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[silence] 94 near the cross, as we stand. [coughing] [Music]

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(coughing) (dramatic music) [music] Jesus keep thee near the cross

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near the precious fountain ♪ Greater of the healing tree ♪ ♪ More profound and loving ♪ ♪ Give the brook ♪

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♪ Give the brook ♪ ♪ Heed my glory ever ♪ ♪ Till thy rapture song shall fly ♪ ♪ Rest beyond the river ♪

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♪ 'Tis of old ♪ ♪ The camp is old ♪ ♪ The ramparts we watched ♪ ♪ Were so gallantly streaming ♪

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♪ And the rocket's red glare ♪ ♪ The bombs bursting in air ♪ ♪ Hail the free ♪ ♪ The proud ♪

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♪ Of thee ♪ ♪ Hail the proud ♪ ♪ Hail the proud ♪ ♪ Be thy home ♪

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♪ Forever ♪ [Choral singing] [Choral singing] ♪ There beyond the river ♪

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♪ Hear a call for help ♪ ♪ Bring it since before me ♪ ♪ Shall be home from day to day ♪ ♪ In this chasm above me ♪

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♪ In the grove, in the grove ♪ [Choral singing] [Music] [Music]

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[Chanting] Speak to our hearts, dear Lord. [Chanting] Grant that your word may be said.

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[Chanting] Grant that your word may be heard. [Chanting] Grant that your word may be done in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Honest to God, honest to God. Jesus said to Peter, "The truth is that this very night, before the cock crows at dawn, you will deny me three times this very night before the clock crows at dawn, you will deny

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me three times. Honest to God. In a moment of crisis, we want to be surrounded by friends, we can trust. Persons who will tell the truth about us and stand by us, who will not fail us. People who will not let us down. Ralph Abernathy talks about the fact that he was with Martin Luther King in strategy sessions.

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They marched together. They went to jail together. But he was with him when they were at that motel in Memphis and his life was taken. He was with him all along the way.

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He was his friend. In the midst of the crisis of the cross, Jesus announces to his intimate circle of friends they would all abandon him. They would all forsake him and run for their lives. It is Peter who is considered the spokesman for the apostolic band who

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says, "Oh no Lord, I'll never leave you. I'll be with you come hell or high water. I'll stand by you to the end." Then Jesus says to him, "Peter, this very night you You will deny me three times before the clock rolls." But Peter goes on to protest and proclaim his allegiance to the truth.

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"No, no, I'll not deny you. I'll not leave you." We all say we love the truth and we consider honesty one of the shining virtues of our life and our faith.

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We say we want the truth and nothing but the truth when a witness is placed on the stand. But many times when the truth is revealed we find it difficult to accept and easy to deny. clamor for the truth. The person promises to tell the truth and we want to make

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sure that he's telling the truth so we place the witness under oath. We have our polygraph test. We call them the lie detector tests. Some time ago we had a case before the school board

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of a young man who was accused of approaching some girls and both of them took the polygraph test and both of them passed it. Young man said he was innocent. He took the test and the test seemed to indicate that he was innocent.

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The girl said he was guilty and they took the test and it indicated that they seemed to be telling the truth. But who was telling the truth? When I was a child, and I guess many of us have had that experience, Said someone would say maybe a playmate would say are you telling the truth?

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Cross my heart and hope to die. I'm telling the truth Then again sometimes person would say well I'll swear it on a stack of Bibles I'm telling the truth Well to lie is to deny the truth To lie is to engage in a deliberate deception.

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To engage in deliberate deception to our own detriment. That's what it means to lie. To deny the truth, to negate reality, to contribute to the destruction of that reality which is by God. And sometimes in order for a lie to, well, all the time in fact, for a lie to be

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effective it has to masquerade as the truth. Have to dress it up so that people will think it's the truth so that it will look like the truth, it'll sound like the truth, and so do that many times we mix it up with a little truth and we dress it in the same clothes that truth wears. Jesus in this time of passion, Jesus the eternal

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reality is on trial. Jesus who is truth personified, he's on trial. They are the Pharisees who claim to be the custodians of the truth. They are the hypocrites. They are the ones who do their good works to be seen of men. They put on an outward show.

