Luke 22:1-6

We're going to read the scripture.

And it is a tradition here that we stand for the reading of the gospel.

So we're going to read Luke chapter 22, verses 1 through 6.

Luke 22:1–6

You will stand and hear the word as soon as I can get myself organized here.

There we go.

Luke chapter 22, verses 1 through 6.

Luke 22:1–6

Now the feast of unleavened bread, called the Passover, was approaching.

And the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people.

Then Satan entered Judas called Iscariot, one of the twelve.

And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus.

They were delighted and agreed to give him money.

He consented and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we acknowledge your holy word to us this morning.

Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would open our eyes to see what we are unable on our own to see.

The glorious truth of who you are, who Jesus is, who we are, what we need, and how you have provided everything.

God be at work in each heart in this coming moments in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you.

Please be seated.

I think we have a drooping mic.

Okay.

I want to thank uh Pastor Josh for the invitation to speak with you this morning.

I'm going to move myself over here so I'm not hiding somebody behind this poll.

And uh I also want to thank uh all the folks do all the work to set up and tear down and make food and everything else that goes to making this a wonderful time of fellowship in the presence of the Lord on Sundays.

Now it's Super Bowl Sunday, and I thought for sure that when I looked around, I'd see a jersey or two from New England or the Rams, and I don't see any, and that's just surprising.

But anyway, I thought I'd uh start with this with a oh there we go.

Barry's got something.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, so I thought I'd start with with a football story.

It was March the 29th, 1984, at about 10 o'clock at night.

15 moving vans rolled into the Baltimore Colts training facility in Owens Mills.

You're gonna have to because it goes with the sermon.

And those vans opened up and they started loading everything from the Colts into the vans, and one by one the vans were leaving.

And the reporters heard about it by about midnight, and they're showing up, and nobody would tell them anything.

And by dawn, all the vans were gone, and the people of Baltimore and Maryland woke up to the news that their Baltimore Colts, their beloved cults, were now the Indianapolis Colts.

And Robert Ursay in that morning became the most hated man in Maryland for a long time.

Because he betrayed his fans, right?

That's the way we saw it.

He moved the team that everybody loved to Indianapolis.

And we didn't expect it and we didn't like it.

And betrayal hurts.

The scripture this morning tells us that Judas, who was called Iscariot, that's a word that basically means traitor.

So they gave him the nickname, Judas the Traitor.

He's gonna connive to betray Jesus.

Now you remember Pastor Josh, when he was talking last week, he was describing how this is the week between Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus.

And in that week, Jesus was coming into the temple every day from outside the city and was teaching.

And so this chapter opens again with Jesus teaching the next day in the temple.

And the temple leaders are nervous and they're angry.

Now, this was the week of the Passover celebration, the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

It's celebrated when the Jews were led out of their slavery in Egypt by Moses, some 2,000 years or so before Jesus' time.

And so Jerusalem was packed with people because basically you were required to appear before the Lord.

That was the words of the Old Testament covenant.

You have to appear before the Lord.

You're physically supposed to be in Jerusalem unless certain conditions and certain things prevented you.

But there was an expectation that everybody from Israel would be there.

So the leaders are pretty nervous because when you got that many people in one place, right, the danger of a riot or a rebellion, if Jesus says the wrong thing, if Jesus says something that infuriates the people against the leadership, because they were pretty sure that's what he'd been saying all along, they're nervous.

So they feared Jesus, what he might say.

They were afraid of the people, but also they were afraid of Rome.

Because Rome was not one to accept rebellion or riot or disorder kindly.

And they expected the Jewish leadership to keep control of the Jewish people, but if it didn't happen, if things got out of hand, the Roman military would come in, and when they came in to put down the rebellion, it got bloody and ugly in a hurry.

So these leaders are afraid of all these things.

And then the scripture tells us Satan entered Judas.

That is a really dark statement.

Satan entered Judas.

Now, so Judas is one of the twelve.

He's been traveling with Jesus, right?

But in John 12, we read what John and probably all the other disciples knew.

Judas was a thief.

He'd been invited in to their company.

He traveled with them, but he never really committed.

And in John, we're told that he was in charge of the money bag.

And he loved to just reach his hand in there and take out for himself instead of using it for the needs of the group or the needs of the poor as they went through towns and villages.

He was helping himself.

So he wasn't really listening to Jesus talk about, you know, what a life of discipleship looks like.

