John 21:18-25 "Follow Me!"

Praise to the Sovereign King

Once again, that's absolutely beautiful to be able to sing those kind of songs together as a church. I think they're absolutely gorgeous and God-glorifying in those ways. Today we are going to be, since last week, Brother Steve did some triumphal entry texts with us and started talking about things.

Palm Sunday, the Passion Week, and Finishing the Gospel of John

Today is what would be normally the Sunday that people talk about those things with this being Palm Sunday. And it's important to remember that from the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ to His crucifixion, to His burial and resurrection, all happened within the timeframe of seven days.

And so next Sunday will be what's the Easter Sunday or the Resurrection Sunday, the day that we'll be paying close attention to Jesus Christ being the firstborn of the dead. And so we'll be focusing on those things next week.

But this Sunday is quite a special Sunday to myself as we are going to be finishing the Gospel of John today. So let us pray about this and pray over these things and then we'll read the text and we'll talk a little bit more about this.

So let us just pray. But we'll be in John 21, verses 18 through 25 to finish out for the Gospel of John. So Lord God, what a privilege and blessing it is for each one of us here, Lord, to have walked along as a church, to walk along as a family, to walk together as a body, Lord, to walk together as loved ones in this wonderful and blessed text, Lord.

God, I thank you for every word that you have uttered in this text, every word that has been recorded for our benefit in this text, Lord. And God, I just pray that we would not only hear these words, Lord, but that we would heed them, that we would apply them, that we would seek to know you better through these, Lord.

And God, I would pray that we would recall every verse from chapter one to verse one, Lord, all the way to 21, 25 in here, Lord. God, I just pray that those words would be in our minds, that they would bless us in our conversations with the unconverted, Lord, that we would even be sanctified in them, Lord, that we'd be made more like you in them, Lord, as this text, this one for the day, Lord, you have said, follow me.

And so, Lord, I pray that us as a church, Lord, us individually, us in our marriages, us in our family, us in our relationships, Lord, in every way that we would follow you, that we'd glorify you, and that we'd seek you as our master, and that we'd have perseverance in you, and that we'd have love to this world, Lord, that hates and rejects us.

So, Lord, we just say these things in your holy name, Jesus Christ, amen. So, we will read verses 18 through 25, and once again, as we normally do, talk a little bit about the context and remind ourselves of what took place last week.

So, verses 18 to 25 says this, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk everywhere you wished, but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go.

Now this, he said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he said to him, this is Jesus speaking to Peter, follow me. And Peter turned around, saw the disciples whom Jesus loved, the disciple whom Jesus loved, following them, the one who also had leaned back on his breast at the supper and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you?

Peter, therefore, seeing him, said to Jesus, Lord, and what about this man? And Jesus said to him, if I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. This saying, therefore, went out amongst the brethren, that the disciple would not die.

Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only if I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? This is the disciple who bears witness of these things and wrote these things. And we know that his witness is true.

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that not even the world itself would not contain the books which were written. Let us pray over this text.

Peter's Call to Follow Christ in Suffering

God, Lord, you are king, you are sovereign, you are supreme, you are our shepherd, Lord. And God, as your sheep, Lord, we want to follow you. Our flesh doesn't, but we want to, Lord, because you have made us anew, you have changed us, Lord.

And so, God, I pray that today we would be in line with how we ought to be, Lord, that we would seek to defeat sin in our life, that we would seek to kill it, to leave it, to be sanctified alone in you, God, that we'd be quick to remember what you have done on our behalf, Lord, on the cross.

And Lord, God, I just pray that we would follow you, that we would forget the woes and the trials of this world and we would just be, have our minds set solely upon your cross and your throne. And we just say these things, Lord, in your name, amen.

Church, as I said, this is our final message. This won't be the last time we read in John. We'll be going, just like as we have throughout many of the different books in the Bible, we will be back in John in the future, no doubt.

But this is the last expositional text that we are looking at here in John. And just to give us a recap of how this has taken place, these 21 chapters, it has taken us roughly two and a half years to go through.

Pastor Greg, the pastor before myself, started in John 1 ,1, and he ended up finishing and leaving from this pulpit to go with his family to Florida at the end of John 11, where I was so privileged to pick up in John 12, verse one.

And I can't express how much gratitude I've had to be along with us as we've gone through this journey of understanding who Jesus Christ is, what He has done for us, how we are to glorify Him, how we are to serve Him, how we are to remember what He has done for us and how to apply that to our lives.

