SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: As you take your Bibles and open them to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 26, I'd like to take a moment and explain, give at least some kind of explanation to my sermon title this morning.
SPEAKER_00: A Divine Tragicomedy.
SPEAKER_00: I was asked this week, is that a word?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a word, actually.
SPEAKER_00: You can find it in the dictionary.
SPEAKER_00: My sermon title is generated by a commentator's use of the term tragicomity to describe this section of Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: A tragicomedy is a story that incorporates tragic and comic elements into the same account.
SPEAKER_00: And there have been variations in the meaning of that term and in the application of it throughout the centuries of its use.
SPEAKER_00: I am using it this morning as it was meant by the Roman dramatist Plautus, who invented the word in the second century BC.
SPEAKER_00: Plautus used the term to denote a play in which gods and men, masters and slaves, reversed the roles traditionally assigned to them.
SPEAKER_00: The comedy part may make you laugh because it's funny.
SPEAKER_00: But it also may be that the plot is so intense, so serious, and maybe even sinister, that the only thing left to do is to chuckle, to relieve tension.
SPEAKER_00: In simpler terms, in a tragic comedy, everything is turned upside down.
SPEAKER_00: And some tragic comedies focus the comedic element not so much on the humorous, but on the ironic.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the case before us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We have an account featuring God the Son, one of his disciples, and human rulers and leaders in unexpected roles.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a tragic account where the God of truth is condemned.
SPEAKER_00: Look with me at Matthew chapter 26, beginning in verse 57.
SPEAKER_00: Then those who had seized Jesus led him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the scribes and the elders had gathered.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter was following him at a distance as far as the courtyard of the high priest, and going inside he sat with the guards to see the end.
SPEAKER_00: Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: But they found none.
SPEAKER_00: Though many false witnesses came forward, but at last two came forward and said, This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to rebuild it in three days.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest stood up and said, Have you no answer to make?
SPEAKER_00: What is it that these men testify against you?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus remained silent.
SPEAKER_00: And the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, You've said so.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest tore his robes and said, He's uttered blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: What further witnesses do we need?
SPEAKER_00: You've all heard his blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: What is your judgment?
SPEAKER_00: And they answered, he deserves death.
SPEAKER_00: And then they spit in his face and they struck him.
SPEAKER_00: And some slapped him, saying, Prophesy to us, Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Who is it that struck you?
SPEAKER_00: Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard.
SPEAKER_00: And a servant girl came up to him and said, You also were with Jesus, the Galilean.
SPEAKER_00: But he denied it before them all, saying, I don't know what you mean.
SPEAKER_00: And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_00: And again he denied it with an oath.
SPEAKER_00: I do not know the man.
SPEAKER_00: After a little while, the bystanders came up and said to Peter, Certainly you too are one of them, for your accent betrays you.
SPEAKER_00: Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I do not know the man.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately, immediately the rooster crowed.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter remembered the saying of Jesus, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.
SPEAKER_00: And he went out and wept bitterly.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, may we.
SPEAKER_00: May we by your words here through Matthew be moved to respond to our own sin by this account, just as Peter was.
SPEAKER_00: But to have that motivated by your grace and your mercy to us just as Peter was.
SPEAKER_00: Open your word up to us.
SPEAKER_00: Show us Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Enable us to see how you indeed are, as we've just sung, the true and better.
SPEAKER_00: Cause us to worship and bow before you as a response.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this for your glory.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 57 and 58 set the stage for our characters being in unexpected places.
SPEAKER_00: The rulers and the leaders have convened, not during normal operating hours, but as a secret, clandestined kind of grand jury functioning at night.
SPEAKER_00: They have to because it's Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Time demands that they act, and they must determine if there is enough evidence to try the God of life with a crime worthy of death.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples were last seen fleeing Jesus in verse 56, leaving him to face the trial alone.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter's regained some of his boldness here to follow at a distance to see how everything turns out.
