Now, we have announced in the bulletin that
we are beginning a new series this morning.
A series that we have entitled, From Simon
to Peter.
From Simon to Peter.
And this morning we are going to take
what is described by the word preparation.
Our message this morning is not based so
much upon one particular text or passage, but
upon a wider spectrum of scripture.
On the occasion of their first encounter, our
Lord Jesus Christ looked into the eyes of
Simon, son of Jonas, and said this to
him, So you were Simon, the son of
John, or the son of Jonah.
You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter,
a rock.
John 1.42 Now, this renaming of a
man must be seen and understood against its
biblical background.
And also, of course, we must recognize something
of what such a thing signified in ancient
times.
When it was done by a man, it
meant that the person who performed the renaming
was a person who had authority over the
renamed.
For example, it would invariably happen if you
procured a slave, and the slave was added
to the number of your household.
You might very well want to give him
quite a different name to that which was
his when you procured him.
And the very fact that you could so
do meant that you had authority over him.
When God renames a man, however, it does
not simply mean that God has authority over
the man, that he has over all of
us, for we are in his hands.
But it also signifies that God is going
to transform that man, so that he will
assume a character that is altogether new, a
character that is in some ways symbolized by
the name that is given him.
By way of illustration, you have the Old
Testament character Jacob.
There came a point when God said to
Jacob, your name shall no longer be Jacob,
but Israel.
The reason is this, there is something princely
that is going to emerge in your life.
You have prevailed both with God and with
man, and your name henceforth will indicate this
transformation of character.
And of course, you have other instances.
Simon, as he appeared before our Lord Jesus,
was very much the son of Jonah.
And there is good reason to believe that
our Lord played upon that fact.
Jonah means dove.
One modern writer puts it like this, Jonah
means dove, and Cephas, or Peter, mean rock.
So what Jesus is saying to Peter is
this, up until now you have been very
much like a fluttering, timorous dove, child of
a dove, fleeting, flying, hither and thither from
bow to bow.
But if you take me as your Savior,
and if you give your life to me,
I will make you a man of rock.
Now if you omit the ifs, because there
were no ifs in our Lord's statement, not
one.
Omit the ifs from that quotation from a
modern scholar, and you've got the truth of
my text.
Jesus said, Browart, Simon the son of Jonah,
a little dove, fluttering around from place to
place without any solidity, without any purpose, going
around in circles, higher and lower, moving hither
and thither at the whim of a fancy.
But I'll make you a different man.
Thou shalt be called Cephas, Petros, rock.
Now that's a wonderful promise.
Not more wonderful still as far as we
are concerned this morning.
We have the evidence of the transformation that
took place.
Making Simon, son of Jonah, into the man
of stability, and of character, the rock man.
That we find him to be in the
book of the Acts of the Apostles, and
in the two epistles that bear his name.
And what a story it is.
He was a man ultimately not only saved
by the grace of God, that he was,
but if we may use his brother Apostle's
language, sanctified, meek for the master's use, and
prepared unto every good work, so that as
God would have him labor for him, here
or there, the man is ready, and the
man is willing to be made willing if
he's not already willing.
And we find him ultimately as one of
the most mature, one of the most stable,
one of the most stalwart souls of the
great New Testament and Apostolic Age.
Simon the Rock.
Now the story of that transformation I believe
is one of the great epics of history.
It's a remarkable story.
But it is all the more remarkable because
you see, there is so much of Simon
in all of us.
Now I dearly love the Apostle Paul.
Who doesn't?
We owe him so much under God.
But somehow or other he's often on a
different plane, naturally speaking.
We're not in the same world, naturally speaking.
Oh there are times when we converge, but
this man Simon, son of Jonah, he's so
much like me, or I'm so much like
him.
And wherever I go I find people who
are prepared to say this, there is so
much of Simon in me, we're so near
to one another.
His humaneness brings us so near to him.
