Matthew 26:69-75
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You know we live in a world of fake.
It is never been more true that you cannot believe everything that you read on the Internet.
Especially with all of the Artificial Intelligence stuff, we have to worry about people faking us.
But if we are honest, we probably do some faking as well..
Go and look at the majority of people and their social media pages.
People post well manicured videos of their recent dinner out to a really fancy restaurant.
You’ve got the nice juicy steak with Chimichurri rolling off the side.
We’ve post the picture of the beautiful one bite dessert that cost 16 dollars.
We post stuff like that.
But what we don’t post is the bologna sandwich with American cheese “product” we ate earlier that day on the Walmart bread that expired two days ago.
Do y’all know what I mean?
I saw a friend of mine the other day at Radd Dews BBQ buffet, and he had been posting pictures on Facebook of his meal prep because he was trying to eat healthy.
But I bet he didn’t post a picture of his barbecue plate.
Isn’t this how we are?
We want everybody to see our good side whenever we take a picture…
We post a picture with our kids where everybody has such sweet smiles, but five seconds before that picture was taken you were threatening your kids’ life if they wouldn’t be still and smile.
In a 24 hour period this weekend—
I was stung by a bee in the armpit.
Our family cat was killed.
I lost my wallet.
My truck broke down. (Alternator)
Then when i needed and encouraging word,,
My wife said “I wish younger people could understand that looks aren’t everything in a person to date. They go away with age.” ….
a good amount of silent awkwardness passed…. “Except of course for you.”
And so the way I interpreted that was that at the very least, i had gotten uglier.
It was a rough day. I didn’t care to let everyone know how things were going.
We live in a world of highlights and reels of our best moments.
We like to keep the tough days and the bad things that happen where they belong.
In the shadows.
Off social media.
But we all know the truth and that’s that not everything is as good as it seems at times.
All that to say, our lives are often dressed up for what we believe everybody should see.
I’m thankful for this text this morning.
Texts like we come to this morning serve to give us a strong dose of reality that even our heroes in the Bible have bad days.
Text like this also serve to solidify in my mind the truthfulness of the Bible.
Because what we find here recorded is the reality of a worst moment possible in the life of one of the Bible‘s heroes.
We find here recorded for us, the failure of one of Jesus’s closest friends, Peter…
Peter is an amazing character in Scripture. He plays a major role in much of the New Testament narratives.
You have to remember…
It will be Peter who preaches the first sermon in Acts where the church is born in that significant event we know as Pentecost where the Holy Spirit falls in a visible way.
Peter… will write two books that we still enjoy today.
But before any of that happens, here we find his failure.
Now, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
The Bible records many failures.
The heroes of the Bible are not pictured as flawless and spotless characters who only give us positive examples to follow.
Just think about it for a moment.
The Bible records weak men like Adam who refused to lead his home and then passed the buck whenever it came time to take responsibility for it.
There are drunkards like Noah.
Liars like Abraham.
Deceivers like Jacob
There are adulterers and murderers like David.
They are angry and short tempered men like Moses
Defiant and disobedient men like Jonah.
Doubting men like Thomas.
Denying men like….Peter.
But the blessing of all of this… is that time and time again you see God in His grace using these imperfect and flawed human beings to accomplish his purposes.
And again, one of the things I appreciate so much about the Bible is that it makes no effort to cover these things up.
It’s been said, the Bible presents its characters warts and all.
And I believe this honesty from Scripture is for our good…as people who are flawed and desperately in need of God’s grace as well.
Let’s look at this this morning…
Remember at this point, Jesus has been betrayed and sold, and now he has been arrested.
They have even brought him before the Sanhedrin council to try and establish charges against Jesus.
During all of this,Matthew’s text tells us that one of Jesus’s disciples is hanging out nearby.
We read this last week in verse 58..
And Peter was following him at a distance, as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end.
But now, we fast-forward to what is probably a few hours later, and Peter is still there.
He is till hanging close enough to observe the trial, but certainly not by Jesus’s side.
He is close enough to see what’s going on, but far enough, at least he thinks, from anyone thinking that he is “with Jesus.”
Pick up with me in verse 69.
Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.”
