The apostasy of the world in the realm of religion and politics, John 18:12-38

The question of whether or not the truth is really that important is what we have been looking at for the last couple of weeks as we have studied the arrest and now the trial of Jesus.  The writer of John  has been showing the contrast of truth versus apostasy.  Remaining stedfast in the truth, versus caving in to natural wisdom or human preferences which subverts the truth.

Last week we looked in detail at the denial of Peter, his attempt to fight in his own wisdom and strength resulted in eventually blaspheming and denying the Lord.  And we looked at four steps by which the church - not the world, but the church - can turn from the truth to apostasy as illustrated by Peter.  The steps to apostasy were first relying upon your own wisdom and strength,  then distancing yourself from God,  third, a desire for friendship and acceptance by the world, which finally culminates in blasphemy and denial of the Lord.  And we often see those steps to apostasy mirrored today in the church.

Now this week, as we follow the events recorded by John, we see another view of apostasy, the apostasy of the unsaved, or the apostasy of the world. Christ manifested the truth of God to the world, but the world turned away from truth, deliberately choosing apostasy.  Truth is what was on trial then, and it is what is on trial in our modern culture as well.  And we who believe the truth find ourselves on trial as well.  As Jesus in vs.37 says, “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”  You are either in agreement with the truth, or you are in opposition to the truth.  And the world is antagonistic to the truth.  Apostasy is championed, in both the religious and political realms of this world.

Even a cursory look at the problems headlining our society today reveals  the dilemma of our modern culture, which is summed up in  Isaiah 59:14 which says, “Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the street, and uprightness cannot enter.”  Today truth has stumbled in the street.  Apostasy seems to hold sway in the world and it threatens to overwhelm the church.  The world loves darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil, they hate righteousness, and they love wickedness.

But while we can expect such a sentiment from the world who is in rebellion against God, it is even more disconcerting that the same questions are being asked by organized religion, if not directly, then indirectly.  Is truth worth standing for?  Does the truth really matter?  Is the truth worth dying for? Is the truth worth separating over?  Or do we just throw up our hands as Pilate did and say, “What is truth?”

I would submit to you that the truth is all that there is.  It is the most important thing.  Not conformity to religion, not conformity to the status quo, not conformity to political ideology.  Jesus said, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”  So truth is important.

Even the founders of our country understood that our freedom as Americans depended upon the truth.  The Constitution begins, “We hold these truths to be self evident…”  They acknowledged that truth was derived from our Creator.  But I’m afraid that though they made a good start, they fell short of the truth.  True life and freedom can only come when we believe and accept the gospel which is the truth of God given by Christ Jesus.  As Jesus said, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 

So as the church, we must believe all the truth, and nothing less than the truth.  It’s so important that as a church truth must be paramount in our focus.  We cannot allow false teaching to creep in.  Because like leaven, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, a little falsehood corrupts the truth so that it loses it’s power to set you free.  A little lie serves to keep you in bondage.

The truths or doctrines of our faith are like railroad ties, underlying the steel rails of the track.  If you start removing some of the ties, soon the rails are no longer able to keep the train on track, and you end up with a train wreck.  But the world doesn’t see truth like that. They see truth as a restriction on their freedom.  They hate it because it makes them feel guilty.  They want independence from God, even though such freedom leads to destruction.  So they want to subvert the truth, and are hostile to the truth.  The world is at enmity with God.

In our text today we see this attempt by the world to subvert the truth concerning Jesus Christ.  Truth is on trial, as I said previously. And the world is characterized by two entities in this passage; religion and politics. Those are the two elements of the world we are looking at today in this story.  Religion and politics. First let’s consider religion. Not the church (the true believers) but religion. Religion is man’s attempts to reach God.  Christianity is God reaching down to man through Jesus Christ.  

Now in this passage, religion can be illustrated Annas, the father in law of the high priest, who was Caiaphas.  John doesn’t tell us much about Jesus’s trial with Caiaphas, but other gospels fill in those blanks.  However, as I said in previous messages, John isn’t interested in a chronological biography here, he is giving us his gospel.  And so the message I believe he wants to get across to us is not necessarily every detail of Christ’s trial, but the dominate characteristic of the religious bureaucracy, which was their animosity and hatred of the truth of Christ. 

John focuses on Annas, because he is the real manipulator behind the Jewish religious system.  Caiaphas, who is the high priest that year is his son in law.  But Annas, who had once been the high priest himself, is the godfather so to speak.  Annas is the one who was in charge of all the concessions which were in the temple; the money changers and the sellers of doves and sacrifices.  All of that was known as the “bazaars of Annas.”  He was the godfather of what Jesus referred to as a “den of thieves” when He made a scourge of cords and cleaned out the temple.

