Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] We are continuing our series called the Passion of Jesus, where we are walking through the last hours of Jesus's life leading up to his crucifixion. And I'll be honest, that's a heavy series, right? Like, that's a heavy chunk of text with these closing narratives of Matthew.
[00:00:25] They take us through hours of awful, right?
[00:00:30] And yet these are powerful stories. They're worth sitting in, they're worth stewing on a lot of times around Easter and Good Friday and things like that. Like, we'll do the whole narrative at once, and that's beautiful, and we should do that.
[00:00:47] But I also think the different scenes of the Passion narrative, as heavy and difficult as they may be, they're worth taking our time through.
[00:00:56] And the reason is simple, because this is the passion of Jesus.
[00:01:01] It's his passion. It's his. His story. Hebrews 12 tells us that it was the joy set before Christ, the glory of God and our salvation that allowed him to face and endure the humiliation of the cross with strength, with determination, that he had joy set before him. It's such a. An important reminder for us as we go through these stories that the cross didn't happen to Jesus.
[00:01:27] Jesus chose the cross.
[00:01:30] Every onlooker. Every onlooker saw a quirky miracle worker who got swallowed up by the machine that is the temple in Rome.
[00:01:40] But Jesus is not a victim.
[00:01:43] He chose this.
[00:01:44] He set this up.
[00:01:46] He walked into it. These dark Passion stories are Jesus's plan for your life and my life, and they're beautiful and they're worth our time.
[00:01:59] We started our exploration a few weeks ago with this high point of the Last Supper, and we. And how Jesus was celebrating and inaugurating this gospel with his closest friends. But. But even in that, it quickly turned to what was coming as he started to predict his own coming. Betrayal and abandonment. Not just from Judas. We highlight that one because we should, but also from all of his followers, Peter specifically, who would deny him and leave him at the worst possible moment. And then the story moves to the garden, and we see Jesus's humanity on display. He didn't want to suffer and be tortured. A big surprise, right? But he didn't want that.
[00:02:40] He wanted us. He wanted the glory of God. He wanted heaven. He wanted eternity. And so in the midst of his wrestling in the garden, he chooses the glory of God. He chooses the Gospel of grace, and he resolutely chooses the cross.
[00:02:54] And then the trap snatches and the guards show up armed with Judas the betrayer. And Jesus is arrested and all the apostles flee and leave him abandoned. And that's where we pick up our story today.
[00:03:11] Right? So, like, good morning, welcome. But, like, we're going to jump into it. See, first, as we read through the Passion narrative in these coming weeks, it's pretty likely that you will be struck by the sheer injustice of it all.
[00:03:27] You should be. It's legitimately terrible what was done to Jesus and how he is treated in all of this.
[00:03:35] But hopefully our text today will ground you in the midst of this narrative, because today we're going to look at the story of Jesus's trial and we're going to look at Peter's denial of Jesus. You can, by the way, you can go ahead and Turn to Matthew 26 if you want to. That's where we're going to be today. If you don't have a Bible with you, we have house Bibles around the room. Just look under the chairs. Feel free to grab one. We really believe in the importance of access to God's Word here at Emmanuel. So if you're here today and you don't own a physical copy of God's Word, we please snag a pew Bible or talk to one of the pastors. We'll get you a nicer one than that. But Matthew 26 is where we're going to be today. And my main point is going to be pretty simple, I think, honestly, pretty intuitive for most of us. It's just this. We are all Peter.
[00:04:17] That's. That's the point of the text today. And what I mean by that is this.
[00:04:23] All of us deny Christ.
[00:04:25] You deny Christ.
[00:04:27] I deny Christ.
[00:04:29] We do.
[00:04:30] It is part of what it means to be a broken, sinful person, even a broken, sinful person doing their best to pursue Christ, to pursue the gospel. We are all of us, Peter.
[00:04:41] Now, I know that idea as it goes through this room is going to hit us differently, right? Like, I'm pretty confident there's some of us in this room who hear that and kind of go, yeah, yeah, we have an awareness of our own abiding sin nature and our struggles with habituated sin patterns. And we can think about the ways that we continually choose our flesh over the gospel, over the glory of God. And we kind of just go, yeah, we can look at the story of Peter's denial, and it's kind of familiar, right?
[00:05:15] But I also know that some of us deeply love Jesus, and it's really hard to consider this story and not get angry at Peter. Right?
[00:05:24] I mean, who the heck. What kind of person would leave their friend hanging like that.
[00:05:31] And here's the thing. Both of these reactions are rooted in the truth of the story. They both are.
[00:05:36] But I want to invite you today, regardless of how that idea hits you, I want to invite you to consider this story of Jesus and his relationship to Peter through the lens of your own relationship to Jesus.
[00:05:49] Because I think if we are sober and we are honest, we will see the truth that all of us really do choose to deny Christ, that it really is a universal experience.