So imagine this scene with me…
Jesus is on trial.
Peter is hanging close by to observe.
When all of a sudden a servant- Matthew tells us, it’s a servant girl.
This servant girl comes up to Peter and she simply makes a statement.
“You also were with Jesus the Galilean.”
Now, that is a statement of fact.
Peter was with Jesus.
He was with Jesus so much that he is probably best known as having been with Jesus.
His identity is tied to Jesus.
And the servant girl comes up and just makes that observation.
This doesn’t seem to be accusatory.
There’s no threat with it.
And if you consider who it’s from, this isn’t one of the grand officials there of the Sanhedrin Council.
This isn’t the high priest.
This isn’t one of the scribes..
It’s a servant girl.
This girl would’ve been the lowest of the low in society. Not having the ability to bring any charges whatsoever against anyone…
And so, when you think about who this is talking with Peter, surely Peter will remain strong and confident in the face of such lowly company.
Right?
Surely he will be able to say to the servant girl. Yeah that’s right, I was with him.
But we know that doesn’t happen, does it?
Look at verse 70–
But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you mean.”
Peter is dismissive of this young lady’s comment..
He plays dumb.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
And that is denial number one.
But then look at verse 71…
And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
And so a second time, another servant girl, again occupying the lowest rung of society….she doesn’t even speak to Peter.
She just says to those standing around- Hey I think that man was with Jesus of Nazareth.
Peter hears what she says to them and he cuts her off.
Verse 72 tells us what Peter says—
And again he denied it with an oath: “I do not know the man.”
And here, what you must notice is that the denial goes a little deeper.
His denial here goes from saying he’s ignorant of what she is talking about.
To where now, he is saying he does not know Jesus personally.
And it even goes a step further where Peter is swearing an oath that he does not know Jesus.
Listen to this definition of an oath-
In biblical terms: An oath was a solemn appeal to God to confirm the truth of your words.
It would basically be like someone saying, “God is my witness. I don’t know him.”
So Peter wants to put an end to his being connected with Jesus.
He’s doing so by swearing by God I don’t know him.
And that is denial number two.
Now this seems to create quite the stir.
It seems to me now that the crowd that the servant girl had spoke to they began to look at Peter a little more closely.
They heard what he said, and how he spoke—
And so a third time they come up to Peter—-
Look in verse 73–
After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.”
So the crowd comes up and they said, “No, no, no… you sound like a Galilean.”
You are one of his.
We do this too.
I can tell when someone’s from Horry County and when they are not.
You can tell the people who were raised in Ketchuptown vs Myrtle Beach. .
Your accent betrays you.
Here Peter speaks like a Galilean.
He is recognizably tied to place where Jesus found the majority of his followers…
Peter is caught… But he denies it
And we see, this is the final straw for Peter.
Peter begins to invoke a curse on himself.
He begins to swear
And he says I do not know the man.
And don’t miss that little detail… I want you to notice he doesn’t even call Jesus by his name.
The man who he said he loved. Can’t even say his name.
SDFS
Notice— with each denial— Matthew records that Peter becomes more and more agitated.
Here, when he invokes a curse on himself— it is as if he’s saying, may God strike me dead if I’m lying, I do not know the man.
And that’s denial number three.
He becomes angry. He curses he swears…
And while he throws his fit…
Luke tells us—
And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.
He turned and looked at him.
Can you imagine the moment his eyes met the Lord’s as he curses and swears that he doesn’t know Jesus?
Bear in mind… This was the man in the inner circle..
The man who had left everything to go and follow Jesus.
The man who had been around Jesus and had seen him do basically all of his wonderful mighty acts that only God could have done.
Peter saw Jesus turned water into wine.
Peter saw Jesus heal the blind and the lame and the deaf.
Peter saw Jesus feed the five thousand with the 5 loaves of bread and two fish.
Peter saw Jesus walk on water and he actually walked upon the water to him..
Peter saw Jesus speak to the waves and calm them.
Peter saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead.
And Peter was one of the three who got the awesome privilege to see Jesus transfigured on the mountain , where, for a brief moment, the veil of Jesus’s humanity is peeled back and the glory of God shines forth.
