Here in the 22nd chapter of the
book of Luke, I want to read verse 54, and then we'll skip down to verse
61 and 62. Then took they him, and that
is the Lord Jesus, and led him and brought him into the high
priest's house, and Peter followed afar off. And in verses 61 and
62, 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 shall deny me thrice. And Peter went out and
wept bitterly. Now the fall of Peter, and I
want to speak to you this morning about Peter's fall and his restoration. His fall is recorded in each
of the four Gospels, but in none of the four Gospels is Peter's
sin and his fall excused. Well, why is this sad event of
Peter's fall given in all of the Gospels? Why is it given
four times over? Well, that's a good question.
I think maybe it might be in order that we should give maybe
this event fourfold attention. Maybe we should look at it and
look at it and then look at it again and then maybe again look
at it. Give it fourfold attention. Now
Peter's Fall, and I think most of you would agree with what
I'm saying, that it must have increased the grief of the Lord
Jesus Christ to know that while he was enduring untold indignities
here on his people's behalf, that his most prominent disciple
was at that very time denying him with oaths and curses down
at the other end of the hall. This bound to have increased
the grief of our Lord Jesus Christ. I can't imagine that any of the
tortures that the Lord received or endured at the hands of his
enemies could have caused him so much pain as the wicked denial
of one of his closest disciples. Next, I think that Peter's fall
and restoration are fully recorded in the word of God to set forth
the greatness of our Redeemer's saving power, even at the very
time of his death. It's a wonderful thing to think
that before the Lord Jesus expires, before he dies, before he goes
to that horrible cross, that he restores this backslider.
That he is pleased to look upon this backslider and restoring
this open apostate, we could call him, because according to
his own language that's what he was, but in his heart we know
that it was not so. We know that Peter was not an
apostate. We know that he was truly a believer. But here he is a fallen believer,
here he is a backslider, and the Lord Jesus, in absolute sovereign
mercy and free grace, pardons old Peter and forgives him and
restores him at the very time here of this great affliction
and suffering right before death. I think also that there's a lesson
for us here concerning the frailty of the best men that ever lived.
the frailty of the best men that ever lived. Now there's a lot
that the scripture does not tell us about the best of men, the
characters of scripture, those who lived in olden times. There's
so much the scripture doesn't tell us about them. But the scripture
is very particular in recording their faults. The scripture is
very, very clear on revealing the faults of the characters
of the Bible. And if its special purpose, I
believe, is to remind us that the best of men are only men
at the best. The very best men are only men
at the best. Now this Peter was an apostle. And we know that Jesus Christ
And we said this a few weeks ago in a service here, that he
was the elect head of an elect body. And then we know that our
Lord chose 12 apostles. And so we might say that Peter
was involved in election, election, and election in that he was chosen
of the Lord Jesus Christ to be an apostle. He was chosen by
God the Father, put in the Son in old eternity, and so he was
chosen in Christ the head. and then he was chosen as an
individual, and then he was chosen here to be an apostle, but yet
he was so frail, and yet he was so fallible. He certainly was. Now Peter, somebody has said
he was the first bishop of the church at Rome, And I'm not here
to comment on that this morning, but I tell you he had this likeness
with all of the bishops or popes of Rome, and that is he was a
frail and fallible man. And all of the popes have all
been fallible and frail, and all of them have been sinners.
Now Peter's fall seems to say to every one of us, this is what
it says to me, you too are weak. and you too will fall if you're
left to yourself. Therefore, we must trust the
Lord, never trust in ourselves. We must look away from ourselves
and look to Him, look to the Lord Jesus, and don't rely upon
our own experience, don't rely on our own firmness of resolution,
Because you see, if there's any one thing that's brought out
clearly here, and that was that old Peter, that he was very resolute
in the fact that he wasn't going to deny his Lord. In verse 32,
after the Lord had said, Satan hath desired you that he might
sift you as wheat, but he says, I prayed for you that your faith
fail not. And when you're converted, strengthen
your brethren. And then listen to what Peter
said in verse 33. And he said unto him, Lord, I'm
ready to go with you both into prison and to death. He said,
I'm ready, just whatever the situation calls for. If they
want to imprison me, they can. And if they want to put me to
death, that's all right, too. I'm ready. I'm ready. He was
very resolute. I'm ready to die. I'm ready to
be imprisoned. And then the Lord said, Peter,
Peter, he said, the cock shall not crow this day before thou
shalt thrice deny that you know me. You don't know yourself. You don't know yourself at all.
