Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 22:47-62
[ Pause ] >> Like Corey said, thanks, Stephen, for leading us in worship this morning. Tyler's out of town, and we appreciate you sharing your gifts with us. I'd like you to take a Bible this morning. We're going to use it, we're going to read it, we're going to talk about it. I want you to find Luke chapter 22. Luke 22, we've been in Luke 22 for a few weeks now. And I mentioned this last week, I told you last week the passage that we were looking at was a somber one, it was a solemn one. It wasn't really light-hearted, it was weighty, it was serious. And the passage this morning is very, very similar in that respect. It's a dark passage, it's dark in the sense that it happens at nighttime. So when you picture these things happening, you picture them happening at night under the cover of darkness. But it's also figuratively dark. Because most of the characters that you see in the passage we're about to read, their heart is not in the right place. Even when you look at Peter, the leader of the apostles, one of Jesus's closest friends, his heart is not in the right place. And we see how that plays out in this passage. So there's an outline in the bulletin, if you like to follow along in the outline you can do that. I'm just going to start by giving you the big idea. It's a simple idea, but it's a really big, big idea. Here it is, the sin of wicked men led to the death of Jesus. That's the immediacy of this passage. The sin of wicked men led to the death of Jesus. But you've got to keep this in mind. It happened according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, just as it was predestined to take place. You've got to balance those two things. Wicked men are at work. Their sin is leading to the cross. But at the same time, it's exactly what God had predestined to take place. You see, that's a strong word. That the sin of wicked men is at work to do wicked things. And yet it's all happening according to God's plan and purpose. There are strong words, they're not my words, they're Luke's words. And I just want you to look at these two verses. One from Acts 2, it says, Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. This is Peter speaking. He says, you crucified him and you killed him by the hands of lawless men. You did it. Yes, you were lawless. You were wicked. You were sinful. But it all happened according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You flipped the page in Acts and you see this verse from Acts 4. "Truly in this city, there were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, the people of Israel, they were gathered together against Jesus and they did whatever God's hand and His plan had predestined to take place." And so as we look through this passage, we're going to see clearly exposed the sin and the wickedness and the darkness of men and their actions leading to the death of Jesus. And then we're going to come around at the end and we're going to see this light shining in the darkness, this hope that it all happened according to the foreknowledge and the plan of God. And so you follow along. We're going to read the passage. It's in Luke 22 and we're going to begin in verse 47. He says, "While He was still speaking, there came a crowd and the man called Judas, one of the twelve was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kissing. But Jesus said to him, "Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?" And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said, "Lord shall we strike with the sword?" And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, "No more of this." And he touched his ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders who had come out against him, "Have you come out against a robber with swords and clubs? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour and the power of darkness." Then they seized him and they let him away, bringing him into the high priest house. And Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them, then a servant girl seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him said, "This man also was with him." But he denied it, saying, "Woman, I don't know him." A little later someone else saw him and said, "You also are one of them." But Peter said, "Man, I am not." And after an interval of about an hour, still another insisted saying, "Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean." But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about." And immediately while he was still speaking the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the rooster crowed today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and he wept bitterly. This is the word of God, let's pray. Father, help us to see the reality of sin in this passage. Help us to understand that this is not a story about only someone else, but this is a story about us. Help us to see the light of the glory of Jesus Christ shining in the darkness, shining in this passage, shining into our lives today. And Father, we pray for people who are in the room, who do not know Jesus, who have never come to a place of repentance and faith, of turning from sin and trusting in Jesus. And we pray that they would do that today by your grace. