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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, September 18, 2016

“Wild Goose Chase: A Rooster’s Crow” John 18: 13-27 Matt 18: 21-22

09/18/16 “Wild Goose Chase: A Rooster’s Crow” John 18: 13-27
Matt 18: 21-22

Guilt. That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you did something you knew you shouldn’t have done. That nagging sense that is always around you that something just isn’t right. Guilt. The feeling that can call us to repentance, when approached properly, or hold us back from following God if misunderstood. 
If anyone understood guilt it would be the apostle, Peter. Peter either is on top of the world or stumbling with his walk with Jesus. He is either watching the transfiguration or sinking in water. Being told that he is the rock on which the church would be built or denying Christ as in this mornings scripture passage. 
A lot has happened in the short time prior to this mornings scripture passage in the gospel of John. Peter and a few of the other disciples had accompanied Jesus into the garden, where guards had comes to arrest him for untold crimes. Peter, always the zealous one, takes out a sword and in order to protect his Lord, cuts off the ear of the high-priests guard. Jesus however, turns and tells him to put his sword away before healing the young man’s ear. 
Peter could have gotten into a lot of trouble for that swipe of the sword. He could have been imprisioned. He could have been chastised by Jesus. But instead, Jesus simply tells him that this is not the way his disciples are to live and heals the young man’s ear. No case could have ever been made against Peter, for no damage was done. 
Then shortly after the arrest, this seems to change for Peter. He still wants to protect Jesus, so while all the other disciples scatter except for one (the beloved disciple), he follows after him to the court of the high-priest, albeit at a safe distance. But somewhere on that short journey from the garden to the court, things change for Peter. It was almost as if his zeal was replaced by fear - fear of the unknown, fear of what was going to happen to Jesus, fear of what was going to happen to him. When the other disciple boldly entered into the courtyard of the high priest, Peter stayed behind. Surely he was just as well known as the other disciple - yet he held back, he lingered outside of the gate. 
How many times have we let our own fear of the unknown hold us back from following the prompting of the Holy Spirit? There are times I really don’t want to tell strangers that I’m a pastor, mostly because of the “oh you’re going to throw the Bible at me” looks I get if they don’t know me. Other well known pastors have tried to redefine their job title by tellings strangers they are an author or a speaker or a group organizer. All of those sound a lot better at times than pastor. But at the same time, I have to wonder what opportunities can be missed because of the fear of the assumptions that others have about what it means to be a pastor. Are we missing opportunities to share the love of Jesus because of how a few people (and sometimes more than a few people) have misunderstood or mistreated us in the past because we are a pastor? 
I think the same is true for many people about sharing that they are a Christian today. In fact, I think we’ve been conditioned to be apprehensive about identifying ourself with our faith. We’ve seen people do it badly. We’ve seen people use their faith to harm others. We’ve seen others shy away because of the word “Christian” so we hold back, just like Peter.
And what happened when Peter took that step of holding back - of not following the other disciple into the courtyard - he found it much easier to be in situations where he denied Jesus, repeatedly. There was a woman who saw Peter and asked if he was on of “this man’s disciples”? And Peter said No, I’m not. 
Can you imagine how fearful Peter must have been to answer in this way. How fearful he would have to had been to deny three years of his life, a deep friendship, the recent sword swipe that echoed what he had said so many times - that he would follow Jesus to the death. Now death was looking eerily closer than Peter could ever have imagined and he denied his teacher and Lord. 
Peter must have found safety and comfort in his lie because he kept standing by the fire warming himself after he denied Christ. But he was then asked two more times by that fire if he was of any relation to Jesus as his disciples - even if he was just in the garden with him. And he answered no, two more times. 
Oh the guilt Peter must have felt when he heard the cock crow and remembered Jesus’s words. Pastor Mark Batterson wondered if he felt that little twinge of guilt for some time afterwards ever time he heard the rooster. But what makes this passage particularly challenging, isn’t just that Peter denied Christ. What makes it even more challenging is that Jesus forgave him for that denial! 
Before this passage ever took place in the gospel of Matthew, we find Jesus teaching the disciples about forgiveness. Peter is struggling with the concept, as many of us do, and was asking Jesus how many times he should forgive someone who hurt him. Seven times? Or was that too many? To which Jesus replied seventy-seven times - a number that seems unfathomable. 
There aren’t limits to Christ’s forgiveness. Not a numerical limit and not a threshold of what is considered too bad to forgive. Peter did the unthinkable, folks - he denied Jesus not once, not twice, but three times, publicly! Yet Jesus forgave him. Yet Jesus forgives us. 
The problem is that for many of us, it seems easier to accept God’s forgiveness for our actions than to forgive ourselves. How many of us have confessed our sins to God, received forgiveness, but still wrestle with feelings like we aren’t good enough? How many of us confess the same sin to God over and over - not because we keep committing it, but because we can’t believe that God could ever really forgive us? 
Brothers and sisters, when we are weighed down by unnecessary guilt - the guilt that comes from not believing that God would ever or could ever truly forgive us for our sins - it makes it so difficult to follow the Holy Spirit - to chase after the Wild Goose. We cannot minimize the effects of our sin - we have all fallen short of the glory of God and we all deserve to be punished for those sins -  but we can also not minimize the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness which frees us from the bondage of that sin - including our guilt. 
Do you think Peter could have went on to be the rock on which the church was built if he would have been weighed down by the guilt of denying Jesus? Do you think he could have given his passionate evangelistic appeals in the book of Acts if he wouldn’t have accepted God’s gift of forgiveness? 

We need to embrace the forgiveness of God, friends. Embrace the gift we have been given instead of denying it. May we use the freedom from sin we find in Christ to empower and encourage us to follow the Holy Spirit to share the glory of Christ with those whom we encounter on life’s journey! Amen. 

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