And so, beloved, don't rely upon your own experience, your past
experience. You say, well, I've overcome
many, many situations. Don't Don't rely on your own
experience or the firmness of your resolution, for you will
assuredly fall, as old Peter did, unless the almighty hand
of Jesus Christ holds you up, unless the Lord holds you up.
Now then, I want to talk about a few things here. First of all,
I want to say a few things about the weakness of man and the power
of the temptations that's all around us here in this world.
And all God's people know something about temptation. They know something
about trial. They know something about test.
And then I want to say a few words about Peter's sin and then
something about the display of the grace of God in his case.
in being restored, the effects that the grace of God had upon
him in the next place, and then there's a few lessons, a few
general lessons that we can glean from this this morning. First
of all, let's say a few things about the weakness and the power
of temptation. Now, the weakness of man is very
great. It is very great compared with
the Almighty God, our Creator, and our Upholder. Man is at his
best state, the Bible says, altogether vanity, and the Bible teaches
that man is weakness itself. If you want to look at weakness,
look at man. The Scripture says in Peter that
the woman is the weaker vessel, the weaker vessel, but man is
weak. Man is weak. Well, we're not
sufficient of ourselves so as to do anything of ourselves. We know not even what to pray
to God for as we ought. The Bible said we don't even
know what to pray for as we ought. We're so weak. We need the power
of God to uphold us in all of our goings in this world. In
all of our going in and coming out, we need the power of God
to uphold us. There have been better men than
we that have been left to themselves and have proved their innate
weakness to be great, to be great indeed, better men than we are.
And Peter, I look upon old Peter as a stalwart man who most of
the time had great courage and great boldness and when the Spirit
of God was upon him a very able preacher and a man who wanted
to follow the Lord and I believe as tradition has it that Peter
finally was crucified upside down on a cross. because of his
reliance on the Lord and because of his testimony for the gospel
and because of his devotedness to his Lord. Well, why do we
so easily forget and think ourselves to be strong? when we know that
there's been better men than we are that have fallen to temptation
and have fallen in the way in the service of Almighty God.
Well, why do we forget this and consider ourselves to be strong?
We think we can manage things better than they, I suppose.
And I'm sure that many, many times we feel that we can manage
things quite well, and that we'll be able to handle the situation.
That this temptation that's coming upon us, or this situation that's
coming, it looks very, very great, and maybe it's something that
other people can't handle, but surely we can handle it. Well,
beloved, this is our weakness because the Bible says, let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Let the man
that thinks he's gonna stand, that he'll be able to stand,
whatever comes, let that man who says I'm ready to go to prison
and I'm ready to die, let that man be careful because It's that
man that will fall if the Lord takes his hand off of him, if
the Lord leaves him to himself. Well, we have some examples.
in the Word of God. Let's mention a few of these
people. Righteous Lot, O Righteous Lot, he was miraculously, you
know, preserved from the wrath of God that was poured out upon
the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. Him and his daughters were miraculously
taken by the angels and led out of the city. His wife was also
led out, but we know that she turned and looked back and was
turned into a pillar of salt. But Lot, you remember that afterwards
he fell and committed incest with his own daughters. This
is righteous Lot. God had mildly delivered him,
and the scripture says he was a righteous man. The Bible says
he was righteous and vexed with the filthy conversation of the
wicked, but he afterwards fell after God had preserved his life
and had taken him out of the city. And then Sarah, in the
Old Testament, you know, she was past childbearing time, and
God said to her, said, about this time next year, you're going
to have a child. And she couldn't believe God.