And so when we come to this text, I wanna make reference to everything that we've gone through. And I'm not, there's not enough time. I feel like John in this text, that there's not enough books that could contain the types of things that we have thought when we have read what Christ has done for us, about Him walking the hill of Calvary, about Him paying the price we couldn't pay, Him being around the table with His disciples and having Judas there and all these visuals that I've been able to go through with us.

It's been a blessing and a privilege. But as we come to this text, we need to remember what's gone before it directly and in its context. Peter and seven total of the disciples, including Peter, have gone out to fish.

They have drawn nothing until Christ has commanded that the fish would be in the nets and has commanded for them to cast to the right side of the boat. And they pulled a load of 153, I believe it was.

After this, Jesus has restored Peter to his calling of apostle, teacher and pastor by asking him, do you love me, Peter? And he says, yes, I love you. You know I love you. And he's told three times, tend my sheep, feed my sheep, tend the lambs.

He's told this and it restores Peter to his calling after denying Christ three times. And now we are here in verse 18. This is the final words of Jesus Christ, the final exhortation from the disciple whom Jesus loved here in the gospel of John.

So let us begin here in verse 18 and look and see what it says. John 21, verse 18, it says, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wish. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go.

Parables, Omniscience, and the Death of Peter

Now, why is it that Christ is starting out in this verse here in speaking to specifically to Peter, but also just to the apostles in general as well, this is coming after, once again, the restoration of Peter and telling him three times, tend my sheep, feed my sheep.

And this is mimicking how Peter has denied Christ three times. Church, to the unconverted world, when they were to, if they were to read something like this in this text, they wouldn't know what to make of it.

Why is Jesus saying in here, giving this parable of when you were young, you used to do X, Y, and Z, and you would go about it however you wanted. But when you're old, you were taken by the hand and doing things that you don't want to do, doing things that you do not wish to do.

What is this speaking about? And we're told in verse 19, what it is, that John understands this. It was to signify what kind of death Peter was going to die. It was to signify, it was to be symbolic in this way, it was to be a parable in this way.

First of all, I want you to take close attention and look and see how one is a child in this parable and the other is an adult, an old man or woman that is being taken by the hand. There's a change that has taken place here.

There's a maturity that has taken place here in this kind of a text. That before you did X, Y, and Z, and you weren't concerned about what was going to happen, you did exactly what you wished. Now, let's think about this in our own lives and we would all have different answers on how to apply this to our own life.

But when you were unconverted, before you had faith in Jesus Christ, did you do all that you wished to do? You went out to the world and you sinned and you were happy with it, you justified your deeds, you went about it in these ways.

Like I said, each one of us would have a different answer of how we did this when we were unconverted, when we were a young child in this way. I didn't drink coffee and didn't do X, Y, and Z to be legalistic to earn my salvation and now that I'm saved, I drink coffee and I glorify God in these ways and I'm thankful for that.

We have a change in us when we have faith in Jesus Christ. We are born again and now we understand that maybe following Christ will lead us to places we don't want to go. Our flesh does not want to do these things.

Our flesh says, no, that's disgusting. I would imagine going into somebody's house to serve them, to take care of them, and it's destroyed and disgusting and the smell in the house just makes you wanna walk away.

You don't want to do what you need to do. You don't wanna serve this person but because you're a Christian and you wanna serve somebody, you're gonna bear the front of the disgustingness to reach in and help that individual out.

That's what it's being spoken of in here. You're going to have something in the future, Peter, that you're not going to want to do but because you are tending your sheep, because you were restored as an apostle, because you have this change in you, Peter, you're going to be taken by the hand and do that which you would not want to do, to do that which you wish not to do.

Now, there's many things that we could say about verse 18 in here as this is a parable. Why does Jesus not just tell Peter, Peter, you denied me before. You were unwilling to follow me as you said that you would follow me even to death as we looked at two weeks ago from the previous text that Peter said he was willing to do these things and he really wasn't.

He denied Christ, thus fulfilling Christ's prophecy to him that he would deny him three times before the cock crowed. And now, instead of Jesus just saying, look, Peter, you were to die just like myself.

You were to go and die. Why does Jesus not just say it bluntly like that? Well, I would have our minds turned back to how Jesus speaks often. And let's look at Luke chapter eight. There's three accounts of this saying of Jesus Christ in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but in Luke chapter eight, verses 10 through 12, Luke chapter eight, verses 10 through 12.

