Will You Lay Down Your Life? - [John 13:36-38]

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Let's open our Bibles to John chapter 13. As many of you know, we just did come back from the
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United Kingdom. We had a wonderful time. It was a real blessing. You know, it's just amazing, though, how time went so fast, and yet it seems like we were gone for so long.
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I don't know if that makes sense. I mean, it seemed like it was a whirlwind, but then we come back and it seems like, man, like six years or something like that.
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I don't know. Maybe it's just because I feel like part of my body is still over the Atlantic Ocean somewhere.
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I'm not really sure. But we had the opportunity to go to Stratford -upon -Avon, which all of you know is the birthplace of Shakespeare.
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You actually know that? Okay, good. Good. Yeah, we actually got to go right in the room where he was delivered, and they had a video recreate.
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No, they didn't do that. But one of Shakespeare's famous lines, and it's so famous I have to read it.
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No, no, it's because I was trying to get the characters right. I know it's from Hamlet, and it's
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Polonius. I mean, I'm the real Shakespeare expert. Polonius to his son,
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Laertes, there we go. And he says what? I guess it's not that famous.
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He said, this above all else, to thine own self be true.
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Now, when we hear that today, what do we think? First thing I think is what? You know, this is like the
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Oprahfication of theology, right? You have to be true to yourself. I guess that's not actually what it would have meant to the original audience, which is good to know, you know, that they didn't see it that way.
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The original audience would have heard it as, like, do the right thing. But again, when we hear that, what do we think?
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We think, you know, trust yourself, believe in yourself, have self -confidence, listen to your heart, trust your gut.
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I was just talking to a man the other day, nobody here at the church, one of my internet friends, who wanted some advice.
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Because his wife recently told him, now she's a professing Christian, and she says,
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I think it's the right thing for me to divorce you, and here's why. Because when
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I married you, I didn't really have a peace from God.
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Therefore, God now wants me to divorce you. And I listen to that, and I'm like, this is what happens when we have an exceptionally, what, low view of scripture and what it says, and a real high view of self.
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Of what we feel, of what we believe, of what seems right to us.
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You know, this was God telling her something, this was, you know, the little G on her shoulder,
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God, telling her what she wanted to hear. But giving so -called personal revelations, our gut feelings, our emotions, more weight than scripture, what is that?
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Well, it's foolishness, good answer. But I think even, and it's sin, excellent answer.
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But if we're going to put a name to that, I'm going to call that pride.
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We exalt our own opinions over scripture. And what is, you know, in Psalm 138, what does he say?
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He puts his name and his word on the same level God does, right? And we're going to say, well, that's all well and good,
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God. But my feelings, my opinions, what
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I think is right, my gut is more important than what scripture says. And we're going to see a really kind of, we're going to see an example of that, in a sense, you know, just too much pride and not enough reliance upon the
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Holy Spirit. Let's just put it that way. And this is going to come, you know, really from the number one disciple, the man who's going to become the leader of the early church,
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Simon Peter. Let's go ahead and go to our text, John chapter 13, verses 31 to 38.
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And before, when I went through this passage, I just emphasized the new commandments that we love one another.
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And so I'm going to read this whole passage, and we're going to focus on a different element of it this morning. John chapter 13, verses 31 to 38.
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And this initial he here is Judas Iscariot. When he,
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Judas, had gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
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If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.
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Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the
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Jews, so now I will say, I will also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come.
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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
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You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
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Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him, where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.
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Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now?
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I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me?
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Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.
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Well, we're in the so -called upper room discourse, and the clock is ticking.
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The clock is ticking hours until the crucifixion. The weight, not only of what lies in front of Jesus, but the pressure now to just kind of give his disciples that last little boost, that last little bit of encouragement, that last little bit of teaching before he's crucified.
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John wrote this gospel to show that Jesus is the Christ, and that eternal life is available only through him.
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We're going to see that this morning. In this section, again, as I said, that Jesus has just dismissed
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Judas Iscariot. He's identified him as the traitor, and he told him, you know, one of my favorite quotes to just apply in any kind of situation you'd like to the kids when they were little.
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You know, what you do, do quickly. Like if they're taking out the trash, or, you know, we have to pause the movie for a bathroom break, what you do, do quickly, whatever it is.
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So wrong. I mean, that is like, but Jesus says to Judas Iscariot, he says, what you are going to do, do quickly.
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And if you recall, what he's really saying is, you're really not going fast enough.
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You need to betray me faster. You need to get this on the divine timetable. This isn't, we're just not going fast enough here.
