From faith to fear to failure; Luke 22: 49-62

I’ve often jokingly said that I discovered panic attacks.  And I’m only half kidding when I say that.  Almost 18 years ago I went through a period where I had debilitating panic attacks every day for about 3 years.  I may make light of it sometimes now, but I can assure you that panic attacks are no laughing matter.  So along the way I learned something about panic attacks.  And one of the things I first learned was that when you have a panic attack, your body wants to respond in one of two ways; fight or flight.  That is the automatic response of your nervous system when it gets stimulated to the degree of a life threatening situation.  Your adrenaline starts pumping, your breathing starts becoming shallow, and your heart is pounding.  Your body basically is trying to prepare you for either fight or flight.  If there really is a survival situation going on, then that kind of natural nervous response might enable you to react in a way that would help you to save your life.  But when there is not a life threatening situation, then it is a horrifying feeling to have suddenly come over you and it can be difficult to shake off.

It’s difficult because at that time, your body does not respond to reason.  It is responding to feelings.  Though there is no real threat, your nervous system suddenly goes into hyper drive and the effect can be debilitating. It doesn’t mean that you are a coward.  You might be as brave as the next guy in a threatening situation, but it’s that something triggers your nervous system and your mind becomes like a scratched 33 rpm record that keeps repeating and repeating the same what if scenario and causes your nervous system to rev up to the breaking point.

As we look at this story today, I don’t think that Peter and the other disciples necessarily  had a panic attack, at least like the kind that I just described.  But I do think that the principle of how we respond to fear is applicable to some extent to both situations.  Peter and the disciples had a legitimate life threatening situation that was suddenly thrust upon them.  Jesus had been warning them that something like this was coming, but it was so unreal to them that they had fallen asleep in the garden.

The setting was the middle of the night in a dark wooded olive grove.  They were sleeping out in the open.  They were exhausted.  It had been one stressful thing after another with Jesus for a week now, ever since they entered Jerusalem.  And suddenly they are awakened by Roman soldiers with lanterns flickering in the darkness surrounding them.  They have clubs and swords.  The well known enemies of Christ, the chief priests and the elders were there with their officers of the temple.  It was sudden, it was frightening, and it was alarming.

So at first the disciples reacted just as the psychologists say is normal under those circumstances in a life threatening situation.  They get ready to fight.  Remember in the upper room Jesus had said that if they didn’t have a sword they should buy one, and they said they had two of them.  That was enough, Jesus said.  Now they are facing this mob in the middle of the night, and it makes perfect sense  why Jesus said they should get a sword.  So they say, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?”  And before Jesus can answer vs. 50 says that one of them struck the slave of the high priest with the sword and cut off his right ear.  Now Luke doesn’t say who that was, nor do Mark or Matthew.  And the reason that they don’t identify the person responsible was that it was undoubtedly a capital offense to strike the servant of the high priest.  But John who writes his gospel after Peter is long dead does identify him in John 18:10  “Simon Peter then, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's slave, and cut off his right ear; and the slave's name was Malchus.”

Now there were 11 disciples with Jesus that night, and some have raised the possibility of another one or two people with Jesus as well.  But the mob has them vastly outnumbered.  So Peter is certainly courageous.  He had boasted earlier in vs. 33 “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!”  He knew that regardless of how many soldiers and henchmen the chief priests had, that he and the Lord was a majority.  So I can imagine that all the disciples were kind of in the same mode.  Peter was their leader, so they would follow his example.

But then Jesus does something really contrary to everything they could have imagined.  Jesus says in vs. 51, “’Stop! No more of this.’ And He touched his ear and healed him.” And then Jesus turns to the chief priests again and said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs as you would against a robber?  While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on Me; but this hour and the power of darkness are yours.”

From the disciples point of view, this must have been astounding.  Jesus heals this servant of the high priest and then basically gives himself up to be arrested by this lynch mob in the middle of the night.  He says this hour and the power of darkness is yours.  He surrenders Himself into their hands to be arrested and taken away.  And I think this is where the situation goes from being astounding and incomprehensible to terrifying.

