Let's turn to Mark's gospel again this morning,
and then I want to read a passage
from Luke's gospel, but Mark chapter 14.
And I want to give, have two talks
this morning and tonight on our Lord, our
Restorer.
And I'm thinking of the word in the
23rd Psalm, He Restores My Soul.
Now, I'm encouraged to talk about that here,
because a number of years ago, when I
was in my mid-twenties, we had, speaking
in Florence for a weekend, a visitor by
the name of E.
G.
Matthews of Waterloo, Iowa.
He's an old man, at least he seemed
awfully old to me, he was about eighty.
And I was already a father, but he
was sitting on the couch beside me in
my home that day, and he turned to
me and says, Boy, and I was about
twenty-five, he says, Boy, don't you think
that when you get old, the flesh is
going to be any easier to deal with?
So I'm encouraged to talk about the Lord,
our Restorer, because as I understand from Scripture
and from a man like E.
G.
Matthews, it doesn't get any easier as you
get older.
The flesh is still the flesh.
So I want to read these two passages
of Scripture.
First Mark chapter 14, and let's begin reading
at verse 26, And when they had sung
a hymn, they went out to the Mount
of Olives, and Jesus said to them, You
will all fall away.
For it is written, I will strike the
shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.
But after I am raised up, I will
go before you to Galilee.
Peter said to him, Even though they all
fall away, I will not.
And Jesus said to him, Truly, I say
to you, this very night, before the cock
crows twice, you will deny me three times.
But he said vehemently, If I must die
with you, I will not deny you.
And they all said the same.
Now Luke's Gospel, chapter 22, verse 28.
You are those who have continued with me
in my trial.
As my Father appointed a kingdom for me,
so do I appoint for you, that you
may eat and drink at my table in
my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you,
and that you is plural, all of you
disciples.
Satan demanded to have you, that he might
sift you like wheat.
But I have prayed for you, and that
word you is in the singular, for you,
Simon.
I have prayed for you, that your faith
may not fail.
And when you have turned again, strengthen your
brethren.
And he said to him, Lord, I am
ready to go with you to prison and
to death.
He said, I tell you, Peter, the cock
will not crow this day until you three
times deny that you know me.
Verse 54, They seized him, that is Jesus,
and led him away, bringing him into the
high priest's house.
Peter followed at a distance, and when they
had kindled a fire in the middle of
the courtyard, and sat down together, Peter sat
among them.
Then a maid, seeing him as he sat
in the light and gazing 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 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 is a Galilean.
But Peter said, Man, I do not know
what you are saying.
And immediately, while he was still speaking, the
cock crowed.
And the Lord turned and looked at Peter,
and Peter remembered the word of the Lord,
how he had said to him, Before the
cock crows today, you will deny me three
times.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
The seeds of Peter's denial go way back
to his own childhood, really.
The first seed that I see sown, as
far as the harvest of denial is concerned,
goes back to the presupposition the people of
Israel had about the coming Messiah, and Peter
and the other disciples shared those presuppositions.
You are aware that in the Old Testament
there is a twofold picture of the Messiah
of Israel.
There is the glorious, ruling Messiah, triumphant over
all his enemies.
With Israel they had not the tale of
all the nations.
There are those beautiful pictures of peace and
prosperity throughout the whole world while the Messiah
reigns in Mount Zion, and the law goes
forth from there.
People coming from all over the world to
Zion to hear the law of God.
That is the picture that Israel emphasized.
That is the one that they saw.
Alongside that picture, there is another picture of
a Messiah who is betrayed, delivered up, killed,
buried, and cast out.
That is the Messiah they forgot about.
By the way, that contrast is so strong
that in the intertestamental period, after the close
of the book of Malachi and before John
the Baptist appears on the scene, there was
a teaching in the nation of Israel that
there would be two Messiahs.
There would be a Messiah of the tribe
of Levi who would suffer and die in
keeping with that picture in the Old Testament,
and there would be a Messiah of the
tribe of Judah, a descendant of David, who
would rule in righteousness and fulfill the picture
in the Old Testament of that ruling glorious
Messiah.
