While this response speaks volumes about Peter's professed loyalty and love for the Master, it also shouts the single word "overconfident." Or, as we sometimes hear a boisterous crowd chant to a highly-ranked, but losing, team at the end of an exciting college basketball game: "Over-rated, over-rated."
No doubt Simon Peter had overrated his abilities. He was sure that no matter what happened, no matter what anybody else did, he would be true to Jesus. On that night in the Upper Room, just hours before Jesus was arrested, in
Mark 14, verse 27, Jesus proclaimed to the Twelve, "'You will all fall away' ... But Peter declared, 'Even if all fall away I will not.'" We find the same basic rebuttal from Peter in
Matthew 26, verse 33. Then in all three Synoptic Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- we find Jesus' reply, as found in
verse 34 of our text in Luke 22, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today you will deny three times that you know Me."
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Peter believed in himself. But in his overconfidence, he over-rated himself. In very un-rock-like fashion, Peter cowered and crumbled. Big, brave Peter was so frightened that he would not even admit to a young servant girl that he had been with Jesus. Minutes later, Peter denied Jesus a second time. Finally, perhaps an hour later, someone else claimed that Peter was a friend of Jesus, and Peter replied with swearing and curses, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about!"
Then came the "cock-a-doodle-doo." This was Peter's wake-up call. In
Luke 22:60 we read, "Just as Peter 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 he went outside and wept bitterly."
Do you know how Peter felt? Have you ever believed in yourself and promised that you would do the right thing, only to find yourself sad and sorrowful at your failure? Have you ever started out so sure of yourself, but then you mess up, and you mess up again, and then again, perhaps without even realizing what you are doing! You or I would go right on blowing it without knowing it, except by God's grace, we hear that wake-up call. By God's grace that harsh, jaw-dropping, eye-opening moment comes as a "'cock-a-doodle-doo" jars us back to our senses.
Our "cock-a-doodle-doos," generally speaking, aren't rooster calls. Instead they may be any number of voices that catch our attention -- the voice of a family member or friend, a co-worker or a fellow believer. It may not be a sound at all, just a dawning realization of personal sin -- to have denied and dishonored the Lord, to have hurt someone deeply, to have brought harm to a relationship. At such times it is right to feel shame. It is right to accept the blame.