When You Fall

Well, "Flawed Follower" is the name of our series on the original "Flawed Follower," Simon Peter. My name again is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. And several people asked me this morning, "Isn't it difficult for you to preach if you came in late?" What Mark was mentioning was that one of our pastoral staff died yesterday. Julian Pizarro, our pastor of Spanish ministries, after two weeks in a coma following an accident. And my heart is heavy for Julian, and I've done my share of crying.

But when it comes to whether it's difficult to preach this sermon, I have to tell you, I want to preach this more than ever right now. I want to preach this with all my heart, with all my passion. I've been praying that the Holy Spirit would fill this room during this sermon, and I'll tell you why. Because I know Julian would want me to preach this sermon. Because "Flawed Follower" is a series on the life of Simon Peter, and we've been traveling with Simon Peter from the very first moment that he met Jesus Christ on the shore of a lake.

And we've been through all kinds of ups and downs and kind of little triumphs of Peter, and then followed by immediate pratfalls. It's just been a rollercoaster. And now we get to the moment when Simon Peter meets the resurrected Jesus. And this is what I love of all weekends to be able to preach this sermon, because that's what gives us hope. The resurrected Jesus Christ. That's where our hope is. That's where our hope is in this moment. That's where our hope is forever. Amen, Church?

And the resurrection means that dark days like this don't stop God. The resurrection means that, well, crucifixions don't stop God. Sealed tombs don't stop God. Death doesn't stop God. When all the wheels seem to come off, that doesn't stop God. Maybe in your life right now you feel like things aren't going so good. In fact, it's never been worse. The resurrected Jesus shows us none of that's gonna stop God.

God is always working behind the scenes, and not only do we have promised resurrection hope for our eternal future, we have the resurrection power of Jesus and the promise that in all things, all things, God is actively working them together for good. That's the resurrection promise. Can I hear an amen from the church today? That's the hope I need to hear, and that's the hope you need to.

It all reminds me of, I was reading this week about something I'd heard of but never really investigated before. The Japanese art called Kintsugi. Raise your hand if you've heard of this. Kintsugi. Well, this is fascinating because what they do, and this goes back centuries in Japan, they take broken pottery and instead of just throwing it away, they repair it with gold filament. Molten gold. They put it into the cracks, and this makes the broken pottery actually not only useful but even more valuable than before.

Kintsugi literally means to join with gold. And here's what one of the practitioners, one of the artists says. Listen carefully to this. Instead of throwing it away, we fix it in a way that doesn't pretend it hasn't been broken. Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated. And now the object is dignified, stronger, and even more valuable because of its reinforced golden scars.

And it occurred to me as I was reading about this, and I really went down a rabbit hole learning more about Kintsugi. I've deliberately broken all of our plates at home in order to become a Kintsugi master. But it occurred to me, what a great illustration of how God redeems you. In the hands of the Master, you can come to God with all of your brokenness, and I mean all the wounds that others have done to you, and all the ways you've broken and self-sabotaged your own life, and God can meld you back together and turn what was broken into a masterpiece.

And as we continue our series on the life of Simon Peter, today we get to his Kintsugi moment. But first a quick recap to see what got him here. Three years before the moment that we're gonna look at today, as we saw earlier in this series, Peter's a fisherman. He doesn't know Jesus. He's working the lake. And after a long night of fishing where he has caught nothing, this guy named Jesus, some itinerant preacher Peter doesn't really know, says, "Well, why don't you put out into the deep and broad daylight and cast your nets and try that?"

And Peter's like, "Well, because that doesn't work, but because you say so, we'll try it." And instantly both of the boats are nearly capsized with the weight of the fish that just are catapulting themselves into the net. And Peter's a little freaked out. He says to Jesus, basically, "I don't know who you are, but I know who I am." And he says, "Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man." And Jesus says to him, "Don't be afraid. Follow me."

And maybe Peter's not even sure why he does it, but there's something so intriguing about Jesus that Peter, it says, leaves his nets behind that day and he follows Jesus and he tags along and he listens and he watches and he starts to consider himself to be a follower of Jesus. And as time goes on, he kind of starts to consider himself maybe the best follower of Jesus, maybe the most committed follower of Jesus, and I'm not putting words in his mouth because three years after he starts following, on the night before Jesus is crucified, he gathers all of his followers in an upper room in Jerusalem to have the Seder meal, the Passover, and he tells them all, "I'm going to be crucified and killed and every single one of you will desert me."