But as the years went by, Israel tended
to forget that picture of the suffering Messiah,
and they saw only the picture of the
glorious Messiah.
And that was especially true in the days
of our Lord, when they were under the
heel of Rome.
And what they were waiting for was a
Messiah to come and deliver them from Rome.
They could hardly wait for the day when
Israel would be the head and Rome would
be the tail.
They could hardly wait for that glorious kingdom
to have its center in Jerusalem, and not
a kingdom with its center in Rome.
And this was in the mind of these
disciples when they first came to Jesus, and
it persisted during all the years that He
was with them.
And one of the fascinating things you see
in the interaction between Jesus and His disciples
is that they were constantly trying to bring
Him round to their way of thinking.
Their idea of the Messiah was running at
cross purposes their idea.
And it's an amusing thing in one way,
that here are disciples trying to straighten Him
out.
You remember that occasion when they finally discovered
who He was, and Peter made that magnificent
confession, You're the Christ, the Son of the
living God.
And then immediately Jesus began to teach about
His coming death.
And Peter takes Him and rebukes Him.
No, Lord, this be far from Thee.
He's trying to straighten Him out.
You don't understand.
Hey, we've got to teach you a few
things.
You misunderstand what the Messiah is supposed to
do.
And you find this all the way through
the public ministry of our Lord.
They're trying to straighten Him out.
They want to bring Him round to their
way of thinking.
And all the while the Lord is trying
to bring them round to His way of
thinking.
And this thing goes on all during the
three and a half years of His public
ministry.
But their ideas, their presuppositions are so fixed
in their minds that all they can see
is that ruling Messiah.
And they are simply not prepared for what
takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane, in
the high priest's palace, in Pilate's judgment hall,
and out on Calvary's hill.
They are totally unprepared for that.
They shouldn't have been, but they were.
Our Lord clearly spelled out in Mark's Gospel,
chapters 8, 9, and 10, the details of
His betrayal, His arrest, and His crucifixion, and
His resurrection.
But they weren't listening because their minds were
already filled with the idea of this glorious
kingdom that's to come.
And I think that is the first seed
that was planted that brought the harvest of
Peter's denial that night in the courtyard of
the high priest.
A misconception.
Now when I say a misconception, understand it's
only a matter of sequence and timing, not
of fact.
They were right that He's the Messiah.
They were right that one day He will
rule from Jerusalem.
They were right that one day there's going
to be a universal kingdom over the whole
world.
They were right, but they were wrong as
to sequence and timing.
They thought since He is the Messiah and
He's here, the kingdom should come now.
And that was their mistake.
But that presupposition filled their minds and was
one of the seeds in the harvest of
Peter's denial.
There's a second seed I see planted that
brought about this harvest of Peter's denial.
And I hate to use the term, but
since we're so much like them, there was
a great deal of pride in these men.
When they discovered that Jesus was the Christ,
the Messiah, and the kingdom they thought was
about to appear, their response to that was
a very, very selfish one.
James and John with their mother come to
Jesus with a request.
She says, I want you to give my
sons the chief seats in the kingdom.
One on your right hand and the other
on your left.
I don't think, I know they don't, they
didn't know what they were asking.
Our Lord talks about a cup and a
baptism, because before there will ever be two
thrones, one on his right hand and one
on his left, there have to be two
crosses, one on his right hand and one
on his left.
But what they wanted was the chief seat
in the kingdom.
Peter wasn't foreign to that idea either, because
you remember when they did that, the other
ten were indignant.
I wish I could say that I get
the feeling as I read through it.
They were indignant at the spiritual immaturity of
these two men, but that wasn't the point.
They were indignant because these two beat them
to it.
They all had that idea, only these two
sneaked in with their mother and got ahead
of them.
But that's the request that was in the
mind of all of these men, and James
and John beat them to it.
You can see that in Peter.
You remember after our Lord talks about when
the rich young ruler had come and our
Lord talked about the difficulty of a rich
man getting into the kingdom and all the
rest of it, trusting in riches and the
need to give these things up to follow
him?
And Peter turns to Jesus and says, look,
we've left everything, and if I could roughly
paraphrase what he said, the idea is what's
in it for us?
