12 Denials of Christ We Never Saw Coming
Today Michael is looking at one of the most famous denials in history.
Jesus was carried to face the Sanhedrin, with Caiaphas leading the charge of trying to find something they could use to put Jesus to death.
The high priest asked if Jesus declared himself the Messiah? To which Jesus answered, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of Heaven”. This was seen at this mock trial as proof positive that Jesus was making a clear claim to be God and they had the admission they needed to put Him to death.
Meanwhile, Peter is watching all this and his heart is breaking, though he is too afraid to do anything about it. The servant girl, saw his face and asked him, “Don’t I recognize you, I’ve seen you with Jesus of Nazareth” to which Peter denied, very loudly, that she did not know him. A rooster crowed in the distance. The servant girl stated this to the crowd and he denied it again. Then finally a man saw Peter at the fire and recognized him, and others recognized Peter’s accent, as being from Galilee, and Peter denied Jesus yet again. And a rooster crowed a second time.
This time Peter remembers Jesus’ prediction that when a rooster crowed twice, he will have denied Jesus three times, which, of course, he had.
We are in the same situation today; we deny Jesus through our actions but your lives say otherwise.
The take home for today is, “Let your life declare I know Jesus”. Sometimes our lips say it, but our life may not match it.
The Twelve Denials of Christ We Never Saw Coming (or how we currently don’t live what we say we do, as Christians).
- Compromising your integrity.
- Neglecting to help. Run towards the messes.
- Taking part in gossip or slander. See Ephesians 4 on this one!
- Placing comfort over people.
- Withholding forgiveness.
- Neglecting to share your faith.
- Conforming to worldly values.
- Ignoring injustice.
- Living hypocritcally.
- Neglecting personal spiritual growth.
- Not taking a stand, we have to be salt and light.
- Failing to love like Christ.
(CSB Bible Notes) 14:53-65 No single Gospel comprehensively records Jesus’s trials, and each emphasizes different perspectives and events. It is clear, however, that both Roman political authorities and Jewish religious leaders were involved in handing down Jesus’s death sentence.
Today’s verses can be found in Mark 14: 53 - 72.
Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.
Good morning. How are you guys? Welcome to the gathering of recreate church. It feels like we're doing some South American ministry today. There's a little hot and a little humid in here. Our AC should be recovering. We had a little issue that, so yeah, I'm aware it's hot. It's hot. Now those of you who are cold-natured and are like, this is finally, finally you figured it out. But for those of us who are not hot-natured, or cold-natured, it's a little bit warm. I'm so glad to see you guys. You know, we pray every week for the right people to show up. Not necessarily for all the people to show up because we know we're not gonna be a church where everybody kind of finds their place and that's okay. That's okay, that's what God has a lot of churches in our community. I'm thankful for that. But there's some people who are meant to be here. And I don't know if it's forever. Maybe it is, hope it is, but today you were meant to be here. We pray for you to be here. So praise the Lord. Let's let the world know our motto. We say it every week. Our banner is a little bit turned here. Some of you haven't heard this before, but those of you who have, let's share a motto. No matter your story, you are welcome, you are wanted, and you are loved. And we mean that, we mean that. So this family reunion time, anybody get to go to some family reunions. I'm very thankful. Not my family doesn't always get together like it used to, at least parts of it. That breaks my heart a little bit, but there's always one big family reunion at least in the summertime. And we went there last weekend. So much fun, so much fried chicken. Like there's a whole end. It was fried chicken. There was fried chicken in buckets, fried chicken in trays, fried chicken in platters, fried chicken in a big cardboard box. I went with the box chicken. I don't, it just felt, I thought, if someone makes a whole cardboard box full of chicken, they often know what they're doing, and they did. They did. There's good so much, so much. Family was great. Family was wonderful. Almost as wonderful as the fried chicken. But there, there, they're in the middle of the reunion though. There was, it wasn't all fun and games, or maybe it was fun and games for some people. We're out in the middle of the union. There were some overgrown kids acting badly. I'm not talking about little kids. I'm talking about bigger kids. They were acting bad. They were misbehaving. They were being rowdy. They were wilding. And two of the siblings tackled the third sibling and had her pin on the ground. Being rowdy and loud and trying to pull something. Right in the middle of the union, everybody's seeing this. And I met me and Katie. We looked at each other, and I know we were thinking the same thing. So I just said it out loud. So everybody else at the reunion would know what I thought about it. And I said, I don't know, who's kids are these? Who's kids are these? Somebody better come get their kids. Get these youngins. But no adult