The Fall of Peter | John 18:15-27
Brian Hedges | March 13, 2022
Let’s turn to God’s word together this morning. We're going to be in the Gospel of John once again, in chapter 18, but actually beginning in John 13 this morning.
One of the things that has been a great help in my spiritual life over the years, and probably for many of you as well, is reading the biographies of great saints who have gone before, men and women of God. It’s helpful for me to read these stories of people who have lived in times past and read about their courage, about their sacrifices, about their faithfulness to their Lord. But I have found that perhaps the most helpful thing in reading biographies is not just reading the good things about their lives, but it’s reading about their sins and their faults, their failures, their flaws. The biographies that I consider the best are the critical biographies, the biographies that give you warts and all; they give you a full picture of someone’s life, so that you’re not really slipping into hagiography, hero worship, but rather you’re looking at someone in their humanity and you’re seeing how God was faithful to them in spite of all of their faults and their failures.
Well, the Scriptures don’t necessarily give us full-fledged biographies, but they do give us little biographical portraits, little cameos of people in Scripture, and the Scriptures do not hide the warts of the saints. In the New Testament, apart from perhaps the apostle Paul and of course the Lord Jesus himself, there’s no character in the New Testament who receives more attention than Peter. Today, as we continue our study through the passion narrative in the Gospel of John, we’re going to be looking at the story of Peter, and particularly Peter’s fall, Peter’s failure of Jesus, as he denies Jesus three times in John 18.
It’s interesting that all four Gospel narratives record the failure of Peter, and they do so in great detail. As you read through these narratives, you might wonder, Why does this receive so much attention? Why is there so much detail about Peter and his failures? I think there are several reasons.
One reason is that these are eyewitness reports, and when you read these stories and you read about specific people who talked to Peter and Peter warming himself by the charcoal fire—I mean, it’s very vivid detail. It’s because these are based on the actual eyewitness reports of the disciples, including Peter himself. We believe that the Gospel According to Mark was really the substance of Peter’s message that was given to Mark and then recorded, and it’s interesting that Mark’s Gospel is the most severe towards Peter in describing his failure. These are eyewitness reports, and it’s one reason we can know that the Gospels are authentic history. If the early church had invented these stories, they never would have invented stories that included the failures of such prominent leaders as Peter.
Another reason these stories are here is to show us that even the disciples were guilty when it came to the death of Jesus. James Montgomery Boice says that “John has undoubtedly intertwined the story of Peter’s fall with the story of the Jewish and Roman trials to show that even the followers of Christ are not free from guilt in their relationship to him. True, they do not hate him like Caiaphas, they are not indifferent to him like Pilate, yet they deny him many times, as Peter did.”
It was a part of the suffering of Christ that in his hour of greatest need, in his humanity, his best friends, his disciples, his students forsook him, they denied him, they abandoned him. That was part of the agony of Jesus’ passion.
I think another reason why Peter’s failure is included is to be something of a mirror for us to see our own stories reflected in the life of Peter, and, in contrast, to show us even more of the greatness and the glory and the beauty of Jesus and his sacrifice.
My approach this morning is to look at the story of Peter, going back to John 13, beginning there, and really tracing this story through the final hours of Jesus’ life, and to do so by looking at Jesus and Peter in contrast. I’m going to point out five different contrasts between Peter and Jesus, and as we do it my hope is that we will see ourselves reflected in Peter, learn something about ourselves, but especially that we will see the glory and the beauty of Jesus in contrast.
1. Peter’s Self-Confidence and the Lord’s Prophetic Word
We begin with John 13, and the first contrast is between Peter’s self-confidence and the Lord’s prophetic word. Now, you have to remember the context in John 13. This is the Upper Room narrative; this is the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus has just had this last Passover meal with his disciples, he has washed his disciples’ feet, including Peter’s. He is preparing them for what is to follow in the following hours. Here is Peter, the leader of the apostolic band; Peter, one of the twelve—in fact, Peter was one of the three closest disciples to Jesus, right? Peter, along with James and John, who would accompany him into Gethsemane, had been eyewitnesses of his majesty on the mount of transfiguration. Peter alone of all the disciples was the one who had walked on water and who had first confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. Here’s Peter; he’s the leader of them, and in fierce loyalty to Jesus, Peter says, “I’m willing to die with you. I’m going to go all the way. I’m going to die for you, Jesus.”
