Latest / Bible stories / Why A Rooster_ The Hidden Meaning of Peter_s Denial in John 18

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Why A Rooster_ The Hidden Meaning of Peter_s Denial in John 18 · Bible stories

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
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  Speaker 1: are no ads on this video because YouTube has demonetized
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  Speaker 1: our channel. To support us, you can scan the first
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  Speaker 1: QR code to join the Bible Stories podcast app, where
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  Speaker 1: you can listen offline and access exclusive episodes. Or, if
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  Speaker 1: you simply want to give, you can scan the second
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  Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
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  Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. Jesus could have said before sunrise.
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  Speaker 1: He said before the rooster crows, and all four gospel
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  Speaker 1: writers kept that wording. Almost everyone hears that sound the
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  Speaker 1: same way. It is the moment heaven rebukes Peter. The
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  Speaker 1: bird is the slap, God's way of saying, look what
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  Speaker 1: you have just done. That reading does not survive the verse.
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  Speaker 1: Think about what a rooster actually does. It does not
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  Speaker 1: say a man's name. It does not accuse anybody or
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  Speaker 1: announce a verdict. It makes the same noise every morning
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  Speaker 1: of its life, whether or not somebody in the courtyard
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  Speaker 1: has just failed. Nothing about that sound is pointed at Peter.
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  Speaker 1: So it was not a rebuke. Which leaves the question
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  Speaker 1: exactly where it started. Why that, out of everything available
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  Speaker 1: to the Son of God on the night he was arrested?
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  Speaker 1: The answer is not in the bird. It is in
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  Speaker 1: the chapter around it. John chapter 18 is about who
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  Speaker 1: will speak. A man is on trial, the trial cannot
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  Speaker 1: produce a witness, and the one person in Jerusalem who
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  Speaker 1: could have testified for him is standing outside at a fire,
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  Speaker 1: saying he has never met him. Once you see that,
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  Speaker 1: the crowing stops being background noise and starts doing something
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  Speaker 1: no human voice in that city was willing to do.
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  Speaker 1: And if you have ever gone quiet when you should
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  Speaker 1: have spoken or kept your faith to yourself in a
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  Speaker 1: room where saying it out loud would have cost you something,
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  Speaker 1: stay with this one to the end. The man who
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  Speaker 1: failed worst that night is the man Jesus put in
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  Speaker 1: charge of everything afterward. By the time the story finishes,
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  Speaker 1: the sound that marked his failure is not saying the
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  Speaker 1: same thing anymore, and neither is the thing you have
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  Speaker 1: been carrying. Start with the way John built it, because
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  Speaker 1: he arranged these scenes on purpose. Most of us read
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  Speaker 1: this chapter in pieces, a bit at a time, and
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  Speaker 1: the arrangement disappears. Put it back together, and it is unmistakable.
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  Speaker 1: Watch the order carefully. Verses 15 to 18 give you
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  Speaker 1: Peter arriving and denying Jesus for the first time. Verses
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  Speaker 1: 19 to 24 give you Jesus standing before Annas. Verses
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  Speaker 1: 25 to 27 bring you back outside for the second
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  Speaker 1: and third denials. John cut the trial of Jesus into
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  Speaker 1: the middle of Peter's denial. That is not how the
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  Speaker 1: other gospels arrange it. Matthew and Mark run the trial
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  Speaker 1: through and then hand you Peter. John interlocks them, and
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  Speaker 1: the effect is that you cannot read one without the other.
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  Speaker 1: Every time you look up from Peter, you are inside
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  Speaker 1: with Jesus. Every time you look up from Jesus, you
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  Speaker 1: are outside with Peter. Two men are being questioned in
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  Speaker 1: the same house at the same hour. Both are asked
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  Speaker 1: who they are. One tells the truth, and it costs
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  Speaker 1: him his life. The other lies, and it saves his skin.
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  Speaker 1: And the questions themselves are almost mirror images. Inside, the
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  Speaker 1: high priest asks Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Outside,
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  Speaker 1: somebody asks Peter whether he is one of the disciples.
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  Speaker 1: The same relationship is on the table in both rooms,
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  Speaker 1: from opposite ends. Jesus is asked about the people who
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  Speaker 1: follow him. A follower is asked about him. The physical
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  Speaker 1: distance between them is almost nothing. This is a courtyard house.
