It was for his sheep that he
laid down his life. While his blood is said to be
the blood of the everlasting covenant, the blood of the shepherd,
the shepherd of the sheep. They've always been his sheep.
We've always been his sheep. All who'll ever believe the gospel
are his sheep. And his lambs are those tender
young believers. And our Lord shows that He isn't
upset with Simon Peter, nor is He upset with the rest of the
disciples, because you know, they deserted Him as well. But
He shows that He is now committing the care of those who are most
important to Him, who are loved by Him with an everlasting love. He's giving the care of His sheep
to these men. What a responsibility. And I
would say, being a preacher of the gospel myself, certainly
not an apostle, obviously, because the apostleship died out with
the death of John about the end of the first century. But all
preachers of the gospel have a tremendous responsibility that
the Lord has thrust upon them because our instructions are,
feed my sheep. He has his sheep. He chose his
sheep. He redeemed his sheep. He's called
his sheep. And here's the instruction to
the preacher of God, now you feed them. And always remember,
they're my sheep, he says. They're my sheep, mine by choice. Mine because I bought them. with
my blood, mine because I effectually drew them unto myself. They're my sheep, but I'm going
to give you a tremendous responsibility. You feed them." You feed them. And that's what Simon Peter and
the other disciples did. This man, as we get into the
first chapter of Acts, we see Peter at work immediately. And
then in the second chapter, we see him preaching a tremendous
message there on the day of Pentecost. Now, here's what I wanna focus
on tonight, verses 18 and 19. Okay, so after these things,
after all of these things have happened, and now our Lord kinda,
He herds up His disciples again, He gets them together, He shows
He's forgiven them, He doesn't hold grudges. Isn't that a wonderful
thing? The Lord does not hold grudges. He doesn't have hard feelings
toward His fallen disciples, and that would include you and
me. We're not apostles, but we are followers of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and we're disciples who are fallen. We're sinful people. And yet He doesn't hold those
against us because He has paid for our debt of sin. And so He
comes to these men in love. with some final instructions
for them. And he says this to Peter now.
He's already confronted Peter three times to do you love me.
So we get to verse 18. Verily, verily, what does that
mean? Amen, amen, truly, truly, of
a truth, of a truth. He states the word verily two
times for emphasis. Whenever you see verily, pay
attention. If you see verily, verily, pay
special attention. So he says, verily, verily, I
say unto thee, when you were young, you girded yourself. You put on your clothes, Peter.
You dress the way you wanted to dress, and you walked whether
you would. You went wherever you wanted
to go. When you were a young man, and Peter now is kind of
a middle-aged man, when you were young, he said, you pretty much,
you did what you wanted to do. That's what young people typically
do. They do what they want to do with guidance and with instruction. But, verse 18, but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy
hands, and another will gird you and carry you, whither thou
wouldest not." What in the world is he speaking about? Well, the
next verse sets forth what he's talking about, verse 19, this
speakee signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this,
he said unto him, follow me, follow me. Now here's the meaning. When Peter was young, as I said,
he pretty much did what he wanted to do. He was a fisherman, he
was raised as a fisherman and he and Peter and John and several
of the others, they fished for a living and he did, he just
kind of fulfilled his own desires. He had some independence. That's a good word to use here.
He had some independence. But he was going to get, when
he got old, now when you think of getting, when we think of
getting old, we think of retirement, kind of slowing down. That's
the idea of getting old. Relaxing, resting, taking it
easy. Well, here's what the Lord says
to Simon Peter. It's not going to be that way
for you. When you get old, here's what's
going to happen to you. You're going to be arrested.