Jesus knows Peter better than Peter knows himself, and I want you to see this exchange between Peter and Jesus in John 13:36-28.
“Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.’ Peter said to him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.’”
Do you see Peter’s self-confidence in verse 37. “I will lay down my life for you!” In contrast to that, the prophetic word of Jesus, “You will deny me three times before the rooster crows.”
What’s going on here?
Well, we’re seeing Peter, this chief among the disciples, the apostles, with all of his self-confidence, he loved the Lord. I think Peter genuinely loved the Lord. He thought he was willing to die for the Lord, but Peter, though he was confident in himself, he didn’t really know himself, right? He’s full of self-confidence, but he’s lacking in self-knowledge.
Peter thought he knew himself better than Christ knew him, so he argues with Christ. Peter thought that he was courageous enough to die with Christ, but in reality Peter had more confidence in his self-perception, his own idea of who he was, than he did in Jesus’ prophetic word.
Brothers and sisters, this is a danger for us as well, the danger of self-confidence, of thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, as Paul will say in one of his letters. “Let him who stands take heed lest he fall.”
It’s a danger that I think is especially true of young Christians, immature Christians who have not yet experienced enough of the wickedness of their own hearts to know how prone they are to wander far from God, how prone they are to sin, how prone they are to fail.
Perhaps one way in which this is expressed is in resolutions and in vows and in making these great promises to the Lord. Have you ever made promises to the Lord that you haven’t kept? I certainly have. I can look back to my early 20s and the promises I made about spiritual disciples and faithfulness to the Lord—so many broken promises, because I thought I was better than I really am. That’s what’s going on with Peter as well. He thought he was ready to die for Christ, but when the moments of real pressure come, as we will see, Peter fails.
One illustration of this is in the life of Jonathan Edwards, that great New England Puritan. Many of you have probably heard me share over the years excerpts from Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions, 70 resolutions that he wrote when he was 20 years old. They’re certainly inspiring to read; they’re convicting to read; they’re motivating to read. If you’re ambitious as a young Christian, you read those and you want to be like Jonathan Edwards.
It’s really interesting that one Edwards scholar, a guy named Kyle Strobel, has written a book on Jonathan Edwards, on the spiritual practices of Edwards, and he quotes Edwards from much later in life, a more mature, humble Edwards. This is what Edwards said as an older man.
He said, “I used to be continually examining myself and studying and contriving for likely ways and means, how I should live holily, with greater diligence and earnestness than I ever pursued anything in my life; but with too great a dependence on my own strength, which afterwards proved a great damage to me.”
He’s probably thinking of those early resolutions. All the earnestness, all the zeal, but too much self-dependence. Edwards said this did damage to him later on.
Strobel, in reflecting on this, says this is our temptation as North American Christians. We’re ambitious, we live in a self-help culture; our temptation is to make these kinds of resolutions and vows and to depend on ourselves to pursue the Lord. It’s not as though resolutions are a bad thing altogether—of course we should want to live holy lives. But, as Strobel says, “resolutions need to be ordered by grace and oriented to God, and not focused on self-achievement through the zeal of immaturity.”
Edwards went on to say, “My experience had not then taught me, as it has now, my extreme feebleness and impotence and the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit that there was in my heart.”
Have you seen that in yourself? Have you seen your feebleness, your extreme feebleness, your weakness, your impotence to do good? Have you seen the innumerable bottomless depths of corruption and deceit in your heart? Peter was about to discover that. He was about to see who he really was. Let’s be wary, brothers and sisters, of too much self-confidence.
2. Peter’s Neglect and the Lord’s Watchful Prayer
So, we see Peter’s self-confidence and the Lord’s prophetic word, and then the next step in the story is Peter’s neglect and the Lord’s watchful prayer.
The scene now is Gethsemane. It’s mostly passed over by John. John in chapter 18 just tells us that Jesus retreated and went to a garden, and then immediately goes to the scene of the betrayal and the arrest, as we saw last week at the beginning of John 18. But Mark especially gives us a great deal of detail about what happened in the garden of Gethsemane, and I want to read from Mark’s account, because what you see here with Peter I think is crucial for understanding the failure that will follow.
