John 18:12-27 Yet I Am Not Alone January 4, 2015

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1 Transcription of 15ID1562 John 18:12-27 Yet I Am Not Alone January 4, 2015 Let s open our Bibles again to John s gospel, chapter 18:12, as we continue with our Lord and especially as we head, now, to the cross. Last week we were with Jesus and the boys in the Garden of Gethsemane, where we know that the Lord labored for hours in prayer. Father, if there is any other way that man can be saved, that sins can be forgiven, that man can be restored to You, then let this cup pass from Me. But not My will. Yours be done. And while sweating great drops of blood under that kind of pressure, the inner circle of the disciples slept - Peter and James and John. And they were suddenly awakened by the Lord where Judas had come with almost a thousand, maybe, men to arrest the Lord, to arrest these men. And we finished last week as Peter made a heroic but foolish attempt to wield a sword against these men in defense of Jesus; this after the Lord had simply spoken a word and knocked a thousand of them on their backsides so that He might get them to be freed. But Peter wanted to show the Lord what he could do, and he was told to put away the sword. In fact the Lord said, The cup that I ve been given by My Father, shouldn t I drink it? Isn t this why I have come? We are told in verse 12, Then the detachment of troops and the captains and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound Him. But we know that Jesus went willingly, don t we, with these men. The first time they had asked for Him by name, He had said His name, and they had all fallen down. So ropes couldn t hold Him, swords couldn t grab Him, manpower couldn t contain Him, but His love for you did. And so what man couldn t do, God was willing to do in His desire to save. Over the next few weeks, we are going to see (not totally in John) Jesus will face six different trials between here and the morning hours. By 9:00 a.m., He ll be crucified. But there will be six trials three of them before religious leaders. They ll take Him to Annas first. He wasn t the high priest but used to be. To his son-in-law, Caiaphas, who was the high priest. And then sometime right before dawn, the entire Sanhedrin will gather together at the palace of Caiaphas to try to formalize some charges that they might get to take to Rome and somehow get them to participate in having this Jesus put to death. They will then take Him to Pilate who will, in trying to escape the responsibility of letting Him go because he 1

2 says a half a dozen times, He s innocent, send Him to Herod when he hears He s from Galilee. To whom Jesus will have very little to say. And then Herod will send Him back to Pilate who will then declare Him not only innocent, but, Here, you take Him and kill Him. I m not going to be a part of it. And yet he certainly was. So, three before the religious leaders, three of them before the Romans all in one night. And we re not going to cover all of them because John doesn t. If you want to do that, we wrote a book a few years ago called The Jesus Chronicles, which goes in depth by putting all four of the gospels together in some chronological order. John will give us, this morning, the first trial. He will, in verse 24, reference the second trial. You can find the other detail in the other gospels. Yet everything that the first three trials do the Jewish trials was illegal. Now, you can really say that of Rome because they really didn t have any rules. They just did what they wanted. But the Mishnah, which is the recording of Jewish law, said that no trial for a Jew could be held at night; this one was held at night. That they could have no trials at all during the religious feast days; and this was the Passover. That all trials had to be public; this one was private. That the high priest was not allowed to participate in the trial, whatsoever; he took an active part here. That the accused could not be asked to testify against himself; we have a fifth amendment here. Witnesses had to be brought in to make a case, and if there was a death penalty case, it had to be 24 hours before that death sentence was carried out so if someone had some second thoughts, they could pursue them. None of that took place in these trials. Everything was absolutely, like I said, illegal. Every rule was broken. But the Lord was in charge, right? He s the One who went where Judas could find Him. He s the One who knocked them all down and said, I ll go with you, but you let these go. Everything about these few chapters that we re going to look at, especially chapters 18 and 19, is orchestrated by the Lord. So on the one hand, you feel like gosh, so unfair, so out of control. No so. But from a purely physical standpoint, these trials were as wicked as they could be. This morning we want to look at the first trial of Jesus and Peter standing down below in the courtyard. There are a couple important lessons that I would hope that you ll go home with this morning. The most obvious one is that Jesus is forsaken by all, and yet He is not alone. He has said, back in chapter 16:32, Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. And that s an important lesson to learn because sometimes you feel like 2