And he was. He was arrested. Nero had him
arrested in Rome and then took him out to have him executed
by crucifixion. And tradition says that Peter
said he wasn't worthy to be crucified like his master, so he was crucified
upside down. On the way to his martyrdom,
his wife walked with him. And it is said by historians,
all along the way, he was encouraging his wife. that this is the will
of God, God has blessed me, I've been able to preach Christ and
Him crucified, and I'm willing now to lay down my life for Him. In his older years, he did not
forsake the Lord. And then it was that he kind
of earned the meaning of his name. What's the meaning of Peter's
name? Rock. That's what his name means. Now, before we beheld him in
weakness, after all, he denied the Lord three times. But as
he gets old and the Savior says, when you're old and you've been
faithful to the gospel on account of your witness of the gospel
of Christ Jesus, you will be arrested and you will be put
to death. And you're going where you don't
really want to go. You're going to a place of suffering. You're going to die. You're going
to a mound where they will put a cross in the ground, and you'll
be hanging on that cross, and in Peter's case, upside down,
and you'll be tortured, and you'll be beaten. These things are going
to happen to you. By the way, this shows that the
Lord Jesus was the omnipotent God and the omniscient God. Because
you see, Peter lived after this 34 years. You see, our Savior
is talking about something that wasn't going to happen for 34
years. Well, how did he know that? He
knew that because he's God. He knew that because he knows
all things. He knew that because the life
of Simon Peter was in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
say, well, could Peter not have died a more pleasant death? You
know, go to sleep? and then wake up in glory? Well,
if that had been the Lord's will, sure, certainly he could have
died that way, but it wasn't his will. Listen, all these issues
of life and the issues of death, how we die, when we die, the
circumstances of our death, all of those things are prearranged
by our Lord. Do you know, people, maybe you
have a pre-arranged funeral. Everything about your funeral
has been pre-arranged. A lot of people do that. We've
already got our vault paid for and burial spots paid for and
the marker. All those things are done. We've
already taken care of that, pre-arranged. Well, listen, there's another
pre-arrangement a whole lot bigger than that. And that's exactly
when we're gonna die, the way we're going to die, where we're
going to die. And so our Lord is the omniscient
God. What does omniscient mean? He
knows all things. And he knows all things not merely
because he can look down through the halls of time and see what's
going to happen. He knows all things because he's
ordained all things. He's purposed all things. All
things happen according to his will. Now, here's what I want
to focus on for the next few minutes. And that is the subject
of glorifying God in death. That's an unusual subject. But
this is what the Savior said to Peter, verse 19, this spake
he signifying, by what death he should glorify God. So our subject is glorifying
God in death. Now, for every child of God,
for every believer, our goal in life, you all the time hear
people say, set goals, set goals in life. And that's good advice. But the greatest goal, the number
one goal that every child of God should set is to honor God
in all that we do, is to seek his glory. So we read in 1 Corinthians
10 and verse 31, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatever
you do, do all for the glory of God. It is written in Romans
15, 5 and 6, now the God of patience and the God of consolation grant
you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus,
that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the
Father, our Lord Jesus Christ. Motivating force for the child
of God in getting along with us, getting along with one another
is the glory of God. We wanna magnify the glory of
God. It is absolutely dishonoring
to God when children of God can't get along with one another. So that's what we seek to do
in life. We seek to be of one mind, as a church body, of one
mind, one heart, one voice, one attitude, one purpose, and that's
the glory of God. But specifically, the Lord Jesus
is speaking to Peter about his death. And certainly we want
to glorify the Lord in life, but we also want to glorify him
in death. That was the goal of the Apostle
Paul, Philippians 1 and verse says, according to my earnest
expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed,
but with all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be
magnified or glorified in my body, whether it be by life or
death. And we might be tempted to think,
well, I can only glorify the Lord in my life, and so let my
life be lived in a manner that would be honoring to Him. Well,
yes, do that. But you don't only honor God
in life. You honor God in death. And so
that leads me to say four or five things here. Number one,
we glorify God in death by being ready to die. And we're ready to die by having
seen the beauties and the majesty and the wonders of the Lord Jesus
Christ and his salvation. That's how you're ready to die.
That's how you glorify God in death. You're ready to die. You're
ready to meet him because you believe his son. God sent his
son into this world. God sent him on a mission. and
most of the world turned thumbs down on Him. Will you do that? By His grace, we want to glorify
God by believing Him, by loving Him, by embracing Him. You see, the Bible says this
is the record that God has given to us, eternal life, and this
life is in His Son. Where is it? It's in His Son.
