EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
6/17/2026 6:45 PM
My
Worship Time Focus:
PT-2“The Right
Life Experiences”
I did not get as much written this
morning that I hoped to, but I will continue to write and quote what John
MacArthur wrote in this section.
“God even used Peter’s great
transgression to further mold and shape him.
Perhaps no incident more clearly reveals Peter’s mercurial temperament
than his confession of Jesus as Messiah and its aftermath. After affirming Jesus’ true identity through
a revelation from God (Matt. 16:16-17) and receiving the promise and privilege
described above, Peter was riding high.
Yet amazingly, he immediately plunged into the depths of sinful folly by
daring to rebuke the Lord. After Jesus
solemnly warned the apostles of His coming rejection and death (v. 21), Peter
brashly ‘took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord!
This shall never happen to You’’ (v.22).
There was no place in Peter’s theology for a dying Messiah; like the
rest of his fellow Israelites, he expected the Messiah to drive out the Roman
oppressors and bring Israel to the place of covenant promise, prominence and
glory. Christ’s response was swift and
devastating. The very man whom He had
just pronounced blessed by God (v. 17) He now shockingly addressed as Satan (v.
23).
“The lesson Peter learned from this
incident was that he was not to overestimate his role, but to understand its
firm limits within the divine plan (cf. Rom. 12:3). As Jesus’ rebuke indicated, Peter could be
just as available to Satan as he was to God.
Because of their influence and the respect leaders command, they have
the potential to be used by God, but also to be used by the devil. Leaders must learn, as Peter did, to operate
within God’s plan, as revealed in Scripture, and not alter it in order to
pursue their own agenda.
“Without question the most painful
experience of Peter’s life was his great rejection of Jesus Christ. On the night before His death, Jesus, quoting
Zechariah’s prophecy, warned the disciples that they would all temporarily
abandon Him that very night (Matt. 26: 31-32).
Peter, however, confidently asserted that whatever the others might do,
he was going to stick with Jesus (33). When
Jesus replied that Peter would deny Him three times, Peter forcefully insisted
that he would never abandon the Lord (v. 35).
But as always, Jesus was right and peter was wrong. Not long after boldly proclaiming his undying
loyalty to Jesus, Peter repeatedly and emphatically denied Him (vv.
69-74). After his final denial, ‘the
Lord turned and looked at Peter. And
Peter remembered the word of the Lord how He had told him, ‘Before a roster
crows today, you will deny Me three times’’ (Luke 22:61). The realization of what he had done devastated
Peter, ‘and he went out and wept bitterly’ (v. 62). His proud self-confidence had been put on the
test and found to be wanting.
“This experience crushed Peter’s
self-confident reliance on his own strength and abilities. Leaders have to learn to rely on the Lord for
strength; they must acknowledge that, as Martin Luther put it in his hymn ‘A
Mighty Fortress Is Our God,’
Did we in
our own strength confide,
Our
striving would be losing.
Paul, the
proud, self-righteous, self-confident Pharisee, came to recognize himself as
the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:16) and acknowledged, ‘But by the grace of
God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored
even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me’ (1 Cor.
15:10) .
6/17/2026
7:09 PM
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