Faith can falter without finally failing, because Christ intercedes for His own to hold them firm. As Christians we can be so glad that it is an issue of how His hold on us is what counts and not that our strength is our only hope to survive in Him. Despite Peter’s denial of knowing Christ, the Lord has confidence in His prayers for him and later restoration. Nonetheless the need for true turning (conversion) is also very apparent in the story line. The interesting accompanying mention is that the Lord’s call was not only for Peter to be converted, but also to then strengthen those led away with them. Jesus had prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail, and He still prays for His people today to be strengthened. When we return to Him in repentance, He restores us to service and calls us to join Him in bringing back others.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] In the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 22, we have a scene of Simon being talked to, that’s Simon Peter, from Jesus. And he’s doing this talking before the actual moments when Simon Peter failed to live out his boasts that he’d be faithful to Jesus. And when everybody else was going to run away, Simon Peter was boasting that he would not. And Jesus had this to say to him, but the actual happening of it is recorded later in the same Gospels that tell us this information. And it’s a very interesting one because it brings up something that is very central to the Christian faith. I’ll elaborate in a moment. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.

[00:01:04] And when you have, our version here reads, turned again, but in other translations it says, but when you are converted, strengthen the brethren or strengthen your brothers. Now, the emphasis of Jesus’ words to Peter, that they would need to necessarily be, in his experience, a time of turning around, the actual wording in the Greek for turned again or converted literally means to stop and go back. And that wording that was in the King James, when you are converted, strengthen the brethren, has come down in Christian tradition and Christian circles about the necessity of being converted to be a real Christian. It’s not wrong. The Gospel of John teaches so clearly that unless a person is born again, he cannot get into the kingdom of God.

[00:02:01] And that getting born again was a spiritual thing, which the storyline of Jesus that he gave around that mention in John’s Gospel, quoted by Jesus and quoted by the Gospel of John, I should say, that just as Moses lifted a serpent in the wilderness, so also Jesus would be lifted up. And the people who were dying of snake bite in the Old Testament incident, when they looked and saw that which was biting, killing them, had been put on a pole, it would cause their healing and that they would not die. And in a similar way, the Gospel of John was pointing to Jesus’ cross, that the necessity for him to come and to make an atonement for the whole human race and for every sinner and pay the price for every sin would be done by Jesus.

[00:02:57] And the Old Testament scene was turned into a prophecy that one day Jesus would be the one placed on the pole and the snakiness of our sins laid on him. That when we looked at that cross and saw that Jesus had died, we can be forgiven and we’ll get into the kingdom of God and eventually go to heaven. Now that’s the Gospel most of us from childhood days are very familiar with. I had a wonderful Sunday school teacher in Adelaide as a little boy at Sunday school, a teenage boy I suppose I was, but that man checked up on all of his students. Have you been born again? Or have you come to Jesus? Have you, and the wording often used, have you been converted? It’s actually the old King James version of the verse up on the screen for us here.

[00:03:51] And when you have turned again, because that’s the literal meaning of the Greek word. When you’ve come to a full stop and realised you’re wrong and go back and reverse what you’ve done, that’s what turning again is. That’s what being converted is. It’s not a continuation of all of your good steps. It’s the recognition that you’ve done it wrong. Another word sometimes is aligned with such statements in the scriptures and the idea of being converted keeps turning up in different places, but it’s the word repentance. The word repentance, sometimes we picture that to mean sorrowing and we picture it as someone crying, I’m sorry I was so bad. That is quite appropriate for such a moment, but the actual word repentance means more about your decision making that you’re going to reverse your verdict.

[00:04:46] And to repent means that you thought this way before, but now you’re changing it to change the direction of your decision. Where you’re going that way before, stop, turn around, go back and do what you’re doing before. And interestingly, there’s this passage of Jesus talking to Simon and it brings for me an opportunity to illustrate that in evangelical circles, Christian circles that are Bible-believing, in our circles, we have got a lot of teachings that have cemented themselves in certain language and one of them is the word conversion. And so you’ll often get asked, have you been converted or are you a converted person? It’s not wrong, but it isn’t the only language the Bible uses about becoming a Christian and sometimes there are folk who’s becoming a Christian as something very slow