[00:06:00] And if you're here today and you're one of those people where stories like this can bring you to a really dark place of sorrow, I want to encourage you to hold on. Because the reality is there's hope for us deniers.
[00:06:13] There's hope for us.
[00:06:15] That is the story of the go of the Gospel. Beloved, Jesus died for deniers.
[00:06:21] He died for Peter.
[00:06:23] And he dies for you. And he dies for me. So pray with me, church. And let's look at this text. Jesus, we.
[00:06:30] We need you today to be our preacher, to be our discipler, to be our teacher.
[00:06:36] Holy Spirit. We pray that you would illuminate your text, that you would cut through everything that's going on in our hearts. Lord, in this space, we have brought with us into this room such a myriad of experiences. There are highs and lows and joys and sorrows and victories and holiness and dark sin and secrets and shame. And we have brought all of them in here with us, and they're mixing together in our hearts and our minds.
[00:07:02] Spirit, we need you to be the voice that breaks through our current circumstances and speaks your truth to our heart. Today we need to be challenged. We need to be encouraged. We need to be reminded of truths we know and have forgotten.
[00:07:17] We need to meet with you today.
[00:07:19] And so, Jesus, we ask that you would do this work in our heart, Father, we need you to do this.
[00:07:25] So we pray it in your name, Jesus. Amen.
[00:07:28] Okay, Matthew 26. We're going to start in verse 57, and we're going to read this in two chunks. We read this.
[00:07:38] Those who had arrested Jesus led him away to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had convened.
[00:07:46] Peter was following him at a distance right to the high priest's courtyard. He went in and was sitting with the servants to see the outcome. The chief priests in the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false testimony against Jesus so they could put him to death. But they could not find any, even though there were many false witnesses who came forward.
[00:08:05] Finally, two Came forward and stated, this man said, I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.
[00:08:12] The high priest stood up and said to him, don't you have an answer to what these men are testifying against you?
[00:08:18] But Jesus kept silent. The high priest said to him, I charge you under oath by the living God, Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.
[00:08:27] You have said it, Jesus told him, but I tell you, in the future you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.
[00:08:37] Then the high priest tore his robes and said, he has blasphemed.
[00:08:42] Why do we still need witnesses? See, now you've heard the blasphemy. What is your decision? And they answered, he deserves death.
[00:08:51] And they spat on his face and beat him. And others slapped him and said, prophesy to us, Messiah, who was it that hit you?
[00:09:01] I hate this scene.
[00:09:04] It's so difficult to sit in this.
[00:09:07] But we must, we need to allow ourselves to see, to consider, to experience this facet of the story.
[00:09:15] This is all Jesus's work for you, beloved.
[00:09:18] So let's, let's do him the honor of journeying with him to the cross. Amen.
[00:09:24] So the Sanhedrin, if you don't know that word, was kind of like a ruling counselor court for the Jews. It was led by a mixture in this day of priests, scribes, and rabbis.
[00:09:36] And the Sanhedrin sends the temple guard along with Judas to arrest Jesus in the garden. And last week we saw them take him into custody.
[00:09:47] This is kind of a weird detail. We actually know a good amount about the temple guard. In the first century, this was a, this was a group of Levites assigned to the protection of the temple. And they actually had a legal exempt from the Roman authorities. They existed as kind of like a private police force for the functioning of the temple in Jerusalem. And we even know, like, we literally even know what their uniforms look like. Like that was, that was like preserved for us.
[00:10:13] Imagine the stereotype in your brain of a Roman soldier, you know, like the leather cuirass and the skirt and everything. And just replace their like horse hair helmet with a cone. And that's it, that's, that's their whole deal. Now I'm gonna be honest, it's hard for me to think of a soldier with a cone on his head. You take it seriously. But that, that's, that was their deal. And so these guys, armed and with legal authority, show up in the garden as Jesus is praying.
[00:10:43] And we can all imagine the scene, Judas walks up and Jesus says, what you are about to do, do quickly.
[00:10:49] Greetings, Rabbi. It kisses him.
[00:10:53] Then they. The chaos breaks out.
[00:10:56] The guards come in, they fall down, they get back up, they're moving around. Apostles are running. Peter attacks the guy, Jesus heals him. But it all comes together in this moment.
[00:11:07] Jesus is arrested in the apostles flee.
[00:11:11] And you have to remember, like, being arrested is not fun. I don't know if you've ever experienced it. It's not fun.
[00:11:17] But we live in a culture. You're all going, have you experienced, at best, we. I'm not gonna answer that. We live in a culture where we have something called Miranda rights, where if you get arrested, you have protections and rights over you that doesn't exist in this day.
[00:11:35] Brutal treatment of prisoners, even just accused prisoners, was the norm.
[00:11:40] And so as the apostles flee and these armed men crowd over, Jesus would have bound him ropes or chains.
