We'll be right back. Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. You know, it's one of the saddest episodes in Scripture—Peter's denial of Christ—but even in this heartbreaking story, there's actually a lot of encouragement. In fact, Peter's story provides a great lesson for recognizing what genuine repentance looks like and what it doesn't look like. John MacArthur shows you that today on Grace to You as he continues his brand new series from the Gospel of Mark titled, The Divine Drama of Redemption. This is a fast-paced, big picture look at the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the other important events surrounding that first Easter.
It's designed to give you a fresh appreciation for Christ's great sacrifice as Resurrection Sunday draws near. So if you have your Bible, turn to the Gospel of Mark and here's John with the 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 re-label it as a virtue without deceiving everyone. Today we're going to meet 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 how he got to the 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 onto the porch. The servant girls 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.
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 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 one to three, Peter denial from one to three.
They run concurrently. Christ is seen in glorious triumph, speaking honestly, knowing it will cost Him His life. Peter speaks dishonestly, trying to preserve His life. Now while what Peter did is not necessary, don't have to do this, it does happen. You say, you mean an actual true believer could 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 one o'clock and three 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 prove 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 eleven 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, John, 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. Oh, he's so confident, so foolishly confident. He is dangerously overconfident.
He is foolishly confident. Proverbs 16, 18 says, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. First 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. They arrest him, they tie him up, Jesus, the disciples scatter, Judas is long gone, but the other eleven scatter as Zechariah 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 healed. 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 67, in the flickering of the firelight in the middle of the night. She sees him there. And it says she looked at him. Luke 22 56, Luke's account says she stared at him.
It's not a glance. She's looking 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. He says, I neither know nor understand what you are talking about.
No sooner did He say that than what you read in verse 68. 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 you mean the porch? What's the porch? 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. It's 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 saw him 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 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 paraptoma, 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 the 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, were 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. He 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're 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, didn't have to happen, but the Lord knew it would happen because Peter was unprepared. Brash overconfidence, 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. He 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 his 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 boasted too much. He 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. He 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 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. It's John MacArthur here on Grace to You. He's a pastor, author, and chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary. John's current study is reminding you of the great truths of our salvation, all that Christ went through for sinners like you and me.
The series is titled The Divine Drama of Redemption. You know, John, what we've seen in this study about the disciples' failures and particularly today with Peter's collapse as he denied Jesus, it brings to mind a fact that sometimes may be overlooked. You stressed it in your book on the 12 disciples that these were not supermen, always in control, never weak, never fearful. In fact, almost the opposite. These guys seemed a whole lot like, well, us. Yeah.
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, Twelve 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 CDs 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. So the story of the disciples is the story of twelve ordinary men. They are very ordinary. In fact, they're so ordinary that Jesus basically 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 weaknesses basically make them like us. Twelve 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, ordinary men, ordinary women. 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. So get a copy of Twelve Ordinary Men, available from Grace To You. Yes, this is one of John's most popular books.
It will show you how Christ used ordinary people to turn the world upside down, and how he can use you too. Pick up a copy of Twelve Ordinary Men when you contact us today. The softcover book is reasonably priced and shipping is free. To order, call 800-55-GRACE or shop online at GTY.org.
Also, like many of John's books, Twelve Ordinary Men is available in Spanish. Again, to order, call 800-55-GRACE or visit our website GTY.org. 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 spiritually strengthened by our teaching on the 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, write to us at Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television on Sunday, check your local listings for Channel and Times, and be here tomorrow when John continues his brand new Easter series called The Divine Drama of Redemption, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
