Saint Peter Lecture Notes

[Music] welcome to our series on saint peter i'm so excited to be with you and this study of of peter and his life peter the closest disciple in many ways to jesus and he opens up a window into the teaching and life of jesus christ i have been longing and eager to teach on peter for a number of years every time i go to the holy land i've really been moved by the character of peter as i go to the holy land and visit the places like capernaum where you have the ancient ruins where peter lived the synagogue where peter prayed where jesus taught i'm always moved by reading the stories of the gospels and how often peter is part of that story and how often peter is so approachable he's kind of the everyday man right he's not a professional religious scribe he's a professional fisherman he's a hard-working blue-collar guy in many ways and what's so striking is jesus encounters peter and calls him out of his own busyness out of his own story into a bigger story into the story of jesus christ and how peter reacts to that and how peter interacts with jesus and with the 12 and with the crowds to me it's just really he's a model disciple we're going to see how human peter is peter can be impetuous he can be you know rather bold you know he's always got his foot in his mouth almost as as you watch peter but peter's also gonna be a sinful man he's going to betray jesus at the direst hour of christ's life and yet he'll repent and weep bitterly for love and so peter is a model for us of how to follow christ and how to repent and i think that's why peter was so beloved by the early christians you know at the beginning of acts when judas has died and it's discovered that he hung himself peter has to lead the early church because jesus is gone and as peter leads the early church he has to lead them into the first decision to replace judas and how do they find the criteria to choose somebody to take one of the apostolic offices to be one of the twelve and it's interesting in acts chapter 1 verse 21 i want to read you this passage because i think it speaks to why peter should be our focus because peter says what's the criteria for somebody to be an apostle early on and he says so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the lord jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of john until the day that he was taken up from us in reference to the ascension of christ one of these men must become with us a witness to the resurrection so what peter is saying is what matters most is those what qualifies you to be an apostle what qualifies you to be a disciple the amount of time you have spent with jesus that is the earmark of a disciple is time spent with jesus now for us that's time spent in prayer in worship and adoration but in the first century as jesus as god himself was walking in galilee what qualifies you is spending time with jesus and conversing with him which is what we call prayer watching him which is what we call adoration and honoring him as we'll see that the disciples do in many ways and giving him reverence which is what we call worship so this is going to be the key qualifier now who out of all of the 12 spent the most time with jesus but peter james and john the through the inner circle and when you talk about the inner circle of the three the head of the inner circle was peter so peter in a sense represents for us that very very intimate and close witness to christ so as we get closer to peter we get closer to christ as we study peter i think it's going to open up for us a window into the life and teaching and mission of the messiah of jesus and that's why it's going to be so important now one of the fascinating things is in early christian art and here i have a picture of a sarcophagus from a christian tomb from a wealthy woman around it's dated around the year 300 a.d so this is probably before christianity was legalized by constantine so just before and in this artwork what we see on the on the one side of the sarcophagus is scenes of the life of jesus and in every scene is peter so as this art works what you'll see is on the from the right to the left on the right side you see a young man with his hand down and he's touching a woman who's bent down reaching out to touch the hem of his garment remember that scene from the gospels it's in luke 8 for example it's the hemorrhaging woman who touches jesus but right to the left of jesus is a bearded man and he's got curly hair and a curly beard that's the quintessential scene of peter peter in roman art almost always looks the same the purpose of that by the way is in roman arts the emperor always looked the same you couldn't any town or village in the empire couldn't make their own image of the emperor even out of honor they had to use the image and copy the images that were approved by rome itself and the idea was they wanted anybody in the roman empire to be able to identify the emperor and the christians took up this very thing because the christians like the romans wanted to be universal and they wanted any christian anywhere to be able to recognize peter paul jesus as they depicted them in art so there's a consistency in the depiction of art of peter and paul so you'll see peter's face he comes over and over and over again we see peter so here we have peter a witness to the hemorrhaging woman in fact in luke's version luke 8 we'll find that peter's doing crowd control there's a large crowd around jesus and jesus stops and says who touched me and peter says lord don't you see how the crowd presses in on you and yet you say who touched me peter's a little offended he's in charge of crowd control that day and uh and then you know notice that the picture of jesus is not the picture that you're used to in later european art of jesus jesus is a very young man because the youth signifies divinity you'll see this also with the emperor like augustus he's always clean shaven early images of the emperor of the emperor uh are always clean shaven it's not tell hadrian that that will change clean shaven and youthful to signify divinity so jesus is youthful uh to signify eternal life uh resurrection life divinity and then the next scene we see somebody carrying their bed and that's going to be the paralytic we'll talk about that scene in peter's house of the paralytic and again we have peter watching peter's there and then we have another scene with jesus healing the blind man and so jesus is touching his eyes and then there's peter flanking both sides so we constantly have peter in the scene peter's looking over jesus shoulder and scene after scene after scene and of course there's another great scene of course the the filling of the pots and because uh they didn't have motion graphics you have uh the staff coming down and touching the pots to show that jesus is changing the water into wine and of course there's peter again peter's always over his shoulder now you have a woman here and a gesture of prayer at the center because she's the one who's buried but i think it's interesting that they put the scene of cana right next to the woman who's praying an intercessory way for petition for help now that she has passed away she's praying asking for prayers which is interesting 300 a.d and it's right next to the scene of canis you could almost take this as mary who intercedes for the wine right and so maybe this woman had a devotion to our lady right i think it's suggestive again we don't know for sure but the placement i think is rather suggestive and uh and then you go through the scene now you have peter being arrested so peter's arrested and then this is a story that's later on after the bible this is peter in prison and he he you can see the two guards who take him and they're drinking water from the rock that peter strikes because in the prison where peter is held he strikes the the rock water comes forth and he baptizes the prison guards whom he's evangelized so what you see is peter throughout and i just love this artwork from the earliest christians with peter looking over the shoulder of jesus in each scene and if we look at the gospels we are going to see the frequency by which peter's mentioned in matthew's gospel he names peter 25 times in mark's gospel peter's mentioned 25 times in luke's gospel he's mentioned 30 times and then when we get the gospel of john it's 39 times that peter is named so you can see that peter is always peering over jesus shoulder in just about every scene of jesus's life there's peter and so there's a lot of reasons to want to study peter but one of the important reasons as we'll see later on is that peter will be named peter rock by jesus because jesus said you are rock peter and on this rock i will build my church i see peter as the bridge between us and jesus he is the bridge to understand the relationship of the church to jesus right and in our day the idea that why do we need religion why do we need the church right and in fact i i was looking through books on the internet last night uh on amazon and i saw this book that was why how you could be christian without going to church that was the title right and that would be incomprehensible to peter the apostles and i would suggest you as we'll see in our study to jesus himself right and so i think it's timely to study peter because we have to go back to the origins of the church there's a bit of an identity