She wasn't able to believe God. She was a woman that had been
around the things of God for many, many years, maybe all of
her life. And she'd seen many things happen
as Abraham had served God and worshipped God. But she wasn't
able to believe God. And so she laughed at the promise
of God. She just laughed. Just like,
well, this thing could never happen. Even if there's a God
in heaven, it'll never happen. And you know that I'm an old
woman here now, and I'm going to have a child. I'm going to
have a child. God said I'm going to have a
child. And she said, I just can't believe that. And so she laughed
at the promise. Now, I don't know. You may not
think that's serious, because you may laugh all the time in
your heart about the things of God. And you may just think the
things of God, part of you or some of you, are just utter foolishness
anyway. But I'll tell you, this was a
serious thing as God looked upon it, that she laughed at his promise. You see, God can do anything
He wants to do, anytime He wants to do it, by anybody that He
chooses to do it. God is an absolute sovereign,
almighty, all-powerful. There's nothing that is too hard
for the Lord. The Lord is able. No question
about that. God is able. And we must believe that. You
know, I was listening to a report that came out of Oklahoma City
and some fellow was talking this morning about the Roman Catholic
Church there in Oklahoma City that they seem to be a band,
now this is the way he described them, they were a group of believers
that were banded together by their doubts. Now would you want
that said about you? A group of believers banded together
by their doubts. Now, I wouldn't want that said
about me. I don't know about you. But I mean, it's okay for
somebody to just call us a group of believers. But when they call
us a group of believers, that's very significant. That means
that we believe in a God who is God. That he's a sovereign,
almighty God and that he can do what he wills to do and that
God will accomplish his purpose regardless of whether in our
generation it appears to be so or not. God will accomplish his
purpose. And there's many, many things
that, you know, blind us to the full seeing of the truths of
the word of God and many of the things that happen around us
we don't understand we can't figure them out we don't have
the insight we don't have the ability but yet God is God and
Sarah should have never laughed at the promise of God and anytime
you read a promise of God you believe that he can fulfill that
promise and that not one word of God will ever fail And God's
Word doesn't fall to the ground. God's Word is accomplished. God's Word is fulfilled. And
then you remember the story, of course, of David, who was
a man after God's own heart. He, being in the way of temptation,
fell. He could not keep his own heart.
He didn't have the ability to keep his own heart. Neither do
you have the ability to keep your own heart. If God takes
His hand off of you, there is nothing that you won't do. And
David, he did that exactly which his own heart wanted to do, desired
to do, felt that he'd like to do and must do. He did that very
thing because God left him to himself. And I'm telling you
that here's a man that was not sufficient in himself to keep
himself from the temptation and he could not keep his own heart.
No man can keep his own heart. No man has the ability. The heart
is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and no
man knows his own heart. No man knows all the things that
are in his heart. And then we have Abraham. And
he was a remarkable man for his faith. And his faith was, the
Bible said, accounted for him, unto him, for righteousness. He believed God. Yet twice in
his lifetime, it's recorded in scripture, that he denied the
very wife of his own bosom. Two times. He denied that she
was his wife. He lied about it. I don't know
that it was that he had no concern for the woman, that he didn't
really care for the woman. I don't think it was that. I
think he was a coward. I think there were times when
he, just like you are, just as weak as water, and didn't have
a bit of courage and didn't have the ability to stand and say,
well, this is the true state of affairs. He thought too much
of himself and he thought that it was legitimate for a man to
lie to save his own hide and his own skin. And that's what
we have. But what I'm pointing out to
you is that the best of men, we see them falling in the word
of God and the scripture records these things about these men
in order that we would wake up and in order that we would begin
to pray, O God, O God, thou knowest my heart, and you know my weakness
and frailness. Leave me not unto myself. And so this is true in the case
of Abraham. And then we have Samson. And
he was a strong man. He was the strongest man that
ever lived in the flesh in this world. He was the strongest man.
And he did not yet have strength enough. even though it was a
strong man after the flesh and killed only God knows how many
of the enemies of the Lord, yet he did not have the strength
to keep himself from sinning, but was overcome by the tempter
and the weakness of his own heart. He just didn't have the ability
to do that. He could pull columns of buildings down and destroy
the enemies of the Lord, but he could not rule the enemy of
God in his own heart. He wasn't able to do that. And
what a lesson there is in that. Solomon, though Solomon was blessed
with wisdom, And I think he was the wisest man that ever lived
outside of our Lord and our Master. But yet there came a time in
Solomon's old age and in the later years of his life when
he became indifferent. to the things of God and the
things of God didn't somehow or other, he didn't tremble at
the word of God anymore and he became careless and he departed
from the path of rectitude and wisdom and sank into the very
depths of falling. Here is the wisest man. Now that
ought to say something to you and I. You and I don't make any
boast of our intelligence, we certainly don't. the best educated
among us wouldn't say one thing about our education. We wouldn't
do that. None of us would here, of course.