appeared to get those youngins. Because we were too busy pretending like we didn't know them. (audience laughing) So if you, if you've never had a moment, were you pretended like you did not know your kid in a public place? Are you even a parent? Yeah, I mean, it's like, whose kid is that screaming in the floor of Lowe's? I don't know, just came here by themselves, I guess. Why they look like you? I don't know, God's good, I don't know. What? Who's that kid poking holes in the bread at the bread aisle? I don't know, I hate that their parents are gonna have to pay for that bread. No, I paid for the bread, calm down. I paid for the bread. And then it was the expensive bread. Why do they put the ex-parents? Can you relate, why do they put the expensive bread on the Lowe's shelves where the children can poke it? So you have to buy it. Yeah, that's it, yeah. Look, no good parent would truly deny their child. I know that kind of stuff happens, but that's not what a good parent would do. Not even if they're being rowdy at the family reunion. Why? Because being denied hurts. When somebody you truly care about acts like they don't know you, it's painful and hard to ever get over. Today we're gonna look at one of the most famous denials in history. So last week, we're in the book of Mark chapter 14. Last week we saw as, watched as Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, he was arrested, he was dragged away, his followers ran off into the night and he was taken to the home of the high priest to be interrogated by the religious elites. And that's where we're gonna pick up the story. So the core idea, the main idea I wanna communicate to you today, the really the take home of someone says, well, what was it about or you're trying to think, well, what did the preacher preach on? This is it and it's this. Let your life declare, I know Jesus. Sometimes our lips say, I know Jesus, but our life says, I don't know him. So let's read a few verses and we'll get started and we'll pray verse 53. And they led Jesus away to the high priest and with them were assembled all the chief priests, all the elders and the scribes, but Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest and he sat down with the servants and warmed himself at the fire. Heavenly Father, please speak to us now through your word. Lord show us the ways that we unintentionally deny you in Jesus name, amen. So the Gospel of Mark was written by a man named John Mark. He was the protege of Simon Peter. What we have, the Gospel of Mark is really the story of the life of Jesus from the perspective of Peter as Peter tells these stories to Mark and Mark writes him down. So it's a, it is a firsthand account of the events written down by someone who was taking notes. And so that's what we have. We get the story of Jesus through the eyes of Peter. And let me tell you, it's been a shocking, devastating night for Peter. At dinner that night, Jesus said, told him, you're all going to run away. I'm going to be captured and you're all going to abandon me in my hour of need. And of course, Peter said, no, I would never do that Lord. And the Lord said, as a matter of fact, Peter, before the Reoster crows twice, you're going to deny me three times. So Peter has broken hearted at this. He cannot bear the thought that he's viewed as someone who would deny his Lord. So when they're praying in the garden of Gethsemane and Judas comes with the, the armed men to arrest Jesus, Peter leaps into action. He draws a sword from inside his cloak. He swings it, he slices off the ear of one of the high priest servants and, and he seems like he's going to be the hero, but he loses his nerve and he runs away into the night. And he's, he hasn't really processed it yet that he's already begun to deny Jesus. So he doesn't run away forever at this point. He, he runs off into the night, but he works his way back around. And he's following this procession as it's going from the Mount of Olives on the east of Jerusalem into the city, into the high priest courtyard and give the guy credit for guts. He like snuck right in like it's a spy movie. He snuck right into the courtyard behind this procession and he sits down at the fire to warm himself, trying to blend in with the servants and with the guards who are lingering around. You know who else is in this courtyard? Jesus is in that same courtyard. Don't know how big it was, but it probably wasn't a whole lot bigger than this room that we're in. So imagine Peter's kind of over here sitting by a fire. Jesus is over here and he's being interrogated and roughed up and Peter is, is eavesdropping. He's trying to understand here what's happening, but he's trying not to look directly at Jesus because then he would be found out. He listened as the trial began. The courtyard was a buzz with nervous energy as witness after witness came before the high priest Caiaphas torchlight flickered across his enraged face. "You're all useless," he growled. "Can nobody give us a testimony to put this man to death?" See, only two witnesses were needed for a capital offense. In Israel at that time, but none of the false witnesses who had come had been consistent. They were lying, but even their lies did not match up. The council grumbled and discussed what might be done if they didn't find two witnesses that agreed. Suddenly a group of men pushed into the courtyard and they're smiling and