Peter Denies Jesus

Our text today is Mark chapter 14, verses 66 through 72.

Mark 14:66–72

And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also are with the Nazarene, Jesus.

But he denied it, saying, I neither know nor understand what you mean.

And he went out into the gateway, and the rooster crowed.

And the servant girl saw him and began to say to the bystanders, This man is one of them.

But again he denied it.

And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.

But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I do not know this man of whom you speak.

And immediately the rooster crowed a second time.

And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, Before the rooster crows try, crows twice, you will deny me three times.

And he broke down and wept.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rath, and I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

I always look forward to gathering together on Sundays with you.

And uh uh yeah, I'm glad it's Sunday again.

So this morning we are looking at the text which you just heard of Peter's denial of Christ, where he denies him three times.

And this is uh, I think one of the most encouraging texts that we I think we have in Scripture.

It's because Peter is a true hero.

And when we look at this failure, and then we see how Christ meets him in the midst of it, then what we really see is the wonder of the depth of Christ's grace for us.

And so we get to see that on full display this morning.

So before we move into our text, let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, we praise you for your loving kindness.

That you are gracious and merciful, you're slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Lord, in our hearts we underestimate your patience, and so we are slow to repent to you.

Lord, would you transform our hearts that we might see the wonder of your grace towards us and that we might turn towards you and be restored?

Lord, we praise you that you seek us out, and you seek us out in the midst of our sin and transgression, and in the midst of our denial of you.

Lord, let us see your grace shine as you seek us and you draw us back to yourself.

Father, we praise you for this text.

We pray that you would work into our hearts the courage that you restore to Peter as you restore him to yourself, even after his denial of you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Peter is courageous.

He's one of the, he's probably the most courageous disciple.

Some evidence.

Uh, when Jesus is walking on water, Peter walks on water as well.

Wow, everybody knows that I can't speak, and so you're the second person to bring me water this morning.

I'll drink some of it now.

We'll see if it helps.

All right.

You can also at communion, you can take some of my water.

Or some of communion, then we'll really be we don't share a cup.

I went to an episcopal high school, and we would take communion once a month together at school, and the whole school would drink from the same cup.

Which is pretty cool.

Line up right behind your crush.

So Peter is courageous.

And Peter's uh courage, he he's the disciple who steps out of the boat.

He walks on water.

And of course, it was just a couple of steps, but it was more steps than any of the other disciples took.

Peter's the first to open his mouth.

He he's willing to take the risk of speaking.

That's a big risk to take.

And he's willing to take the accountability for the things that he says.

He often puts his foot in his mouth, but it's no lack of courage that we see Peter demonstrate.

And Peter, just moments before in this story, when Jesus is arrested, Peter is the one who, against a huge group of Roman soldiers, takes out his sword and is like, I think we got him.

And it slices off the ear of the high priest's servant.

He was no coward, Peter.

But the type of courage that is required of Peter in this moment, while Jesus is being tried, and while it is becoming more and more certain that Jesus is headed straight for the cross, is a type of courage beyond what Peter is able to endure.

Because what we see previously in Peter is a courage that is willing to press on towards victory.

But the courage that's required of Peter in this moment is the courage to go to the cross.

Now the cross is defeat.

The cross is the end of the story.

The cross is death and utter humiliation.

It is the symbol of being conquered by your enemy, and you are hoisted up by your enemy so that your conquering might be made known.

And yet this is what Peter is being called to take up his cross like Jesus and to follow where Jesus is headed.

It is a different type of courage than a courage that is willing to press on towards victory.

It is a type of courage that is willing to head into certain defeat.

It's a type of courage like Abraham's courage, because it's ultimately a courage that is grounded in faith.

Abraham was promised the son Isaac, and Isaac is the son of promise, the one through whom all of the other promises that Abraham has given will be fulfilled.

That he will be this offspring that will become nations, and that through his offspring all the nations of the world would be blessed.

But then God requires of Abraham that he would take this son, his only son, whom he loves, and that he would sacrifice him to God, take him up the mountain and kill him before the Lord.

Now, this must be impossible.

Because this is the type of courage that requires going towards certain death.

And death is the end.

After death, it's over.

And so all of the promises of God could, it seems, be stamped out by the death of this promised son.

