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Welcome to the Bridge Church VB Podcast, your weekly source for uplifting and transformative Sunday messages! Each episode features insightful, practical teachings rooted in Scripture, designed to inspire and guide you on your spiritual journey. Led by our passionate Lead Pastors, Archie and Tangie Callahan, we strive to create a welcoming environment that encourages individuals from all walks of life to connect with the person, power, and purpose of Jesus Christ.
In this podcast, we delve into relevant themes and timeless biblical truths that speak to the challenges and joys of everyday living. Whether you’re commuting, exercising, or simply seeking encouragement, our messages aim to empower you to grow in faith and discover your unique purpose.
Join our vibrant community of believers as we explore how to apply God’s Word in practical ways, fostering a deeper connection with Him and one another. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to enrich your life through these dynamic teachings. Connect with us and find out more at www.bridgechurch.tv!
Well, good morning, Bridge Church.
I hope you are doing well in the dog days of summer.
I hope you're amped up and cranked up and red bulled up and monstered up and any other thing that you do to get cranked up in the morning.
And so glad that you are here.
For those that do not know me, my name is Scott and I serve as the executive pastor here at Bridge Church.
And it's my honor to be speaking with you today.
Our lead pastors, Pastors Archie and Tangie are away.
And actually, I think their anniversary is on Wednesday.
So...
You might want to drop them a little happy anniversary thing on social media, whatever it is.
You can pretend like you knew about it, but I told you about it.
So anyway, but it is a delight to be with you today.
They'll be back next week so let's get in the word
Let's do that and let's discover what God has for us today.
We're going to continue in our series called Chiseled.
It's Chiseled built by Jesus.
The last couple of weeks we've been talking about the life of Peter.
Peter was one of Jesus' 12 disciples.
He was an ordinary fisherman when Jesus found him.
At the end of his life, he was an extraordinary leader and a very devoted follower of Jesus.
The scripture text that we've been using throughout this series comes out of Ephesians chapter 2.
Verse 10, it says that we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do.
The word handiwork there can mean workmanship or craftsmanship.
And so it's kind of this idea that God is building us.
And in the New Testament, it goes on to say that, hey, we are living stones.
being built together for a spiritual house.
And how many of you know that in living stones, you gotta do a little chiseling on some living stones?
You gotta use a little sandpaper on the living stones.
You might even have to use a jackhammer on some living stones, right, to get it all to fit in there.
But that's what God is doing through the life of Peter.
And so we're looking at his life because we believe that that's what God is also doing with us today.
And so...
Two weeks ago, we talked about chiseled by the call.
We talked about Peter's call to follow Jesus.
Last week, we talked about chiseled by correction.
And today, we're going to be talking about chiseled by failure.
By failure.
Now, I know that no one really wakes up in the morning and goes, I would like to fail today.
No one ever thinks that way, right?
No one likes failure.
We don't really care for it.
But the truth of the matter is that in life and throughout life, we fail.
We all experience failure in our life.
Now, failure has very many different shapes and sizes that it comes in.
For some of us, it might be a failed business venture.
We tried something and it didn't work out.
For others, it might be like a failed financial investment.
We tried to make it rich or do something great and somehow that didn't go as planned and didn't fall through like we expected it to.
And some of us maybe have failed at reaching our goals and our dreams, the things that we had hoped that we would accomplish by now.
I mean, we're like at a certain age and we feel like we should have already been there.
We should have already accomplished that.
Maybe for others it's...
Maybe we failed in something legally and so now we're in a little trouble with the law or had to work through some things with the law.
And so maybe that's an area of failure.
Others may have experienced failure through relationships.
So maybe there's been relationships in our life.
Maybe we failed in marriage.
Maybe we failed in marriage.
And connecting with our kids.
Or connecting with our parents.
Or connecting with someone that we needed to ask for forgiveness.
Or to give forgiveness.
But maybe it's too late now.
And they've already passed away.
And so we feel like we failed in being able to mend that relationship.
So failure comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but we all experience failure.
But here's the thing, failure, when you experience it, will always bring baggage with it in your life.
So we experience the baggage that comes with failure, things like embarrassment, things like shame, things like regret, things like remorse, guilt, grief.
All of these things become part of the baggage that moves into our life when we experience failure if we don't handle it properly.
What happens is we begin to have a negative self-talk or a negative self-confidence.
Because I failed, now I think of myself as a failure.