And by the way, Jesus did that twice. At the beginning of His ministry and then after His last triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus cleaned out the temple.  And that operation had exposed and called out the corruption of the religious system of the Jewish temple and the priesthood which was complicit in it.  What they did was they fleeced people who came into the temple to present their sacrifice.  Annas had inspectors there who inspected the animal or birds that someone brought to be sacrificed. And of course, the law required that the sacrifice had to be without spot or blemish.  So when the inspector would look it over, he would find fault and say that it had some sort of defect and could not be sacrificed.  So then the only real option was for the person to buy one of the “perfect” specimens that the bazaars offered for sale, which of course cost much more money than what you could buy the same for elsewhere.  And to make it even more odious, these thieves had another aspect to their racket that included money changing.  They said you couldn’t buy the sacrificial animal with Roman money, or make an offering with Roman currency because it had Caesar’s image on it, and that amounted to idolatry.  So you had to exchange your money for Jewish money, which again cost you a hefty commission.  So they had quite a racket going on, enough to make the Mafia jealous.

Caiaphas, being the High Priest, was complicit in this scheme of course.  It was a family business, after all.  They were made extremely wealthy by it.  But the High Priest was by this time a political appointment.  The Romans recognized the degree of control and authority of religion in Israel, and so they had taken over the appointment of the High Priest in order to make sure that whoever was in that position followed their wishes and worked with them.  And Caiaphas and his father in law Annas had managed to ingratiate themselves to the Roman authorities through graft and behind the scenes deal making.  

So that’s who these guys were.  They were using religion for personal advantage.  Truth had stumbled in the streets, because there was no righteousness in the leadership.  They cared more about preserving their political positions, about keeping the powers that be happy, and about garnering wealth  than they did about truth.  In fact, Caiaphas was the one who had said in vs14, “It is expedient for one to die on behalf of the people.”  Unbeknown to him, God was prophesying through him that Christ would die for the sins of the people.  But from his perspective, what he was really saying, was it was expedient to sacrifice truth, to murder Jesus, for the sake of their religious enterprise.

So Annas, starting in vs.19, begins a sham trial of Jesus in the middle of the night.  It was totally illegal and improper.  There were no witnesses there to bring charges against Him. And as you look at his line of questioning, you notice that he doesn’t accuse Christ, but that He wants to get Jesus to say something which they can use to incriminate Him.  They ask Him about His disciples and about His teaching.  

So Jesus answers him saying, “I have spoken openly to the world; I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together; and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you question Me? Question those who have heard what I spoke to them; they know what I said.”

Here is what really is happening; the ruling party of the Jews have already issued a verdict upon Jesus.  He is to be killed, to be crucified.  They have already determined that He has to be done away with.  They have no charges in regards to Him teaching anything that isn’t true, or scriptural, but their issue is that He challenges their authority and their ability to exert financial gain from their religion.  So there is a conflict between their religious traditions and Christ’s teaching of truth of God and their only solution is to silence Christ by killing Him.

Listen, there are similar attacks against the church today.  There are traditions, practices, that have been passed down from generations and are considered essential to church health and wealth.  And if you don’t conform to the country club mentality, then you are ostracized and even sometimes attacked.  You are put on trial so to speak by the religious community because you don’t conform to the church paradigm which is practiced by most churches.  Truth is sacrificed for the sake of conformity to the approved template, for the sake of organizational conformity.  And when you don’t adhere to their template because you don’t see that specified in God’s blueprint for the church then you are subject to hostility and denunciation.

And as we see in the case of the High Priest’s appointment, there is a parallel in the church today over leadership that is not according to the calling of God.  I read a blog the other day from a pastor, lamenting the number of pastors he knew that had recently quit the ministry.  They talked about things like burnout, and lack of appreciation, or conflicts with membership or committees.  I don’t deny that pastors can get burned out, or that they can suffer from loneliness or depression just like any other person does. I am sometimes a victim of such things myself from time to time. But what I think is perhaps the root of the problem is that there are a lot of pastors today that have been called by churches, but not necessarily called by God. They may have been appointed by a seminary, but not appointed by Christ.  If a pastor has a clear call of God to preach the gospel, and pastor the flock of Christ that Christ has given him, then I think that such a man will not likely quit the ministry due to feeling under appreciated.  I think far too many men are called to a pastorate as a result of a popularity contest held by the church’s pastor search committee, and in order to maintain that approval rating, they have to conform to what the people want them to do, rather than faithfully perform their ministry according to what God would have them do.  And that lack of a divine call upon their lives is equivalent to what Jesus referred to as a hireling, and not a true shepherd, who abandons his sheep when trouble comes.