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  Speaker 1: The rooms open onto an open space in the middle.
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  Speaker 1: Peter can hear voices. He is close enough that when
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  Speaker 1: the rooster crows, Luke tells us Jesus is able to
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  Speaker 1: turn and look at him straight across that open ground.
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  Speaker 1: There is a detail about how Peter got in there
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  Speaker 1: that makes it heavier. John says another disciple, known to
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  Speaker 1: the high priest, went out and spoke to the girl
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  Speaker 1: at the door and brought Peter through. Somebody vouched for him.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody stood at that door and said, He is with me. Then,
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  Speaker 1: five minutes later, Peter told the same girl that he
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  Speaker 1: was not. And notice that he did not have to
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  Speaker 1: be there at all. Nobody summoned him. The other disciples
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  Speaker 1: had scattered into the dark, and nothing happened to them.
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  Speaker 1: Peter walked toward the danger, got himself inside, and then
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  Speaker 1: denied his way through the night he had volunteered for.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever else this story is, it is not the story
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  Speaker 1: of a coward. It is the story of a brave
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  Speaker 1: man discovering that courage and faithfulness are not the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: Now the part that almost nobody points out, and once
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  Speaker 1: you see it, you cannot unsee it. Go back a
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  Speaker 1: few verses to the garden. The soldiers come with lanterns
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  Speaker 1: and weapons, and Jesus walks out to meet them and
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  Speaker 1: asks who they are looking for. They say, Jesus of Nazareth.
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  Speaker 1: I am he, Jesus said. When Jesus said, I am he,
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  Speaker 1: they drew back and fell to the ground. John chapter
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  Speaker 1: 18 verses 5 and 6. He says it again in
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  Speaker 1: verse 8. Three times in that garden, the same two
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  Speaker 1: words in Greek, ego, I me, I am. Anyone who
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  Speaker 1: has read John's gospel from the beginning knows what those
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  Speaker 1: words carry. This is the book where Jesus says, I
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  Speaker 1: am the bread of life. I am the light of
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  Speaker 1: the world. I am the door. I am the good shepherd.
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  Speaker 1: I am the resurrection and the life. I am the
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  Speaker 1: way and the truth and the life. I am the
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  Speaker 1: true vine. It is the signature of the whole gospel.
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  Speaker 1: John built his book around that phrase. And every one
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  Speaker 1: of those sentences was an answer to a need. People
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  Speaker 1: were hungry, so he said bread. People were in the dark,
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  Speaker 1: so he said light. People were shut out, so he
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  Speaker 1: said door. People were burying somebody, so he said resurrection.
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  Speaker 1: Each time, somebody's emptiness got named, and then answered with
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  Speaker 1: two words about who he is. Now, go out to
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  Speaker 1: the courtyard less than an hour later. You aren't one
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  Speaker 1: of this man's disciples, too, are you? she asked Peter.
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  Speaker 1: He replied, I am not. John chapter 18, verse 17.
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  Speaker 1: In Greek, that answer is two words, ukeimi, I am not.
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  Speaker 1: Peter says it again in verse 25, in exactly the
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  Speaker 1: same words. So in one house, on one night, the
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  Speaker 1: phrase that runs through the entire Gospel of John is
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  Speaker 1: spoken in both directions. Inside, a man says, I am,
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  Speaker 1: and men fall backward onto the ground. Outside, a man says,
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  Speaker 1: I am not, and warms his hands. John never stops
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  Speaker 1: to explain that. He does not put a note in
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  Speaker 1: the margin. He simply lays the two sentences down a
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  Speaker 1: few verses apart and leaves them there. And if you
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  Speaker 1: know his gospel, you feel it without being told. And
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  Speaker 1: notice what Peter was actually denying. The question was not
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  Speaker 1: whether Jesus was the Messiah. He was not asked to
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  Speaker 1: renounce a doctrine. He was asked whether he belonged to somebody.