laughing and thumping each other on the back and they come to the high priest and say, "We have just what you're looking for." The leaders stepped forward and said, "We heard Jesus say this. I will destroy the temple made with hands and within three days I will build another temple not made with hands." The rabble behind him nodded in agreement. Did Jesus say that? He said something like that in John 2.19. He said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." They took that. They twisted it out of context. They twisted the meaning they added to it. What really happened, he was speaking to a group of religious leaders and he said, "If you destroy this temple, I will raise it again." And the temple that he was referring to was not the temple of stone and wood and precious metals. It was the temple of his body. He was referring to his body as the temple. And his body, the temple would be destroyed. And three days later he would rise from the dead, effectively raising the temple, restoring the temple. But they could not see that. The truth did not matter to these angry men. They only wanted the justification to get rid of Jesus. And a false accusation, a twisted accusation was enough. The high priest turned to Jesus in wicked triumph and his robes rippled in his excitement. What do you have to say to these charges he demands? Don't you have an answer? Jesus remains silent and steady. His eyes betrayed no fear, no anger, only peace. Chiaphas, meanwhile, he's bubbling like a boiling pot. Tell us, once and for all, are you the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed, the only God. Now at that moment Jesus lives his eyes to Chiaphas. One of them has already swollen from the beatings he's received, and there's blood at the corners of his mouth. And he replies, verse 62, Jesus said, "I am." And you will see the Son of Man, sitting at the right hand of power, coming in the clouds of heaven. Now gaps rang out through the courtyard, followed by shouts of blasphemy, blasphemy. Those words I am may not mean so much to you. They may not mean so much to you today, but Chiaphas understood the claim that Jesus was making. And he grabbed the front of his priestly robes and tore them in distress because in the Old Testament, when Almighty God appeared to Moses at the burning bush and told him to go deliver the people, Moses said, "Who shall I say sent me?" And the Lord answered, "I am." Tell them, "I am" has sent you. Jesus used those words. He was making a clear claim to divinity. There are those today who say, "Well, Jesus never claimed to be God." Well, Chiaphas certainly thought he did, and killed him for it. And he would have only had to clear up the misunderstanding right here, and he would have lived. But that's not what happened because that's not the truth. Jesus made a clear claim to be God. And the high priest cried in outrage, "Father, need do we have a witness? You've heard the blasphemy out of his own mouth. What do you think?" And the people gathered around, cried death, death. They surrounded him, and they spat upon him. They tied a blindfold over his eyes and mocked him as they struck his face, saying, "If you're a prophet, tell us which one of you, which one of us hit you?" Jesus remained silent through it all. He held his tongue, and he held onto his dignity. Meanwhile, Peter is over at that fire, pretending not to watch this. You know his heart's breaking. You know he's hurting. He would love to go and swing that sword again, but he can't do it. He's too afraid. He wants to look like he's not affected by it, but his face is showing his dismay. And the servant girl, who kept the door, saw his face in the firelight and said, "Don't I recognize you?" Yes, I've seen you with Jesus of Nazareth. Peter jumped up in protest. I have no idea what you're talking about. He said, and he went out on the porch to hide and to try to listen from a distance. And somewhere far away, a rooster crowed once. A few minutes later, the same girl came out on the porch and found him again. "Look, this man was with Jesus." She said, "You're wrong." He shouted, "Leave me alone." And he went back inside the courtyard and he lurked in the shadows until that servant girl seemed to be gone. And then he went back up to the fire to warm himself and a man looked at him suspiciously. You're one of them, aren't you? Yes, you're the one that cut off my cousin's ear in a garden. You got the wrong guy, Peter says. Another man says, "Listen to his accent. He's from Galilee." That was the redneck part of Israel, by the way, the hillbelly part of Israel. He sounds like he's from Galilee and everybody knows Jesus and all his disciples are from Galilee. Now, Peter is upset. He unleashes a string of curse words that the Bible does not record here, except that he cursed. And he said, "I do not know this man of whom you speak, just then near at hand and much louder a rooster crowed for the second time." And as the cry died on the night air, Jesus looked Peter in the eyes and Peter remembered. Verse 72, please. A second time the rooster crowed then Peter called to mind a word that the Lord had said to him. Before the rooster crowed twice, he will deny me three times. And when he thought about it, he wept. He never denied Jesus. Yet he has denied Jesus three times the final time of the curse. And he realizes this in his heart shatters to pieces and he runs away into