I Have Prayed For You

So I'm going to start by asking you a question. I expect the answer is probably yes for all of us. Can you think of a time in your life when you knew that you were going to enter into a tempting situation? Something was coming up, you knew about it, and you knew it was going to be an occasion for temptation. You were going to have to fight against some sort of sin or temptation in that circumstance. I think most of us would say, yeah, that's more common than I would like it to be, actually. There are a number of ways that we would prepare for it. Some of us would rather not have that knowledge at all. Say, I just don't even want to know. I just want to live life and deal with it. Some of us would say, no, I want life to stop and I want to be able to prepare and guarantee that I will not do the wrong thing in that situation. Some of us just are bothered by temptations and irritated by them. Wish they'd just go away. They just make us angry. Whatever it is that you're thinking of this morning as we start our time,

studying the word, I want you to realize that temptations come from Satan. It's his way to tempt us. It's his desire that we would be overcome by sin of whatever form and that it would be that this overwhelming would be used for our destruction. That's his aim. That's his goal. And so when we are entering into temptation of whatever sort, we have to see we're entering into a of engagement with Satan. Our temptations are not benign. They don't come from nowhere. They come from Satan whose aim is to destroy us. And so they're not something we ought to ignore. They're not something we ought to despair over either. They're something we ought to prepare for. And so this morning, we're going to be studying the account of Jesus foretelling Peter's betrayals. He says to him, you're going to deny me three times before the rooster crows in the morning.

But before that, that's toward the end of our passage. In the beginning, Jesus tells Peter ahead of time, Satan's going to assault you. You're going to enter into a season of temptation, a period of temptation. But this isn't all Jesus says to him. He also tells Peter the outcome of the trial. What's going to happen? How it's all going to go? He lays it out for Peter. And he gives Peter instruction about what to do after it's all over. And so my purpose this morning, It's for us to see how Jesus prepares Peter for his temptation so that we're better equipped to face temptation when we do, because all of us do. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word from Luke 22, verses 31 to 34. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And you,

When once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. He said to him, Lord, with you, I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And he said, I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied me three times. You've denied three times that you know me. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, as I asked you at the beginning, do you know when you're going into temptation, you're going to face a difficult situation. Maybe it's the holidays. You know, we're going to go be around extended family. And you go, yep, here it comes. Maybe it's Monday morning at work. Maybe it's coming home from work to your wife and your kids. Maybe it's coming home to no one. You all know when there's some like, that's going to be a hard situation, you know, something's going on. But Jesus begins by telling Peter, you're going to enter into temptation. But he doesn't tell him, you're going to enter into temptation. What he says to him is, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat.

This is how Jesus describes the temptation that Peter is going to face. You're going to be sifted like wheat. Now, I want to explain to you a little bit about what that means because I don't know that any of us have ever sifted wheat before. When wheat grows up and it's time to be harvested, it has a husk, not a husk, but it has a chaff or a lining around every seed. And you don't want to eat that. You know when you eat oatmeal and you get the little thing stuck in your teeth? It's part of the oat shell or husk. It's really annoying, okay? So you wouldn't want, the wheat has a similar type of casing called chaff. And when you sift wheat, the whole point is to remove the chaff from the wheat. So how do you do that? Well, the way they would have done it was you would take the wheat and you would beat it to get it to rub together, to cause some friction so that the chaff would separate.

but now you've just got a pile of wheat and chaff mixed together. So now what are you going to do? Well, now what you have to do is you have to take and you have to throw it up in the air when it's windy. So when you throw it up in the air, the chaff that's very light blows away and the wheat that's heavy just falls back down. And so to us that sounds like, well, that's fine. You kind of rub the wheat together and then you kind of blow on it and it's all fine. But consider yourself being the wheat. Because that's what Jesus tells him it's going to be like. Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, to act violently against you, tempting you. Now, this is not how Peter thought of temptation. And you know this because you can see how Peter responds to him. How does Peter respond after being told? Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. Peter says, I'm ready to go to you to prison and to death. I'm not worried about it.