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  Speaker 1: Are you one of his? And the answer he gave
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  Speaker 1: was about himself. I am not. That is what makes
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  Speaker 1: it recognizable. Very few of us have ever been asked
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  Speaker 1: to deny that Jesus is Lord, but a great many
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  Speaker 1: of us have quietly decided, in a particular room, with
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  Speaker 1: particular people, that it would be easier not to be
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  Speaker 1: one of His tonight. It is worth remembering who was
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  Speaker 1: saying it to. This is the man who had already
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  Speaker 1: answered the biggest question in the Gospels correctly. When Jesus
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  Speaker 1: asked the twelve who they thought he was, Peter was
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  Speaker 1: the one who said it out loud first. He had
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  Speaker 1: the right answer in him. He had said it in
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  Speaker 1: front of everybody once already. That is what makes the
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  Speaker 1: courtyard so painful. The problem was never that Peter did
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  Speaker 1: not know. The problem was the cost of saying it
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  Speaker 1: in that particular place. Here is where the chapter's real
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  Speaker 1: subject comes into focus. Under the law, God gave Israel
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  Speaker 1: no matter could be established on the word of one person.
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  Speaker 1: Two or three witnesses were required, and that requirement was
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  Speaker 1: not a technicality. It was the safeguard that kept a
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  Speaker 1: man from being executed on somebody's grudge. Deuteronomy states it plainly,
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  Speaker 1: and it applied to everything from a property dispute to
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  Speaker 1: a capital charge. So, a capital case needed testimony that agreed,
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  Speaker 1: and this one did not have any. Mark records what
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  Speaker 1: was happening inside while Peter stood at the fire. Many
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  Speaker 1: testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
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  Speaker 1: Mark chapter 14, verse 56. The prosecution was collapsing. They
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  Speaker 1: had volunteers, and none of the accounts lined up. Picture
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  Speaker 1: how that actually happened. looks in a room at two
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  Speaker 1: in the morning. Men are being brought forward one at
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  Speaker 1: a time, each one certain he has the thing that
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  Speaker 1: will finish it, and each one contradicting the man who
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  Speaker 1: spoke before him. The people running that trial were not
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  Speaker 1: short of malice. They were short of evidence. Now watch
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  Speaker 1: what Jesus does with that when Annas questions him about
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  Speaker 1: his teaching. He does not defend himself. He points at
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  Speaker 1: the missing witnesses. Ask those who heard me. Surely they
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  Speaker 1: know what I said. John chapter 18 verse 21. That
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  Speaker 1: is a legal answer. He is telling the court to
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  Speaker 1: do the one thing the law required and go find
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  Speaker 1: people who were actually present. And a moment later, when
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  Speaker 1: an officer hits him for saying it, he says the
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  Speaker 1: same thing again in different words. If I said something wrong,
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  Speaker 1: testify about what was wrong. Twice in three verses, from
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  Speaker 1: a man with his hands tied, the demand is for
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  Speaker 1: someone to come forward and speak. Then step outside into
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  Speaker 1: the courtyard and look at who is standing there, the
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  Speaker 1: people who heard him. That is exactly who Peter is.
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  Speaker 1: Three years of it. Every sermon, every argument with the Pharisees,
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  Speaker 1: every private explanation of a parable after the crowd went home.
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  Speaker 1: If the court had sent an officer out to the
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  Speaker 1: fire and asked that Galilean fisherman what this man taught,
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  Speaker 1: Peter could have answered for an hour. Instead, a servant
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  Speaker 1: girl asked him a much smaller question, and he said
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  Speaker 1: he had never been there. That is the tragedy of
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  Speaker 1: the chapter, and John built the whole structure to make
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  Speaker 1: you feel it. Inside, the accused is asking for a witness. Outside,
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  Speaker 1: the witness is denying he was ever in the room.
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  Speaker 1: There is a detail in the Greek of that first
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  Speaker 1: question that changes the emotional temperature of the scene. When
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  Speaker 1: the servant girl speaks in verse 17, the way she
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  Speaker 1: frames it in Greek is the form you use when
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  Speaker 1: you already expect the answer to be no. It is
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  Speaker 1: closer to, you are not one of this man's disciples too,
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  Speaker 1: are you? The question comes preloaded with its own escape.
