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[Music] The Man Who Came and Went and Came Again. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's Word

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as it is recorded in two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke. Reading first from chapter five, the passage beginning at verse four. When Jesus finished speaking, he said to Simon Peter, "Push the boat out further to the deep water,

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and you and your partners let your nets down for a catch. 'Master,' Simon Peter answered, 'we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will let down the nets.' They let the nets down and caught such a large number of fish

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that the nets were about to break. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so full of fish that they were about to sink. When Simon Peter saw what had happened, he fell on his knees before Jesus and said,

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'Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.' And Jesus said to Simon, 'Don't be afraid. From now on you will be catching men.' They pulled the boats on the beach, left everything, and followed Jesus."

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The second reading from Luke's Gospel is from the chapter number 22, reading from two passages in the Gospel, first at Luke 22, verse 31. This conversation takes place during the Last Supper. Jesus is speaking.

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"Simon, Simon, listen. Satan has received permission to test all of you as a farmer separates the wheat from the chaff. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail.

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And when you turn back to me, you must strengthen your brothers." Peter answered, "Lord, I am ready to go to prison with you and to die with you." "I tell you, Peter," Jesus answered, "the cock will not crow today until you have said three times that you do not know me."

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And then, beginning with the 54th verse, later the same evening, "They arrested Jesus and took him away into the house of the high priest, and Peter followed far behind. A fire had been lit in the center of the courtyard,

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and Peter joined those who were sitting around him. When one of the servant girls saw him sitting there at the fire, she looked straight at him and said, 'This man, too, was with him.' But Peter denied it, 'Woman, I don't even know him.'

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After a little while, a man noticed him and said, 'You are one of them, too.' But Peter answered, 'Man, I am not.' And about an hour later, another man insisted strongly, 'There isn't any doubt that this man was with him, because he also is a Galilean.'

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But Peter answered, 'Man, I don't know what you are talking about.' And at once, while he was still speaking, a cock crowed. And the Lord turned around and looked straight at Peter. And Peter remembered the Lord's words, how he had said,

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'Before the cock crows today, you will say three times that you do not know me.' And Peter went out and wept bitterly." And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Will you pray with me?

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Jesus said, "Whosoever cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out." Tonight I would like to talk with you for a little while about a man who came, and went, and then came again. I'd like to think about a man who was like smoke, in that he was always drifting back and forth.

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But he was forever moving upwards. I'd like to share with you some thoughts about Peter. We begin, of course, with that time when he first came to Jesus. He had listened to Jesus for some months before that occasion on which Jesus asked him to loan him his boat as a pulpit.

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Peter loaned the boat, Jesus used the boat, and then said, "Push out into the deep for a catch." Peter objected, "It's too late in the day, it's not time for fishing." Jesus insisted, and so they went. They let down their nets, and so great was the catch that they had to summon another boat in order to be able to handle it all.

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And in the face of this demonstration of the power of Jesus, Peter, who'd heard a great deal before this and now saw this power demonstrated, fell on his knees before Jesus and said, "Oh Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner." It's a rather remarkable thing to say when you think about it.

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It certainly isn't the kind of language that we use today. People are not very quick to admit that they are sinners. In fact, generally today people labor and go to great lengths in order to excuse their conduct rather than to admit it. Nations will provoke nations and then say afterwards that they didn't really mean it.

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Peoples will rise up against peoples and then say afterwards that they were misunderstood, that that was not their intention. And one doesn't have to limit one's consideration to nations and peoples. One can look at that pathetic weakling who stands before the court and bleeds, "I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing. You've got to let me go."

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It's all of one piece, this constant making of excuses, this denial of the reality of sin. There is one school of psychology that has become quite popular simply by advocating that you never really can be held responsible for anything. It all can be attributed to your environment and to your background. So that we all end up sounding like that character in West Side Story who says, "I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived."

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There are not many in our time who will say plainly and openly and for everyone to hear, "Lord, depart from me for I'm a sinner." I think it's this openness and this plainness and this honesty that makes Peter such an attractive personality to us. In survey after survey that has been taken, Peter is undoubtedly the most popular New Testament character after Jesus himself.

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We think of Paul in terms of his magnificent intellect and his great courage and power. We think of John in terms of his mystery, in terms of the awesomeness and the intricacy of his beautiful personality. But when we think of Peter, we think of someone who's just like us, except that he's ready to say it right out where anyone can hear it or see it. He had the courage of his imperfection.