SPEAKER_00: There may be some irony here in Matthew's use of the end.
SPEAKER_00: Does Peter think this is the end?
SPEAKER_00: Has all of his three plus years of following Jesus, has it come down to this?
SPEAKER_00: What is this end?
SPEAKER_00: Is this it?
SPEAKER_00: Is this how it's all going to turn out?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew paints him, Peter that is, not with the disciples, but with the guards.
SPEAKER_00: Did you catch that?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew goes into this courtyard, this area around the high priest's house, and he sits down and he has a conversation with the guards.
SPEAKER_00: There may be some irony there in Matthew's choice of language.
SPEAKER_00: The with, the guards, may be an intentional word choice to indicate that Peter displayed a withness, if I can use that word, a withness that is more like an insider than an outsider.
SPEAKER_00: If that's the case, then Matthew's portraying Peter as though he's with the guards, no longer with the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is looking like one who had joined the opposition.
SPEAKER_00: The one who promised to never abandon Jesus appears to have done just that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, after the stage is set, Jesus is in place, and Caiaphas' household, the council is gathered together to hear the testimony.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's out in the courtyard watching, listening, waiting to see what will happen.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew then recounts two acts in the script.
SPEAKER_00: First, beginning in verse 59 through verse 68, and then verses 69 through 75.
SPEAKER_00: So look look with me at this account and consider the tragedies, the ironies and the triumphs that lead us to humble trust in Jesus, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: First, consider what we might call Act 1 with the title Son of the Blessed or Son of Blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: Mark's gospel phrases the main question from the high priest like this Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed?
SPEAKER_00: It's a fair question.
SPEAKER_00: It is the question that Matthew has answered on nearly every page of this biography of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's evidence is primarily God the Father's own declarations, verbal declarations, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's evidence is further explained by repeated demonstrations that Jesus has fulfilled the Old Testament again and again and again.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't even begin to get us to the points of miraculous powers demonstrating that he is unlike any other human being that has ever walked the earth.
SPEAKER_00: He is God the Son by declaration of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He is God the Son by fulfillment of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: He is God the Son by the demonstration of his power.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew affirms repeatedly that Jesus is the one the scriptures anticipated.
SPEAKER_00: So the question posed by the high priest is the question of Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It is the question everyone who encountered Jesus had to answer.
SPEAKER_00: It's the question you have to answer.
SPEAKER_00: Is this Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: The Son of the Blessed?
SPEAKER_00: Or is he a son of blasphemy?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is either good news full of hope for you or bad news with an expectation of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: So if Jesus responds to the high priest's question with a, yes, I am, but in reality it's false that he's not that person, then he is guilty of blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: That is, if Jesus claims to be the Christ, the Son of God, but he is not the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, then his claims are blasphemous, and he ought to die.
SPEAKER_00: If he answers, no, I'm not the Christ, the Son of God, but he really is, then he's a liar and the truth is not in him.
SPEAKER_00: But we know that God cannot lie.
SPEAKER_00: It is not in his character to lie, for God is truth.
SPEAKER_00: But more importantly, if Jesus answers truthfully with a yes, and it is true, yes, he is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, then everyone who hears that must respond to that reality.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus truly is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, then no one can walk away from that question, from that declaration, from that answer without deciding if they will believe in him or reject him.
SPEAKER_00: The question is a fair question.
SPEAKER_00: It's the right question, which is why Matthew has used so much ink to reveal the answer.
SPEAKER_00: And now, now Matthew places the answer not in his text but in the mouth of Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: But that's getting ahead of our plot.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish rulers and leaders had an agenda.
SPEAKER_00: Says they were seeking false testimony against Jesus so that they might put him to death, verse 59.
SPEAKER_00: So the verdict was already determined.
SPEAKER_00: After years of failing to find legal reasons to arrest Jesus, the only way to find guilt in him was to produce false witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: And apparently, according to verse 60, they had many.
SPEAKER_00: How many is that?
