If you can turn your Bibles with me to Matthew 16, 21-36. Matthew 16, 21-36. We're going to take a break from the book of Romans for this week. We want to take some time to highlight what's going on in this text. In Matthew 20, 16, 21-26. Reading out of the ESV.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for your goodness. We ask you especially, Lord God, as we celebrate Mother's Day, that you would help us, Lord God, to remember your goodness through them. We ask for your continued grace. We ask for your word to come and speak to us.

Help us, Lord God, to fix our mind and our heart where it belongs, to you and to you alone. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Can you do me a favor? You guys handing the light? Turn this light on. I think this light's forgotten. Okay, there you go. All right.

All right. As I said, I'm going to be taking a break from the Book of Romans. My intention this morning is not to talk about and worship our mothers. It is Mother's Day, but it is a service that we're here to honor and glorify God. So we want the word of God to be spoken and Christ to be highlighted.

But at the same time, we want to address certain issues. And I think motherhood especially is one of those things that I think is extremely important for us to take time to consider the grace that God has given us through the various people that God has given us, but in particular with mothers, as we celebrate Mother's Day.

I was thankful that early on when we started having our kids, our first kid, we weren't in a financial situation where Esther could stay home. And obviously I wasn't making enough money, and so at least for the time being, we made a decision that I would stay home with Jeremy.

And I forget how long it was. I don't think it was more than a year, but it felt like a couple decades. At least that's how it felt. And it was a -- I think I'm very thankful for that period because it gave me a glimpse of what it's like to be home as a mother because on the surface it looks like, well, you're taking care of the kids and you don't have to go and work hard, or at least on the surface some people may think like that.

But I would honestly say that the whole time I was there with taking care of the baby or a baby/toddler at that time that I was daydreaming about getting a regular job. Because at a regular job, if you're tired, you just don't work as hard. You know what I mean?

You go to your desk and then you just kind of take your time. You take a bathroom break, 15, 20 minutes. So you have some time. You can kind of spread yourself out. But when you have a child at home, there's no such thing as a break. The only break you get is when they're sleeping, and if they're not sleeping, there's no break.

You can't even go to the bathroom. You have to take them with you. So there is no break. And I remember that during that period it was just so exhausting. And I took plenty of naps when I shouldn't have while he wasn't taking a nap. I just kind of cornered him in with the sofa so that he couldn't break out.

Because there are some nights when they would just not sleep all day. They were sick or something. And then all night you didn't sleep. And then Esther had to go to work because she had to go to work. We didn't have any insurance, and she had to pay the bills.

And so I had to do my part. But I remember so many times just cornering him with the sofa and then just falling asleep in the sofa and then waking up looking for him. And then he would roll to the other side of the room and say, "Oh, that's where he is." So many times--I've never shared this with Esther.

At least not at that time because I didn't want her to be worried about what was happening at home. And I shared with her before, like 3, 3:30, 4 o'clock, about time for her to come home, I would be literally waiting for the doorknob to turn. And then as soon as she would come in, I would take him, and then I would walk into the room and just--I just need to be alone for a little bit.

I'm thankful for that because it gave me a glimpse of how hard it is to take care of a child because you are attached to them 24/7. There is no break. Even when you're not with them, you're with them mentally because you're worried about them. Even when you get babysitting and you go out to enjoy yourself, supposedly, but the whole time all you're thinking about is the kids.

So there's no real break. I hear a lot of people saying things like, "We're not ready to become a mother or a father." You're never ready. How are you ever going to prepare to literally give your life to somebody else? So God gives you the grace that you need at the moment.

And so moment by moment, you feel like you can't handle it, but God gives you the grace to be able to do that, and then eventually God uses that to raise up children. And so I'm very thankful that I was able to experience that even for a short period of time because obviously half of our congregation are females, and to be able to better understand just how difficult it is to raise children.

And one of these days that you, some of you guys, you know, like you're going to have kids of your own, and I don't think you really appreciate your mothers until you've been a mother yourself, at least for a period, and then you're like, "Oh, somebody did that for me." And among all the common graces that every human being experiences, I think one of the greatest, if not the greatest common grace, is the mothers that God places in our lives.