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He let it all hang out. He showed the warts as well as the dimples. We identify, you see, with Peter saying as he came to Jesus, "I'm a sinner." Because we all know in our heart of hearts that when we stand in the presence of Jesus, that's all that we can say.

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We don't announce it, we only whisper it, perhaps in our closet in prayer. But the same words are on our lips if there's any honesty in us at all. "Oh Lord, I'm a sinner." We're one with Peter in the way he came.

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And I would suggest that we're also one with Peter in the way that he went away from Jesus. It was some years later that it happened, actually the last week of Christ's incarnate ministry. It was a very exciting week for Peter and the disciples. The temple had been cleansed, there had been the triumphal entry into the city, great parables had been enunciated to the people.

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It was a tremendous time and it came to the climax on Thursday evening in the hour of Passover. And as they sat there in the upper room about the table, Jesus suddenly shocked the group by announcing that they would run away from him. That they would in fact deny him. And Peter, good old impulsive Peter, always saying what's on his mind, always letting it all hang out,

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articulates the feeling that probably would have been ours. "Lord, I'm ready to go with you to prison and death. Lord, I will never deny you." And Jesus turns to him and says, "Peter, before the cock crows this day, you will three times deny me." And it was so.

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It all began in the garden a little bit later that night. They'd arrested Jesus and taken him away. Peter was left behind, still in the garden. He saw the torches of the troops as they took his master away.

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They looked like fireflies through the branches of the trees. And it says in scripture that he followed, but that he followed afar off. He didn't want to get too close to the action. He wanted to be in a position of safety.

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And whenever you follow Jesus afar off, you're not in a position of safety. This is where Peter made his first mistake. Jesus had said to him earlier that evening, as he said to all of the other disciples, "Pray, lest you enter into temptation."

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And Jesus himself had gone to prayer and strengthened himself for the enduring trial that was to come. He had prayed so earnestly that his sweat was like great drops of blood. But Peter and the other disciples, they fell asleep. They were not prepared with prayer.

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They followed afar off. When an army is marching through a foreign country, it is a relatively simple matter for armed bands to cut off groups of stragglers and to quickly eliminate them. That's what happens to individuals who follow Jesus afar off,

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who forsake the practice of prayer, who turn away from the regular reading of scripture, who absent themselves from the worship of God, who reject the communion of Christian friends. When you begin to back away from Jesus,

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when you start to try to travel the Christian road alone, you're in trouble. It caught up with Peter very quickly. The procession, you see, went to the house of Annas,

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and everyone went into the house except the serving people. They were outside in the courtyard sitting about a fire. And it says that Peter went and sat with those people. This was his second mistake.

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He had now fallen into and with the wrong crowd. He had become a part of that group that constituted the enemies of Jesus. Whenever you move into fellowship with those who do not know Christ as Lord, you put yourself again in a position of peril.

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Let's lay this down axiomatically. Let's say this so plainly there can't be any possibility of mistake. No evil person can be a good friend. And when we put ourselves in the company of such one,

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we put ourselves in a position of great danger. The pressure of rejection can be brought to bear upon us. After 20 years of experience in the ministry, I can say beyond any shadow of a doubt that the greatest pressure a man or a woman can know,

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that which will bring that person to its knees faster than any other thing that can be done, is the pressure, the pain of rejection being turned on by those you esteem. You talk to the man who's chronically unemployed, who has been rejected by business and enterprise,

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and see the scars of rejection in his life. You talk to the old person who's been put on the shelf by their younger sons and daughters who no longer care about mom or dad, and see the scars of rejection in that life.

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You talk to the black man who's not able to buy a house in a white neighborhood, and see the scars of rejection in that life. You talk to the girl on campus who had her heart set for a particular sorority and was denied admittance to that group,

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and see the scars on that heart and on that spirit. You talk to that friend who is in the midst of the group, who suddenly experiences the rejection of that group, and see the scars of that kind of pain.

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Nothing can bring us to compromise faster than being rejected. We drink things we do not like to drink because we don't want to be rejected. We applaud plays that bore us stiff because we don't want to be rejected. We sit through parties which are the same again and again and again,

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and which interest us not at all because we do not want to be rejected. We clap like crazy for movies that we didn't even want to go to see because we don't want to be rejected. And Peter, sitting with the enemies of Christ,

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and we, whenever we fellowship with those who do not know him as Savior and Lord, put ourselves in a position where all the power of rejection can be brought to bear upon our lives. Peter very quickly collapses under him.

