Beyond - Peter's Transformation

Our new summer series, "Beyond the Yearbook" starts by looking at the life of the Apostle Peter. How did the once brash, prideful, and hot headed disciple grow into the wise, humble, and strong leader of the church that wrote the letters of 1 & 2 Peter? It's because Jesus saw more in Peter, just like he sees more in each of us. We unpack what it means to go on a life-long journey with Jesus and what it means to have a true willingness to learn from Jesus.

For more info about RPYA check us out on Instagram @rpyoungadults or at our landing page on rockypeak.org

Transcript

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So I'm holding in my hand my actual yearbook from my senior year in high school. This sits in a box collecting dust, and every so often I get to bust it out as a prop. And for those of you that, if you remember your senior yearbook, some of you don't have to think that far behind, you notice that seniors take up a large section in a yearbook. And they have a couple of different things that are dedicated to them. One, there are those senior photos where you get dressed up and you pose and you actually get the full color photos in your yearbook, right? So this is my senior photo from the year 2000 when I graduated high school. Raise your hand, raise your hand if you were not born in the year 2000. Raise your hand if you were not born in the year 2000. Some of you are doing quick math in your head. I can answer for you, you were not born in the year 2000. As you can see, I was going through my goodfellas phase at the time. And yes, my legal name is Rodrigo Andres Carías. Now, not only do seniors have their senior photos, but seniors also tend to have a section of the yearbook called senior superlatives. You remember what that was? It's a way of saying a senior award. And these awards are based on what was known about you in that moment or in that year or in your high school career. So some common senior superlatives were things like class clown or always late or best excuses or most athletic, right? In fact, I got one of those my senior year as well. I got most spirited because I showed up to things. That was how easy it was to be able to get that. So we were given most spirited and we thought we'd be cute by looking grumpy as we as we did that. But some of them. Oh, I'm getting to him a second. But some of them, I know he's coming into my time, but some of these superlatives were actually predictive. Some of these superlatives took what was known about you in high school and it made a prediction about the trajectory of your life. And so in some of the common ones were most likely to succeed, most likely to become a musician, most likely to become a star. Do you remember some of those? Where they took what they knew about you and they made a prediction about your future. But here's the problem. What if what people knew about you wasn't positive? What if what people knew about you wasn't positive? What if, quote, you weren't good enough to have gotten a superlative? What if they're like, well, we can't say most likely to be average or meh or something like that? What if what was known about you was not the best? And that actually led me to the picture I got into earlier. That leads me to the disciple Peter. Now, this is the actor that plays him in the chosen. I just needed a picture of him looking young. So just go with it. Here's what I want you. Let's do a thought exercise, RP Way. If there were senior superlatives for the 12 disciples, with what you know about Peter, what do you think his would have been? If there were senior superlatives or senior awards for the 12 disciples, what do you think Peter's would have been based on what we know about Peter? And I'm gonna say something that's gonna sound bold, but it's actually rooted in fact. My guess is that Peter would be awarded least likely to succeed. And the reason that would be my guess is because of what we see about him in the four Gospels of Jesus. Just a couple of examples. Peter got out of the boat and he walked on water, which is pretty cool, until he sank. And when he sank, what does Jesus say to him? Why do you have such little faith? Peter is the one that is most famously known as Jesus saying to him, get behind me, Satan. In fact, remember the context of this. Peter, with all the boldness of a young guy, goes to Jesus and says, No, that's not what you're gonna do, Jesus. And what does Jesus say? Get behind me, Satan. Peter, very famously again, when Jesus said, one of you is going to betray me, Peter with pride and with bluster got up and said, I will never leave you and leave you. And Jesus even challenged that. And Peter said, everybody else could go. Everybody else could have banned you. I am never going to leave you. And he denies Jesus one, two, three times. There on your note sheet, there's a quote by a late pastor named John MacArthur. He says this about Peter. By nature, Peter was brash, vacillating, and undependable. He tended to make great promises he couldn't follow through with. He was one of those people who appears to lunge wholeheartedly into something, but then bails out before finishing. He was usually the first one in, and too often he was the first one out. When Jesus met him, he fit James's. This is the letter of James, written by the half-brother of Jesus in the New Testament. He fit James's description