[00:05:39] and they couldn’t tell you the exact moment when they had a crisis that normally the word conversion embodies. But for Peter, it was going to. But mind you, even in Peter’s case, I wouldn’t want to try and pinpoint exactly when you’d have to say he was a Christian because he was following Christ, which was what was available in that period of time that Jesus was doing ministry and recruiting disciples and they had to follow after him, leave their homes and walk around and be seen with Jesus and learn at his feet. That’s what it was to be a disciple and they were like the premier people who are going to become the Christians. But you don’t have to be someone who’s gone off to Bible college to be a Christian, but in that era, maybe 30 years ago, when my family carried me and my brother and sister around

[00:06:31] to all the different Bible colleges where Dab was the principal or the lecturer, and we lived in a circle of people of Christians who used to go to all the conventions, my culture that I had as a Christian was one where this work being converted was strongly used. Have you been converted? Often I’ll be asked of you as a young person, of course, you don’t know what to say when you’re only 8. You believe what we were being taught and you’re trying your best to be a good Christian little boy, and yet someone says, have you been converted? I don’t know what you mean. There was one occasion in one of those conventions when the fellow in charge took it upon him to give us a call. He was copying what he saw the bigger circles do, and here our little fellows were, little people were,

[00:07:18] and he asked you if you want to be converted, put your hands up, My brother reported in the car going back to our lodgings that Jimmy had put up his hand. Nothing had happened, I better tell you. I just did what I was told. Yet this is in the Bible to Peter. When you have been turned again, strengthen the others. Now it actually gave a good illustration point for me later on to recognise that in the circles in which I was brought up there’s a certain lot of stuff that you get assuming because it’s implied in the way people talk about the language. Now this word converted was one of the ones that you had to go through some dramatic experience to be called a Christian. I remember believing in Jesus before I had my dramatic experience or even the one that wasn’t so dramatic

[00:08:14] when my big brother recorded that I put my hand up. We need to come to understand that the way… It wasn’t wrong of evangelical circles to talk a lot about Christian conversion. That’s okay. But we do need to recognise that sometimes in our circles, and I’m going to say our because we’re largely an evangelical church, that just means you believe the gospel. The word evangelical is just the Greek word for a gospel-believing person. Evangel is good news. So if you believe in the good news, you are an evangelical. Even better, if you believe it’s got recorded in the scriptures and the scriptures are accurate, you are a very good evangelical. There are some evangelicals who are not so good, hot in the Bible. I don’t, I… That’s not… You know. We’re funny people.

[00:09:06] We’re people that, you know, think we understand it all and divide people up. When we get to heaven, I think we’re going to get a surprise at not only who didn’t get there, we’re going to be surprised about who did get there. Because God is a God who’s very graceful and if a person trusted Christ, even though they didn’t work it all out very well, I believe God takes you to be his when you come to Jesus. And you may have many aspects as to how you believe that the church would be that are quite different from what the Bible says, but I don’t think God is that picky. Now that sounds bad and I could get misquoted, but if you’ve understood that the reason why God picks you is not because you’ve got it all right, I wish we could understand this. The reason why God picks you is because of the sufficiency

[00:10:01] of the one great act that Jesus did when he atoned for the sin of the world and he paid for your sin and Jesus accepted you on the basis of the sufficiency of Jesus’ death for your sins. Nothing else needed as far as God’s concerned. What Jesus did is enough for him. And what’s more, if you look around here at all these people, it’s enough for them too. Now, one of the things we get from that is don’t get too picky about how right or wrong you fellow believers are. They might be quite wrong in some things. But if God has accepted them, you better too. Now, what Peter had was a problem. And how Jesus used this, what has become a scripture on him, gives us a bit of a precedent as to what we can realise that the scriptures are of such a nature that they may not always be for you to use the way

[00:11:18] that you think is the only way appropriate. Sometimes Christians think the scriptures are there for you to learn so well that you know all the doctrines. And this is one that is used very mildly by us as Christians to believe that it’s important to emphasise Christian conversion, to emphasise the fact it’s in John’s Gospel as being born again, and it’s in this spot in Luke as being converted. Now does that mean that Peter was not born again earlier? Possibly. I don’t know what to say about that. I think he was following Jesus and had a big animal jumped on him as he ran through the desert and ate him up. He’d still eventually be in heaven because I think he’s safe because of what Jesus was going to do on the cross, and he was safe because he’d expressed faith even though he had a lot