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But apparently there was more than one set of witnesses that came forward.
SPEAKER_00: And apparently every time they came forward, their testimony, their stories didn't match.
SPEAKER_00: If they were contrary to one another, they couldn't be admissible.
SPEAKER_00: These prosecutors, however, had already determined the verdict.
SPEAKER_00: The trial had not yet begun.
SPEAKER_00: That will begin later, after daylight, and now they are already convinced of the end.
SPEAKER_00: We have to find a way to put him to death.
SPEAKER_00: The God of justice was tried without justice.
SPEAKER_00: Lies convicted the God of truth.
SPEAKER_00: But we know too, right?
SPEAKER_00: As God's people, we know that God determined this.
SPEAKER_00: Peter will preach, and in just a few short months from this time, Peter will preach that God foreordained every single step of this plan.
SPEAKER_00: Emmanuel, God with us, humbled himself to be judged without justice by those he created with his fingertips, by the word of his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, let that sink in.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime, anytime you feel or you perceive or you actually encounter injustice in this world, remember that you follow a Lord who knows all about it.
SPEAKER_00: He not only sympathizes, but he empathizes because he's walked that road.
SPEAKER_00: And the injustice that he has faced is far greater than any injustice human beings will ever encounter.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows how to work it all out according to his purpose, so we who follow him, who claim the name of Christ, can entrust our circumstances and our feelings to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now don't overlook the role reversal here.
SPEAKER_00: You remember how Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, he said to God the Son in millennia past, when he was considering injustice, potential injustice, he he said, Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?
SPEAKER_00: And now that judge who does what is right endures an unjust judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Where David David prayed, Give me not up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me.
SPEAKER_00: And they breathe out violence.
SPEAKER_00: You can't read some of these texts from the Old Testament without recognizing God knew what he was doing.
SPEAKER_00: They tried to find two people telling the same lie about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because the law required at least two or three witnesses with the same testimony.
SPEAKER_00: We see no desire to try justice with justice or truth with truth.
SPEAKER_00: For the goal is not justice or truth, but the destruction of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, finally, you think they have three years to get this in motion, but they still can't get it right until many tries.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, they find two people coming forward, alleging that Jesus asserted that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, no record of that statement from Jesus is found in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing close to it is the railing of the crowds at Jesus while he's hanging on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 27, verse 40, they said to him, While he's hanging on the cross, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, mocking him.
SPEAKER_00: In John's gospel, though, we read in John chapter 2, verse 19, where Jesus said, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews then said to him in response, are you nuts?
SPEAKER_00: It's taken us forty some years to build this temple.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna build it in three days?
SPEAKER_00: Then John adds this qualifying statement, but he was speaking about the temple of his body.
SPEAKER_00: Now that statement was very early in Jesus' ministry and apparently was remembered and repeated.
SPEAKER_00: But from the very beginning it was misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone thought Jesus was speaking about the actual temple.
SPEAKER_00: And that's curious because acts, especially destructive acts, against temples was often considered to be a capital crime in the ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: Not only were they places of worship, but they were also business centers and banks.
SPEAKER_00: So any attack of any kind against a temple was considered an attack against the people and the nation in which the temple existed.
SPEAKER_00: So if the if the people of Israel heard Jesus speaking of destroying the temple, it would have been received very seriously.
SPEAKER_00: It would have been, it would have been treasonous and worthy of death to the right people.
SPEAKER_00: But no one understood Jesus' intention when he stood accused before the get the gathered members of the Sanhedrin.
SPEAKER_00: The prosecutors' key witnesses then are giving false testimony.
SPEAKER_00: By misunderstanding Jesus' intent, they're declaring that he made a statement that he didn't make.
SPEAKER_00: You've been there.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus responded.
SPEAKER_00: Response is recorded in verse 63.
SPEAKER_00: Silent.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I could have done that.
SPEAKER_00: My natural reaction is that's not what I said.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not what I meant.
