Who Will Witness for Christ?

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

A Warning from Thomas Chalmers About Missed Opportunities

We're getting rather close to the end of Mark now, aren't we? And we find ourselves in these final paragraphs in Mark chapter 14. And as we do, I want to begin our time today by opening with a story from the life of a Scottish pastor from the 17th and 18th century, a man named Thomas Chalmers.

One day this Scottish pastor, Thomas Chalmers, was on his way home to Scotland from England and found himself staying in the home of a wealthy and powerful man just outside of Edinburgh, a nobleman of sorts.

And one historian tells us that Chalmers was, at least on that particular night, the life of the party. That he was speaking very eloquently about the causes and the cures of poverty, both in England and in Scotland.

And not like probably many of us today, he had opinions about the political and the societal problems of the day. And so as the evening or as the day turned into the evening, the men sat around the table and talked about politics.

And as we often find ourselves doing, at least as I often find myself doing, if you get me talking about politics with a group of friends in the evening, he got carried away talking about these societal problems that were plaguing their area.

But here, as Chalmers was going on about these issues, or as Chalmers was going on about these issues, among them, among this captive audience, was one man, a Highland chieftain, really the head of a Scottish clan, who listened to Chalmers with intense interest.

And as far as Chalmers knew as he spoke of these men, he looked at this man and believed that he was likely a man who was without the gospel, a man who was without Jesus Christ. But nevertheless, Thomas Chalmers was on a roll.

And so the men stayed up late into the night talking about politics. I'm sure many of us have been in that situation, up into the evening talking about what we would do if we were in power, what the nation ought to do, what the political leaders aren't doing and should do.

But eventually, as the day went on, the evening went on, the men had to go to sleep. And so they made their way up the stairs to the apartments that were in the upper level of this home. And as Chalmers was getting ready for bed, he heard an unusual sound, an abnormal or unnatural sound, followed by a very heavy groan.

And so realizing that something was wrong, he quickly got up, got dressed, and went across the hallway to the room where this chieftain was staying across the hall. And when he arrived, he was met by a very sad sight.

There on the floor, he found a pale old man, this pale chieftain, lying in the arms of his attendant. And there, before Chalmers' very eyes, as he stood there looking down at the man, he watched him take his final few breaths and then died from what was later determined to be an apparent stroke.

And Chalmers' biography tells us that there, Thomas Chalmers stood there over the man with his hands outstretched in silence. As he stood there, the room became crowded with other people and they were busy looking at what had happened.

And as they saw Chalmers, the room itself fell silent. And then Chalmers looked up at this group of people that had accumulated in the chieftain's room, with this man's body still lying in the room, and he said this.

He said, Never in my life did I see or did I feel before this moment the meaning of that text. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering. And he said, long-suffering and doctrine.

And he lamented, he said, had I known that my venerable old friend, this chieftain, was within a few minutes of eternity, I would not have dwelt on the subject which formed the topic of this evening's conversations.

Wouldn't have gone on long about politics. He said, but I would have addressed myself earnestly to him. I would have preached unto him and unto you Christ Jesus and him crucified. I would have urged him and I would have urged you with all the eagerness, with all the earnestness, befitting the subject to prepare for eternity.

And he looked at this group of people and he said, you would have thought and you would have pronounced that this kind of talk was out of season. But ah, it would have been in season. Both as it respected this man and as it respects you.

Here this man, Thomas Chalmers, who's known principally for preaching the sermon, the expulsive power of a new affection. Really his whole life is remembered because of that sermon. Here he stood before this man, wishing that he had preached the gospel to this soon to be dead man.

Rather than going on about politics and a whole host of matters under the sun. I think that many of us, while we have not experienced this exact same scenario, this account still rings familiar to us, doesn't it?

And why is that? Because I think in that moment Thomas Chalmers became acquainted with that feeling that many of us are so often acquainted with. When we have had the opportunity to share the gospel, to tell someone about Jesus Christ.

Someone who so desperately needed to hear it. And yet in that moment we remain silent. That feeling when we have had the opportunity to testify of Jesus Christ. To proclaim Christ and him crucified. But instead we remain silent or went on about some other trivial thing.