And Peter says, "No! Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you." In fact, Peter then says, almost comically, I think, he says, "Even if all these others deny you, I will never deny you." And I always feel like they're going, "Peter, we are literally right here behind you. We can hear what you're saying," but Peter's literally saying, "I am better than all these people. Even if they threaten me with death, I'm not going down."

Well, Jesus is arrested and Peter, after initially running, slinks behind him, kind of running from shadow to shadow and eventually follows him into the courtyard of the high priest where Jesus undergoes his first little trial and he sits with the officers and he warms himself by the fire. And it's by the fire that a servant girl says, "Aren't you one of his disciples?" "No, never heard of the guy." And somebody else says, "I'm pretty sure I saw you." And then he started a curse and swear, "Well, I don't know this man you're talking about."

Now, as we saw last week, the original Greek word when he says, "I don't know this man you're talking about," it starts to curse and swear. The word for curse there is where we get the word "anathematize." Literally, you know what? God damn you to hell! And the blood-curdling part is that most scholars these days believe for a variety of reasons that Peter is saying this of Jesus. He's so panicked to prove that he is not a follower of Jesus, so afraid, just hours after saying, "I'll never deny you, never deny you, never deny you," he points to Jesus and says, "You know what? May God damn him to hell! I don't know him!"

And immediately a rooster crows. And suddenly Jesus' words flash through Peter's mind and Peter is sick to his stomach, "What have I done?" And Peter flees into the night weeping bitterly, and that is the last time we saw Peter. That's where we left him last weekend. He disappears into the shadows. Meanwhile, other disciples of Jesus, because Peter's nowhere to be found, take down Jesus Christ's corpse and lay it in a tomb, and they roll a stone in front of it. Bam! Because he is dead. It's all over.

But the Bible says on the third day following that, some women go to the tomb and they find the stone's been rolled away and the tomb is empty and an angel tells them, "Well, Jesus has risen. Now go tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You'll see him there just as he told you." And I've always wondered why the angel put it that way, right? "Go tell his disciples and Peter." Peter was one of the disciples. I think he said this because Peter wasn't one of the disciples anymore, not in Peter's own eyes. Peter's thinking, "I have completely disqualified myself."

Obviously, if Jesus is alive now and the last thing he heard me say was, "God damn him to hell," guess what he's gonna say to me? Just what I deserve to be damned. So Jesus briefly appears to the Apostles, the disciples, in that upper room which they have locked for fear and everybody else is excited. But what's interesting about these accounts of the risen Jesus in the locked room is Peter doesn't say anything. When's the last time you could have said that about Peter? He hardly says a word. Other disciples are talking, right?

In fact, I love the way the French painter James Tissot painted this in the 1800s. The disciples are all, "Whoa, whoa, yo, it's Jesus, he's back." And there's Peter looking with fear that the other disciples are, "Oh, yay, Jesus is back." And Peter's, "Oh, no, Jesus is back." So some of the disciples go up to the Sea of Galilee where they came from and Jesus isn't there and so after a while Peter says, "I'm going fishing." His old job. I think what's happening here is Peter quits. He says, "Well, I'm clearly, I'm either gonna be demoted, best-case scenario or I'm damned for what I've done." And the other disciples say, "Well, we'll come too."

And so it says they went out into a boat but shades of three years ago, they caught nothing all night. And you know it's funny, I was just thinking, we think of Peter as a fisherman, but can you think of one Bible story where he actually caught some fish without miraculous intervention? I can't think of one. It's like the worst fisherman ever. I'm glad he got another job. So they don't catch anything all night long and in the early morning mist there's a figure that they don't really recognize who calls out, "Hey fellas, caught any fish?"

And the Greek construction is interesting because that's actually a negative. So it's even worse then when you're a fisherman and somebody asks you what you're fishing for, have you caught anything? The way it's constructed in the Greek originally is, "Hey, haven't caught anything, have you?" The disciples shout back, "No!" You can hear the exasperation and then this man on shore says, "Well, try this, try to throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat and then you'll get some." They're like, "Well, that brings back memories of three years ago. Let's try it." And they do and they couldn't haul in the net because there's so many fish in it.

