If you have ever put your foot in your mouth, chased recognition, or failed when courage mattered, you may wonder whether God can still entrust you with meaningful work. In 1 Peter 5:1–5, the apostle once notorious for fumbling addresses the care of God’s people—and the ambition, reluctance, and pride that can distort it.
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This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
So we’ve been in a series for about a month now exploring what it means to be fishers of men. We’ve been looking at how God was setting up his people to do that over the ages. This was not plan B. When we get to the New Testament, it’s not plan B, it’s the fulfillment of plan A.
This is exactly what God’s been calling his people to do through all time. So tonight, we’re going to begin a series of weeks where we’re doing a case study on some of those early fishermen, right? If we’re going to go and be fishermen and fisherwomen. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to study the masters and learn from them.
And tonight, we’re going to look at someone who fumbled a lot on his way to becoming a fisherman. Peter. Because I think about Peter this week, I found myself thinking of another man who’s been known to fumble a few things, but made an enormous amount of money as he has. If you know the name, probably most of you know, much of her work, but the founder and current CEO of Facebook or Meta.
So most of us, several billion people in the world, every day interact with something, whether it’s Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp or a number of other different products, that come from the company that’s talking about fleets. But if you look at the early history of what Zuckerberg sent out to do, you were a college student that wanted to get to know the other college students. And he wanted a book of faces, so he could decide who it was, he was going to get to know. That was…
that was the plan. It was not to be the leader of one of the magnificent five tech companies that is worth incomprehensible amounts of money and foster’s communication amongst billions of people around the world. It was to get to know the other students… at his college.
And so, when Facebook took off, and, you know, at first, it took off, amongst purely college students, I remember, I was finishing up at Lindenwood, right, when it really started becoming big, and so, I was excited, but at the time, they didn’t give us email addresses, like, a lot of colleges did. They hadn’t done that yet, and you had to prove you were a college student with your email address. And so all these people were on the Facebook, but were we gonna get on it? And then my last semester.
Facebook rushed across campus because everyone started taking email places. Sign up for Facebook. So, there was that, and then suddenly, high school students, and then suddenly, everybody get on, and suddenly, it was the place you communicated, and you farmed your crops, and, um, it became this thing, right? And there were a lot of stumbles after that, because here was a man who wanted to meet friends at college,
He was now running a major serious communications platform. So you had problems with how to protect people’s privacy and how, whether they could sell data from people and all these things. It was sort of like, oh, here is someone who has fumbled his way into being a tech type.
I wasn’t thinking about that this week because if you were following your news, you may have heard there was an AI summit at the White House, and all the leaders of all the big tech companies doing AI work, which Meadows, one of them, they have a lot of investing in this, came together to talk about how to avoid being, you know, maybe annihilated, and agree to a policy of protocol to try to ensure that AI is well stable.
And some of the people most people focus on, the CEO of M-Profit, Mario Rampadena, or Sam Altman with OpenAI, those are the ones that you hear the news constantly people talking about. They’re talking about the existential threat and how it’s going to kill us all and the government needs to come in and control it before these CEOs do what they’re going to do, which is kill all of us and please control us before we kill ourselves and everybody else.
Let me get on with something better. How about we just actually have you transport it voluntarily? And it was really interesting to me when I read that very concise, very sensible plan. It was Mark Zuckerberg, the fumbler. And if you’re following him at all in the last year, it does seem like he’s kind of starting to actually feel his role and try to be actually responsible.
What does that all look like? Well, he’s very responsible. I thought, here’s someone who finds himself in a position, but it takes them a long time to find how to live that position. And if you really think about the apostle, was there any apostle that fits that description better? Peter was a fumbler. And it would be really easy, just like many of us avid readers who write about Mark Zuckerberg, it would be really easy to write off Peter. He can’t get anything right. He’s always looking out for himself, and he’s not looking out for himself. He’s putting his foot in his mouth, and he has his thing, and then he just goes on. It’s just like, oh, Peter, he’s sick, right?