SPEAKER_00: So this seems very hard to comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't Jesus respond?
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't he defend himself?
SPEAKER_00: Why didn't he correct their misunderstanding?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't the God of truth want truth to reign?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew doesn't tell us.
SPEAKER_00: But we may find some kind of an answer in the prophet Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: For Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53, 6 and 7, he was oppressed and he was afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: Yet he opened not his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he was like a lamb that was led to the slaughter, and it didn't bleat, it didn't cry, it didn't try to run away.
SPEAKER_00: Before its shearers, it's silent.
SPEAKER_00: And just like that, so he opened not his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: One writer declared, and I love this phrase, it was a sovereign silence.
SPEAKER_00: A sovereign silence intended to accomplish the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: And even here, in his silence, he's fulfilling scripture.
SPEAKER_00: And that incensed the high priest.
SPEAKER_00: So he invokes the name of God to push Jesus to force him to answer.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest calls on the living God.
SPEAKER_00: I adjure you by the living God, verse 63, tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to compel Jesus to respond, and the irony is intensely tragic.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest has no clue.
SPEAKER_00: He has zero recognition that his Savior, his God, is standing before him.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest called on Jesus to swear by himself.
SPEAKER_00: Since Jesus is the living God.
SPEAKER_00: Truth in human form.
SPEAKER_00: By answering, by answering with, you have said so.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus essentially says, Yes, yes, I am.
SPEAKER_00: But those are your words, not mine.
SPEAKER_00: And then he clarifies his answer by using a messianic term to refer to himself.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of Man.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the Son of Man is someone that you're going to see from now on seated at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So the high priest asked Jesus if he was the Messiah, the promised one sent by God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, Yes, I am, but I'm much more than that.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus references two key Old Testament texts, one from Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, and the other from Psalm 110, verses 1 and 2, to identify himself with a particular prophetic figure.
SPEAKER_00: And according to those passages, that figure called the Son of Man is none other than God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Those two passages in Daniel 7 and Psalm 110 show that the promised Son of Man possesses all dominion.
SPEAKER_00: He rules.
SPEAKER_00: In him is found all power and all authority.
SPEAKER_00: He is a ruler whose kingdom will never end.
SPEAKER_00: And is demonstrated by him sitting at the right hand of God in the place of honor and rule.
SPEAKER_00: Coming on the clouds of heaven was a sign of dominion and victory of God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And here they were, judging the judge, and trying the truth.
SPEAKER_00: In Genesis Reborn, it's the creation seeking to rule over the Creator.
SPEAKER_00: Acting acting as a judge, the high priest declares the verdict.
SPEAKER_00: To claim messiahship is one thing.
SPEAKER_00: But to declare equality with God was blasphemy.
SPEAKER_00: To the high priest, Jesus' statement rose to the level of blasphemy, and so he reacts in horror, ripping his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate sign of mourning.
SPEAKER_00: His thinking had no place for a for a God man who would come to save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: The question before us is Is there room in our thinking for a God man who would come to save his people from their sins?
SPEAKER_00: Is there room in your thinking for that reality?
SPEAKER_00: The judgment.
SPEAKER_00: It's quick.
SPEAKER_00: Death is deserved.
SPEAKER_00: Naturally, with a served with a side of mocking and brutality.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' claim of the position and the prerogatives of God was blasphemous in their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: So the judgment is he deserves to die.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to kill the Lord of glory rather than humbly repent before Jesus and see him with eyes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: The irony begins in verse 59, but we only notice that irony by reading it in light of Jesus' statement in verse 64.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: But those are the words the high priest used.
SPEAKER_00: The high priest likely has some vision of a revolutionary, of a political opportunist, maybe even some kind of terrorist.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, but Jesus is going to be the one who defines those terms.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I am that Son of Man, whom you will see seated at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And there we observe the ultimate irony.
SPEAKER_00: The divine judge, the power of the universe, displays his strength through weakness and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: This is blasphemy and worthy of death if what he says is false.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, yet it is his glorious humility and his path of exaltation if what he says is true.
