Impressive Promises
Mark 14:27-31
Even if all fall away,
I will not. Even if I have to die with
You, I will
never disown You!
-what in the world is Peter thinking?
--first of all, contradicting the clear, prophetic word of Jesus
--and then making impressive promises he would not keep
We usually attribute Peter’s rash response to his impulsiveness
-after all, he’s always eager to speak his mind without using his mind
--“Hey, Jesus, let me walk on the water with You!”
--“Jesus, it’s really cool that You chose me to be with You and
Moses and Elijah on top of this mountain. In fact, let’s just set
up some tents and hang out together for a while.”
--“Jesus, You just hush all this “crucifixion” talk. I’ll personally make
sure that no such nonsense ever happens to You. You can
depend on me. I got Your back.”
Mixed in with Peter’s impulsive, and outspoken personality, is a rather
unhealthy dose of macho bravado
-you can sense it almost every time Peter opens his mouth
--later in his life, after the Holy Spirit focuses Peter’s passion on
missions and evangelism, Peter proves to be a fantastic leader
-but in the meantime...Peter has some tough, tough lessons to learn
And probably more than we realize, Peter (along with Jesus’ help, of
course) is going to take us to school about some convicting things
-I believe there is more going on here than Peter simply making
some radical promises to be faithful to his Lord
--Peter is actually attempting to stake his claim on his salvation
by working so hard to impress Jesus with his devotion
---“Jesus, forget about You for just a moment, and look at me.
Listen to my vows. And You gotta’ tell me that I’ve finally
done enough to make You love me.”
--we heard it
earlier in Mark 10:28 when Peter
declares à We
have left everything to follow You!
---it’s tempting to think, “C'mon, Peter,
stop your whining!”
----but the reality is, Peter was pretty much right on target
---Read Mark 1:16-17
Before we criticize Peter too much, we must remember that he
actually did leave just about everything to
follow Jesus
-his wife and family...his home
-his family business...his
financial security
-his friends
-his plans for the future
-the comfort of everything that
is familiar and safe
So with his personal sacrifices for Jesus in the back of his mind,
Peter promises to be faithful to the bitter end
-I don’t think these are empty promises, either
--although Peter doesn’t fully understand the depth of his
commitment, he is sincere...he does intend to keep his word
-but the motivation and logic behind his vows may be lacking
Think about it for a moment
-Peter is vowing to be the only faithful follower and even to die with
Jesus—but remember, Peter, at his core, doesn’t really believe this
whole crucifixion thing is ever going to happen
--he’s been rejecting that idea since he first heard Jesus mention it
-it’s pretty easy to make extraordinary promises if we’re sure we’ll
never have to keep them
--it would be like me promising to shave my head if the Royals win
the World
Series this year
Another tactic is to put spiritual-sounding conditions on our vows
-“I’ll become a
missionary to the
-“I’ll share the gospel if God opens a door.”
-“I’ll give up anything God asks me to surrender.”
-“I’ll go anywhere God leads me to serve Him.”
-“I’ll lay down my life for God if the situation ever warrants.”
--granted, many promises like those are made with the best
intentions by genuine believers, but do you hear the problem
underlying all of them?
--it’s easy to make promises that sound so incredibly impressive,
but to word them in a way so no one could ever challenge you
---if asked, you could piously reply à
----God
never called me to the
----God simply never opened the door
----Surprisingly, God never asked me to give up anything
----God just never led me to go anywhere
----I was ready, but the situation never called for martyrdom
---and who’s to argue with that?
--but the truth is..
---your phone was off the hook when God called
---you were busy watching TV when God opened the door
---you asserted your God-given right to happiness whenever He
spoke of surrender
---God was leading you to go, but you were asleep on the sofa
---you never allowed yourself to get remotely close to any
situation in which you might be called upon to lay down your
life for Him
-sadly, many (if not most) of us have been there—I sure have
--all you have to do is walk an aisle, get all emotional and teary-
eyed at camp, go
to Promise Keepers or Women of Faith...but
---as the saying goes, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”
----making a public rededication of your life to Christ is all
well and good, but don’t expect that alone to impress God
-----He is looking for the fruit, or the long-term, on-going
results of such promises
Read Matthew 7:15-23
What about you?
-is your relationship with God based on mere words...words that
might impress people, but words that do not and cannot fool God?
But I’m convinced there’s more to Peter’s pledge of allegiance
-listen to how Lloyd Ogilvie, the former Chaplain of the United
States’ Senate
expresses it à Peter had built his whole
relationship with Jesus Christ on his
assumed capacity to be
adequate.
-let that sink in à [He]
had built his whole relationship with Jesus
Christ on his assumed capacity to be
adequate.
That’s it, isn’t it?