And so I think it's important for us, again, not simply to celebrate motherhood, but to be able to recognize the people who poured into our lives because if we are not able to recognize them, how do we recognize the Heavenly Father up in heaven that we cannot see if we did not honor those who we can see?

Now again, as I told you, the purpose of this morning is not to highlight and say, "Here's Mom, let's worship her today." But in the context of that, I want to talk about how if we're not careful, if there's anything that we want to get right, we want to get right in raising our children.

And oftentimes we do things and we don't do it right, and we'll say to ourselves, "You know, we made an attempt." The worst thing that you can do in life is not to do something, but even when we fail, we gain because we learn, and we grow, and we're sanctified.

You can apply that to almost everything in life, but when it comes to your children, you don't apply that. You don't say, "Well, you know, I failed when he was one, but thank God we have when he's two." "I failed when they were young, but when they get older." But you only get that period once during their life, and we want to make sure that we get that right.

There are two people in the Scriptures that at the end of Jesus' ministry, where we can say they utterly failed. One is Judas. Both of them, Jesus mentions about satanic influence, where one was actually, Satan actually entered into Judas, and with Peter, Satan actually had influence on him and was able to use him to say certain things to Jesus.

We know why that happened to Judas, because in John 12, 5-6, it states that Judas was a thief. On the surface, he made it sound like he was interested in the poor and why you're doing this, but behind the scenes, he was actually taking money from the money bag.

He wasn't having integrity. So we can see why Judas was open to satanic influence. But with Peter, it's not that clear. Peter was a man who was very loyal to Jesus, and yet, Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan." He was being influenced by him. In Luke 22, verse 31, Jesus predicts that Peter is going to fall.

He's going to deny him three times. And this is what Jesus says. He says, "Satan has asked permission to sift you like wheat, but I pray that your faith would not fail you." Now, what does it mean to be sifted like wheat? You have to understand, again, we're not farmers, so we don't understand that illustration or the imagery that Jesus is giving.

To sift something like wheat is kind of like the farmers at that time. In order to separate the wheat and the chaff, what they would do is they would take a pitchfork and just throw it up in the air and let the wind separate the lighter chaff, and then the heavier wheat would fall to the ground.

That's how they would separate what they wanted from the stuff that they wanted to throw away. Some of you guys who've been to India, the way they do that is they would just spread it onto the ground where the cars are coming. Cars would run over the harvest, and then by the force of the car going over it, they would separate the wheat and the chaff that way.

Now, the reason why they do that and the imagery that Jesus is giving is to separate what's valuable with things that we're going to throw away. So what Satan was asking was permission to test Peter, just like Satan asked permission to test Job. He said, "The only reason why Job is faithful to you is because you put a hedge of protection around him.

Take that away. Let me at him, and we'll see what's real. We'll see how much of his righteousness really remains. Give me a chance to prove to you that this is not your man." And so Job's whole story begins with Satan asking for permission to sift him like wheat, and the whole story of the book of Job is him being tested, and at the end, what really remains.

So that's what Jesus was saying. Satan has asked permission to test you, to test Peter to see how much of his loyalty, how much of his love, how much of his faith was real. "Let me at him. Take away the hedge of protection, and see what remains." So what I want to do this morning is take a closer examination of Peter.

What made him so vulnerable? And through the testing at the end, what was revealed about his faith that he was so vulnerable that Satan was able to have influence on him? Considering how close he was to Jesus, considering all the confessions that he made, considering everything that he already knew about him, why was Satan able to have this kind of intimate access to this man?

So the first thing that we want to look at, number one, Peter's perspective was temporal, not eternal. Peter's perspective was temporal and not eternal. Jesus himself says that in Matthew 16, 23. "But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.'" So Jesus explains.