And this is because Peter underestimated Satan's rigor and his vehemence toward his destruction. He didn't think it was going to be that bad. He thought he was strong enough to handle it, to go through it without failing. Now, this man who's being spoken to now, Peter, is the same man who later wrote these words. In 1 Peter 5.8, he says, Be of sober spirit. Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, what? prowls abround like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Now, where do you think that Peter came up with that analogy? Would it be reasonable to think that what he's about to enter into that Jesus is telling him had some bearing on him coming up with his description of temptation? And so I want you to see from the very beginning that Peter was ignorant of what it was going to be like, but Peter learned. Because later on, when he's warning others about this sort of temptation, He understands it's very intense. Prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. This is not kid-friendly. So Peter learned firsthand what it was to be sifted like wheat, what it was to have Satan prowling around like a lion seeking to destroy him. But at this time, as I said, Peter didn't understand that. Not yet. His response...

as I've said, was, Lord, with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death. Now, is that an admirable statement for Peter? I think so. If you knew that your allegiance to Jesus might mean prison and death for you, would you be quick to accept it? To say, I'm ready. Whatever the cost is, I'm ready to follow you, even to prison and to death. Peter understands that he's not saying these sorts of things as though, well, that would never happen. He said these things with the full knowledge of the fact that Jesus was hated, that there were men out intent on killing Jesus. And Peter says, no, my allegiance is to you no matter what comes. And in that sense, it's an admirable thing. And you remember that just after this, when they come to arrest Jesus, Peter's the one who whips out his sword and lops off the ear of one of the men who's...

going to arrest Jesus. He's ready to fight to protect Jesus. He's ready to go with him. He doesn't run until Jesus picks up the man's ear, heals him, putting it back on, and tells him to put his sword away. And so when he says, I'm ready to go with you to prison and to death, we can understand him to be telling the truth. He's not speaking this way frivolously or flippantly. He's willing to do the things he says he's willing to do. And in that sense, it's very admirable what he says. When we consider our own, you know, would we behave like that? Would we say something like that? Would we say something like that at all, let alone would we say something like that after what Jesus just said to him? And yet there's another way of processing Peter's declaration, and it's that it's a very foolish thing to say. Jesus had just told him that Satan's attack, what it would be like, and that he essentially says, Peter does, bring it on. I can handle it. No worries.

So what's wrong with Peter's, why is it foolish for him to say what he says? Well, I've already mentioned that he discredits the intensity of Satan's temptation. He thinks himself strong, able to stand, able to endure whatever Satan's going to bring at him. And he's a fool for thinking that. It's very foolish what he says. He doesn't take into account his own frailty, his own weakness. He hasn't, in one sense you say he has considered what Jesus has, what's going to happen to Jesus, and he's willing to go with him to death. And in another sense, we understand Peter to be an impetuous man. Impetuous meaning he doesn't think before he acts. This is the man who jumped out of the boat and started walking on water and then sunk. Peter speaks first and thinks later or deals with the consequences of his actions after he's taken them. Now, I want you to think for a minute. If you were in Peter's shoes and Jesus had just told you Satan has demanded permission

to sift you like wheat. And Peter would have understood, we ought to understand, he was granted that permission. What would you have said? Or what would have been going on in your heart if you stood with the Lord Jesus and he said, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat. Bring it on. I got this. It's not what I would have said. And I suspect it's not what any of us would have said. And so think for a moment, what would you have wanted at that time? I think you'd start by saying, well, I would want to not face that sort of temptation. I would want Jesus to remove that from me. And the reason would be because I wouldn't want to fail the Lord. I don't want, and I don't think you want, to end up into situations in your life where you think you're going to fail, where you're going to abandon Jesus, where you're going to do what Peter did. None of us want to go into places like that in our lives. We don't want to have those sorts of things on our consciences.

and on our minds, we don't want to say, yeah, I didn't do what was required of me there. I didn't prepare, and I fell. I failed. And so I don't think I would have spoke the way Peter did. Not because I'm wiser than Peter, but because I would have been scared that I would fail, scared that I wouldn't make it through. Peter says, I will make it through, and I admire it, and at the same time, the text tells me Peter didn't make it through. If you read in the parallel accounts, Peter is the placeholder in our text. He's the one being spoken to. But in the accounts in Matthew and Mark, all the other disciples say the same thing. They join right in with Peter and they're like, yeah, we're going to follow you to death and to prison and no matter what comes, we're yours. And so it's common among even the strongest, most noble Christians that they don't understand their weakness and their frailty and their dependence on God or the way that he sustains them.