crisis of what and who is the church supposed to be and if we go back to the beginning back to that foundation stone which is peter right we'll understand better what jesus intended by the church and why we need the church and why the church is not a millstone around our neck but a firm foundation for our faith right that will be important that will be important now i always think of peter's humble background and we're going to talk about where peter is from uh which is bethsaida and i want to talk about the early call and the first encounter of peter with jesus and uh but before i do that i i wanna there's a text from saint paul that always jumps out of me about peter because peter of course you know is that fisherman he's that everyday kind of you know his his hands are calloused his fingernails are dirty uh he's a tough guy fishing with nets that work is in the water and i remember a few years ago swimming out deeper out into the sea of galilee and it was a hot day it was in the summer and as i got deeper the lake is is extraordinarily deep lake and so the water as after you get out 20 feet from shore the water is a lot colder than you'd imagine and as i swam out there i was like whoa this is really chilly out here and then i reflected on peter had to work in that water we know from john 21 that peter was stripped for the work with the nets when jesus is on the shoreline and says children have you caught anything well imagine if in the summer some of that water is cold what was it like in the fall the winter or the early spring so when i think of peter working out there with the boat the nets calloused hands sunburn out there on you know on some of those days in the heat of galilee and then that working in that cold frigid water and his hands must have been strong big hands right when i think about that i think about that text that paul writes to the early christians in corinth when he says then to reflect on your call he says this in in first corinthians chapter 1 verse 26 for consider your call brethren not many of you were wise according to worldly standards right and of course i think of acts 4 13 where the sanhedrin takes peter in and they interrogate him and they're amazed at peter's preaching and teaching because he is an uneducated man unquote he's an uneducated man in other words he doesn't have a doctorate from an accredited institution right and yet he's teaching powerfully from the word of god right so paul says not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many of you were powerful not many of you were noble birth these are all true of peter aren't they but god chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise which is exactly what happens in acts 4 13. right god shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong and we'll see the weakness of peter betrayner lord in the courtyard of caiaphas to the maiden you know to the to the serving girl right and yet we'll see him bowled at pentecost with the spirit of god god shows what is low and despised in the world so that no human being might boast right so what in other words is the lesson here god chooses people like peter he doesn't call the equipped he equips the called and that is consolation and encouragement to you and i to know that god likes to choose people who don't have all the perfect background all the perfect preparation they have a heart open to god to do his will that's all it takes is that fiat to say yes as we'll see with the call of peter now i want to take us to what i would call the first encounters the first encounters and the gospel of john so turn with me uh to the gospel of john and we'll see where john the baptist is out and he's summoned all of israel to his baptism in the jordan river and he's out in the jordan out in the wilderness the judean wilderness and we're told that you know as john's preaching the scribes and the pharisees come in and they say are you the messiah are you the elijah come he says nope nope you know there's one among you whom you do not recognize whose sandals are not worthy to fasten so john speaks that there's somebody greater who is not just going to come in the near future he's present and yet unseen and then of course jesus comes and john bears witness when jesus is baptized and john says i saw the spirit and by the way this is in verse 32 i saw the spirit descend as a dove from heaven and it remained on him i myself did not know him but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me he on whom you see the spirit descend and remain this is he who baptizes with the holy spirit right and i have seen him born witness now the next day again john was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at jesus as he walked and said behold the lamb of god now in verse 37 the two disciples heard him say this and they followed jesus now i want you to understand the background here these are two of john's key disciples john tells them in conversation behold the lamb of god point to jesus whom jesus had seen the spirit rest upon when he baptized them right and so what do they do they follow john's direction and follow jesus so we get these two and then uh they say uh jesus turned to them saying what do you seek and they said to him rabbi which means teacher where are you staying and he said to them come and see and they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour and then one of the two heard john speak and followed him was andrew simon peter's brother so one of those two is andrew now this is important andrew peter's brother was one of the early disciples of john the baptist now i think this is a good clue and a good entry into who peter is because it tells us that peter's brother was on the cutting edge he was alerted to this idea of a prophet john the baptist and not only did he go to john the baptist to be baptized but he followed john as a disciple in other words he was he was in early on the john the baptist movement now that's going to be important that's going to tell us a little bit about peter now what happens now andrew who was one of those two who hears john the baptist say there's the lamb of god follows jesus who the other disciple is is probably the beloved disciple and then what does andrew do after he encounters jesus and spends that day with him verse 41 he first found his brother simon so the first thing andrew does after he finds jesus is he goes and finds his brother his brother simon and he said to him he's so excited he can't he's got to get it all in one sentence right so what has he blurred out we have found the messiah we have found the messiah now step back and think how profound those words are and remember this is the first message peter receives about jesus from his brother and his brother is connected his brother is a disciple of john the baptist right and andrew comes and says we have found the messiah i mean they've only been looking for a messiah for over 500 years right no big deal right they've only been waiting in exile for generation after generation 500 plus years of waiting and longing for that messiah and andrew tells peter we have found him we have found him out here in the wilderness thanks to the gps known as john the baptist right we have we have located them right we have found the messiah and then he brought him to jesus what a beautiful thing and in the story of john's gospel this is the first example of evangelization does andrew have a phd in jesus studies no andrew's known jesus for about 24 hours at this point right but he has met jesus and he knows his brother and this gets back to the heart of evangelization that pope john paul ii spoke of when he said to evangelize all you need to do is know jesus christ and no modern man and woman with their insecurities hopes fears and introduce them bring the two together if you've ever introduced two people who didn't know each other to each other you have exactly what you need on your resume to be an evangelist you're equipped that's what evangelization is sometimes we think evangelization is you know giving somebody a whole download of the whole of catholic tradition all of scripture you know all of sacramento theology and we get so overwhelmed by it all that we don't even touch it now peter has a lot to learn so does andrew and they'll learn it but andrew makes the introduction that's how easy evangelization is and andrew shows this with this interaction with peter so andrews brought him to jesus and jesus looked at him and said so you are simon the son of john now he's heard a lot about him right so andrew kept talking about his big brother right so you are simon the son of john as jesus kind of looks them over you shall be called right you shall be called kaphos which is the greek version of the aramaic name kefa which means rock or the greek word for that is petros is the petros or the english version of the greek which is peter is that confusing good you got it we'll go over those names again and again so it'll it'll it'll it'll become rock solid in your memory by the time we're done you shall be called caiphus which of course means peter john tells us in the text now the next day jesus decided to go to galilee so now he's met andrew and peter and what are they doing you got to come to galilee right so then the next day jesus decides to go to galilee notice they meet they're going to meet uh jesus encounters them down