Annual Sermons: Vol. 2 Sermon 21*
Bob Marcaurelle: 1988 John 1:42
* Catalog of all messages (1000 +) bmarcaurelle.@charter.net
CHRIST’S FAITH IN US
As a boy, Sir Walter Scott was left week and lame by a severe attack of fever. Some misjudged him and thought he would never amount to much. When he became a teenager, he visited in a home where some famous literary guests were being entertained, including the poet Robert Burns. In one room was a picture under which was written a beautiful bit of verse. Burns asked who wrote it, but no one seemed to know. Timidly, Scott gave the author’s name and quoted the rest of the poem. Burns was delighted. Laying his hand on the young fellow’s head, he exclaimed, “Ah, my boy, I’M SURE YOU’LL BE A GREAT MAN IN SCOTLAND SOMEDAY!” From that hour, Walter Scott was a changed person. That brief conversation set him on the road to greatness. Why? Because someone believed in him and helped him believe in himself.
Simon Peter was like this. He became one of the great champions of the early church. In the early chapters of Acts he is the chosen leader of the church. He stand like a giant oak against all oppositions, preaches the gospel with Pentecostal power and is willing to die for Jesus. Today he is the best known and best loved of our Lord’s Twelve Disciples. The Roman Catholic Church, without a shred of evidence, claims him as the first Pope. They are wrong, but their claim points to his greatness. Protestants and Catholic alike, look up to Simon Peter.
How did he reach such heights? It wasn’t natural ability, wealth or brilliance. Peter left much to be desired. He was ARROGANTLY SELF CONFIDENT. He was the one who foolishly boated that he would die before he would deny Jesus. He always had to be first to speak or act. When Jesus tried to warn him about over confidence, Clovis Chappell says it was like shooting a BB gun at a battleship.
He was UNPREDICTABLE and UNRELIABLE. He, like us, was a mixture. He was both wise and fool with his words. One minute he named Jesus as the “Son of the living God” and the next he was up to his chin in the waves, hollering for help. One minute he was facing an army with a sword in Gethsemane and the next he was backing down from a servant girl.
Now Peter never got entirely away from this. We never do, because there is no perfection this side of the grace. But I submit that the best of him was dominant in his later years. He was far more wise man than fool; far more hero than coward; far more faithful than unfaithful and far more success than failure.
How did he change? Well, certainly it was because HE PUT HIS FAITH IN JESUS. Simon Peter became a stable, dependable, rock-like man because he took the weak clay of his human nature and by faith placed it in the hands of Jesus, the master Potter, who fashioned him into what he became.
But there was another reason, revealed the day he met the Lord, and that was CHRIST’S FAITH IN HIM. When He first laid eyes on Simon He looked beneath the surface of the rugged fisherman into his inner being and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated is Peter) (Jn. 1:42). It was God, in the Old Testament, who changed men’s names to fit their character. He changed Jacob (supplanter_ into Israel (Prince with God). Here, God in human form, changes Simon-the weak, unstable, unreliable - to Peter, which means “rock”. What was it that the Lord believed about Him and believes about you and me? For one thing ...
I. HE BELIEVES WE CAN BE SAVED
Our Lord’s mission in life was to save men and women, to get them to turn to God for forgiveness and for the power to live a life pleasing to Him. The angel said, “You will call His name Jesus (the Lord saves), for He will save His people from their sins.” Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
One mighty force in the ministry and method of Jesus is that He believes we can be saved. No one else may believe it! We may not even believe it! But, praise God, He believes it.
He does not believe it because of blind optimism that refuses to face the truth. Jesus was no humanist. He knew human nature was corrupt to the core. He knew the heart of man’s problem was his heart. The four men brought their paralyzed friend through the roof for physical healing; but Jesus knew his problem was spiritual. What he needed was forgiveness and power to live right.
But here is the difference between Jesus and others. They look at us and DESPAIR; He looks at us and HOPES. He raked the gutter, said J. D. Jones, for His saints. He knows nothing of hopeless cases or those too far gone to help. A soiled woman, with five ex-husbands and a live-in boyfriend comes to the well. She comes along because the “good people” of the town have nothing to do with her. They are just waiting for her to die and go to hell and get what she deserves. Jesus looks at her and what does He see? He sees a woman who can be helped, who can be reclaimed for God and goodness, who can become a home missionary, who can be saved!
The great words of Christ’s gospel are, “You are ... You shall be.” He has the “shall be” of hope for everyone. He took Mary from the “you are” of demon bondage to the “shall be” of purity. He took Zacchaeus from the “you are” of dishonest and greed to the “shall be” of fairness and sacrifice. He took Saul from the “you are” of pride and hatred to the “shall be” of humble missionary service. Friend, I don’t care what “you are,” Jesus offers you a “shall be.” Put your faith in Him Who believes in you and you can be saved. You can one day say with Paul, “By God’s grace I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10).
