Well, good morning and welcome
to our continuing Bible study in Luke. What a pleasure it is
to be able to be here and fellowship around the Word of God and to
look at the many wonderful blessings that we have in Christ. We were just discussing as we
were visiting this morning earlier that sometimes We take for granted the blessings
that we have to be able to fellowship together like this, and not everyone
enjoys that. Some folks are somewhat isolated
in that. Our brother Duane, his loving
wife, just passed away. And I was just mentioning this
morning how often Yvonne and I sit around the house and discuss
the wonderful grace of God. And he's not able to do that now because
his wife has gone on to be with the Lord. So today, our continuing study in Luke. We're in chapter 22. And we're looking at this block of
Scripture from verse 54 down through 62. And as we kind of look at the context
of things, as was their custom, they went to the Mount of Olives
at night the disciples and the Lord. And Judas had said, well,
I know where we can arrest him, to the priests, where we won't
have a big crowd and it'll be dark and no one will see what
we're doing. And so that has happened. He brought the the multitude with him that was
the officers of the temple and the priests and all those that
came. The Lord said, or you come out
against me as a thief with swords and staves, and we went through
all of that, things that happened there. and the deal with Peter
smiting off Malchus's ear and all those things, and the Lord's
command to let these go their way, and according to His purpose
in being the sole mediator. And so now we're in verse 54,
And they took him, took Christ, and led him, and brought him
to the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off.
And you remember the Lord had told him earlier when he was
boasting about his, though everybody abandon you, I'll never forsake
you. And he says, you know what? You're
going to deny me three times before the cock crows. Peter
said, no, that will never happen. How deceitful is our heart on
these things. So when they had kindled a fire
in the midst of the hall, and were sat down together, that
would be the ones that were in the business of apprehending
Christ and bringing him to the high priest for some kind of
inquisition situation. They were sat down together and
Peter sat down among them. But a certain maid beheld him
as he sat by the fire and earnestly looked upon him and said, this
man was also with him. And he denied him saying, woman,
I know him not. He denied Christ saying, I don't
even know him. And after a little while, another
saw him and said, thou art also of them. And Peter said, man,
I am not. And about the space of one hour
after another confidently affirmed, saying, of a truth this fellow
also was with him, for he's a Galilean. In one of the other gospels,
I just remember which one it was, but they said, your speech
betrayeth thee. Because the Galileans had a specific
accent or dialect to be like. Giovanna's dad was from Georgia,
no mistake in that, y'all. Your speech betrayeth thee. I
know you're one of those Galileans. And Peter said, man, I know not
what thou sayest. And immediately while he yet
spake, the cock crew And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter,
and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said
unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And
Peter went out and wept bitterly." Boy, what a block of Scripture
we have. You know, we have a situation
where these people, they've already come together come to certain
conclusions about Christ. When they went to that priest
house, there were certain people there that were gathered together
that were in unity against him. Their whole focus and all of
them were against him and yet here's one of the disciples that
says Peter went down and sat down among them and boy there's
a host of lessons that we can that we can relate to from there
you know when we participate in some things maybe other bodies
and things we lend credence to them and that maybe we shouldn't
so but anyway in our Our lesson today... Get the right page up here. The lesson
today is titled, The Lord Looked. The Lord Turned and Looked. And
the Lord's thoughts toward us. His eternal electing love and
thoughts toward us are not based on behavior. And boy, this is
an important lesson for us in the church. He looks through
the lens of eternal love in his righteous substitution. You know, it would have been
easy for him to look over at Peter and say, you dirty rat. I told you you were going to
do that. And you said, no, I'm not going to. And then you did
it anyway. And so therefore, I turned you
into a lump of charcoal. That would be how I would probably
do it. But you know, the Lord looks at things not as man looks
at them. And he looks at them in spite of our... before the
children have done any good or evil that the purpose of God
according to election might stand. He said, I love Jacob. I love
Peter, but not Esau. Esau I hated. You kind of remind
me of this text, kind of the flip side of the coin regarding
what Christ said about false religion and outward appearances.