by the jordan river where john the baptist is so if we if we look back at a uh at a map of israel jerusalem down in the south the dead sea just above the dead sea is where uh john the baptist is baptizing just across from jericho and then they're going to go all the way up to galilee along the jordan river valley which is not a far journey and when they get up to galilee we're going to find out that they're going to go in the region of galilee where peter's from and i like how john says this in verse 43 the next day jesus decided to go to galilee and he found philip and he said to him follow me now philip was from bethsaida the city of andrew and peter so are you seeing the connection now so in other words so phillips is the next guy who gets called in philip's hometown is bethsaida which is the city where peter and andrew are from right so bethsaida now of course where is peter living at this time caphernum right capernaum as we say in english but his hometown was bethsaida so andrew right knows philip and we have so we now we see how andrew leads us to peter leads us to philip all knowing jesus and you'll see in the gospel of john by the way that this connection between philip and andrew who are particular friends because you'll see for example in john 6 where jesus is multiplying the loaves and the fish and uh right before he does that the crowds are hungry and jesus and john at the beginning of john 6 turns to philip and he says philip where shall we buy bread enough to feed everybody and then john tells us he said this to test philip because he knew what he would do right and philip says well gosh if we had 200 plus denarii we couldn't feed this crowd right and uh and then philip you know is given this task of go find what you have and then he turns to andrew and then andrew finds a boy with five loaves and two fish so you'll see how you go from again philip andrew andrew phillip and then later on in the gospel of john in john chapter 12 we're told that some greek speakers in fact i'll just take you to that passage real quick because i think it's just interesting to see this connection between this group uh in in john 12 20 it says now among those who went up to worship the feasts were some greeks and so these came to philip who was from bethsaida in galilee and said to him sir we wish to see jesus philip went and who is phil going to go to andrew so you notice how you go down the chain and back so andrew gets philip to know jesus and now philip goes to andrew to get to jesus right so so philip went to andrew right and he told andrew and andrew went with philip and they told jesus now it's interesting why do the greeks go to philip out of the twelve well philip is a greek name philip is a greek name if you remember there's a you know alexander what's his father's name philip right so philip is a very greek name it's not a jewish name and andrew by the way is a greek name now simon is a jewish name in root simeon but simon is the greek form of that name now that's interesting because bethsaida had gentiles as well as jews living in it and and the significant thing about bethsaida is that it was a hellenistic style city phillip herod aunty potter's brother philip right so then we give another phillip right notice that's a greek name herod the great named one of his sons philip and so philip's region is going to be the decapolis and the area of bethsaida so if you look at a map of galilee what we see is the jordan river flows into the northern part of the sea of galilee and so the jordan river flows in and everything east of this region is the decapolis and the region of philip everything west of the jordan river and west of the sea of galilee is the area of galilee proper which is herod antipater's territory so you have two different territories so bethsaida became in 30 a.d it was made a it was given the title city police city by philip and it was made as capital now here's the interesting why does peter why do peter and andrew move from bethsaida to capernaum which is three miles away why do they move so scholars have had different hypothesis for a tax break which i think is a really lame only americans would come up with that right you know americans move on average every five years you know first century jews they don't move from the village that's very unusual so why would they move because when philip makes bethsaida his capital he dedicates a temple names it after the wife of caesar augustus julia and so there's a pagan temple now in bethsaida and so i think andrew and peter who are devout jews and we know andrew is because he's with the john the baptist movement from the beginning and we know peter is because later on in acts 10 when peter is shown all this unclean food he's told to eat he says lord i have never in my life eat unclean food right that's significant that tells us that peter was an observant jew his whole life that's significant because in archaeological digs of bethsaida we found many pig bones so we know that there was jews as well as gentiles who probably compromised with hellenistic culture and ate pork and unclean kosher foods but peter wasn't one of them but you can see how once the city has a pagan temple and philip's going to want to modernize it even more in other words he's going to want to make it more gentile more hellenistic peter and andrew have had enough and they go to caferno which is a pious and more much more zealously jewish village compared to bethsaida so i would i believe that that's going to be one of the reasons why from bethsaida peter and andrew are going to move and leave bethsaida but again here's the point though if you grow up in bethsaida you probably know enough greek to get around which means peter and andrew probably knew enough greek notice they had greek names so their parents their father gave them greek names that's going to be significant for peter later on it's interesting that god places peter in this gentile hellenistic jewish village that's kind of a mix to prepare peter for where what god's going to do with peter you would think that what does a simple galilean fisherman need to know about greek and greek culture a lot as we see the story unfolding right so again we see even these small little details god preparing peter for his call for what he wants to do with peter which i think will be amazing and that's why the greeks go to philip who probably knew good greek and that's why they approached philip first and philip goes with his buddy andrew that he probably grew up playing soccer with in bethsaida right and so phil goes to andrew and says let's tell jesus you know and so notice philip and andrew are open to the greeks coming to know jesus that'll be significant that'll be significant so now this first encounter of jesus with peter tells us a lot peter's from bethsaida why does he move from bethsaida you know because of the politics of philip the great or philip not phil the great but philip the brother of herod and the you know the the kind of pagan uh culture that's growing in bethsaida and all that background i think opens up a window into what jesus is doing and calling this group and i also think here's peter coming down to see john the baptist so peter has encountered john the baptist before did you did you think about that when you thought about peter did you ever think about peter knowing john the baptist yeah but here it is at the very beginning of john's gospel and john is one of the 12 who knows peter well and knows john the baptist well he knows the origins of that story so he knows that there's there is peter that andrew can introduce peter to jesus where john the baptist is baptizing and of course as if andrew was a close disciple of john the baptist and as just as andrew told jesus in 24 hours all about his big brother i'm sure he did the same thing with john the baptist so john the baptist knew peter peter knows john the baptist and remember what does peter say at the beginning of acts remember we talked about in acts 1 21 peter says remember he says so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the lord jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of john so let's go back to somebody who was there with john the baptist from the beginning just like peter was just like peter was now peter is still running the business the family business up in galley so he comes down maybe for as a pilgrimage done jerusalem he go makes a journey down to visit andrew he's probably doing the mission support for andrew right andrew's full-time missionary john the baptist and peter's running the family business to support his young his kid brother right and he's coming in to check on making sure he's you know being pious and and doing his mission work probably you know is peter's sweating and uh braving the cold waters of the of the sea of galilee i think it just gives us a fuller portrait of peter and this prepares us for the next encounter the next key encounter as jesus goes up to galilee at probably the recommendation of peter and andrew and philip is luke chapter five so i want to turn to luke chapter 5 now this was one of the favorite passages of now saint john paul ii so pope john paul ii love this passage uh at the beginning of luke's gospel in luke 5 verse 4 where jesus will call to peter to duke in altum to cast into the deep right to cast into the deep first let's get a little