What happens is when all of that baggage moves in and we begin to meditate and think on our failure so greatly, then oftentimes what happens is failure keeps us from moving forward.
It keeps us from making progress in life.
And so it becomes sort of like a heavy boat anchor that gets dropped right there at that place of failure.
Even though life is passing us by in our minds and in our heart, we can never really move past the failure that we've experienced.
And so you and I as Christ followers, as disciples of Jesus, have to know how to process failure because we're all going to experience it.
We've already, some of us have experienced it.
And those of you that are young and just starting out in life, somewhere along the way, you'll probably run into failure, right?
You say, Scott, that sounds negative.
No, it's positive.
It will happen.
But we all have the experience of failure.
But here's what I want you to know.
That failure isn't final.
And failure is the place where God can begin to rebuild you.
Failure does not disqualify you and I from being shaped by God.
I like to think of it like this way.
That where the place of my failure and the place of God's grace intersect is the place where God can rebuild my life and restore me.
So we're going to talk a little bit today about a guy, Peter.
And we're going to look at his failure.
And here's the crazy thing.
We're going to look at a guy...
Guys, failure that gets out there for everybody to read and has been read for centuries.
How would you like your failures to be put out there for everybody to read throughout all the centuries?
I know I wouldn't.
But we're going to look at Peter's failure.
So if you have your Bibles today, we're going to look at Luke chapter 22.
If you have the Bridge app, you can always follow along in the notes there as well.
I encourage you to download that.
There's a lot of ways that you can connect with Bridge.
And this is what it says.
It says, Then seizing Jesus, they led him away and took him into the house of the high priest.
Peter followed at a distance, and when some there had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and had sat down together, Peter sat down with them.
A servant girl saw him seated there in the firelight.
She looked closely at him and said, This man was with him.
but he denied it.
Woman, I don't know him, he said.
A little later, someone else saw him and said, you are one of them.
Man, I am not.
Peter replied.
But about an hour later, another asserted.
Certainly this fellow was with him, for he's a Galilean.
Peter replied, man, I don't know what you're talking about.
And Jesus, just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.
The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.
Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him.
Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.
And Peter went outside.
it wept bitterly, wept bitterly.
Let me just kind of give you a context of where we are and the things we see that this is at the end of Jesus's ministry.
Jesus has been on earthly ministry for about three, three and a half years.
And so they had just finished the last supper.
They had taken the last supper together.
The disciples had gathered around and
And so Jesus had gone to the garden of Gethsemane and they were there to pray.
And Jesus asked his disciples to come with him.
And he took Peter and them to come a little bit further and to pray with him.
And Jesus moved on a little bit further away to pray by himself.
And when he came back, he saw that the disciples were sleeping.
Now, I don't know about you, but I am an early riser.
And there have been times that in my prayer time, I have dozed off.
I know y'all haven't, but I have.
But there have been times, and so I can relate to what these brothers were experiencing.
It was late at night.
Jesus, can't we do this in my twilight time?
At 3 p.m.
or 4 p.m.
someplace.
Why do we have to be doing it late at night?
But here's where we are in the story.
They're at the Garden of Gethsemane.
Judas is coming to betray Jesus.
They come and the Roman guards take Jesus and they begin to take him away.
Now we begin the trial that's going to take place, the sham trial that's going to take place of Jesus.
There's going to be the beating of Jesus.
There's going to be the crucifixion of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the burial.
and ultimately the resurrection.
And this is all going to happen within just a few days of each other.
So that's where we are.
But that is where in this moment, in the scene that we see here, as the guards come to take Jesus away by force, this is where Peter begins to unravel.
This is where we begin to see Peter's failure to begin to unravel in our story.
And what happens is Peter is like many of us.
Peter overestimates his strength.
Many of us do the same thing.
Now, Peter had good reason to overestimate his strength.
Peter had walked with Jesus for the last three, three and a half years.
Peter had left everything to follow Jesus.
Peter had seen miracles.
Peter saw Lazarus rise from the dead.
Peter saw the deaf to be able to hear.
Peter saw the blind to be able to see again.
Peter saw the lame people get up and walk and take up their mats and go home.
They saw the beggars that Jesus would touch.
And so Peter had reason to have confidence.
In fact, check this out.
Peter was taught by Jesus, the Son of God, about God.
Isn't that crazy?
How would you like to have Jesus as your small group leader?
And all the other facilitators in the church would be like, well, nobody's signing up for my group.