Peter just a few hours prior had begged the Lord not to wash his feet because he didn’t feel worthy.
Peter just a few hours prior had been served the Lord’s supper.
And Peter just a few hours prior had promised Jesus something.
Do you remember what he promised him?
In verse 35…
Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And all the disciples said the same.
And here in a matter of hours, the very thing Peter said he would not do. He has done three times….
…
Verse 75 says..
And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.
All of a sudden, with a look from Jesus, Luke tells us, Peter remembered the words that Jesus had told him just a little bit ago… that he would deny him three time before the rooster crowed.
All at once, those words come flooding back into his mind as he hears the crowing of the rooster.
If there’s a moment, Peter could erase, it would be this one… But then we would miss everything this is meant to teach us.
There’s a few things here I believe we learn from this incident:
We are not as strong as we think we are.
Peter was bold before as I believe he truly thought his love for Jesus exceeded his fear of man and the pressures of other people.
But Peter’s boldnesse turns to brokenness here as theLord, looks him in the eyes after he had denied him three times.
SDFS
JC Ryle said this —
“[This great fall] teaches us plainly that the best of saints are only men, and men encompassed with many infirmities. A man may be converted to God, have faith, and hope, and love towards Christ, and yet be overtaken in a fault, and have awful falls. It shews us the necessity of humility. So long as we are in the body we are in danger. The flesh is weak, and the devil is active. We must never think, “I cannot fall.”
Now, I don’t think that this should lead us to despair.
I don’t think that we should just throw up our hands and say well we’ll never be able to make it.
No, Jesus knew this was going to happen… If you remember earlier, Jesus was praying in the garden, and he came back after he went the first time to pray and he found Peter James and John asleep and do you remember what he said?
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Pray that you enter not into temptation.
Jesus told them back then that the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.
Peter I know you want to be strong and you claim to be strong, but if you are going to live holy and boldly in this world, you will need supernatural help.
This is the second thing we learn here…
2. You will need to pray and rely upon God.
SDFS
Beloved, we live in the constant reality of a weak flesh.
Yes, the Holy Spirit indwells those of us who are believers, but we are still carrying around a body of sin.
Now thanks be to God, one day that body of sin will be glorified, and we will be like Jesus with never again the possibility of a fall
But right now, in this particular age, all of us here are capable of a fall.
So we must be sober.
We must be alert.
You must put on the armor of God.
We must pray that we not enter into temptation.
We must rely upon the everlasting arms of God to hold us up.
We are warned in scripture that pride comes before the fall.
This is the case with Peter.
We see this in the previous passage where he argues with the Lord and tells him though they all fall away, he would never.
And so with that confidence, and that boldness and self reliance, while Jesus prays on the mountain, Peter sleeps.
He neglects the very thing Jesus said to do.
A mentor of mine once told me something very important.
He said men do not fall in the ministry.
He said they slowly slip down through thousands of tiny decisions.
Who we are day-to-day matters..
The habits we feed.
The friends we entertain. The places we go.
Allowing ourselves to become so busy that we neglect the things that should be occupying our time .
The small things that we neglect.
A lack of prayer. A lack of studying God’s word. A lack of being connected to the church.
All of that is a recipe for a fall.
JC Ryle said this—
“Men fall in private, long before they fall in public. The tree falls with a great crash, but the secret decay which accounts for it, is often not discovered till it is down on the ground.”
Peters fall here reminds us that anyone can fall..
And so I would just encourage and caution all of us to avoid thinking that it could not be us…
Rather, let us take up the things God has given us to keep us on track to maintain a healthy relationship with the Lord, so that when temptation does arise, we can stand against it.
The third thing we learned from Peter’s fall is actually something worthy of imitation.
Don’t miss the last words of this chapter.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
Whether it was the look from Jesus or the immediate crow of the rooster immediately following his third denial, Peter is broken.
3. Our sin should break our hearts.
He goes out and the text says he wept bitterly.
Let me ask you a question this morning and this is a question that I have wrestled with this week as well: when’s the last time you truly wept bitterly over your sin?
When’s the last time your sin bothered you to the point where you wept over it.
I believe Peter wept over his sin, because of how close he was to Jesus.
