The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.
20 Jesus answered him, “I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret.
21 Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what I said to them; they know what I said.”
22 When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?”
23 Jesus answered him, “If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong; but if what I said is right, why do you strike me?”
24 Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. 25
Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You also are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.”
26 One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?”27
Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed.
Peter is a disciple, a man of faith. But he falls, while Jesus remains faithful to the bitter end of his temptation. And we must always remember that Jesus suffered
the same temptations we suffer but much worse, for unlike every one of us, Jesus never gave in…He took the full force, full fury, of every temptation until it had nothing else to throw at Him.
Every one of us knows that the longer you say no to a particular temptation especially those that you have kept far too close for far too long that the temptation
actually gets stronger the more we resist it and how we can resist and desist and resist and then finally we snap, we break, we give in and we think, “I just couldn’t take it any longer!” But the Lord Jesus resisted every one of his temptations to the bitter
end…for example He wasn’t just hungry when Satan tempted him with bread, he was literally at the point of death, of starvation and yet never once, not in thought or deed did He give in. While it is true that He came into the world sinless, He had to remain
sinless he had to destroy thousands upon thousands of temptations, temptations that came upon him suddenly, out of the blue, and temptations that hit him with full force at his most vulnerable moments.
Think about how prone you are to giving into temptation when you are tired, or lonely or when you are so frustrated as one circumstance after another adds to the pressure
and the feelings that are already so strong! It just wears you down! We read often of how our Savior was tired and was made to go without sleep because all the people were pressing in on Him and so He would give Himself to them at the cost of his convenience,
and the rest, that his body, like ours, so desperately needed…And did the majority of those folks thank Him for being so kind to them? Goodness no, in fact they despised Him and even killed him for being nothing but kind and loving to them.
We can understand that Jesus was alone in the truest and deepest sense that any human being has ever had to experience. While on earth He was really never understood,
even his disciples were most often confused at what He was saying…and the one who probably understood him best, John the Baptist, at the end of his life, seemed to be a bit mixed up as to what Jesus was really doing.
Being deserted by everyone, left with no one and then, in what would have been the deepest stroke of pain that divine justice poured out, to be forsaken even by His
Father. As a man, His loneliness, His frustrations were worse than any you or I have ever even imagined, doing all that could conceivably be done for men and women and having them utterly and inexcusably miss the point of everything he did.
And think of how unjustly he was accused of crimes when there has never been, in the history of the world, a man or woman who was more innocent of any wrongdoing,
than was Jesus. All of that and yet, he did not sin. And as he got closer and closer to Jerusalem, the tension mounted and the pressure was building and yet even in Gethsemane with the realization now only hours away of what He was going to have to endure…When
it became clear to him that He was going to have to drink this cup…there was no other way…still, he did not sin.
Some would lessen what Jesus has won for us saying, “Well, of course, I mean who couldn’t do that if he was God for crying out loud.” But this is a colossal mistake,
this is robbery, robbery of the glory of and the magisterial wonder of our Savior’s doing all things in our place, for us, instead of us, as a man. Jesus resisted every one of those temptations as a man and as only a man. His divinity never one time came to
the rescue of His humanity. He resisted all of his temptations to the bitter end, using no resources other than those that are available to you and to me: the Word of God, prayer, dependence upon his Father in heaven, and obedience to the commandments of God.
Jesus lived the life that you and I should have lived, that God deserved us to live, but we didn’t.
Jesus didn’t just die for you, which He certainly did, He lived in your place. Jesus didn’t need to become a man, He didn’t need to come to this world to suffer, or
to live a perfect life in the storm of every effort of hell to tempt Him to sin and to then have his life drained out of him by all that this required of a human being…He didn’t need to do any of that He was already perfect, He was already complete as God
the Son, the second person of the divine, eternal Triune God.
Let me put this in a different light: If you were going to stand before God and not be rightly and truly judged to hell for ever and ever, you were going to need a
perfect righteousness, where, how…were you to ever attain such a thing? If God gave you a thousand lifetimes to try and obtain this righteousness…you would fail, miserably fail, every single time.
So, God the Son, the man Jesus, left the majesty and the glory that He enjoyed in perfect fellowship and contentedness with the Father and the Spirit…and He came down
and He lived his life for one purpose, to give us a righteousness; as if we had lived it ourselves. And ever since, this has been the sole question facing mankind. Do you want to stand before God with your own life or with Christ’s? Do you want
to answer for your life or his?
John sets Jesus next to Peter not to disparage Peter, I am sure John loved Peter dearly, and I am just as sure that had Peter read John’s gospel he would have said
to his dear friend, “Oh that is a beautiful way to tell the story…the Spirit was really moving to have you record it this way, Johnny boy! No. John sets Peter next to Jesus to help us see the depth of the love of God for sinners and the wonder, the sheer amazement
of this righteousness and what it cost our God, that we might have it.
In one way we could say that in our text we see Peter…doing his best. But the problem is that Peter’s best was ugly. Everyone’s best is ugly, pathetic, and shameful,
your best, my best, is ugly, pathetic and shameful. So what John shows us is Jesus doing his best and doing it under the worst and most hostile conditions conceivable.
The question this morning is quite simple: Whose best do you want God to judge on the great day? Yours or Christ’s? And in a sense this is the good news in a nutshell.
The life of Jesus can be counted as yours, you can be judged according to how he lived or you can be judged according to how you lived.
You can be as righteous as Jesus was righteous for you, or you can take your stand before God with your own works and nothing but your own works to show for yourself.
My brothers, my sisters, it is simply a fact that Peter was a colossal and pathetic failure, but he was a great Christian, considerably greater than any of us. Look at Peter and look at Jesus Christ and make your choice.
Because the sinless Savior died, My sinful soul is counted free; For God, the Just, is satisfied To look on Him and pardon me.
Prayer: Father, I praise You that Jesus stands for me, in my place. He has taken my sin and given me His righteousness. How, Lord, can I ever thank you as I should,
as I want? I pray that my mind, heart and body would swell with praise and joy for the gift that the Savior is and that I would live all my days to His glory, in Jesus name, Amen.
Hymn: Jesus thy Blood and Righteousness