I'm a completely different person depending on the room
that I'm in. Upstairs I'll be chasing your
skippity. Kids will be dodging nerf nerf
bullets, absolutely destroying them in foosball.
Speaking fluent middle schooler, no cap.
I know it's weird. And then my phone rings and I'm
standing in a hospital room, praying over a friend who's in a
coma, holding onto a hand that's not squeezing back, asking God
for something that I can't make happen on my own.
Same guy, same week. Hi, I'm Dave, one of the pastors
here at Resurrection Church. I think we all do this.
You have a version of yourself in every room you walk into, and
most of the time that's just being called human.
Most of the time, nobody calls you up because it's basic
survival that read the room, protect yourself, don't make
things weird. But it doesn't just stay in the
classroom or at work. Actually follows you into the
moments, the moments that matter most.
And at some point, maybe, maybe it's already happened.
This week, that same instinct shows up when Jesus is on the
table. Not in a dramatic way, that was
soldiers and torches. Just a moment where you could
have said something and you didn't, or you could have let
people know who you actually are, but you chose the easier
version of yourself. Most of us, we've been doing
this. We've been doing this so long,
we don't even notice it anymore. How much would it cost you,
Judas? Judas sold out Jesus for 30
pieces of silver. 30 pieces branded him forever. 30 pieces
made him the villain. But here's what I keep thinking
about. Most of us, we betray Jesus for
free. Judas at least got something out
of the deal. We deny him for nothing.
We go quiet at a dinner party to avoid awkward pauses.
We scroll past your chances to say something about our faith
because what would people actually think about us?
We stay silent in a conversation where Jesus is being mocked or
our morals, our values are being challenged and we walk away
pain. Exactly nothing except our
integrity. Our big idea for today is your
silence is your statement. Today we're going to read John
chapter 18. And this chapter isn't really
about Peter. It's about the version of you
and me that show up when it gets costly to follow Jesus.
Before we before we read this, though, if you're here today and
you're not a Christian, you're about to see what makes Jesus
different from every other religious leader who's ever
lived. Every other religion tells you
you've got to get it back together.
You can come back when you're worthy.
Jesus walks toward people who have just failed him.
That's the account we're going to read right now in John
chapter 18, verses 15 through 27.
Let's read. Simon Peter followed Jesus, and
so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to
the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the
high priest. But Peter stood outside the
door, so the other disciple who was known to the high priest
went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at
the door and brought Peter in. The servant girl of the door
said to Peter, You also are not one of this man's disciples, are
you? He said, I am not.
Now the servant, an officer, had made a charcoal fire because it
was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves.
Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself.
The high priest then question Jesus about his disciples and
his teaching. Jesus answered him.
I have spoken openly to the world.
I've also taught in synagogues and in the Temple where all Jews
come together. I have said nothing in secret.
Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what
I said to them. They know what I said when he
has said these things. One of the officers standing by
struck Jesus with his hand, saying, Is this how you answer
the high priest? Jesus answered him.
If what I say is wrong, bear witness about the wrong.
But if what I say is right, why do you strike me?
And it's been sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.
Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself.
So they said to him, You also are not.
You also are not one of his disciples, are you?
He denied it and said, I am not one of the servants of the high
priest. A relative of the man whose ear
Peter had cut off asked, Did I not see you in the garden with
him? Peter again denied it, and at
once the rooster crowed. Most of us picture this in a
dark alley where all of this is happening.
But if you remember Pastor Daniel's message a couple weeks
ago, this is the high priest courts.
This is where Peter and and Jesus are the absolute center of
hostile power of this massive estate.
Not a little house, a fortress built in rectangles surrounding
a central courtyard. You don't just wander in and out
of this place. Jesus was visible to Peter.
They could see each other as people moved about across that
courtyard. Peter's warming himself by the
fire. And Jesus is on trial.
The courage and the cowardice is happening all at the same time,
and what happens next is not one denial, it's three, and each one
costs something different. The first one is the relational
cost, the question that catches you off guard.
It doesn't start with an enemy, it starts with somebody who
probably doesn't even know your name.
The first actually accusation comes from a low stakes source,
a servant goal. Not a soldier, not one of the
religious authorities who could actually have him arrested.
A girl at the door, she says, Aren't you one of his disciples?
She says it's so in a way that she expects him to say no.
She gives him the easy out. There's no sores at Peter's
throat, no crowd calling for his blood.
Just a girl asking an easy question with an easy exit.
And Peter took it. Peter took it because the
relational cost felt too high. What if word got out?
What if people start to treat me differently?
What if I lose access to the courtyards, the inner circle, to
this moment? I know this.
I know this because I've done this.
I've lived this. I felt this.
I spent over 10 years in sales, new people everyday, thousands
of conversations. I've sat across from foster
parents, people in crisis, people drowning, hurt, sorrow.
And I've stayed quiet, Silent because the cost of being cut
out of the situation felt too high, too much at stake, too
much to mention the one thing that could actually help them
and help the situation. I didn't stop believing in
Jesus. I just mentioned Him when I felt
safe and I told myself that was enough.