He was perfectly content to help himself at the expense of Jesus and his followers.

So he goes to and agrees with the priests and the temple guards that for money he will betray Jesus at a time when there's no crowds present.

By the way, the price that he paid was the price that you would pay for a slave in a slave market, 30 pieces of silver.

That was the typical cost of human beings back and forth in the slave trade of that day.

So he had to find a time when Jesus was alone because they couldn't arrest him in the temple.

They knew there'd be a riot.

Notice that Judas is not just leaving Jesus, right?

He's not committed, but he didn't just get up and say, Well, I'm just going to stop following this, go.

I'll go find another guy to follow, or I'll just go back to whatever he was doing before that.

No, Judas actively worked against Jesus.

That was what the heart of the betrayal was about.

Now, there's lots of speculation on why he did that.

One is that he was trying to force the Messiah's hand.

That he maybe believed Jesus was the Messiah, but things were moving too slow.

And he thought, if I get him arrested, he'll just have to break out of prison, right?

He's got all this power.

He'll just have to call an army or call angels or something.

And then finally the Messiah will do what the people expected, which is overrule, overrun Rome, and set Israel free from all these foreign powers that ruled over them.

Well, that's one possibility.

Another possibility is that he sort of agreed with the priests and the leadership that some of the stuff Jesus was saying was just wrong.

Maybe he knew Jesus was a powerful man led by God, but when Jesus would start talking about being God himself, the Son of God, maybe this was too much for Judas.

And he thought, man, this needs to be stopped.

Because he did come back later and say, I've betrayed innocent blood.

Which kind of sounds like maybe he thought he was guilty for a while of something, but we don't know what.

This is all kind of speculation.

We really don't know why.

But what we can see is he wasn't committed.

He wasn't all in.

And so he decides to betray.

Betrayal, as each of us knows, is a very painful experience in human life, isn't it?

Most everybody in here can think about it.

I don't want you to think too hard about your betrayals in your life, because I don't want to lose you here, okay?

So uh, but they happen, right?

Things go bad, and uh and so you and I experience things, some kind of an injury.

You know, we can be injured in lots of different ways, right?

Somebody can steal from us, somebody can assault us, somebody can slander us and destroy our reputations.

Those things hurt, but they're not necessarily betrayal.

Because betrayal can only be caused by someone we trust.

So, in addition to the injury, we get the damage to some relationship that we've trusted.

Whether it's a friend or a family member, whether it's a coworker, maybe it was a politician that you thought was going to do something, maybe it was an institution that you expected was going to protect you or provide for you.

We we feel this sense of betrayal when we put trust someplace and it is not returned.

They should have protected me, they should have helped me, they should have loved me, they should have done something I expected.

And we're left with this deep sense of loss and grieving.

Michael Card, the Christian artist and singer, has a song called Why?

And here's what he says about Judas.

Why did it have to be a friend who chose to betray the Lord?

Why did he use a kiss to show them?

That's not what a kiss is for.

Only a friend can betray a friend.

A stranger has nothing to gain.

And only a friend comes close enough to ever cause so much pain.

That's the nature of betrayal, isn't it?

Here's some good news for you.

It won't sound like good news when I first say it, but trust me, we'll get there.

The pain that we feel in betrayal is a sign to us that we were created to not to experience betrayal.

We were created for something better in relationships.

It's not what God intends for our life, and that's why the pain is there.

Because betrayal is a changing of loyalty.

Or sometimes it's just a revelation of a disloyalty that was always there, but we didn't know it.

It was hidden from us.

It's a changing of sides.

It makes me think of it.

We have a bunch of television shows that have been around for a long time.

The news people just said this week, it's the 30-something season of Survivor.

Now I want you to think about shows like Survivor, these reality shows, in the context of betrayal versus relationships that are committed.

Because it's all about making little alliances and then turning on people later in the game, all in the name of, oh, I'm playing the game by the rules.

But we're glorifying these dark aspects of human experience.

And, you know, I just caution you that that that can seep into our souls and we can start, because you know, once you've been betrayed, you can justify just about anything to try to set it straight, right?

Some kind of revenge.

We we can go down a dark road thinking we're going to set it right.

Betrayal is a deep wound in our souls.

But we were made for covenant relationships with God and his people.

What's a covenant?

A covenant is a wholehearted commitment between people and God.

Or between people, between multiple people.

Marriage is intended to be a covenant relationship, not a contract.

