Luke 22:54-62
Please remain standing and turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Luke 22. Today’s passage will
be Luke 22. I will read verses 31 to 34 and
then 54 to 62. We look back to 31 to 34 to be
reminded of Jesus telling Peter of what trial he would face. And then our main passage for
today is verses 54 to 62. Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
Father, you’ve given us so much. You have provided for us richly.
And so we ask now for one more thing, that we would be receptive
to your word. And that as we receive it with
joy and with diligence, we would put it into practice in our lives
for your glory and our neighbors and our own good. And this we
ask in the name of Christ. Amen. Let’s hear God’s word. Luke 22, beginning at verse 31. This is at the last supper. Jesus says, Simon, Simon, behold,
Satan has demanded to have you. that he might sift you like wheat.
But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And
when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. Peter said to
him, Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.
Jesus said, I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this
day until you deny three times that you know me. Then skip down
to verses 54 to 62. Then they seized him, speaking
of Christ. They led him away, bringing him
into the high priest house. Peter was following at a distance.
And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard
and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant
girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely
at him, said, this man also was with him. But he denied it, saying,
woman, I do not know him. And a little later, someone else
also saw him and said, you also are one of them. But Peter said,
man, I am not. And after an interval of about
an hour, still another insisted saying, certainly this man also
was with him for he too is a Galilean. But Peter said, man, I do not
know what you were talking about. And immediately, while he was
still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked
at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he
had said to him, before the rooster crows today, you will deny me
three times. And he went out and wept bitterly. Amen. This is God’s word. You may be seated. I believe some of you will know
what I’m speaking about when I say that operating and maintaining
a weed eater, a weed trimmer, is from the devil. They hardly ever start and the
string always runs out. And they’re a pain in the neck.
You spend more time maintaining and fixing and repairing and
respooling a weed eater than you do actually eating weeds. I don’t know why they call them
weed eaters when they’re trimmers. But nevertheless, a weed trimmer
is, I think, from Satan. It’s a thorn in the flesh. And
so is a small engine. Maybe some of you are in the
midst of summer yard work, and you get the mower out, you get
the weed trimmer out, you get the hedge clippers out, the trimmers,
or whatever, and you have a window of time to get your work done,
and you know nothing about small engine repair, but it seems that
is on your to-do list for the day. And it’s helpful, isn’t
it, as a person who maintains a home, or maintains a yard,
or maintains a car, or some other gadget, it’s important to know
how it works. For when you know how to repair
your weed trimmer, you know how to repair your lawnmower, or
you get in your car, or your boat, or some sort of contraption,
and it doesn’t work, you begin to go through, not your contacts
to call AAA, But you go through, is there battery? Is there gas? Is my key in the ignition? You
go through the process of troubleshooting. And while it’s wonderfully helpful
to know these things in order to maintain your house and yard
and small engines, it’s lots more valuable to know the nuts
and the bolts of the Christian life. It’s important for us to
know how God is at work in our lives as Christians. Then we
can troubleshoot better. About six years ago, we, in August
of 2015, began our Sunday evening services. And the first series
that we did in our Sunday evening studies, before we picked up
our study of Psalms that are about to end in a week or so,
we looked at the nuts and bolts of the Christian life. We looked
at predestination, effectual calling, regeneration. We considered
faith. We considered justification,
adoption, sanctification. We looked at the world and the
flesh and the devil. We considered assurance. We considered Perseverance of
the Saints. And we looked at a godly, biblical
view of heaven. And so we considered what I would
call the nuts and bolts of the Christian life because I figured
if at the outset of my ministry, you would get more of my preaching
and understand more of my teaching if you saw those nuts and bolts
and where I was coming from, from the perspective of the Christian
life. And this message today we have, this lesson we have
from Peter’s life is very much an important lesson about a serious
nut and bolt, you might say, of the Christian life. And so
I hope this is a blessing and beneficial to you as you consider
how you live the Christian life before Christ with some of the
struggles that come upon us. I want you to think about the
big picture of this world and everything in it. We understand
the Christian worldview is one of creation. God made the world
and everything in it. He made it perfect. He made Adam
and Eve and he made them righteous. He put them in the garden and
he gave them one simple command. Do not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. In the day you eat of it, you
