Denial of Christ

Okay, so we are going to be in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 14, this morning, and we're going to be starting in verse 53.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

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But we're going to be in Mark chapter 14, and we're going to be reading verses 53 through 72.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

And it's a larger chunk.

We're getting into more of a narrative section of Mark.

So as uh we have a lot of verses to read here this morning, uh, but it's just the story of Jesus and towards the end as he's going into this trial.

So let's stand for the reading of God's word.

Starting in verse 53, it says, They led Jesus away to the high priests, and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes assembled.

Peter followed him at a distance, right into the high priest's courtyard.

He was sitting with the servants, warming himself by the fire.

The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they could not find any.

For many were giving false testimony against him, and the testimonies did not agree.

Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, stating, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple made with human hands, and in three days I will build another, not made by hands.

Yet their testimony did not agree even on this.

Then the high priest stood up before them all and questioned Jesus, Don't you have an answer to what these men are testifying against you?

But he kept silent and did not answer.

Again the high priest questioned him, Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?

I am, said Jesus, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, Why do we still need witnesses?

You have heard the blasphemy.

What is your decision?

They all condemned him as deserving death.

Then some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to beat him, saying, Prophesy.

The temple servants also took him and slapped him.

While Peter was in the courtyard below, one of the high priest's maidservants came.

When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.

But he denied it.

Then he went out to the entryway, and a rooster crowed.

When the maidservant saw him again, she began to tell those standing nearby, This man is one of them.

But again he denied it.

After a little while, those standing there said to Peter again, You certainly are one of them, since you're also a Galilean.

Then he started to curse and swear, I don't know this man you're talking about.

Immediately a rooster crowed a second time, and Peter remembered when Jesus had spoken the word to him, Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

And he broke down and wept.

Lord, I thank you so much for your word.

Lord, once again we thank you for the sacrifice that Jesus made, not just on the cross, but all the way leading up to it.

Everything that he went through for our sake.

Help us to see this with fresh eyes this morning, all that you've done for us, how much you love us.

I pray that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit, that I would be your mouthpiece this morning, and that you would help me to rightly divide your word here, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So every week, as I'm preparing the sermon for Sunday morning, I really think of it kind of like as a meal that I get to serve to you on Sunday mornings.

And when I'm thinking about it as a meal, I think about what's the main course?

You know, I want to provide something that's a good source of protein based out of the text that we're in.

Something that we have to chew on, something that we have to digest for a bit.

Then I think about, you know, what is a healthy side?

You know, what's the vegetable or the salad that's going to be a part of this meal that we're going to have?

You know, something that might not be our first choice of everything that's on the plate, but it's something that we need to hear.

You know, maybe it's something that's convicting, something that the Lord wants to work on in our heart.

And then also maybe, you know, something for dessert as well.

Something that goes down easy, that makes the taste buds happy.

You know, hopefully something that's encouraging to our faith, something that's enjoyable for us to look forward to.

Maybe it's heaven or you know, something like that.

And some weeks, you know, just depending on the scripture that we're in, sometimes I feel like we're heavy on the meat, you know, on the protein of the meal.

Like when we're talking about all the prophecy just a couple weeks ago.

Some weeks I feel like we're heavy on the dessert, you know, when we leave here encouraged with our faith bolstered and feeling like, man, with God, all things are possible.

You know, let's let's go attack this world.

And then some weeks, um, like this week, I feel like we're kind of heavy on the vegetables or heavy on the salad, where we leave and it's like, wow, that was convicting, you know.

And it's really dictated upon the text that we're in, the the next text that we have as we're going through these books of the Bible.

And today is a hard message, and I'm just gonna admit that, you know, up front, but that's okay.

You know, if we're truly looking for the whole counsel of the word of God, this is gonna be part of it, of having some of these vegetable and salad meals on Sunday mornings.

You know, my old pastor, Tony, he was the pastor I had in college over at Shoreline.

I never forget him saying, you know, when you open the Bible when you're a new believer, you know, you'll just read a little bit and you just feel like you know, it's like, wow, that just hit me right in between the eyes.

That was really convicting.

And you read a little more, and then it's like, you know, something else hits you.

But then as we mature in our faith, we kind of see it coming, you know, and we're about to get there, and then it's like, you know, we see these convicting things coming, then we try to dodge them, you know.

But the thing is, um, we just need to allow the Holy Spirit to do whatever work he wants to do inside of each one of us here every Sunday morning.

