We continue our series on Matthew this morning, and now we've come to the last seven verses of chapter 26. There are only 28 chapters in the whole book, so we're getting close to the end. We started at the beginning and now we're getting near the end. Matthew chapter 26, and we'll be reading 69 through 75. Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, the gospel according to Matthew chapter 26 verses 69 through 75, the word of the Lord. Now, Peter sat outside in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him saying, you also were with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied it before them all saying, I do not know what you are saying. And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth. But again, he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And a little later, those who stood by came up and said to Peter, surely you are also one of them, for your speech betrays you. And he began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the man. Immediately, a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, who said to him, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So he went out and wept bitterly. It's the reading of the word of the Lord, and we pray that he would bless it to our hearts. Amen. In traditional Christian depictions of good guys and bad guys, the number one bad guy, most likely, I think for good reason, is Judas. He's the one who's In the worst part of hell, in Dante's Inferno, he's the one whose name has come to be synonymous with betrayal and treachery. And one of the best is Peter. In the common fables, when people go to heaven, who's at the gate letting people in? St. Peter. I think that's from Matthew chapter 16. It's a misinterpretation of it. But see, I hand you the kings of the kingdom of heaven. So therefore, Peter's at the entrance of the gate of heaven. That's not what it means. But that's how people take it. And so that's where that came from. But Peter's always the one there. And Peter's highly esteemed in the thoughts and minds of many Christians, whereas Judas is often singled out with contempt. But if you look at what they did, there is a similarity. Not an exact sameness, but a similarity. Judas betrayed Jesus. Peter denied Christ. And while Judas was premeditated in doing it, it was far worse. I do not want to I don't want to say that that's not true. It is in the same category of sin. And both showed what might be called emotions for repentance. I don't want to set too much on Bill's toes this afternoon, so I'm not going to focus on Judas. But what I do want to focus on is Peter here. What was the difference? How was he able to recover from this denying Christ three times? And how does this show the type of God whom we serve? Those are the questions we're going to ask this morning, and this is how we're going to get there. First of all, in the two sections here this morning, normally my sermons are three to four parts, but This morning, we only have two. The first one's going to be long, so don't worry. You'll get your money's worth. The first one's about Peter's denials. His three denials and how they build upon one another and what they might mean. And the second one of them calling Peter's tears. It's just there in the end of verse 74 and also in 75. recognition of his sin and his tears and how that can be applied to our lives in a way that's useful and that also emphasizes the love and graciousness of our God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Beginning with Peter's denials. Now we see in verses 69 through 74 that Peter clearly denies the Christ Jesus three times. And each one is escalating. But before we go into the denials, let's talk about the background just a little bit. Peter had been following Jesus from a distance. You remember that they were all in the garden of Gethsemane. And then Judas came and he betrayed Jesus with a kiss and Jesus was then arrested. And what did Peter do? Do you remember seeing all the guards and seeing what was happening there? He pulled out his sword and he cut off the ear of one of the servants of one of the servants of the high priest. But he was there with the cohort. And trust me, he wasn't aiming for his ear. He was out there to go. And basically, I think it was misguided, and it was wrong. But it was certainly an act of courage and bravery. He wanted to rescue Jesus from the fate of being arrested, because he knows what political enemies of Rome, what happens to them when they are arrested, they are crucified. And Peter does not want to see Jesus become crucified. He does not want to see his good friend hurt. pulls out the sword, and he tries to at least cause enough of a distraction to let Jesus go free and continue on the movement. And Jesus tells him, he rebukes him, mildly, but he rebukes him, he says, Peter, put the sword away. Those who take the sword perish by the sword. Okay, showing that Jesus was not that type of revolutionary, certainly not that type of Messiah. And then Jesus was brought into the courtyard, and we talked about it a couple weeks ago, the trial that was against him. And this trial probably took the better part of the night, and many people were summoned to give witnesses and to give accounts of Jesus's blasphemy, anything to warrant his crucifixion. And no one stood forward and finally Someone stood forward and said, this man said he would destroy the temple and raise it up in three days, or misquoting one aspect of what Jesus had said earlier. Finally, Jesus admits that he is the son of God and that he should. And then there was this great portrayal of blasphemy and the high priest tore his coat and said, do you hear anything more? And the high priest then arrests Jesus and he is taken away. And that's where we are right now. We know from verse, what is it, verse 58 of chapter 26, that Peter was there and he was sitting among the servants. Matthew is very deliberate to tell us that he is there watching