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November 21, 2022
Key verse 17: " The third time he said to him, <Simon son of John, do you love me?> Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, <Do you love me?> He said, <Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.>!”
Love changes the world to paradise for loving people. For me and Esther, our wedding day is the happiest day of our lives. We celebrated our marriage on one day in October 1977. I can never forget the day.
Why is this day the best day for me and Esther?
Because we got married that day, and our body and soul became one through love.
It's amazing that two people who didn't really know each other fall in love and get married. Marriage is the strongest bond between people. Most of the books or TV films are romance novels or romance films.
There is another love relationship that is very strong, like the marriage relationship. This is the love relationship of Christians to Jesus Christ.
Today I want to talk about our love relationship with Jesus.
1. Jesus loves us (verses 1-14)
"I was just supposed to meet up with a friend and there he was standing next to her. I had never seen him before, but he turned and smiled. This smile; indescribable and beautiful. Suddenly everything in the world seemed meaningless except for this moment. This moment determined my life from now on. I want to grab your hands; fly with you in the sky of love; be yours forever.”
This is a short description of a love story.
The Bible is a love story, a love story between Jesus and us.
Genesis chapters 1 and 2 tell us about God's creation and God's love to us. God loves us so much that he created a beautiful world for us and gave it to us. And he gave people love partners and walked in paradise with people.
But people were unfaithful to God and lost the Paradise. Nevertheless, God loves us humans unchanged. God loves us so much that he came as a man named Jesus because he loves us. He died in our place for our sins and then rose from the dead on the third day.
The risen Jesus loves us as he loves Peter.
Today we want to get to know Jesus' love better.
Seven of the 12 disciples of Jesus, namely Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John and two other disciples, are together in Galilee. Galilee is their homeland. And the Sea of Galilee used to be their working place.
Then Peter says to them: "I want to go fishing."
Then the others answer: "We'll go with you."
When I was in middle school, I went fishing at the dam lake back home on vacation days off and on.
Do Peter and his friends want to go fishing to kill time? I do not think so. They have already seen the risen Jesus and believed in his resurrection. They also received the Holy Spirit (20:22).
Still, they didn't become supermen. Their worry about the cost of supporting themselves and their family members weighs heavily on them.
Most of them were fishermen of the Sea of Galilee, they return to their old profession. They get into the boat and start casting nets to catch fish.
But weird. Although they kept throwing the nets all night, they couldn't catch anything. They are desperate. When morning breaks, they are still empty-handed. They are tired and hungry.
At dawn, the risen Jesus comes and stands on the shore.
Did Jesus say to the disciples, "Hi, what are you doing? Have you already forgotten your calling as gospel workers and gone back to fishing? How can you forget my calling?”
No!
Rather, he fully understands their needs. He hears that they stand there with empty-hands and despondent. He knows they are hungry. That is why he says to them: "Children, have you nothing to eat?" (5).
He is like a loving mother who is happy to feed her hungry children. He wants to give them something to eat. Therefore he says to them: "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some fishes" (6).
The disciples do as Jesus said and make a big catch. Their net is full of big fishes. Meanwhile, Jesus has already kindled a fire on the bank.
He grills the fish and then says to them, "Come and eat!"
He gives them grilled fish and bread.
The disciples warm their frozen bodies and feed their hungry stomachs.
They are fed up now. Their souls have recovered. They have peace of mind again.
This scene shows that Jesus loves all of us very much and cares for both our physical and spiritual needs.
Unfortunately, some people think that Jesus only cares about our spiritual needs and has little concern about our physical needs because our bodies are perishable anyway.
But that is not truth!
Jesus takes great interest in all of our needs, both spiritual and physical, because He loves us very much.
God is our creator. He created both our bodies and our souls. He loves us and cares for our physical as well as spiritual well-being.
Out of love, God gave us mother and father and brothers and sisters and brought us up. Out of love he has given us this beautiful earth, a blue sky, a warm sun, fresh air and clean water and delicious bread. He gave us kind people out of love. Out of his love, he sent us to school or gave us jobs. In the past,
Jesus gave his disciples bread and fish to eat (John 6). But the disciples have forgotten that. That is why the risen Jesus gives them bread and fish again.
God truly loves us and takes great care of our physical and spiritual well-being.
As an example of God's love for me, I will tell of God's care for my ears.
I was born and raised in South Korea. My father died of illness when I was two years old. I received a lot of love from my mother and siblings. When I was a kid, I used to go swimming in the creek in the summer.
