April 5, 2012
Suddenly,
Jesus' words flashed through Peter's mind: "Before the rooster crows, you will
deny three times that you even know me." And he went away, weeping bitterly.
-- Matthew 26: 75 (NLT)
I sometimes I feel like I am too
hard on poor Peter but he keeps giving me so much material to work with! Continuing
on with the march of Jesus to the cross, we come to Thursday. Thursday was Gethsemane
and for more on that see today's devotional. For this Thought of the Day
however, I am going to look at Peter yet again. I want to discuss remembering
the Words of the Lord. Peter here seems to have unworldly-like poor retention!
Remember that Jesus specifically warned Peter that he would deny even knowing
Him three times before the rooster crowed. It's not like this warning came a month
ago or even the previous day. It was the same day! The prediction of the denial
and the denial itself come from the same chapter! I would like to think if it
was me I would have avoided any possibility of denial or at least not go
anywhere near a rooster!
Yet look at the key verse above -- "suddenly
Jesus' words flashed through Peter's mind-- Really? Suddenly they flashed
through his mind? Just several hours prior he had been specifically warned
about denials! Why wasn't that thought prevalent in his mind already so that
when the temptation to deny him came up, he could fight it off? Why was Peter's
retention so poor? Then God dealt with me and reminded me of all of my
failures, despite knowing the Word. All of my immediate failures after just
having read about what I was tempted with. And then I realized -- I am Peter. We
all are.
What I mean by that is we usually
do not do a good job of truly listening and obeying what God speaks to us.
Peter may have had direct access here but so do we through the Holy Spirit! Do we
turn the volume down on our conviction so that we can feel better about our
sin? Do we excuse it instead of making it obedient to Christ? Are we in a
constant cycle of lament and repent? Let's take some time to examine ourselves
today before the Lord and ask where we are on the Peter-o-meter. Are we the brash Peter who was all talk and
no substance? Are we the Peter here in this verse who is not retaining the
teachings of God or listening to His voice very well? Because Peter eventually would get it right.
He would give the first sermon at Pentecost that saw 3000 saved. He would go on
to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ until he was crucified himself, for what
he believed. Sure the Peter in Acts wasn't
perfect -- none of us ever are. He still was confusing clean versus unclean for
example. But the inconsistencies we see
in the Gospels had been largely corrected.
The way we avoid denying Christ is by remembering what He said. Let us take reading the Word seriously. Let us take seriously also retaining and applying the Word. There may be a sermon out there God wants us to preach. There may be 3000 reasons waiting for us to mature.