Let’s read, beginning in Mark 14:32.
“And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.’ And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” Then notice this in verse 37. “And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
Here’s Jesus, knowing what is about to transpire; Jesus, who is right on the brink of his betrayal, the eve of his crucifixion, and what is Jesus doing? He’s praying, he’s seeking the Lord earnestly. Jesus is watchful in his prayer; Peter, in contrast, falls asleep.
It’s like someone falling asleep at the wheel. Have you ever fallen asleep while you’re driving? That’s a very dangerous thing to do. I’ve done it. I fell asleep one time when my dad and I were driving to a church; it was a long, three-hour trip on an early Sunday, and we both fell asleep and woke up at the same time with the van careening on the side of the road. By God’s grace and providence we were not hurt, but ever since then I’ve been hyper-vigilant when I’m driving not to fall asleep. I drink as much caffeine as necessary, do anything possible to stay awake while I’m driving.
Brothers and sisters, we also need to be wakeful in our spiritual lives, watchful and prayerful in our spiritual lives. This is really the balancing point to that first point. On the one hand we need to be wary of self-confidence, trust in ourselves; but that doesn’t mean that you shirk off prayer and time in the word and seeking the Lord. In fact, if anything, it means that we need more prayer, we need a richer, deeper devotional life—not because we’re depending on that, but because we need to be in touch with Jesus. So we have to ask ourselves, are we watchful? Are we prayerful? How’s your devotional life? How’s your prayer life? Are you falling asleep at the wheel?
Or could you say with Charles Wesley these words:
I want a principle within
Of watchful, godly fear;
A sensibility of sin;
A pain to feel it near.
I want the first approach to feel
Of pride or wrong desire,
To catch the wandering of my will
And quench the kindling fire.
This watchful fear, because we know how weak we are, we know the dangers of sin and temptation, and it makes us watchful, it makes us prayerful, it makes us dependent on the Lord. Peter missed that. Peter neglected that. While Jesus is watching and praying, Peter is sleeping.
I think Peter eventually learned his lesson, because when he wrote his first letter to a group of Christians, he said these words in 1 Peter 5:8-10. He exhorts them, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
3. Peter’s Sword and the Lord’s Bitter Cup
Peter’s neglect and the Lord’s watchful prayer. Then, when we get into John 18, we see the third contrast: Peter’s sword and the Lord’s bitter cup.
Look at verses 10-11. We saw these last week, but I want to focus on them again for a few minutes. Jesus now has encountered Judas coming to betray him with armed men, Roman soldiers, the temple police, the chief priests; they’ve come armed with swords and spears, clubs; they’re ready to lay hands on Jesus. Look at what happens in verse 10.
“Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?’”
As we saw last week, this cup is nothing less than the cup of divine judgment. It is the cup of God’s wrath and judgment against sin, and Jesus says, “I must drink this cup.” He is, of course, talking about the cross and the suffering that he will endure at the cross.
But Peter doesn’t understand the cross. All Peter knows at this point is the sword, and he draws his sword. He is ready to fight for Jesus. This shows that there was real courage there. He was ready to fight for Jesus; he draws the sword and he’s ready to lay down his life, and take life as well, for Jesus. But the problem is his zeal is misguided.
It shows us the danger of misguided zeal, of religious fervor that is not closely tethered to the way and the teaching of Jesus. This can happen in our lives as well, when we are full of zeal for the cause of Christ while we are far from the heart of Christ.
There’s an example of this from the biography on Martyn Lloyd-Jones, written by Iain Murray. Martyn Lloyd-Jones had a great burden to try to help a fellow minister, a man named T.T. Shields. He had been known in the early 20th century as the Canadian Spurgeon; he had been a great preacher, but now he was later in his life, he was growing older, and he had become a very controversial figure. He was always criticizing other people in his sermons, in his preaching. He was going after the liberals, but he wasn’t really feeding his sheep, he wasn’t really helping the church, and his ministry was taking this negative turn.
