How to be a Committed Christian Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to be a Committed Christian Part 2. He will be reading out of John 21:15-25.

We will put everything else above Jesus. We’ll put out yard signs, and we’ll go door -to -door. We’ll do all these things for a politician. But you asked somebody to come to church on Sunday night. You asked them to come to a prayer meeting on Wednesday night.

You’re asking too much. Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders from The Open Door Church, and we welcome you to our Hope Worth Having broadcast. We’re excited to be able to join with you today as we study the word of God.

And today we’re going to be in John chapter 21, and we’re going to be talking about how to be a committed Christian. You know, we live in a world where there are so many people who are uncommitted, or maybe they have drifted in their walk with God.

And as we see how Jesus interacts with Peter and how he restores him, you and I are going to see how God wants us to be all in fully committed believers following him. So let’s grab our Bibles and let’s begin our study today.

Jesus says, do you love me? More than these. In the Greek, it is the Greek word agape. Unconditional. Love. Supreme. Divine. Love. Do you love me? Number one. Do you love me? I’m your number one. Love in your heart.

Is that the way it is, Peter? Then he goes on. In verse 16, Simon, son of Jonas, love is thou me? We get annoyed when people repeat themselves, don’t we? We get annoyed when people keep asking us the same question, but Jesus said to Peter, do you love me again?

Again, the Greek word agape. But Jesus is not done. He asks him again. Again, he says in the third time, verse 17, Simon, son of Jonas, love us thou me? There is a distinct change in Jesus’s question.

For he had been asking Peter, do you agape love me? And finally, the third question is Peter, do you phileo love me? In the Greek language, there are four different types of words that are used to describe love and phileo being that brotherly love.

You’re familiar with Philadelphia, which is the city of brotherly love, at least it used to be, amen? I mean, I’m not against you if you’re from Philly, okay? And I don’t want you to hurt me after church, but I’m just saying that it was designed to be this city and it came from the idea of brotherly love.

And that’s why it’s called Philadelphia. And so Jesus uses that Greek word phileo, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? even at the level of brotherly love. Now let’s look at Peter’s answers to all three of these questions.

For when Jesus asked him in verse 15, son of Jonas, love us thou me more than these, here’s what he said. He said unto him, yes, Lord, you know that I love thee. Jesus said, Peter, do you agape love me?

Peter said, yes, Lord, you know that I filet O love you. That’s why Jesus asked him again. Peter, do you agape love me? He saith unto him, yes, Lord, you know that I filet O love you. Every time Jesus asks Peter, do you love me at the agape level?

Peter’s response was filet O. I love you at the brotherly level. Now it wasn’t that Peter didn’t love him at the agape level. It was that Peter was struggling to say that based upon his actions, based upon the fact that he had just denied him.

Peter no longer was this brash, bold person who just was out there saying anything. And the first thing that popped in his head, but now he was being humbled. He had been humbled. And now his heart was breaking.

And now Jesus invites him to dinner. And right in front of everybody, he says, Peter, do you agape love me? And Peter knows these guys know his life. And Jesus knows his life. And he’s like, I really can’t say that.

But Jesus, you know, I filet O love you. And so Jesus says the third time, do you filet O love me? Do you filet O love me, Peter? And Peter says, he was grieved, the Bible says in verse 17, because he said unto him the third time, love us that and he said unto him, Lord, that I knowest all things.

Do you see Peter looking at Jesus? Jesus, you know me. You know my scars. You know my weaknesses. You know where I failed you, Jesus. You know how I dropped the ball in the moment of pressure and temptation.

You know all things, Jesus. You know every heart. You know every person. You know if people are being real with you. You know if people are faking. You know. And he’s saying, Jesus, I love thee. I filet all of you.

I filet all of you. And all Peter is doing is saying, look, I just wanna be honest with you, Jesus. I’m not the man I should have been. I’m not this guy who could stand in front of thousands and defend you.

I’m not this guy who said that I will never ever deny you or betray you, I’m not this guy who would go to the ends of the earth for you, because when it came down to it, you know, Lord, that I failed the test.

