Simon Peter No.6 Denial

178, who is on the Lord's side, who will serve the King, who will be his helpers, are the lives to bring. By thy call of mercy, by thy grace divine, we are on the Lord's side. Saviour, we are thine.

378, we'll stand to sing. Matthew 26, and we're going to start reading from verse 31. Then Jesus told them, this very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee. Peter replied, even if all fall away on account of you, I never will. I tell you the truth, Jesus answered, this very night before the cock crows, you will disown me three times.

But Peter declared, even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you. And all the other disciples said the same. Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane.

And he said to them, sit here while I go over there and pray. He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him. And he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.

Yet not as I will, but as you will. And then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour, he asked Peter.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. He went away a second time and prayed, my father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away, unless I drink it, may your will be done.

When he came back, he again found them sleeping because their eyes were heavy. So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time saying the same thing. Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near and the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Rise, let us go. Here comes my betrayer. Amen.

Continuing to read from Matthew chapter 26 at verse 47. While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the 12, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them. The one I kiss is the man, arrest him. Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, greetings, Rabbi, and kissed him.

Jesus replied, friend, do what you came for. Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus's companions reached for his sword, drew out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

Put your sword back in its place, Jesus said to him, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my father and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? At that time, Jesus said to the crowd, am I leading a rebellion that you come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching and you did not arrest me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.

Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. But Peter followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest.

He entered and sat down with the guards to see the outcome. The chief priests in the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, although many false witnesses came forward.

Finally, two came forward and declared, this fellow said I'm able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you? But Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, I charge you under oath by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God.

Yes, it is as you say, Jesus replied. But I say to all of you, in future you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, he has spoken blasphemy.

Why do we need any more witnesses? Look now, you've heard the blasphemy. What do you think? He is worthy of death, they answered. Then they spat on his face and struck him with their fists.

Others slapped him and said, prophesy to us Christ who hit you. Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him. You also were with Jesus of Galilee, she said, but he denied it before them all.

I don't know what you're talking about, he said. Then he went out to the gateway where another girl saw him and said to the people there, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth. He denied it again with an oath.

I don't know the man. After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, surely you're one of them for your accent gives you away. Then he began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, I don't know the man.

Immediately a cock crowed. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken, before the cock crows, you will disown me three times. And he went outside and wept bitterly.

I'd be glad if you'd have your Bible open at Matthew's Gospel in the twenty-sixth chapter. Some people sometimes wonder why it is that we make so much of Scripture here in the tabernacle, and why we encourage the bringing of a Bible or the sharing of a Bible when someone speaks. The answer quite frankly, and we often give it because there are always visitors here, is that there is no greater authority we recognize, no greater tangible authority we recognize in this world than the Bible.

And it's not so much what the preacher has to say that's important, it's the fashion in which he's able to explain and expound what's contained within the covers of this book. So, it's far more necessary for you to have a Bible than what it is to follow a piece of music as a musician, or to follow your hymns as you sing your songs in your praise to the Lord. This is the book that God has caused to be preserved down the centuries, and between its covers is His Word, it's a now Word.

That means to say it's a present Word. Generally speaking, God is always generally speaking. You say you don't hear Him, then my answer is you do not read Scripture sufficiently.

We are more blessed people than Abraham. We are at a greater advantage in some ways than the disciples were, because the patriarchs and the apostles never had a complete Bible, and you have a Bible. At least a Bible is possible for you to obtain, and through this book God speaks.

So, here is a very powerful and a very sad verse of Scripture, verse 74 of Matthew 26. Then he, that is Peter, began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, I don't know the man. Second Timothy chapter 2 and verse 13.

Here is a trustworthy saying. If we are faithless, He, the blessed God, will remain faithful, for He cannot disown, or if you please, He cannot deny Himself. If you were divorced, it will tell me at least one thing about you, quite obviously by using simple logic.

You were first married. If you are retired, then by implication you are telling me there was a time when you were in employment. And there is a sense in which if you speak of denial, you are implying that there was in a previous situation, perhaps for many years, a time when you professed to believe something.

And maybe to understand denial, you have to first understand profession and work out why the one slipped down into the other. I shocked my wife the other day. It is a privilege that husbands have from time to time.

I bought Friday's copy of the Daily Mirror, Confessions Good for the Soul. Actually, it was the second copy I had bought within three weeks, but she didn't see the first. It got into the bin before she got home.

The headlines of the Mirror on Friday were two words, the lie, and just three weeks or so, Captain Bob, the man who saved the Mirror. And there was such a difference between the two editions. One professing that some business magmate stepped into Fleet Street and took over the Mirror and made it into a successful paper when failure was staring it in its face.