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They are the ones who claim to be custodians of truth but really are representing falsehood. They are living a lie. But we can do that in many ways, we can live a lie. I remember back in the 60s, the Civil Rights Movement,

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when we were emphasizing things that are black and how we ought to affirm ourselves, have a positive self-image, and the Afro became very popular. some college campuses, the fellows were telling the girls, you know, that if they weren't

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wearing an Afro, that they really weren't with it. And I remember one young lady who said, you know, there can be many people wearing the Afro who have processed minds. You can wear the afro but have a processed mind.

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So they said don't criticize me because I want to have my hair processed because that's really not the test. That's not the truth about me. That really doesn't define me.

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is told this night, this night, you will deny me. And yet he insists that he's going to be honest with God, be honest with God. You know this society of ours is very reckless with the truth. Sometimes it's even popular to be reckless with the truth.

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Very popular sometimes. To make believe, to say that we are what we are not. I guess we sort of have a background that has encouraged us in some way. I was reading in Frederick Douglass' autobiography and he talks about that the black slave, you know, didn't think much of telling a lie if it helped to get his freedom.

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And he didn't think much of stealing because many times he didn't get enough to eat so he'd have to steal some things from the big house to eat. So he did all of those things because he felt it was old to him. And some people think that whatever somebody else has is old to them.

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there are certain virtues in life and truth is one of them to tell the truth to be identified with that which is absolute that which is good that which is real Peter you say you're my disciple you're faithful to me you've been with me for three years you you've been taken with me in the most intimate way in

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confidence you've been with me on the Mount of Transfiguration you were there and you were so lifted up in the spirit that you said Lord let us build here three tabernacles. Peter you remember when we were in Caesarea Philippi and I asked a question whom do men say that I the Son of Man am and I received the

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report Peter you said thou art the Christ the Son of the Living God and yet "Peter, this very night you will deny me three times. You'll deny me three times." "Well, you're going to tell a lie about me three times in a matter of hours." They said George Washington never told a lie.

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That's the story that circulates. Our book wall, the columnist who imagines many of the things, most of the things that he writes, figments of the imagination. And I heard him speak several years ago on the title, "I Never Lied to You."

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And he said the interesting thing about it is he makes up all these things, but some people write him, ask him where his sources of information because they sound so true that they actually believe them. honest, being honest to God. Here they are in the midst of a crisis and that night

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after Jesus had uttered these words he is arrested and he's taken from the garden of Gethsemane to the courtyard of the high priest. There they have a trial in the wee wee hours of the morning. Peter is there. He's warming by the fire out there in the courtyard, chilly hours of the morning, and suddenly the light

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from the fire is on his face and one of the maidservants points to Peter and says, "You were with Jesus?" He said, "No lady, you got me wrong. You don't know what you're talking about and so Peter moves away and as he moves away moments later another maiden who's a servant of the high priest sees Peter and she says

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to the bystanders, "This man was one of them!" And again Peter said, "No, no! I'm not identified with his disciples." And moments after that the bystanders say, Come on fella, surely you're one of them. For you are a Galilean and your speech betrays you. And this time Peter emphasizes it to emphasize it rather

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like many of us. When we want to emphasize something we use a few choice curse words that really nails it down no I don't know him and he becomes more emphatic and he underscores it with curse words and he reinforces his lie by giving testimony under oath he begins to

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curse and swear. While lie is the denial of the Word of God, it's a contradiction of the Word of God, it's a contradiction of truth. Here is a man who has been in constant fellowship with the Word of God. Here's a man who has heard the Word of God constantly and after having heard it for three years, he says, "I never heard it."

