Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website, globalservants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Do you have your Bibles? If you'll take those and turn, if you will, to the Gospel According to John, the first chapter. The Gospel According to John, the first Chapter. Our subject tonight as we continue this series on the magnificent seven.
This being the sixth of seven.
Next week we will conclude with St. Paul and I hope that you can be here for that. But this being the sixth is Simon Peter.
And this is his appearance according to John, beginning with verse 35 again, the next day after John stood, I.e. john Baptist, not John, the writer of the Gospel.
And the next day after John stood and two of his disciples and looking upon Jesus as he walked by, John saith, behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard John speak. And they followed Jesus.
Then Jesus turned and saw them following and saith unto them, what seek ye? They said unto him, rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted, master, where dwellest thou? And he saith unto them, come and see.
And they came and saw where he dwelt and abode with him that day. For it was about the 10th hour, one of the two which heard John speak. And following him was, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
And he first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, we have found the Messiah, which is being interpreted, the Christ.
And when he brought Simon Peter him. The pronouns are confusing sometimes in the New Testament. And when Andrew brought Simon Peter to Jesus, and when, and when Jesus beheld Peter, he said unto him, thou art Simon, the son of Jonah. Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, in the next few moments, I pray that your Holy Spirit will so captivate our hearts, so arrest our attention, that we will hear all that you have to say, despite the weakness of speaker and distraction of hearer, that somehow divine communication will happen and that when we leave here we will say one to another.
Surely we have heard from the Lord, for it is in Jesus name who is the strong Son of God, that we offer this and every prayer. Amen.
As we say his name, Simon.
The name in Hebrew is Shimon, if you will remember, the great Israeli diplomat and politician Shimon Peres.
It means Simon. And then John records Him as being his father, being called Yonah Jonah.
At other places, he is called Yonan John.
So in Hebrew it would be Shimon ben Yonah Shim' on Simon, the son of Yonah.
Now all of a sudden, John, the gospel writer, throws in the word in Greek, Peter Petros, and he calls him Simon Peter. However, at this time in the story, he's not Simon Peter.
John is describing him as Simon Peter because he knew him for a lifetime, later called Simon Peter. But at this time, he's not called that until Jesus gives him a nickname.
Jesus meets him, he says, thou art Shimon Simon, the son of Yonah Jonah. Thou shalt be called Cephas.
Now, there is no. There is no word for that in Hebrew. That's not a Hebrew word. It is, at best, an Aramaic word.
Probably should be kepha, which means a stone.
In Hebrew there are two words, sur, which means a big stone, a boulder, if you will, and even. Which is the kind of stone you throw, a smaller handheld stone.
So Jesus is using Aramaic, and he says, your name is Shim', on, but you shall be called Kepha, a stone.
And then it, as it's translated from Aramaic into Hebrew, into Greek and into English, it becomes Simon Peter.
He is of the tribe of fishermen, which are worldwide, not dissimilar.
No matter what country and culture you go to.
They are a tough group.
Professional fishermen are tough guys, and Simon Peter was one of those.
We may assume that he was a big man. He is never described physically as big. However, he is described as being strong.
A boat full of men in John chapter 21 could not budge a net full of fish, and Simon Peter carries it by himself.
So whether he is big and strong or just strong, we don't know, but he is certainly strong. But we may assume that he is a big man for another reason. He's one of those people that sort of walks in a kind of natural leadership.
I'm not talking about giftedness or anointing. I'm talking about the kid on the playground in the fifth grade that can just run faster, throw the ball further, shout louder, jump higher, and. And he kind of becomes the. The guy that is almost certainly Simon Peter. And he has some of the.
Some of the character and personality issues that go with being that guy.
He is not poor.
He and his friends co own a professional fishing endeavor.
They are not poor, but they are what I would call blue collar, prosperous.
He is married.