[00:11:48] It would have began to shove him and pull him along as they moved toward where they were going. And the idea of blows and shoves and trips and yanks even as this experience starts, like that would be the norm for how prisoners were treated. Right. This isn't even strange that Jesus is getting that kind of abuse that early, but. But he would have been.
[00:12:11] And what the text tells us is that they lead him to Caiaphas's house.
[00:12:17] We're going to see a couple aspects of this narrative that actually really are strange historically, and I'm going to poke that out for a minute. But they lead him to Caiaphas's house where the Sanhedrin has been gathered. Probably not all of them, but at least enough for a quorum. And they're. They're waiting there to begin this kind of pre trial or trial of Jesus.
[00:12:35] And the text tells us, actually, if you look between the four Gospels, the text tells us that Peter and John followed behind at a distance. And we don't know why or how, but John had some kind of relational connection with Caiaphas's family.
[00:12:51] And so John's able to get. Get them in, but Peter actually lingers.
[00:12:57] Remember, this is the middle of the night. And this trial, by the way, lasts from the middle of the night until sunup. It's hours and hours.
[00:13:04] Peter lingers here. It says in our text, he wants to see the outcome. He wants to know what's going to happen to Jesus.
[00:13:12] And so he's kind of lingering around the edge, the outskirts, trying to hear what's happening during Jesus's trial. But I want you to hold on to that piece. Because what that's telling us is this. We have two scenes today, really two trials. Today, Jesus faces his trial before the Sanhedrin, and then Peter is going to face his own trial for himself and his faith and his claims. And these scenes happen simultaneously, but Matthew's going to present them to us one after the other. And so we're going to walk through the scene with Jesus, then we'll back up and we'll walk through the scene with Peter. But we need to understand is that as Jesus is brought into the Sanhedrin, he already probably has bruises welling up on his cheeks.
[00:13:55] He's already bound, he's already being mistreated, he's brought into this trial.
[00:14:01] Now here's. This is a little bit of kind of some like, nerdy history stuff here. But I actually think it's helpful we don't have preserved for us the legal proceedings and structures for the first century Sanhedrin, but the writers of the Gospels assume you know all that stuff. And so they take you through scenes like this, assuming you understand how it all works. And we actually don't have a lot of that history preserved. We do have some legal history and structure preserved for how the Sanhedrin and their trials operated. But the earliest one we have is from about 100 years after this scene. And so think of it this way.
[00:14:38] Imagine if I gave you a court transcript to look through, or even just a story of a court trial, right? And that trial was from 1925.
[00:14:49] And the only standard for law you had was right now, 20, 25. Right. 100 years difference. There's a whole lot of things that you would still know that would be lockstep, that would be just locked in and permanent over that time. There's a lot of things you could infer that would seem right. There'd be some stuff you just wouldn't know. There'd be some differences there. And so that's kind of where we're left with this scene. There's a couple things we can say really for certain that are strange or incorrect about Jesus's trial. There's a couple things we can say with pretty good confidence are fishy. There's a couple things that we kind of just like, who knows?
[00:15:23] So I want to walk us through those.
[00:15:25] The big one is this. You notice that the whole trial is set with an outcome in mind, right?
[00:15:33] They're meeting here to look for their excuse to kill Jesus.
[00:15:37] They're not looking for witnesses to describe Jesus's ministry. They're looking for witnesses to tell them how they can kill him.
[00:15:45] And they're unashamedly seeking out false witnesses.
[00:15:50] Now this still, even though the ruling people with all the power and Jesus is arrested, this still takes hours. And you think, if they're the ones in authority and position, like, why does it take hours? Let's just say they want to kill him and kill him. Well, because we know enshrined in law in the Sanhedrin law from Scripture is that they can't actually condemn someone to death without the agreeing testimony of two or three witnesses.
[00:16:13] And so they start paying people to come in and bear false testimony about Jesus. And it takes hours because none of the paid false witnesses have stories that line up because they're making it up.
[00:16:24] And so they're left with this problem. It takes them hours to actually make this thing work.
[00:16:29] And I want you to envision that scene.
[00:16:31] Jesus's these homes, the way they kind of work, they would have these really large open courtyards that kind of opened up into the house where you could set up an area in the middle with tables for gatherings or parties. And then kind of around the edges is where the servants would hang out. So there's probably 30 to 50 guys set up in the seat of judge alongside the high priest. And Jesus is standing there, he's bound, he's already bruised, he's already injured. And the guards are around him, keeping him in place. And they keep bringing up witness after witness who's just saying ludicrous things about Jesus and evil things about Jesus. And the text tells us that he just stands there silently for hours, not defending himself, not saying that's not true. That's obviously not. No. He just lets the witnesses pour out what they're saying over and over, speaking poorly against him, wrongly against him. It's important to understand that aspect of the scene. This takes all night. They're up all night doing this.
[00:17:33] There's a couple things we can infer about, some things that we think are pretty likely about this. One of them is this.