3 you re all alone. But don t believe it. If Jesus has your life, He s not going to forsake you. The other lesson is Peter, who is found in all four of the gospels so that we might learn, I guess, not to fall or not to make promises we can t keep. But also, more importantly, if you do fall, that God s grace will sustain you and restore you because even in your worst of rebellion or your unwillingness to stand up for the Lord, He will stay with you. You won t be left alone either. So, you can learn that Jesus is the example of how we can make it through the worst of times. And Peter is a pretty good example of when we make those worst of times by our own behavior that God says, You re not alone, and I m going to restore. I m going to help. So we ve entitled these verses this morning, Yet I Am Not Alone. Verse 13, And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year. Now it was Caiaphas who advised the Jews that it was expedient that one man should die for the people. Now what Jesus had been saying for the last year now begins to come to pass. He s in the enemy s hands. He s heading for a trial that has nothing to do with honesty or justice. It is a farce. The judgment has been cast already. It is an outward show. And yet, the Lord, like I said, was in charge of it all from, Judas, go do what you do quickly, to waiting in the Garden of Gethsemane, to the arrest and all. Understand, though, that these religious authorities in Jerusalem had been planning this for a long time. Jesus had irritated them. He had exposed them for being religious phonies. Oh, they looked good on the outward, but they were very self-centered, and they had wicked hearts. They despised the very people they served. And as His popularity grew, their desire to kill Him grew as well. You might remember, back in chapter 12, when Lazarus was raised from the dead, it was the religious leaders who went, Now we ve got to kill him, too. Because of him many are coming to the Lord (verses 10-11). And, in verse 19 of chapter 12, it even shows these religious leaders meeting together and saying, Look, all of our efforts have come to nothing. The whole world has gone after Him. So this was something that had been in their hearts for quite some time. But the Lord is in charge. He ll die on the Passover, when He decides, because that s been the picture and the portrait that comes from the Old Testament. So the Lord s in charge. Always remember that when you read the passion of the Lord. He s in charge every step of the way. Annas was not the high priest. His son-in-law, Caiaphas, was. But both of those guys Annas and Caiaphas, as you read through the gospels, are two of the most wicked men upon whose shoulders all that transpires falls. They re the driving force. They cared nothing about God at all. Just about themselves. Annas was the 3

4 high priest from 5 A.D. through 15 A.D., according to history. But he was the power broker in Jerusalem even now, and he made his living and his money running the concessions at the Temple. Now we ve run into that a couple of times. When you were to bring a lamb without spot or blemish for the Passover, his guys would find fault with your lamb. He would have a lamb for you that was ordained by the high priest, had the stamp of approval, but it would cost you three times as much money. So you brought your lamb, you ve done what the Lord said, you wanted to approach God, and these guys were standing there with their hands out, Well, in order to worship God, it s going to cost you something. The same thing was true with the money you brought, Oh, is that Roman money? Yeah, we don t deal with that here. But for a profit, we ll change it into Temple money that s holy with God. And so these guys worked everything with exorbitant prices and healthy mark-ups, and the sheep and the goats and the priest. This was an industry that made Annas and his people rich. But the fallout was people turned away from wanting to serve God or worship God. It was horrible to have to come here. The law said you had to, but lying in wait were these guys with the dark coats and the hats and the shades, with their hands out, ready to just take advantage of you. So nobody really wanted to come worship the Lord. They were driven away by the greed of these men. They were hindered in their worship, and they became barriers to really knowing the Lord and His mercy. When Rome got sick and tired of Annas, and they didn t like him very well history tells us, he worked with five sons and a son-in-law to maintain his power base. Now, according to the Old Testament, when you were a high priest, you were a high priest for life unless the Lord removed you for some sin or whatnot. But that isn t the way it was working these days because no one cared about what God had to say. And so there was this regular rollover, and it was the Romans who had actually taken Caiaphas and said, We like him. So Caiaphas is a puppet in government. Annas is the power broker behind the scenes. So when they take Jesus anywhere, they ve got to go first to the guy who has the last word. He s not official, if you will, but he s in charge. Now you might remember that Jesus had lots of run-ins with this guy. In fact, both at the beginning and at the end of His ministry twice Jesus went into the Temple and absolutely turned over tables and took out a whip and scattered the animals, and the money went flying in all directions as He cleansed the Temple. He hit Annas in the pocketbook. He destroyed his power base, if you will, and He yelled out, This is My Father s house. You have made it a den of thieves (Matthew 21:13) or a house of merchandise (John 2:16). So Annas didn t think 4