This is the reason why, Peter, you are being influenced by Satan. Why Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Because you do not have the things of God in mind, but the things of man. The word for hindrance here is "skandalon," and the word literally means "to make a trap." So in other words, what Jesus was saying was, "Peter, you may be saying these things thinking that you're helping me, but you are being influenced by Satan to put me in a trap." That's what Jesus was saying.

In Proverbs 3, 5-6, it says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your path." The reason why he tells us this is because our natural inclination is to survive. And our natural inclination is to make sure that our physical bodies, our physical life in this world is a better place for us to live.

That's our natural inclination because that's how we are raised. This is the world that we were born in. It is the flesh that we live in. It is the flesh that we are most concerned about. But Jesus says, "Your perspective is wrong." And the reason why you do not have the things of God is because you're thinking about the things of man.

See, in Romans 12, verse 2, the reason why Jesus says, "In view of this mercy, to present your body is a living sacrifice, to give it all to God, and not to conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind," because our natural mind doesn't think about the things of God.

Our natural mind is concerned about this world. It's concerned about where we fit in. It's concerned about our investments and the things that we've done, things that we're going to do. If we work hard, what are we going to get tomorrow? And that's our natural inclination, and that's exactly what Jesus was pointing out with Peter.

"Peter, you're concerned about this world." Jesus is concerned about the next. And because of that perspective, they could not understand what Jesus was saying, even though he made it very plain. In Matthew 16, 24, right after he says to Peter, in that passage, "Get behind me, Satan, because you don't have the things of God but of man," he follows that up in verse 24.

It says, "And Jesus told his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?

Or what shall a man give in return for his life?'" Did you know that that passage was in the context of rebuking Peter? That unless you forfeit your life, for Christ's sake, you will lose it. It's in the context of rebuking Peter for not having the things of God in mind, but the things of man.

He wasn't simply talking to a generic multitude. He was talking to Peter, who was telling him, "You can't go to the cross. You can't be doing this because it didn't make sense to Peter." And so he's telling Peter, looking right through the surface, that your value is based upon what you think you're going to gain from following me.

It wasn't just Peter. None of the disciples understood this. Because their whole paradigm was about this physical kingdom. In Mark 8.31-32, "And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And he said this plainly." Mark goes out of his way to make sure that we understand that it wasn't because Jesus was speaking in parables or he wasn't making it clear. He was absolutely crystal clear. He made it very plain. In fact, if you were to study through the Gospels, at the end of the Gospels when Jesus is going to the cross, it's almost difficult to understand.

How did the disciples not know that this was what Jesus was going to do? Because he kept on saying it over and over. "I'm going to Jerusalem to be killed, to be crucified, and to be raised." We know that they heard him, but they didn't understand him. So he said he was going to rise, but remember after three days?

Nobody went. The only people that went were the women, who were there to anoint his body and take care of his dead corpse. And they were shocked that he was raised. But if you look at the accounts that Jesus gave, he made it very crystal clear he was going to die and he was going to be raised on the third day.

It wasn't until after he was raised, lights started going off. It's like, "Ah, he did tell us this." But why did they miss it? They completely missed it because they had the things of man in mind and not things of God. When they were thinking to themselves about what Jesus was saying, it didn't fit their paradigm.

Now we could look at that and say, "Well, how could they have missed it?" Our churches are filled with people who come to church every single Sunday and working so hard to make this kingdom a better place. Is it because the scripture is not clear? Is it because there's any kind of ambiguity in the Bible about what he says about the eternal kingdom?

That all of this that we see, that we value so much, the comfort and safety that we want so much, even for our kids, all of it is under the judgment of God, yet it comes through one ear and completely out the other. We can talk about it in Bible study in small group, and yet all of our lives, our projection of life, has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

It's because we have the things of man in mind and not the things of God. That's why Peter, even though God made it very clear, at the end it didn't make any sense to him. In Romans 8, 5-8 it says, "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit." To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

"For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot, those who are in the flesh cannot please God." If our whole projection in life is to have a comfortable life, for us, and then the temptation gets really great when we have kids.