There is a progression to apostasy as we discussed last week.  And acquiescing to the culture  rather than standing on the truth of God’s word leads eventually to denial and blasphemy of Christ. One denial of truth soon leads to another and so on until it is completely corrupted. And the pastor that is a hireling will try to appease the people and give them what they want at the expense of the truth of the gospel. But a little leaven soon leavens the whole lump.

Well, the response to Jesus’s rebuke of the High Priest earned Him a slap in the mouth.  Vs22, 

When He had said this, one of the officers standing nearby struck Jesus, saying, “Is that the way You answer the high priest?” Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify of the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike Me?”

Jesus comes back to the truth.  If I’m telling the truth, why do you strike Me? The reason is that they hated the truth.  They didn’t want to hear the truth.  And I believe that resentment is still the prevailing sentiment today in organized religion.  People don’t want to hear the truth, if it opposes what they want to believe.  We have seen that lately in the political arena as well, haven’t we?  The riots in our cities are a rebellion against the truth.  They can’t stand to hear the truth.  So they strike out, they riot, they break things and cause damage in order to prevent or intimidate  people from speaking the truth.  And as Jesus indicated, they break laws in order to try to convince others that they are unlawful.

We have even seen similar attacks here in our church.  We speak the truth, and eventually someone gets their pet doctrine stepped on, but rather than seriously seek to know the truth, they go out of their way to attack the pastor, and demean him to as many people in the community as they can. Such is the nature of apostasy.  But Jesus is the example of how we are to react to it.

There is one other aspect of  the apostasy of religion that is illustrated here in vs 28, “Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas into the Praetorium, and it was early; and they themselves did not enter into the Praetorium so that they would not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.”  What this indicates is a commitment to ceremony at the expense of truth.  The hypocrisy of these Jews is really astounding.  They don't want to be defiled, and so they will not enter into the hall of judgment because the hall of judgment is in the hands of Gentiles. God hadn’t told them to do this, this was their tradition.  So in their minds,  to enter into the hall of judgment will bring about the possibility of defilement.  It’s ironic that they are so  scrupulous about the little details of tradition, but totally unconcerned about their blatant sin of the murder of the Son of God.

Now, what makes it even more significant is that John says they didn't enter into the hall of

judgment that they might not be defiled, so they might eat the Passover. Think of the irony of that. Who is the Passover lamb? Well Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5: 7 that Jesus Christ is the Passover lamb. He says, "Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” So they continue in their sin of murder, but publicly adhere to ceremonial cleanliness, in order that they might eat the Passover, while putting to death the Passover Lamb.  

And as a modern parallel of that, let us be careful in the church if we accommodate sin in order to not offend the world, so that we might practice our religion. Remember that Christ suffered and died for those sins.  And when we wink at sin, or say that sin isn’t actually sin, we cheapen the grace of God through licentiousness, trampling underfoot the blood of Jesus Christ, disregarding the fact that God sacrificed Jesus to pay the penalty for those sins so that we might be set free from them.

The second aspect of the apostasy of the world that is illustrated here is the political realm.  Pilate is a prime example of the political aspect of the world.  Let me give you a little background on Pilate.  First of all, he married well.  He married Claudia, who was the daughter of Tiberius, the grand daughter of Caesar Augustus.  As a result of that marriage, he was appointed prefect of Judea, or what we might call the governor.  

Pilate was a politician, trying to please the Emperor of Rome on the one hand, and to placate the Jews on the other.  Yet Josephus and other historians tell us that he repeatedly irritated the Jews, and had more than once been rebuked by Rome for his treatment of the Jews.  So perhaps that is an indication of why Pilate seems to try to accommodate the Jews desire to crucify Christ, even though he found no fault in Him. Even his wife urged him not to have anything to do with crucifying the Lord. He was trying to please people, even if it meant he would have to sentence to death an innocent man.

I’ve come up with my own definition of the word politics. Politics is the art of compromise. It means one will jettison truth in order to reach a consensus.  Politics is usually opposed to absolute truth.  Now in Pilates case, you get the feeling that he wasn’t happy being political, but he felt he had no other alternative.  Look at the predicament he found himself in. 

