Just before we have a brief prayer together,
may I invite you to turn with me
to the 26th chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel,
and out of that long chapter I'd like
to read just four groups of verses upon
which our meditation will be based as we
proceed in this meeting today.
Saint Matthew's Gospel, chapter 26, and first of
all at verse 31.
Then said Jesus unto them, All ye shall
be offended because of me this night, for
it is written, I will smite the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock shall be
scattered abroad, but after I am risen again,
I will go before you into Galilee.
Peter answered and said unto him, Though all
men should be offended because of thee, yet
will I never be offended.
Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto
thee, that this night before the cock crow
thou shalt deny me thrice.
Peter said unto him, Though I should die
with thee, yet will I not deny thee.
Likewise also said all the disciples, Then cometh
Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane,
and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here
while I go and pray yonder.
And he took with him Peter and the
two sons of Zebedee, and began to be
sorrowful and very heavy.
Verse 40, And he cometh unto the disciples
and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter,
What, could ye not watch with me one
hour?
Watch, and pray that ye enter not into
temptation.
The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh
is weak.
Verse 57, And they that had laid hold
on Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the
high priest, where the scribes and the elders
were assembled.
But Peter followed him afar off, unto the
high priest's palace, and went in and sat
with the servants to see the end.
Verse 69, Now Peter was sitting without in
the palace, and a damsel came unto him,
saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.
But he denied before them all, saying, I
know not what thou sayest.
But when he was gone out into the
porch, another maid met him and said unto
them that were there, This fellow was also
with Jesus of Nazareth.
And he denied again with an oath, I
do not know the man.
And after a while came unto him they
that stood by and said to Peter, Surely
thou also art one of them, for thy
speech bereath thee.
Then began he to curse and to swear,
saying, I know not the man.
And immediately the cock crew.
And Peter remembered the word of Jesus which
said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou
shalt deny me thrice.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
Now we doth bow our heads before we
speak together.
O God our Father, thou knowest and seest
where we are.
So very far behind, our blessed Lord, we
long that thou shouldst look upon us as
thou didst look upon Peter, till every vestige
of sin and shame and pride is broken
and we broken with it, ready to meet
a risen Lord as he shall later reveal
himself to us.
Speak now, we pray, and grant us the
listening ear and the willing heart.
And be thou supreme in this moment, for
thine own dear name's sake.
Amen.
I suppose that as we have read together
the central portions of this great chapter regarding
Simon Peter, we have all been saying to
ourselves, of course, we've read that before and
we know it well.
And I shouldn't be at all surprised if
the vast majority of us here have not
at some time or other spoken upon these
very verses that we have been reading together.
And yet I feel that for some of
us it isn't the knowledge of the text
that matters, it's that the Lord of the
passage should bring us to see how true
it is of ourselves.
For while this closing verse of chapter 26
breathes the air of utter despair in the
life of God's servant, I'm quite sure it
holds for him, it held for him, and
it holds for us a bright ray of
hope as on this first teaching day of
convention ministry we think together of God's word
and seek the Holy Spirit's searching and teaching.
How wonderfully we have here a picture of
this brokenness of soul which possessed Peter as
according to the closing verse he remembered.
And a picture too of the wonderful provision
that God was about to open up for
him as in the very closing sentence of
the verse we read he went out.
And if the memory of all that the
Lord had said to him and of all
that had happened in spite of it brought
him to a place of brokenness before God,
then the activity of that moment was the
secret of his salvation.
He went out.
I wonder if there's someone here this morning
and as we meet here today you're almost
despairing.
The purpose of this convention is that our
lives might be brought under the searchlight of
God's word and that they might be adjusted
to his will.
And if that is the purpose and that
is what God is going to work out
in us and for us, there may be
very little new to learn but there may
be a great deal to remember.
And it was what Peter remembered that broke
him down and it was what he did
that made it possible for God to lift
him up.
What a lot there was for Peter to
recall.
There had been those three years of fellowship
with Jesus Christ from the Jordan to the
judgment hall and none had come closer to
Christ in his earthly ministry than Simon Peter
along with James and John.
And there had been, as you will well
recall, those three special occasions of much closer
intimacy with Christ which Peter, James, and John
had known over and above that which was
known by all the twelve.
You remember the raising of Jairus' daughter when
the Lord Jesus took with him Peter, James,
and John.
Likewise, at the transfiguration mount as recorded in
Matthew 17, these three disciples had been with
him when the others had not.
