Unfinished: Peter's Story | Restored

So glad you're with us today. We've been learning, studying Jesus and our teaching by looking at some of the big pivotal moments in the life of one of his earliest followers, a guy named Peter. He is one of the people that Jesus ultimately trusts with his message and his movement after his resurrection. Earlier this summer, we saw some of that. We were walking through a bit of the Book of Acts, and we got to see Peter participate in some pretty dramatic things, great things.

But these last few weeks, we've been looking at the other side. We've been looking at who he was as Jesus was training him. And we saw that he took some big swings and had some really big misses as well. We've seen him stumble, fail, sink. Peter is imperfect.

He's unfinished, just like you and me. And as we focused on this, it's reminded me of someone in my life, someone who's really close to me and who likes to remind me that I'm unfinished. Like my biggest critic. It doesn't matter if it's my best day or my worst day. They're saying things to me like, you're not good enough.

You know you're always going to mess things up. If people really knew you, they wouldn't like you. You should be working harder. You should be farther along than you are right now. This guy's a real jerk, right?

And you're probably wondering, well, why does he keep this guy around? He's really hard to get rid of. Impossible, actually. Because he's me. I have this inner critic that likes to show up and remind me or say things that just simply aren't true.

And I shared this because I'm confident I'm not the only one in the room today that has an inner critic like that. We are all unfinished. We all face fear and hurt and shame. The shame of not yet being fully remade and living in a world that's not yet fully remade, restored, renewed. We're unfinished, just like Peter was unfinished.

And we've seen him as some of his worst moments. Today we see him hit rock bottom. It happens at the moment when Jesus life is reaching a climax. He's going to be arrested in just a few hours. And Peter makes his boldest claim in this moment.

He doesn't yet fully grasp what Jesus is surrendering to. That Jesus is surrendering to execution, crucifixion. And so Peter's expecting battles. He's expecting a fight. He's expecting Jesus kingdom to come through force, not through the power of self giving love.

And as we saw last week, it's at this moment that Peter vows his undying allegiance. He says, even if all else fall away, I will not. He's looking at the rest of his trainees, the other guys that Jesus is training with him, and he goes, look, if these schmoes bail on you, don't worry, I never will. And Jesus told him, well, actually, you're going to. You're going to fall away.

You're going to deny me before the sun even comes up tomorrow, before the rooster crows twice. And Peter insists, here's what he says. He says, even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you. Peter's kind of that guy. And maybe you know somebody like this, you are this person.

He's the kind of guy who says, I've got this five minutes before he realizes that he absolutely does not got this, this right. And then Jesus is arrested. He's put on trial. And it's during the trial that Peter hits rock bottom. This encounter he has with Jesus.

Luke tells it in Luke 22, he says, then seizing him, that's Jesus. They led him away and took him into the house of the high priest. Peter followed at a distance, and when some there had kindled a fire, we'll come back to that idea of that fire. He had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together. Peter sat down with them, and a servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.

She looked closely at him and said, this man was with him. This man was with Jesus. But he denied it. Woman, I don't know him, he said. A little later, someone else saw him and said, you're also one of them, one of his Jesus followers.

And he says, man, I am not. About an hour later, another asserted, certainly this fellow was with him, for he's a Galilean. They can tell by his accent. And Peter replied, this is the third time, man, I don't know what you're talking about. And just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord Jesus turned and looked straight at Peter. And Peter remembered the word the Lord has spoken to him before the rooster crows, today, you will disown me three times. And he went outside and wept bitterly. There's a word for what Peter does to Jesus here. It's the word betrayal.

Peter was someone that Jesus should have been able to count on. And here, when he needed his support the most, Peter couldn't even own up to the fact that he knows him. And he hears the rooster crow and it breaks through to him, and it breaks Him. His response is anguished. He.

He wept bitterly. This is a deep, violent, uncontrollable outburst of grief. This is an epic failure. And if you're hearing this for the first time, you might be tempted to think this is the kind of failure, kind of thing that a person doesn't come back from. This is the kind of moment that marks you and the rest of your life.

But there's more to this story, and there always is when Jesus is involved. Because what we know is that Jesus is crucified, but then he resurrects and everything changes. And then as these autobiographies of Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, as they start to talk about encounters with Jesus after resurrection, it's almost like he pops up out of nowhere, surprising them. And John tells about a time that he popped up on a Beach. John 21.