I got a good group on marriage.
What's Jesus got that I don't have?
Right?
So Jesus had taught his disciples.
And so Peter was very confident.
that he would be able to stand.
In fact, if you go to verse 33, Peter replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.
That's how confident Peter was.
But not only did Peter overestimate his confidence, his strength, Peter underestimated fear, pressure, and this thing called self-preservation.
See, he underestimated those things.
So oftentimes in life, when we overestimate in one area, we were really underestimating something else.
And so what Peter's failure began to reveal is what Peter thought he was capable of and what he actually did.
And the gap in between what you're capable of and what you actually did was this place of fear for Peter.
And so this place of fear, fear exposed what confidence cannot cover.
Fear exposed what confident could not cover.
So check out this downward spiral that Peter is walking through.
This downward spiral that he's experienced.
Look at verse 56.
It says a servant girl, not like some UFC woman coming up to Peter.
It was some servant girl that was seated there in the firelight and she looked closely at him and she said, this man was with him.
Notice the word with.
She was just saying, hey, I think he's part of the crowd.
This guy's part of the crowd.
I've seen him floating around and wherever Jesus is, he's been kind of floating around.
So I know that he was with him.
And Peter turns around and says, woman, I don't know him.
Woman, I don't know him.
And so there was this with, he was part of the crowd and Peter says, no, but let's go a little bit further.
Watch the downward spiral here.
A little bit later, someone else said to him, you are one of them.
So not that you were just in the crowd.
But now you're one of the disciples.
You're one of the Jesus followers.
You're one of them.
And what does Peter do?
Again, he says, man, I'm not.
So he's willing to give up his identity of being a Christ follower.
He gives up his identity of I'm not with that crowd.
Like I'm not really associated with them.
I'm not part of that.
And then he gives up his identity.
I'm not even a disciple.
Amen.
No, I'm not even a disciple.
But here's the dagger.
And I like the way Mark's gospel describes it.
Is there somebody else, a third person?
That comes along.
And this is what Mark's gospel in Mark 14, 71 says.
It says, Peter began to call down curses and swore to them, I do not know this man you are talking about.
In other words, that fear, that pressure, come on, that self-preservation mode kicked in so great in Peter that he was willing to swear by an oath.
Now, let me just kind of unsanitize this a little bit.
It was like saying this, I swear I don't know him.
Let me go a little bit further.
I swear to God, I do not know this man.
Just a few chapters before, and we talked about it last week, Peter has a revelation.
Jesus says, who do you say that I am?
And Peter comes along and he has this revelation.
He says, you are the Christ.
You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.
And so Jesus says, that's right, Peter.
This is not flesh and blood that has revealed this to you, but this is from my father in heaven that has revealed this to you.
So Peter has this revelation in one moment.
And then he's swearing to God that he doesn't even know this man.
In fact, he took it from the Messiah, son of God, to just a mere man.
This is how bad the failure was.
This is how bad it was spiraling out of control.
And here's the thing.
At this point, Peter's fear of men was greater than his fear and reverence of God.
And so what happens in life, if we're not careful, our failures are oftentimes attached to our fear.
I'll give you an example.
We're afraid of being rejected.
So we fail to be vulnerable and real with people.
Because if you ever really knew who I was, you wouldn't accept me.
You wouldn't want to be my friend.
You wouldn't accept my invitation on social media.
Rafe, you really knew who I was.
Maybe it's, I'm afraid I'm not going to be successful.
I'm willing to compromise.
I'm willing to cheat a little bit to get ahead.
I'm willing to work a little sly hand here of trying to make some money.
Because I'm afraid of not succeeding, I fell with integrity and honesty.
Maybe it's I'm afraid of being alone.
So I always end up picking the wrong relationships.
And I don't know why I'm failing in my relationships.
And I continue to come up with the same guys that had the same type and the same problem.
Or I come up with the same girls that had the same problem and the same trouble.
Why do I always continue to fall into this place?
Why do I continue to fail in this place?
Oftentimes we move into places in our failure because of fear.
And the danger of fear is this, is when fear becomes the deciding decision maker for our life.
And so you and I have to understand that we've not been given a spirit of fear, but a power of love and a sound mind.
So we walk in the spirit, but we not gratify the flesh.
And so you and I have to understand that fear plays a part in our life, but we have to make sure our faith plays a part in our life and that we have to make sure we under overcome fear.
But we have to make sure that we don't criticize Peter too hard.