And here, he’s calm. That’s one of the reasons I love Peter, and why I think it’s so good to spend a little time looking at his wisdom later in life, which is what we’re going to do tonight. Because for all his fumbling, God had a plan with him, and God was going to use him. And for myself, I love hearing that, because I don’t get a lot of things right. I get a lot of things wrong. I often don’t know how God is working. I stumble on a thing, I put my foot in my mouth, I do all this stuff.
And if you’ve ever had that sensation, too, and you’ve destroyed a peer, if one encouraged you as well, be nice to the guy. Take the fumblers and the fumblers, and use them for your healing. Go pray or believe in the Peter story, by the way.
Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your Word. Would you help us to go from where we’re just bouncing around trying to do a few things we think are kind of nice, and then when we find ourselves in places and situations, we don’t know what to do, we put our foot in our mouth, we fumble, we fumble. Lord, would you help us to go from that to actually living the role that you’ve given us. Not because we’re so great, but because you are. Would you help us to understand what you call us to do, and understand that even when we’ve messed up, even when we get things wrong, Lord, you still have a plan for us. Would you help us to be encouraged by that, and led by your Spirit to make a great change in the world.
Would you help us to turn to 1 Peter chapter 5 tonight, that’s where we’re going to be looking. Because, like I said, we know the story of Peter, right? We know his denial, we know he wanted to be one of the greatest disciples, we know he wanted to know if he really had good people, we know all this stuff about Peter. It’s so helpful that we can be who Peter actually ends up being. Peter…
Okay, there we are. Okay, everybody. Apologies to our online folks. The livestream computer decided to go nuts about five minutes before the service started, and apparently some of it still hasn’t recovered. But I was just saying we were turning to 1 Peter chapter 5 tonight. And it’s so helpful to hear from Peter because we know that messed up background that he has. And because we know that messed up background, then when we come to his instruction later in life, he’s not the guy that has had everything right all his life, right? He’s not the guy that you sort of think, you know, how does he do that? He just always gets everything right. We all know those people. It just seems like they get everything right. That’s not Peter.
No, when Peter tells us what we ought to do and how we ought to live, he’s living as somebody who’s generally managed one way or another to do the opposite, and God’s been growing him. And so it’s a message of hope for us as we aspire to be the men and women that God has called us to be. Let’s go ahead and take a look. We’re going to start at verse 2, and then we’ll come back to verse 1. We haven’t forgotten it. Verse 2:
“Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly.”
Think about Peter. Peter, when he was called to be a fisher of men, may have been trying to figure out what that meant. May have even had some idea what it meant. But I think he was really initially hoping it meant something important for him. And we can see that in his interactions and his jockeying for position. He saw the opportunity for authority.
But as he instructs the early church later in life, he says, no, what it means to be a fisher of men is to be someone who cares for others. That, that is the calling. That is the point.
Just flashback, Matthew 19:27. Take a look.
Peter says in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Right? This is, as Jesus is talking about how hard it is to enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, if the rich will have a hard time because it’s hard to get into the kingdom of heaven as someone who’s wealthy, well, we’ve given up everything. We should be getting, like, major, major rewards, right? Jesus, I mean, it’s going to be great.
Peter says, no, the calling, the thing that we look forward to is getting to care for others.
When Jesus first says to Peter that “upon this rock I will build my church,” he seems more like quicksand than a rock. But, of course, God takes our quicksand and he can harden it into a rock. He can take our nothingness and harden it into a rock. He can build us into foundations for his work because he’s the actual foundation. He’s developing us.
And so, if you think about Jesus commissioning Peter and the other apostles, but in particular tonight, commissioning Peter, and if you only knew the early Peter, you’d think, what in the world is Jesus talking about? But here we actually see it come alive.
Here is Peter saying, here’s how this church is built. Here’s how this church functions. And notably, notably here, we serve others not because we have to, but because it’s a joy to serve others. Not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you.
Think about that. Sometimes we want to serve others. We have a very service-oriented church, and I’m thankful for that, all of you, and the ways you serve. But we probably all have had those times where we don’t really want to do something, right? Those times you just think, oh, I know I should.