[00:17:40] Scholars are pretty confident that at this point it was actually illegal for the Sanhedrin to have a trial at night.
[00:17:46] They had to be during the day.
[00:17:48] And it's also, we know this one pretty certainly they weren't allowed to actually give their resolution on the same day as the trial. It had to be at least 24 hours between the trial and the verdict.
[00:18:01] And that's not followed here.
[00:18:03] And the other piece, it's a little less certain, but pretty confident, is that they weren't allowed to bring in witnesses until the defendant represented their own aspect of the story.
[00:18:14] None of that happens here.
[00:18:16] This trial's at night. It's a secret.
[00:18:19] This trial starts with the witnesses against the defendant, and this trial begins with the verdict already in light.
[00:18:27] And so we know this trial is a sham.
[00:18:30] This trial is box checking for these men in power and authority to get what they want, right?
[00:18:37] And I think the piece of that that's so interesting is that in the midst of all of this injustice, like, I don't know how your heart's wired for stuff like this that, like, gets my blood boiling. Like, when you start going down that list of, like, everything Jesus should have had access to, every right that was violated, everything that was like, no, no, that's not how you're supposed to do that. That's not how things work. That's against the law. Like, that upsets me the more I read it. And yet Christ's response is so strange.
[00:19:09] Christ's response is so counterintuitive.
[00:19:13] He just stands there silently.
[00:19:16] The normal response for any defendant trying to preserve their life in what is very obviously a capital trial, right?
[00:19:24] Where your life is on the line would be to deny the accusations, to speak in their own defense, to assert the truth over the lies. But Jesus doesn't bother responding.
[00:19:39] These witnesses, these accusations are irrelevant to him.
[00:19:44] I think it's important to understand that aspect of the story.
[00:19:48] Jesus isn't behaving how anyone in his circumstances would behave.
[00:19:53] And I think as we read the story, we have to just assume on some level, like, Jesus knows how this trial is going to go anyway, right? Like, he knows this isn't going in his favor.
[00:20:05] But I think even that's the wrong way to think about it.
[00:20:09] See, here's the thing. I. I think that we need to remember in this moment, Jesus has no need to fight in this trial, no need to fight for his freedom, no need to fight for the truth. Because Jesus has already fought the battle of this trial.
[00:20:25] He already did so in the garden, where it actually mattered, in his conversation with the Father, where he said, this is what's coming and this is what I want, and they don't line up.
[00:20:37] He already fought this battle, and he already chose submission to the Father.
[00:20:42] He already chose the glory of God. He already chose the way of the cross.
[00:20:47] And so when he steps into this trial and injustice upon injustice is poured out on him, he's already resolute.
[00:20:55] He already knows what his plan is for the next 24 hours.
[00:21:01] This is God's plan.
[00:21:04] If he would be Betrayed that He would be crucified. And he's already said yes to it.
[00:21:10] He doesn't defend himself to these priests and rabbis, but because he has come to this house in complete control of the entire cosmos.
[00:21:20] Right?
[00:21:22] Jesus is Yahweh.
[00:21:25] He's God, the Creator and sustainer. Go back and read Colossians 1.
[00:21:32] Jesus is the one who made all things, and he is the One through whom all things continue in their being.
[00:21:39] Jesus, the creator and sustainer of the universe, is standing in this trial and by his will is maintaining the lives of his accusers.
[00:21:49] By his will, he's continuing the beating of their hearts and the breathing of their lungs as they pour out lies upon Him.
[00:21:57] He has no need to defend himself.
[00:21:59] He is in control of this situation.
[00:22:02] Right?
[00:22:05] But his silence escalates the situation. And finally the high priest approaches him and challenges him. He draws Jesus into a holy oath that leaves no room for questions. Are you the Messiah? Are you the Son of God? Tell us yes or no.
[00:22:21] And this really is the piece to understand. Kind of the seed you have to remember. The Jews didn't actually connect divinity, Son of God to this idea of the Messiah.
[00:22:33] They didn't have any idea of. Like Trinity and Father Son in their theology, it was assumed that the Messiah would be a new David.
[00:22:43] He'd be a military and spiritual leader for sure, but he would be a man.
[00:22:47] And Jesus, in his public ministry at least, has been insinuating that he has some special relationship, some special connection with God. And even though Jesus has been really careful with his public language around this, all these leaders in the room, the Sanhedrin, they know that he believes he's the Messiah. They know that. That part's obvious. And by the way, it wasn't illegal to believe you were the Messiah. You could be dumb and wrong, but that wasn't a legal matter, that wasn't blasphemous.
[00:23:21] But if he's claiming some divinity, some special connection to God, that's what they want to know.
[00:23:29] That we as the readers know, Jesus has already accepted the mantle of Messiah. He's already let his followers know this is what's going on.
[00:23:37] But if you go back and reread Matthew through the lens of just what is private speech and what is public speech, you find out these leaders have an inkling.