Even when he shows up in the Gospel, he's already married. And he stays married. In fact, later on St. Paul makes mention of the fact that his wife traveled with him in, in his evangelistic and ministry efforts that Simon Peter did not travel alone. His wife went with him.
The, the Roman Church sees him as the first Pope. It's a, it's a thin line of reasoning. But he was to a certain extent the, in a way, we'll come to it, the Pope leader of the primitive church, of the first century church. Though in another way I would say it's James, we're going to, we'll come to that. But Peter is certainly one of the leaders. But if he was the first Pope, then I would make the case that the first Pope was married and remained married after he ascended to the papacy.
He was somehow a memorable person as well.
Whether it was because of his size or something. There are just some people that you just take note of. And he was that, if you'll remember in the night that he betrayed Jesus in Caiaphas courtyard, in the semi darkness around a campfire, kind of, you might say, a warming fire, a maid recognizes him of the other disciples.
And she says, I recognize you. You were with Jesus. So we know that he is. He's a big, strong, and he's kind of that personality. He's what I call an A to Z personality.
A. I'll never do it.
I'll never do that. If I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it all the time.
And I'll give you an example of that if you remember later on in the story, we're not reading all of these tonight.
At the time of the Last Supper, Jesus says, I'm going to wash your feet. And Simon Peter says, never.
You will never wash my feet. It's a kind of statement in a way. It's a statement of humility. Lord, I'm not worthy I should wash your feet. In another way, it comes across almost as arrogant.
You're not ever going to wash my feet.
Jesus says, if I don't wash your feet, you have no part in me. And Simon Peter says, okay, then wash my hands and my head too.
So he's that guy.
And you'll remember in John chapter 21, when Jesus, after the crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Jesus shows up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Peter does not recognize him.
John, who just wrote, who wrote what we just read. John recognizes Jesus and says, that's the Lord.
And Peter jumps in.
Everybody else rows the boat. Peter dives in.
This is this guy.
He's the one that stands up Talks loud, always there, always present. Everybody is aware of Simon Peter and he just makes himself known.
You remember in the storm, this is also very characteristic of this personality type. In the storm, when Jesus appears walking on the waves and they're all afraid, they think it's a ghost. The King James Bible translates it spirit. But the word they're afraid of is that it's a ghost.
And Jesus says, don't be afraid. It is I. It's Jesus.
And Simon Peter says, if you really are Jesus, bid me to walk out to you.
Now that's just fascinating.
He could have said, if that's really you, turn the clouds into oranges.
If that's really you, make fish jump in the boat. Why choose. Why choose that test?
If that's really you, bid me come to you. I think it is that two things. First of all, Simon Peter had detected in Jesus this tendency to call all of us out further up, higher, in deeper. So he says he chooses a task that would be characteristic of Jesus, bid me to come out to you.
Secondly, it would be miraculous to walk on water. If you're walking on water and you're really God and you're walking on water, make me walk on water. So it tells us something about what he thinks about Jesus. But doesn't it also tell us something about Simon Peter?
Everybody else is yelling, it's a ghost. It's a ghost. Simon Peter says, let me walk on the water.
And he does until he sinks.
It's just. He's just this huge.
Bigger than life.
And when I'm. If I ever get to see him in heaven, I'm sure he's going to say, I didn't like that one thing you said. But he's this kind of big loudmouth guy, and he's not. He's not a rabbi. We've got to get this in our minds. None of these guys are.
None of these guys are. These are professional fishermen. And. And they're rough guys. They've got.
They've never been formally educated in the sense that people of that day considered formal education. And that is studies of Torah, the studies of scripture, rabbinical studies that would be considered.
However, Peter is later on, subsequently in the Book of Acts, is referred to as being ignorant and unlearned.
But that means a specific thing. He is ignorant of rabbinical teaching. He's not a rabbi. He's a layman in contemporary terms.
And he's not studying. He hasn't studied the ancient law and the prophets and all of that kind of thing. That's what they mean by ignorant and unlearned.
