BIBLE MESSAGES ON EASTER
Bob Marcaurelle
freesermons@homeorchurchbiblestudy.com
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Message 9
Annual Sermons: Vol. 3
Sermon 32 John 21:15
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DO YOU LOVE HIM?
(A Stewardship Sermon)
Jesus asked some important questions. When the first two men stepped up to become His disciples, He turned and asked, “What are you looking for?” (Jn. 1:38). He still asks that of would-be disciples. But if Jesus came to earth today and stood before His church, before this church, I believe His eyes would move up and down these pews and with each look at each one of us, He would ask that question He asked Peter that morning on the shore of Galilee - Simon (John, Mary, Bob), do you love me?
When we truthfully say we love the Lord that settles a lot of issues and answers a multitude of questions. It means there are a lot of places I will not go and a lot of things I will not do. For example, if you are rude and critical to me, my love for you would probably not keep me from being harsh in return.
Retaliation is as natural to me, and to most of you, as falling off a greased log. But if I can think of the Jesus who loves us both, I can many times respond with a healing word. My Lord in His Book tells me, “A soft answer turns away wrath,” and if I love Him I will want to please Him and obey Him. I know what Luther meant when he said, “Love God and do as you please!,” because if we love Him what we please is to please Him.
No more powerful, life changing question, then, can be asked of the Christian than this one. Vance Havner says revival is “falling back in love with Je¬sus.” If he is right, and he is, we should all stand in Simon’s shoes. First we find. . .
I. THERE IS A CLEANSING IN THIS QUESTION
The background of this question was Peter’s failure; his threefold denial that he was a follower of Jesus; his cowardice and his cursing. The last few days and weeks of Simon Peter weren’t too impressive. He had stood in the Lord’s path to the cross and asked Him not to go. He acted in love but instead of asking Jesus to get outside the will of God, he should have asked for the privilege to die with Him. In the garden he drew his sword and resorted to violence. In the upper room he boasted that he would never deny his Lord. Then, warming himself by the world’s fire, he denied Him three times. It broke his heart and he gave up on himself and decided to go back into the fishing business.
So, in light of the last few days, it was logical for Christ to call him by his old name, Simon, and not Peter, the rock, and ask him, “Do you love me?”
We will never understand this question if we see it as an interrogation. This whole scene is positive, not negative. The storm clouds of doubt were not casting a shadow over these two men, the sunlight of a new day was dawning. It was a cleansing question from the viewpoint of Jesus to Simon and of Simon to Jesus. In it Jesus was saying two things we who gail need to hear - I love you and you love me.
Jesus was saying here, “I still love you! I am asking this because I want you back.” Jesus does not kick His wounded soldiers. He picks them up, forgives them and chooses to use them.
You know, I believe I am like many of you. I have failed the Lord more since I was saved than before. I have responded with the harsh word. I have neglected to make a visit or have made it out of sheer duty rather than love. I have preached something I have trouble practicing. But friends, Jesus has never failed me. Times without end I have crawled into my payer closet, broken because of failure and have come out singing and shouting because the Lord has showered me with His love.
And Jesus does not do this by just showing us that He still loves us but also THAT WE STILL LOVE HIM.
That is exactly what Jesus was doing here. He is saying, “You still love me!” Some of us, who feel more “Spirit empty” than “Spirit filled” wonder at times if we love the Lord.
A pastor called upon an elderly member of his church and she, painfully aware of her shortcomings, said, “Oh, pastor, I’m afraid I don’t love the Lord. How could I be this way and love Him?” The wise pastor took a sheet of paper and wrote upon it the words, “I do not love Jesus Christ.” He handed it to the lady and told her to sign it. She said, “Pastor, I would die before I would sign that.” Sometimes we need to know if the Lord really loves us.
We feel forgotten and forsaken and need a reaffirmation of divine love to keep us going. But sometimes, like this lady, and like Peter here, we need to be shown that in spite of our faults and failures we truly love our Lord. Jesus did not ask Peter, “Do you love me?” to find out, He already knew he did. In His grace He wanted Peter to know it too. Their relationship was cleansed both ways.
II. THERE IS A COMMISSION IN THIS QUES¬TION
Jesus, when the relationship and fellowship were renewed, said, “Feed (Pastor or Shepherd) my sheep.” This is the great commission to an individual.
1. There Is a Timelessness in this Commission.
These simple pastoral words have a timelessness in them that goes far beyond pastoring a church and far beyond Pales¬tine and far beyond the First Century. It was facing a lost world about which the Bible says of Jesus, “When He saw the multitudes, He had compassion for them, for they were mangled and thrown to the ground (Berkeley Version), like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). These words reached the rock bottom of human need and encompassed every pain of every person in every age - feed my sheep! Care for my wounded!
Feed My sheep! With these three words the Son of God gathered a globe full of broken people to His breast. He who created the world and died for the world and sent His church into all the world, had the whole world, from then until today, on His heart when He said, “Feed my sheep.” He could see our day, when “World Vision International” estimates that 10,000 people a day die of hunger and millions sleep in the streets and eat out of garbage cans, and He says,”Feed their bodies.”
