WWUTT 2233 Peter Denies Jesus Three Times (Mark 14:66-72)

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Jesus was betrayed by a friend. He was denied by another friend. He's been falsely accused.

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He's going to be put to death. But despite all of these things Jesus loved anyway and committed himself to the

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Father when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

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God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this is ministered to you please let others know about our program.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Mark we are finishing up chapter 14 today with Peter's denials of Jesus.

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I'm going to begin reading here in verse 66. We'll go to verse 72 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

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Hear the word of the Lord. And as Peter was below in the courtyard one of the servant girls of the high priest came and seeing

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Peter warming himself she looked at him and said you also were with the

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Nazarene Jesus but he denied it saying I neither know nor understand what you are talking about and he went out into the entryway and when the servant girl saw him she began once more to say to the bystanders this is one of them but again he was denying it and after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter surely you are one of them for you are also a

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Galilean but he began to curse and swear I do not know this man you are talking about and immediately a rooster crowed a second time and Peter remembered how

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Jesus had said the statement to him before a rooster crows twice you will deny me three times and throwing himself down he began to cry now remember some of the things that we have read about over the last several lessons we have read about how when

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Jesus comes into the garden of Gethsemane he is grieved he says to the disciples with him

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Peter James and John I am very sorrowful even to the point of death and when he goes to pray and he comes back out to them he finds that they're asleep he's disappointed in his friends they couldn't even stay awake and pray with him for one hour and this goes on several times when he comes back out to them he says the moment has come here comes my betrayer and he's betrayed by his friend with a kiss he's falsely accused he's given over to those who want to kill him his friends don't stick with him they all run away and scatter one of them even runs away naked as we read about they reached out grab his tunic he ran out of his tunic naked he would rather run away in such shame than to stick with Jesus then

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Jesus is put through this sham trial unjustly sentenced he is beaten he's about to be given over to death even though he's done nothing wrong and here we get to this portion where his friend the one who said

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I won't ever leave you I will I will go to death with you here he's even going to deny that he even knows

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Jesus so we come back to verse 66 as Peter was below in the courtyard one of the servant girls of the high priest came now again this is all happening at an hour that people are not typically awake it's after midnight it's dark and so they have had this trial late at night so that they don't stir the anger of the people because the

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Pharisees as we have read they feared the people that was the reason why they had not arrested him yet or put him to death as they wanted to is because there were some people that really really liked him so they did not want to stir the ire of the people therefore they have this trial late at night when no one else can know about it and no one else can see so it's an unusual hour but when the high priest is going to be awake and remember the high priest is chosen from the

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Sadducees and they're kind of the the upper class the Pharisee was the everyday man he would be involved in the regular lives of Jews around him but the

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Sadducee was was up there I mean he came from a pretty rich class and the high priest would have been chosen from from among the

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Sadducees the high priest would have been chosen by the Romans they would have decided who was going to be the high priest they had to approve it so this guy's pretty rich and if he's going to be out doing anything well he's going to have his servants with him so if he's going to be up his servants have to be up to tend to him wait on him hand and foot after he rends his garments maybe they bring him another garment

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I'm not sure but since he's awake since he's got business that he needs to attend to he's got servants to attend to him so this is one of those servants a servant girl of the high priest and she recognizes

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Peter now Peter would have denied anyway no matter who it was but it just kind of seems interesting that it was a servant girl of the high priest who was just leading this trial that is sentenced

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Jesus to death so it's very likely you know this kind of adds on to the intimidation for Peter because this girl's connected with the high priest if he gets spotted is he going to be turned over and given this unjust trial

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Peter is seeing how things are going for Jesus and it's really bad and Peter is afraid the same thing might happen to him that really has to be his motivation here he does not want to be accused along with Jesus he is seeing how this is going this guy that we thought was going to be our

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Messiah in the sense that he was going to be an emancipator for us he was going to free us from the tyranny of Rome well he's been arrested and beaten and they they're talking about putting him to death here this is not going at all like Peter thought it was going to go so now he's he's got cold feet he did have kind of a spark of bravery there for a moment didn't he when

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Jesus was being arrested grabbed his sword cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest now Mark doesn't mention that it was

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Peter but we know from John's account that it was Peter so he had this this moment of courage he was ready to go and fight to draw a sword but that was not the plan and for Peter to respond this way he clearly was not listening to Jesus three times we've had it for in fact in in Mark's account of Jesus telling his disciples that when they go back to Jerusalem he is going to be arrested tried put to death but he's coming back again on the third day he's going to rise again he's told his disciples that but they just don't understand it hey they cannot figure this out our

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Messiah is not going to die and then come back to life he has said that to them but they they can't hear it they don't have the ears to hear it they are not listening now our

