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

Jesus was betrayed by a friend. He was denied by another friend. He's been falsely accused. He's going to be put to death. But despite all of these things, Jesus loved anyway and committed himself to the Father when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky.

Peter’s Denials in Mark 14

In our study of the gospel of Mark, we are finishing up chapter 14 today with Peter's denials of Jesus. I'm going to begin reading here in verse 66. We'll go to verse 72 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

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 Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, you also were with the 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 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 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 Jesus comes into the garden of Gethsemane, he is grieved. He says to the disciples with him, 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 and grabbed his tunic. He ran out of his tunic naked. He would rather run away in such shame than to stick with Jesus.

Then 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, I won't ever leave you.

I will go to death with you. Here he's even going to deny that he even knows 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 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 Sadducees, and they're kind of the upper class.

The Pharisee was the everyday man. He would be involved in the regular lives of Jews around him, but the Sadducee was up there. I mean, he came from a pretty rich class and the high priest would have been chosen from among the 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. 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 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 has sentenced 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?

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 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'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 got cold feet. He did have kind of a spark of bravery there for a moment, didn't he? When 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 Peter, but we know from John's account that it was Peter. So he had 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, four in fact, 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. They cannot figure this out. Our Messiah is not going to die and then come back to life. He has said that to them, but they can't hear it.

They don't have the ears to hear it. They are not listening. Now, our 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 Jesus, maybe Peter thinks this is our moment.

Here we go. We're going to fight back against these guys. And here's the time now we're going to take over this thing. Draws his sword. They believe they're with the Messiah. They can't lose because the Old Testament, the prophecies say he's not going to 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. 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, 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 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 Romans where it is going to be demanded of the Romans that they put Jesus to death for blasphemy.

Peter's 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 going to deny that he was even with Jesus at all. Remember that Jesus says, whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my father who is in heaven.

Peter is going to 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 going to 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 Jesus. So the servant girl sees Peter warming himself, looks at him and says, you also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.

Now, Nazareth is a really small town. Not going to be a whole lot of people out there who were 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 will say that he's a Galilean.

That's in the Northern area of Israel. There were some identifying characteristics even among the Jews as to what regions they lived in. 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 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, 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 Galilean. Now, if you remember in the Pentecost account in Acts chapter two, when the 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 12 apostles are speaking 12 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 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 Gamaliel and some of those other well-known teachers, Nicodemus and et cetera, 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 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 Pentecost. You had Jews from all over the Roman empire who were coming back there for the festival. So having scattered throughout the Roman empire, they learned all these different languages.

Hebrew, by the way, was not a very common language among the Hebrews at that time. They would speak Aramaic, which was a dialect, it was a Hebrew dialect, but they were not speaking Hebrew. And the scriptures that they read from were the Septuagint.

It was the 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 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 12 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 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 Judea even. So they look at him and they know, well, he does have to be with Jesus, right? Because how many Galileans would there be wandering around here?

Looking at him and being able to identify his position as a 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 Nazareth.

The first disciples that Jesus called to himself were from that region. Peter and James and John and Peter's brother, Andrew, they were among the first disciples that Jesus called. So they were definitely Galileans.

Peter's still not wanting to be made out. In verse 71, he began to curse and swear. Now, 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. I mean, he loses himself as a disciple of Jesus altogether, not just denying his Lord, but speaking in such a way that Jesus would surely have rebuked, not let Peter get away with using these words.

And here Peter is speaking and probably beating his chest and saying, 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 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 like spark something in his head. Wait a minute, something's happening here. I seem to remember a conversation about this a few hours ago.

Jesus said I was gonna do this. Well, I better stop now. Nothing like that happens in Peter's mind until the rooster crows. I don't know the man you're talking about. Verse 72, and immediately a rooster crowed a second time and Peter remembered how Jesus had said the statement to him before a rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.

And now Peter realizes what it is that he has done and what is his reaction to it? And throwing himself down, he began to cry. I think it was in Matthew's account that said he went out and wept bitterly.

And I think that word bitterly does seem to indicate an anger that Peter has toward himself because he was so weak, because he did this. Now, the question then becomes, is this a godly grief that's gonna lead to repentance?

Because as Paul talks about with the Corinthians, in 2 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? 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 Lord.

Peter, do you love me? Lord, you know I love you three times. Jesus asks Peter this and Peter responds, you know that I love you. And so Peter is commissioned. Jesus commissions him. Then feed my sheep, feed my lambs, tend to my flock.

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 weeping that will lead to repentance. But for now, at least where we are in the narrative, Jesus has been denied by the very man who said, I will go with you and I will die with you.

Suffering with Christ and the Call to Faithfulness

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 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 going to go through these things also. You are going to share in these things too. But listen to what Peter said about that. 1 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 insofar as you share 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 too. Heavenly father, I thank you for reminding us 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 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, then we have to choose between being liked by the world or acknowledging 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.

Closing Announcements

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a 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 Old Testament study When We Understand the Text.