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  Speaker 1: She was not interrogating him. She had let him through
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  Speaker 1: the door thirty seconds earlier. She probably asked the way
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  Speaker 1: you ask something you are half sure about, expecting to
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  Speaker 1: be told you were wrong. And that is what makes
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  Speaker 1: it so ordinary and so recognizable. Peter was not broken
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  Speaker 1: down by a Roman officer. Nobody put a sword to
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  Speaker 1: his chest. He was asked a casual question by a
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  Speaker 1: girl doing her job at a door, in a form
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  Speaker 1: that practically handed him the answer, and he took it.
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  Speaker 1: Most of the times, we go quiet. It looks like that.
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  Speaker 1: Not a tribunal. A comment at a family table you
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  Speaker 1: decide not to answer. A conversation at work that turns,
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  Speaker 1: and you let it turn. A moment where saying yes,
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  Speaker 1: that is what I believe, would have cost you nothing
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  Speaker 1: but the temperature of the room, and you let the
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  Speaker 1: moment pass. And the second question is no harder than
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  Speaker 1: the first. John frames it the same way. You are
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  Speaker 1: not one of his disciples too, are you? Two easy questions,
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  Speaker 1: both practically apologizing for being asked, and Peter fails both
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  Speaker 1: of them. He had been ready to die a few
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  Speaker 1: hours earlier. He was not ready for small talk. That
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  Speaker 1: gap is worth thinking about. We prepare ourselves for the
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  Speaker 1: crisis we imagine, the dramatic one, the one where the
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  Speaker 1: stakes are obvious and our courage would have somewhere to stand.
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  Speaker 1: Then the actual test arrives, dressed as a casual remark
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  Speaker 1: from somebody who does not even care very much about
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  Speaker 1: the answer, and there is nothing heroic to grab hold of.
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  Speaker 1: There is one more thing worth seeing here. Look at
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  Speaker 1: where he was standing when he said it. John tells
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  Speaker 1: us the servants and officers had made a fire because
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  Speaker 1: it was cold, and that Peter was standing with them,
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  Speaker 1: warming himself. Then, in verse 25, after the scene cuts
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  Speaker 1: back from Jesus, John says it again. Simon Peter was
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  Speaker 1: still standing there, warming himself. John repeats it on purpose.
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  Speaker 1: Not that Peter arrived. that he stayed. He had every
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  Speaker 1: chance to walk out into the dark after the first lie. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: he kept his hands over the coals with the men
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  Speaker 1: who had arrested his friend, and stood there long enough
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  Speaker 1: to be asked twice more. Denial is rarely one decision.
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  Speaker 1: It is one decision followed by the decision not to move.
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  Speaker 1: And there is a reason he did not move, and
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  Speaker 1: every one of us knows it. Leaving would have been
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  Speaker 1: an admission. Walking away right after being asked whether you
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  Speaker 1: belong to Jesus is its own kind of answer, and
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  Speaker 1: everyone at that fire would have read it. So he
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  Speaker 1: stayed to prove he had nothing to hide, and staying
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  Speaker 1: is what put him in front of the second question
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  Speaker 1: and the third. That is how a small lie holds
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  Speaker 1: a person in place. It is not the lie that
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  Speaker 1: traps you. It is everything you then have to keep
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  Speaker 1: doing in order to look like someone who did not
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  Speaker 1: tell it. The third challenge is different from the first two,
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  Speaker 1: and John is the only one who tells us why.
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  Speaker 1: The first two questions came from people guessing. The third
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  Speaker 1: comes from a man with a personal reason to remember
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  Speaker 1: Peter's face. John says he was a relative of the
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  Speaker 1: servant whose ear Peter had cut off in the garden,
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  Speaker 1: and his question is not a guess at all. Did
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  Speaker 1: I not see you with him in the garden? That
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  Speaker 1: is an eyewitness statement. A man is standing in front
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  Speaker 1: of Peter, saying, I was there, I saw you, I
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  Speaker 1: know what you did to my kinsmen. So the last
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  Speaker 1: thing Peter denies is not a rumor. It is testimony.
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  Speaker 1: On a night when the court could not find a
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  Speaker 1: single reliable witness, a real one is standing in the courtyard,
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  Speaker 1: describing exactly what he saw, and Peter tells him he
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  Speaker 1: is wrong. There is a bitter symmetry in it. Inside
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  Speaker 1: the house, men are lying about Jesus, and the lies
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  Speaker 1: do not hold. Outside in the courtyard, a man tells
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  Speaker 1: the truth about Peter, and Peter denies it to his face.