What are we going to get out of
all this?
And when he confessed our Lord as the
Messiah, as in chapter 8 of Mark's Gospel,
and then our Lord announced his death, Peter
says, no, you can't do that, because in
Peter's mind was, hey, you can't destroy my
dream like that.
Man, when we've discovered that you're the Messiah,
you know what's coming next is the kingdom.
And you know who's going to be there
with you as the chief magistrates of the
kingdom?
Us guys.
And here he could see it.
He could already feel those robes on him,
you know?
He could already feel the crown.
He could see himself just getting comfortable in
that throne, and dimly through all that picture
there come words about crucifixion and death and
Calvary and all.
He says, look, don't do that to my
dream.
And his whole response to the Lord was
really a very selfish one.
And there was a great deal of selfishness
in these men, a great deal of pride.
What they were looking for was the chief
seats in the kingdom.
And that's the second reason they were totally
unprepared for what happened to our Lord Jesus
that night.
But by the way, you saw the words
here in Luke's Gospel.
To these men our Lord says, you are
the ones who have continued with me in
all my trials.
I like that.
These men were totally unprepared for what happened.
They were baffled by the Lord.
Though they had confessed him as the Messiah,
they did not understand him.
And his insistence on going to Jerusalem with
all the dangers inherent there, knowing that people
were going to kill him.
You remember their words?
Let's go and die with him.
They could not understand him.
They couldn't figure him out.
But there was one thing about it, they
loved him.
And they stuck with him.
And what came to the point when they
saw he was determined to go to Jerusalem
and they knew all his enemies were there
and his enemies were determined to kill him,
their response was, let's go die with him.
They were not very intelligent, but they were
very devoted.
And it seems to me what our Lord
would rather have is devotion than intelligence.
Now let's have both, but if it comes
to a choice, let's have the devotion.
And these men stuck with him.
You are they who have continued with me
in all my trials.
In Luke's account just prior to this, in
the upper room, when they had observed the
Passover and our Lord had instituted the Lord's
Supper, do you remember what these men were
doing on that occasion according to Luke's Gospel?
Imagine, here they are, going to the Passover
and then our Lord instituting the Lord's Supper
and all his words about, this is my
body given for you, this cup is the
New Testament in my blood, shed for many
for the remission of sins.
All that, all that was in his mind
while this was the topic of his discussion.
You remember what Luke says these men were
doing as they were reclining around that table
where all this was going on?
They had a discussion going.
And Luke tells us they were arguing about
which of them was going to be the
greatest.
Right there, while he was talking about his
coming death, while he was telling them the
purpose for it.
My body which is for you, my blood
shed for the remission of sins.
All that was going over their heads.
They were arguing about which of them was
going to be the greatest.
The Bible is a thoroughly human book.
Don't you put these men up on pedestals,
you know, where they're not human.
They were thoroughly human.
But there's something that I enjoy about that.
You'll have to forgive me for enjoying the
wrong things, but I sometimes do.
I have a perverse way about doing that.
I enjoy the wrong things.
But I remember sitting in the auditorium at
Emmaus.
We had a visiting speaker who was talking
about this.
And of course, reading from Luke's Gospel about
the account of the Lord's Supper.
And talking about the terrible spiritual condition of
the disciples and as he read it, something
hit me.
And right in the middle of it, I
wanted to shout, Hallelujah!
When you go to someone else's house for
dinner, how do you behave at the table?
Aren't you on your best behavior?
Don't you remember your manners?
Aren't you very kind in your speech so
that your wife isn't quite sure who you
are?
Isn't that true?
Is that the way you are at home?
I can hear wives saying, unfortunately, no.
But are you like that at home?
Do you speak to your wife with the
same courtesy at home as you do around
somebody else's table?
You ought to, but I'm saying, do you?
Now, I can talk this way because my
wife isn't here.
But do you?
No.
I use the illustration of my kids.
That's a whole lot more comfortable than talking
about myself.
And when they were smaller, you know, we'd
go off to somebody else's house for dinner.
And as we sat there at the table,
I'd look around at my kids and say,
are these mine?
Who are these kids?
They're well-mannered.
