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Mark Sermon

What do we do when our commitment to Christ fails? – Mark 14:66-72

Good morning church! It’s a pleasure to be sharing the Word with you. As a church we have been reading through the gospel of Mark. Right now we are in Mark 14 and as we are turning to today’s text let me share a small context.

The setting is right at the home of the high priest. Jesus has been arrested and is on trial. All of his disciples have abandoned him. Jesus is all alone as He is being insulted, accused, beaten and humiliated as He reveals His identity as the Son of God. And in the midst of that we have a passage on Peter that totally transforms his life! Let’s look at v 66-72.

I still remember how amazing the first week was after I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. Everything was so great! I enjoyed fellowship with God – reading the Word and prayer. I had brand new desires to grow in holiness. I wanted to grow with other believers. But I quickly realized that I became more and more aware of the sin in my life and some sin patterns were repeated and frequent. I started going back to God asking for forgiveness.

 First time, second time, tenth time…by the time it reached the hundredth I began questioning if it was possible for me to lose my salvation. Surely God has lost patience by now. And that left me really insecure for some time because I thought it was up to me to keep my commitment to Jesus.  It was around that time – alongside other believers and a weekly bible study that I where my whole understanding of the gospel changed drastically. What is it that holds our relationship with Christ together? What happens when our best efforts and intentions fail in our relationship with Christ? Today’s passage helps us answer this:

  1. We are prone to be unfaithful to God

This incident of Peter denying Jesus is mentioned in all 4 gospels. We know that the gospel writer Mark was mentored by Peter, so the account in the gospel Mark is through the lens of Peter. Why would Peter mention such an embarrassing story? If we were to write an autobiography, we would probably exclude the bad and embarrassing stories about ourselves. Why mention this? I think the first reason is to show how we all are prone to be unfaithful to God. Peter, even though he was a key leader among the disciples of Jesus was unfaithful to God. We see that displayed in:

  1. False promises (v29-31):

29 Peter said to him, “Even though they all fall away, I will not.” 30 And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” 31 But he said emphatically, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And they all said the same.

Peter seemed quite confident that he will never deny Christ even to the point of death. Now we know that Peter is known for being impulsive. During the transfiguration, he sees Jesus standing in glory with Moses and Elijah and he tells Jesus that he’ll make three tents for each of them.

 We know he is impulsive but before we quickly make our judgments, let’s realize that he isn’t too different from us. He is a reflection of what goes on in our hearts. I’m sure he had the best intentions when Peter made the promise but his promise ultimately turned out to be false and empty.

How many of us have ever promised after a Sunday sermon – “I will do better next time. I will pray more from tomorrow onwards. I will spend more time in the Bible from tomorrow morning. I will cut off a particular sin pattern from my life”? I’ve done this myself.

 Even though we say we know the gospel, isn’t it true that our responses sometimes to a sermon on a Sunday morning is self-help? And what we don’t admit a lot of the times is that we make a lot of false promises to God. Even as we are singing some of the songs we do, do we make false promises? “I’m coming back to the heart of worship…it’s all about you…it’s all about you Jesus”. Is it really about Him? Even our best intended promises turn out to be false.

  • Fearful Heart

54 And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire. (v54)

In some verses earlier we see that guards were right next to Peter as he was being confronted by the servant girl. And Peter saw what happened to Jesus. He was beaten, spat at, humiliated and pronounced guilty of death.

Associating himself with Jesus would mean inviting the very same consequences. Even though he gave Jesus a very bold assurance a few verses earlier, when it came down to the actual moment he was overcome by fear. He wasn’t ready to be beaten, humiliated and to die for Jesus. 

In our current situations in life – be it at work or home or personal life – do we see ourselves more often than not operate out of fear or faith? Big question I know. But let’s ask ourselves – are we more likely to make choices and decisions in our lives based on fear of consequences and people or do we make choices out of faith in Christ?

  • Failing loyalty

67 and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” 68 But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.”

69 And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” 70 But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” 71 But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.”

In these three denials, we can see a failing loyalty to Christ. Peter was one of the closest people to Jesus. He was one of the three in the inner circle. He spent 3 ½ years with Jesus seeing Jesus do marvelous things for people & teach with authority & live an impeccable life. But at this very moment, when he was asked about being with Jesus – he disowned Jesus. He rejected knowing him.