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  Speaker 1: The whole building has stopped being able to handle honest speech,
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  Speaker 1: and Peter has joined the side of the house that lies.
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  Speaker 1: And then the sound. Again Peter denied it, and at
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  Speaker 1: that moment a rooster began to crow. John chapter 18
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  Speaker 1: verse 27. That is the whole verse. John says nothing else.
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  Speaker 1: No comment, no explanation, no weeping. He simply stops the
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  Speaker 1: scene there and takes you back inside to Jesus and Pilate.
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  Speaker 1: Now we can answer the question properly. Everything in that
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  Speaker 1: night had failed as testimony. The volunteers inside contradicted each other.
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  Speaker 1: The witness outside said he had never met the man.
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  Speaker 1: The one honest eyewitness in the courtyard was contradicted to
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  Speaker 1: his face. Every human voice in Jerusalem that night was
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  Speaker 1: either lying, guessing, or refusing. And then a bird made
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  Speaker 1: a noise, and it was the only thing said in
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  Speaker 1: that city all night that was completely true. Think about
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  Speaker 1: what a rooster is as a witness. It cannot be paid.
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  Speaker 1: Nobody rehearsed it. It has no opinion about Galileans and
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  Speaker 1: no relatives with missing ears. It is not for anyone
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  Speaker 1: or against anyone. It has no idea a trial is
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  Speaker 1: happening thirty feet away. It makes exactly one statement. It
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  Speaker 1: makes the same statement every day of its life, and
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  Speaker 1: the statement is true every single time. That is the
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  Speaker 1: one kind of testimony that could not be corrupted on
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  Speaker 1: the night everything else was. And it is worth noticing
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  Speaker 1: what kind of a court that leaves you looking at.
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  Speaker 1: The high priest had every advantage— authority, soldiers, a building, the
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  Speaker 1: legal machinery of a nation, and hours of darkness to
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  Speaker 1: work in. What he could not manufacture was one honest sentence. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: something with a brain the size of a walnut delivered
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  Speaker 1: the only reliable statement in Jerusalem, on time, without being asked.
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  Speaker 1: Scripture does not say God sent that bird. It does
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  Speaker 1: not call the crowing a sign or a miracle, and
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  Speaker 1: I am not going to claim more than the text does.
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  Speaker 1: What the text does say is that Jesus knew at
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  Speaker 1: dinner what that bird would do and when it would
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  Speaker 1: do it, and that he chose it as the marker.
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  Speaker 1: And notice what it does not say. It does not
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  Speaker 1: say Peter is a coward. It does not name him,
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  Speaker 1: accuse him, or pronounce anything over him. A rooster announces
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  Speaker 1: the hour and nothing else. All it said was, it
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  Speaker 1: is morning now, which means the sound convicted only one
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  Speaker 1: person in that courtyard, and only because he already knew
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  Speaker 1: what it meant. Everyone else heard a bird. Peter heard
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  Speaker 1: a sentence he had been told at dinner and had
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  Speaker 1: argued with. to Jesus' face. That is a strange kind
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  Speaker 1: of mercy, and it is worth slowing down for. God
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  Speaker 1: did not send an angel to stand over Peter and
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  Speaker 1: read the charge. He did not have the sky darken
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  Speaker 1: or the ground move. The evidence against Peter was a
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  Speaker 1: noise that the servants around that fire did not even
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  Speaker 1: look up for. His failure was made undeniable and completely
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  Speaker 1: private at the same moment. Consider how differently this could
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  Speaker 1: have gone. Any of those officers could have recognized him
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  Speaker 1: from the garden and dragged him inside. The relative of
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  Speaker 1: the wounded man could have pressed the point and had
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  Speaker 1: him arrested. Peter had drawn a sword on the high
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  Speaker 1: priest's household a few hours earlier, and there were men
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  Speaker 1: in that courtyard who would have been glad to say so.
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  Speaker 1: Every one of those endings was available, and none of
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  Speaker 1: them happened. What happened instead was a bird. Nothing was
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  Speaker 1: taken from Peter that night except the ability to pretend,
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  Speaker 1: and that turns out to be exactly what had to go.