because he was always up against that. He was at the very priest's
house that was supposed to be the leader of the religion of
the time and was responsible for proclaiming the gospel of
the Messiah coming to save his people from their sins as it
was proclaimed from A to Z through the Old Testament. And he did
so many things that they could not have been ignorant of that
proclaimed him to be the Son of God and to be the Almighty
Lord, and yet the blindness of their hearts was so permanent, so overwhelming because
of the fall that they just couldn't see those things. They rationalized
each one of those behaviors, saying, oh, yeah, that's just
a trick, or that's just a this, or it's just a that. And even like Lazarus being raised
from the dead, instead of saying, hallelujah, Lazarus was raised
from the dead, they sought to kill him again. And I always
thought, well, that is just the height of irony and stupidity
that, well, here's a guy that the Lord raised from the dead,
and you want to kill him again so he can raise him up again
and prove further that he is who he said he is? That just
made kind of no sense to me at all. But that's a condition we're
in because of the fall. And so here we have this situation
where you have a disciple. a person whose heart is the Lord's,
and yet physically on the outside, he's kind of seems to be going
the other way. Isaiah chapter 29, 13 tells us
the kind of the situation that the Lord ran into with the religious
folks. In Isaiah 29, 13, Wherefore the
Lord said, For as much as this people draw
near me with their mouth, and with their lips they do honor
me, but they've removed their heart far from me, and their
fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. Therefore, behold,
I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people, even
a marvelous work and a wonder. For the wisdom of their wise
men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be
hid. Woe to them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the
Lord. And their works are in the dark,
just as they came and arrested him in the dark, so no one would
see. And they say, Who seeth us, and
who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things
upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay. For shall
the work say of him that made it, he made me not? Or shall
the thing frame say of him that framed it, he had no understanding? And we kind of went through that
argument in our message on Romans 9 on election and the potter
and the clay and the excuse that men say, well, it's your fault. You made me. That's what Adam
said in the garden. I ate that fruit, but it's not
my fault. You gave me the woman, and she gave me the fruit, and
I did eat. So if there's any blame here
to be laid, it's on you, not me for making the incorrect choice
here. So, you know, this phrase, this
block of text that we just read from Isaiah 29, recorded by Isaiah
there, it's quoted in Matthew 15, 8 and Mark 7, 6, as Jesus
is addressing these religious folks, saying, truly did Isaiah
talk about you guys, You worship me with your lips. You honor
me with your lips. But your heart is like, it's
in another universe. It's in another realm, the realm
of flesh. It's not in the spiritual realm.
And so the Lord kind of identifies Peter in this text as one of
the opposites of the text in Isaiah. He's one who outwardly,
on the surface, seems to deny Christ. He did it three times
there in this one evening in the front of these religious
folks. He seemed to deny Christ and
not to honor Him. But inwardly, one whose heart
was made nigh to God, not by anything he had done, but by
an external force of grace, his heart had been made nigh to God.
and one whom God loved from eternity, as it says in Ephesians 2.13,
you who sometimes were far off were made nigh by the blood of
Christ. So the Lord is able to discern
this difference. where Peter is denying him hourly,
saying, I don't even know who he is. But he was drawn nigh. I mean, he couldn't bear to be
away from him. He had to go even into the midst of these people
that were at enmity with God and sit down at the fire with
them so that he could see what was going to go on and be near
to the Lord. And yet on the outside he said,
I don't even know him. Well you might say, well why
are you here then? But to the outside people they just said,
well he's here just to spy on us and to maybe foment some more
insurrection. whatever nefarious purpose that
they invented. But, you know, the Lord looked
at him and says, you might could design me on the outside with
your mouth, but your heart, it's mine. Your heart is made nigh
by me. And so The Lord is able to discern the
difference because He's the one that made the difference. That's
how He knows the difference, because He's the differentiator. And as noted in Isaiah, as once
again, the Word of God is true, but in this case, it applies
to His sheep in this state of grace that they're in, where
kind of the opposite applies. Woe to them that seek deep to
hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark,
and say, Who seeth us and who knoweth us? Those ravening wolves
in sheep's clothing that have no conscience about their lives
and evil deeds under the guise of religion." You know, the conscience
of Peter ripped him. When the Lord looked at him,
he wept. When he heard that cock crow and he saw the truth of
what the Lord said, his conscience just ripped him. And he sought
to be near the Lord, but outwardly he seemed to draw away and disown
Him. It just proves how frail is man, even after regeneration
by the Spirit. Paul said, you know, the flesh
warth against the Spirit, and the Spirit warth against the
flesh. It's just a good thing that that
is not a factor in the final outcome. The final outcome is
determined by the eternally electing love of God and His application
of the blood to His people at the time that He appoints, and
nothing else. Not on our behavior or performance,
because our performance is pretty awful most of the time. Pretty
meager. We just have so little grasp
of the humongous reality of things that we're so incapable of. What's
the greatest commandment? Well, thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy might.