That's OK. That's the first denial.
It doesn't look like Peters. No soldiers, no courtroom.
Just a decision to stay quiet. The decision to send the easier
version of me into the room. We do it every week.
Not dramatically socially in the moment when we we should be
relevant and standing up for Jesus, we say nothing.
When someone challenge you the way you parent, the way you
think about your marriage or your morals, you actually have
an answer for these things. Not just an opinion, but a
conviction. Something that scripture has
been shaping you over years following Jesus has actually
changed you. That idea of well, I just think
as if now it's just your personal preference, as if
nothing Jesus has done in your life is making you think that
way, as this you've arrived to this conviction by accident,
like nothing God is actually doing in your life.
This is denial. Nobody threatened you.
Nobody came at you with torches, you just quietly edited out
Jesus of your own story, your own conversations, to be
comfortable. The first denial, the easy
denial, is about reputation. The servant girls question the
low stakes, the easy exit. Man, do we take it.
We take it all the time. Social media and modern dinner
parties are our new courtyards. We warm ourselves by the fire of
public approval. So what do we do about this when
that moment comes? That moment at the dinner table,
the discussions, that group chats, the office?
I'm not telling you to go preach and Bible thump people.
Just don't edit Jesus out of your conversation.
Ask yourself one question before you answer, before you speak
into it. How would I respond if Jesus was
sitting next to me? Because he is the lifestyle
cost. By the 2nd denial, Peter is not
really in that much danger. He's just cold.
He walked into the court court courtyard and the people were
about to kill Jesus, and he's warming his hands by the fire
and he's starting to blend in, not because he had to, but
because it's easier. The second questioner pushes
harder. Aren't you one of the disciples?
And again, I am not you and I, we want the fire without the
cross. We want the peace of Jesus, his
promises, but not the lifestyle that requires us to follow
Jesus. Arthur Wilburys says from this
book, $3 worth of God. I would like to buy $3 worth of
God, please. Not enough to expose my soul and
to disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm
milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don't want enough to make him make me love a black man or pick
beats with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not
transformation. I want the warmth of the womb,
not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in
a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of
God, please. We want the blessing without the
obedience. I've wanted that $3 version of
God more times than I can admit. Following Jesus has always meant
something was going to be costly.
Not your salvation. That's grace.
It's given to us freely. But my lifestyle, my life, my
choices. Jesus says to take up your
cross, not your coffee. He says to deny myself, not just
my desires, when it's convenient.
The second denial is a lifestyle choice.
How often do we want Jesus to show up on Sunday?
But we're not ready to be different on Monday?
What's the fire you're warming yourself that isn't Jesus?
That thing. That thing that's coming to your
mind. And if it's not, keep searching
for it. When it comes, say it out loud,
because silence is a statement. But so is finally telling the
truth, and denial thrives in silence.
The moment you say it out loud, it loses half of its power.
Lastly, the physical cost. By the 3rd denial, Peter's back
is against the wall. One of the people asking is the
relative of Malchus, the man who Peter had just chopped his ear
off hours before. This is personal now.
This is dangerous, he says. Didn't I see you in the garden?
And Peter denied it again. And Matthew's count.
Matthew tells us he's cursing and he swears I don't know this
blankety blank dude. The deeper we go into denial,
the harder we have to work to maintain it.
First it's a quiet deflection. Now, now it's a loud
desperation. Matthew 26 tells us that after
the 3rd denial, someone in the courtyard says your accent, the
way you talk, it gives you away. You're 1 of him.
He's trying to blend in, standing at the fire, using
their words, playing the part. But the moment he talked, he
ratted himself out. Because when you've spent a long
time with Jesus, he changes you. It changes the way you talk
about life, money, the way you see your enemies, the way you
handle suffering. It changes what you're willing
to do with your life. Peter couldn't fully hide it,
even in his denial. Jesus already changed him more
than he realized. So what would it cost you to
take one step closer to Jesus right now?
Not vaguely. Specifically.
A reputation, a relationship, a career, a lifestyle you've
built. Write that down.
Write down what you might lose. And then right underneath it,
Jesus already knew when he went to the cross for me.
Jesus himself says, don't start building until you've counted
the cost. Luke chapter 18.
This is his words, not mine. Because until you name it, until
you make that decision about whether or not you're willing to
pay for it, you don't know what you're doing.
Sometimes we Christians lie to ourselves.
We'd say we'd die for Jesus. Bro, please.
You won't even fully live for Jesus, let alone die for him.
Who's singing about taking the cross on Sunday?
But Monday, we won't take a pay cut for a calling.
About 10 years ago, I'm a brand new youth pastor just trying to
figure out how to get kids to go to church.
And I get a call about a student that had graduated about a year
and a half earlier. And this young man lost his
life, an overdose gone. Instead of a regular Wednesday
night service, we're going crazy, having fun.
We planned a small prayer service just so our youth group,
the kids that knew him, could start to heal.
Something quiet, something for a few of the family members.
That night, I pulled into the parking lot.
