26-0830a - Detailed Summary

Jim thanked Roger for the lengthy reading and also thanked John. He explained that he had been up late the night before and early that morning working on the lesson, and in his haste he had forgotten his bowl of heart medications. Those medicines, he said, regulate a very dangerous heartbeat. Joking with Kevin earlier, he warned the congregation that if they saw him suddenly freak out it would be his defibrillator going off, and they should not touch him.

Jim announced that the morning’s lesson was titled “Peter’s Recipe for Christian Growth.” He said he would be talking about his favorite character in the Bible, Peter. Peter is his favorite because Jim believes there is a little bit of Peter in all of us. Peter was a man who was greatly flawed, just as Jim considers himself greatly flawed, and God was able to use Peter to do great things. That fact gives hope that God can also use ordinary, flawed people in His ministry. More importantly, Peter was a perseverer. He overcame. He was a man who tried and tried again, suffered failures, but kept trying. He persevered over personality flaws and bad decisions and finally became the wonderful leader in the fledgling church that Jesus wanted him to be. Jim said they would look at Peter’s life a little and at some of the important lessons he has for the church in his short letter.

The apostle Peter loved the Lord’s church and could tell that the times in which he was living were dangerous and becoming increasingly more evil. Being both an apostle and an elder, he felt an urgency to feed the church the Word of God, instill in them the basic knowledge of Christ, and warn them of dangers the church would soon face from outside. He also warns the church about dangers inside from false brethren. The letter is only three chapters long, Jim said, and is worthy of reading and very eye-opening.

Jim sketched the historical background. In Rome, Emperor Claudius persecuted the Jews heavily and expelled them from Rome in 50 AD. His successor Nero, after beginning what Jim called his “fiddle lessons,” persecuted Christians after the fire of 64 AD. As the year 67 AD approached—the year commonly thought to be the year of Peter’s martyrdom—Peter may have sensed that his time was nearly up. He may have reflected on the words Jesus spoke to him on the shores of the Sea of Galilee: “Feed my sheep.” Those words may have inspired this last letter to the church, the letter known as 2 Peter. Jim then proposed looking first at what led to those words from Jesus.

As prophesied in Zechariah 13:7—“O sword, awake against my shepherd and against the man who is my associate, says Yahweh of hosts. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered”—Jesus was struck, went to the cross and died, and all the disciples scattered after His arrest. Jesus had also made predictions about Peter’s behavior. After they scattered, John and Peter met up and followed Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest’s house. John, who apparently knew the staff there (Jim suggested he had probably sold them fish), went in with Jesus, while Peter had to wait outside in the courtyard. Peter found a fire and stayed by it. That was where Peter’s love and devotion to Jesus were tested.

After Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, He showed Himself to many believers as proof of the resurrection. As the good shepherd, He sought out His scattered sheep. On His third appearance to the disciples He found seven of them, including Peter, at Peter’s home base of Capernaum. They were fishing on the Sea of Galilee and had caught nothing after spending most of the day and all night at it. Early in the morning a voice from the shore asked, “Children, haven’t you any fish?” They answered no. The visitor told them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat and they would find some. When they did, they caught 153 large fish. The apostle John recognized the miracle as a second version of an earlier fish miracle and said, “It’s the Lord.”

As a point of interest, Jim noted that the three main fish species in the Sea of Galilee are carp, barbel (called thyme), and tilapia (called mushk), and that carp and barbel there average about 15 pounds. Multiplying 153 large fish by 15 pounds yields a very large haul. When Peter heard that it was the Lord, he jumped into the water, grabbed the net, and dragged it across the sand onto shore—more than a ton, over 2,000 pounds of fish. Jim contrasted that with the difficulty he and Wally once had dragging a 50-pound salmon out of Johnson Creek, concluding that Peter was a strong man.

On the shore Jesus already had a fire going and fresh baked bread waiting. They put some of the fish on the fire and ate breakfast together. Nobody had to ask whether it was the Lord; they knew. Jesus then had unfinished business with Peter.

After breakfast Jesus asked Peter three questions. First: “Simon, son of John, do you agape love me more than these?”—probably pointing to the other disciples. Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I phileo love you.” Jesus replied, “Feed my lambs.” A second time Jesus asked whether Peter agape-loved Him. Peter again answered that he phileo-loved Him, and Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” A third time Jesus asked, this time using phileo: “Do you phileo love me?” Peter was deeply hurt that Jesus asked a third time and replied that the Lord knows all things and knows that he phileo-loves Him. Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Jim inserted the Greek terms to distinguish the words for love. Agape love, as Steve had mentioned in class that morning, is godly, God-like love, not merely an affectionate feeling. Agape love can be commanded, as Jesus did in the upper room on the night He was betrayed when He commanded the disciples to love one another. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 gives the textbook definition: love is patient and kind; it does not envy, boast, or act proudly; it is not rude, self-seeking, or easily angered; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth; it always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres; love never fails. Peter answered Jesus only with phileo love, which the Greeks described as affection toward another or being fond of someone. Jim was careful not to degrade phileo love, but to note the difference.

