John's life, particularly his moments of self-importance, self-indulgence, and self-pity, is examined to reveal the human struggles even within a devoted follower of Christ. The sermon highlights instances from Luke 9, Mark 10, and John 21 where John displayed a narrow, harsh, or self-focused attitude, contrasting these with his later self-effacing nature. The core lesson is that even those close to Jesus can falter, demonstrating the need for humility and service over personal ambition or despair. Ultimately, the message encourages listeners to learn from John's mistakes and to embrace God's strength in the present moment, rather than succumbing to self-pity or seeking personal gain.
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John chapter twenty-one, and we'll read the four faith verses. After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and on this wise showed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and the two other of his disciples. Simon Peter said unto them, I go of fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee.
Now I want you to watch that little word we, and how often it occurs in the accounts that we are going to read. We also go with thee. They went forth. and ended into a ship immediately. And that night they caught nothing. But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.
Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved set unto Peter, it is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girded his fissures coat unto him, for he was naked, and did cast himself into the stream. And the other disciples came in a little ship, for they were not far from land, but as it were, two hundred cubits, dragging the net with fisheries. Now go back to the gospel that precedes this one. Luke chapter nine. Luke chapter nine. And we'll begin to read at verse forty-nine.
Luke nine and forty-nine, and John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out demons in thy name, And we forbade him, because he followeth not with us. Jesus said unto him, For he that is not against us is for us. And it came to pass when the time was come that he should be received up. He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face. And they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him. And these did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, even as Elias did? but he turned and rebuked them and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. Now let's turn to the gospel that precedes this one. And this time let's go to Mark chapter ten. Mark chapter ten.
Verse thirty-five. And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you? They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit. one on my right hand, and the other on my left hand in my glory. But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask. Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with, and they said unto him, We can.
Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I am baptized, with all shall ye be baptized. But to sit on my right hand, and on my left hand is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with James and John. And now let's turn to the gospel that precedes this one. And this time we'll go to Matthew chapter twenty. Matthew chapter twenty.
Now we are going backwards. That's what John did you know, and that's what we're going to look at tonight. Matthew chapter twenty and verse twenty. Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons, worshiping him, worshiping him, and desiring the certain things of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She said unto him, Grant of these my two sons may sit, the one on my right hand and the other on the left in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask.
One other verse or two verses, this time in Mark three. And we read these before. I'm just going to read these two verses to you again, because I am interested tonight in the title that the Lord Jesus gave to James and John, and you know that title already. Verse sixteen says of Mark three, And Simon, he surnamed Peter, and James the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James, And he surnamed them, Boiner G, which is the son of thunder.
Shall we bow in prayer? Our Heavenly Father, we know that it is a wise man that learns from his mistakes, and a foolish man who makes the same mistake time and time again. But though the wise man learns from his own mistakes, the wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. This is not quite so costly a process. And we ask, O Lord, as we look at some of John's shortcomings tonight, it might not be that we might point the finger at him or make excuses for ourselves.
but that we might realize and that they might be borne in upon our hearts a realization that if such a wonderful man as John could fall into these snails then it ill behoves us to imagine that we are bound to be free from him speak to our hearts and speak to our hearts solemnly we pray and grant that we might hear thy voice and respond to thy choosing. We ask for thy name's grace. Amen. Now I must this evening do a little recapping just so that we can put tonight's study in its proper setting.
Four wonderful studies about John on the positive side and only one on the negative side. That should say something. First of all, we looked at John's spirit of devotion, and we saw that it was evidently part of his character. We saw, too, that it was directly instrumental in his suffering. And we saw, thirdly, that it was certainly appreciated by his master, through accepting him into an inner circle and gazed at him some very special privileges. After his spirit of devotion, we looked at his sense of beauty.
And this was impressed upon us as we thought of his affinity with the Master, his appointment by the Master, his activity for the Master, and then his abandonment to the Master in taking of the Mother of the Lord Jesus into his own home directly from the cross. And then we looked at his stability under duress. And again there were four things that concerned us. The first was at the trial of the Lord Jesus. The second and third were at the tree.
And the fourth was inside the tree. We looked at his fidelity at the trial. His steadfastness beside the cross. His dedication of the future. And then finally his triumph in the tomb. For we read this stable man's sword and belief. Now tonight we're going to spoil everything by talking about John's surrender to defeat. And it all comes about when that little word we comes to the forefront.