And yet Abraham goes and he gets to the moment of sacrificing Isaac, the moment of the cross, so to speak, and he's he demonstrates a willingness to follow through with it, but then the Lord intercedes.

But why is it that Abraham was able to demonstrate this courage, that is a courage unto death, a courage unto certain defeat?

Well, in Hebrews 11, 19, it tells us of Abraham's faith, he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.

From which, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back.

Now the courage that goes to the cross is a courage that says, I'm going to a place where I certainly cannot rescue myself.

But I know that there is one who even in death is able to rescue me.

And so I'm going somewhere where beyond which I cannot imagine a situation in which I could experience victory.

But the Lord has promised me that I will.

And so I go to this place of certain death on the bare word of God alone.

That he is the one who, in the place of death and defeat, is able to work his victory.

So it is a type of courage which heads towards death because in just the faith in God alone, that God will bring a victory on the other side of death.

That is not a victory that you can acquire for yourself.

But it's one in which you thrust yourself completely on the Word of God that He will be victorious.

Today in the story, we discover that this is the limit of Peter's courage.

But in seeing the limit of Peter's courage, which has been vast up till this point, we also see the depth of Christ's mercy and grace.

We see that just as beyond death there is a hope of resurrection in Jesus Christ, that beyond our sin and failure, there is a hope of restoration.

And we see that in Peter's story.

So let's jump into the story.

We'll cover his denials, then we'll look at what those denials mean.

And then finally we'll look at Christ's restoration of Peter.

Mark 14, 66 through 67.

And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, You also were one, you also were with the Nazarene Jesus.

Now, Mark had told us before that when Jesus had entered in to be tried before the Sanhedrin, that Peter followed Jesus, and he followed him and he entered the courtyard of the high priests.

Now, the way the courtyard is not something that's just outside the house.

It's actually on the interior of the house.

And so the house of the high priest would have been built such that all the rooms looked into the interior courtyard.

So you would have gone through an outer gate that brought you into the interior courtyard.

And Peter walked through the gate and went into that.

And as he goes into the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest comes and offers this, it's it's uh barely an accusation.

She says, You also were with the Nazarene Jesus.

Now, Peter could have said, Yeah, yeah, you know, sometimes you fall in with people and you're curious about how an evening's gonna go.

It looks like this has been a pretty wild evening.

But he senses that the depth of the threat so completely.

And he at this point is in, he's so prepared to deny Jesus.

He's in such an agreement with Satan that he must preserve himself, that he just folds like a lawn chair immediately.

Mark 14, 68.

But he denied it, saying, Listen to this denial.

I neither know nor understand what you mean.

And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed.

I neither know nor understand what you mean.

It's too much.

It's too much for what was said.

You don't you can't you just hear the servant girl being like, you don't know what I mean?

With Jesus here?

You don't understand what happened?

It's like, you know, we're we're we're all on the internet and we, you know, you you look at stuff and there's stuff that finds you about everybody, but then there's this trick that we play with one another.

It used to be that the way that you would show you were better than other people was by how much you you were informed about things that are going on.

But we are in the upside-down world here.

And so now here's the move.

It would be like, did you see Trump and Zelinsky and JD Vance arguing in the in the Oval Office this week?

And then here the power move is I don't even know what you're talking about.

I was focused on my own life.

You know, I was paying attention, I was playing with my kids.

Wasn't even didn't even have my phone with me, but it's interesting.

This is this feels like this feels like that, you know?

There's this, I know I neither know nor understand what you mean.

Jesus is right here.

He's in the other room, he's the reason that we're all here being interrogated right now by all of the people gathered together.

You're gonna say you just don't even know what I mean?

When I'm saying this, Peter is trying to create such distance between him and Jesus at the first question that he moves himself into the level of the absurd.

But he will do anything at this moment, this one insinuation to make sure that he isn't identified with that man.

That's the most important thing.

Because identification with that man, that's where all the danger is.

And he went out into the gateway, this verse ends, and the rooster crowed.

This is the first rooster crowing.

Mark has the most to say about the rooster crowing.

In Mark 14, 30 through 31, and in this same chapter, of course, they didn't know they were in the same chapter at the time, but in the same chapter, just uh it, you know, 30 verses earlier, Jesus warns Peter.