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. We're just going to move through the passage. We're going to talk about each of the major players in this story. And again, it's a somber passage, it's a serious passage. And the things that we read about are dark and disturbing. So we're going to work through it. And as I just prayed, we're going to see the reality of sin and then see the beauty of Jesus Christ more clearly when we are realistic about sin and what it does in our lives. So first of all, let's talk about the religious leaders. The religious leaders, this crowd, this mob that is coming out against Jesus. Here's the first thing I want you to see about these religious leaders. They allowed pride to harden their hearts. What I'm telling you is they didn't wake up one day out of the blue and decide, let's murder Jesus. That's not how sin works. You don't just wake up out of the blue and it just sort of comes out of nowhere. These men over time allowed pride to harden their hearts. Look, Jesus had exposed them for months and months and months for several years at this point. He had called them out publicly. He'd rebuked them for their sin. He'd shown people their hypocrisy. He'd pointed out the emptiness of their faith and their religion. And they were hurt by that. Their egos were wounded. They were prideful. Jesus had put them in their place and instead of accepting that and repenting, their pride got in the way and their pride hardened their heart just a little bit at a time. And so we read as far back as Luke 4 29, you can jot that down, Luke 4 29. Jesus preaches in their synagogue and they're so wounded in their ego. They take Jesus out to the edge of town and they want to throw him off a cliff. They didn't just wake up one day and say, "Huh, today, pass over. Let's kill Jesus." They've been thinking about this. They've been running it through their minds. Their hearts have been hardened. Luke 611, way back in Luke chapter 6, Luke tells us that they're secretly planning and plotting how to murder Jesus. And now in this passage, especially as we go forward in the next few weeks, we're going to see these men, these religious leaders, they're going to break every rule of justice in their own books of how a trial ought to be carried out and when it ought to be carried out and how many witnesses and what the charges, they're going to break all of the rules in their own books. Why? Because they're dying to get rid of Jesus because they have allowed pride to harden their hearts. You may read this story and you may read about these religious leaders and you say, "These are the guys who murdered Jesus. I don't see myself ever doing anything that serious." I mean, that's pretty serious, right? You're the guys that murdered the sinless son of God. You may say, "You know, I don't know what I have in relation with these guys. What they did is so heinous, so dark, so black. I don't think I could end up down that road. If you start right here, you can end up down that road." You take one sin, for example, pride and you just let it live in your heart and you let it sit there and you let it fester and you let it harden your heart to the things of God and the things that are true and you'll end up being a lot more like these guys than you could ever imagine. So they let pride harden their hearts. They also take solace in secret sin. They think that they can do it at night under the cover of darkness that no one will know what's going on and they can just be done with it and forget about it. That's not how sin works, is it? That's what we'd like to believe. Just one more, no one will know, no one will be hurt. It's just a secret thing and then I'll be done with it. That was sort of their mindset. When you read this story in the Gospel of Matthew in the Gospel of Mark, you read an interesting detail. When they got to this point and they decided they were going to kill Jesus and they were ready to do it, these guys weren't stupid and one of the things they said in conversation is we should really wait till after the Passover. We shouldn't be so foolish as to try to murder a man when there's hundreds of thousands of pilgrims crammed into Jerusalem. Let the Passover get passed, let it finish, let it be done and then we'll make our move on Jesus. But when Judas comes with this opportunity and he says, "Hey, I know where we can get him. It will be dark. It's out of the city. No one will know. You can do it quietly." They jump on it and they jump on it because their hearts are hard and they think they can keep it a secret. They can do it under the cover of darkness, which is why Jesus says verse 53, "I was with you day after day in the temple." You could have done it. "I've been right there. All you had to do was take me." Just three days ago, I threw you out of your own temple. You did nothing. Now that it's dark and we're outside of the city, you make your move and he says, "This is your hour. This is the power of darkness." Again, you may think that this sin that they commit is so far out of the realm of possibility in your life, but listen, you just go down this road of letting pride harden your heart and thinking you can keep your sin a secret and in the end, you're going to end up a whole lot more like these guys than you ever imagined. So there's the religious leaders. Now let's talk about Judas. We've talked a little bit about Judas over the last few weeks. We need to talk about him this morning. This is a guy who spent three years walking around Judea and Galilee with Jesus. Three years following Jesus around. Think about the stories you know from the gospels, the things that Judas has seen first hand. He's seen Jesus make wine out of water. He's seen Jesus heal the sick, he'll