“Lovest Thou Me?”

“So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more than these?’ (Fish and everything, the world.) He saith unto Him, ‘Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ (Very easy, right from the lips on out. Just glibly.) He saith unto him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ He saith unto him again, the second time, ‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?’ He saith unto Him, ‘Yea, Lord (a little deeper); Thou knowest that I love thee.’ He saith unto him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ He saith unto him the third time, ‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?’ Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, ‘Lovest thou Me?’ (How many times has He said it to you? Peter was grieved when he had it said to him a third time.) And he saith unto Him, ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ Jesus saith unto him, ‘Feed My sheep.’” (John 21:15-17)

It took a while to get to the depths of Peter’s heart. It is a question as to how many times the Lord has to say to us, “Do you love Me?” Some more, some less.

You ask a little child, “Whom do you love?” “Oh, I love the Lord Jesus.” And you ask, “Who next?” “My father and mother.” Then let the parents ask the child to do a certain thing, and that is a different story: “I don’t want to. I want to color something.” They will try to distract so that the parents will not insist on what was asked of them and in the end they do whatever they want. Go back to it again, “Oh, yes, I love you, Mommy,” or “I love Jesus.” Such answers are many times parroted.

We say, “Jesus” – it is very easy to say it – some of us are so used to saying, “Jesus.” Some people take His name in vain, for which they will come into judgment. The Word says, “Take not the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” We hear people take the Lord’s name in vain constantly. These, for the most part, are not professors of salvation.

Let us consider those who name the name of Christ and we hear them say casually, “Yes, I love the Lord.” You can see that something or somebody else comes first; you can tell by their actions that fleshly desires are mixed in with it. There is a mixture of the spirit and flesh. They love the Lord on one hand but when the time comes to let the Lord have His entire way with them, self rises up and demands its rights.

A volcano can be inactive for years – seemingly asleep – but then the rumblings are heard, and those around know there is danger. When we hear the rumblings of the flesh, back of that flesh is the enemy. As I have often said, the enemy and the flesh are linked together and they go right along with one another at all times to defeat the plan of God. You think you are deciding what you will do when you procrastinate and say, “I’ll decide tomorrow for the Lord,” but Satan is in back of it saying, “Never!” The enemy loves to keep things in the past or in the future, he hates the present tense.

The same thing happens when you start following the Lord. Not many people know (that is, comparatively) that after you give yourself over to the Lord there are steps that must be taken day by day to bring about the victorious walk with Him until the end of the way. “The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord,” but not many people realize this, or if they do realize it they begin to count what it will cost and say, “If I start to follow Him closely, where is it ever going to lead me? How will I wind up? It will strip me of my own thoughts, my own designs, and all of the outposts I have out there that I wanted all my life.” When the Lord just sort of moves the surface of their desires, they begin to say, “Watch it there.” The enemy is back of that saying, “Absolutely, you had better take it easy,” because this might lead to forsaking all, because He said, “Except you do this, you cannot be My disciple…yea, even your own life.” Self is the last thing to go. That is the uppermost in your life.

You can lay certain things aside, as did Jacob. He was going back, after many years, to his brother Esau and he knew that Esau could wipe him out on sight. Jacob had many riches, including wives and children and many servants. He started calculating: “This is going to cost me something. My brother Esau is on his way to meet me with 400 men and he has sworn the death of me.” We remember how they parted. Now Jacob was terrified and he divided his camp into two companies, so that if one were destroyed, the other might survive.

Jacob called on the Lord. He took action by degrees. He sent over those who least affected his life first – the cattle, then Bilhah and Zilpah, and then the children of Bilhah and Zilpah. Of course, he loved them all, but it went by degrees. So he sent that one over and her children. Then he is dealt with again and he sends over the next one with her children. Then it comes to Leah. That was his second choice, we know. He didn’t want Leah in the beginning but he had to take her because the father-in-law fooled him with the veil, remember? The one he loved dearly was Rachel. But even she had to go. He sent over all that he had until he was left alone.

So there they are all going over, across the brook – and he watched them go – “Goodbye, I don’t know when I will ever see you,” he was thinking, but the last and most beloved was Jacob, himself. Yes, even his dearly beloved Rachel. What a time to ever let her go!

Just as with Peter, there were depths in Jacob’s own life that had to be touched and sounded out. The most superficial part when first, then the next part, on down to the different levels of his life until at last Jacob was left alone. A man wrestled with him till the break of day.