What the exchange shows, Jim said, is that Jesus wanted to gauge whether Peter was now humble after what had happened only days before. In the upper room on the night of the betrayal, Jesus announced that one of them would betray Him and then revealed that they would all be offended at Him, fall away, and abandon Him. He quoted Zechariah 13 about the shepherd being struck and the sheep scattering. Peter, in his usual boastful manner, made great claims of loyalty even to imprisonment and death, and worse, dishonored his fellow disciples by saying that even if all should fail Jesus, he himself would never fail. Pride precedes the fall. After throwing the other disciples “under the bus” with that arrogant, prideful attitude of putting himself above their devotion, that is what Jim believes Jesus was gauging by asking three times whether Peter loved Him.

Jim believes Jesus was not restoring Peter at that shoreline moment but was making him publicly apologize to the other disciples. The restoring, in Jim’s view, had already taken place. Jesus had appeared to Peter alone, as inferred by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:5, and the purpose of that private visit was most likely to restore Peter to the fold. Like a good shepherd tending the injuries of a wounded sheep and carrying it back for healing, Jesus first healed Peter of the emotional damage he suffered when he denied Jesus and realized what he had done. Peter had been despondent and had run away to the point that it could be said he fell away, just as Jesus had told them and Zechariah had prophesied. Peter’s denial of Christ was just as intense as his earlier affirmation of loyalty in the upper room.

Jim asked the congregation to listen to Peter’s third denial in the high priest’s courtyard. After about an hour had passed, another person confidently affirmed that Peter too was one of them, because his accent gave him away as a Galilean. Peter then began to curse and swear, saying he did not know the man and did not know what they were saying. Immediately the rooster crowed, and as it was crowing Christ turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered the word of the Lord, that before the rooster crowed he would deny Him three times. Peter went out and wept bitterly. Jim asked whether any of the men present had ever wept bitterly, observing that it takes a great deal to make a man go out and weep that way. Peter was broken.

The Lord knew how Peter would react to failing Him by denying Him. Jesus had intimated this fall in the upper room, told Peter he would deny Him three times, and added that He had prayed for Peter that his faith should not fail, and that when he had returned he was to strengthen his brethren. Jesus knew Peter was going to fall away and would have to return. Peter fell away and was in a fragile state, but he had an advocate in the Lord, who had prayed that his faith would not fail under such emotional turmoil. Peter was going to be an integral part in getting the Lord’s will underway and would have much work to do strengthening the brothers who looked up to him. He was a role model and integral in getting the Lord’s church going. On the day of Pentecost he would give the very first public sermon. By asking those three questions in front of the other disciples, Jesus was gauging Peter’s humility to see whether he was finally in a state of mind in which Jesus, as the potter, had molded him into the leader He wanted him to be, with the right attitude.

Right after asking Peter three times if he loved Him, Jesus prophesied about Peter’s future. In John 21:18-19 He said that when Peter was young he used to dress himself and walk wherever he wanted, but when he was old he would stretch out his hands and another would dress him and carry him where he did not want to go. John notes that Jesus said this signifying what kind of death Peter would die to glorify God, and then told him, “Follow me.” Jesus was foretelling that Peter would die by crucifixion: when young he could come and go as he pleased, but when old he would be taken, stretched out, and bound to the lumber of a cross. He would die a slow, excruciating death as a martyr for Christ. Love and commitment for a cause will see a person through martyrdom, even though nobody wants to die, not even for a cause. Jim pointed to Jesus Himself, who in Gethsemane fell face down and prayed that if possible the cup might pass from Him, yet not as He willed but as the Father willed. Jesus did not want to die; no human wants a terrible death. But for the cause they are willing, and that is what Christ did for the benefit of all mankind, to remove sin and the guilt of breaking God’s law. Likewise Peter had to face martyrdom after a life well spent serving God in the church. Seeing the day of his death approaching most likely prompted his second letter. He was sober-minded and focused on what was important.