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A serving girl comes up. She looks at him and says, "Were you not one of his disciples?" Peter replies, "I do not know him." After a few minutes, a man comes by, looks at Peter and says,

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"Weren't you one of those who were with him?" Peter responds, "I don't know what you're talking about." And somewhere nearby, a cock ruffled its feathers. How is it the poet put it?

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"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." He was lying, you see. We know all about lying, don't we, as a people? I mean, brought down to the lowest common denominator,

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wasn't the whole Watergate mess just an expression of the fruit of lying, the bitter fruit of deceit? I remember thinking to myself as I watched all that episode unfold, whether we were seeing a demonstration of a psychological mechanism which is well known.

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We've all been taught at one time or another that we have a tendency to hate that in others which we most despise in ourselves. And as I watched the media busy attacking the Watergate conspirators for their deceit, it kept coming home to me that perhaps the reason the media was attacking them so earnestly

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was because that same deceit exists in the media themselves. And then I took it one step further back to my own life and asked myself if the reason I was not railing against the dishonesty of those in positions of leadership and power was because there is so much dishonesty in myself.

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We live in a dishonest age, only we don't call it dishonesty, we call it public relations, the deodorant of the establishment. The attempt, you see, to represent things not as they are, but as we want people to think them to be. To tell not the truth, but that which will sell, that which will be accepted,

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that which will make us look the best. I said to a student on our campus whom I'd caught cheating, "Do you see anything essentially different between what you did and what Richard Nixon did in the White House, or what some bank robber does that steals money that doesn't belong to him?"

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And the student said, "I see no similarity between those deeds, whatever." He was blind. When there is a discrepancy between that which your mouth announces and what you in fact do, when what you say is a fraud, a counterfeit,

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it is the evident fruit of a character that has already been stained and become evil. The degree is not important. George Bernard Shaw said to a woman once, "Madam, would you sleep with me for $50,000?" She thought about it for a moment and then she said, "Yes."

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Then he said, "Well, madam, would you sleep with me for $2.50?" And she responded, "No, what do you think I am, a whore?" He said, "We've already established that. We're now just haggling over the price." You see, it's not a matter of degree.

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Once the lie's been told, it's a lie, no matter by what name you choose to describe it, no matter how many are hurt by the heinousness of it. So Peter, fearing rejection, begins to lie. But his disguise of deceit is penetrated because a man comes up to him and says,

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"Surely you must have been with him because you are Galilean." And now open denial comes from Peter. "I know not the man." One of the Gospels records that he used language such as he had not used since the fishing boat days.

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His speech was filthy. It rejected in the extreme. His face twisted into both fear and anger. He backed off into a corner, afraid of what was about to come. And those about the fire were so astonished at his reaction that they fell into shocked silence.

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And in that silence, the crowing of a cock sounded like a bugle call. And Peter turned and looked at the staircase leading up into the house of Annas. And at just that moment, Jesus was coming down those stairs. The Lord had heard. The Lord had heard every word of the searing denial.

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He had heard it all. The Scriptures say that Jesus looked straight at Peter. And Peter, under the burden of that gaze, well, his heart melted inside of him. And he ran out into the night and he wept bitterly.

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The scene is very real to me because I've been there. I've sat with a young man in the juvenile detention center who looked at me and said, "Look, I never intended anything like this to happen, but you see, I just started." I've talked to the woman who was having an adulterous relationship with the next door neighbor.

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She said, "You know, nothing like this was intended at the beginning. It's just that we began to—" I've talked to the man who was unknown until his name appeared in all the headlines as embezzler. And I sat with him in his cell and he testified to me, "It was never my intention. I was going to put it back." The kind of stories you see on television and call entertainment,

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the kind of stories that you pay money to go and see in the motion picture theater, those kind of stories, you know, sometimes become real. They happen right down the street from where you live. They happen in the friend's family.

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They happen in your family, to your brother or to your sister or to someone who is near and dear to you. There comes a moment when this kind of sin that you've been playing with for a long time comes up and grabs you by the throat and demands that you bow the knee. And we do.

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We're the ones who said with Peter, "Lord, we're ready to go with you to prison and to death. We will never deny you. We're the ones who stand up in church and sing, 'I am thine, O Lord.'" And then the man comes and says to us, "Did I not see thee with him?" "Minister, did I not see thee with him in the pulpit?"

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"Choir member, did I not see thee with him in the choir loft?" "Student, did I not see thee with him when thy parents took thee into his place of worship?" "Teacher, did I not see thee as thou confessed him before thy class?" "Parent, did I not see thee when thou didst kneel beside thy child's bed and teach him to pray?"

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"Did I not see thee with him?" And we, living now far from that moment when we were seen with him, reply, "I never knew him." [bell rings] Please turn your cassette to the other side.