bit more of the setting while the people pressed upon him to hear the word of god so there's a huge crowd pressing in on jesus as he's teaching he was standing by the lake of genesseret so the lake has several names ganasseret uh gali the sea of tiberias uh that was what uh herod the great tried you know inherit aunty ponter named the sea of tiberius but that name didn't stick by the locals they didn't like calling their lake after a pagan roman emperor uh so you'll you'll have several different names uh ganester is an older name and it it means uh uh has an image of a harp uh kenaret of a harp because that's the shape of the lake in a sense from uh one of the traditional names for that sea but it becomes more and more known as the sea of galilee in the first century and that's how the gospels generally refer to it as the sea of galilee so that'll be our default and he saw two boats by the lake but the fishermen had gone out of them were washing their nets so this is probably some time in early to mid morning because the fishermen would fish all night as peter will tell us in a few moments and after the fishermen fish with nets what you have to do is you come back you take your fish and typically what you would do is you would take your fish if you had a large catch and you drop your fish off over a magdala because that's where the processing place was for processing and salting and drying fish and selling the markets and then you come back and then you wash your nets and i've seen this with fishermen who fish with nets and i remember being in greece in particular at a port in greece uh kavala which was the ancient city of neopolis where paul came into port to go to philippi but where early in the morning i was going for a walk at dawn and i saw the fishermen and they had their large nets huge nets and they were going through them and they were sewing the nets where they had torn so after you use your nets you have to clean them of all the debris and junk and then you mend the nets and you fold them up so they're ready to go the next night you're going to go out and so i think that setting is important because the fishermen are cleaning their nets so jesus maneuvers his teaching so that peter will hear maybe peter is that businessman and he's he's not maybe maybe not as devout as andrew is who wants to sit at the feet of john the baptist and peter's religious he's observant but he's also maybe a you know a driven business guy no nonsense guy and so what does jesus do he takes his bible study over by the boats right he's gonna he's gonna reel in peter slowly here right so uh so jesus notices that the fishermen had gone out of the boats they were washing their nets and getting into one of the boats which was simon's he asked him to put out a little from the land now think about that there's a little bit of hutzpah here jesus sees peter's boat empty he steps up and gets into peter's boat tell us a little bit about jesus he's not a mild milk toast you know kind of cowardly guy he just takes command and he steps boldly into peter's boat and then he asks peter hey would you take this boat out a little bit from shore so i could teach because as the crowd was growing and pressing on jesus there wasn't a lot of shoreline left for jesus and so peter will do that this is also another clever way to get peter in on the bible study right sometimes when we evangelize we have to come up with clever ways to get people to come and to hear the word and so and then he sat down and taught the people from the boat so jesus teaches from peter's boat and of course there's many little bays along the northern shore of the sea of galilee near capernaum where this happens and and of course it's perfect acoustics if jesus pulls out in the boat a little bit from shore and speaks now the crowd can hear him distinctly there's no microphones in the first century but your voice carries over water if you've ever stayed at a lake or on a lake shore you'll be surprised at how much you can hear noises across the lake noise carries over water jesus is a pretty smart guy he's figured that out and uh and so he uses the natural acoustics to reach a large clock crowd effectively but i think the more clever point is he's got a captive audience in the boat with peter peter's man in the boat doing what he does but now he's got he has to listen to jesus right and when he had ceased speaking he said to simon duke and ultimate duke and altum put out into the deep right away from the shoreline let's go out away from the crowd let's go out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch now of course pope john paul ii opens his uh what i really see is his last will and testament spiritually in a sense and that is the letter he writes after the jubilee year remember so much of pope john paul the second pontificate was preparing the church for the year 2000 the 2000 2000th anniversary of the birth of christ and he's celebrating 2000 years of catholic history but at the end of that year he writes a letter to the church and it's basically how does the church go forward for the next thousand years pope john paul ii never thought small right he's not writing a letter here's what we should do for the next three year five-year program no pope john paul ii here's what we should do for the next thousand years in that he starts the whole letter off with this scene of luke 5 verse 4 where jesus says duke and ultim pope john paul ii says we've had a great run the last 2000 years but we can't be afraid of the future as christians even in the midst of all the challenges we face now we can't be afraid of the future because and then he quotes from the epistle of the hebrews jesus is the same yesterday today and tomorrow the same god who blessed the church for the last two thousand years will bless it again there's still a promising and great future for the faith that's what pope john paul ii tells us and so he says we have to do conaltem and i love it because this what is peter's response master epistata in greek which which is simply the word for it's a you know a title of respect you know master is is a good translation sir you know we toiled all night and took nothing and then he's waiting for jesus to say something jesus doesn't say anything jesus just looks at him and then peter says i think but okay at your word i will let down the nets so peter will obey jesus even if it doesn't make sense even if the prospects don't look good and that's precisely pope john paul the second is saying duke and altum get ready to evangelize the world you might think wait a minute no the world's not ready to be evangelized the world's really secular the world doesn't want you lord jesus is saying duke and altum right don't worry about how you have toiled and failed trust me that's what it's about and when he had done this they enclosed a great shoal of fish and as their nets were breaking they beckoned to their partners on the other boat to come and help them and they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink but when simon peter saw it he fell down at jesus's knees saying depart from me for i am a sinful man o lord and i love the greek here because it's a change it's courier corey depart from me i am a sinful man curry lord before he called him sir master now he calls him lord see peter didn't get it about jesus yet andrew right away this is the messiah peter he's not like that impetuous younger brother he's a little bit more seasoned he's seen things come and go he's gonna you know he's gonna save his judgment and jesus has maneuvered things in this morning with peter's boat to give him the word and then to show him the deed in word and deed jesus moves peter's heart to a conversion and of course peter says depart from me lord i'm a sinful man peter's not worthy and what does jesus say do not be afraid henceforth i will make you a fisher of men now do not be afraid remember throughout the old testament is what god says to israel jesus is taking the the words of god and speaking them to peter do not be afraid see peter gets it that he is lord and now the lord speaks to him a message from god do not be afraid and that is the great consolation that's why we study peter let's conclude in prayer reflecting on this great encounter of peter and jesus because peter gives us hope that we too are sinful and unworthy of the call but god doesn't call the worthy he calls and then he makes us worthy and he tells us not to be afraid the name of the father son holy spirit amen eternal father give us the courage to not be afraid help us to hear your words as peter heard them a summons to love to forgiveness and invitation to draw closer to you help us lord to know that you have called us each by name we pray this in christ's name amen father son holy spirit amen