But then the discovery of what had happened to this so-called benefactor and the charge that he's whittled away millions of pounds in terms of pension funds, the journalists took their loyalty to the brink and they exploded. And they denied that Maxwell really was their saviour. There are many forms of denial.

You can deny with a word. You can deny with an action. You can deny with an attitude.

Tragically, it was said of one preacher that he was so eloquent when he was in the pulpit that some recommended he should never step out of it. And when he was out of it, he lived so outrageously that some said he should never step into it. Or if you like, the example which I've used before of two doctors married to one another, the one a doctor of medicine, the other a doctor of divinity, the latter a preacher, the former given to the recovery of sickness, recovery of health from sickness.

There's a knock on the door. The maid comes to the door. The inquirer says, can I talk to the doctor? And the maid's response is, do you mean the doctor who preaches or the doctor who practices? It's subtle.

It's worth thinking about. You can deny what you preach by what you practice. Here's Peter, and before you can understand his denial, you really first of all have to consider his profession.

And the way that he indicated his faith in our Lord Jesus was so astonishing that our blessed Savior paid him a compliment that he paid to none other. Matthew 16, 13, when Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is? They said, well, John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Jesus narrows it down, but what do you say? Who do you say I am? And Peter said, you're Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus says, blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. Here is Peter. The months have rolled by, and our Lord is coming to the last days of His ministry before He's put on the cross.

It's in the chapter that we had read to us. Jesus tells them in verse 31, referring to the disciples, that all of you will fall away, and He quotes the Old Testament, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the scattered. But Peter is bold enough to suggest that Jesus has got it wrong.

Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will. You see, who are you? Well, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Alright, so you predict the fall away of all your disciples, but this I profess, that in your hour of greatest need, Jesus of Nazareth, I will be with you.

Now, I say you've got to plunder the background to gather together the incidents of profession in order to measure the enormity of the denial that Peter expresses in the courtyard of the high priest. Betrayal is a nasty thing. To be let down by your friends is tragic.

George Bush was in tears yesterday. Maybe you saw him on the television. Tears were real enough.

He'd been a fighter pilot in the last world war. How did the Americans get into the war? Well, by what the Japanese did some fifty years back. Taking thousands of Americans to a watery grave in the treachery of Pearl Harbor.

Nasty piece of work that was on the part of the Japanese and the whole of the American nation recoiled in horror and in anger. How much more our hearts go out to say David whose son Absalom dealt with him treacherously as he led a coup d'etat against David when Absalom is in Jerusalem and David is away from his headquarters city. But the worst example of denial and let down in terms of a friend in one sense betraying another is surely this of Peter and our blessed Lord.

You know the story, don't you? You know the context very well. Here in this twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew's Gospel there is recounted not just one trial, but two trials. Maybe you never thought of it like that before, but it is the case.

You see, here is our blessed Savior. We see Him in the olive groves. It's dark apart from the light that comes from a full moon, and He's arrested.

He's carted off as a common criminal, and He's set in front of the high priests and all the retinue friends of Caiaphas and Annas and the like, and a trial takes place. But outside in the courtyard there's another trial. It's the trial of Peter.

It's not an official trial in the way that Jesus' trial might be conceived to be, but nonetheless it is real. You see, this man Peter has made a profession about Jesus. He knows who he is, and he said to Jesus that in your hour of great need I will be with you.

Now I want to tell you this, my young friend here in Worthingtown, and my older friend too, if you have professed faith in Jesus Christ the time will come, probably has many an occasion already for the majority of you, when you will be tested as far as your profession is concerned. See, what you see this evening is not so much Peter warming his hands in the courtyard in the chill hours of the late evening and early morning as Jesus is being tried. What you really see is an illustration of the duplicity and the weakness of many of us who also claim to follow the Lord Jesus.

Jesus is on trial, yes, and they've got all the big guns to assess His case. Verse 59, the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put Him to death. There were trumped-up charges.

There were witnesses who were paid to give malevolent testimony as far as the Lord was concerned. And you can hardly over emphasize the seriousness of the experience through which our blessed Lord is going through. He is on trial, and outside you've got Peter.

There's no high priest. What there is, is a young lady. She's the portress.

She's the one who looks after the gate and only allows Peter to come into the high priest's courtyard because John, if you read his gospel, actually recommends that Peter should be admitted, for John has influence with the high priest's servants. It's a very interesting word in the original language in verse 71 which speaks of this. Then he went out to the gateway where, I beg your pardon, verse 69, now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard and the servant girl came to him.

It's the diminutive word for girl. If you were to translate it colloquially, you would say a slip of a girl, and she brings terror into the heart of Peter the fisherman. You also were with Jesus of Galilee, she said.