I've never had, I won't say never, but I felt like when I decided to go into full-time ministry, when I met the Lord, the world to me, at least I felt like it died. And all of that began to resurface when I had kids. I'm not into cars, I don't care whether I live in a big house or not, or able to travel, but when I had kids, I wanted it for them.

I wanted it for them. And it started to test all of the things that I thought was given to the Lord, it started all coming back. It's one thing for me to suffer and sacrifice, it's another thing for my wife to go through that, but it's another whole thing to see it being done with my children.

And I had to wrestle with that, even to this day. And I've shared with you the passage that I memorized more than any other passage before I had kids, was "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live." That's a passage that I meditate and think about often.

But the passage that I struggle with the most in application is Matthew 6.33, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you." And the reason why I memorize that and meditate on that constantly is because of that temptation to have man's perspective, to live my life like the rest of the world, to have Jesus and the world too.

And we can completely miss, and if you take it further, you end up not wanting to hear it. And that's why the scripture says at the end times, people are not going to persevere with sound doctrine. Because it goes against what God wants. So if we're projecting our life to make this kingdom a better place for us and our children, and God is leading us to the cross, at some point that's going to intersect and contradict, and the only way to be able to deal with that is to nullify the preacher, or nullify the theology.

I shared with you that years ago when we were out in China, I met an underground church leader, and he shared about how much of the health and wealth gospel was penetrating into the church, and he told me that he was part of that, and when I heard that, we decided to spend some time together, and literally spent no more than an hour, it probably wasn't even a full hour.

And I decided to sit with him and go through the passage after passage, how the health and wealth gospel just does not fit the gospel that we know. It doesn't fit the life, it doesn't fit Jesus' life, his teaching, the apostles, nothing written in scripture supports what they're saying.

So after about an hour of discussion, I asked him, "What do you think?" And he honestly said, "Well, I can't refute what he's saying, because clearly you've shown me in scripture that that's what it says." And yet, he said the underground church in China said, "This teaching won't be popular." Now what was confusing to me was, he was a very smart guy.

He was, I mean, I would say out of all the people that I met in China, who was raised in China, his English was probably the best. He sounded like a guy who came maybe to the United States, immigrated when he was a young child, and that's how great his English was.

His vocabulary was far better than mine. And he was an editor for Xinhua newspaper, the English version, and so he was a very educated guy. Very well studied, very smart, went to the top universities, and yet all it took was one hour or less of sifting through scripture for him to come to the conclusion that everything that he was learning and teaching was wrong.

Now why was something so clearly taught in scripture so easily rejected, and so few people are able to filter that out? And he was just honest with me, and he said, "It's because they want it." It fits what they want. In fact, so many Christians, so many people are confessing faith in Christianity because they see America as a rich country, and Americans are Christians.

So if you become Christian, you're going to become rich. Even though it contradicts everything we know in scripture, and yet so many people, so many people claim to be followers of Jesus Christ and yet so many of us are adhering to that gospel, which isn't a gospel at all.

Why is it so popular? Because it fits what they want. How much of our understanding of Christianity is what we want, and not what is? How much of what we are hearing and learning from the Word of God has to do with the truth of the Bible rather than the life that I was set before me, and we kind of hear some certain things and then not hear certain things?

That's exactly what's happened to Paul. In Colossians 3, 2-4, it says, "Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." When it comes to our children, the temptation and the testing is great.

Nothing will expose the idols in our hearts than when we have children. I remember years ago in 1991, I was choosing between coming to Irvine and L.A. For me, it was an obvious choice to go to L.A. than Irvine, because Irvine at that time was the boonies. It still was pretty developed, but it wasn't as developed as it is now.

I visited Irvine in 1986 or '85 to visit a friend who was at UCI, and I remember getting off the 405 on Jamboree, and it was literally farmland. Right now, you have high-rises, condos, and all these new buildings, but at that time in 1986, you literally drove through orange groves and farmland and smelled cows to get to UC Irvine.

I was thinking, "Who goes to this school?" That's what I was thinking at that time, because it was in the boonies. Now, it's one of the top universities. When an opportunity opened up, I had a friend of mine who was asking me to come to Irvine to work with him.