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And notice in verse 31 that really the whole goal of Judas, the divine goal of Judas betraying
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Jesus was to bring glory to God. When he had gone out, Jesus said, now, now that Judas is on his way, now that this whole thing is about to take place, is the son of man glorified and God is glorified in him.
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If God is glorified in him, God will glorify him in himself and glorify him at once.
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In other words, this was the moment. This was the moment that the whole divine plan is about to reach its crescendo in the cross.
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The work the father had sent the son to do was about to be completed. He was about to save those he was sent to rescue.
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He was about to lay down his life for the sheep. And this brings glory to the father, son, and spirit.
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And Jesus then gives a new commandment, namely to love one another, fellow believers.
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This isn't about loving your neighbor. This goes beyond that.
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It's a new commandment taken to a new level that all people will know that we believers are his disciples.
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What? By the way we love one another. I think I said when I preached through this that we ought to like, that should be our flag, our sign, our motto, that we're just known as a place where we love one another.
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And we are to love one another as Christ loves us. And that's a very, very high standard.
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And this morning as we go back into this text, I've got three truisms for you, three true statements that are going to get the heart of this conversation.
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I mean, these are things that I, I mean, I almost feel like sometimes I I'll say to people, I'll say, you know what?
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If I was your dad, this is what I'd tell you. And I think I do that because that's sometimes what Michael said to me. If I was your dad, this is what
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I'd tell you. So I do it with other people. It's a truism.
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It is true. And it's based on this text. So anyway, I just kind of framed it this way.
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So truism number one, and these are applicable to us, but they also reflect what is happening with Peter.
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Truism number one, sometimes questions are best not asked, right?
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You ask a question, you probably shouldn't have asked it, or you don't really like the answer, you're not going to like the answer when you hear it.
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Verse 36, Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Now, if you think about it,
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Jesus just gave this new commandment. He just set the bar super high. Now, if you're sitting there and you're the disciples, and, you know,
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Jesus is really kind of pouring himself out to you, really teaching you, and he says, here's the new commandment, here's the new standard, here's what
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I want you to do, then it would be logical for you to say, I have a question. What's new about this, or how is this going to flesh itself out, or, you know, in what way should we implement this?
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That's not Peter. Peter's like, wait a minute, wait, back up. Forget all that stuff about new commandment.
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What's this about you going somewhere? Where are you going? He's missing the big picture, and he's going to focus in on something that really, for lack of a better term,
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I guess we could just say it's sort of beyond his need to know. He's going to get an answer, but, now, it's probably reading a little bit too much into the text to look at verse 36, the beginning of it, where it's
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Simon Peter, and just think that John is kind of calling him out like, you know, not too many people do this.
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They'll call you by your first name and your middle name. Only your mom probably does that, and when that happens, what?
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You know, some of the sweetest words in our house were when I would hear, Roger Thomas Cooley, that was my brother, because I knew
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I was safe, right? He was in trouble. And here, Simon Peter, John kind of calls him by that.
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It makes you think, well, he's about to get it. He's about to land in it.
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This isn't going to be good. But Peter's question is based on back in verse 33.
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We read through it a little while ago. Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the
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Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. And he said there that he said it to the
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Jews, and that was in John 8, 21. This is kind of a little mini -review, and it's going to be mini.
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But as you recall, he's talking to the Jews up on the Temple Mount. And in 8, 21, he said to them, so he said to them again,
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I'm going away, and you will seek me. But listen, he said, and you will die in your sin.
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Where I am going, you cannot come. So when he's talking to the masses, he says to them, you will die in your sin.
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Where I'm going, you cannot come. Well, he's eventually going to heaven, and they will not be joining him there.
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It's different for the disciples. They're going to miss him. They're not going to be able to follow right after him, but they're going to be with him again one day.
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And in verse 33, he's, Jesus is again, we have to consider, I think too often we minimize the humanity of Jesus.
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The, if I could say it this way, the normality of Jesus. We think Jesus, God.
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Well, that's a good way to think about him, right? Because he is God. But we also, we sometimes kind of gloss over Jesus, the man.
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Jesus, the man who experiences emotions in everything that we do. And here he is with his best friends that he spent all this time with for the last few hours on earth, and he's saying to them these things, and he comes to them, and he says, where I'm going, you cannot come.
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He's trying to comfort them. He wants them to know it's going to be okay, but he's like, you know, you guys need to steel yourselves.
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You need to put a little, you know, brace in your backbone, because it's going to get tough. He's going to the father.
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When he is crucified, they're going to continue his work, but without him physically being there.
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In just a few hours, he's going to be arrested. He's going to be tried in mock trials, and then he's going to be executed.
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After his resurrection, he's going to spend a little time with them, a little while with them, 40 days with them, but he doesn't have long with them.
