But he denied it again. After a little while, those standing nearby said once more to Peter, "Surely you are one of them, for you too are a Galilean." Sermons 1. The unmeasured love of Mary of Bethany shines radiantly beside the unexampled treachery of Judas Iscariot. 2. Contrasts occur also in the experience of our Lord. He passes from the fellowship of the upper room to the solitude of Gethsemane; from the secrecy of prayer to the publicity of a mock-trial before his foes. 3. There are also great changes visible in the spiritual condition of certain disciples. Judas appears amongst the chosen disciples, listening to the Master's words and eating at the same table with him; and a few hours after he is seen at the head of a band of ruffians, betraying his Lord with a traitorous kiss. Peter, in the garden, starts forth as a hero in defense of his Master; but in the palace of the high priest, with trembling heart, denies all knowledge of him. To this last scene our text points us. (Describe it.) I. THAT THERE ARE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THE CAUSE OF CHRIST'S AROUSES UNCOMPROMISING HOSTILITY. Peter was experiencing this in the palace of Caiaphas. 1. Paganism was instinctively hostile to Christ's teaching. Far-seeing men amongst the Gentiles soon saw its drift. They spoke of the apostles, not inaptly, as men who would turn the world upside down. Christ's doctrine of brotherhood would be the destroyer of slavery. His inculcation of purity and righteousness threatened licentious pleasures and tyrannous exactions. Men who could win high positions by force or fraud, and immoral people, who loved brutal or sensual amusements, would unite in antagonism to the Christian faith. Some would hate it the more intensely because their worldly interests were associated with the continuance of paganism. Many a Demetrius saw that his craft was in danger, and priests, with their crowds of attendants, would contend zealously for the idolatry which gave them their living. They would have granted Christ Jesus a niche in their Pantheon; but his followers claimed that he should reign supreme and alone. 2. The Jews, however, were the first instigators of opposition. Christianity threatened to destroy their national supremacy by inviting the Gentiles to all the privileges of the kingdom of God. They hated a Messiah who came not to deliver them from political bondage, but from their own prejudices and sins. 3. Heathenism in our own day, whether at home or abroad, is at enmity with Christ. The vicious, who live to gratify their passions, the worldly, who would make this life their all, as well as the idolaters in distant lands, hate the teachings of our Lord. 4. Even in nominally Christian society there is sometimes seen an ill-suppressed dislike to earnest fidelity to Christ's cause. II. THAT A DISCIPLE OF CHRIST, IN THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, MEETS WITH A TEST OF HIS MORAL COURAGE. We all appreciate the heroism of the apostles, who, with their lives in their hands, witnessed for their Lord before Jews and pagans, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for his sake. Equal courage is occasionally exhibited lives which are unromantic and prosaic, which endure each day the bitterness of scorn and shame, 1. Sometimes a Christian shows heroism by speech. Profanity is thus rebuked, slander is silenced, impurity is indignantly reproved, and the cause of Christ defended against mockery. It is well when this can be done without any sign of a Pharisaic spirit or of a censorious temper; so that from the tone of the defense the godless are compelled to say, "These men have been with Jesus, and have learnt of him." 2. Silence may also be on occasion the display of courage. If one, by reason of youth or sex, cannot speak, witness may be borne by quitting the scene where Christ is dishonored. The responsibility for witness-bearing is the heavier in proportion to the weight of our influence. The effect of Peter's denial was the greater because he was like a standard-bearer in the army of Christ. Even although his testimony might not have changed the opinion of one in the crowd around him, he was none the less bound to give it; and our Lord was grieved because he withheld it. III. THAT VERY TRIVIAL THINGS MAY SOMETIMES REVEAL ASSOCIATION WITH JESUS CHRIST. Peter had no expectation of being discovered. He was a stranger; the crowd was large, and the excitement great; it was dark, and attention seemed centred in Christ Jesus, to the exclusion of all beside. A question unexpectedly put necessitated an answer, and his rough Galilean brogue increased the suspicion to a certainty that he was a peasant who had come up with Jesus from Galilee, and was intimate enough with him to know of his secret and sudden arrest. 