Huge difference, huge difference.

Marriage is intended to be a covenant relationship because it demonstrates the heavenly reality of the kind of relationship God intends for us to have with Him.

Now, a contract is a relationship based on some kind of matching of value.

Okay?

I bring X to the table, you bring Y.

We both agree that we're going to treat them as the same thing, so I'll take yours and you take mine, and we all walk away and everybody's happy.

So it's a transactional arrangement.

It's a very limited relationship between the people.

If I, for instance, own an apartment building and you wanted to rent an apartment, I don't own apartment buildings, by the way, so don't ask.

If you wanted to rent an apartment, you could come to me and say, I want to rent an apartment, and we'd have a lease agreement or a contract, and it would say, I agree to provide apartment number three, and I agree that it's going to be kept in good working order, and that you know, the heat will work and the plumbing will work, and and you agree to pay me a certain amount every month, and you agree not to wreck the place, and you know, we'd have these terms, and and we would each have get what we wanted.

You'd get a place to live, I'd get some money, and uh, and that would be our our transaction, our contract.

But once that contract was in place, it doesn't give you any access to anything else in my life.

You don't get to use apartment number seven if you rented number three, okay?

Just because I own it doesn't mean it's yours.

You don't get to come and hang out at my house and have a barbecue because you're my tenant, right?

It's a very limited sort of thing in a contract.

But a covenant is a relationship based on full commitment.

I bring everything I have, you bring everything you have, we put it on the table.

All I have is yours, all you have is mine.

And here's the kicker.

The two piles of whatever it is we put on the table, they don't have to be equal.

Because let's face it, in a relationship with God, they ain't equal, right?

We bring, we bring nothing.

All we bring is broken stuff.

Well, I got this thing, but it's in pieces, you know.

We put that stuff on the table, and God says, Oh, I have the cattle on a thousand hills, that's yours now.

Isn't that what the message of scripture is to us?

Isn't that the good news?

That in the instead of betrayal and relationships based on on intrigue and and trying to get the upper hand and control, God says, Everything I got's yours.

And everything you got, if you make it mine, we have a covenant relationship.

And this is the relationship Jesus calls us into.

Excuse me for a minute.

I'm talking myself hoarse here.

I'd ask Nick to include that song, My Chains Are Gone, this morning.

If I can find it here, I'm gonna go.

I've lost it.

Because this last verse speaks to this where it says, the earth will soon dissolve like snow and the sun forbear to shine.

But God, who called me here below, will be forever mine.

Can you imagine what that means?

God, even this moment, if you're in a covenant relationship with God, He is forever yours.

That means everything is yours.

We don't experience it all instantaneously at this moment, but we will.

But even in this life, he said, ask.

I'll give it to you.

Seek, you'll find it.

God who called me here below will be forever mine.

Now, sometimes we don't really get the point of this, or we don't understand this, because covenant language often looks like the language of love in the Bible.

And we tend to read that word love, and we use our modern definition that's in our head for what love is, and we miss the massive significance of what the Bible tells us about God's love for us.

I think the best phrase to describe biblical love is the covenant faithfulness.

That's the phrase I like to use.

When it says God is love, it's saying God is faithful to his covenant in everything.

There's not one aspect of his covenant that he will not fulfill.

It's not the world's definition where we think about emotional attachment or we think about it's how I feel about you.

God says, I've just committed myself to you because I choose to commit myself to you, and there are no limits to that commitment, and I will never back off of it, and nothing will ever change.

You're always mine.

And when we can say that back to God, we are in that relationship that God offers to us.

In Psalm 89, we see this very clearly: this relationship between love and covenant faithfulness.

Psalm 89, verses 1 and 2 says this I will sing of the Lord's great love forever.

Psalms 89:1

With my mouth, I will make your faithfulness known.

Now, this is Hebrew poetry.

In Hebrew poetry is often structured, two lines that say exactly the same thing using different words.

And we're supposed to see that there is equivalence between the words.

So when he says, I will sing of the Lord in the first line, and the second line says, with my mouth I will make known.

He's saying the same thing, isn't he?

And he says, I will sing of the Lord's great love forever.

I will with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known.

God's love and God's faithfulness are inseparable.

They are the same, they are united eternally.

Next verse says, I will declare that your love stands forever firm, and that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself, because of course the heavens are unshakable and unmovable in the imagery of this poetry.

So we have this sense that God is faithful to his covenant.