He was asking me to come, but L.A. is where I feel comfortable, because that's where my friends were, and that's where I got saved, so I was leaning toward L.A. Then I went and talked to the youth pastor that I was going to replace. He was trying to recruit me to take his place, and the lunch that I had, he started sharing.

He started opening up with me why he was leaving. This is what he told me. He said he was frustrated with the parents. He said when the kids started to really grow in their faith and really start giving their lives, the parents started to get upset. The parents wanted to drop them off so that they would be good kids and not join gangs, because this is in L.A., but as soon as they got beyond that surface and really wanted to dedicate their lives and talk about possibly going to missions or ministry, the parents turned on them.

He said he was so frustrated with the parents, one day he had a PTA meeting, and he told them, "Stop dropping your kids off on Friday night. I'm not their babysitter." He said he rebooked the parents, and then he wanted me to come and replace him. I wasn't sure if he was quitting or he was being let go, but he asked me to come, because he was so frustrated with the parents, "I'm leaving, so would you come and take my place?" Obviously, the answer was, "I don't think so." That's what propelled me to come to Irvine.

I didn't know nothing about Irvine, but I came to Irvine, and then I've stayed ever since, in 1991. Nothing exposes our idolatry than with our children. We can be godly people in every other aspect of our lives, and if we're not careful, we can be raising nominal children, Pharisees in the church, where Jesus is on Avenue to get what you want.

We make the sacrifices. We do everything for our children. They're memorizing scripture, Sunday school, VBS, and doing all these godly things, but at the core of our pursuit is the world through Jesus Christ. Peter was completely blind, because he had the things of man in mind and not the things of God.

That was the first reason why he was vulnerable. The second reason is because of Peter's confidence in his own flesh. Remember, Peter says in Matthew 26, "They will all fail, but I will not." He had utter confidence in his own flesh. This is what made him vulnerable. Peter may have been the oldest of the group.

Think about the arrogance of Peter, pulling Jesus aside and rebuking him. Some commentators believe that Peter may have been older than Jesus, and maybe that's where his confidence came from. Peter was a fisherman who worked with his hands, and he was a successful fisherman. If you remember the story of the paralytic, and they're in a home, and Jesus is teaching, and somebody breaks the house, and they lower him down.

It was obviously a big enough home where they can have a meeting like that with a bunch of people. The commentators believe that that was probably Peter's home. It was Peter's hometown. So the fact that he even owned a house that was that big of a size, pointed to the fact that he was probably a very successful businessman, and he also owned his own boat.

An average fisherman at that time was a hired hand. So the fact that he owned his own boat meant that he was at minimum middle class, possibly upper middle class. He wasn't part of the aristocrats, but he was a very wealthy man. So when they were asking Jesus, Peter, John, James, and Andrew, "What benefit do we have that we've given up all that we have to follow you?" They did give up quite a bit.

It wasn't like they were in poverty, and these were people begging for alms outside of the temple. These are guys who were making a good living. And that's why, remember, after Jesus is resurrected, where do they go? They go right back, because they had a pretty decent life. They went right back, but they forsook all of that stuff to follow Jesus.

So Peter was not a man who was just desperate when he met Christ. He just calculated that following Christ would be beneficial than not following Him. He was a man of courage. He was fiercely loyal. Strong leadership, and even other disciples probably looked up to him. That's why he's always mentioned as a first name among the twelve disciples, because he was a leader among them.

So here's a strong man who's successful in his career, who has a character, and maybe even age, to garner attention and respect of other people, and it was that in and of itself that made him the most vulnerable. It is the areas in our life where we think we know is when we are the most vulnerable.

He says, "Even if everybody falls, I will not fall." Luke chapter 22, 29. Or 33, Peter said to Him, "Lord, I am ready to go with You both to prison and to death." You know what scene that kind of shows me Peter's character? Is when Jesus is walking on the water during the middle of the storm, and everybody's freaking out, like, "Who is this?" And Jesus says, "It is I." And Peter's first response isn't, "What are you doing out there?