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But again, Peter doesn't even let that teaching on love or anything to kind of sink in. He just wants to know where Jesus is going.
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He wants to go with him, and the very idea that he's not going to be able to go with him is unacceptable, unsatisfactory, and the answer that Jesus gives him is not what he expects.
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Verse 36, Jesus answered him, where I am going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.
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Jesus narrows the focus. This is singular. Instead of you, plural, he's talking to Peter, and he says, be patient.
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You will follow in my footsteps, but not right now. The bad news for Peter, what he doesn't know is he's going to follow in Jesus' footsteps and he's going to go to heaven, but he's also going to suffer.
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He's also going to be crucified. In fact, tradition tells us Peter was crucified upside down.
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Many of the disciples were put to death in ghastly ways. Several of them crucified.
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Peter doesn't know that Jesus is speaking of his own death. If he did understand, if he understood, if Peter understood that Jesus was saying,
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Peter, you're going to, I'm going to be crucified and you're going to be crucified too, that might be the end of the conversation because Peter might just think, okay, let me just process that, but that's not the end of it.
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Peter asks a question that he probably isn't ready for. Well, he's not ready for the answer to.
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He's not spiritually ready for it and that will become obvious. Truism number two. Sometimes the tongue, sometimes our mouths, write checks that we can't cash.
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We overpromise and underdeliver, I think is the business phrase for it. It's clear that Peter does not understand the scope of Jesus' words.
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Look at verse 37. Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? One commentator calls this perhaps, in other words,
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I think I can. Why can't I just go with you right now? One commentator says that perhaps this is the best illustration found anywhere in scripture of the problem of the unknown self.
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So what's the unknown self? I'll put it another way. In Harry Callahan language, for those of you who have no idea who that is, that's fine.
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Good for you. I'll put it this way. A man's got to know what?
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His limitations. Peter doesn't know his limitations. He's grossly overestimated his spiritual strength.
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He thinks he can go into the spiritual gymnasium, as it were, and bench press 425. He doesn't have a clue what reality is.
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But notice he is devoted. He calls Jesus Lord. He's also impetuous.
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The word that he uses for now has a greater sense of urgency than the word that Jesus used.
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He wants to go right this second. He wants to, wherever Jesus is going, let's go and let's get it over with and I'm going with you.
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Even worse than his impetuousness is his self -confidence. Again, look at verse 37. I will lay down my life for you.
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I thought, that's why I just focused on that. I mean, is that braggadocio?
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I mean, is that just, that is the height of, I can do this. I'm going to look at a few parallel passages to just kind of let us see just how full of himself
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Peter was. Matthew 26. Matthew 26, verses 30 to 35.
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I took one section out of each of the Gospels to just kind of help us see what
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Peter's attitude was here. And this is, again, same time frame.
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This is the Last Supper, the Upper Room Discourse. And so we get some additional information from Matthew here.
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He says, And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. So they leave Jerusalem, they go up the
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Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, You will all fall away because of me this night.
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For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.
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But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. Peter answered him,
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Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.
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I want to say that again. I will never fall away. Verse 34,
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Jesus said to him, Truly, I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
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Peter said to him, Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.
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And all the disciples said the same. Peter boasts that he's the most loyal, right?
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Everybody else might fail. I won't. Everybody else might blow it.
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They might abandon you. They might betray you, but I won't. I will never fail.
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Others may flee your cause, Lord, but I never will. Even if it's just you and me, even if this is like the...
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I mean, this is out of time, but the first thing I thought of was, this is like him bragging, we can hold the
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Alamo, just me and you. There's nothing that's going to stop me from being with you right to the end,
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Lord. Even after Jesus says that to him, even after he tells him, you're going to deny me three times.
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Nope, not me. Let's turn to Mark chapter 14.
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Mark chapter 14 verses 26 to 31.
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Again, very similar. Just a few tweaks in the language.
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Mark 14, 26 to 31. And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, you will all fall away for it is written,
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I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. But after I am raised up,
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I will go before you to Galilee. Peter said to him, even though they all fall away,
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I will not. And Jesus said to him, truly, I tell you, this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.
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And listen to verse 31. But he said emphatically, if I must die with you,
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I will not deny you. And they all said the same. That word, emphatically.
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It's as if he's just, he just keeps on saying it. And in fact, it's like, he's grabbing, it's almost like he's grabbing
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Jesus, interrupting him. He's like, you don't get it. I'm not going to fail. Listen, I'm not going to fail.
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And over and over and over, it gets to the point of, the way the word works itself out, really kind of rudeness.
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It's obnoxious. It's outside of normal conversational etiquette.