Peter had actually in his boast earlier alluded to what might have been the key to their response to this sudden turn of events.  Peter had said, “with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death.”  With Jesus in all His power Peter was brave enough.  But without Jesus Peter and the disciples didn’t know what to do. It was terrifying.  Jesus had been the visible power of God in their midst for 3 years.  He had been able to do anything, from walking on water to raising the dead.  They had plenty of confidence when He was with them.  But now, to submit Himself to the mob, to say that in this hour He would surrender to the power of darkness was incomprehensible.  It was so unbelievable that it was terrifying.

And so that terror produced the second type of response to fear, and that is flight. Mark 14:50 “And they all left Him and fled.”  That’s the second natural response of the body to fear;  you take flight.  All the disciples took off, probably in 11 different directions.  We know according to Mark’s gospel that a young man, probably John Mark himself, was with them, and he was seized by the officers, but he escaped by pulling free of his covering and running away naked.  So we can assume that all the disciples took off in fear for their lives, narrowly escaping arrest.

Peter, even more so than most.  For he had struck a man with the sword and cut him.  And that man happened to be Malchus, the slave of the high priest.  So Peter had much to fear.  In fact they all did, because Jesus is not acting like they thought He should.  They expected Jesus to do more of what He did when the soldiers had first entered the garden.  He had gone towards them it says in John 18:4-6 “ and said to them, "Whom do you seek?"  They answered Him, "Jesus the Nazarene." He said to them, "I am He." And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them.  So when He said to them, "I am He," they drew back and fell to the ground.”  That’s the kind of Jesus they would follow anywhere. Able to knock soldiers to the ground with just a word.

But when Jesus seems to surrender Himself to them, and then allows them to arrest Him and lead Him away that is something that the disciples cannot understand.  In spite of everything Jesus had told them, they somehow still expected that He was going to enact a physical kingdom at this time, and it would mean the overthrow of Rome and Jesus would take the throne of David in Jerusalem and they would sit at His side and judge the 12 tribes of Israel in this new kingdom of God.

I remember what was the catalyst for my panic attacks.  For me it was unexplainable medical issues.  It was the fear of something unknown, that was beyond my comprehension, that was unexpected, unexplainable.  That kind of situation prompted my psyche to go into panic mode.  And I think that happens in the garden to some extent.  Something unexpected happens.  Something incomprehensible.  Something that seemed to counter to their doctrine, to their faith.  And it caused them all to stumble, to even fall in their faith.

Folks, I think there are some parallels in this event to what often happens in our lives as believers.  We come to know the Lord, we come to something of an understanding of the doctrines concerning God, and then circumstances suddenly test our faith to the breaking point.  Our doctrine founders.  We don’t understand why this is happening.  God seems to have broken His promises.  God didn’t do what we thought He was supposed to do, when He was supposed to do it.  Someone we loved didn’t get healed.  Someone we prayed for didn’t get delivered.  The money we desperately needed by Friday to pay that bill did not come, even though we prayed fervently for it.  And we go from faith to fear in a moment.  And in that fear we find ourselves reacting in the flesh in one of two ways; fight or flight.  And both of those ways are the wrong way we are supposed to respond.  They are the response of the flesh, rather than the response of the Spirit.

That is why I am so insistent that our focus here at the Beach Fellowship is on the teaching of sound doctrine.  There is a lot of false doctrine out there that is appealing.  We want to believe it.  It appeals to our flesh, to the pride of life.  It sounds like the kind of God we think God is supposed to be.  And yet when life’s trials come along and God doesn’t perform as you have been taught and assured that He would, you are left with the options that either God doesn’t love you, or you don’t have enough faith, or the word of God can’t be trusted.  So you find your faith foundering, in danger of shipwreck.

Well, to Peter’s credit, he tries to get back on track.  He fled like everyone else, but then he must have doubled back and followed at a distance to see where they were taking Jesus.  And they go to Annas’ house, the father in law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest.  There they begin an unlawful trial, a pretrial really, of Jesus to see what they could indict Him with.

Peter manages to get let into the courtyard, and John’s gospel says it was because John was known to the high priest, he might have even been related.  And so John is also secretly following Jesus, and somehow Peter gets word to him to help him get in.  So John speaks to the servant girl and she lets Peter in, and he goes over to the fire in the courtyard which the soldiers are warming themselves by.  That’s a pretty daring move on the part of Peter, wouldn’t you say?