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  Speaker 1: And there is the timing of it. Cockcrow is the
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  Speaker 1: end of the night rather than the middle. It is
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  Speaker 1: the noise that means the dark part is finishing. So
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  Speaker 1: the exact instant Peter's failure was complete was the exact
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  Speaker 1: instant morning arrived. Whatever else that bird was doing, it
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  Speaker 1: was not announcing the end of something. It was announcing
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  Speaker 1: that the night was over. One more thing about that choice.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus picked a sound Peter was going to keep hearing.
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  Speaker 1: It was not a one-time event that could be filed
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: away afterward. In that world, the crowing came every single morning,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: in every town, and nobody could arrange to miss it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: Whatever happened to Peter later, that noise was going to
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: find him at the start of every day he had left.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: which raises the only question worth asking about the rest
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of Peter's life. What did he hear in it? Follow
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the chapter a few verses further, because John is not
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: finished with the word. Jesus is taken to Pilate, and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Pilate asks whether he is a king, and Jesus answers
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: with a sentence that reaches back over everything that has
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: just happened in that courtyard. In fact, the reason I
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was born and came into the world is to testify
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: to me. John 18.37 Set that sentence against the knight
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: he has just had. A trial has been running for
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: hours and cannot find a witness. The man on trial
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: has twice asked the court to produce one. And now,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: standing in front of the Roman governor, he says that
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: giving testimony is the reason he exists. The court spent
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: all night looking for a witness against the only true
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: witness in the room. There is something almost unbearable about
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: the timing of it. Peter says his last, I am not,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and the bird crows, and within the hour Jesus is
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: standing in front of Pilate saying, in effect, this is
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: what I came for. One man's voice failed at the
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: door of a courtyard. The other man's voice held all
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the way to a Roman judgment seat, and it held
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: while he was tied up, sleepless, and already struck once
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: for answering a question honestly. That is the shape of
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the whole chapter. Everyone else in John 18 is failing
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: to say something true. Jesus is the one person there
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: who says nothing false under pressure with his life on
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: the line all the way to the end. Much later,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the Book of Revelation gives him the title outright and
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: calls him the faithful witness. And that title is worth
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: holding next to the courtyard because it tells you what
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: he was doing while Peter was failing. He was not
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: merely being condemned, he was testifying. Every answer he gave
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that night was true, in a building where nothing else was,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and he kept giving them after being struck for it.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: So when the rooster crowed, it was not correcting Peter
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: on behalf of a god who had gone quiet. It
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: was the smallest possible echo of the person standing forty
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: feet away, who had been telling the truth in that
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: house since midnight and had not stopped. Which brings us
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to the part of the story that most people know,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: but few connect to any of this. Weeks later, after
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the resurrection, Peter is back in Galilee doing what he
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: did before he ever met Jesus. And Jesus meets him
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: on a shore in the early morning over a fire
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: with breakfast and asks him a question three times. Simon,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: do you love me? Everyone notices the number, and the
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: number is the point, but watch what kind of thing
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: is actually being asked for. Jesus does not sit him
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: down and go over what happened. There is no review
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of the courtyard, no mention of the girl at the door,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: or the fire, or the bird. He asks Peter to
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: say something out loud, in front of the other men,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: three times. Three times in a courtyard, Peter had made
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a statement about himself, and it was false. Three times
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: on that beach, Peter makes a statement about himself, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: it is true.' Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.'