Here's where we're going to sit. Says afterwards, Jesus appeared again to his disciples by the Sea of Galilee. It happened this way. There's Simon Peter. That's our guy.

Thomas, this is one of the other trainees. They're all been the guys he's been training. Thomas, also known as Didymus, Nathaniel from Cana and Galilee, the sons of Zebedee. That's James and John. John's telling this story and the two other disciples.

And they're all together. I'm going out to fish. Simon Peter told them, and they said, we'll go with you. So they went out and got into the boat. And that night they caught nothing.

Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore. And the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. And he called out to them, friends, which I love the tender language, friends, not hey, knuckleheads, Right, it's hey, friends, haven't you any fish? No, they answered, so throw your net on the right side of the boat and you'll find some. And when they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

Then the disciple whom Jesus loved, that's how John writing this, refers to himself, said to Peter, it's the Lord. And as soon as Simon Peter heard him say, it's the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him, for he had taken it off, and he jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in a boat, towing the net full of fish. For they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. And when they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals.

There was fish on it and some bread. Let's notice a couple things. First thing is that Jesus, through his life Death and resurrection. He is victorious over sin and Satan. He resurrects so that we may all know the renewal of all things.

And even more good news. Jesus cooks.

He makes breakfast. There's always a meal when Jesus is around. And in this case, he sets the table. Let's notice a second thing, and maybe more important, notice the fire specifically is the kind of fire this is. There are common words for fire.

This is not one of those words only gets used twice in the whole New Testament. It's specifically a charcoal fire. Jesus is cooking over a charcoal fire. The other time it's used, John uses it. Same biography.

It's the fire that Peter is standing over when he denied Jesus.

There's this thing about smells. They bypass our brain, the main relay station, and link straight to our memory and our emotion centers. And that's why a smell can instantly evoke deep, vivid feelings from our past. What's on Peter's mind when he smells that charcoal fire, when it hits him? The last time he was with Jesus and there was charcoal in the air.

The moment Jesus looked him in the eye as he denied him. The third time, he's remembering his worst moment. Can you imagine what his inner critic might be saying in that moment? What his body might be feeling?

We've had these raw moments like this where we're feeling exposed, awash and shame and hurt and fear. And Jesus intentionally evokes, recreates this scene of Peter's worst moment. But not to punish him. It's to heal him. See what Jesus does.

Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish that you've caught. So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish. 153. And even with so many, the net was not torn.

Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. None of the disciples dared ask him, who are you? They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

And when they finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I love you. Jesus said, feed, nourish, my lambs. That's the first question again. Jesus said, simon, son of John, do you love me?

He answered, yes, Lord. You know that I love you. And Jesus said, take care of my sheep. Care for lead, protect, guide my sheep. That's the second time.

The third time he said to him, simon Son of John, do you love me? And Peter was hurt, grieved, deep emotional pain, because Jesus asked him the third time three denials, three questions. Do you love me? He said, lord, you know all things. You know that I love you.

And Jesus said, feed my sheep.

I love that Jesus. Questions sound nothing like the questions my inner critic will ask. He's asking questions about love, about connection, about commitment. My inner critic asked questions, would ask me questions in this moment, like, hey, are you sorry for what you did? Do you think you can do better next time?

Do you think I'll ever be able to trust you again? This isn't what Jesus asked. Jesus frames this whole conversation around loyalty, relational faithfulness. Do you love me? Is not a question of feeling affection.

For Jesus, it is a question he's asking Peter, are you ready to arrange your whole life around me again, to orient your whole self around me? There's a lot of debate in scholarly circles about this passage. In modern English, we have one word for love. John is writing this story in the common language of his day, it's Ancient Greek. And Greek had multiple words for love, and there are two of them used in this passage.

One would be the word agape. Agape, it's self giving, sacrificial love, a bold, committed allegiance to someone else. There's agape and then there's phileo. This is the kind of love somebody would have for a friend or brotherly affection. Anybody know what the city of Philadelphia.

