Praise the Lord for He is the Resurrection and the Life.
He makes all things beautiful and glorious in His time. He has blessed us
with an amazing day. I woke up early this morning to listen to the
early birds sing and praise the Lord. The Eastern sky is colorful
and cloudless. My heart is full of gratitude and
thanksgiving. The Lord blessed us in His house Sunday,
with much love and grace. It turned into another summer like
day. We are blessed with wonderful people who love the Lord
and who love one another. We celebrate and we rejoice. We praise the
Lord for Peter and Grace who are celebrating their 64th wedding
anniversary. We rejoice with them and praise the Lord for them. We
praise the Lord for the life and witness of Art Ensign, who is in his
nineties. He shared with me some time ago that he started driving when he
was 14 years old. We are praying for Corey who is need of a kidney
transplant and a donor. Alice and I walked in the late afternoon gazing upon
the surroundings and reflecting on the beauty of the Lord. We had some
brief google time with some of our grand children. They are hilarious and
crazy. I drove to the Triple Cities yesterday. It was another
brilliant day, warm and sunny. I was looking at the river banks and
noticing how the trees are budding fast and furiously. I drove by
one of the iconic parks of Broome County, where the flowering trees are
luxurious. The water fowl and spring birds are serenading with unending
songs with sweet music. Indeed, "A thing of beauty is a joy
forever". Praise the Lord the way He decorates the earth in every
season with so much beauty and with so much love.
Praise the Lord, the Risen, conquering One
who decorates our lives with so much grace and mercy and His
goodness. Praise the Lord for the glorious good News of the
Resurrection of Jesus our Lord who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Praise the Lord for the way all gospels record the account of
Resurrection of Jesus our Lord. It is thrilling and
invigorating to read afresh the Resurrection narrative recorded in all
the Gospels. Mark’s record of the resurrection inserts two short words
that offer hope to all who have failed God: “and Peter” (Mark 16:7). The angel
at the empty tomb told the women, “But go, tell His disciples and Peter,
…” I am sure that the risen Lord told him specifically to include those
words. Peter had miserably denied the Lord! Peter had boasted of
his allegiance to Christ, but had failed worse than any of the other disciples
had failed!
“And Peter”—These must have
been sweet and winsome words in the ears of Peter. We can be
sure that the angel said those words. Peter could not have forgotten the
scene. The women had reported to the disciples the news of the
resurrection. We can surmise that Peter, the bold and compulsive, was
possibly dejected, depressed, disheartened, and haunted with self doubt
and doubt, failure, and betrayal. I love the words of the Hymn, "Jesus,
the very thought of Thee" which goes on to say, "To those who
fail how kind thou art". The risen Savior offers hope to all who
have failed God.
We cannot hide our
failures from the risen Savior’s gaze. He knows more about us than we
know about ourselves. He knows every rotten thought we have before we
think it. He knows every terrible thing we say before we say it. He
knows how we will fail Him next week and next year. He knows our failures
as we are committing them. He doesn’t overlook them and He doesn’t want
us to overlook them. He wants us to confess our sins, not cover
them. Failure
cannot separate us from the risen Savior’s love.
Peter knew that the last words Jesus had
heard him speak were words of denial during Christ’s moment of need. It
is an awful thing to live with the memory that your last words to a loved one
were not what you wanted them to be. Peter spent a dark Saturday with the
memory that the final words Jesus heard him speak were words of awful denial.
By including Peter’s example in Scripture, the Lord shows that there is hope
for us even at our worst moments of failure! Jesus can use our
failure as as a sacrament to blessings to us.
The
Lord did not embarrass Peter by dealing with his sin in front of the other
disciples. First the Lord met privately with Peter to deal with his
sin in a private and personal manner. We learn this from two
verses. In Luke 24:34, the disciples tell the two men from Emmaus, “The
Lord has really risen, and has appeared to Simon.” The other verse is in
Paul’s defense of the resurrection where he states that after the Lord was
raised from the dead “He appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve” (1
Corinthians 15:5). We know nothing more about this meeting, but it
must have taken place sometime early on that first Easter Sunday. The
actual words exchanged were too intimate to be included in the Bible, but in
that private meeting, the Lord reconciled with Peter. We see vividly and
lucidly how the prevenient grace of the Risen Lord was at work. The Risen
Lord was seeking out Peter who was trying hide and run away. Peter
was trying remain behind the closed doors. The Amazing grace, the unmerited
favor, of the Risen Lord was following Peter. He extends His grace
to each of us today, although we cannot do anything to deserve it.
The only proper response to grace is to
receive it. Our human nature grates against the idea of God’s grace but,
because God’s love operates upon the basis of grace, it means that there is hope
for every sinner, no matter how great his or her sin. No failure, no
matter how bad, can separate us from the risen Savior’s love if we will simply
turn to Him and receive it. Failure cannot be hidden from the risen
Savior’s gaze, failure cannot separate us from the risen Savior’s love, and
failure does not exclude us from the risen Savior’s service.
The Scriptures are abundantly clear that
Peter’s education through failure was not wasted. One reason he failed
was his pride: “Even though all may fall away, yet I will not” (Mark 14:29).
But years later he wrote, “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one
another” (1 Peter 5:5). In the garden Peter failed to watch and pray with
Jesus, but later he wrote, “Be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the
purpose of prayer” (1 Peter 4:7). Peter hastily tried to defend the
unjust arrest of Jesus by swinging his sword at Malchus, but later he wrote,
“But if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it,
this finds favor with God” (1 Peter 2:20). Peter was surprised into
denying the Lord in front of a servant girl, but later he wrote, “Always [be]
ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the
hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). Peter had learned all of these
things through his failure.
Although we fail, God uses our failures
to teach others through us. When the Lord predicted Peter’s failure, He
told him, “And you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers”
(Luke 22:32). Later the Lord told Peter, “Shepherd My sheep” (John
21:16). The Lord uses restored sinners to restore and strengthen other
sinners. Restored sinners must go to those who are not right with God and
tell of the abundant grace of the Lord Jesus. The fact that God has
restored you can bring great hope to those who may have known of your past
sins.
The risen Savior offers eternal life and
forgiveness of sins to us, no matter how badly we have failed God, but we
must personally receive His offer of love by faith.
In Christ.
Brown
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