hot stares of the other disciples on him? Did he glance around at the other disciples for confirmation? All were silent. But they HAD heard.

Jesus didn’t contradict Peter; He instructed him, “Feed My lambs.” Peter’s mission was to care more for OTHERS than for himself.

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Then Jesus continued. “Simon, bar Jonah, do you love ME?”

“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you,” Peter said, perhaps more quietly. Was he remembering how he’d once, twice… three times denied Jesus? Swearing that he did not even KNOW his Lord? I can imagine Peter squeezing his eyes closed as tears began.

“Tend My sheep,” Jesus instructed, challenging Peter to be a good shepherd over those he would lead, as his Master was.

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And then, for the third time, came that stinging, probing question, “Simon bar Jonah, do you love me?”

Peter, grieved perhaps as much as when he’d heard the rooster crow and remembered Jesus’ dark prediction, may have fallen to his knees at this point. “Lord … You know everything! You KNOW that I love You!”

Peter’s true humility and sorrow for his denials are revealed. Jesus knew it, but now the other disciples had witnessed it. He grew tall again in their estimation, although he was bowed low at Jesus’ feet. The others could now trust him to lead them again.

I imagine Jesus gently smiling as he reached out and pulled Peter to his feet. “Feed my sheep.” And I imagine Peter nodded.

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John had now shown the THIRD thing he wanted to make clear in this “epilogue chapter” – Peter’s reinstatement into leadership. That done, he was ready for that pesky rumor. The FOURTH thing he needed to do was reveal how the rumor started, then refute it.

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John 31:18-23.

After Jesus finished calling out the veracity of Peter’s love, and seeing Peter humble himself for ready service, He led him apart for a different revelation. Best friend John followed quietly along.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, Peter, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.”

Jesus said this to show the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. (imprisonment and crucifixion – stretching out his hands)

Perhaps Peter was thinking about Jesus’ words to them in Matthew 16:24-28. Read them now as Peter might have been recalling them….

• Matthew 16:24 – “Then Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me.
• 16:25 – “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
• 16:26 – “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
• 16:27 – “For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay each person according to what he has done,
• AND THEN…..
• 16:28 – “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”

Wait, what? What did Peter just remember???

Walking with Jesus on the beach of Galilee, after breakfast and a difficult but sweet time of restoration, Peter remembered THOSE WORDS?

He looks at John and says to Jesus, “Lord, what about THIS man?”

Oh, no, that not-so-friendly competition raises its head. If Peter is destined to die, crucified, what about John? Will he suffer that death too? Or will he be one of those who…?

Then Jesus speaks the words that someone heard and spread as a rumor. “If it is My will that he remain until I come…what is it to you? YOU follow me.”

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Of course, Jesus was not promising that His beloved disciple would live until He returned. Jesus’ point was for Peter to ‘mind his own business.’ Peter was to accomplish Jesus’ will for HIS life, and not look at others’. Keep your eyes on Jesus, Peter! Follow in His steps.

By telling how it started, John hoped to quell this rumor.

By the way, Peter lived 30 more years and was martyred in Rome by crucifixion, hanging upside down. John lived 60+ more years and suffered torture and exile. God preserved him to write the book of Revelation; then he died a natural death of old age.

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John 21:24-25.

John then attests to the fact that it is HE, JOHN, who has written this. He is a WITNESS of these things. That should settle it. And then, before he lays his quill down for the final time, John’s mind is filled with many, many other things he could write about Jesus. Then he “waxed poetic.”

“Were every one of the things that Jesus did to be written… I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

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“Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.“

The famous last stanza of the classic Christian hymn The Love of God, written by Frederick M. Lehman in 1917.

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Next up, The Gospel of Matthew.