Why are you walking on the water? Get in here." He doesn't say any of that. He said, "If that's you, let me come out to you." He's a man of action. He's not a guy who sits there and contemplates, and he's like, "If this is the right thing to do, I'm going to do it," and he goes out.

And that kind of shows me his personality, his character. He convicts, and he acts. I mean, he gets into a lot of trouble because of that. He doesn't think through what he's doing, but he's a man of response. He does things. So he had supreme confidence because in every other areas of his life, he probably was successful.

Strong-willed man who garnered respect from his peers. But it's in the areas where we think we are successful, where we are talented, we are gifted, where we are the most vulnerable. Jesus said in Romans 12.3, "By the grace given to me," 12.3, he says, "I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." He says, "Think with sober judgment." The reason why he says that is because when we're not sober, we begin to see things through our lens of whatever we think we are good at, and that's the area that we stumble the most.

There's a reason why. Here's a man, Apostle Paul, who's gifted, educated, powerful in his testimony. Jesus deliberately makes him weak by putting a thorn on his side and caused him to beg before God to take it away, and he says, "No, because my grace is sufficient for you." And the lesson that he learns is when I am weak, he is strong.

He deliberately makes us weak. He deliberately humbles us. He deliberately puts us in places where we don't know what to do so that we can depend on him. When it comes to our kids, we have so many books. There are so many things that we think. Everybody has their opinion about what we ought to do, what we shouldn't do.

If you do this, your kids are going to read better, they're going to behave better, and we control all of these things, and the successes that we have, not realizing, and the longer you spend time raising your kids, the more you'll realize how little control you ultimately have, because they're human beings.

And it causes us to be desperate. There's a reason why the Scripture says in Joshua 1.8, as they are going into the greatest battle that Israel has ever encountered, and the consequence, they could have completely been squashed, humanly speaking. If this war didn't go well, the whole deliverance from Egypt, the whole wandering in the desert for 40 years, all the tabernacles and the sacrifice, all of this could have been squashed with one battle.

Humanly speaking, they had no chance. And the only instruction God gives to the nation of Israel, Joshua 1.8, "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." In other words, humble yourself.

Listen carefully to what the Word of God has to say. And don't turn from it to the left or to the right. It is often in the areas where we are the most successful, where we are the most vulnerable. Peter was deceived because of his own confidence. And that's what Satan was given permission to test.

Throw Peter up in the air and see what falls to the ground. And the only thing that will touch the ground is your dependence on God. And that's exactly what happened. Satan threw him up in the air, and all the self-confidence, all the determination that he had, it was all blown away.

And he was left desperate failure. And the only thing that remained with him is the grace of God, where he was weeping before him. "I wasn't who I thought I was. I wasn't as strong as I thought I was." And that's why Jesus says, "Your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak." And the greatest part of our sanctification is coming to a greater recognition of our weakness.

So we come to the same point of Peter weeping before God, that we are desperate. And we are desperate as parents. You don't have it figured out. And until you and I come to that point that we don't have it figured out, we pray superficially. We cling to him superficially.

Because we are not desperate. We kind of figured all things out, and then we want Jesus to come and make it a little bit better. It's almost kind of like we built the house, but we want security in what we built. So we sprinkle Jesus over it. And that's the way our sanctification, that's the way our Christian life oftentimes looks like.

We built it. We planned it. We worked hard. We built it. And Jesus, can you protect this? And that's why so much of our prayer is about protection. Protect our children. Protect what we built. Protect our job. Protect our health. Because we worked hard for this. It is in our own confidence where we are the most vulnerable.

And third and finally, Peter's weakness was his love for Jesus. Now we can look at that and say, "That sounds foolish." Because the Bible says the love of Christ compels us. He says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So how can his love be his weakness?

I think Peter really did love Jesus. Even though he didn't have the clear mind, even though his worldly perspective caused him to hear certain things and weed out other things, when he said to Jesus, "This will never happen to you. How can this happen to you?" I think Peter meant it because he loved Jesus.