He's such a real man, he's no man
of straw, I'm not suggesting that Paul is.
But this man is certainly made of the
same stuff as you and myself.
And you see, as we pursue the footfalls
of Simon Peter, and see the vicissitudes of
his life, and how the Lord deals with
him and transforms him, we cannot other than
take courage.
For we see what the grace of God
can do, and can make of a man
like ourselves.
Very impetuous.
Very impulsive.
And there is much else that we can
say about it.
But at last, God triumphs.
And it is on that score that I
want to invite you over the next number
of months to come with me and follow
in the footmarks and see the great transition
from Simon to Peter.
Until we see what the grace of God
can do, not only for him, but please
God for every one of us.
It would be a wonderful thing, let's pray
for one another, if no one was left
out of this.
I'm often sorrowful on behalf of men and
women who come to the sanctuary and who
go out unblessed.
They even see others blessed.
But they themselves don't seem to catch the
glory and the grace that God is pouring
forth.
Will you pray with me that in these
mourning times as we gather together over the
next number of months, there will not be
a man or a woman or a boy
or a girl which will fail to see
the significance of these things, but that we
shall all know the grace that redeemed and
rescued and transformed Simon, saved him, sanctified him,
and made him a servant of God.
To whom successive generations acknowledge their gratitude.
Now, the first scene, preparation.
The divine potter always prepares his clay with
meticulous care.
Ere he personally and directly began the work
that was to change Simon into Peter, and
canalize his energies into the fulfillment of God's
perfect will, Jesus first arranged that Simon should
become closely involved with the ministry or in
the ministry of John the Baptist.
And this is the background, this is the
preparation.
Now it often happens this way.
When God is about to do something big,
he will arrange for a man to come
under the influence of somebody or other who
will engage in a preparatory ministry.
Sometimes it's a mother or a father.
Sometimes it's a Sunday school teacher.
Of course, sometimes the father or mother or
the Sunday school teacher can be the very
person who is involved in bringing the boy
or the girl right into the swing and
glory of the Christian life.
It's true.
But more often, rather, it is a case
of someone being the agent for the performance
of the preparatory work.
Now there is some legitimate room for doubt
as to whether or not Simon was actually
a disciple of John the Baptist.
And so we don't dogmatize here.
But really it doesn't matter whether he was
directly a disciple of John the Baptist or
not.
He was intimately involved.
I'll tell you why.
We read that all Judea and Jerusalem and
all the cities round about Jordan went out
after John to be baptized of him.
And we also read that Andrew, Simon Peter's
brother, was a disciple of John the Baptist.
And knowing Andrew, and the way he shared
things with Peter, and the way they talked
about things together, and the way he was
ultimately able to persuade Peter to come to
the Messiah, it is impossible, it is inconceivable
that Simon could have evaded the ministry of
John the Baptist.
But in all probability, I say in all
probability, Peter was a disciple, Simon was a
disciple of John the Baptist.
I suggest that because of the way Peter
speaks on the occasion when they would choose
someone to succeed Judas to the throne.
These are Peter's words.
So says he, one of the men who
have accompanied us during the time that the
Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
beginning from the baptism of John, until the
day when he was taken up from us,
one of these men must become with us
a witness to his resurrection.
Now, that means at least that Simon was
present on the occasion of our Lord's baptism
by John.
Why was he there?
Well, the most natural reading of the text,
I think, would suggest that he was there
just like his brother, as a disciple of
John's, being taught by John.
He was one of the serious young men
who, along with others, had gathered around John
the Baptist, this authentic man of God, this
voice from above, who in those days when
the word of the Lord was scarce, knew
his God.
But really, it doesn't matter very much.
In either case, the ministry of John had
an impact upon Simon Peter, and prepared the
way for what was to come.
Now, in what sense?
This is our question this morning.
How did the ministry of John prepare Simon
to become Peter?
I can only choose a few strands from
the main body of truth that we have
in the Gospels.