will receive the pain of death. Well, we know that Adam and Eve,
enticed by Satan, enticed by the lust of the eyes, the lust
of the flesh and the pride of life, they ate the forbidden
fruit. And so they and all mankind after
them were plunged into what we call the fall. So you have creation,
righteous creation. You have the fall of Adam and
Eve and therefore all mankind after them into sin. And then
we have redemption, the work of Jesus Christ beginning to
make all things new. And his beginning to make all
things new starts in the life of every Christian. And it will
be fully realized at the last day when all evil is vanquished,
all sin is punished, and all the righteous are gathered together
in the new heavens and the new earth. Not only will creation
be made whole again, Every Christian will in body and soul be made
perfect and enjoy God forever and ever. And that’s something
we look forward to, but what do we have to deal with now in
the Christian life? And I want you to think about
your Christian life. Our Christian life, yes, is a
company of saints, but your specific Christian life under two words,
justification and sanctification. Those are two words every Christian
really, really, really needs to know. Justification is an
act of God’s free grace, whereby we are pardoned of our sin and
accepted as righteous in the sight of God for the sake of
Jesus and his righteousness. So to say it another way, God
sees us as if we’ve never sinned. God sees us as if we’ve always
obeyed. Have you sinned? Of course you
have. Have you disobeyed God? Of course you have. But Christ
has obeyed God perfectly and he has never sinned. And when
we come to Jesus in faith, we receive his righteousness and
we receive his obedience. And so when God sees his children,
When he sees his Christian child, he sees you as if you’ve never
sinned because he sees you in Christ. He sees you as if you’ve
always obeyed because the obedience of Christ is given to you. It’s
imputed to you. It’s credited to you and received
by faith. And so justification is an important
concept for us as Christians to grasp. But sanctification
also is an important concept for us to understand. This is
the nuts and bolts of the Christian life, like knowing how to tinker
with your mower or repair your weed trimmer. You know how to
troubleshoot because you understand how it works. And so sanctification,
according to our catechism, it’s a work of God’s free grace, whereby
we are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto
righteousness. And throughout our Christian
life, yes, we are justified. God will never hold our sin against
us, but we continue to sin. We continue to sin and we grow
in our sanctification, our holiness. God, when he pardons us, has
laid waste to Satan’s dominion, his control, his power over us.
But there remains in us a remnant of our original sin. And from
that remnant of original sin come actual sins. And so our
confession, our catechism reminds us there exists in every Christian
a remnant of corruption. And it takes hold of your life
at times. And you fall into grievous error. You sin against the Lord. You
return to him in repentance and in faith. But our catechism,
our confession tells us it is a continual and irreconcilable
war in this life. And so while it brings great
peace to us to know that we are justified, it ought to bring
great peace to know that God is at work sanctifying us, even
though it is painful. and there is sin involved. My
hope today is to encourage you by helping you understand through
Peter’s life and his failure, the nuts and bolts of the Christian
life so that you don’t leave discouraged saying there’s remnant
sin in me. There is remaining original corruption
in me and I have no hope. Now I want you to see that God
tailor makes every Christian’s life And he in his wisdom and
in his goodness has left that corruption so that while we live
on this earth, we will seek him and trust him and rely on him
and weigh heavily on his grace for our continual living. Now, I want to point out something
to you that is a difficult It’s a difficult truth to bear,
but I think one that will help you and bless you in significant
ways in your Christian life. We’re gonna look at something
in the back of our hymnal in just a moment. So if you wanna make
your way to page 923, there you’ll find the chapter in our confession
of faith on providence. And on page 923 in the fifth
point, which I’ll read in just a moment, It basically says this,
God in his wisdom, he sometimes allows the corruption of your
flesh to operate for some time, some extended time. And it’s
for his wise purposes. It’s for his glory and it’s for
his everlasting good. And so if you struggle with a
sin, if you struggle with a hardship, this I think will give you some
help and comfort. It says on page 923, the fifth
point up on the top left, the most wise, righteous, and gracious
God does oftentimes leave for a season his own children to
manifold temptations, the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise
them for their former sins or to discover unto them the hidden
strength of corruption and the deceitfulness of their hearts,
that they may be humbled and to raise them to a more close
and constant dependence for their support upon himself and to make
them more watchful against all future occasions of sin and for
sundry other just and holy ends. Friends, this is the life of
Peter. This is the moment in Peter’s life that we are reading
in Luke explained. God has told Peter, He has told
him, Satan desires to sift you and he is going to have you.