Lloyd-Jones had a burden to try to help this man, he was praying for an opportunity to speak to him. One day they were in a conversation together, and Shields brought up another author that was common in that day, a man named Joseph Parker, and he asked Lloyd-Jones, “Do you ever read Joseph Parker?”
Lloyd-Jones said, “No, I don’t read him.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he doesn’t help me. I don’t get anything from him.”
Shields said, “He just makes mincemeat of the liberals; you don’t get anything from that?”
Lloyd-Jones very wisely said, “You can make mincemeat of the liberals and still be in trouble in your own soul.”
He began to try to plead with Shields to give up this critical spirit and this approach where he was always censuring other people, argumentative and controversial. Well, Shields knew that Lloyd-Jones had been a physician, he’d been a medical doctor, and he said, “What about a patient who has cancer? You have to get that cancer out!”
Lloyd-Jones said, “Yes, but there is such a thing as a surgical mentality, where a doctor can become knife-happy," and all he sees is cancer.
He was pleading with Shields to try to get him to see his need to change. Unfortunately, Shields didn’t change, and the impact of his ministry just diminished more and more as the years went by.
What had happened? He had let the cause of Christ and his zeal for the cause of Christ blind him to something very important about the heart of God, the heart of Jesus.
Have you ever wondered how religious people can end up doing really awful things? How do people take up arms in the name of Jesus? Think about the Crusades. How can people so wrongly confuse worldly ambition with following Christ, or political enterprise with the kingdom of God? How do pastors and other church leaders become proud, power-hungry leaders instead of tender shepherds who feed the flock? How could several generations of evangelical Christians in the southern states in the 18th and 19th centuries actually try to defend slavery? These are the kinds of things that happen when zeal outruns grace, when we are compromised by the world and by worldly ways of thinking, and when we embrace the sword instead of the cup.
Peter was misguided. Jesus rebukes him: “Put away your sword. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”
4. Peter’s Denials and the Lord’s Faithful Witness
Peter’s misguided zeal, as courageous as he is, will soon turn into outright cowardice. We see this in the fourth contrast, Peter’s denials and the Lord’s faithful witness.
This gets us right into the heart of John 18. I’m going to read the longest part of Scripture now, from John 18:15-27, and as we read it I want you to see the contrast. It’s sort of like cross-cutting in a movie. Have you ever watched a film where the scenes keep switching back and forth between two things that are happening concurrently? Maybe you see the villain of the film, who’s really at his very worst, in contrast with the self-sacrifice of the hero of the film, the protagonist of the film; these two things happening one and at the same time. That’s what’s going on here.
You have Jesus, who is standing trial before Annas in verses 19-24, but it’s bracketed by Peter’s denials on either side. John here is cross-cutting, and he’s doing it to highlight the contrast between Peter, his denials, and the faithful witness of the Lord Jesus. Let’s begin in verse 15.
“Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple [possibly John the beloved disciple, but we’re not sure]. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, but Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door, and brought Peter in.”
Then you have the first denial in verses 17-18. “The servant girl at the door said to Peter, ‘You also are not one of this man's disciples, are you?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.”
The scene switches to Jesus before the high priest in verse 19. “The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. 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. Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what I said to them; they know what I said.’ 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?’ 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?’ Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.”
Raymond Brown comments on these contrasting scenes that "John here has constructed a dramatic contrast, wherein Jesus stands up to his questioners and denies nothing, while Peter cowers before his questioners and denies everything."
You see it in the second denial in verse 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.’”
Again, I think there’s a contrast there. Just earlier in John 18, when the soldiers and Judas all came looking for Jesus, they ask for Jesus of Nazareth, and what does Jesus say? He says, “I am.” Three times in the text he says, “I am,” and in contrast here you have Peter’s, “I am not.”
The third denial is in verse 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?’ Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed.”
Peter’s faith, his courage all collapses like a house of cards as he denies the Lord, in contrast to Jesus, who never flinches, because he is the true and faithful witness.
Mark, as I mentioned earlier, gives us even more detail, and is much harsher in its perspective on Peter. In Mark 14:71, on the third denial, we read that “he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, ‘I do not know this man of whom you speak.’”
