I Am Not

Introduction

Illustration: A puzzle piece object lesson.

Did that illustration hit a little too hard for anyone? Sometimes in life it really does seem like you can’t see the big picture and you wonder what God is doing. Maybe you’re in a season right now where that’s true, or maybe life is good right now and you do feel like you see the big picture. Either way I think our scripture this morning has something to teach us about God’s big plan.

We are continuing our series Believe and Live: The Gospel According to John. Believe it or not we’re coming quickly to the close of the series actually. Jesus has now been arrested and is about to face the judgment of the High Priest, while Peter faces his own sort of judgment moment. Let’s take a look at John chapter 18, verses 13 to 27 and ask how they can teach us how to be better disciples who make disciples:

John 18:13–27 CSB

First they led him to Annas, since he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be better for one man to die for the people. Simon Peter was following Jesus, as was another disciple. That disciple was an acquaintance of the high priest; so he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard. But Peter remained standing outside by the door. So the other disciple, the one known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the girl who was the doorkeeper and brought Peter in. Then the servant girl who was the doorkeeper said to Peter, “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” “I am not,” he said. Now the servants and the officials had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold. They were standing there warming themselves, and Peter was standing with them, warming himself. The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus answered him. “I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and I haven’t spoken anything in secret. Why do you question me? Question those who heard what I told them. Look, they know what I said.” When he had said these things, one of the officials standing by slapped Jesus, saying, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” “If I have spoken wrongly,” Jesus answered him, “give evidence about the wrong; but if rightly, why do you hit me?” Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said to him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Peter denied it again. Immediately a rooster crowed.

So what does God’s word have for us this morning? Well in my study I saw three major themes emerge from this passage that I think will help us be better Jesus followers. First, we see that Jesus stands as a great example of how to live in the light, and how living with integrity can help you to live without fear. On a much different note however, Peter teaches us by his failure the danger of not understanding the true value of the gospel and instead giving in to fear. Finally we see that though this moment is dark and seems to be dominated by the evil works of men, God uses all things for good in the end, and through this moment is showing us His hand for our ultimate good.

Living in the Light

Illustration: If you’re anything like me, you get nervous when you’re driving and you see a police car. Even if I’m fairly confident I’ve done nothing wrong, it still makes you extra alert and anxious. That’s nothing compared to how you feel when you see a police car and you know you have done something wrong. Like you see the car and you remember that you haven’t renewed your license plates yet for example.

Life is a bit more relaxing when you don’t have anything to hide. The thing about secrets and lies is that they are a lot of work. Plus they can turn totally peaceful situations into more stressful situations. If you have nothing to hide in your phone you’re never worried about your significant other asking to use it for something. If you are the same person in all your friend groups you don’t have to worry about your friend groups meeting.

And if you’re standing trial being innocent helps a lot. I assume. The trouble only comes in if the people putting you on trial are willing to cheat and lie to accuse you. That’s the problem that Jesus ran into in our passage this morning. Let’s read verses 19-23 together again.

John 18:19–23 CSB

The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus answered him. “I have always taught in the synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews gather, and I haven’t spoken anything in secret. Why do you question me? Question those who heard what I told them. Look, they know what I said.” When he had said these things, one of the officials standing by slapped Jesus, saying, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” “If I have spoken wrongly,” Jesus answered him, “give evidence about the wrong; but if rightly, why do you hit me?”

You see Jesus has nothing to fear from someone looking for evidence against Him. You and I are flawed and we make bad choices, so even the most honest of us might have something that somebody could dig up against us. Jesus on the other hand, though tempted in the same ways we are is without sin according to Hebrews. So then He has absolutely nothing to fear from an examination of His words and deeds. In fact if these men had been looking at Jesus with an open mind they surely would have seen that He truly was Messiah and savior of the world.

Instead their commitment to power and sin led them to condemn Him anyway. So then Jesus suffered, but He suffered for the right reason. Because He was completely righteous He died for us so that we could be saved. The only person who never sinned died for all the people who have sinned so that we can be saved.

Peter, whose failure at this same moment we’re about to address, learned his lesson from watching Jesus. He saw how Jesus lived and died and wrote this about how we should learn from that example in 1 Peter 3:13-18

1 Peter 3:13–18 CSB

Who then will harm you if you are devoted to what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear them or be intimidated, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do this with gentleness and reverence, keeping a clear conscience, so that when you are accused, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit,

So then Peter has given us our application for this point. We should aim to have the same integrity that Jesus had. If we’ve done wrong than we deserve justice, but if we live devoted to doing good than we have nothing to fear, and any suffering we face will be sharing in Jesus’ suffering, which the Bible calls our joy. I for one if I’m going to suffer would much rather do so with a clear conscious than suffer because I’ve somehow earned it. So let’s strive to live with the level of integrity that Jesus showed.