And so if I were going to have to face that sort of temptation, being sifted like wheat, and it's kind of a joke to say if I were going to, because the fact is every one of us faces this. But as I realize that I'm going to face it, what I want from Jesus is encouragement and strength and his assurance that I'll make it out the other side. That's what I want. However it comes, whatever way he sees fit. I want some sort of assurance that I'm not going to be lost in the process. And if you look in our text, you'll see that Jesus does say something to that effect to Peter. What does he say to him? He says, Peter, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. Now, Jesus already knew that this was coming. This is a revelation to Peter that this is about to happen. Jesus already knew. Jesus says, I have already prayed for you.

I know what you're about to go through. I know what's coming. I've prayed for you. And I've prayed specifically that your faith would not fail. This is a very personal prayer. And it would have been a great encouragement. As you enter into temptation, consider the strength of knowing that Jesus has prayed for you in that temptation. And that he's prayed that your faith won't fail. Would you take strength from it? Of course you would. And this privilege doesn't belong only to Peter. It may be that you read this and you go, well, it's good that he prayed for Peter. I'm glad he prayed. It must have been nice to be Peter. And I want you to know that this sort of intercession, this sort of care that Jesus provides for Peter as he enters into temptation is not exclusive to Peter. In Romans 8.34, Paul writes, Jesus Christ is he who died. Yes, rather, he who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Who prays for us. Who speaks on our behalf to his father. That we wouldn't be lost. And the danger of being lost is very real. Because that's Satan's explicit intention. It's not to make you miserable. It's to destroy you. And every good thing that you have. Every good thing that has any shred of God's image or his glory in it. Satan's only objective is to destroy it. And so Jesus tells Peter. I've prayed for you that your faith will not fail. Paul tells us that Jesus sits at the right hand of God, interceding still for us today. And so as we face temptation, as we engage with Satan and his fiery darts and his arrows coming into our lives, seemingly one after another, we can persevere in confidence knowing that Jesus intercedes for us just as he did for Peter, that we will not be abandoned. This is what he told his disciples even as he left this world. At the end of the Great Commission, he says to them,

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. As you go into battle, as you go into the ministry of building my kingdom, I will not abandon you in it. Not in the trials of it, not in the hardships of it, not in the sufferings. And so when we enter into temptation, when we face Satan in our day-to-day lives, you have to know, Christian, that you do not face him alone. that Jesus stands at the right hand of his Father, interceding for you on your behalf, that you would not fail. Now I want to caution you a little bit, because I don't want you to get the wrong impression about what I'm saying. So I'm going to ask you a question. Did Peter's faith fail? Did his faith fail? If we say no, his faith didn't fail, then we have to make sense of his denials in some way that doesn't end with, and he shouldn't have done that.

And we have to deal with Peter's response to his denials, which is that he went out of the city and wept bitterly for what he had done. And so we can't very well say that Peter's faith didn't fail. But then we're left saying, so his faith did fail, but Jesus prayed that his faith wouldn't fail. And this can seem to be a worse situation than the former one. If we say that Peter's faith did fail, then are we saying that Jesus' prayer was unanswered? That his intercession doesn't work? If we start down this path, we've started down a path to despair. What hope can we have of not failing if Jesus tells Peter, I prayed for you, and then he failed? So we have to work through this. Did Peter's faith fail? The answer is, in this situation, yes. Peter's faith failed him when he faced this temptation. He lost faith. He didn't do what he ought to have done. He denied his God.

That's what he did. But there's a sense in which Peter's faith didn't fail. You could think of it as saying he didn't persist in his failure. If you step out of these particulars and you come in to look at Peter's life, what is the rest of Peter's life? What is the fruit of Peter's life going forward from this point? It's a life of faith. Peter remains one of the apostles. He doesn't go and kill himself as Judas did. He preaches at Pentecost. He's the primary actor at Pentecost in terms of the men. Of all the disciples, he's the one who stands up and preaches and brings the blood of Jesus down on the head of the Jews, saying things to the people that, you know, when he denied Jesus, he was afraid of the servant girls. And when he preaches, he preaches to the masses saying, you killed him. You crucified him. His blood is on your heads.