SPEAKER_00: And it is true.
SPEAKER_00: And because it is true of Jesus, it will be true of every person who follows Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he said, Everyone who desires to follow me must take up his own cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: He said, The way to glory is not up but down.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus stood firm.
SPEAKER_00: He did not succumb during his trial.
SPEAKER_00: He succeeded in his trial because he endured in prayer in the garden in the previous section.
SPEAKER_00: The divine plan was to endure the ultimate irony.
SPEAKER_00: For God, the God of life, the God who breathed life into creation, to be killed by his creation.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus will be justified, he will be declared right by his resurrection and his ascension.
SPEAKER_00: This first scene of tragedy, irony, and divine triumph closes with a pitiful abuse scene.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that surprising.
SPEAKER_00: It was a widespread belief that the coming Messiah would be able to prophesy.
SPEAKER_00: And so this scene closes with a mocking of God based on that popular conception.
SPEAKER_00: One of the Gospels says that they even blindfolded him.
SPEAKER_00: Prophesy to us, who hit you?
SPEAKER_00: The God of life then is reduced to a sad caricature.
SPEAKER_00: That scene closes.
SPEAKER_00: And a new one opens with a different but familiar character.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps we could title Act 2 Rocked by a Rooster.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 22, verse 61, tells us that the courtyard that Peter was standing, sitting in, was somehow within view of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because when Peter denied him for the third time, Luke tells us that Jesus turned and looked at him.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter is very close to the main scene.
SPEAKER_00: The proximity is very close.
SPEAKER_00: And as Peter failed to remain awake and pray while he was close to Jesus in the garden, he will fail this trial while also close to the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That will come later, though.
SPEAKER_00: First, we need to observe the stage that Matthew sets for us.
SPEAKER_00: And that image begins at least six months before this point in Matthew chapter 16, in a passage that resembles this one.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 16, verse 13, Jesus asked the disciples, Who do the people say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Very similar, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you really?
SPEAKER_00: The disciples repeated the typical answers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, some say you're John the Baptist, others say Elijah, maybe another of the prophets that's been resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, even that is far more than the high priest and the leaders of Israel acknowledge.
SPEAKER_00: But back in chapter 16, Jesus then follows that question and answer with this.
SPEAKER_00: But okay, that's fine, but who do you?
SPEAKER_00: My disciples, who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter replied, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus answered, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
SPEAKER_00: Peter, meaning the rock, becomes a picture of the stability of the Lord's work of gathering his people and assembling them together into an unshakable temple that even Satan can't tear down.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who refused to believe that Jesus would suffer at the hands of Israel's elders and chief priests and be killed and raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who once set his mind on the things of man rather than things of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who said he would never leave Jesus nor betray him.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who is the leader of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who walked on water.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rock who boldly wielded a sword in defense of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But this is also the rock who slept instead of praying in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: This rock is in the courtyard.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking with the guards.
SPEAKER_00: While the true rock, that cornerstone, is likely in fetters, chained to a guard.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter is unfettered, chatting with the guards in the courtyard.
SPEAKER_00: Unfettered, this rock displays his weakness through cowardice and falsehood.
SPEAKER_00: His weakness is highlighted by a chicken calling out his sin.
SPEAKER_00: The rock was crushed in his trial because he did not endure with Jesus in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, let's be careful.
SPEAKER_00: We must never reach final conclusions about people because of moments of weakness and sin.
SPEAKER_00: They're significant, they need to be dealt with.
SPEAKER_00: And they may point to the reality of being without Christ, but they may also be moments of learning to follow Jesus in the weakness of our flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Peter followed.
SPEAKER_00: Do we see any other disciples following?
SPEAKER_00: He watched and he listened.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, he chatted it up with the guards in freedom while his king was chained to a guard.