It's not anywhere else. It's not in the church. It's
not in communion. It's not in the baptistry. Life
is in Christ Jesus, who is life. And we glorify God in death by
being ready to die by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, God says of His Son,
this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Well, what
then should we do? Believe on His Son. And to not
believe on His Son, oh, that'll bring you everlasting
condemnation. You see, the Lord Jesus is the
darling to God's heart. That's His Son. It's the Son
of His bosom. It's the Son of His love. It's
His only begotten Son. It's His everlasting Son. and
to not believe him to do as the people in his day did and just
say, we will not have this man to rule over us. Well, and Pilate
said, well, what do you want me to do with him then? And they
said, crucify him. Do you think they reaped the
wrath of God then? Sure they did. I don't want the wrath of God.
I don't want the judgment of God. I want to magnify His Son. I want to glorify God in my life
and in my death by being ready to die by believing the Lord
Jesus Christ. Hold your place here and look
at Hebrews chapter 11. Look at Hebrews 11. This is the way we're prepared
to die. We look on Christ. We believe
Him. We don't trust the labors of
the flesh. We're not trusting anything we've
ever done or anything we will do for salvation and acceptance
with God. We're not trying to make a garment
of righteousness of our own. We bow to the righteousness of
the Lord Jesus, and that's pleasing to God. Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter.
It begins by telling us of the faith of Abel, of Enoch, of Noah,
of Abraham, of Sarah, and look at verse 13. These all died in
faith. Not only the ones before this,
of course, Enoch did not die, but he did leave. But it's also talking about all
those on the other side of verse 13 from the rest of the chapter.
So these all died in faith. Would you die in faith? I want
to die in faith, don't you? Well, live in faith. That makes
sense, doesn't it? Live in faith. Live, believe
in Christ Jesus. You want to die, believe in Christ
Jesus? You want to die in faith? You
better live in faith. God, give us faith. Faith's a
gift of God. He's got to give it to us. Now
watch it, these all died in faith, not having received the promises,
that is not having participated in the promises of God. Like, you know, Abraham, he made
mention there in Genesis chapter 22, that God would provide himself
a lamb. Well, Abraham didn't live to
see the lamb of God. So in that sense, he did not
participate in that promise. That promise was not fulfilled
to him, but watch this, but having he saw them afar off, he did
see the Lamb of God afar off, he saw him by faith. And these people, they were persuaded,
they were convinced of them. They were convinced of the accuracy
of all the blessings and promises of God. And they embrace them. They embrace them and confess
they're just strangers and pilgrims on the earth. They died in faith. That's the way I want to die.
Do you remember in the Old Testament, there's a story about Balaam?
And Balak, King Balak of Moab, he hired this prophet, Balaam,
to pronounce a curse upon Israel. And he couldn't do it. And he
told the king, he said, the king said, I'll give you silver and
gold, give you anything you want. I hate the Israelites. I want
you to pronounce a curse. You seem to have some kind of
unusual power. I'll give you anything you want.
Just curse those people. He said, I can't curse people
that God has blessed. And then he said, That's what
Balaam said. Let me die the death of the righteous
and let my last end be like his. But it wasn't. That's the sad
part. It wasn't. He was a preacher
for a hire. That's what he was. He was a preacher for a hire.
He wasn't God's servant. You see, we want to die in faith. And to die in faith is to have
a confidence that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the only Savior
of sinners, and you commit your soul with all of its value unto
him for safekeeping forever. And in him, you're forgiven,
you're made righteous, you're accepted by God. Yeah, we glorify
God by being ready to die. And we're ready to die by believing
Christ. Are you ready to die? I frequently go back to that
story in Luke chapter two, Simeon. The Lord had assured him that
he wouldn't die until he had seen God's Christ. And then when
Joseph and Mary brought the babe into the temple, Simeon said,
now let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen
thy salvation, which thou hast prepared from the foundation
of the world. Listen, folks, you're only ready
to die if you've seen Christ by faith. as your all in all. And if you haven't seen him that
way, you're not ready to die. You must be prepared to die.
