Boasted too much, listened too little, prayed too little, acted too fast, followed too far. And as a result, he fell Too low. Peter had discovered the corruption of his own flesh even in the face of his best intentions. I think he believed in himself. And that's the problem here.
That's the problem. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's one of the saddest episodes in Scripture, Peter's denial of Christ. But even in this heartbreaking story, there's a lot of encouragement.
In fact, Peter's story provides a great lesson for recognizing what genuine repentance looks like. John MacArthur shows you that today on Grace to You as he continues his series from the Gospel of Mark titled The Divine Drama of Redemption. It's a compelling look at the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the other important events surrounding the first Easter. It can give you a fresh appreciation for Christ's great sacrifice as Resurrection Sunday draws near.
So now here's John with today's lesson. One of the popular lies of our culture, if not the dominating popular lie of our culture, and it's an old one, is that man is basically good. And that not only is man good generically, but you as an individual are more than good, you're great. You're more than great. You're wonderful.
And you need to recognize that because all your power in life resides in your self-esteem, and all your influence in life, and your ability to achieve great things lies in the power of your self-confidence. And people who fail and people who struggle are people who lack the power of self-esteem and the power of self-confidence. People are programmed from early education to believe in their personal power. their personal worth. their personal rights, their personal beauty, their personal talent.
And to reject the reality that they are corrupt and fallen and evil and sinful and selfish and prone to disaster. They are radically depraved. A whole generation now, or perhaps two or three generations, exists of deluded people. Who, when they get out of elementary school and face reality, find out that they can't make their world what they've been told they could make their world. And it certainly can't be their fault.
So they all become victims. And the rest of society has to somehow take the blame for these poor victims, these. Great, wonderful, superior. individuals who are unparalleled Their failures have to be explained by something outside of them.
So people live in spite of these ridiculous notions. With a perpetuated sense of importance and personal power, and blame what's around them. for failure to achieve. Mark it down, self-esteem, self-confidence, personal pride. is sin.
It is an evidence of corruption. It is the very arrow point of sin. It's where sin starts. with pride. You can't relabel it as a virtue without deceiving everyone.
Today we're going to meet a A believer. One of us. And not just one of us. But one of the best of us and certainly one of the most privileged of us. Who spent three years walking with the Lord and was the leader of the apostles?
We're going to meet our familiar friend. Peter and we're going to find out A very, very profound lesson in the danger. of self-confidence. The danger of self-confidence. Let's begin at verse 66.
As Peter was below in the courtyard, One of the servant girls of the high priest came, And seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were with Jesus the Nazarene. But he denied it. saying, I neither know nor understand what you are talking about. and he went out on to the porch. The servant girl saw him.
And began once more to say to the bystanders, This is one of them. But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter, Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too. But he began to curse and swear I do not know this man you are talking about. Immediately a rooster crowed a second time.
And Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him that Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. and he began to weep. This is colossal. This is Peter. Who said, To whom shall we go?
You and you alone have the words of eternal life? Who said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is Peter. The great leader, the great preacher. How can this happen?
This is a believer. And this is not just a momentary slip-up. His denials, if you think They happen in a brief time. You miss it. His denials are strung out over two hours.
And the first one was a shock and a surprise, but the next two were premeditated responses, not just knee-jerk. Jesus on trial for two hours from 1 to 3. Peter denial. from one to three. They run Concurrently, Christ is seen in glorious triumph speaking honestly.
knowing it'll cost him his life. Peter speaks dishonestly. trying to preserve his life.
Now, while what Peter did is Is not necessary. Don't have to do this. It does happen. You say you mean an actual true believer could uh Do this? Yeah, oh yes.
Oh, absolutely. And you know that because Although you've never stood before a tribunal that threatened to execute you, and you never stood before some court that threatened to put you in prison for the sake of Jesus Christ, you have stood before people. And when you knew you should have confessed Christ, you kept your mouth. Shut. Right?
So you know what this is like. If not on a colossal level like this, on a smaller level, but you know how hard it can be in some circumstances to openly profess Christ because there are negative consequences. You know that You have it in you to do this, even though you love Christ. You're not forfeiting your faith in him. You're not abandoning your trust in him.
You're not disdaining him where once you loved him, you're just unwilling to confess him and admit that you are his. And we've all tasted of that.
So we understand Peter's situation. How can that happen? That can happen because while we are new on the inside, we are incarcerated in our fallen flesh, and it is still corrupt, and sinful, and self-protective. And that's what happened to Peter.