So I just ask, as we come to this, as we see this denial of Jesus by Peter, as we see this trial, you know, this isn't the sermon that a bunch of you are probably gonna go back and oh, I'm gonna listen to that, you know, 15 times throughout this year because I just need that.

But this is good.

This is something that we need from God's word here this morning.

So we're gonna jump in.

I'm gonna give you a little bit of a background of what's going on, a little bit of a history of what we're looking at, and then we're gonna jump right into our passage.

But first off, last week we saw Jesus in the midst of his anguish, you know, as the reality of the cross and the reality of the separation from God really starts to set into him.

We saw him come to a place of resolve, where he's in the Garden of Gethsemane, he's praying, and he just comes to this place where he accepts the cup of God's wrath towards sin.

And he reaches out and he takes that from God, and we just see this spot where he's like, Okay, I'm gonna go do this.

And then we see this mob comes to Jesus that was assembled by the religious leaders to come, and they came with torches and they came with clubs to arrest him as if he was a violent criminal that they needed to be afraid of.

And they led him away.

And now we've talked about this before, but Mark's gospel, the gospel that we're in here, it's a condensed gospel that was written with the intent of reading it at one sitting, or actually to be acted through all at once.

And I like how Pastor Joe Foch says it.

He says, Mark is like a photographer, and he gives us snapshots of Jesus.

Where it's like there's all these snapshots in this book that we just kind of get to look through and be like, oh, here's a small picture of what happened here, and here's a picture of what happened here.

And Mark assembles it kind of like that, unlike Luke's gospel, where he's more of a historian and he's more worried about chronology and more of the details than Mark is.

So, what we're gonna see here today really is just a snapshot of Jesus' trial among the religious leaders.

Because if we compile the gospels and we look at the trial from beginning to end, with the religious leaders all the way through the Romans, what we see is that there's actually three phases to the religious trial that Jesus is going to go through.

And the first one is when they lead Jesus to Annas.

And Annas is the father-in-law of the current acting high priest at this time of Jesus' trial.

He was actually the high priest, the serving high priest from 680 to 1580, and now he's the father-in-law of the acting high priest.

And the Talmud, which is the history of the rabbinic law, actually condemns Annas and his whole family because they were so greedy.

It actually says that in the historical rabbinic law that they had documented.

So Annas, we find out, was one of, or he was the actual one that ran the whole racket in the temple that Jesus had to cleanse twice.

He organized all of the vendors that were buying and selling in the temple to make that profit, which Jesus had to go in and cleanse twice.

So he was the one that was in charge of that.

So you know, as Jesus is coming to trial, he already doesn't like Jesus because he went in and turned his market over twice already.

And then, so that's the first trial, the one of the three phases that we see is they take him to Annas.

And then they lead Jesus to an illegal meeting of the Sanhedrin with Caiaphas.

Now, Caiaphas is the current acting high priest.

Now, the Sanhedrin, they were only supposed to meet during the day for capital cases, like this one, where they could pronounce the death penalty on somebody or at least recommend that to the Roman government.

Now, according to that same Jewish law, they were never supposed to hear a capital case and convict that person on the same day.

They were supposed to hear the case, sleep on it if they were thinking of a conviction, and then come back the next day to actually convict that person.

And I'm telling you this because we're gonna see them defy all of this stuff right now.

And this is the trial, the second portion.

This is the trial that we see today.

We see the snapshot today.

So they're gonna then the third part of this trial is they're gonna have their official daylight lawful meeting of the Sanhedrin as the third portion of the religious trial.

And then from there, they're gonna take them to Pilate, and then to Herod, and then to Pilate again.

So there's actually these six phases we're looking at, phase two, right here in the Gospel of Mark.

So let's jump in now that we know kind of where we are in the context of this.

Starting in verse 53, it says, They led Jesus away to the high priest and all the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes assembled.

So this is the snapshot of phase two with Caiaphas, the acting high priest.

So the Sanhedrin, this is the bigwigs of Israel.

They're the ruling council of Israel.

We need to remember that they're under Roman occupation at the time.

And this Sanhedrin did not have the power that it once did.

At one time in Israel, they had the final and ultimate say.

When Rome came in and occupied them, the Sanhedrin was still allowed to meet and then give suggestions to the Romans of what they think should happen in regards to their religious law.

So they were not able to carry out capital punishment on their own.

So no death penalty.

