Transcript
In your Bibles, will you turn with me this morning once again to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22 and verse 54. Luke chapter 22 and verse 54.
Luke chapter 22, beginning to read at verse 54, Having arrested Him, they led Him and brought Him into the high priest’s house. But Peter followed at a distance. Now when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them. And a certain servant girl, seeing him as he sat by the fire, looked intently at him and said, ‘This man was also with Him.’ But he denied Him, saying, ‘Woman, I do not know Him.’
And after a little while another saw him and said, ‘You also are of them.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I am not.’ Then after about an hour had passed, another confidently affirmed, saying, ‘Surely this fellow also was with Him, for he is a Galilean.’ But Peter said, ‘Man, I do not know what you are saying.’ Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’ So Peter went out and wept bitterly.
When 1994 began, Mike Kubasi and Trisha Silden were simply casual acquaintances. Mike was 34 years of age, and he was a freelance photographer. Trisha was 37, and she was the office manager for a Los Angeles law firm. Both of them lived in the same building in the Northridge Meadows apartment complex in the Los Angeles area.
They knew each other’s names, but their relationship was extremely casual. All of that changed suddenly, shortly before dawn on January the 17th, 1994. That was when the great earthquake struck Southern California, an earthquake that killed 57 people and left about 15,000 people homeless.
During the earthquake, the three-story Northridge Meadows apartment building in which both Mike and Trisha lived was lifted off of its foundations and then set down with such force that the bottom floor collapsed, killing 16 residents. The door in Mike’s third-floor apartment was jammed shut, but he managed to get out of the apartment through a fissure that had opened in the foyer of his apartment.
Trisha was also blocked in her apartment, and she was standing out on the balcony, preparing to jump from the balcony. And then she heard what seemed like a familiar voice, and she called out, “Mike!” And he replied, “Who’s that?” “Trisha in 341, but I can’t get out.”
Within a few minutes, Mike was at the foot of the balcony, and he was pushing up a chain ladder. Trisha got on the ladder. She was clad only in thermal underwear, a bathrobe, a jacket, a muffler, with her purse slung around her neck, and she scrambled down. As she did so, she prayed, “God, whatever happens, it’s in Your hands.”
When she got to the ground, someone put a flashlight in her hand and told her to train it on the crack in an apartment on the first floor, which had been the home of 77-year-old Ruth Wilhelm, another resident. Mike climbed through the crack and came out with the sobering news that Ruth Wilhelm was dead.
Meanwhile, Mike rushed off to search for other residents of the complex. And they might never have met again except for the fact that they bumped into each other at a meeting for earthquake survivors that was sponsored by a local Methodist church. After the meeting, they strolled together to a mini-mart. They had a soda and they conversed with each other.
In early February, when the residents of the Northridge Meadows complex were allowed to come back and take their belongings out of the unstable building, they met again. When Trisha saw Mike through the window of his apartment, she was surprised at the intensity of her reaction to him. And she prayed in her heart, “God, don’t let anything happen to him.”
Before he left that day, Mike came over to her and said goodbye. And then he added, “You know, if you just want to talk, call me.” But it was actually Mike who made the first telephone call. And to make a long story short, the rescuer and the person he rescued wound up at the altar, and they became husband and wife.
Today they live in a two-story colonial home, which they have bought in Simi Valley, just about two miles from the Northridge Meadows apartment complex where the earthquake brought them together. Trisha often ponders what has happened. And not too long ago, Trisha was talking to People magazine, and she said, “Sometimes I wonder how good fortune could come out of that. I got Mike. I got marriage with Mike, and I got a new life. And yet, just two stories below me, my neighbor Ruth died. I’ve had a difficult time coming to terms with that. I believe in God’s plan, but there are no answers to the questions: Why me? Why her?”
And yes, my friends, earthquakes can do amazing things. They can, of course, wipe out life, but they can also bring two lives together, as happened in the case of Trisha and Mike.
Now I strongly suspect that most of us who are in the audience this morning are sort of glad that we live in Dallas, Texas, instead of in Southern California, because we have a much smaller chance of experiencing a physical earthquake. But isn’t it true, don’t you agree with me, that it’s a fact that nobody, but nobody, goes through life without experiencing an earthquake or two or three?
