...HOW CAN WE AVOID THE SAME FATE?
Peter is the perfect example of someone who, in my
opinion, was in need of a good God spanking. Peter needed a trip to the woodshed
where God could give him a good whoopin’. After all, Peter lived day and night
with Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He listened to all Jesus taught and
saw miracles every day. Peter also knew scripture and knew Jesus was the
fulfillment of ancient prophecy. He knew Jesus intimately and declared his love
for Him, even vowing to serve Him all his life. How could he just abandon Jesus
like that?
It only took a little peer pressure for Peter to fail,
and fail big. He denied he was a disciple, denied he even knew Jesus and then
started cursing to make his point appear more valid. And this was not just a
momentary lapse. In Luke, the Bible says over and hour went by between the times
when he was questioned. So, Peter had an hour to stew, think about what he said
and decide if it came up again how he would answer, if he would stand for Jesus.
When the question did come again, Peter denied Jesus even more violently.
When morning came and that famous rooster crowed, the
full understanding of what he did hit Peter. His remorse and regret consumed him
and he left the crowd and “wept bitterly.” The most painful failures of our
lives are the ones where we can only blame ourselves and Peter was looking in
the mirror. Peter had betrayed someone he really did love and by his denial,
made himself part of the mob that were torturing for sport and crying out for
blood.
I can not imagine the misery and despair of that moment,
the grief and the loneliness. What would I have done in that
situation?
There is a part of me that would want to crawl under a
rock, even too ashamed to look Jesus in the face again. And I would hope that
rock could hide me from the punishment that certainly must soon follow.
But Peter had the opposite response. When he heard of
the empty the tomb, and the women saying Jesus was alive, he went tearing out of
the house in a foot race with John to the tomb. John won the foot race but,
while John was standing at the entrance looking around, Peter was the one who
blasted past him into the tomb to see for himself.
And after the resurrection, when the disciples were out
fishing and Jesus appeared on the shore, Peter was the one who threw himself,
fully clothed, into the sea in order to reach Jesus faster.
These two Peters, the Peter of denial and the impulsive
can’t-wait-to-get-to-Jesus Peter do not seem to agree with each other. Why, and
how, could he run toward Jesus when he had wronged Him? But because this was the
Peter who lived day and night with Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords,
listened to all Jesus taught and saw miracles every day and learned from Him,
this was the Peter who knew that the Jesus waiting on the shore was not holding
a club to let him have it over the head for denying Him.
When we fall in life, when we fail God and those we
love, when our morning comes and our remorse and regret set in, we are faced
with a choice – we can either find a big rock to crawl under, hoping to avoid
the God spanking we probably deserve, or we can follow Peter and jump in the
ocean to get to Jesus as fast as we can.
The more we learn the lessons of the Great Teacher, the
easier it is to resist that tempting dark place under the rock. When we live
each day with Jesus, listen to what He taught, experience His wonders, we
understand the Jesus who spent His life teaching how to be disciplined, not
dishing out discipline. But whether we spend each moment walking with God, or we
have not talked to Him in years, the only thing we really need to know is what
Peter knew. It wasn’t a wood club and a beating waiting for him on the beach. It
was a warm fire and breakfast.
Jody
Ward