[00:12:14] of sinful stuff in his own personality that’s being expressed as Jesus pointing out to him. But nonetheless, people get in the door because of simple faith in God’s grace. And that’s the heart of the Gospel and something for which we need to cling to the purity of that faith in Jesus is enough, even though you might have all the other aspects not quite worked out, and you can relax and trust in his holding you even if you don’t always get all that right. And here we have the demonstration of the Apostle Peter who’s boasted of being the one who won’t run away, boasted of being the one who’d die with Jesus if necessary, but then when he comes and gets Jesus taken away, he gets chicken at the last moment. He does follow at a distance, and he gets on down there and gets asked questions and eventually

[00:13:17] denies the Lord. You know the scene. You know the story. And he’s so absolutely ashamed of himself and his failure. He’s said how much he was going to stand up for the Lord, and then he failed. And he’s so annoyed at himself. He’s going to quit the whole attempt. Don’t, I’m not going to ask you to put your hand up if there’s anybody here who’s been at us, because I guess there’s a few of us. Well, not me, I have to be honest, but there are a few of you here who have, on failing, given up at different times. Or maybe someone who’s here and is feeling that way right now. Well, this passage is a tremendous good news for you. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan’s demanded to have you. He wants to sift you like wheat. But I, this is Jesus speaking, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

[00:14:16] Now that helps me understand that he had some modest amount of faith, a lot of boasting in Peter, but he had a lot of faith there. And Jesus has prayed that his faith may not fail. He looks at you, Jesus does, with a greater commendation than you may be looking at yourself. And underneath your failures and your annoyance at yourself for how you didn’t succeed, you’re here now. You have a love for him. You have faith. And he, he’s in heaven now, but he’s praying for you, that your faith won’t fail. But then he says, so when you have been converted or turned again, when you’ve come to a full stop and recognise you’ve made a bit of a mistake, just turn around and correct it. And what’s more, you better go and strengthen your brothers.

[00:15:14] Now in Peter’s case, this is an example of a scripture not being used to make the doctrine tight about you need to be converted to be a Christian, true enough as that is, but it’s actually the very meaning of being converted or turned around, which needs to be done again by Peter. Whatever turning around he might have done before, he better do it again. He better just reverse what direction he’s going in his sadness of things being not worked out. Or it could be you’re not Peter because he was annoyed at himself. But Peter might have been also rather annoyed at all the others because they chickened out before he did. And he had very good reason to, he at least followed Jesus down when he was captured and put on, you know, his trial and Jesus is there and Peter’s trying to stick around.

[00:16:06] He probably had reason to feel that he was being braver than the rest of them who chickened out long earlier. Well, whatever it is that’s been the stumbling point for Peter, here you have a scripture and it’s turned up for us and it is, you’ve got it on the screen, Luke 22, a scripture that’s the word of God. You can trust it, it’s accurate. But Jesus sometimes uses scriptures to get across for ways different from just what the literal wording would be the first truth of. And one of the things I learned from being brought up in the circles when my parents were involved in lots of these big teaching meetings at Tambourine, you know, and lots of camps for young people and I had them all the time, so many of them, that I could sort of repeat the sermons if I wanted to myself.

[00:17:02] I was someone who knew it all. But there’s something I discovered about evangelical Christian circles, especially when you work and teach in the Bible college as I’ve done at times, that there’s a certain culture that we Christian evangelicals particularly have picked up. And in that culture, we are strong believers in the Bible. And we believe that there are scriptures that help you. And the Bible isn’t only just to teach you to become a Christian, but if you read it often, you store it up in your heart, those scriptures will come and help you at different times. Now all of that’s true. I’m not quoting that to say it’s wrong, it’s quite accurate. The Bible has many application points. One is it tells us the doctrines to become a Christian.

[00:17:49] It tells people who are theologians how to get the doctrine exactly right and you apply that principle that let one scripture be interpreted by the rest. You never take an interpretation that might be a possibility just in one place without bringing to bear all the other information of the Bible. That’s one way to know that you get to the refiner’s form of evangelical truth and that’s good use of scripture and that you’re taking it as its major purpose to lay out for us the things that are to be believed. There’s enough places, I won’t take us to them to look at them just now, but there’s enough places in this book to tell us that the scripture, all of it is given by God to us to know what is the exact truth and the doctrine and to get it straight.