We already have those times. Peter had those times. But here he says, here’s what it’s supposed to look like in general, especially he’s speaking to elders, what’s it going to look like to shepherd the church. But more generally, elders should then be modeling how Christ shepherds us, and we, as we individually minister to others, should follow that model too.
And so the big point here is that however it is that we have the opportunity to serve others, how should we do it? Not because we have to, but willingly as God would have you.
I think it’s a challenge for growth, but also a challenge for growth where we say, well, I don’t know if I can ever be that way, because a lot of times what it takes for me to go do something is because I realize it’s what I should do.
And Peter’s been on that journey. Again, Peter is not the guy that’s Mr. Perfect that’s always just wanted to serve for the sake of others and always in it because it was just, what else would I possibly do? Of course I want to do this. No, Peter is the one who was really looking out for number one for an awful lot of the time.
And if he wasn’t looking out for himself, maybe looking out for Jesus, but then even there hoping that Jesus is going to praise him because he’s looking out for Jesus. And now he says, this is where we should be. This is where, I think at this point he’s arrived, at least for the most part, probably not perfectly because none of us are perfect in this life.
But he’s saying it’s someone who’s gone through it the hard way. He has the scars of the times where he wasn’t doing what God’s called him to do, and he wasn’t thinking and he wasn’t caring for others. And yet God has transformed him into the wise apostle passing on the calling to the next generation.
And so when we don’t always find ourselves eager, you think, well, maybe that’s someone else. If only I was that kind of person. What we need to do is understand God can take a Peter and bring him to that point. And he can take you and me and bring us to that point too.
When we’re tired, it’s okay to be tired. And it’s okay when we get back up to say, God, help me to have joy in this. Help me to desire to do this. Help me to desire the things you desire more and to recognize that God actually does that.
So that is our general calling. It is also specifically the calling of elders. And one day here, God willing, we’re going to have elders. We’re not there yet, right? We’re working that way.
And one of the reasons we didn’t start out, you may have wondered, well, why plant a church and you don’t immediately have elders? Well, the reason that we haven’t established elders and deacons yet is because we want to get to the point where we’re doing actually what Peter describes here.
And the real risk when you’re an itty-bitty church and you start already appointing a bunch of titles is that it becomes about the titles, right? And so much better, and I can see this happening here, God is developing shepherds here. God is developing people who have a heart for his people who are ready to serve. And the thing that we should always be looking to do is simply taking joy in doing what God is calling us to do.
And at some point we’ll say, okay, now we’re as a group going to call those people God’s raising up, and we’re going to call certain members of the congregation to be elders. We’re going to do that. And we’re going to call others to be deacons. We’re going to do that, and that’s a good thing.
But we don’t want to do it because someone gets to be important. We want to do that because someone is seeing himself humbly and is ready to serve. Very different thing.
Peter, if he’d been given his full apostolic title, you know, “I’m an apostle of Jesus Christ, and I’m an elder, and I’m this and I’m that,” when he’s first called to leave his fishing boat and become a fisher of men, do you know, Peter would have just added that to all the ways he pounded himself over the head, right? Sticking his foot in his mouth. He would have gone into the town and said, “Do you realize I’m an elder of Jesus? You should listen to me.” People say, “What does that matter?” right? We don’t care.
But now he says that because really he finally is that. He’s been serving as that, and that’s the way it had been in ancient Israel, too. The elders had been lifted up out of the people, not because they wanted a title, but because they were serving.
The whole point of establishing leadership that we see going back to Moses, why did it occur? It occurred because Moses needed help, and there were certain people who were able and capable and ready to do it. Not because they wanted to be important.
And Peter here is at the point he can understand that and he can commission others to do that.
And when we talk about elder and deacon, these are not awards to say you’ve reached super Christian status. These are the church empowering someone saying, “We recognize how God is working through you. We recognize that you are doing this role, and we are praying for you and supporting you in this role.” That’s why we do that.
So it’s so important first that we get the attitude right.
Peter recognizes this, too. It’s something interesting he does in this passage as he’s talking about how does it look then if we are all doing this and then certain people rise up and are commissioned to do this or ordained to do this. What exactly is this?
