John 21 1 thru 14

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“It Is the Lord!” John 21:1-14 (Second Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2017) After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. 3 Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 4

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. 8 The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. 9

When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. 10

PRAY Today is the second Sunday of Easter on the church liturgical calendar, the week after Easter. Last week was a big Sunday. A lot of people said it was one of the best Sundays they’ve ever had at Grace Bible, and one reason for that might be all the prayer in the week leading up to Easter, especially at those lunchtime services. We asked for God to show up and I think in response to those prayers he did. Another reason was the tremendous sacrificial offering you brought for the poor here in Oxford and in Honduras – we hoped for $12,000 and you gave $24,000. So it was a great Sunday, it was a great day of celebrating the risen Lord Jesus. But now we are a week post-Easter, and we’ve come down off the mountaintop (because you can’t stay there all the time). What should we do? How do we carry the experience of Easter forward into the rest of the year? To answer that question we’re going back to the gospel of John, and studying what happened after the first Easter Sunday. This Sunday and next Sunday we’ll be in John 21 and we’ll look at one of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ on the Sea of Tiberias, or the Sea of Galilee. We’re calling this mini-sermon series “On the Beach with Jesus,” because Jesus meets with the disciples there on the shore of the sea, and I think Jesus is telling us two things through these verses: first, Jesus shows us our post-Easter mission. Second, Jesus shows us how we can

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do it. Our post-resurrection mission, what we are to be doing in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and, second, how we can do it. First, our mission. The disciples are fishing all night on the Sea of Galilee, and they’re having no luck whatsoever. Then Jesus appears and calls out to them from the shore and says, “You’re fishing on the wrong side of the boat – put your nets over the starboard side and then you’ll start catching them.” And even though the disciples don’t know that it’s Jesus, and even though fisherman aren't known for taking kindly to suggestions from people on the shore, they do it anyway. What happens? They catch a ton of fish – they later count them and find they caught precisely 153 fish. And it’s then that John, the beloved disciple, leans over to Peter and says, “It is the Lord!” Now how did John know that it was Jesus on the shore? It was getting to be daylight, but I don’t think it’s because John could see better that he knew it was Jesus. John remembered something, he remembered what happened back when the disciples first met Jesus and began to follow him. In Luke 5, we read how the disciples before they were disciples were plying their trade, fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus walks up to them, with great crowds following him, and he gets into Peter’s boat and asks him to put out a little from shore so he can preach to the crowd from the boat. After he finishes teaching, Jesus tells Peter to let down his nets for a catch. Even though they had fished all night and caught nothing, they do what he says, and what happened? Every fish in the Sea of Galilee jumped into Peter’s net. Then we read this: “For he [Peter] and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.’” Luke 5:9-11. Fast forward three years. John remembered that event and that’s how he knew it was Jesus on the shore. And for two thousand years commentators have pointed out the similarities in the two miraculous catches of fish. They have noted how Jesus ended the first one by saying, “From now on you will be catching men, you will be fishers of men,” and they’ve said that the catch in John 21 is a parable. It really happened, it’s not fiction, but it’s parabolic history. Jesus led the disciples to catch all those fish to remind them of their mission: to go and tell all the world (all the fish in the sea, so to speak) the good news about Jesus Christ. That’s the disciples’ mission in John 21 and it’s our mission today. We are to tell the world the good news about Jesus. It’s called the Great Commission. “ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20a. But how? How is it exactly that we are to do this? It obviously does not mean that all Christians are to be missionaries – that they cross language and significant culture barriers (perhaps move to a different country altogether) to go and tell the good news of Jesus to people who don’t know it. Relatively few Christians are called to that kind of work. By the way, I’ll give you just one test, it’s not the only test but it’s one, for how you can know whether or not you’re called to that