Jacob knew the meeting with Esau was a life and death proposition, and that struggle was nothing easy. It was such a fight that it affected him not only spiritually but physically. The physical works in with the spiritual and vice versa. The result of the struggle was that his thigh was out of joint, and he walked a cripple ever after, because the fight was so intense. The man striving to get away before the break of day, at dawn said, “Let me go.” That man from heaven had an engagement somewhere else, but Jacob would not let him go until he was blessed and assured all was well. What a marvel!

We know that Jacob was a crooked, scheming person. A person who watched out for his own ends. He knew how to scheme against his father-in-law. He knew how to get the best cattle. The father-in-law had fooled him, but he knew how to fool the father-in-law, and he wasn’t bad at it, because he became rich.

You can imagine how Esau must have felt at seeing the wives and children and all the cattle Jacob was bringing back, until Esau asked, “Who is this?” Jacob answered, “I have been blessed by God in the other land where I was a fugitive, an outcast,” and then Jacob sent presents, “Accept these, dear brother.”

There are people who say, “I thought you could go to church on Sundays and have a good time, but I didn’t know it meant forsaking all. I didn’t know it would affect every avenue of my life, every avenue of my being, that I am to become Christ’s for real in such a way that I do His will and go His way.” “My, what bondage to be in,” they say. If you are one who thinks like that, then you begin living with a conscience that is pricking you because, at a particular point, you refused to yield to the Lord. You did not let Him go through to the very quick of your being. You did not let Him sound you to the depths. You have held something in reserve that He cannot touch. As someone has said, “Now, Lord, here are the keys to my heart. I want to turn them all over to You, but the key to one room. It is a secret room and it is only for me. That key I don’t turn over.”

The Lord will not accept anything like that. He must have every key to every room. You have those sections that you will turn over to Him, and you will go that far. Some people might be glad to turn their wife or husband over, they can’t do anything with them, so that key goes quickly. “And my children I just have to turn them over to You, Lord. What more can I do?” But oh the preciousness of your dear self.

Jacob, thank God, got through.

You can see the similarity of Jacob and Peter. Peter too had his reservations. The Lord would not have probed to the very depths of his heart if He hadn’t had to. He was probing and proving the heart of Peter. Thank God that Jacob persisted until he got the blessing. He could have been wiped out if he had not persisted. Time had run out. Day was coming, the sun was rising. The man from heaven was not supposed to be there after the break of day. Still Jacob had not prevailed. What a pitiful thing it would have been if he had not broken through! Jacob made it through, not simply because Abraham was his grandfather or because Issac was his father, but because he personally made it through. Not only because he was in the line of his father to the nations but, praise God, he on his own who had been a weakling, a conniving one, yet made it through to the right place, to the right level, until the Lord could say to him, “Thy name shall be no more called Jacob, but Israel, a prince with God.”

What a name! To say that name, to me is just a beauty – Israel. “For as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” No wonder Esau ran out to meet him and embraced him and fell on Jacob’s neck and kissed him. Jacob, or a truth had power with God and power with man. Israel had prayed through!

God grant that the Israelites of today pray through, taking hold of God. Praise God, there will be an Israel of God that will be probed and purged. It will not be an Israel that is superficial. It will be an Israel that has been purified. They will come through. Israel will live. Israel will live, praise God, when the Jews, as the good olive branch – cast off only for a time – will be grafted back into their own tree. We Gentile believers pray because we do not bear the branches, but the branches bear us. We cannot boast against the natural branches. For Paul says, “If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?”

Peter, who was to become a pillar of the church, needed the probing. He didn’t quite fit as he should have fit. He was at times bold, overly aggressive, impetuous, at other times he was cowardly. He could not have fitted had he stayed in that place of superficiality. In such a condition he could not have fitted, he would not have been a person of any depth.

Let’s say you could get something that looks good on the top and it might shine and sparkle for a while and have all the prismatic effects and designs.

So here was Peter, a diamond in the rough. What makes a diamond is the cutting of it and Peter had not been cut. Yes, the chiseling had to come because he was to receive the power of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, but as yet he was not ready. We don’t know what God had to do with the others. Immediately after the Lord had dealt with him, Peter wanted to know, “How will You work it out for John?” Jesus answered, “What is that to you? You follow me.” Did this mean that Jesus made choices or had preferences? It was not that. But John had more insight into spiritual things. He understood the Lord better spiritually. He could lay his head upon Jesus’ breast and hear the very heartbeats of the Lord. That does not mean just physical heartbeats, but that he understood Jesus’ desires. When the resurrected Jesus stood on the shore, it was John “the beloved disciple” who discerned it was Jesus. No one else knew who it was. John told Peter, “It is the Lord.” When Peter heard that, he cast himself into the sea.