In this brief story, the story of Thomas Chalmers, we see a little bit of ourselves, I would say, in this scenario. In this hostile world, we're often presented with the opportunity to be true witnesses of Jesus Christ to the people around us.

For Christ's sake. But it isn't true, brothers and sisters, if we examine ourselves. We rarely come forward as witnesses. We rarely speak up. We rarely testify of him. And what's interesting is today we find ourselves studying a text that is before us.

That is very similar in its nature. This opportunity to speak of Christ and then of not speaking is not a new phenomenon by any means. But as we've heard our brother read, as we will see, as we open our Bibles today.

As we finish off the final paragraphs of this colossal chapter that is the gospel of Mark chapter 14. We find essentially a very familiar, a very similar scenario. Perhaps a different version, but the same scenario playing out.

As we've read over the last number of weeks, as we've looked at Christ's coming to his final hours. We've looked at Christ's final hours with his disciples. We've looked at his time in the garden of Gethsemane pouring out his heart in prayer as he prepares to receive the cup of God's wrath at the cross.

We've heard about his betrayal. Last week, or two weeks ago, we watched as his disciples fled from him. And this week, what we're going to find is Christ's perhaps last act of humiliation before the morning of Good Friday.

When he is humiliated and suffers at the hands of sinful men for the benefit of sinful men. He's going to the cross to be the propitiation for our sins in his own blood. And as we will see, the theme that becomes immediately apparent in this particular text is that while Christ is rejected and left to suffer alone.

In the midst of this, there is no one, not one of his disciples even, who stands up to testify for him. But all, it seems, bear false witness against him. Even those who don't testify against him remain silent.

Now we know that ultimately all of this takes place to fulfill what God had ordained before time began. That Jesus Christ would go to the cross and to die for sinners in our place. But even so, this text offers us instruction, dear brethren, about what it means to stand for the suffering Savior.

To stand for the suffering servant, or to not stand for Jesus Christ. I think it begs the question as we get through this text. The challenge I hope to issue to you, the challenge I hope you leave this room thinking about today is this.

Who will be a true witness for Jesus Christ in a world that rejects him? Amongst the people that frequently reject him, who will be a true witness for Jesus Christ? Now it seems perhaps like a different introduction than you're used to.

But I want us to understand off the bat that today we can focus on a number of things. But we're going to focus on the testimony concerning Christ. And so let's, if you haven't already, let's turn in our Bibles to the Gospel of Mark chapter 14 and verse 53.

I'm not going to read the whole passage because this is a long text as we had a couple weeks ago. But I'm going to highlight a few. Verse 53 says this. Verse 55. In this text as our brother read, we see that eager search for a witness, a false witness no doubt.

And in verse 60, the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, have you no answer to make? Saying that he would destroy this temple and in three days he would build another. He said, have you no answer to make?

What is it that these men testify against you? But he remained silent and made no answer. Again, the high priest asked him, are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you will see the Son of God seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

And the high priest tore his garments and said, what further witness do we need? You have heard that his blasphemy. What is your decision? And they all condemned him as deserving death. And some began to spit on him and to cover his face and to strike him saying to him,.

Prophesy.

And the guards received him with blows. What I want to do today is we're going to focus. We've broken this text up into two different parts. And the first part that I want us to look at is how Christ himself was subject to false witness from the world.

In the second part, I want us to look at how Christ was subject to false witness from his disciples. And then in the third section, just a commentary of application on this whole passage collectively.

I want us to look at the opportunity that we have before us today to be true witnesses for Christ. So looking at this first paragraph, then let's look first at this. That the first reality of the scene, which is this.

Here we find false witness from the world. In verse 53, we're reminded that Christ had just been arrested. And he was taken by night to the chief priests, we're told. The chief priests, the elders, and the scribes.

And these groups, when they were assembled, comprised what we would call the Sanhedrin. They were the ruling class of the Jewish people. And we're told in verse 54 that Christ was taken directly to the residence of the high priest.

This would have been the home of Caiaphas, who served as the chief priest from AD 16. When Christ was just a young man. Until the time of AD 36, a few years after Christ had died. And it seems, like everything else, that the archaeological evidence demonstrates the proof of this place where Christ was taken.

Not surprisingly, in recent years, remains of this particular residence, the residence of Caiaphas, have been found on the slopes of Mount Zion, just a kilometer southwest of the Garden of Gethsemane.

