GOSPEL MEDITATION # 229
Jesus Foretells Peter’s Denial & Peter Denies Jesus
Mark 14:26-31, 66-72
- Find a quiet place without distractions.
- Be comfortably alert, still, and at peace.
- Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer.
- Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself.
- Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.
- From memory, determine the central points.
- The hymn sung, perhaps from Psalm chapters 115 to 118, the Hallel Pslams. Like to have recorded that one.
- Thursday evening, Jesus would be in the tomb in a. 20 hours.
- The last ‘full disclosure’ from Jesus to His disciples.
- “All” would fall away! How does Jesus know this?
- Peter underestimates his friends and overestimates himself.
- The “rooster” – a real critter or a watch in the night, it will come twice before Peter denies Jesus three times. Very shocking.
- Peter strongly rejects Jesus’ statement and insists that he is above it all. The others have little course but to assert the same.
- Peter apparently was known to Caiaphas, the high priest, (see John 18:15-18), and once inside the grounds of the high priest is recognized by a maid who accuses Peter of being a companion of Jesus. Here is the first denial. Peter blatantly lies.
- In verse 68, the words, “and the rooster crowed” are not in the best manuscripts and should be ignored.
- The same servant girl once again, but this time more vigorously points Peter out as being one of Jesus’ followers. Peter, for the second time, lies about knowing Jesus.
- “Bystanders” are certain Peter was a part of Jesus’ party and are assured of this by Peter’s being a Galilean. Now to more than a servant girl, but before a group of people, Peter places a curse upon himself if he is not telling the truth and swears, maybe upon the temple or the altar, or some other sacred place, that he does not know Jesus. This, the third and final denial.
- At that moment the rooster crowed a second time, just as Jesus had stated would be the case.
- Peter now can only fall on his face and cry.