of a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Now there's a couple of things that really humble me looking at that quote. One, when I read that quote, I gotta be honest, that sounds a lot like me. And I'm sure I'm not the only one here that looks at some of that and be like, ooh, yeah. There's a lot of us that we have talked a big game when it comes to our faith. And when push comes to shove, we're like, nope, I'm out. And here's the thing that fascinates me more than anything. This is exactly who Peter in the Gospels was, and this is the person that Jesus chose to lead his movement, to lead what is now called the church. And I gotta ask this question, it's an honest question. Why? Because as we've just established, Peter has a terrible resume. Peter does not have the qualifications. And yet from the very beginning, he's the one that Jesus is choosing to lead his new movement as we go into Acts. In fact, we are here today as the church because of the leadership of Jesus. So why Peter? And that leads me to the first fill-in in your note sheet. Because when it comes to Peter, Jesus saw more. Peter was exactly what we just talked about. But that wasn't all what he was. And so when it came to Peter, Jesus saw the truth, but he also saw more. And the reason why this matters to us tonight is the same is true of you wherever you are on your spiritual journey. One of the most important things about life with God is learning the identity of God and learning the identity of God is learning how does God see you. And so when Jesus sees you, and this is your next villain, he sees more, just like he did Peter. When Jesus sees you, he sees more in you. See, hear me, RP Way. Jesus sees everything that is you. Jesus sees all the good. Jesus sees all the brokenness and the sin. Jesus sees everything in between. And he still chooses to love you. He still chooses to enter into your story. And he sees more. And not only does he see more, but he invites you to live in a story that's bigger than what you are right now. He invites you to live beyond what you are in this moment. And that's what we're gonna spend our summer learning together. And so tonight we're kicking off the series that's gonna take us through most of the summer called Beyond the Yearbook. And so, like I talked about it, when we look at ourselves, when we look at our lives, it almost feels like we get stuck in moments. It almost feels like we get stuck in situations or stuck in bad choices or stuck in scenarios. And the thing is, what we learn about following God is that God sees more than who we are in this moment. And so we're gonna be unpacking throughout the summer what does it mean to answer God's invitation to live beyond what we are and to become what we can be through the gift of transformation that the Holy Spirit brings us. And the way that we're gonna do it this summer is we're gonna be unpacking Peter's letter in the New Testament called First Peter. And what I love about First Peter is that it's written by an older and a wiser and a more experienced Peter. And sometimes the timetable is a little, is a little funky, but it's estimated that he writes this letter 25, 30, 35 years after the resurrection of Jesus. And this Peter that writes this letter as well as 2 Peter is a very different man than the Peter we encounter in the Gospels. In fact, that Peter, we're gonna get to it in a few weeks, writes this in 1 Peter 5. All of you clothe yourselves with humility, humble yourselves under God's mighty hand, which is misspelled, but humble yourselves under God's mighty hand. And it brings up this beautiful question. How do we go from the guy in the gospels that gets into an argument with the other disciples over who the greatest is gonna be to the guy that says everybody, humility is our power, humility is our strength. How do we go from that Peter to this Peter? And that's what we're gonna learn through his letter. And here's something I have always found beautiful about Peter's letters. Peter is writing to the church, he is writing to real people, but there's something about his writing, especially in this first letter, that sounds like he's writing to himself. Peter really is writing to younger leaders where he was. And as now an older saint, he's going, I remember, I know, and can I speak some wisdom into you? So as you enter into young adulthood, as you enter into a new reality, as you enter into real life, Peter, as Christ followers, is one of our older brothers, and he is speaking wisdom to us on what does it mean to live beyond and to be more. And so we're gonna be spending our summer in 1 Peter, but we're gonna be doing that starting next week. Tonight, what we need to do is set a foundation, and to understand Peter better, we need to understand this invitation to live beyond. And that's in the passage that Ember read for us as we started our time. And so if you still have it open, open up your Bible, turn on your apps, go to Matthew 16 with me. Matthew 16, and we started at verse 13. And this account is pretty extraordinary. And so the first thing that I want to be able to do is I want to shed a little bit of light and some context into where they were. Because as people that are learning the Bible, as we're learning how to handle the Bible well, one of the most important things we can learn is the world that the Bible took place in. Because the world that the