5 much of Jesus, and Jesus, to be honest with you, didn t think much of Annas in the way that he was living his life. But if you ever want to be in ministry, be sure that you consider what Jesus did in cleansing the Temple before you begin to develop practices of raising support that don t just support the work that you re doing but really turn people away from the God that you re seeking to serve. He s more than able to pay His bills, so don t make Him out to be some begging God who always needs people s money. But that s what Annas did. And he hated Jesus. He defied Him. And Jesus called him out on his practice. So, to Annas first. Then to Caiaphas, who lived in the same palace, just separated by a courtyard. They lived in two sides of the same palace. They were family. In fact, Matthew 26 and Luke 22 would suggest that. And notice that John reminds us, here in verse 14, that this fellow, Caiaphas, who was sitting in the office of the high priest, had earlier (in John 11:50) proclaimed, Maybe it s better if one dies than we all die. And John had written it down and said, because he was in the office of high priest, not even chosen but just the office that God anointed. He spoke about the death of Jesus for the sake of all. He had prophesied, though he didn t know it, of Jesus death that He should already die. So it might look like it s all out of control, but remember the Lord had already said that He would die. He d even said it through the fellow who wanted Him dead, through Caiaphas, back in chapter 11. So that s where He went first. And I guess the obvious lesson is religion will always hate Jesus. Religion hates Jesus. I don t care what people call me, but I m most insulted when they call me a religious person. Oh you re so religious. No. I m not. Religion is all about systems, right? Christianity is all about a relationship with God. I had a religion for years, and when I met the Lord, that religion went away, and a personal relationship with God began. It made all the difference in the world. Religion is all about outward things, right? You ve heard it said of old times, You shall not do this, and you shall not do that, but let Me just say to you, if it s in your heart you re a sinner. So religion is outward. Jesus is all about the inward. Religion is all about the don t do this, don t do that. Being a Christian is all about what are you going to do now that you know the Lord. It s all about the positive. The old religion, I never drink or chew or go with girls that do. The Christian is, Hey, what are you going to do to serve the Lord? How are you serving Him? So this is the religious clash, if you will, with a God - who wants a relationship with man who came to save us. 5

6 Well we leave Jesus standing there for a few minutes. And the way that John interweaves Peter and the trial of Jesus, I think, is designed, very much, to say one is for the other. Right? The Lord is on trial because we re sinful. The Lord is taking the brunt of it because we ve fallen. And wrapped around Peter is the trial of Jesus and the deliverance that He will bring him. So you leave Jesus standing before Caiaphas, and John said, in verse 15, And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in. So from upstairs, where Jesus is standing before Annas, to the courtyard below, where the Jewish police and officers began to gather the ones who had gone out on this mission to arrest the Lord. We know from the Bible that most of the other apostles had fled. Most of them had fled. But Peter, Matthew tells us, followed at a great distance away, and then eventually John let him in to see and to sit, and Peter says that he followed afar off to see what would happen. That s what Matthew 26:58 tells us. Now, we don t know how John knew the high priest. We know this is John because this is the way he always refers to himself in his gospel the other disciple. You ll see it in chapter 20 again in verses 3 and 4. How he knew him, we don t know. Maybe the high priest liked the fish that were imported from Galilee. John was a big shot fisherman. Maybe there was a relative or a descendant of John, somebody he knew. We do know John had a house there in Jerusalem. That s where Peter and Mary, Jesus mother, would stay during these three days of grieving. Peter wasn t allowed in the gate. John had to come and go, Hey, he s with me. And he got in. So, let me just say this about that. Peter should never have come here. The Lord said, Take off, man. Arrest Me. You go. And they didn t go. They went to see what was going on. Why was Peter there? I don t know. Maybe he was hurt because Jesus told him to put away the sword when he tried to defend Him with his own life. Maybe Peter was interested in defending his promises that even if everyone fled, he wouldn t. Nine were gone. Judas had betrayed Him. John was inside, somewhere with Him. And Peter was standing afar off. That s what we read. Here we read that Peter stood at the door waiting and had to be let in. One of the lessons you learn from Peter quickly and early is that if you re going to follow the Lord afar off, you re not going to do very well. The Lord had said, Don t come here, just get you off the hook. Peter went, No, I ll just go with You. I ve got better ideas. And then he follows afar off. Luke mentions it, Matthew as well. They use that very term, afar off. And I think that, so often, there are lots of people that want to follow the Lord but not too 6