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kind of work. I’ve said several times over the years that I was born in Mississippi, I’ve basically lived all my life in Mississippi, and I don’t want to live anywhere else. If you’ve heard me say that and you’ve thought, “That sounds awful. That sounds boring. I want to live abroad, I want to live among people really different from me (and I don’t just mean moving to Tennessee or North Carolina – but really different),” if that’s you, and you love the Lord Jesus and you love to explain the Bible to other people, then maybe he’s calling you to be a missionary. Just think about it; pray about it. But that’s not most Christians. Most Christians are not called to be full-time, vocational pastors or missionaries. But you still are called to do your part in fulfilling the mission and obeying the Great Commission. How? By opening our lives up to other people. All of us have access to the most powerful evangelistic, missionary tool available: our homes. Whether it’s a dorm room, or an apartment, or a house, or some other dwelling, when you open it up to neighbors, to co-workers, to new friends or old ones, it has a powerful effect on people. People know it’s a big deal to show hospitality like that, they know it’s expensive, they know it takes energy to prepare food and clean and all that, so when you do that it automatically gives you a platform in their lives. It’s what the early church did, and it worked. “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” Acts 2:46-47. But it’s not enough just to open our houses. We must also open our mouths. See, when most people think about opening their mouths for the sake of the gospel they think of going door-todoor, knocking, asking the residents if they have a relationship with Jesus. Or maybe setting up a table in the Grove or on the Square and handing out tracts. Now, if you feel led to do that and if you see fruit from that kind of evangelism, that’s great. But that’s not the only way to open your mouth, nor is it the main way. In the relationships you already have, there are plenty of people who don’t really know the Lord Jesus (they may say they do, but they don’t), and as you are opening your life up to them of course you’ll open your mouth. In other words, you will talk about what you think about, and you will think about what you love. If you really do love the Lord Jesus, then he’s going to be on your mind. As you have people in your home (especially if they aren’t Christians and admit it) you will talk about Jesus. In fact, you will have to fight to not talk about him too much, because you’ll want worse than anything for them to know Jesus. Again, this was how the early church worked. In the second century one of the biggest critics of Christianity was a pagan man named Celsus. The early church fathers felt compelled to write responses to his works because they were so widely distributed. But one of his criticisms of Christianity back then turns out to be something Christians can be very proud of today. Celsus wrote, sneeringly, that Christianity was not growing because the learned, educated, wealthy classes were being convinced. Rather, he wrote that “in private houses workers in wool and leather, and fullers, and persons of the most uninstructed and rustic character [in other words,

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nobodies], not venturing to utter a word in the presence of their elders and wiser masters; but when they get hold of the children privately, and certain women as ignorant as themselves, they pour forth wonderful statements [about their Jesus] ...” All the scholars agree that Christianity spread like wildfire in the Roman Empire and eventually became the world’s largest religion not primarily because of great preaching or missions or doorto-door evangelism, but because of a bunch of nobodies who would not keep their mouths shut while they worked and lived but instead talked with everyone around them about Jesus. Here’s the question I want us to ask: are we doing that? Here I am talking about opening homes and lives and I’ll see this morning a dozen or more people at church I’ve told that I want to have over at our house and we haven’t done it. My guess is that some of us are doing this, but the vast majority are not. It’s not because we don’t want to do it. Why? Second, how we can do it. Can you imagine how worn out the disciples must have been in John 21? Within the course of a week, they experienced the incredible high of Palm Sunday, with Jesus welcomed by the crowds into Jerusalem as the Messiah and they along with him. Then the unimaginable low of Good Friday, Jesus crucified and the disciples scattered. Then the confusion of Easter morning and how the women said Jesus was raised from the dead, and the resurrection appearances at the end of John 20 where Jesus just materializes in a locked room. He has holes in his hands and in his side, but no blood clotted around it. Then Jesus disappears again and apparently leaves them without instructions. And this on top of three years of intensive, itinerant ministry with Jesus. And what does Peter do after all this? I think he throws up his hands and says to the other disciples, “Guys, I’m going fishing – you in?” And they all say, “Yes.” They had to be exhausted. They weren’t commercial fisherman anymore, but to deal with the stress of the previous weeks they went fishing. It was the one thing they could do together that would enable them to relax and take their minds off everything that had happened. Then Jesus shows up on the shore. Of course, he shows up the one time the disciples are taking it easy. Jesus catches them in the act, he catches them fishing. But what does Jesus say? Does Jesus yell at the disciples? Does he say, “You wicked and lazy servants!” Does he say, “What are you doing? Why aren’t you out spreading my message? Why are you right back where I found you three years ago, doing the same thing?” No, he helps them catch a bunch of fish, then he builds a fire on the beach so they can have breakfast, and he lets them eat in peace. He doesn’t even lead them in a Bible study while they eat – they just eat, and relax. Jesus knew the disciples were exhausted. He knew they were worn out. Last week someone said to me, “J.D., you’re always getting on Peter, calling him an idiot.” That may be true, so let the record show that at least one time – here – Peter did exactly as he should have done. Peter was worn out, he rested by fishing, and Jesus by his actions clearly approved. Friends, Christian friends, why aren’t we carrying out our mission? Why don’t we open our homes and lives up more than we do? Might it have something to do with laziness? It might,