blind people, he'll lame people. He's listened to Jesus preach and teach. He's seen Jesus walk on water and control wind and wave. He's seen Jesus just a few days earlier, raised Lazarus from the dead. He stood right there and watched it happen. And now we read that this man named Judas is leading a lynch mob under the cover of darkness to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. And he knows that Jesus is going to be there because he just spent every night the previous week Luke tells us it was his custom to go out here and pray. He just spent a week every night in Gethsemane praying with Jesus. And on the heels of that, Judas says I'm going to lead this mob out. We're going to get him under the cover of darkness. It's a remarkable thing to think about all of the spiritual opportunity that was set in front of him and what he ends up doing in the end in betraying Jesus. You understand the gospels tell us that he was never a believer. He was not a believer who then changed his mind. He was never a believer. In fact, in John 670, you can jot that down and look it up later, John 670, Jesus is talking with his disciples and he says to them, look, I chose all of you guys. You didn't choose me. I chose you to be my apostles, to be my disciples. And one of you, I know way back in John chapter 6, one of you is a devil. You're not with me. You're going through the motions. You're doing all the external things you're supposed to be doing, but your heart is not with me. He was never a follower. Here's a lesson when you think about Judas' life. If you're not a true follower of Jesus, you might be one sin away from apostasy, from falling away. That's a frightening thought. Let me explain to you how it works. In the book of Romans, Paul says that sometimes when a sin or a lost person, someone who's not a Christian, when they're following sin and they love this sin and they want this sin, it's the most important thing in their life. Sometimes says it three times in Romans 1. God just gives people over to the sin that they want so bad. Sometimes he just steps back and says, you want it? You got it. I'm done. He gives them over. And here's the thing. When it gets to that point, there's no warning shot fired. You know what I'm talking about? There's no text message from heaven that says, hey, you're down to your last one. How many of you guys have been watching presidential debates over the last couple of weeks, sigh and groan as you raise your hand? It's been about a thousand of them. And it's remarkable that in a country of 350 million people, we're down to these six. These are the six we get to pick from. And they line them up on the stage and they do this little thing. They say, we're going to ask you a question. You've got 30 seconds to answer. And when your time's up, we're going to ding you. So they start talking. They start going and you hear this ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and it just goes on and on. But the point is they're saying, hey, your time's up. It's almost up. You've got five seconds left. You've got three seconds. Time's up. And I'm just telling you, when you think about this idea, if you're not a true follower of Jesus, you might be one sin away from apostasy. There's no bell that's going to go off and say, ding. That's it. Watch it. Judas crosses a line in this passage and to use a phrase from Romans 1, God gives him over to it and he never crosses back across that line. I can't tell you what that line is in your life or where it's at or what it looks like. I can't. No one can tell you that. But I'm telling you, it's very real. It could be one away from God just saying, you want it? You got it. And Judas crossed that line and he never came back. Look at the last thing that Luke tells us about Judas. It's the last time he mentions Judas's name in his gospel. It's in verse 48. Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss? It's a form of greeting. It's a form of affection. Something that a friend would do to a friend, a brother to a brother. And that's the signal of all the things he could have chosen to do in the darkness of that garden to identify Jesus. That's what he goes with. And it's the last thing that Luke says about him in the gospel of Luke. We know from the other gospels and from the book of Acts a few more things about Judas after this incident because this is where Luke leaves it. We know that after they took Jesus some time later, Judas began to feel guilt. He began to feel remorse for what he had done. And we know that he took the money that they had given to him and he tried to give it back. He took it back and they said, we don't want your money. They were done with Judas. They had used him. We know from the gospels that Judas went out feeling miserable and he hung himself. We also know that as he hung there and his body stayed there, we don't know how much time passed, but some amount of time passed. And eventually he fell from that spot where he was hanging and his bowels burst out on the rocks below. You read that end and you say, that's such a tragedy. It's such a sad end. And you look at the life of spiritual privilege that led up to it. A man who spent three years walking with Jesus and he was never a true follower of Jesus. He followed him around for three years, but he never followed him. Some of you sit in the room this morning and I realize this is heavy stuff, but let's just be honest. Some of you sitting in the room this morning have been around Jesus all your