I see a lot of commentators disparage Peter on this night as some sort of coward.  I don’t see that at all.  I see a man that is brave enough, but he is acting and relying on his bravery, on his cunning, on his strength to not fall away.  He is confident in that strength.  And yet we will see that his strength is not enough.

Back in our text starting at vs. 25 we see the progression of Peter’s failure of faith.  Peter’s self confidence in his natural ability had led him to fight.  And that had backfired when Jesus had stopped him and healed the servant’s ear.  That resulted in uncertainty, a failure of doctrine if you will, that caused him to take flight with all the other disciples.  They were scattered in every direction.  So now we see Peter come back, but he is hanging outside by the fire with the men who had arrested Jesus. The uncertainty of Peter’s faith has induced him to hang out with the wrong people.  He is at the fireside of the enemies of Christ.

How many times do we find ourselves as Christians hanging out by the fire of the enemy?  Especially at times when our faith is the lowest, we often end up seeking the comfort of the world.  The familiarity of the old friends, the old hangouts.  Our faith is shaken by some circumstance that we aren’t expecting, and rather than it driving us to God, we allow it to steer us back to the world.  We skip a few church services.  We say we’re trying to figure some things out.  We need to take a break.  Whatever the excuse, we find ourselves by the fire of the unbelievers, finding comfort in wrong associations.   As Christians, God never calls us to sit on the sidelines.  That is where we get in trouble.  David sat on the sidelines when his army went out to battle and began his fall from faith with a woman named Bathsheba.  And it too went from bad to worse because he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

Remember what Jesus had said to Peter in the upper room?  He said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”  And Peter’s response was, “Lord, with You I am ready to go both to prison and to death!”  Well, now the devil was sifting Peter like wheat.  Satan was going to exploit all the holes in Peter’s theology, all the fault lines in Peter’s faith. Peter had thought he was strong enough to handle Satan.  But we should never underestimate our enemy.  When Satan moves against Peter, he only has to use a little slave girl to do undo him.

Vs. 56-57, “And a servant-girl, seeing him as he sat in the firelight and looking intently at him, said, ‘This man was with Him too.’ But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I do not know Him.” Peter had been ready for the big battle.  He had been ready to go to war with Christ at the head of an army.  He was ready for the big things in the kingdom, or so he thought.  But this little girl completely caught him off guard.  For some reason, he suddenly was afraid.  He could probably see Jesus in there, bound and tied,  getting repeatedly slapped in the face and spit upon.  And he just couldn’t believe what was happening.  It didn’t fit in with Peters theology.  And all of his bravado went out the window when this little maid comes up to the fire and says in front of these soldiers you’re one of His disciples.

You know, the thing that reveals our true nature is involuntary response, not a planned response. Your character isn't shown by what you prepare to do, it's manifest by what you're not prepared for and how you react to that, that involuntary reaction. That reveals which nature you are living in. It's those things that catch us off guard that reveal the real weakness of our hearts and shows us who we really are.

You know, when Satan comes after you, it’s not going to necessarily be with big things.  We probably have our guard up in those areas.  It’s the little things that catch us.  Maybe it’s skipping our devotions.  Or like Peter, sleeping when he should have been praying.  It’s the little things that take us further and further away from the Lord until we find one day that we are so far away that we are actually denying Him by our lifestyle or our in our actions or our words.

So to summarize the next few verses, Peter makes another denial to another servant girl, then an hour later he made yet a third denial to a man who according to John happened to be a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off.  So there is a steady progression from faith to fear to fighting to flight, and then from sitting with the enemy to denying Christ, not once, but three times.

And there is one more element to that progression that Luke doesn’t include but Matthew and Mark both do, and that is that Peter begins to swear and curse to emphasize his denials, to try to prove to them that there is no way he could be a disciple of Christ. You know the way you talk when you’re away from church reveals your heart.  The kind of language you use reveals the nature of your heart. Matt. 15:18 says, “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man.”