[00:18:32] But the scriptures are also used of God in another way. Sometimes he uses his own scriptures to come and speak to you and every now and then a Christian person will have a moment when reading the bible someone gets them in the heart with a verse it’s not very often happening but if you’re a real Christian maybe once every little while or maybe when you first came in the door there was one particular time when God spoke to you and there was a sermon and the person was going through it and there was another voice not just the fellow on behind the microphone but there was someone getting to you and he spoke to you. That’s what God uses these scriptures for. They are the living word of God. They’re sharper than a two-edged sword. They pierce even to the very centre of your being

[00:19:25] where soul and spirit and joints and marrow have their connections. He gets to the real you. And that speaking of God through this book is a very powerful and wonderful thing that we as evangelicals believe in but don’t think that God gives you a special thing to be said to you every day. He doesn’t. You might go through years. Or you might be a person whose way the Bible has spoken to you is that you gradually absorbed its content. It added up to you being certain of what the Lord wanted to get through. And you’ve never had one of those personal moments when God gave you a verse. But in the evangelical circles of which I was a young, old adolescent and a young adult, it was a common thing for Christians who were keen Christians to say about something, I didn’t know what I should do about this job offer

[00:20:20] but God gave me a word. He gave me a scripture or he gave me a verse often. And you’d often find, and because the students coming to the college exemplified this same type of young people, I heard often them speaking. Yes, I was wondering who I was going to marry but she came and sat next to me at the conference and God gave me a verse. And the verse says, Know the time of your… And I took it to mean that she’s the one. And it’s a bit of the evangelical culture. And God gave me a scripture. Now he does give scriptures and I’m trying to speak up for that occurrence being something God does and I think this example of Peter is exactly one. I have prayed for you, this is Jesus speaking, that your faith may not fail. When you’d turned or converted or repented, reversed your decision,

[00:21:17] you know what the decision was? He was so annoyed at being a failure that he went back fishing. And he says to the others, I won’t find the verse now, but he says to the others, I’m going to fishing now, said, Oh, we’ll come too. And he led them all away from their discipleship, not badly, but back to fishing where Jesus had called them from in the first place. And Jesus was saying to him through this verse, which would be a very good verse to make a whole lot of theology about the necessity of Christian conversion, but he’s actually saying something very personal to Peter. And you’d be surprised how able the Lord is to take a scripture a little bit out of context and have a very special meaning. And when he speaks that way, you know it’s him. And what he’s saying to Peter, you’ve made the wrong move, mate.

[00:22:11] Change it and get back and when you do, go and collect the others that you’ve led astray. When you’re converted, strengthen the brethren. And that’s an application to this particular statement through a scripture that had particular appliance to Peter because he was such a leader that when he got cranky at the Lord and really cranky at himself, I think, because of how much he’d failed, he was leading all the others to undo some of the discipleship. And the Lord’s sending him a special little telegram. When you wake up to yourself and get back to being what you were, then go and get back the others that you’ve led off. That’s basically a special message for Peter. Now, the interesting thing is how much God does do this, even today.

[00:23:07] And in a Christian meeting, when you’re there and you’ve got the word of God and you have your reasons for wanting to get certain scriptural teachings to be landed in the folk, and then someone comes and tells you that God spoke to them. But when you’re listening for what he said, God is, how will I say this, he is not given permission, he has permit to use his scriptures any way he wants. And God does give people a word, a scripture. I think it’s rare. And a lot of times we take giving ourselves permission to do what we want to do by finding some scripture that roughly makes it look like it, which is the reverse of the opposite of what I’m trying to illustrate. This verse examples God using a very special truth that’s in the Bible for everybody

[00:24:06] and it’s the need for Christian conversion to be a real Christian. But he’s using this verse to tell Peter, you’ve taken a wrong step, buddy, and you’re so aware of your failures that you’re throwing in the towel and you’re taking others with you. When you get turned around again, go and collect them and make them get back on the track. That’s actually what he’s saying to Peter. When you have turned again, strengthen your brothers, which of course is what he does, and becomes the leader of the Christian church. she’s the speaker on the day of Pentecost which is yet to happen. It’s later than this. It’s yet to happen in the book of Acts. Luke is the first volume of Luke and the second volume that that writer wrote is the book of Acts and he records in there the day of Pentecost

[00:24:55] where Jesus has now not only come back from the dead but Jesus has gone to heaven being crowned King of Kings and Lord of Lords and he’s been given the Holy Spirit to give and Peter announces the first sermon in the Christian era which is the day of Pentecost which announces the new covenant that if people will come to Jesus for the forgiveness of sins they’ll be forgiven their sin and they’ll receive the Holy Spirit the offer of the Holy Spirit first made like that for a permanent indwelling based on the new covenant there’s indwellings in the Old Testament based on what God was doing in the Old Covenant but in the new covenant the first opportunity to take it in was on the day of Pentecost and those people were the beginners of those who became members of the church, spiritually in the church

