WWUTT 1017 John Was Not to Die?

All of us have received different callings in Christ Jesus. We're all going to receive the same reward, but He has called us to different responsibilities.

There are responsibilities I have, and different responsibilities you have, when we understand the text.

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Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Gospel of John, and we'll nearly finish up our text today as we look at John chapter 21, verses 20 through 24.

The Apostle John wrote, Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said,

Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?

Jesus said to him, If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

You follow me. So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die.

Yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things.

And we know that his testimony is true. And as an added bonus, throwing in verse 25 here.

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did where every one of them to be written.

I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. And that's a verse

I'm going to save until tomorrow. That's the one that we're going to hold on to and close out our study of John completely with John 21, 25.

But in the meantime, we have Jesus talking about the will that he has for John.

Yesterday, we were looking at Jesus recommissioning Peter. It's in verse 20.

It says here, Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. So remember, they've had breakfast and somewhere at the conclusion of breakfast,

Jesus and Peter take a little walk. They're walking along the bank of the

Sea of Galilee. And it's in this walk that they're having this conversation where Jesus asks

Peter rather casually, perhaps saying, Peter, do you love me?

And Peter saying to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And then, of course, we have

Jesus asking that question of Peter three times and Peter answering that way three times.

And this goes with the fact that Peter had denied Jesus three times, just as Jesus said that he was going to, which was a very, very serious thing.

Because you remember back to Matthew 10, 33, Jesus said, whoever denies me before men,

I also will deny before my father who is in heaven. And then in Matthew 16,

Jesus asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is?

And the disciples are all they're all coming up with different answers. Some say John the Baptist. Others say

Elijah. Others, Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. But then Jesus said to them, but who do you say that I am?

And it says in Matthew 16, 16, that Peter is the one who speaks up and says, you are the

Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you,

Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

So what's what an honoring thing for Jesus to have said this to Peter. And yet, when

Jesus is arrested, though, Peter insisted, and it's even in the context of Matthew's gospel that Peter says, though the rest of the disciples, if they fall away,

I will not fall away, I will go with you to death. But when Jesus was taken in and tried, and Peter was asked three times if he was one of Jesus disciples,

Peter denied it. Three times he said, I do not know the man. And then when the rooster crowed, just as Jesus said, you'll deny me three times before the rooster crows.

When Peter heard the rooster crow, it says that he went out and wept bitterly.

He knew exactly what it was that he had done. And the grace of our Lord Christ, though he had previously said, if you deny me before men,

I will deny you before my father who is in heaven. Though he said that in Matthew 1033, yet in the grace of Christ, he reinstates

Peter. By once again commissioning him to go and feed his sheep,

Peter is going to take the gospel out so that all who hear the voice of the shepherd through the gospel that is going to be preached will turn from their sin and will follow

Christ. And Peter will be an under shepherd, one who feeds the lambs, who tends to the sheep.

Jesus, in his graciousness, asked these questions of Peter that Peter may state three times that he loves

Jesus rather than having denied him the way that he did three times.

So we see the wonderful grace of our Lord Christ demonstrated here to Peter as we looked at it yesterday in John 21, verses 15 through 19.

Just as the grace of our Lord Christ is demonstrated to each one of us, some of us may have never denied

Christ with our mouths. Like you may have never said before, I don't know, Jesus, I'm not a follower of Jesus or maybe under pressure.

Maybe somebody in the culture was going to ridicule you or make fun of you somehow. And you could have been put in a spot to say,

I don't know him. No, that's not what I believe. I don't believe in Jesus. I believe in this other thing. And perhaps you stood steadfast.

You remain fixed on the gospel of Christ that you have heard. It's very rare for anyone to say that they do not know

Christ unless they're an atheist or agnostic somehow. They're just adamantly opposed to Christianity and they will say that they do not know

Jesus. But even a Muslim might say they know Jesus, but they know him in the sense that he was a prophet.

Mormons will say they know Jesus. A Jehovah's Witness will say that they are followers of Jesus, something to that degree.

But when they say that, they're actually denying Christ because who they believe in as Jesus is different than the biblical

Jesus. A Jehovah's Witness believes Jesus is Michael, the archangel. A Mormon believes that Jesus is what

Joseph Smith said Jesus was, and that is the literal offspring of God, the father.

Then you have a Muslim who believes he was just an ordinary man. You have

Hindus and Buddhists that might believe the same thing. He was just a prophet of some kind.

You've got people in secular context who will say that they're followers of Jesus, but they are following their own version of Jesus.

The nice, hippie guy that loves everybody, doesn't hate anything or anyone, would never get mad.

He'd never send anybody to hell. Hell isn't even a real place. We don't even know if Jesus even talked about it.

They probably could quote you three words that Jesus said. Even that, they would only come to it by guessing.

In this way, when somebody is claiming to be a follower of Jesus, but it's not the Christ of the

Bible, they are denying Christ. They deny that they know him.

I don't know the biblical Jesus. I don't know Jesus as he said that he was.