And that’s why you and I can identify with Peter, because we’ve been there and we’ve done that, right? I know some of you are better spiritually than me and others, and maybe you have lived a perfect Christian life, but for the rest of us that are real and honest before God, we are very much like Peter in that we don’t want to overstate the reality of what we’re doing.

What we have done and experienced. And so we back away, and I want you to note what Jesus does in this process as He is helping Peter to come to grips with loving Jesus more than anything else. So we back up into verse 15.

And after Jesus said, Peter, do you agape love me? And Peter said, I filet all of you. What did Jesus say? Feed my lambs. And when we come to verse 16, he said again, Simon, son of Jonas, do you agape love me?

He said unto him, Lord, you know I filet all of you. And he said, feed my sheep. And then he said unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest, or filet all of me? Peter grieved, Lord, you know everything.

You know everything. And you definitely know I filet all of you. You know I definitely filet all of you. And he said, feed my sheep. There may have been many times in our life that our love for Jesus has failed.

And that in the moment of trial and temptation we have struggled, we have floundered, and we have failed. But there is a clarion call to each of our hearts from our Savior that continues to ask us this question, do you agape love me?

And you may feel like, pastor, I could never love Jesus like I should. And I would say to you, that is a wonderful, humble, self -awareness answer. And I’m glad you’re there. But I want you to strive to grow in your love in 2020.

I want you to go from filet -o -love to agape -love. And here’s how I want you to do it. I want you to do it by ministering out of the love that you have for God. For whatever love you have, at whatever level you have, that you in your heart would strive to grow that love and to strive to show that love in how you minister to other people.

For what Jesus is doing in recommissioning Peter and the disciples is he is helping them to understand that their love for God is the primary motivation for their service for God. And that Jesus does not give up on us when we don’t always show the max love for him as we ought.

And he does not always kick us to the curb when we have failed him and when we have come to the point in the moment of pressure that we have dropped the ball. But there is a savior who says, let’s regroup, let’s huddle, let’s get together, let’s fellowship, and let’s again work on that love that you have for me and that as you grow in your love for me, that’s how you will grow in your ministry to others and that this love for God will be what motivates you to stay at it for the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the bottom line is we do what we do because we love him. If you do what you do for any other reason than that you love Jesus Christ. you will fail. This is where Peter had to get to, for Peter could no longer be motivated by his self -ambition.

He could no longer be motivated by his desires to be this strong leader. He could no longer be motivated by his desire to overturn the Roman government. He could no longer be motivated to be a part of this group and band of disciples who somehow were going to change the Jewish religion and the Jewish system and they would help usher in the coming king who would sit on the throne of David.

This could not be his motivation. His motivation had to be pure love for God and a growing love for God. Though it was never all that it should be, but praise God, it was something. And praise God, it was growing and developing and Peter was striving to be more of what he should be in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So when we make this statement to you that you should love Christ more than anything else, we recognize, as Jesus did with Peter, that not all of us are where we ought to be. And the truth is that none of us are where we should be.

And we all have shortcomings and we have all failed. And yet Christ is still, he is still calling us to feed his sheep. He is still calling us to minister on his behalf. He is still calling us to serve him out of our growing love for Jesus Christ.

And this is where I would challenge you that you would have a love that will not stop growing in Christ. Number two, how to be a committed Christian. It is to sacrifice everything for Christ. We come to verse 18.

And Jesus continues his discussion with Peter. And he says to Peter, “‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, “‘When thou was young, thou girdest thyself, “‘and you walked whither thou wouldest.'” Meaning you went wherever you wanted to.

“‘But when you will be old, “‘thou shall stretch forth thy hands, “‘and another shall gird thee, “‘and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.'” In these sets of verses, in verse 18 and partly of verse 19, Jesus is revealing to Peter not only his ministry, but his death.

He is saying to Peter, “‘Do you really love him?'” me I want you to do this if you love me Peter feed my lambs if you love me I want you to feed my sheep if you love me Peter I want you to minister on my behalf but listen Peter there’s a cost there’s a cost there’s a cost Peter and you must be willing to sacrifice everything for me you must be willing to understand that you will one day have to die for me you will have to die and as a young boy Peter you went and did whatever you wanted but one day someone will grab you and they will take you where you don’t want to go and tradition has that Peter was crucified but unlike Jesus he was crucified upside down because of his commitment and his loyalty to Christ.