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: He was not being punished with a repetition. He was
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: being handed back the one thing he had thrown away
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: at that fire, which was the ability to say something
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: true about where he stood. And there is a difference
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: between the first two answers and the third one that
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: is easy to miss.' The first two times, Peter says,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you know that I love you. The third time he
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: opens with something else.' Lord, you know all things.' Compare
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that with how he talked at the supper-table. Every sentence
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: out of him that night had been a claim about
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: his own reliability.' I am ready. I will go to
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: prison and to death, even if all of them fall away.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I will not. He was building a case, and he
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: was the whole case. On the beach there is none
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: of that.' He does not mention that he followed the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: arrest party into the courtyard while the others hid. He
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: does not mention swimming to shore while the rest rowed.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: He offers no evidence about himself at all. He hands
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: the question back to the one person who can answer
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: it properly and says, You already know. A man who
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: has been through what Peter has been through does not
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: trust his own testimony about himself anymore, so he stops
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: giving it. And then Jesus gives him work. Feed my lambs.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep. A man
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: whose voice had failed as a witness is put in
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: charge of speaking to people for the rest of his life,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: and decades later he is still doing it, writing letters
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that we are still reading. Think about what that means
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: for the sound. Peter did not retire quietly to Galilee.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: He spent the rest of his life in cities, and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: every city in that world woke up the same way.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: He heard that noise at the start of thousands of
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: mornings after the resurrection, and by then it could not
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: possibly have meant what it meant in the courtyard, because
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the last thing that ever happened to him at a
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: fire with Jesus was breakfast and a job. So, what
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: does any of this do for you tonight? Start here.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: If you have ever gone quiet when you should have spoken,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: you are not looking at a category of person God
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: gives up on. You are looking at the man Jesus
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: put in charge of the church. Nothing in this story
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: suggests Peter was excused. The rooster made sure he could
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: never soften what he had done or tell himself he
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: had misremembered it. The record stands in four Gospels forever,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and Peter almost certainly told it himself. But the record
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: standing is not the same as the man being finished.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Name your own version of it honestly. For most of us,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: it is not dramatic. It is a grandchild who asked
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: what you believe and got a short answer because the
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: room was mixed. It is a hospital conversation where you
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: could have said something about Christ and talked about the
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: weather instead. It is years of being the quiet one
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: about your faith, because you did not think you knew
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: enough to defend it, and now you feel like a
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: fraud for even watching a video like this. And some
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: of it is older than that. There are people who
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: have carried a specific silence for forty years, a parent
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: who never heard it, a friend who is gone now,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: a moment at a graveside where you had the words
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and could not get them out. Those are courtyards too,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: and time does not make them quieter. The Bible's word
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: for what you are is not fraud. It is Peter.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: And there is something worth holding on to in the
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: fact that this story survived at all. Somebody had to
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: tell it. Peter was almost certainly the source for it,
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: and he had every reason in the world to let
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: it quietly disappear. He was the leading figure in the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: early church. Nobody was going to press him on it. Instead,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the account of the worst thing he ever did is
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: in all four Gospels— in detail, with the servant girl, and
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: the fire, and the bird, which means the man kept
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: telling it out loud for the rest of his life.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: That is only possible for someone who is no longer
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: afraid of it. Notice the direction of the whole story.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: The night ended with the sound of morning. The failure
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: got a timestamp, and the timestamp fell at dawn. Then
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a fire on a beach. Then a question. Then a job.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: If you are older, and much of your life is
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: behind you, and some of it is a courtyard you
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: would rather not walk back through, hold on to the
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: order of those events. Jesus did not go to Peter
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and ask him to explain himself. He made him breakfast
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: and asked him whether he loved him, and then gave
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: him something to do. He was not waiting to see
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: how the courtyard turned out before deciding what to do
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: with you. He was inside the house while it happened,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: telling the truth in the next room, and he came
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: looking for you afterward. You may not get the chance
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to go back and answer the question you dodged. Most
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of those rooms are gone, and most of those people
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: have moved on. But you can answer it now, tonight,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: out loud, the way Peter did on the beach. Nobody
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: has to hear it but God, and it counts the same.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: The rooster crowed. Peter heard it and went out and wept.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: And then the sun came up, exactly as that bird
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: had said it would. If this video helped you grow
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: deeper in God's Word, I want to personally invite you
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to be part of what we are building here. Every
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: video on this channel takes many hours of study and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: careful research to make sure we bring you content that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: is faithful to Scripture and worthy of your time. If
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: you would like to support this mission and help us
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: keep making these videos, you can find a link in
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: the description below to give a one-time gift or become
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a monthly supporter. Every gift, no matter the size, goes
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: directly toward creating more content like this. And if you
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: are not in a position to give right now, that
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: is completely fine. The best thing you can do is subscribe,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: share this video with someone who needs to hear it,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and keep studying God's Word with us. Thank you for
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: being here, and may God bless you richly.