Meditation

Reader,

Easter week is the most grueling yet ultimately the most triumphant time in the Christian calendar. The passages we will copy this week reflect that truth.

Ahead of you are the most momentous events of the week, with four passages taken from Matthew's Gospel and four from Luke's.

This week begins today and tomorrow with Peter's denial and ends with the tomb sealed, guarded, and ultimately defeated on Saturday and Sunday.

Matthew's gospel bookends four days we'll spend midweek copying out Luke's recounting of the crucifixion.

Copying these passages out is challenging physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This is the hardest week in Bible Copy Club. But the value of slowing down to copy out these verses is that they land harder and burrow deeper.

You can't look away when you are copying them down, ultimately bringing you closer to the action and to the truth of what Jesus has done for us.

One note about today's passage: the last sentence: "And all the other disciples said the same." It's almost a throwaway line, but it points to a truth that we would all have said...and then done the same.

Today's text is Matthew 26:31-35.

I have included tomorrow's passage for context below in gray.

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial

31 Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:

“‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’

32 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

33 Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.”

34 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

35 But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same.

Peter Disowns Jesus

69 Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.

70 But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

71 Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.”

72 He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”

73 After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.”

74 Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!” Immediately, a rooster crowed.

75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Encouragement

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

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7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-7

Andy

God's Word In Your Hand