We continue this morning with our subject, From
Simon to Peter, and with the aspect of
the subject that we began last Lord's Day
morning, when we were dealing with some of
the early confirmations of the Saviour's claims to
Simon Peter.
Now we are not directly on the theme
of Christmas, but our subject is Christocentric, Christ
is at the heart of it.
And therefore we feel justified in continuing with
this theme this morning and trust that it
will honour Him, whose name is uppermost in
our minds and in our hearts at the
present time.
To make a promise is one thing, to
deliver the goods is quite another.
However, when Simon heard Jesus address him by
name and affirmed so confidently that this man
Simon would be in due course another man,
requiring a new name, Petros, Peter, a rock,
a rock.
One wonders what really went on in Simon's
mind and heart.
He doubtless questioned, it would seem to me,
the right of this stranger to address him
in this way.
What right has he to say this?
And assuming that he has the right to
talk like this to us, what does he
know about me anyway?
And assuming that he knows me and knows
that I need such a radical change as
to take me from being the Simon I
am to this new character whose name is
Petros, what is he able to do about
it?
The journey from Simon to Peter would be
a long uphill climb, involving the most radical
change in character and in conduct and in
spirit.
Did the Nazarene know his man?
If he did, what recreative resources does he
command to bring about the kind of transformation
that he speaks about without qualification?
Now, we saw last Lord's Day morning that
Jesus knew his man all right, for he
knew all men.
We don't propose going back over the same
territory this morning, but let us repeat this.
Jesus knows his man.
He knows you, and he knows me, and
he knows every other man, and he knows
every woman, and every boy, and every girl,
and every creature.
And this is part of the glory of
his Saviorhood.
He knows men.
He knows me.
You and I may be hiding in some
tucked away corner this morning, thinking that we
are separate from everyone, and no one really
knows us.
My friend, you've made a terrible blunder.
He does.
He knew Nathanael.
He knew Nicodemus.
He knew the woman of Samaria.
We've seen this, and the evidence of his
knowledge of them—intimate and real, knowledge of their
hearts, knowledge of their thinking, knowledge of their
behavior and history.
He knew them.
We now propose looking at that same narrative,
John 1 to 4, looking at this narrative
and seeing with equal clarity the truth brought
out, that he not only understands us, not
only knows us through and through, but he
has the power to make us into the
kind of people he would have us be.
And this, of course, is what rounds the
whole message of Christmas into one whole.
What's the use of having someone who has
unique diagnostic powers to tell us what's wrong
with us, if he cannot prescribe?
What's the value of the physician that comes
along our bed and says, look man, you're
dying, but can do nothing about it?
Here is a
but with a power to bring Simon to
Peter, to bring a sinner to sainthood, to
bring a child of Adam, to bear again
the image of a child of God.
And this is salvation.
Now the first four chapters of John's Gospel
serve most forcibly to portray these facts, and
I want to turn to them now.
Two main things I shall be dwelling on
this morning, and the first is this.
It is Jesus's outstanding perception of the need
for change.
Not only did he know man, not only
does he know me and know you, he
is impassioned with a blazing concern that we
should be changed.
And not simply changed, but changed so that
we become precisely what God meant us to
be.
His perception of the need for change, and
of the change that we need.
Have you not noticed that whereas no one
else appeared to be concerned about the condition
of things and people, as described in these
first four chapters, he was.
Everyone else seems to be taking things so
much for granted, there's nothing very much wrong,
but when he comes everything is wrong.
And he sees what is wrong, but not
only that, he knows what is right.
And his concern is not simply to change
things from what they are, but to change
things so that they become what they ought
to be.
He knew what was right, therefore he could
not tolerate what was wrong, he would make
the wrong right.
There are people who simply want to change
things.
It's the love of novelty that characterizes their
lives.
And if only they can change things, well
they're happy.
That's not Jesus Christ.
The change that he wanted was a change
that corresponded to the perfect will of God.
He knew what God meant the world to
be.
He knew what God meant Simon to be.
He knew what God meant the woman of
Samaria to be.
He knew what God meant you to be,
and me to be.
And that is the mainspring of his passion
for change.
It's not simply to change things superficially.
It is so to change men and circumstances
that they become what God meant them to
be.
Now let's just look at this briefly.
Why change Simon?
Simon must be changed to Peter because the
man as he is, is not the man
as God meant him to be.
As Simon he was alienated from God.
Sin has made his life abnormal from the
point of view of his maker.
He was meant to be different.
It is something so simple about it that
one tends to miss it.