And he uses two different terms to describe that. First one is this term we translate elder. And if you ever drive by a Presbyterian church, that’s the Greek word for it there. It’s the church of the elders. And so that’s the term being referred to here. So that’s the office. And that had been the term that had been used in the Old Testament times. And so Peter is saying those who are called up to help handle the workload, just like all the way back to the time of Moses and had been in the synagogue and had continued. This was not a new invention. He uses the term elder.
But then he goes on and he uses a second term as well. He uses the term overseer, or sometimes it’s translated bishop, interchangeably. And this is something that’s gotten confused over the years because some churches emphasized bishops and some churches emphasized elders. And so it’s like, here’s these two different things.
But in the New Testament, we see these two terms both used for the same role. And when he goes from elder to overseer, when he does that, he’s going from, here’s the title, here’s the thing, to what does it do? And what does it do? It oversees.
Well, overseeing can mean a lot of things. It could be the very thing that Peter probably would have wanted to do early in life. I’d like to be important. I’d like to be somebody’s boss and oversee them. It’s nice being an overseer. Always good to be the person that’s watching the other highway department workers throwing all the rock into the pit rather than being one of the ones digging up the rock. So much better. I’d like to be a manager.
Now, if you actually manage people, it isn’t always as nice as it sounds, right? But nonetheless, most of us would rather be telling someone else what to do than having to do it ourselves. And so, ah, Peter, you’ve just gone back to your old role. But that’s where it’s so important that he starts out by how is it that we live? We live as shepherds under the master shepherd.
Exercising oversight, there’s that word, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you, and not for shameful gain but eagerly.
Why do you do it? Not so you can be important and not so you can make money, right? There are plenty of people who would say, “I’ll come in and lead your group in the ancient world,” just like people come in today. And how do they do it? They do it by getting paid. “Give me enough and I’ll watch over this. Give me more and I’ll watch over it even better. Or maybe I won’t watch over it at all but I’ll take the money,” right?
I mean, we know this and we can feel the temptation. But Peter says what you’re really looking for is the person who just, God has placed such a desire to serve his people on that person’s heart that he can’t do anything else. I need to serve.
And if you don’t give me the title, I’m just going to serve anyway. I just want to serve.
The way we get to old Peter style humility and humble servant leadership, as it’s often called, is again to say who’s doing this without a title? And then the title becomes not, here let us now make you important, but here let us recognize what you’re doing so that you are empowered to do it.
And also we believe in the power of prayer, right? When we lay hands on a man and we ordain him, what are we saying? We’re saying you have our prayers. We, the congregation, are praying for you because, and this is the notable thing as we go on and we’ll see in a moment, we’re not setting someone to, again, that super Christian level, but rather saying you’re going to take on something hard because guess what? Satan’s going to attack you. Evil is going to want to thwart you doing this.
And so we might not all be called to be overseers but we’re all called to the battle together whether it’s in support and in prayer or in actually being called to do it.
Now, why is this so important? Why, if, I’ve had to kind of walk around this a bit because, you know, Peter did have a big head early on and many of us get big heads and many of us even if we don’t have them right now you give us a title and boy, that head just inflates faster than that helium tank in the back can inflate our balloon up front, right?
Why bother? Maybe it’s too much risk. Maybe we shouldn’t do this.
Well, if we go back to earlier in this epistle, we think about chapter four, there’s persecution happening in the church. And the reason that Peter is calling fellow shepherds is because when the wolves are attacking, when the attacks are coming, you need someone who’s on guard. And guess what? That hasn’t changed.
Now, thankfully, and we should literally praise God for this, that we live in a place right now, all of us here in the United States, our online family, I can’t even say that universally for our online family. Some of them live in places where this isn’t true. But for those of us who do, we praise God that we can live here and we can gather here and we can gather freely, we gather without fear, we gather without fearing the government is going to throw us in jail for gathering or something like that.
Again, just our missionary family, we’re reminded this is not something we can take for granted. But nonetheless, it doesn’t mean that spiritual warfare is gone. It just means that it has other forms. Forms where it can just lull us into lukewarmness, lull us away from excitement for Jesus. There’s all kinds of things like that.