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but when I think of our church I don’t primarily think of a bunch of lazy people. Rather, I think of a bunch of people who are going in a million different directions all the time: pulled this way by work, another way by family commitments, another way by school, a fourth by volunteering in the community, a fifth way by our kids’ sports teams, and coming home at the end of twelve or fourteen hour days completely worn out. Here’s why I think we aren’t carrying out the mission: because we are tired. When it comes to work and time commitments, there has never been a busier culture on the planet than ours. We talk a lot about laziness in the United States, but the fact is that in our country over the last twenty years working hours have increased fifteen percent while time spent in leisure activities has decreased thirty percent. We are working more than ever and we are proud of it. Just this past March the Journal of Consumer Research, a peer-reviewed academic journal, published a new study by scientists at Columbia and Harvard in which the authors demonstrated through the study of social media that the new status symbol in the United States is neither wealth nor appearance. The new status symbol of success is being perceived by others as overworked and having no time for leisure. All the social pressures are pushing us to work harder and get ever more worn out. Plus, we live in a time of unprecedented change, which also takes its toll on us. Richard Swenson, a physician and professor at the University of Wisconsin, wrote this: “No one in the history of humankind has ever had to live with the number and intensity of stressors we have acting upon us today … The human spirit is called upon [today] to withstand rapid changes and pressures never before encountered.” He wrote that in 2004, before the advent the smart phone, which most social scientists agree is the single most transformative piece of consumer technology ever invented. Our lives are more complicated than ever. In his outstanding book Reset: Living a Grace-Filled Life in a Burnout Culture, David Murray (and by the way much of what I’ll say the rest of the way comes from this book) writes that as an average American you “have debt, a [spouse], teenage kids, teenage kids’ friends, school sports, in-laws, two cars, a mortgage, insurance premiums, home repairs, car repairs, aging parents, nieces and nephews, a few friends, many enemies, a boss (or five), work colleagues, work conflicts, work meetings, work deadlines, work disappointments . . church meetings, church services, money worries, and on and on and on it goes. The weight [of it all] is piling on…” I mention all that not to give us a pass or an excuse for not being on mission, but for helping us to understand why we aren’t doing what Jesus calls us to do. So, how do we address it? Friends, if you’re here today and you’re a Christian, that means you have the Spirit of God dwelling inside of you. And that Spirit is prompting you, pushing you, guiding you, to perform certain acts of service for the sake of the kingdom. So I think we all want to open our lives and open our mouths for the cause of the Great Commission, but with our busyness, our overwork, our overscheduled lives, we’ve grieved the Holy Spirit. We’ve quenched his fire. You can hinder the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, and being a willing participant in your own exhaustion might be one of the main ways we’re doing it in Oxford.

