“How Poorly I Know Myself” – FBC Morning Light (4/24/2023)

Peter’s Overconfidence and Jesus’ Warning

Well, a good Monday morning to you. I hope you had a good day yesterday at God's house, I hope you were able to meet with God's people and hear from God through his Word, and worship him in your praise and your listening and your praying and your responding to that Word that you've heard.

Yesterday we began our Eternal Issues Bible Conference and got off to a great start with Aaron Hoke. He's a pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Warsaw, Indiana, and here for a couple of days. We meet again tonight at 7 o 'clock, and then again Tuesday night and Wednesday night this week for that Bible Conference.

So again, as I've even mentioned last week, I encourage you to come and attend one or more of these services if you're able to do so. I know it'll be a blessing to you. Aaron is a good speaker, and he's got good topics for our consideration in these days.

Well, today in our Bible reading plan, we're reading in Judges chapters 15 and 16, John chapter 13, and the 81st Psalm. While the book of Judges is an exciting book, and chapters 15 and 16 talk about the story of Samson, and there's probably so much that could be said about that, I want to zero in on just a couple of verses in John chapter 13.

This is going on in the upper room, the night of the betrayal, and Jesus is spending a lot of time teaching and encouraging his disciples before what he knows is coming, and his arrest and the betrayal and then arrest, and then of course, in 24 hours, less than the crucifixion.

In this setting, Jesus says at the end of chapter 13, Jesus says that he is going to go away, and that his disciples can't follow him. Simon Peter responds to him and says, well, Lord, where are you going?

And Jesus said, where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you shall follow me afterward. And Peter said to him, well, Lord, why can I not follow you? And you're getting where he's going here, right?

Why can't I follow you? I should be able to go with you anywhere you go. But then he says this, I will lay down my life for your sake. Now, you and I know what's coming, and so we can be a little bit jaded, I guess, in the way we view Peter, but I think Peter was, I know, Peter was absolutely sincere in what he said, I'll lay down my life for you.

But Jesus offers this corrective, and he says, will you lay down your life for me? Do you really know your heart as well as you think you do? Are you really as loyal as you think you are? Then he says this, most assuredly, I say to you, the rooster shall not crow till you have denied me three times.

Now the other Gospel writers elaborate on that interchange, Peter had said, if everybody else were to deny you, I will not deny you, I'll be faithful to you, I'll be loyal to you even unto the death. But this is sufficient for us to get the heart of Peter, and the inability of Peter really to know his heart.

At this point, at this moment, here in the upper room, they've just been enjoying the Passover meal together, Jesus is teaching, he's also washed their feet, and so on. Jesus has also told them that somebody's going to betray, one of the disciples is going to betray them, and they're all, who could that be?

Peter's just filled with commitment, a heart of commitment right now. You can almost sense a little bit of agitation that somebody would be so disloyal to Jesus as to deny him and to betray him. So this statement of commitment, I really believe, is coming from a genuine heart that wants to be loyal to Jesus, and yet how poorly we know our own heart, right?

How many times have you had the same depth of commitment and expressed it either in private prayer or maybe to others, but then sometime later that commitment wanes, or you actually turned your back on that commitment, and you were not faithful to follow through on that commitment.

We don't know our own heart as well as we think we do. We tend to overestimate our strength, our zeal, our faithfulness to Christ. We tend to underestimate the power of temptation, and underestimate the pull of other passions like fear and anxiety, and the desire to fit in.

We don't appreciate the power of those things sufficiently enough. This all serves to me, it serves as a kind of a reality check for us to stop and think, and to realize how weak we really are. Just to realize how weak we really are.

Maybe you're in a moment right now of weakness, and you say, yeah, I know, believe me, I know. I've blown it again. Peter blew it, but remember, the Lord restored him. Peter retained his love for Christ, it was re-energized, and his commitment to Christ was restated, and he lived out that commitment.

Just because you're in a position of weakness right now, and you have realized, yeah, you've failed the Lord, don't wallow in that, don't stay there. Go back to the Lord, turn back to him, cry out to him, and tell him, let him know, I blew it, and I'm sorry, please forgive me, and then rededicate yourself to him.

But do so with an awareness that you're not as strong as you think you are, and you are weaker than you think you are, and the forces outside of you, and the forces within you are more powerful than you realize, and then you may give them credit for.

That should drive us all the more to our Lord, and to rely more heavily upon him. So our Father and our God, I pray that Peter's statement of commitment here, when we know he's not going to follow through on it, I pray that that would serve to be a warning to us, and an encouragement to us, to rely heavily upon you, we pray, in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.

Resting on Christ Rather Than Self-Confidence

All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Monday, and again, I encourage you to come out tonight, 7 o 'clock, at Faith Baptist in Sterling for our Eternal Issues Bible Conference. Hope to see you, have a good day.