Though short compared with some other New Testament letters, 2 Peter is full of wonderful information for the church. Peter was not only an apostle responsible for the church as a whole; he was also an elder in the church that was his home base, somewhere in Asia Minor. As a shepherd he had a small flock of his own. Jesus had told him to feed His lambs and feed His sheep. The Greek word for “feed” in those first charges is bosko—not, Jim joked, the chocolatey syrup added to milk—but fodder, the dry hay or grass one feeds an animal in one’s care. The shepherd’s, or elder’s, responsibility is to provide the lambs and sheep something to eat: the Word of God, milk for the lambs or meat for the sheep. It is important for the elder to know what the flock needs. To the young one does not talk about righteousness or types and antitypes; it will go over their heads and they cannot make application. They need the elementary teachings of Christ mentioned in Hebrews that morning. As another point of interest, in the third charge, “feed my sheep,” the word is not bosko but poimaino. Those who study elders know that the word for shepherd or pastor is poimen. Poimaino means to tend the sheep as an elder: to rule over, look out for, feed, and guide. That is Peter’s role and the role of any elder. Jim thanked the congregation for allowing the side note.

Peter understood the importance of balancing the message in both of his letters. He has both milk and meat in them, and that is probably how he spoke to the people in his own church: elementary teachings of Christ for new Christians and meat for those who had been in the Lord’s church for a while. That style of writing and preaching should be considered by ministers, elders, and teachers alike. Peter worked the elementary teachings into his letters. Those teachings, Jim said, are repentance from acts that lead to death (he phrased it as “repentance from accidentally to death”), faith in God, instruction about baptism, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment—the six basic teachings Paul lists in Hebrews 6:1-2 that all need to know. He asked whether the hearers knew those basic teachings. Paul had to admonish the recipients of Hebrews because they had stagnated in their learning, stalled out, and become bench warmers. Paul wanted to go on teaching them about Melchizedek—not only righteousness but types and antitypes—but they were not able to handle the meat. They needed someone to teach them the elementary teachings all over again; they needed milk, not meat. The point for the congregation is that in the study of God’s Word one must not stall out or think one knows it all. One must continue and progress. Jim said he had been in the Lord’s church for forty years and still kept finding new nuggets of gold. They are there; one just has to look.

It is like Peter’s words in his second letter: until the day dawns and the light clicks in one’s head. A person can read something a hundred times, and on the hundred and first time something suddenly clicks and makes sense. The brain makes connections; the Spirit says to look here and compare that, and great application follows. One becomes a more knowledgeable Christian and can apply the truth in life. Throughout the first chapter of Peter’s letter everything is tied to knowledge. The grace and peace received from God are tied to the knowledge gained by studying God’s Word. There is value for a new Christian in learning those elementary teachings of Christ—Jim said he would probably do a study on them down the road—and by Peter’s own words the mature in Christ need to hear those elementary teachings on a regular basis as well.

Further down in 2 Peter 1:12-15, Peter says he will always remind them of these things even though they know them and are firmly established in the truth they now have. He could only be talking there to mature Christians who can eat meat. What he is talking about, Jim said, they would see later that evening in part two of the lesson. The point is that even the sheep, not only the lambs, need to hear the basics over and over again to prevent stagnation. Those who have heard basic teachings about faith and baptism many times may sit there thinking they know it like the palm of their hand. Jim urged them to suffer through it and humble themselves; the light bulb might go off and they might learn something they had been overlooking. No one should ever think they know it all. There is great value and depth to the Word of God, and Peter brings that out. Peter thought it right to refresh their memory as long as he lived in the tent of this body, because he knew he would soon put it aside as the Lord Jesus Christ had made clear to him, so that after his departure they would always be able to remember these things. Peter wants believers to know the basics even if they think they know it all and could put their spiritual life on cruise control or autopilot and just putter along. There is no such thing as cruise control or autopilot in Christianity, especially when it comes to gaining knowledge. God always wants His people to know about Him, to seek Him out, to dig as if digging for treasure, finding the pearl in the field, buying the field, and making it their own. That is how one makes faith one’s own: one has to dig and explore God’s Word.

When believers are learning and growing in knowledge they have to put all of it into practice. There is a methodology to gaining knowledge and putting it into practice. God then blesses with more grace and more peace. Why does He give more grace to people who are trying to learn the Word of God? Because as they put it into practice they are going to be tested. God will permit certain things to happen in life that will challenge faith. Instead of throwing a hissy fit about how cruel and unkind life is and asking why this is happening, one must buck up and become mature, understand that at that moment one is being tested, and then say, using an old cliché, “I don’t like it, but what would Jesus do?”—and then do it. Christians are little Christs; that is what the name means. It began as a mockery of those who believed in Jesus—“look at the little Christians, the little Christs”—and they turned it around and took it as a badge of honor and began calling one another Christians in the first century. At least, Jim said, the light is showing and Christ is seen in the face now to those mockers.

Jim acknowledged that he was way off track and way over time. They would pick up that evening and finish part two. He offered the invitation: if anyone needed the prayers of the saints or any request filled, they would be glad to do that. Hearers could come forward as the congregation stood and sang the invitation song together.