Bible took place in actually fills in a lot of context and emotional depth as to what they were experiencing as this was happening. And so the first thing we were told in this account is that Jesus and his disciples were in the region of a city called Saya Philippi. Now, Saesariah Philippi was near Galilee in ancient Israel, but it was a very unique city because it was a city completely focused on pagan worship. Saariah Philippi was known for the worship of the Greek god Pan, who was kind of like a fond, goat-footed type god. He was the god of the wild, he was the god of the outdoors, the god of shepherds, and the god of the flocks. Or also, Sayah Philippi was known for Roman emperor worship. The emperor Augustus had a temple to himself. Many Roman empires declared emperors declared themselves deities and demanded to be worshipped. So temples to them were built. And this was happening in Saeraia Philippi as well. Twelve years ago, this month, I got to go to Saeraiah Philippi as I toured the Bible lands. And so one of the things throughout the rock and the excavation is if you see kind of those frames and those openings, that's where they would put idols to different deities related to Pan, related to emperors, related to other gods. Not only that, this city was known for this cave. Now they have since closed the ground, but in ancient times, that was a chasm that was known by one of two names. It was either known by the grotto of Pan, that goat-footed God, or it was known as the gates to hell. And in pagan worship, they would offer sacrifices down this, whether they were animal blood sacrifices. There's some historical accounts that even hint that they might have been human sacrifices. Jesus is very intentional about the fact that he asks the questions that he does in a city that is incredibly religiously confused. In a city that doesn't know what to think when it comes to religion, come to faith. And let's think about the impact and the power of the questions he asks. The first thing he asks is, Who do people say I am? And the disciples give him an honest response that people have a lot of different opinions. And that's true today, right? If you were to walk into any type of setting with different people, even here and you're ago, who do you say Jesus is? You're gonna get different answers. There are gonna be people that say he's a good teacher. There are gonna be people who say he was a moral leader. There's people that say he was an absolute fraud. There are gonna be people that are gonna say he's an alien. There's gonna be people that have different answers to that question. But what's really interesting is that Jesus takes the general question and then he makes it personal. And then he says, but what about you? He asked. Who do you say I am? And the emphasis very much is in the word you. Jesus made it personal. Well, what about you? And hear me, RPYA, if you don't walk away with anything else this evening, if you don't walk away with anything else in your time, if this is the last time we will ever see you, walk away with this. There is no more important question in your life. Who do you? Not your parents. Not me. Not your life girl. Who do you say that Jesus is? Who do you, who have you come to see Jesus as? And this is a big question. Because a lot of us know that this question determines our eternity. But the reality is if it only determined our eternity, that would still be too small. It doesn't just determine heaven and hell in our eternity. This question determines how we live our lives now. How you answer that question, who do you say Jesus is? Is it gonna be what determines the way you think? Is it gonna be what determines the way you use your time? Is it gonna determine your priorities? Is it gonna determine what's important? It's gonna determine what you say yes to. Is it gonna determine what you say no to? It's gonna determine your actions and your goals. This question is what changes everything. And we're gonna learn this throughout 1 Peter. That question is not meant to be a one-time only question. One of the mistakes we make in our Christian life is that we think way too small. One of the gifts that Jesus gives us is constantly expanding our view of him. Because a lot of us think, yes, when I was 15 at a camp in high school, I said, I answered that question, and now I moved on to the next thing. But what Peter will learn in his life, we don't move on from this question. This is a daily question. Who do you say Jesus is today? Who do you say Jesus is tomorrow? Who do you say Jesus is when things go well? Who do you say Jesus is when you're tempted? Who do you say Jesus in when you're stuck in sin? Who do you say Jesus in is when you don't know what to do? This is the question. I mean, theology matters. Theology is important, but we get lost in the wheeze of theology that we lose sight of this the ultimate. Who do you say Jesus is the dead? And of all people, it's Peter that speaks. Now, in one sense, we shouldn't be surprised by that. But it's what he says that is extraordinary. Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the son of the living God. And as we learn how to unpack the Bible, this is why context is so important. You ever heard the joke that the right Sunday school answer is always Jesus? So we might look at that and be like, yeah, he's just saying it's Jesus. You're Jesus, you're you're the Messiah. No, no, no, no. But what makes this answer extraordinary and life-changing is the fact that he uses the word Messiah as a proud Jewish man, which Peter was. There was a deep reverence and a weight when it came to Messiah. You did not say that people could be the Messiah. You would not declare that somebody was Messiah. In fact, as a proud Jewish man living in a proud Jewish community, saying something like that could get you killed for blasphemy. The fact that Peter said, You are the Messiah is an extraordinary statement. Because up to this point, Peter was likely hoping that Jesus was who he said he was. It was in this moment, and did you catch Jesus' response? Blessed are you, which is living in the right relationship, because you didn't come to this conclusion on your own. The Holy Spirit opened your eyes, and that's true of you if you're a Christ follower. We can't see Jesus without the help of the Holy Spirit. And it's in this moment that I believe that Peter is experiencing a significant heart change that he hadn't experienced before. It's almost like the switch went on and he went, Oh my gosh, you are him. You are the Messiah. This was a big, big statement. And what happens next is transformation. So Jesus goes on and he says, And I tell you that you are Peter. Jesus renames him, but this is significant in a lot of ways. One, Peter wasn't his name. Simon was a very common name. So what is going on here? And it starts with that statement, I tell you, in the ancient world, throughout history, it was a very common practice that somebody in authority, a king, an emperor, or a ruler, would rename someone as a sign that they were under authority. So if somebody had the power to rename you, that meant you were under their authority. So we actually have seen this in other places in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, God or the angel representing God renames Jacob to Israel, and he gives them a brand new story. We've seen this on the negative side. Everybody remembers Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the burning furnace, right? What we tend to forget is all of them. Daniel was renamed Balthazar. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are names from pagan gods. They were renamed by Nebuchadnezzar as a symbol that they were under his authority. And so to say this, this is the declaration from King Jesus. And what he's saying is, this is who you now are. And like I said, he's now given him a new name, which is more in our modern world today, we name people based on does it sound good with our last name. But in the ancient world, names were often meant to be aspirations, characteristics. This is who we want to see you grow into. So Jesus says, I name you, I tell you that you are Peter. Peter comes from the Greek Petrus, which means rock. So think about the characteristics of a rock. A rock is strong, a rock is stable, a rock is faithful, a rock is often experienced, a rock is important for the foundation that you want to build something strong on. Jesus is speaking this into Peter, and we honestly can laugh a little bit at the irony. This point in Peter's life, was he that? No. He was the farthest thing from that that you can imagine. And so, what is Jesus doing? Jesus is saying, You've started a journey by seeing me through the Spirit. If you choose to follow, this is who you're gonna be. If you choose to follow me, I will teach you how to become the rock. I will teach you how to become strong and stable and steadfast. And that's the important thing we gotta understand about Jesus and what he sees in us, and the more what he sees past this moment right now. So there in Unochi, we've got a section titled Neon Lights. It's what I like to just say. This is the heartbeat of any teaching that we do. And so your neon light is two statements. The first one is this Simon was not yet Peter. Simon was not yet the rock. When we give our lives to Jesus, a switch in our soul doesn't just get flipped. And now we go, okay, I got it. I know everything. I know all the books in the Bible. I know how to not sin. I know how to choose wisdom in every situation. I know how to be healthy in all my relationships. I know how to not mouth off. I know all the theology and all the things. I got it. That's not what happens. Simon was not yet Peter, but your next amen, Peter was who Jesus would grow him into. Simon was not yet Peter, but Peter was who Jesus would grow him into. But there were two key things that Peter had to choose that are the same two things you and I need to choose if we're gonna answer Jesus' invitation to live beyond our yearbook photo. This isn't in your noche, but here's the first thing. The first thing is Peter needed to be willing to go on a long journey. You need to be willing to go on a long journey with Jesus. Something I've said often in the context of RPYA is that one of the things that holds us back in our spiritual life is that we chase moments. We chase moments that feel good. We chase the worship encounters, we chase the camps, we chase those life groups when it feels like very emotional. We chase those preachings that feel very, very powerful. We chase the podcasts or the worship. And hear me, those are beautiful moments, those are gifts, but the problem is they're momentary. They're not our whole lives. And when Jesus wants to change a life, he doesn't want to change a sliver of your