But here's Solomon. Shouldn't it speak to our hearts
that this man, as we said, the wisest of men, that here he is
at the end of his life. Here he's overcome and sinks
down into the depths of folly. But then we come to old Peter
here and old Peter had a love in his heart for the master.
But he denied it. He denied it. And he swore that
he never knew him. He swore that he never knew him.
Three times over, I don't know this man. I don't have anything
to do with this man. I'm not involved with this man.
It kind of reminds me of what the militia is saying this morning
about the people that did the horrible bombing down in Oklahoma
City. None of them want to own them
fellas. They want any of them on them. They put the distance
between themselves and them fellas. And they're the ones that stirred
them up, probably, and caused them to do what they did. But
now they don't want to own them. They don't want no part of them.
What do you think they can do with it? They want distance between
them and the people responsible, don't you see? It kind of reminds me of some
things that went on when I was a kid. We had a fellow that lived
in our neighborhood and he was the kind of kid that All you
had to do was just seek him on. Whatever you saw, you know, just
wanted, if you wanted to see him get in a fight with a certain
person, or if you wanted to see him do something that was outlandish,
all you had to do was just talk to him a little bit, seek him
on, and in a little while, that fella, he'd just do whatever
you encouraged him to do. And there's people in this world
just like that. There are people in this world that if you stir
them up, if you stir them up, if you set a match under them,
if you somehow or other encourage them, them people will not stop. They'll go right on to the very,
what we might say, to plunge themselves into trouble from
which they can never be extracted. And there's people that way.
Well, here's old Peter now. And he denies the Lord. The Lord's
in, we'll say this, humanly speaking, the Lord was in trouble from
the human standpoint. He was in custody, and he was
being mistreated, he was being tortured, and he was going to
be crucified, and Peter said, I don't know this fella. I don't
know anything about it. I don't know it. And he denied
the Lord. Now, listen to me this morning.
If you and I were today to be arranged before the bar of God,
and our hearts were open before Him, how many of us would be
able to stand and say, you know, we never denied our Lord. We
never denied Him in thought, word, or deed. We never denied
the Lord. Well, who is clean among us? We have all sinned, we've everyone
turned, Isaiah said, to his own way. We all, like sheep, have
gone astray, and there is no help in us. There is no help
in us. But thank God that if the creature
has no better salvation, if old Peter has no better salvation
than to depend upon his own doings, then old Peter's, it's curtains
for Peter, and it's curtains for us. If our salvation, the
only salvation we got is dependent upon our dependability, our faithfulness,
us being always up to the task, our being always able to control
every thought, every emotion of our lives. If our salvation
depends upon that, we're all lost. There ain't anybody here
that's saved, and there ain't anybody here that's gonna be
saved if our salvation depends on that. Is that right or not?
Amen? Is that right? Well, I believe
that's right. A man's gonna sink forever in
black despair, to rise no more if his salvation depends upon
creature strength, upon creature worthiness, upon creature dependability,
either ours or somebody else's. And I'm telling you the truth.
I'm telling you the truth. Okay, now the next thing, I want
to say a little bit about Peter's sin. I consider that his sin
was more outrageous than that of Judas Iscariot. Now you may
wonder about that statement, but I do believe in my own heart
that Peter's sin was more outrageous than that of Judas. Peter, it
appears to me, at least, was closer to the Lord and had more
converse and had more intimate fellowship with the Lord Jesus
Christ than Judas did. Now I base that on just what
I read in the Word of God. That's just my feeling. I just
feel that, that Peter was closer to the Lord than Judas was. Now
Judas, he did not go up on the Mount of Transfiguration, but
Peter did. Peter went up with the Lord.
He had experiences that Judas did not have. And do you know
that when Peter made his confession, of Christ when he said thou art
the son of God thou art the son of God and Jesus said to him
He said blessed are you Simon Barjona for flesh and blood has
not revealed this unto you But my father in heaven my father
in heaven. He's revealed it to you I want
to say that the scripture nowhere reports that Judas ever had such
a revelation as that I don't believe he did. I don't believe
that Judas, I don't believe that Judas was a child of God. He
never had any such revelation as that. The father had never
revealed his arm to old Judas, but he revealed it to Peter.