the night weeping bitter tears. And that's where the narrative ends for now. Did Peter plan for that to happen? Did Peter love Jesus? Did he mean it when he said, "Lord, I'll never deny you." Did he mean that? No, he really did. Did he think, was this premeditated? Did he think it through? Did he say, "Yeah, I think when the heat's on." I don't think I'll stand up for Jesus. No. He was determined. Here's a man who loved the Lord who was determined to do right, who meant what he said. But in the heat of the moment, he blew it. And when he realized what he had done, he was devastated. As followers of Jesus, we find ourselves in the same place. We say we would not deny the Lord and we mean that. We say we love the Lord and we mean that. And yet we may end up denying him in ways we never planned. Denying him through our actions. Our lips say, "Yes, I know Jesus, but our lives say, "Who's that? I don't know him." Remember the core of the message. Let your life declare, "I know Jesus." Sometimes our life says, even though we don't mean it to, says, "I don't know him." Now I want to spend some time getting real with those of us who would claim to be Jesus, followers. If you say, "Hey, I'm a Christian. I believe. I follow Jesus. This is for you." If you are listening to this, either live or through the podcast and you say, "I'm not a Christian. I'm just listening. I'm just kind of a fly on the wall right now." Well, you may say, you may feel a little vindicated because you'll be like, "You know, I've always said those Christians don't quite live up to what they claim." And it's true. Every one of us have those moments where we say, "Yes, I love God, but our lives don't show it sometimes." Even the most sincere and faithful believers here, even somebody ready to swing a sword to defend Jesus can fall short. So let's talk about the 12 denials of Christ we never saw coming. I don't usually do big long lists, but this is a big long list. Some of you organized people who are taking notes right now will love my big long list. The rest of you, you'll like it anyway. You just won't write it down, but you'll remember some of it. So these are some ways that believers today unintentionally say, "I don't know him." Number one, compromising your integrity. This could be at work. This could be at school. This could be in other places. We see unethical behavior in the workplace or classroom or in the community. We see cheating or falsifying and we don't say anything about it. We remain silent because we don't want to stir up trouble. Maybe you've worked in a place where there was a lot of bad stuff going on, but whoever spoke up about the bad stuff they were the ones who suffered for it. And you're like, "Man, look, I know it's not right, but if I stand up for this I'm going to pay the price." Or worse, sometimes we get pressured into taking part into the stuff that's not right. There's a lot of good Christian kids who go to school and they get pressured into things that they would never ever do otherwise. We need to pray for our kids. We need to pray for ourselves because God sends us out into the world as light. The light of the world, he says. You're the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. We cannot deny Christ by compromising our integrity even if it costs us. Number two, neglecting the help. When we encounter a person who has a legitimate need it's easy to rationalize it or ignore it away or just say, "I don't really actually know these people." Like now, I go to the self-checkouts a lot, right? In other words, myself check out people. My fellow introverts, I'll brave of you to raise your hand because you thought twice about that, didn't you? And it's like, do you want to round up too? Do you want to round up to make a donation to the children's miracle network? I'm like, "Oh, well, you know, dog on it. I like children. I like miracles." So, okay, you can have my 87 cents. But, you know, there's that's like, then you feel like, I pat on the back. Look at me. I gave 87 cents to children and miracles. What a good Christian am I. But, it's a lot harder sometimes when the need is in front of you and the need is real messy. Because real people who need help it will take more than a few button presses and the sacrifice of whatever change you would have been getting back. Real people who need help have very messy lives. My family has always tried to have the policy of we walk towards the messes, right? Like, you're in a store and you see someone has made a huge mess in the store. There's part of me that wants to say, "Ooh, I'm not going down that aisle." 