He refused to accept any association with Jesus. That’s because it revealed what he truly valued and treasured in his heart. He had to chose between the idols in his heart and Jesus and he chose the idols. He chose himself over Jesus.

Have we ever seen this failing loyalty in our hearts? Calvin said that our heart is a factory of idols. We are regularly churning out more and more idols that are competing for the affections of our heart. And when do we see our idols? On a stressful day, what or whom do we turn to for relief? When we are sad and upset, what do we turn to comfort us? When we are bored and idle, what or whom do we turn to automatically? And if we are being absolutely honest, we’ll admit that we will see a failing loyalty. We don’t always say that Jesus is better.

The famous hymn “Come thy fount” has an interesting line in one of its verses which says “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”. What I’m trying to say is that we can’t rely on our promises, or our heart, or our loyalty to sustain and keep this relationship. Why? Because our promises are false, our hearts are fearful and our loyalty is failing.

 Whenever we come before the throne of God, we need to admit that we are prone to be unfaithful. Even our best intentions and our best efforts to keep up our commitment will end up in being unfaithful. Our position after listening to God’s Word cannot be “I will do better” but rather a humble position “I don’t know what’s going on in my heart. I know I’m prone to be unfaithful. Lord, help me!”

But if we are only left with this truth that we are prone to be unfaithful, we will be left in despair. But the best truth is that:

Christ still remains faithful towards us

27 And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”

Already in verses 27,28 along with Jesus’ prophecy on the denial and abandonment, He already spoke about meeting with them after He is raised up!! Even though we are prone to be unfaithful, Christ will still be faithful to us.

 Christ’s faithfulness is not based on our faithfulness. He will remain faithful irrespective because He cannot go against His character. And He upholds this relationship and commitment. But what does that look like tangibly in a relationship where I am prone to be unfaithful?

  • Christ desires repentance by revealing our sin

72 And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept. [j]

The purpose in Jesus telling Peter that he would deny him 3 times before the rooster crows twice was not to insult him or tell him “Aha…I told you so” or to condemn him. But the purpose was to draw Peter to repentance by revealing his sin.

Prior to this incident, Peter probably thought he was the most committed guy to Jesus. But this whole incident revealed the opposite because of the idols in his heart. Because Jesus treasures the relationship He has with us, He will always bring to light areas in our life which will need to be repented of.

And we see the repentance being reflected in the sorrow Peter showed over his sin. Imagine this… think about a close relationship that you have. Married people – think about the relationship with your spouse. Unmarried people – think about the relationship with someone in your family. If you’ve done something to offend them and deeply hurt them, wouldn’t you feel sorrowful over what you’ve done? You couldn’t just sit and be normal.

 When you know that you’ve hurt someone you love, it will grieve you. So even in our relationship with Christ, when the Holy Spirit brings to light areas of sin in our hearts, if we are truly genuinely repentant we will mourn over our sin. I’m not saying you need to manipulate your tears but respond as you would to any close relationship.

2 Cor 7: 9 says For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

  • Christ produces faithfulness by redeeming our lives

Few weeks after this very same incident, we see Peter boldly preaching on the Day of Pentecost before a large crowd. The Word says that they were cut to the heart. And they asked him “What must we do to be saved?” And Peter said to them “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins”. 

Sometime after that – Peter and John are called in by the Sanhedrin in Acts 4. These are powerful religious authorities.  They charge them to stop teaching in the name of Jesus. What do Peter and John say? “You judge for yourselves if it is right in the sight of God to listen to you or obey God for, we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard!”

What brought about such a drastic change? I think it was Peter realizing that His loving Savior died & rose again on the third Day for him even though he rejected and refused to associate with Him. Peter realized how Christ was faithful to Him despite His unfaithfulness. And that stirred up his heart in repentance. I hope you see the two sides of repentance: one is the mourning over sin the other is the turning away from sin – both being motivated by the unlimited kindness and faithfulness shown toward you.

Brothers and sisters, what is hope for all of us who see ourselves failing in our commitment? It’s not based on our intentions, our promises, our heart and emotions, our loyalty but it’s based on Christ’s faithfulness toward us.

 Do you want to truly repent today? Ask God to reveal your sin so that you can mourn over what offends God. And then ask God to fill your heart with so much love in what Christ has done so that you can turn away from unfaithfulness.

