Encountering the Risen Christ #5 - Insecurity
Description
Senior Pastor, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund, explores John 21:1-19, revealing how Jesus meets us exactly where we are—even in our insecurity and failure—while inviting us to something greater than worldly comfort and priorities. Through Peter's restoration after denying Christ, we learn that God's grace empowers us to follow Him despite our shortcomings, challenging us to invest our lives in what truly matters beyond this world.
Summary and Application
The Problem: The Struggle with Failure and Insecurity
We all face moments when our failures and insecurities overwhelm us. Like Peter, who denied Jesus three times, we often find ourselves wondering if our mistakes have disqualified us from God's purpose. We struggle to believe that God could still use us after we've fallen short. Many of us retreat to what's familiar and comfortable when we feel insecure—just as Peter returned to fishing—rather than pressing forward in faith. We question whether God is still present in our lives, especially when we don't sense Him working or when our circumstances don't match our expectations.
The Scripture: John 21:1-19 - Peter's Restoration
In John 21, we find the disciples fishing all night without success until the risen Jesus appears on the shore, though they don't immediately recognize Him. Jesus instructs them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat, resulting in an abundant catch. When they come ashore, they discover Jesus has prepared breakfast over a charcoal fire—the same Greek word used to describe the fire where Peter warmed himself while denying Jesus (John 18:18). This detail isn't coincidental but sets the stage for restoration.
After breakfast, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him—a deliberate parallel to Peter's three denials. Notably, Jesus uses the word "agape" (unconditional love) in His questions, while Peter responds with "phileo" (brotherly affection). Jesus then prophesies about Peter's future death that would glorify God and concludes with the same words He first spoke to Peter: "Follow me." The narrative beautifully frames Peter's discipleship journey with these bookends of "Follow me," showing that despite Peter's failures, Jesus' invitation remains unchanged.
The Insight: Jesus Meets Us Where We Are
The profound theological revelation in this passage is that Jesus meets us exactly where we are—even in our moments of greatest failure and insecurity. He doesn't demand that we immediately rise to perfection; He accepts what we can offer now while inviting us to something deeper. The charcoal fire wasn't meant to shame Peter but to bring healing through confronting the very context of his failure.
Jesus' prophecy about Peter's future death reveals another crucial insight: while we have agency in our lives now, there will come a day when we won't. This reality check serves as a "bridge out" warning sign, redirecting us from investing solely in temporary priorities toward what truly matters eternally. God works all things together for good (Romans 8:28), even when we can't see or understand His purposes in the moment. Our encounters with the risen Christ give us perspective that helps us deal with frustrations without demanding immediate answers from God.
The Application: Practical Takeaways
Embrace God's grace in your failures: Like Peter, recognize that your past mistakes don't disqualify you from God's purpose. The same Jesus who restored Peter offers you grace and a fresh start today.
Meet God in your current reality: Don't wait until you have perfect faith or perfect obedience to approach God. Jesus accepts what you can offer now—your "phileo" love—while gently inviting you to deeper "agape" love.
Invest in what outlasts you: Recognize that worldly priorities and comforts are temporary. Make intentional choices to invest in relationships, faith, and service that have eternal significance.
Look for God in unexpected places: Sometimes God appears on the shore when we're focused on empty nets. Be attentive to how God might be working in ways you didn't anticipate or in areas where you've given up hope.
Remember that frustration isn't the final word: When you encounter obstacles or detours, trust that God is working things together for good, even when the immediate path isn't clear.
Reflection Questions
Where in your life have you been "fishing all night with empty nets"? How might Jesus be calling you to cast your net differently—to try a new approach or perspective that you've been resistant to?
Think about the "charcoal fires" in your life—places of past failure or shame. How might Jesus be inviting you to face these areas not for condemnation but for healing and restoration?
What would it look like for you to truly follow Jesus this week, even in areas where you feel insecure or inadequate? What specific step of faith is He inviting you to take?
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No references in this message.