And not only that, but Peter was cautioned. I mean, it wasn't
like Peter didn't know that this was going to happen if he had
listened to what the Lord said. He had been cautioned that before
the cock crow, before that old rooster gets up on that fence
post and cries out, before that happens, you're going to deny
me three times. You're going to deny that you
ever knew me. That's what's going to happen,
Peter. Now can you imagine the Lord telling him that? Don't
you think that oughta stuck in his mind and in his heart? Don't
you think that oughta been like an error going into his heart? Here's a man who's a friend of
Jesus. Here's a man that is an apostle
of the Lord Jesus Christ, had all of these wonderful times
of fellowship and experience in the things of God, and the
Lord says, before the cock crows, you're gonna deny that you ever
knew me! Don't you think that ought to affect a man? Well,
I think it would have affected me. I believe it would have.
And I hope that I'm not being presumptuous to say that, but
I believe that it would have affected my own heart. And I
think that there's some of you here that would have said, well,
if I'm going to weep, I'll weep right now. That my Lord tells
me I'm going to do this. I can't believe that he went
on and then done this after the Lord had told him. But then that's
the fulfilling of the Word of God. That's the fulfilling of
the omniscient prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ knows
everything. And he knew what was going to
happen and what Peter was going to do. But you think that it
would have in some way or another affected old Peter. But in spite
of all of that, he denied him with oaths and curses. And if
Peter could do it, then what's to keep us from doing it? What's
to keep us? Now you see, what I'm trying
to do is get you to depend on the Lord. I'm trying to get you
to look away from yourself and rely on the Lord, to trust the
Lord. Because it's going to be a miracle of God if we all make
it out of this world and don't openly deny the Lord. It'd be
a miracle. It'd be a miracle of grace if
we make it out of here. It really will. Well, what's
to keep us from it? We're as weak and helpless as
old Peter was. and that we might come to the
place where we wouldn't trust in our own hearts, put confidence
in the flesh, but pray the Lord to keep us and preserve us in
the Lord Jesus, who is our only strength, and in Him alone is
their safety. Now number three, I want to say
a little bit about the grace of God that was displayed in
the restoration of Peter. What would you and I have done
with Peter? Just think about it just a little
bit. Would you think with me a little bit? What would you
have done with Peter? I know him not. Three times. In the presence of your enemies,
if he'd have said, if somebody denied you three times in the
presence of your enemies, what would you have done with old
Peter? If someone that we esteemed,
as a dear friend, or of a brother whom we love, was to denounce
before others, and this in our very presence, what would we
do? What would we do? Well, I think we would consider
ourselves greatly insulted and we would ask, of course, that
that person be removed from our presence and be removed from
our suffering and our affliction. I wouldn't want him to be around
to pour salt in my wounds. Get him out of here! Take this
man out! But not so with the Lord Jesus
Christ. The wounds which Peter made in
the heart of the Lord Jesus brought forth grace from the heart of
Christ. brought forth grace, and he looked
upon him, the Lord Jesus looked upon him, he looked upon him
with an eye of pity, and he had mercy on him, and he softened
his hard heart by his grace, made him ashamed of his denying
him, he did not cut him off. He did not cut him off. Have
you denied, ever denied your Lord in your heart? Are you still
here? Yes, you're still here. And that's
for the very reason old Peter was shown mercy by the Lord Jesus
and didn't cut him off. By the grace of God, we have
not been cut off to this good hour. And I've thought of many
a time, Lord, if you ever, ever was going to cut me off, you
certainly got reason to now. I'm expecting the axe to fall.
I'm expecting it to come down and cut me clean off from the
Lord. The grace of God is greater than
the depths of our depravity and the depth of our backsliding. How far down have we gone? How
far down have we gone? Well, the Lord's grace is greater
than our sin. We cannot make the atonement,
listen, even if we've fallen, there's no way we can atone for
what we've done. There's no way we can do that.
You say, well, you can do this or you can do that. And there's
suggestions made often to people how they can make restitution
and so on and so forth. I'm talking about before God.
If you've fallen before God, there isn't anything you can
do. Your future, listen, your future works, your future faithfulness,
your future obedience will not atone for your fall. It won't.
The grace of God that restored old Peter is the only thing that
can restore you. And hear me out, it's by free
sovereign grace alone that we're restored and kept after we're
fallen. The free sovereign grace of God
that restores us. And he restoreth our soul. The Lord does that. And so the
Lord restored old Peter. Have you answered the question
yet? What would you do with Peter? Have you answered that question
in your heart? What would you do with him? Well, Just keep
asking yourself and thinking on that question, but remember
your Lord and His grace and His mercy that He showed old Peter.