the whole thing, taking in the whole thing, but from a distance. He's sitting with the servant girls and he's sitting outside on the courtyard where it's all happening, the courtyard. He's on the outskirts there and looking at what's going on. Finally, All the attention is now away from Jesus and people are starting to look around. Why? Because when revolutions begin they're never done alone And you want if you're going to stop a revolution you need to stop all the revolution You don't want this person's next man or his right-hand man to pick up or the arrested person left off so people are looking for followers of Jesus at this time and so The attention is now off Jesus. It's safe to look around and they're looking for people to that might have followed Jesus. And here we come to verse 69, where Peter is recognized as a follower of Jesus. We read in verses 69 and 70. Now, Peter sat outside in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him saying, you also were with Jesus of Galilee, but he denied it before them all saying, I do not know what you are saying. Now, Peter denies it here with seemingly rather innocent language. He doesn't say, no, you are absolutely wrong. He certainly doesn't call an oath or a curse upon himself and then deny it. He just says, I don't know what you're saying. Technically, you can even construe it as not really being a technical lie. He's just saying, I don't know or I don't understand. He's not saying, I am not a follower. It's rather innocent language. Yet he's still clearly, by his words, denying Christ. And we have to ask ourselves, why someone who was willing basically to die for Jesus and who had adamantly admitted just a few hours before that he would never deny Christ, what was it that caused Peter to suddenly deny Christ? We know that Peter is not lacking in the bravery department. Remember when Jesus said, come to me on the storm, Jesus was walking on the water. Now, he loses his nerve after he goes out there, but he takes the step and goes out onto the water, which is something that not many of us would do, especially if you've been on the open sea. You know what that's like. I've never been, but I've heard it's not exactly a smooth ride. Peter is not lacking in bravery, but this is what I think happened. And now, of course, this is speculation. We don't know. I'm not into Peter's mind, but this is what happened. Peter had an idea. He had an understanding of how things were supposed to go. He had a narrative. He had his plans. They were all there. Jesus is the Messiah. He himself had admitted it. And he said that Jesus said to Peter that you are blessed because man did not reveal this to you, but God did. But Peter's view, just as many people around him, of the Messiah was not exactly the way that Jesus had envisioned it. Not exactly the way that Jesus was doing it. You don't become a Messiah by going to the cross. This is just not something that's logical in the minds of the first century Jews. It's certainly not something that's logical to anyone around here either. It just doesn't seem logical. So Peter's whole world was turned around. And so at that point, when things he was holding on to so dearly were beginning to loosen, he lost his nerve and he denied Christ three times. Here's just the first time. And I think this is an important lesson for us. We all make plans. We all have a way, it's just natural as humans to do this, to have a way that we think, this is how things are going to go. This makes sense to us. This is what's going to happen. It's not necessarily wrong to do this. In fact, it's good to make plans, but so often God just shakes them up and says, nope, that's not what I wanted, even though it seems logical to you. What do we do when we have these shakeups and plans? We could react to it and say that God really isn't there or doesn't really care and react contemptuously. Or we can put our trust more in the God who makes the plans and the God who controls all things. I think we need to really take this lesson. Why? Because it's so easy for us to manipulate God in our minds. We cannot really do it, obviously. But we try to say, of course, this is what God wants us to do. This is what we're doing. And sometimes God blesses our plans, and that's great. But when things start going off, it's so easy for us to then attribute it to God and say, well, God doesn't really care. Not saying it, perhaps thinking it. And do things that we later regret, as Peter does here. We need to trust not our plans or not even what we think God's plans are. But. The Lord. The one who controls all things. And the one who does not change our plans and our purposes might change. But God does not change. And when our hope and our trust is firmly in him, we can deal, as difficult as it might be, these times when our plans change and our view of the way things should be is suddenly shifted before our eyes. Peter's first denial seems innocent enough, but it gets worse. The second denial, verses 71 through 72. And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth. Now, just you see just a comment here on you see the words there in italics, and I think many of you know it, but I'll just say it again. If you see words in your Bible that are in italics, especially in these ones, They're not in the original language, but the reason why they're there is because they're implied. See, Greek is different than English, where you don't have to say all the words. It's encoded in an ending. So we know that the word girl is there, so they're not just making that up. But just so you know, when you're reading the Bible and you see these italics, it means that the word is not really in the original, but it's implied. So we, as English speakers, are to read it as though it were there. So, they're not emphasizing it and saying another girl here. It's just saying that that's not in the original, but it's implied and it should be there in our translations. Okay, enough