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But in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, we see four principles that will help us change. I mention them not because I want anyone to feel guilty. The last thing I want is someone walking out of here feeling guilty. I want to give you permission to use these biblical gifts God has given you. He wants you to have them, and I mention them not only because they will help us carry out the mission of the church but also because they will make our lives happier. They are: slack, sleep, Sabbath, and savor. First, slack. In Leviticus 23, we read about the law of gleaning. In ancient Israel, everyone was a farmer. There basically no other occupations. But it was written into the law of Moses that a farmer could not reap all his field – they had to leave the edges and the corners of their field so the poor and the immigrant could come along after the farmer, gather, and have something to eat. So the law of gleaning was in place obviously to help the poor, but it also taught the people of Israel that maximizing productivity, maximizing profits, is not something God is interested in. God would rather his people work at less than one hundred percent capacity, so that they could fulfill the law of love with their neighbors. Fast forward to today: a lot of us are trying to reap, not to the edges of our fields, but all the way out to the edges of our calendars. Every spare hour is scheduled during the day, every night and weekend is booked up as well – usually, if you have kids, with their activities. Most of the stuff on our calendar, maybe all of it, is good. But good is the enemy of the great. These activities aren’t all necessary, and they leave us with no slack, no margin. So when anything goes wrong during the week (a car has to go to the shop, someone in the family gets sick), everything is thrown completely out of whack. And the result is stress, lots of stress. What we must do is build slack into our schedules. It is okay, and I’ll even say biblical, to operate at an 80 percent capacity and leave room for the unexpected. If you think it will take an hour and a half, schedule two hours. If you think a project will take three days, schedule four. And what you’ll find is that you are far less stressed and have more emotional capacity and stamina in to open your life up to others. Second, sleep: Sleep is a gift from God. “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127:2. The Lord Jesus was a man who needed his sleep. We read in Mark 4 that he was so tired he fell asleep in the back of a boat in the middle of a hurricane. We need our sleep, yet almost no one is getting enough of it today. We sleep between one and two hours less per night than people did sixty years ago, and we sleep two and a half hours less than one hundred years ago. The National Institute of Health estimates that Americans would save $16 billion in health care expenses and companies would regain $50 billion annually in lost productivity if we simply got enough sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation is associated with increased risk of infection, stroke, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, infertility, increased hunger (especially a preference for high-calorie, high-carb foods), which in turn leads to obesity.

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The problems with sleep deprivation aren’t limited to physical issues. There are moral consequences as well. I know that I am far more likely to be anxious and angry when I haven’t had much sleep. I can definitely tell by their behavior when my children are tired – can you tell about yours? Bill Clinton once said that every major mistake he ever made coincided with sleep deprivation. Don Carson at one points writes this: “If you are among those who become nasty, cynical, or full of doubt when you are missing your sleep, you are morally obligated to try to get the sleep you need [and I say that not to beat up on the people who aren’t getting enough sleep, but to help you feel like you have permission to get the sleep you need and you want]. We are whole, complicated beings; our physical existence is tied to our spiritual well-being, to our mental outlook, to our relationships with others, including our relationship with God.” And it’s not just a good night’s sleep that’s helpful – naps are good for you, too. One study of world-class violinists found that in addition to sleeping 8.6 hours per night, they spent three hours per week napping. I well remember my dad coming home from work virtually every day in Kosciusko, eating lunch, and taking a twenty minute nap before heading back to his law practice. I grew up thinking that was normal, then got away from it and thought it was unrealistic in today’s world, but I’m learning to change my mind. “I am emotionally less resilient when I lose sleep … For me, adequate sleep is not a matter of staying healthy. It is a matter of staying in the ministry. It is irrational that my future should look bleaker when I get four or five hours sleep several nights in a row. But that is irrelevant. Those are the facts. And I must live within the limits of facts. I commend sufficient sleep to you, for the sake of your proper assessment of God and his promises.” John Piper. Third, Sabbath. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work …” Exodus 20:8-10. Now, pretty quickly, when you talk about the fourth commandment, when you talk about the Sabbath, in some circles you’ll get arcane discussions about what exactly you can and can’t do on the Sabbath – what work is legal and what works aren’t? What day is the Sabbath? I’m not saying those discussions are unimportant, but I’m not going into any of that this morning. All I want to do is point out the wonderful news that one day out of every seven God wants you to take a day off and just rest. Just rest. Don’t go to your job, don’t do any work, don’t go to school, don’t do homework, don’t do housework – don’t even clean – just relax, and take it easy. Plan your schedule so that one day out of seven, you don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to do anything. You can just be. Fourth, savor. Ideally, your Sabbath would be on Sunday, so that you can be with God’s people in your local church for worship. Not always possible, but ideal. And what do you do with the rest of your day? What do you do with some of the other slack in your schedule? Some of it needs to be used to open your life up to other people. But the rest of it can be used to do whatever you want. Do what you enjoy. Ride a bike. Work in the yard. Play cards. Read a book (not a book on productivity, but just a book you want to read for the fun of it). Build something. Draw something. Watch a game. I don’t know what you like to do, but whatever it is take some of this extra time in your schedule and savor life.