He says, and Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

But he said emphatically, if I must die with you, I will not deny you.

And they all said the same.

This is probably about six hours ago.

Where Peter says, I will die with you rather than deny you tonight.

And Jesus put a timestamp on it.

Now, there's so much work done on reconciling how many times the rooster crows, because Mark is the only one that says the rooster crows twice, and the others uh just reference the the other synoptics reference the rooster crowing once.

Here's something we can imagine.

Um the the rooster crowing is uh a time referent in scripture.

It's a it's a reference between the hours of 3 a.m.

and 6 a.m.

And it stops when the rooster crows at at 6 a.m.

Now the rooster probably crows a lot of times, but it's sort of just a colloquial lism.

Oh man, that was close.

Uh it's a colloquialism to say before the rooster crows is to say before the morning comes.

But Mark references it as twice because he explains the fullness of what Jesus explained to us in this passage because he wants to show us the hardness of Peter's heart, that at the first crowing, there's a warning where Peter's conscience could have been pricked, and he could have, he could have heard and understood, oh man, this is what's unfolding now is like what Jesus said, and there's this warning that's come across.

But the text never references that Peter experiences anything like that.

It's just passed over.

What's shown to us here is that the the warning is not heard, and that after the first denial, things only accelerate for Peter.

Notice at the end of verse 68 as well, it says, and he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed.

So he's asked this one, not even really asked a question, one observation is made about him, and then he immediately heads to the gate.

He's like, you know what?

I'm just gonna get out of here.

Gonna get out of here.

And that's when the rooster crows.

But then in verses 69 through 70, his second denial comes, and the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, this man is one of them.

But again, he denied it.

So on his way out, another servant girl comes and says, This man is one of them.

But again, he denies it.

And at this point, he's sort of like, okay, well, I can't really get to the exit.

And it might be more conspicuous if I try and leave right now.

And so he stays and settles in.

And you can feel the discomfort as Peter's trying to hide within his own skin.

He wants to see what's happening with Jesus, or at least he wanted to, but he can't be identified with him.

Because to be identified with Jesus at this moment means I'm going to the cross.

In fact, I can hear Jesus in there, and he's doing nothing to defend himself.

The scales are tipping towards the cross more and more quickly.

And so it's actually becoming more and more dangerous for Peter while he's out here to be identified with Jesus.

And then finally, more bystanders come, and verses second half of 70 and then to 71.

And after a little while, the bystanders again said to Peter, Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galatian, excuse me, you are a Galilean.

But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear.

I'd rather be dead than know that man.

May the Lord count me a curse if I know Jesus.

Peter, it's six hours ago he's saying he'd go die for Jesus.

If the path for dying to Jesus was a path towards victory.

But this identification with Jesus, well, it's sure defeat, isn't it?

Jesus himself, the one who's ahead of this whole thing, is about to be raised up on a cross and humiliated.

And that's the end of the movement.

Because we see who's stronger.

This movement that's happening with Christ or Rome together with the corruption of the Jews.

And plainly it will be seen.

Jesus is the weaker here.

This is done.

And so to head into that, Peter cannot head into that.

So he preaches and proclaims an anti-gospel.

If I know Jesus, I'll be cursed.

Six hours.

And he plunges into the most unthinkable abandonment of Christ.

If I know Jesus, I'm cursed.

Verse 72, and immediately the rooster crowed a second time, and Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

The second crowing of the rooster, he remembers.

Just what Jesus said.

Before the rooster crows, I will deny him three times.

What have I said?

I think uh Peter was in a state where he was given over to Satan in such a way that if the Lord had not set this limit of before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times, it could have it could have been three hundred times by the end of the night.

This is the state of his heart before the challenge, before the offer of the cross, certain defeat.

In Luke's gospel, it's conveyed to us in the most graphic terms, I think, because right at the time of the rooster crowing and Peter recognizing his denial, it says that Christ looked at Peter, which means that they were an eye shot of each other.

And that Jesus himself at this moment of denial looks into Peter's face.

Not denying himself.

He probably just said or was about to just say something like, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Most Blessed?

And Jesus would respond, I am.

Not denying himself.

Peter on the outside, his closest friend, is denying him.

He looks at him.

Peter's crushed.

His heart is broken.

He saved himself.

His heart's broken.