So, we can learn crucial lessons from this experience with Peter. And that's what I want us to see this morning. First, we'll look at the story, then we'll talk about its implications. The story begins with foolish confidence, foolish confidence. And the story really begins the night before.
This denial occurs between 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock in the morning on Friday, at the same time Jesus is having this illegal trial before Annas and Caiaphas. But it was the night before, Thursday night, in the upper room from sunset on to midnight when they were celebrating the Passover, Jesus and the disciples, and when he instituted the Lord's table, the communion service. It was in that context, in that upper room. That Thursday night, that our Lord looked at Peter and said this, Simon, Simon It's not good when they repeat your name twice. It's never good.
Never good. Simon, Simon. Behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. Satan has asked permission to come after you in the same way he asked permission to go after Job. And I'm going to let him go after you because I want to prove, as I proved with Job, that saving faith can never be broken no matter what happens.
However, this is going to be a great trial for you. I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Faith can't fail because the Lord intercedes for us. The faith of Job didn't fail. The faith of Peter didn't fail.
The faith of Paul, when a messenger of Satan was allowed to come after him, didn't fail. Faith doesn't fail, that's perseverance.
However, though we don't stop believing, we can Fall to a temptation to be cowardly and not confess our faith. But he said to him, Peter says, Lord, with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And Jesus said to him, I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you've denied me three times. In fact, you will deny that you even know me three times. Later that night, Judas left.
Later that night, the 11 left the upper room. They go toward the Mount of Olives. Jesus says, You will all fall away. You will all fall away. Verse 29, Peter said, Even though all may fall away, yet I will not.
And here is Peter again saying, Lord, most of the time you know what you're talking about. You really do. You're really good on the kingdom. You're great on salvation. You just don't know how strong I am.
Wow. Jesus said, Truly, I say to you, this very night, before a rooster crows twice, you yourself will deny me three times. He said it again. On the walk. Peter kept insistently saying, Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you.
You're wrong. Boy, the boldness of this guy. Verse 32 says, They finally came to the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. And he said to his disciples, Sit here until I've prayed. And we know from the other writers that he said, And pray, watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.
This is a time for you to arm yourselves, Peter and the others, against what's going to come. And when he went in to pray and came back out, Verse 37 says, He came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? You you still don't get it, do you? This was the sleep of self-confidence. He went back in, prayed again, came out.
They were asleep again. He went back in, came out again, they were still asleep. This is a disastrous situation. But Peter will not relent on the fact that he is not going to deny the Lord. He will not do that.
And to prove it, in verse 47, when the entourage of up to a thousand people shows up in the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. Peter is the one who draws a sword and whacks off the ear of the servant of the high priest that John tells us had the name of Malchus. And Peter is trying to prove his profession, to prove his courage. In his mind, he is invincible. In his mind, he will be faithful.
He is dangerously overconfident. He is foolishly confident. Proverbs 16:18 says, Pride goes before. Destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12, let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest He fall.
Peter is really set up for a fall. His inner man His love for Christ, his love for the truth. His desire to be obedient, to give honor to Christ, fully functioning. But he fails to understand the power of his remaining flesh. And foolish confidence leads to failing cowardice.
Failing cowardice. We pick up the story here in verse 66. At this point, Peter was below in the courtyard.
Now, let me just kind of give you the scene here. Uh they arrest him, they tie him up, Jesus. The disciples scatter. Judas is long gone. But the other eleven scatter.
As Zachariah 13:7 predicted they would, and they flee. Jesus is taken bound to the house of Annas. At one o'clock in the morning. It is in this environment inside the house That belongs to the high priestly families in which Peter's denials take place. It is also inside this house, first in the apartment belonging to Annas, and second in the apartment belonging to Caiaphas, that Jesus goes through the two aspects of the Jewish trial.
There's a third kind of for show trial where they repeat their accusations and conclusions in the daylight before the crowd to give it the sense of looking legal. because trials were not allowed to be held at night. All three denials then occur in the same location, but they occur over a period of two hours.
Now As we see Peter, we ask the question: what's he doing there? What's he doing there?
Well, he's driven there by his love for the Lord. He's driven there by his desire to be loyal. He's driven there by the fact that he has made these. constant protestations that he would ever defect, right? He's just trying to have some integrity.