life. Sunday school, church nursery, vacation bible school, youth camp, you've been here, you've been somewhere, you've been exposed, you've heard the truth, but you're just like Judas. You're not a follower of Jesus and you just need to feel the weight of this. You can chase your little pet sins all you want and play a spiritual religious game that looks good to everyone in your life. Just understand that you could be one step away from crossing a line that you don't ever cross back. That's a warning from the life of Judas. Here's another warning from the life of Judas, remorse is not the same as repentance. You got to get that through your head. Remorse for your sin is not the same as repentance. Bill Cooks here this morning, we're going to pray for he and Dorothy in a little while. I bet Bill Cook could tell you stories for a month without stopping about people that he has ministered to in his life who felt remorse for their sin, but they never repented. I haven't been a pastor as long as Bill Cook was a pastor, but I could tell you quite a few stories. People feel remorse. They feel bad about it, but they don't repent of it. You say, well, what's the difference? And I'll be honest with you, from a human perspective, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but ultimately there's an important difference. Remorse is focused on you and the negative consequences and the negative results that come from your sin. And let's be honest, Judas felt remorse. When he saw what they did to Jesus and how they did it, he felt bad about what he had done. And there's going to be things in your life that you do, you cross a spiritual line, you rebel against God, you transgress in some way, and you say, man, I didn't think this was going to happen because I did that, you're going to feel remorse, but remorse is focused on you and the negative consequences that you experienced because of your sin. Repentance is not focused on you, it's focused on God. Repentance is not so much concerned with the idea of my sin has bad consequences in my life. Repentance is focused with the idea of my sin is an offense against a holy, holy, holy God. That's what David said, right? When he repented of his sin with Bathsheba, he'd sinned against a thousand people, including himself. And what does he say? Against you and you only have I sinned. That's the focus of repentance. And Judas never got there. He felt remorse, absolutely, but he never got to a place of repentance. So remorse is not the same as repentance. That brings us to Peter. Let's talk about Peter. I'll be honest with you, I've thought about Peter a lot this week, and the deal with the sword is just, I don't know how to explain it to you. Peter taking a sword, trying to chop a guy's head off in the garden. Part of me says, well, Peter was kind of an impulsive guy, right? He was like your friend that speaks first and then he thinks. That was Peter. He just, he did something and then he thought about it. And so maybe he just did it, maybe. Maybe Peter is just a good counter puncher, to use a phrase from the election cycle this go around. Most of us tend to be that way. We think we're pretty nice until you cross us, and then we're going to do something, say something, to get even with you, to get back at you. And we just, we really believe deep down that a little bit of revenge and something we do or something we say is going to just make us feel better. You're that way. I'm that way. You get in a situation with somebody and they hurt your feelings, right? They say something that upsets you. And then later in the day, you do this because I know I do this. You say, oh, I wish I'd have said this. I mean, it's too late. You can't go back and say it, but you say, I wish I'd have just given him this zinger. When you think that, what are you saying to yourself? You're saying a little bit of revenge would have made me feel better. Would it have? No. So maybe that's Peter. He's just, he's counter punching. He's reacting. Maybe Peter is just still confused. I think this is part of it. You remember a few weeks ago, Jesus told these guys, get a sword. He's talking about the mission that they're about to go on. It's not a short-term deal where they come back and check in with him, but it's your going out and you're not coming back. And one of the things he tells him to take is a sword. So maybe he's just confused about what that meant. One other possibility that sometimes we forget about, to give Peter a little bit of credit, go back and read John chapter 18 this afternoon. There's a detail in John 18 that's not in Luke. It's not in Mark. It's not in Matthew. And the little detail is fascinating. It says, Jesus is out there praying in the garden when the mob comes, right? And the mob comes and the Jesus shouts out at him, who are you looking for? And the mob shouts back and they say, we're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. And then Jesus shouts back, you ready for this? I am he. And John says, when those words came out of Jesus's mouth, everybody in that lynch mob fell to the ground. Peter saw that and heard it. I mean, he's out there in the darkness and he hears everybody coming and he hears this back and forth. Who are you looking for? We're looking for Jesus of Nazareth. I am he and he hears everybody hit the ground. And so maybe Peter thought, this is it, man. It is time to throw down. Jesus took him out and I'm going to go finish him off. I don't know what's going through Peter's mind. What I