There's an old story, and I read it many years ago, but it's about
a preacher, and I'll condense it way down. It was about a preacher. Every night, he had everything
in order before he'd go to bed. And the very last thing he would
do, he'd take off his boots and he'd kind of shine his boots
up and set his boots just in order. Everything hung up, no
mess, anything like that. And somebody asked him, why do
you arrange things so perfectly every night before you go to
bed? This is what he said. So if death
comes calling, nobody will have to clean up my mess. Nobody will
have to clean up my mess. Be ready. That's a message found
in Matthew chapter 24. Be ready. For you know neither the day
nor the hour when the Son of Man comes." He said, but that's
talking about the second coming. But it also can be applied to
death. You don't know when He's coming
for you. I like the advice of John Bunyan
who wrote Pilgrim's Progress. He gave this advice to a friend
regarding death. He said, keep your last hour
always in your mind. Make it your continual companion. We like to put off thoughts of
death, that comes naturally. Live your life, but remember,
God gave you that life, and one of these days, he's gonna take
it back. Just like Job said when God killed all 10 of his children,
He said, the Lord gave and the Lord had taken away. Blessed
be the name of the Lord. So we glorify God by being ready
to depart this world. It's really good advice. You remember in Matthew chapter
25, parable of the 10 virgins? Five were wise, five were foolish. All 10 of them had lamps. The
lamps, that pictured a profession of faith. All ten of them were
religious. All 10 of them lived a nice,
good life. That's indicated by calling them
virgins. They lived a life of morality.
All 10 of them did. And to the outward eye, you couldn't
tell indifference. You couldn't tell who was a real
believer, who wasn't a believer because they were all nice people,
good people, people who lived upright lives, as we would call
it. But the scripture says five of
them were foolish. because it didn't have any oil.
They didn't have the grace of God. They had profession. They were religious. They went
to church. But they didn't have grace. They
were graceless and godless and Christless. They had no righteousness. All they had was an empty religion.
And the Lord came and took the five wise virgins away. And the
five foolish ones said, let us in. No. No, you're not coming
in because you didn't have any grace. Do you know anything about the
grace of God? It's only one who can shed his
grace on us. That's the Lord. Here's the second
thing briefly. Here's how we glorify God in
death. We glorify God in death, number
one, by being ready to die. And number two, we glorify God
by facing it without fear. We glorify God in death by facing
it without fear. Are you afraid to die? Those only need be afraid to
die if they're if they think there's something that they've
done that God has paid attention to, that therefore God will take
them to heaven, and then they get to thinking, I wonder if
I've done enough. Well, I got news for you, you
hadn't done enough. You hadn't prayed enough, you
hadn't repented enough, you hadn't wept enough, you hadn't done
anything enough. The death of the Lord Jesus,
that's enough. He said it is finished. face death without fear. And who knows how God will use
your death if you're a believer, or even if you're an unbeliever
as far as that goes. But I think about Samson. He was the child of Manoah, as
his name was, Manoah and his wife. And of course he had unusual
powers, He got rid of a lot of the enemies
of God, but he fell prey to temptation. Well, he lay his head in Delilah's
lap and she tricked him and he got a haircut. That's kind
of what I need, a haircut. But he was real long. That's
part of his strength, he's committed to the Lord. And she said, the Philistines
are coming, and he jumped up and didn't realize he didn't
have any more power. So they arrested him, put out
his eyes. Poor old soul was blinded. And then they put him in a prison
house. They put brass shackles on him
and they made him grind the corn like oxen would do, pulling it,
grinding the corn. And the Philistines, they're
so happy, they're joyful. Our God delivered him into our
hands. Their God was Dagon, the dunghill
God. And so they had a big celebration,
the Philistines did. They said, we're gonna offer
sacrifices to our God, Dagon, because he brought our fiercest
enemy to our feet. And they're sacrificing to Dagon. Dagon had the tail of a fish
and the hands and the head of a man. And as they celebrated,
they said, go get Samson. We'll have a festival at his
expense as we rejoice in him. And they had to lead him out.
They had his eyes put out. And there he was in front, thousands
of people. And there was a young lad who
was leading him, and Samson said, I can't see. Could you put me
up against the pillars of the house? And the young man did,
and Samson could feel the pillar over here on the left with his
hand, the pillar on the right with his hand. And as they all
danced and celebrated, he said, Lord, remember me, I pray thee,
and strengthen me just this once, one more time, that I may be avenged at the
Philistines for putting out my eyes. And he took hold of the
two pillars of that house. 3,000 people up on the roof. And He
pulled that whole thing down and He killed thousands of Philistines. These are enemies of God. These
are enemies of the Gospel. These are false God-worshippers. They worship Dagon. And the Bible
says He killed more in His death, He accomplished more in His death
than He did in His life. And that reminds me of another
person who died, who accomplished more in his death than in his
life, our Lord Jesus Christ. He accomplished a lot during
his life. He healed many, many people.