They're polite.
They use their knife and fork properly.
You know, where do these kids come from?
At home, what happens?
They act as though they don't know which
hand to put the knife and the fork
in.
And if one says something, the other doesn't
like, wham, there it goes.
And as I look at this account of
Luke's gospel, I say, these men were at
home with him.
They'd never have done that at a Pharisee's
table, but they could do it at the
Lord's table.
They were so much at home with him,
they went ahead and argued.
Now, I'm not justifying what they did, but
I'm saying they were tremendously comfortable with him.
I'm not saying they should have done that.
Of course, they shouldn't have.
But it's one indication of how much at
home they felt with him.
What kind of a man is this?
Not just that wind and sea obey him,
but the disciples can argue in his presence.
Well, why not?
No, I'm not saying they should.
You understand, I'm not saying they should, but
I'm saying why not.
You can fool a Pharisee, but you can't
fool him.
You can put on your best manners in
the house of a Pharisee and he's impressed
by them.
But our Lord knows when they're just manners,
when they're just put on.
One of the most stupid things we try
to do is to fool him, to hide
something from him.
You can't hide anything from him.
You can't pretend in his presence.
He knows what's really there, and we can
fool each other, but we can't fool him.
And these men argued, but what they were
arguing about was which of them was the
greatest.
The third seed that I see sown that
brought the harvest of Peter's denial is an
unfortunate self-confidence.
And that night when our Lord said, all
of you will fall away, all of you
will fall away.
Did you pick up what Peter said?
Though they all fall away, yet will not
I.
Right away, Peter's making a distinction between him
and the others.
You're right, Lord, I can understand how you
say that about these ten guys.
I understand that.
You're right.
They probably will.
I know these men, but not I.
You and I, Lord, we're aware that I'm
different.
They will, but not I.
And then when our Lord turns specifically to
Peter and says, Peter, you're going to deny
me three times tonight.
I'll die before I'll do that.
Now, Peter was honest, but he was overconfident.
None of us in that situation would say,
that's right, Lord, that's what I'm going to
do tonight.
I'm going to sit out and deny you
three times.
Nobody intends to do that.
We don't start the day out by saying,
now let me see, what would be the
best way to deny the Lord today?
I wonder how I could vest in against
him today.
None of us starts out to do that.
We may end up doing that, but we
didn't start out to do it.
Look, all the exhortations in the New Testament
to Christians about different kinds of sins.
You know what they tell me?
I am capable of committing any one of
those sins, or else there wouldn't be exhortations
warning me against them.
Now, my own particular tendency means that I
am more liable to commit some of those
sins than I am to commit others, but
I am capable of committing any of them.
And it's best that we come to grips
with that.
And when another Christian falls, if I say,
how in the world could he do that?
All I'm saying is, I count myself better
than him.
I'm like Peter.
I would never think of doing something like
that.
No, I might never think of it, but
I might do it.
And if I ever want to ask, how
in the world could a person do a
sin like that as a Christian?
All I have to do is stand in
front of a mirror and say, that's how
he could do it.
They all may fall away, but not I.
Dear Peter, how often I've echoed your words,
not I.
Now, do you see what Peter was fighting
against when he said that?
He was fighting against the prophetic scripture that
said, I will smite the shepherd and the
sheep will be scattered.
Now, the scripture said that, the sheep are
going to be scattered.
And he's fighting, secondly, against our Lord's own
words.
All of you will fall away tonight.
And Peter is putting himself against the Old
Testament scriptures and the words of Jesus Christ.
Now, that is an overweening self-confidence.
I don't know what it is.
Look, take the word of God seriously.
When it talks about those sins, when it
talks about those evil tendencies within us, take
it seriously.
We've got them.
What should Peter's response have been?
Lord, you're right.
If you leave me to myself, that's exactly
what I'll do.
But please don't leave me to myself.
Some of the most terrible words I read
in the Old Testament are about a king
of Israel, really a king of Judah.
God left him alone to test him, to
see what was in his heart.
And I read that and I cry, O
God, don't ever leave me alone to test
me to see what's in my heart, because
he fell.
That should have been his attitude.