Phileo. Philadelphia is called? It's the city of brotherly love. Yeah. Now, we don't know why these two words get mixed in this dialogue, but there is a pattern, and it's kind of an oversimplification, but it could be helpful for us, just as we walk through it in English, to translate agape as love and phileo as like.

And if we do that, here's how this encounter goes. Jesus says, peter, do you love me? And Peter goes, lord, you know I like you.

And the second time, Jesus says, peter, do you love me? Lord, you know I like you. The third time, Jesus says, peter, do you like me? And Peter says, lord, you know I like youe.

There's Peter, charcoal memory filled with shame and fear. This inner critic screaming, you're a failure. Jesus won't want you anymore. It's over. And here's Jesus meeting him where he is.

And I wonder if Peter just couldn't bring himself to make a bold claim of loyalty again. He couldn't trust himself. He lost his confidence. And it's as if Jesus is Saying, if like is all you have today, Peter, if it's all you can muster, it's enough. I'll make up for the rest.

And he meets him where he's at. That seems like the person that we've seen Jesus be all along, having grace for the unfinished, meeting us where we are. And the truth. This has always been God's posture towards broken people. There's this thing in us.

My critic consistently wants me to think that God is turning away from me because I'm unfinished, that God wants nothing to do with me. But even in the whole story of what God's up to in the world, God, Genesis 1 and 2, created a world for us to live with him. A world that's right the way it's supposed to be, filled with meaning and purpose and belonging, inner wholeness and freedom. And in Genesis 3, we break it. We want to be like God.

We want to decide what's good and evil. And now there's a world that's not the way it's supposed to be. And what does God do to a broken world, broken people? What does he do? What is his posture?

What is his response when he goes, I'm going to heal it. I'm going to put it all back together? How does he do that? Not by turning away from us. He enters into it.

Jesus becoming human. Incarnation is God stepping towards us as unfinished as we are.

And here he is stepping towards Peter. And he's not just restoring Peter into relationship, he's restoring him into partnership. Three questions about love. Three commands. Feed my lambs.

Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep. Peter isn't disqualified forever.

Jesus invites him back into a life of deep purpose, working with him for the good of the world.

And there's no pretending here that Peter is unaffected by his failure. Sure he is.

But his failure, his betrayal, actually becomes part of his formation, becomes part of his humility. It becomes part of his ability to shepherd others. Jesus restores Peter to a life of ministry motivated by love. Do you love me? Motivated by his allegiance to.

To his king, Jesus. See, God doesn't waste our failures. He puts them to good use.

And then Jesus says this thing to Peter as he's looking ahead, he can see what Peter's gonna do. And it's an odd little story. Very truly. I tell you, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted. But when you're old, you will stretch out your hands.

That's key. And someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go. And Then John tells us what Jesus meant. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would do what? Glorify God.

Jesus is saying, by the way, Peter, you do love me. Your allegiance to me is such that you're going to live a life, that you're going to die the way I die, stretched arms, stretched out, crucified.

Jesus is telling him he's going to suffer, not punishment. He's just being realistic about the nature of love. Jesus tells Peter that in the future it will involve a death he does not choose. And it's not divine retribution or a loss of blessing. It is the reality of love in a broken world.

It's costly, but Peter will ultimately live up to his bold claim. He will be committed to Jesus to the end. And then Jesus last two words here. Then he said to him, this is the one invitation Jesus gives to us. Follow me.

Follow me. And this whole time, Jesus has been locating this conversation in two big pivotal moments in Peter's life. One is the denial. The other one goes further back. Peter knew it, had to.

It's way too much in common with this earlier encounter and we can easily miss it if we don't know. Luke tells this story of when Jesus invited Peter to follow him the first time. And he says that Peter was fishing. He was a fisherman and he had fished all night and caught nothing. Sound familiar?

Just like this story. Where was he fishing? Sea of Galilee, same lake. And then Peter comes in after all night fishing, and there's Jesus, and he says, how about we go back out? Which you got to wonder if Peter's like, you don't fish.

What do you know? I'm a fisherman. Like, we fished all night, there's no fish. They get back in the boat, they go back out. Jesus tells them to cast.

He tells them where to cast the net, just like this story. And Peter catches so many fish that the boat's about to sink. Full nets. Just like this story. You see where Jesus is locating, this for Peter isn't just in healing from his denial.