 Vs.29, “Therefore Pilate went out to them and said, ‘What accusation do you bring against this Man?’ They answered and said to him, ‘If this Man were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him to you.’ So Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.” The Jews said to him, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death,’ to fulfill the word of Jesus which He spoke, signifying by what kind of death He was about to die.”

The predicament is this; Pilate is summoned to court to pass sentence on Jesus, whom I believe it would have been next to impossible for him not to have heard of to some extent, and the judgment, which is crucifixion has already been determined, and yet there is no charge that they prove is worthy of death.  The religious leaders have put Pilate in a box. They know Pilate has been in trouble with Rome over his treatment of the Jews in the past, and he cannot afford to upset the Jewish leaders. So in order to appease the Jewish rulers, he must condemn Jesus to death.  But in his heart he knows that Jesus is not guilty of death.

I think a lot of people in the world find themselves in a similar position today in regards to Christianity.  They recognize something about it which seems true and right, but the acclaim of the culture is to condemn Christianity.  And at that point they have to make a decision; to please the world, or to please God.  Since they haven’t yet chosen to believe in God unto salvation, it is very unlikely that they will do so under duress.  They make the same mistake that Pilate did.  They try to escape making a decision at all.

vs.31, “So Pilate said to them, ‘Take Him yourselves, and judge Him according to your law.’ The Jews said to him, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death.’  But the world will not let you off the hook so easily. The world requires allegiance to it’s doctrine, just as God demands allegiance to His doctrine. 

So Pilate asks Jesus directly, “Are You the King of the Jews?”  That was a start towards the truth.  But let’s see if Pilate is seriously seeking the truth, or if he is just seeking a way out.  Jesus answers him curiously; ““Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?”  

Jesus doesn’t need to ask Pilate questions, as He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart of man.  But what He is doing is asking a question to prompt Pilate to ask himself the right question.  So Jesus says, Do you say this yourself, or did others tell you that about Me?  Are you repeating what you have heard, or are you seriously inquiring to know if I am King of the Jews?  

Note Pilate’s response; Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?”  So he tries to remove himself from the equation, putting Christianity aside as a nationalistic thing, something that has nothing to do with himself as a Roman.  And yet he cannot sweep this question of what to do about Jesus aside.  It is a question that everyman and woman must answer at some point in their lives.  Is He King of Kings, and Lord of Lords?  And if I acknowledge that He is, then I must bow the knee to Him and worship Him.  If I say He is not, then I will suffer the eternal consequence of my decision.

Jesus then answers in a way that does nothing to absolve Pilate of guilt.  Jesus’ answer  includes everyone regardless of his nationality. “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”  

Note that Jesus does declare that He is King, but not just of the Jews, but of a realm which is over all the nations and kingdoms of this world.  It is a spiritual kingdom as opposed to an earthly kingdom.

Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”  Here is the purpose of Christ’s coming to earth as declared by Jesus Himself; to testify to the truth.  And here is the means of salvation; everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.  Hearing indicates more than listening however.  It indicates receiving, believing, and obeying the truth of Christ with all your heart and soul.  

Folks we need to understand the gospel.  Jesus testified to the truth of God.  The gospel teaches that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You must confess that you are a sinner, and that the judgment for sin is death.  God has judged you as a sinner, deserving death. But the good news is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became our substitute, dying in our place for our sins, so that we might receive the gift of His righteousness credited to our account.  And that believing in Him and what He accomplished, we might be given new life, even eternal life, being saved from the penalty of death.

But the politician Pilate was still trying to keep from having to make a decision.  And so are many in the world today.  The world echoes the disillusioned cry of Pilate; “what is truth?”  Truth was staring him in the face, and he would not receive it.  Oh, I believe Pilate saw it, just as clearly as Annas and Caiaphas saw the Passover Lamb standing in front of them.  But like them, Pilate cannot afford to receive it.  He loved too much the favor of this world to become identified with Christ.

Pilate thought he could please the world and still please God.  He said to Christ “what is truth,” thus hopefully excusing himself from having to accept the truth, and then he goes out to the crowd and says I find no fault in Him.  He doesn’t want to make a decision either way.  But either you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, or you condemn Him along with the world. Undecided is not an option in the Kingdom of God.  You are either for Him or against Him. You either believe Him, or you reject Him.  Pilate would ultimately find this to be true, and though he would wash his hands for eternity, he would never wash away the blood of Christ upon his hands.