Now, I want to begin the work of
the Lord as I restore it today.
And we'll finish it up tonight, because I
want to look at that passage in John
about Peter's restoration to service.
But let me say a word in Peter's
defense.
It sounds like I've been awfully hard on
Peter, and I haven't meant to be.
And it's not that I'm trying to say
that we're just like Peter, or Peter is
no better than we are, or we're as
good as Peter, not at all.
But I'm trying to see what happened in
Peter's life.
Now look, the only reason, I shouldn't say
the only reason, but the only way Peter
could deny the Lord three times that night
is he had more courage than anybody else.
The reason the other ten couldn't deny him
three times is they didn't have the courage
to be in a position where they could.
Where was it that Peter denied the Lord
three times?
Right in the courtyard of the high priest.
Who was the instigator of our Lord's arrest
that night?
Who manipulated his betrayal through Judas, the high
priest?
He was the brains behind the whole scheme.
And where was Peter that night after his
Lord had been arrested by the high priest's
guard?
In the courtyard of the high priest.
And when they have captured the chief of
the band, who do you think they'll be
looking for next?
The second in command.
Who was the chief spokesman for that band
of disciples?
Peter.
Who's the man they're looking for next?
Peter.
Who wielded the sword in the guards of
Gethsemane that night?
Peter.
Whose ear did he cut off, trying to
split his head open?
The servant of the high priest.
Do you think the high priest doesn't know
about all that by this time?
And when Peter goes into that courtyard, if
he's recognized, not only as the chief spokesman
of that band of apostles, but the man
who wielded the sword in resistance, who tried
to kill the servant of the high priest—and
that's not just a common servant, by the
way—tried to kill the servant of the high
priest, who do you think is in the
most danger?
It's Peter.
Give the man credit for tremendous courage.
He wouldn't have been there except for his
courage and his devotion to Jesus Christ.
It was his devotion that put him in
a predicament where he could deny the Lord.
I admire the man's courage.
Now, suppose you were the second in command
of what amounts to a guerrilla band in
a foreign country, at least that's the way
they're treated.
Your chief has been captured, and you're going
into the courtyard of the individual who plotted
the whole thing and carried it off.
How are you going to go in there?
Are you going to go in there with
a sign on you saying, I am Peter?
You're going to sneak in there with your
collar turned up and your cap pulled down
so nobody recognizes you, right?
And what happens?
Hey, you're one of those, and his cover's
blown.
He's recognized.
Now what do you do if you're recognized?
You get out of there as fast as
you can.
Not Peter, he stayed.
And it was Peter's courage and devotion that
put him in a situation where he could
deny the Lord.
That does not excuse what he did, but
it helps me to see the devoted heart
of this man.
Now, what's our Lord's response to all this?
Well, it's very similar to his response in
the Upper Room, when these men were arguing
about what should be the greatest.
What'd our Lord do?
Start a long lecture.
You wicked disciples, how backslidden you are.
How little you understand.
Is that what he did?
No.
Sitting over here is a jug of water
and a basin of towel.
That's been sitting there all evening.
Nobody has touched it.
For whatever reason, whether by design or accident,
the slave who usually provides that service when
guests come into the home did not do
it.
And if there is no slave, then the
householder does it, and he hadn't done it.
Nobody had washed the feet of the guests
as they came into the home.
And there sits the jug of water and
the basin and the towel.
That's the work of a servant.
Now, there are all these men lying around,
reclining around this table, and if you're arguing
who's going to be the greatest, you're not
going to get up and touch that water
and that towel.
Right then, you've admitted you're not.
And if you're in contention for the chief's
seat, you're not going to take the place
of a servant.
Well, since our Lord didn't have to contend
for anything, he got up and did it.
And I wonder what went through those disciples'
minds when the Lord got up from that
reclining position as the host and took off
that outer tunic and walked over to that
basin of water and put that towel around
him like a slave and poured the water
into that basin and picked it up and
started toward the disciples.
And he knelt down and washed their feet.
That's how he handled their argument about who
was going to be the greatest.
He washed their feet.
What was the lesson he so often tried
to get across to these men?
In the things of God, everything is reversed
from our normal human judgment.
