The following sermon was preached at Grace Predatorian Church, a mission work of the Orthodox Predatorian Church and Covenant Predatorian Church in Mansfield, Ohio. For more information about Grace Predatorian Church and when we meet for worship and Bible study, log on to graceop.org or email us at graceopchurch at gmail.com. Turn your attention to the Gospel of Mark, Mark chapter 14, verses 66 to 72, where we left off some time ago it seems. 14. In this chapter we have been seeing Jesus betrayed, the promise of that, sharing the last supper, the Passover, praying in Gethsemane, the actual betrayal of Jesus, his trial before the council, the Sanhedrin, and now Mark goes back and picks up The story regarding Peter and so that's where we are 66 to 72 and as Peter was below in the courtyard One of the servant girls of a high priest came and seeing Peter warming himself She looked at him and said you also were with the Nazarene Jesus But he denied it saying I either know nor understand what you mean And he went out in the gateway and the rooster crowed And the servant girl saw him again and began to say to the bystanders, This man is one of them. But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean. But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I did not know this man of whom you speak. And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. And he broke down and wept. Herein's reading of God's holy and inspired word. Please be seated. Mark, he uses a literary device as he tells the story of the Passion of Christ. That literary device, which we are familiar with, is the flashback. He kind of sets it up at the beginning, and then he comes back to it to remind us that this is what was happening while Jesus was in trial. Peter was undergoing a trial. So he flashes back, as it were, using this device to show us that these things were actually happening concurrently, but he wants to separate them so we can get the full impact of both of those events. He picks up, as I said, that story line as we find it in verse 54 where we're told as Jesus was led away and Peter had followed him at a distance right into the courtyard. So he goes back to the courtyard and we find Peter. Now, most of us sense the passion, the emotion of the story. We identify with the Apostle Peter. We see him in his struggle, in his fall, reminded, well I don't want to do that. I would hate to be Peter at that point. I don't want to be the one to deny Jesus. Oh God, don't let me do that. We sense that and we see this story and we think it's about Peter, but I would suggest to you it's not about Peter. But Mark's purpose is not to put the spotlight on Peter as a moral story. But what he's doing is in the contrast of Peter and Jesus, he wants us to see Christ. That's what he wants us to see. That's what I suggest to you, is to confirm the very identity of Christ that's in question in his own trial, and in fact is the subject matter of the whole gospel. Mark writes the gospel like the other writers of the gospels, that we might understand who Jesus is. And so in this case, The contrast between Jesus and Peter is done that we might see Christ all the more. So it's not so much a moral story, a warning to us about faithfulness, as it is who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? It is as Calvin, John Calvin, the reformer, noted that Peter's fall mirrors our infirmity, our weakness, our sinfulness. And in that, Jesus is revealed and proved as necessary. See, that's the problem. Most people think that they don't really need a Savior. They don't mind a little help. Particularly when things get difficult, but they don't need someone to save them, because saving means you're unable. And that's precisely what the gospel is about, that we're unable to save ourselves. And so I would suggest to you, here, in this text, that what's being displayed for us is our humility, or our humiliation, shows or reveals Jesus' divinity. Our humility shows Jesus' divinity. And that's important. that we need a divine savior. So let's see how Mark unfolds the story looking at Christ, as it were, through the lens of Peter's infirmity. First of all, there's the prophecy. The prophecy is what sets up the story. As you know, you sense the question already. It begins to unfold. Is Peter going to do this? And what, of course, is the prophecy? Well, chapter 14, verse 30, Jesus had set before us that prophecy. You may remember Jesus says, even though all fall away, I will not. Verse 29. Verse 30. And Jesus said to him, surely I tell you this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. There's the prophecy. It is that which sets the stage for what we're about to see in the courtyard. And Jesus asserts that promise of his resurrection and the falling away of the disciples that is suffering. And Peter is adamant that he's going to be faithful. But that is the driving theme. Jesus is foretelling Peter that you're going to fall. Everybody's going to fall. And Peter, even you will. I know. He knows his heart. He knows the weakness of man. He knows us. I mean, that's the whole point. Jesus knows. He is the Son of God. And so, that's the prophecy. Now, Mark, in an indirect way, alludes to that, interestingly enough, in the way he tells the story. Because if you look with me at verse 65, at the end of Jesus' trial, as portrayed by Mark, what do we find? And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to strike him, saying to him, prophesying. And the guards received him with blows. Now what's going on? Well, they were disbelieving in his messiahship, that he was the one, and they believed that the messiah should be