Man's Inability, Christ's Abundance Series

Man’s Inability, Christ’s Abundance

Text: John 21:1-14

Before we start this morning, let me ask you a question – How much control do you have over the circumstances of your life? Can you make it rain? I’m not talking about those people who are doing the geo-engineering and chem trails… I’m talking about you personally. Can you make it rain? Can you control the temperature and make it hot or cold? Sunny or cloudy? Can you control the price of wheat or feed? Pakistan and India recently launched strikes on each other – can you stop war from happening over there? James 4:13-16 says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Tomorrow we will go into such and such town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

When James said that, he wasn’t trying to be all doom and gloom… He was trying to get us to understand that we are totally unable to control most of the things in our world, or even the things around us. But God can! And so we should go to Him, and seek Him, and trust in Him.

So with that in mind, let’s go to our text – John 21… we won’t get through this entire chapter this morning, but I’m going to read it, and we’ll see how far we get. So yeah… it’s going to take me today and next Sunday at least… maybe to the end of June. But today as we go through this, what I hope we find is that we need Jesus. IN EVERYTHING, and FOR EVERYTHING. And if we have Him – we have EVERYTHING!

(READ John 21:1-25)

Now the text starts out by saying, “After this…”. AFTER WHAT? Well… after all that John has just described to us in chapter 20. So after the tomb was found empty. After Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples and again to Thomas. After Thomas’ declaration that Jesus is both Lord and God.

So after all of those things, Jesus revealed Himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.

The Sea of Tiberias is the Sea of Galilee. Sometimes it’s called the Sea of Tiberias because that’s what the Romans called it. It’s the same thing, but different people call it different names. Think Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico… Mt. Denali or Mt. McKinley – you pick. I think you all probably know which way I go. But anyway. It’s the Sea of Galilee and that’s where this takes place.

So Jesus reveals Himself to the disciples near the sea… and it’s not all the disciples. There are specific ones listed here. Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James and John and two others… So 7 of His disciples were present at this meeting. The two unnamed were probably Andrew and Philip… if I had to guess. So basically it was all those disciples who were originally from that region.

And I’m going to tell you why I think this happens. In Matthew 28, Jesus had told the disciples to go meet Him at Galilee… and in verse 16 – Matthew 28:16, it says that Jesus had directed them to go to a mountain. Now back in John 21, Peter says, “I’m going fishing.”

Basically the idea here is that Peter got impatient.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen this. I’ve seen it in my own life, and in the lives of other Christians. And I bet you have too. We’re trusting God for things, we’re believing God for things, and we know He is able to do that thing – whatever it is… but we want it in our time. We don’t like waiting on God to do it… We don’t even like waiting on each other to do it. And in that process we can sometimes magnify the issue.

Let me give you an example… It’s a Saturday, the husband and wife are both home. And there’s a light fixture that needs to be fixed in the bathroom, over the mirror. The wife says to her husband, “Don’t forget to fix the light in the bathroom today.” And he’s like, “Ok… I’ll get it in a minute.” And he goes back to working on the project he’s currently on, and it’s all good – OR AT LEAST IT SEEMS LIKE IT’S ALL GOOD. But a few minutes later, she notices that the light fixture isn’t fixed, and she offers a gentile reminder, “Honey don’t forget the light in the bathroom.” And he’s like, “Yeah… I’ll get it in a minute.” 20 minutes later and she again sees it isn’t done.