'Cause someone will think, "I made the mess." I did not drop those jar pickles. That was somebody else. But the Spirit of the Lord in me says, "I'm digging up those pickles." And we encounter people who have made a mess of their lives. Let's not forget sometimes that's us. We've got to walk towards the messes. And that is not always easy. And you will not always be able to help people fully. Trust me, I know that personally. But I don't think we get to opt out of walking towards the messes. I don't think when Jesus says so much about helping messy people like us, I don't think we get to walk away from messes. Number three, taking part in gossip or slander. So this is kind of a tough one. An ugly one talking smack about somebody isn't right. Even if what you're saying is true. They may actually be a person, a toxic person. But it's probably not very helpful to talk about the other person to another person and say, "Oh, they're so toxic." It's not helpful. The Word says, "Speak the truth in love and use your words to build up people." That's an Ephesians 4. And what did mama say? What did mama say? If you can't say anything nice, mama's right, mama's right. Let me add to what mama said. If you won't say it to their face, don't say it at all. And if it needs to be said, say it to them directly in love. So you won't be able to spill some of that tea. You even want the spill. Not if we're going to live for Christ. Number four, Old school comfort over people. Oh, this is a tough one. I came up in the church world, a very old school church world and old school church world. You know, people have gotten very used to, at least in America, have gotten very used to the idea of comfort, of everything should kind of cater to my needs. You know, that's not the way church is in other parts of the world. Some people pay a very high price for their faith and they have to really suffer for their faith and kind of been on top for so long. Kind of changing now, but been on top for so long we're so used to the idea that the world should kind of cater to us and should be very comfortable. But that is not really how it was meant to be. Don't forget that the first people who followed Jesus, virtually all of them got killed for their faith. All of the apostles except for John who lived to die of old age. All of them died pretty gruesome deaths were publicly executed. Understand that we are not here because our comfort is on earth. We are here because our comfort is in heaven. We cannot be so caught up in our comforts that we forget what we're really here for. You know, I'm glad the AC is like working now. That's great. That's great, but we don't come here just for the work in AC. It's not about that. Our priority is not on that. One of the things that is written into the DNA of recreate church, if you pick up one of our brochures and you look in the middle, one of those lines in that identity statement says, "We believe reaching people is more important than serving our comforts and preferences." We believe reaching people is more important than serving our comforts and preferences. That sounds really good until it's your comfort or preference. He'll be like, "Ooh, I didn't like that song today." You know, "I don't like this element or that." We'll say, "Well, we did that because we want to reach some people who aren't here yet. We want to reach some people who need the Lord." You've already met the Lord, which is awesome. I'm so glad you're here. Will you help us reach these other people, even if it means sacrificing someone of your comfort and somewhat of your preferences? We cannot put our comfort and preferences over people. Number five, Biggie Biggie, withholding forgiveness. We say we believe in Jesus and we follow His teaching, but it's very easy to kind of skim over that part where it says, "We must love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those, pray for the good of those who use you." Ooh, that's hard. Several weeks ago I had a conversation with someone who said, "You know, I think all this faith stuff is just a crutch for weak people." I said, "Okay, you're not the first person to say that to me. Have you actually read the Bible?" Well, no. I tried so hard not to be mean about it, but I said, "Well, I can tell, because if you actually read the teaching of Jesus and you see how Jesus says to live, that is not for weak people. That is only possible if you are empowered by God Almighty. It takes a strong person to forgive. A weak person can hold grudges. A toddler can hold grudges. It takes a mature person, full of the strength of the Lord to truly forgive. And there are some people in this room and don't think I know your stories because I don't know most of your stories this way. There are folks in this room that have got stuff to forgive that is too big to forgive. Then if I heard your story, I would say, yep, yep, makes sense. I can see why you don't forgive them. I can see why you can't forgive them except in Christ we can forgive. It takes strength in Christ. Truly forgiving people might be one of the best ways to demonstrate that you know Christ. And for a professed Christian to refuse to forgive might be one of the most serious denials of Christ. Ouch. Forgiveness is not easy and it is rarely quick. It will take time. It will take growth. It will take sacrifice. But you cannot. You cannot follow Jesus and continually refuse to cling to unforgiveness. God will work that out in your life. Number six, neglecting to share your faith. It ain't always easy to talk about the Lord these days. The environment around us is not always very open and frankly there are some people who claim to be Christians who have been very weird about their way of sharing their faith and get way out and way out there in the realm of Pluto and talking some stuff that's really not too helpful. Let me say this. You might be surprised at how open your friends and family and neighbors are if you approach it the right way. You don't have to be weird. You don't have to be aggressive with it. Just be open and honest and let it be natural. Here's my best advice. You want to talk more about Jesus? Get filled up with Jesus and it'll run out. It's like a