We count those who rule as greatest.
In God's kingdom, it's those who serve that
are counted greatest, and we can't get that
to our heads.
I can't.
I know what those words say, but I
don't believe them.
And the one who was really greatest did
the greatest thing that night when he washed
their feet.
And I remember the illustration that Robert Little
gave that helped me tremendously in seeing the
significance of this.
And I'm not going to get to our
Lord starting to restore these men.
But you realize, as I mentioned the other
day, that in the seating arrangement in a
Palestinian home when you had guests coming in,
and they reclined, of course, on their left
elbow with their feet out from the table.
They weren't sitting in chairs, in a low
table, and then ate with their right hand.
And where you were assigned a position in
regard to the host showed your relative importance
in that company.
And when our Lord watched the religious leaders
on one occasion scrambling for the chief places,
and you've got that picture, by the way,
in that parable of the rich man and
Abraham and ladders in Abraham's bosom.
He was in Abraham's bosom.
That's the chief place.
Reclining so that your head is right there
at the breast of the host.
You're reclining right beside him.
Our Lord watched all this, and he used
that as a picture, things in his kingdom.
And Robert Little said it like this.
The host hasn't come in yet, and here
we are as Christians all scrambling for the
chief places, and I've got you elbowed out
of the way, and I've got that place
right next to where the host is going
to be.
And we leave, of course, we leave that
low couch vacant, and I've got that place
right next to me.
And finally, after all our scramble, the poor
guys who didn't have big enough elbows and
weren't husky enough, they're way down at the
end.
Or some of those people who didn't think
the scramble was worth it and just came
in and took those low seats, while the
rest of us scrambled for the chief seats.
Finally, we're all in place.
And then our Lord walks in, and he
goes and sits down at the bottom of
the table, and he's turned everything upside down.
He's just totally reversed our order.
And that's the way his kingdom is.
In his kingdom, the servant is the greatest,
not the ruler.
Now, I think in one sense that was
the start of the Restoration.
The other, he says to Peter, here in
Luke's Gospel, we'll pick it up from here
tonight.
When he says, Satan has desired to have
all of you that he may sift you
as wheat.
I have prayed for you, Peter, that your
faith fail not.
Before the denial ever occurred, the Lord had
already been praying for Peter.
That was the start of the Restoration.
Do you remember what John says in 1
John chapter 1?
If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father.
Right?
Yes.
We have an advocate with the Father.
Note, it's not if any man confess, we
have an advocate with the Father.
It's if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father.
His advocacy does not begin when we confess,
but when we sin.
Peter, I have prayed for you, before the
thing ever happened.
I have prayed for you.
Prayed what?
That you might not fall?
No.
I wrote again as a supreme realist.
He will not artificially manipulate things.
Peter, you're going to fall.
He will not interfere with the workings of
Peter's will.
He will not make a robot out of
Peter.
He thinks too much of Peter to do
that.
But I have prayed for you that your
faith fail not.
When Peter sinned and went out and wept
bitterly, what do you think he was thinking?
What do you think when you sin grievously
against the Lord?
Overwhelmed with remorse like Peter, going out and
weeping bitterly, what do you think?
What's your reaction?
What's your response?
He's through with me now.
I'm finished.
He'll never have another thing to do with
me.
Any possibility of service is gone.
Your confidence in the kind of Savior Jesus
Christ is begins to waver.
And Peter would think, oh, right there to
deny him in the moment of his greatest
need.
How can I ever look him in the
face again?
That's what the Lord prayed about.
That your faith fail not.
That Peter, you'll still be able to trust
me.
I haven't changed.
That's what he prayed.
What a Savior.
Thinking of the hurt to himself in Peter's
denial?
No.
What's he thinking about?
Peter.
That's the one he's thinking about.
Not himself, Peter.
I have prayed for you.
That your faith fail not.
Let's pray.
Our Father, again we want to give you
thanks and praise for our Lord Jesus.
To worship such a Savior.
One so interested in us, so concerned.
One who is now our advocate.
Lord, we thank you.
When we fall, you do not turn against
us.
You pray for us.
Thank you.
In your own worthy name, amen.