And now, according to our passage, into the
deeper shades of the garden when our blessed
Lord was facing up to all the cost
of the cross and to what it was
going to mean to go through with God's
plan and purpose for him in the redemption
of the world, into those deeper shades he
had taken Peter and James and John and
bidden them to watch and pray.
And I love to think too, not only
of this profound fellowship with Christ himself during
his earthly ministry, but of the wonderful personal
friendship that is evidenced so often on the
pages of the Gospels between Peter and John,
so different in their personality, so different in
their characteristic outlook upon discipleship, and yet so
wonderfully put together by Christ.
And I can't help feeling that down the
years Simon Peter had been learning very much
from John.
And there was all that to remember.
How good it is of God to throw
his people together with one another, even though
they may be very different from one another.
Have you ever noticed in the writings of
St. Paul how every reference to Demas who
forsook him includes a reference to St. Luke
who stood with him?
And these two men are not mentioned together
without having been much together.
And Peter and John are like that in
the Gospel records.
How frequently the impact of each other's differing
life and personality must have been great and
profound upon the other.
But the special word which Peter was to
remember on this occasion was the word of
warning which our Lord Jesus Christ had given
him.
So delightfully recorded here, and I think even
more delightfully recorded in St. Luke 22 and
verse 31 where we read of the Lord
saying to Simon Peter, Satan hath desired to
have thee, that he may sift thee as
wheat.
But I have prayed for thee, that thy
faith fail not.
And when thou art turned again, strengthen thy
brethren.
What a lot there was for him to
remember.
And the ministry of memory is one of
God's choicest and most used ministries.
In the lives of his people, it wasn't
anything new.
It was calling to mind what the Lord
had said to him and noting its relevance
to the situation as it then was in
his case that was God's ministry to him
in that hour.
And I shouldn't be at all surprised if
there aren't some of us here who are
convicted not by any new word but by
a word heard long ago by God's faithful
dealings with us in past days and by
his many teachings out of the word which
have come to us.
And as we sit and stand here in
this meeting on this Monday morning and look
back over our past lives, we are searched.
God is speaking to us.
We are conscious of our breakdown and our
failure and our sin not by light thrown
upon a dark text that we hitherto didn't
understand but by the light that flashes back
into memory of what God has said to
us in days gone by and our life
has not measured up to it.
And we've allowed our forgetfulness and our sin
to spoil all that God taught us in
earlier days and the backsliding of the Christian
who was once so well taught is the
devastating feature of our modern English Christianity.
Peter remembered and I'm quite sure that God
is bringing back to heart and mind as
we gather here in Keswick and has been
doing it over this weekend many many things
that he has spoken to us and taught
us in days gone by and God would
bring us to the place where the the
impact and the power of that word begins
to make itself felt in a new way
in our present day experience.
How is it with us today?
In the light of all we know, is
there any comparison at all between that which
we know and that which we are?
Has there been some base denial, some cowardly
retreat, some compromise with the world, the flesh
or the devil?
Have we lied as Peter lied before those
who should have heard an unflinching statement of
truth?
God alone knows and and we know the
details of our failure are open before his
holy sight and they're wrapped up in the
consciousness of our own spirits.
I feel dear friends that though our cases
vary and though my particular breakdown and failure
may not just be the same as yours
and yours may be somewhat different from the
person sitting next to you, we may see
here in this chapter the breakdown which is
characteristic of God's people so often mirrored in
the life and experience of Simon Peter and
I would like just taking the bones of
the passage as we have read to outline
four steps down in Peter's experience.
There'll not be time to think of three
steps up.
I mention that now because it's wonderful to
know that God does not intend his people
to mark their steps down and then stop.
God intends his people to get on the
rung of the ladder that begins to mark
the steps up.
How well I like that prologue to bible
readings this morning.
Some Christians you know live broken.
That's not holiness.
Holiness is health.
Holiness is wholeness and when God comes to
break us it's a necessary prelude to something
finer and better for God's purposes that the
broken life should be pieced together in all
the wonderful harmony of his perfect will that
there should be built up a wholeness which
is holiness unto the Lord.
Steps down must be answered by steps up
but in the ministry of God's grace God
would bid us pause a while to note
the steps down.
You know sometimes when you're at the seaside
you go from the promenade or the lovely
cliff down to the level of the beach
down a concrete pathway that has many steps
in it and sometimes there are those steps
that you can't take one after another like
the staircase at home.
They're very wide and you go down one
and there's a sort of a jerk and
you then you go down the other and
every step is a little landing and so
down you go not rapidly one after the
other and spiritual declension is not necessarily rapid.
It may be insidiously slow but at every
stage of it you're on a plane which
is lower than the last.