[Music] welcome to our series on saint peter i&#39;m so excited to be with you and this study of of peter and his life peter the closest disciple in many ways to jesus and he opens up a window into the teaching and life of jesus christ i have been longing and eager to teach on peter for a number of years every time i go to the holy land i&#39;ve really been moved by the character of peter as i go to the holy land and visit the places like capernaum where you have the ancient ruins where peter lived the synagogue where peter prayed where jesus taught i&#39;m always moved by reading the stories of the gospels and how often peter is part of that story and how often peter is so approachable he&#39;s kind of the everyday man right he&#39;s not a professional religious scribe he&#39;s a professional fisherman he&#39;s a hard-working blue-collar guy in many ways and what&#39;s so striking is jesus encounters peter and calls him out of his own busyness out of his own story into a bigger story into the story of jesus christ and how peter reacts to that and how peter interacts with jesus and with the 12 and with the crowds to me it&#39;s just really he&#39;s a model disciple we&#39;re going to see how human peter is peter can be impetuous he can be you know rather bold you know he&#39;s always got his foot in his mouth almost as as you watch peter but peter&#39;s also gonna be a sinful man he&#39;s going to betray jesus at the direst hour of christ&#39;s life and yet he&#39;ll repent and weep bitterly for love and so peter is a model for us of how to follow christ and how to repent and i think that&#39;s why peter was so beloved by the early christians you know at the beginning of acts when judas has died and it&#39;s discovered that he hung himself peter has to lead the early church because jesus is gone and as peter leads the early church he has to lead them into the first decision to replace judas and how do they find the criteria to choose somebody to take one of the apostolic offices to be one of the twelve and it&#39;s interesting in acts chapter 1 verse 21 i want to read you this passage because i think it speaks to why peter should be our focus because peter says what&#39;s the criteria for somebody to be an apostle early on and he says so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the lord jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of john until the day that he was taken up from us in reference to the ascension of christ one of these men must become with us a witness to the resurrection so what peter is saying is what matters most is those what qualifies you to be an apostle what qualifies you to be a disciple the amount of time you have spent with jesus that is the earmark of a disciple is time spent with jesus now for us that&#39;s time spent in prayer in worship and adoration but in the first century as jesus as god himself was walking in galilee what qualifies you is spending time with jesus and conversing with him which is what we call prayer watching him which is what we call adoration and honoring him as we&#39;ll see that the disciples do in many ways and giving him reverence which is what we call worship so this is going to be the key qualifier now who out of all of the 12 spent the most time with jesus but peter james and john the through the inner circle and when you talk about the inner circle of the three the head of the inner circle was peter so peter in a sense represents for us that very very intimate and close witness to christ so as we get closer to peter we get closer to christ as we study peter i think it&#39;s going to open up for us a window into the life and teaching and mission of the messiah of jesus and that&#39;s why it&#39;s going to be so important now one of the fascinating things is in early christian art and here i have a picture of a sarcophagus from a christian tomb from a wealthy woman around it&#39;s dated around the year 300 a.d so this is probably before christianity was legalized by constantine so just before and in this artwork what we see on the on the one side of the sarcophagus is scenes of the life of jesus and in every scene is peter so as this art works what you&#39;ll see is on the from the right to the left on the right side you see a young man with his hand down and he&#39;s touching a woman who&#39;s bent down reaching out to touch the hem of his garment remember that scene from the gospels it&#39;s in luke 8 for example it&#39;s the hemorrhaging woman who touches jesus but right to the left of jesus is a bearded man and he&#39;s got curly hair and a curly beard that&#39;s the quintessential scene of peter peter in roman art almost always looks the same the purpose of that by the way is in roman arts the emperor always looked the same you couldn&#39;t any town or village in the empire couldn&#39;t make their own image of the emperor even out of honor they had to use the image and copy the images that were approved by rome itself and the idea was they wanted anybody in the roman empire to be able to identify the emperor and the christians took up this very thing because the christians like the romans wanted to be universal and they wanted any christian anywhere to be able to recognize peter paul jesus as they depicted them in art so there&#39;s a consistency in the depiction of art of peter and paul so you&#39;ll see peter&#39;s face he comes over and over and over again we see peter so here we have peter a witness to the hemorrhaging woman in fact in luke&#39;s version luke 8 we&#39;ll find that peter&#39;s doing crowd control there&#39;s a large crowd around jesus and jesus stops and says who touched me and peter says lord don&#39;t you see how the crowd presses in on you and yet you say who touched me peter&#39;s a little offended he&#39;s in charge of crowd control that day and uh and then you know notice that the picture of jesus is not the picture that you&#39;re used to in later european art of jesus jesus is a very young man because the youth signifies divinity you&#39;ll see this also with the emperor like augustus he&#39;s always clean shaven early images of the emperor of the emperor uh are always clean shaven it&#39;s not tell hadrian that that will change clean shaven and youthful to signify divinity so jesus is youthful uh to signify eternal life uh resurrection life divinity and then the next scene we see somebody carrying their bed and that&#39;s going to be the paralytic we&#39;ll talk about that scene in peter&#39;s house of the paralytic and again we have peter watching peter&#39;s there and then we have another scene with jesus healing the blind man and so jesus is touching his eyes and then there&#39;s peter flanking both sides so we constantly have peter in the scene peter&#39;s looking over jesus shoulder and scene after scene after scene and of course there&#39;s another great scene of course the the filling of the pots and because uh they didn&#39;t have motion graphics you have uh the staff coming down and touching the pots to show that jesus is changing the water into wine and of course there&#39;s peter again peter&#39;s always over his shoulder now you have a woman here and a gesture of prayer at the center because she&#39;s the one who&#39;s buried but i think it&#39;s interesting that they put the scene of cana right next to the woman who&#39;s praying an intercessory way for petition for help now that she has passed away she&#39;s praying asking for prayers which is interesting 300 a.d and it&#39;s right next to the scene of canis you could almost take this as mary who intercedes for the wine right and so maybe this woman had a devotion to our lady right i think it&#39;s suggestive again we don&#39;t know for sure but the placement i think is rather suggestive and uh and then you go through the scene now you have peter being arrested so peter&#39;s arrested and then this is a story that&#39;s later on after the bible this is peter in prison and he he you can see the two guards who take him and they&#39;re drinking water from the rock that peter strikes because in the prison where peter is held he strikes the the rock water comes forth and he baptizes the prison guards whom he&#39;s evangelized so what you see is peter throughout and i just love this artwork from the earliest christians with peter looking over the shoulder of jesus in each scene and if we look at the gospels we are going to see the frequency by which peter&#39;s mentioned in matthew&#39;s gospel he names peter 25 times in mark&#39;s gospel peter&#39;s mentioned 25 times in luke&#39;s gospel he&#39;s mentioned 30 times and then when we get the gospel of john it&#39;s 39 times that peter is named so you can see that peter is always peering over jesus shoulder in just about every scene of jesus&#39;s life there&#39;s peter and so there&#39;s a lot of reasons to want to study peter but one of the important reasons as we&#39;ll see later on is that peter will be named peter rock by jesus because jesus said you are rock peter and on this rock i will build my church i see peter as the bridge between us and jesus he is the bridge to understand the relationship of the church to jesus right and in our day the idea that why do we need religion why do we need the church right and in fact i i was looking through books on the internet last night uh on amazon and i saw this book that was why how you could be christian without going to church that was the title right and that would be incomprehensible to peter the apostles and i would suggest you as we&#39;ll see in our study to jesus himself right and so i think it&#39;s timely to study peter because we have to go back to the origins of the church there&#39;s a bit of an identity crisis of what and who is the church supposed to be and if we go back to the beginning back to that foundation stone which is peter right we&#39;ll understand better what jesus intended by the church and why we need the church and why the church is not a millstone around our