Understanding Failure and Faith in Christ

I have two passages I want to read this morning. Matthew chapter 26, I want to begin reading with verse 50 of chapter 26. Amen. Boy, you're right on that today, getting started good. And then I want to read another passage from chapter 26, beginning with verse 69, because there's a connection between these that I think are really important, a connection that lets us see something about not only the lives of these people involved, but about something about ourselves and what the nature of our own relationship with Christ is. This is a story in the Bible about tremendous failure. The failure on the part of the apostles or disciples to be obedient to God. They didn't know that they were going to fail, in fact, they thought they were going to succeed. That every confidence in the world that they were going to succeed, but they were destined to one of the most tragic failures of their lives. In this story of their failure, we get an idea about something about the nature of how our own lives can be captured by doubt and fear and Satan. In this first section, chapter 26, where Jesus is talking to his disciples, he's just been arrested. And he says to them, friend, do whatever you came for. Then the men stepped forward to seize Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out, and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Put your sword back in its place, Jesus said to him. For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my father and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way? And Jesus, as he spoke to the disciples, at that time Jesus said to the crowd, am I leading a rebellion that you have come out of the swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching and you did not arrest me. But this has taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled. And all the disciples deserted him and fled. Now Jesus is captured and he is taken for his trial to the high priest's house. Verse 69, chapter 26, picks up the story about what happened now with the disciples and Jesus. Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard and a servant girl came to him. You also were with Jesus of Galilee, she said, but he denied it before them all. I don't know who you're talking, I don't know what you're talking about, he said. Then he went out to the gateway where another girl saw him and said to the people there, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth. He denied it again with an oath. I don't know the man. After a little while those standing there went up to Peter and said, surely you're one of them, for your accent gives you away. Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, I don't know the man. Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken, before the rooster crows you will disown me three times. And he went outside and wept bitterly. All of the disciples had been warned that one of them was going to betray Jesus. They asked him, is it me, is it me, till all of them had asked that, Jesus said to Judas it was him. But all of them were left wondering, they didn't know exactly who it was until the time came. When they saw Judas walking up they knew exactly who was going to do the betraying. They knew for sure. But Jesus had told them something else. He said, before this day is over, this night is over, every one of you will deny me. One by one they said, it's not right, I'm not going to ever deny you, I'll be faithful to you even to death. They believed that they really would. And their affirmation of their promise of faithfulness I think was very sincere. But when Jesus was arrested something different happened. Peter I think understood whenever Jesus was arrested what was happening. He reached and took his sword and began to do what he promised he would do. I will stand beside you and between you even if it means that I would die. And he took a swing at the head of one of the people who came to arrest Jesus. Got his ear, not his head, Jesus put it back on and fixed it. But Jesus said to him something that was startling and hard. He said, Peter, put your sword back up. If you start a fight here today with your sword, they're going to get their sword and it's going to be bloody. That's what Jesus was saying. You start a fight, they want to fight, there'll be a fight. Put it up. That's not what I've come to do. Now here's a man who's risking his life for Jesus. He took his weapon. He was ready to give himself as he promised he would and Jesus says to him, you're doing the wrong thing. Put that up. That's not what this is about. Quite an insult to Peter too. And then Jesus said something to Peter even harder. He said, why are you taking a measly sword, I mean this is what it sounds like to me, to try to protect me? Don't you know that I could ask my Father in heaven and he would send twelve legions of angels, 6,000 in a legion, 72,000 angels and you're here with your little sword trying to help me out? Now whenever you've done your very best and you've taken your weapon and you've gone out there and risked your life and then to be put down like that would be strong and powerful and humiliating but he didn't say it just to Peter in his ear. He said it to Peter and all the disciples who were there to hear and all the Jewish leaders who were there to hear and all the soldiers who came there to hear. Peter was publicly humiliated for what he did. Now Peter got this humiliation because of what happened. He was afraid for Jesus. Jesus himself was afraid. When he came to the garden of Gethsemane he was so wracked with fear that he said I