Listen, don’t die with Christ’s blood on your hands.  Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost said in Acts 2:23, “this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”  It was your sins and mine that put Jesus to death.  And only by repentance of your sins and faith in His sacrifice for our sins on the cross can we be forgiven of our sins, and given new life.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.  Believe the truth today and be saved.  Hold onto to the truth today and be set free.  Walk in the truth and have life more abundantly.  Today you have heard the truth of the gospel of Christ.  What will your response be? Will it be the response of religion?  Continuing to practice expediency at the cost of truth? Will it be the response of political correctness, at the expense of truth?  I pray you will believe the truth unto salvation, no matter what the world or religion or political persuasion says.  

Four steps to apostasy, John 18:12-18, 25-27

As I have previously pointed out, John isn’t presenting a blow by blow account of the arrest and trial of Christ.  By the time he is writing this epistle, the other three gospels have already presented all of the chronological events in detail.  Instead, what John is doing is specifically highlighting certain events in order to illustrate particular principles which he is attempting to teach.  And as we have seen from our previous studies, John is very focused on presenting the gospel as the truth of God.  He quotes Jesus reaffirming this principle again and again in statements such as “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  And “I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me.”  And another, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”  Finally one more, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

In fact, 83 times in his writings John writes about either truth or what is true.  I firmly believe that for the apostle John, truth was the preeminent theme of the gospel.  So what I think he is doing here in addition to presenting the events leading up to Christ’s crucifixion is he is including a sub plot, which is contrasting the truth with the dangers of apostasy.  The truth of Christ is contrasted with the apostasy of Peter.  And Peter is representative of the church.  Remember, Jesus had said in Matt. 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”  So the apostles, and especially Peter, are emblematic of the church because they are the foundation of the church.  And in this passage we are looking at today, John is highlighting the dangers of the church slipping into apostasy.

Apostasy means the abandonment or renunciation of belief, particularly religious belief.  So to become apostate is to abandon or renounce your faith, or the principles of truth which undergird your faith.  In 2 Thess. 2:3, Paul speaking of the second coming of Christ says, “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first.”  The Bible teaches that in the last days there will be a great falling away from the truth. False prophets and false teaching will fill the church to the extent that Jesus said if it were possible even the very elect would be misled.  

And we know from church history that has in fact already happened. When Jesus speaks for the last time to the church in Revelation 2 and 3, which was also written by John by the way, He speaks to the seven churches in Asia, which were symbolic of the church universal, and in practically each of His messages to the churches, He emphasizes their need to stay true to His word, and warns them to repent of their apostasy, lest He remove their lamp stand from the Earth.

Now last week we looked at the first part of this passage set in the Garden of Gethsemane where the mob came to arrest Jesus along with the Pharisees and the Roman cohort.  And particularly we focused on the response of the disciples as an example of how the church often responds to a hostile world.  We talked about the natural response of the human psyche to fear or intimidation known as the  fight or flight syndrome which was exemplified by the disciples fleeing, and Peter swinging his sword and cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s slave. And if you will remember, my application contrasted the church’s natural response to the world as opposed to what should be the true response of the church as identified by Acts 2, in the first church of Jerusalem immediately following Pentecost.

In a similar fashion, I want to show a subsequent application to the church through the events recorded in this passage that may not at first be apparent from a superficial study of the chronology of events.  But if you will bear with me, I hope to show you how the denial of Peter and the trial of Christ mirror the choice confronting the church today, namely, remaining steadfast in the truth, and on the other hand, denying the truth, or becoming apostate.

So what we see from the passage is that really what  was on trial was the Truth. That becomes apparent in Jesus’s response to both Annas and Pilate later on in the chapter.  It was all about the truth that Jesus taught and represented.  Jesus was the Truth personified.  That is what the Pharisees and Sanhedrin hated.  They weren’t interested in the truth, they were interested in the law.  The law was their religion.  They had learned to manipulate the law.  They could take advantage of the law. They could enrich themselves through the law, administered through ceremonial religion.  But Jesus focused on the truth.  The truth trumps the law because the law comes from the truth.  However, as I said, they were not interested in the Truth, they were interested in law, which was administered through their religious ceremonies.  

And sadly, we see today in the church that there is an emphasis on religion as they define it, but there is very little emphasis on the truth. Truth is relative today in our culture, and the church in it’s efforts to be relevant to the culture has become a mirror of the culture, rather than a reflection of Jesus Christ who is the Truth.