[00:23:47] In fact, if you go back and read the Parable of the Vineyard that Jesus spoke directly to them in the temple, they got a little more than an inkling, but they don't have proof, right?
[00:23:58] And so Caiaphas challenges Jesus directly. Tell us, yes or no. Are you the Messiah? Are you the Son of God?
[00:24:07] No more dancing around. No more sitting quietly. Tell us.
[00:24:11] He makes him swear an oath.
[00:24:13] You have to remember that this proceeding, right? Like I've already said this, it's taken hours.
[00:24:19] We've gone through the night. We're getting into the next morning as Jesus has stood silently. Now, I share this idea a lot around our Good Friday gatherings, but just as a reminder, this is Caiaphas, the high priest.
[00:24:34] The high priest has a really special role in Jewish religious life.
[00:24:39] This is the man charged with interceding for Israel directly to God.
[00:24:44] This is the man who stepped into the holy of holies to offer sacrifice for Israel on the day of atonement. This is the man out of all of Israel who should know God.
[00:24:56] He should know him, should know him face to face as Moses knows him.
[00:25:02] But as you think about the scene, you imagine this man and they're up late at night and it's dark, and you can see the anger on his face as he comes forward, looking at Jesus, just going, just tell us.
[00:25:15] Speak it straight.
[00:25:17] Angry, arrogant, looking down on Christ, but not recognizing his Creator, not seeing him for who he really is.
[00:25:28] Tell us plainly, he says.
[00:25:31] And Jesus responds, I love this.
[00:25:35] You said it.
[00:25:36] You said it.
[00:25:38] This is the exact same phrase he uses when he calls out Judas, betrayal. And Judas says, surely not I. He goes, you said it.
[00:25:46] This is a very Jewish rabbi way to talk, by the way. If you. If you read, like into some Jewish history and rabbinic history.
[00:25:53] I have one scholar I read this week said that if you read this in Aramaic, that the phrase kind of would pack the meaning of. Well, I wouldn't have said it that way, but you said it sounds good enough.
[00:26:03] Which is.
[00:26:05] It's just a really, like the first thing out of his mouth after hours of trials to go, yeah, close enough.
[00:26:12] Like, that's. That's a wild answer.
[00:26:16] Another guy said that it kind of means, I wouldn't have said it that way, but I'm not going to bother correcting you.
[00:26:23] Which is another. It's just man. Kind of a salty way to answer, yes, I am the Messiah, I am the Son of God, but that doesn't mean what you think it means, which you can't use that phrase without remembering Enigma, Montoya for a minute. Right?
[00:26:38] Do you not think that means what you think it means?
[00:26:40] And Jesus goes on to explain why this is the only real words of defense he gives in his trial.
[00:26:48] He doesn't just have a special connection To God. He is God, and you're going to know that soon enough when I come in. Power and authority sitting at the right hand of the Father in judgment.
[00:27:01] Oh, my gosh.
[00:27:03] The first time he opens his mouth in his trial is to drop this massive bomb.
[00:27:09] And I would say in this moment, Jesus wins his trial.
[00:27:14] He quotes the Psalms, he quotes the prophet Daniel, basically saying, yes, I am the Messiah. And you obviously don't see it now, but you will. And when you do see it, I'll be the one doing the judging, not you.
[00:27:28] But Caiaphas, his self deceit.
[00:27:32] He doesn't see the warning. He misses it.
[00:27:36] He's too happy that he's gotten what he wants, right?
[00:27:39] You heard him say it. Blasphemy. And he rips his robe. This is something the high priest could only do, by the way, in the presence of blasphemy. It was part of their legal proceeding. It's not just him being dramatic. It's a specific thing they had to do. You can imagine the grin that spreads across his face as he tears the robe and pronounces the charge.
[00:27:59] And the room explodes as leaders begin to spit upon him and shout at him and hit him. By the way, a normative part of the legal proceeding for the Sanhedrin. For a blasphemer, the only sentence is death. And a way to distance yourself from the blasphemy would be to spit and hit.
[00:28:17] And so these 70 men begin to do this to Christ.
[00:28:21] We don't need any more witnesses.
[00:28:25] But then they take it a step further.
[00:28:28] Matthew excludes this detail, but the other gospel writers tell us they blindfold Jesus and begin to beat him across the head and then say, you're a prophet. Tell us who hit you.
[00:28:38] As they abuse him, they receive Jesus with mockery and blows.
[00:28:44] And before we go on, because that's the heavy part of the scene, I want to encourage you not to miss this, that Jesus has won his trial.
[00:28:54] He's won his trial? Yes. He's being mocked. Yes. Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin are deceived. And they're purposefully killing a man they know to be innocent of any real crime.
[00:29:05] But this is the outcome Christ sought.
[00:29:09] He is walking toward the cross. This is his passion. This, Beloved, is the gospel.
[00:29:16] Jesus chooses the cross for you. He made this world.