You see, earthquakes in our personal experience come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes they come in the form of losing a job, or they come in the form of a serious illness, or the breakup of a marriage, or the death of a loved one. And earthquakes like that can cause deep and lasting effects, for good and for evil. And sometimes they can profoundly affect our personal relationship with Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.
And because we need to be prepared for the consequences of the earthquakes that will strike our lives, this morning I would like to talk to you for a few minutes on the following topic: spiritual aftershock. And as you might guess, that topic is also the title of my message to you this day, Spiritual Aftershock.
Some of you have probably heard me tell the story of the greatest act of treachery, the most terrible act of betrayal that I’ve ever had to experience in my entire life. It happened to me in the second grade. Now, as you’ve also heard me say, in the second grade I had my very first romance. Not my natural man’s romance, but my first romance.
You see, in the second grade I fell madly and wildly and head over heels in love with a pretty little second-grade girl named Anne Nuttall. But I was a very bashful guy in those days, and I didn’t have the courage to talk to her face to face. So I resorted to an illegal strategy. I passed notes to her in class.
Now there was a problem with this, because Anne Nuttall sat in the first seat of the first row, and I sat in the last seat of the second row. And it’s hard to get a note all the way up from the last seat to the first seat. So one day when we came in from recess, I handed a little love note to a guy that I thought was a good friend of mine and who happened to sit in the first seat in the second row, right next to Anne Nuttall.
And I gave him instructions to pass the note to Anne. He ignored my instructions, folks. And in an act of treachery that will live in infamy, he took my note directly to my second-grade teacher, who promptly unfolded it and silently read it as she stood before the class.
Now you want to talk about the ground shaking beneath the feet of a little second-grade boy? The ground was shaking beneath my feet, and I was in mortal terror that in the next minute she would read my note out loud to the whole class. And I just knew that if she did that, I would sink directly through the schoolroom floor.
But fortunately she folded the note up. She didn’t say a word to me. She didn’t say a word to the class. She went back to her teaching duties. And I don’t think I really felt any better at all, because I imagined that she was thinking to herself, “Well, that poor little sick boy in the back seat, I’m not going to embarrass him by reading his mushy, silly little note out loud in class.”
Now I’m telling you, for a second-grade boy, that’s an earthquake. That’s an earthquake. And I know it’s a kind of silly and loose comparison, but something very similar to that happened to the Apostle Peter, about whom we’ve read this morning on the pages of God’s Word.
Remember that it wasn’t too long before the incidents that we have read about that Peter was in the upper room with Jesus and the other disciples. And he was boldly declaring, so that all could notice it, he says, “Lord, I am ready to go with You to prison and to death.” And Jesus dumped a barrel of cold water on that, and He said, “Peter, before the rooster crows tonight, you will deny Me three times.”
And according to the Gospel of Mark, he was having none of that. And he replied, “If I should die with You, I will not deny You.” And it wasn’t very long after that that he found himself in the garden with Jesus and with the other disciples. And he found himself confronting a hostile crowd that was obviously in the process of arresting Jesus Christ.
And unthinkingly, in rashness, he drew the sword that he had with him, and he swung it at a deadly arc in the direction of the head of the servant of the high priest, a man named Malchus. Unfortunately he missed the head but cut off the ear. And according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus turned to Peter and He said, “Put up your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword. Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will send Me more than twelve legions of angels?”
Then Jesus cleaned up the mess that Peter had wrought and healed the ear of the servant of the high priest. I submit to you, folks, that in that moment Peter must have been seized with embarrassment, confusion, and frustration. The rash help that he foolishly thought he could give to Jesus was rejected by Jesus. And Jesus said, in effect, “I don’t need your help. I can have the angels if I want them.” And then Jesus had to fix up what Peter had broken.
And I want to suggest to you that in that crucial moment, Peter experienced an earthquake in his own little world. His little world of self-confidence, his little world of self-assurance shook beneath his feet. And he was not the same the rest of that night.
In the passage of Scripture that we have just finished reading, we learned this significant fact. Jesus is now arrested. He is led away to the house of the high priest. And the writer of the Gospel of Luke adds words that are tremendously significant and important, because Luke writes, “But Peter followed at a distance.” Did you get that? But Peter followed at a distance.