Here is our Lord on the inside, on trial before the tough opposition of the Jewish religious aristocracy. Here is Peter on trial on the outside. He's only got a girl to contend with.

If Jesus is successful in the most serious trial, will not Peter be successful in the lesser? That's the challenge, and many of you know the answer. And the fact of the matter is that when you allow the picture to blur and refocus, you know too that it's not Peter that you're seeing, it's yourself. There are oaths that fly around that particular late night and early morning, not so.

In the sixty-second verse, on the inside, in the serious trial where our Lord is before the high priests, they say to Him, are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you? Jesus remains silent. The high priest said to Him, I charge you under oath by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.

And because it's the high priest, Jesus responds. Not that He will take an oath. Our Lord is not happy about oath-taking, and yet He will respond to this particular serious inquiry from the lips of the high priest.

Go back outside. Here is Peter, and he's already denied in front of this slip of a girl when she puts the allegation, you also were with Jesus of Galilee, probably saying of Galilee in a contemptuous fashion. Peter responds, I don't know what you're talking about.

And then it seems as though he has some respite just for a little while, but once more someone else comes alongside. Verse seventy-one, he went out to the gateway where another girl saw him and said to the people there, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth, and he denied it again with an oath, I don't know the man. You see, it's possible for people like ourselves to deny Jesus.

One thing, however, it's impossible for the Lord Jesus to do is to deny Himself. That's why I took you to Timothy. Here He is once more.

We go on the inside and see Him before Annas and Caiaphas. They ask Him who He is. He acknowledges who He is.

He is none other than the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is as you say, says Jesus, verse sixty-four, I say to you, in the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven. Our Lord gives faithful testimony to who He actually is.

But Peter, well, and this is painful, go to the seventy-third verse, because now we have the third time when Peter is tested. And if you check the synoptic account, or at least if you check John's account, you will discover that the spokesman for this little group is none other than the relative of Malchus, whose ear has been severed by Peter, you remember, when they arrested the Lord Jesus in the garden. Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away.

You're a Galilean because you can't pronounce the guttural sounds that we can pronounce in the handling of the Semitic language here in the south of Palestine. Then, verse seventy-four, he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, I don't know the man. Now, the curses of verse seventy-four is different from the oath of verse seventy-two.

The curses are actually anathemas. They are bringing down on someone all the most horrible things that you could think of. Now, this is the shocking bit.

You could, if you wish, though I'm not advising you to, but I do at least bring this bit of information to your attention. You could erase from that verse on himself. Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them.

On himself is not in the original Greek. The implication is that he calls down the curses on none other than our blessed Lord. You remember that when Peter denies the Savior, the cock crows.

In years to come, when Peter has been reestablished, in fact, he's reconciled with the Lord days after this event, but in years to come when he's a mature leader of the Christian church, there is the record, not in Scripture, but in some of the writings of the early church, that every time the apostle Peter heard the crowing of the cock, he started to weep. And I have an inkling to believe that particular Christian tradition, for it seems to me that if the way that I've expounded this story this evening is correct, and Peter brought down curses on the Lord, and the horror of it hits him as the cock begins to crow, then in the years that come, with Peter being unable to erase the incident from his memory, the crowing of the cock will bring it all back. Peter rushes off into the darkness.

He went outside, and he wept bitterly. Peter is not mentioned again by Matthew. Not that Matthew would imply by this that he was unaware of Peter's restitution, reconciliation with the Lord.

He's writing, of course, to people who know a great deal of the story of Peter. Maybe he has in mind Peter's earlier failure when he let the Lord down, and the Lord Jesus lifted him, you remember, when he was going to be immersed in the waters of the Sea of Galilee. It's Peter to whom Jesus makes the reference when He's congratulated him in saying that He is none other than the Christ, the Son of the Living God, that on this rock I will build my church, your confession.

Matthew has already implied that when Peter lets Jesus down, as Matthew recalls the words of the Savior, He will go ahead of him into Galilee, and there he will see Peter, and there will be restitution. The only way to stop yourself denying Jesus is to deny yourself. Did you know that? If a man will be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

And if you're going to be successful in your own Christian discipleship, you must learn what Peter tragically had to learn during that night and the nightmarish days which immediately followed prior to him having a further audience with our Lord Jesus. What contributed to Peter's denial? What contributes to your weak discipleship? Can I suggest to you that there are several things? Briefly, how about insufficient prayer? Verse 40 takes us back to our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows just what is in front of Him.

And He's praying that God, His Father, will strengthen Him. And He entrusts to Peter, James, and John the vigil of prayer also. And when He comes back from the innermost parts of the Garden, He finds these men asleep.

Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour? And He directs the question particularly to Peter. When you're not praying as much as you should, the possibility is that you'll crack as far as your discipleship is concerned. And under pressure you will deny.

There's inadequate discipline. Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is weak.

The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. That's the problem with the body. It's the problem with the flesh.

By flesh we're not just referring to the physical body. We're talking about the disposition. When our Lord has given instructions about remembering His death on the cross, when He breaks bread and they drink wine together, as is recorded from the 23rd verse and onwards, then you find the disciples later on, if you check the synoptic accounts, actually arguing with one another.

Who will be the greatest in the kingdom when the Lord Jesus Christ establishes it? Or the weakness of the flesh? Or the terror of pride? And it contributes towards the denial of Peter and the rejection of our Lord at His hour of His greatest need by the rest of the disciples. What about this misplaced zeal of Peter? Our Lord is at the point of being arrested, verse 51, with that one of Jesus' companions reaching for His sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. The last miracle that Jesus ever performed was to put to rights the over-enthusiastic actions of one of His disciples, Matzoh.

He heals Malchus' ear. Peter's defective discipleship has as a contributory fact to the way in which he distances himself from the Saviour, verse 58, but Peter followed him at a distance right up to the courtyard of the high priest. Put all those things together, an insufficient prayer, inadequate discipline, misplaced zeal, distancing him from Jesus.

And what do you find? That when stress is applied to one's profession of faith, the man cracks, as it was with Peter, so with you and me. And it's all taking place against the back cloth of the harrowing trial that our blessed Lord has to undergo out there in the courtyard of you and you and me. Our Lord deserves better quality disciples.

Under strain, He doesn't break. He doesn't deny Himself, yet His disciples do. And as far as Peter is concerned, in a most terrible fashion.

How does Jesus deal with it, with Peter and with us? Well, Jesus knows. Jesus knew that Peter would fail that you gathered in the reading. Jesus had prayed for Peter.

Gaddafi said the other day, talking about the Americans, the problem with the Americans is this, they shake Libya up and down like a like a bottle of Coca-Cola, and then we explode. There is a sense in which the devil was shaking Peter up and down, but Jesus had prayed for Peter that his faith would not break, even though his testimony was in ruins. Jesus had made provision for Peter.

Jesus will deal with Peter, and at the moment when Peter has let Jesus down in a way that he never thought possible, our Lord Jesus appears, as He's taken from one part of the high priest's palace to the next, and catches a glimpse of Peter, who has so treacherously let him down. There's nothing that Jesus can do in terms of speaking a word that will make it worse. He cannot lift out His hands, extend His hands, and lift him up as He did when Peter was threatened with drowning, but He can look on Peter, and He does, and I would love to have been a photographer and taken the picture of the face of our Lord Jesus.

I see no anger there. I see the knowing look. Peter, I told you.

I see the compassion. I see the forgiveness. I see the very elements that I've needed, hear me, for 50 odd years or so, to keep me within His fraternity.

Jesus, who will not deny Himself, will still enter into a relationship with broken Peters, who've cracked under strain. Peter goes on, back to Galilee, to the place where it all started, and there Jesus, the resurrected Lord, meets with him on the seashore, where first they encountered one another, and instead of excommunicating him, He forgives the penitential fisherman, fills him with His Spirit, and gives him the task of looking after the apostolic community, and seeing to the spiritual welfare of Christian people in Jerusalem. Our blessed Lord does not applaud you, nor me, for failure.

Some of you, I pick up the impulse of the Spirit, have let our Lord down so terribly. You know that He bled and He died for you. You know that He expects a better standard of behavior and discipleship than you've ever offered Him.

But look, there's probably not one person in this sanctuary who's gone to the place that Peter probably went to and cursed. The man who, his own lips, had identified just months previously as being the Son of the Living God. Peter was forgiven by Jesus.

You can know forgiveness, the re-establishment of your own integrity and worth. Jesus cannot deny Himself, but He can cope with those who have let Him down and ask for a new beginning. He did it for Peter.

He can do it for you. Father, we come to you, some of us having professed such serious vows, some of us having made such a commitment to you in the months and the years gone by, and we feel that we've let you down, and we find it hard to believe that you could ever forgive us. And yet you show us a classic example this evening of a man who let the Savior down, and yet Simon Peter was restored as a result of his confession and his tears and the cross work of our Savior.

Restore us, O Lord. Lord, those of us who feel sometimes when we look in a mirror that actually we are a disgrace before God and before man, infuse your Spirit into our hearts. Cleanse us by that blood to which repeated reference was made this morning, and enable us to go out of here with a fresh resolve and with Holy Spirit equipment to serve you well for the rest of our days.

Amen.