able to prophesy, and so they were mocking him by blindfolding him, and hitting him blindfolded and saying, who hit you? A very wicked and evil game. mocking, as it were, what they saw as his inability to prophesy. Now, I would suggest to you that what Mark is doing is contrasting that with what we just saw in verse 30. We must not fail to note the irony, you see, of that moment. Because as Jesus' own enemies were heeding scorn on him by demanding him to prophesy blindfolded, the very prophecy that he had made about Peter was unfolding in the courtyard. What they were unaware of, what they did not see, was unfolding before him. In other words, Jesus' divinity was actually being proven, not before their eyes, but it was to Peter. You see? And so there it reminds us again of this sort of this tension in the Gospels. Remember when Jesus was speaking in parables and the disciples asked him, well, why do you speak in parables? He said, well, that hearing they may not hear and seeing they may not see. Because to you has been granted to see and to understand the things of the kingdom. In other words, God in his sovereignty is hiding, as it were, knowledge about Christ and redemption from some and revealing it to others and I would suggest to you it again is the operation of faith and what's going on here is that those who believe come to understand and those who disbelieve are left in that disbelief and darkness And there is a warning to all of us. It is not Christianity, belief in Christ, salvation, the gospel, all that stuff. It is not simply a matter of having enough evidence and having all the proofs laid out for you. It is a matter of, as the gospel tells us, repenting and believing. There is evidence. The Apostle Paul writes that in Romans chapter 1, that the manifold witness of God and the things he has been made leaves us without excuse. You can't say to God, well I just don't know, there's not enough evidence. God says, that's not the problem. The problem is that you are stiff necked and stubborn, you will not repent of your sins and believe in me. And that's the gospel, folks. What we must do is to call people, as the apostles did, we call them to repentance. It's not a matter of having enough evidence. It's a matter of them bowing before Christ. It's a matter of them acknowledging they are sinners. And there's certainly enough evidence of that in our lives. That we need a Savior. And that's what Mark is doing in our text. You see, Mark is humbling the enemies of Jesus and their scorn to prove his identity. And it is Peter who gets the message. And so, that I suggest to you is the first point. The prophecy. The prophecy itself lays out who Jesus is. The second point is Peter himself. You see, Peter's weakness. Peter's weakness is laid before us. And it comes in two forms. There is first his denial. Note again the contrast. If you're thinking about these things as concurrent trials happening at the same time. Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Peter before the people in the courtyard. And if you look at that, the contrast is Peter's denials versus Jesus' silence. Well, Jesus' faith, the accusations of antagonistic witnesses in a corpse setting, Peter is questioned by who? A servant girl. Someone who has no authority, just a regular person. How we quiver and quake when our neighbor When someone who is of, in one sense, of no real authority position questions us. Have you ever noticed how your mouth gets real dry and cottony when some question comes up out of the gospel and you're not sure what to say? And what is Jesus? He's standing before in a court scene. And the chief priests are all staring at him. I remember my son when he was in the Navy and he had to pass a board exam for his training. in the nuclear power school and so they sat him in the chair and there were all the officers in a table in front of him and they were firing questions at him about how this nuclear power system works and he was a lowly enlisted guy and you see all the brass in front of you And that's what's going on. You know that sense of being in the spotlight. And what are we told? As this goes on, as you read Mark's account of Jesus' trial, he answers nothing. In fact, we're told all this is going on and only one time in verse 61 he remains silent and made no answer at all. But one servant girl says something to Peter and she says, You also were with him. It's not even a charge. It's like, well, yeah, weren't you with him? You can imagine how it's asked. And what does he do? He's quick out the gate. I don't know the person. He's not silent. The contrast is the silence of Jesus in the confrontation of those who are false witnesses, and this who is a true witness, so to speak, because he recognizes, and Peter's quick to answer. In fact, he repeatedly, we're told, denies Jesus despite the warning of the cock. Because Jesus said the cock will crow twice, and by that time he will have denied me three times. And he denies him once, the cock crows, it's the warning sound. And he doesn't even catch it. He blunders right on forward. We identify with Peter in how quick we want to say something or whatever. Jesus is concerned with his mission and his purpose and remains silent against the false accusations lest they turn his words against him because he's going to confess the truth. And Peter is concerned about what? Peter. His safety. How often do we the same way? We're concerned about how we're going to look. What they're going to think about us. We're concerned about our own comfort. Secondly, it is Peter's denial versus Jesus' confession. Peter has crypted an I, Jesus, whom he recently had professed total commitment to. I will never forsake you, he said. But Jesus boldly confesses his identity as the Messiah and a God's own Son when confronted. Remember, the high priest has said, what is this? They testify to you and you answer nothing. Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. boldly, strongly, confidently, he makes the confession. And Peter is the one who is denying again and again and again. Mark tells the story, you see, of Jesus' commitment to his role as Messiah and Savior in the face of weakness and the failure of man, which is epitomized in Peter. We are to see Peter, you see, but note the contrast between the weakness of Peter, of man, in the face of questioning by those with little authority or no authority and Jesus who boldly stands in our place ready to take anything and all that is required of him by the law to fulfill his mission as our Savior so Peter is humbled in our eyes not to show us don't be like Peter but to show us what we are like that we might see the boldness the strength, the confidence of Christ. If you read the stories of men who fought in the Civil War and the various generals that were on the various sides, you'll find that the ones who gained the most praise are those who lead their men into battle rather than the ones who sit back behind the lines and direct everything I mean the general did have to do a certain amount of that direction but they were the ones who went forward and who were the ones who led their men and this is the kind of a leader this is the Savior that we have not one who sits back and who cowers but one who boldly confesses and takes up the task before him You see, all this is to show us that Peter is a man like us. He's a human being like us. And so, lest we be too prideful and think, well, I would never be like Israel of old. I mean, God did all those wonderful miracles to them, brought them out, and they were faithless, and they didn't keep the covenant. We wouldn't have done that. Oh, yes, we would have. That's the whole point. The whole point is the failure of our own arm to save us. Our own strength, as it were. That's the point. We need a Savior. Which then takes me to this last point, then, of what we can learn, I think, from this text, is Peter's need. You see, we see Peter going through all this, and then the cock crows. He remembers the Word. He remembers the word and he breaks down and he weeps. He's overwhelmed with the reality of his own failure, his own sin. That's magnified because he had said, I can do it. Mold affirmation of faith does not guarantee faithfulness, folks. Just because you've made a profession of faith doesn't mean you're going to be faithful. The only guarantee of faithfulness is the work of the Holy Spirit and of God's grace in your life. Not because you've said it or you've made a decision. Let us not trust in some decision we made some time ago or some act on our behalf. Let us trust, as the writer of Hebrews says, in He who has gone before us that we might set our eyes upon the author and perfecter of our faith. You see, Mark portrays Peter's sense of guilt as the realization of the prophecy. And note, again, how he words this. Immediately the rooster crowed a second time, and Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him. What does he remember? The Word. The Word. The Word of Jesus. That's what he remembers. It's not the look of Jesus. There is another Gospel writer, I think it's Luke, that mentions the look as it drives it home, as it were, adds it to it. But it is the Word. I would suggest to you that the effect of the Word, it is the Word of Christ employed by the Holy Spirit that brings about repentance. I mean, I suppose I could study the psychology, as others have done, and really do an emotional sauna of all this and make you all feel real guilty and drive your emotions and all those kinds of things, but what would that accomplish? What you need to hear is the Word of Christ. What you need to hear is Christ Himself. See, that's the point. It is the Word of God applied by the Spirit that breaks us. And so we need to remember that when we witness to other people. Yes, your testimony can be helpful and important, but take it back to the Word. Share the Word of God because that's the sword of the Spirit. That's what the Spirit uses. I think it was Spurgeon who said something about, and I'm really bad on these kinds of quotes, but we need to let the lion out of the cage and it will defend itself. That lion is the Word of God. We need to trust that God will use His Word. And that's what Peter remembers. He remembers the Word of Christ. And it's like a hot knife. And it brings and it breaks him, doesn't it? This strong, self-sufficient, self-made fisherman man, who was committed to the death, is broken by the Word of Christ. There was a general assembly and there was a fellow pastor who was expositing the word for devotions and he was talking about his father who he watched come to Christ. His father was a brawling Scotsman who was on the police force. Scotland Yard, an early kind of a guy who was always getting himself into trouble and on the force as well and always solved the arguments with an argument and easy fists and knew how to put people in their place and what not. But was not a church goer in any way. and he contracted, I think it was cancer, near the end of his life and he was struggling with the debilitation of all that and so the pastor came and was one more time appealing to him and his conscience and trying to share the gospel with him and witness to him and you know, he was as belligerent as ever and finally he said, as he sat in the