The Bible says that John, one of the disciples, says, "It's got to be the Lord!" And Peter cannonballs into the lake and John writes in his gospel leaving the rest of us to do the heavy work and Peter swims to shore and it says when they got there they found breakfast waiting for them. Fish cooking over a charcoal fire and some bread and I love this, "Now come and have some breakfast," Jesus said. Don't you love that?

I want to help you picture this. Something super cool happened right when we were filming this series. If you're new, this is a book we wrote and an audio book and it ties into a video series. You can get all of this at FlawedFollower.com and all the proceeds go to the church, not to me or anybody else, but something cool happened when we were filming. We were right in the area where this story happens on the northern shore of Galilee and we saw some fishermen and their friends had made a fire on shore to cook a meal for these fishermen just like in this story. What a great way to picture this.

But how much about Jesus does that tell you? At a scene very much like this, the risen Jesus makes breakfast for them and he's telling his flawed followers, "Come on, come on, have some breakfast," and he's telling them three things that he wants them to know and he's telling you these things, three things right now. These are how Jesus is taking the broken pieces that you might have walked in with and this is how he's knitting them together and the first one is this, "I still care for you." Doesn't he communicate that?

When of all the things that the risen Jesus could have done with his resurrection power, what he does is find his shame-filled disciples and he doesn't damn these deserters with like God rays blazing from his eyeballs or something like I might have done. He cooks him some breakfast. "Last time you saw me I was washing your feet. I want to make sure the next time you see me I'm still serving you. How do you like your toast?" Now watch this, in the original language the word for the fire Jesus made is anthracia from which we get the English word anthracite meaning a charcoal fire. Now get this, this is so cool, this word is only used twice in the entire Bible.

The second time is here. The first time it's the word used for the courtyard fire where Peter denied Jesus. Do you get this? Jesus deliberately makes that same kind of fire. Why? Well you know how smells can bring back memories like the smell of coffee equals morning or the smell of popcorn equals movies. For Peter and Thracia a charcoal fire equals the worst failure of his life. It's the scent of failure and I believe Jesus is saying let's redeem that memory.

I envision Peter and Jesus kind of staring into the fire after breakfast and if you've ever been camping or at a beach bonfire you know how sometimes really great conversations can happen just staring around a fire right. You're not even maybe looking at each other but you're kind of poking sticks into a fire and you're chatting. And Jesus asks Peter a very surprising question considering what has happened the last three days. He says do you love me? Times three and we'll get to the text in just a minute but I want you to spend some time around the fire and hear its crackle and smell it and feel its warmth. Jesus made it for you.

Do you hear this question? Have you ever asked anybody else this question? What's the only reason you ever ask anybody that question? It's if you love them. Jesus very vulnerably here is saying I still love you Peter. I still invite you into relationship which is the central invitation to the Bible right to enter a loving relationship with the risen Christ. So here's the text here's exactly how the dialogue goes down. After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" "Yes Lord," Peter replied, "you know I love you." "Then feed my lambs," Jesus told him.

Jesus repeated, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" "Well, yes Lord," Peter said, "you know I love you." "Then take care of my sheep," Jesus said. A third time he asked him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question a third time. I think Jesus is deliberately trying to be provocative asking three times and maybe you're saying yeah why did Jesus ask three times? Why do you think? How many times did Peter deny Jesus? Once for every time he denied Christ and watch this Peter for once does not brag on himself. "Yes Lord, I love you more than anybody. I'm the greatest at loving people in the whole world," right? He says, "Well Lord, you know everything. Everything, you know what I did but you also know I do love you. You know everything about me, you know how I messed up I am but I really do love you." And Jesus says for the third time then, "Peter, feed my sheep. My offer still stands. Let's do this," he's saying. "I still have a plan for you. Stop benching yourself."

And here's how important this was for Jesus to communicate. It's strategic that he chooses a spot like this to reinstate Peter, isn't it? Why didn't Jesus just do this back in Jerusalem right when he appeared to all the disciples at that upper room? He could have done it then. Why didn't he? Because he's meticulously communicating, "Look Peter, look around. I called you out of being a fisherman at this very spot three years ago and now knowing everything that I know about you, I would do it again. In fact, I am doing it again. I chose you then, I choose you still, and I will never unchoose you." I want you to hear that the risen Christ is saying the same thing to you now.