And he continues on throughout the rest of the book of Acts. If you trace Peter through, he's faithful in his preaching and in his teaching and in his healings. He does suffer. He does go to prison. He is beaten. He's the one who considers it all joy to be considered worthy of suffering for Jesus. And so when you look at Peter's trajectory, you see that he does trust God, but then what do we do with these denials? How do we process that? Well, I think part of the difficulty in processing this is that we don't want to live in the reality of the constant temptations that we face. We really want some way to say, temptation's only occasional or it's not real, or it's not as bad as it feels or seems. If you read this passage carefully, you'll see that Jesus actually tells him, your faith is, you're going to fail here. Before he tells him, you're going to deny me three times. Because he tells him,

I've prayed that your faith may not fail. And you, when once you have turned again, what's that mean? Turn from what? Turn from your failure. Turn from your sin. Turn from your abandonment and your denial of me. Once you've turned away from that, strengthen your brothers. And I think we too easily believe that if we fail in the way of Peter, all is lost. But Jesus tells him, after you've turned again, I've prayed that your faith will not fail. But once you return again, strengthen your brothers. Now, if I could take your life and I could strip away all of the things you know you worry about and the things that you're concerned about that are simply worldly. You're worried about what other people think. You're worried about money. You're worried about your health. You're worried about your relationships. You're worried about your kids or your wife or your husband or are you going to get married or whatever that stuff is. If I could take all that stuff, put it in a box, set it over here and come back to you and say,

With all that stuff set aside, you are a Christian. What is at the bottom? What is the foundation? What is the footer of your life? What do you want your life to be about as a Christian? And you have to say, I want to serve God. I want to be useful to him. I have all these other things that consume my time and my energy, and they probably shouldn't the way they do. But setting all of those things aside, I want to be faithful and I want to serve the Lord Jesus. That's what I want to do. And what we often think is that when we sin, when we fall, and when we give into temptation, our usefulness to God is now gone. And it's not. When you have turned again, what is he supposed to do? He's to strengthen his brothers. This failure, and it's a serious failure, it's a major failure, doesn't disqualify him from the ministry as an apostle.

He continues on as an apostle, being the primary actor at Pentecost, preaching the gospel, strengthening his brothers. And he's a terrible sinner, but he's a repentant sinner. He turned away from his sin. So when it comes to temptation for you and for me, what are we supposed to do with it? We're supposed to ignore it, go along with it, forget about it when we fail, act like we didn't fail. Well, that actually wasn't a failure. No, none of that. What are you to do when you sin? What are you to do when you fail? When you say what you ought not say, when you do what you ought not do. When you knew it was coming and you did it anyway. Peter knew it was coming. Didn't know the particulars until Jesus told him, Lord, I'm going to go to prison and death with you. And Jesus says, before the rooster crows today, you're going to deny me three times. And it was only a matter of hours. He knew what was coming.

And he knew what Jesus told him he was going to do. He didn't say, well, if you're going to sin, if you're going to fail in some way, he says, you're going to deny me, you're going to do it three times, and you're going to do it before the sun comes up. You ought to think here of the contrast between Peter and Judas. Both of them betrayed the Lord. Judas, for money, betrays Jesus' location. And you get the impression that Jesus was hiding, that he's retired away where, They don't know where he's at because that's the information Judas gives them. I'll take you to him. I know where he stays at night. This is information that they didn't have previously. And then you have some sort of remorse from Judas, right? He tries to give the money back. Overcome with grief, he kills himself. Peter denies Jesus three times, leaves the city and goes out and weeps bitterly. And it's the sort of weeping that's inconsolable. Have you ever been inconsolable?

No matter what people say, there's nothing that can be said, there's nothing that can be done. Something terrible has happened. That's the sentiment of Peter's weeping bitterly. But Jesus says to him, I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And after you've turned again, strengthen your brothers. And what does Peter do? Does he believe that he's unworthy now to do the work? Could you imagine having to stand up at Pentecost, having done what he did? He literally says to his hearers, You crucified him, and he was in the court when they were trying Jesus, and he did nothing. Now, which one of you wouldn't have felt some responsibility for Jesus' death? There you stood in the court afraid of a servant girl, and Jesus is being killed because of it. In what way can you describe Peter standing up and preaching at Pentecost other than that he repented of this sin fully and made it his aim in life?

to serve Jesus and to do what he said. Jesus told him, strengthen your brothers. And so that's what he did. And he stood up and told the truth as a sinner. And so what are we to learn from this? Well, there's a couple of things. One, your temptations come from Satan. They're not benign and they're aimed at destroying you. And you can die by getting your head cut off or you can die by a million cuts, but Satan's aim is to destroy you. And so every temptation you face is aimed at your destruction. So deal with it. Process it. Resist it with that knowledge. Second, you're going to fail at that. What else can I say to you except you're going to fail at it? Peter failed at it. You failed at it numerous times, countless times in your life, and you'll fail at it again. So is there any hope? Once you have turned, turn away from it. Put it behind you. You say, I've done it too many times. I can't. Show me in the scripture where you found that.