life, he doesn't want to change a part of your life, he wants to change your whole life. Meaning, yes, he wants to change those powerful mountaintop moments where you meet him, but he also wants to change the quiet parts of your life. He wants to change the confusing parts of your life, the sinful parts of your life, the mundane parts of your life, the parts of your life in which you have to make difficult sacrifices. Are you willing to go on a whole life journey so that we're not simply people that says, Yes, Jesus, you have my life. And the reality is we're lying through our teeth. Because what we're really saying is, no, Jesus, you have a moment. You have a moment. Peter had to learn, faith was not momentary, faith was my our whole life. And here was the second thing Peter had to learn. Peter had to learn that this was the journey in which he had to be willing to be taught. Peter had to be taught what it meant to live a life after Jesus. Peter had to be willing to be taught. And here's the hard thing about being taught. When somebody is teaching you, when somebody is coaching you, when somebody is committed to your growth, there are times in which they're gonna encourage and praise you. And those feel good, huh? And then there are times in which, hopefully, in love, they're gonna need to tell you where you need to grow. And that doesn't feel as good, does it? There are times in which for us to be taught, we need somebody to say, hey, I see pride in your life. The way you come down on other believers, the way you call out the sin in their life, it doesn't feel like it's loving, it feels like they're not meeting your standard. We need people that say, hey, the the way what you're choosing in your dating relationships, your sexual sin, what's happening on your phone, that that doesn't seem compatible with what God wants for you. We need people to say, hey, you're follow-through. You talk a big game, but when it comes to following through, it feels like you struggle. We need people to go, hey, I'm concerned about your emotional health. You've been running, running really hard. I'm concerned about how you deal with it, I'm concerned about how you view certain problems in your life. I'm concerned about the fact that it always seems like it's everybody else's fault, but it's not yours. We need people that are willing to speak truth into our lives. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. I'm a uh I'm very proudly a dad of three kids, and so my oldest, and whenever I talk about my kids, I always ask their permission before I do it. So my oldest, Gabriel, who just actually finished up Wildlife and is gonna be joining Revolution next weekend. Um Gabriel is a very strong writer, and that's something that as a dad was always important to me when it came to all three of my kids. Because we're growing up in the in a world of social media and AI, and those things can be helpful tool, but also those things are making us dumber. And so, one of the most important and simplest ways to combat what the digital world can do to us is just committing to learning how to read and write well. And so, since they were young, we've been very, very committed to that. And Gabriel has grown into a strong writer. But I remember specifically back when he was either in third grade or fourth grade, we were going over some of his paragraphs, and I would just very matter-of-factly be like, no, that's not how you use a that's not how you use a comma, that's not how you write this, that's not how you're going in. And I'm using it in the tone that I'm sharing this with you. And Gabriel started crying. And when I asked him what was going on, me telling him what he was doing wrong, for lack of a better term, where he could grow, it was hurting him. It was hurting his feelings. He didn't want to hear it. And so I had a moment where I could just, first of all, with my kids, it was always important to tell them to breathe. And then when he calmed down a little bit, I just got to his eye level and I looked at him and said, I need you to understand a couple of things that are true. One, I love you deeply. And what that means is I love you enough to tell you the truth. And you need people in your life, son, that are gonna love you enough to tell you the truth. But not only that, I love you enough to walk with you as you grow. I don't want to just tell you what's wrong or what you can grow and say, go and figure it out. I want to walk this path with you. That is Jesus in our lives. Jesus is not here to bring guilt and shame. Jesus brings what's called conviction, meaning he raises to the surface anything that is holding us back from walking well with him. And when he does that, he doesn't say, go and figure it out, go and solve it, go and get better and then come back to me. He says, No, we are gonna walk together in this, is what Colossians tells us. We now get to do life with Christ. And so, are you willing and are you teachable? And so, in that moment, even though Jesus renames him, Peter was not yet ready to be the leader. He was not yet ready to be what Jesus saw. Just like many of us, we are not yet ready to live in the fullness of what Jesus sees for our lives. But Peter got to learn three things throughout his journey that shaped him to become the man that will write first Peter to us. And so these are the final things on your note sheet. These are things that