[00:25:43] and if you’re here this morning and you’ve been born again or you’ve been converted and been changed because the Holy Spirit has come and indwelling in your heart he’s made you a Christian that’s what it is to be born again then you are in the door you may get tempted by Satan to get sifted like wheat you may get your faith tested and think you’ve made a big bomb like Peter must have thought of himself. Well, we know he did. Boasted so much and didn’t live up to any of it. But Jesus gave him the grace reverse your decision and then go and get strengthened by the others you let astray. You know, it’s the sort of thing that happens to people who I meet in ministry who are serving the Lord in all sorts of different capacities. They’re often not the ones that might have been looked at by their churches

[00:26:42] as wonderful people who make good leaders and pastors but sometimes they’re people that did get worked on by Jesus and turned out that they learned how to rest in his strength and power and became very effective in ministry and are serving the Lord in lots of different ways. Well that’s my message for today but if you want a place to look at it and to review it I’ll lead you to a Bible passage just to finish on so you can go away when you do want to look at it again John 21 and 3 to 18 John 21 and 3 to 18 and you’ll find in that passage much some of the similar ideas 3 to 18, John 21 on the board we’ve got now I am confused oh yeah it’s the right passage, thank you I hadn’t realised how quick you’d been Simon Peter said to them, I’m going fishing this is when he’s in his crankiness time

[00:27:41] they said to him, we’ll go with you see he’s such a strong leader that even when he decides to go back fishing they all say yep, they went out and got into the boat but that night they caught nothing now of course when people go in your own anger at Jesus when something’s gone wrong and you try to do a bit of Christian things nothing happens that’s just what’s happening to them they’re not catching any fish either and as the day was breaking Jesus stood on the shore the disciples didn’t know that it was Jesus but he called out to them children do you have any fish? and they answered him no and he said to them cast the net on the other side of the boat the right side and you’ll find some. And of course, if you’re a fishing person whose whole background is doing that, you know how to know which side of the boat

[00:28:32] to try out first or if you’re not getting one way, go to the other. And here’s this stranger on the beach who’s telling him, try the other side. And they did that. And the disciple whom Jesus loved, that’s John, said to Peter, it’s the Lord. He recognised Jesus. And when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he did a typical Peter thing. He’d been fishing without any much clothing on. He put on his outer garment for his trip for work and he threw himself into the sea. He didn’t bother with the casting net. The other disciples came in the boat after him, dragging in a net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about 100 yards off. And Peter then drags in. Peter replies to Jesus. And Jesus goes through the whole process of, I won’t go through it, you can look it up later,

[00:29:24] of restoring Peter and letting him know that Jesus hasn’t discarded him and he can learn to love Jesus and express it properly nonetheless. So I love this passage because Jesus doesn’t get rid of you because you made one mistake. But he knows that your love for him is something that he can help you with. And that’s a fantastic thing. It’s not a matter of how great is our love. Why we got tested, we survived. The Lord, you’d better give us an extra reward in heaven. And no, all of us are guilty people who have forgiveness because of the atonement where Jesus died for our sins. And on the basis of his successful dealing with all our sinfulness, he’s always going to accept us back if he just come. And if you are at distance from Jesus this morning, please take this morning to be him telling you,

[00:30:26] listen here, just get back where you ought to be and then go and help the others. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, I give you thanks for this passage. I don’t know why it is I love this passage. Jesus, if you understanding Peter and you said this to him even before he failed, you knew what was going to happen to him. Peter, Satan’s after you, but I have prayed for you that your faith don’t fail. And Lord, the idea that you in glory pray for us and our weak little faiths because you want us to hang on to you and you know you want to love. We want to love you if you help us. Thank you, Father, for the reality nonetheless that is taught in the passage of the need to convert, that is to turn around and leave what’s wrong and leave our lack of faith and trust in you and walk with you.

[00:31:33] And I thank you for the assurance we have that you’re just wanting to keep us and to carry us on. If there’s someone here who needs to know, Lord, that you’ve got their case right in front of him, Jesus does, and he’s looking after you. We pray that they’ll know that today in Jesus’ name. Amen.