This is Jesus Christ telling us why he speaks in parables, telling us exactly why, like when he's speaking to Peter here in John 21, why he speaks like this. Luke chapter eight, verses 10 through 11 says this, and he said, to you, it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest, it is in parables in order that the seeing may not see and the hearing may not understand.

Now the parable is this, the seed is the word of God and it goes on and teaches us more of a parable. But in verse 10 there, we see that Christ speaks in parables so that those that have eyes that can't see, they will stay not seeing it.

They won't understand these things. That's why when an unconverted person was to read John 21, verse 18, they would be, that's just strange, why is he saying that? But us as Christians, there's many things that will happen as a Christian reads a parable, like we see Christ speaking of the parable of the lamb, the parable of the lost coin, the parable of all these types of parables.

If you're a Christian,.

You will understand what he means immediately or you won't understand what it means immediately and what does it make you do? Dive deeper into the text. It forces your eyes down to the word of God. It forces you to understand it.

If you're a believer, you will seek to understand what is being said in these parables. Thirdly, what it would do to, let's say it was to somebody that wasn't converted but they are being drawn by God, that they're going to believe in him in the future.

It's gonna make that person curious to want to know what the parable is. It's gonna make them dive deeper as well. Now to the person that hates God, that has eyes that cannot see, what does Jesus Christ say it's for?

So that they will remain unbelieving. They won't see these things. They won't understand these things. And so this is another parable that we have in here that here is a young child, old man, Peter, you are now being led by the hand to do that which you do not wish to do.

Now Jesus says this, and this demonstrates a couple of different attributes of Jesus Christ. One is omniscience. Jesus knows that Peter's going to die a brutal death, that he's not gonna like the kind of way that he is going to die.

In fact, it's tradition, it's not recorded for us in the word of God, but it's tradition that it is said that Peter died by being crucified upside down. And the reason he was crucified upside down was because he told the people that were crucifying him, he was crucified and put to death by Emperor Nero, that he didn't see himself worthy to be crucified in the same way that Christ was.

And so they crucified him upside down. This is omniscience. Jesus couldn't have said this unless he knew all things, signifying what kind of death that Peter was going to die. Not only that, but it says that he is led by the hand.

Who do you think does the leading by the hand?

God.

God leads us and he guides us. He's our shepherd. We are his sheep and we follow after him. He's been telling the apostles this over and over and over again. Let's now look at verse 19. It says, now this he said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.

Now, speaking about this parable, symbolic, metaphorical language that we have, I often call this kind of language in the text, theological symbolism. That the symbolism in here is not that Jesus Christ didn't really exist.

That's not what I'm saying. Jesus Christ really exists. He really said these words when I say symbolism, but he spoke in this parable to make something beautiful. When we talk about a fight, we say they really locked horns, right?

And that means, oh man, it was a real good fight or, oh man, it was an inch that way and a step forward and a step back. It means that you're stuck in this area that you're really struggling, right? We use these metaphorical language to give beauty and meaning to what we're saying rather than just say what's going on.

And so we see in here that Christ has this theological symbolism by saying this about what kind of death Peter was going to die and there's more beauty and glory in those words that Christ says. And it says, and when he had spoken this, he said to him, now this is so important.

So Jesus says that you're going to be led by your hand to do that which you do not wish to do, Peter. And immediately after that, Jesus says,.

Follow Me, Not the Future of Others

Follow me, follow me.

Why is it that Jesus would say, follow me? Well, he's the shepherd, Peter's a sheep and he's to follow his shepherd. And how did the shepherd die? Was the shepherd accepted in the world?

It was rejected.

Peter too, likewise, is not to seek the joy of this world, not to seek acceptance in this world, not to seek after those things, but he's to seek after Jesus Christ and follow him. Follow him. I wanna turn to, we've read many, many texts like this, just as in John chapter 20, when he says, peace be with you, just as the father has sent me, I also send you, that just as Christ has been sent, so we are sent to a rejecting Christianity world, that they hate God, they reject him.

Let's turn, we've read this several times in these last couple of weeks, but I wanna read it again with us. John chapter 12, verse 26. John chapter 12, verse 26. First of all, here in John chapter 26, it says, if anyone serves me, let him follow me.

Peter can't serve Jesus unless he follows Jesus in his footsteps. And if you're still with me on this, let's go to now John 15, verses 18 through 20,.

Just a couple chapters later.