1. Even the nominal connection with Christ which we all have as Englishmen is betrayed by speech in foreign parts; and how often is the work of our missionaries hindered there by dishonest traders, or profligate sailors and soldiers, who are supposed to be "Christians," but who by word and act deny the Lord! 2. Others, who have been under direct Christian influences in their homes, are sometimes tempted, at school or in business, to keep that fact secret, as if it were something to be ashamed of. But when some small phrase or act unexpectedly betrays the truth, and one of those standing by says, "Surely thou art one of them,... thy speech agreeth thereto," then comes the crisis, the turningpoint, on which the whole future will hinge. Happy is it if then they are saved from Peter's fail! 3. Occasionally those who are devout disciples wish, like Nicodemus, to remain secretly so. They wish to avoid all responsibility, and therefore make no profession of their love. Little do they suspect how many are discouraged by their failure to avow their loyalty to their Lord. Let all our influence everywhere be consecrated to him. CONCLUSION. The hall of judgment is still standing. Christ Jesus is being examined and questioned now by men who resent his claims. Still we hear the cry, "Prophesy! who is it that smote thee? Tell us something new. Work some miracle now, that we may believe thee." And to it all Jesus answers nothing. His Church is keeping close beside him, as John did, and is glad to share his reproach. But many are like Peter; they have followed afar off, so that the world should not notice them. They would not be so near as they are, but that others have led them, as John led his brother apostle. Yet, after all their friends have done, they are still outside, in the courtyard, among the foes of their Lord. They hope that all will end well; they dare not help in the conflict, so they keep far enough away to retain their popularity, and yet to see the end. As the light of the fire revealed Peter, as his speech further betrayed him, so something has called attention to these, and companions begin to say, "Surely thou art one of them." What shall the answer be? Shall it be, "I know him not;" or shall it be, "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee"? - A.R.
The poor with you always. Covetous men have put our Lord's words, "Ye have the poor with you always," beside the Old Testament sentence, "The poor shall never cease out of the land," in order to quiet the trouble of their own consciences when forced to think of the little they are daily doing for the poor; and then tell themselves, and too often tell others, that aspiration, self-denial, and liberality are, after all, mere spasmodic, ineffectual palliatives of a disease which is inveterate and hopeless, and that, the existence of poverty being an unalterable decree, there can be no true neglect in doing nothing in their power, if there can be no full success in doing all. To some other people this combination of texts supplies a convenient discouragement to throw on all suggestions for elevating the condition of the poor, and alleviating the pressure of their poverty; for it enables them practically to conclude thus: "To do this thing would be, more or less, to fly in the face of the Almighty: To alter the conditions He has so clearly laid down would be, in fact, to contradict His will." Of course this error also admits of an easy reply, too logical by far, how. ever, for men who would offer the argument. It is this. God may have willed, and has willed, that absolute equality of goods Shall be, in this world, an impossibility; that the terms rich and poor, being relative terms, shall always have persons to whom they may be applied, though a man who is rich as compared with a peasant may be poor as compared with a prince. But God has never revealed as His will that those conditions shall never be interchangeable; on the contrary, His word tells us that such interchange must be sought (James 1:9), and the history of the world, from day to day, shows us, as part of its natural course, a continual rising of some, and sinking of others, in the social scale. Then there is another class of objections to deal with. It is urged by those who really sympathize in good will for the physical and moral raising of the poor, and feel that the bettering of poor men's condition would be an admirable thing if only it were possible, but that its antecedent impossibility frustrates all efforts towards so desirable an end. There are very many such — people who feel Christian love to fellow men fill them with longing to promote their temporal, and through it their eternal good; people who, themselves blessed with ease and affluence in worldly things, feel themselves in some sort trusted by God to benefit their poorer fellows; who know the pity and the wrong of merely flinging money, in whatever sums, into the grasping hand of the loudest clamourer; who strive with all their might in seeking, and fail so often bitterly in finding, the true deserving poor; who go themselves amidst the haunts of squalor, the homes of misery, the very centres of disease, trying to make true Christian mercy the dispenser of their money, and to consecrate even filthy lucre to the holy ministry of Christian love. How many these