Well, what did this grace have on old Peter? What effect did
it have at number four? Well, some say that the grace
of God leads men to licentious living or leads them to more
and more unruliness and sin. Some people say that. But let
me say this quickly that the grace of God did not lead Peter
into sin in the first place. It was the grace of God that
broke his heart and humbled him before the Lord. And what it
was that led him to his sin was his own deceitful heart and his
own cowardice, his own fear, his own weakness. That's what
led him to sin. It was not the grace of God.
The grace of God does not lead men and women into licentious
living. The grace of God's got nothing
to do with that. All God has to do is leave a
person to themselves and the sin will follow. It will follow. The Lord just takes his hand
off and says, just go on your own way. And then that's what
happens, don't you see? But the grace of God was not
responsible for anything here other than his restoration. And you see how the grace of
God reigns, beloved. Did Peter, in his own heart,
did his own heart make itself to weep? The scripture says he
went out and wept bitterly. He went out and he wept bitterly. Did his own heart make him weep?
No! It was his own deceitful heart
that caused him to sin in the first place. And it wasn't his
deceitful heart that wept when he went out. It was the grace
of God sent into his soul by the Savior's look as the Lord
looked upon him. I believe that a sight of the
Lord Jesus looking upon him in pity and mercy is what caused
him to go out. I think the Lord in that look
said, I bore all this for you, Peter. I'm suffering this for
you. And though you denied me, I'll
not deny you. I'll not deny you. You denied
me, but I won't deny you. I'd like to say that as Peter
went out and wept bitterly, this tells me the true religion, that
it truly humbles a sinner. True religion will humble a sinner.
That's one thing that is a telltale sign of whether an individual
has ever been touched by the Lord or not. That fella is humble,
God humbles it, and that fella, you're never going to find that
fella with a boastful, proud attitude, running around acting
like some peacock somewhere. That individual is going to be
a broken, hearted, poor sinner, an individual. Okay? I think that angels assemble
together in the court of heaven and rejoice over broken hearted
sinners. Well, let me give you a few general
remarks, and we'll be done here. I think these things are very
important. I'd wish you'd listen to what I've got to say. We're
going to close here in just a little bit. But number one, what I get
from this is this, that a Christian, to a believer, to a child of
God, it is bad for you to be in evil company. You know, Peter
was among those, the scripture says that he was, he was among
those that in verse 55, in the last part of verse 54, it said
he followed four off, and then in verse 55, when they kindled
fire in the midst of the hall, it was a cold evening, maybe
a cold and damp evening, and they were set down together,
Peter sat down among them. It was bad for Peter to be among
those who were standing or sitting around this fire. He shouldn't
have been there. He should not have been there.
On a cold night, everybody likes to be nice and comfortable around
the fire, but, beloved, we better suffer any discomfort and any
inconceivable, anything discomfort and anything, whatever it is,
rather than associate ourselves with the wicked of this world.
Whatever inconveniences we've got to endure, we better endure
it rather than sit by the fire with those that's going to crucify
our Lord. Peter was sitting in the seat
of the scorer, so we do not wonder that at last here he uses the
scorners language. Keep out of evil company if you
possibly can do so and watch and pray and if you have to mix
daily with the ungodly of this world and with the alien sinners
of this world then you slip away from them as quickly as you can
when it's possible to do so. Get away from them. Don't company
with the wicked of this world. The next thing is this. that
it is useless for a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ to disown,
to try to disown his own discipleship. It's useless. Here's old Peter
and he swears he don't know the Lord. But it don't do no good. That woman looks on him earnestly.
She said, you're one of them. You're one of them. I know you're
one of them. And another fellow confidentially
said, this fellow, he's one of them. His speech betrayed him. He's one of them. And so I'm
telling you, listen. When Peter begins to talk, they
say you're one of them. His very speech causes him to
be found out. If you're a genuine Christian,
you can no more hide yourself than the violent, one old writer
said, than the violent in the grass whose perfume tells the
passerby that it's there. You can't hide. If you know the
Lord, if you're in Christ, and if you're a true disciple, it
won't do you no good to say, I'm not one of them. I'm not
one of them. Your speech will betray you.