But we'll talk in just a few minutes about his letters 1 and 2, Peter, which are brilliant and beautiful and the language is powerful in, In Greek or English. And so he was whatever, whatever we understand to be ignorant and unlearned. That's not Simon Peter. He's not a. He's not a dummy.
And his letters reveal that to us.
He's a bit rough.
And not all of that roughness ever goes away.
Brethren, we are who we are, and we do all that we can do to smooth off the edges. And God works on us and grace is operative in us. But in a crisis, sometimes that can show up.
If you remember the night that he betrayed Jesus, he betrayed him having been told that he would. He betrayed Jesus. Denied Jesus, not betrayed. He denied Jesus three times, and it says the third time he denied him with a curse.
He denied him with a curse.
So what does that mean? It means in a crisis, something.
The vocabulary of his past arose.
Does anybody understand what I'm talking about?
You're in a line of traffic and that guy in front of you jams his brakes on.
Do you find that you reveal yourself occasionally? Does your past erupt vocally? I'm not giving you an excuse to curse. Please don't hear that. I'm just helping you to identify that that's not the first curse word that Peter ever said.
So he's a rough guy, He's a tough guy, He's a fisherman. He's a hard worker. He's a strong guy. He's bold.
He's, he's, he's memorable. He's one of the, the great characters and men of the Bible and particularly of the New Testament.
But I don't want to make it sound like somehow he's not one of the great men of faith in the entire history of the Church.
His call reveals to us his ability to identify the moment of God and to answer immediately. He simply meets Jesus and changes his life.
He follows Jesus from the moment they are encountered.
He is.
He is a man of boldness and faith.
As I said, sometimes it can seem to be almost errant, but it isn't.
He is. He is a man of tremendous leadership capacity which is going to show up in just a moment.
He is always referred to first.
When the Bible describes the disciples and Jesus, especially Jesus inner circle, it is the, the, the people that were the closest to Jesus are Peter and James and John, all three fishermen and all three that had been in partnership together.
And, and it's always Peter and the other guys.
So this is a. This is a. A great man. Now, I want to get into some things about his life.
Let's talk about one of the great moments of his life.
Peter has seen, like all the others, has seen the miracles of Jesus.
And everybody is trying to figure out who Jesus is.
Now, we've had 2,000 years to work with this, but I just want you to understand, you're a professional fisherman. This rabbi walks into your life. He says, follow me. You do you see miracles. He makes the blind to see the deaf hear. He casts out demons with a word. He walks on water. He makes you walk on water until you sink, and then you don't walk on water. All of this is. This is blowing their minds.
This is blowing their minds. Remember, they're not. They're not acting out a Bible play.
We have the Book of John. They didn't.
So this is happening to them.
And, and they're not particularly clever chaps.
And. And there's nothing in the Bible that tells us that these guys are brilliant. Next week we'll talk about a guy that's brilliant. These guys are not.
They're.
They're like us.
And. And they're trying to figure this thing out.
And so they're having conversations behind his back. Who do you think he is?
Is he Messiah? I don't know. Is he. Is he John the Baptist, raised from the dead? Is he Elijah?
Who do you think he is?
They don't know that Jesus knows they're arguing about this until one night at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus says, who do men say that I am?
There it is.
That's the argument.
Who do men say that I am? And they offer a series of lame answers.
Some say you're Elijah.
You're not Elijah, are you?
Some say you're one of the prophets, on and on. And finally, Jesus brushes that aside and he says, what about you?
Who do you say that I am?
And everybody looks at their sandal straps except who?
Good old Simon Peter. He says, I know who you are. You're the Christ, the son of the living God.
That is an astonishing answer.
That's an amazing answer. He doesn't say you're a great man. He doesn't say you're a prophetic presence. He doesn't say you're a miracle worker. And he doesn't just say you're the Messiah. Look how he defines it. Christ, the Messiah. You are the Messiah. Hamashiach. You are the Messiah, the son of the living God. He could have said half of that.