just wish I could die. The pressure of what he's facing was so powerful and strong to him his courage had run out. Courage is what you have inside of you, the will and ability to do something. That had gone. What he did was he went and sat down and talked to the father. We have no idea what he said to the father, what the father said back but step by step through this story Jesus loses the fear, he loses the anxiety, he loses the uncertainty and he comes out of those times of prayer with the father calm, cool, collected and determined to do what the father asked him to do. The difference between courage is what you have inside of you as a human being. The difference between courage and faith is that you believe that when God tells you to do something everything is right. No matter how afraid you are, no matter how impossible it might seem, you believe that if God has told you this is the right thing to do and you do it as he tells you to do it, in the end everything will work out perfectly well. Jesus got that. In the story of his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane he went to his disciples and asked them to pray for him and three times he went back and they were sound asleep. He told them one time pray that you don't fall into temptation. Usually when you take that passage by itself you say the temptation to fall asleep. I think there was more to it than that. Jesus knew that they were going to face this failure that they experienced and he wanted them to be able to find from the father exactly what he had found. The peace that comes from knowing the father has told me what I should do, I'm going to do it no matter what takes place and I know in the end it will work out right because God is in charge. Instead Peter did what his human nature told him to do. The enemy comes with their swords, what do you do? Grab your own sword, begin to fight. The enemy comes, they arrest Jesus, they kill him, it's the end of our ministry and mission. Protect him at all costs. You see he never understood exactly what Jesus was going through. Now Jesus had told them I'm going to go to Jerusalem, I'm going to suffer, I'm going to die, I'm going to be buried and I'll be raised on the third day. He told them this, we know in the scriptures at least three times, I'm sure more than that. They didn't get it. They didn't listen to what Jesus had to say. They didn't accept what Jesus had to say and so they came into this situation thinking in human terms, success means Jesus doesn't die, success means he's able to go on with his ministry. Jesus, on the other hand, had been with the father. He knew that what he was facing had to occur. The line he said to them was, if I don't do this the scripture will not be fulfilled. Now if they had sat down and prayed with the father as Jesus did, they would have gotten the same information. If they had sat down and poured out their hearts to the father and said, what do you want us to do? He would have given them the faith to be able to face whatever they faced as he did for Jesus. But their failure, you see, Peter's failure was not there in that moment with the sword but it was there in the garden where he did not come to the father to ask, what is it you want me to do? He didn't come and say, how can I have knowledge about what I'm going to face and give me the wisdom to make the choices that are right? And so his failure was the result of what happened in the garden and it showed up whenever they came to take Jesus and his failure was complete. Now it's not just him. All the other disciples, I'm sure when Peter jerked out his sword, thought maybe we ought to get ours too and get in here and fight as hard as we can but Jesus stopped them before anything else could be done. Do not fight. This is not what I want. They were thinking like Peter and so now all of a sudden they're so confused about what's happening that they all run away. The very thing they said they would never do, they ended up doing. Because they trust their own judgment, they trust their own wisdom instead of the instructions from God about what was to take place. Failure in our life often comes not because we're not able but because we don't know. What is it that God wants me to do? Even if it's hard, would I be willing to do it? God has called us to make disciples and all these things we're doing is to make disciples. We bring these kids here to plant seeds in their lives. We hope that they come to know Christ. We teach in Sunday school because we want people to know who God is and how to be able to follow Him and what His will is and how they can determine what it is and what it's not. All because we want them to know what God wants. And then when they act, they act in obedience to God. That's what faith is. So that every time something comes up, they will know what God wants them to do and how He wants them to do it. In all the Bible study that we do, we want people to store in their heads the ideas about who God is and how He works in the world and what He's trying to accomplish. And it's so often different than the way human beings think about things. What do you do when somebody comes with an army to fight you? You get your sword and you go fight them back. Jesus had a different principle. Turn the other cheek. Listen to the Father. Do what He tells you, even if it means your death. They didn't learn what they needed to learn. They weren't prepared because they didn't know what God wanted them to do. Jesus said, don't you understand that if I do not do it this way, Scripture will not be fulfilled. Their lack of knowledge about the