of that. What happens here in the second denial? Peter, in verse 71, is there with another girl who saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow also is with Jesus of Nazareth. And then Peter again denies it, but this time, as we read in 72, with an oath. I do not know the man. Notice how things have escalated. The first denial was simply, I don't know what you're talking about. Here, it's escalated in two ways. First of all, Peter flat out lies this time. You cannot construe this as anything but a bold-faced lie. It wasn't, I don't know what you're saying. You can interpret that in many different ways. This time, it's a lie. I do not know the man. That's the first way in which his denial is escalated. His lie becomes more and more entangled. The second way is... He denies it with an oath. Now, an oath, we don't do those normally in our society, at least in day-to-day activities, but it's to be distinguished from a vow. A vow is something you make when you're going to do something. You say, I vow to God that I'm going to do this. The greatest and easiest example for us in our day and age is a marriage vow. We vow to do these things, and there's all kinds of, you know, to death do you part, et cetera, et cetera. But you're vowing to do something. But that's not what an oath is. An oath is a charge before God that you are telling the truth. The closest thing we have here in our society might be in a courtroom when the guy comes up and says in really fast language, you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help you, God. You're making an oath there before God that you are telling the truth. So it actually heightens your guilt if you were lying, because not only are you just lying in ordinary speech, you're doing so under oath. So Peter here calls an oath, probably says something like, I swear by the living God who rules forever and ever or something like that, that I do not know this man. What began as what looked like an innocent denial, or at least the language of it was innocent, has escalated into something far more serious. He calls down an oath, and he says, blatantly lying, I do not know this man. This is how deceit often works, and it's important for us to take note of it. What might seem at the beginning as a little white lie and not really going to hurt anything, can snowball so easily into something far more serious. I remember one time when, I'm glad it's this week and not last week because my mom was here and she doesn't have to hear this confession, but when I was about nine or ten years old, there were six kids at the time because my little sister hadn't been born yet, and Snacks often came in packages of six, so that was really convenient for our family. So you buy one package, everyone gets one, and that's that. But I thought this was a little bit unfair, because my littlest brother was two or three years old, and I was nine or ten, whatever. And so, you know, that doesn't make sense that he gets the same as me. This is just not fair. So I ate his Pop-Tart, and boy, Pop-Tarts were treasured for us. I mean, they were just something that we only got rarely. And I remember justifying it in my mind, because they came in packets of two, three packets of two. So I only had literally, technically, I only had one packet, not one pop-tart, but hey, these were just little words here. And so, obviously this was found out quite quickly. My little brother claimed injustice, and he went to the authority, and my mom came, and she said, who did this? lined up all of us. How many did you eat? One, one, one, one, came to me, one. I'm not really technically lying, I said in my mind. And so it was a great mystery. And my mom was like, look, I know one of you is lying. Pop-tarts don't disappear. But then she pressed it because she knew that one of us is lying. And she said it because she is being smart about this. She said that maybe perhaps people can justify the one by saying one fact. She said, how many individual Pop-Tarts did you have? She said it in language so explicit that it would have to lie. And I continued the lie. And I remember feeling so guilty about this. So horribly guilty, in a sense, I was justified to feel guilty. Because not only did I start with that little white lie, but because of that white lie, what are often called white lies, it got worse and worse and worse, and I denied it emphatically. Now, I didn't call down an oath, thankfully. But it just illustrates the nature of deceit. And this is something that Satan often will tempt us with. It's not going to matter. One little white lie, it's not going to do anything. It's just a little lie, and you can even justify it by twisting the words a little bit. But that can lead and snowball down the hill it goes until all of a sudden you are entangled in its web. This is so often how deceit works, and you see it happening here with Peter. What started out as just a plain admission of ignorance, I don't know what you're saying, now has become a blatant lie with an oath. Now we move to the third denial, verses 73 and the beginning of 74. And a little later, those who stood by came up and said to Peter, surely you are also one of them for your speech betrays you. Then he began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the man. And we'll stop the reading right there. His speech betrays him and again we talked about in judges how their speech betrayed them and try to work. There was something about the Galilean dialect that made it clear that they were from Galilee. We do this too and even in the same state if you go to the other side of the state I'm not going to. I'm not going to disparage this holy pulpit by talking in Pittsburghese from the pulpit, but I think it's the worst dialect ever created. But anyway, people speak differently in Pittsburgh than they do in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, you don't say water, you say wooder or whatever. You put a