[00:29:21] And he is not content to allow sin the final say on your life or my life. So he chooses the cross.
[00:29:30] He's not going to allow the curse to define his reality or yours.
[00:29:34] So he chooses the cross.
[00:29:36] That he might finally repair what we have broken.
[00:29:41] But hold on to that. Let's look at the other trial that's happening simultaneously. Look back at your text with me. Verse 69.
[00:29:48] Now, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard.
[00:29:51] A servant girl approached him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilee and too. But he denied it in front of everyone. I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:30:00] And when he had gone out to the gateway, another woman saw him and told those who were there, this man was with Jesus the Nazarene.
[00:30:07] And again he denied it with an oath. I don't know the man.
[00:30:11] And a little while later, those standing there approached him and said to Peter, you really are one of them, since even your accent gives you away.
[00:30:19] And then he started to curse and to swear an oath. I do not know that man.
[00:30:24] Immediately a rooster crowed and Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
[00:30:33] And he went outside and he wept bitterly for all his cowardice in deserting Christ.
[00:30:40] We got to give Peter's credit.
[00:30:43] He was the only one who stood to Jesus's defense when he was arrested.
[00:30:48] He drew out his sword, he went in for the attack.
[00:30:52] But when Jesus stops him, Peter flees like everyone else.
[00:30:58] But even as the other apostles disperse into the night, Peter and John at least are willing to follow at a distance.
[00:31:07] We don't know how, how that relationship worked, but, but John's able to get Peter in to the house to sit in this outer courtyard, these, these men in the middle talking to the knight, shouting all the back and forth, and he's kind of hanging out on the outskirts with the servants, trying to watch, trying to hear.
[00:31:25] And I think it's worth giving Peter credit for that, right?
[00:31:30] He's obviously very scared. He obviously doesn't know what to do, but he took a step toward Christ.
[00:31:35] He wanted to see this thing through, he wanted to see the outcome.
[00:31:40] But then it all falls apart.
[00:31:42] The text tells us that a servant girl approaches him and it's going out of its way. You know, this is a little, a little ancient in the way of looking at it, but it's going out of its way to let you know this was a non threatening situation.
[00:31:53] A little girl who's a servant approaches him and says, aren't you with him?
[00:31:58] And his first response, fear. You know, the whole thing is to kind of deflect. I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:32:05] Then he starts to realize, like, there's a whole lot of people watching me right now. And I've been with Jesus in public for a while.
[00:32:12] And so he. He scoots himself over to kind of the gateway, the entrance to where he's at, like, just in case he's got a bolt, right?
[00:32:20] And then another woman, one of the servants, an adult this time, but a servant comes up to him and doesn't say to him, says to others, I think that guy was with Jesus. I think that guy goes with them.
[00:32:31] And this time, Peter escalates his denial. He doesn't deflect.
[00:32:37] He actually swears an oath.
[00:32:39] I swear I do not know him. You're wrong. You're mistaken.
[00:32:43] Which is a little ironic considering Jesus's radical teaching to his followers about oaths and their role and how we ought not swear things we don't mean, and how God, let your yes be yes and a no be no.
[00:32:56] And how Jesus, in the midst of his trial, when challenged with an oath, answers plainly, yes, but Jesus is not Peter.
[00:33:07] And Peter uses this oath to distance himself from Christ.
[00:33:13] And as the trial goes on, remember, you have to remember, this is all taking place over the course of hours.
[00:33:20] He's staying close to the door in case he's got a jet. It's getting near the end.
[00:33:25] You can imagine the moment as these verdicts are falling down and people are yelling and Jesus is being hit and the crowd is getting stirred up, and a group of people go, he was with him.
[00:33:36] We can tell. Listen to his voice. He has a Galilean accent.
[00:33:40] And the text says that Peter begins to curse and swear an oath. Now, this is one of these little things that just kind of. It just kind of lose it a little bit in the translation from. From Greek to English.
[00:33:52] But this idea of swearing a curse, it's not like we. It's not like he's cussing.
[00:33:57] What it is is that he's. He's cursing a person.
[00:34:00] And what's interesting about the way the text says this is it's very delineated that he is not cursing himself, which is something someone might do. If I know that guy, then let this happen to me like that, like that kind of thing, right? He's not doing that.
[00:34:13] And he's not. The subject of the curse is not the people talking to him. Oh, you guys are making me look bad. Like, curse upon you. No, no, no.
[00:34:20] The text very distinctly. And by the way, this is in three of the four gospels. This detail very distinctly doesn't tell us who the object of his curse is.
[00:34:30] And you have to remember the story of Peter's betrayal is an eyewitness account from Peter.
[00:34:39] This is something Peter, in his own humility, was willing to share with the church later in his ministry.
[00:34:46] On the lowest night of my life, this is what I did.
[00:34:50] That's the testimony of this part of the gospel.
[00:34:54] And what most scholars believe in this moment is that Peter actually cursed Cross.