Nobody ever came to him that was sick, that he turned away.
He healed everybody, whether they believed him or not. He
healed everybody who came. Every disease that he ever met,
he conquered it. But I'll tell you where his greatest
victory was. It was at the cross of Calvary,
and it was when he died. When he died, that's when he
conquered us. That's when he bought us, and
that's when he conquered all of his enemies and all of our
enemies. We glorify God in death by facing
without fear, like Samson. And who knows how God might use
your death? Years ago, many years ago, I
was asked to go and visit a man who was dying of cancer, and
I did. I didn't know him, never had
met him. I knew his niece. She went to
our church, and so I went. to visit this man and his dying
of cancer. And he knew it and everybody
else knew it. And I said, well, I've come to talk to you about
the things of the Lord. And he said, yes, sir. And I
just talked to him about Christ and salvation. And I prayed with
him. And I said, if you want, I'll
come back and visit you again. If you don't, that's OK. He said,
I'd like you to come back and visit. He died the next day before
I could come back. His wife asked me, she said,
would you preach his funeral? I said, we don't go to church
anywhere. Would you preach his funeral? I said, yeah, I will. I preached his funeral. I don't
know whether God gave him faith or not. That's not for me to
know. I know he heard the gospel at
least once, because he heard it from me. I preached his funeral. You know, as a result of his
death, his wife started coming to hear me preach. And she came
to hear me preach for the better part of 18 years until she was
too feeble to come anymore. You just never know how God might
use your death. Never know. May we face death without fear.
We glorify God by facing death, by being patient amid the sufferings
associated with death. I tell you, it's a good time
when a person is dying. That's like the best time to
be a witness. And I know some people are so
drugged up with medicine that they're not thinking straight.
But if God is pleased that on our so-called deathbed, if we're
still thinking rationally, God help us to be a good witness.
And God help us to rest in those final weeks and days and hours
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Aaron did that. He was such a
good testimony. I've seen several others. I've
seen children of God, like Aaron, who just manifested the grace
of God. And you go to visit them, and
you go to try to encourage them a little bit, and you come away
encouraged by what they had to say to you. It's wonderful when
people are like that. And I don't know what God has
in store for me. I don't have any more days I'll
live, and you don't know how long you're gonna live either.
But I hope if it's God's will, when time comes down for me to
begin to fade away and my ministry is winding up, or winding down,
I guess I should say, I hope that I can be a witness then
of the sufficiency of the grace of God to see me through that
last trial. of dying. To die so it magnifies
him and to die so that people will say, boy, the Lord really
held him up, didn't he? The Lord gave him dying grace. He's got to give us dying grace,
I'll tell you that. He's also got to give us living
grace. That's true too. We glorify God in death by holding
loosely to the things of this world right up to that time when
we're going to die. Heard Scott Richardson say this
one time. He's a wise old owl, I'll tell
you. He said, don't hold on to your
family or hold on to the things of this world with a death grip.
Lest the Lord have to break your fingers when you have to let
them go. Because you are going to have to let them all go. Or
they're going to have to let you go. Don't know what's going
to happen first. Be thankful for your family.
Love them. Be appreciative. But remember,
the Lord gave. The Lord will take away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And whatever he does, it's right,
and it's good. He doesn't owe us anything. That's
one of the most aggravating things that I hear preachers talk about. They leave people with the impression
that God owes you something. God's in debt to nobody. And
He doesn't owe you a smooth journey through life, and He doesn't
owe you a smooth passage through death either. But he graciously leads his people
through the valley of the shadow of death. And David says, I'll
fear no evil. And you know, we're always in
the valley of the shadow of death, aren't we? Death casts a big
shadow. Big shadow. It casts a shadow
on you as soon as you're born. And we know every day we live
that shadow. It gets bigger and bigger and
bigger because death's getting closer and closer and closer.
But the Lord says, through David, David says, I'll fear no evil. Why not, David? You're not afraid
to die? Lord's with me. The Lord's with
me. That makes it all right. It does. Makes it all right. God help
us to glorify him in life and and death. Well, let's pray.