little e in front of a little glide in front of vowels. In Pittsburgh, I'm not even going to say it, but it's very different. You can tell someone's speech, if you're really good, if your ear is good, or if you're used to hearing different types of speech, you can tell where someone's from by the way they're speaking. It really takes a lot command and a lot of practice to rid yourself of the accent from which you were born or which you grew up in. It really takes a whole lot of practice and control. So it's easy for one's speech to give one away. It's interesting that Dr. Watt, some of you know Dr. Watt from Geneva, he is a linguist. He got his PhD in biblical Greek, but it's having to do with linguistics. And this is a verse that he loves, because he loves speculating on what may have been. He thinks it's a guttural. But I don't know. I didn't read his stuff. But anyway, there was some kind of distinction in language between the Galilean speech and the speech in Jerusalem. So it was really easy to tell that Peter was from Galilee. And if you're from Galilee, that's where Jesus is from. You could put two and two together and say, look, you were with this guy, too. I can tell by the way you're talking. And like the people back in the day of Jephthah, their own speech gave them away, and they could not pronounce it right. Peter could not pronounce it right, and so he stood condemned. But what does he do? He denies it again, and this time it's even worse. Then he began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the man before was just a note. Now it's cursing and swearing. It's not just I swear that I'm telling the truth. It's I swear. And may God curse me. Be it ever so severely, if I'm telling a lie, it's even worse. Now, these words curse and swear are used differently in our modern English. We think about potty words or words that you don't hear on PG movies or something like that. That's not the idea here. It's an actual, it's the real meaning of these words. Calling upon curses on yourself if you're telling a lie. And swearing, that's another oath. Peter has really dug himself into a major hole here. And he is denying blatantly that he even knows Jesus. Before we move on to Peter's tears, I want to just emphasize here, we know what happens in the end. We know that Peter is restored. We know this from John 21, but not just there. We know it from the rest of the scriptures where Peter is among the disciples. How great it is that God does not sometimes take us at our word. He has every right to do so. He had every right to bring about whatever curse Peter called upon himself right then and there. But what a merciful God we serve that he does not take us at our word sometimes. How many of us, don't raise your hands because I know what it'd be, have said something stupid that we later regretted? I think that's pretty clear that all of us have. Thanks be to God that we serve a merciful God who forgives us of our foolish and idle words. It doesn't mean that they mean nothing. They clearly do have meaning. But we serve a merciful God, and He is able to forgive, and He does forgive Peter in the end. Let's move now to the second part, talking about Peter's tears. And this is just the last two verses here, verses 74 and 75. Immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So he went out and wept bitterly. immediately when the rooster crows. Peter probably had something in the back. He was probably in a fluster. And you could imagine being flustered at what was going on here. Your best friend is being arrested. You don't know what's going on. You thought he was the Christ. He's being crucified. This is just not the way we thought of things. He was very flustered. I'm sure there is a sense of guilt and shame somewhere back there, but as soon as the rooster crowed, it became clear, it came to the forefront of his mind, and he knew exactly what he did. And Luke adds, it's not here in Matthew, but Luke adds that the Lord looked at him at that point. Jesus looked at him, and I can't imagine what Peter was feeling at that point. Just how much shame he must have felt, and the horridness he did by just denying the one whom he confessed as Messiah. And so the scriptures teach us that he wept bitterly. His response is to cry. And I think this response here is not just crying because things aren't going the way you want. I think there is a sense of repentance, perhaps, a sense of remorse, at least here, in his tears. And for the rest of this sermon, I want to briefly, because I know Bill's going to get into Judas later this afternoon, but I want to briefly compare and contrast Judas and Peter. Like I said earlier, both were in the same realm. Peter, they're both in the realm of betrayal. Now, Judas's is much worse. I don't want to deny that, but it's in the same general sphere. And both showed signs that they were sorry for what they did. Judas, in fact, is even more explicit. He says, I've sinned against innocent blood, whereas Peter just cries. But both clearly show signs of remorse. What was the difference? Now I'm going to focus on Peter here. Peter had the humility to come back and go before Christ and repent. Do you remember what happens in John chapter 21? They're out in the fishing boat. I think John says, look, the Lord, he sees him on the shore. What does Peter do? The moment he sees him, he plunges into the water. It's as if Jesus had called him earlier when he said to walk on the water. Peter is out there in a second. He is desperate to have the forgiveness of God. And he goes before Jesus, and Jesus is the one who initiates it. But remember, Peter's the one who came out of the boat to go meet Jesus. He wasn't afraid of him. He wasn't ashamed of what he did. He was ashamed. But he was so desperate for forgiveness that he went right back to the Lord and said, to be reinstated, to make things right again. Whereas Judas does not act in this way. In fact, he's so guilty that