And not been quite so scandalous.
He is a Jew who is identifying a physical human being as the son of God.
If that's right, if that's right, it's the most amazing moment in the history of Judaism.
If he's wrong, he needs to be stoned to death right there. Because that is the most heinous blasphemy imaginable.
Who is this guy who says, you're the Christ, the son of the living God.
I know who you are.
That's Simon Peter.
Bold in his faith, bold in his witness, bold in his life.
He's a kind of a big, tall, loud out there guy who puts all that to work for the gospel.
In the next sentence, this is. This is Simon Peter.
In the next sentence, Jesus says, you're right and you've had a divine revelation. This is. You couldn't have received this from human means. You've had a divine revelation and you're right.
What a wonderful moment.
Peter is affirmed.
The other guys are blown away.
They must have been wired for sound.
They've waited from the Garden of Eden for the seed of the woman to come and crush the serpent's head. And now there they are, 12 guys alone in a cave in Caesarea Philippi. And Jesus says, you're right, I'm the Christ, the son of the living God.
And then Jesus says, now let's go to Jerusalem.
I'm going to be arrested and tortured and crucified and dead and buried. And the third day I'll rise from the dead.
Good old Simon Peter, he says, God forbid.
He said, we don't want. No, he said, let's just stay up here in the Galilee. Everybody up here loves you.
And Jesus says, he has just said, you have had a divine revelation of the messianic mission of the Christ.
And he says, get thee behind me, Satan.
This is an up and down day for Simon Peter.
So in a way, it's kind of a.
It's kind of a look at Simon Peter, that conversation.
So the interaction between Jesus and the disciples, particularly Peter and James and John and the other disciples, is one of teaching and illumination.
They are following him. They're learning, they're trying to understand.
Then there comes the crisis of the cross.
Peter's denial, Judas Iscariot's betrayal, Judas Iscariot's dreadful suicide.
Simon Peter's this big strong guy. I'll follow you. Everybody else may desert you, but I'll follow you all the way. And he denies him, denies him with a curse. The big guy fails.
It's a horrible Time in there.
And then Jesus is raised from the dead and restores them.
And in the restoration, the angel says to Mary, tell Peter and the others to go to Galilee and I'll meet him there.
That moment that one thing says, I'm not through with Simon Peter.
He restores him. In John chapter 21.
Our pastor preached on that recently and brilliantly. And that restoration was, was wonderful. And he is restored.
And then Jesus spends 40 days with them.
And the ascension happens. Jesus says, go back into Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father. And the ascension happens.
And then 10 days happen. And on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, Shavuot, the baptism of the Holy Spirit falls on them all.
And the gifts of the Spirit burst into flame. They're speaking in tongues. The wind, fire. Thousands of people gather. It is a. It is a magnificent moment. And then the people around on the outside begin arguing about what's happened in here. Some say they're just drunk. Some say they're, you know, babbling all kinds of things. They're arguing about it.
And who stands to preach?
Simon Peter.
The whole world is glad I'm not God.
But if I was God, I would say to Simon Peter, oh no, you're not preaching the Pentecost message. Have a seat, sport.
You stay on the bench.
John, you preach. My mother's at your house.
50 days. We're not talking about years and years of restoration.
50 days ago he denied Jesus three times and the third time with a curse.
And God chooses him to preach the initial message of the church. This is the primary message, the first sermon to come from the newly regenerated body of Christ. The inbreathed corporate body of Christ happens at Pentecost. And this is the first sermon preached by the new Spirit filled church. And who preaches it? Peter.
And listen to what he says. These men are not drunken as you suppose, seeing it's but the 9 o' clock in the morning.
Good old practical Simon Peter. No highfalutin theology.
He said, think how much liquor it would take to get 120 people so drunk by 9am that they can't talk plain.
He said, there's not that much Thunderbird in all of Jerusalem.