The first thing I want to say is
this.
John's ministry demanded reformation, and this in itself
had an impact upon Simon as well as
upon others.
John's announcement was that the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.
Don't read that without care, without thought.
The kingdom of the heavens is at hand,
the Old Testament had promised a king.
And a kingdom that would belong to the
Son of Man.
The ancients of days would give him a
kingdom that would outlive and outlast every other.
And what John said, the kingdom of the
heavens is right at hand, it's around the
corner, it's just here.
Of course, it was here not because the
kingdom as such had come, but the kingdom
had come in the presence of the king.
And in this context, the king makes the
kingdom.
He brings all the powers of the world
to come, to bear into the human situation
and upon it.
And he comes.
Now, John's statement that the kingdom was at
hand was no more startling than his understanding
of the nature of that kingdom.
Peter and all others like him, versed in
the Old Testament, were waiting for this.
But they waited, they knew not what for,
because their understanding of the kingdom had become
so material and so carnal that alas, they
were oftentimes waiting for the wrong thing to
come, as the Jews are still waiting.
It was nationalistic and narrow, their concept of
things.
It was materialistic and shallow.
John knew that it was quite different from
the common conception.
In the solitude of the desert, he had
learnt that God's promised reign would be spiritual
before all else.
Now, I deliberately put it like that.
I'm not saying that there was no other
aspect to it, but what I am saying
is this.
It was spiritual before anything else.
So John's call was not to become involved
in political intrigue or maneuvering.
John's summons was a summons to summon men
to repentance.
A change of mind and a change of
heart and a change of life.
It was spiritual, because the nature of the
kingdom was spiritual.
It wasn't to verse people, it wasn't to
teach people according to the tenets of some
philosophical or political creed.
The kingdom was not political, the kingdom was
not philosophical.
It was moral, it was spiritual, and the
preparation must be correspondingly moral and spiritual.
Repent, says John.
And wherever he went, this was the message.
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.
He summoned men to make a verdict, to
arrive at a verdict that they would be
morally different and spiritually different.
He called them to repentance.
And such repentances would radically change their thinking
and their living, their beliefs and their behavior.
Now that moral transformation that John sought must
in the first place involve the end of
national bigotry and a self-righteousness that bursted
in mere physical dissent.
This is one of the damning features of
the life of the Jews of our Lord's
day.
And John, with the axe in his hand,
lifted it up and let it fall in
these thunderous words.
Bear fruit, said he, that befit repentance.
And don't begin to say to yourselves, we
have Abraham for our father.
For I tell you, says this man of
God, can you imagine it?
I tell you, he says, that God is
able from these stones to raise up children
to Abraham.
If this were the salvation of mankind, simply
to be physically related to Abraham, God can
make stones into children of Abraham.
There could be no more devastating word in
the whole of the Bible.
Merely to be a physical descendant of Abraham
does not save a man.
Let me repeat, physically descend from the very
friend of God.
Significance as it may be, does not in
and of itself imply greatness or goodness.
In and of itself.
As such, it is no qualification for access
into God's kingdom.
Nicodemus was the man at the threshold of
John's gospel who had to be told, Nicodemus,
the ruler of the Jews, except a man
be born again he cannot even see, let
alone enter the kingdom of God.
Then again, where genuine repentance is present, there
must be fruit that befit repentance.
Repentance is not a thing that you can
do without showing it.
Oh no.
Now you can be secretly in love with
someone, I suppose, and hide it for a
long time, but you cannot be a penitent
sinner and not show it.
It will show in your attitude, of course,
love will also in due course.
But repentance is such a radical change of
mind concerning myself and concerning God and his
glory, that it has to be out.
If we ask with the multitudes that did
ask John, well how, in what sense, what
must we do, how do we express it?
Well John's got his answer ready.
They asked him exactly that question in the
days when he ministered.
What then shall we do, they said, Luke
3.10. And we have the reply.
He who has two coats, says John, let
him share with him who has none.