I kid you not, there were students and teachers.
The place was packed. There were skids everywhere.
I did not invite them. They invited themselves. 150
people show up, People I've never seen.
People never set foot in church. I'll be honest, I was terrified.
I'd never done a funeral service before.
I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was walking
into. I'd never stood in front of
grief that size before. But I knew a few things.
I knew that boy knew the Lord and I knew that 100 people were
about to walk into a church that had probably never heard about
Jesus before. I had a choice.
I could keep it safe. I could keep it general.
I could talk about love and loss and really say nothing about the
gospel. Nothing really uncomfortable
about eternal life and or I could say the one true thing.
The thing that cost Jesus so much.
So I preached the gospel in a room full of strangers and grief
and a mother who had just lost her son.
And at the end of it, we had a prayer quote up front.
And I told anyone who wanted to pray, to pray for the family, to
pray over the the quilt, to come forward and tie a knot, say your
prayer. And they lined up, seemingly all
of them, 150 people in a giant line, 1 by 1 tie knots,
whispering prayers. Some of them probably never
prayed in their lives before. That's what happens when you say
the costly thing. That's what happens when you
don't edit Jesus out of the room.
So where are you in this story? Maybe you're at the servant
girl. You're at that easy question
right now. Just a low stakes moments.
You've been quietly editing out Jesus out of your story, out of
your personal life, out of the conversations that you're
having. You haven't done anything
traumatic. You've just stopped mentioning
him. Maybe you're at the fire.
You're in a season where you're trying to stay warm, be
comfortable. You've started to blend into the
crowd more than you and I'd like to admit.
Or maybe you've heard the rooster crow.
You know something is off, the weight is on you, but you
haven't been willing to name it yet.
If that's you, I need to, I need you to see what happens next.
In this account, Peter hears the rooster and it broke him, but it
didn't end him. And here's why.
Luke tells us in that exact moment, Jesus turns and looked
straight at him through the people, through the courtyard.
Think about what Jesus was going through.
Betrayal, abandonment. He's about to be crucified.
He's already been beaten. It's just about to get worse.
He could have looked at Peter with anger, with disappointment,
with disgust. But what he saw in Peter, he is.
This is the same thing that he's seen through Peter, through all
the ministry, through the all the time that they're been
together. He watched him look at Zacchaeus
as a thief, a sell up. He watched him look at the woman
caught in a drought she dragged into the streets in her shame.
He watched the lepers and the outcasts and the failures.
It was always the same look. The look of love, the look that
says I know what you're going through, I know what you've
done. It's why I came here to earth,
to die on the cross. This is the gospel.
Jesus didn't come to the cross by accident.
He went knowing that Peter was going to be standing at the
fire. He went for the skeptics in this
room. He went for the person warming
themselves by the wrong fires. He went for me and he went for
you. The courtyard is not the end of
your story. It wasn't the end of his.
Right now, He's not looking at your failures.
Jesus could not stay dead. Not even death could hold him.
Next week we're going to celebrate that.
We're going to be so excited. It's going to be Easter.
Jesus is not asking you to clean up yourself first.
He's asking you to trust him with your mess.
The same Jesus who looked at Peter across the courtyard, who
didn't look away, who didn't give up, who went to the cross,
who came here anyways. That is the same person who's
standing in front of you now. Not a religion, not a set of
rules. Jesus who already knew
everything you've done and he came for you anyways.
Romans 10/9 tells us if you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, you will be saved.
For the heart. 1 believes and is justified and with the mouth one
confess, confesses and is saved. If you want to take the
opportunity to confront Jesus, who's already standing in front
of you, who's been calling you, who's been waiting for you,
wants to save you, I'm going to give you an opportunity right
now to say a prayer. This prayer isn't about perfect
words. It's not about getting the
formula right. God cares about your heart.
I can pray this quietly or silently repeating what I say or
something in your own words, in your belief to Jesus.
Let us pray right now. Right now is the time for
someone to surrender their life to God.
Say this prayer. Jesus, thank you.
Thank you for finding me where I'm at today.
I choose to follow you. I know I'm a messed up person
and I'm lost on my own. I know I can't save myself.
I've been warming myself at the wrong fire and today I look to
you. I can't follow you perfectly,
but I trust you to save me today.
I give you my whole life. I accept your love, your peace,
your forgiveness of my sins. Be my savior Jesus, Everybody's
head still bowed. If you pray that prayer for the
very first time, would you be brave enough for me to see?
Thank you. See your hands in Jesus name
Everybody says Amen. If you prayed that prayer for
the very first time, something incredible just happened.
Welcome to the family of God. In a moment we were all going to
stand. If you pray that prayer, please,
please go to either of the tables that say I raised my
hand. I ask you because we, we want to
start this journey with you. We want to celebrate with you.
We want to give you a gift right now.
Our prayer team is going to come forward.
If you would like to pray about anything, I mean anything at
all, I encourage you to come forward.
Maybe it's something that you wrote down today.
As you come forward, give it to God.
Everybody, please stand. Move as the Lord leads you.