Peter’s Failure

Illustration: So there’s this odd thing I do sometimes that I hear from the internet is actually more common than I thought. I sometimes imagine worst case scenarios and what I would do in them. Like if I get up in the middle of the night sometimes I’ll imagine what I would do if I discovered an armed robber in the house. Am I the only one?

Of course the unifying factor in all these mental scenarios is that in my mental rehearsals I am very unrealistically heroic. We all like to think that if we were put into difficult situations we would persevere and do the right thing. Maybe we wouldn’t always pull off what we tried to do, but we’d always do the right thing, right?

Peter certainly thought that he would do the right thing when put under pressure. Jesus warned him along with the other disciples that there would be trouble coming and that they would abandon him. What did Peter say? In John 13:37 Peter said this:

John 13:37 CSB

“Lord,” Peter asked, “why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”

He thought that when he was threatened with death he would do the right thing and lay down his life if the situation called for it. That’s not what happened though, is it?

Almost everyone knows what really happened, because all four gospels record it during the most important historical event to ever unfold. Peter has one of the most famous failures in history because of what happens in our passage this morning. Let’s take a look at verses 16 to 18 and then 25 to 27.

John 18:16–18 CSB

But Peter remained standing outside by the door. So the other disciple, the one known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the girl who was the doorkeeper and brought Peter in. Then the servant girl who was the doorkeeper said to Peter, “You aren’t one of this man’s disciples too, are you?” “I am not,” he said. Now the servants and the officials had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold. They were standing there warming themselves, and Peter was standing with them, warming himself.

John 18:25–27 CSB

Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said to him, “You aren’t one of his disciples too, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the high priest’s servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you with him in the garden?” Peter denied it again. Immediately a rooster crowed.

John is very clearly setting up a contrast here between Jesus and Peter when they face danger. Last time we looked at Jesus’ arrest, and how He boldly declared “I Am” when they came asking for Him. What does Peter say when he is asked about his identity? He says I am not. It’s a lot clearer in the Greek than the english. In Greek both answers are two words, ego eimi and ouk eimi. Jesus faces His torture and death with boldness where Peter faces a lesser though very real chance of torture and death with fear and lies.

You see when John wrote this gospel he had witnessed the trouble that Jesus promised the disciples would go through. Depending on when exactly this gospel is written at least one and perhaps as many as ten of these disciples had been killed for preaching the gospel. Christians were being crucified and lit on fire as scapegoats for a fire in Rome. What God was asking His followers to do was not easy. John’s whole gospel is filled to the brim with the theme of faithfully testifying to the gospel no matter what the cost.

This may be a tough pill to swallow, but Jesus really does ask us to risk everything for His sake. We’re far removed from this being a reality in our comfortable modern life, but Jesus asked His disciples to pick up their cross and follow Him. Peter failed because he in that moment was not willing to face death for Jesus. One quote I found in my research says it so well that I thought I’d share it with you:

“If Peter could see clearly, if he could rightly estimate what matters and what is valuable, he would know that it would be better for him to be in danger than for him to deny his Lord. Better for him to be jailed, even killed; better for his sons that their father die a heroic martyr than live as a coward. Better for his wife to be the widow of a noble man who kept faith with the one who matters most than to have a husband alive because he denied Jesus. Better for his life to end in honor than to continue in shame.[1]”

[1] James M. Hamilton Jr. and Brian J. Vickers, John–Acts, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. IX, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 275.

That’s hard to hear, isn’t it? Especially for those of us with families. But it’s meant to jar us awake to the surpassing value of Christ. When I read this quote and reflect on the value of the gospel I can’t help but ask myself, would I be willing to die if it came to it? Would I be willing to leave my wife a widow and my children without a father for the sake of the gospel?

Am I even willing to be publicly embarrassed for the sake of the gospel? To have an awkward silence for the gospel? How many among us have had moments where we felt a pull to bring up Jesus but we let the moment go? I wonder if this is because we don’t truly understand what it is we have.

We have eternal life, not just for ourselves but for everyone who receives it. So the lesson we can learn from Peter’s bad example in this moment is the one that he learned. He did one day face his death with courage for the sake of the gospel. We’ll talk more about that at the end of this sermon series. We should have the courage to boldly stand up for Jesus even when its unpopular, even when it’s difficult, even when we stand to lose someone or something important to us. It’s no less than Jesus did for us.

God’s Sovereignty

Illustration: When I was a kid I really loved this show called “Art Attack.” It was a kids show where the host, Neil Buchanan, taught kids how to do fun arts and crafts at home. Each episode Neil would do something called a “Big Art attack” where he would take a lot of something and make a really big picture only visible from a large overhead camera. I loved it because you’d watch him take this massive pile of shirts, or salt, or cardboard boxes, and he’d start arranging them. Usually you’d watch along and think “what the heck is he making” the whole time until he finally stands back and does this open arm motion for the camera revealing the image.