Scripture, lack of knowledge about what God was doing right there, lack of knowledge about what God wanted them to do caused them to fail. And it will you too. If you don't know how God wants you to live, you can't live that way. If you don't know how God wants you to be a husband or wife, you can't be that. If you don't know how God wants you to raise your children, you cannot do that. The knowledge about what God wants is critical for you to take the first step. And after you have that, then you have to do what God tells you regardless of what people around you think, regardless of what our culture says, regardless of what your own feelings are. There are times whenever you act according to your feelings and it's the opposite of what God wants you to say and what He wants you to do. But knowing what God wants allows you to act in faith, which means doing what God tells you regardless of the apparent consequences. And this was their failure. But the story wasn't over. Jesus was taken then to trial. All the disciples ran away. And then the story starts over. We don't know what happened in between that time. But here is Peter. He shows up where the high priest's house is in the courtyard. The houses were built in those days with the houses inside and a big wall around the outside for protection. And it was in there, the courtyard of that house, that the trial was being conducted. Peter comes into the courtyard where all the people are. There are not any of the other disciples there, just him and the soldiers and the servants and the other people who are involved with the military or with the high priest's house. We can be hard on Peter about what happened at the dime with the sword and we can be hard on him here. I want you to notice something. He was there and the others weren't. They were all afraid of what was going to take place. But Peter made a promise and he tried to keep it with the sword even though he was mistaken. And even though Jesus had said some pretty straight and hard words to him, he wasn't off sulking somewhere. He was sitting there in the courtyard looking out for Jesus, watching what was taking place even though he was scared to death. He was doing it in his own courage, depending on his own strength to do it. And there, sure enough, in the crowd, one lady recognizes him. She says to Peter, you were with the Jesus of Galilee, but Peter denied it before them all. I don't know what you're talking about, he says. His first effort not to be associated, you can tell he's afraid here, he's open to confess exactly who he was and what he was there for. He's trying to protect himself. He thinks in his own human wisdom, the best thing for me to do to help Jesus is to lie. Now if he knew what he was doing, surely he would have understood that was contrary to what God wanted. But sometimes in our human wisdom, we think doing something contrary to the scripture is the very best thing for us to do. Why? Because we look around us and everybody does that. We look around us and it seems like we're going to get away with it. What he thought was, I can say this and then I'll leave and I can get off by myself and I'll still be faithful to be here with Jesus, keeping the promise I made to him. He saw in his own mind to work out lying and then it'll still be okay. It never works. It never works. Living contrary to what God tells you is disastrous and it always is disastrous. So he walks out to the edge of where the gate is to go outside and there's usually a little house there and he's standing in this house away from the fire, away from the people, no one's going to see him. His plan is working. He's able to come and nobody's going to recognize him and another girl saw him and said to the people there, this fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth. There he's stuck again. He feels now the necessity to do something a little more than what he had said before so he denied it again but this time with an oath. I swear on a stack of Bibles, that might be what we would say if you want to make sure everybody believes you, I swear on my mother's grave, we don't know what his oath was but some affirmation apart from who he was to make people convinced that what he was saying was the truth, I don't know this man. Now again Peter's tried the best he can to keep his anonymity so nobody would know who he was. His motive was good but again he thought if I can convince people I don't know him I'll still be here to help Jesus out in case he needs me. After a while those standing there went up to Peter and said surely you're one of them for your accent gives you away. Now what they're talking about here is something you have to understand what their world was like a little bit. Jerusalem was sort of like New York City where all the cultured, wonderful people live in our country they say and Galilee was sort of like the South and the hillbillies that live in the South. I forgot the name of this guy that makes a fortune saying you're a redneck if you know one thing or do one thing or another and when you listen to him you say that's right. He does a little bit about if you're having brain surgery and a guy comes in and says well I'll tell you what we're going to do about this. You're wanting to say give me another surgeon right away. This guy is not going to work. Well people in Galilee had a different vocabulary like many of the redneck things he talks about and they also had a different accent. So when you heard them talk you knew that they were from Galilee like you can hear somebody and say well they're from the South because of their accent. Now