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Let's pray together. God, as we're gathered here this weekend, I ask that you would speak to each of us. God, I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Do you remember when you first became aware of God or first sensed God in your life. Some of us probably would hearken back to a time when maybe we were out in the woods or by the mountains or the ocean and we said there has to be something more because there's a vast world and there has to be a creator and I'm so small. Some of us might remember a Sunday school class or a worship experience or maybe somebody in our family explaining to us who God was and beginning to sense God or maybe in the midst of some desperate situation, you cried out to God, not certain if God existed and you sensed God's presence. We'd have a lot of different experiences about when we first sensed or experienced God in our lives here as, as we're gathered. But one of the assurances of Christianity is that you can experience the living God, you can know the living God and yet, because there are so many different experiences and some people's experiences, most of us would be pretty certain aren't actually God because there are some people that in the name of God say they experience God and do something that's violent or something that is completely without justice in this world and you say how could that be God?
But it raises a question and that is how do you know when you're actually encountering God versus just your own version of God? Your own kind of idea of what God is like. And what we've been doing over these last several weeks is we've been looking at the post resurrection appearances of Jesus. So John 20, John 21, Jesus appeared several different times and trying to learn something about when we encounter the risen Christ, what it's like, what it was like for them, what it's like today. How do you know that you're actually encountering the risen Christ?
And today we're going to look at this passage in John 21 and we actually see three events. We see a fishing trip, we see a breakfast and we see a conversation and each of them teaches us something about a genuine encounter with the risen Christ. So we'll start with this fishing trip. So this is after the resurrection of Jesus, after the disciples have seen Jesus and now they don't probably know where Jesus is and so they're left to say, what is it that I do? And Peter says, well I know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go fishing.
Now you may say, I like Peter. You know, that works for me. Let's go fishing. But this probably wasn't just I want to go fishing because I like fishing, this was probably we need to eat and so we're gonna go out at night, we're going to fish, we're going to come back to the market in the morning, we're going to sell the fish, we'll have some fish to eat, we'll have some money and we'll be able to use the money to live on for at least a little bit of time. And so the other disciples according to this said, we'll go with you.
And what we're told in verse three is they went out into the boat and they fished all night and caught nothing. So this is frustrating. Here they are trying to get food, trying to make their life work and they catch nothing. And then we're told that Jesus stood on the shore and the disciples didn't realize it was Jesus. Verse five, and he called out to them, friends, haven't you any fish?
No, they answered. And he said, well throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. And when they did, they were unable to haul in the net because of the large number of fish. Now there are a few things about this event that are helpful for us to understand. I heard somebody teach on this years ago, and I haven't verified all of this information, but I think it's pretty accurate.
That's the Sea Of Galilee. Thank you. And there's a little like tributary river that runs into it up here, so the water comes in here and it's cold up here at the top. This is, where Jesus' hometown was. This is about where this event takes place.
And so the disciples, this is a boat, that's a boat. The disciples go out here and they fish and they're fishing probably in this shallow water and they're going most likely in a circle like this. Because what they're doing is they are trying to get fish to bring back into the market to sell it here so that they can make a living. And the way that the nets worked is they would have had some things that floated and then they would have had this net that kind of came down from all of these things with some weights maybe on the bottom to make a big net and they basically go along the lake trying to get as many fish as they could. And what they're probably fishing for because of the time of year, the position in the lake is they're probably fishing for small fish.
There were probably a 68 different variety of fish in here and they were probably fishing for these little fish because of the time of year. And this is supported by the idea that in the text it says that they caught a 53 large fish a little later because the words for the fish here are different. And and then what we see is this, verse, 11, It says this, it says, so Simon Peter climbed back in the boat and dragged the net ashore and it was full of large fish, a 53, but even so many that the net was not torn. Now here's again what's going on. They would have had this net with small little lines but close together to catch the little fish.
They end up catching big fish who probably could have swam through this because the lines wouldn't have held them, let alone a 53. They caught the fish on the wrong side of the boat. Jesus says throw your net to the right side. They would have probably been fishing in this direction because of the current and that's what would have made sense because of the inflow of the river here. And Jesus says throw your net over here so that you're on the wrong side of the boat to catch fish.
And so what Jesus in a way was doing was he was showing them his power because they caught the wrong fish with the wrong net on the wrong side of the boat in the wrong area of the lake at the wrong time of the year. And yet, they caught a 53 large fish better than what they could have hoped for if they had gone about this a different way. Now, what does that have to do with how we encounter Christ? Well, when you experience frustration in your life because you say it should be this way, this is what God should do. I've trusted God in this area of my life and God ought to do certain things.