And I believe it’s probable that we don’t weep over our sin because of how far we are away from him.
It broke Peter’s heart to have denied him.
I believe it broke Peter’s heart as he considered what he had done.
As he considered who Jesus was to him and how he in this moment had failed him.
Peter is broken.
I don’t think this is worldly sorrow of having been caught.
I believe this is godly sorrow.
I believe this is sorrow that hit deeply within Peter’s heart, and it flowed out of a heart of love for the Lord.
Beloved friend this morning, it is good and right that when we sin against God that it would bother us.
It ought to break our hearts whenever we fail the Lord, who has never failed us.
Does your sin break you?
Does my sin break me?
In the passage concerning the New Covenant in Ezekiel 36, God promises through Ezekiel the prophet, that part of what the Holy Spirit will accomplish in our lives will be establishing within us a holy hatred for the evil we commit.
Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.
Beloved, do you hate your sin? Do you bitterly weep over it?
The last thing I want you to see here is this—
Thankfully, this is not the end of the story for Peter.
4. There is a gracious and resurrected Shepherd who comes looking for his straying sheep.
There is a bottom to Peter’s fall.
He is indeed caught in the everlasting arms of God.
I think I’ve preached John chapter 21 twice since I’ve been here as pastor.
Once whenever we went through the gospel of John, and once on an Easter Sunday.
And that passage is a passage that we must keep going back to because it speaks of the restoration by the resurrected Savior of the one that he loves.
Jesus having been failed by Peter goes to the cross and dies for Peter and every other failing child of his.
On that cross, he takes Peter’s failures and my failures and your failures if you are a believer…
And he takes the punishment that we deserve for our failures and our sin. And he finished the wrath payment for them.
So that it could be said of us that there is now no condemnation for us.
And then, upon that foundation, Jesus restores us.
He does not leave his sheep alone to wander. He chases them with a disciplining hand.
For Peter Jesus would show up and ask him three times if he loved him.
Three times Jesus questioned Peter’s love because three times Peter had denied him.
And after every affirmation of love by Peter Jesus tells him to go and do what he told him to do to start with feed his sheep.
Thanks be to God for a resurrected Savior that restores his fallen and unfaithful people.
Peter failed to stand for Jesus. But Jesus would stand up for Peter, so that Peter can be made right.
Peter slept while Jesus prayed.
But Jesus told Peter something beautiful… Luke 22:31-32
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
Thanks be to God when Peter in His boldness believe himslef incapable of falling, and so instead of praying, he slept.
Jesus prayed that his faith would not fail.
That’s the picture we get here.
This morning, as we end, I want you to consider your life as I consider my life and light of the things that we learned here from Peter.
Do we think we’re stronger than we actually are?
Do you see yourself as someone you don’t believe that you could ever do something like this ?
Listen to the words of Jesus.
Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Don’t overestimate yourself and do not underestimate temptation and in the flesh .
Understand you are weak, and I am weak and because of that we need to pray. We do not need to neglect. The ordinary means of grace that God has given us to help guard our lives from sin.
We need the church. We need brothers and sisters who hold you accountable.
We need to be in the word daily.
We need to be on our faces before God in prayer daily asking God to keep us from sin and temptation .
Are we doing that?
I want to encourage you this morning as you consider your life.
Maybe you have fallen into some sin.
Maybe you have by your life denied Jesus.
My prayer this morning is that that denial and fall and sin breaks your heart
That you will be convicted of your sin that you would weep over it and refuse to live in it anymore .
And the good news is this .
You have a resurrected, Lord ready and willing to restore you make you useful again.
I believe Satan desires to sift us like wheat. He is the enemy of God’s people and he seeks to steal kill and destroy.
But if you are a child of God, take rest in this— Jesus, resurrected Lord, perfectly righteous, perfectly acceptable as our sacrifice, and perfectly raised up forever never to die again, that same Jesus, John tells us, he is our advocate.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
We serve a God who rescues the sinners.
We serve a God who binds up the broken.
We serve a God who qualifies the disqualified .
We serve a God of grace and mercy so this morning cry out to him.
Weep bitterly over your sin and call on Christ who stands ready to forgive and restore.
Let’s pray.
