“It’s not what’s happening today that drags a man down.
It’s remorse over what happened yesterday, and dread of tomorrow.” - man to bartender on Perry Mason episode.
Think about that statement for a moment. There is really a lot of truth in it, you know. Man is basically a fighter. A survivor. Some have more fight in them than others, but for the most part the things that are happening to us today meet with as much resistance as we can muster. When we are in the midst of problems we are so busy fighting that there is little time for either positive or negative reflection concerning it.
Another factor is sin. When our crisis situation is based on sin in our lives, we often have allowed the enemy such a grip on our minds that even when we know in our heart that we’re doing wrong, we feel helpless to stop, or even receive the counsel of those around us, because we have relinquished control to him. But what finally ‘breaks us down’, (emotionally), is the inability to forgive ourselves for past wrongs, failures, weaknesses; and anxiety over what tomorrow holds for us.
These feelings are a result of trusting our own strength, having pride in our own standards.
A.W.Tozer wrote a small book entitled, “That Incredible Christian”. If you can find it, I recommend it to you very highly. There is one chapter in that book that by itself is worth the cost of the book. The chapter is called, “The Futility of Regret”.
Listen to a quote from that chapter.
“Regret frets the soul as tension frets the nerves and anxiety the mind. I believe that the chronic unhappiness of most Christians may be attributed to a gnawing uneasiness lest God has not fully forgiven them, or the fear that He expects as the price of His forgiveness some sort of emotional penance which they have not furnished. As our confidence in the goodness of God mounts our anxieties will diminish and our moral happiness rise in inverse proportion.”
We are going to study here, a story of a man who could have allowed his failure to utterly destroy him. A man who went so completely against his own convictions and his own self-image, that he could have slipped into a rut of remorse and despondence that might have brought him to the same end as Judas Iscariot.
(Read Luke 22:31-34, 54-62)
Most of us have, in our past, failures and mistakes that at the time seemed devastating to us. In a way, they may have been devastating. They may have seemed, as a single incident, to turn our lives to an entirely different path than we thought we would take.
We can all remember times in our life, just the memory of which can cause us to cringe inside with embarrassment or shame as we relive the moment in our mind.
But try to put yourself in Peter’s sandals for a moment.
Imagine that you are sitting by a fire warming yourself, as the one you call Lord and Savior is being beaten and spit upon and ridiculed. You are a burley, boisterous fisherman who mends nets with gnarled hands, hauls loads of fish over the side of a boat with powerful shoulders, and guides the vessel through the raging storms of the Sea of Galilee with legs and arms of steel.
As you are there, watching the one you call Teacher being torn and buffeted, a slip of a servant girl suddenly looks you in the eye and says in a bold, clear voice, “this man was with Him too.”
Your stomach seems to do a somersault inside of you. You avert your eyes quickly to the fire at your feet and with quavering voice you say, “Woman, I do not know Him.”
So, for the next few minutes you sit staring into the flame, probably a little less willing now to watch the injustices taking place only yards away. You remember your words of braggadocio only hours before, when you told this Man you would gladly die with Him. Your shame is deepened when you remember how He looked into your eyes, no, into your very soul it seemed, and said that you would deny Him three times before the third watch.
With this agonizing thought, you clench your teeth and determine that you’ll say nothing more to anyone. But just as this resolve passes through your mind, you hear another voice. “You are one of them too!” Your head snaps up to meet the man’s gaze and involuntarily the words fairly hiss out between your teeth. “Man, I am NOT!”
Filled now, with confusion and shame and fear, you move from the warmth of the fire, feeling you’ve betrayed the One you love so dearly, yet unwelcome among those who despise Him. You stand over in a shadowed corner by yourself and begin to wonder if you will be able to face the other disciples when this is over. For some strange reason, you remember the stories of Lot, who sat in the gates of Sodom and felt estranged from Abraham, but vexed by the sin and perversion he saw around him. Just as you begin to consider why that scriptural account should come to you at just this moment, a face appears from nearby and another voice says, “Certainly, this man also was with Him, for he is a Galilean too.”