So John’s record at this point doesn’t focus so much on the illegality of the trial or on the  hypocrisy of the Pharisees, but he seems to deliberately juxtapose Peter’s denial with Christ’s affirmation of Truth.  Twice John shows another side of what was going on, that which was happening in the courtyard below with Peter.  And I am proposing that his intention is to show the counterpoint to the truth of the gospel, which is apostasy, and how easy it is and possible it is for the church to fall into it.  

So without further introduction, let’s look at four steps to apostasy as illustrated in this text.  And I will give you each step in advance; First, the steps to apostasy begins with acting in your own wisdom, which leads to # 2, distance from God, which produces #3, a desire for acceptance from the world, and #4, results in blasphemy and denial.   That’s the four steps to apostasy.  

Let’s consider how this is illustrated in the text.  The first point, acting in your own wisdom we pretty much covered last week.  When confronted with the hostility of the mob, Peter did what he thought was right according to his own wisdom, according to his own strength.   When he should have followed the Lord’s example and looked to him as to how to respond to the attack of the mob, instead he acted in his own strength, according to his own wisdom, and it resulted in disaster.  He pulled his sword and whacked off the High Priest’s servant’s ear.  That was a bad move.  It could have been even worse had not Jesus healed the man’s ear.  Because as we see later, Malchus’s kinsman was sitting at the fire later in Annas’s courtyard, and he recognized Peter and called him out in front of the soldiers.  

We see this same attitude played out today in the church all the time, though perhaps in a little less dramatic fashion.  More and more we see the church relying on philosophy, psychiatry, science, survey’s,  and business practices in order to achieve their goals. The average sermon today is an impotent mixture of psychology, positive thinking  and sentimentality, with a few jokes and a poem thrown in for good measure.  Rather than looking at how the Bible says we should approach things like sin and righteousness, we follow what science or business or common sense tells us to do.  But we need to remember that God has given us a blueprint for the church, and when we deviate from it to follow our own wisdom, we do so at our own peril.  

I want to point out another contrast inherent in this scene.  Peter decides to fight with his sword against the forces of darkness that are arrayed before him.  And though he manages to wound one out of possibly hundreds of armed soldiers, it was not a very effective strategy.  And as I said earlier, if Jesus hadn’t stopped it and healed the servant, it would have probably ended badly for Peter.  But then notice the contrast of the truth.  In vs. 4, it says, “So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth 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.”  

Here is the irony of the contrast.  Peter takes his sword and wounds one man, and potentially sets up a disastrous situation.  Jesus uses the sword of His mouth, the very word of God, and the entire Roman cohort are knocked flat on the ground.  I believe that John shows us this contrast to illustrate that even the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men.  We must not underestimate the word of God.  It is powerful even to the destruction of fortresses. 2Cor. 10:3 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.”  The  efforts of our flesh in our wisdom and strength fail to make a difference for the kingdom.  Whereas God’s word is living, and powerful and sharper than a two edged sword.  Because it is the truth of God.

Well, as we see in Peter’s case, acting in your own wisdom leads to the second step towards apostasy, which is distancing yourself from God.  It’s really amazing that Christ demonstrates His divine power even in this hour of darkness, in both knocking the mob on the ground and healing the man’s ear, and yet the mob is unmoved.  They are resolute in their hatred and determination to put Jesus to death.  Their hearts are hardened. 

But what’s even more amazing is that the disciples, also seeing these things, and having seen so many other miracles that Jesus had done over three years,  are unmoved as well.  Their response is to run away.  You would think that they would have recognized that the safest place for them to be was with Jesus. 

I have said that from this pulpit many times and I will say it again this morning.  There is no safe place outside of the will of God.  And there is no safer place than to be in the will of God.  Yet how quickly we forget that.  The disciples thought that it would be safer somewhere else.  So they ran.  Peter, I will give him some credit, doesn’t run.  Instead he follows from afar, according to Matthew 26:58.  And so when Jesus is in the house of the High Priest, Peter is hanging around outside in the dark, outside the courtyard door.  

Over the last few months or so, I have had a number of people tell me that they felt as if they were far from God.  They didn’t feel close to God anymore.  They feel like God didn’t care, or He didn’t love them anymore.  They felt distant.  And I will tell you what I tell them every time.  When you feel distant from God it’s usually because you have moved away from God, not vice versa.

It’s like the old couple that had been married for 30 some years, back in the day when pickup trucks had bench seats, not like the bucket seats we have today.  And the couple were driving down a country road, and the wife looked over at the husband who was driving and said sort of reproachfully, “Remember when we used to take a drive when we were dating, and how you used to put your arm around me, and hug me close?  Don’t you ever miss that kind of closeness?”  And the husband looked over at her on the passenger side of the car and said, “Well, I didn’t move, you did.” 

