By John A. Huffman, Jr.
Let me assure you sin is the saddest word in the Bible and in human speech. The fact is the Bible is the perfect and eternal mirror of the human heart. What we see in the life of Peter is not just past history, it is not just a Bible story. Read the newspapers, survey the New York Times' best selling books, both fiction and non-fiction. Read the stories of the lives of men and women in this community. Read your own life, and you will read stories of noble and gifted persons wrecked and ruined by sin, brought down in bitterness and pain by their betrayal, our betrayal, of all we were ever meant to be.
In spite of all of the warnings of Jesus, we see Peter doing precisely what Jesus predicted. And we see that desperate man as a microcosmic reflection of ourselves.
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Can't you say with me, "The things I want to do I don't do, and the things I don't want to do I end up doing?" No, I am not just quoting myself. I am quoting the Apostle Paul who discovered the hard way the ravages of a life torn between all God created it to be, the distortion which comes when our own agenda takes over and eclipses God's.
Those of us who are religious want to think of ourselves as being good people, don't we? To some extent, we are -- because we can always find people who are not as good as us. But that does not deny the reality of sin. For as good as we may be, we -- right along with the biblical characters of old -- are not perfect. Each of us is a sinner. Each of us needs God's forgiveness. Each of us needs to look into the face of that One, hanging crucified on that cross, looking down and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
How does the life of Peter, and the stories I have told about him this morning, apply to you and to me? Try to make sense out of all this by putting this to two verses that I had never really discovered until this week. They are the words of Jesus to Peter before the denial. They read: "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers" (
Luke 22:31-32).
Encapsuled in these two verses are five truths simply stated. They can transform our understanding of who we are and the spiritual struggles which are ours.
Truth one: Satan has an intense desire to destroy every Christian.Satan wanted to destroy Peter. Satan is particularly interested in tripping up those who are closest to the Lord.
I know what you are thinking. "Satan? Come on, John, we live in the age of modernity. We are post-Enlightenment! Don't take us back into the dark ages with all that talk about Satan and demons. We are sophisticated people. We will grant that there is a force of evil, a kind of negative, cosmic energy of an institutional and social nature that is corrupting. But don't talk about a personal Satan."