So he finds his way back to this entourage that is moving in the blackness between midnight and one o'clock after having arrested Jesus in the garden. He finds them and he follows them. Back to the house of the high priest. It's in that situation that he is exposed. He's in the courtyard, and one of the servant girls in verse 66.
Who served the high priest? Came. And she sees Peter. warming himself Verse sixty-seven. in the flickering of the firelight.
in the middle of the night. She sees him there And it says she looked At him. Luke twenty two fifty six, Luke's account says She stared at him. It's not a glance. He's looking to.
to see if this isn't somebody that she recognized. Remember now, Jesus for that whole week had been pretty much in the temple surrounded by his disciples, and everybody associated with the high priest and his family knew about them and where they were because they were. tearing into their temple system. From Monday through Wednesday.
So perhaps she had seen him, and she was just checking it out to make sure he was the one. She thought. She looked at him and said, You also were with Jesus. The Nazarene. meaning that he had come from the town of Nazareth, And he says, I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.
No sooner did he say that. Then what you read in verse Sixty-eight. It says, I neither know nor understand what you're talking about, but if you have a new King James or an Old King James. You will read this. And he went out.
into the porch, and the rooster crowed. What was Peter doing, trying to get away? He went out onto the porch. What do what do you mean the porch? What's what's what's the porch?
So that's the Vestibule might be kind of an old archaic word. It's the corridor. It's the corridor that leads back out to the street. Dark. It's out of the flickering fire, away from the people, into the corridor, into the hallway that leads out.
He's got to get away. It may have dawned on him the first time he heard that crowing of the rooster that he was on schedule. To do exactly what the Lord said he would do.
So he ducks. Into the corridor. and some time passes clearly. Verse 69 says the servant girl. Sign?
And he's confronted another time. And perhaps on this occasion, there was, again, more than one question directed at him by more than one person. But the servant girl who saw him began once more to say to the bystanders, This is one of them. This is one of them hiding here in The corridor. But again he denied it.
Verse 70. Again, he denied it. And Matthew says he denied it before all of them. He denied it again. And If you read Luke, Luke says, he said, I am not one of his followers.
Matthew says, I do not know what you're talking about. His second denial. It maybe is even a more fierce denial. And now he's had some time to think about it, but he's really caught. The second denial is not a paroptima, it's not a trip-up, it's premeditated now.
He's deep into this. really deep into it. Matthew says that this accuser, one of this accusers on this second go-round, said, This fellow was with Jesus the Nazarene. And Matthew says, Peter with an oath. denied it.
With an oath. I swear it's the truth. I vow it's the truth. You think now he'd probably get out of there? But he doesn't.
He hangs around? And verse 70, look at it. After a little while. After a little while, Luke says about an hour. Another hour goes by.
He's still milling around in the night, wanting to see the end. Wanting to see the way it turns out. And maybe he's heard the screams of blasphemy that have been hurled from the mouths of the Sanhedrin against Jesus. But he's still there. And the bystanders This is the third time, verse 70.
We're again saying to Peter, Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean too. How did they know he was a Galilean? Did he have a name tag? No, Matthew 26:73 says, Your speech betrays you. You had a Galilean accent.
So in verse 71, he began to curse and swear. I don't know this man you're talking about. Curse and swear? What do you mean cursing? Pronouncing a curse on himself if he's lying.
He literally pulls down the hand of God on his own head if he's lying. He has really hit rock bottom. I do not know this man you are talking about. How can he say that? Immediately, verse 72 says, A rooster crowed a second time, and all that the Lord had told him had come to pass.
The Lord didn't make it happen. The Lord knew it would happen. And it happened because Peter wasn't ready. He wasn't prepared. It didn't have to happen.
But the Lord knew it would happen. Because Peter was unprepared, brash over confidence. Foolish confidence led to failing cowardice. How does this happen? How does this happen?
What leads to this? Let me give you the lessons, okay? Number one, he boasted too much. He boasted too much. Self-confidence.
He was strong. He was the man. He could handle anything. Follow Christ anywhere. And he had that bolstered by warm, affectionate feelings toward Christ.
He boasted too much, too much confidence in his strength, too much confidence in his flesh. Secondly, he listened too little. He listened too little. Jesus told him and told him and told him. This is great danger waiting for you.
Satan wants to sift you. You will deny me. And he spurned all those warnings. He did not take the word of the Lord seriously. He ignored the word of Christ.
He rejected warnings and reproof. Dangerous. He boasted too much, he listened too little. And thirdly, he prayed too little. He slept through the prayer meeting.