Jesus saw not only the Simon before him,
but he had the image of the man
he was meant to be, in God's plan.
His concern, let me repeat, is not for
novelty but for normality.
Normality according to the divine purpose.
And nothing else is normal in the life
of Jesus.
Normality is not doing what other people are
doing.
Normality is being what God meant me to
be.
As Jesus looked at that disorganized, disintegrated life
of Simon, he saw the lostness.
What we can only see in retrospect, he
perceived in prospect.
He foresaw the tragedy of Simon's powers of
leadership, his vast energies of soul and of
body being used simply to shuffle around on
a fisherman's boat, bossing this man and bruising
that character, being just the kind of impetuous
sinner he's always been.
Oh, the tragedy, the lostness of it, especially
when he could see what God meant him
to be, the fisher of men, the pillar
of the church, the apostle of the reigning
Lord, the builder of the churches, the strategic
apostle of the New Testament, and the shepherd
of souls.
Not that fishing fish is in any wise
unworthy.
It certainly is not.
But God had something bigger, something greater in
comparison with which Simon's life at the present
time was totally lost, apart from the fact
that as a sinner he was under the
condemnation of God.
That's why Simon needs to be changed.
He needs to be changed because he's not
what God meant him to be.
And my friend, that's why you and I
need to be changed.
It doesn't matter how much we are like
other people or unlike other people.
The one thing that matters is this, are
we what God meant us to be?
And if the Christian religion is anything, it
is this.
And if it is not this, then for
God's sake, let's get rid of it.
There are plenty of religions in the world
that talk about change, but have not the
capacity to bring forth the goods.
Christianity claims to be able to remake and
renew men and people.
Simon needed to be changed, not for change's
sake, but to become the normal man in
God's sight.
Why change the temple?
John 2, 13-22.
You remember the story, Jesus Christ goes into
the temple, and he ends up driving out
the money changers and those who sold doves
and animals in the temple prison.
Why change the temple?
Now isn't this ridiculous, someone might say.
Here is a man of Nazareth, he's come
up from the backwoods of society, he comes
into the city, he's overwhelmed with the things
he sees, and he begins to get cross
and angry.
That's how people talk.
And of course, just as there was a
natural and human justification for Simon's present mode
of living, so was there a kind of
justification for everything that went on in the
temple prison.
People sold doves and animals because it was
useful for those that were sacrificing them.
And so you can rationalize the whole thing.
The exchange of money was necessary in order
to pay the temple shekel in the coinage
of the temple.
And so you can rationalize that.
There was, humanly speaking, a reason for almost
everything that went on.
But when Jesus came in, his soul blazed
within him with a holy zeal and a
passion for change.
Why change?
Why not see what's good here?
See the glory of the sanctuary.
See the people coming, and they want to
worship and they want to sacrifice.
Why not let things be as they are?
Let me come back and repeat.
The concern of Jesus for change was not
for change's sake.
His was not a love for novelty.
He knew what the temple was meant to
be.
And it was as one who knew what
the temple of God was meant to be,
he looked into the faces of those men
that traded on other people's religion and said,
Look, Jesus, you have made my father's house
a den of thieves.
What was meant to be a house of
prayer for all nations has become a den
of religious thieves.
You see the point?
It's not simply that he knew men.
It's not simply that he wanted change.
He wanted such a change as to bring
the whole temple life into harmony with the
will of God.
Behind the stench of the cattle and the
noise of the money changers, and the evident
greed of the multitudes that came, he was
devoured with a zeal for the will of
God.
Move along.
Why change Nicodemus?
It's the same principle.
He's not simply concerned to see Nicodemus a
slightly different man from the man he is.
He was religious enough already, perhaps a little
too religious, in one sense.
Why was Jesus concerned to change Nicodemus?
Well, here he is, sophisticated, theologically minded, one
of the great men of his society, the
teacher in Israel, not a teacher, a ruler
of the Jews, and having a hand in
organizing the life of the temple and what
went on in the temple presence.
A most influential man.
Here he is.
Why change him?
One for his own salvation.
He's only once born, born of the flesh,
born of the will of man, and no
man can enter the kingdom of God unless
he is born again.
Why change him?
Perhaps also that he should in turn lend
a hand to the changing and transformation of
the temple, that it should once again be
the kind of place that God meant it
to be.
But he must be changed to become the
man God meant him to be.
And I'll ask the same question about the
woman of Samaria.
Why change the woman of Samaria?
This thrills me, I must say.
She was quite a different character from Nicodemus,
morally and otherwise.
Do you know God had a purpose for
her?