It may take years and God has brought
us to Keswick in 1957 that he might
reveal to us the lower step we've been
taking.
Here they are as I see them in
this chapter.
Peter's first blunder was that his confidence was
wrong.
His confidence was wrong for we read in
that 34th verse that when the Lord Jesus
Christ warned him about the sore trial that
was coming he said verily I say unto
thee that this night before the cock crow
thou shalt deny me thrice.
Peter had preceded that by saying though all
men shall be offended because of thee yet
will I never be offended and he followed
it by adding though I should die with
thee yet will I not deny thee.
Here was a man who was determined in
his heart that he would not do the
very thing that Christ warned him was coming
and his determination was based upon self-confidence.
First of all it assumed exemption from the
possibility of failure and I wonder whether some
of us especially older Christians ministers and missionaries
and Christian workers we've assumed that we have
after many years of knowing the Lord we
have come to a position where this kind
of thing while it might come the way
of some young convert doesn't come our way
now we're older than that now.
I won't tell you how old I am
but I'm not older than that and I
can see some of you who are older
than I am and may I say it
very kindly to you older folks neither are
you.
Peter assumed possibly assisted by his past experiences
of God's grace after all had there not
been the walking on the water had there
not been that wonderful declaration of faith at
Caesarea Philippi had our Lord not wonderfully approved
of his statement of fact thou art the
Christ the son of the living God and
there had been so much in Peter's past
history which made him say on this occasion
not I though all men not I not
I.
I was talking to a young Christian just
a few days ago and he told me
how he had gone through an experience and
he added which I suppose we all go
through about that time and the experience about
which he was speaking was having slipped back
from the Lord quite soon after his conversion
there had been a bright and a happy
profession of Christ in conversion and then there
had been a slipping away and thank God
in his wonderful way as so often with
his young children he had drawn him right
back to himself and the comeback had been
great and blessed but the young Christian said
to me I suppose we all go through
something like that about that time he may
be quite right but may I ask permission
to cross out about that time for there
are some who come to that backsliding condition
years after that that that particular time even
though they went through it then backsliding is
not limited to six months after I was
saved it can happen 60 years after I
was saved and Peter had come to the
position where he had assumed that this warning
from Christ while applicable to very many didn't
touch him for he was immune I wonder
if there are some of us whose very
failure is to have taken that attitude and
we're where we are today because we read
the warnings of holy scripture to our bible
classes and to our junior converts but we
didn't read them to our own hearts and
going about our Christian work and amongst our
Christian friends with a wonderful air of confidence
which had been drawn steadily from confidence in
God to confidence in ourselves or our experience
or our progress in service we have been
trusting ourselves in the end and thinking that
this had no reference to us let him
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall his confidence was wrong and then I
find in the natural sequence of events in
this chapter that his communion was broken not
willingly for the spirit indeed is willing we
read in verse 41 but the flesh had
mastered the spirit and prayer watching which was
commanded of the Lord had collapsed I cannot
help feeling as I read this chapter fresh
and as I have been reading it and
rereading it in preparation for this morning that
this is a very amazing situation for Peter
or for us in the face of two
things the first is this that surely as
our Lord approached Gethsemane he had chosen Peter
for this very thing with Peter and John
with with James and John why the very
choice of the disciples originally as we read
in the early verses of Saint Mark was
that they might be with him and when
coming towards the close of his earthly ministry
and facing the deeper shades of the garden
he picked on three of the twelve to
go further in it was they might watch
and pray with him that was the purpose
of their presence in the garden and Peter
failed his master as much as he failed
himself when prayer watching broke down and he
fell asleep but not only had the Lord
chosen them for that but the Lord had
commanded it so that failure in the place
of prayer was a disobedience to a clear
command of Christ watch and pray our Lord
said and they fell asleep I wonder if
we sufficiently regard prayerlessness as sin when we
think in terms of sin we think in
terms of those positive acts of evil but
what about the failure to watch and pray
the breaking of any command is sin and
have we been I say again for the
young people have their meeting and we here
are somewhat older this morning I wonder if
the Christian church is how she is today
because experienced Christian people are failing in the
matter of their praying this communion was broken
remember many years ago in my theological college
in Bristol an old clergyman who's long since
gone to glory taking several terms of pastoral
lectures he gave us so many helpful things
for the work of the ministry but one
thing that he said has remained in my
mind over 20 years now when most of
the others have gone I remember him so
well saying and underlining as he said it
and repeating it time and time again the
minister on his knees in his study before
God what he is there he is and
no more his communion was broken and
as a natural sequence to wrongly placed confidence
and broken communion I find in the progress
of the chapter that his contact with Christ
was distant the word follow is forever linked
with Simon Peter not only in its occurrences
in the gospels but in his own use
of it in the two epistles that bear
his name and nobody can think of this
little phrase in verse 58 without thinking of
Peter he followed afar off there are two
characteristics of this distant following in the life
of Peter here and in the life of
ourselves no doubt I noticed that he was
near enough to be interested he went in
to see the end he was near enough
to be interested he still loved the Lord
he was still keen to know what was
happening to his master he was near enough
to be interested but he was far enough
to be immune from all that close discipleship
might cost verse 70 makes that plain near
enough to be interested and therefore to know
all and see all and watch every little
detail of the proceedings but far enough not
to be caught up in the total cost
of it as our Lord approached the judgment
hall and his cross is that how we
are I must confess as I look back
over the years of my ministry and I
think of the 30 years now 31 years
now that I have known the Lord there
must have been many many occasions when this
has been distinctly true in relation to some
critical matter in relation to some challenging situation
you wouldn't catch H.