You have a vision for yourself, a vision for your success, a vision for methods of how things should work and when things don't go that way, our tendency can be to say God, where are are you? God, why didn't you? God, how could you let this happen? Instead of being able to say, maybe God is doing something different than what I have anticipated. You see, some of us believe that by this point in our lives we should be married or we should have had kids or that our career arc should be different or maybe we've invested part of ourselves into something that we thought God would work in and the thing collapsed and we just say, God how could you let this happen?
Or we have trusted God in some area of our lives and yet in another area of our lives we're just met with frustration and one of the ways that we know we're encountering the risen Christ rather than our own version of God is that we let God be God even when things aren't the way that we like them to be. Because we say, God, you might choose to do something different than I would choose, but you might also bring a 53 fish. You might bring something that's totally different than I expect. But sometimes, what we do instead is we demand and we say God, you need to do this the way I think you should do it. And that isn't the risen Christ that we're encountering but our own version.
So, that's the fishing trip and now we get this breakfast. And the breakfast happens this way, in verse nine we're told this, that when they landed they saw a fire burning of coals there with fish on it and some bread. And verse 12 it says this, Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. And none of the disciples dared to ask, who are you? They knew it was the Lord.
So they came and they took and they ate basically with the Lord. Now, now what's going on here in this moment? Well this word for there was a charcoal fire, there there's usually not a wasted detail in the text of the Bible. The the charcoal here isn't just saying it's supplying heat, although it did that to cook the fish, But the last time that we saw this word, the only other time we see this exact word is in John eighteen eighteen when Peter had denied Jesus three times and he was warming himself by the fire, the charcoal fire basically after he had denied Jesus. So what is Jesus doing here?
In verse 15 it says the reinstatement of Peter. It's a title that that is put on our text. But I think this is actually the moment of reinstatement of Peter. You know how sometimes smell overwhelms you and you have a sense of, of a memory with a smell? Well this would have been that moment where he had known that he had denied Jesus during the, the, this time when he was warming himself by the fire and now Jesus is cooking breakfast and he's using charcoal and the smell would have probably just come over Peter and reminded him and here's Jesus saying, come and have breakfast with me.
He's not rubbing it in Peter's face but he's giving him a moment of grace because what happens when we understand the risen Christ is we always understand that he is a God of grace and that he invites us to come back no matter how many times we fail, no matter what has happened detach from God but a place to walk toward God. Some of us let our failures keep us from wanting to be anywhere near God. Some of us have made choices in our lives that have hurt people close to us and we think there's no way that I could ever be in relationship with God. Maybe we got divorced and it was our fault or maybe we've been addicted to something or we've we've made some some really egregious choices but what we need to understand is that in the Bible, penance is not a thing. And here's what I mean by that.
When you do penance, you're doing double payment. When you've been forgiven, you don't have to do penance. And so, and so penance means that, that, that what's said in the Psalms about our sin being put as far as the east is from the West, Psalm 103 verse 12, that, that they never meet, that, that, that our sins are taken away from our present existence. Once you have encountered the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, it means you don't need to do penance. And what penance is, is when you say, well I made a mistake, therefore I have to make up for it in order to be back in good graces.
You know, you use the last butter at home and you don't make it on the list and you don't tell anybody and then when they go to have butter it's not there. So what you do is you go to the store and you buy lots of butter and say, here's butter. That's just a hypothetical but you know, you just say, here's butter for you. I did butter because what you're doing is you're saying I'm making up for what I did wrong. But when it comes to Jesus, we don't need to make up for what we've done wrong because Jesus has paid the price.
Now, some of you, I would guess, get a little uncomfortable when I say something like that because you're like, but does that mean we can do whatever we want and just get forgiveness down the road? Well, let me give you a really deep illustration. I'm gonna appeal to baseball. So if you don't like baseball, forgive me for a second. I don't really follow it anymore either, but I used to when I was a kid.
Hard to follow right now but that's another story, I digress. In baseball, on the pitching staff there's usually a pitcher in the bullpen called the closer. That's the name they give them. And the closer is the guy who's probably the best pitcher on the bullpen, you know, is right there with some of the best pitchers and what they do is whenever the game is close and you're ahead especially, you put your closer in and he's supposed to get the key outs of the game so that you win games and they have a little stack called a save where you get a save every time that you hold the other team from getting a run and then they keep track of what they call blown saves. When you come in and you could have stopped it but you don't, you get a blown save.