The Lord said in the garden, Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. He had taught him in the disciples' prayer, pray this way, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. He should have been awake and praying that instead of sleeping. He prayed too little. He omitted the spiritual duty.
He omitted the drawing on divine power. and a downward impulse of his own flesh dragged him into the pit of cowardice. Boasted too much, listened too little, prayed too little. Fourthly, he acted too fast. He reacted on his own without Considering the Lord's will, grabbed a sword.
Started swinging it around. He was out of sync with the plan of God. He was out of sync with the purpose of God. He was driven by his own fleshly impulses. He wanted to make a hero out of himself.
He wanted to increase his reputation. He wanted to affirm his self-confidence. This is just more of his pride. He um boasted too much. listened too little, prayed too little, acted too fast.
And he followed too far. He would have been a lot better off if he had gone all the way across the courtyard and stood right with his Lord. That was always the safest place to be. He fled with the rest. He followed far off.
He is curious, but not courageous. He is a compromiser. He's mingled around the fire, and now he's stuck. He mingled long enough. He sat with the men at the fire, wanting to blend in so nobody would know who he was.
And it was his desire to blend in. That was the compromise. We followed too far. Boy, the practical implications of that are so important. You want to follow close, you want to stay close.
Boasted too much, listened too little, prayed too little, acted too fast, followed too far. And as a result he fell Too low. He had discovered the corruption of his own flesh, even in the face of his best intentions. I think he believed in himself. That's the problem.
That's the problem. He doesn't believe in himself anymore. He knows what he is capable of. This is a profound lesson. And Jesus said to him: When you are converted, when you turn around from this, you will be able to strengthen the brethren.
Because you will be able To teach them the lesson you learned about the weakness of the most resolute, self-confident believer. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is willing. Weak. It's a great lesson for us to learn. Not to be overconfident.
But to understand the weakness of our flesh. and steel ourselves against the kind of cowardice. that broke the heart of Peter and grieved the heart of his Lord. You're listening to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. John's current series is titled The Divine Drama of Redemption.
Now, friend, what we've seen in this study about the disciples' failure, and particularly today Peter's collapse as he denied Jesus, it brings to mind a fact that sometimes may be overlooked, and that is the disciples were not supermen, always in control, never weak, never fearful. Frankly, they seem a lot like us. John had some helpful thoughts about that, so let's hear them now. Yeah, um I've said this many times. The reason Jesus chose such weak and ordinary men is because that's the only kind there are.
The book 12 Ordinary Men has had quite a ministry through the years. It was years and years that we just had that series on audio and it was downloaded on the website and we had C D's on that series. We even go back to tapes on that series. But when the book came out, it all of a sudden catapulted into a huge amount of interest. The story of the disciples is the story of 12 ordinary men.
They are very ordinary. In fact, they're so ordinary that Jesus. Basically, they named them OU of Little Faith Society. And it seemed like they never developed theologically or in faith. From the beginning to the end, because they were still.
confused after three years of his ministry as things began to move toward the cross. They exhibited a lack of faith, a lack of understanding. They were telling Jesus he wasn't going to do what he said he was going to do.
So their faults and foibles and uh weaknesses, um Basically, make them like us, 12 ordinary men, one of the most popular studies we have ever done, and it's available in book form. Why is it important for you to read this book? Because you're going to find out what the Lord can do with ordinary people. It's a deep dive into the lives of the disciples, everything we know about them from the New Testament. And we'll see their weaknesses, their strengths, their failures, and their victories, and they will be a model.
And an example for us to follow. That's right, friend. This is one of John's most popular books. It will show you how Christ used ordinary people to turn the world upside down for his kingdom, and how he can use you too. Pick up a copy of 12 Ordinary Men when you contact us today.
Twelve ordinary men costs ten dollars and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or shop online at gty.org. Also, like many of John's books, 12 Ordinary Men is available in Spanish. To order a copy in Spanish or English, call 855 Grace or visit our website gty.org. And when you finish reading the book, let us know how God used it in your life.
We'd also love to know if you've been encouraged by John's teaching on radio, by an article you've read on our website, and especially if the Lord has used this ministry to bring you or someone you know to faith in Christ. Email us at letters at gty.org. Once more, that's letters at gty.org. Or if you prefer regular mail, you can write to grace to you. Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412.
Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378 or watch anytime at gty.org. And be here tomorrow when John continues his look at the divine drama of redemption with another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