Maybe that's why I got an otitis media. But because of the poverty of my parents' home, I could not get proper medical treatment. But when I was a master course student, God used my Prof. Bosung Rhee, my masters course supervisor, to talk to the ENT professor at Chungnam University Hospital for my surgery. So I got my first ear operation there free of charge.
And at the end of September 1981 I got the second ear operation in the municipal clinic in Dortmund free of charge through the health insurance.
I had my third ear operation (early March 1989?) in the Elisabeth Hospital in Bochum by Prof. Hildmann. After that, in April 2011, God sent me through the dermatologist Dr. Heyden to Josephs Hospital. Josephs-Hospital sent me by taxi to the Elisabeth-Hospital's ENT ambulance to have my ears examined. A benign tumor was found in my left ear and I had ear surgery for the fourth time.
This example shows that God loves me very much and takes good care of my health.
Above all, God sacrificed his son Jesus Christ to give me eternal life. God loves not only me, but all of us. He even sacrificed his son Jesus Christ to save us and to adopt us as his children.
Praise God for his love!
We are to recognize his presence and his loving voice. We should perceive God's love and care and accept them with thanks. When we look at Jesus with open eyes, we see that he is always with us and takes care of us carefully.
When we perceive his presence and his love, we become very happy.
Here's how we can sing along to Psalm 23:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He feeds me on a green meadow and leads me to fresh water... Goodness and mercy will follow me all my life, and I will abide in the house of the Lord forever."
2. Do you love me? (15-25)
Jesus first loved us. He even sacrificed his life because he loves us very much and wants to make us happy. He wants us to receive his love. That is why he asks Simon Peter and us:
"Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these people love me?" (15).
Peter answered him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus asked him the same question twice more: "Do you love me?" (16 and17).
He also asks us three times: “Stephan, do you love me?
What does Jesus mean by his repeated question, "Do you love me?"?
I believe that with his question he wants to say to them and to us, "I love you very much. Have you accepted my love? Do you love me?"
This question is a brief summary of the whole Bible: God loves us very much. The whole Bible is a love story of God for us.
And he asks us: "Do you love me?"
We are to accept his love and confess our love to him: "Yes, Lord, I love you."
This confession is like the vow of marriage at the wedding. In the wedding ceremony, there are various acts such as B. Sermon, songs, exchange of marriage rings, etc. But the marriage vows are the centerpiece of the wedding ceremony, because through this marriage vows, the couple enters into an indissoluble marriage.
Jesus first loved us and proposed to us. We are to respond to his proposal through the confession of love.
Everyone can enter into the eternal bond with Jesus through a personal confession of love.
Of course, even after this spiritual marriage with Jesus, we should repeat our love confession to Jesus. It is through this repeated confession of love that we are to keep our love relationship with Jesus fresh.
Jesus asks each of us today: "Do you love me?"
Now, everyone should answer it personally.
Even though Jesus already knows everything about our thoughts, he still wants us to confess our love for him with our mouths.
This love relationship should not be a one-sided love, but a two-sided one. Where there is mutual love, there is a paradise.
When I accepted Jesus as my Savior during my college days in Korea, I felt like I was walking in paradise during my college days.
We are to accept Jesus' love for us every day and confess: "Jesus, I love you!"
So we are very happy and we can experience every day that Jesus is with us and that we are walking with him in paradise.
3. "Feed my sheep!"
Every time Peter answers Jesus, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you," Jesus tells him: "Feed my sheep!" (15:16:17).
Why does Jesus say to him: "Feed my sheep!"?
Jesus wants us to tell other people about the love of Jesus so that they too will believe in him and have eternal life.
That is why Jesus says to Peter and also to us: "Feed my sheep!"
We should perceive Jesus' desire correctly and fulfill it. When we do this, a beautiful love story becomes a reality.
And Jesus will be very happy, and we will be very happy too.
Jesus' love is like the water in a dam, and we are like the dam. We can receive the water, which is Jesus' love, in abundance. We can thereby enjoy happy, eternal life. This is a great blessing from God for us.
But we should let this water of Jesus' love continue to flow so that as many people as possible can receive Jesus' love and have eternal, happy life.
If, if we want to enjoy the water of love in the dam alone and don't let it flow any further, the water will rot and our dam will stink.
If we only receive Jesus' love and don't pass it on, we will stink.
We should take this seriously and pass on Jesus' love and the gospel to other people. Then we and others will be happy, and paradise will be everywhere.
That is the will of God in Jesus Christ.
Let's read verse 15 again: "When they had eaten, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than they love me? He said to him: Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus says to him: Feed my lambs!”
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