And certainly the challenge of a society that increasingly has different values than our God and feeling out of place and trying to figure out whether when we speak, how we speak, how do we do these things, and all the implications of that, it’s still incredibly important to recognize we are in a battle. And because we’re in that battle, we do continue to have the need for those who look out for us and to look out for each other.
The key thing across the board is we actually understand what that looks like. And that’s why that humility that Peter is painting here is so incredibly important. Because the worst thing you can do is set up for the spiritual battles that are very much there, but be totally unequipped for what they actually are.
I read about a man by the name of Dante Raleigh. I never would have known Dante Raleigh. I still don’t know him, but I know of him and lots of people around the country and perhaps the world know of him now because of his dog, Nash.
And Nash is this big golden retriever, four years old. And you would think if you have a big golden retriever, you’d actually be improving the security of your home, wouldn’t you? I mean, a big dog should make your house safer, you’d hope. And of course, you want the dog to understand different contexts, right? Like if friends and family are over or the family itself is there, you don’t want them ripping them to shreds.
But on the other hand, a good guard dog should recognize when someone is there that isn’t supposed to be there and start barking and may chase the person or whatever. But, well, let’s just say Nash doesn’t understand context.
And so there’s these videos that went viral of the security cameras in the house. And the burglar breaks in while the owner of the house, Dante Raleigh, is at work. Comes in, gets some food out of the fridge, lays down and takes a nap.
And Nash realizes somebody’s there and he doesn’t bark and he doesn’t chase the man. He goes and gets his toys. Because there’s a human. And maybe he’ll play with me. And maybe we can have a really good time. And maybe he could be a new friend and this could be so great.
And you can tell at first the burglar is thinking, oh, man, I better get out of here. There’s this big dog coming at me. And then he realizes this dog wouldn’t harm a fly. He just wants to play.
Nash didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the time to guard. He didn’t understand the context. He was just bringing the toys.
All of us, in different ways, whether we’re ever given a formal title or not, are going to have opportunities to care and shepherd others. God’s going to use us in that. Don’t mistake that calling for each and every one of you. God is going to place you in your neighborhoods, in your workplaces, in your different community organizations, online. He’s going to place you in all these places. And we, distinctly, are going to be called to understand the context.
And what does that context mean? It means that we actually understand that we shouldn’t get wrapped up in the foolishness of the world. But instead, we actually are on guard that we don’t rip to shreds the people that we’re meant to bring the toys to and to just love.
But at the same time, we’re on guard for the different ways the evil one will attack his church. And we’re ready and willing to guard those around us.
Nash did not guard his family from the burglar. But each of us is going to have that opportunity. And so we need to ask, am I ready to care, to offer God’s care, to offer God’s protection, to be there with those that God’s placed in my life to care for?
We understand the context that we’re in this battle. And it’s not about what we want and how we want to play with the toys right now. We want to have fun right now. It’s about, do I need to protect the house right now?
Now, the thing that Nash didn’t need to do, though, was decide that he was such an important guard dog that everyone should serve his every need because now he protected the house. That would have been awful, too.
And likewise, Peter, as he grounds what it looks like to be servant leaders, makes it very, very clear what I’ve been talking about that we can pick up indirectly in verse 2. This is not about being over other people. It’s not about being important.
Take a look at verse 1. Peter says, “So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.”
And we have verse 2 that we looked at. Then we’ll jump right over to verse 3. “Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”
And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.
Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
We can kind of just go flying by it, but notice what Peter does in both the beginning and the end of this section. He starts off with, he’s exhorting elders. Okay, I’m important, right? I’m an elder. Well, no.
Peter’s a… Yeah, he’s an elder, but he’s an apostle. He’s one of the twelve. He’s one of the inner three of the twelve.
What does Peter say? Peter says, “I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder.” We’re fellow elders together, he says. And so this church already has elders, he’s writing to it. He’s not establishing the role, but he’s modeling the role.
He doesn’t say, “Let me exhort you as someone who’s in the office above you. I’m an apostle. I’m important. Now listen to me, you elders.” He says, fellow elder.