What’s going on here? Peter is doing exactly what he said he would never do. Peter is doing exactly what Jesus said he would do. Peter is doing that which he thought himself incapable of doing.
Have you ever come to grips with the fact that you are so weak and so sinful that you are capable of doing things that you hate? Apart from God’s sustaining grace, we are capable, through the weakness of the flesh, of doing the things we hate the most. Peter does that, in contrast to Jesus, who is true and faithful to the end.
5. Peter’s Tears and the Lord’s Gracious Look
Finally, we see a fifth contrast. This one I’m drawing from Luke’s Gospel; it’s the contrast between Peter’s tears and the Lord’s gracious look.
I’m so glad this is included in Luke’s record, because it shows us that Peter was ultimately not left to himself. He wasn’t, and in fact, in John 21 we’re going to encounter a charcoal fire once again when Peter is restored by the Lord Jesus. We’ll save exposition of that for a few weeks down the road, after Easter, when we’re looking at the resurrection appearances of Jesus. But I want you to see what Luke says in Luke 22 about Peter’s tears and the Lord’s gracious look.
Luke 22:60: “And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter.”
Spurgeon said, “It was a heart-piercing look and a heart-healing look all in one, a look which revealed to Peter the blackness of his sin and also the tenderness of his master’s heart towards him.”
The look that changed him. “The Lord turned and looked at Peter, and Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.”
Have you ever wept over your sins? Have you ever felt cut to the heart when you’ve begun to recognize how you have grieved the heart of Jesus? That’s what happened for Peter; he weeps bitterly, he cries, he sheds tears.
But even as he cries, even as he weeps, what is Jesus doing? Jesus is on his way to the cross to die for those very sins, and so the gracious look, a look which told Peter, “Peter, in spite of what you’ve done, I love you.”
What a contrast we see between Peter and the Lord Jesus. What a contrast we see between ourselves and the Lord Jesus. My hope this morning is that in seeing this it will both humble us and it will cause us to cherish even more the beauty and the glory and the grace of Christ, because that’s the key thing that we need. It’s to see him.
I want to end by reading some words to you. You can follow along on the screen. These are words of a hymn that have been set to more contemporary music, and to be honest, I don’t know that I’d ever even heard these until a few weeks ago. If I had, I certainly did not remember. But I’ve been listening to this one album on Spotify, and this hymn keeps popping up. After a few times the lyrics started to grab me, so I began to read and pay more attention to them. I want you to see these; they do relate to the story of Peter. Maybe they will touch your heart as well.
Hast thou heard him, seen him, known him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
Chief among ten thousand own him;
Joyful, choose the better part.
What has stripped the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not a sense of right or duty,
But the sight of peerless worth.
’Tis the look that melted Peter;
’Tis the face that Stephen saw;
’Tis the heart that wept with Mary,
Can alone from idols draw.
Captivated by his beauty,
Worthy tribute haste to bring;
Let his peerless worth constrain thee,
And crown him now unrivaled king.
This is the glory and the beauty of the gospel: though it shows us our desperate wickedness, our sinfulness, our weakness, that just becomes the dark, black backdrop against which the brilliance and the beauty of Christ’s peerless worth shines all the brighter. This morning, my hope is that you will not only see yourself in the story of Peter, but that you will see the peerless worth of Jesus Christ, that you will be captivated by his beauty, the beauty of his prophetic word, of his prayerful watch, of his faithful witness and testimony, of his gracious look, of his preserving grace that brought Peter back to himself. Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank you this morning for your word. It is a passage, a story that searches us, that humbles us, that shows us our great need for your grace and mercy, but it also shows us the great beauty of your Son, the Lord Jesus. We thank you for what he’s done; we thank you for his faithfulness; we thank you for his grace, his sacrifice, his love, his compassion.
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, we humble ourselves, we acknowledge our great need for your mercy, and we look to Jesus, to his peerless worth. We pray that by grace and through faith that we would be freshly captivated by his beauty this morning, that in seeing who Jesus is and what he has done that our hearts would be kept close to Christ, that we would be drawn close to the Savior, that we would learn to walk with him, to depend on him, to abide in him, to trust in him. So Lord, draw near to us in these moments as we seek your face and as we come to the table. Draw near to us and be glorified, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