Well, in reality, We don't do that. In our physical, fleshly
persons, we don't spend 100% of our time loving the Lord,
our God, with all our heart and all our soul and all our might.
We just don't. But we count on the fact that
Christ has done that eternally. And we're in Him, and He imputes
that to us Whereas on our own, we just can't and we don't. Boy, a couple of weeks ago, Norm,
before he went on the trip, produced that bulletin there article by Octavius Winslow. I encourage you to read that
if you haven't read it, but this week he's got a quote from J.C. Philpott and he says, as we have no line sufficiently
deep to sink to the bottom of human depravity. That reminds
me of when we were up in Alaska and I used to fish for halibut
and I let out like 300 and some feet of line to get down to the
bottom where the halibut were, you know. He said that the depths
of human depravity are just They're like the Titanic. They're down
there like three miles deep. And we have no line sufficiently
deep to sink to the bottom of human depravity. So we have no life sufficiently
high to reach to the summit of the love of Christ. There's two
things that are infinitely immeasurable in our condition that we're in
now and we can't really understand the depths of depravity and we
can't understand the eternal aspect of the love of Christ
for us. He says, thus all our knowledge of self as well as
our knowledge of Christ must be from the very nature of things
defective. And the only thing that overcomes
that defectiveness, even in the least little bit, is the revelation
that Christ gives us through His Word. And so that's what
we have here in Peter, denying him three times and the Lord
turns and looks at him. He doesn't say anything. But
that word turn means it's a twisting around. He's bound. They've got
him under arrest and he's bound, and Peter's behind him sitting
at the fire, and that croc crows three times after Peter denies
him. And that word turn means to twist
around with purpose, and he looked at
Peter. You can only imagine. That's
all we have is what the Word tells us and kind of how we view
it through the lens of grace that the Lord looked at him not
with condemnation. The Lord looked at him that before you did any works, good
or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might
stand up. Jacob have I loved. Peter have I loved. I love you
and your relationship with me is
not based on what you're doing, what you're saying. And that
could be applied in a much larger sense in salvation and grace. It's grace, the very definition
of it is without merit. not earned. And certainly, Peter
was trying not to earn much from a physical standpoint. So how
pertinent are these truths of Jehovah, the self-existent, eternal
Lord God Almighty, when we view them as applied to Peter here
and in a good way? And, you know, there's a purpose
for this being recorded to us. You know, if we're In our human
nature, we don't like people to know bad stuff about us. Boy,
I hope this never gets out, that I did this or did that or lost
my temper and said this or said that. And, you know, we don't
have a recorder following us around recording that. But Peter and Paul and, you know,
many of the writers of the New Testament and the Old Testament
as well had these things written for our admonition, for our edification,
for our growth, and for our ultimate trust in God as our Savior, not
based on merit or performance, but based on grace, based on
His love, on His eternally electing love and grace. Externally, Peter, the work of
the potter's clay, as the representation here was saying, somehow in his
fleshly mind was saying, he made me not. I know not the man. I'm not one of them. And somehow
he was thinking that Jesus somehow didn't have understanding of
that. I don't know how to express it
adequately, but the depths of depravity enabled something that
in our flesh we call rationalization. We can rationalize things in
our mind and justify what we're doing
or saying or whatever based on that. And somehow he was saying,
he won't hear me deny him three times. He can't look in my heart
and see that on the outside I'm denying him three times, but
inward I can't stand to be away from him. I have to be near. Somehow he thought that Jesus
had no understanding of what he was going through. I'm sure
in the back of his mind was saying, well, I just whacked off one
of those guys ears. I don't know why I'm not in jail right now. He probably was wondering that. The scriptures and truth tell
us a different circumstance than the one that's beyond our ability
to grasp in its fullness, just as Philpott said. We have no
measurement device to measure the immensity of it. We can't measure the depths of
our depravity. The heart is desperately wicked
and deceitful above all. Who can know it? And yet, the
grace of God is greater than all our sin. Where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. It was just not just a little
bit, but much more. So, you know, the Bible in Hebrews
4 says the Word of God is Quick and powerful. Jesus, the Word
of God, is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts
and intents of the heart. So it's a divider between what's
on the surface and what's in the inward man. Neither is there any creature
that's not manifest in his sight. But all things are naked and
open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." How little
is that grasped? We just think, well, you know,
on a daily basis, minute by minute or something, he's not really,
he's not aware of me or what I'm doing or what I'm saying
or anything. He's far away. Unless I dial
him up on the phone, we're not even communicating. But even the very hairs of your
head are numbered. He says, my thoughts toward you
are infinite thoughts, thoughts of good, to give you an expected
end, he said. You know, there's a truth about
sheep. I had a sheep once in my FFA
project when I was in school. I didn't have really the room
to raise a beef or anything, so I wanted to raise some livestock,
and so I got a sheep. And that sheep was largely unconcerned
with things in general. If you let him have a little
bit of a way out, he was gone. And he would always get into
trouble. My neighbor come driving into the driveway with a pickup
and offloads my sheep and he was just sopping wet. He had gone out through the open
gate that I, who would have left the gate open? The sheep got
out and he went up through a couple of pastures and got into irrigation
canal that had really steep sides. Probably wanted to get a drink
of water and fell in and couldn't get himself out. And he had this
big old wool coat on that probably weighed a thousand pounds now
that it was sopping wet. But this neighboring farmer Fetched
him out of there for me and loaded him in the back of his truck,
knew where his home was, and took him back to me and delivered
him to me. And the sheep says, yeah? And your point is? Leave the
gate open again, see what happens. So sheep, they're kind of prone
to wandering off. And I love that song by Robert
Robertson, He says, prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone
to leave the God I love. Here's my heart though. take and seal it for thy courts
above." I just love that hymn. You know, we have a good shepherd
that's able to keep us eternally rounded up and who loves us unconditionally. No matter how many times we fall
in that irrigation canal, he brings us out and carries us
back. The truth for the sheep is the
truth for the elect. We not only have a good shepherd,
but we have a great high priest who's at the right hand of God
making intercession for us, whose love and eternal thoughts, his
eternal relationship is not altered by our performance or behavior
in any way, but is based solely on his electing love. When God looked down and Peter
was there at that fire, Jesus said, I'm paying for those sins
right at this very moment. I'm going to present him to you
spotless, without wrinkle. The Scriptures are full of Peter's. and the churches. And that's
why he's such a good representative in the scriptures for the church,
the elect in any age, is because he just represents what we all
are by nature and by grace. We may think that we can leave
the Lord, but he never leaves us. And our text tells us that
after Peter denied the Lord, denied even knowing him, at all
in the cock crew, as was told him, what guilt and unworthiness
must Peter have felt in that moment? And our text says this
in Luke 22, 61, and the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.
And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he said unto
him, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. When it's
recorded, the Lord turned. He twisted about and looked.
And He looked on Peter as one whom He loved with an everlasting
love, one whom God the Father had given Him to redeem. He looked upon Peter as a friend
whom He loved eternally and was about to lay down His life for
us. There's no greater love than anyone that a man lay down his
life for his friends. He looked upon Peter as he was
presented before God without spot, without wrinkle, without
even... I enjoyed what Norman brought
out in the lesson on Esther, how the three Jewish boys were
cast into the furnace. And they saw, wasn't there three
in the furnace? Yeah. But I saw four. And he said,
when they came out, they weren't even singed. And I singed the hair on my hands
all the time. Just get light in a fire, doing
some things. It's all curly and gnarly looking. And these guys weren't even singed. And he says, there wasn't even
the smell of smoke on them. And for you that go camping a
lot, you just sit around the campfire, and smoke pretty much
permeates you. all your clothes, your skin,
everything about you, your hair, it smells like smoke. And when
you go home, you have to wash all those. It smells like you've
been camping. Well, those came out of that
furnace without even the smell of smoke on them. What a picture
of redemption, of how Jesus presents His elect to the Father. And He says, Of all you have
given me, I've lost nothing except the son of perdition that the
scripture might be fulfilled. He still has that smoky smell
on him, and he's a little singed, and it's going to get worse.