Later on in that same Psalm, God is speaking and he says this about David and the promise about David having uh basically it's basically basically a promise that the Messiah is coming, and he says, I will not take my love from him, nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.

See again the parallel between his love and his faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered.

And this is in the context of he was talking about also the people of Israel, even if they mess up, I will not violate my covenant.

God made the commitment.

So when Jesus says to us, he's asked, what's the greatest commandment?

You remember what he says, right?

What's he say?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength, right?

That phrase that was covenant language in the Old Testament.

The way that treaties and all sorts of covenants were drawn up physically when they actually wrote out a contract, it would always have this response of the lesser party was, and you will love your king.

And it meant you will be faithful to this covenant with your king.

You will not betray your king, you will not work against him in any way.

You will always remember to honor and love your king.

And that's the language that we're called into.

And so we sang this morning in the song Build My Life.

I will build my life upon your love.

It's a firm foundation.

And I will put my trust in you alone, and I will not be shaken.

This is the covenant love of God expressed to us.

And I tell you, when when we sing this this morning, I it's like, Lord, I hope I can keep it together because this is just too good.

Pastor Josh is going to speak next week on a large portion of this chapter after this.

If you've looked ahead, you know it's about to be the Last Supper, it's about to be the betrayal in the garden, it's about to be Peter denying Jesus, it's about to be a bunch of these things.

But I want to, I told him I was gonna sneak into his scripture a little bit.

Because in order to make this point, I I think it's important, and he said this last week, that when we look at scripture, we have to think, remember he talked about hermeneutics, the big word that means the principles I use to understand scripture and interpret it.

One of those principles is we don't take individual chunks in isolation, we have to look at how they're related to everything around them.

And in the Gospels, the Gospel writers were not as concerned as we are about things like sequence.

We want a story told right in order.

We want everything to go just the way it happened.

Often in the New Testament, the writers group things by subject.

These are things that all happened, but they didn't always happen in exactly the order.

So take Luke 15, where Luke says he tells a story about a lost coin, then he tells a story about a lost sheep, and then he tells a story about a lost son, the prodigal son, right?

Well, that Jesus may not have said all three of those stories at exactly the same place.

He may have used them.

But Luke says we're going to group them together because it goes to a demonstration of what I'm trying to reveal about Jesus.

That's what the Spirit is trying to tell us.

So sometimes when we get into these historical passages, they are pretty much in sequence.

But Luke still has a storyteller's heart, and he lays this out in a way that's trying to draw our attention to something.

So there's a theological literary term for what he does here, but I just call it the sandwich.

Okay?

He starts a story, and then he jumps to another story, and then he comes back to the first story.

And it's, you know, you've experienced this with movies or books, right?

You're reading along, and something happens, all of a sudden they flash forward or they flash back into history, and you get another chunk of the story from a different perspective.

So he's kind of doing that.

So he tells about the betrayal in the first six verses.

Here's what's coming.

Then he goes off and has all this stuff where we see exactly the opposite of betrayal.

We see Jesus sitting around a table in a covenant relationship with his disciples, saying, I've earnestly desired to eat this meal with you.

I want to be with you.

We see him telling them, serve one another, have communion and fellowship together.

Y'all have a kingdom that you're part of.

He says all these kinds of things, and then later on we go back to the betrayal story.

Because Luke wants us to see the difference between what it's like when Satan's running things, right?

Remember, he entered Judas at the beginning.

He's gonna sort of reappear later.

So in verse 47, we get back to this betrayal in the garden, and Jesus says this statement in verse 53.

He's speaking to those who came to arrest him.

He says, This is your hour when darkness reigns.

And we get Peter's denial, and we get all the disciples abandoning him.

So what's going on here is we see Satan and God's plans sort of in contrast.

Satan is trying to get Jesus out of the way, he's trying to destroy him.

God is trying to build a community of disciples through a communion and a fellowship that Jesus describes in the middle of the chapter.

So Judas was invited, he was at the meal, but we know he left because he was never really committed.

Now, I can't explain what this phrase means that they used in verse 3, I think it was, where it says, Satan entered Judas.

I don't know what that means.

It means something about Satan was in control and running the ship.

And I'm pretty sure that Judas had no idea what was happening.

Right?

He thought he was running the ship.

He was going to get his money, they were gonna, you know, get what they wanted, he was gonna get what he wanted, his little contract was gonna be fulfilled.