They weren't able to do that, but they could recommend that to the Romans.

But they had a lot of sway.

The Sanhedrin had a lot of sway with the Roman government in this regard, and the Romans took their recommendations very seriously.

Verse 54.

Peter followed him at a distance, right into the high priest's courtyard.

He was sitting with the servants, warming himself by the fire.

So Peter ran when Jesus was arrested.

You know, we saw that last week and the week before.

But he didn't disappear.

In some ways, I think he must have been justifying not following through with his words of never denying Jesus.

You know, his initial response, I think, when all of this happened was just, I'm going to save myself.

But then we see that he's safely following at a distance.

And he's just kind of watching what's going on and following from a distance.

And I think maybe even thinking, you know, at the right moment, if I could just get the right spot, maybe I can swoop and save the day, you know, and save Jesus.

You know, who knows what he's thinking, but at this time he's he's staying close enough, but he doesn't want to be noticed.

He just wants to blend into the background.

But this is a great time to point out some symbolism that we see here.

That you cannot follow Jesus from a distance, as we see Peter trying to do right here.

Because a branch cannot stay alive if it's not abiding in the vine.

And a follower of Christ cannot continue to follow Christ if it is no longer attached, and that branch and the vine are standing at a distance from one another.

There's no such thing as a follower of Christ that follows from a distance.

But Peter's trying.

Verse 55.

The chief priests in the whole Sanhedrin were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they could not find any.

For many were giving false testimony against him, and the testimonies did not agree.

Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, stating, We heard him say, I notice the word I right there, I will destroy this temple made with human hands, and in three days I will build another, not made by hands.

Yet their testimony did not agree even on this.

So if you can get the mental picture of what's going on here, it's a circus.

It's a true definition of what a kangaroo court is.

You know, I wonder if the Sanhedrin were even embarrassed at this point, realizing this is not working, and we've got nothing on this guy.

He's actually innocent, and even this false testimonies, we can't even get those to line up and corroborate so that we can give a you know a false conviction on this guy.

And the false witnesses are really making the Sanhedrin look like fools at this point.

Now, these accusations that the false witnesses are making are coming from something that Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 2, verse 19, where he said, Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.

John 2:19

This is what the false testimony is based around.

And John goes on to explain his gospel that Jesus was actually talking about his own body.

Destroy this temple, Jesus was saying, and in three days I will make it rise again.

And it's funny that out of everything that Jesus says, that this is what they're trying to pin him down on.

This is what they're trying to find, a guilty verdict, so that they can kill him.

And notice Jesus said, destroy this temple.

Meaning, somebody else, destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.

And the tell and the testimony is accusing Jesus of saying that he would destroy the temple.

You know, the big temple there in Jerusalem.

So, like I said, if you're getting a mental picture of this, it's just a circus that's going on.

But it does make sense that this is what they bring against him.

Because according to the Greco-Roman law of the time, it was a capital offense to destroy a place of worship, like a temple, like the one in Jerusalem.

Now, to threaten to destroy a temple, which he didn't do, but they're accusing him of, is a different story altogether.

But at this point, you can see they're grasping for straws.

They're trying to do anything they can to get rid of Jesus.

Now, I think another reason they're accusing Jesus of this is because the place that they had built, this temple, this place that they built to point to God, ended up being their God.

The place of worship and the form of worship became more important than what they worshiped.

I want to say that again because it's important.

The place of worship and the form of worship became more important than what they worshiped.

You see, they saw very they thought very highly of this building.

They were very proud of it.

We even got a glimpse of that in Mark when the disciples were pointing out to Jesus the various things that were so beautiful about the temple.

See, Jesus was messing with their little g gods.

And if you ever want to get somebody really upset, mess with their gods.

It's gonna work every time.

That's how you push people's buttons.

And Jesus had been doing this since day one of his ministry.

He was just pointing out these little g gods that were throughout Israel, that were in people's lives.

And at this point they said, enough.

We've had enough of this.

Let's just kill this guy and get rid of him.

Verse 60.

It says then the high priest stood up before them all and questioned Jesus Don't you have an answer to what these men are testifying against you?

But he kept silent and did not answer.

So throughout this trial and all the way to the cross, Jesus will not protest or lash out in any way.

He's not even gonna defend himself to those that are leading him to his death.

You know, the prophet Isaiah actually prophesied about this nearly 800 years before Jesus' trial and crucifixion.