7 closely. They want to know stuff, but they don t want to be involved. They want to fill their heads, but they don t want to fill their lives, and so they live a great distance from Jesus in practice, or at arm s-length from Him constantly. And yet, though they won t identify with Him, they know all about Him. That s kind of Peter, there. He s way too far to be able to stand. Verse 17 tells us that the servant girl, the one who had let him in the gate, the one who sat at a locked gate, I guess, said to Peter, You re not also one of this Man s disciples, are you? He said, I m not. Now remember, this is the middle of the night, and everybody s been awakened, and there s a trial going on. It was a big deal. If you combine all of the accounts of Peter s denials, you find that this question was probably asked of Peter after he came in and settled down by the fire and was getting warm on a cold night. The New King James translation, actually, is better than the King James here because the way that the question is asked, it s posed in Greek to get an expected negative answer. You re not one of those, are you? Or, You re not one of them, are you? It s a real contemptuous kind of question. And Peter, the man of promise, the one who said, Even if they all stumble, I won t. I m ready to go with You to prison, Lord, and to die. I m ready to go with You. I ll lay down my life for You. That man is questioned by this woman, and she asked it in a negative way. And from all that we understand, it was an easy out for Peter. But when you follow at a distance, you really don t have much strength to stand. You re not one of them, are you? And Peter went, Oh, no. It s pretty easy. Nope. I m not. Verse 18 tells us that the servants and officers who had made a fire of coals stood there, for it was cold, and they warmed themselves. And Peter stood with them and warmed himself. Now, from all that we can gather, the Roman soldiers went back to the fortress, the Antonia Fortress. They had come along for the help. What was left was a much more dangerous group, at least to Peter. These were the guys that worked for the high priest. These were the servants and the soldiers of the high priest, and it was Peter, notice, outside standing with them to warm himself there. The only one in this whole story that you ll read of standing with them, as far as these soldiers, is in verse 5 - it was Judas standing with them as they arrested Jesus, there in the Garden. So this is not a good place for Peter to stand, is it? He s following afar off. He s hanging out with the guys that are really antagonistic and hateful towards the Lord. He s trying to find some kind of warmth at the world s fire. He s trying to be anonymous, trying to fit in, trying to escape notice. That s really not a good way for a believer to live in the world. But 7

8 that s the way he s forced to live because he didn t belong here, and he shouldn t have been here. So learn from Peter that the world s fires will always lead you to compromise. What do you think that these soldiers are talking about around the fire? Well that was an interesting evening. How did you feel when you got knocked down? I felt like somebody picked me up. I don t know. Well, we won in the end. He s locked up now. We did our job. Victory in the end. High five. And then Peter (whistling sound) trying to fit in. So we leave Peter standing with the world, warming himself at the world s fire. And John turns, again, upstairs. Verse 19, The high priest then asked Jesus (and we suspect that Caiaphas is here at this meeting, though it is not in his area of the home, if you will, but it is high priest, and he was the high priest) about His disciples and His doctrine. Tell me the names of Your disciples, and what are You spewing around town? Jesus doesn t answer the question about the boys. He is still protecting them. But when it comes to His doctrine, here s His answer. I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the Temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing like you guys. I m always out in the open. So, if you want to know what I ve taught, why are you asking Me? Ask the witnesses. Ask those who heard Me what I said. They know what I said. And I want you to notice that Jesus reminds both Annas and Caiaphas of how illegal this is because the way you begin any trial is you ve got to get witnesses in, not talk to the one you re accusing of something. And so Jesus said, I don t have any hidden agenda. Where are the witnesses? They can tell you what I taught on Thursday morning and Tuesday afternoon and what I spoke about last week. And the guy that was standing next to Him, one of the officers of the high priest, immediately got the implication. This is all wrong. And he turns, and he takes a swipe at Jesus and slaps Him across the face and questions whether He feels like He should be talking to the high priest that way. And Jesus answer is pretty straightforward. If I ve said the wrong thing here, then tell Me what that is. But if I m not lying here, and what I m asking is correct, why did you hit Me? Pretty straightforward, right? Well we are not told anything else that took place at that trial, other than Annas then sent Him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest, who was also there. But now they moved the venue across the way, if you will, to the other side of the courtyard to Caiaphas house. John will not report on those trials. Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22 do. So you ll have the information there. 8