In the reading of these varying passages, I emphasize that word, we. Now, Matthew, I'm reminded, as I take up the subject that I would very much like to omit from the series, of the Sunday school teacher who took a double sheet to Sunday school one Sunday afternoon. It was in England, where they have Sunday schools in the afternoon. She had very, very carefully laundered that sheet, very, very carefully ironed it, and then took a British half penny about her just over a half an inch in diameter, placed it right in the center of the sheet, drew a line around it, and then filled it in that tiny little dot with black ink.
She started off her Sunday school lesson By having one boy hold the corner of the street as high as he could, and one girl hold the other corner of the street, and as they stood there holding this vast street, he asked the boys and girls in the Sunday school, boys and girls, what do you see? And do you know what they said? To a man, a black spot. They didn't see the double sheep. They didn't see the whiteness of the background, but they focused their attention on the black spot.
That's very human. And that's what we so very often do. You know God does not do that. But however, he does not hesitate as he parades the virtues of his heroes before us, to also remind us that they had their weak moments, and they had their drawbacks, and they had times when they fell flat on their faces. David was a man after God's own heart, and yet at one terrible time in his life he committed adultery, and then after it, and because of it, became a murderer.
Very, very hard to reconcile those things. And so it is as we go through the scriptures, and we look at these remarkable men of God, I can see Elijah sitting under a tree and wanting to die, because he imagined that nothing anymore was worthwhile. He gave up, became depressed, and was ready to throw in the sponge. There are three things I want to say about John tonight. And when the Lord Jesus gave to James and John their title, Boener G, that's Aramaic, and it means sons of thunder and its interpretive chorus, I think we get a clue to the meaning of it when we take the parallel word in the Hebrew, which is actually sons of tumult.
And that perhaps gives a little different light upon it. Even with John, his prolonged contact with the Lord Jesus had not yet done all of its work. When the Lord Jesus surnamed Peter, he called him what he was. And when the Lord Jesus surnamed John, again he called him what he was. In spite of the fact that John has become, and justifiably so, called the disciple of love. There were times of tumult in his life.
I want you to think with me, first of all, about the story in Luke nine, because what we have here is a display of self-importance. And then I want you to look with me at the story that we read in Mark ten, where we have a desire for self-indulgence. And then we shall come to our chapter where our phrase is found, in John twenty-one, where we have a descent into self-pity. Now these were the three things that spoiled the picture of the Apostle John. Self-importance, self-indulgence, and self-pity.
and immediately the speaker becomes convicted, and I know that those of you who are listening to become convicted also. Which of us sitting here or standing here tonight has not been guilty of a display of self-importance? Which of us has not been guilty of a desire for self-indulgence? And which of us has not been foolish enough to descend into self-indulgence? Let's see how these things affected John and those around him. In Luke chapter nine, John says, We forbade him, and he says, Shall we command fire to come down out of heaven and consume them as Elijah did?
You can see that that's a display of self-importance, can't you? We thought, what was it? What was the story? We saw, said John, we saw one casting a demon in thy name, and we forbade him because he followeth not with us. You know, first of all, there is a tragic lack of understanding here. There is a narrowness that I'm sure that did not really characterize John, but it was a matter of being among the usites. The usites. He followeth not with us.
Now I could introduce you to a lot of people that I've met in the course of forty-three years in the work of God who very, very truly belong to the usites. And they're very sad people to meet. You know, they use the word very carefully of themselves. They say, I am conservative. Now, when you come across a brother who tells you he's conservative, you become a little suspicious. Because somewhere along the line, you may well find he belongs to the usher. And people who don't, it doesn't matter what fine questions they may be, It doesn't matter how devoted to the Lord they may be, because their ways are a little different from his, because their method of gathering is a little different from his, he loses sight of all of their value to God, loses sight of all of their effectiveness in the service of God, and rejects them because they follow not with us.
You know, I could go to assemblies of brethren today who would not let me break bread. there among the other. And I pray very earnestly that that kind of spirit of exclusivism will not characterize us. And if it does, then God will convict us on it. This man on this occasion was extremely narrow, and Jesus rebuked him by saying, He that is not against us is for us. What a lack of understanding John showed on this occasion. He certainly was lacking in understanding because he said, and marked the words, We saw one cursing out demons in thy name.