it was bad really because the people, the priest would not allow someone who was from Galilee who came down to the southern part of Judah to ever pray out loud in the synagogue because of their language, accent, and their words that they spoke. They said it was terrible Hebrew and not worthy of being spoken in prayer. So Peter's language was so clear and plain that anyone around who heard him say a few words and now he had to say several words because he made an oath. They picked up on it right away and came over and said buddy you're from the South. We can tell you're a redneck. You can't deny that. We can hear it in your language. Now he was caught. But just like a common experience it's very difficult for us to stop and say you're right. I've been lying to you. We just keep pressing this thinking that lying another time is finally going to break through and will win the victory. So Peter after being confronted with the man he began to call down curses on himself and swore to them I don't know the man. Now here he talks about something far more serious. May God strike me dead if I know this man. May God rain his judgment down on me if I know this man. Suddenly he's raised the ante with God. I'm willing to be cursed if I'm lying to you even though he knew he was lying. How can a guy go from saying I'll fight with you to the death to the point where he's willing to say I'll lie and even bring curses on myself to keep from telling the truth. Well Peter wasn't mean and he wasn't vicious. He was a person like all of us. Caught in a situation where his human mind said if you tell the truth it will be bad for you. All of us who've started out living in the kingdom of God know what this is like. You come to a place and somebody says I have a name here I'd like you to go talk to this person and invite them to church and immediately we start saying I can't do that. I can't go up and talk to people like that I'd be so embarrassed I don't know what to do I can't say the right words I haven't been trained to do it we have a thousand excuses. I can't teach a class because I don't know this I can't do that I'm not able. We have millions of things that keep us from doing the things that God might ask us to do. We get ourselves in the same spot Peter was in. What do I need to do that I think will be safe for me? What God wanted from Peter was to live by faith. If you're standing there and someone asks if you know me I want you to tell them that you know me and what my relationship with you has meant to you. If you know that's what I want you to do and you're determined to be obedient to me then you do it regardless of the consequence. You do it believing that God does not ask you to do anything that does not have a good result in the end. It may look like in the short range it's going to be disastrous but I'll promise you in the long term it will always be victorious and wonderful. See that's what faith is. It is knowing what God wants you to do and being willing to do it regardless of the apparent or even real consequence because God is looking past that consequence to the ultimate end of what he's trying to accomplish. That's where trust in God comes through. God has asked us to be disciple makers, everyone who's in the kingdom of God. He's asked you to pray for people. There is no reason why you should not be praying for others to come to know Christ. There is not any reason or excuse for it except the failure to do what God is telling you to do. You should take the names of people that you know who don't go to church and may not know God and begin to pray for them. You should ask God all the time, give me an opportunity to tell this person who's a friend of mine what you have done in my life. Don't be afraid of that for just like Peter you'll be put in a position where you'll be asked to say something that you think is going to be damaging to you. But if God has told you that you should be a disciple maker as a follower of his, you must do that. What Peter discovered in those moments was his courage away from that situation was not enough. I've seen a lot of events, you know, where in church we have things take place and ask people to volunteer and a lot of people volunteer. Then when it comes to doing it, they begin to fall away because they're doing it out of courage. Yeah, I can go out there and knock on somebody's door and I can talk to them and they get in, get that name, they go out there, I don't know them. They get scared to death that they're going to go and they drive up in front of the house. I remember going with a guy one time and we turned the corner, started at the house. He said, they're not home, they're not home, I know they're not home. I said, well, how do you know they're not home, we haven't got to the house yet. Well, I know, there's no lights I can see. Well, we're going to go up there anyway and knock on the door. All the way at the door he said, they're not home, we might as well go back, we're wasting our time. Well, you know, if you go up and knock on the door and nobody's there, you're not wasting your time. I mean, they just don't come. What he was really afraid of was somebody would show up that he was afraid of. Am I afraid? You bet. I don't like to do that. But I do it, not because of my job, but because God said I should do it. When you act in faith, you see, there is fear there. But the greater fear is disapproving of God's disapproval of your behavior. And the greater force is not the fear, but the confidence that somehow God will take care of you. Peter failed again. His failure was open and clear and plain. Then