There's something about you that will cause people to find you
out. So don't try to hide the mark that God puts on your forehead,
the mark that He puts in your heart. Don't try to hide the
mark that He places on you saying, this is one of mine, this is
one of mine. And God will put that mark on
His people and it don't do you any good. And you can try as
hard as you want to, but people are going to find you out. You'll
never be successful in hiding it. You just won't. Old Peter
was found out. Third thing, Observe the power there is in
people's eyes. You think about this a little
bit. What a power there was in that maid's eyes when she gazed
upon old Peter. She looked upon old Peter. And
it was that earnest gaze of the girl that made, I mean it, froze
this fella in his tracks. And it made him deny the Lord
when she looked upon him. She gazed upon him and that made
him say, I don't know that man. The power in that gaze. She earnestly
gazed upon him. But then I want you to see this
too. The power of good that was in the eyes of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I'd like to say that eyes can
say more sometimes than lips can. Eyes can say more than lips. Often there is more heart-affecting
eloquence in the eye than there is in the tongue. This maid looked
upon him, made him deny the Lord, and then Jesus looked upon him
and he went out and wept bitterly. And so there's power in the look. Next, what a mercy it was that
Jesus Christ did not treat old Peter as Peter treated him. I talked a little bit about this
a while ago and telling you that I asked what we would do with
Peter but I thought well I think this is one of the great lessons
here. What a mercy that the Lord don't treat you like you treat
him. What a mercy that is. What a mercy. What a mercy. I'll tell you that that really
touches my soul because There have been so many times that
we've been so cold toward the Lord. What a mercy it is that
He comes back and warms our heart. Peter said, I know not this man,
but if Christ had said that, then it would have been all over,
wouldn't it? Christ would have said, well,
I don't know you either. I don't know you either. I don't know
you in time, and I'm not going to know you in eternity. It's
all over, Peter. It's all over. Now what a mercy
that the Lord did not do that. I want to suggest just a couple
more things quickly, and we're done. I think this is a comment
that should be made, that if we see a brother fall into some
sin, that we should not set our heart against him, but we ought
to pray for him, remembering him, and remember our own weakness,
because we may be the very next to fall. I think that's Paul's
admonition in Galatians 6, isn't it? When he said, if we see a
brother sin, that you which are spiritual, restore such a one
in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Lest you also be tempted. And
so I believe that's an admonition that we need to consider. And
then there's another thing here. It is something that I I just
felt keenly that this needed to be mentioned, that it's a
very dangerous thing for an individual to walk alone in this world,
a Christian to walk alone in this world. It's a very dangerous
thing. One of the great, I don't know all that the Lord
had in mind about this, in isolating me and putting me up here by
myself in some regards as a preacher. No other, hardly any other preacher
around that you can have any close fellowship with and that
you can kind of expect them to be kind of watching out for you
and you kind of watching out for them. Them coming and say,
well, I'll pray with you over this thing or that thing, and
kind of stay in touch with somebody and kind of... You know, the
Bible says that two are better than one. Two are better than
one. And here's old Peter up there
with all of them wicked people, and he's there by himself. Of
course, the Lord was there. But there he is. And I think
we need to be very careful. Do not trust yourself alone. Be very careful about rushing
out, taking off on your own, even in your thoughts, and saying,
well, I'm going to do this, or I'm going to do that, and I think
this, and I think that. Be very careful about that. Because
two is better than one. And you best talk to somebody.
You best visit with somebody. You best fellowship with another
believer. Now there came a time and there
is a time in every believer's life like there was with Paul
when he was called to the ministry. He said, I didn't talk to flesh
and blood about it. I didn't consult with flesh and
blood. I didn't. The Lord called me to preach
and I just went and preached. And so there's times when you
have to, when God tells you something you don't tell somebody else,
there's times when you gotta say, well this is what the Lord
showed me, and I gotta be obedient to it. I gotta follow that. But
I think in general circumstances, that it's best to not to walk
alone. And not trust yourself alone.
Don't trust yourself in improper company especially, because the
Bible says that bad company corrupts good manners. and so don't trust
yourself in it. But cry to God to be always with
you in your daily walks through life that you may be enabled
to put your trust in Him for He that trusteth in the Lord
shall never be confounded, shall never be put to shame. Trust
the Lord and depend upon Him. Lean upon Him with all of your
heart. Well I hope these admonitions
and these things this morning have been somewhat helpful and
been instructive. They certainly have spoken to
my own heart. and I trust that the Lord will use them for your
edification. Well, let's have a song, Mike.