-that’s me, too, sometimes...and that’s possibly you
--we build the foundation of our relationship with Christ on the
assumption that we somehow have the ability to save ourselves,
to justify ourselves, to make ourselves acceptable in God’s sight
-and all we have to do is continue to try a little harder...resolve to
make fewer mistakes...and we believe we will have earned His
temporary approval and His conditional love
Like a lot of us tend to do, Peter figures his natural ability to remain
faithful and loyal and strong is what attracted Jesus to him in the first
place...and Jesus saved him because Peter was such a great catch
-but the logic follows, then, that Peter must continue to produce
those saintly qualities in order to keep Jesus loving him and in
order to keep himself saved
Probably that’s because too often our experience with people has
taught us that love is simply a commodity to be exchanged
-you give love to get something
-or you must give something to get love
--sadly, that false notion about love is often the only “love” many
people ever know
And so we tend to come to God with that same mentality
-God may love me if I am good, if I work hard, and if I don’t mess up
too badly
--and so we live in hopes that He might love us
--rather than living with the certainty He already loves us
What about you—which of those two describe how you are living?
You want to hear some truly impressive promises...ones that will be
kept? Just listen...
*His divine power has given
us everything we need for life and
godliness through our knowledge of Him who
called us by His own
glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very
great and precious promises... [1 Peter 1:3-4a]
*Everyone who calls on the
name of the Lord will be saved.
[Romans 10:13]
*...there will be more
rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who
repents than over ninety-nine righteous
persons who do not need
to repent. [Luke 15:7b]
*My sheep listen to My voice;
I know them, and they follow Me. I
give them eternal life, and they shall
never perish; no one can
snatch them out of My hand. [John 10:27-28]
*As for you, you were dead in
your transgressions and sins...like the
rest, we were by nature objects of
wrath. Because of His great
love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ
even when we were dead in transgressions—it
is by grace you
have been saved. [Ephesians 2:1a, 3b-5]
*Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. [Hebrews 13:5b]
*...neither
death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the
present nor the future, nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation will be
able to separate us from the
love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. [Romans 8:38-39]
Do you get the idea that God is not impressed with our promises
-His love for us is based on His character, not ours
-nothing we do can
change His passionate, pursuing love for us
Brennan Manning often retells the story of his visit with an Amish
family consisting of a widower and his four adult children
-there, on a pig
farm in
--here’s Brennan’s account of what happened
“Jonas Zook is an 82-year-old
widower...[His] oldest, Barbara, 57, manages the household. The three younger children, Rachel, 53;
little Elam—about four feet tall, heavy-set, thickly bearded, and wearing the black Amish outfit with the circular hat—was coming out of the barn some 50 yards away, pitchfork in hand. He had never laid eyes on me in his life; yet when he saw me step out of the car, this little [guy with Down Syndrome] dropped the pitchfork and ran lickety-split in my direction. Two feet away, he flung himself at me, wrapped his arms around my neck, his legs around my waist, and kissed me on the lips with fierce intensity for a full thirty seconds...Then he jumped down, wrapped both his hands around my right arm, and led me on a tour of the farm.
“...later,
“
“And there
[I] was, dazed, dumbstruck, weeping, and suddenly seized by the power of a great affection. In his utter simplicity little Elam Zook was the
image of Jesus Christ. Because at that
moment his love for me did not stem from any attractiveness or lovability of
mine. It was not conditioned by any
response on my part.
“...I had read...that the Iroquois Indians attributed divinity to retarded children, gave them an honored place in the tribe, and treated them as gods. [Elam Zook was] a transparent window into the...heart of Jesus Christ who loves us as we are and not as we should be, in the state of grace or disgrace, beyond caution, regret, or breaking point.”
It took quite a bit for Peter to drop the pretending and to forget all the
promises to do better next time (that he’d end up breaking anyway)
-and just a few hours after his promises were made, Peter did deny
knowing Jesus (just like Jesus said)
--then when Jesus was nailed to the cross, Peter wasn’t hanging
on the cross beside Him as he’d sworn he’d be...in fact, Peter
was nowhere to be found that next morning...even three days
later, when word of the Resurrection reached the house where
he was staying, Peter was still hiding upstairs in a locked room
--and Peter became a broken man...his pride shattered, his self-
confidence destroyed, his impressive promises exposed for what
they truly were
You see, it takes being broken to receive grace...it takes being
broken even to believe that grace is more than a theory or a dream
-when you are broken—when your strength, your best intentions,
your self-righteousness are all crushed—and you confess you can
no longer depend on any good in you...when you finally let go of
all that junk, and trust instead on the Christ of the Cross, it’s then
you are free to be showered with God’s amazing grace
--nothing else can save us...nothing else can cleanse us from our
sin...nothing else can give us life
---grace...accept no substitutes