I mean, seriously, where did you come up with this idea that you've sinned so much that God is unwilling to restore you? This is yet another lie of Satan. Repent. Don't lie about the character of God to sustain your sin. All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. So don't lie to yourself and to other people saying that you're too bad. If you refuse to repent, you've judged yourself, you've chosen your end. because you've refused the blood of Jesus. But if you hate your sin, and if you don't want to live in it anymore, then I say to you, repent. You say, well, I've tried before. And I say, well, so long as you sin, the path forward until you die is repentance by faith in Jesus. That's your work. That's your place. That's what you have to do. And know that that work is not in vain. That repentance is not some sort of just thing you do, but it actually is the work of restoring right relationship between you and God.

And it will strengthen you to obey him further. Peter's work specifically here was to go and to strengthen his brothers. Each one of you has work, has a calling from God that you're to fulfill. You can imagine the humility that Peter learned from all of this. And then we have record later in scripture of him making a mess of it again in Galatians. In Galatians, Paul writes to these Galatians, to these Gentiles, and there's a big conflict. About how they're saved. And the Judaizers are saying they have to become Jews to become Christians. Namely, they have to obey the law. They have to be circumcised. And Paul's opposed to that, to say the least. Galatians is one of the most intense books you'll read in the New Testament. And he does it for the sake of the souls of these Gentiles. That the gospel not be lost on them. So then, at some point, Peter's with them. And they're eating a meal. And everyone's eating and it's fine. Until the Judaizers show up.

And then Peter distances himself from the Gentiles. No, not you guys. I'm with them. And Paul confronts him to his face in public and shows to everybody that what he's doing is wrong and that he was doing it because he was afraid of them. And so I don't want you to get in your mind that repentance means you won't fail again. You will. And you have to guard your heart not to say, well, what's the point then? Because that's a short-sighted question. The point is your growth and holiness. The point is you becoming more like Jesus. And that's hard work, and that's long work, and that's good work. And it will be completed. And there will come a time when you won't have those struggles anymore. But if you quit beforehand, you sacrifice all of the blessing and all of the benefit that comes to those who persevere. And so, so long as you sin, you must repent. And you need to repent with knowledge, not ignorance. You will sin again.

Repentance does not mean you will not be tempted and that you will not fail again. And it doesn't make it okay. Our place as Christians is to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, trusting that God is at work in us to bring about his will and to change us. And so repentance is not pointless. Think of it this way. What happens if you don't repent? Does everything just stay the same? No, things get worse, don't they? You go further into sin. And the same is true of repentance. When you're falling into sin and you say no, and you turn away, it's helpful. And it strengthens you so that the next time you need to say no, you're a little stronger to say no. You're a little quicker to say no. You're a little more resolute when you say no. You say, well, I just don't want any of that. I just don't want to face all this. And I say, you don't get to decide that. You simply don't.

I started out by saying, you know about temptation, how you think about it? Some of us just don't, well, I wish I wasn't ever tempted. And I say, well, we don't get to decide that in this world. God in his wisdom and for his glory and our good has allowed and ordained us to be sinners and to be tempted by sin and to glorify him through faith and repentance in his son. That's his way that he's laid out for us. And so it's our place to walk down that path. And so when I read this passage, this is the last thing I'll say. When I read this passage and I see Peter's failure, I want to just be discouraged and just, yeah, I get that. But this is not the end of Peter's life. He is told in the midst of his failures what he's to do when he repents. And it is encouraging to me to see him do it, to see the fruit of his repentance, to see God use him. It gives me hope that I can be useful to God.

as a sinner. And I want you to have the same hope that you can be useful to God as a sinner, as you repent of your sin. If you love your sin and you stay in it, nothing but misery for you. But if you're a sinner and you repent of your sin and you turn away from it by faith, you are useful to God and he will use you. You're not obsolete. You're not some sort of thing that he made and it's like, well, there he is. I guess he's useless. God delights in all of his creation. And every one of us has work to do given to us by our God. And he's given us the ability to do it through the death of his son. And so we're to be about that work by faith. And when we fail and when we fall off the path through sin, we're to get back up and we're to repent. And we're to get back to the work that God's given us to do.