It says in Isaiah 53:7, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.

Isaiah 53:7

Like a lamb led to the slaughter, and like a sheep silent before her shears, he did not open his mouth.

So Jesus had reached out, as I we talked about a lot last week, and he had taken that cup already.

He'd come to a place of resolve, just realizing, okay, this is what I'm about to bear, this is what I'm about to go through.

And he's holding that cup, and he's not going to do anything to try and give that cup back to God.

Even though these accusations were false, and it was evident to everyone that this was an innocent man that was on trial.

Look at the second half of verse 61.

It says, Again the high priest questioned him, Are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed one?

So in Matthew's account, it says, and the high priest answered and said to him, I put you under oath by the living God.

Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.

So think about this.

The high priest put Jesus under oath by the living God.

I don't think he had any idea that he just put Jesus under oath of himself.

And then he asks him, flat out, are you the Son of God?

Verse 62.

This is Jesus' response.

He says, I am, said Jesus.

And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

So Jesus throws two references at these guys straight from Scripture that they would obviously be very familiar with.

Psalm 110, 110, verse 1 says, This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord.

Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

So the right hand was reserved for the Messiah.

And here it's actually a reference to judgment.

So by quoting this, Jesus is telling them, one day you'll be on trial with my father, and I'll bear witness against you.

Now the second reference that's in Jesus' response is from Daniel 7, 13, talking about the Son of Man, talking about the Messiah coming with the clouds of heaven.

By referencing these two scriptures, Jesus is saying, Yes, he is the Messiah, and you will be the ones that are going to be judged by my Father.

So no wonder they get the reaction that we're gonna see here in verse 63.

Then the high priest tore his robes and said, Why do we still need witnesses?

You have heard the blasphemy.

So forget that the witnesses can't corroborate their stories.

Let's just take a shortcut here.

Let's just justify our murder of this man.

Another way.

Let's just claim blasphemy.

And then that's just going to take care of everything.

And we don't even have to worry about these witnesses bringing their stories together.

Anyone else get warm?

I feel like the heater might be stuck on.

You guys good, or is it just me because I'm up here?

Everybody's good?

Okay, awesome.

Just wanted to make sure.

So they claim blasphemy, which is another capital offense according to Jewish law.

And to blaspheme simply means to speak with contempt about God or be defiantly irreverent toward him, which is different than blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

I want to make sure we know the difference here, which we talked about way back in Mark chapter 3.

Mark 3 · chapter mention

And how blaspheming the Holy Spirit is just a flat-out denial of God until death.

And it's the only unforgivable sin that we see in Scripture.

So here it is an accusation of Jesus being defiantly irreverent by claiming to be God.

So the high priest says to the Sanhedrin, look at the end of verse 63, what is your decision?

They all condemned him as deserving death.

Now, I want us to think about this in another context.

Because sometimes we can just picture this in the old times 2,000 years ago, and we can lose the connection to it.

I want you to place yourself in this situation.

If someone, oh I'm not, not you, but yeah, we're in this situation of here this Sunday morning.

If somebody walked in here and mid-sermon, they just stand up and they say, Hey, by the way, the God that you're worshiping, it's me.

I'm Him.

So everybody just turn your chairs towards me and then just direct all your worship this way.

What's the first thing that would cross your mind?

This guy's nuts, right?

And how would we respond?

Well, hopefully, how would we respond to this?

Wow, you know, this guy really needs some help.

He obviously has something wrong.

You know, he has some sort of a mental disorder if he truly believes that he is God.

And hopefully our response would be: how can we help this guy?

How can we help him get back to a right state of mind?

Right?

Isn't that kind of hopefully how we would respond?

And of course, Jesus right here is in his right mind, but the religious link, the religious leaders just think that he's just a little crazy, you know?

And I want you to look at their response, keeping that in mind.

Verse 65.

Then some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to beat him, saying, Prophesy.

The temple servants also took him and slapped him.

They did this to somebody that they thought was out of his mind.

Now, is that the right course, or what you would hope to find coming from your religious leaders?

I don't know about you, but I that's not the religious leaders that I want to follow.

And on Jesus' end, this is the epitome of self-control.

He's wrongfully accused of wanting to destroy a temple that he would never even talked about.

And he's wrongfully accused of blasphemy.

And then we see the temple servants even jump in and they start hitting him as well.

