Fish & forgiveness

This is the lesson from February 23. Amazingly, I think I remember getting through all of it.

Fish

• SAY Peter decided to go fishing, and 6 other disciples went with him.
• READ 21:4–5
• READ 21:6–7
• ASK Why didn’t they catch any fish all night, and then caught almost more than they could handle?
• ASK How did John recognize Jesus? (He remembered the experience in Luke 5:1–11, when Peter fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!”)
• SAY They pulled the fish up on the shore, and Jesus had breakfast ready for them.
• READ 21:12b–13
• What did this remind them of? (Feeding of the 5,000)

Forgiveness

• READ 21:15
• ASK What did Jesus mean by “more than these”?
  • More than the other disciples?
  • More than the living he could make fishing?
• READ 21:16
• READ 21:17
• READ 21:18
• Some people think there’s something in the way the differentiation of the Greek words for “love,” others think there’s no essential difference in the way John uses these words when he writes.
  • We use love to mean different things as well:
    • “We say we love Coca-Cola, and we love mother’s hot apple pie. We say we love Captain Kangaroo — we say we do, but we lie!”
• It’s also not much use to try to differentiate between Jesus saying “sheep” & “lambs” or “tend” and “feed”.
  • SAY The point is to match up forgiveness for Peter with Peter’s denial of Jesus: 3 times around a charcoal fire.
  • Also, Peter took this as Jesus giving him advice for pastoring. And he passed this along to the pastors who came after him. READ 1 Peter 5:1–4
• SAY We sin. If you have sinned, and you think or feel you’re up against the limit of what God is willing to forgive, remember Peter. Jesus took forgiveness to Peter in a way he couldn’t mistake, and he has the same forgiveness for you and me when we sin.

Oh! to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be.
Let thy goodness like a fetter
bind my wand’ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it —
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart. Oh, take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.