SPEAKER_00: But when the sound of the bird touched his conscience in those early morning hours, he awoke out of his fleshly stupor and wept over the presence of his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Ironically, the king displays his power through weakness, while the rock reveals his weakness through fear of discovery.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the king's weakness will lead to the divine means by which Peter and all who follow him can be redeemed from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter, the rock, is redeemed by his humility and his repentance and his trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to know more about that, you can check out the end of the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_00: So do you see that Jesus displays his strength through his weakness?
SPEAKER_00: And now this rock is being crushed, and yet in his weakness we see his strength displayed in weeping over his sin.
SPEAKER_00: When we humble ourselves and confess our sins, our failures, and our own inability, we express then our reliance on the only power that comes from another.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody said no, so I'll keep going.
SPEAKER_00: The bystanders in verse 73 could hear with their ears that the rock is a Galilean rock from the sound of his speech.
SPEAKER_00: What Peter said, no, I don't know the man.
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding?
SPEAKER_00: I've never met him, never seen him.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea who you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: The words he used were undermined by the sound of his voice.
SPEAKER_00: But the words of Jesus' speech, grounded in Scripture, would end up being confirmed through an empty tomb and being gathered up into the clouds of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Such sin-driven tragedy and comedic irony.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's not funny.
SPEAKER_00: It's not funny unless you somehow mock Matthew's account and are mocking then Matthew's Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it's comedic because we groan and chuckle, watching the bitter reality.
SPEAKER_00: And we do that because we see the lowliness to which our Savior was brought to redeem us.
SPEAKER_00: For in one sense, we are all Peter's.
SPEAKER_00: Are we not?
SPEAKER_00: There's another group distinct from Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Not like Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Peter is the disciple who gave in to the desires of the flesh but was rescued yet again from his failing.
SPEAKER_00: But in the background of these two scenes is a group of people we might describe as fettered by faithlessness.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew describes them as gathering together, assembling together against God's anointed one.
SPEAKER_00: What does God say about leaders gathering together against his anointed one?
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Psalm two.
SPEAKER_00: Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
SPEAKER_00: The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed ones, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.
SPEAKER_00: He who sits in the heavens laughs.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord holds them in derision.
SPEAKER_00: Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I have set my king on my holy hill.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell of the decree.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to me, You are my son, today I have begotten you.
SPEAKER_00: Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession.
SPEAKER_00: You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel.
SPEAKER_00: Now, therefore, O kings, be wise.
SPEAKER_00: Be warned, O rulers of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
SPEAKER_00: Kiss my son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.
SPEAKER_00: For his wrath is quickly kindled.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
SPEAKER_00: Ironically, in the background of this courtyard, these leaders are looking desperately, waiting for the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them, maybe all of them, will set an empty place at the Passover table in hopes that the Messiah might be there that night.
SPEAKER_00: They were looking for the Messiah, but they didn't have eyes to see him.
SPEAKER_00: They were chained to their faithlessness.
SPEAKER_00: They refused to listen and kiss the Son.
SPEAKER_00: But all who take refuge in this one, who embodied humility and through humility displayed his power to save, will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: All of the ironies, the upside downness, ought to move us to humble trust in the God who gave himself for us and the awe of the King, the one who will come with the clouds of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And we will all stand in awe of him.
SPEAKER_00: We all ought to be moved with Peter to tears of our sin and praise full of hallelujahs to the merciful Savior who humbled himself even to the point of death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we come and we bow before you.
SPEAKER_00: Thanking you for such a magnificent picture of who you are and of what you've done for us.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord Jesus, may we not be left unmoved.
SPEAKER_00: And we also thank you that you would take sinners like us.
SPEAKER_00: As John Newton described worms such as I.
SPEAKER_00: Worms like Peter, that crushed rock ground into gravel by his sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that you would restore us.
SPEAKER_00: You would redeem us and not just redeem us, but you would enable us to have the authority to be called the sons and the daughters of God.
SPEAKER_00: Inspire us to proclaim, hallelujah, what a savior.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.