So certainly, a short walk with the guards to the house of Caiaphas. Right off the bat, what I want to just point out briefly, is this ought to remind us, just to know that this place exists in reality.

That when we study our Bibles, we are not dealing with ancient fables. But with historical facts that are better preserved in the pages of Scripture than in any other book in all of humanity. And it seems that every time an archaeologist turns a shovel over in Jerusalem, they find another relic that confirms this fact.

That the Bible is true. And that because the Bible is true, brothers and sisters, the gospel is true. You can still find those ruins if you were to go to Israel today. You can touch the stones that that residence, that villa, was built out of.

In fact, recent excavations have even found raccoon pits where they kept religious prisoners awaiting their trials. The Bible is true. And here we see that truly Christ was taken then to Caiaphas, the high priest's residence.

And moving along, not only was he taken to the high priest's residence, but we read in verses 55 through 63 that the Sanhedrin attempted to find a few witnesses, even two witnesses, any two witnesses, who could agree on just a few details that would be significant enough to put Christ to death.

And it's here that we begin to see, as we look at this text, that the theme of the passage really begins to take shape. I didn't read it, but I want to point out a couple of things here. Throughout the entirety of Mark's gospel, the first 13 and a half chapters of Mark's gospel, we see the word witness or testify.

It pops up only four times in those 13 and a half chapters. But from verse 53 to 63, that word for witness in its various form appears seven times in nine verses. I'm not going to read them all, but in verse 55, you might see the word testimony.

Verse 56, testimony. Again in verse 59, testimony. In verse 60, testify. In verses 56, 57, and 63, witness. All of these words contain the same Greek word, the word martyr, which informs our English word martyr.

It means to bear witness. And what we see, just in Mark's use of the language here, is that this passage, the theme of this passage, is the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of lawless men, and the loneliness, his loneliness in this particular detail.

That there was not even one witness who would stand and speak the truth about Christ. But in every instance that we see this word witness, testimony, or testify, it is always speaking of those who are violating the commandment of God by bearing false witness.

It speaks in every case of the Sanhedrin's attempt to find just one false witness who is credible enough to condemn Christ. But what we see, brothers and sisters, there was none. The whole account itself reeks of desperation.

The Sanhedrin's desperation to find any ground whatsoever to kill the Son of God. But it's not just desperation that we see. It's also lawlessness. If an objective scribe, if there was an objective scribe in Christ's day who were to go and to observe these court proceedings, what they would immediately find is that what was set up for Christ was not a court of law, but a kangaroo court.

Not a hearing, but a witch hunt. It was a farce. The whole account is filled with irregularities that stand in stark contrast to the normal judicial procedures in ancient Israel. I like what one commentator has pointed out, and I'll borrow a little bit from what he did.

But he said, according to the Mishnah, it took a group of 23 members of the Sanhedrin to gather collectively and to judge capital cases. Before any reason for convictions were given, the Sanhedrin had to first be told all of the possible reasons for acquittal.

So all of the reasons for the individual's innocence. In this way, the person was presumed innocent until being proved guilty. In order for a guilty verdict to be delivered, this would require a second sitting on the following day by the Sanhedrin to allow all the evidence to be weighed fairly and objectively.

Both sittings in this trial were to take place during the day and not on the eve of a Sabbath or the eve of a festival. Before any testimony was given, the witnesses were cautioned on not including rumors or hearsay.

From passages like Numbers 35 or Deuteronomy 17, there was the conviction that there had to be the evidence of at least two or three witnesses who all agreed. And even in the case of blasphemy, a charge could only be sustained if the accused person cursed God's name in particular, specifically.

And even then, the punishment that was prescribed was death by stoning and the corpse was to be hung on a tree. According to the customary practice of law in that first century of Israel, they were not to meet in the home, the private residence of the high priest Caiaphas, but in what was called the Chamber of Hewn Stone, which was located north of the temple sanctuary adjacent to the court of Israel, where the public could observe the proceedings.

