Bible Studies
John 21:1-14
After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and in this way He showed Himself: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing."
They said to him, "We are going with you also." They went out and immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing. But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "Children, have you any food?"
They answered Him, "No."
And He said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.
Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment (for he had removed it), and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat (for they were not far from land, but about two hundred cubits), dragging the net with fish. Then, as soon as they had come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish which you have just caught."
Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land, full of large fish, one hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not broken. Jesus said to them, "Come and eat breakfast." Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, "Who are You?" -- knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.
This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
His silence is loud, isn’t it?
It’s been too long since you saw Him, the most recent revelation He gave of Himself is day by day threatening you with bittersweet memories. You are glad for Him revealing Himself to you back then, but now He is a phantom walking nearby, just like the story in Matthew 14, when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea.
Holy Ghost takes on a whole new meaning. We acknowledge that He is holy, but don’t like it when He is a ghost. In your heart and mind you see the silhouette of the Risen One. However, the outline of His form is nothing compared to looking Him in the eye. You long to see Him clearly. As a phone call from a loved one is nice, your heart’s desire is to have breakfast with them.
Take special notice of John’s use of the word “again” there in the first verse. He took care to show Himself to them “again.” Notice above all that Jesus never once criticized, corrected or rebuked them for going back to the “tried and true” of the life they had known before He told them to “Follow me.” Magnify that with those words that tell us “Jesus showed Himself to His disciples.” Again. Not once and that should do, but, again.
Peter was a leader, an obsessive/compulsive fisherman who quickly lay down most, if not all he knew of his brief sojourn with the Galilean teacher and went back to his job. With a simple statement of going back to what he knew, the others easily followed him.
Yet, Jesus called them “Children” which speaks of a relationship, though they had forsaken the Way. People in our day that do such things are considered as being backslidden or unbelieving. Jesus never saw these saddened fishermen as anything but His and He said so with that one word; children.
Also, don’t miss the meaning of the phrase, when we are told here that “Jesus showed Himself to His disciples.” They followed Peter, instead of Jesus; all of them went back to living in the past, so to speak. First and foremost, they are His, and then they are His disciples. One must come before the other. Read that again; this time don’t finish the sentence with “disciples.” Jesus showed Himself to His…
Now read it again, this next time leave out the words “to His disciples.” What is left is “Jesus showed Himself.” Himself, not their doctrine, not their assumptions, not their prejudices, Himself and that is the reason for the third showing of Himself to them; and to you and me.
Bear with me here, but read that just one more time and leave out “Himself” and you will have in your hand a key that will open many doors of understanding for you and lock doors of misunderstanding. “Jesus showed” and if you’ll remember those words it will serve you well in seeing that He alone is the One who can and will show Himself; we cannot convince ourselves or anyone else of His presence, nearness or reality.
Though men would criticize our lack of faith, and worse, they will use Jesus’ own words to do just that. Here, He never uses a single word of condemnation, neither is He critical of them for “going back” to a previous life, or to an occupation with its consequent provision. Folks around us criticize and there is nothing we can do about that, except to know that there is coming a day for them when He will show Himself to them again.
He alone knows our denominational slants. He knows that after each revelation there will still be a few beliefs that we hold. Beliefs that are causing us to see Him in a way that keeps us from being the people of faith we long to be. For Him to author the faith He desires, He first has to silence the faith we have now that is obscuring our view of Him.
Unfortunately we have grown up in a generation of believers that tell us we are not to “live by our feelings.” We take this idea to a dangerous extreme when we come to stories just like this one. Try and read this again without considering the emotions the disciples may have been feeling. All that is left are bones. There is no soft flesh left to form a man. Missing is the gentle shoulder of the Messiah for us to rest our heads on, just as John the Beloved often did.
That we are not to be governed by our feelings is true. We all know that the “just shall live by faith” as we have read in the letters to the Romans, the Galatians and the Hebrews; we take this to mean that we are not even to have them. A heartless lie that will suffocate 1/3 of his being: if it can't kill it altogether it will at least silence it. I suggest that rather than dispense with emotion, it is better by far to submit those emotions to His care and once comforted and redeemed, then live with them, though not by them.