do know is that all of the gospels record Jesus saying, put it up. Put it up. That's not the way we're going to do it. He tells them to put the sword away and to be done with it. So they take Jesus. Peter's following at a distance. We read in another place that there's actually two of them following at a distance. It's Peter and John. John gets him into the courtyard where this little mock trial is beginning. And I don't need to read it back to you or describe it in too much detail. You know the story. Little girl says, hey, you look like one of them and Peter says what? I don't know him. Another guy says, hey, you really do kind of look like one of them. You are with them, right? Peter says, I don't know what you're talking about. A little bit of time goes by and a third guy hears Peter's accent. He was from the redneck country. So this would be like one of you guys going up to New York City. And as soon as you open your mouth, they're going to say, hey, you're not from around here. And you can deny it and curse and yell and holler and hoot all you want. It's just going to confirm the fact that you ain't from around here. And they're going to know it. And this guy says, hey, we know you're from Galilee. Listen the way you talk. You say y'all. We don't say that. Peter says, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know him. Luke does not record Peter cursing and swearing and making an utter fool of himself. He does record a fascinating detail where he says, as soon as that rooster crowed, Jesus was close enough that he looked Peter in the eyes. You can imagine what's going through Peter's mind in that moment. Do you remember what Peter said in Luke 22 back in verse 33? Jesus said, Peter Satan's demanded to sift you. I've prayed for you so that when you've turned you can strengthen your brothers. And what does Peter say? Luke 22, 33, Lord, I'm ready to go with you both to prison and to death. Give him a little bit of credit. He was willing and ready to fight in the garden against insurmountable odds, humanly speaking. But here it's a girl and a few more bystanders asking him questions and he says, I don't know who he is. I don't have anything to do with that guy. I'm just listening in. Peter's pride led him to overestimate his spirituality. And I hope you can draw the connection between Peter and his pride and the religious leaders and their pride. And I hope you can understand that the darkness in both of those situations began with the exact same sin issue, pride. You don't think you're capable of doing something like this? Neither did Peter. He swore he would not do it. He insisted that it was beyond what he would do. He even said, look, if all these other chumps deny you, I won't do it. Putting himself one step above all the other apostles. They might, I won't. It's the exact same issue that led the religious leaders to do what they did. And you look at it at that point and you say, well, sounds like you're saying, Peter is just as bad as Judas and just as bad as the religious leaders. That's exactly what I'm saying. What's the difference? The difference is back in Luke 22 few verses earlier, right before Peter says, I'm not going to do it. Jesus says, Peter, I have prayed for you. I prayed for you, Peter. You want to know what the difference is? Hold your spot here in Luke and flip back to the book of Psalms in the Old Testament and find Psalm 37. This is the difference. Psalm 37. We'll just start in verse 23 and read verse 24 as well. Psalm 37 verse 23. It says, "The steps of a man are established by the Lord when he delights in his way, though he fall. He shall not be cast headlong." Why? Because the Lord upholds his hand. Peter wasn't just a little bit better than Judas. He wasn't just a cut above the religious leaders. The same sin that lived in Peter's heart is the sin that lives in your heart and that lives in my heart. And when you and I sit around and we say things like, can you believe what that person did? I could never do anything like that. Can you believe what happened over there? I would never be capable of something like that. What you're really saying is the sin in my heart is somehow qualitatively different than the sin in yours and it's not. The difference wasn't that Peter was a better guy. The difference was that Jesus prayed for Peter and to quote Psalm 37, the Lord upheld his hand. That was the difference. That's why Peter moved from remorse to repentance. We read in all the Gospels, Judas goes out and he weeps bitterly. We read that Peter after this moment goes out and he weeps. Same response, but then Peter moves one more step from remorse to repentance. And this is the last thing I want you to see about Peter. Repentance is a blood-bought gift and the blood of Jesus is more powerful than your sin. It's a blood-bought gift. The New Testament talks about repentance. It's a gift. God grants people repentance and the blood of Jesus that purchased that gift is more powerful than your sin. So here's the deal. You look at Peter and you say in some ways Peter's sin is worse than Judas than the religious leaders because just hours earlier Jesus told him exactly what was going to happen. And he was so arrogant and so prideful and so self-centered that he said, I'll never do it. He turns around and five minutes later he does it. Denying Jesus, calling curses on his name, on his head. It's wicked, but it's not as powerful as the blood of Jesus. And you may sit here today and you may say, okay, well, Peter did