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Oh yes. We can identify with Peter. When he came to Jesus, he said, "Lord, I'm a sinner." And when he went from Jesus, he went because he was a sinner.

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But the story doesn't end here, because Peter came back to Jesus again. And it would not be fair to him or fair to any of us were we to go forth from this place tonight without thinking for a moment about the steps in his return. The first of those steps was the crowing of a cock.

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God can use events like that to speak to our souls. There was a time, back about six months ago, when I was in the period of recuperation. I was terribly bored and frustrated. I was full of a lot of anxiety, a certain amount of fear, and a great deal of tension

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because time was weighing so heavily on my hands. One day in my house alone, I went to a drawer where my mother keeps a lot of tapes, trying to find something that would interest me. There was one tape there that had no label on it.

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I wondered if there was anything on the tape. I took the tape and put it on the machine and pressed the forward button. It was the voice of my dad. I lost my dad two years ago.

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That was the first time I'd heard his voice since right before he died. It wasn't much, just a letter he'd sent to me in California about eight years ago. But when I heard that voice, the strength in it, the courage in it, the humor in it, the calmness in it, the faithfulness in it, it spoke to my soul.

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"Blessed be anything." A letter from your grandma. A picture that falls out of your wallet. A telephone call from your mother or your father.

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A word of encouragement from a friend. The voice of a preacher. The song of a choir. "Blessed be anything that speaks to you of your soul."

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Perhaps this very night will not pass without one of you hearing the crowing of a cock. When Peter heard it, he turned and found Jesus looking at him. It's interesting to notice that Jesus did not utter a word. There is no record of anything being said.

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But you can understand that. You remember how it was as a child when sometimes your mother and father wanted to rebuke you. It wasn't really necessary for them to say anything. All they had to do was look your direction.

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That certain look which none of us can define now, but we'll all be able to do by the time we become parents. Peter saw the look of Jesus. The tenderness, the love, the rebuke, the compassion, the power, the caring.

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It all was there. I know a priest who told me of once being in a church. Four boys were in the church and there was another priest in the front and there was no one else there. The priest was engaged in an act of worship and these boys, seeing that no one else was present,

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began to become rowdy and disruptive. The priest tolerated as long as he could and then asked them to go, which only angered them more and they misbehaved more aggressively. So the priest went down and took one of them by the arm,

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brought him up and stood him before a cross bearing a carved representation of the dying figure of Jesus. And he said, "I want you to look right at that cross and that figure and I want you to say, 'I don't give a damn.'" So the kid looked right up at the cross with the crucifix upon it and he said, "I don't give a damn." And the priest said, "Say it again."

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And the boy looked up at it and he saw the crown of thorns and he saw the nails in the hands and he saw the lacerations on the body and he saw the woundedness of it and he said, "I don't give a damn." And the priest said, "Say it again." And the boy looked up again, but only for a moment.

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And then his eyes drifted toward the floor and he began to weep. And the priest who told me that said, "I was that boy." And then he went on to say this, "I don't believe that anyone who ever sees, really sees, the loving sacrifice of Jesus Christ can ever turn away."

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That happened to Peter here. He saw in the look of Christ all the hurt love that was there. And as he looked, it says in scripture that he remembered the word of the Lord. That's the third step in his coming back again, remembering the word of Jesus.

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And the word of Jesus that he recalled is this, "Peter, I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not." I had a woman tell me once that there wasn't anybody in all the world who prayed for her. And I remember thinking to myself, that was very, very sad. And it meant, of course, that she should pray all the more ardently for herself.

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It's important to remember that there are people who pray for you. On a Saturday afternoon in April, when I was still recuperating, I suddenly took a turn for the worse and they decided that they would have to take me to the hospital in a hurry in an ambulance. I'd never been in an ambulance before.

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I can remember some of the events associated with that moment. It was a volunteer ambulance company and they came from all different directions, running in all the doors of the house. I can remember them taping on the oxygen mask and a rather young kid beside me carrying the equipment. I can remember how they groaned when they lifted the stretcher with me on it.

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I can remember the difficulty we had getting through the door and how the thing lurched going down the steps and across the lawn. I can remember the curious neighbors who were gathered around. I can remember the inside of the ambulance, especially of the roof. I can remember the straps being tied down and the young man who braced himself in such a way that the stretcher would not slide as we traveled.

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I can remember the siren. I can remember my mother sitting beside me in anxious silence. I can remember the horns and the sounds of the traffic. I can remember all of those things, but they are to me as if in a dream.