Now there is absolutely no question about the fact that demons were cast out, and men and women were being blessed, whose lives had been torn, whose lives had been controlled by demons. At the word of this unnamed and unknown person, they were freed from their bondage, and the demons were cast out. But John lost sight of that. He simply said, He's followed not with us. We forbid. God forbid that we should ever consider ourselves sufficiently important as to be in a position to forbid anybody else in his activity before God.
A lack of understanding. It also showed something else, you know, and that was a lack of concern. When he forbade this man, because he followeth not with us, he showed a narrowness and a lack of understanding. When the Samaritans refused to receive the Lord Jesus, because they saw that he was determined to go to Jerusalem, John said, shall we call down fire from heaven and consume them as Elijah did? Now this showed a lack of concern. At this time John was harsh as well as narrow.
Not only was he exclusive, but he was intolerant. And it's astounding how often exclusivism and intolerance go hand in hand. This always shows a lack of understanding and a lack of concern. It really wasn't characteristic of John, you know, because as you read his life in detail, you see that really he was a very sweet person. I wonder what happened on these occasions. I wonder what caused John at this time to be narrow and at this time to be harsh.
You know, as time went by, this man who at this time... is giving us a display of self-importance became a very self-effacing man. We know that because he didn't even use his name here in his gospel. He didn't speak at all to exalt himself. He didn't speak to place down in holy rifts anything about his own importance. Rather than use his name, he called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. He didn't call himself the disciple who loved Stephen. He certainly did.
And justifiably could have done that. But he didn't choose to do that. He never got over this realization. Jesus loved him. Jesus loved him. And he became so self-effacing as to refer to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. rather than to use his name. And if you will again go in detail, greater detail than we've done during these studies, you will see how often John puts himself in a second place. How often he puts or he mentions someone ahead of himself. It seems to be the playing the second fiddle.
There's a little rhyme about the second fiddle and playing the second fiddle well. I don't remember it. I wish I did. There it is. It takes more grace than I can tell to play the second fiddle well. That's right. And you find that John, as he portrays himself in his gospel, is constantly playing second fiddle, doing it well, and therefore manifesting the grace. It was so tragically absent. on these two occasions. May we be warned, and may we be challenged.
God gives to us big hearts, the kind of hearts that John manifested on so many other occasions. Especially in his display of self-importance, and there really is no denying it, it's right there in Luke nine. Let's think now about his desire for self-indulgence. And again that we comes to the forefront. Mark chapter ten, we would, that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we desire. Now, if that's not a desire for self-indulgence, I don't know what is. We would, that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we desire.
So I want you to notice three things about this desire for self-indulgence. I want you to notice, first of all, the form of it, and then I want you to notice the perceptions of it, and then I want you to notice the effects of it. Now the form of it, it was twofold. These two brothers wanted position. Grant us that we may sit, the one on the right hand, and the other on the left hand in the glory. Now I'm sure that James and John were quite prepared when they were alone to fight it out as to who was going to get the right hand and who was going to get the left hand, but in the meantime they wanted to take out those two places and let me think that had the Lord given to them what they wanted They would have had some fear in fighting between themselves to decide who was going to get the better of those two places, which of course was the place on
the right. We would. They wanted position. I suppose that's a very natural thing. Nobody likes to be the low man on the totem pole. And how many times, in how many instances, do we hear about all chiefs and no Indians? You know, if the Church of God were like that, we would have even greater problems than we have today. All chiefs and no Indians. God has been very wise, you know. God always is. But in laying out church truth in the Word of God, He has shown to us.
But the local church is not a democracy. Everybody doesn't have the same votes. It isn't run by popular votes. The local church is governed by men who meet spiritual qualifications, who are mature and godly and self-effacing, and whose examples are the kind that the people of God without hesitation can follow. And the elders are warned against this desire for self-indulgence. Don't lord it, the Bible says, over God's lot.
Not only did these two men want positions to occupy the right hand and the left hand But with that position, they also wanted authority. They wanted authority. Would you turn back, please, to the passage? Mark chapter ten. And will you notice, please, how the Lord Jesus greets it? Look at verse forty-four of this chapter. We didn't read this far, but I want to read it now. The Lord Jesus is now the speaker, and he says, whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be the servant of all.
So is deep down in your heart, there is a desire for self-importance and for self-indulgence in this fashion. I can tell you how you can bring it about. by becoming the servant of all. Even your master, gird himself with a towel, when the disciples would not humble themselves to wash one another's feet, and he washed the feet of his disciples. He said, If I, your Lord, have washed your feet, don't you hesitate to wash one another's feet.