Comfort is a word that speaks of “feelings” and if we are not to live as emotional beings, then He doesn’t need to tell us about the Spirit of Comfort. Joy that does not bear the offspring of laughter, smiles and celebration cannot be called joy. Peace should bear its young; naming them confidence, calm and relationship. These things that Jesus tells us He gives, will and must evoke some kind of feeling. Why would He make us a three part being and then tell us to ignore one third of His creation in us? Redeemed emotions are part of the “do you want to be made whole?” of Bethesda.
I can only suggest that you reconsider such notions in the light of His Word and I hope that you may see that feelings borne in you by Him are ones to have to hold; oftentimes they are the demonstration of Jesus words, when He said “Wisdom is justified by her children.” (Luke 7:35)
Jewish boys are schooled extensively in the teachings of Judaism. They learn from their earliest years the scriptures that tell of the coming Messiah. Peter and likely others with him in that boat had glimpses of who was to come. Fallen, dead in sin, blind and deaf; they did what you and I do, they draw conclusions, form opinions and insist on assumptions and have all the feelings that come with these things.
Peter and the gang had some teachings that lead to thoughts, which morphed into beliefs, which grew into their religion, their faith. We do the same things.
If they had perfect insight into the mysteries of God, a sound understanding of the reason and ways of the Messiah or a firm grasp on spiritual truths: how many of them would have been in that boat? Not a one. It’s not what they knew about Jesus that caused them to go back to fishing; it’s what they didn’t know.
Now, let’s consider this again. This time, get in the boat with them. Maybe you already are.
You have had times when Jesus was as real to you as the person sitting next to you. He had revealed Himself to you, not once, but twice and you followed Him every where He went.
“Water” is used in the written word as a symbol of the Living Word and you saw Jesus on every page. He is standing on the “water.” Like Peter, you’ve had the indescribable experience of getting out of your boat so you could be with Him.
But, today and for the past few days, weeks or months you haven’t seen Him on the water as you’ve read the written word. Rather, you see Him standing on the shore, the fringes of where you expected to find Him and God knows you’ve sought Him with your whole heart. He’s “in there” in the Word, you just didn’t think you’d see Him again. There is still a residue of a belief that has kept you from Him and that is what He is dealing with in you, right now.
Peter, growing up in Judaism, believed this or that about the Messiah and had conclusions, opinions and convictions that ordered his life. Even after Jesus’ words to him of “blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father…” Peter is out in a boat taking care of himself. All he believed and all that he thought he knew about the Messiah ended when Jesus died.
You know how painfully true these words are. Where you are right now is because Jesus is gone, or so it seems to you. Oh, I know, there are people all around you that remind you of His promise to never leave you or forsake you. Peter heard those same words with his own ears. But, we find him in a boat taking care of the practical side of life.
Pete may have even been one of the first ones’ to shake Lazarus hand or he may have hugged a friend, a leper that he had known before, but just couldn’t touch. He had seen water made into wine right before his very own eyes. Peter “outwalked” them getting out of a storm tossed boat and outran them all going to see the empty tomb. You have had days like this too. But not today, today you are fishing. You are right where Jesus wants you to be, well, not where He wants you to be, but where you really are.
Just like Peter, Jesus went looking for him and He knew right where to look.
What was Peter feeling? Well, being men ourselves, we don’t have to go far to see what emotions he was having. He was just like us.
All that he knew Jesus to be was, up to a point, all that he thought the Messiah would and should be. I’ll not go into that at length, suffice it to say that Peters’ knowledge of Jesus the Messiah was just like ours, limited.
One illustration of how a belief will keep Him “over there” on the shores, if you will. Some think of Jesus as a hero. He is far more than that. A hero will oftentimes die WHILE saving us; Jesus died TO save us. One is a million universes away from the other. A man will run into a burning building to save a person, he still hopes to emerge from the inferno; he doesn’t want to die, he wants to go home to his family. Jesus not only knew He had to die, He wanted to. If He emerged from the fire of judgment unharmed, He wouldn’t have a family at all.
Peter wanted a hero, but he needed a Savior.
More than likely, Peter and company were sad; their hopes for Israel and themselves disappeared like smoke in the wind. They believed that the Messiah would liberate them from Rome’s iron grip and restore to the Jews, the land promised to them. We do the same thing, we believe that Jesus the Messiah will free us from this or that, but His ways always reach beyond our perspectives and meet a need we didn’t know we had.