that, but you don't know what I've done. I don't need to know what you've done. Here's what I know. The sin in your heart is no different than the sin in my heart or the sin in Peter's heart. No different. That means we're all capable of a lot more than we'd like to think we are. And I know that you have sin in your past. I know you've done things you feel remorseful over. You wish hadn't happened. I know that sin and its consequences can be a crushing weight, but I also know and I pray that God would uphold you through that and that you wouldn't end up like Judas just wallowing in remorse, but that you would be like Peter and move to repentance. It's a blood-bought gift. The blood of Jesus is more powerful than your sin. And that brings us to Jesus. As I think about this passage, I look at the religious leaders and I look at Judas and I even look at Peter and you just say, dark, dark, dark. It happened at night. It was dark. The whole thing is just dark and depressing. And as we were singing earlier, it just, it made me think I flipped the page. Two pages over in my Bible and I looked at John 1. It says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life. Here it comes and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. You have one light in this passage. It's kind of a silly scene really, isn't it? Jesus out praying and Jesus is the same guy that's walked on the water and controlled the wind and the waves and he's cast out demons and he's healed sickness and he's raised the dead. He's just said the divine name I am and the whole bunch of them fell down on their face. And then he's going to tell Peter to put your sword up and he's just going to go with them. And he's going to let himself be arrested like a lamb led to the slaughter that before it shears as silent. Almost like God had thought about all of what was going to happen beforehand because he had. That was the plan. The good shepherd didn't come to just bark out orders at the sheep. He came to lay down his life for the sheep and he's clear in John 10. Nobody takes my life from me. I'm laying it down at my own accord. That's why the Father loves me. This is the plan. Acts 2, Acts 4, yes, the sin of these men led to the death of Jesus, but it was exactly according to the plan of God, exactly what he had predestined to take place. This is Luke 19, 10. I've been preaching it at you every week for months. This is nothing new in the gospel of Luke. The son of man did not come just to be a self-help coach. He didn't come just to hang out and make friends. He didn't come just to fill four gospels with stories so that we could read them in our kid Sunday school class. Luke 19, 10, the son of man came to seek and to save the lost. That's the mission. That means he's going to die for your sin. He's going to spill his blood to purchase repentance for you. And this morning, as we've talked about all the way through the gospel of Luke, the challenge is not necessarily to walk away and to say, "How can I try to be a better person?" The challenge is to say, "Have you run to the cross of Jesus Christ? Have you trusted in the one who came to seek you and to save you? And are you putting him at the center of your life?" Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for a realistic picture of who we are. And when we look at the religious leaders, when we look at Judas, when we look at Peter, we see way too much of ourselves. We see ourselves in their cowardice. We see ourselves in their pride. We see ourselves in their attempt to puff themselves up and build themselves up spiritually. We see ourselves in their hardness of heart and their stubbornness. Father, I pray that we would be realistic about the darkness that Luke is describing here and that we would understand that he's talking about us. But Father, we have great hope because the light has come to the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. We have hope because the Son of Man came to seek us and to save us. He came for this very purpose on a mission to give his life for ours, to spill his blood for our salvation, to purchase the gift of repentance that we might move from wallowing and remorse focused on ourselves to focusing on you in your glory and your holiness. Father, we pray for those in the room. Father, we know there's people here who have been around church, in Jesus, in Christians, all of their life. And they're no different than Judas. They're just playing a game and we pray that you would wake them up. Father, for those of us that do love you, that have trusted in Jesus, we pray that we would be honest and biblical about what we're capable of, that we would look at Peter in this story and that we would give pause when we start to boast about our spiritual steadfastness and our faithfulness and our love for you, but that we would be humble, resting in the fact that you pray for your people, resting in the fact that even though we fall, we don't fall headlong because you hold us up, resting not in our ability to be faithful to you, but resting in what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross in seeking us and saving us. Father, as we come to a time of response, I pray for the folks in this room, some need to repent, some need to reflect, some need to worship and give thanks, but Father, as we do that together and we do it through song, we pray that you would be honored and glorified, and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I want you to stand and we're going to sing a couple-