John 15, verses 18 through 20, it says this. So here he's already said to follow me, if you serve me, follow me. And here in the final exhortation of John, he says, follow me to Peter. And here in 18 through 21, or 18 through 20, it says this, if the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

If you were loved of the world, the world, if you were loved, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. Church, we are not to be accepted by the world.

In fact, if the world loves you, I would say that you have alarms that should be going off in the back of your mind because you are not following after Christ then. Because the world should be rejecting you.

They should be hating you. And this is all because they hated Christ first. Now, why does the world hate us? Why does it reject us? It's because we bring the same message that Peter was rejected for. We bring the same message that all the apostles were rejected for.

And we bring the same message that Christ brought. That you need to repent and believe in the gospel. That you've broken and violated God's law. And that it is only through Jesus Christ and not of your merit, but his merit that he earned on your behalf that you can have salvation.

Turn to him. And the world hates us for that. It's not a kind, it's not an outwardly kind message that the world perceives when we say, no, what you have actually done is sin against God. The world doesn't like hearing those things.

And therefore they hate the messenger because they don't like the message. Now, he says to Peter in verse 19, he says, and when he had spoken this, he said, follow me. Now we understand what it means to follow me.

Church, I need to ask us this. Do you follow Jesus Christ today? Do you serve the master today? Because it says, if you serve me, follow me. Are you serving him today? Are you following after Jesus Christ?

And church, let us take this to the extreme to understand this parable because this is what's being spoken of to Peter right here. Church, if your neck was against the sword, would that same throat that the blade is pressed against proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord?

Would you be quick to deny the master just like Peter did prior to this text? I take it to the extreme in those ways because we don't have that kind of persecution here in the United States. And I praise God for those things, but it's made us weak.

It's made it so we're not willing to just share the gospel with people in such a blessed way that we have the opportunity to. If we had that kind of attitude today and we had people outside the door with swords ready to kill us, we'd be much stronger in proclaiming the gospel in every way that we could.

And this is applied to me as well. I forsake God because I don't share him crucified like I should be. It's applied to each one of these in this way. If you said yes to the question, do I follow Jesus today?

I hope that it means that tomorrow you proclaim him crucified. That you do that today, knowing that you're gonna be rejected. Follow Jesus. And in verse 20, it says, Peter turned around and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them.

Who's this disciple whom Jesus loved? Well, in verse 24, it says, this is the disciple who bears witness. So it's the writer of this text. And as we've discussed many, many times, it is John. Simply put, he likes to be recognized in this way.

And it's a beautiful way of referring to oneself, the disciple whom Jesus loved. I absolutely love that. I think it'd be awesome to maybe change my name one day and maybe on this new name title, it'd be the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And I'd have to figure out a new way to sign my name in that way. It's a good way to refer to oneselves. But John in this text says that Peter turns around and he sees John following him. And Peter then says, Lord, who is the one, or excuse me, he looks back to Peter, or Peter looks back to John and it says in here, the disciple whom Jesus loved.

The one who would also lean back on the breast at the supper and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you now? Now this is Peter, or not Peter, this is John that's writing this text. We need to remember this.

This is John that's writing this. And so he's recorded this because that event for John that night was very, very significant. That here he was next to Jesus Christ at the Lord's table, leaning back on the breast of Jesus, leaning back on his chest.

That event meant something dearly and deeply to John. And he's the one that questioned Jesus saying, Lord, who is the one that betrays you? And we know who that was, that was Judas. And in verse 21, Peter therefore seeing him, so he sees John and he says to Jesus, Lord, and what about this man?

Now this is most likely because Peter and John had a special relationship that Peter loved John dearly and deeply as a great friend of his. And so he's concerned about him. Peter understands, okay, so you're telling me, Jesus, that I'm gonna be led somewhere that I don't wish to go.

And you told me to follow you. This is most likely that means Peter understood that he was going to die. And so that's why now he's looking back at John and he says, well, what about this friend of mine?

What about John?

Is he going to die?

I'm now concerned about my friend. I'm worried about what's before John, the apostle. I'm worried about my friend, Jesus. And this is Jesus's remarks back to him. He says, if I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?

You follow me. Now we'll discuss this a little bit more in detail, but this is Jesus saying, Peter, stop it.

Follow me.

Don't be concerned about what is in the deck of cards for John. You follow after me. Stop concerning yourself with that. I have a plan for it. It's not meant for you to be in the weeds considering what will happen to John.

