Good to see each one here this morning. Be on a new lesson this week. Lesson 10. A lesson on self-reliance. I almost locked myself out of my computer. Got it right now. Okay. So the scriptures are in Matthew chapter 26, Mark chapter 14, Luke chapter 22 and John chapter 36 all speaking on the same subject of Peter denying Christ. I think most of the lessons we've had have come out of three of the Gospels. This one is in all four of the Gospels. And of course it's a very familiar lesson in the Word of God about Peter denying Christ. So we'll read the scriptures in Matthew this morning. Matthew 26 and 31. And then of course we'll be skipping around a little bit. We won't read the whole, the rest of that chapter because it's 75 verses. But we'll read the verses, I think you have them there in your outline. Then saith Jesus unto them, all ye shall be offended because of me this night. For it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, that this night before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples." And we pick on Peter and Thomas sometimes because of the things that they did. We call Thomas, doubting Thomas. And a lot of times, Peter was simply the one that spoke out. The rest of them were usually in agreement with him. They just didn't speak out. And even doubting Thomas. The rest of them doubted also. Thomas just happened to be the one that wasn't there. But all the disciples said they would not deny Christ. Then verse 56, But all this was done that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him and fled. and they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were assembled. But Peter followed him afar off unto the high priest's palace, and went in and sat with the servants to see the end. Verse 69, now Peter sat without in the palace, and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him and said unto them that were there, this fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And verse 73, And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said unto Peter, Surely thou art also one of them, for thy speech bereath thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crewed. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crowed, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out and wept bitterly. So we have that, so again, four times in the Word of God. So I think there's very important that we learn something from it. You know, we don't ever need to just read the Bible. We should read the Bible. We should try to read all the Bible, more than once on a regular basis, read the Bible. But we shouldn't read it just It should not be our only time in the Word of God is just to say, I read it. If you're reading it just to say you read it, you're not learning enough from the Word of God. Sometimes we need to study the Word of God. That's what Sunday school is all about. So Jesus predicted His disciples would all desert Him in the hour of trial. Of course, again, Peter spoke for all of them. And Jesus told Peter directly that he would deny him three times. And of course it happened just like Jesus said it would. So as goals we should look to from this lesson, understand that we should have noble aspirations. As the old saying goes, if you don't ever shoot at anything, you won't ever hit anything. Realize that it is a grave mistake to boast of ourselves. And then thirdly, choose to humbly ask the Lord to help us stand for Him at all times. See, the reason they couldn't stand, they were relying on themselves to stand. If we're going to stand for Christ, we're going to have to have His help, and we're going to have to ask Jesus for help to stand when the times get hard. In the outline, the three points we'll be talking about is Peter's willing boastfulness, And then Peter's wavering boldness and Peter's weeping bitterness. And Peter learned, like a lot of us do, about life through the school of hard knocks. Peter had something that Satan can use easily in us if we have it, and that's overconfidence. If we're overconfident in ourselves, we won't rely on Christ. We'll say, well, I can do that. We'll keep Christ in the background, something maybe we think we can't handle. But we need Christ all the time. Now, Peter was God called, God gifted, but he was very sure of himself. And confidence, he said, I don't care if they all leave you. I don't know about them guys. But I'm going to tell you right now, Jesus, you was wrong. I'm not, that's not me. Not me. I'll be here. I'll be, I'll be here. But that's, God warns us several times in the word of God about that self-confidence. 1 Corinthians 10, 12. Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he fall. If you rely on yourself all the time, you're going to take a fall. Now, we learn that we can do all things, but we can only do them through Christ. So number one is Peter's willing boastfulness. And that comes from Matthew 26, 31 and 33. We'll read those again. Then saith Jesus unto them, all ye shall be offended because of me this night. For it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. Peter was not only denying Christ, he was denying what the Old Testament said. But he couldn't relate the two together. He didn't realize At that point, I don't believe they realized when Jesus said, the Bible says that this is going to happen, what he said to them is, it's going to happen now. Peter answered and said to him, though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. And then Mark 14 and 29, but Peter said unto him, although all shall be offended, yet will not I. So Christ tells the disciples that they would all be offended and forsake him. Again, Peter says no. But one of the mistakes he made was comparing himself to others. And that's what he said, the rest of them, I don't know, they might, but I'm not like them. We can't look at somebody that has fallen or that we think has fallen and say, I would never do that. That is a dangerous words to speak. I will never do that. I don't mean that you've told a crowd or whatever. But you, in your heart, you think, I will never do that. So you and God know that you're saying that. That tells, you should realize right then You're not relying on God to help you not do it. You're saying you have the power not to do that. But we don't know the temptations. We don't know the trials that we're going to go through when we say stuff like that. The moment we begin to think we're better than other individuals, we're deluding ourselves. We're all flesh. We all have the flesh. We all have Satan to battle. We're just a sinner saved by grace. and we have to have the help of Christ. We can't get into heaven without Christ and we can't go through the trials on this earth without Christ as well as we could. Now, you can go a long time and not ask Christ for help and say, I'm doing just fine. But