I know my version of Jesus, and that's denying Christ before men. And Jesus will likewise deny them before the

Father. You may have never said out of your mouth before that you don't follow

Jesus, but perhaps you have with your lifestyle. There was at some point in your life when you weren't a follower of Jesus.

You didn't become a follower of Jesus until you heard the gospel, and you turned from your sin, and you placed your faith and your trust in him.

That's when you became a follower of Jesus. So anytime before that, you were living in denial of him being the son of God.

And Jesus says, whoever denies me before men, I will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

So it is only those who are followers of Christ and know the true Christ according to the Bible who can say they know

Jesus, and therefore knowing the right Christ, they can testify of him before men rather than denying him.

But as we have all in some capacity, in some way, shape, or form, all of us have denied

Christ before men. So we need a Savior. And Jesus is merciful and gracious to us, to every one of us, not just to Peter.

Although with Peter, it was truly remarkable that he said what it was that he said.

Yet Jesus was gracious to him, reinstated him, even appointed him as an apostle, one of the most important influential apostles who would be preaching the gospel.

He's the first one to preach the gospel there at Pentecost in a way that all of the Jews there understand.

He's the one who says, repent of your sins and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Peter is the first one to declare that.

So Jesus has indeed an important role for him and shows grace to Peter because Peter is going to preach grace to all

Jews and Gentiles. And so likewise, the grace of our Lord Christ has been demonstrated to us so that we may know him and testify of him before others.

If you say that you know Jesus, may it be the true Christ of the Bible and not some

Jesus that we have made up in our minds. This is the Jesus whom the apostles testified about.

Everything that we have written in the gospels was written down by an apostle or a disciple of an apostle, something like that.

Matthew was Levi. He was the tax collector. He was a follower of Jesus. Mark, John Mark wasn't one of the twelve, but he was a follower of Jesus.

And then you have Luke, who was not among the twelve, may not have even been of the other disciples, but he was of the apostle

Paul. He was part of Paul's missionary entourage. And so what Luke wrote down was the gospel as Paul preached it.

And then, of course, you have John, the beloved disciple whom Jesus speaks about here at the very conclusion of the

Gospel of John. Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said,

Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? They knew of the closeness that Jesus had with John.

And so when Jesus had said one of you is going to betray me, all the rest of the disciples are looking at John going,

I'll ask him which one is it, which which of us is it going to be that's going to betray Jesus?

And so John is leaning against Jesus bosom. He's even there physically closer than all the rest of the disciples are.

They just had a very close relationship with one another. Though Jesus places an importance upon Peter that seems to be above all of the rest of the disciples.

Yet there was a personal closeness between him and John more so than the rest of the disciples.

Peter seems to have some sort of competitiveness with John and I might be speaking in conjecture there.

I don't know. It just seems to be the case that that Peter is somewhat competitive with John.

John may not perceive it that way. At least we don't get that from John. But it seems to be the case on the part of Peter.

We know his zeal and we know his tendency to kind of want to be the first one to answer and answer the best, you know, and even pop his collar and say, hey, look,

I'm the one that got the answer right or something to that effect. We we see that from Peter, even to the point that he sticks his foot in his mouth.

So he's got that such a zeal that he may even have a competitiveness with John. John gets to the tomb first.

Peter comes in second. But Peter's the first one in the tomb. And then John follows him in the tomb.

When John recognizes in the boat, Jesus is the one on the shore. Peter's the one that jumps in and goes after Jesus.

They have this conversation, Peter and Jesus alone. But then Peter turns around and he sees that John's there.

John's following them. And so after Jesus said this was in verse 19, he said to Peter, follow me.

So they're walking along and talking. Peter turns around and he sees John there and he says to Jesus, Lord, what about this man?

I don't know why that comes out so impersonal in the English language. In Greek, does that read a little bit more,

I don't know, warmly than we we get it in English. But Peter just he just kind of looks at John.

It's like, what about this guy? He's following us. You seem to have quite an affection for for this guy.

If I'm going to go and feed your sheep, what are you what are you doing with him? Like what what kind of job does he get?

And Jesus says in verse 22. Now, now, hang on before I go on to where Jesus replies to Peter's question.

Remember that Jesus has just said to Peter the manner in which he's going to die. So that's that may be part of what's kind of startling.

Peter, a little bit, is that Jesus has said, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted.

But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

And it says this, he said, to show by what kind of death he was going to glorify

God. And then after this, he said to Peter, follow me. So the next reply that we have in this exchange between Peter and Jesus is

Peter looking back at John who's following them and saying, well, what about this man? If you're telling me I'm going to die, what about him?

And so here's Jesus reply to Peter there. If it is my will that he remain until I come.

What is that to you? You follow me now notice something here.

Verse 23, so the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die.

Yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die. But if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

So we can understand that this answer that Jesus was giving to Peter was hyperbole.

He was saying, what difference does it make to you? Like I've said how you're going to die.

If it's my will that John should be alive for the next 2000 plus years until I come back, that's my will.

That's none of your business. I'm telling you right now what I want you to do.

I want you to feed my lambs. I want you to follow me. So Jesus bringing it back to don't distract from the point here.