neck but a firm foundation for our faith right that will be important that will be important now i always think of peter&#39;s humble background and we&#39;re going to talk about where peter is from uh which is bethsaida and i want to talk about the early call and the first encounter of peter with jesus and uh but before i do that i i wanna there&#39;s a text from saint paul that always jumps out of me about peter because peter of course you know is that fisherman he&#39;s that everyday kind of you know his his hands are calloused his fingernails are dirty uh he&#39;s a tough guy fishing with nets that work is in the water and i remember a few years ago swimming out deeper out into the sea of galilee and it was a hot day it was in the summer and as i got deeper the lake is is extraordinarily deep lake and so the water as after you get out 20 feet from shore the water is a lot colder than you&#39;d imagine and as i swam out there i was like whoa this is really chilly out here and then i reflected on peter had to work in that water we know from john 21 that peter was stripped for the work with the nets when jesus is on the shoreline and says children have you caught anything well imagine if in the summer some of that water is cold what was it like in the fall the winter or the early spring so when i think of peter working out there with the boat the nets calloused hands sunburn out there on you know on some of those days in the heat of galilee and then that working in that cold frigid water and his hands must have been strong big hands right when i think about that i think about that text that paul writes to the early christians in corinth when he says then to reflect on your call he says this in in first corinthians chapter 1 verse 26 for consider your call brethren not many of you were wise according to worldly standards right and of course i think of acts 4 13 where the sanhedrin takes peter in and they interrogate him and they&#39;re amazed at peter&#39;s preaching and teaching because he is an uneducated man unquote he&#39;s an uneducated man in other words he doesn&#39;t have a doctorate from an accredited institution right and yet he&#39;s teaching powerfully from the word of god right so paul says not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many of you were powerful not many of you were noble birth these are all true of peter aren&#39;t they but god chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise which is exactly what happens in acts 4 13. right god shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong and we&#39;ll see the weakness of peter betrayner lord in the courtyard of caiaphas to the maiden you know to the to the serving girl right and yet we&#39;ll see him bowled at pentecost with the spirit of god god shows what is low and despised in the world so that no human being might boast right so what in other words is the lesson here god chooses people like peter he doesn&#39;t call the equipped he equips the called and that is consolation and encouragement to you and i to know that god likes to choose people who don&#39;t have all the perfect background all the perfect preparation they have a heart open to god to do his will that&#39;s all it takes is that fiat to say yes as we&#39;ll see with the call of peter now i want to take us to what i would call the first encounters the first encounters and the gospel of john so turn with me uh to the gospel of john and we&#39;ll see where john the baptist is out and he&#39;s summoned all of israel to his baptism in the jordan river and he&#39;s out in the jordan out in the wilderness the judean wilderness and we&#39;re told that you know as john&#39;s preaching the scribes and the pharisees come in and they say are you the messiah are you the elijah come he says nope nope you know there&#39;s one among you whom you do not recognize whose sandals are not worthy to fasten so john speaks that there&#39;s somebody greater who is not just going to come in the near future he&#39;s present and yet unseen and then of course jesus comes and john bears witness when jesus is baptized and john says i saw the spirit and by the way this is in verse 32 i saw the spirit descend as a dove from heaven and it remained on him i myself did not know him but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me he on whom you see the spirit descend and remain this is he who baptizes with the holy spirit right and i have seen him born witness now the next day again john was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at jesus as he walked and said behold the lamb of god now in verse 37 the two disciples heard him say this and they followed jesus now i want you to understand the background here these are two of john&#39;s key disciples john tells them in conversation behold the lamb of god point to jesus whom jesus had seen the spirit rest upon when he baptized them right and so what do they do they follow john&#39;s direction and follow jesus so we get these two and then uh they say uh jesus turned to them saying what do you seek and they said to him rabbi which means teacher where are you staying and he said to them come and see and they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour and then one of the two heard john speak and followed him was andrew simon peter&#39;s brother so one of those two is andrew now this is important andrew peter&#39;s brother was one of the early disciples of john the baptist now i think this is a good clue and a good entry into who peter is because it tells us that peter&#39;s brother was on the cutting edge he was alerted to this idea of a prophet john the baptist and not only did he go to john the baptist to be baptized but he followed john as a disciple in other words he was he was in early on the john the baptist movement now that&#39;s going to be important that&#39;s going to tell us a little bit about peter now what happens now andrew who was one of those two who hears john the baptist say there&#39;s the lamb of god follows jesus who the other disciple is is probably the beloved disciple and then what does andrew do after he encounters jesus and spends that day with him verse 41 he first found his brother simon so the first thing andrew does after he finds jesus is he goes and finds his brother his brother simon and he said to him he&#39;s so excited he can&#39;t he&#39;s got to get it all in one sentence right so what has he blurred out we have found the messiah we have found the messiah now step back and think how profound those words are and remember this is the first message peter receives about jesus from his brother and his brother is connected his brother is a disciple of john the baptist right and andrew comes and says we have found the messiah i mean they&#39;ve only been looking for a messiah for over 500 years right no big deal right they&#39;ve only been waiting in exile for generation after generation 500 plus years of waiting and longing for that messiah and andrew tells peter we have found him we have found him out here in the wilderness thanks to the gps known as john the baptist right we have we have located them right we have found the messiah and then he brought him to jesus what a beautiful thing and in the story of john&#39;s gospel this is the first example of evangelization does andrew have a phd in jesus studies no andrew&#39;s known jesus for about 24 hours at this point right but he has met jesus and he knows his brother and this gets back to the heart of evangelization that pope john paul ii spoke of when he said to evangelize all you need to do is know jesus christ and no modern man and woman with their insecurities hopes fears and introduce them bring the two together if you&#39;ve ever introduced two people who didn&#39;t know each other to each other you have exactly what you need on your resume to be an evangelist you&#39;re equipped that&#39;s what evangelization is sometimes we think evangelization is you know giving somebody a whole download of the whole of catholic tradition all of scripture you know all of sacramento theology and we get so overwhelmed by it all that we don&#39;t even touch it now peter has a lot to learn so does andrew and they&#39;ll learn it but andrew makes the introduction that&#39;s how easy evangelization is and andrew shows this with this interaction with peter so andrews brought him to jesus and jesus looked at him and said so you are simon the son of john now he&#39;s heard a lot about him right so andrew kept talking about his big brother right so you are simon the son of john as jesus kind of looks them over you shall be called right you shall be called kaphos which is the greek version of the aramaic name kefa which means rock or the greek word for that is petros is the petros or the english version of the greek which is peter is that confusing good you got it we&#39;ll go over those names again and again so it&#39;ll it&#39;ll it&#39;ll it&#39;ll become rock solid in your memory by the time we&#39;re done you shall be called caiphus which of course means peter john tells us in the text now the next day jesus decided to go to galilee so now he&#39;s met andrew and peter and what are they doing you got to come to galilee right so then the next day jesus decides to go to galilee notice they meet they&#39;re going to meet uh jesus encounters them down by the jordan river where john the baptist is