But I am praying for you. I am with you. I am cheering
you on. So as we think of this passage
from Luke today, this theological truth under the issue of sanctification
in our lives, think of Peter’s life. Peter was a Galilean, a
fisherman, and he was on his boat one day when Jesus came
calling. You’ll have to think back a long
time ago to when we studied this passage together. Peter fished
all night, didn’t catch a thing. But at the instruction of the
Lord, at the instruction of the master, he cast his nets opposite
side of the boat and they hauled in more fish, so many fish that
their boat began to sink. And when Peter and the others
realized who this Jesus was, when they recognized him, they
fell down on their faces in the boat and worshiped Jesus. And
they followed Jesus. But you know of Peter, Peter’s
either all on or Or all on and then some. And we see this when
Jesus announces to the disciples later on, he says, I’m going
to go to Jerusalem and I’m going to die. And what does Peter do? No, Lord cannot happen. He stands
in front of him. What does Jesus say? Get behind
me, Satan. And there are other instances
when when Peter has his ideals, when he thinks in drastic terms,
there’s Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. His glory is
glowing. His glory is made manifest as
he is visiting with the two fathers of the faith on the mountain.
And there’s Peter, James and John. And what does Peter do?
Let’s build a temple up here. Let’s put a roof over this thing
and let it last forever. He’s always thinking or always
speaking and never thinking. Well, fast forward to the upper
room. Fast forward to Wednesday and
Thursday. It’s now Thursday night in our
passage during Holy Week. But fast forward to Wednesday,
Thursday. Peter has been told by Christ. The shepherd will be struck with
a sword. You all will scatter. And Peter
says, no, Lord, I will go to prison and I will go to death
and I will never fall away. This is Peter’s foolishness,
isn’t it? And this is our foolishness.
We think sometimes we become a Christian and we are 10 feet
tall and bulletproof. And very often that’s what the
church tells us. You come to Jesus, all your problems are
going to go away. And then someday you’ll be playing
a harp up in heaven with angels wings. That’s the Christian life
in the South. But it’s not the way it is, is
it? The Christian life is a difficult one. It’s full of pain and hardship. We speak the name of Christ and
we are reviled for it. We live the Christian life and
Satan seeks to destroy and to devour us. But Peter is a fool. Never, Lord, I won’t fall away.
They zip up to the garden where Jesus prays. He tells his disciples,
watch and pray. And he finds Peter, the chief
snorer of them all. Then the mob comes and Peter
takes the sword and It’s going to take on the whole Roman guard
and lops off the high priest servant’s ear. And when we get
to our passage today, Jesus is arrested. And you can imagine
this mob walking Jesus down the mountain, through the valley
and into the city of Jerusalem, where they land at the high priest
house. And what does it say of Peter?
It says he followed Jesus at a distance. And so we’ve seen
the full heartiness of Peter, Lord, I will never fall away.
I’ll go to prison for you. I’ll even die. And then when
trouble comes, he follows at a distance. And this is our temptation
in today’s world. If you stand in the marketplace
today and you pronounce before the watching world that you’re
into saving the earth, people will applaud for you. If you
stand in the marketplace today and you say, I’m, I’m, I’m for
pride. I’m for equality. I’m for, uh,
all these social issues that are before us today, you will
receive applause. But if you stand before the watching
world today and say, I am a follower of Jesus Christ, the king of
the universe and the savior of sinners, the only way, truth
and life, people will revile you. People will cast you out. You will lose friendships, you
will lose business, you will lose social standing in today’s
world. And that is the foolishness of
Peter as we make our way towards the high priest house in our
passage. He follows, but at a distance. He’s close enough to be curious
and have that curiosity met, but he’s far enough away. Oh,
I’m not with Jesus. I was until the going got tough.
So we ought to take great care from this story to see what Jesus
and following him requires. Well, this mob has seized Jesus
and they’ve made their way to the high priest palace. And I
want you to think about this two stories going on at the same
time. We’re going to focus today on
Peter and his His denial of Christ out in the courtyard. But simultaneously,
Jesus is in one of the inner rooms of the palace. He’s a stone’s
throw away from Peter. One’s outside, one’s inside.
Jesus is on trial in front of the Sanhedrin. It’s not the official
trial, it’s the pretrial. They’ve captured him. They’re
excited. They’re thrilled that they finally
caught this Jesus. But we’re going to see. We’re
going to see that while Jesus is on trial, Peter is out in
the garden. He’s out in the courtyard having
the struggle of his life. When the story goes something
like this, Jesus and the mob make their way to the high priest
house. They go through a gate and enter into the palace of
the high priest. And in this outer courtyard on
a cold night, a fire has been built. And there are servants
and others out in this, this grand courtyard, uh, warming
themselves by the fire. Jesus has been carried into an
inner room and all the pretrial motions and, and what are we
going to do with them and how are we going to kill them? All
that’s taking place inside. And so, uh, Peter is out there
warming himself and a servant girl notices him. You’re one
of them. You’re one of the disciples.