Just this morning I heard Teddy Welborn, the country singer, say, “I was a slave to alcohol. In eight years I had not had thirty sober days. But Jesus loved me and set me free. I don’t know why He loved me and I can’t explain what happened to me, but I love Him for it.” “You are ... You shall be!”
II. HE BELIEVES WE CAN BE SERVANTS (Jn. 21:16)
The shallow evangelism of our day is satisfied with “converts” but the Great Commission tells us to make “disciples” (Matt. 28:18-20). A disciple is one who follows his Lord (Lk. 5:11), who takes up his cross (Lk. 14:27). Too many so called Christians are satisfied with forgiveness, with their “eternal fire insurance policy.” Genuine salvation, which makes disciples, includes a life of service based on love for Jesus. As Teddy Welborn said, “I love Him for it.” Jesus believes not only that we can be saved, but that we can be trusted with significant tasks of service. Did he not say, “As the Father hath send Me, so send I you.” (Jn. 17:18). “As God trusted Me with the mission of redemption, so do I trust you with the message of redemption.”
When Peter denied Jesus and quit the ministry to return to his fishing, it looked like he had blown his chances to be a useful servant. To him, the best thing he could do for Jesus was get out of His way. But Jesus felt differently. He still believed in him. He sat down with him on the shore, got him to reaffirm his love and then made him a shepherd in the church, saying, “Shepherd my sheep” (Jn. 21:16). What was Jesus saying? Wasn’t it, “I trust you!”? Moses, Jeremiah, Gideon and Ezekiel all shrank from the call of God. They did not believe in themselves at times. But God believed in them and used them.
III. HE BELIEVES WE CAN BE SACRIFICERS (Jn. 21:18)
Our Lord has such faith in us that He believes not only that we can be saved, and we can be servants, but that we can make un believable sacrifices for Him. The clay of human nature can become a rock alter upon which we place all that is nearest and dearest to us. It was after Peter’s failure that Jesus said to him in Jn. 21:18, “ ... when you were younger you dressed yourself and went were you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” The Apostle John explained this in verse 19, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.”
We know from the Book of Acts that Peter was willing to die for Jesus. King Herod executed his friend James with whom he had fished as a boy (12:2). Then he threw Peter in jail and the night before his trial (and certain execution) God delivered him (12:3-19). For Peter’s death, however, we must turn to tradition. And tradition tells us that around A.D. 61, Roman troops took Peter to Rome and crucified him. He was crucified upside down at his won request for he said, “I am not worthy to be crucified like my Lord.”
The story of sacrifice has been repeated over and over in the history of the church. Christ takes selfish, scared human beings and turns them into giants of heroism. A young boy who seems to be full of trivia goes to war and throws himself on a grenade to save his buddies. We can’t believe it! But Jesus can! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran Pastor who dies in a German concentration camp, did not see his sacrifice as special. Before His capture he had written, “When Jesus calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Sacrifice, he says, is required for us all. Since we do not believe in people we hide this call in our shallow evangelism, but Wayne McDill is right, “God can only work His wonders in a life yielded to Him. When we invite people to a cheap and easy acknowledgment of Christ, we cheat them out of the riches of an abundant life.” Jesus tells us, “Do not hide the demands of the gospel; people will give up everything, including life itself, for Me.”
According to tradition, every one of the Twelve Disciples, except John, died a violent death for Jesus. Father Damien ministered to lepers until he became a leper. Bill Wallace refused to leave China and was murdered and buried in China. Dr. Calude Barlow, fighting a plague in China that killed people at a terrifying rate, infected himself voluntarily with a disease and checked into John Hopkins Hospital so they could develop a cure. The layman lawyer, H.G. Spafford, received the horrible news that the ship carrying his wife and four children had gone down in the mid-Atlantic. A cable came from his wife - “Saved - alone.” Mr. Spafford plunged into deep sorrow as he grieved for his four children. But eventually he came out and wrote the immortal hymn:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way/ When sorrows like sea-billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say / It is well, it is well, with my soul.
We stand back and admire such people from a distance, but Jesus looks at us and says, “You can do the same.”
There is an ancient legend about the might sculptor Michelangelo. He had just fashioned the beautiful figure of an angel out of solid rock. When someone asked him how he did it, he answered, “I see an angel hidden in every stone and I bring it out.” Isn’t this what Jesus does with each of us? He sees in us what no one else sees. He believes things about us that no one else believes. He believes we can be saved. He believes we can serve. He believes we can make unbelievably heroic sacrifices for Him. Our response should be first, “Have thine own way, Lord/Have thine own way” and second, “I can do all things through Christ, Who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13).