And in that, he’s talking about the way that we model our Christian walk in general. Whatever we do, we should look at our fellow Christians as fellow members of the flock. Fellow people who have been fished and needed to be.
Peter doesn’t call rank because he realizes in the end, and this is what we see in the mature Peter and how he can say everything else we’ve been talking about, that yes, he has certain roles because God’s given him those roles, but he is not a better man than the others that he’s addressing. He’s not, somehow, a more important person than the others he’s addressing.
What he is, is simply someone who’s been called by God to this particular role. And so he doesn’t need to play rank. He just needs to speak the truth.
How different from the man who wanted to be the greatest disciple and the most important.
Elders, if we really understand what Peter is discussing here, and he talks about not domineering in verse three, “Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples.” That’s exactly what he’s doing here.
And I understand that we also are shepherded. How does that all come together? It means that you recognize that no matter what role God places you in the church, you’re still part of the flock. We’re all sheep together. Some sheep will be called to do a certain job. We’re all sheep together.
Peter doesn’t need to pretend otherwise. He’s not some special class. He simply has a calling. But he realizes that he can speak to other people with callings, too. He doesn’t need to somehow any more seek to be more important.
Why is that? Because he wanted glory. He wanted importance. Well, it’s because of exactly what he says at the end there. He says in verse four that “you will receive the unfading crown of glory.”
In verse five, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
Seeking for glory is not found in being important, in elevating oneself. It’s in caring for others as a servant and recognizing our situation where we’re in the same boat together. We’re all in it together.
So yes, there’ll be glory, but it’s not the glory that he was seeking as a young man. It’s the glory of actually being in God’s presence. He’s seen in the risen Lord what really matters. And he’s seen what it’s like to try to seek that importance and seen what it’s like to fall from it.
But in the restoring love of Jesus that he experienced when he was restored at the end of Jesus’ earthly time, Peter’s a changed man.
In the years afterwards as God has continued to grow him, he’s a changed man and he realizes that the glory that maybe he thought he could have was not the glory that he needed. He’s equal to others. God gives unfading glory and he has an unlimited supply of unfading glory.
There isn’t a limited quantity. He offers a limited C store for details. It’s not that kind of thing. It’s available to all who turn to him.
Then we don’t need to race others to see if we can get the glory before they do.
There was a series of pins you could get when you filled up your tank with at least eight gallons at Phillips 66 over the summer. Did anyone else hear that commercial over and over and over again? No? Well, you’re going to miss out on the pins then. Sorry, the offer ended on September 27th.
But there were pins to represent the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals. And you know what they said at every commercial? Supply is limited and you had to see store for details and you had to do these certain things and then you’d get this. And if you didn’t do that, well, you’re out of luck. You can’t get it, right? It’s just gone.
But God’s glory isn’t that way. There isn’t a limited supply of glory. There isn’t an end date other than the end of our lives or the return of Jesus when he comes. And so we turn to him and we recognize that if we simply do what he’s called us to do, it’s enough.
We need to remember our purpose and that’s the thing that Peter keeps coming back to. Here’s the point. Not to elevate yourself but to care for others. Here’s the point. We don’t need to find a way to have glory in it. We just need to do what God’s called us to do.
Back to verse 2.
That’s what we’re called to do. And yes, someday when we ordain elders and deacons here, yes, we’ll talk about that in that particular role. But again, if the role of elder is to be an example to the flock, then that’s for all of us right now.
We don’t have to be the superstar. We don’t have to be the big church with the official titles before this can happen. All of us can do this right now and thankfully, and this is the beautiful thing about our church, I see you doing this right now. I see the way our church comes together and cares. It’s beautiful.
And it’s exactly what we need to be doing and we need to keep our eye on the prize. That’s why we come back to this. We come to it not because the people here don’t want to but because it’s so easy to lose sight of it and so we keep coming back to what has God called us to do.
Read a few months back and all of you know I’m about as knowledgeable on football as, well, I’m not. We’ll just go with that. I’m not. But I know that if I read a story about people that are doing something that’s exactly what they’re called to do that can stand out whether you understand all the details or not.