so if we if we look back at a uh at a map of israel jerusalem down in the south the dead sea just above the dead sea is where uh john the baptist is baptizing just across from jericho and then they&#39;re going to go all the way up to galilee along the jordan river valley which is not a far journey and when they get up to galilee we&#39;re going to find out that they&#39;re going to go in the region of galilee where peter&#39;s from and i like how john says this in verse 43 the next day jesus decided to go to galilee and he found philip and he said to him follow me now philip was from bethsaida the city of andrew and peter so are you seeing the connection now so in other words so phillips is the next guy who gets called in philip&#39;s hometown is bethsaida which is the city where peter and andrew are from right so bethsaida now of course where is peter living at this time caphernum right capernaum as we say in english but his hometown was bethsaida so andrew right knows philip and we have so we now we see how andrew leads us to peter leads us to philip all knowing jesus and you&#39;ll see in the gospel of john by the way that this connection between philip and andrew who are particular friends because you&#39;ll see for example in john 6 where jesus is multiplying the loaves and the fish and uh right before he does that the crowds are hungry and jesus and john at the beginning of john 6 turns to philip and he says philip where shall we buy bread enough to feed everybody and then john tells us he said this to test philip because he knew what he would do right and philip says well gosh if we had 200 plus denarii we couldn&#39;t feed this crowd right and uh and then philip you know is given this task of go find what you have and then he turns to andrew and then andrew finds a boy with five loaves and two fish so you&#39;ll see how you go from again philip andrew andrew phillip and then later on in the gospel of john in john chapter 12 we&#39;re told that some greek speakers in fact i&#39;ll just take you to that passage real quick because i think it&#39;s just interesting to see this connection between this group uh in in john 12 20 it says now among those who went up to worship the feasts were some greeks and so these came to philip who was from bethsaida in galilee and said to him sir we wish to see jesus philip went and who is phil going to go to andrew so you notice how you go down the chain and back so andrew gets philip to know jesus and now philip goes to andrew to get to jesus right so so philip went to andrew right and he told andrew and andrew went with philip and they told jesus now it&#39;s interesting why do the greeks go to philip out of the twelve well philip is a greek name philip is a greek name if you remember there&#39;s a you know alexander what&#39;s his father&#39;s name philip right so philip is a very greek name it&#39;s not a jewish name and andrew by the way is a greek name now simon is a jewish name in root simeon but simon is the greek form of that name now that&#39;s interesting because bethsaida had gentiles as well as jews living in it and and the significant thing about bethsaida is that it was a hellenistic style city phillip herod aunty potter&#39;s brother philip right so then we give another phillip right notice that&#39;s a greek name herod the great named one of his sons philip and so philip&#39;s region is going to be the decapolis and the area of bethsaida so if you look at a map of galilee what we see is the jordan river flows into the northern part of the sea of galilee and so the jordan river flows in and everything east of this region is the decapolis and the region of philip everything west of the jordan river and west of the sea of galilee is the area of galilee proper which is herod antipater&#39;s territory so you have two different territories so bethsaida became in 30 a.d it was made a it was given the title city police city by philip and it was made as capital now here&#39;s the interesting why does peter why do peter and andrew move from bethsaida to capernaum which is three miles away why do they move so scholars have had different hypothesis for a tax break which i think is a really lame only americans would come up with that right you know americans move on average every five years you know first century jews they don&#39;t move from the village that&#39;s very unusual so why would they move because when philip makes bethsaida his capital he dedicates a temple names it after the wife of caesar augustus julia and so there&#39;s a pagan temple now in bethsaida and so i think andrew and peter who are devout jews and we know andrew is because he&#39;s with the john the baptist movement from the beginning and we know peter is because later on in acts 10 when peter is shown all this unclean food he&#39;s told to eat he says lord i have never in my life eat unclean food right that&#39;s significant that tells us that peter was an observant jew his whole life that&#39;s significant because in archaeological digs of bethsaida we found many pig bones so we know that there was jews as well as gentiles who probably compromised with hellenistic culture and ate pork and unclean kosher foods but peter wasn&#39;t one of them but you can see how once the city has a pagan temple and philip&#39;s going to want to modernize it even more in other words he&#39;s going to want to make it more gentile more hellenistic peter and andrew have had enough and they go to caferno which is a pious and more much more zealously jewish village compared to bethsaida so i would i believe that that&#39;s going to be one of the reasons why from bethsaida peter and andrew are going to move and leave bethsaida but again here&#39;s the point though if you grow up in bethsaida you probably know enough greek to get around which means peter and andrew probably knew enough greek notice they had greek names so their parents their father gave them greek names that&#39;s going to be significant for peter later on it&#39;s interesting that god places peter in this gentile hellenistic jewish village that&#39;s kind of a mix to prepare peter for where what god&#39;s going to do with peter you would think that what does a simple galilean fisherman need to know about greek and greek culture a lot as we see the story unfolding right so again we see even these small little details god preparing peter for his call for what he wants to do with peter which i think will be amazing and that&#39;s why the greeks go to philip who probably knew good greek and that&#39;s why they approached philip first and philip goes with his buddy andrew that he probably grew up playing soccer with in bethsaida right and so phil goes to andrew and says let&#39;s tell jesus you know and so notice philip and andrew are open to the greeks coming to know jesus that&#39;ll be significant that&#39;ll be significant so now this first encounter of jesus with peter tells us a lot peter&#39;s from bethsaida why does he move from bethsaida you know because of the politics of philip the great or philip not phil the great but philip the brother of herod and the you know the the kind of pagan uh culture that&#39;s growing in bethsaida and all that background i think opens up a window into what jesus is doing and calling this group and i also think here&#39;s peter coming down to see john the baptist so peter has encountered john the baptist before did you did you think about that when you thought about peter did you ever think about peter knowing john the baptist yeah but here it is at the very beginning of john&#39;s gospel and john is one of the 12 who knows peter well and knows john the baptist well he knows the origins of that story so he knows that there&#39;s there is peter that andrew can introduce peter to jesus where john the baptist is baptizing and of course as if andrew was a close disciple of john the baptist and as just as andrew told jesus in 24 hours all about his big brother i&#39;m sure he did the same thing with john the baptist so john the baptist knew peter peter knows john the baptist and remember what does peter say at the beginning of acts remember we talked about in acts 1 21 peter says remember he says so one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the lord jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of john so let&#39;s go back to somebody who was there with john the baptist from the beginning just like peter was just like peter was now peter is still running the business the family business up in galley so he comes down maybe for as a pilgrimage done jerusalem he go makes a journey down to visit andrew he&#39;s probably doing the mission support for andrew right andrew&#39;s full-time missionary john the baptist and peter&#39;s running the family business to support his young his kid brother right and he&#39;s coming in to check on making sure he&#39;s you know being pious and and doing his mission work probably you know is peter&#39;s sweating and uh braving the cold waters of the of the sea of galilee i think it just gives us a fuller portrait of peter and this prepares us for the next encounter the next key encounter as jesus goes up to galilee at probably the recommendation of peter and andrew and philip is luke chapter five so i want to turn to luke chapter 5 now this was one of the favorite passages of now saint john paul ii so pope john paul ii love this