Peter

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are coming towards the end of this series in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, as you recall, is a story with so many one-on-one dialogues that Jesus has with different individuals all the way through. It's just fascinating how he does this and how the Gospel records these. Most of these dialogues, from Nicodemus to the woman at the well, to Nathaniel, to Philip, we haven't even covered all of them that we could have. Mary and Martha at the grave of Lazarus. They're all often questions about identity. Who am I? What am I about? Whose am I? Am I my ethnicity? Am I my failures? Am I my background? Am I what other people say of me? Am I my work? My job? You name it. Identity is a huge issue. Today, we're with Peter. After the resurrection. And his question, he's struggling with, I believe, is who am I? Am I my failures? Am I my contradictions? I said one thing and I did another. Am I good for anything anymore? I don't know if you've ever felt that way. Something happened, something you did, something you said, and you wonder, am I good for anything? Or is this stuck with me forever? Just a couple weeks before we get into the text itself, let's get a little backdrop to the story. Two to three weeks prior to this encounter that Peter has with Jesus by a fire at the Sea of Galilee for breakfast, Jesus spoke to his disciples the night that he would be betrayed and told them he was going to be betrayed, that he was going to be handed over, that he was going to be tried, convicted, crucified, but he would rise again. And Peter is the one who objects to the whole idea of any of this and cries out, no, no, no, I will never forsake you. I will never leave you. And they may all, he kind of turns on the rest of the disciples, they may all forsake you, but I will not. And then, as you might know, and all four Gospels actually record this event, Peter ends up denying Jesus that night three times. He first of all runs away in the garden, like everyone else, but when he comes back to the trial to kind of be outside of the courtyard to see what's going on, he's starting to warm himself by a fire, and there's a young slave girl about probably age 10 or 12. She has no status, she has no position, she has nothing, but she recognizes and wonders, hey, are you, you're from Galilee, right? Are you one of his disciples? And Peter denies three times. He's so contradicted by himself. So the question is, why is this such a bad thing, right? Why is this so incredibly grievous that Peter would deny Jesus? Okay? And I think there are a few reasons for that. First of all, Peter was not just one of the 12, he was one of three. James and John often went alone with Jesus to do different things. And of those three, Peter is the one whom Jesus calls out and calls the rock, and here he crumbles, right? Right before everything. On top of that, he seems so out of touch with himself that he would have such bravado, that he would have such moral superiority over all the rest, that he would be so blatantly straightforward and zealous and say, I will never, I would rather die before any of this happens. And then he does exactly the opposite of what he said. Now, if it was just once, you know, you probably said things once, and oops, that was kind of a slip, right? Okay, I'll give you that. I hope you give me that too, right? You know, slip of the tongue, or it's out of character, or maybe I was hangry, you know, hungry and therefore got a little, and then tense. That happens to me, by the way. But Peter didn't do it just once. He didn't do it just twice. He did it three times over the course of a few hours. So he had time to even reflect on it in between, right? And here's the deal too. It's really interesting. Richard Baucom, notice he's a New Testament scholar from, I think, Great Britain, and he said that when Peter denied Jesus, it's mentioned in all the Gospels, but in the Gospel of Mark, which we do believe is the one that has Peter as kind of a testimony behind the whole Gospel, that Mark, the evangelist, had Peter with him as he wrote this Gospel. And it's in the Gospel of Mark, it becomes very blunt, where it says in Mark 14, 17, that Peter, he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, I don't know this man you're talking about. Now, the Greek word for that, curses, is anathematizing, and it really means to say, to condemn someone, to curse, or to damn someone, or to say to hell with. I know, I'm glad the kids are gone, right? And so the question is, it just says he curses, quote, someone, right? So the question is who? And Richard Bauckham says, I don't think it was Peter that he was condemning himself. You know, because that really wouldn't prove anything, by the way, you know. Hey, may I be damned if I, you know, I'm not telling the truth. You know, that might be a, I think you're pro...