“After they arrested Jesus, they led him away and brought him to the high priest’s house. Peter followed from a distance. When they lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. Then a servant woman saw him sitting in the firelight. She stared at him and said, “This man was with him too.” But
Peter denied it, saying, “Woman, I don’t know him!” A little while later, someone else saw him and said, “You are one of them too. “But Peter said, “Man, I’m not!” An hour or so later, someone else insisted, “This man must have been with him because he is a Galilean too.” Peter responded,
“Man, I don’t know what you are talking about!” At that very moment, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter, and Peter remembered the Lord’s words: “Before a rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And Peter went out and cried uncontrollably.” (Luke 22:54-62)
Let’s just tell it like it was. Peter feared what an open commitment to Jesus might mean: being hated with Him. Being persecuted with Him. Being scorned and laughed at with Him. But when Jesus looked at Peter after his third denial, it was with eyes of understanding, not disappointment.
"While Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, many believed in his name because they saw the miraculous signs that he did. But, Jesus didn’t trust himself to them because he knew all people. He didn’t need anyone to tell him about human nature, for he knew what human nature was." (John2:23-25)
The message here is that although the people knew that Jesus was someone special, (someone come from God?), Jesus still would not commit Himself to them because He knew people and what was in them which basically is the brokenness and rottenness that sin brings to us and brings us to. Yet it had to be done, or the victory would never be accomplished. Jesus had to die so that man might live, so in the end, He did commit Himself to us and we killed Him. But He rose again and won it all! And He said that whoever would own Him, whoever would claim Him as their Savior and King would enter into life eternal.
Peter denied Christ at that fireside, and it made for a truly hard day’s night! He tried to run from the cost of owning Jesus and it nearly ruined him. It almost kept him from becoming one of Christ’s greatest ambassadors. In John 21:2-22 we find Peter in the process of returning to his old life and had it not been for an intervention on Jesus’s part, He would have.
“Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus[a]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other disciples were together. Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a boat” (John 21:3,4)
But Jesus wouldn’t let him. He refocused Peter on what his life was really meant for, and it was greater things than merely catching fish. It was meant to be spent on sharing the Good News of a loving, redemptive Father who wanted nothing less than for His children to grow up happy, doing what they were created to do, being free to be who they were really created to be.
In the sixties and seventies, I was a hippie. When most people hear “hippie,” they think pot smokers and acid heads, but all the drug culture stuff came later. In the beginning, being a hippie was about rejecting the existing government and trying to find a way of life that didn’t cost the earth all of its resources and cause people to have to sell their souls for a buck. They rejected their parents’ legacy of a pillaged world and tried to return to a sustainable lifestyle, digging their own wells, raising their own food, using what they made, and doing without as much as they could.
The hippies suffered rejection, persecution, and violence and the movement grew. It was when the establishment figured out that if they just left the kids alone, inertia and the world's attractions would bring them back in line, and history bears witness to the truth that except for a few holdouts (that younger people today consider silly old dinosaurs), they did.
It’s a lot like the true Christian church for those holdouts though. We see in Jesus the greatest rejector of status quo ever: the one who knows what is really at stake here, which are men’s eternal souls and our relationship with a living God. Even knowing what we are made of, and how fearful we are of persecution and rejection, He still claimed us for His own; He still committed Himself, He still invites anyone who wants to, to join Him, and He will never reject you.
Of course, you may be required to give up your life for Him, but really what better thing have you got to do?
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