And he who has food, let him do
likewise.
Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and
they said to him, Teacher, what shall we
do?
And he said to them, Collect no more
than is appointed you.
Soldiers also asked him, And we, what shall
we do?
And he said to them, Rob no one
by violence, or by false accusation, and be
content with your wages.
That's evidence of repentance.
Now you notice what John does.
He deals with the peculiar sin of every
sector of society that come to him.
The first were materialistic, and they loved to
hoard clothing and other things, clothing and food,
food and clothing, hoard, self is in the
center.
Right, says John, the token of repentance is
this, share what you've got.
This means that you haven't the view that
you yourself are the center of the universe,
but other people have a share in God's
good things.
That's repentance.
And so he goes down the list, I'm
not going to pursue.
The point is, of course, that we all
have our sin that so easily besets us.
It may not be quite the same with
me as it is with you.
It may not be quite the same with
any two among us this morning.
But the fact of this, there is a
sin that besets us.
We must repent.
Each reply speaks of a practical expression of
a moral and spiritual change.
My dear friends, this is so challenging.
You know, I would love to speak eye
to eye with any passenger this morning who
feels that when the message of repentance is
struck, it applies to everybody else.
My good man, my good woman, in the
name of God, don't let yourself be thus
bulldozed by the devil into a corner where
you will perish this morning.
Repentance is a word for you and for
me.
And then, of course, genuine repentance needs to
be expressed symbolically as well as practically.
Then went out to him Jerusalem and all
Judea and all the region round about Jordan
and they were baptized by him in the
river Jordan.
Confessing their sins.
Acknowledging their wrongness.
So easy to expect others to do this.
It's a different thing to do it ourselves.
And it's so easy for us to call
attention to other people's sins.
Now, my dear people, we need a lesson
here.
We are past masters at this terrible game
of that's his sin.
I beg of you, dear people of Knox
this morning, every man and woman among us,
don't do that.
What's yours?
What's mine?
Acknowledge it.
Keep your finger to yourself, man.
You see, for every finger that points at
another, there are three that point back at
me.
And I tell you, this can damn the
church.
And I will stand in this pulpit this
morning, though I've only been here six months,
less, and I will tell you that this
sin can damn Knox.
Man or woman.
Repentance means acknowledging your sin.
Not somebody else's.
Now, there comes a point, according to the
disciplines of the New Testament, where those in
pastoral authority have from time to time to
speak to a recalcitrant brother or a recalcitrant
sister.
But this is of such a pastoral order
that it is extremely delicate and a very,
very, very sensitive operation to perform.
But generally speaking, penitence means this.
I acknowledge my own sin.
Only on that score, only on that score
is the baptism of John, the baptism unto
the remission of sins.
For that word unto means this, that to
the penitent who acknowledges his sin before God,
God forgives and God forgets.
This is another lesson we've got to learn.
That when God forgives and forgets, we've got
to learn to forget as well.
When God forgave, God forgave.
We've got to forgive and forget.
This is a fellowship.
And Simon came to this.
Later on, but this is very significant, Simon
along with other sons who asked our Lord,
How I'll forgive you.
I wish you under the sneezing to forgive
you.
And forget.
But a man who is penitent is so
aware.
Such was the radical reformation that was and
was and was participated in.
What I want you to notice is this.
John's minister supplied instruction instruct authoritatively to be
made explicit concerning certain matters.
John's kingdom was quite at hand.
Sure as it was imminent and close, so
also was it quite spiritual as we've seen.
And a God-present of the King.
It is for John to see that it
was spiritual.
Verily, the memory of the King in whom
was embodied was a spiritual many things.
That the Son opens, doesn't it?
Yes, until why?
Until we put it in its place.
It's the son of a lamb made the
cur of sinners.
Rather than the son of iron that is
whose foe Alex is the sovereignty over our
guilt.