time's going to come where you're going to wish you hadn't done that. 2 Corinthians 10, 12, for we dare not make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. You can always find somebody to say, I'm a better Christian than they are. I'm better at this than they are. I'm better at that than they are. But you got to realize, they can always point at you and say, I'm better at this than you are. We're in the same boat they're in. We're not perfect. We're not all powerful. We can't overcome everything on our own. There's a way of illustration. You remember the Pharisee that was praying? And it said, Luke 18, verse 11 says, The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. about to leave me here. You know, you see somebody and they leave a lot on their plate. You say your eye is bigger than your stomach. A lot of times in our mind our eye is bigger than we really are. Our eye. Not E-Y-E, but eye. We make ourselves bigger than we really are. And we need to remember that Noah undoubtedly never believed that he would get drunk. I mean, we know Noah was a man of God, right? I mean, he found grace in the eyes of God. And he continued on the human race. I mean, we say quite often here, well, we're all kin to Adam. We're all kin to Noah. We're closer kin to Noah than we are to Adam, right? Because thousands of people live between the two, but we can all trace it back to Noah. And we think, faith he must have had in God but yet he got drunk and terrible things happened because he got drunk and David undoubtedly believed he would never be a murderer and you think of all the Bible says Dave was that a man after God's own heart and he was and he did have faith but he messed up when he relied on his self that brings us to A he would Stand with Christ. That was the same, right? I will stand with Christ. I will always be here with you. Mark 14, 29. But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. See, there's that I. When we use the word I too much, when we depend too much on I, we're about to mess up. Peter had good intentions, and we should have good intentions. And he made a brave resolution. But again, he depended on himself and not Christ. It should be our goal to stand. And to stand with Christ. And the scripture commands us to stand with Christ. Ephesians 6, 13, 14. Wherefore taken to you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth and having on the breastplate of righteousness." So we're commanded to stand for the cause of Christ. And we should have the desire to stand. We should encourage others to stand by words and by example. But what is our spirit when we're talking about standing for the Lord? With Peter, it was, I can do it. I can stand, but we must have an humble heart and understand that we need Christ. Proverbs 27, 1, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. And then very familiar scripture, James 4, 13 and 16, go to now, ye that say today or tomorrow, we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain. So that that was an admirable thing to do. Right. They will go to the city and they're going to they're going to work. Right. They say we're going to go in the middle of night and we're going to steal. No. They had an admirable wish and a desire to go and to work and to make money. Whereas you know not what shall be on the morrow, for what is your life? It is even as a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. For that you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now you rejoice in your boastings, all such rejoicing as evil." When we are rejoicing in not What Christ has given us the ability to do, but when we are rejoicing as Christians in what we have done. We couldn't do anything without Christ. And then B is he would die with Christ. Luke 22, 33. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee both into prison and to death. And at that moment, he meant that exact thing. But he was relying on the cell. Peter is declaring that he would stay with the Lord to the end, giving his very life, and would not deny the Lord. He meant it. He truly loved Christ, and that's exactly what he meant to do. That's what he wanted to do. He had heard Jesus say, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life. for his friends and he was ready. Now the emphasis in the Bible is on Peter because he spoke first and we talk about that and we teach on that because Peter is the one that spoke but all the other disciples echoed Peter's words. But we ought to ask ourselves a question, would I be willing to die for Christ? Now without thinking I think All of us, if we're all saved, I believe, as far as I know we are, when we just ask that question, it would almost be an immediate answer, yes. Right? Without any consideration, yes. But we need to realize that is what we should be willing to do, but we're going to have to have Christ to do it. Would you be willing to give your life rather than deny Christ? Now we know that others have done it in the past, we've studied on others, we've read about others, we've been told about others that have died for the cause of Christ. Really thousands and billions of people have done that. Most of them not named, some of them named and some of them very well known have died for Christ. If I ask myself that question, my answer would be the same as all the disciples. Yes, absolutely yes. I mean I would say it. That's easy to say it. Right? It's easy to say it. I followed their answers. Now if it came to it, would I also follow their actions? So that's what we have to ask ourselves when that time comes and we're thinking about what the Bible says about Peter and the other disciples. Yes, we want to say and we would want to say that I would die for Christ. But we have to take that a step further, relying on Christ to enable us to do that. And when comes time that we could actually do it. In Foxe Book of Martyrs, that was published in 1563. Now a lot of times you hear about that book and you say you don't realize how old it was. There's been a lot of martyrs after Foxe Book of Martyrs. But it gives hundreds of accounts of persecution and death suffered by those who stood for Christ. Ultimately, Peter would fulfill his promise to go to prison and later to die for Christ. He was executed by the Emperor Nero about the same time as the Apostle Paul. As even the tradition says that he had them crucify him upside down because he was not worthy to be crucified as Christ was. But in the dark hours of Christ's arrest and trial, Peter would obviously fear for his life. Sadly, he would not keep the bold boast that he had made in these passages. How easy it is for our flesh to betray the best of intentions. Things are easy to say. And we know what we should do, but we don't always do what we should do. None of us do. Not just some of us, but