9 Now, over the next several hours, many prophecies of the Bible take place. The cruel, sadistic treatment of Jesus that reveals the hearts of these men they will blindfold Him and strike Him in the face when He can t see it coming and say, Prophesy to us who hit You. Who do you think? And blasphemy. And all of the suffering that the Psalms talk about, Isaiah speaks about, are all found in these chapters, in these verses. Jesus was beaten. Can you imagine being beaten with a blindfold on? God makes you amazingly if there s something that comes flying at your head, if you just barely see it coming, your eyes will close, your head will duck, you ve got great reflexes. You know? The Lord makes you with those given abilities to protect yourself. But what if you don t see it coming? You can t close your eyes, you can t roll with the punch. You just kind of get hit like a quarterback that s blindsided. He doesn t see it coming, and he s just laid out. It can do great damage. Isaiah writes in chapter 52:10 that His visage was marred more than any man. So I suspect a lot of that began here with these guys who, in their hatred for the Lord, just struck out against His Person. The high priest and the council would eventually meet together in the morning and decide that what they would charge Him with was blasphemy. Now that works fine on a religious calendar, but the Romans could have cared less because everyone had a god. So when they came in, and they said to Pilate, He claims to be God, that s not enough. He also claims to be King. That s what they wanted to use. That s what they hoped that the Roman political machine would grab ahold of because if you threaten Rome s power, then you re done. So to them, it was His claim to be God. What they hoped to use was that He also claimed to be a King. They brought many false witnesses in to talk about Jesus. They decided not to use any of them. None of them. Because I think the holes in the Swiss cheese, you know? None of this would hold up. They just decided that they would try to say, Hey, He said He s God, and He said He s the King. He refuses to pay taxes, and He s a seditionist. He s a problem for the state, for the government, if you will. Well, we ll set the hearing before Pilate off till next time. John, again, does not cover the second or the third trials before the religious leaders. But we do read this in verse 25, Now Simon Peter stood and warmed himself back downstairs. Therefore they said to him, You are not also one of His disciples, are you? He denied it and said, I am not! Now, Mark tells us, and Luke as well, it would appear that Peter got away with it for a while. Standing in the same place, still kind of trying to fit in, he is approached by several groups at once. In fact, the maiden who opened the door, according to Mark, came up to him and asked him 9

10 again. Luke tells us she was accompanied by a masculine they. So she brought some guys with her. She came again, You re not one of those? But now she s got witnesses, and John simply just says the word they here. Therefore they said to him. That s explained as being the maiden and some others, there in Mark 14 and Luke 22. And Peter said, I m not! And his second denial is recorded as being very emphatic. The first one might have been just slip it off because you re not one of them. No, no. I m not. But now it s more accusatory. And it s interesting that when sin begins in your life, the second time you sin is always easier than the first, isn t it? The first time s hard. You re battling with your flesh. I want to do the right thing. But if you lose that battle, if you don t go back and repent and be restored, the first fall takes out some of your defenses, and now you re much less able, the second time around, to resist. You almost see that with Peter. He should be out of here, but he s running down this slope of sin that kind of erodes the steps underneath him. I always think about Lot. Lot had such a great opportunity to walk with God, but his heart wasn t there. And when they went out into the wilderness and into the land, and then, when they saw the land, it was Lot who faced the land of Sodom. It s beautiful, it s green, it s lush. It s Sodom. It s the place of wickedness. But, I ll stay way out here, and he kind of moved in that direction. Then he lived facing it, and then a whole period of time passes, and then we catch up with Lot, and now he s living in it. And he s lost his family, for the most part; and those he has, he just kind of has to drag around to walk with God. And he ends up in this very sterile life that you really don t know what kind of fruit Lot left behind. It s kind of like that with sexual promiscuity in young people. We do a lot of pre-marital counseling. We talk to kids about staying pure until you get married. But it s interesting. If you ve decided that you don t do that, the first time s hard. And the next time seems to be much easier. Well, we ve already kind of fallen. Oh well kind of thing, right? In fact, Matthew records this second denial of Peter, in Matthew 26:72, He accompanied the no with an oath or with a swear. I swear to God I don t know. May God strike me dead! I don t know Him! It becomes worse and almost less able to resist. We are told in verse 26, One of the servants of the high priest, (now this guy s got to have it out for him, doesn t he?) a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said, Did I not see you in the garden with Him? Peter then denied again; and immediately a rooster crowed. Luke tells us that an hour passed between denial #2 and denial #3. Peter went like this, Huh. All right, I m okay now. Things are settling down. Everybody s eating their Smores. But the news was spreading, and there was a lot of talk around him. And the third challenge appears to have been 10