Maybe you're thinking how can Jesus say he'll never unchoose me when I've done some really bad things and I really worry I worry that I've lost my salvation or that God is gonna reject me or just don't belong there. I'm such a flaw, I'm not just a flawed follower, I'm a super flawed follower. Well, I want you to look at this central question again carefully, really focus on this, ready? Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" Say these words out loud with me, "Do you love me?" If you don't understand that this is what Jesus asks, what he always asks, what happens is you substitute other questions and you begin to imagine that he asks, "Why are you such a slacker?" right? "Why aren't you perfect? Why don't you try harder?"

If you look at those lines, that's what many people are expecting to hear when they walk into church. It's some version of this, isn't it? "Why do you all search slackers? That's like the application of every sermon, just go try harder next time, see you next week." I mean this is what you hear in a lot of churches and you know what? It's what you hear at work all the time, right? Essentially, "Do better, try harder, pedal faster." It's what you hear at school, "Do better, try harder, pedal harder, right? Go, go, go." What if what you hear at church is not that? What if instead you hear an echo of Jesus's words? If you really understand that this is what Jesus is asking, that's gonna transform you so much more than a focus on behavior.

I mean think about this. Do you ever really move closer to people continually nagging you to try harder and do better? You probably move away from those people, right? You begin to resent those people and yet that's exactly what happens to people who imagine that this is what they're hearing from God or this is what they're going to hear from church. What if instead of the hammer of judgment when people walk into church they walked in and instead experienced a cloud of Jesus Christ unconditional love and all sufficient grace for those who have failed? Well, that's our prayer for Twin Lakes Church. That's what I want you to sense here and that's what Peter gets from Jesus, right?

This is all a performance-based religion but this is a love-based relationship because on the cross out of love Jesus Christ paid the price for all of those sins and all of that shame. Listen, maybe you feel disqualified. I think I'm just gonna go back to fishing, quit all this Jesus stuff. I can't do it. That's your inner Simon talking. Jesus is saying, "I've been waiting for you. I'm here. The risen Jesus is really here and he says I'm waiting for you to welcome you back with outstretched arms and a delicious breakfast. I still care, I still love you, I still have a plan for you."

Now Jesus has something else to say to Peter and at first glance it sounds pretty grim but really it's such a gift to Peter. Truly, truly I tell you, Jesus says, and that's Jesus for listen up, "When you were young you dressed yourself and walked wherever you wanted but when you're old you're gonna stretch out your hands and somebody else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." You will stretch out your hands that is a euphemism for crucifixion. Why is Jesus telling Peter that he's gonna be crucified? Watch the next verse. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.

Not just the kind of death that Peter would die, the kind of death by which he would glorify God because you know how Peter died? It's not in the Bible but it's one of the earliest historical stories that Christians told each other after the New Testament was finished about 30 years after the story happens. In the mid 60s AD, the Emperor Nero in Rome starts the most severe persecution of Christians yet, horrible just carnage, and one of his prized captives is Simon Peter. He drags this aged follower of Jesus, the leader of the church in Rome, right in front of everybody in a stadium, the circus of Nero, and he says like they said to all the Christians they captured, "Deny Christ and you can go free." And Peter, the same Peter who wilted at the nominal pressure of a teenage servant girl, stares into the eyes of the Emperor of the world and says, "I will not deny him." And he is crucified and by his death he glorifies God.

What Jesus is saying to Peter, and this is why this is a gift, Peter, is saying, "You're going to change. You're not stuck in this endless loop of failure. You vowed to me that you would never deny me and we all know that didn't work out last time, Peter. It will next time." And he says the same thing to you. You are not doomed to the same endless loop of failure. You will learn to stay faithful. Just keep following. Don't let despair get its claws into you and think I'll never be able to change. You can't change and you will change by your proximity to Jesus Christ as you keep following him.

Now think of the meticulous level that Jesus went to arrange this same Lake where Peter was first called, same kind of miracle, same fire where Peter denied Christ. It's like he's saying, "Peter, let me just replay your first calling and your worst falling." And then to wrap it up he says the first two words Peter really felt resonating from Jesus Christ, Jesus said to him, "Follow me." Isn't this so beautiful? The same exact call that Peter heard three years earlier. It shows me up, it really does. Peter, you blew it. Now follow me, follow me.