Hallelujah.
The Son of God came to the life
of the morally derelict and looked at them
and spoke to them, and saw that God
had a plan for such.
Why change the woman of Samaria?
Well, it would be a good thing simply
to change her mode of living, that's true.
And yet that was not the ultimate in
our Lord's purpose.
He would make her the kind of woman
God meant her to be, and God had
a plan for her.
And you see, at the end of the
story, we're given to understand something of that
purpose of God for her.
Let me read to you again, in this
context, verses 39 to 42.
Many Samaritans from the city believed in him,
that is in Jesus, because of the woman's
testimony.
That's part of the divine plan for her.
Her testimony was, he told me all things
that ever I did.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they
asked him to stay with them, and he
stayed there two days.
And many more believed because of his word.
They said to the woman, it's no longer
because of your words that we believe, for
we have heard him ourselves, and we know
that this is indeed the Savior of the
world.
Can you see what's happened?
This dear woman, who was first of all
bearing not bad tidings, but bad habits and
a carrier of moral corruption all around, in
the mind and purpose of God she was
to open the gateway into the city of
Samaria for the incoming of the Savior of
the world.
And there she is at the moment, in
her sin, lost.
God had a plan for her.
Jesus' astonishing powers of perception.
He knew the human heart, and not only
knew what was there, but knew what was
there in relation to what ought to be
there, in relation to the will of God.
Now that brings me to the other matter.
Our Lord's astonishing power to effect such changes
as were necessary to bring people and society
into the proper and complete alignment with the
will of God.
Now this is the other thread woven into
the pattern of these opening episodes in our
Lord's public ministry.
He knows all men, knows what we are,
knows what we ought to be, but he
carries in his word and in his heart
and in his being the authority and the
power to bring us to that very place
in the divine purpose.
Now having already seen this power reflected in
some of the passages to which we've referred,
I propose now to confine my remarks to
three illustrations of this power, and three only.
I deliberately choose these three illustrations from John
1 to 4 because they serve to show
our Lord's power, one, over material things, two,
over the moral and spiritual, three, over physical
affairs.
First of all, Jesus' power over things material.
In John 2, 1 to 11, he turned
water into wine.
What a delightful episode that was.
And what a remarkable indication of the kind
of thing he was able to do.
Here in this first sign of his deity
and of his messiahship, our Lord Jesus Christ
manifests himself as the Lord of Nature, the
Lord of Nature.
This appointment was not the least, was probably
the least consequence, I should say, of the
failure of wine on such an occasion in
a wedding in the Near East of our
Lord's day.
That there was disappointment is evident.
I don't need to stress that.
It's evident to anyone that knows the narrative.
Disappointment there must have been.
But according to J.D.M. Dirrott, such
a thing meant much more than ordinary embarrassment
for the hosts.
They may well be involved in a pecuniary
liability.
Now this is something quite new to us,
Westerners.
They might even be involved in a court
case.
There was an element of reciprocity about everything
that took place in a wedding.
For example, you would invite all your neighbors.
And just because one neighbor would present a
son or daughter of his neighbor in a
certain way, so you were expected to do
the same.
Just because one neighbor laid the table in
a certain way, you would be able, you
would be expected to do something similar.
There was this element of reciprocity.
And therefore, according to this authority at any
rate, it was very possible, if not probable,
that those who had failed to make provision
for the wedding festivities, the wine running out,
would be required to answer for it even
in the court of law of the day.
Failure to provide what was customary would be
tantamount to breaking a kind of unwritten social
contract.
Against such a background of rich national custom,
we see that there was a deep social
stigma involved in all this, as well as
a purely domestic dimension to the premature failure
of the supply of wine.
Thus, the Lord steps in.
Mary, his mother, tells him about it and
asks him to do something.
And what he does in every orchard, every
year, by means of a natural process, a
process involved in viticulture, he now does in
one pregnant moment by his sovereign word, he
causes the water to become wine.
Now, that the event had a primary message
to the newly married couple is evident.
That is obvious.
It spoke to them of a friend who
could change water into wine, who could save
them from disappointments galore if they kept in
touch with him throughout their married life.
Oh, it told them no end of things.
It was a message for them, as well
as saving them out of the very difficult
situation that had emerged.
But it also bore a special message for
Simon and for ourselves.
We need to know that the Lord who
comes to us and promises to change us
into different people is not just a little
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a
manger, making a mother cry.
The Son of Mary is more than Mary's
son.
He's the Son of God.
He's the Lord of the universe.
He holds the whole wide world in his
hand.