It was just as if the earthquake had opened a big crack in the ground, a great big fissure. And now Jesus was on one side of it, and Peter was on the other. Peter was no longer in the presence of Jesus Christ. He was following Him at a distance.
And listen closely. One of the things that can happen when an earthquake strikes our lives, when something goes seriously wrong, when something dreadfully disappoints us, is that it can open up distance, distance between ourselves and Jesus Christ. It can separate us from the Son of God.
Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that our troubles can cause us to lose our eternal salvation. If you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of everlasting life, you can never lose your salvation. Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and he that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out.”
He also said, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believes on Me shall never thirst.” And to the woman at the well He said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever.” And when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith for the free gift of eternal life, He promises that He will never cast you out. You will never again hunger for the bread of life. You will never again thirst for the water of life.
But note it well. Even though you are a Christian and a Christian forever, sometimes it is possible for us to be separated from the fellowship of Jesus Christ our Lord by the troubles and disturbances and earthquakes in our lives.
The Duke of Wellington was the commander of the British armies at the historic Battle of Waterloo, a battle which crushed the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte. The results of this battle were sent by sailing vessel to the coast of England and then by semaphore. It was wig-wagged across the land of England to the city of London.
At the top of Winchester Chapel in London, the semaphore began to spell out the long-awaited results of the battle. And the semaphore said, “Wellington defeated.” And just at that point, fog descended on the steeple of Winchester Chapel, and they couldn’t see the semaphore anymore. And the words “Wellington defeated” were passed through the city of London. Then there was discouragement and dismay.
And a little later the fog lifted, and the semaphore was able to complete its message: “Wellington defeated the enemy.” And sometimes, my friends, in the midst of the troubles of life we feel that we’ve been defeated or worse. We feel that God has been defeated. And in the midst and darkness of our confusion, we are tempted to give up. We are tempted to drift away from God. And we forget that God always defeats His enemies.
Eugene Field was at one time considered one of the finest newspaper columnists in America. But during a very dark period of his life, he walked into his editor’s office one morning and he said to his editor, “There’s going to be no column this morning. I’m quitting.” The editor looked at him for a few minutes, kind of leaned back and braced himself, and then very casually the editor said to him this. He said, “Gene, I have a printer downstairs whose wife died three months ago, and this morning he has three children down with scarlet fever. And he’s not quitting.” And neither did Eugene Field. He stayed at his post.
And my friends, there are times in our lives when the earthquake has struck. The little voice says, “Give it all up. Quit. Don’t hang in there with God anymore.” And that’s the wrong thing to do.
A man named Jim once met his pastor on the street of the city where he lived. And he began to tell his pastor about all of the things that had gone wrong for him in the year that was past. And when he had finished his story of woe, he said to his pastor, “I’ll tell you this, preacher, it’s enough to make a man lose his religion.” And the preacher very wisely replied, “Jim, it seems to me it’s enough to make a man use his religion.”
And sometimes in the crisis of life, my friends, we feel like chunking it. We are tempted to lose our religion. And that’s the time to use our religion. That’s not the time to drift away from Jesus Christ. That is the time to walk closer with Him than ever before.
But that’s not what Peter did. Peter followed at a distance. While Peter had not exactly lost his religion, had he? But he wasn’t using it. He wasn’t using it. You see, in the garden he’d been right next to Jesus, and Jesus had pulled him out of the fire. He had saved him from the consequences of his foolish action by healing the ear of the man that Peter had wounded.
But now Peter was no longer in the presence of Jesus Christ. Now he was on his own. And that was dangerous, because now Peter was a sitting duck for the devil. Now Peter was a big, big target at which Satan could take easy aim.
Did you know that that’s where we got the title for the book that we wrote about losing? You see, when you walk away from God, you are walking in dangerous territory. And in that territory you can say, “Here walks my enemy,” because Satan is there ready to attack. And it didn’t take long for the attack to come, did it?
Pretty soon Peter finds himself in the courtyard of the high priest, in the company of people who are not sympathetic to Jesus at all. And he sits down in front of a fire with these people to warm himself. And a little servant girl comes up, and she stares at Peter for a moment. And then she says, for all to hear, “This man also was with Him.”