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Mark Sermon

Understanding the Lord’s Supper – Mark 14:12-25

Good morning church! I hope you all had a blessed week in the Lord and I’m excited to share from the Word this morning. As a church we have been studying the gospel of Mark and we have arrived at the last few chapters of this gospel.

Wouldn’t you agree it’s been wonderful studying this together? We will be continuing with chapter 14 today and as you are turning to it let me set the background: the events of the last few chapters are taking place during Passion Week – which means that the crucifixion is very very close. You can imagine what might have been going through the mind of Jesus & his disciples. And our passage today revolves around the supper/meal that Jesus has with his disciples
[Read Mark 14:12-25]

I grew up in a traditional church where they used to administer the Lord’s Supper each week but I don’t think I realized the significance at the time. It seemed like a ritual similar to the rites of other religions is how I presumed it while growing up. With the wide variety of interpretations available everywhere, it’s great that today we get to study this together to get a biblical understanding of this important commandment from the Lord. I’ve got 3 points to share:

We need Jesus’ Provision and not our performance (v12-16)

Context is key to understanding any passage, wouldn’t you agree? The Lord’s Supper after all was a part of the Passover meal originally. Therefore, it’s vitally important to understand the context of this passage to understand the Lord’s Supper. v12 says this happens on the first day of Unleavened Bread and when they sacrificed the Passover Lamb.

Now what is this unleavened bread? It’s a 7-day festival observed by Israelites where they would eat bread without yeast to remember that on this day God brought out the Israelites from the land of Egypt. God rescued the Israelites from their bondage to slavery! 

And on the first day of the unleavened bread they celebrated the Passover. Now as most of you would remember, this was the event in Egypt when the Israelites killed a lamb and painted their doorposts with the blood of the lamb and no one ventured out till morning next day. At night, the Lord passed through the land to strike the Egyptians and he passed over every home that had the blood of the lamb on their door post & so the Israelites were spared but the first born among the Egyptians were killed.

On one hand it marked the event of God rescuing the Israelites from slavery and on the other hand, the Passover meant God protected them from being killed through the blood of the lamb.

Do you see the familiarity with these events and what Christ was going to ultimately do?

  • He was going to save people from their slavery to sin (Matt 1:21).
  • He Himself was the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. (John 1:29) He was going to protect people from the wrath of God.

Now think about it, the disciples ask Jesus about where would he want them to prepare the Passover. And Jesus gives them specific instructions and they found it to be exactly how it was described to them by Jesus. At the time I don’t think the disciples understood the truth about Jesus’ being the Passover lamb. I wonder if in a way Jesus was communicating this idea through this supernatural provision that “the Lord Himself will provide for the Passover”. Not through their performance & efforts but through His provision.

How does this speak to our hearts this morning?

All of us have been born with a default setting: self-performance. We love to do things by ourselves. We love the idea of a self-made man or woman. We don’t want to be helped by anyone and sometimes that also reflects in our attitude towards God.

We want to be self-sufficient in our relationship. That’s precisely the thing that keeps us from depending on Christ. Any person who understands his real need will run towards anyone who can offer help. How much more should that be for us who are broken, wretched, helpless and sinful without Christ? We need Jesus’ provision.

We know that we can’t create that need for Jesus automatically. That happens when we identify our crutches – those idols of self-performance, those idols of self-sufficiency – turn from those crutches – throw it away and then call out to Jesus in our helplessness.

I remember sometime back when God convicted me of spiritual pride because “I thought” I knew a lot of the Bible. I gained some knowledge because of the resources that I was exposed to. And all those things were really good stuff that I learnt. Over a period of time however, I realized how that was making me arrogant, argumentative, and most importantly it made me forget how much I needed Jesus.

My prayers sounded more like the Pharisee rather than the tax collector from that parable that Jesus shared. I had to throw away/repent of that crutch of biblical knowledge and then my heart was able to respond to Christ and understand His provision. What are those crutches brothers and sisters in your lives that God is calling you to throw away? Let’s humble ourselves in repentance as we look to participate in the Lord’s Supper. 