We're talking. I'm telling you what to do. Don't be concerned about what's going on with John. So that answer that Jesus gave was hyperbole.

He wasn't actually saying that John was going to live until Jesus returns.

But notice in verse 23, the saying spread among the brothers that the disciple was not to die.

So Peter, since he was the only other one there to hear that, he actually thought

Jesus was saying that John's going to live until Jesus return. But that wasn't what

Jesus was saying. For, as John goes on to say, Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die.

Jesus didn't turn to John and tell him that you're not going to die. Rather, he said, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?

Now, one thing that we can say was fulfilled in this particular statement as Jesus made it to Peter about John.

John did get to see Christ return. It's not that Christ returned in John's lifetime, but he got to see it.

He was the one that got to see the return of Christ and everything that's going to happen in the end of days, everything from that heavenly perspective.

And that's the book of Revelation. John was the one who was privileged to see that. I kind of wonder if Paul also saw it, maybe not in the same way that John saw it, but something like it, because we have in 2

Corinthians chapter 12 that Paul saw something. He was taken up into the third heaven and he says, whether in the body or out of it,

I do not know. And he was shown incredible visions that he he was not permitted to come back and speak about.

So it's possible that Paul also saw the things concerning the end,

Christ return, judgment of the world, how everything in the the completeness of time and the fullness of time as God was going to accomplish according to his will through the person and work of Jesus Christ, all of that from the heavenly perspective.

It's possible that Paul saw that also, but Paul was not permitted to write about it.

John was the one that was going to write about it. So John is the one that gets to write the book of Revelation. So Jesus did show

John his return. John did get to see that with his eyes and perhaps the rest of the disciples did not get to see that.

So in that way, this thing that Jesus had said to Peter certainly came to fruition, came to fulfillment like that.

John is the only disciple who did not die a martyr's death, but he died of old age.

Now, he was still exiled. He he still went through very, very difficult circumstances.

It's not like he did not suffer for the gospel, but he was not martyred. He died of old age.

And according to church history, it's likely that it was Ephesus was the place where he died.

You know, I remember reading somewhere it was one of the early church fathers, and I can't remember which one now, but talking about how

John and his old age would actually be carried into the church in Ephesus, like he would be sitting on a chair or laying reclined somehow, and he couldn't walk on his own anymore.

But the faithful there of that church would carry him in and then he would sit and he would just speak to them the things that he could speak, though he was feeble and it was very difficult for him to teach anymore.

Yet he would do that and everybody would just latch on to every word that he said and they would be moved to tears with mere sentences like stuff shorter than tweets on Twitter.

And John would just say these things that would be from the beloved one of Christ. They would be the words of Christ since he was an apostle and it would move the church to tears.

I cannot remember who I remember reading that wrote about that. But maybe the things that John said were even very similar to the stuff that he writes in his first epistle, because you can take various passages in that epistle.

First, John, you can take verses out by themselves and they're very awesome standalone statements in addition to the context that we have that letter being written to the churches there in Asia Minor.

So Jesus did have something for John that was going to take him into later years than the rest of the apostles saw.

But this just kind of demonstrates how Jesus had a unique plan for each one of his disciples.

And what he's saying to Peter here is you need to concern yourself with what I have called you to and that is for you to follow me.

I've got something else for John. I've got something for you. You pay attention to what I am saying to you.

And regarding the other disciple, the beloved disciple, John writes in verse 24, this is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things.

And we know that his testimony is true. Very similar to what we read in first John one, right at the start of that letter, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,

John speaking of himself and the testimony that he has witnessed, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

We know that his testimony is true. He was one who was there. He saw all these things with his own eyes.

Now, just as Peter had a specific calling in the Lord and John had a specific calling in the

Lord, you have a specific calling as well. I have a specific calling. I have a calling as a pastor.

There are certain responsibilities that are upon me that are not going to be upon you. But nevertheless, all of us have a responsibility to know the word of God well and how to answer each person who asks us for an answer for the hope that lies within us and doing this with gentleness and respect.

That's first Peter three 15. That's what Peter instructed to the whole church there that that we need to know how to answer each person and do so respectfully sharing the gospel of God.

Some are going to have greater audiences that they're reaching out to, and others have smaller audiences.

But there are people that you can reach with the gospel that I cannot that are never going to hear my voice.

And so you need to know the the hope and the promises in Christ Jesus that we have laid up for us here in scripture and how to use these things to communicate the truth of the gospel with others, or even how to encourage and uplift your brothers and sisters in the

Lord, according to the word of God that we read. We all have different callings, but let us be faithful to these things in Christ Jesus.

And we will receive, as I had mentioned yesterday, the unfading crown of glory when we reach heaven with him someday.

Let us conclude with prayer. Our wonderful God and Savior, what grace you have shown to us.

We have been deniers of God. And yet you did not destroy us, but called us to yourself through the preaching of the gospel that we would become followers of Jesus, desiring to be like our

Savior and feeding the flock of God, sharing the gospel with unbelievers, encouraging believers with the gospel as we hold out hope to the day of Christ when he returns and we will join you forever in glory.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog, sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word, when we understand the text.