Now certainly the closers are a talented pitcher on most staffs but the issue is that it's a very psychological position. Meaning, when you are the closer, it's probably as important as how well you throw a baseball as how you think about stressful and difficult situations. And if ever you start to believe that you're not going to be able to get the outs, you'll probably really struggle to get the outs. And so what happens is when a reliever blows a game, when a closer blows a game, the manager comes right back the next day and usually will give them the ball again in the same situation instead of saying I don't know if you can do it, I, I don't, I don't sense that you're that good. Instead they're like you're my guy, here's the ball, go get them.
Why do they do that? Because they know that if they're going to continue to perform, they need to actually show belief in them. Now, here's why I say it's a deep example. Jesus here is in some way saying to Peter, you blew it, but I'm over it. Here's the ball.
And some of us are concerned that we'll never get the ball again. Now, see, Jesus is not saying go ahead and blow whatever you want, but He's saying I will give you grace every time that you have made a mistake, every time that you failed. And that doesn't mean that we want to blow it a reliever, doesn't want to blow a game but knowing that there's grace allows him to go out there and live without fear. And Jesus, the risen Jesus is one who gives grace. So the fishing trip addresses our frustration and tells us when, when, when we have an idea of how it should go that sometimes God will redirect in ways that, that we don't think maybe make sense.
But we'll accept that if we understand the risen Christ and, and the breakfast reminds us that he takes our failures and meets him with grace. And then he has this conversation with Peter in verse 15 and following where he asked Peter three different times, he says, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? And Peter says, yes Lord, you know that I love you. And he says, well then feed my lambs, feed my sheep.
And in the original language, the way that this works is the first two times Jesus says, do you love me? And he uses the word, the Greek word agape which is the word that is the highest word for God's love and Peter responds each time with, yes I love you and he uses the word phileo which is a word for affection and brotherly affection. So he's really saying a step below what Jesus says, like yes I I love you but I I love you like this is what he's doing. Now some commentators read this and they say this is just stylistic, there's nothing to it in this. So I acknowledge that but I think there's probably something here because the third time Jesus says do you follow me and then Peter says yes Lord you know that I do and here's why I think this matters.
I think Jesus is showing that he will meet us exactly where we are with what we have to offer. And Peter was saying, God, this is what I have right now. And he is hurt, we're told in verse 17, because Jesus asked him three times, and then Jesus makes this this peculiar statement in verse 18 that doesn't seem to fit the context here at all. He says this, very truly I tell you, when you were younger, you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted. When you're old, you will stretch out your hand and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
Now why is that here? What does that have to do with anything that's here? Well Jesus tells us in verse 19, Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, follow me. Do you know that the first words that Jesus said to Peter were follow me and here in his last conversation his last word is follow me?
And what I believe he's doing is he's saying you're going to have some agency in your life. You have it right now now but there's coming a day when you won't have agency and you will die. And when you do, you'll want to know that you invested in something more than just the life that is in front of you. I don't know if you've seen, this, this tech billionaire guy who's all over YouTube right now who is trying to extend his life using millions of dollars, every year on his health and his habits. If you Google it, it's all over the place but but here here's what I know.
This guy might extend his life a little bit but he's still gonna die because death is undefeated. He he may live a little longer but there's coming a day when his life will come to an end and what Jesus I believe is doing here is He's addressing Peter's future and He's saying, if you want your future to really be, be well lived then invest in something that's bigger than things that will deteriorate as you age. And sometimes, when we haven't encountered the risen Christ, we lose sight of that and we think that everything in this world is what matters the most rather than saying there is an invitation to something greater. And, and you may say this doesn't feel very encouraging because this is, like, like talking about the future and, and how, how our lives end. But it's a little bit like this, if you're driving down the highway and you come to a sign that says bridge out, detour, you will be annoyed when you come to that sign.
You'll think, I don't want to drive out and around, this is annoying, why don't they have this fixed? But you know what would be more annoying? Is if there was no sign and you just went right through and your car plummeted into the ditch and you bottomed out your car and you wrecked your car. That would be more annoying. And it's a little bit like what Jesus is doing is he's saying, look, here's a little detour.