He said, but this is that which was prophesied by Joel.
And then he begins.
This fisherman begins to spontaneously quote or more precisely paraphrase the second chapter of Joel.
He identifies this by a revelation of God. This is Joel, chapter two.
And he quotes it.
And then he says, this is proof.
This same Jesus whom you crucified, Christ hath Raised from the dead.
Whoo.
50 days from. I never heard of Jesus. And I'm going to curse to prove you I never heard of him.
To the boldness of the lion of the tribe of Judah.
What made the difference?
The baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Simon Peter. What? He's a big guy. He's a good guy. He's an up and down guy. He's an A to Z personality. He's a natural leader. But the thing that makes a difference is Pentecost.
And Simon Peter is forever changed.
Not the last time we're going to see a little weakness in Simon Peter, but he is changed at Pentecost.
So now the church begins to grow and happen in. In Jerusalem, particularly at Solomon's porch at the Temple.
Peter is in a sense the ad hoc, physical, personal head of the church. But the. The actual bishop at Rome is Jesus, Brother James.
And Peter is kind of the.
Kind of the.
The figurehead leader of the church. And James is the administrative leader, if I could put it that way.
When they have a big council at Jerusalem, Peter doesn't preside. James presides.
But Peter now begins to move into his own ministry, not just of preaching, but of the things that he learned from Jesus. He now begins to experience his own miracles.
Peter and John walking into the temple. They're at the gate. Beautiful. You remember the story. There's a man there who is infirm and he's asking them for alms.
And who speaks?
Peter.
And he says, gold and silver have I none but that which I have, I give unto thee. Rise in the name of Jesus and walk.
And the miracle ministry of St. Peter begins.
Subsequently, he heals an infirm man named Aeneas.
And then the sort of the great miracle, he raises a woman from the dead in Yaffa, in Joppa Yafu, however you call it.
And he is established now as the.
Not simply the titular head of the church, but he is being used of God in the miraculous ministry that flows from the cross to into Simon Peter and out into miracles. Out and out miracles.
And then comes a critical moment.
He is in Joppa, that. That city goes by about five different names. Japa, Yafo, Yaffa.
It's a suburb of. Of Tel Aviv. It's just to the north.
And he's there on a rooftop. And the only time that I can find, it's used in the New Testament.
It says he went into a trance.
If there are more times when words used, I just haven't seen him. But it says he went into a trance. It doesn't Say he had a vision. It says he went into a trance.
And he sees this sheet being lowered down, and it has into it all kinds of food that is not kosher.
And God speaks to him.
Rise, Peter.
Have a ham on rye.
And we find something about Peter. For all of his roughness and everything else, he has kept kosher his whole life.
So he has been a religious Jew. And he answers God back, oh, Lord, no.
Never eaten anything that wasn't kosher.
And God says, don't call anything unclean that I've cleansed. Three times the vision, three times God's order. Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Three times Peter's response, and three times God's answer, don't call anything unclean that I've cleansed. Just at that moment, messengers arrive at Jaffa from Caesarea, and they say, our master has had an angelic visit, a vision, and said that we should come here and find a man named Simon Peter, and he would come to Caesarea and tell a master's household the way of life.
And Peter says, who is your master? And they say, Cornelius, a Roman centurion. Okay, that's the trifecta.
So, first of all, Caesarea. Let me say it differently. Caesarea is the way you pronounce it, but let me say it the way it's spelled. Caesarea.
Caesarea.
The administrative and military leaders of the occupation of conquered Israel didn't want to live in Jerusalem. It was religious. And the religious Jews made them miserable. They didn't want to be with them. They wanted to be in a Roman town.
They wanted a hippodrome. They wanted chariot races. They wanted Ben Hur. They didn't want. They didn't want Jerusalem. So they built a city. Herod built a city for them on the sea coast and a magnificent city and named it for Caesar. Caesarea. And they. They live there.