It's into his original calling of purpose. There's this famous line, the old school language is Jesus saying, I will train you to be a fisher of men, of humans. I'm going to train you to fish for people. Jesus is saying, I'm going to train you to do what I do. I'm going to give you a deep purpose.

This whole encounter is about being restored to a life, yes, of deep connection with God and belonging with all of his daughters and sons, but also to a life Overflowing with purpose, being good news wherever we go. Peter's reshaped in this encounter. His confidence in himself is dismantled. His reliance on grace is deepened. And there's a shift, and it's the point, the shift from self confidence to dependent love.

Can you see yourself in Peter unfinished? Sure. Showing up today like me, with your hurt and your fear and your shame and your inner critic. And yet Jesus looks at you like he looked at Peter and says, you're my kind of person. Come work with me.

I want to work with you. I want a junior partner in accomplishing the good that I want to do in the world today. And if you hear that and you think, nah, that can't mean me, right? If you're into critics like, I will never be. Okay, so there's no way that can be true.

Let me just remind you that even the Bible itself is a testament to God's collaboration with unfinished people. That. How do we get this? It's. It's a library of books that God collaborated, Holy Spirit inspiring together with humans to give us this revelation to understand who God is and how the world is meant to be and how we can participate in and who we are, all of that.

And how do we get it? God collaborating with unfinished people. Moses. Moses was a fugitive. After killing a man, David took another man's wife, got her pregnant, had her husband killed so he wouldn't be exposed.

The back half of the New Testament, most of it's written by a guy named Paul, who actively hunted, imprisoned, and oversaw the execution of our earliest forefathers and foremothers in the faith. God specializes in working with unfinished people. Your weakness is not an obstacle to God. It's often the place where he wants to do his deepest work. And it's out of that place that we join him in the world being good news.

That guy Paul in second Corinthians talked about this this way. He's struggling with something and he's asking God, hey, can you remove this thing from me? We don't really know what it is. And God responds this way. But he, this is God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you.

My grace is enough for my power is made perfect where weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that King Jesus power may rest on me. And that is why, for Christ's sake, I do what in my weaknesses. Delight. Not just in my weaknesses.

I delight in my weaknesses, in insults, in hardship, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God's most effective junior partners are not those who overcome their weaknesses. It's those of us who allow our failures and wounds and dependence on him to become the very means to which we help other people. And then it comes with authenticity and humility and grace.

It's God's power being made perfect in our weakness. And when that happens, we can allow our own experiences, our pain, our loneliness, our brokenness, our own betrayals, the times that we're betrayed. Those things can become a source of compassion and presence and healing for others through the grace of King Jesus. God does not need perfect people to work with him. He just needs people who are humble and willing.

That's it. Humble enough to know that we don't have it all together. And here's the thing. For a guy like Peter who comes off often as a blustering, overconfident buffoon sometimes, right as you read his story in the Gospels, Peter's ultimate humility is stunning.

Because how do we know these stories? How do you think we know these stories? These stories that make him look bad? Here's the thing. If I was writing my own autobiography, I would include a lot less stuff that had me saying dumb things, right?

You want to put your best out there. If you were here in the beginning of the year, we walked through the Book of Mark. And if you remember, the storyteller behind the Book of Mark is who? Peter.

There's an argument to be made that the Book of Mark makes Peter look worse than any other book.

And what we just read. Peter's having a private moment when he denies Jesus. Jesus looking him in the eye. How does anybody else know that? Peter is able to tell those stories not in shame, but in weakness.

He is strong.

Peter lets his stories, stories of his failures, be told over and over and over again and echo all the way down thousands of years to you and me. He owns all that. He's not owned by any of it. That's an attestment that testifies to the power of redemption in Jesus. But it also says Peter was willing enough to go, oh, yeah, I'm unfinished.

Look at this. So you think you got problems? Look what I did. Peter is humble and he's willing. What does he do when his friend John recognizes Jesus on the beach?

He dives in. He's willing enough to go to Jesus to show up. I don't know about you, but I have a tendency. If somebody's got a problem with me, my move is to avoid them. I've preached sermons before, knowing somebody right around here had a Problem with me.

And I would talk to you and to you and to you, right?

Does Peter do that?