God doesn’t move to distance Himself from us.  Even when we are in rebellion against Him, He pursues us. The Lord is like the husband of Hosea, who watches and provides for his love from afar, waiting for her to return to Him, and never stops loving her.  James gives us the prescription for a healthy relationship with God in James 4:8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”  

Distance from God usually happens as a result of a lack of dependence upon God.  You stop reading His word.  You start skipping your devotions.  You hardly pray.  Start missing church services.  It’s usually characterized by a desire to keep a comfortable distance from God, while all the while claiming to be in fellowship with Him.  You want to be free to make your own decisions, and then that leads to neglecting the word of God so that you can operate independently without a guilty conscience.  

Thirdly, distancing yourself from God leads to a desire for acceptance by the world.  We see this illustrated in Peter’s example.  There is an unnamed disciple in the text, who John says was known by the High Priest’s family.  Most commentators believe that this is John himself.  And so John realizes that Peter is outside the door, and  he speaks to the girl watching the door so that Peter can come inside.  I’m not sure that Peter really wanted to come inside.  But nevertheless, he more or less had to come in when John came to the door.  

But where he ends up is not back beside Christ as you might think.  He hasn’t felt enough remorse over his earlier actions so that now he just wants to be next to Christ again.  No, instead he sidles over to the fire where the enemies of Christ are hanging out getting warm.  So it’s apparent where his sentiments are at this point.  There are two sides in this mock trial.  There is Jesus standing all alone, and there is everyone else.  Peter gains entrance to the house, but he chooses to stand with the enemy.  He wants to keep his distance from Christ.

We see that in Christianity all the time.  There is a crisis in one’s life, and so they feel remorse that they were caught up in some crime, or put in jail, or totaled the car, or messed up their marriage somehow, but rather than come all the way to Christ, the natural tendency is to come only so far.  To hang on to their autonomy, to hang on to their sin.  The choice Peter should have made was to come all the way to Christ, even to the death if necessary, which was what he had boasted earlier that he would do.

So of course in our text we see that the enemy recognizes Peter as having been with Christ. And they start to call him out.  First the slave girl says, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” And He said, “I am not.”  He denies being a disciple.  He doesn’t deny knowing Christ at this point, just denies being a disciple.  

I don’t think that Peter was afraid of this slave girl.  I think Peter suddenly is getting a clearer understanding of what Jesus has been saying all along about what it really means to be a disciple, to  suffer for Him.  I think it was easier being a disciple when they had this miraculous power to call down fire from heaven or cast out demons.  But now this hour belonged to the power of darkness.  And in this hour he begins to remember  how Jesus had just told them they would be persecuted and killed for following Him.  It suddenly is no longer theoretical, but an immediate possibility.  And maybe he realizes at this point that this being an outcast from society, being persecuted, being publicly ostracized was going to be part of what it means to be a Christian.  And at that moment, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to commit to that.  

So he chose friendship with the world, which Paul tells us is enmity with God.  He found himself at odds with Psalm 1:1 which says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”  

Acting in your own wisdom results in distancing yourself from God, which leads to a desire for acceptance from the world.  And we see that all the time in the church today among Christians.  Who at some point, come to realize that following Christ completely and being stedfast to the truth of God puts them in opposition to the world. It’s makes us social outcasts, fools for Christ. So  to appease the world we want to soften our stance on things that the Bible speaks clearly about.  We start to accept the dictates of the culture, because if we spoke out about adultery or homosexuality or evolution or a host of other subjects then we would become ostracized  by our families, outcasts in our communities.  We could lose our job.  We might get “unfriended” on face book. We might get ridiculed at school.  

And before we know it, we have moved from walking according to the counsel of the wicked to standing in the path of sinners, and before we are done we end up sitting down with the scoffers.  We find ourselves like Lot, who moved from living in the country near  the city of Sodom to living next to it, then finally moving downtown.  On the road to apostasy you get comfortable with the world, and uncomfortable with discipleship.  So you move further and further towards apostasy.  When you start to accommodate the world’s views in one area, it leads to another area, and soon its like yeast in a lump of dough- it corrupts completely.