Peter sacrificed the ultimate, his very life. Jesus doesn’t call all of us to die a martyr’s death, but he does call us to all sacrifice for him. For Jesus said we must be willing to take up our cross, and it is a cross of self -denial.

It is a cross of sacrifice. It is a cross of death to self. It is a cross that recognize that living for Jesus Christ is not always easy, and that sometimes people will abandon us because of our faith, and sometimes we will find ourselves in the most difficult situations because of our faith, but we must be willing to sacrifice everything if we’re to be committed as a Christian.

Peter was to die a martyr’s death, but his death, according to Jesus, would bring glory to God. The Apostle Paul understood this in Acts 21, verse 13, when he said, I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus are you there yet?

Are you there yet where your commitment to Christ has come to the point that you are willing to pay the ultimate price for Jesus Christ? That you would give your very life for him. Jesus said in Matthew 10, verse 38, he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.

What would you give up for Jesus? Would you give up? your comfortable life? Would you give up the conveniences of life? I tell you that if there were no padded pews and no heat going this morning, how many of you would come to church again?

Can we be real? That if we didn’t have this and if we didn’t have that, how many of us would be willing to gather on Sunday if the government said it’s illegal now for you to gather on Sundays or any time?

How many of us would still meet underground out of sight, would meet together to learn the Word of God? Now I’m gonna hit you right where it’s gonna hurt. Are you okay? I want you to know I’m gonna say this right out of the gate so you don’t get everybody being upset with me.

Okay? And I understand what Jesus said when He taught in John chapter 6 and they said these things are hard sayings and they no longer followed Christ. But I am convinced, let me say this first before I say that, that I love America and I appreciate our Constitution.

But I am convinced that Americans would do more to sacrifice for their Second Amendment right than they would for their faith in Jesus Christ. I mean I talk to Christians and when I say something about sacrificing for Christ, you know, they kind of get distant, despondent, fidgety, anxious, don’t really want to talk about it.

But if I bring up, they’re coming after your guns, you talk about bringing out passion in people. You talk about people getting fired up. As one man said, they’ll cry it out of my dead hands. Now listen, I’m for the Second Amendment, so don’t come after me.

But I want to tell you something, what’s more important than America, the Constitution, and the Second Amendment, it is Jesus Christ. And I sometimes don’t understand how we get our loyalties out of line and how we will put everything else above Jesus and we’ll put out yard signs and we’ll go door to door and we’ll do all these things for a politician.

But you asked somebody to come to church on Sunday night. You asked them to come to a prayer meeting on Wednesday night. Pastor Mike, you’re asking just a little bit too much out of us. You asked people.

Would you teach a Sunday school class? Would you serve in the church? Would you help us over in this ministry or that ministry? We don’t got time for that. We can drive our kids all over the state of Pennsylvania for basketball, for football, for softball.

Am I starting to hit home? But bless God, we’re not driving across Chambersburg because the traffic’s too bad and the weather’s too bad to take our kid to Sunday school, to take our kid to Awana. You’re asking a little bit too much out of us, Pastor Mike.

That’s what I’m trying to say, church, is this, that you say you want to be a committed Christian, but you won’t sacrifice anything for Jesus. You will only do what is convenient and what is comfortable, and as long as everything is convenient and comfortable, yes, Pastor Mike, we’ll come to church.

If you make decisions we like, we’ll come to church. If you have the music we like, we’ll come to church. If you say what we like, we’ll come to church. But see, church, that’s not what it means to follow Jesus.

Not what it means. And God is calling us to be willing to sacrifice for Him. See, you want enough Jesus to fix your marriage. You want enough Jesus to get you out of hell. You want enough Jesus so you can be, quote, blessed.

You want enough Jesus so you can get this or that. But what if Jesus called you to a different country? And what if He called you to sacrifice it all, to walk away, and to go be a missionary in another country?

Are you with me? Sacrificing everything for Christ. Isaiah said, hear my Lord, hear my, hear my Lord. Hear my, are you there yet? Are you there? My final point, and I know that you’re excited about this, but if we’re going to be a committed Christian, we need to focus on following Christ.