And what I love about this so much is that follow implies forward movement, right? You don't go follow me and then go backwards. Yeah, you go forward. And this is important because I meet people all the time as a pastor who are haunted by, tortured by their past mistakes. The voice in their head is always self-condemnation. But did you hear one word of condemnation from Jesus Christ to Peter who actually really deserved it? Not one. He's saying, "Don't dwell in the past, that's forgiven. Let's move forward." That'd be a great place to end the story, huh? Wish I could end the story here, but I can't because Peter doesn't.

I always think it's funny how Peter never really seems to read the room or read the moment. It's like let's just fade to black right here, take some steps to follow Jesus, let's end this chapter of John. But instead, this is so classic Peter. He starts to follow Jesus and then it says he turns around and he sees another disciple and it's one of the disciples he'd been arguing with earlier about who was the greatest. And Peter goes, "Well Lord, what about him?" Like I appreciate what you said about how I'm gonna be crucified to glorify God. It's super encouraging, God, thank you so much for that, but what about him? Is he gonna get killed too?"

And Jesus says, "If I wanted him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me." I love this because we wonder that too sometimes, don't we? But how God deals with others is his business. God, well how come they get better stuff when they're worse people? And what about my aunt? What about my grandma? Are they gonna go to heaven? Jesus is like, "You know what? Let me deal with them in grace and truth. The question is will you choose to follow me?"

Now as Mark announced, you know we started this series Flawed Follower with baptisms. We're gonna end it in two weeks with baptisms. If you have come to a point where you want to follow Jesus, I would love to see you baptized. All the details are in your bulletin and on screen as well. But the choice to follow Jesus, I don't want to twist anybody's arms but I want to nudge you just a little bit.

I was talking to Sarah Pizarro, Julian's 17-year-old daughter, and she said she translated into English the Spanish sermon that was the very last sermon Julian preached on October 6th before his accident. And she told me, "René, it has so much more poignancy now that I frame it with his passing, the words he said in that sermon." And I said, "For example?" And she texted me this example. Julian said, "What do I really prefer, a miracle today or eternal life? I love how my life is right now, but I know there's a beautiful eternity. I'm not afraid. I know there's eternal life. God wants us to have eternal life with him."

And so my prayer is let your will be done in my life. You know Julian's passing, as Sarah was saying, reminds us all of the fragility of life. So don't delay. Choose today to say to God, "I'm surrendering to you. I'm turning my life over to you." You know why? Because then your broken pieces get put back together again. Do you remember we started talking about Kintsugi? And you remember what one of the artists said? Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage but the repair is literally illuminated. And that's what happened to Peter, isn't it? Peter's denial and then restoration, that those broken edges were illuminated by the gold of God's grace and that tragedy turned into a testimony and that can happen to you too and all of your broken pieces when you put yourself into the hands of the master and watch how he turns the brokenness of your life into a masterpiece.

Trent actually wrote a beautiful song about this. It started as a prayer about this very thing to Jesus Christ and I'm gonna invite him and the musicians back. They're going to close with that song. But as they prepare, I'd love to give you a chance to put your broken life into the master's hands. Would you pray with me? Let's bow in prayer with our heads bowed. I just want to invite you to admit to pray a simple prayer, "I put my broken life into your hands, Jesus. Maybe for the first time I choose to follow you, to believe in you and receive you as my Lord and as my Savior. Thank you for your forgiveness bought on the cross. Thank you for the redemption and the promise of resurrection."

And if you're making this decision for the first time, I pray that you'll follow Jesus in baptism. Heavenly Father, thank you for the power of the resurrected Christ. Again, we pray for continued resurrection comfort for the whole Pizarro family and we ask for all of us, make a masterpiece of all of our broken pieces by your power. In Jesus' name, amen.

I don't know, I'm not sure where this road is going. I choose which path to take even though I feel alone. I am not forsaken. Help me, Jesus, help me walk by faith. Could it be that you knew all along? Could it be that your wisdom is strong enough to bridge this impossible spell? I believe that you can. It's your plan that you even a masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece out of me, out of me, out of me. Take my fears, take my doubts, take my heart's frustration. Take my life, I surrender all 'cause I know that you knew all along.

And I know that your wisdom is strong enough to bridge this impossible spell. I believe that you can. It's your plan that you even a masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece. Yeah, you know then you do what you do. It's a beautiful masterpiece, a masterpiece. You're making a masterpiece out of me, out of me, out of me. You're making a masterpiece out of me.