Conversion and Consecration.
(John 1:19.42; Luke 5:1-11.)
THIS scripture in the fourth Gospel without doubt gives us the moment when Simon Peter, the fisherman of Bethsaida, first met and got to know the Lord Jesus, whom to know is life eternal. No more important epoch in a man’s history could possibly be than this―the moment when he is brought into personal contact with the living Saviour. Hence there is a most important question., which each one of our hearts should ask and answer before God―viz., Have I been brought to have to do with this living Saviour?
If you have not yet been brought to Jesus, my reader, give me the joy that Andrew had in his day, as he led his brother to Jesus―give me the joy of bringing you to meet that Saviour in this day. This is the evangelist’s work in the Gospel.
Let us see now what led to this warm―hearted man―Simon the son of Jonas―being brought to the Lord, for the links in the chain that lead to conversion, whether his or yours, or mine, are ever very interesting.
The Lord had sent to Israel at this moment a servant who roused the people from end to end of the land. No smooth-spoken prophet was John the Baptist. He spoke to people of their sins and of their need, and multitudes were aroused and gathered round him (see Matt. 3:1-12), until he, as it were, shook them off at the feet of the Saviour. John preached repentance. “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” was the clarion note that reached the conscience of the multitudes that heard him. Thoroughly awakened by his preaching of coming judgment, John then told them, in answer to their query, “What shall we do then?” (see Luke 3:1-14), all that they should do, or should not do. To the publicans he preached, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you;” to the soldiers he said, “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages.” He, said, moreover, “Now also the ax is laid to the root of the tree;” and if an ax be laid to the root of a tree, down it must go. In a way, therefore, John foretold the ruin of the nation. If the ax were laid to the root of the tree moreover it would show what was inside the tree, and it might be rotten to the core. If the ax of God’s Word lay open―as it does―the heart of man, it shows it to be rotten to the very core (see Mark 7:20, 23).
It was strong language John used as the multitudes came out to him. “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” fell not only on the ears of the common people, but also on “many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism.” How they were going to escape the damnation of hell was urgently sought of them, as I would ask it of you, too, my reader. It is a query that must be faced, alike in John’s day, and in ours.
John could not give his hearers pardon, nor preach forgiveness, but he told them if they were repentant they would go down under the waters of Jordan, and be baptized, confessing their sins; and they did so. As he was thus baptizing, there came to him a Man whom John knew to be the sinless One. He had no sins to confess. He was the only sinless man there ever was in this world, but He asked to be baptized of John―took His place, though sinless, with the remnant that was turning round to God, and, as He came up out of the water, the Spirit of God came down upon Him, like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaimed, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17).
After this John sees Jesus one day coming unto him, and he gives this lovely testimony of Him, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” John got the sense in his soul. Here is the One who can really bless man. You get the atoning work of the Lamb of God first, and then that He is the One who baptizes with the Holy Ghost. We must learn these two things, first, that Jesus is the One that can take away our sins, and then that He is the One who gives the Holy Ghost, and blesses. The Lord puts away sin in two ways―He puts away the sins of His own people by dying for their sins upon the cross, and then for those who, alas! refuse Him, He baptizes them with fire―that is, judgment sweeps the whole scene. Oh, come to Him, my unsaved reader, while you can get the forgiveness of your sins, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and escape the certainly coming baptism of fire, the judgment which is rapidly nearing.
John’s first testimony to Jesus seems to have had little effect―no one followed the Lord―hence we hear his voice again raised as he says, the day following, “Behold the Lamb of God.” I do not think John is exactly preaching here; he loved his Master, and saw His moral beauty, and as he stands and says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” he becomes the channel of introducing to the Bridegroom the nucleus of the Bride, as those two disciples were detached from himself, and followed Jesus.
I grant you the Bride, the Church, was not formed till afterward, but I have no doubt you get here the nucleus of that which becomes the Bride. One of the two who heard John speak was Andrew, and I am inclined to regard the other as the man who wrote this Gospel, the one who does not name himself save as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” John the son of Zebedee.
The Baptist spoke in a lovely, meditative manner, as his eyes rested upon that incomparable Man, the One whom he knew to be Jehovah, the One who came to take up the whole question of sin; and as he says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” those two disciples turn, and, leaving John, follow Jesus. And thenceforward John disappears, and Jesus fills the whole scene.
Jesus turning saw those two disciples following, and said to them, “What seek ye?” Searching question! Is it fame you are seeking, my reader, knowledge, power, or riches? The Lord asks you this from the glory today. Can you answer Him as these two did? “Master, where dwellest thou?” i.e., We only want you, we want to know where we can be always sure of finding you. “They came and saw where he dwelt.” Capernaum is the place called “his own city” (Matt. 9:1), the place in which His most mighty works were done, and concerning which, at length, he is fain to say, “And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day; but I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee” (Matt. 11:23, 24). The higher the privilege the more terrible the judgment when it falls on one who has not answered to the privilege.
“They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour,” that is, there were two hours of the day left.
Oh those two hours with Jesus! I ask you, Have you ever spent two hours with Jesus? I am sure if you have, you have come out and tried to take somebody else back to enjoy what you enjoyed. These disciples did. There comes out at once personal testimony, and let me tell you that quiet personal testimony is often worth far more than public preaching. That quiet man, Andrew, of whom we hear no more, save that he companied with the Lord till the end, became the means of the conversion of the most prominent man of the twelve, the record of whose life and ministry has such a large place in the Scriptures, and who became afterward the means of the conversion of three thousand souls in one day.
It is beautiful to see how Andrew goes at once to testify of the One he had found, and he begins at home. “He first findeth his own brother Simon.” He begins from the center, and works out to the circumference.