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It's as if he's saying, you know, I am, I possess, you know, kind of a, such strength that nothing in the natural or the supernatural realms are going to move me.
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In this passage here, it was, it's like, Peter takes Jesus' words as if the disciples are going to stop believing if Jesus is killed.
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When the scattering, it means that they're going to stop believing. He just doesn't get it.
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He thinks he's the only one who's going to maintain the faith. And then the rest of them all fall in line.
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They repeatedly, they're all now, after they're following his lead, they're all just saying, we're not going to fail.
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We're not going to fail. We're not going to fail. Let's go to Luke 22.
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Luke 22 verses 31 to 34. Jesus says,
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Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.
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But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.
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Peter said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.
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Jesus said, I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day until you deny me or deny three times that you know me.
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Did Peter's faith fail? Jesus prayed that his faith would not fail.
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And my argument is, no, his faith didn't fail. He still believed, but his faithfulness sure failed.
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He wasn't faithful. I don't want to spoil the punchline, but Jesus is going to, or Peter's going to do exactly what
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Jesus said he was going to do. He's going to fail. We'll see that a few weeks down the road.
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It's the only time in the Gospels where Jesus just kind of refers to him plainly, singularly as Peter.
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Maybe it's with the sorrow of just knowing that Peter doesn't have the strength that is implied in the word rock, which is what his name means.
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But again, Peter boasts of his steadfastness. He's with Jesus no matter what. On pain of death, imprisonment, whatever it takes, he's there.
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As I was contemplating this, I just thought, these are the very kind of attitudes that people carry into a lot of spiritual situations, right?
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Well, I can go into that situation because others might stumble, but I won't.
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I can go into that place. I can go see that movie. I can be with that person because I know me and I won't fail.
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Scripture says, therefore, let anyone who takes or who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.
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We ought to think less of ourselves than we do. We ought to be afraid of ourselves.
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Peter didn't have that appropriate fear. He lived daily.
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I mean, we can go on and on about the disciples and about how they lived with them and everything, but what did they want to argue about?
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About who was the greatest or who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom? They didn't get it.
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They didn't see themselves as prone to wander. They weren't writing these hymns and thinking about the greatness of Christ.
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I'm also mindful of Jeremiah 17 .9. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.
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Who can understand it? That's a rhetorical question. No one can. But if you rely on your heart, if you rely on your feelings, you're going to wind up saying dopey things just like Peter does here.
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The disciples would eventually be spiritual giants. Peter would eventually be a spiritual giant, but he wasn't on this day.
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He believed his own press releases. He had confidence in himself.
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Truism number one was sometimes questions are best not asked. Truism number two, sometimes the tongue writes checks you cannot cash.
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He really thought he was going to be able to do these things. And in just a few hours, it wasn't like it took weeks for him to break down.
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It's just a few hours. Truism number three, sometimes the truth cuts you down to size.
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Sometimes the truth cuts you down to size. Look at verse 38. Jesus answered,
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Will you lay down your life for me? Peter just said that, right? He just said, I will lay down my life for you.
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So why does Jesus come right back with the question? Because he doesn't believe it.
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He knows better. Jesus knows it's not true.
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In fact, he knows that just the opposite is true, that Jesus is going to lay down his life for Peter.
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Jesus is going to lay down his life for Peter who is one of the sheep, right? He's the good shepherd.
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Jesus knows what Peter's going to do better than Peter knows what
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Peter's going to do. Again in verse 38, Truly, truly,
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I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. This should be very familiar to you by now.
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This is amen, amen, right, in the Greek. Verily, verily, in the
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King James, which I think Paul wrote in, but I digress. Jesus wants us to understand.
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These are very familiar words and they introduce a truth which is just absolutely reliable and Jesus is stressing the truthfulness of the statement by saying amen, amen, truly, truly, verily, verily.
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And then he prophesies about Peter's failure. When you see that the crow will not, or the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times, this isn't about, you know, by four o 'clock in the morning or whatever.
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Now there's a range of times. This isn't about being a specific time.
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This is just saying that sometime before the sun comes up, maybe even as early as 3 a .m.
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So it could be just as little as like maybe four or five hours. And when
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Peter heard this, he would have known that Jesus was talking about just a few hours.
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Now again, just put yourself in the sandals of Jesus for a moment, which is lofty, but just think about it.
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You think he enjoys this? Absolutely not. Again, this is one of his dear friends.
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I don't think he, you know, I don't think he had a moment of joy out of sending
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Judas out there. I think that made him sad. I think, you know, in his humanity, he hoped that Judas would repent, even though in his deity he knew he wouldn't.
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But here, this is painful. But it was more painful, or it will be more painful, when that rooster crows.