Rather than the son deals with an exit
such as Rome.
Old says he, the lamb that us.
You see, if he couldn't in this realm
were the point of breaking the law of
Rome.
The King cannot consume a nature, cannot curse
and be able to with God.
Well, there's the basic issues taking away the
King of the Lamb.
The Jews of Peter do this.
They expect a King to emerge.
He is coming to send guilt.
Jews are just going to do something to
the nature to be complete.
Says John, hide in water.
But he who is mighty he with a
holy fire.
Judgmentations both of us.
Only the preparer of the way the foreking
Isaiah 4.
It was going down the mountains up the
valleys leveled up so that the highway could
be the King.
The King is coming.
That says John.
I know that I am as limitations of
ministry as limitations of the water that symbolize
repentance.
Water can do nothing.
Not anything.
And of itself water is as simple as
anything.
In myself no water can do nothing.
But, says John, perhaps the water with the
baptized men is symbolic of something that has
happened by the grace in the heart who's
coming after me.
The shoes I'm on were his shoes.
And when he comes he will baptize me
with the holy spirit fire and the holy
symbol of doing things.
Not the symbol this is.
Going to a power being a power.
This is the power of God.
Down among God the holy is God.
Human heart.
And you see water all we are is
a loss of our business, you know, with
water.
God have mercy.
And it's all simple after all.
Who's self is a cup.
Nothing.
But the holiest never comes in vain.
He changes the heart.
He renews the soul.
This was one thing that Simon needed to
learn.
The kingdom to which you call is not
a kingdom that you enter into because you're
a Jew.
It is a kingdom to which you summon
that you must change radically and harm in.
That sin and curse must be done.
And when the law of sin must be
so that a man is made new, transformed,
redeemed, regenerate.
And John told him that.
One other thing.
John included at least one other vital note
concerning the king in whose very assembly from
the kingdom comes.
He errs away and baptized with the Holy
Spirit for burns with unquenchable fire.
A then solemn note.
Very palatable in the 20th century as in
the past.
Yet I can't apologize to you for this
morning for many because I am declared the
word of God and not the age.
Listen to this.
Winnowing for and he will cleave and he
will get into his but that he will
burn with unquenchable fire.
Rome also comes under the shape of Sodom
in his view.
And where is the king?
Juvenile.
Immodern.
He's all.
He's sovereign of the world.
He's separate from the goat and the wheat.
And having gathered in a garden or in
a corn harvest he will burn with unquenchable
fire.
I'm not suggesting one more.
That's not everything he heard.
I'm not suggesting a half of it in
points or a fact of this ministerial revolution.
You choke in upon the nonsense of scientist
fellow countrymen.
Humans start to ask questions.
The thing to which I want to be
closing is this.
It would be remiss of me if I
had one other speech in history.
Very briefly in this way an introduction.
He said the kingdom that he brings materialistic.
It is first place.
God says to John the one that I'm
talking about the sin bearing spit baptizing the
king.
Behold.
Then he says to his demon you who
dwell there is an abusive disciple knowing that
he has now started in the beginning Simon's
preparation took shape beyond the baptization of life
and instruction as well to protomatize the best
sin as well as individual produced by John's
minister my friends on your pathway and you
dislike more of the John the Baptist when
he disclosed your weakness had to be dealt
with.
The wound is opened up of the foot
marks and and thereby my very life that
refuses will be silenced to dance to his
tune of all disgust to me.
Have you ever before the one Herod of
Jesus before Herod had understand this and had
said my friend Herod is Baptist and you
can discourage the Baptist and he brings to
the heart has been the such disgust and
shamelessness under the men of the forerunner of
your people I have afraid that God one
thing and say something to us and this
is why perhaps we feel that with all
sense and we should take advance cuts on
this and if we keep the letter the
history of the gospel with our best prisoners
to dance.
I have advised everyone as John for the
reasons he had concerned us and leaders of
the people and of Israel of Israel