In Luke's account, it says, Now the men who held Jesus mocked him and beat him, and having blindfolded him, they struck him on the face and asked him, saying, Prophesy, who is the one who struck you?

And many other things they blasphemously spoke against him.

So they are striking and mocking him because of blasphemy, while in doing so, they're committing blasphemy of themselves.

And Jesus is just sitting there showing an immense amount of self-control, and he's just taking it.

I'll never forget my youth pastor from Calvary Chapel, Monterey, when I was growing up, when he was talking about the trial that Jesus was on, when he talks about Jesus going all the way to the cross and dying for us.

And I will never forget, because he said, you know, at this point, if Jesus wanted to, he could have just had this huge button like come out of the sky.

And he could have looked at everybody and just said, Behold, reset.

Yeah.

He could have just said, I'm done with this.

You know, let's do all of this again because you guys aren't worth it.

Book of Genesis.

Take two.

He had the power and the authority to do that at this moment, but he didn't.

He thought, and think about this, he thought that you and I were worthless.

That we were worth everything that he was going through in this moment.

Now the scene's going to shift from Jesus to Peter now.

And we know from John's account that Jesus and Peter have some sort of a line of sight to one another at this point.

Verse 66, look at it with me.

While Peter was in the courtyard below, one of the high priest's maidservants came.

When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth, but he denied it.

I don't know or understand what you're talking about.

Then he went out to the entryway and a rooster crowed.

So before we judge Peter, we need to ask ourselves, what would we have done?

Or what would we do if we were found in the same situation?

So let's place ourselves in a modern day situation.

So if you walked up to a scene somewhere and you see somebody from church, from this church, being tortured.

And then one of them says, Hey, aren't you from that church too?

What would you do?

Like we talked about last week, it's okay to say, I could never do that.

I could never stand up in that situation.

I could never proclaim the gospel to those people and say, Yeah, I'm a part of that church, beat me up too.

Because it's only through the person of the Holy Spirit living inside of us that we could ever do that.

The correct answer to could we do that?

is only by the grace of God.

Only through his strengthening, only through his boldness and courage could we ever face persecution and not run the other way.

It's when we say, Yeah, I got this, like we saw Peter do last week and a couple weeks before that as well, that we that's it's when we have that attitude that Peter had of, I've got this, that we need to be worried if we could face persecution or not.

And I think the real question here for Peter is what was he hoping would happen?

I think at this point, he was just hoping to blend into the crowd.

He just wanted to be warmed by the fire, watch Jesus from a distance, and to just blend in until he had an idea of what to do next.

And I think that's really the temptation for us often as well.

You know, I don't want to be labeled one of those weird followers of Christ.

I just want to blend in.

Which inevitably, and we see it here and just over and over again, when we just want to blend in, it always leads to compromise.

Whether as a church, if we're trying to blend in and fit into our culture, or as an individual where we're just wanting to blend in.

And Peter just gives us a perfect example of compromising to avoid confrontation, to avoid looking weird or being singled out.

So his first denial, as we just saw here, is I don't know what you're talking about.

And as we look at the three, we're gonna see that each of the three denials just becomes more adamant and more serious.

Look at verse 69.

When the maidservant saw him again, she began to tell those standing nearby, this man is one of them.

But again he denied it.

So that's the second denial.

You know, I'm sure when Peter said he would never deny Jesus, that he was thinking of standing before, standing with Jesus before these men of authority, maybe before the Sanhedrin, like, Jesus, you know, I would I would never deny you.

But here he denies Jesus to a servant girl.

He had said, I'll follow you wherever you go, Jesus.

Unless a servant girl asks me a question.

That's what it came down to.

And what this is, is just a picture of our own confidence in our own flesh.

So this time he actually says, he actually denies it.

The first time was, I don't know what you're talking about.

This time he says, I am not.

Look at the second half of verse 69.

After a little while, those standing there said to Peter again, You certainly are one of them, since you're also a Galilean.

So it's most likely that they picked off Peter's Galilean accent.

In John's Gospel, it says that Peter's speech betrayed him.

He was from the north.

He was part of the blue-color community of Israel, where Jesus lived and was from.

And they talked a little different than the Jews from the South, the ones that were from Judea.

Kind of like we can pick off somebody that lives in the south, you know, because they have a southern drawl and they say all y'all, you know, and stuff like that.

And so they probably were able to pick him off and knew that he was a Galilean for that reason.

Verse 71.

Then he started to curse and swear.