That was to be a fair trial in the nation of Israel with countless checks and balance dictated by not only the word of God, but the oral tradition of God known as the Mishnah. But here we find Christ in this particular scene, tried nefariously under the cover of night, on the eve of a festival, not publicly in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, but in the private villa of the high priest, presumed guilty before a disorganized mob of accusers with no real witnesses, let alone witnesses who could agree on even a single detail.

In reality, no trial, no charge, no evidence. In verse 64, the only thing that does follow the law is the death sentence. One brother writes about this. He says nearly every detail of Jesus' trial violates the rules for capital cases prescribed in the Mishnah, and in all of Scripture for that matter.

But in the midst of all of this, Christ, we're told, was almost completely silent. We see this, and it fulfills perfectly passages like Isaiah 53 in verse 7, where it says, He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is before its shears, is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

And so Christ went through this kangaroo court with false charges and false witnesses, and every law under the sun broken. And he was silent until the high priest invoked the testimony, his testimony, in the name of God.

If we were to go to Matthew chapter 26 and verse 63, we'd find there the priest himself actually said, I adjure you by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, if you are the Son of God. And it was only then that Jesus acknowledged, Under oath before God, what Mark has been trying to point out for the whole of his gospel.

If we remember all the way back to Mark chapter 1 and verse 1, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Here Christ answered the high priest, quoting from Psalm 110 in Daniel chapter 7, it said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.

In the whole of this trial, before this kangaroo court, the only true statement that was ever made was the statement that Christ made about himself. And this was why Christ was condemned to death. Not because he was a blasphemer, but because he was the only Son of God, begotten, not created, equal with the Father.

God, a very God. See with me for a second in verse 62, and Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven. Christ not only agrees that he is the Son of God, but here Christ shows that he is the great I am.

He is himself God in human flesh. And after Christ was condemned to death, in this whole scene, friends, look at how they treated Christ. In verse 66, and some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to strike him, saying,.

Prophesy.

And the guards received him with blows. They spit in his face. Mark and other gospel writers say that they blindfolded him and struck him. They jeered at him, prophesy. They mocked and taunted the sinless Lamb of God who came to take the sin of the world.

But cruelty,.

Cruelty that fulfills Isaiah 50 verse 6, where it says, I gave my back to those who strike, my cheeks to those who pull out the beard. I did not hide my face from disgrace and spitting. Now what does it mean, besides being a disgusting act, to spit in Christ's face?

Children, what do you think it might mean that the people, as they condemned Christ, spat in his face? Not sure? It was the act, the grossest and the strongest act of hatred toward an individual. It was to render that person ceremonially unclean, to ritually defile them.

It was to spit in their faces. Deuteronomy 25 tells us of one of the accounts or one of the situations where it was suitable to spit in someone's face. It was, if you can remember back to this type of scenario, when a man would die and would leave his widow without any children.

And his brother was to come and to redeem his brother, to redeem his brother's wife and to care for her and to give his brother children on his behalf. And if that man refused to give the widow children and his brother children on his behalf, then they were to take the man out into the gate before the elders.

They were to remove his sandal and they were to spit in his face. A man who refused to redeem his family. And such was the treatment given to the Redeemer of Israel and the Redeemer of the whole Gentile world.

H. A. Ironside has a piercing commentary on this that I want to share. He says, the betrayal, the mock trial, in condemnation to death of our blessed Lord, formed together the most colossal miscarriage of justice in all of human history.

It was the most awful drama of the ages. What ensued was a shameful scene that would have disgraced any court, even if the prisoner were so guilty. Some spat on his sacred countenance. Others blindfolded him and they slapped him insultingly.

They cried derisively,.

Prophesy,.

Asking that he name those who so mistreated him. But no word came from his holy lips. Brothers and sisters, this was the trial. This was the law court that was afforded our Lord Jesus Christ. A court that was filled to the brim with false testimony.

A force, sorry,.

A court that was filled with nothing but malice and the presumption of guilt for the preservation of the power of the religious elite in Israel. Dear friends, this is what our race did to the perfect, glorious, and exalted Son of God.

See what our ancestors did to the creator of worlds who came to his own and his own did not receive him. I was thinking about it this week. Our culture, our world treats wild animals with greater compassion, with rabid beasts, with greater care than this.

As the song goes, the song that we love to sing, Oh the wonder of this awesome scene as our Savior bleeds. Come stand in awe of what Christ endured on our behalf at the hands of wicked men. A quick point of application.