I want you to get the irony of this, folks. This big, brave, bold Peter, who’s ready to go to prison and to death for Jesus Christ. And all the weapon that Satan needs is a little servant girl: “This man also was with Him.” And Peter replies, “Woman, I do not know Him.” Woman, I do not know this man. Bingo! Direct hit number one.
It isn’t very long after that when a man sees Peter, and he says to Peter directly, he says, “You also were with Him. You’re also one of them.” And Peter replies, “Man, I am not.” Bingo! Bingo! Direct hit number two.
About an hour lapses, and now another man says to everybody within earshot, “This man also was with Him, for he is a Galilean.” And vehemently Peter replies, “Man, I do not know what you are saying. I do not even know what you are talking about.” No, no, no. Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Direct hit number three.
Now, folks, let’s admit that we know this story, right? We even know its lesson. But the lesson of this story is a lesson that all of us forget frequently. And the lesson is this: Never say, “I would never do that.” But we say it, don’t we? So-and-so did such and such. So-and-so did this or that. But I would never do that.
If there’s anybody in the audience this morning who has never said something like this, please introduce yourself to me after the meeting. I’d love to meet you. We’ve all said that. And we forget that if we walk at a distance from Jesus Christ, we might do that. We can do that. And sometimes we do do that.
There was a little boy named Alexander who was having a big problem saving his money for a baseball bat that he wanted very much. So one night when he was praying, his mother overheard him praying the following prayer. He said, “Lord, help me to save my money for a baseball bat. And God, please don’t let the ice cream man come down this street.”
Well, you know, I don’t know whether we need to pray about baseball bats and ice cream men. But that little boy had something going for him. Instead of saying, “I’m not going to spend any more of my money on ice cream, and if the ice cream man comes down this street, I’m just going to look the other way,” he knew he was weak. He knew he needed help.
But us grown-ups, you know, we can cope, right? We can handle it. We don’t need help. But in fact we do.
In an East Side delicatessen, I suppose in New York, a specialist in art once saw a mangy-looking kitten lapping up milk out of a saucer. When he focused on the saucer, he realized with a shock that that saucer was a rare and valuable piece of pottery. So he decided he was going to play it real cool and smart. And he sauntered into the delicatessen and he said to the owner, “I’ll give you two dollars for that cat.”
The owner said, “It’s not for sale.” The art specialist replied, “Look, it’s a dirty and undesirable cat. But I’m an eccentric. I’m kind of weird, and I like cats like that. And I’ll raise my offer to five dollars.” And the owner of the delicatessen said, “It’s a deal.” And he took the five dollars and stuffed it in his pocket.
And then the art specialist said, “Now, I know that for five dollars like that you wouldn’t mind throwing in the saucer too, would you? Because obviously the cat likes to drink from the saucer.” And the owner of the delicatessen said, “Nothing doing. That’s my lucky saucer. So far this week from that saucer I’ve sold 35 cats.”
Oh, folks, we’re so smart. We’ve got it figured. We know how to resist temptation. That won’t get us. We won’t be trapped by this. We’ve got it all worked out. And when we think like that, Satan gets us. Satan gets us.
Never say, “I would never do that.” Always say, “God, help me never to do that.” But mark it well. Mark it well. Just at this point comes the aftershock. Now comes the spiritual aftershock.
And no sooner does Peter get these final words of denial out of his mouth than his ears are stunned by the crowing of a rooster. And then Jesus, who is still within range of Peter’s vision, turns and looks at Peter. And I have to believe that Jesus’ look at Peter cut through Peter like a knife cuts through butter.
And then came the aftershock. Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he is shaken to the very core of his being. And he rushes out of the courtyard, and he dissolves into tears. And the Bible says, “So Peter went out and wept bitterly.”
And listen. When we have failed God, and then we follow that failure by walking at a distance from Him, we are inviting an aftershock that may result in regret and remorse and in bitter, bitter tears.
Now here’s where I stop preaching and start meddling. Let me get down to where all of us live here at Victor Street. I think there’s no question about it. It’s not financial. It does not relate to this building. Our biggest problem is that we are losing our children. Our biggest problem is that we are losing our children.
