Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Apollo 13 was one of the biggest flops in the history of our space program, and yet it was also one of the most celebrated.

Can a catastrophic failure also be a colossal success?

Just ask the three astronauts of that ill fated flight.

It was 1970, and they were on their way to the moon when an explosion changed their plans radically.

For the next 6 days it took all the ingenuity of these three men, and a vast ground crew, just to keep them alive.

Everything went wrong, and they could have died a number of different ways.

They could have frozen to death, but they learned that in zero gravity air does not move, and so if they stayed very still their body would heat up the air around them, and form a sort of cocoon of warm air.

Had they panicked and moved about they would have frozen.

They could have died of poisoning, or been lost in space, or blown up.

It took 24 hours a day of thinking and improvising just to stay alive.

All over the world people were praying, and they were able to get back to earth in the lunar module, which was never even designed for anything but taking them down to the surface of the moon.

It was like crossing the ocean on the Queen Mary, and half way over deciding to make the rest of the journey in a canoe.

They did not get to the moon, nor did they do any of things they were suppose to do.

None of the goals were achieved.

All they did was to get through dozens of hopeless situations, and survive to tell about it.

Commander James A. Lovell said of this amazing flop of a flight, "We could've been assured a catastrophe.

But the dedication and knowledge of the ground and the flight crew were such that we were able to make it a successful failure."

President Nixon awarded them the Medal of Freedom for their successful failure.

Peter is the great example in the New Testament of successful failure.

He made the most blunders of anyone, and yet he survived, and like a cat tossed in the air, he landed on his feet, and became a loved hero.

In our text we see the flight plan of Peter blow up in his face.

He thinks he is in control of the situation, and has such a grasp of the way life should go that he has the audacity to take Jesus aside to set Him straight.

Talk about aggressive leadership.

Here is a disciple telling the Master the score.

Peter has put his foot in his mouth before, but never up to the knee.

He has become a megalomaniac, that is one who has grandiose delusions.

He has just confessed that Jesus is the Son of the living God, and that he is the Messiah, yet he begins to rebuke the Messiah because he does not like what he is saying.

Jesus is telling it like it is, and the truth is not pleasant.

He will suffer, be rejected, and killed.

That is not an acceptable program to Peter, and so he takes Jesus aside to reprogram the plan of God.

There is only one other person in history who had that kind of pride, and that was Lucifer.

No wonder Jesus said to Peter, "Out of my sight, Satan!" Peter had become a tool of the devil in trying to reprogram the plan of God.

Can a Christian fall so low they can become an agent of Satan?

Yes they can, and it is not just by falling low, but also, as we see here, by rising too high.

Peter was exalted, not just to the moon, but to the very gates of heaven.

Jesus gave him the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and He had the power to bind or loose on earth, and that would lead to binding or loosing in heaven.

Peter's promotion went to his head, and he began to think that he now had the authority to even alter the course of the Messiah, and set policy on the plan of salvation.

Peter was a mere fisherman, but Jesus chose him to be a spiritual astronaut, and he sent him soaring to the heights of leadership and power in the kingdom of God.

And what does he do?

He blows the mission to pieces by abuse of power.

How many other leaders do you know who were called Satan by the Lord?

There were no others.

Peter was the greatest failure in his abusive power.

And yet we see that he not only survives, but he does so quite successfully.

He is able to stay on top as the leader of the 12.

He does everything wrong, and still comes out a winner.

He is the most successful failure in the New Testament.

Consider this record of his failure:

1.

He lost faith while on the water, and began to sink.

2.

He rebuked his own Messiah, and received the strongest rebuke of anyone.

3.

He refused to have his feet washed, and had to be forced to cooperate.

4.

He cut off the ear of Malchus in Gethsemane and needed to be rebuked.

5.

He went to sleep when Jesus asked him to watch with Him.

6.

He denied his Lord 3 times.

7.

He refused to believe the eye witness testimony of the women who saw Jesus after the resurrection.

8.

He fell back into prejudice against the Gentiles even after Pentecost.

9.

He needed to be rebuked by the Apostle Paul for his inconsistency.

These are just his major mistakes and blunders.

He had a number of minor ones as well.

You cannot come up with a list like this even for the scoundrels in the New Testament.

Yet, this walking comedy of errors is not made to wear a dunces hat and sit in the corner.

He is made the leader of the group.

Tragen was one of the greatest of the Caesars, and the senate raised a towering column to record his victories, but today in Rome you will no longer see the Emperor on top of that column raised to his honor.

You will see instead a statue of a man with two large keys in his hands-the man called Peter.

Peter fumbled and failed his way to the top, and by so doing, he reveals by his successful failure just how fallible man can be, and still be used of God.

Consider, for example, that Peter was-

I. AN EXTREMIST.

Keep in mind, Peter was no intellectual scholar like Paul.

He was a man moved by feeling rather than reason, and feelings can be changed a lot faster than the mind.

It takes time to think through an issue, and weigh the values, and change one's convictions.

But it only takes seconds to go from hot to cold in ones emotions.

Peter was always going from one extreme to the other.

1.

On the stormy sea he shouts "bid me come to you Lord on the water," and a few moments later he is crying out "Lord, save me!"

2. When Jesus came to wash his feet he cries out, "You will never wash my feet."

For an emotional guy like Peter, never is not very long, for he is soon at the other extreme saying, "Not my feet only, but my hands and my head."

Jesus had to slow him down and explain that the feet alone are sufficient.

Peter is not one to be straddling the fence.

He is totally on one side or the other.

He is never middle of the road, but usually in the ditch on one side or the other.

Ask Peter where he stands, and he says 100% on this side, and while he is saying it, he may be moving to the other side where he will stand with equal conviction.

This sounds like a terrible weakness for a leader, but it is a weakness that can be helpful when going through radical transition.

The world of Judaism was being turned upside down, and the pagan world would be next, and Jesus needed a leader who was not locked into legalism, but who was open to change, and who could lead others to accept radical change.

It was a troublesome aspect of his personality that he was such an extremist, and so inconsistent.

Yet it was a necessary ingredient for what Peter had to lead the church through.

He was even inconsistent in his inconsistency.

On one occasion after shifting from being closed to Gentiles to being open to them, he reverted back again to the old way,

and needed to be rebuked again.

Peter must have felt as frustrated at times as a chameleon crawling across a plaid shirt.

He was not sure what color to be, but he still comes out smelling like a rose, because his first loyalty was to the Rose Of Sharon, his Lord and Master.

An impulsive personality like Peter's is bound to get you into trouble, for you take every feeling of the moment too seriously.

You are moved by some conviction, and you follow your emotions as if it were the essence of the ages, and in fact, it is only temporary.

Peter feels it so strongly that he will never forsake his Lord that he proclaims, "I will never be offended because of Thee.

All others may be offended, but you can always count on one, and that is me."

Then the next thing we know, Peter is denying with oaths and curses, "I never knew the man."

Peter is one of these guys who is always so enthused about something.

It is the answer the world has been looking for.

It is the greatest discovery of our day, the discovery of the decade; the milestone of the millennium; the highlight of history.

Then the next time you see him, he has forgotten and forsaken the whole thing.

These types are on the mountain top, or down in the valley, and to one extreme or the other.