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Messiah is not going to die that's not how this thing is going to go he's going to overthrow them they're not going to overthrow him and so even though Jesus has said this they have this expectation that that's what they have in front of their eyes they can't hear or see anything else but that and so even when these soldiers come to arrest

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Jesus maybe Peter thinks this is our moment here we go we're gonna fight back against these guys and here's here's the time now we're gonna take over this thing draws his sword they believe they're with the

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Messiah they can't lose because the Old Testament the prophecies say he's not gonna lose and so we're ready to fight this thing out here we go cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest

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Jesus stops him now that's not what we have in Mark's account we don't have Jesus stopping him we did have that in Matthew's account but not in Mark's but we know that is what happened nonetheless at least the way that Mark has presented it to us here

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Peter did have that moment of zeal he had that moment of bravery but it was stifled by the fact that Jesus did not lead a revolt he did not lead a rebellion he turned himself over to them he went with them quietly and now he just stood by as they accused him and the only words he spoke was to answer the question that he is the

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Christ he is I am and the high priest rents his garments and says hey this guy's committed blasphemy we don't need any other witnesses you've heard it yourself and now he's being led away to be taken to the

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Romans where it is going to be demanded of the Romans that they put Jesus to death for blasphemy

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Peter seeing all of this transpire this was not the way that I thought this was going to go and to save himself and he's gonna deny that he was even with Jesus at all remember that Jesus says whoever denies me before men

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I also will deny before my father who is in heaven Peter is gonna be forgiven for this we know that we know that's where the narrative goes but for now we have this moment where Peter chickens out and he's gonna feel it he will feel it at the end of this thing he will weep over what he has done but for the moment that he is in here he cannot acknowledge that he even knows

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Jesus so the servant girl sees Peter warming himself looks at him and says you also were with the

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Nazarene Jesus now Nazareth is a really small town not gonna be a whole lot of people out there who were

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Nazarenes and so it's kind of easy to spot the ones that stand out a little bit notice the crowd a little bit later on we'll say that he's a

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Galilean that's in the northern area of Israel there were some identifying characteristics even among the

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Jews as to what regions they lived in there there were different accents dialects the way that they wore their clothes the way that they looked there were things that you could tell about a person as to which region of Israel they came from and so this gal but when she says this she knows she recognizes him as having been in Jesus company but still knows him as the one who was with the

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Nazarene with Jesus but Peter denies it saying I neither know nor understand what you are talking about and he went out into the entryway so he leaves that inner court area as it said in verse 66

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Peter was below in the courtyard he's leaving that area and he's going to the gate area that would enter into the courtyard somewhere just to get away from that gal but then she kind of follows up verse 69 when the servant girl saw him she began once more to say to the bystanders this is one of them she's now drawing attention to Peter amongst all the people that he is around and Peter's getting really uneasy about this they're all now looking at him attention has come his way when he was trying to just kind of eavesdrop on the situation and not be noticed so he continued to deny it verse 70 but then after a little while the bystanders were again saying to Peter surely you are one of them for you are a

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Galilean now if you remember in the Pentecost account in Acts chapter 2 when the

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Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and they go out into Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost preaching the gospel but they are preaching in different languages the twelve apostles are speaking twelve different languages respectively one probably one language one another language on and on it goes and the people see this and one of the things that is said about them when they witness these men speaking in these multiple languages what they say is that these men are uneducated they're

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Galileans and Galileans weren't known for spending a whole lot of time in synagogues or in schools learning all these different languages the men that were raised in these schools like Amaliel and and you know some of those other well -known teachers

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Nicodemus and etc Caiaphas the high priest they weren't schooled in 12 different languages they didn't know how to speak all these different dialects and here these

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Galilean men men who looked by their appearance to be uneducated common fishermen or other occupations that they had it was known by the people who were there how do these guys speak all these different languages now all those languages were represented in Jerusalem that day because of it being

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Pentecost you had Jews from all over the Roman Empire who were coming back there for the festival so having scattered out the

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Roman Empire they learned all these different languages Hebrew by the way was not a very common language among the

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Hebrews at that time they would speak Aramaic which was a dialect it was a Hebrew dialect but they were not speaking

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Hebrew and the scriptures that they read from were the Septuagint it was the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament so Greek was the common language it was more often spoken among the various Jews that may have been the language that they had in common but living in different areas in the

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Roman Empire they pick up these different languages and so you had the different people from these different locations coming into Jerusalem for Pentecost and here these twelve men are speaking languages that they all can understand they hear the gospel spoken in their native tongue but it's recognized these are not educated men they know something miraculous something highly unusual is taking place here because these men you can look at them and tell they should not be this smart and so there's something about even

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Jews themselves the different places that they come from you can look at them and tell they ain't from around here and Peter was not common to Jerusalem not common to do to Judea even so they look at him and they know well he he does have to be with Jesus right because how many

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Galileans would there be wandering around here looking at him and being able to identify his position as a