sponge. A completely saturated sponge. Every little touch it's going to ooze out Jesus. Just tell them the preacher said to ooze Jesus on people. That's a weird, sorry. Sorry I'm a weird. This is who I am. I'm just oozing. That's just how I ooze. It's really okay, you guys. But listen, if it's in you, it'll come out. If it's not coming out, put some more in, okay? Put some more in. Fill up with Jesus and let it come out. It will come out. You won't have to say, "I wonder how I can work Jesus into this conversation." It'll happen if you're full. Just get filled up. Number seven, conforming to worldly values. The life and the mindset and the worldview of a person who follows Jesus should be very different from someone who does not follow Jesus. If people cannot tell there's something different about you by the way you live and talk and treat people, please don't tell them you're a Christian. There's was enough people who say I'm a Christian, but their life is no different than anybody else's. If you live by the teaching of Christ, however, I don't warn you, people will not understand it, and they will think you're weird. They might think you're weird anyway, depending on who you are. They're going to think I'm weird anyway. It's okay. They're going to think you're weird. I had an interesting experience this week. I found out that I had recently been labeled as a religious fanatic. A religious fanatic. Like, "Okay, wow." You know? I kind of... And they didn't mean that in a nice way, obviously. And you know, I don't certainly... There's people who are religious fanatics that I wouldn't want to be associated with at all, and I'm like, "Religious fanatic. I thought my faith had been kind of beaten up lately. Maybe I still got it. I still got it." I'm not going to be... You know, I'm not sacrificing cats and my basement. Don't even have a basement. And that crawlspace, I'm not going in there. But just to know that my life and values are different enough that somebody thinks I'm weird, you know, I'm going to take that as a compliment. That wasn't meant as a compliment. Sometimes I feel... I ever feel like your face getting beaten up. I felt that a little bit lately. But it's still there. It's still there. It's still there. Number eight, ignoring injustice. When we see people who are being exploited or mistreated and stay silent, we deny the spirit of Christ who spent his whole earthly ministry helping the downtrodden. We live in a culture that talks about tolerance and acceptance and helping people. But it is in a very exploitative culture. Do you realize there are more people in slavery in the United States today than before the Emancipation Proclamation. It's called human trafficking. And it's everywhere. And every celebrity who talks about it mysteriously unalives themselves. Have you noticed that pattern? Anybody who starts to pull the shroud back. So think about that. Pray over that. Number nine, living hypocritically. Now there's nothing more that the world likes than pointing out the hypocrisy of Jesus followers. You can always, if you don't want to follow the Lord, you can always find somebody who appears to be following the Lord and say, "Hey, yeah, but I know about them. You don't see what they do on Saturday night before they stumble in on Sunday morning. Listen. Never mind that everybody in the whole world has standards that they don't quite live up to. So everybody is a hypocrite to some degree and in some way. But let me just say this. If you say you're a Christian, man, try to live it. Don't be somebody's excuse for rejecting God. Don't be somebody's excuse. Don't be what the world wants you to be. Don't get sucked into that same whirlpool of consuming media and of things like pornography. Don't get sucked into materialism. Don't get sucked into jealousy. Don't get sucked into the selfishness and the slander of the world. Try to live differently. Will it be easy? No. It's going to be the hardest thing you ever do living for Jesus. But it's right and it's good and it's worth it. Number 10, Neglecting personal spiritual growth. Here is the reality. Most people who are honest to goodness Christians aren't that deep of Christians. And that's been me sometimes too. We've got to be in the word and in prayer and in community with fellow Christians. You've got to. Spiritual stagnation is a denial of Christ. Number 11, not taking a stand. It can feel very risky to take a stand in this world when the prevailing culture says one thing and God says another thing and you want to be different and you're going to pay a price for that. But we cannot deny our calling to be salt and light. The salt of the earth. Salt of the earth. Not salty. Some Jesus people are just salty. If you're unfamiliar with the term, well have somebody who's laughing right now to explain it to you. Be salt, not salty. I don't know if that works. I don't know if that works grammatically. But be loving, be kind, but be salt. Be a preservative in this society that's decaying quickly. And that leads us to the twelfth one. Failing the love like Christ. I never cease to be amazed at how church people are going to act sometimes. How sometimes we can spend Sunday morning having such a hard time getting to church service. Hey, I had small kids. My kids are bigger now. If they don't have their shoes, they don't know where their shoes are. They can go barefoot and I don't care anymore. I