Because if we would have been there, Scott would have done the same thing.
See, sometimes you can't always look at the story and go, I wouldn't have done that.
Look at Peter's failure.
But the truth of the matter is, if all of us would have been around that campfire that night, we would have done the same thing.
But here's the second thing.
The second reason you can't criticize Peter too harshly is because Jesus never did.
Jesus never criticized Peter.
So in the midst of our failure, we have to know how to navigate.
But when somebody else around us is experiencing failure, we have to make sure that we know how to handle their failure and know how to lovingly and gently help them along the way.
What is Galatians chapter six?
Paul says this in Galatians chapter six, verse one.
He says, those of you that are spiritual or those of you who are mature,
Come along if there's someone that's been caught in sin or stumbled in sin.
Come and what?
Restore them gently lest you fall into the same temptation.
So you and I have to understand that when we walk in failure, we want people to give us grace.
But when we turn around and somebody else is failing around us, that we make sure we extend grace to them.
And so...
Here's what happened is that Jesus actually told Peter, hey, Peter, this is what's gonna happen today.
This is before the last supper.
Jesus is giving a forewarning to Peter.
This is what's gonna happen.
And do you know that Jesus already knew Peter's sin and he already knows your sin that's gonna happen on Wednesday at 12.45 p.m. ?
He already knows that and he's still there loving you.
He's still there loving me.
In fact, if you go over to verse 31 and 32 of this chapter, Jesus says this, "'Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.'"
We're talking about being chiseled by failure.
Did Jesus' prayer not have enough faith to help Peter not to fail?
No, no, no, no, you gotta understand.
Peter's faith never failed.
His courage did.
At times in our life, because of fear, it comes along and it causes our courage to fail.
Failure.
So you have to get back up again and say, I'm gonna continue to move forward with God.
So notice what happens to Peter.
So we see Peter come along and we see his failure, but now we also gotta look at Peter's repentance.
And it says that Peter wept.
Peter weeps, but he does not disappear.
Peter weeps, so what are you saying?
What are you saying he didn't disappear?
Think about the same time all of this was going on, a guy named Judas.
He betrayed Jesus.
Peter denied him.
And I believe Jesus would have restored Judas.
But it says that Judas went out and hung himself.
That's how he handled his failure.
So there should never be a place in our life, understanding the grace of God, that failure leads us to a place that we would want to commit suicide.
That we're willing to walk through the process of repentance.
And so look what Peter does.
It says this.
First thing Peter did is he remembered Jesus' words.
It says over in verse 61, then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him before the rooster crows today.
You will disown me three times.
I'm here to tell you in the midst of your failure, you need to remember the words of the Lord over your life.
What did he speak to you?
What did he encourage you in?
Come on, he'll never leave me nor forsake me.
Come on, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
What is the verse, what is the thing that you hold onto that in the midst of your failure, in the midst of your disappointment, in the midst of where things are falling apart, what is the word that you grab onto?
Go back to the word and grab onto it again.
Amen.
Go back to the word once again and say, God, I need that word to come alive to me once more.
In the midst of my failure, I hold to your word.
And not only did he go back to the words and remember the words of Jesus, but it says he got alone.
He said he left the crowd that he was with.
He left the place where fear was, pressure was, self-preservation was overwhelming him.
He left that place and he got alone again.
And then he expressed godly sorrow.
He expressed godly sorrow.
It says he wept over what he had done.
Now, let me just say it this way.
Just because some people weeped doesn't mean they've repented.
That just might have meant I got caught.
Anybody got a seven-year-old or ever had a seven-year-old?
You fuss at them and then two days later they're doing the same thing.
They didn't repent.
Repent means to change your mind.
They're just crying because they got caught.
But also remember, just because someone doesn't cry doesn't mean that they haven't repented.
I've seen it both ways.
But Peter was so broken over his failure that he wept.
I know in my own life that I have grieved the Holy Spirit.
I know when there are times where I felt the prompting of the Lord to do something and I didn't do it.
For whatever reason.
Might have been fear.
I don't know.
But I know that I have done these things and my heart has been broken and it's grieved and I have prayed, dear God, forgive me.
Send someone else to do the job that I was supposed to do.
Don't let this person's life not hearing the gospel because I messed up along the way.
Show mercy to them and forgive me.
And so Peter has this place of repentance.
And this is what I want you to understand.
The Bible says that in that moment when Peter had denied Jesus, that Jesus looked at Peter.