He hasn't reconciled with Jesus yet, but he doesn't wait for the boat to get back. He just goes to him. He is humble and he is willing.

And then Jesus meets us where we are humble and willing. He meets where we are. And he doesn't just invite us back into life with him, but into partnership, getting to collaborate with him in reshaping and reforming ourselves and through our weakness, more and more becoming the kind of person he wants us to be, who is more like him and doing more of the things he does and being good news for the people in our lives.

See, he sends Peter out and he wants to send us to send you right with his power in your weakness. He wants to send you to be good news wherever you are, where you live, where you work, where you play, even where you gather together on a Sunday morning. There's a little phrase you may hear us say around here, and that is being a gospel epicenter. It's a beautiful phrase that simply means this, that a gospel epicenter is a community of people like us, but it's also an individual. It's each of us people who are so changed by Jesus that the good news about him naturally spreads outward into the lives of other people.

Picture a still lake and throwing a rock in the center, and you see a ripple and a ripple and a ripple.

That what Jesus is restoring and inviting you into is a life of being the rock and seeing a ripple and a ripple and a ripple. Your family, your friends, your neighbors, co workers, classmates, communities, world.

It doesn't take big dramatic stuff. It just takes an everyday person willing to listen and respond and help others do the same.

And if you're thinking to yourself right now, hey, I want to do that, man, I want to do that, but I have no clue how to do that. You're in the right church because we are the people who love to show you how. So I stood up here beginning of January, and I said, hey, we were teaching on Follow me, right? And I said, well, here is the one thing that we've been practicing that's been the best thing that we've seen in helping people learn how to do this, live like a gospel epicenter. It's a 13 week training.

And I said, if any of you are crazy enough to think you want to do that, you're my kind of crazy. I want to meet you. 36 of you joined in and finished that, that session. It's called a Disciple making intensive. I use the word intensive because I just said 13 weeks, right?

So it's one night a week for 13 weeks. It is the most effective experience we have in helping you live that way, out of that language or out of that session. There were things we heard from people and what they experienced. We heard people say things like, I feel free now, knowing that I'm loved and valued by God. I've experienced more community than I ever have before.

I have no fear now when I pray for others. I'm seeing what's going on around me and seeing where there's spiritual opportunity. I'm not punishing myself now. It's okay. God's not disappointed in me.

I don't worry about praying the right words. I just pray. It's easy for me to forgive myself. I'm not so hard on myself. I feel confidence, the kind of confidence that's helping me talk about Jesus to people who don't like God at all.

This is just some of what we heard. If you want to live the life that when Jesus says, follow me, this is what that life looks like, I want you to come. So we just keep practicing this and keep learning. We're offering them again starting in September. So just about a month from now, we're offering two sessions.

One for morning people and one for the ones of us who aren't annoying.

I said that at 9am they didn't laugh.

That's true.

It's a little like, hey, we're going to inspire. We're going to be inspired to do this. But what if just get in the room and start to practice together with some other people in a safe environment. Love for you to join us in doing this this fall. This whole week, as I sat with this passage, been remembering a conversation I had with a man named Dan Allender, like 20 years ago, I think it was 2005.

And he talked about a novel that he read. And in the novel, a family had owned an old circus tiger. And some men had attacked this family. And one of them let the tiger loose and it mauled the men. Such an odd story, right?

But there was a line in the book that stuck out to him. The narrator, one of the family members, said, when those men chose our house, they chose wrong.

And then Dan shared about how he had been abused as a kid and how he had encountered Jesus as a teenager and how God had worked in his life in specifically in his weakness in that broken place. And it led to a purpose in Dan's life that's led to a profound impact internationally in the arena of healing from trauma, of abuse.

And here's what he said. He said through the work that God had done in his life, he said, when evil chose me, it chose wrong.

Power and weakness, not his. That God would work in that place. And Dan's life is a stone hitting the lake. And there's a ripple and a ripple and a ripple, and me, 20 years later, still ripple. This is the life that Jesus is saving you to.

Yes, he died to save you from your sin. And he also died to set up his kingdom, show God's love.

And he died that you might get to experience the life you were designed for from the very beginning. A life filled with meaning and belonging and purpose and purpose. Unfinished as you are.