1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father
and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. Sin is a slippery slope. In
our Lenten midweek series these past few weeks we’ve seen the extent of Peter’s slide—all the
way from pride to complacency to misunderstanding to distancing his
discipleship to bad company. Now tonight each of us must say, “It’s Jesus,
Peter, and me; and it’s all about denial.” Tonight, Peter denies Jesus, and
so have we. Is there any hope for Peter and for us who’ve found ourselves
somewhere along that same slippery slope? Yes, there is. The Jesus Whom We Deny Died to Forgive and
Restore Us.
2.
Our Lord was denied by Peter on the night before his death.
Review the story in your mind. Peter had first boldly declared his loyalty to
Christ, even unto death. But suddenly Jesus is taken captive, and Peter is
overwhelmed by fear. It drives him to panic. But not for long. Soon he’s
following at a safe distance. He wants “to see the end” (Mt 26:58). He
even risks going into the court of the high priest’s palace, where Jesus is on
trial. The night is cold. The warmth of the fire kindled in the courtyard is so
inviting, and Peter sits at the fire with the servants. But, this is his
undoing. The light of the fire shines on him, and a servant girl says that he
was with Jesus. Now he finds himself in a desperate situation. A lie leaps to
his lips, “Woman, I do not know him” (v 57).
3.
That lie saved Peter, but only for a moment. Peter stays on.
Then someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But
Peter denies it. “Man, I am not.” About an hour later, “still another
insisted, saying, ‘Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a
Galilean.’ ” Again Peter denies it. “Man, I do not know what you are
talking about” (vv 58–60). By now Peter had made his point, maybe more
clearly than he realized. He’s denied his Lord three times.
4.
You and I know something of Peter’s experience. Like Peter,
we’re not always alert to spiritual danger. A sudden temptation catches us off
guard, and we embrace the sin. We know better, but we’re afraid to say no or we
don’t want to say no. The sinful pressure of the moment turns us away from
Christ. That’s denial. A situation calls
for us to confess our sin, and we fail to make it. Something should be said,
and we’re silent. Our talk is vulgar and dirty, and we laugh. The conversation
is unkind, and we join in. The whole thing is wrong, and we become a part of it.
And when the first realization of what we’ve done dawns on us, instead of fleeing
the sin, we plunge in deeper. And the last state is worse than the first. We
deny Jesus by speaking or by not speaking, by doing or by not doing. It’s a
reflection of our heart, where we say yes to our fears or to sin’s siren call
or to the devil’s deception, and we say no to Christ. The result is bitter—in
fact, it should be absolutely terrifying!—because the judgment of Christ rests
upon it: “Whoever denies me before men,” Jesus said, “I also will
deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 10:33).
5.
But Jesus turned and looked at Peter. And whatever else
there may have been in that look, there was surely love and compassion. That
look was Peter’s call to repentance and restoration. Because Jesus died for our
sins and rose again, because God laid on him the sins of us all, because Christ
gave his life to ransom us, because his blood cleanses us from all sin, there
is forgiveness and a new beginning for those who look to him in repentance and
faith. Peter is witness to the fact that the lost can be restored, that sins
are forgiven, that the fallen are raised, and that life begins again. He who
said, “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who
is in heaven,” also said, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (Jn
6:37).
6.
Jesus had warned Peter, “The rooster will not crow this
day, until you deny three times that you know me” (Lk 22:34). When the
rooster crowed, Peter remembered and wept bitterly the tears of repentance. Many churches in Europe and some in America
have a rooster on top of the steeple or on a high point of the building. The
rooster is a symbol of repentance and a wake-up call to spiritual watchfulness. The rooster’s crow is heard today in our family
devotions, in our worship services, in the mutual admonition and encouragement
of one Christian to another. We hear it in the Word read, preached, and
studied. The Word of God rouses us, like a rooster’s crowing; it warns and
admonishes us and calls for our repentance.
But even more, the rooster’s crow announces the dawn. The message is
that we can leave behind the night and the darkness of sin and denial to greet
the dawn and the sunlight of God’s mercy and grace in Christ.
7.
The rooster crowed. Jesus turned and looked at Peter. And
Peter went out and wept bitterly. This was the prelude to that unforgettable
moment beside the sea, after Jesus’ resurrection, when Jesus, in effect, said
to Peter, “I still want you as my disciple, Peter. Three times you denied
me. Now I call you to deny yourself and follow me. Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep”
(see Jn 21:15–19).
8.
What happened to Peter happens also to us. Not that all
temptation is over, not that all failure is past, not that sin no longer blots
the record. But this is our hope. We live by our Lord’s forgiving grace. Every
day can be put to rest in this forgiving word from God: “Though your sins
are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like
crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is 1:18). The new day can begin like
a beautiful winter morning, when you look out on the wonder of new-fallen snow
that has covered completely the grime and grit of the day before. When our
hearts weep over our sins, the forgiveness of Jesus heals our souls. And life
is new again. This is the story of
Jesus, Peter, and each of us. Amen.
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