the rooster crowed. Jesus at the end of the courtyard turned around and looked back to see Peter standing there. And with one single look, Peter knew that he'd failed. He left the crowd to go out and cry. His heart was broken in his failure. He came face to face with Jesus and he realized, I have failed him. This is a great story because it's so important to us to know that even the greatest of God's followers gets in places where they don't do what God tells them. They depend on themselves instead of living by faith. All of us are going to fail God. Jesus told his disciples, every one of you are going to deny me. I can have courage to say every one of you are going to get in a place sometime where you're going to fail God. It's just inevitable. It's our human nature. But there is one powerful thing in this story. The moment Peter was confronted with his failure, he was broken hearted. He didn't want to fail. He admitted his failure to himself. He went outside the courtyard and wept with a broken heart because of his sin and received the forgiveness of God and became one of the greatest leaders in the kingdom of God. Failure does not determine your future. It's what you do with your failure. Will you admit that you failed? Will you ask for forgiveness? And will you get up again and do what you know God's asked you to do? This same man, a little while later, stood before thousands of people, perhaps including those in that courtyard, and preached the very first Christian sermon and thousands of people became followers of Jesus. There is no limit to what God can do to your life. In spite of your failure, in spite of your repeated failures, once you've determined that you're going to live by faith, admit when you sin, turn your life back over to God and start again. What God asks is not for courageous people, but faithful people. People who will do what they know God wants them to do. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? I want to ask you to say in the quietness of this moment, God, is there anything in my life that you want changed? Listen carefully to the thoughts that come to your mind. It may be something you're doing wrong, it may be something God wants you to do. Now what God's asking is, do you believe me? Are you willing to do this? If it's sin God's pointed out, he wants you to say, like Peter, I'm brokenhearted that I've done this, I am doing this, please forgive me. And return again to say, Lord, show me what you want and I will do it. I want you also now to ask, is there something, God, that you want me to do? I know that he wants you to be a disciple maker, do you have some people's names outside your family that you're praying for to come to know Christ? Ask him if that's not something he wants you to do. I want to add to this, we are coming Monday night to here, we're going to have the names of these kids, pictures of these kids, we're going to go to their homes, express how happy we are their parents let them come, and ask God if there's anything we can tell this family about you. Ask God if that's something you should do. We only want the people to come who think God wants them to do this. There may be something else that God has had on your mind. I was talking to a guy the other day and he said for a year now I've been knowing God wants me to commit my life to him. Maybe God's been talking to you that way. If God is telling you that today, you do what he tells you. Don't be afraid to do what God tells you. He will give you the victory. Father, you know what it's like because you've seen so many of your followers struggle to know how to be faithful. Have mercy on us here today. Put in our minds exactly what you want us to do. Give us the faith to say yes to you in spite of our fear, our uncertainty, and our lack of courage. Help us to put aside everything except one thing. What would please you? In the name of Jesus, I ask this. At the end of our service, we ask you to think through what God wants. He may want you to come and share with us a promise you want to make to him and have us pray for you. It may be that you want to come and commit your life to Christ. Maybe God has said to you, this is the place I want you to be as a church member and a family of this group. Whatever it is that God wants you to do, I'll be here to pray for you. Marla will be here to pray with you. You can just come and kneel and pray if you'd like. This is a time the Lord speaks. Don't say, I don't hear him, I don't know him, but if he's spoken, say yes. Would you stand please while we sing? Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity, love, and power. I will rise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms, in the arms of my dear Savior. Oh, there are ten thousand charms. Come, ye thirsty, come and welcome. God's free bounty glorify. True belief and true repentance, every grace that brings you nigh. I will rise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms, in the arms of my dear Savior. Oh, there are ten thousand charms. Come, ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. I will rise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms, in the arms of my dear Savior. Oh, there are ten thousand charms. Would you be seated a minute? Would you come on up here just a minute? This little lady grew up in our church, and she comes this morning, had to bulldoze over her mother and her dad, and that's a pretty big bulldozing job, because she thinks God wants her to tell us something, a story. Share with us. Good morning. I haven't stood in front of this podium probably since I was a teenager in