1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word today as we continue our Lenten midweek series is taken
from Luke 22:61-62, it’s entitled, “Remember
Jesus’ Words,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
What do you do to remember
something? Many people use electronic memory helpers by setting an alert on
their phone. Some may still use an “old
school” method like putting a sticky note where it’ll be easily seen. The
memory helper everyone knows but nobody really uses is tying a string around a
finger. There are also unintended ways to remember things. When the smoke alarm
goes off, we remember that we left something in the oven. When the chime
sounds, we remember we were going to put gas in the car. Or, in the case of
today’s text, when the rooster crowed, Peter remembered the words Jesus had
said. In our Lenten services, we’re
looking at the way the Bible uses the word remember. So, we look for both the
thought in the mind and the action that follows. In our text tonight, Peter did
something when he remembered: “And the
Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord,
‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went
out and wept bitterly” (vv 61–62). The rooster crowed. Peter remembered the
words of Jesus. Jesus’ words showed Peter his sin. And then, at the power of
Jesus’ words, Peter repented. That’s our theme tonight. God
Causes His Word to Be Remembered So That People Repent.
3.
Peter had started that evening with good
intentions. When Jesus said, “You will
all fall away,” Peter said, “Even
though they all fall away, I will not.” That’s when Jesus said, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before
the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” Peter disagreed. “But he said emphatically, ‘If I must die with
you, I will not deny you.’ And they all said the same” (Mk 14:27, 29–31). What
Peter and the other disciples were saying were only words. They wouldn’t have
the power to keep them. But, Jesus, had
the power to keep his word. He would keep his word and be denied, deserted, and
crucified. Even Peter’s denial was part of the prophecy from Zech 13:7, “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be
scattered.”
4.
It’s sad that instead of reading
these verses and seeing the power of God’s Word, some read them and see an
example of the weakness of God’s Word. First, they note that one place says the
rooster crows twice and other places only say it crowed once. Then they add
that the whole thing must be false since chickens weren’t allowed in Jerusalem.
Sure enough, the Mishnah, the written
version of the ancient Jewish laws, says, “It
is forbidden to raise fowl in Jerusalem” (Bava Kama 7:7). So, they conclude that the Bible is wrong.
5.
People have defended the Bible by
saying that “rooster crow” could
refer to a man speaking, as a woman might refer to her husband as “that old rooster” in unflattering terms.
A more reasonable explanation is given by the Bible itself in Mk 13:35, where
it says the return of Christ might be “in
the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows.” From that, it
appears that an identifiable time, about three in the morning, was known as “when the rooster crows.” Did Peter hear
an actual rooster crow and then remember what Jesus said, or did he remember
what Jesus said by three in the morning?
I like an idea people have raised that Jesus actually sent a rooster,
especially where there weren’t supposed to be any roosters, to bring Peter to
repentance. God Causes His Word to Be Remembered So That People Repent.
6.
What about us?
What does God send to us so that we remember his Word and repent? In one sense,
God sends a rooster to us. If “rooster
crow” could mean a man speaking, we could say that the pastor speaking
God’s Law is like a rooster crowing. That’s not very flattering, so I hope it’s
not the thing you remember most from this sermon. But the preaching of the Law
is a necessary part of preaching God’s Word, and that Word still has the power
to do what God sends it to do. We learned in our catechisms that the Law is a
mirror to show us our sin. God’s Law is held up in front of us, and it has the
power from God to show us what we’re really like . . . how sinful we are . . .
how we have sinned against God in “thought,
word and deed.” As St. Paul said, “through
the Law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). James used the mirror
illustration: “For if anyone is a hearer
of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural
face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets
what he was like” (James 1:23–24).
7.
This fits well with our focus on the
word remember in the Bible and how it
involves both the thought in the mind and the resulting action. When we see our
sins in the mirror of the Law, the resulting action is to repent. Failure to
repent upon hearing God’s Law is like looking away from that mirror and forgetting
what we look like, because we’d rather not know. But then we’d still be in our
sins. So, God sends the Law to lead us to repentance. We’d probably like a more
memorable thing, like a rooster crowing, rather than a pastor preaching, but
it’s God’s Word with God’s power, and the Word works. We may not go out and
weep as Peter did, but we do come here and confess our sins.
8.
Well, so far we’ve heard about
repentance, but the Bible says, “repentance
for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed” (Lk 24:47). Repentance
and forgiveness go hand in hand. When God leads people to repent and confess
their sins, God, “is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9).
God didn’t go to Peter and rub his nose in his denial or make him pay for what
he did. God forgave and restored Peter. In fact, most scholars note a
relationship between Peter’s denying Jesus 3 times and Jesus reinstating Peter 3
times in John 21: “Feed my lambs . . .
tend my sheep . . . feed my sheep.” Instead of shaming Peter or disowning
him or making him win back his credibility, Jesus said to him the same words he
said before—when Jesus had first called Peter: “Follow me” (Jn 21:19). There was no need to rub Peter’s nose in his
denial. There was no possibility of doing that, because what God forgives is
gone. The denial was gone. Sin is forgotten. No action is taken. There’s no
judgment. It was by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but also from personal
experience, that Peter could write: “Humble
yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time
he may exalt you” (1 Pet 5:6). It may have been the bitter tears shed
between his denial and his restoration that made Peter personally understand
what he wrote for others: “And after you
have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his
eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and
establish you” (1 Pet 5:10).
9.
That crowing sound of the Law is a
good thing for us, because God has given power to the Law to show us our sins
and bring us to repentance. Where God works through his Word of the Law to
bring genuine sorrow for our sins, there is forgiveness of those sins in the
Word of the Gospel. Where there’s forgiveness, there’s not just an empty hole
or clean slate. In our case, an empty hole could just be filled back up again
with sin or a blank slate filled again with filthy words. It’s similar to what
Jesus said about an unclean spirit who had been cast out of a person and then
went looking for a new place to live “and
finding none, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when
it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings
seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there” (Lk
11:24–26). No! When God forgives our sins, he doesn’t leave us empty to allow
more sins to move back in, but instead fills us with his Holy Spirit. God
restores us. We sing a hymn like that: “Come,
Holy Ghost, Creator blest, And make our hearts Your place of rest; Come with
Your grace and heav’nly aid, And fill the hearts which You have made” (LSB
499:1). God Causes His Word to Be Remembered So That People Repent.
10.
More and more cities have ordinances
that allow people to keep chickens. But, because of the noise, most of them don’t allow roosters.
Jewish law didn’t allow roosters in Jerusalem. But the Romans were in town, and
history says they liked omelets more than they cared about Jewish laws. So, it
might have been a Roman rooster that crowed for Peter. A rooster caused Peter
to remember the words of Jesus to repent and receive forgiveness and to be
restored as a forgiven servant of God. God does what it takes . . . and he has
done it again tonight. He has sent his Word to bring us to repentance,
forgiveness, and restoration. Amen. The peace of God that passes all
understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life
everlasting. Amen.
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