PODCAST
Saying More Than We Know
March 14th, 2011
Luke 9:18-27
In one of my favorite Bob Benson stories, he tells of the church gossip hard at work. She is dishing up the latest news on some choice morsel of interest, and her listener begs for more.
She is, I believe, a distant relative of Peter. When asked who Jesus is, he has a plethora of possible answers, stretching from a re-headed John the Baptist to the prophet Elijah come back from the dead. The towns were full of juicy gossip. But Peter replied calmly and succinctly, “You are the Messiah, the Christ of God.” And he was right. But he said more than he knew. Because he would soon be addressed as Satan (“Get behind me!”), deny even knowing Jesus, and run for his life with all the other cowards. Do you think he would have done this if he believed what he said?
No more than what we say about Jesus and what we do are miles apart. Maybe we ought to pay more attention to our confessions.
March 14th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
A very good point. And also, we believe the scripture warns against making vows that we do not keep.
We are not sure though that Peter was the one who gave that plethora of possible answers. And even if he did, how could we link that to gossip, for Jesus ask, “whom do men say that I am.” He was not asking for gossip was He? KJV says: “They answering said,”. How do we pin that one on Peter.
Your next suggestion is that Peter did not believe what he said, or he would not have denied Christ. He may have believe it emphatically. Two things I must remember: (1) he thought Jesus was to set up an earthly kingdom, and he was ready to fight in the garden a physical battle for his King. Doesn’t sound like a coward. After the arrest, he may have realized that was not going to happen. (2) Perhaps he was not strong enough to take on the spiritual battle that was needed, for it was prior to his Pentecostal experience.
Please don’t take this as personal criticism, for we don’t even know who wrote this. But we have heard Peter bashed with a plethora of bashings by both preachers and teachers for over 37 years. And it seems it’s cleaver if one can come up with new ones on the old humble fisherman who may have ask to be crucified upside down. Some criticisms justifed, I guess, but we believe way too many are not. Please don’t ever ask me to stand beside Peter and then compare the two of us.
By the way, Bob Benson is one of my favorites also. I still read his books, and would love to find any of his videos or even audio tapes.
God bless!