[00:35:00] And he actually said. I mean, you have to imagine it like, a little more crass than how I'm saying this, right?
[00:35:08] But something to the effect of, forget that guy. I have no idea who he is.
[00:35:13] I swear I've never met him.
[00:35:16] Make it a little worse in your head, right? But that kind of weightiness.
[00:35:21] And that's the moment.
[00:35:24] We've been in this trial all night long. The sun's starting to come up.
[00:35:28] That's the moment when the rooster crows and it clicks and Peter remembers.
[00:35:35] And Luke actually tells us that from the center of the room at that moment, Jesus looks over and locks eyes with Peter as the rooster is crowing.
[00:35:45] Oh, and he just has this moment of going, yes, I did exactly what I told you I wouldn't do.
[00:35:54] I mean, think back to that moment when Jesus says, peter, you're going to deny me three times tonight.
[00:36:03] You're talking a big game, but you're going to do this tonight.
[00:36:06] And Peter says, no, never.
[00:36:10] I would die before I deny you.
[00:36:13] Never.
[00:36:15] And here it is, hours later, Peter realizes he looks in Christ's eyes.
[00:36:21] I have saved my skin and sold you to your enemies.
[00:36:28] And as. As the Sanhedrin are looking upon Jesus, saying, prove you're a prophet.
[00:36:36] Tell us who hit you.
[00:36:38] We, as the reader see, Jesus is a prophet and his words came exactly to bear.
[00:36:46] And the text tells us the Peter runs away. He leaves, he flees and he weeps bitterly.
[00:36:55] Oh, and this is the moment of his real abandonment.
[00:37:00] I was going to stick it out to the end, but I can't.
[00:37:04] And he leaves.
[00:37:06] And as Jesus is choosing the cross, we see that for all his bravado, for all his hot air, Peter is the coward.
[00:37:16] He chooses to save his own skin. And Jesus is utterly alone.
[00:37:22] His closest friends, who swore to walk to the end with him, has cursed him and abandoned him.
[00:37:29] That is a brutal way to end our text today.
[00:37:33] But that is where we're going to leave the narrative.
[00:37:37] But there is resolute gospel hope through all of this passion narrative, in part because we can just see Christ in this.
[00:37:47] We can see our sweet Jesus, wonderful resolve, his amazing control as he walks toward the cross for you and me. But the plain immensity of the injustice and evil he experiences from people who should recognize him, who should care for him. It's just heartbreaking to watch Peter's systemic failure of Jesus. It's painful, but I think a big part of why it's painful is because if we're honest, it's relatable.
[00:38:17] It's relatable.
[00:38:19] It is easy to talk, a big talk of confidence to Jesus after the triumphant entry, after the temple showdown, after the Lord's Supper.
[00:38:31] But in Caiaphas's house with the conehead guards all around, that's a different game.
[00:38:41] That's a whole different thing.
[00:38:43] It is easy, beloved, to raise your hand church and to sing the song and to preach the gospel and say, yes and amen. Yes, of course I give my life to Christ. Of course the gospel is what is easy to do that.
[00:38:58] And you hear Adam and Audrey hit that perfect harmony, and you're like, right when you're on the last day of the retreat and you've been away from all the distractions and away from all the temptations and you've been just drenched in the Word for three days, it's easy to go, oh, Jesus, you have all of me.
[00:39:17] Whatever my life needs to look like it's yours, it's yours.
[00:39:21] Until you step back into your life and you step back into the world.
[00:39:26] You step back into your temptations, and you step back into those broken relationships, and you see the call and the allure of the flesh, and you see the actual sacrifices you'll have to make to walk in holiness. And you see the actual cost of discipleship. And all of a sudden, Peter's route doesn't seem all that strange, doesn't seem all that foolish.
[00:39:50] Beloved, this is why I say we are all Peter.
[00:39:56] We've all been some version of that moment.
[00:40:00] You talked a big game, and you actually desire. That's the hard part. You actually love Jesus and you actually desire to live a holy life.
[00:40:10] You actually really do finally want to take your faith seriously.
[00:40:14] But then when you're confronted with the cost of following Jesus, you bail.
[00:40:19] Just me.
[00:40:22] You wimp out, and you don't share your faith with that person, even though the Holy Spirit's been prodding you the whole meeting.
[00:40:28] You drop out of that discipleship group because you stopped doing the homework, and it's kind of embarrassing, and I just don't want to deal with that mess.
[00:40:35] You run back to that sin pattern because life and work is stressful and you want comfort.
[00:40:41] I could keep going, but the plain reality of this is, this is all of Us, we're all Peter.
[00:40:48] We've all denied Christ. We've all faced the choice of Jesus or ourselves and chosen ourselves.
[00:40:56] And I'm sure those of you who follow Christ, you've had the moment where the rooster crowed and you realized, I've done it again.
[00:41:06] I've rejected him again. I said I would never run back to that sin, and I've done it again.