room and watched the scene unfold he said, the pastor in a sense of getting up began to read the Bible began with John chapter 1 He got through the first 18 verses and he watched his father crumple and break down into tears. And he was like, Dad never cried. It was after that he asked him, he said, why? What was it? I never heard that he became flesh and dwelt among us. It was the power of the word red that brought it home to him. That God used those words, the very gospel itself of Christ taking on to himself a human nature that broke that man. Folks, we sometimes can think of all the arguments, and I would say it's not just, and I do it too, you write something and you quote John 3.16, and I don't mean the words you just say in your writing or whatever you use. You can't throw the book of the Bible and the chap in reverse at him. You've got to share the word itself. And as Spurgeon said, you let the lion out of the cage. And this is what breaks Peter. This is what breaks every man. If you read the book of Acts, look how it happens. It's again and again. It is that. That is why the sacrament cannot stand by itself. It is only an aid, an illustration of what the gospel itself is, which is the very word of God, the message, the good news of Christ who comes to us. It confirms to us that word, but there is no power in it of itself. It is used by the Spirit to seal. But the power itself is the Word of God. And that's what makes Peter rise into repentance, and he's shown to us as a man in need of restoration. You see the sense of repentance, the teary. It's not just, oh, woe is me, but he's broken before God. He's a man who then, therefore, not only needs repentance, he needs forgiveness. He couldn't deny his denial. That's the point. It was stark before him in clear relief. He remembered the words. He saw what he had done. There was no argument to be made. And I would suggest, again, that's what we need to do is to call people to repentance, to see sin. That's the proof, folks. The proof is not in all the arguments that we can make and all the ways that we can talk about the law of God, apply the situations, and that's all true. The law has to do its work, but it does its work by showing us that guess what? The reality is we're sinners. That's what we need to be convinced of. And all those Faithful to Jesus in one sense are shown to be faithless in the end of their faithful by their own power You see that it's not our It's not our faith that saves us. It is a gift of God. It is grace that saves us Faith is the means by which it comes All of us need forgiveness. That's what Paul argues in Romans chapter 3. He argues about the Gentiles and their condemnation before God. Everybody knew that. And now the Jews and their condemnation before God. They were surprised about that. He says basically, listen, all the basins are covered. We're all in the same boat and it's sinking. Peter's need is our need. That's the point of this text. None of us can stand the onslaught. But Jesus, that's the contrast. And so that Jesus becomes all the more visible when we see Peter filing before God, before God and man. What Peter needs is repentance, forgiveness. He needs a Savior. We need a Savior. A divine Savior who can face the wrath of God for us, who can bear up under it, who alone can bear our sin and pay his penalty, who can do what we cannot do. That's what Mark is showing us. And that's what these self-righteous Pharisees and chief priests and leaders of the people did not understand. They were trusting in themselves. That's the condemnation of religion. It teaches you. Religion teaches you to trust in yourself. Christianity teaches you to trust in Christ. We don't need religion, folks. We don't need the old time religion. We need Christ. And that's what we share. That's what our world has forgotten. That's what I'm afraid of. That's what the church has forgotten. And so the sacrament reminds us again of the need, as much as we need to feed our bodies and the rest. So we need Christ. And so we come to Christ. And so He offers to us His confidence, His strength, His love and His grace, even in the face of purposeful sin, like Peter's. Peter, I told you. How many times have you heard? I remember myself. I've read the Bible. I've warned myself. I've heard the Holy Spirit warn me and I've sinned anyway. I've opened my mouth when I shouldn't have. And I've been angry when I should have not been. And I've... whatever. And I know better. But Jesus is always gracious. And that's the point. That's what you need. It's not a matter of proving it to you. It's not a matter of being convinced of all the arguments and having all the philosophy figured out. It's a matter of repentance. Of saying, I am a sinner. Hello? We're all sinners. It's not that hard. It is hard to be in pride though, is it not? May God break us. May God work in us. May we be like Peter and show forth Christ. We simply need to receive the gospel. May He be known in us. May we know Him. May we call others. May they see Him in us. May they hear His word and respond. May God be pleased to work. Let's pray. Oh Lord God, we confess indeed that we are often like Peter, bold in our own efforts, or maybe we are questioning and looking for the final proof to be made known, that certainty of mind. Lord, may you direct this to Christ. And show us the certainty of mind that the real proof is our sin. And that's where Christ is displayed as the divine Savior. O God, we would pray that you would confirm these things even as we share the sacrament in a little bit. But grant thy word to us that we might live it and show forth Christ. In Christ's name we pray.