Your heart leaps within your chest and your hands shake, and you hear strange vile words being spit out at the face. You hear the words, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!” It sounds like your voice, but you can’t believe it could have been you speaking, until, in the clear early morning air, you hear a sound coming to you from somewhere across the courtyard. For that moment, the world is silent but for that single sound. The people at the fire have stopped talking and laughing, the temple guardsmen have ceased their physical abuse of the Master and have grown silent. It is as though the world, for a moment, has stopped turning, and the only thing alive, the only animated creature on God’s earth is that cursed rooster.
A drop of sweat runs down the side of your cheek and onto your neck. Or was it a tear? For the first time in several hours now, you turn to look at Jesus, and what you see breaks your heart. He is sitting on the ground with legs crossed. His garment is torn, and stained with dirt, sweat and blood. His hair is matted and stringy. His jaw looks crooked for some reason. One cheek is swollen in a grotesque manner and the other is slashed and bleeding...and His eyes; oh, God. His eyes are meeting yours with such a mixture of love and sorrow and agony, that they fairly tear your heart from your breast.
You turn and flee from the courtyard in a stumbling run, not knowing where you’re going...just away. FAR away. Finally, your legs turn to rubber and your wind comes in ragged gasps, and you simply drop to the sand and weep until there are no more tears.
You are facing what seems at this moment the worst torture you could endure; that being, the fact that you will have to see another sunrise and walk among men, knowing what you have done this night.
Now, can you think of anything from your past that could have made you feel worse than Peter must have felt?
The next two days must have been gut-wrenching agony for Peter. The Bible doesn’t say where he was. One movie I watched showed him at Calvary during the crucifixion, but somehow I doubt it. I know I couldn’t have been there. The thought of those eyes looking at me once more from a raised cross would have driven me out of my mind. Wherever he was however, we can only imagine the myriad thoughts that must have rifled through a grieving, befuddled mind.
Their last Passover celebration had been a strange one. Jesus had said confusing things about the bread being His body and the cup His blood. He had spoken of a traitor in the midst and Judas had left early. At the time, Peter had thought Judas had an errand to run, since he was the group treasurer. He knew now, of course, that Judas had gone to sell the Master out to the High Priest.
Then later as they sat on the mount, Jesus had turned to him and said, “Simon, Simon...” But why had He used his given name? Early in their relationship Jesus had said He would call Simon, “Peter” - a rock. But He had used the name Simon and told him that Satan had obtained permission to sift him like wheat. Then, He had encouraged Peter by saying He had prayed for him that his faith would not fail. And in almost the same breath, He called him PETER again and admonished him to strengthen his brothers after his ordeal was over.
All of these confusing thoughts compounded by the memory of the scene in the courtyard of the High Priest must have driven Peter to the edge of insanity. It is no wonder, when the word came of the empty tomb that he fairly ran a race with John to get there and see for himself.
But the crucial time was the period in between, and that is what we’re discussing here.
Those are the times that destroy us. The times when we’re looking back to the holocaust of our lives, yet uncertain of the future.
It is in these times that we NEED to exercise faith and in these times that faith seems to elude our grasp.
Much of Christian poetry and many of the encouragement-type books on the shelves today are centered in these times of our lives.
Well, that’s helpful, of course, Many of us have found strength in the popular poem “Footprints”, or Corrie Ten Boom’s book, “He Cares, He Comforts”. And there are thousands of other works designed to get us through troubled times. Then, of course, there are the scriptures to encourage us. David’s Psalms, Paul’s doctrine, accounts of Old Testament saints like Job, Elijah, Daniel, Jeremiah or Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (the furnace brigade).
But in the very worst of times, in the mire of our despondency, even Bessie Ten Boom’s “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still” can sound trite and weak. When under a great weight of guilt or worry it can be difficult to receive encouragement from even our favorite passages of scripture.
Now, I’m not so shallow or insensitive as to think I can give a blanket answer to such a problem as afflicts all of humanity and expect all to say, “of course! Why didn’t we see that? Everything’s all right now!”
But I do have scriptural basis for what I say, and that is enough at least to give me confidence to offer it to you.
It is this. We are a people who by nature dwell in the past or look to the future, with little or no thought for the now; while He is a God of TODAY. He is an eternal being, not hindered in any respect by time.