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Galilean they say surely you are one of them for you are also a Galilean you're from Galilee you're from that upper region of Israel that area that would include

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Nazareth the first disciples that Jesus called to himself were from that region

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Peter and James and John and Peter's brother Andrew they were among the first disciples that Jesus called so they were definitely

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Galileans Peter's still not wanting to be made out in verse 71 he began to curse and swear now this is this is how belligerent he is over not wanting to be identified not wanting to be spotted and made out in this way he curses and swears

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I mean he loses himself as a disciple of Jesus altogether not just denying his

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Lord but speaking in such a way that Jesus would surely have rebuked not let

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Peter get away with using these words and here Peter is speaking and probably beating his chest and saying

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I do not know this man you are talking about just becomes indignant and it shows you the cowardice that is in his heart and also the weakness in his flesh how certain he was that he was not gonna deny his

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Lord but here he's doing it and has done it three times you would think the first time that he did it it would it would like spark something in his head wait a minute something's happening here

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I seem to remember a conversation about this a few hours ago Jesus said I was gonna do this well

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I better stop now nothing like that happens in Peter's mind until the rooster crows

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I don't know the man you're talking about verse 72 and immediately a rooster crowed a second time and Peter remembered how

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Jesus had said the statement to him before a rooster crows twice you will deny me three times and now

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Peter realizes what it is that he has done and what is it what is his reaction to it and throwing himself down he began to cry

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I think it was in Matthew's account that said he went out and wept bitterly and I think that word bitterly just does seem to indicate an anger that Peter has toward himself because he was so weak because he did this now the question that becomes is this a godly grief that's gonna lead to repentance because as Paul talks about with the

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Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians he says there is a grief that is a godly grief that leads to repentance there's a grief that is a worldly grief that leads to death and here we really have the contrast between Peter and Judas right

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Judas also regretted what he had done Judas will not come up again here in the gospel of Mark he's out of the story now but we know from other accounts he tries to return the money he did regret what he had done but it was not a grief that led to repentance it was a grief that led to what it led to his death he committed suicide but for Peter this is it's a godly grief for later he will be reinstated to the ministry by his

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Lord Peter do you love me Lord you know I love you three times

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Jesus asks Peter this and Peter responds you know that I love you and so Peter is commissioned

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Jesus commissions him then feed my sheep feed my lambs tend to my flock

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Jesus reinstating Peter to the calling that he was given at the first to be an apostle of Jesus Christ so this weeping that he does here it is a it is a weeping that will lead to repentance but for now at least where we are in the narrative

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Jesus has been denied by the very man who said

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I will go with you and I will die with you so let me go back to something that I stated at the beginning of the devotional about Jesus being sorrowful unto death being abandoned by his friends being betrayed by a friend being denied by another friend my friends if you want to be like Jesus and we should all want that we should desire to be like Christ understand what that comes with Jesus grieved in the garden he was betrayed by a friend he was denied by another he was abandoned by the rest he was hated for speaking the truth he was lied about and slandered he was beaten he was mocked and he's being sentenced to death he's going to be killed this is what

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Jesus went through so if you want to be like your Lord don't you know that you're going to share in a little bit of that as well in the sufferings of Christ in being hated by the world because you're of Christ and not of them we're gonna go through these things also you are gonna share in these things too but listen to what

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Peter said about that 1st Peter 4 12 beloved do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you but rejoice in so far as you share

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Christ's sufferings that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed if you are insulted for the name of Christ you are blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you so though you may go through these difficult things just like Jesus went through these difficult things you won't ever have to go through it as severely as he did for he took the wrath of God upon himself for us and by faith in him our sins are forgiven and we have right standing with God though Jesus went through these difficult things though he was betrayed by friends and he was wrongly accused and so on and so forth remember he loved anyway he was obedient and submissive to the father's will and he was raised from the dead and my friends likewise you and I in Christ will be raised from the dead to Heavenly Father I thank you for reminding us of of an account we've surely heard most of our lives many many people have heard the story of Jesus being wrongly accused being sentenced to death eventually to be crucified and along with that narrative we've heard about Peter denying

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Jesus three times how easy it is for us to fall into the same weakness if we are not careful and so strengthen us and keep us steadfast that we would not disqualify ourselves but we would continue to hold fast to Christ and if a day comes and we have to choose between being liked by the world or acknowledging

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Jesus we're gonna stick with Christ hold us fast to yourself give us strength and courage in these days to look to Christ as our hope not to anything else in this world thinking that it's gonna make our situation more comfortable we look to Christ knowing that our greatest peace is there with God it's in Jesus name we pray amen you've been listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes Monday Tuesday and Wednesday Gabe will be going through a

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New Testament study then on Thursday we look at an Old Testament book on Friday we take questions from the listeners and viewers tomorrow we'll pick up on an