And I don't think that Judas went into this thinking, I'm gonna make a deal with the devil.

Somehow in Judas's mind, he'd rationalized that this was a good thing he was doing, and he was gonna get paid on top of it.

There's always a spiritual battle going on for your loyalty and mind.

It's always happening in our lives.

You know, it probably happened to you this morning.

You opened your eyes and something in your head said, I wonder if I'm gonna get up and go to church.

It's usually not real blatant.

We don't usually have this question.

I wonder if I should stop serving Jesus today.

We don't usually get that question.

Satan knows we're gonna say no to that one, right?

But he doesn't, but he but there's a constant barrage of uh influences.

And the other thing that the enemy does with us is he tries to get us to interpret circumstances in a negative way, to think badly about God, to sort of say, oh, that must mean that God didn't keep his word.

See, he's fighting against the covenant relationship God wants to give with us, and he wants us to think it isn't real.

So the question for us is always who are we going to follow and who are we gonna imitate?

Because when Judas does what he does, he imitates Satan, right?

Satan's a betrayer, he's a liar, he's a deceiver.

That's what betrayal is.

Who will you be faithful to?

Now we also see there's a spiritual battle going on in Peter because Jesus predicts his denial, but he says this to Peter in the midst of that conversation, in verse 31, it's actually found.

He says, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.

Now notice this is a little different than Satan entered Judas.

This is Jesus saying, Satan's come asking for permission.

Why?

Because Peter already was in a covenant relationship with Jesus.

He was already belonged, he already belonged to God.

And so Satan says, Well, I can I at least rough him up a little bit?

And God must have allowed it because Jesus said, I prayed for you.

That your faith may not fail.

What is sifting?

If y'all ever sifted flour into a recipe, I'm not a baker, so I don't know.

You get this little thing and you put the flour in it, and I don't know, my mother had one, you turn the crank and it all kind of falls out the bottom.

That's not the kind of sifting we're talking about.

Have you ever sifted dirt to get the rocks out?

You know, usually two guys have got a big wooden frame with some wire, and somebody's shoveling dirt in it, you're shaking it, and the rocks stay in the in the sieve, in the in the screen, whatever you're using.

That's the idea.

It's a sifting, not just because the texture of the flower needs to be changed, but a sifting because there's stuff in there that has to be taken out.

You gotta expose it, and then you gotta dump it over here in the trash pile.

And that's what so why did God essentially say yes, you're allowed to sift Peter a little bit?

Because God wants us to see what's in our heart.

The sifting is not to destroy us.

The sifting is so that what's in there that needs to come out, we can say, Oh my gosh, God, I had no idea that was impeding my covenant relationship with you.

I had no idea that was getting in the way.

Let's dump that on the pile of trash.

I don't want it.

And let's let's just, you know, and then next, you know, next month, next year, God makes the screen a little narrower and some more stuff doesn't get through.

But you know what?

That's covenant faithfulness.

Why?

Because God is preparing us through our lives to imitate him better and better.

And that means that stuff's got to come out if that's gonna happen.

So Jesus says, But I've prayed for you that your faith will not fail.

And then he says this, when you've turned back, strengthen your brothers.

So there's a difference here because Peter's already committed to Jesus.

Jesus has prayed that his faith isn't gonna fail.

So what we're saying is his actions aren't gonna be indicators of the true state of his heart.

He's gonna do a dumb thing, he's gonna run away, he's gonna get frightened, he's gonna, you know, the other disciples, they just ran away.

They're not part of this discussion, but they're not guiltless in this either, right?

They didn't stand with Jesus.

But he came back.

He was repentant.

He saw that what he did didn't align with what he wanted to do.

He'd already said to Jesus, I'll follow you to the death.

That's probably why he was the only one who went where they took Jesus.

He's probably thinking, I just told this guy I'm gonna die with him.

You know, can I run away like the other ten guys did?

I better go.

But he reached his limit when somebody said, I know you, and I don't know what he was thinking.

Maybe he was thinking they're going to arrest me.

Maybe he was thinking they're gonna make me testify against Jesus, that I was there and that I heard him say whatever they want to accuse him of.

Who knows?

Whatever it was.

You've been in that situation, right?

Fear can happen to us quickly, it can put us at odds with our own convictions, and the next thing you know, we're like Peter.

We're someplace feeling bitter because we know we haven't done what we thought we were able to do.

But because we're in a covenant relationship with God, forgiveness is available.