If you're a believer, sorry, an unbeliever here today, you don't believe in Christ. You don't claim to believe in Christ. Perhaps children, you've never thought in your mind to believe in Christ. You might look down at this trial.

I think we would all look at this trial and say, what a travesty. And you might look at this trial and say, what a hasty and unfair and unjust trial. And you're right. But if you're an unbeliever in this room, you have treated Christ this way your whole life.

You have been believing and advancing false testimony concerning Christ your whole life. You've never stopped to see who he truly is. But like these men, you are hard-hearted and have been blindfolded from birth to the glories of Christ.

Now, some people might argue, well, certainly we aren't born that way. We don't have that disposition. That is not who I am. I thought this week as I was thinking about this world's disdain for Christ, something that just happened recently.

If you've ever been to my house, I know PJ was at our home not too long ago, especially during the summertime. Our home is like a community center on the block. There's just children in and out of our house only continuously.

And it's a great blessing. I love it. I would never drive them away. I want them to come, keep coming. But oftentimes what happens is the children come at dinnertime or after dinnertime. And so when they come at dinnertime or after dinnertime, they come and will stay for family worship.

PJ was there one evening when we had one of the neighborhood children over for family worship. And they will come and they will sit and listen. And I'm so grateful that many of them listen very carefully and they nod their heads and they probably think that we're a very strange family.

But just recently, one little lady, a little lady who's not yet old enough to have grown a filter, as we were doing family worship, she said what probably most unbelievers think but never really say out loud.

As I was talking about God and the gospel and the Bible and the way that God deals with his people, this little girl said, would you stop already? You're wasting our time. We had a movie night planned afterwards and I was standing in the way of that particular movie night.

But such is the heart of unbelievers toward Christ that he is a waste of their time. He is a waste of their time to look at and to consider his glory and to consider his beauty and to consider his sacrifice.

And so they slough him off, they put him off and put him away. And if you're an unbeliever, such is your attitude toward Christ. But I want you to see with me for a moment who this Jesus Christ is. He went to that high priest's compound.

That high priest's compound that you can touch today with your own hands. And he endured all of this suffering, all of these trials that he might reconcile sinners like you to himself. But as we see from Christ's words, it is a limited time offer.

He says, you will see the Son of Man. It reads almost like a threat to this court at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. One brother writes, here Jesus stands on trial before the Sanhedrin, but the Sanhedrin will stand trial before the Son of Man when he returns in glory.

The Sanhedrin made a charade of Jesus's ability to prophesy, but his prophecies all come true. And so Christ went to that cross to die for sinners. He rose from the dead and he will return. And so if you're not a believer in Christ, my exhortation to you is to repent of your sin and to believe on him.

Peter’s False Witness and the Shame of Silent Discipleship

But it wasn't just the world that bore false witness about Christ. We'll see next in verse 66, it says this. 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 mean. And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed. 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. 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 twice, you will deny me three times. And he broke down and wept. The second reality that we find here is that Christ is not only subject to false witnesses from the world, but false witness from his disciples.

Verse 54 tells us that after Peter had initially fled from Christ at the time of his arrest, he followed him from a distance, even now to the courtyard of the high priest. And we ought to recognize for a second what this is.

We can be very hard on Peter for denying Christ. And certainly what we're going to look at here in a moment is not very favorable toward him. But see with me for a second how much we have in common with Peter.

Peter might not have lived up to his big promises that he made to Christ. But we can see here that he certainly aspired to be loyal to Christ. Apart from John, who we read about in John 18, who let Peter in through his connections with the high priest into the courtyard.

Apart from John in John 18, we read of no other disciple who followed Christ into that courtyard. But here we see Peter in this courtyard, what would have been a rectangular court in the center of this compound that belonged to the high priest with the internal walls forming the walls of the particular court.

And here is Peter stood by the fire warming himself. If you were in Israel in May or April, it would be cold by three in the morning. This is likely around that time. And so here Peter stands around the fire waiting, watching, observing.

In verse 66 and 67, we see the first major interaction with Peter. We're told that a servant girl recognized Peter as one who was with the Nazarene, Jesus. If we look carefully at the language, it would seem that this servant girl was not an adult, but a young girl, a little slave girl, a little maid that would serve the high priest.