I want you to see that that there is coming a day when the bridge is out and so understand that you the investments you make that are bigger than this world will actually outlive you. And what happens is when you and I encounter the risen Christ, we begin to be able to deal with our frustrations without demanding from God and saying God, give me what I need. But we'll be able to say God, you're adjusting and you're giving me something different that I didn't anticipate. In fact, sometimes we'll say is it really better? But do, do you know what the Bible says in Romans eight twenty eight?
It says that God works all things together for good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. Now it doesn't mean that everything that happens in our life will go, that's awesome. But what it means is God is weaving things together in a way that sometimes we can't see, we can't perceive and he is going to work in ways that that that overwhelm our expectations. Now some of us again might say, I don't see it. But where we're living is we're living in the boat, throwing our net on the one side saying, I don't sense God doing anything right now.
But in a moment, there will be a day when God says throw the net on the right side. And then we'll look back at some point and say, look at what he did. Some of us, our reason for not encountering or sensing God is our own failures. We just say, how could God ever look at me with the things that are in my past? And yet, when we encounter the risen Christ, we experience grace.
And when we encounter the risen Christ, it reorders our priorities. Now now here's what I want you to get because some of us are probably saying, okay, that's nice, but like, I don't know if I encounter Christ that way. And I understand that. But here's what's true about our spiritual life in encountering Christ, and that is it's very much like many things in our lives, you don't actually get the benefits through direct effort. And here here's what I mean.
If there were a 500 pound barrel up here, and I decided I was going to try to lift it, I would have a very hard time moving it. Okay? If it was a 200 pound barrel, I think I could probably get it up off the ground a little bit, but I'd have a hard time hoisting it above my shoulder or doing something like that. Some of you are like, I'm not sure you could do that. I opted not to go with the visual object lesson for this, so you just have to take my word for it.
If it were a hundred pounds, I'm pretty certain I could lift it with a little bit of a struggle. I could probably get it up over my shoulder. Okay? Now, my point isn't the weight, it's that, it's that no matter how hard I try to lift a 500 pound barrel in the moment, I'm not going to lift the barrel. I'm just not prepared for that.
But the 200 pound barrel, the one that that that maybe I can lift, maybe I can a little bit depending on kind of where it's at, I can do some things in the days ahead which will prepare me to be able to lift that barrel that I can't do today through direct effort. And the way that we ultimately relate to the living Christ is about the things that we do that prepare us so that when we encounter our moments of frustration, when we encounter our failure, when we're making life choices, failure, when we're making life choices that are about the investment of, of our one and only life, that our instincts and our ability is to say, I see Christ, I know Christ, I know who he is and what he wants. And for many of us, what that is it's going back to the message of Jesus Christ that he died and he rose and savoring that he is the savior. It means that we spend time in worship. We maybe go for walks in the woods, on the edge of water and we consider the greatness of God.
We live in community, we serve because all of those things we spend time in the word produce in us the actual encounter with the living God. And they give us the ability to relate to him as he is but without those things, what happens is you'll have moments where you're like, this seems like God to me. And it might be, but ultimately you're just being the arbiter of that. You're saying, well, this seems like God, and I seem wise enough to know, but when you root it in the reality of the scripture and of a worshiping community, then you can live with some certainty to say I know that I know who this God is. And the great promise of Christian faith is that you can actually know the God of the Bible.
You can know the God of the universe. It's not always a clear direct line, but he is alive. And when you encounter him, you will begin to, even in your frustration, say maybe God's doing something else here, something better. You will in your failure be able to say, there is grace. He's saying, here's the ball.
Go again today. And in your future, you'll be able to say, God, I want something more than just my own comfort, my own priorities. I want something greater. And that's relating to the living Christ. Let's pray.
God, as we're here today, I know we come from a lot of places and a lot of experiences, and I just ask that you would help all of us to encounter you as you are. Not as we just wish you were. And God, I, I ask very simply that, that, that you would help us to, to do some of the things along the way that help us to really encounter you so that when we're in moments of frustration failure, moments of, of choices about how to invest our one and only life, That it would be clear to us where you are and what you're doing. And we pray this all in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.=[
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript was automatically generated, please excuse any errors.