Jesus asks us, ‘Do you love Me?’ “Yes.” But it does not go deep enough. Do you love Him? “Yes, I do.” He knows when it goes deep enough.

Jesus touched the bottom of Peter’s heart. “Simon, do you love Me?” “Yes, I love You.” A little better but not there yet. It’s like when you are tuning up, you got that note. What is that – a “G”? – no, not quite. “G” yet? No. Until you get that “G” you are just out of tune. Then you finally get that note, that key note.

It was rock bottom that he had not hit yet and Peter had to come to rock bottom. But when Jesus asked him the third time if he loved Him, that hurt. Peter got to the place where there was a hurt in him and that is a wonderful place to get. The best place you can get is to where it hurts you, you are so repentant and have such godly sorrow. St. Paul says, Repentance is godly sorrow. You loathe yourself, you are against yourself to think that you would ever do such a thing. Do you love Him? Do you love Him to the depths there is nothing you would not let go for Him.

Peter was grieved. Godly sorrow leads to repentance that does not need to be repented of. In everyday life, when you are so sorry you have hurt a person, it is not just a case of saying “I’m sorry.” That one knows, if he has wisdom, if your sorrow is genuine or not. Genuine grief all but swallows a person up with sorrow. He doesn’t want you to be overcome with grief when he sees true sorrow, so he says, “Don’t be concerned anymore about it. It’s all forgiven. Don’t get swallowed up with it.” The Word says, “Godly sorrow works repentance that needeth not to be repented of.” Hallelujah, what a beautiful thing!

“Because He said unto him the third time….” Peter was more alarmed, realizing his love was being sounded out. “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”

“Then do something about it. Feed My sheep.” Peter did become an overseer of the sheep. You read in his epistles what an overseer he became! For years and years, even up to the end when he was about to put off the earthly tabernacle, he was stirring up the saints. He said, “As long as I love, I will stir you up.”

“Peter, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord.” “Peter, do you….?” “Yes.” “Peter, do you love Me?” And then the burst of sorrow, the burst of repentance, to think how he had failed. He could reminisce and recall when he said, ‘You won’t go to the cross,’ or when he sold Him out and said, ‘I never heard of Him’ and cursed and swore….”

“Do you love Me?” “Oh, Lord!” All of that swept over him and that was why he was so powerful on the Day of Pentecost, because he had allowed Jesus to sound out the very depths of his heart. Then the Lord could use him to the best advantage possible. Peter could stand before the people on the Day of Pentecost and tell them, ‘You have crucified the Prince of Glory.’ The power of God came upon him. He had had the probing before and the godly sorrow. God could trust him with His power. He was made safe for blessing.

Can we say then, “Lord, probe me to the depths and make me safe for blessing? I want to be an overcomer.” In Revelation, we read the promise of Jesus to those who overcome. “I will give you a new name, and I will make you a pillar in the temple of My God.” Can we say, “Make me safe for blessing now and for all eternity. Make me safe for Thy plan. Make me safe for Thy purpose.” Hallelujah!

“Lord, you know I love you,” but “Lord, what will this man do?” “What is that to you?” You don’t have to bother about whether that one is going to be a minister or an evangelist or if he is more spiritual that you.

“What is that to you? You follow Me. I have a life for you to live, and I have a death for you to die. You follow Me.”

Prayer

Father, we thank Thee that we can come to Thee tonight at the end of this broadcast hour believing that Thou wilt touch those that have heard and that Thou wilt enlighten the eyes of their understanding that they might have light upon those things that have hindered them throughout the years they have known Thee.

And those that don’t know Thee tonight, may they take this as an opportunity to bow before Thee that they might become part of Thy plan and purpose on this earth. We ask Thee that Thou wilt speak to hearts tonight, no matter where they are that could be in darkness and blinded by the enemy not having been able to come out of it until now. May this be the night for them to decide for Thee, O Lord. We pray Thee that Thou wilt suit a blessing for everyone that has heard. In Jesus’ name, we ask for Thy glory. Amen.