But somewhere along the line the menial tasks are always the ones that don't seem to get done. Because we're all of us just a little, we matter just a little bit too much to be expected to do that job. And we read the verse again to you. Whosoever of you will be the chief of you shall be the servant of all. You know there are some real surprises coming for us in the glory. When we see those that take the chief priests and the glory, when we see those on the right hand and on the left hand, I think we're going to be very much astounded.
One that we thought would surely be there, may well be elsewhere, and those we never gave a second thought to be, will be occupying those places. because they didn't aspire to give a treatise to all. But they were prepared to be disperseable. And so the Lord exalted them. Did you take a look at another verse? Verse forty-five. Even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. The Lord Jesus says to John, you know not of what spirit you are.
Exclusive, intolerant, you're not really, you shouldn't really be concerned with your own self-importance. And he said you shouldn't be concerned about where you're going to sit in the glory. What you should be concerned about is the needs of others. And you should be giving yourself to the meeting of those needs. So John wanted position, and John wanted authority. He wanted, if you will, to be able to throw his weight at us. So unlikely, John, that we've been thinking about it. But I have an idea not so unlike those of us who are sitting and standing here.
This, then, was the form of his desire for self-indulgence. Now, what about the persistence of it? Not only did James and John come and ask the Lord Jesus, but when they didn't get what they wanted, what did they do? They sent their mother to try to get a word into it. They didn't learn what the Lord Jesus had sought to teach, but instead they persisted in this desire for self-indulgence. And what was the effect of it? We read in one place, Matthew twenty, that the ten were moved with indignation, and in Mark ten that they were much displeased.
If you want to upset the people of God, all you've got to do is display your own self-importance and manifest a desire for your own self-indulgence. Because if you indulge yourself, You'll always do it at somebody else's expense. The ten, of course, they were saying, and something of the same feeling motivated them, I'm sure. If those two get the right and the left hand, where are we going to be? So maybe every one of the other ten was saying, I hope he doesn't give him the right hand because I want it. My so characteristic of the human heart.
Don't you sort of feel a little echo? in your own heart of these things. But you know, as time went by, just as John's display of self-importance gave way to a development of self-effacement, so his desire for self-indulgence later gave way to total self-adnegation, where John no longer mattered to himself. where he was not concerned about what he'd stand for, Christ would cost him. He was prepared to stand there by the cross. He was prepared to be in attendance at the trial.
He was prepared to take the mother of the Lord Jesus into his own home. This man became totally unconcerned about himself, and he became an example of self-denial. You know, the Lord Jesus said to James and to John, when they were asking about the right hand and the left hand, indeed you can drink of the cup that I'll drink of, and you can be baptized with the baptism wherewith I shall be baptized. And indeed that became their experience. James, you'll remember, lost his life as a martyr.
He was slain by the sword. And John was banished from all his friends, and home and everything dear to him, the isle called Patmos. Yes, they suffered as the Lord Jesus suffered, and as he said they would. And for John, he was perfectly prepared to save his Christ. What a change, man. How different from this occasion. Now what about our story in John twenty-one? His descendants are self-pity. We also go with this. Peter, you know, he works well, you know about Peter.
He's very impeccable. Peter was a man who was always on the go. Lots of Christians are like that. Sometimes Peter opened his mouth and put his foot into it, you know. And there are occasions when we find the evidence of that on the pages of Holy Writs. And when Peter couldn't stand the inactivity, the master had been taken away, and there was a waiting period, Peter said, I can't stand it. I'm going back to the ship. I'm going back to the nets. I'm going back to the fishing. The other disciples, John with them, says, We are coming too. Now, actually, the disciples were guilty of pitying themselves. Why should we have to be here waiting?
The Lord Jesus said, Carrie. wait, but waiting is really work, you know. And these disciples didn't know what was going to happen. And so in the end, because they pitied themselves, they said, we've got to get out of this, right? We've got to get out of this place. We've got to do something else. We're going to go back to where we were. That was their mistake. So pity will always land you in trouble, always. See what happened here. There are four things again that occur to me as I read this story and think about this descent, and it is a descent, you know.
When you sit down and you begin to pity yourself, you've gone down and gone a long way down. And you've forgotten that man of whom it was written. I grumbled that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet. Really and truly our lot is such a blessed lot. Our circumstances are such privileged circumstances. Like the psalmist we can say, and we don't say it often enough, the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. There are so many people around us and close to us whose lot is so much worse than ours.
