September 26, 2019 - Suggested Reading John 21 for the September 29th message on Jonah in our worship service at 10:00AM

““Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!””

John 21:18-19 (NIV) 

John 21 is one of my favourite passages in all of Scripture, for it records our Lord’s gracious dealings with his most vocal disciple. Not only does our Lord restore Peter by drawing out of Peter three declarations of Peter’s love for Jesus, while at the same time commissioning Peter to love and care for the Lord’s people. Our Lord also prepares Peter for his cruel death at the hands of the Romans.

We can readily see that Peter remembered that Jesus taught that our lives are to glorify God, just by comparing Matthew 5:16 to 1 Peter 2:12, and also by realizing that he spent his life glorifying his God by caring for the church of Christ. No doubt Peter remembered these Words of his Lord as the Romans prepared to crucify him, and no doubt these Words were part of Peter’s motivation to request an upside-down crucifixion – Peter wanted to glorify God in his death, just as his life brought glory
to God.

Someone else dressing us and leading us where we don’t want to go describes the experience of a Canadian senior entering a nursing home. We may think that this a poor comparison - for dying in a nursing home surrounded by those who care for us is not comparable to Peter’s death surrounded by those who were there to harm him. Yet if dying in a nursing home is the death God has chosen for us, may we desire to glorify God through that journey.

Jonah chapter 4 records that Jonah didn’t want to live any more - he wasn’t happy with God’s gracious treatment of his worst enemy.

Was he trying to manipulate God in destroying the city of Nineveh?

Or did he want to have his life ended because a prophet whose prophecy of destruction didn’t come true would reflect badly on the God he spoke for?

Either way Jonah still had life to live, and he didn’t take his death into his own hands, he left it
to God. 

May we glorify God in our life and our death.