So Luke says as Peter was still speaking, the cock crowed.  Jesus had said in the upper room to Peter that before this night had ended and the cock crowed, Peter would deny Him three times.  And as the cock crows, Peter looks up and sees the Lord looking at him.  And it says he went out and wept bitterly.

How in the world could Peter ever sink to that depth? How could a Christian ever reach the point of denying Christ? I will tell you one thing, if Peter could deny Christ, we all are vulnerable as well.  So let’s review the path he took  to denying Christ as a lesson for us.  First, over confidence based on his feelings. Peter felt he could handle temptation. He felt as if he could follow Christ anywhere. He was confident in his emotional attachment to Christ. He relied on his feelings. And secondly, he disregarded the Word of the Lord. He didn’t think the warning applied to him. He didn't take the Word of God seriously. He rejected reproof. He ignored the voice of the Lord. We cannot ignore the Word of God and survive the onslaughts of Satan. And the third step was prayerlessness. He rested instead of praying. He slept instead of watching for temptation.  Spiritual indifference leads to ruin, lack of prayer leads to disaster.

And then the next on his path to failure was independence. He acted on his own. He didn't need to seek God's will. He didn't wait on the Lord, he acted independently in his own strength. That got him into a situation that was out of God’s will. And finally, the fifth step was compromise. He followed Jesus at a distance, he sits by the fire, he mingles with the crowd that was the enemy of Christ. He reminds me of Psalm 1:1, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful," He walked in, he stood around and finally he sat down. And he sat among the scornful. He took a seat in a compromising place. And compromise led to defeat.  Peter’s strength was no match for Satan’s schemes.

But thankfully Peter’s story does not end in his denial, but in his repentance. In Judas’s story we looked at last week ended with his remorse and then he went out and hanged himself. There was no real repentance. But Peter went out and wept bitterly and he repented and was restored. And that’s the difference between a Judas and a Peter. Both will sin, but one will be repentant and restored and the other will be damned.

There are three aspects presented here that make up Peter’s repentance. The first is the prayer of Christ.  Remember Luke 22:32, Jesus said, "Peter, Satan desires to have you but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not."  You know why Peter's faith didn't totally fail? Because the Lord had prayed for him. Peter was kept by the power of God.  Listen, the reason that we stay saved is not because of our strength to hold onto God but because the Lord holds onto us. He didn't hold Judas because He never had Judas. But He held Peter. God remains faithful even when we are faithless, for He cannot deny Himself.

Secondly, the repentance of Peter was brought about through the look of Christ.  What kind of look did Jesus give Peter?  Was it a look of condemnation?  Was it a look that said “you sorry traitor you!” Or was it a look that said “I told you so, I knew you couldn’t stand, I told you that you would fall.”  No, I don’t think it was that kind of look.  I think it was the look of love, a look of total compassion. A love that loved us even when we were yet sinners, a love that was willing to die in  our place  so that we might be saved. It was a  look that pierced Peter’s heart and conscience. Romans 2:4 says that the kindness of God leads us to repentance.

Thirdly, Peter’s repentance was brought about not only by the prayer of Christ, the look of Christ, but the word of the Lord.  It says in vs. 61, “And Peter remembered the word of the Lord….” The word of the Lord convicts the heart of sin. Heb. 4:12
“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  The Holy Spirit, working through the word of God, convicts the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.

Peter’s response to the word of God was repentance.  And that repentance brought about restoration.  God is always ready to restore the repentant heart.  David says in  Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”  See, God worked even in the denial of Peter for His good.  Peter wept that night in brokenness before God.  And a broken heart is the kind of heart that God delights in.  Peter had thought his independence was his strength.  But now he realizes that his independence had been his greatest weakness.  God often has to break us of our independence in order to bring us to repentance so that we might be able to learn dependence upon the Lord.  Then we might be able to say with Paul in 2Cor. 12:9-10, “And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Our brokenness and  dependence on Christ should cause us to keep our eyes on Him, trust totally in His promises and stand firmly on His word, not reacting according to fear or the flesh, but remembering that He will never leave us nor forsake us.  He will strengthen and keep us by His great power, no matter what may come our way as long as we lean upon Him.  Let us pray.