You’re with Jesus, the guy in their own trial, the bad guy.
You’re one of them. No, no, not me. And then a little time later,
another, a man says, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re with him.
No, I’m not. His voice gets a little louder. Well, as Jesus trial comes to
an end inside. Jesus is brought through the
courtyard as the story goes, as historians believe it took
place. And as he’s making his way across the courtyard, another,
maybe even one of the guards who has Jesus by the arm says,
Hey, you, you’re one of them. And Peter, if you read the other
gospels, it’s not in Luke, he explodes with curses and with
oaths and with promises. And if you were to put this into
a film and show it on family television hour, it would be
bleeped out because Peter is so vehement in his denial of
Jesus that to call on his name would probably bring certain
death and he would be alongside Jesus in his trials and his crucifixion. And so he says, with all his
might and with all the dirty words he knows, I do not know
this man. And as Jesus is making his way
by the guards across the courtyard, probably to his imprisonment
for the night, he stares Peter eye to eye and the rooster crows. And Peter at that moment knows
what has taken place, that the words of Christ have been fulfilled. Well, Peter’s a fool. We know that Peter follows at
a distance not to be counted with Jesus. But what is what
does Peter really do here in this denial of Christ? Well,
every Sunday we confess our faith. We affirm our faith. The Apostles
Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Ligonier
Statement on Christology. We have the Westminster Creed.
We use all sorts of ancient, historical, even some modern
creeds to affirm our faith together. Common beliefs of who God is,
what he’s done, and what we can be assured of in the promises
of God. And we affirm our faith every Sunday, and we are affirming
our faith to God. I believe in you, God, the Father
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. We are affirming to one
another. We still believe this. The world
is hostile, but we still believe it. I hold my faith. You hold
your faith. We have this faith together.
And so there’s camaraderie in it. But we’re also proclaiming
to Satan, Satan, I’ve been rescued from you. I’ve been redeemed
from you. I’ve been unshackled from you.
And this is now my faith. But we’re also saying our faith
to the watching world. I believe in God. I believe in
Christ. I believe in the Holy Spirit.
I believe in the forgiveness of sins. I believe the one way
truth in life is Jesus. And so when we affirm our faith,
we are not denying Jesus. But we are acknowledging him.
We are affirming our faith. And that’s what Peter fails to
do. And notice the third time when
Jesus is being brought through the temple or the high priest
palace courtyard, his denial of Christ is right there in front
of him. What Jesus foretold of Peter
to Peter takes place in this very moment. Peter fails to confess
Christ. This is his big fall. But look
who acknowledges Peter. And isn’t that a great comfort
to know that in the midst of our struggle with remnant sin,
in the midst of the struggle of the flesh and the world and
the devil, in the midst of our sovereignly tailor-made struggle
of sanctification, Jesus will acknowledge us, even when we
fail to acknowledge him. And isn’t it a wonder, isn’t
it a grace to know that the depths of the well of the mercy of God
can never be exhausted. You may deny Christ. You may
fail Christ. You may fall short of his glory.
You may transgress his laws and your struggle with sin and in
your struggle to become holy. But we remember the tenderness
of Jesus. Those verses we read earlier,
verses 31, I believe, to 34, Jesus says something very important
that we ought to take heart. And it’s something that Peter
forgot, maybe until the rooster crowed. It’s something Peter
forgot until Jesus’ eyes met him there in that palace courtyard. Jesus said to Peter there at
the upper room, Satan would like to sift you. He would like to
have you. This is, in a sense, the same
struggle we read of in the prologue of Job. Satan is allowed in God’s
sovereignty to test Job. Well, Satan here in God’s sovereignty
is allowed to test Peter. But what’s the great promise?
Satan desires Peter to sift you. But I have prayed for you. I
am praying for you. And we should not forget. We should never forget the high
priestly ministry of Jesus. What we understand Jesus praying
for in his high priestly prayer in the upper room in John’s gospel,
Jesus continues to do to this day from his seat on the throne
in heaven. He is praying for each of you.
Each of you who are justified, he is praying that you would
walk in the newness of life. He is praying that you would
not fear man, that you would not fail to study the word and
be in church and to grow in grace and to live by the Holy Spirit. And that’s a tender mercy to
us, isn’t it? That God who begins a good work
in us, he is faithful to complete it. Yes, it’s a messy path. It’s
a path that is filled with your pride. It is a path filled with
your lust. It is a path filled with your
arrogance. It is a path filled with the
remnant of sin welling up in you. And yes, God tailor making
a pathway for you to show you often, to show you over and over
your need of Christ and your need of resting in him alone
for your salvation and grace. We have in us a remnant of corruption. And from that remnant of corruption
come our actual sins. And we have good weeks and bad
weeks. We have up weeks and down weeks.
