2019.12.06 Hopewell @Home ▫ John 21:20-25

Read John 21:20-25

Questions from the Scripture text: What does Peter do, while Jesus is walking and talking with him (John 21:20)? Whom does he see? What does Peter ask Jesus in John 21:21? What does Jesus ask Peter in response (John 21:22)? What command does Jesus repeat to Peter? What saying went out among the brethren (John 21:23)? What correction is John making? Who is writing these things (John 21:24a)? What do “we” know? What were not written in this book (John 21:25)? How many of them were there? 

Peter makes so many of the same mistakes that the rest of us make. He’s not the vicar of Christ on earth, but he has certainly acted like the “patron saint” of millions of believers. Here, he makes the same mistake in John 21:21 as many others apparently had, according to John 21:23.

It’s an amazing moment between Peter and Jesus:

• Christ restoring His fallen servant from his failures in his denials.
• Christ commissioning His servant to a ministry of tending and feeding the flock.
• Christ taking His servant on a private walk on the beach.

And what does Peter do? He wants to know, “but what about that guy?” That’s a problem with us. Our confidence in Christ and cherishing of His walking with us are so poor that instead of being satisfied in Him, we seem often to wonder how His providence to us measures up against His providence to others.

John notes in John 21:23 that the church as a whole had been taken with this idea, but then he turns us to his real significance. Not as the disciple that will never die, nor even the disciple who lives the longest (though he did). Rather, John tells us that his importance is a witness who gives true testimony of Jesus—God the Son who became a Man in order to be the crucified and risen Christ.

In the beginning of his gospel, John had told us that Jesus is the eternal Word, who is the full revelation of God. Now, in John 21:25, he closes the book by saying that Jesus is the glorious God of Psalm 40:5. “Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.”

Who is Jesus? How have you been responding to His walking with you in life?

Suggested songs: ARP40A “I Waited for the Lord” or TPH375 “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”