passage uh at the beginning of luke&#39;s gospel in luke 5 verse 4 where jesus will call to peter to duke in altum to cast into the deep right to cast into the deep first let&#39;s get a little bit more of the setting while the people pressed upon him to hear the word of god so there&#39;s a huge crowd pressing in on jesus as he&#39;s teaching he was standing by the lake of genesseret so the lake has several names ganasseret uh gali the sea of tiberias uh that was what uh herod the great tried you know inherit aunty ponter named the sea of tiberius but that name didn&#39;t stick by the locals they didn&#39;t like calling their lake after a pagan roman emperor uh so you&#39;ll you&#39;ll have several different names uh ganester is an older name and it it means uh uh has an image of a harp uh kenaret of a harp because that&#39;s the shape of the lake in a sense from uh one of the traditional names for that sea but it becomes more and more known as the sea of galilee in the first century and that&#39;s how the gospels generally refer to it as the sea of galilee so that&#39;ll be our default and he saw two boats by the lake but the fishermen had gone out of them were washing their nets so this is probably some time in early to mid morning because the fishermen would fish all night as peter will tell us in a few moments and after the fishermen fish with nets what you have to do is you come back you take your fish and typically what you would do is you would take your fish if you had a large catch and you drop your fish off over a magdala because that&#39;s where the processing place was for processing and salting and drying fish and selling the markets and then you come back and then you wash your nets and i&#39;ve seen this with fishermen who fish with nets and i remember being in greece in particular at a port in greece uh kavala which was the ancient city of neopolis where paul came into port to go to philippi but where early in the morning i was going for a walk at dawn and i saw the fishermen and they had their large nets huge nets and they were going through them and they were sewing the nets where they had torn so after you use your nets you have to clean them of all the debris and junk and then you mend the nets and you fold them up so they&#39;re ready to go the next night you&#39;re going to go out and so i think that setting is important because the fishermen are cleaning their nets so jesus maneuvers his teaching so that peter will hear maybe peter is that businessman and he&#39;s he&#39;s not maybe maybe not as devout as andrew is who wants to sit at the feet of john the baptist and peter&#39;s religious he&#39;s observant but he&#39;s also maybe a you know a driven business guy no nonsense guy and so what does jesus do he takes his bible study over by the boats right he&#39;s gonna he&#39;s gonna reel in peter slowly here right so uh so jesus notices that the fishermen had gone out of the boats they were washing their nets and getting into one of the boats which was simon&#39;s he asked him to put out a little from the land now think about that there&#39;s a little bit of hutzpah here jesus sees peter&#39;s boat empty he steps up and gets into peter&#39;s boat tell us a little bit about jesus he&#39;s not a mild milk toast you know kind of cowardly guy he just takes command and he steps boldly into peter&#39;s boat and then he asks peter hey would you take this boat out a little bit from shore so i could teach because as the crowd was growing and pressing on jesus there wasn&#39;t a lot of shoreline left for jesus and so peter will do that this is also another clever way to get peter in on the bible study right sometimes when we evangelize we have to come up with clever ways to get people to come and to hear the word and so and then he sat down and taught the people from the boat so jesus teaches from peter&#39;s boat and of course there&#39;s many little bays along the northern shore of the sea of galilee near capernaum where this happens and and of course it&#39;s perfect acoustics if jesus pulls out in the boat a little bit from shore and speaks now the crowd can hear him distinctly there&#39;s no microphones in the first century but your voice carries over water if you&#39;ve ever stayed at a lake or on a lake shore you&#39;ll be surprised at how much you can hear noises across the lake noise carries over water jesus is a pretty smart guy he&#39;s figured that out and uh and so he uses the natural acoustics to reach a large clock crowd effectively but i think the more clever point is he&#39;s got a captive audience in the boat with peter peter&#39;s man in the boat doing what he does but now he&#39;s got he has to listen to jesus right and when he had ceased speaking he said to simon duke and ultimate duke and altum put out into the deep right away from the shoreline let&#39;s go out away from the crowd let&#39;s go out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch now of course pope john paul ii opens his uh what i really see is his last will and testament spiritually in a sense and that is the letter he writes after the jubilee year remember so much of pope john paul the second pontificate was preparing the church for the year 2000 the 2000 2000th anniversary of the birth of christ and he&#39;s celebrating 2000 years of catholic history but at the end of that year he writes a letter to the church and it&#39;s basically how does the church go forward for the next thousand years pope john paul ii never thought small right he&#39;s not writing a letter here&#39;s what we should do for the next three year five-year program no pope john paul ii here&#39;s what we should do for the next thousand years in that he starts the whole letter off with this scene of luke 5 verse 4 where jesus says duke and ultim pope john paul ii says we&#39;ve had a great run the last 2000 years but we can&#39;t be afraid of the future as christians even in the midst of all the challenges we face now we can&#39;t be afraid of the future because and then he quotes from the epistle of the hebrews jesus is the same yesterday today and tomorrow the same god who blessed the church for the last two thousand years will bless it again there&#39;s still a promising and great future for the faith that&#39;s what pope john paul ii tells us and so he says we have to do conaltem and i love it because this what is peter&#39;s response master epistata in greek which which is simply the word for it&#39;s a you know a title of respect you know master is is a good translation sir you know we toiled all night and took nothing and then he&#39;s waiting for jesus to say something jesus doesn&#39;t say anything jesus just looks at him and then peter says i think but okay at your word i will let down the nets so peter will obey jesus even if it doesn&#39;t make sense even if the prospects don&#39;t look good and that&#39;s precisely pope john paul the second is saying duke and altum get ready to evangelize the world you might think wait a minute no the world&#39;s not ready to be evangelized the world&#39;s really secular the world doesn&#39;t want you lord jesus is saying duke and altum right don&#39;t worry about how you have toiled and failed trust me that&#39;s what it&#39;s about and when he had done this they enclosed a great shoal of fish and as their nets were breaking they beckoned to their partners on the other boat to come and help them and they came and filled both boats so that they began to sink but when simon peter saw it he fell down at jesus&#39;s knees saying depart from me for i am a sinful man o lord and i love the greek here because it&#39;s a change it&#39;s courier corey depart from me i am a sinful man curry lord before he called him sir master now he calls him lord see peter didn&#39;t get it about jesus yet andrew right away this is the messiah peter he&#39;s not like that impetuous younger brother he&#39;s a little bit more seasoned he&#39;s seen things come and go he&#39;s gonna you know he&#39;s gonna save his judgment and jesus has maneuvered things in this morning with peter&#39;s boat to give him the word and then to show him the deed in word and deed jesus moves peter&#39;s heart to a conversion and of course peter says depart from me lord i&#39;m a sinful man peter&#39;s not worthy and what does jesus say do not be afraid henceforth i will make you a fisher of men now do not be afraid remember throughout the old testament is what god says to israel jesus is taking the the words of god and speaking them to peter do not be afraid see peter gets it that he is lord and now the lord speaks to him a message from god do not be afraid and that is the great consolation that&#39;s why we study peter let&#39;s conclude in prayer reflecting on this great encounter of peter and jesus because peter gives us hope that we too are sinful and unworthy of the call but god doesn&#39;t call the worthy he calls and then he makes us worthy and he tells us not to be afraid the name of the father son holy spirit amen eternal father give us the courage to not be afraid help us to hear your words as peter heard them a summons to love to forgiveness and invitation to draw closer to you help us lord to know that you have called us each by name we pray this in christ&#39;s name amen father son holy spirit amen

Transcript for:Saint Peter Lecture Notes

Transcript for:
Saint Peter Lecture Notes