But the rest of my people, I've not lost a single one of them,
and they're going to come to you spotless without even a smell of smoke on them. What
a picture of redemption from sin. Hebrews 4, 14, so seeing then
that we have such a great high priest that's passed into the
heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession,
for we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities. but was in all points tempted
like as we are yet without sin. And so let us therefore come
boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and
find grace to help in time of need." What good words we have
there. And what a picture that we have
in Peter who desperately needed that. Turn with me to Psalm 103. with some wonderful words that
we have from the Old Testament here that give us some insight
into this, about the magnificence of the Lord, and the immensity
of Him, and the magnitude of Him. I just think that we just
can't, in this world, grasp the immenseness of God and His grace
in its totality. Psalm 103 says, The Lord is merciful
and gracious and slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will
not always chide, neither will he keep his anger forever. He
hath not dealt with us after our sins. Boy, thank goodness. Thank God. Nor rewarded us according
to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above
the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. It's
just beyond our, as Philpott said, we don't have a line, a
measurement to understand that depth of that. Not sufficiently
high to reach the summit. We only have a 25 foot tape measure
and Christ is like the top of Everest. As far as the east is from the
west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. That's hard for us to imagine. Like a father pitieth his children,
so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knows our frame,
and he remembers that we are dust. For as man, his days are as grass,
and as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. As for man,
his days are grass." Just here for a brief time. And the brief
time that we're here is according to his purpose in the redemption. We're part of the, all that the
Father giveth me shall come to me. and him that cometh to me I will
no wise cast out. Every one that the Father giveth
me shall come to me." So we're in that category. But the mercy of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his
righteousness unto children's children. Everlasting to everlasting
is kind of a department of redundancy department. from eternity to eternity is
basically what that's saying. It's infinite. So, you know, when we think about
this, and Peter, later on he runs to the tomb because they
said, he's gone. He runs to the tomb and he has
to look for himself. They said, no, he's gone. Did Jesus later rise from the
dead and hold Peter to account for his misdeeds? Did He do that? No. Or were His actions paid
for in the totality of the sacrifice Jesus made once for all His elect? The two on the road to Emmaus,
if we ever get to Luke 24, they're going along and they're
all despondent Their leader has been crucified. He's been killed
in an awful way. And they're not quite understanding
it. And yet, Jesus appears to them
on the way and opens their eyes, it's said. And He expounded to
them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. They go back, they say, oh man,
we know a lot of stuff now. And we're eager to share that.
Now that we have a kind of an understanding of the Old Testament,
like Norman's been preaching from Numbers and Esther and all
those Old Testament scriptures for years and years. We got to
go back. We got to go back to Jerusalem
and tell the disciples what we learned. So they're eager to share these
revelations of Jesus, and they had this to say in Luke 24-33,
"...and they rose up the same hour and returned to Jerusalem,
and found the eleven gathered together, and they that were
with them." And here's what they said, "...the Lord is risen indeed,
and He appeared unto Simon." Well, how would they have known
that? How would they have found that out? Because they're moping
along on that road saying he's been crucified and he's dead.
But now they're saying he's alive. And guess what he told us? He
said, I rose from the dead. And then I went and showed myself
to Peter. He appeared unto Simon. And you
know, Jesus had a special concern regarding Peter and the anguish
that he must have been suffering And He gave this direction. Let's go to Mark 16. And these people are at the tomb
and they're looking for Jesus. And there's these ones there
in white apparel. And He saith unto them, Be not
affrighted. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, which
was crucified. He's risen. He's not here. Behold
the place where they laid him. But now go your way and tell
his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into
Galilee, and there you shall see him as he said unto you."
He kind of singles out Peter because
he knew the anguish that he was going through sin. How could
I have done that? How could I have said that? How
could I have denied him three times? And then look what all
the things that happened. Paul, in declaring the Gospel,
reported this in 1 Corinthians 15, in verse 3, he says, For
I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received,
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according
to the Scriptures, and that he was seen of Cephas, Peter, and
then of the twelve. So he made a special point of
revelation, of revealing himself to Peter. And so when Jesus comes
to them, if you go back through the other
Gospels, you find that Peter denied him, and so said they
all. I mean, they all abandoned him and skulked off. He appears to them, and what's
the first thing He says unto you? Peace be unto you. John 20, 19, the same day at
evening, being the first day of the week when the doors were
shut, where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews,
the same day came Jesus and stood in the midst and saith unto them,
Peace be unto you. Because that's how he looked
at them, through the lens of eternal electing love, and that
he shed his blood for them. They're his. They're his peculiar
treasure, he calls them. And that means peculiar, not
like they have a third eyeball or one ear that's great big.
Peculiar means purchased. It means something that you have
bought for yourself. peculiar to you. It belongs to
you. His thoughts to them are not
of anger, not of vengeance for abandoning him because it was
all purposed, it was all ordained of God, exactly what would happen,
exactly what would transpire, exactly for the purposes of God
in redeeming the church. He was not going to be angry
at them or thinking of vengeance for abandoning them or for denying
Him who bought them. For I know the thoughts that
I think toward you, saith the Lord, that thoughts of peace,
peace be unto you, and not of evil to give you an expected
end. My blessed sir, behold the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world." So, we're done there. Be free in that. Thank you.