He could see down through the Dark Ages to our enlightened dark age today with 700,000,000 illiterate human beings and He says, “Feed their minds.” He could see a soul every second stepping out into eternity with no saving knowledge of Him and He says, “Feed their souls with the truth.”
Our Lord embraced all of broken humanity here, every broken life, dream, body, mind, home and spirit and set Peter and his church and us on an endless mission of mercy. We are to feed friendship to the lonely, hope to the despairing, strength to those who are slipping, inspiration to the downcast, laughter to the children and salvation to the lost. “Feed in every way you can,” He says, “around this shrinking globe, the glory of my gospel: for I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”
2. There Is a Trust in This Commission.
Our Lord placed the success or failure of that for which He had given His life, into the unstable hands of Simon Peter and men and women like him. I can see the angels cover their faces in astonishment and react, “No! Lord! You can’t trust the likes of him. He means well but he is so weak and untrustworthy.”
My friends, I look at you with your faults and frailties and failure and then I look in the mirror at myself, with my faults and frailties and failures, called to lead you, and I sometimes think God has lost his mind entrust¬ing His noble work to the likes of us.
But there is something about His faith in me that inspires me to do a little better and hit a little harder and stand a little longer. What about you? God is depending upon you! God is counting on you! Isn’t that an unbeliev¬able, inspiring thought!
3. There Was a Test in This Commission.
To reveal the true heroism in the soul of this man, branded by many as a coward, Jesus unveiled the future and showed him the awful death he was to die - death by crucifixion (21:18-19). There is heroism in the man who, on the spur of the moment, throws himself on aa grenade to save his comrades.
But a far greater heroism is involved, the slow, steady, voluntary walk toward a horrible death. Our Lord made such a journey. Knowing that the cross awaited, the Bible says, “He set His face toward Jerusalem” (Lk. 9:51). And here He calls His friend to make that same journey.
This is stewardship Sunday, and in the light of such sacrificial love to Jesus I hesitate to step forward and say anything as a tither because the tench is so little compared to this. I feel like David Livingstone who, when asked to speak on sacrifice, said, “I know nothing of what it means to sacrifice.”
When he said that, his arm hung limp from the attack of a lion, his body bore the wear and tear of malaria, and he had buried his wife on the Dark Continent. But he could not boast of his sacrifices. Why? Because when compared to the sacrifices of Jesus our little gifts seem so small.
But what we have we need to give. Let us lay our tithe upon the altar and let us lay our lives and hearts upon the altar. And in so doing, let us say, “Oh Lord, you know that we love Thee!”
It always costs us to serve God - always. If you want the easy life and the rosy path then you’d better leave Jesus alone. To His followers, Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me,” and only those who truly love truly do this. We have this same spirit alive in our church.
Harris and Neva Poole, our missionaries to Africa, leave their children in the States to attend school. Gerald Lawton drives a beat up old car and ministers on a near poverty level salary to the Navajo Indians in New Mexico. So many of our dear senior citizens receive their little checks that barely enable them to live, and they faithfully give God His rightful share.
The word “love” seems out of place between these two rugged, heroic men. Some may feel that this question is far too sentimental and just drips with a syrupy sweetness that is too soft. But such a view is based upon a perverted view of what love really is - the toughest emotion known to man.
It is love that drives and enables a mother to care for a sick child for days and nights without sleep, without complaint and without regret. It is love that enables a worn out father to play baseball with his boys or London Bridge with his girls, when every muscle in his body is crying out for rest. It is love that enables a man to spend a lifetime without complaining at a job he hates, to care for his family. It was love that drove Jesus to the cross and kept Him there while ten thousand angels stood ready to rescue Him.
It is love and love alone that will enable us to bear our crosses for Jesus and do His will when the cold wind blows. No wonder a Scottish preacher, when he heard the charge of “sloppy sentimentality” hurled at the words, “Lovest thou Me,” said of them, “Men have been burned to ashes in their flames.”
If you purpose in your heart to serve Jesus and follow His will wherever it leads you had better have a better motive than personal glory or earthly reward or fear or even devotion to duty. They are not tough enough to keep you going. Only love is that tough.
The pastor whom God used to call me into the minis¬try, preached a special sermon to commemorate by decision. In that sermon he told a story that grips me today just as it did more than 25 years ago.
A wealthy young Boston socialite, engaged to a wealthy young man, heard and heeded the call to Foreign Missions. The young man could not bring himself to go and the engagement was broken.
Years later on a business trip to the country in which she served, he made his way to the small hospital where she worked as a missionary nurse. Directed to the second floor he saw her down on her knees cleaning the hall.
He slowly approached and saw that she was cleaning up after a patient who had gotten sick. He called her name. She stood, faced him, smiled, wiped her hands on her soiled apron and then greeted him. He, in astonish¬ment at her lowly act, said, “Mary, there’s not enough money in the world to make me do what you just did.”
And the young girl, with the glow of God about her, said, “John, there’s not enough money in the world to make me do it either. But there are things you will do for Jesus that you will not do for money.”
