(Matthew 26:31-35)…..Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written:
‘I will strike the Shepherd,
And the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
32 But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.” 33 Peter answered and said to Him, “Even if all are [b]made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.” 34 Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” 35 Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And so said all the disciples.
Why did the disciples walk with the Lord turn out this way? Why did over three years of intimate communion with Jesus end with them abandoning Him? Why did they run away in fear that night? Well, we can say for certain that God had intended it to be that way because it was prophesied in Scripture that this would be the outcome. I think the reasons they failed Him lie behind all of our failures as well. Let me suggest a few reasons why I think these men failed, but as I mention these things let’s take a moment to look into our own hearts because it may be that some of these things have taken root in us.
Before the night ended every one of His disciples would abandon (forsake) Jesus out of fear for their own lives (Mark 14:50). Remember in today’s verse Jesus had told them that their failure would be the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy (Zechariah 13:7). But just as the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot had been a part of the divinely ordained plan so would be the other eleven disciples’ abandonment of the Lord.
We don’t want to admit it but we often judge others by measuring their lives against the life we live. We look at others and we see the things they do, the places they go, we hear the things they say, and we look at them and we say, “I would never do that!” “Not me!” Who can admit this about themselves? You see, we think there is something special about us that we too can say we will never fail the Lord. In this passage, however, Jesus deals with some men who saw themselves as ones who would never fail Christ. Yet if you had asked any of them they would have told you that they were sold out for Jesus. They would remind you how they had left everything to follow Him. They would tell you, as they told Jesus, that they would never fail Him or forsake Him. If you had come to any of these men and asked them, “Do you think you will ever fail the Lord?” They would have looked at you and said, “Never!” But they did!
The disciples surely thought that they were secure from failing Him in any way yet He knew them far better than they knew themselves. The same is true with us, He knows us better than we know ourselves. Only God truly knows us (Jeremiah 17:10) (Hebrews 4:13) (Psalm 139:1-16). Don’t miss this! God knows you better than you know yourself! He knows the problems you have with the flesh (your sin nature), He knows the potential you have to sin, He knows the pull of temptation and evil on your life, He knows the full possibilities of sin in your life. We like to think that we have made great strides in our walk of faith, and in many ways we have, but we sometimes carry it so far as to think we would never fail our Lord when the storms of life or the temptations of life come upon us. That scares me in these last days we are in, and I find myself asking of the Lord,….. “please never let me deny you in any way, not your name, your doctrine, anything that involves you, no matter how hard these godless times get.”
In these days that we are in, let us not become prideful in declaring we will do this and that for the Lord, and in the end, fail Him. But let us realize that without the Lord and His power in us, you and I can do nothing (John 15:5).