Andrew not only finds Simon, “but he brought him to Jesus.” Happy service! Have you, my reader, been brought to Jesus yet? If not, let me lead you to Him now. Come to Him now!
I think I hear that stalwart fisherman speaking that day, and saying to his brother, “We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ; come to Him, Simon,” and he came.
It is not a question of having an immense amount of knowledge here, but it was a Person who was known, and to Him Andrew brings his own brother Simon. “And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” This was a wonderful moment in Simon’s history. He gets into the presence of the Lord, and what does he learn? He learns that the One whom he had never seen before, and, as far as he knew, had never seen him before, knew all about him. Jesus knew what Simon was, and He knows what you are, my reader. He knew that Simon was a sinner, needing a Saviour, and He knows that you are a sinner, needing a Saviour too. The Lord says to Simon, “Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” What does the changing of his name mean? In Old Testament times the changing of the name was very frequent. God changed Abram’s name, and Sarai’s; He changed Jacob’s too; Pharaoh changed Joseph’s name, and Nebuchadnezzar Daniel’s, and the King of Egypt changed the name of the last King of Judah.
The changing of the name, then, implied that the one whose name was changed was the vassal, the subject, the property of the one who so changed it. The Lord said, as it were, Simon, you are Mine, spirit, soul, and body, and I shall do what I like with you. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live,” was being fulfilled in the Galilean fisherman’s history. Simon heard the voice of the Son of God then, and though perhaps at the time he did not know the meaning of what He said, yet when he writes his first epistle afterward he had found it out, for he says, “To whom coming, as unto a living stone... ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.” What is a stone? A little bit of a rock. And what is a Christian? A little bit of Christ, for he is a member of Christ.
Believers now in the Lord Jesus Christ are linked with, yea, united to Him. Peter was learning this truth, slowly I admit, but the necessity and blessedness of it are apparent as, by-and-by, we hear him saying, “To whom coming as unto a living stone,... ye also, as living stones, are built up”―that is, Christ communicates that life which is His to us, and we become an integral part of that house which God is building; and is not being a living stone a very different thing from being a dead sinner? Do you ask, How am I to get this life? You must get into personal contact with Jesus. Andrew brought Peter to Jesus, and Jesus said to him, “Thou art Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone”―you are a living stone, Peter, and you belong to Me from this moment.
And will not you, my reader, belong to Him today, will not you trust Him now?
The whole question of sin is settled by the death of Christ. He went into death and annulled it. He destroyed him who had the power of death. He took sin upon him, and put it away, and now at the right hand of God He says, “Look unto me, come unto me.” If you come He will give you eternal life on the spot, and make you a living stone. Peter then, that day, had life communicated to him from the Son of God. “He passed from death unto life” as he stood before the Son of God that day. His soul was forever linked with the Lord from that day. I do not say that he followed the Lord then, but here you get the moment of, Peter’s conversion, he is quickened with the very life of Jesus, and becomes “a living stone.” This then is the account of HIS CONVERSION.
For a time we hear no more of Peter, he had evidently gone back to his earthly calling, but now We will turn to another eventful day in his history. We find it in Luke 5, where you get what I may call HIS CONSECRATION. In this chapter he sets out to follow Jesus; yes, forsakes all, and follows Him; and it is a happy moment for us when we forsake all and follow Jesus. The Lord goes down to Peter in the very midst of his business. He Himself was, as ever, going on with His mission of grace and mercy to souls, and in order to more advantageously speak to the multitudes who were thronging to hear Him, He uses Peter’s boat as a pulpit.
In John 1 He sought to teach Peter one lesson, namely, this, “Peter, you belong to me,” though evidently Peter did not then fully learn it. Now He teaches him another lesson, namely, “Peter, you, and all that you have, belong to me.” He steps into Peter’s boat, does not ask for it, because it belonged to Him, and then He says, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draft.” He will not be beholden to any man, so He is going to pay Peter now for the use of his boat. Peter says, “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing, nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.” Peter obeys, for he knows now something of who He is who spoke, and, as a result, found that he never had taken such a haul of fish in all his days.
Thoroughly “astonished” thereat, and awakened thereby to a sense of his sin, Peter “fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” He saw now not two boatloads of fish, but the Godhead glory of the Son of Man, the Messiah, the more than Man, Son of God. He saw the application of Psalms 8:4-8 to his Master as the fish obey Him. He is convicted about his sin, his guilt. He had never had the truth of his sinful state raised before. He had to learn what he was. He had learned something of what Jesus was in John 1, and something more of what he was in Luke 5, and now he had to learn his own good-for-nothingness, his guiltiness, but he felt too, I cannot do without Thee, O Lord, and he gets as close as he can to Jesus’ knees, while he says, “Lord, depart from me.”
Jesus sweetly calms his troubled conscience as He says unto him, “Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” This troubled soul is sweetly calmed by the Lord’s own blessed ministry, “Fear not”; and to every troubled soul, in this our day, He says now, “Fear not.”
“And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all and followed him.” No doubt most people would have thought Peter a most improvident man, would have said he had better go to market with his fish first, but Peter heeding the call “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19; Mark 1:17), gave up all that had hitherto entranced him, in the day when it was most bright and prosperous. He had a heart to be for the Lord, and the Lord only. Christ eclipsed everything in his soul, and he leaves all to be near that Saviour, to be His companion, and His servant, as He passes through this scene. Happy choice, blessed submission of faith, and answer of affection!
Now, my reader, if Jesus says to you today, “Follow thou me,” what will you say? Let it be, Lord, from this day forth my heart is thine! The Lord grant it.
W. T. P. W.
(To be continued if the Lord will.)