Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love Me?". Peter grieved and said, "Yes Lord. You know I love You!".
Jesus said, "Then feed My sheep. And truly you are going to grow old and you are going to be killed for My sake, and for God's glory. Now, follow Me."
Christ surely knew Peter loved Him, as He knows all things, as Peter proclaimed. Jesus knew Peter would one day be killed for the sake of the Gospel, and for the sake of his Lord Jesus Christ, whom he loved.
JC Ryle says this: "The truth before us is eminently full of comfort to a true believer. To obtain foreknowledge of things to come would, in most cases, be a sorrowful possession. To know what was going to befall us, and yet not be able to prevent it, would make us simply miserable. But it is an unspeakable consolation to remember, that our whole future is known and forearranged by Christ. There is no such thing as luck, chance, or accident, in the journey of our life. Everything from begining to end is forseen,--arranged by One who is too wise to err, and too loving to do us harm."
The Lord is the Shepherd of our souls, and we are His sheep. He loves us more than we could ever love Him. And He calls to us, because He loves us, and we hear Him, because we are His sheep, and becasue we love Him, and so we follow Him.
He watches over us with a sovereign almighty hand, and His rod and staff shall protect us, and this should be comforting to us. (Psalm 23)
"He has made us, and His we are, we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture". Psalm 100:3
Shepherds were there on the first Christmas morning. They saw glorious things, and the most gloriuos was a Babe in a stable, who would grow to become the Good Shepherd, who would lay His life down for His sheep. There's no greater love than this. And only Christ the Lord could be this perfect Shepherd.
2 comments:
Don,
Yes! This is immensely comforting- the fact that a wise and loving God has foreordained my future. I'd much rather leave my future in his sovereign hands then trust my tomorrows to my own fickle will.
Yeah. And Peter was told he was to die, and in his 2nd letter he speaks of how it's time for him to leave his tabernacle as the Lord told him. All those years later, Peter was crucified upsidedown, and yet he knew this was the Lord's word coming to pass.
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