And so Fernando Mendoza, does anyone know Fernando Mendoza? He’s apparently a rising prospect playing for Las Vegas’ team right now and he was the quarterback for Indiana University, led them to the championship. So you could kind of feel relatively important. He’s promising. Lots of people talk about how many things he was capable of doing and the certain NFL career he’s going to have.
And so when draft day came, of course there was big commotion and a lot of players that have that kind of excitement around them. What do they do when there’s going to be a draft? They go and they go someplace where there can be a big party and a big celebration and be there with all the lights and the press and really live up this moment where they’re making it to be really important, right?
But Mendoza’s mother has MS and is in a wheelchair and has a hard time getting around. And so he decided when he knew he was going to be drafted that rather than go and do like a lot of his peers would be doing where they’re going to get all these giant festivities, he was going to stay with his mom. And so he did.
And so instead of the big lights and the shiny parties, he got the call that he was being drafted and going to be an NFL player, sitting at home with his mom.
And then what did he do? He immediately was drafted and suddenly has a lot of money coming in. He donated $500,000 to the society studying for a cure for MS.
And I thought about that. It’s so easy when suddenly you feel like you have a chance to be important to forget what it is that you’re actually supposed to do and to say, you know, it stinks that you can’t be with me after all those years you drove me to all the practices and did all this, but I have to get my 15 minutes of fame. I need to live the big league life here. I need to go do this.
Or to say, you know, yeah, I’m going to get a lot of money now, but I have a lot of things I want to buy. But what did he do? He wanted to actually continue to care for his mom and to help find a cure for this disease. And that’s what he did.
I don’t know if he’ll actually live up to all the promise that people are saying, but in a sense, he already has because you know what was really important?
I think over the years, no matter what sport, if you look at what do the best athletes do? They use that position they have to play a game to do something bigger than the game, to actually help people and to make a difference.
And we’ve seen brothers and sisters in Christ who rise to those levels, who use the platform to speak for Jesus. And that’s the right attitude. Serving your loved ones and a broader community of those hurting is the right attitude. Those are the things that matter, not the lights and all the people that suddenly want to be your friend because you’re important now.
And Peter didn’t understand that at first. See, he was drafted by Jesus and suddenly felt pretty important. And for a long time, he had a hard time actually understanding what mattered.
And there are going to be times when suddenly, maybe it’s not a position, but it’s some opportunity we have to serve the kingdom. And we start to believe our own press. We start to believe that we’re important because we’re important. And people should think that we’re important.
Peter would say to that, that’s not what you’re called to do. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. But you know who’s important? It’s Jesus. And you know what he’s called me to do? It’s not to get the big league press and go to the big league parties and for everyone to think of how important I am. It’s to serve my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Because we follow the one who ultimately shepherds us.
What did Jesus do? Jesus became a fish. He became a man. He came into this world to live in this aquarium, this pond that is an undesirable pond filled with algae of sin all over the place. He came into this world. Why? Because he came to serve us.
And so what does it mean when we’re fishers of men? It means that we come to serve others too. That we don’t forget that our Lord came into this world for us. So we come in and we live humbly in this world too to serve others.
If Jesus could become a fish to serve us, we shouldn’t try to pretend to be something more as we serve other fish. But rather we’re fish fishing for fish. And that’s what we see in Peter’s life. Let’s pray that it’s what we see in ours.
Lord, we do pray that you would guide us and help us to be those who are humble and faithful to the calling that you’ve given us. It’s easy to make ourselves important. It’s easy to believe our own press, to think that somehow we should have these big titles. And if we have a title that was rightly bestowed, that we’re important because we have that title.
But Lord, would you simply help us to go and see wherever you set before us is the people you’ve placed around us. Here’s an opportunity for us to serve.
Would you help us no matter what gifts you give us, no matter what calling you give us to remember that we are called to serve. To serve your people, to serve people who are very much fellow fish with us. That we all share being sinners together. But we serve the sinless one.
Would you help us to serve each other as we walk in the calling that you’ve given us. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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