You are to follow me, Peter. Now, there's some really bad theology that's out there that's by cults, to be honest with you, that say that John the apostle is alive today. And they'll rationalize this text to say so, that Jesus Christ hasn't come yet in his second coming.

And here he said that he's going to remain. That's not what Jesus is saying in here. That is not what Jesus is saying. Because in verse 23, it says this, this saying therefore went out. So the disciples, this is John giving us some context here.

It says the saying therefore went out amongst the brethren that the disciple whom Jesus loved, speaking of John, would not die. Yet, and John records this for us for a reason. It says, yet Jesus, this is him saying, John is saying that saying that has gone out amongst the brethren is not true.

That's not what that meaning was. Because he records for us, yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die. John is saying, no, no, I'm not going to live. That's not what was said here. It was only said that he would not die, but only if I want him to remain until I come.

What is that to you, speaking of Peter? See, this is Jesus in this sense, rebuking Peter in this way of saying, Peter, your plan for your life is in my hands. The plan for John is in my hands. Stop concerning yourself with that which you have no control of.

If John is to remain until I come again, that is my plan. That's not your plan, Peter. Stop concerning yourself with this. Now, I ask us this, church, that is it a bad thing to be concerned for your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, to want to care for them and to love them?

No, no, it is not. But if God has a calling for us, and this is the road we are on, and we are to look forward and drive on that road and follow Jesus Christ, if you're in a car and you're focusing more on the cars around you than on the road, do you start to swerve?

Do you start to go outside of your lane? What happens if you take special notes of the cows as you're driving by? Is that safe or dangerous to do? It's a little dangerous to start doing those things, and you start to go outside the mustard and mayo, the white and the yellow.

You start to go outside of those things, and it's dangerous. And so this is Jesus saying, Peter, you've got to follow me. Keep your eyes on the end. Keep your eyes on the cross. Keep your eyes on glorifying me.

Keep your eyes directed to heaven because you have nothing of this world. Stop overly concerning yourself with that which you have no control of.

Stop it.

Don't worry about these things. There's another thing that needs to be careful in this kind of a text, that there's a thing called full predatorism or hyperpredatorism, and we won't go into great detail on this, but this would be a text that they would use to speak about how Jesus came, his second coming, his final coming, meaning that he's not coming again for us in the future, that he came in 70 AD fully and totally, and that John the Apostle was alive then, and so therefore this is a fulfillment that Jesus came in 70 AD.

Now, there is no doubt he came in judgment in 70 AD when he destroyed the temple as he promised in Matthew 24 to do, but there is yet a time in the future that Christ is coming physically, the second coming, the time when he comes to judge both the righteous and the wicked, and there'll be glory in paradise and eternal damnation after those things.

That is a fact to happen in the future, but this is, once again, this is a text that many false religions, heretics, those that don't know Jesus Christ of the Bible, they'll use this as a supporting text, but it's obvious from the context what Jesus Christ is saying in here.

Focus on me, Peter. Stop concerning yourself with that that's outside of your means, outside of your hand. Verse 24, it says this. This is the disciple, so once again, this is John, who bears witness of these things and wrote these things, and we know that his witness is true, and there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose, and not even the world itself would not contain the books which were written.

Sola Scriptura, Tota Scriptura, and the Witness of John

Church, verse 24, I wanna go and read this because this is the final exhortation that John is giving to end this gospel, to end this record of Jesus Christ. He says that his witness is true. His witness is true.

Just as I said before, as a true believer in Christ will seek to understand a parable or know what the meaning of a parable is, they know that this witness is true, that we see Christ crucified in this.

I wanna read in verse 31 of John 20. It might be on the same, just on the other side of the river of our Bibles for us here. In John 20, verse 31, it says, but these things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

We know that John's record, his witness is true because we see Christ in it. We see the wounds that were pierced, the wounds that were caused by us for us, that we see the Savior, the sin that was laid upon him was our sin.

We see these things and we know that it's true. There's two Latin terms I wanna speak of real quickly. Those two Latin terms are sola scriptura and tota scriptura. These come from the Reformation days.

And it's the saying that sola scriptura is by the scripture alone, that we know who Christ is, not because I receive a personal revelation and I write these things down so that you can know these things.

No, that we know that the witness is true because it's the scripture that is inspired. It's sola scriptura, it's by the scripture alone that we know who God is, that we come here and we see him, that we know that we're saved by grace.