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I wonder if you ever had that experience where the rooster crows, and you realize that you just epically failed.
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I'm going to go to one more passage here, and it's in the Old Testament. One that I like to allude to, and I'm going to go to it right now.
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2 Samuel, Chapter 12. Because if you've never experienced this in your life,
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I don't know why. 2
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Samuel, Chapter 12. David has committed adultery with Bathsheba.
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He has conspired to have Uriah the Hittite die,
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Bathsheba's husband, and nobody knows.
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Nobody knows. It's the perfect crime. David is the pinnacle of everything that it means to be an
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Israelite. He's the king, and he's also their spiritual leader. And we come to 2
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Samuel, Chapter 12, verses 1 -9. And Yahweh sent
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Nathan the prophet to David. He came to him and said to him,
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There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.
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And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.
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It's like our dogs today, just like a little puppy in the house. Verse 4,
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Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guests who had come to him.
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But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. He took that which was precious.
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Verse 5, Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, As the
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Lord lives, as Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
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Nathan said to David, You are the man.
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And that's what I mean when I say kind of a you are the man moment. It's when like, have you ever experienced this where it seems like all the lights kind of fade, all the noise fades away.
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You can't see anybody else in the world, and it's like all the spotlight is just on you. And you recognize that you are alone with God.
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You are guilty and condemned before him. That was David's plight there.
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I'm not going to read the rest of this. And I think it was David, or it was Peter. When that cock crows, those words of Jesus echoing in his head, all the noise, all the people, all the tumult of the night,
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Jesus being arrested, all these things that have happened, all fade away. And now it's just Peter with this massive weight of guilt and betrayal and recognition that his pride and his boasting and his self -confidence had led to this very moment of emptiness and of guilt and of a feeling of complete worthlessness.
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Knowing that Jesus, that he said he loved, that he said he would follow to death and to the grave and whatever it took.
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He said, I don't even know him. Denied him three times. Peter had great confidence in his strength.
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He was greatly wrong. Now it's easy to kind of pile on Peter and say, what an idiot.
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How could he do that? But I think this was a transforming moment for Peter.
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And I'll tell you, some people say, I really love the Apostle Paul and I love the Apostle Paul. That's not a problem.
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But I love Peter. And I love Peter because I see in him me, like I never see me being the leader of the church or anything like that.
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Don't get me wrong. But I see his epic failures and I'm like, I could do that.
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I've done that. That's me. I overload all the time.
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I think I'm better than I am. I think most of us do that.
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Most of us have let ourselves get into a situation that we thought we could handle and then we find out we can't.
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And then that spotlight comes on us. That guilt comes on us. That sense that it's just us and God and we're condemned before him.
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But that's not the good news, is it? The good news isn't failure.
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The good news isn't we're condemned before God. The good news is that Jesus Christ died for sinners.
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Just like Peter. Just like me and just like you. Checked it before we started.
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That Thursday night on the
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Mount of Olives, Peter was filled with false self -confidence.
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But by the morning, he was spiritually crushed. And only a man who had experienced that could write this by the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit. 1 Peter 5, verses 6 -11. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time...
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Listen to that. At the proper time. Just think about this passage in light of what Peter experienced this night.
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How he was impetuous and wanted to do things now. But just listen. So that at the proper time, he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
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Be sober -minded. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
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Remember how Jesus said he wants to sift you like wheat. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
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And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, listen to this, will himself restore you from that feeling of condemnation, from that feeling of worthlessness, from that guilt.
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Confirm, strengthen, and establish you from the absolute depths of where Peter was that night to be able to write this, to be able to preach as he did, to be able to lead the church.
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To just finish that passage, he says, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
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To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
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Peter's faithfulness failed. His boasting was empty.
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Your faithfulness fails. You don't get to heaven on the basis of your faithfulness.
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You get to heaven on the faithfulness of Christ Jesus who perfectly kept the law, who never did anything wrong, did everything right, went to the cross an innocent man, wrongly convicted, died a death in the place of sinners and was raised on the third day and now lives to intercede on behalf of all the saints.
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Will you lay down your life for Jesus? We want to.
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The good news is he laid down his life for you. Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, it is amazing to see someone like Peter so confident, so much like we're told we should be, to see him laid low because he failed to lean on you.
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He failed to trust in you. He failed to even heed your warning.
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But Father, what an encouragement to know you didn't leave him in the dust and you won't leave us in the dust.
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Father, for anyone here who doesn't know you today, would you draw them to yourself?
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Apart from you, apart from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope.
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There is no excuse. There is no plea. But in Christ, there is absolute confidence that we will spend eternity with him.