He broke down and wept.

Peter would have known the stakes of what he had done, because Jesus taught them to him.

Peter was present.

Mark 8, 34, it says, and calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, calls the disciples together.

Jesus says to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Jesus teaches strange things, doesn't he?

Peter says to James, his first name that came to mind.

How is it that we could follow him by death?

And so Jesus presses the paradox further, and then he goes on, verse 35, for whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake in the gospels will save it.

Peter was taught.

Here you begin to see, as Jesus is saying, there's a way of saving your life, which you lose your life.

There is a way of losing your life following Christ in which your life is saved.

Peter had just saved his own life.

These three denials meant he would not be considered with Christ.

A cross would not be prepared for him later that day.

One would only be prepared for Christ out of that room.

He'd saved his life.

But he recognizes he lost it.

Who is he before the Lord?

If he is the type of person who moments earlier had said he would die for him, and then really, when the moment came for it, he realized he would walk away.

The shock of what happens here is that Peter is revealed to himself.

What Peter discovers here is he is not the Christ.

Jesus says it in 36 to 37 as he continues this argument in Mark 8, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

For what can a man give in return for his soul?

And here Peter is in the sadness over the denial of Jesus, the sadness over saving his life, as he realizes all that I did to save myself here was a denial of the one who would save me.

What did he preserve?

Peter, I think, especially seeing the imminent death of his friend, he would have considered, I'm headed towards death too.

We all are.

What did I save here?

What is my life for?

What can I even offer up?

There's all kinds of ways of telling the story.

This is perhaps one of the most compressed ways, but you can tell the story of a man who has compromised his morality, who has disordered his priorities of his family in order to gain great wealth for himself.

And then at the end of his life, he sits surrounded by it and he says, What did I gain here?

What do I do with any of this?

Or you've you've heard the stories, you you know the friends that have considered, and they've looked at the commitments that they've made to one another in their marriage, and then they imagined that there was something more wonderful beyond a life with this person.

And so they divorce and then they they move into this thing that they think is more wonderful, and then they think, well, what did that promise mean?

What does this next promise mean?

What am I able to offer?

You know, what does it mean to be able to be a participant with anyone?

How can I come to know and to be in relationship with anyone?

How could my soul possibly be known if I know you can't trust the promises I make to you?

Well, how could I what soul do I have to offer?

What closeness do I have to provide?

And then Jesus turns in this passage and he turns to in Mark 8.38 as he continues, he starts talking about being ashamed of him.

And he says in Mark 8.38, for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

You think Peter remembered those words after the rooster crowed?

I was ashamed of Jesus.

Ultimately, this is what all of our sin comes down to: that there is this fundamental shame of Jesus, that that we would rather not live the way that he calls us to live.

We would rather live the way that we think would maximize our pleasure, would maximize our happiness, would allow us to be fully expressed in the world, that he is just a limit, and we just that we think those things and and we we imagine them in all sorts of ways that that would excuse us.

We resent him for the life that he has put us in, with the particular difficulties that it has and the pains of having to live with ourselves in our own annoying idiosyncrasies.

And we resent him for it.

He says, Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words and this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

Now, I want to stay on point because we are talking about denial of Christ, and there's just all kinds of opportunities for this.

I mean, just plainly, like consider the it we we look at Peter's story and it's like, wow, that first question from the servant girl was a really low-stakes question.

Well, we experience low-stakes questions with regards to Christ all the time.

What did you do this weekend?

Did you mention that you went to church?

Or do you know that it's like, well, it might make this person uncomfortable?

Well, that you know that's okay.

Things make people uncomfortable all the time.

When I my car, when it's too cold and I have to get in it, makes me uncomfortable.

So that can't be it.

You you might feel uncomfortable.

You might be identified with with Jesus.

And you're not in control of what that might mean to this person.

You don't have your hand on that lever, it could mean all kinds of things.

You could be a misogynist, a bigot, you could be like their parents.

You're you're you're in Denver, and you moved here, so you didn't have to live in the Midwest anymore.

Or so you or so you didn't have to live in the South anymore, so you didn't have to live in those places.

You know, and that's why a lot of your it's the your friends, it's the same thing.

Because man, the the way those people thought back there was just so backwards.

I honestly couldn't imagine being friends with people who thought like that.