W.
Craig being ignorant of the facts why I
must know what happens I must understand what's
going on but how often has it been
true that H.
W.
Craig was not completely caught up in the
total cost of what was going on thought
I was in that situation and in relation
to that matter completely committed to my Lord
and right at his side for whatever he
might ask me to do there are a
great many Christians who are interested and they're
near enough to be interested but if we
may borrow a picture from the evangelistic world
they're like Zacchaeus they've climbed up a tree
they want to see without being seen and
in all sorts of vital spiritual issues that
beset the church of Christ today there's a
great crowd on the touchline but very few
on the ball they watch the match they
note the breakdowns in those who are committed
to the game but they themselves are not
yet on the ball for God but when
I think of Simon Peter following afar off
I think of a man who who was
unwilling to miss anything but unwilling to be
totally committed to what he was watching and
all that it involved but our contact with
Christ like that you regard yourselves as having
slipped back somewhat if anything in the spiritual
realm had escaped your ken but a thousand
things in the spiritual realm have had to
go their way without your committal and if
I may bring in here what I regard
as one of the most delightful touches in
the whole realm of the four gospels did
you ever notice how according to John 18
16 when Peter followed afar off John spoke
to the damsel that kept the gate and
she opened it that he might come inside
I love that John was inside already he
was nearer to Christ than Peter that Peter's
following had got more and more distant and
when the gate was closed he was outside
John spotted what had happened and he went
to the maid that kept the gate and
they brought in Peter Christian Peter didn't benefit
from John's kindness but what a ministry it
was I find amongst Christian people that when
one of the brethren seems to be slipping
back and to be outside the gate that
those who are just inside and sometimes only
just may point a finger see where he
is not surprised if any man be overtaken
in a fault ye that are spiritual restore
such an one in the spirit of meekness
considering thyself lest thou also be tempted his
confidence was wrong his communion broken his contact
distant and his company doubtful that's to put
it mildly and I like to put it
mildly for Simon Peter's sake because I trust
that God will put it mildly for my
sake his company was doubtful is that where
you are this morning he sat with the
coffers and therefore disobeyed the first sound and
like lot who pitched his tent towards Sodom
he soon found that those to whom he
had drawn near for a sort of smoke
screen became the company which he was embroiled
in my friend is the thing which is
wrong in your life and mind that you're
in the wrong set you're in the wrong
friendship you're finding your pleasure and your comfort
and your relaxation amongst those who are ready
there to despise and to mock and to
hail Christ to his cross his company was
doubtful it was made possible by a lie
for Peter's whole position there with the scoffers
as they gathered around the fire where he
would they were warming themselves while Christ was
being falsely accused in the judgment hall his
whole position there was based upon a falsehood
and the falsehood which was in his position
soon became a falsehood on his lips and
three times he denied saying I do not
know the man his very presence said that
before his words uttered it I can't help
feeling that we Christian folk have often and
all too often allowed ourselves to get into
the position which can only be substantiated by
a lie our very presence there our very
participation in what is going on there is
based upon a denial of Christ though we
may not have said so much with our
lips for there's no depth too low for
a Christian to sink once he has got
out of touch with his Lord his confidence
was wrong his communion was broken his
contact was distant and his company doubtful and
if his presence there was based on a
lie I'm awfully delighted to know that it
was made impossible by a look and there
we begin the first step up again as
the Lord turned and looked on and he
went out may that loving searching
look of wounded love reach into the darkest
places of our backsliding hearts God give us
grace to get out before the place becomes
a doom too great to be set right
on earth for his name's sake