Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2771
“And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said to him, Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times. So Peter went out and wept bitterly.” Luke 22:61, 62.
PETER’S fall, as we noticed in our reading, is four times recorded, at considerable length, but it is not once excused. There is not, in any one of the records, a single word said by way of palliation of his great guilt. John pictures Peter’s sin in colors of an almost neutral tint, yet he does not lessen its gravity.
Why, do you think, is this sad record thus given four times? Is it not in order that we should give it fourfold attention? It deserves this special mention, first, because it must have greatly increased the grief of the Lord Jesus Christ to know that while He was enduring untold indignities on His people’s behalf, His most prominent disciple was denying Him with oaths and curses down at the lower end of the hall. Surely, this must have cut Him to the quick! I cannot imagine that any of the tortures that He endured from His enemies could have caused Him so much pain as this wicked denial by one of His closest friends. Let your pity and love to Jesus flow in deep and broad streams while you behold him that ate bread with Him thus lifting up his heel against Him and even declaring that He knows not the Man! Blessed Master, there is not one tint of all the colors of grief that is lacking in the picture of Your passion! It is not possible to depict sufferings more acute and intense than was Yours when You died, “the Just for the unjust,” to bring us to God.
But, next, I think that Peter’s fall and restoration are thus fully recorded to set forth the greatness of our Redeemer’s saving power in the immediate prospect of His cruel death upon the Cross. Is it not wonderful to think that before He dies, He restores this great backslider—I had almost said, “this open apostate,” for so he was, according to his own language, though he was not so in heart? I can, in imagination, see poor Peter bending before the Cross of Calvary and looking up, through tears of grief and joy, as he mourns his great guilt and sees it all forgiven!
Then comes the dying thief, to represent another class of characters who bring great Glory to our dying Lord. Peter is the backslider restored—the dying thief is the sinner saved at the 11th hour. He was on the very brink of Hell, yet the Master stretched out His hand to rescue him, saying, “Today shall you be with Me in Paradise.” I cannot imagine two incidents revealing greater Divine Grace than these two, which so richly adorn and embellish the Cross! As captives chained to the wheels of the returning conqueror’s chariot make his triumphal procession the more illustrious, so is Christ upon the Cross the more manifestly triumphant in His Infinite Grace as He leads the restored Peter back to his Apos-tleship and takes the penitent thief, plucked from Perdition, up with Himself into the Paradise of God!
Moreover, do you not think that there is, in this fourfold record, an instructive lesson for us concerning the frailty of the best of men? Holy Scripture does not tell us much about the best of men who lived in the olden times—its history of the saints is somewhat scanty—but it is particular in recording their faults, as if its special purpose was to remind us that the best of men are but men at the best! This Peter, who seemed to lead the van, was yet so frail and fallible—so far from being the first “Infallible Bishop of Rome”—that he even denied his Lord and Master! That is about the only point, so far as I can see, in which the Pope of Rome is like Peter, for he, too, has great presumption and he can, with his bulls and his curses, go about as far as Peter did in denying his Lord! Peter’s fall seems to say to each of us, “You, too, are weak. You, too, will fall if you are left to yourself. Therefore trust wholly to your Master, but never trust in yourself. Look
always to Him and rely not upon your own experience, or the firmness of your own resolutions—for you will assuredly fall, as Peter did, unless the almighty hand of Christ shall hold you up.”
These lessons might profit us even if we learned no others, but I think we may find some more as I now proceed to speak to you, first, concerning Peter’s fall. Next, concerning the means of his recovery. Thirdly, concerning the signs of his restoration and, afterwards, if we have time for them, I hope to make a few general remarks upon the whole incident of Peter’s fall and restoration.
I. First, then, concerning PETER’S FALL.
It was a very sad fall because it was the fall of one of the most favored of Christ’s disciples. We know that there is such a thing as election and that there is such a thing as election out of election and, in the case of Christ’s disciples, the principle was carried still further, for there were some who were the elect out of the elect of the elect! Christ had many disciples, yet He said to the Apostles, “I have chosen you twelve.” Out of those twelve, he had evidently chosen three— Peter, James and John—who were privileged to be with Him on various occasions when all others were shut out. Peter had been especially favored, so that probably not even John surpassed him in the honor which his Master had put upon him. After his declaration concerning Christ’s Messiahship and Deity, Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto you, but My Father which is in Heaven.” So you see that Peter was a highly favored man—and for him to deny his Master was a very terrible sin. The higher our privilege, dear Friends, the greater is our responsibility! The nobler our vocation is, the more horrible is our sin when we fall into it.