Now, you know, you could be on the other side of that.

Because here's the risk.

I couldn't imagine being friends with people who thought like that.

Oh man, I don't think they know that they are.

They are friends with someone who thinks like that.

You know, one of one of the wild things about being identified as a Christian is that you're not just identified with Christ, you're identified with other Christians.

You're saying, I'm like them.

You know all those backwards Christians that do all those horrible things and they don't think of Christianity with the nuance that you do.

The image I like to use of this is with your you know your aunt, your Christian aunt who's lovely and has prayed for you your whole life, but she posts on Facebook.

You in Christ have more in common with her, you are more identified with her than your closest friend at work who you know if you were to compare your Spotify dailies, it'd be like, this is the same.

We so get each other.

Would you be identified with someone like that?

Would you risk it?

Being identified with someone like that?

This is not even the cross.

You might even you might imagine, well, there's this sure defeat for the relationship.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Or maybe it's it's a victory that you can't imagine, but that's precisely the type of place that God works the miracle.

You could imagine somebody might wonder at that.

They don't even seem to be afraid of being identified with like their crazy aunt.

They seem to just love them and care for them, like they kind of love and care for me.

This is a different, this is a type of freedom I never could have possibly imagined.

They might think in their head, or they might think, oh gosh, one of those, I'm gonna have to censor my what I say around this person now, and it's super annoying.

It's two options.

It would probably more than that.

The point is, Christ calls us to the cross and he calls us to a place of saying, I don't know how you're going to accomplish the victory here, Lord.

But you promise that you will.

So I will go into the place where I, even the place where I can't describe how the victory will be accomplished, it looks, it looks and feels like death to me.

This isn't just evangelistic terms.

I mean, sometimes it's times where you just have to be honest and tell the truth.

Stick up for someone who's not who nobody likes, you know, who not participate in in gossip or to, you know, do things that the Lord calls you to, like discipline your children when you don't want to, you know.

This I know this is just gonna ruin my evening because it's gonna create a bigger reaction, and if we just let this go, then it then I'll be able to get back to things more quickly.

But the Lord is calling me to this place of death, and I don't know how it will work, but I trust him in it.

This isn't the marriage that I thought I would be in.

I I didn't think it would be like this with this person, but here I am.

And so I'm going to I'm going to trust him, even though all my closest friends and the people who most have my back and are most pulling for me and are most disappointed to see my soul in such despair over the relationship that I'm in, are telling me that I that this must just be over, that well perhaps there's a perhaps there's a courage unto death.

Perhaps there's a resurrection on the other side.

Now, how could Peter at this moment be saved?

Because Jesus himself said, Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

And didn't we just see Peter do that?

Be ashamed of Jesus in this adulterous and sinful generation.

Well, it shows us something about the depths that Christ is willing to go to in order to save us from our sin.

Because while Peter was outside denying Jesus, Jesus was inside, and he was not denying Peter.

And that even after being ashamed of Christ, right in front of him, and offering this level of repentance, Peter is obviously broken, and we see the contrition of his heart in his tears, but he he also runs away in the midst of that.

Like this is a true repentance.

But I don't think we should say this is a strong or courageous repentance.

This is even different than like Zacchaeus' repentance, who is like, I'll pay them all back, the people that I've swindled.

Peter is just heartbroken and then he flees, but you should be encouraged because the Lord, we see that the Lord is willing to meet us even in the weakness of our repentance.

He is mighty to save.

Why is it that Peter could be saved?

Well, it's because Jesus is going to go through with the cross.

And at the cross, Jesus will atone for the sin of Peter.

And he will see Peter's repentance and he will say, It is sufficient.

I have paid for your sin and your denial of me.

And then Peter will be sought out by Jesus.

And the courage that Peter never had will be restored to him by Jesus Christ.

So you're familiar with the story.

Peter denies Jesus.

Jesus goes through with the cross.

Three days later, after the cross, Jesus is resurrected.

And then he goes and he finds his disciples after the resurrection.

And one of the accounts of that is in John.

And in John, he is walking on the beach, and Peter recognizes him from his boat while he's fishing.

And then, like when Forrest comes to see Lieutenant Dan, he just jumps right off the boat into the water and goes and sees Jesus.

