God’s Word for You
Mark 14:27-31 All will fall away
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, January 13, 2024
27 Jesus said to them, “You will all be trapped into falling away. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” 29 Peter said to him, “Even if all fall away, I will not.” 30 And Jesus said to him, “Amen I say to you, today, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” 31 But he insisted again and again, “Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you.”And they all said the same.
On the way out of the city, between the ancient walls and the slope of the Mount of Olives, Jesus surprised his friends with the words, “You will all be scandalized.” The Greek verb refers to a boy’s trap, a box held up with a crooked stick that is yanked away to trap an animal. I have translated it, “trapped into falling away.” The trap was Jesus’ own arrest. It would frighten them and upset them so much that they would scatter away and deny being his friends. But in Zechariah’s prophecy (Jesus is quoting Zechariah 13:7) it is God, not the devil or Caiaphas or Judas, but God who would strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep.
But we need to remember that God did not scatter them so that they would lose their faith, or IN ORDER THAT they would deny Jesus. That would be the result, for a while, but the reason he allowed this test to come upon them was to save them through the cross, and then to strengthen their faith.
There were two reasons for this striking and scattering. First, Christ had to be taken, put on trial, abused and beaten and made to bleed, all for our salvation. “By his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Second, the disciples’ faith needed to be sharpened, strengthened, and bricked up by the love of Christ. The man who has fallen away into denial, and who has been led back by the word of God through repentance and forgiveness, is truly ready to teach forgiveness.
Peter misses the comforting assurance Jesus was offering. The Lord’s words, “After I have risen, I will go ahead of you to Galilee,” bounce off of Peter’s ears like words spoken in a foreign language. The point Jesus wanted to make was that he would be struck down, struck dead, in fact, but he would rise from the dead. And more than that, they would all see him again back home in Galilee! Here in the Lord’s words are the crucifixion and the resurrection, salvation and joy! But Peter only hears about the striking; he doesn’t wait for the rest. He even seizes the Lord’s words and makes them all about him against the others: “Even if all fall,” he says. He means, “Even if THEY all fall.” But he won’t. He’s sure of it. Sometimes human nature boasts too much, sometimes it begs too little. “I could never sin” and “I can’t help sinning; I can’t stop it” are the two swings of the sinful human pendulum. The Lord wants us to see the pendulum from outside and stop riding the thing back and forth. Confess “I have sinned.” not “I can’t” or “I won’t.” Confess “I am a sinner” instead of “I have to sin.” The danger of “I can’t / won’t sin” is that we certainly will. Man is born to such trouble “as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). And the danger of “I have to sin / I can’t help it” is that it rejects the Holy Spirit. It denies that a forgiven child of God can ever turn from temptation and sin and obey the Lord, who says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word” (Psalm 119:67). As Micah says: “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
Jesus warns Peter, “You will deny me. You will deny me tonight, ‘this very night,’ before the rooster crows twice.” Mark’s is the only Gospel account that has the detail about the rooster crowing twice. There is something almost poetic about the warning, an echo of the kind of staircase parallelism Amos used: “For three sins of Judah, ever for four, I will not turn back my wrath” (Amos 2:4). But it’s no time to think of poetry. Jesus is warning his friend that soon he would fall into the trap of denial. It was already late at night. The rooster would not hold back his crowing forever.
Peter led the rest in more denials. “I will not!” But they would. They did. But his promise still stood: “I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”
His promise stands for us, too. The forgiveness of the cross covered even the sin of betrayal, denial. Every sin is covered by Jesus; this covering is ours for free. It doesn’t cost us anything at all—as Peter later wrote: “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). All Jesus asks of us is that we trust in him. He truly will never deny his dear flock.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.