Secondly, their master is a Roman soldier of the occupation.
Also. He's a centurion, the most hated of all the Roman soldiers.
And Peter says, oh, never call anything unclean that I've cleansed.
Maybe it means don't call anybody unclean that I've cleansed.
Simon Peter, you'll remember, I know, goes to Caesarea and preaches. There is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a duplication, really, of the second chapter of Acts, but it's with Gentiles.
And they are. They are filled with the Holy Spirit and demand to be water baptized. And Peter baptizes them.
But when he gets back to Jerusalem.
Now think about this.
If it's against Jewish law to go into a Gentile city.
It's against Jewish law to go into a Gentile house.
If you go into a Gentile city, into a gentile house, when you come back to Jerusalem, you have to shave your head, take a vow, make a tithes, go through Mikveh. You have to be cleaned up. You have to get all that Gentile stuff off you.
If it's against the law to go into the house of a gentile, you don't want one grafted onto your body.
And water baptism baptizes people not only into Jesus, but into the body of Christ.
So they said to Peter, what are you thinking of?
You're baptizing Roman soldiers in a swimming pool in Caesarea.
And he. His defense is Pentecost.
He says, God gave them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us, meaning to us. In the second chapter of Acts next week, we're going to hear about St. Paul, whose mission and ministry was really with the Gentiles. But the icebreaker was here.
The icebreaker was here. Later on, when Paul the Apostle comes back to Caesarea, he finds Philip and his daughters, who are prophetesses, living at Caesarea.
That would never have happened without what happened to. To Simon Peter.
So Simon Peter, this guy, he's bold, he's big, he's breaking barriers.
But it's hard for him. It's hard for him.
He lives his life in Jerusalem.
He's not comfortable with the gentile ministry of St. Paul. They kind of divide it.
Peter becomes the leader of the Jewish church and St. Paul becomes the leader of the Gentile Church.
There is one unfortunate encounter between the two of them.
The probably the largest church in the Primitive Church was in Antioch.
Dr. M.G. mcLuhan used to say it was probably the first legitimate mega church was at Antioch.
It was there, if you remember, where they were called Christians first.
And Paul and. And the others were there. Peter came with some other people and visited there. And while he was there, he didn't make any distinction between himself and these Gentiles.
It's just. It was evidently a Pentecostal church. They would have church and eat.
And after service, when they sat down to eat, Peter sat with everybody else.
Then some guys show up from Jerusalem and they say, no, we want a table over here just for Jews.
And Peter moves over and sits with them, and Paul rebukes him in public.
So it's an unfortunate lapse in an otherwise magnificent life.
And I don't want it to be that we end by talking about that.
I don't think it's possible for us as 21st century Gentiles to understand the ingrained teaching of a 1st century Jew relative to interaction with Gentiles. I don't think it's possible for us to grasp it.
And it wasn't just a racial prejudice. It was a religious conviction that went back to Moses.
And I don't think it's possible for us to understand it. And we need to show Peter some grace on it. However, we'll talk about it next week. Paul not long on grace.
He did not show Peter any grace. He didn't just go over there and whisper in his ear. He denounced him in the room publicly. And then later in one of his letters wrote about it. He said it was necessary for me to rebuke Simon Peter.
Now we come to his letters and I want to be fairly brief on this because in two weeks or a few weeks, Pastor will start back in his fall series and he's teaching the New Testament books. If you've not been part of that series, you don't want to miss it. He does a book or a collection of books each night and goes into depth on these books.
And he'll come to 1 and 2 Peter. But let me just say this about it.
1 Peter deals with our identity in Christ.
It is a.
It is a powerful statement of who we are in Jesus.
This is not written by some country bumpkin, some unanointed ignoramus.
This is powerful language. Your royal priesthood, a chosen generation.
Don't you know who you are in Christ?
And then in two Peter, he deals with the coming judgment and the new heaven and the new earth.
Powerful, powerful letters of great theological and spiritual insight.