[00:41:14] So what the heck do we do, us Peters, us deniers, with a text like this?
[00:41:21] Ben, if you want to come back up, I'm going to give us two thoughts to lay this out.
[00:41:27] The first one is this.
[00:41:29] You need to remember the Gospel is for us deniers.
[00:41:33] That's what it's for.
[00:41:35] In Luke's telling of the story, when Jesus predicts Peter's denial, Luke includes this detail that I think is super helpful.
[00:41:43] He tells us that Jesus, even in his prophetic prediction of Peter's cowardice and failure, that he actually comforts Peter and encourages him toward his coming restoration.
[00:41:57] Says Peter, satan has asked to sift you like wheat.
[00:42:01] You know, you sipped wheat, throw it up in the air, the garbage blow and let the stuff fall down on its back and forth. It's rough, not pleasant for the wheat.
[00:42:12] Satan's asked to sift you like wheat, Peter.
[00:42:16] But I prayed for you.
[00:42:18] I am praying for you.
[00:42:20] That is the heart of Christ. For Peter in the midst of his failure.
[00:42:26] I'm praying for you.
[00:42:28] And then he gives this piece when you come back, encourage the church.
[00:42:35] He already tells Peter, look, you're going to super blow it tonight. It's going to be bad, but I'm praying for you.
[00:42:44] And you're going to come back.
[00:42:46] And when you do, be an encouragement to the church.
[00:42:50] Beloved, the Gospel is for us. Denier, your Christ, your Jesus has compassion for you in your weakness, in your cowardice, in your fleshliness, in your pattern of turning away from him and saving your skin over and over and over.
[00:43:11] Beloved, Jesus knows you're a denier. And his response to you isn't shame, it isn't anger, it isn't disappointment. It is compassion.
[00:43:20] He went to the cross for you.
[00:43:22] He chose the cross for you, knowing full well how deeply and how often you would deny him.
[00:43:28] He has seen every time that Satan has and will sift you like wheat.
[00:43:35] He prays for you, beloved.
[00:43:37] He invites you back to the foot of the cross.
[00:43:40] He invites you to return to him and find life. And you need to know that invitation exists for each and every one of you. Today you can be restored to Christ.
[00:43:52] It does not matter the depth of your denial and betrayal.
[00:43:56] At the foot of the cross, there is healing.
[00:43:59] The foot of the cross, there is compassion.
[00:44:02] The foot of the cross, there is life for you, beloved, because this is my second point and this is where I'm done.
[00:44:11] Jesus turns deniers into disciples.
[00:44:15] That's what he does.
[00:44:17] Early in his ministry, Jesus defined for his followers what a disciple is. He's telling him to count the cost.
[00:44:25] He says, if you want to be my disciple, you can't love your life. You love your life. You'll lose it if you lose your life.
[00:44:31] If you give up yourself, if you deny yourself, you'll find life.
[00:44:38] That's what he says. He says to follow me, you must deny yourself.
[00:44:44] Just pick up your cross and follow me.
[00:44:47] Peter denied Jesus, just like you and I deny Jesus.
[00:44:52] But you need to know something, beloved.
[00:44:55] Jesus himself empowers you.
[00:44:58] You can deny yourself, you can deny your flesh, you can deny your sin, you can the power of the spirit, you can deny the flesh and you can follow Jesus on the path of the kingdom. You can pick up your cross and follow in Jesus's footsteps to glorify God and serve others.
[00:45:20] So I'm going to ask you to do this as we land out. I'm going to ask us to do what we normally do, to take a minute for reflection.
[00:45:26] I want to encourage you to find some space in your seat to connect with Christ friendly.
[00:45:32] And if you can do that sitting there, that's fine.
[00:45:35] I don't want you to take this seriously. I want you to get yourself in a posture where you can connect with Christ.
[00:45:42] If you want to get on your knees in the aisle, if you want to come forward to the altar, if you want to grab one of the pastors, whatever that looks like. But I want you to get in a posture where you go connect with Christ.
[00:45:54] And I want you to consider what your response to your denial needs to be today.
[00:45:59] Do you need to come to the cross for the first time and find salvation?
[00:46:04] Do you need to come home after being a product?
[00:46:09] Has your denial and your sin pattern led you to a place of just. There's no coming back.
[00:46:16] Can't deal with that.
[00:46:19] You need to ask the Spirit if he's calling you home today, calling you to come back to the cross, find joy and forgiveness.
[00:46:28] You need to take next steps of denying yourself and choosing the life of Christ.
[00:46:32] What does that mean for you today?
[00:46:35] What is the sin pattern, the struggle, the idol you need to bring to light so that you can deny your flesh. Choose the way of the cross.
[00:46:43] Let's take a moment, just a few minutes in quiet to consider that.
[00:46:48] And then we'll continue our response through communion. Well, to do the work you need to do with Christ today.