It's part of Jesus saying to us, All I have is yours.

His blood to forgive our sins is ours.

He's given it to us.

So he says to Peter, strengthen your brothers.

That's a good news phrase.

Peter, after this is over with, what you've been through is gonna help others around you.

So God can recycle all of the messes that we make when we fail in our commitments to him.

It doesn't uh it doesn't get us cast aside.

It's a constant reminder that we see in Peter that we can return.

But Jesus is gonna say, you know, you are fighting a spiritual battle, and he's gonna say it twice in this chapter.

Pray so you don't fall into temptation.

I always read that and thought, he's telling them not to fall asleep.

Pray so you stay awake.

How many of you know that you could fall asleep praying?

Yep, it happens.

It happens more than I like to admit.

But Jesus says, Jesus wasn't talking about them sleeping.

Remember, Jesus knew this is a night, maybe the darkest, deepest spiritual battle the world had seen.

And they were exposed to it.

They were part of it, they were right there in the middle of it.

Jesus said, You guys pray that you don't fall into temptation because temptations are gonna come.

The temptation to deny, the temptation to run.

So I'm gonna ask you to today if you're in a covenant relationship with Jesus.

Because he's gonna say this about what a covenant relationship looks like.

Again, I'm stepping all over next week's message, but he's gonna say things like, I earnestly desire to have this meal with you.

He wants to be in relationship with you and with me.

He's gonna say, Be a servant like I am, imitate me.

I serve, therefore you serve.

That was his instruction to his disciples.

He says to them, This really odd thing.

He says, You are the ones who stood by me in my trials.

Now he has to know what's gonna happen in the next three hours, that they're all gonna be disappeared.

But I think Jesus is saying, Look, when things got hot in the temple in various times and the leaders came in and they were looking to, you know, get me out of there, the crowds tried to stone him once or twice.

You know, I think Jesus was saying, You stood by me then, but he's calling out their future.

He says, I know that most of you are gonna go to your death proclaiming my name.

You're gonna be martyred for your faith.

Jesus isn't looking at their performance over the next three hours.

He's looking at the spread of their life as he works through them, that they are gonna die victorious people because they knew who they served.

He says, I'm gonna give you a kingdom, the same kingdom that's been given to me.

Again, everything I have, I give to you.

That's the pattern of the covenant.

So we have an invitation today to pledge ourselves to him.

Are you willing and ready to say, All I have is his, and all he has is mine?

Will you live your life that way?

Like not holding back your control of your life, not holding back your emotions, your fears, not holding back any of your stuff.

Whatever it is that gets in the way, are you ready to say to Jesus, at least in this moment, I want you to have it all.

And an hour from now, I'm gonna be tested and I'm probably gonna mess it up.

But because you've given me everything, I will call upon your strength, I will call upon your forgiveness, I will call upon that covenant relationship that says, I am always yours and you are always mine, even when I mess it up.

That's what trusting Jesus looks like.

Whatever I need, he promises to give me.

Whatever I ask or whatever he asks, I promise to give him.

And if you've been in that relationship for a while and you're sitting here thinking, I've really messed it up, I've gotten out of out of whack, I've let things go, I've I've stopped paying attention.

Do you hear Jesus calling you to remember who you are?

You're still his.

Turn back.

Notice he didn't say to Peter, when you realize the terrible, horrible thing you did, get down on your face, weep, put on burlap, throw ashes on your head, and eventually I'll say, Okay, that's enough, you can come back.

Jesus says, just turn around.

My sin or my blood has already covered your sin.

Your unfaithfulness is not a disqualifying thing.

You are in covenant with me, I will strengthen you, and the next time you will get farther into that situation, and hopefully you'll get victorious.

And that's why these things come back and forth and come back in our lives more than once, right?

Because we just take a while to learn some stuff.

Nobody comes to Jesus on day one and gets it all right.

Okay?

But a covenant relationship means it's not about whether we did or not.

It's about do we keep turning back and saying, Jesus, I still want to be yours.

It's the want to, it's the heart that Jesus is looking at.

Where is our commitment of our heart?

And when our actions don't line up, yeah, we can turn back.

And when you do, and when I do, the covenant faithfulness of God promises this.

I can't even, I didn't even count how many times this phrase is used in the Old Testament.

I will never leave you or forsake you.

Those are the words of God to the people of Israel many, many times.

That's what a covenant is.

We are his.

Amen.