he ends his own life. And this is, in many ways, the difference between a follower of Christ, a follower of God, and one who does not follow. Both commit sins. Sometimes they're great sins. And we see David, we see Peter, we see Paul. But it's the desire for repentance, not just saying you're sorry, but going to the Lord for repentance and then proving it by what you do. Peter became a follower of Christ from that day forward, and early tradition, it's not in the scriptures, but early tradition suggests that he died for the name of Christ in the same way, perhaps it was upside down, but in the same way that his Lord died for him. His actions proved his repentance. It's not enough just to say, oh, I'm sorry to feel bad about things, but it's actions that prove repentance. It's first going to the Lord, as Peter does in John chapter 21 and seeking his forgiveness. and then proving your repentance through what you do. I think this is so important for for we as the church to understand for us to grasp, because I think because we have a good handle on the grace of God and the need for faith in Christ and the need for forgiveness, that's so easy for us just to say, well, you know, we're all sinners anyway. Let's not make a big deal of this. But anyone can feel sorry for their sins. Anyone can feel sorry for committing, especially the kinds of sins that Judas committed or Peter committed. It takes humility and it takes the power of God's grace. It's purpose and to continue and follow through and following Christ and his commands, albeit imperfectly, but following them and turning around and saying, you are my Lord, I will follow you. I think because we're so afraid of lealism, there's a tendency within Protestants for Protestants just to say, well, as long as I'm struggling with sin, as long as it means, you know, as long as I'm trying, but not really, you know, just struggling and feel bad about it, it's okay. And I've heard this, especially as I was working with youth many years ago, they're saying, well, you know what, I'm doing all these sins, but you know, I'm struggling with it in my heart. And therefore this means that I'm okay. That's a lie. It's not true. Repentance means changed behavior. It doesn't mean that we earn God's repentance in the notion of penance or something like that. But repentance is the good works or the fruit of repentance. This is what John the Baptist says when he says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. When he proclaims, repent, the kingdom heaven is near. The fruit must be there. Now, they don't earn us our repentance. But they are the fruit, therefore, of repentance. That's the first application. The second one is more general here. In many ways, Christians need to be judged because of their conduct. There's no doubt about it that scripture teaches that God will give each according to his works and there's a sense in which we are to judge other Christians or people who claim to be Christians by their conduct. But there's also a sense in which, because we all fail and because we all sin, that it's very important not to just judge by conduct but judge by how Christians respond when they need to repent. It's so easy to be proud and to deny that you have sinned or when you have sinned, just to say, OK, I've just repented and continue on your merry way. It takes real humility and it takes a real mature person. To change, to recognize sin and to continue following Christ. A lot of the great saints were before great sinners. Again, I think David, Peter, Paul was a great sinner before he was converted. How they repented was very important, and so it is with us. When we are confronted with sin, be it great or small, how we repent is very important. It's not enough just to cry about it and go on your merry way, but the change. by renewed purpose by God's grace to follow Christ and keeping and bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. This is also very important for Christians and how we seek to judge Christians. And also we have all these scandals that are going on within the Christian church. There's one ongoing within the Catholic church, the child abuse scandal. But this is happening in Protestant circles. It's amazing. Now, It's still in trials you don't make any judgments but there's a similar type of scandal within one of the young restless reform type churches that we have been going over in Sunday school. If the allegations are true. There needs to be serious repenting and repenting. That bears fruit, not just saying we're sorry. And so we look at the Christian world and we try to distinguish true and false, the wheat from the chaff. We need to see how people, not whether they sinned or not, but how they respond. when they are confronted with their own sin. Peter did it. He sinned greatly against God, but he was reinstated. He humbly stood before Christ and he lived his life according to God's commands. It's how we should do it and it's how we should judge other or discern other Christians around us. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we We thank you for your mercy. We thank you that you didn't keep Peter at his word at this time. Father, we thank you that you don't keep us to every foolish thing that we have said, whether it be against you or whether it be against your word. And we pray that you'd give us discerning hearts and minds as we seek around us that we would We would see in our lives and the lives of other Christians the fruit of repentance. We know that we have all sinned, sometimes grievously against you. But Father, we pray that you would grant repentance. A new purpose to serve and to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. You know, it's not enough just to simply be sorry for what we did. And we pray, Father, that you would guide us and that you would bless us and that you would keep us as we seek to live before you. In this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.