And at the end of verse 67, she accuses Peter of being with, she says, the Nazarene. Now this wasn't just a reference to Christ's hometown. It wasn't just like saying, oh, he's an Edmontonian. It would be somewhat like saying, maybe if you are big into local sports, he's a Calgarian.

He was a Nazarene. It was used to express contempt for the small town that was Christ's place where he grew up. It implies that Christ was not only a no one, but a no one from nowhere. Now, one might expect that Peter would be able to withstand this confrontation from this little girl.

But in verse 68, what we find is that Peter withdrew under the pressure, and he responded by saying two things. He said, he denied by saying, I neither know, which conveys that any theoretical knowledge of Christ that he knew, no theoretical knowledge of Christ.

And he said, I neither know nor understand. And that word conveys a practical knowledge of Christ. And so instead of dying for Christ, as Peter promised that he would, here Peter denounces Christ theoretically and practically.

And it amounts to a total and absolute denial of Jesus. Now, after trying to get away and moving near the gateway, after the crow of the first rooster, he's forced again, we see in verse 69, to deny the accusations of a slave girl one more time.

And in verse 70, Peter is accused again of being a disciple, this time of being a Galilean. And just as Christ was called a Nazarene, almost in a pejorative sense. Here, Peter is called a Galilean as a term of ridicule.

The Judeans thought of the Galileans as those who were unrefined, who were unsophisticated. They were uneducated. They were not special at all, except being especially ordinary, especially unnoteworthy.

And here what we see in verse 71 is that Peter, in his third opportunity, invokes a curse upon himself. In verse 71, he says, he invoked a curse on himself and began to swear, I do not know this man of whom you speak.

That word in the Greek is anathematizing. We recognize that. When we say that someone is anathema, it means they are accursed. It's what we read in Galatians chapter 1, in verse 9, where it says, whoever preaches a gospel contrary to the one that you have received, let him be accursed.

Peter takes this upon himself and says, let me be accursed. I do not know the man. And in his shame, at the end of verse 71, see this with me, he says, I do not know this man of whom you speak. He is beyond, at this point, even speaking the name of Christ.

Not only does he bear false witness, but he doesn't even acknowledge Christ anymore with his name. And the scriptures say that the second rooster crowed. Luke 22, 61 says that Christ looked at Peter at that moment.

And when Peter broke down, it says he broke down and wept. Matthew 26 says that he wept bitterly, in bitter agony. Brothers and sisters, not only did Christ's enemies bear false witness and forsake him, but his disciples bore false witness and forsook him.

And we see why Peter did this. He rejected Christ for the sake of his own life. He rejected Christ because he was not honored by the culture. The culture was hostile to him. He rejected Christ because of what Christ said in the garden, because he did not pray.

He rejected Christ even as so many Christians today reject Christ. Now, some people may say, Shane, you're going a bit far at this point. But I lean on the words of one apologist. The cultural Christianity that surrounds us is almost completely ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Almost completely. And we see this. Again, to quote this apologist that I referenced just a moment ago, who points out that the vast majority of Christians today would rather get on an airplane, pay their full fare, and fly halfway around the world to build an orphanage, to dig a well, to build a church or a school, than they would be to simply walk across the road and to tell their neighbor, you are a sinner in need of grace.

But the best news in all the world is that Christ died for sinners like you. And you can believe on him and be saved and have eternal life forever. But many Christians do not do that. You would rather fly around the world and build a well than to tell the person closest to us that there is a Christ who died for sinners like them.

But it's not just cultural Christianity. It's not just Christianity at large. But brethren, we must admit that we are far more like Peter than we care to admit. Who among us, apart from the sustaining grace of God, could stand in that cruel courtyard of injustice, with that murderous trial that was happening behind those closed doors, with the guards standing around us at the fire and align ourselves publicly with Christ?

Who among us, apart from the grace of God, we may not commit false witness like Peter did, but we must confess before God to our shame that we are often silent witnesses. And we're not even silent witnesses in the face of death.

Not even the face of an antagonistic slave girl who might pass it along to the authorities. But we're silent in the faces of our closest friends, of our nearest family members, of our chums at work, the friendly and welcoming people around us.