Your ideas about who Jesus is have vanished and all that remain are ghost-like memories; you see Him but not like you once did. You glimpse Him during your time in the word, but He is a spirit, a phantom. Today you don’t see Him at all. To you, He is as good as dead.
Since this is a forum for writers I’ll draw some comparisons using the writer, but keep in mind that this cannot be applied to only the aspiring author; this applies to every man, woman and child that has ever breathed the air of Heaven.
You’ve seen the Lord. He’s shown Himself to you with such clarity that your writings were powerful, precise and inspired your praise to Him. You’ve read reviews where folks have shared with you how Jesus touched them; His words through your writings breathed life into them. A marriage that was as sick as Lazarus and died, but the Lord spoke through you. Those words sparked a flame of Glory in not just one heart, but two; the couple is once again in the garden, eating from the tree of life.
Now, today, He is silent. You try with all your might to comfort yourself with His words that He will never leave you or forsake you, but like Peter the memory of the words are not enough; you long to hear Him say them to you personally. But, He’s gone from your sight and you feel as if you’ll never hear His voice again.
The sin of unbelief may have been in Peter’s heart. Be that as it may, though unbelief is never good; worse by far is pretending to believe. Peter may have been impetuous, but at least he lived what he believed. He didn’t “psyche” himself into faith.
Despair has sent you back to the life you had lived and just like the men in our story; you toil through the darkest part of your life and for nothing. They fished all night and had nothing to show for their labor. Writers just quit writing as much, or they quit writing altogether. “I thought Jesus was going to do this or that with my writing, I guess not.”
Resigning yourself to what others call “normal” you rig your boat and set your sails in the darkness. “Hopefully, it will rain tonight; the rain will mask my tears so no one could accuse me of being unbelieving.” All that you thought He is, He is not.
He is more than we can imagine. I cannot show Him to you; neither can your brothers or sisters, try as we might. He may use our vocal chords or word processors, but it is still His doing. (Better to write “trusting” than to write “trying”)
Jesus words to them are His words to you. Children! The understanding of your place is immeasurably more important to Him than your catching fish or any other activity.
He told them who they were to Him before He told them what to do next. Mark that, don’t ever forget it, ever. “Children…..cast your net…” Because we’ve been taught that we are to be “fishers of men” we share things about Him that we know nothing about. Just as Peter, who had spent years in the scriptures filling his mind with religious assumptions of what a Messiah would do once he got here; we do the same.
But when we hear Him call us “Children”, then the call to “cast” may come. If it had come before then Peter would have seen only fish, but not Him, not in the way Peter needed to. The preconceived notions had to die in Pete’s mind. His perceptions kept Jesus dead to him.
Your hopes and dreams of ministry as a writer and those things you believed about Jesus are lying on the floor of the boat of your soul. Your time on the water yields nothing. You are veiled in darkness, spending yourself. The joy of following Him, the peace of His being near, the comfort of His words, all of them are nothing but distant memories now.
You may believe that the Christian is to “show Jesus to a lost and dying world” but you still sing “Open my eyes Lord, I want to see Jesus.” A belief that limits Him and confuses you will convince no one. If you can’t see Him, how can you hope to show Him? Only He can show Himself. Only He can show you even now that Only He can show Himself, I can’t convince you.
At best all I can do is tell you, just as the woman told Peter: “He’s alive!” Only He can convince you. Mary’s testimony didn’t convince Peter and mine won’t convince you.
Read those verses just one more time. Like a “fill in the blanks” page, put your name there and see if He doesn’t show Himself to you in a way that you have never seen Him before. He won’t force you to put away what you believe; but what He will do is give you good reason to not believe it any more. Just as I can’t hold my wife’s hand if she’s bringing in groceries; He’ll show you that what you are holding onto is anything; but if it is not His nail pierced hand, it is nothing.
In parting I can only say this; you will know it was Him, if you go to where you didn’t think He would be and He gives you “meat” and “bread.” He has prepared and waiting all that you have labored for, but that’s between you and Him. All I can do is “tell” but only He can “show.”
Only He can show Himself to you again, and again, and again.
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