we're gonna be talking about and unpacking together throughout this journey. But these are things, and hear me, that are essential for us today to be able to learn just as Peter did, if we want to answer the invitation to live beyond the yearbook. The first is this we need to learn humility. And humility is an incredibly confusing word. Because you can hear it, even most corporations have it in the vision statement, but nobody actually wants it. And a lot of times because we have a misunderstanding of what it means, humility is not thinking less or lowly about yourself. Catch this. Humility is having a high view of Jesus. Humility is having a high view of Jesus. My definition of humility has always been Jesus is God and I am not. And there is no better place I can be in life than that. Humility is not saying Jesus is king. Humility is living like it. Humility is not saying Jesus is king. Humility is choosing to live like it. It's an act of dependence. That each day we go, King Jesus, I want to live dependent on you. Because what does Jesus teach us in the Beatitudes of Matthew chapter 6? Blessed are the poor in spirit. In other words, blessed are the dependent, and what happens to them? They experience the kingdom of God. Humility, as one of my favorite authors put it, is the strength that endured the cross. Humility is our gift and our invitations. So how do you know if you're humble? Because a lot of times we laugh and people are like, well, I can't just say I'm humble because people don't think I'm humble. So in life, we need dashboard lights. Do you know when something is wrong with your car, a little dashboard light comes on, right? Air pressure is down, oil needs to change, engine light turns on. So in life, we need dashboard lights. And so what's our dashboard life like when it comes to humility? When life gets hard, when you are challenged, when you don't like the answer, when you don't like the option, when things get hard and painful, when schedules go wild, that reveals what you depend on. And that reveals where you're out of humility. Do you remember we talked about Peter denying Jesus? When Peter said, I will never leave you, 100% he meant it. Do you know what the problem was? He could never imagine a world in which he would be so challenged and so tempted that he would pick something other than Jesus. Do you know what happened in that failure? His world got bigger. Can you think of a time when your world got bigger? Can you think of a time in which your world got bigger? For a lot of you, you've already experienced it. Many of you are going to be experienced. That's one of the hardest things about quote growing up is the world gets bigger all the time. Meaning, can you think of a time in which your parents said something that you did not like and it reveals what's in your heart, in which plans change. Man, some of you that are brand new out of high school, what you thought you were gonna do in the fall has already changed. There are so many of us here that our schooling, our work has taken some twists and turns that we never thought coming. For some of us, our world has gotten bigger because relationships changed, because friendships that we never thought would break down broke down, because dating relationships that we thought would never end ended, because we had to say goodbye in a way that we didn't expect it. And that revealed something about our hearts. For some of us, what reveals humility is our ability or our lack of ability to follow through, that we can show up to church on the weekend and raise our hands in the air and say goodbye yesterday. And as soon as we leave this place, we are living a different way. That reveals where our life is when it comes to humility. For some of us, what reveals is when we're forced to acknowledge truth. Many of us struggle with acknowledging the truth of sin in our lives, how deep it is, how pervasive it is, and that is an indicator life of how deep is this and what are you depending on in your life. For many of us, our world got bigger when our faith got challenged, that we graduated high school and we would say, man, I had a rock, solid faith. And then this scenario happened, this situation happened, this person I came into my life happened, this conversation happened, somebody challenged me, and all of a sudden I wonder, well, maybe I got Jesus wrong, maybe I got this theology wrong, maybe I don't know what I thought I knew. For some of us, we never imagine how strong temptation would be. For some of us, years ago, we said, you know what? If I get into a dating relationship, that's not gonna happen to me. We said, you know what, that's not what I'm gonna look at on my phone. Man, I'm never gonna be this angry, I'm never gonna be this scared, I'm never gonna be that person that doesn't follow through. We never thought that would happen to us, and we're living in it. For some of us and newly graduated seniors, this is one you're gonna start facing, and some of you started facing it tonight. For some of us, we never imagined a world in which going to the church we've been a part of is now harder. Because there's not a parent pushing us to go anymore, because there's not 40 or 50 of my closest friends there every week anymore, because some of them have moved on to college, because some of us are working and we have different schedules, and don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize it, but it used to be easier, and now I don't recognize the faces. Now there's more being asked of me. Can I also just say, those of you that come by yourselves, you are my hero. Because it's hard to walk into a room by yourself, it takes a lot of strength and courage to walk in as a duo or a trio where it feels like everybody else knows each other and I'm brand new to this. You are my hero. Because you made a choice, like it's a good one, but it's a hard one still. And so Peter had to learn. I don't have all the answers. Faith is not gonna be easy. I don't know what to do, but I know who Jesus is. That's humility. So that's the first thing he had to learn. The second thing is Peter had to learn emotional health. Hear me. Emotions, man, they are a gift. It is wrong if we don't learn to feel our emotions, because emotions are how God wired us. But as I say, emotions are a gift, emotions are also a lousy king. And often when we're challenged, often when things take a turn, unexpected twists and turn, it can create some powerful emotional responses in us. And sometimes those powerful emotional responses, they take over. So do some of you remember the account. Do you remember what happened with Peter when they came to arrest Jesus in the garden? Do you remember what Peter did? Peter drew a sword and Peter swung at one of the guards. Does anybody remember what he ended up doing? You can just shouted out. He cut off the ear off. Now, it's thought that Peter was going for the head, but he was a fisherman, and that's how bad he was with a sword. That he couldn't get to the neck, and so he cuts off the ear. Have you ever stopped to wonder what emotions was Peter feeling? Because in some cases, you'd be like, man, Peter's defending Jesus. That's awesome. That's what we want to be, right? Except who told him not to do it? Jesus. Was it wrong that Peter wanted to defend Jesus? Absolutely not. But is that really what he was doing? Or was Peter acting out of fear and anger? And what was Peter's plan? Because there were a lot of guards. There were a lot of people. Do you think Peter was thinking at that point? Do you think his plan was like, okay, I'm gonna kill this dude, and then I'm gonna kill that dude, and then that dude or that dude, that dude, all dead. And then I'm gonna kill that guy. And then I'm gonna keep going through. And I'm a fisherman by trade. But you know what? These hardened Roman soldiers, I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you, and I'm gonna walk out of here. What was Peter's plan? He didn't have one. And isn't that an indicator light of when our emotions fail us, that our emotions lead us to take this big bold step? And then we go, what's next? And our emotions go, see ya. Do you know what Peter had to learn? Peter had to learn how to feel the right way. Which is still feel strongly, but don't let it be king. That's the second thing Peter had to learn. And the third one, he had to learn real life with Jesus. We sometimes think the faith is supposed to be this idealized, like, there's no line to Disneyland life. Where everything is good, the birds are chirping, everything is working out. And Jesus is not interested in a fantasy, Jesus is interested in reality. Jesus stepped into real life. And I don't know if you figured this out yet. I'm willing to bet many of you have. Real life is messy. Real life is complicated. Real life is unexpected. Real life is painful. Real life can be boring in Medine. All of that is real. And the beautiful thing about Jesus is that Jesus wants to meet you where you actually are at. Jesus is not waiting somewhere in the future, going, okay, when your life gets better or more exciting or more holy, or you figure it out, or you memorize these verses, or you stop letting people down, or you start liking what you see in the mirror, you stop sinning and all of that, then we can hang out. No. Jesus, where are you in this moment? Because that's where I am. Jesus wants to meet you where you actually are in this moment. And that's the beautiful thing about the letter, first of Peter's first letter. He's writing to Christ followers that are having a rough time. They're experiencing real life. And what does Peter get to say? He gets to say, man, that is real. And so is Jesus. And so let me share with you how Jesus enters into our real life. So, RV Way, here's the thing I want to encourage you and I want to invite you. Come and learn from the words of Peter. Come and learn from our older brother. Come and learn what it means to live beyond this moment. And so, as much as it's up to you, I want to encourage you to be a part of not only what God is doing, but of what God is going to unleash. Some of you are going to be here for a couple of years. Some of you are going to be here for a few months throughout the summer. Some of you are going to be here maybe for a Sunday or two. Our hope is that you would learn to encounter God and to take that wherever you go. And so as much as you can, come and learn from an older brother that went ahead of us. Come and learn. You know what I love about Peter? He sometimes makes me feel better about my own life. But I look at the gospels and go, man, if if Jesus could do something spectacular with Peter, what can you do with somebody like me? What can you do with somebody like you? Man, these screw ups changed the world. And now it's our turn.