And I want to close with this. In this, though, he wants to talk about the moment in his life that was the most transforming.
And it's not what you think.
He doesn't say, I look back over my life and I remember the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
I remember speaking in tongues. I remember the Pentecostal message I preached and the anointing of God. That was on me. He doesn't mention it.
He doesn't mention walking on water.
He doesn't mention raising the dead.
Raising the dead. Raising the dead.
He doesn't mention it.
You know what he says?
He said, I saw him on the Mount of Transfiguration.
He said, that was the illuminating moment. That's when I saw him in his glory, in his radiance.
Jesus takes Peter and James and John takes him up onto a mountain and before them he is transfigured. It says, his garments, only the garments that even touch his body, glow with radiance.
And with him are Moses and Elijah.
Now here's a remarkable thing. How do they know it's Moses and Elijah? They're not wearing name tags because they are standing in a cloud of revelation and they can hear them talking about the coming crucifixion.
Am I the only one? Can you dilate your mind around this?
That you're watching the transfigured Christ and Moses, who's been dead for 2,000 years, and Elijah, who's been dead for hundreds of years, talking to Jesus and comforting him about the coming crucifixion.
And seeing this, and good old Simon Peter starts talking.
He can't contain himself.
He says, lord, this is great.
This is great.
He says, we've never experienced anything like this.
We're going to. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to build three monuments. One for Moses and one for Elijah and one in the middle for you.
And I think he thinks that Jesus is going to say, well, okay, if you think, you know, if you think I should be between Moses. Oh, okay.
I'm honored.
Jesus doesn't say anything.
Suddenly they're overshadowed by the cloud of the presence and the audible voice of God.
The what does that even sound like?
The audible voice of God says, this is my son.
Listen to him.
Look, it's a sober moment when God Almighty tells you to shut up and listen.
This is my son. What's he saying? This is not Moses and Elijah with you now. This is my son.
There are props in his play.
This is my son. Don't talk.
You listen to him.
And years later, near his death, Peter writes to the church and he says, the greatest moment, the moment of splendor, I saw him in his glory, in the radiance.
I know who he is.
I know what he'll look like.
I know what we'll see.
Let me give you a word.
I am a Pentecostal.
I'm a straight out, 100 proof, unapologetic tongues talking Pentecostal.
But sometimes Pentecostals talk about the Holy Ghost like there's something better than Jesus.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is power. And it's wonderful. And I thank God it changed my life.
I also experienced what Peter did at Pentecost, but nothing that I've ever experienced.
Nothing that you've ever experienced. No miracle that God has ever used you for. If you laid hands on the sick and they're healed if you cast out demons, if you walk on water, if you raise the dead, I tell you this on the authority of Holy Scripture.
When you see him in his glory, you won't remember any of that.
You won't remember any of that.
Peter said at the end of everything, I saw him in his glory.
Great big man.
Sometimes he talked when he should have listened. Sometimes he should have stayed in the boat when he dived in.
Sometimes he made mistakes, sometimes misjudgments.
But, oh, God, how the Lord used this big old fisherman.
And he shows us the way, the reality, the ultimate reality of the universe is the glory of Jesus Christ.
Let's pray, Heavenly Father, for us who in our carnality, experience our own ups and downs, our failures, our denials, our curses, our pathetic disappointments.
Have mercy on us, God.
Have mercy on us, most merciful God, for thy son, our Lord Jesus Christ's sake.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill us.
Fill us as you filled Simon Peter. Fill us.
Sanctify us holy. Set us free. Empower us.
Grant us gifts and graces. Show us your power. We want to see miracles.
But having said all that, O Lord, oh, that we might see you face to face.
In the mighty name Jesus.
Amen.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: You've been listening to the leader's notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. You can follow Dr. Rutland on x @Dr. Mark Rutland, or visit his website, Dr. MarkRutland. Com, where you can find information about his materials and his app. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