Proximity to Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean intimacy with Him (v17-21)

This is a sobering passage to say the least. Think about it…who was Judas? He was one of 12 close disciples of Jesus. He interacted very closely with Jesus every single day. He saw Jesus perform great miracles – heal the blind, sick and even raise the dead.

He saw Jesus show mercy, forgiveness and compassion to those whom the world didn’t even pay attention to. He heard the gospel clearly through the mouth of Jesus. He himself was sent out into the village to preach the gospel while he was appointed to perform miracles and cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Within the disciple’s group he also was a Treasurer – he used to handle to money bag.

And yet we see him betray Jesus because he loved money and himself more than Jesus. In reality he didn’t love Jesus at all. And that’s shocking because it means that Proximity to Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean intimacy with Him…Proximity doesn’t necessarily translate to close fellowship with Jesus. What does that mean for us?

We shouldn’t assume that we are believers because we:

  • Had a spiritual experience in the past: because we prayed a prayer or received healing
  • Religious activity: because we are very active in our weekend gatherings, GC
  • Biblical knowledge: because we know everything in the Bible. Even Satan knows more Scripture than all of us.

What does the Bible instead tell us repeatedly? 5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. (2 Cor 13:5)

Don’t assume…test yourself using Scripture to see if you are a believer or not. As a recommendation – 1 John is a wonderful book in the Bible that you can use to test your faith. Are you seeing the evidence of true faith in your life? This calls us to examine our hearts and test to see if we are truly in the faith before participating the Lord’s Supper.

The Lord’s Supper is about a Promise and not a transaction (v22-25)

Different churches in India and around the world have debated over the meaning of the Lord Supper over the years. Some churches say that during the worship service or “mass”, the bread and the wine actually turn into the literal body and blood of Jesus. Biblically we know that it doesn’t turn into Jesus’ flesh and blood because of the manner in which Jesus used it in this statement.

Did Jesus offer his literal flesh and blood to his disciples? No, he meant it symbolically and so we also need to take it as that. Some other churches say that when we participate in the Lord’s Supper, God actually gives us grace and blessings by our participation. Some other churches say we receive healing by taking it. If you think about it all these other interpretations to the Lord Supper makes it seem like a transaction and that cheapens the true meaning of this.

But what does the Bible actually say? It actually says the Lord’s Supper is more about a promise toward believers and not a transaction. The Lord Supper is a:

  • Promise of Christ’s commitment toward us (v22-24)

Christ literally died. He was physically dead for those 3 days. He paid the punishment for our sins. What we deserved – He bore in our place.  He was willing to go to any extent – even die for you and me. That is symbolized by the bread. The cup on the other hand symbolized the blood of the covenant. What does that mean? In the OT, blood that was on the altar was sprinkled on the Israelites to show God’s commitment toward them. But they rebelled and didn’t remain faithful to that covenant…so God replaced that covenant with a new one through Jesus:

33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jer 31:33,34) Nothing will break our relationship. It will be secure forever because of what Christ has done. So that’s the commitment is reminded to us over and over again as we participate in the Lord’s Supper.

  • Promise of our union with Christ (v22-23):

Not only does Christ die and pour out his blood for us but also, we are united to Him which is symbolized in Him sharing the elements with His disciples. We are members of Christ’s body. We share in His death. We share in His resurrection. And the life we now live we live by faith in the Son of God. Christ is living in and through us.

That’s why we take the Lord’s Supper together because we acknowledge that it’s the same grace that unites us to our Lord. Believers declare their union with Christ first through baptism and then the recurring reminder after that is through the Lord’s Supper. That’s why we say that if you aren’t a believer in Christ you shouldn’t partake of it because it has to do with our union with Him.  

  • Promise of a future hope with Christ (v25):

Jesus promises to have to have the fruit of the vine once again in the kingdom of God. Probably referring to the Marriage Supper of the lamb where He will have it once more with His bride – the church. Isn’t that exciting? Isn’t that something to look forward to?

Angie and I go back sometimes to watch our wedding video to remind ourselves of the vows we made to each other. There were a lot of really good things that happened that day but the most special thing that happened that day was our vow to each other because in that lies our commitment to each other which we make in the presence of God & His church.

What if Jesus Christ used the symbol of the bread and cup to remind our hearts every week of His commitment, our union with Him and a future hope with Him forever. How can we respond to that? By thanking Him, loving Him and surrendering our lives to Him.