Look at verse 22. After explaining to Peter what his ministry would be and that he would die, here’s Peter’s response. You know, it just gets me. It just shocks me how people respond to Jesus. After saying, like you think that there’d be a little bit of, I’m stunned.

I’m shocked. But this is Peter’s response. If I will, that he will tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Now why would Jesus say that? Look at verse 21. Because Peter seeing him sayeth to Jesus, Lord, what shall this man do?

Now who did Peter see? Peter saw John. John. And Peter, having heard about how he’s going to die for Christ and be a martyr, and that he is going to have this ministry where he’s going to have to sacrifice everything, even his own life, his response to Jesus says, well, what about John?

It’s kind of like our kids. Have you ever, you know, like with your kids, you know, you tell Johnny to go to bed? Well, what about, but Fred, what about my brother, Fred, that our kids, they’re like, if I have to go to bed, he has to go to bed.

I was driving the bus the other day and I made one kid get into another seat because he was causing a havoc. And he said to me, well, what about so and so? And I said, don’t worry about them. And he said, well, that’s not fair.

And I said, life’s not fair. Praise God, welcome to it. I mean, these kids riding the bus with Pastor Mike, they’re in trauma. You need to pray for them because Pastor Mike is just getting them a dose of reality and they’re struggling with it.

They’ve been pampered and cup caked all their life. And they don’t know what to do with this guy who doesn’t care what their emotions and feelings are. But what is Peter’s response? Well, what about John?

What about John? And I want you to notice verse 22 again. What is that to thee? What is that to thee? We’re to be followers of Christ. We’re to follow Christ. We’re to take care of our own business. We’re to stay focused on our mission.

But you say, well, what about so and so? And what about this person? And what about that person? And why aren’t you doing it this way to them, Jesus? What’s that matter to you? You see, that’s the problem.

Following Christ means total focus on what Jesus has for us. He may not call you to give your life, but he may call you to walk across the street and reach out to your neighbor. He may not call you to another land, but he may ask you to teach a Sunday school class.

He may not call you. to do something so extreme, but what he is calling us to do is that we would follow him and that we would be willing to do what it takes and not worry about what everybody else is thinking.

What is it to you? What is it to you? Consider that question this morning. What is it to you? You say, well, you know, other people have failed me, pastor. What is that to you? Who are you looking at?

Who are you looking at? Who are you following? Are you following man or are you following Jesus Christ? Well, other people, they’re hypocrites. What is that to you? What does that matter to you? Who are you following, my friends?

I mean, are you telling me that if everybody in America quit following Jesus, that you’re done too? I mean, are you saying that unless the majority is with you, you’re not going for God? What does it matter to you, what John is doing?

Peter, what does it matter to you, what his future is? What does it matter to you of his failures or lack of failures? What does it matter to you, Peter? The point is that each of us have to follow Christ.

And not get distracted on other people. What’s it matter? What’s it matter? Well, I’ve been hurt. What’s it matter? Jesus was hurt. Well, people have let me down. What’s it matter? People let Jesus down.

Well, people gossip about me. What’s it matter? People gossiped about Jesus. Jesus, you’re a follower of Christ. What God is calling us to do is to sacrifice everything. If others have failed you, you cannot let that distract you from serving God.

If others have a different path in their journey of faith, you cannot let that bother you in serving Christ. If others have different positions and talents, you cannot let that shake you from following Jesus Christ.

Church, get your eyes on Jesus. Stay focused on him. Quit comparing yourself with other people and be thankful for all that God has for you. And if he calls you to sacrifice something, do it with great gratefulness and love towards the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here’s what Jesus says. If I will that he tarries till I come, what is that to you? Follow thou me. Well, Peter gives us a great picture of the life of a believer. You know, we’re up and down. We’re wrestling with our weaknesses and we’re dealing with the struggles of life.

But what’s so beautiful is ultimately Jesus wants to know, do you love me? And if you do love me, then get back at it. And we have all the excuses of why we can’t, but Jesus has all the reasons why we can.

As we walk close to Him, then God can use us to be that person that is making an impact for His glory. We certainly appreciate you being with us. Thank you for taking time to be a part of this ministry.

And we want to remind you that in Christ, there is hope worth having.