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Some of you, especially those of you who are exhausted this morning, whenever you try to do something just for yourself, immediately feel like there’s the voice in your head saying, “You can’t do that – that’s lazy. That’s selfish. You need to be doing something for someone else.” And, of course, we should be serving others. But I do know this: if that voice is all you ever hear on the occasions when you do try to savor life, then I don’t know who it is but it’s not the Holy Spirit. “And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 8:15. Not only will savoring life make it more enjoyable, but it will make you more effective. At one point during the Iraq War, when it was not going well, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs brought in a retired general to see if he had any ideas about how to fix things. And the general said, “Yes, tell George Casey [who was the coalition commander at the time] not to work so hard. All he does is work, and all he ever thinks about is the war. He’s working sixteen hour days, seven days a week, and his capacity to think clearly is compromised because he’s exhausted.” And this retired general went on to compare the live of the generals fighting in Iraq with Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall during World War II. He said that Douglas MacArthur watched a movie every night after supper, and went to bed early. George Marshall took hour long naps after lunch, and still got home at a reasonable hour every day so he could go ride horses. Now, does anyone think Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall were lazy? No! They were trying to literally save the world from totalitarian dictators, for crying out loud, yet they still had time to savor life. Maybe there are a few out there this morning who are thinking, “J.D., dress it up however you want, but you are telling this church to be lazy.” I understand if some feel that way – I probably would have as well at points in my past. But I’m as sincere as I can be when I say that I’m talking about slack, sleep, Sabbath, and savoring because it’s the only way we can effectively carry out the Great Commission. We talked about the Great Commission earlier in the service. But do you remember what is called Great Commandment? “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matthew 22:37-39. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves – but if we don’t know how to love ourselves, how in the world can we love our neighbors? How can we carry out the mission? Friends, self-care is a gospel ministry issue. If generals need to take care of themselves if they are going to fight flesh and blood enemies, how much more do we need to take care of ourselves if we are going to put on the full armor of God and fight but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the high places? We can’t. Of course, there will be seasons of life when we can’t do all these things. If you have a newborn, you won’t get all the sleep you need. If you are in finals weeks you probably won’t

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take a Sabbath. And I know that as I talked about all this some of you thought, “I can’t do that, because my work is always going to be too crazy. I can’t, because my kid’s sports schedule is too crazy.” I know. It will mean changes. It will mean you make less money, and it will mean you’ll have to say “no” more to people, including your kids. It means you will have to really will have to trust God to make up the difference in the things you’re leaving undone. But I don’t think anyone who does it will regret it. Matthew 11:28: “28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Friends, Jesus did not die on the cross and save us from our sins so that we could go through life weary. He came to give us rest. And only if we take that rest can we find the joy of living out the mission of the church. PRAY

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