none of us do. Matthew 26, 41, Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. In the hymn, Come, Thy Fount, it describes the weakness of our flesh, prone to wander, Lord I feel that prone to leave the God I love. The flesh, all our flesh is the same. Nobody in here, nobody anywhere has flesh that will overcome temptation on its own. We have to have help from the Lord. And that brings us to number two is Peter's wavering boldness. Now, as we continue to look through these passages, we see that Peter was bold to boast about what he was going to do. We notice where Peter had once been in the inner circle and very close to the Master, that during this time of danger and distress, he began to follow afar off. We should make that our purpose to draw nearer to Christ, not to start going the other way. Our flesh, Satan will always draw us, wants us to go a little, to step back a little bit. Satan don't start out with, you just need to quit following Christ right now. No, it's just, you just need to step back a little bit. You're just getting too fanatical about this thing. And then when you take one step back, he wants you to take another step back. Flesh is the same way. The farther we get from Christ, the more prone we are to do the wrong thing. So we see in A, Peter's departure. Mark 14 to 50, and they all forsook him and fled. You know, when somebody in an earthly relationship leaves, it's heartbreaking. But imagine the desertion that the Lord felt. Remember, He's not just God, He's man. So He feels what we would feel. But it was a deep betrayal for them to leave him and to hurt him. His first command to these men had been to follow me. And that's what he said, follow me and I'll make you fishers of me. And the very first thing that he told them to do was to follow me. And that was the last thing that they didn't do. And he continued to tell them to follow in Matthew 16, 24. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, Let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. We need to realize that Christ wants us to follow him. He's laid out a path for us in the Word of God. And through studying the Word of God and through prayer, he has individual paths for us to follow. And that's what we need. We need to follow the path that he has for us. So then we see in B, his decision. I see we haven't read it, I think we've read this book, excuse me, in John 15, 16. The son of Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. That disciple was known unto the high priest and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door without, then went out that other disciple, which was known unto the high priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. We're seeing a series of things that Peter did wrong. He didn't stay close to Jesus, but we need to mention that it was only John and Peter that followed it all. So he was in the top 10% there of those that he did at least follow far off. The rest of them didn't even do that. When we make a decision that takes us out of the company of Christ, we're often putting ourselves in the company of others. And that's what Peter did. When he said, I'm going to stay back, he was staying back, right? What did that leave him with? The enemy. Warming himself with the enemy at the fire. So when you're going away from Christ, you're always going toward the enemy. You're always going the way Satan wants you to go. It's important to surround ourselves with the right company. You know, when you're raising kids, hopefully you try to, you can't always do it, but you should always try and have a desire to watch who your kid's friends are. And you don't know everything, but you would knowingly say, look out and say, those are the pretty mean kids right there, that's who I want my kid to play with. You want them, you desire for them to have good friends. But we should have the right kind of friends and the right kind of relationships also. Proverbs 13, 20, he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Proverbs 1, 10, my son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Verse 15, my son, walk not thou in the way with them refrain thy foot from their path. In other words, don't take that first step. It doesn't matter if you're going in the right direction or the wrong direction. The second step is always easier than the first step. I'm only going to take one step in the wrong direction. No, probably not. It's called a slippery slope. When you step and you're moving, it's slippery, so you continue sliding in that direction. There's no such thing as moving in the wrong direction, moving away from God and having a firm foundation. The firm foundation is toward God. 2 Corinthians 6, 14-18. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you." Now, we can't live completely apart from people that are not saved, from people that don't even believe God. We can't live completely apart from those people in the world. But we don't have to follow them in what they do. We don't have to follow them in what they believe. We should separate ourselves to God and stay close to Him. Remember Lot? He was with Abraham, another righteous man. He had been trained right. But he saw some things. Basically, he saw some things he shouldn't have seen, which was Abraham's fault. And then he took him out and gave him a choice of where to go. You know, there's religions that do that now. And right now, I've done it for years, they raise them and they keep them closed in, right? And they say, okay, and I don't know what they call it. And I'm only going by what I've heard. I don't know Amish people. But they raise them and they say, you do this and you do this this way, and you live here and you're never going anywhere. And then when they get, I guess, 18, they say, okay, you go out in the world and see how you like it. But you need to come back. I don't think most of them come back. So you can't do that. And that's what happened with Lot. Abraham took him down into Egypt, and then he goes up and says, okay, Lot, which way do you want to go? Well, basically, he saw something that looked a lot like Egypt, and that's where he went. And then C, we have his denial. And we'll pick up there. Yeah, we'll pick up there next week because we won't get that point done. So, study in all four Gospels, the Nile by Peter, and you should have the Scriptures right there in your outline. It's probably pretty small in my own reading. Find those in your Bible and read it. That's usually better. So we'll be back with C next week. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity that you've given us. We thank you, Lord, for all your many blessings. And Lord, we thank you, Lord, for Christ dying on the cross. And Lord, he didn't deny us. Lord, I pray that we not deny him. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.