That takes us to the final point, which is a desire to be accepted by the world leads to blasphemy and denial of the truth.  Peter is getting warm by the fire.  Notice that John repeats that twice in vs 18 and 25.  That accommodation of Christ’s enemies leads to Peter denying the Lord three times.  You will remember that Jesus prophesied that before the night was over Peter would deny Him three times.  Peter had denied such a possibility vigorously.  Once again you see this disregard of God’s word.  We think we can disregard God’s word with impunity.  But we cannot.  If the word of God convicts you, then you need to repent and ask God to forgive you.  Because when you disregard the conviction of the Spirit of God through the word of God your heart becomes hardened, and you give the devil an opportunity to destroy you.

In his later years, Peter illustrated that he come to appreciate the schemes of the devil and how his strategy is to destroy you.  Peter writes in 1Peter 5:8, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”  But at this point in our story, Peter had not learned that lesson yet. He thought he was good, he was strong, he could handle things himself.  But in fact, Jesus had warned Peter earlier that Satan had demanded permission to sift him like wheat.

Peter didn’t believe that he was weak, however.  He was confident that he could stand up to the devil’s temptations.  Peter exhibited overconfidence in himself, and a lack of confidence in God.  It would have been good for him to know  1Cor. 10:12 which says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”  

Well, as we see here, one denial of the truth leads to another lie, which leads to yet another lie. That’s the way sin is.  A little leaven soon leavens the whole lump.  And so we see Peter get deeper and deeper into sin, until he ends up not only denying Christ, but blaspheming and cursing in order to prove himself not a friend of Christ.  It’s really just incredible to watch the fall of Peter.

John 18:25 “Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” He denied it, and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, *said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” Peter then denied it again.  (Matthew 26 tells us that Peter denied it with an oath, and then when asked again he resorted to cursing,)  and immediately a rooster crowed.

Most of us when confronted with the possibility that we would deny Christ would protest as Peter did that we would die before denying Him.  But that is in theory.  In actuality, it doesn’t often go the way we think it might.  Satan gets us to deny Him first by denying the Lord’s power in favor of our own.  We do it our way, kind of like Frank Sinatra bragged about.  We deny the authority of the word of God and want to exercise our own will according to the wisdom of the world.  That leads to further distance from God, as we think we are doing fine, and don’t really need to depend daily upon God.  Skipping devotions or prayer time or church time becomes more commonplace as everything else starts to take precedence over the things of God. And that distance from God leads to a desire to find acceptance from the world, from our friends, maybe even our family.  Maybe that is even our original motivation.  We like the approval of men, so we seek out ways of pleasing the world, rather than pleasing God.  And then finally, that leads to out right denial of Christ.  

Oh, we may not be cursing God, or uttering blasphemies directed towards Christ directly, but in many ways I’m afraid we deny the truth of the word, we deny Christ’s Lordship over us, we deny Him control over our lives, and we don’t trust Him to take care of us.  And if we don’t turn and repent of such things, it can lead us into outright apostasy.  We end up denying the truth of God.  We deny the truth of God’s word.  We fail to stand up for Christ when He is attacked by the world.  

I think the lesson to be learned from this story is that if apostasy can happen to Peter it can happen to the best of us.  Because, contrary to the way many commentators and pastors portray Peter, I believe Peter was the best of us.  I believe he was passionate about following the Lord.  He loved the Lord.  He was faithful to the Lord.  He was an intimate friend of the Lord.  And yet, he fell from faith in denying Christ three times on the night of His crucifixion.  It is a tragedy that is possible for all of us.  And many of us have already done as bad if not worse at some point in our lives.  I know I have.  

But like Peter, I am a child of God.  Thank God my disobedience and denial of my Lord does not negate the fact that I am His child.  God is a God of restoration.  He came to seek and to save sinners.  And just as Christ made a point to meet with Peter specifically after His resurrection and reconcile Peter to Himself, so He will do with you and with me if we are truly His people and we are willing to repent.  If you don’t repent, Satan will use your rebellion to try to destroy you.  But if you turn back to God, He will heal you and restore you.

In Peter’s case, not only did Christ reconcile with Peter, but He still used Peter to be the foundation of the church.  Peter’s past mistakes did not disqualify him, but once he was reconciled to Christ he was used as the chief apostle of His church.  God has a plan to use us, even when we have been broken and beaten up by the devil and by our failures.  The key is we learn to trust God, let Him have control of our life, and we don’t trust in our own strength or wisdom, but trust in the word of God.  

I don’t know your situation, but if you have recognized in yourself some aspect of Peter’s denial  this morning, then I urge you to repent and be reconciled to God. Don’t continue down the road to apostasy.  Come back to the Lord and let Him have full control of your life.