Now before I say anything else, I want to admit that I know that I’ve never had the responsibility of rearing children, and I don’t delude myself that it’s an easy process. It is difficult to rear children who love God and walk with God in a society and culture like our own. But at least I have the model of my own parents, and they raised two sons who, at least to this date, have stayed with the Lord.
Now I’m not going to say that there’s no way I can get away from the Word, but I’d be contradicting exactly what I said before. But so far they did a good job.
Now listen to me. We sometimes forget that our children only come to church an hour or two a week. And as they grow up, they’re with us every day. And they learn the lessons we teach them. Don’t kid yourself. They learn the lessons we teach them, both the positive lessons and the negative lessons.
They observe our anger. They hear our cuss words if we use cuss words. They observe our drinking if we drink. They observe our materialism and our love of money. They observe our neglect of the Bible. They watch us when we stay home from church for no good reason. They see our indifference to God.
And then when they get up in their teens, are we surprised that they don’t consider the religion of their parents to be very valuable to them? Why shouldn’t they think that way? They’ve watched us. And maybe they have concluded that our religion is not important to us. How could it be important to them?
What’s the solution? If you have children that have moved away from God, I think your first responsibility is to look back over your life as a parent and to acknowledge your failures. And then I think the second thing is that you need to walk with God as closely as you can walk with God and trust Him to do the work that only He can do in your kids.
And I want to make a suggestion. I want to help you. Somewhere around the middle of this year I’m going to launch a brand new prayer meeting, a once-a-month prayer meeting. And I’m going to call it the Parents Prayer Meeting. And except for me, only parents will be allowed to come. And we will pray for two things.
We will pray, first of all, for ourselves that we will walk close to God and that we will model the Christian experience that we want our kids to have. And secondly, we’re going to pray for our kids, both those who have gone astray and those who have not yet gone astray, that the Lord will keep them close to Him.
I’m going to tell you something. We need it at Victor Street, and we need it bad. And if there’s anybody here who’s a parent and has straying kids and you don’t feel you need that, then I’m going to warn you, you’re probably headed for an aftershock, and you’re probably headed for regret and for tears.
These are solemn words with which our passage is concluded this morning. Luke writes, “So Peter went out and wept bitterly.” A man by the name of W. S. Rainsford told the following touching story. And I’m going to try to tell it to you in his words.
He said, “I went into the auditorium, and it was packed. There were 2,000 people there. Up on the platform there were about 250 clergymen and bishops. However, I knew my subject well, and I was planning to speak without notes, something I’ve never done since that day.” He said, “My turn came after a speaker from Oxford sat down, and I got up. And I had 25 minutes, but I managed only to stutter and stammer my way through five or six minutes, and then I had to sit down.”
He said, “I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I hardly said a coherent sentence in the entire five or six minutes that I was up there.” The meeting went on, he said, but I sat there in darkness and in discouragement. Finally the meeting was over, and the people began to leave. And the 250 clergymen who were on the platform began to leave the platform. And I didn’t know anybody. I just sat there, a very, very lonely young man.
And then, he said, suddenly I felt a big hand on my shoulder. And I heard a big, kindly voice say to me, “Mr. Rainsford, would you preach for me at Trinity Church next Sunday morning?” That was my first encounter, says Rainsford, with Phillips Brooks.
Is it any wonder that I loved him? And dear friends, no matter how deep our failures are, there’s always a hand that is placed on our shoulder. There is always a voice that continues to speak in our ear and says, “Continue to serve Me.”
And not long after the events that we’ve looked at this morning, Peter heard that voice as he sat face to face with Jesus Christ before a fire of coals at the shores of the Lake of Galilee. And the man who denied Him three times heard Jesus say three times, “Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep.”
And my friends, even after the earthquake, and if need be even after the aftershock, Jesus is saying to you, “Serve Me.”
The songwriter said it well: “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea. Day by day His sweet voice soundeth, saying, ‘Christian, follow Me.’ Jesus calls us from the worship of this vain world’s golden store, from each idol that would keep us, saying, ‘Christian, love Me more.’ Jesus calls us by Thy mercy, Savior, may we heed Thy call, give our hearts to Thine obedience, serve and love Thee best of all.”
Shall we pray? Father, You are calling each of us. May we heed Thy call. May we give our hearts to Thine obedience. May we serve Thee, love Thee best of all. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.