I love reading about Peter. Besides Moses and of course Jesus, I think Peter has to be one of my absolute favorite men ever. He was always so quick to open his mouth. Sometimes that got him in a little bit of trouble. Fear tended to cripple him. When he stepped out of the boat to walk to Jesus on the water he allowed fear to slip in and began to sink. When he was following Jesus as they took him away for trial He denied that he even knew Him three times.
He denied Jesus three times! Just hours earlier he told Jesus to His face I will never deny you. Peter had no idea that things were about to get scary. Up until this point following Jesus had meant leaving family, giving up their jobs, and probably a bunch of funny looks; but the risks were about to go way up. Jesus tried to explain to His apostles time and time again that the time was coming for Him to be crucified, but they just didn't get it. They didn't realize just how messy things were about to get.
When things got scary and Peter started to realize that they were going to crucify His Jesus he began to get a little bit confused. None of this matched what his view of the Messiah was. When asked if he was one that had been with Jesus, He denied Him three times. Fear slipped in and faith slipped out.
Can you imagine the guilt and shame that Peter felt knowing that he had denied Jesus. I can only imagine the feeling Peter must have had in his stomach when he heard the rooster crow and saw the face of his Jesus. The very man that He loved. The man that had shown him so much. His Jesus. He had denied Jesus. The man that had turned his life upside down.
But something changed. When we skip forward to Acts Peter arises as the early leader of the church. He speaks God's word boldly and fearlessly. In Acts 4 Peter and John are standing before the council after getting in trouble for preaching about Jesus. Acts 4:19-20 says, "But Peter and John replied, "Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than Him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard." Their lives are on the line here. They could whipped, thrown into jail, or even killed; but they have no fear. They can't stop speaking about what they have seen and heard.
What changed? Why did our fearful Peter who denied Jesus three times have such a change of heart? What was it that he had seen and heard that completely changed his life?
He saw His savior Jesus raised from the dead. The resurrection changes EVERYTHING! If my Savior Jesus was still in the grave then He would just be another great guy. He would just be another prophet who did great things. But He is so much more than that. He did something that only He could do.
So often I think we down play the impressiveness of Jesus raising from the dead. We have heard about His resurrection since we were little. Do we truly grasp how amazing it is for someone who was dead to come back to life? He wasn't just unconscious. He wasn't just sleeping. He was dead, and now He is alive! Peter knew He was dead and then He saw Him alive and that was something that He couldn't stop talking about. There was no way to shut him up. The only way to keep Peter from talking about what he had seen and heard was to kill him. He wasn't going to make the same mistake he made before the crucifixion of denying Jesus again.
Peter knew what he had seen and what he had heard and it changed his life. He was not going to shut up. He had seen His Jesus raised from the grave. I have to think Peter had to be the most excited about seeing Jesus alive after His last encounter with Him before His death. To receive forgiveness and grace from His Jesus after denying Him three times must have been a sigh of relief. Peter wanted everyone to know about his risen Lord.
So my question to us today is, "What have we seen and what have we heard?" Have you encountered Jesus in a way that has changed your life? Have you encountered Him in a way that drives away fear? Have you encountered Him in a way that makes it so that you can't stop talking about Him? Have you encountered Him in a way that says, "I don't care what man thinks, I am here to please my God"?
Has He changed your life? His resurrection changes EVERYTHING! Tell somebody about it!
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