And I'm telling you, I don't think it was a look that you and I would give.
Because if Peter was in our social media, Facebook, we would have blocked him.
He done that?
No, sir.
Where's that Peter's fisherman?
I'm finding him.
Look, let me try to find, look.
Oh, he's done blocked me.
Oh no, he ain't gonna block me before I get to block him.
Like, well, you know what we've done.
No, here he comes.
I'm going the other way.
I'm walking this way.
I can't even be in the same room with Peter.
Right, but here's Jesus.
And he looks at Peter with, I believe, eyes of compassion.
eyes of kindness, eyes of forgiveness, just like he's looking at you right now.
There's nothing that you have done to ever disqualify you from God shaping your life.
But here's the thing.
Jesus was not the only one who was looking.
Peter looked back.
I want you to know, in the midst of where life seems hopeless,
And there's failure that has taken place.
Look to Jesus.
When it seems like you've crossed the line and you don't know if there's a way back, I'm telling you to look to Jesus.
When things are falling apart in life because you failed and you feel like, man, this is unraveling all around me, look to Jesus.
to Jesus.
There is hope in Jesus.
There is restoration in Jesus.
And so just as I'm telling you to look to Jesus because Jesus is looking back to you with eyes of compassion, with eyes of love, with eyes of forgiveness, just as he looked at Peter that night.
But that's not the end of Peter's story because we see Peter's failure.
We see Peter's repentance.
But now we get to see Peter's restoration.
And this is where oftentimes we don't get to see our own restoration because maybe it hadn't been written yet.
But we get to see Peter's because the story is finished.
And you and I get to live and come back and read the gospels and we get to see what happened.
But you and I at times we get stuck because we don't know how our story ends.
But I'm telling you there is hope and there is restoration today.
And so I like what John's gospel when he writes about this.
It says this in verse 21, talking about Jesus restores Peter with love and commission.
It says this in John 21, verse 15.
It says, when they.
All right, let me just tell you what's happening here.
It's been about one to three weeks.
since Peter's denial.
Most scholars and historians believe that it's been about one to three weeks.
So Peter denied before the death and the resurrection of Jesus.
So after the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus appears to his disciples.
He appears to other believers.
And so he's making himself known that he really did rise from the dead, that he is alive.
And so it's been about one to three weeks since this denial has taken place.
And so when they, so Jesus was with the disciples,
Had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?
Yes, Lord, he said.
You know that I love you.
And Jesus said, feed my lambs.
Now, if you go back and just read it all, and I'm not going to take the time to read all of that, but you can read that of John 21.
It says this, Jesus asked this question three times.
Peter, do you love me?
Peter, do you love me?
Peter, do you love me?
And they were coinciding with the three denials Peter had.
I don't know him.
I don't know him.
I swear to God, I don't know him.
And Jesus comes along and restores him right there.
And he says, you know what?
I understand what happened before the cross and the resurrection, but I'm here to tell you, I'm going to restore you, Peter.
I'm going to restore you right now, Peter.
And Peter, it says that on the third time that Jesus asked, Peter was saddened.
He was grieved.
He was like, Lord, you know all things.
You know all things.
But Jesus says, if you love me, feed my lambs.
If you love me, feed my sheep.
Your restoration is about you, but it's also about the people that you'll come in contact with.
It's about the people that you'll come in a place that will be find themselves in a place of failure and that they will need someone to
To lead them.
Someone that will extend grace to them.
And so fast forward Peter.
And we'll talk about it next week.
But Peter goes and he becomes a pillar in the New Testament church.
And so he becomes a leader.
And he becomes a teacher.
And helping the church to grow.
And he writes letters to the churches.
And encouraging them.
And I wonder.
If Peter, when he wrote 1 Peter, what we call 1 Peter chapter 5, I wonder if maybe Peter, in that moment, was thinking about his own denial and his own restoration before the Lord.
When he writes these words, he says this, And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while,
will himself restore you, restore you, and make you strong, firm,
and steadfast.
Come on, I just believe that God wants to come to us today and just begin to restore some of us, to make us strong, to make us firm, and to make us steadfast.
Come on, that's a lot different than fear, pressure, and self-preservation.
That Jesus wants to come along and begin to give us a strength, something inside of us that we've never experienced before.
So this is not the end.
Failure is not final.
Jesus comes along and says, come back to me and I will rebuild you.
I will restore you.