11 certainly the most serious because now a fellow that, Luke writes (Luke 22:59), confidently affirmed, saying, Surely this fellow also was with Him, for he is a Galilean. Your accent gives you away. And accusations begin to fly, and more people begin to crowd in, and there s that mob mentality, that stirring, and Peter looks like he s in a lot of danger. And Matthew 26:74 records that he began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the Man! at the top of his lungs, with great willingness to deny Him. Now, poor Peter. I know we love to hammer on Peter. But no matter how strong you think you are or how committed you feel you are to the Lord, there s going to come a time when your strength is not going to sustain you. You re going to need His help. Peter needed to learn that. He will learn that. But right now Peter s a pretty self-reliant guy. He s here only because he said, I d never leave You, Lord! But look what he s doing. And rather than leaning upon the Lord, who is his resource, he tries to do it on his own. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). Go back and look at Peter s life. He sleeps when he should have been praying. He doesn t listen to the Lord s warning, he just shoots off his mouth. He follows from afar. He stands to find comfort and heat at the world s fires. He ignores, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1). He gets in there in every way that he can, and then he stumbles, and then he falls. The pressure to be like the crowd, to fit in, the difficulty to confess your love for the Lord when your presence there is a denial in itself You don t belong here, these are not your people. Your people are running for the hills right now. So the rooster crows as the curses fly. Pretty heavy, right? What a picture! But it s not the end of the story. There will be a death and a resurrection, and fortunately for you and me, there s a John 21. Because the whole chapter is dedicated to seeing this man restored after this. We see Peter go off the boards here, off the skids. He goes out. And Jesus said to him, I ve prayed for you, else I don t think he might have survived it. Luke tells us that, as the rooster began to crow, and Peter began to swear, the Lord turned and looked from above to Peter. And he remembered the words of the Lord that said to him, Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times, and Peter went out and wept uncontrollably (Luke 22:61-62). The word bitterly is literally without control. He was beside himself. I can only imagine what he saw in Jesus eyes because Jesus has been beaten by now, and He is in no shape to come down. If Peter was hoping the Lord was coming to rescue him, from a physical standpoint, that wasn t going to happen. What did he see in Jesus eyes? Anger? No. Or, I told you so? No. I m sure that His eyes said, Peter, I knew this was going to happen. I love you 11

12 anyway. And Peter went out, and he wept bitterly. And I truly believe that he was sustained only because of the love of God, the eyes of Jesus, and the prayers for him. Three days from now, Peter would get some good news because the declaration of the resurrection was not, Hey, tell everybody I m alive, it was, Tell everyone I m alive, and be sure you tell Peter because Peter s not alone. Peter thought he had left the Lord, and he felt completely isolated in his sin. But he s not alone. He will stand up, in chapter 4 of Acts, in this very same place, before these very same people, and be asked about Jesus, and this time he would talk to them about who He was. When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). And this man that was healed at the Gate, the Beautiful Gate, standing with them. And Peter preaches to these guys in the exact same place he fell. Pretty powerful. So, hey, look. God s not finished with Peter. And whenever I read this, I always think sometimes you feel like you ve let God down, you haven t fulfilled what you ve promised to do. And you feel kind of isolated. Jesus was left by everyone, and yet He said, I m not alone. My Father s with Me. And Peter goes, I m done! But he s not done. Just look to Jesus. See His wonderful face. And you can be forgiven. You can be restored. This is a new year. Three times, he denied Him. Three times, Peter assured Jesus he wouldn t let Him down. Three times, according to Mark, he fell asleep in the Garden. If this were baseball but it s not. In John 21, Jesus will say to Peter, three times, Do you love Me? so that for every failure, he would find life. So Peter is at the fire, he s under fire, he ll soon be on fire. But he ll have to find God s grace. So beautiful picture of two men standing One for the other. Both of them seem abandoned by all, under fire. Jesus knew He wasn t alone: His passion for our failures, His death for our wickedness. The good news is you don t have to wait three days to find that out. You can find out even this morning. I don t know where you re at today, but if you re far away from God, the trip back is real short. It s all about repentance and surrender. We ll pick it up next week. Submitted by Maureen Dickson January 5,