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Because the overwhelming impression I have of those moments was a very special gift that I believe was given to me by Jesus right at that moment. I couldn't get out of my mind all the people who were praying for me. I'd had letters from missionaries in other countries telling me they were praying for me. I'd had letters from students sitting in this room tonight who told me they were praying for me.

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I'd had letters from faculty. I'd had letters from my former churches. I'd had letters from people I didn't even know, but who in one way or another knew me. And they all said they were praying for me.

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My mother said to me later that I was so still on that ambulance while we traveled that she didn't know whether I was unconscious or was captured by fear. Neither one was the case. I do have a vague awareness of all of it, but I was overwhelmed by the knowledge that I was being prayed for. Do you think about the people who pray for you?

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And more than that, do you remember as Peter did that Jesus said, "I am praying for you"? I mean, if everyone else were gone, if your parents did not pray for you, if your children did not pray for you, if your friends did not pray for you, if your teachers, if I did not pray for you, if no one prayed for you, have you thought about the fact that even then Jesus is praying for you?

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That you might be following afar off like Peter was? That you might fall into and with the wrong crowd like Peter did? That you might in fact lie and say repeatedly again and again by your words or by your conduct, "I never knew him" and still Jesus is praying for you? Have you thought about that? That in Gethsemane He was praying for you?

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That on Calvary He was praying for you? That as He sits now at the right hand of His Father in Heaven, He is praying for you? If there's anything that ought to bring the world to its senses, it's this. That Jesus says, "I, the only begotten Son of God who died on Calvary for you, I am praying for you."

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No matter what the storm of your experience, no matter what the waves of worry and anxiety that you battle, there's at least that star in the sky. "I, Jesus, am praying for you." And remembering that, Peter turned and went out into the night and cried his heart out.

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I've heard all kinds of crying. I've heard the crying of a little child that was lost. I've heard the cry of a girl abandoned and betrayed by a young man who made promises to her he didn't intend to keep. I've heard the cry of a mother at the casket of her child.

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But the cry that has always moved me the most is the cry of a strong man. Don't say there was no use in Peter's crying, that it was all over spilled milk. Not so. If psychiatry has taught us anything, it has taught us that sin stains, that wrong conduct leaves something festering down inside which infects.

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We've got to get that up and out. We've got to get that expressed. Three thousand years before any psychiatrist thought about it, David thought about it and wrote, "Oh Lord, create in me a clean heart. Oh Lord, renew in me a right spirit.

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Oh Lord, purge me with hyssop and make me whiter than snow. We all need to be cleansed. We need it out and away." The poet put it this way, "Oh ye tears, oh ye tears, I am thankful that you run. Though you trickle in the darkness, ye shall glisten in the sun.

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You cannot have a rainbow if the rain refused to fall. And the eyes that cannot cry are the saddest eyes of all." Peter's tears helped to wash his sin away. He was, you see, a man like smoke, always drifting back and forth, but moving upwards.

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He came, he went, but he came again. I feel like a musician confronted with a piece of music so glorious that I can't begin to play it. Utterly without the skill or the capacity to represent it. It is still there for me to see.

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This story of Peter, who came to Jesus unsaved, who went away while he was being saved, and who came back to a closer walk with Christ. Jesus prophesied that it would be this way. Did you notice when I read the scripture?

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In the very passage where he says, "You will betray me before the cock crows," Jesus goes on to say, "But when you return, Peter, strengthen your brothers." And he did. For if Peter had not told what happened to him, we never would have known.

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There was no one there when he followed afar off. No one there when he sat with the enemies of Jesus. No one there to hear him deny. No one there when Jesus looked straight into his heart.

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Peter told it all because he knew that there would be times when other disciples, just like us, were in the dark and very far from Jesus. And he wanted us to know that God will speak to us there, that God still loves us there,

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that Jesus is praying for us there, and that if our tears are expressions of repentance, we can come to him and he will stand with open arms and take us, bruised and stained though we are by our sin,

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take us close and wrap his arms about us and hold us so tightly that we can feel his heart beating right next to our own and holding us like that, he whispers in our ears in language which every child of God can understand,

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"Whosoever will, they come to me, and I will in no wise cast them away." Let us pray. Oh Jesus, call us home.

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Call us home especially if we're afraid to come. Oh Jesus, welcome us home. Welcome us home especially when we're wounded by our wanderings. Oh Jesus, hold us tight

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and help us to be all that we can be, all that we want to be, for your sake, for the world's sake,

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for our own sake. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you

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and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves his peace.