What right have we ever to pity ourselves? And yet because we are human, sometimes we do. And when we do, we're following in the footsteps of better people than ourselves, for they also fell into self-seeking. Now, the first thing it did was it produced hasty action. Peter didn't think twice. As soon as heaven began to feel sorry for himself, he said, I'm going fishing. And the disciples didn't think twice. When Peter said, I'm going fishing, they said, we are also going with you. is produced H-E-S. I was thinking about that hymn as I was sitting, kicking out from him, and I couldn't for the life of me remember how it started.
Bade upon Jehovah, says the chorus, hearts are fully blessed, finding that he promised perfect peace and rest. And the reason why that hymn came to mind was because there is a reference there in the hymns somewhere in the verses. To haste or hurry. Not a blast of hurry. Move your spirit there. How many times have you hurried into something? How many times have you rushed into something? How many times have you thoughtlessly because you felt sorry to yourself, precipitated yourself into a bad situation.
Self-pity produced hasty action. And the second thing it did was this. It caused wasted time. All night lungs and toiled and never even got a bite. Isn't that what you found when you were foolish enough to do it to be sent into self-pity? Don't you find when the Lord brings you out of it? that you left a lot of wasted time behind. There's nothing, there is no pride in pitying ourselves. There's a third thing you did, it dimmed their spiritual sights. They didn't recognize the Lord until at last John said, you know who that is?
And it was obviously a surprise to him. It's the Lord. And Peter, when he heard that it was the Lord, he threw his vicious coat around him for he was naked. They hadn't the last one they had expected to see in that situation was the Lord Jesus. But there he was, and they didn't raise him. You know, when your needs are such that the temptation to pity yourself becomes very strong, there's one who knows your need better than anybody else, and he's just a prayer away. Don't waste your time in self-pity. Don't let self-pity blind you to his nearness to you.
But turn in your brokenhearted condition to him and claim from him victory over that self-pity. You'll be glad that you did. And you know I'm speaking to my heart I think more than I'm speaking to yours tonight. There's a last thing that's here. It brought eventual shame. You know, when the disciples stood in the presence of the Lord Jesus, not a man among them, not John or anyone else, just asked him, who asked us. Because they knew who he was, but by this time they were too ashamed to ask him.
And shame always follows, says Jesus. that we ought to constantly pray that God will deliver us from it. I'm glad that John didn't stay in the slow of death fund. When we find him on the Isle of Fatima, when his circumstances were as dire as they had ever been in his life, he says he was on the Isle of Fatima on the Lord's Day, and he was white. He was in the spirit. He wasn't pitying himself. Instead, he was actually, he was actually, I'm looking, I'm groping for a word here.
He was gambling. Let me use that word. In the sunshine of the love of God, his circumstances were forgotten. Oh, I've mentioned those two men who met on the street corner more than once to you. One said to the other one, how are you today? The other fellow said, I'm all right under the circumstances. First fellow said, what are you doing there? Believers have no business being under the circumstances because my every dire circumstance is a brand new opportunity to put God to the test and define him adequately. and all foolishness.
John was on Patmos. He was on Patmos. On the Lord's side. He was there an exile. But he wasn't occupied with his loneliness. And he wasn't thinking about his love. He was reveling in the presence of God. In the spirit. On the Lord's side. On the Isle of Patmos. So though we've had to make reference to this man's surrender to his feet, let's not dwell on it. Let's just ask that God will teach us lessons through it so that our study tonight might not have been in vain. Having gone down, we're going to come up again.
Tomorrow night, if the Lord will, shall we bow in prayer? Our Heavenly Father, we do see in this man John a very wonderful individual, one about whom we would not hesitate to pray. Lord Jesus made us a little more like him. And yet we have learned even this man had times when he lost his spiritual victory, when he lacked understanding and concern, when the disciple of love became consumed with a self-love. Or we realize if he had faced a danger like that, then we certainly faced that danger.
But we know that he rose above all these things and became wonderfully triumphant. And we ask that that might be our experience as they succeed well. For I would say as a society, social life strength group, deliver us from the following. of trying to borrow the strength of tomorrow for today. And Lord, deliver us in the following of failing to lay hold of all the strength and grace that there is in truth for every moment of the present. We ask that in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.