In this sermon, we looked in John 18:12-27 at Jesus' faithfulness as He was being interrogated by the Jewish religious leaders. As Jesus continued to do His Father's will during the interrogation and false accusations, Peter was outside in the courtyard denying, three times, that he was one of Jesus' disciples. While John specifically captures Peter's unfaithfulness to Jesus, the reality is that all of the disciples abandoned Jesus to face His death alone. In this story, we see a convicting reflection of ourselves. Like Peter, we too are followers who make promises to Jesus, only to go back on those promises when the journey gets hard. However, this wasn’t the end of Peter’s story; we looked ahead in scripture and found that weeks later he was instrumental in organizing the disciples to launch the church in Jerusalem. Despite his ongoing personal struggles, it was Peter who helped break down the walls of racism and partiality in the early church. Just as God continued to use Peter to advance His Kingdom, God works in and through us as we take our failures and unfaithfulness to Jesus, entrusting ourselves to Him as the Shepherd of our souls.