are, of Christian men and Christian women, God only knows who only can reward; but yet how disappointing is their work! They see from day to day so little fruit; they meet from day to day so much resistance; what wonder if, while conscience urges them to persist in their work, despondency should often overwhelm them, and make the toil, which only hope can lighten, a crushing burden when hope is fled? Is it not too sadly true that when the self-indulgent love to cry, "the raising of the poor is resistance to God," the self-sacrificing often have to answer, "the raising of the poor is hopeless for man!" The one class lets them lie, and cries, "their poverty is destiny;" the other class labours even while it cries, "our labour is in vain!" And both have only quoted half the texts — the one side to excuse neglect, the other to explain despondency; while the whole text can force duty on the slothful and give courage to the zealous. For our Lord, indeed, spoke the truth of His day, of our day, and of all days, when He said, "Ye have the poor with you always;" but He said something more which we should lay to heart, "When ye will, ye can do them good." These glorious words settle all questions at once as to the title of man to interfere with the condition of the poor, and as to the alleged hopelessness of such interference. The thing may be done, and the thing may be done with success. To alter the condition of the poor is allowable; to alter it for the better is possible. "Ye can do them good!"(W. L. Blackley, M. A.) When the deacon, St. Lawrence, was asked, in the Decian persecution, to show the prefect the most precious treasures of the Church at Rome, he showed him the sick, the lame, the blind. "It is incredible," said Lucian, the pagan jeerer and sceptic, "to see the ardour with which those Christians help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator has put it into their heads that they are all brothers." "These Galileans," said Julian the apostate, "nourish not only their own poor, but ours as well." In the year 252 a plague raged in Carthage. The heathen threw out their dead and sick upon the streets, and ran away from them for fear of contagion, and cursed the Christians. St. , on the contrary, assembled his congregation, told them to love those who cursed them; and the rich working with their money, the poor with their hands, never rested till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city saved from destruction.(Archdeacon F. W. Farrar.) Thomas Willet, one of the old Puritan divines, was a man of remarkable benevolence. He spent the income of his two benefices in comforting and entertaining the parish poor, often inviting them to the hospitalities of his house. When asked why he did so, his reply was, "Lest Joseph and Mary should want room in the inn, or Jesus Himself should say at last, 'I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in.'"People James, Jesus, John, Judas, Peter, SimonPlaces Bethany, Galilee, Gethsemane, Jerusalem, Mount of OlivesTopics Accused, Afterwards, Agreeth, Alike, Bystanders, Certainly, Denied, Denying, Galilaean, Galilean, Peter, Repeatedly, Saying, Shows, Speech, Standing, Stood, Surely, Thereto, Truly, TruthOutline 1. A conspiracy against Jesus.3. Expensive perfume is poured on his head by a woman. 10. Judas sells his Master for money. 12. Jesus himself foretells how he will be betrayed by one of his disciples; 22. after the passover prepared, and eaten, institutes his last supper; 26. declares beforehand the flight of all his disciples, and Peter's denial. 43. Judas betrays him with a kiss. 46. Jesus is apprehended in the garden; 53. falsely accused and impiously condemned of the council; 65. shamefully abused by them; 66. and thrice denied by Peter. Dictionary of Bible Themes Mark 14:55-72 2060 Christ, patience of Library July 28 EveningLet your requests be made known unto God.--PHIL. 4:6. Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.--There was given to me a thorn in the flesh. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities. I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed … Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily Path July 18 Evening February 7 Evening 'Is it I?' The Sleeping Apostle A Secret Rendezvous The New Passover 'Strong Crying and Tears' The Captive Christ and the Circle Round Him The Condemnation which Condemns the Judges The Alabaster Box Questions About the Lord's Supper That He who is About to Communicate with Christ Ought to Prepare Himself with Great Diligence Twenty-Eighth Lesson. Father! not what I Will;' Letter xiii. Christian Activity. Mark. "She Hath done what She Could. " Mark 14:8. Jerusalem Watch and Pray. --Mark. xiv. 38 As the Rind of a Pomegranate are Thy Cheeks, Besides that which is Hidden Within. Links Mark 14:70 NIVMark 14:70 NLT Mark 14:70 ESV Mark 14:70 NASB Mark 14:70 KJV Mark 14:70 Bible Apps Mark 14:70 Parallel Mark 14:70 Biblia Paralela Mark 14:70 Chinese Bible Mark 14:70 French Bible Mark 14:70 German Bible Mark 14:70 Commentaries Bible Hub |