In many ways I think the story of the Bible is sort of like a big art attack. If you read the Bible in order of when the books were written, assuming you don’t know how the story ends, you’d probably wonder at many points “what is God doing?” Throughout Scripture God inspired the prophets at many points to give these sort of mysterious previews of what He had planned for the future. You read them in their original context and it seems like things might be all over the place.

Then Jesus shows up, and everything starts to fall in place.

Here at this moment in John’s gospel, things are still unfolding and I’m sure the disciples were wondering what God was doing. Jesus has been arrested, Peter who was nicknamed the rock and was the chief disciple was failing, everything seemed lost. Yet now taht John is writing this in retrospect the hand of God in even this moment is perfectly clear.

Consider the prophecy of Caiaphas that John reminds us of in verse 14,

John 18:14 CSB

Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be better for one man to die for the people.

Caiaphas didn’t even understand this prophecy when he spoke it, yet even the death of Jesus is the plan of God. They are trying to work evil but God is working it for good. Or consider the end of the story of Peter’s denial, verse 27

John 18:27 CSB

Peter denied it again. Immediately a rooster crowed.

Again, this shows that God is in control of all these circumstances. He orchastrated this moment as a reminder to Peter that He knows the end before the beginning. Peter didn’t surprise Jesus by failing Him. God was working even this for Peter’s eventual good, which we see as Peter eventually becomes the leader of the church and a faithful disciple even to the point of eventually making good on his promise to lay down his life for Jesus.

This is not a new idea in the Bible. It’s been around since Genesis. Even when human beings are doing wrong and trying to be evil, God is working everything for good. Joseph is the example of this at the end of Genesis, and is in many ways a foreshadowing of Jesus. When his brothers decide to jealously beat him and sell him into slavery they were undoubtedly doing evil. They were wrong to do this to him. They were exercising their freewill.

But God was using even that for good. Joseph being in slavery in Egypt meant that he was there to advise Pharaoh that famine was coming and saved many lives. That’s why he says to his brothers in Genesis 50:19-20

Genesis 50:19–20 CSB

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.

SO the mystery presented by scripture is this, somehow the evil will of man can be used for good, and there is no better example of this than the crucifixion of Jesus. It was undoubtedly an evil act. Judas was doing evil when he betrayed Jesus. The Jewish leadership was doing evil when they conspired to have him killed. Pilate was doing evil when he agreed to kill him.

But through it all God did the greatest good ever conceived. He used all these evil men to save our souls and make a way to have eternal life.

So my friends I want us to think about the evil and wrong in our lives in this moment. The things that are weighing us down. The people who have hurt us. The expenses we’re not sure if we can keep up with. The sicknesses that threaten our lives. Is it possible that God is using these evils for our good?

No. It’s not just possible, it’s certain. Paul says in Romans 8:28

Romans 8:28 CSB

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

The danger is that some hear that as a promise that God will bring us success and happiness in this life, but that’s not what Paul is saying here. He goes on to say in verse Romans 8:29-30

Romans 8:29–30 CSB

For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

If we are to be conformed to the image of God’s son, if we are to be like Jesus, that surely doesn’t mean no suffering. In fact that’s almost a promise that we will suffer. But God is using that suffering for our good, because there’s something bigger and more important than comfort and happiness in this life, and that’s eternal life and joy.

I can’t promise we’ll ever know this side of eternity what each bad thing in our lives is being used for by God. There is one thing we can know however, that God always keeps His promises, so He will use them for our good. Whether that be in building our character, or building our testimony so that it reaches others, or in making way for something even better in our lives. We may not know the specifics, but we do know the ultimate purpose: to make us more like Jesus. That is the greatest good. We can have confidence in knowing that if our God is for us, no one can be against us. We know God is for us because He did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. If He has already done that, we can trust Him with everything else.

Conclusion

Though many moments in history have seemed bleak, even this one displays the hand of God in human events. Though Jesus is put on trial by corrupt leadership, He stands as a testiment to the value of living with integrity in the face of evil. Though Peter fails he teaches us the value of being willing to sacrifice everything to christ. Though everything seems chaos we see that God is in control and working together everything for our good, even our own evil.

So if I had to wrap one neat and tidy application over this whole thing I would say that we should leave today with the reassurance that God has a plan. We don’t always get to know the plan, and it can be sometimes difficult to live in the midst of it, but God is for us. We should be reassured that He is in control so that when we try our best to live with integrity and to stand up for Jesus we can know that it is possible not because of anything in us, but because of the God who stands by us and gives us strength through His Holy Spirit.

Let us pray.