We serve the Lord well and then we don’t. We hear things from
the world. We have burnings and lustings
of our own flesh. And we have Satan tempting us
and deceiving us and trying to get us to deny our Lord. But
God has a deep well of grace in Christ. That wonderful hymn
we sang at Easter, our sins, they are many. His mercy is more. Now, the rest of the story we
won’t come to in Luke’s gospel. The rest of the story is found
in John’s gospel, and I think, you know, the rest of the story.
Well, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples
in different ways on the road to Emmaus. He met with them in
the upper room. But there’s one special meeting
Jesus had with his disciples, especially with Peter. He was
cooking breakfast on the shores of Galilee and the disciples
one by one came to Jesus. They began to recognize him and
they began to eat with him. Jesus singles out Peter. The
same eyes that made contact with him in the courtyard had not
forgotten some 40 days later to meet with Peter and do business.
And as he stares eye to eye with Peter, he says to him, do you
love me? Of course, Lord, you know that
I do. Then feed my lambs. A second time, Peter, do you
love me? Of course, Lord, you know that I do. Feed my lambs. And then a third time, we know,
of course, without a shadow of a doubt, the third time for the
denial. You deny me three times, you reinstate three times. Peter, do you love me? Of course
I do. than feed my lambs. Well, what
do we know of Peter? Peter has written two epistles
to us. And in his epistles, he talks
to us about the fiery trials. He speaks to us about the temptations
of the devil. He speaks to us about the hardships
of being a Christian. And just as Jesus is a high priest
who knows us, he’s been through our pain, our suffering, our
difficulty. He is a high priest with our
same infirmities. He knows what we struggle with.
Well, Peter’s an apostle and he’s had his failures, he’s had
his failings, he’s had his fallings, and yet God puts him back on
his feet in order that he might minister. And isn’t it interesting,
Peter is still ministering to us today. As you read 1 and 2
Peter, you have to think in your mind, he’s the brash one, the
loud one, the the impetuous one. He’s the one with the sword.
He’s the one who wants to build a temple over Jesus and Elijah. But he’s also the one that fell
so far, but the mercy of God caught him and used him. Now
we live in a world today where you’re seeing pastors and televangelists
abuse Christians. You’re seeing other Christians
live in grievous sin, and they will say to you, oh, but look
at Peter. Oh, but look at so-and-so. God
will use me again. This is not a license for you
to live as you want and then to lord it over people and say,
God reinstated Peter, so look at me now. This is a deep and
real struggle with sin, with remnant sin, with the flesh and
with, am I going to call on Jesus and publicly affirm him or am
I going to stand at a distance? And when the going gets tough,
I am going to deny him. Well, Peter gives us an encouraging
word in one of his letters. He says, you work out your salvation
with fear. and with trembling. And don’t
you know he wrote those words by the power of the Holy Spirit?
But he wrote those words as a pastor, as a shepherd, as a fellow Christian
who knows what it is to fail his Lord. But he knows of the
redeeming grace of God and that we can go to God as often as
needed and repent of our sin and confess of our sin and and
receive God’s assurance of pardon and God in his way will make
us useful again. And so what I want to leave you
with today is, yes, in your sin, yes, in your remnant sin and
your transgressions, you may fail Jesus miserably. And Satan would want you to take
that to heart and say, look, you’re no good. God can’t use
you. Jesus doesn’t want you. He’s
ashamed of you. And you need to just walk from
the church. But Peter’s story tells us otherwise. Jesus uses
us in our failures. It’s somehow for his glory. And
it is for sure for our everlasting good. And it can be it can be
for the blessing of the saints who are watching. Let’s pray
together. Our Lord, we give you thanks
for this lesson from the life of Peter. It reminds us of the
hardships of King David. It reminds us of some of your
saints in the scriptures who whose lives were really failures
when you think about it. And it makes us wonderfully happy
that Jesus is our ultimate high priest. And he has not failed.
He has succeeded. And we look to Jesus, the author
and perfecter of our faith. But we look to these saints.
And we want to persevere in our faith just as they did, even
in the midst of pain and hardship. And so help us to learn these
lessons and to live these lessons by your grace this day. In the
name of Christ, we pray, amen.