high school, and I remember the last time I gave a testimony, it was to recommit my life to the Lord, along with the same day of my father walking up to give his life to the Lord. Since then, my husband of 13, almost 13 years now, who was not raised in a church as I was, I was faithfully brought by my mom to the nursery every day and grew up in the same church. It was great to come home and see the same faces that I grew up with and talking about Vacation Bible School and church camp. Those were the greatest memories. I married a man who, as a football coach, I went to one football game my entire high school life, so if you would have told me I would have married a football coach, I would have called you a liar. He's recently become, in the last couple years, the athletic director and a head football coach, but when he was growing up, his parents took him to church a handful of times, and he was very intimidated about coming forward to give his life to the Lord. Here we meet, and I know that he believed in God and was a great example to the athletes that he was with, and he's a great husband, great father. He was recently selected, at the beginning of the year, we live in Texas, he was selected as one of the coaches to coach a game that was called the Victory Bowl, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Victory Bowl. It was a game that was played in mid-June in Waco at the Baylor Stadium, and he had had time to ponder, why me? Out of all the coaches across the state of Texas, why was I chosen? There were about 10 coaches who were chosen, 50 young men who had graduated high school across the state of Texas were nominated by their coaches to come represent themselves at this Victory Bowl. It was the fifth year that it was being put on, and in the previous four years, the young men who are chosen, who have graduated, were divided into two teams, a red team and a blue team. In the previous four years, red team had won, and so my husband was selected to coach the blue team, and two of his young men that had played for him were selected to come and be a part of his team along with a cheerleader. He left on a Tuesday after we got out of school, he left on a Tuesday and stayed until Saturday, of course with the game being on Saturday. What he described to me when the game was over and we went back to our hotel room and he explained to me what went on on a day-to-day basis, it reminded me a lot of church camp with football mixed in, practice and going out to do several things, and of course fellowship in the evening. And he said the Friday night, the night before the football game, when they were having their last fellowship, the same pastor who was there, who had given each sermon each evening that they were there, had really put him in a challenging situation. He had asked them at the closing to please bow your heads and for those that had not given their life to the Lord, please raise your hand. And of course he felt like he was put on the spot, he was answering to God and he had his eyes closed and he raised his hand and the pastor said, okay, put your hands down and open your eyes. And I want to challenge you who had your hands raised to come forward and give your life to the Lord. And so just like I felt that time that I had encouraged my father at one point to come, I just told everybody he was coming with me, God put my husband on the spot and he walked forward and he gave his life to the Lord. He said he was the only adult, he was the only adult and he was able to go up there with one of his fellow players that he had brought and they both gave their life to the Lord that night. And so he said Saturday, in preparation for the game, when all the coaches were giving their speeches and he said, Melissa, you know, I felt like the underdog, the other coaches that I was with, they had been to a state championship game, they'd won a state championship and he'd only made it to semi-state, which is the game before a state championship game, so he felt like he was the underdog and all. But he said when it came to me and it was my turn to give my pep talk to the boys, he said, boys, you know, I wondered why God chose me to come and be one of your coaches. And I found out last night it was not only to give my life to the Lord and do it publicly, I was put in a situation where it would be comfortable for me amongst athletes, amongst coaches and I couldn't say no and I was put on the spot to do that. And he said, so I was brought here to give my life to the Lord, which I did, and I was also brought here to break that winning streak that the red team's been winning and blue team's gonna win. And they went out and blue team won, but it was truly when Doyle mentioned the word victory, I thought, okay, that's God talking to me, I gotta share his testimony. It was a victory for the Lord and it was a victory for our family and I just wanted to share that with you. Amen. Thank you. How wonderfully you work. How wonderful it is to be on the side of someone who's winning. We know in spite of what happens to us that ultimately the victory is yours and you've given it to us. Help us to walk day by day, not with our courage or strength, but by faith in you and to live by your courage and your strength. Amen. Amen. Be strong in the Lord and be of good courage. Your mighty commander will vanquish the foe. Fear not the battle for the victory is always his. He will protect you wherever you go. Be strong, be strong, be strong in the Lord and be of good courage for he is your God. Be strong, be strong, be strong in the Lord and rejoice for the victory is yours.