Let me give you a few scripture references and then I’ll go on.
Malachi 3:6 “For I the Lord, do not change” Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” Hebrews 1:12 “...but Thou art the same, and Thy years will not come to an end.” James 1:17 “...with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow”. Exodus 3:14 “And God said to Moses. ‘I AM WHO I AM’ and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.” John 8:58 “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.” II Peter 3:8 “...with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
In all of these places, I see God referring to Himself in the present tense. He declares not that He CANNOT change, or WILL NOT change, but that He DOES NOT CHANGE; and even refers to Himself as I AM, attributing no past or future to Himself.
God is the God of the ever-present, eternal, NOW. That is to say, the concept of time does not regulate Him in any way, for He created it for we who must be governed by time to lead an ordered life.
Since God is an eternal being, time, for Him, is a tool rather than a slave driver. He uses it to reveal Himself progressively, both to us as individuals and to man through history. He exists in all of eternity at once, and that should help to understand why He cannot change. Change takes time, and for God there is only right now...eternally.
Does this make it easier to understand why He sees us as Justified, Sanctified and glorified? If you read the 8th chapter of Romans you will see this. God already sees His saved ones sitting at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
If you can accept this, then you can see why it is ludicrous for us to carry a burden of remorse and self-flagellation for our past, or of dread and nail-biting anxiety over the future.
It’s difficult to say what got Peter through his trial. I’m sure it was a combination of things. He had strength of character. Christ saw that in him immediately. Behind all of his bold words and his take-charge manner he was possessed of deep humility (Lk 5:8)
He may have remembered Jesus saying, “...when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
That’s a pretty positive inference to the future, is it not? I’m also sure there were many things said but never written that gave Peter hope during that time.
The important thing for us to be aware of, is that His promises to US are no less positive, no less secure.
Jesus told Peter some very specific things about his own future, but we have those also:
“In the world you will have tribulation, but fear not, I have overcome the world”
“If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”
“I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants out begging for bread”
God is not the God of yesterday, as though He is some doting, grudge-holding old man in the sky, who sits on a heavenly porch swing and broods over ancient scars.
He is not the God of tomorrow, who keeps a tally of our actions day to day and uses them to plot His decisions concerning us for the future.
He is the LORD OF TODAY who sees at once what we were, (yet died for us), and what we are in Christ, and what we will become in Him.
All of our doubts and fears, all of our impetuous, sinful grievances against God, all of our insecurities concerning our relationship to Him are the illegitimate offspring of minds locked into time and hearts weak in faith.
Throughout the gospels we see Jesus rebuking poor Peter for lack of faith, for acting brashly, for speaking out of turn, or out of ignorance.
But my, my, look what became of Peter! On the day of Pentecost we see him coming out of the upper room and preaching a bold Gospel message to all who are present...and on the next day, standing before the men he had only days before hidden from in fear, and saying, “We must obey God, rather than men!”
Contrast the gospel portrait of Peter with the Holy Spirit inspired eloquence of I and II Peter, and wonder no more at what Jesus saw in this diamond in the rough.
Compare his three-fold denial of Christ and subsequent tears, with this:
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Be sober of spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself, perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”
When the sifting was done, the chaff was gone and the golden grain remained.
The blessing is that God, who does not change, is the same toward any of us as He is toward Peter.
No sin in your life is so heinous, no failure so complete, that He cannot turn it into glorious, fruit-bearing victory. Turning your defeat to victory is in His plan for you, because His plan was completed before the clock of time even started to tick.
We occasionally fail; we will fail in the future. Sometimes we will fail because of sin. And God, the faithful Father, must discipline those He loves. But when the discipline is done, He breaks the rod and loves the child.
“The work which His goodness began
The arm of His strength will complete;
His promise is ‘yea’ and ‘amen’
and never was forfeited yet.
Things future, nor things that are now,
Not all things below or above,
Can make Him His purpose forego,
Or sever my soul from His love!”
-Unk
I am convinced that each of us here has the potential through God’s Holy Spirit, to be a Peter in our world.
There’s nothing far-fetched about that.
Trust Him, walk in His love, not looking back in sorrow or in fear of the future; for He is the Lord of Today and His plan for you is entirely good.