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It's like a person who comes and who sits in the church and who listens to sermons, who comes to prayer meeting and who reads the Bible and still says, "I don't know the Lord." And that person also has his or her name on the church road. Says, "God has never spoken to me. I've never seen his healing hand at work. I have not

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seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I don't know him." Peter lied. But let's not be too hard on Peter. You see, Peter was not a weakling. He's not someone who's cringing at the thought of danger. He's a big rugged fisherman who was known for his reckless courage when he said I'll never forsake

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you he intended to be faithful to the end and the facts indicate that he intended to be when that mob came to the garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus it It was Peter who put up a scuffle, and he took out his sword, and John tells us

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that he put up a fight, and he cut off the ear of one of the servants of the high priest. That's a man who intends to be with Jesus to the end. And then when Jesus was led away

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to the home of the high priest, it's Peter who follows. Now if a man's scared after he got in the scuffle and lost the first round in the scuffle, you would think he'd flip away somewhere and hide in the darkness, but not Peter. He's a courageous man.

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He goes on and he follows that crowd to see what they're going to do with Jesus. He follows them as they go to the home of the high priest. And he's standing by. He's going to be there to the end.

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The maiden comes and she sees him and he says, "No, I don't know him. I don't know him." Well, he -- you would think he would have left then if he was a coward. Well, he'd step away, but he stays by. He moves away a little bit, but he still stays but he still stays on the scene. And the second time comes he still stays there,

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and the third time when the bystanders say, "Well, surely you are one of them because your speech betrays you." It was then that it reached the breaking point for Peter, and Peter denies him that third time. And when he denies him, he looks into the face of Jesus.

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And when he looks into the face of Jesus, Jesus does not say anything. He just turns and looks at Peter. You know how it is when somebody tells you you're going to do something and you say, "Oh, no, I'm not gonna do that."

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And then when you do it, and you figure they're gonna say, "I told you so," but they just look at you. But there's something in that loop there,

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there is something that penetrates into the very heart of Peter, and there is sorrow, there is remorse. And Peter goes out and he weeps bitterly.

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Well, Peter is one that somehow represents, I think, the plight of every one of us. We are so much like Peter. What we have is, we struggle,

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We want to put up a fight. We want to be faithful. And so often we find ourselves falling short. We're denied in so many ways.

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Just don't have the courage at that moment. I often think of that moment when I was a freshman in college. And the dean was giving out the courses.

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and he was asking us what we planned to major in and the various careers. And he said, "Now, if there's anyone here who's gonna be a preacher, you take such and such courses."

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And when he said that, many of the girls sniggled. He said, "Hold up your hands." So when those girls sniggled, I didn't hold up my hands. You know?

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And I often think about that, because that's the way we are. And I wish so many times I could go back and change that scene so I could hold up my hand. But life isn't like that.

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You look back, and there's so many opportunities that we often stood up for someone, and we know it right. You can be in a meeting, and someone I said, "Well, listen, we sit there, and when you come out to me and say, 'You know, you were right,' I didn't say nothing, but you sure were right, honey."

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You know. And by our very, very silence, we are living and acting alive. And some of us, you know, some of us are so sophisticated. And I've had some of them tell me,

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that's the reverence that you were preaching and you were telling the truth. Say, I wanted so much to say amen. Afraid to witness, but somehow we

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are called upon to witness for the truth. We are called upon to be witnesses for freedom. Freedom. And do you know some people --

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I've had some people who are afraid to vote their convictions. Afraid. So they'll find out how I voted. I said, "What difference does that make?

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You vote your convictions." "Well, the man I work for, you know, may not like it." Well, we are to live our lives, and our lives are to be lives of integrity.

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You know, we don't have much else. We may not have -- we won't -- Many of us will never have wealth, but we can have a word.

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We can stand up for what we believe, And this is important. Yes, to be honest to God is to be rightly related to reality. To be honest.

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To be honest to God is to embrace truth. And to embrace truth means to embrace many of the contradictions of life. If I'm going to embrace you, and really embrace you, and the truth about you, then I accept it. [ Silence ]

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