love you all, but you can go barefoot. We fought that battle. We fought that battle for a long time. Understand, it can be very hard to get to church. There can be a lot of anger on the way to the church service. And then we like sing about Jesus for a couple of hours, talk about Jesus for a couple of hours, and then go out and struggle not to be impatient because we're not going to be in the room. I'm a wage service worker at the restaurant. That kills me. That kills me. That Jesus people, church people can have such an unloving spirit sometimes. I don't know if it's still true. I hope it's not still true. My wife waitresses for years and she said the worst time to be a waiter or waitress is on Sunday afternoon right up to church. Because the church people were the meanest, most entitled, and the stingiest tippers. And I'm like, goodness sakes, that ought to be true. And I've already told y'all, we're kind of out, getting low on t-shirts. There's a few t-shirts and hoodies and stuff over there. And you're welcome to most of those. We've got to order some more t-shirts. But if you've got to recreate church t-shirt on, you better be nice to your waitress. And you better tip them like you're tipping Jesus himself. Okay? If you are not going to do that, change your shirt. Take off your recreate hat. Put something else on. Put an inside out. Or just be nice. It's so cheap to be nice. It's all right. You can be, don't be rude. An unloving spirit is a denial of Christ. Boy, is that hard. Because some people are hard to love. When Peter realized his denial of Christ, how did he respond to that? What do the scriptures say? He wept bitterly, bitterly. That's such a good word for it. He wept bitterly because he understood the depth of the denial. He got it. And even if you kind of read, Jesus does restore him. If you read there in the end of the book of John, he goes through it and he has three chances to claim Christ. It's really nice what the Lord did for Peter. But in that, in between time, you know he was pretty miserable. Because even after the resurrection, Peter's living with the idea, I did not in three times. And that was there. And they got it sorted out by the end. Praise the Lord. There is something worse than a professed believer than I in Christ. It's when you can deny Christ and it doesn't break your heart. You're going to sometimes deny Christ with the way you live your life. I wish it was not so. I wish it was not so for me that sometimes my life is going to look like I don't know Jesus. But when you realize it, when it hits you, oh my goodness, I've been acting like I don't know him, it should break your heart so bad and drive you to repentance. If it does not, that's a problem. If you say you're a Christian and you can live in a way that is opposite of what Christ taught and it doesn't break your heart, are you sure? Are you sure you know him? Better figure that out. I never want to cast doubt on anybody, but you need to work that out between you and the Lord. Don't just say it with your lips. Let your life declare. I know Jesus. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, oh Father God, we want our lives to say we know Jesus. And we are so sorry for the times when our lives say we don't know him, Lord God forgive us for these times that we withhold forgiveness and we hold on to values that are not yours when we don't take a stand, when we don't love, when we ignore those in need or ignore injustice. God Almighty, please save us from the times when our lives look like everybody else's. Break our hearts Lord, when we deny you. And then in your love restore us. We praise you O Lord, that every time we deny you, if we come to you, you will restore us. Thank you God. And I want to pray for everybody receiving this message right now, that they would believe in Jesus and live for him and make a difference in their circle, in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. You know I almost forgot something, some announcements from the beginning of the service. So the ladies craft night is, we'll get it up here this Friday, six thirty, that's going to be fun. No fee, you don't have to bring anything except your lovely self. But we do ask that if you're going to come that you sign up, there's a sign up sheet back there just so we can have enough supplies. Okay, that's ladies craft night, craft night. Men, you're not invited. Sorry. But, Hutch has invited us to his house to shoot pool and throw darts and do manly stuff. Right? Manly stuff. I don't know what else is there. I don't know. We'll fight a bear. We'll eat pizza. We eat pizza. You know, talk about how great our wives and significant others are and how wonderful they are and how lucky we are to have them. Maybe some other things too. So the ladies are invited to the craft night and the men are invited to pizza night. If you're going to be there, make sure and let Hutch is in the front row. He's the saxophone player. Let him know so we can make sure and get enough pizzas. Okay? And that's his phone number and it will be in the post service loop too if you don't catch it right now. But that's all I've got. So it's going to be a fun week. So you can take in a craft night or pizza night and it's going to be fun. Thank you guys for being here as part of this and make God bless you. Let's go live for it. Let's go do that hard work. Let's live for Jesus. Take care.