Now, Peter is caught in his lie at this point.

So, what does he do?

It's like every little kid you've ever seen, he becomes indignant.

You know, it's almost like the little kid that has the chocolate all over the face.

Like, I did not have chocolate.

You know, that's Peter.

He's caught red-handed, so he becomes more indignant.

And then he starts to curse and swear.

And this is the third denial.

This is a complete denial.

It started off with, I don't know what you're talking about.

Then it went to, I'm not one of them.

And then the third one, he's cursing and swearing and saying at the end of verse 71, I don't know this man that you're talking about.

William Lane points out in his commentary that Peter denied the charge, using the form common in rabbinical law for a formal legal denial.

We see Peter's feet are finally held to the fire, and he not only lies, but he denies that he ever knew Jesus.

One of Jesus' closest friends, and I think it's safe to say, probably Peter's best friend was Jesus.

And Peter says, I never knew him.

I think Peter at this point just goes into full self-preservation mode.

I think he would have done almost anything to preserve his life and his reputation at this point, because he just wants to blend in.

Look at verse 72.

Immediately a rooster crowed a second time, and Peter remembered when Jesus had spoken the word to him, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

And he broke down and wept.

Now Luke 22, verses 16 and 61 say, but Peter said, Man, I do not know what you're saying.

Luke 22:16

Immediately while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter.

I imagine this was not a look of anger from Jesus.

I don't think it was a look of disappointment either, because you can't be disappointed when you know the beginning from the end, like Jesus does.

I don't think this was either, you know, like an aha, Peter, see, I told you so.

I really think this was a look of sorrow for Peter.

For what Peter would go through in the days ahead.

The time between the denial and his restoration that Jesus was so graciously going to bring to him.

You know, a look of sorrow for the regret Peter would no doubt hold for the rest of his life.

I wonder how many times in the middle of the night Peter woke up and was thinking about that.

Even though he's forgiven, even though he's restored, but just thinking, man, what was I thinking?

And it says here that Peter broke down and wept as he realized that Jesus' words became true, even though Peter swore that they wouldn't.

Peter's misplaced confidence was finally revealed for what it was, depending on his flesh and depending on his own strength instead of depending on the Lord in the most trying of times.

So I told you that this was a hard message.

And I think we need to wrestle with some hard questions to finish this up.

And these are questions to think on now, possibly as we go into communion, some time of reflection to think on.

But not just now, but questions to wrestle with when we leave here, when we go about our day, when we go about our week.

Things to just notice and think on.

The first question is this where are we depending on our flesh?

Where do we think that we've got this?

And Jesus is looking and wants us to realize that we don't.

So that's the first question.

Where are we depending on our flesh?

The second question is this where are we denying Jesus in our life right now?

Is it not, you know, speaking up when we should?

Is it maybe with our time and our resources, denying that they're even his in the first place?

Denying him access to every aspect in every area of our life.

Maybe because we have control issues.

You know, do we have little compartments of our life that we're denying Jesus access to?

And then the third question I want us to wrestle with is where are we trying to blend in to not be noticed as a follower of Christ?

Either for fear of persecution, fear of what people might think, or maybe, you know, it's not outright denial.

It's just not wanting to be noticed and not wanting to be different.

So the first question, where are we depending on our flesh?

The second, where are we denying Jesus?

And the third, where are we trying to blend in?

Will you pray with me?

Lord, as we wrestle with these hard questions, as we wrestle with this hard text of watching Peter just go through this place of denial and rejection and admitting, or not even admitting, but lying that he didn't even know you.

Lord, I pray that we would learn from Peter's example.

Lord, that we would take courage from Peter's example because once he was filled with the Holy Spirit, he went on to do amazing and wonderful things for your kingdom, and then what through the power of your Holy Spirit had the ability to be a martyr and to die, like he said he would, Lord, but it was just much later than he thought it was going to be.

Lord, help us to take courage in that.

We thank you so much for the gift of the Holy Spirit that's living inside of each one of your followers.

And Lord, I pray that we would depend upon him in every moment to be our counselor, to be our strength, to be everything that we need.

Lord, your grace is sufficient.

We fall short in so many ways.

But Lord, help us to depend upon you more than ever.

To not trust in ourselves, to not trust in our flesh, to not try to blend in, but to just do exactly what you asked us to do on a moment by moment basis.

Help us to abide in you that closely to where we can just say yes to the things that you have for us.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.