This is my Savior.
Who is he in yonder stall, asks the
writer of the hymn, at whose feet the
shepherds fall?
And he answers, "'Tis the Lord, the King
of glory.
"'Tis the Lord, O wondrous story.
And if he's not the Lord, then to
worship him is idolatry.
But if he is, then to worship him
is obligatory.
His power is the power of one who
rules the course of nature.
And that is the Jesus that is introduced
to us in these remarkable words in John's
Gospel.
His power over things, material, is, however, matched
by his power over moral and spiritual factors
in the lives of men.
He changed the moral and spiritual corruptor of
that Samaritan city into a spiritual benefactor of
the whole community.
The very worst Samaritan in that Samaritan city,
he transformed into a good Samaritan, who blazed
forth not words of lust nor deeds of
lust from now on, but words of grace
and healing.
I don't know how you feel as you
read this story.
I think it is true to say that
generally we shudder a little.
We shudder with an almost instinctive sense of
horror as Jesus Christ opens a little window
into the woman's heart.
There she is standing so near to him.
We know him.
He's the peerless, pure Son of God.
The very epitome, the very embodiment of holiness
and purity.
And there she is right by his side.
And then he opens the gateway, he opens
the window into her heart a little, and
he lets us see the private life of
that talkative and religious woman who stood there
by Sica's well.
And it makes such a contrast.
We all must ponder for a moment and
fear in our ignorance that something of her
impurity will pass over to him.
Beneath that friendly exterior of a smile and
a welcome and a little wit, beneath that
friendly exterior is a foul condition of heart.
Behind that controlled reticence lies a ravenously menacing
passion that has already impinged detrimentally upon six
men and broken not only six men's lives,
but possibly six men's homes.
It is no wonder that she has to
come alone in the heat of the midday
sun to get her water from the well.
Probably none of the decent women of that
Samaritan village would walk with her or talk
with her.
But see the end of the story.
See the end of the story.
Will you don't stop there?
If you stop there, there is nothing but
heartbreak.
See the end of the story, men and
women.
And you see what happens here.
That mongrel community, backward and poor as they
were, experienced a new tide of holy influences
moving into their town, casting its healing light
on all hands, bringing salvation, so that the
town testifies, we've heard him ourselves, and now
we know he is the savior of the
world.
How did they come to know?
Through this woman.
Changed.
A witness.
Simple, but profound.
Radical.
Her testimony to the village opened the door
to the coming of the savior himself.
They invited him because they heard and saw
her.
And when he came, something of an altogether
supernatural dimension took place.
All because of her.
All the power of Jesus to change people.
And the kind of heartaches that accompanied this
situation.
And the man is gone in posthaste because
he's heard something, perhaps seen something with his
own eyes in Jerusalem over the recent festive
season.
He's seen the Lord perhaps doing something that
caused others to believe in him.
I don't know, but a denier actually knows
about him and he's on foot or on
horseback or what have you.
I don't know, but away he goes.
You notice he's got no time for introduction
because his son, he said, was at the
point of death when he left home.
And he's won, please come down and do
something ere my child die.
You sense the urgency.
And Jesus turns to him and says, he
says, you people are always seeking a sign.
And if you don't see signs, you don't
believe.
You notice the man doesn't pause to explain
himself or apologize or anything at all.
He just gets right on to the matter
in hand and he says, please come down
quickly ere my child die.
There's no time for an explanation.
My boy's dying.
And Jesus looked at him.
Think of the intervening miles between the north
and the south.
Jesus, son of Mary, did not take one
mile south to lessen the distance between him
and the boy that was dying.
And he stood where he was.
And with his sovereign power, he turns to
the Father, putting his character in the word
and the promise.
And he says, look man, he says, go
home, your boy will live.
What a risk.
Ha ha.
A risk for me to say that.
And a risk for you to say that.
But not for him.
He had power.
He was the Lord of glory.
And the New Testament only makes sense on
the basis of the fact that Jesus was
the person he believed he was.
And the New Testament declares he was.
He had power to heal in the realm
of the body as he had power to
change water into wine and to forgive sin.
And change the human heart.
Without moving from where he was, he had
the power to utter the word.
And the event followed.
Oh what sovereign power that.
Let not any sentimentalizing about gentle Jesus, meek
and mild, hide the glorious fact of his
mighty power.
And it is with this thought that I
conclude this morning.
If the New Testament is true, as we
believe it most certainly is.
And if the Christ of Bethlehem is the
Son of God, the only Savior God has
ever anointed and sent into this world.
If he is that.