And there's this there's this restoration that takes place between Jesus and Peter.

And Jesus receives the has obviously received the repentance of Peter because he brings him back in and he restores him to the fullness of the position that he had called him to in the church.

And he does it by asking Peter three times if he loves him.

Jesus says to Peter, Do you love me?

Peter says, Yes, and says, Well, feed my sheep.

Well, do you love me?

Yes, well, take care of my lambs.

Do you love me?

And then at the third time that Peter is asked by Jesus if he loves him, it says, it grieved Peter, that Jesus asked him three times.

You know, why obviously, it's because he denied him three times.

And he is he is recognizing what's happening now is a full restoration.

How could I be receiving a full restoration?

It grieves his heart because he knows who he is when he's left to his own devices.

He knows what would come out if Christ were not coming to him.

And it would be a denial and he would forfeit his own soul.

He's the type of person you can't trust his promises.

Remember?

And what is Jesus doing here?

He's making him say these promises, and then Jesus is acting like he would believe him.

And so he's grieved, but it's a grief of restoration.

Because what he's saying, what he's seeing here plainly is I could not have imagined the grace of Jesus.

He did come to me.

He has restored me.

He knows my denials, but he sacrificed himself for me.

He has restored me.

I can trust in him.

And then, as his parting words with Peter, Jesus offers the strangest encouragement.

You would think if you were sending someone off, you know, to go do something simple, like make disciples of all nations, then you would say, like, it's gonna be great, you know, this is gonna be an awesome time, and you're gonna do great, Peter.

It's really, it's really gonna be good.

And you're gonna wait till you hear the sermon you preach in a couple of weeks.

Hundreds saved, thousands blessed, thousands saved, you know, and it's it you would say things like that.

Instead, Jesus offers Peter the perfect encouragement.

In verses 18 through 19, he says, Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted to go.

But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.

And after saying this, he said to him, Follow me.

What does he say to encourage Peter?

You will die.

You will die for me.

You will die for me.

And Peter would think, I the only evidence I have is that I wouldn't die for you.

Jesus is saying, I will transform your heart.

I will work in you the courage that you don't have in yourself.

And when you have the opportunity to be ashamed of me and to try and save your own life, you won't.

You will lose your life.

And when you lose your life, you will save your soul.

I will rescue you.

I will strengthen you.

I will encourage you.

I will be with you.

The sin that you have committed against me will not have the last word.

The state of your heart that I found you in will not be the final state of your heart.

I have atoned for you.

And the courage that you do not have within yourself, I will freely give to you.

What is the best news that the one who was ashamed of Christ could hear?

What's the best encouragement for the one who saved his own life and learned the stakes of losing his soul?

The encouragement is you will die.

You will lose your life, and your soul will be saved.

This is the encouragement that Christ offers to you.

As you come to follow him, you will die.

All kinds of deaths.

You will die to who you thought you could be, you will die to your attempts at self-creation, you will die to all of the idols that promised you life and wonder.

You'll you'll die to the relationship that you don't have now, that you thought you would have.

You will die to your selfishness.

You will die to your addictions.

In Christ, our souls will be saved.

Look at the depth of love that Jesus shows Peter.

This is the depth of love that he shows us as well.

With that, let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that you would work in our hearts so that we might grow in understanding of the death that you have called us to.

Lord, when we search our hearts and we consider our weakness, we know that we are not up for it.

But Lord, neither was Peter.

And he did.

Lord, in Peter's story, let us repent to you.

Even the weakest repentance, Lord, let us acknowledge our sin before you with confidence in your atonement, knowing that you will meet us here.

And Lord, let us see that in our discouragement and cowardice, Lord, that this is enough material for you to work with to transform our hearts into a courage like Peter had, that would not be ashamed of you.

Lord, let us grow in this courage.

That we would consider our own lives not worth saving for ourselves, but worth laying down for you and for your glory.

That's an insane thing to do because it means almost certain death, death of all those little deaths, those things we want for ourselves.

Lord, let us lay those down for you, trusting that you are the God of resurrection, that you will give them back to us greater than we could ever imagine, that we might be truly satisfied in you.

Lord, instill in us that type of courage, courage like Abraham, courage like Peter has.

Lord, these are just shadows of the courage that you showed on the cross, which worked for our forgiveness.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.