He was going to the cross. I mean, this is a man that he followed. I mean, I don't know about you, but if you've ever experienced any kind of activity, even for a very short period of time with a small group of people, you learn to love them. And I think the best reference that I can think of is when you go to short-term missions, you spend some time with those people.

And that short period where you sacrifice, you live together, you find out things about each other. And that's why I really enjoy going out to short-term missions with the smaller group because I get to, even though I've been at church for five or six years, sometimes that one trip out to China or India or wherever, or to Japan this year, it kind of solidifies.

Oh, I learned things about you that I didn't before. And you come out as a team. It's not because there was strong team-building exercises. It's just we were just committed to the same thing, spent a lot of time together. These disciples spent two-plus years, almost three years. They risked their lives.

They were in the storm, concerned about their survival. They were in the midst of people wanting to kill Jesus and walking through clouds. They fed the hungry. They raised dead people. And they were in the midst of all of this for two and a half, so for several years they walked together.

And so they genuinely loved Jesus. And so when Peter heard Jesus saying that he was going to the cross, that makes no sense. Why would you go to the cross? I'm not going to let this happen. The problem was not simply that he loved Jesus, but he loved Jesus with a worldly perspective.

He loved Jesus in his own flesh. And that's what ultimately blinded him. You know, raising our children, I mean, you don't have to ask a parent to love your children. I mean, God gives us that ability to be able to do that. And everything we do is because we love them.

We want what's best for them. And oftentimes it is the love for our children that blinds us to think that we're doing what's best for them. But it's from a worldly perspective. It's with our own self-confidence. And if we're not careful in that perspective, that we can protect them ultimately from God himself.

We think we're protecting them from the world. We think we're protecting them from poverty. We think we're protecting them from harm. But if we're not careful, ultimately we can protect them from God. Because God's primary goal is to bring our souls to himself. And he said, "If you do not pick up the cross," and oftentimes we'll pick up the cross for our children.

We'll pick up the cross because we don't want them to experience pain. We don't want them to be an outsider. So we do everything in our power to protect them. But in the midst of all of this protection, we weed out God. We've taken out the rough edges. And we've made Jesus into Santa Claus.

Yes, he loves us. Yes, he forgives us. Yes, he guides us. He answers our prayers. Think about what must have been going through Peter's mind. Right before Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan," Peter's the one who confessed. He was the one who confessed. Who do men say that I am?

Some say you're Elijah. Some say you're the prophet. Who do you say I am? He says, "You are the son of God. You're God." And he says, "Upon this confession, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." I mean, if there was any time when he had a spiritual high, it must have been at that time.

He made the right confession. And he said, "I'm going to build my church upon this, Peter." And then the very next passage, Peter says, "You can't go to the cross. That makes absolutely no sense." And then Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Can you imagine what Peter must have been thinking?

He probably was thinking, "I don't want you to go to the cross, Jesus." And at the minimum, you would think that Jesus would say, "Peter, you're pretty successful. You're older than me. Maybe you've experienced a little bit more like... I'll give it some thought." Or at least say, "Your intentions are good, you know, and I really appreciate your love.

Now, you're willing to sacrifice. You really want to put your body out there, and you're willing to die for me. I appreciate you." You would think at the minimum he would say that, but Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Can you imagine what Peter was thinking? Probably dumbfounded. "What?

I love you, Jesus. Why would you call me Satan?" Because what Peter was saying was influenced by Satan himself because he was vulnerable because of his love. Every single one of us, every single parent, and every single child, we're all vulnerable because of our love. Love for our parents, love for our children, love for our brothers, love for our sisters.

When we love them from a worldly perspective, we become vulnerable to Satan's attack. In fact, that's the area where we are the weakest. And it's not that Jesus or God is telling us to forsake everything to bring hardship. He's consistent because the only way to true life is Christ.

And it doesn't make any sense that we are so concerned about the speck of eternity that we live in here, that we do everything in our power to protect them so that they can have a good life during that speck of life that we have here, and to forfeit the eternity that comes after that.

And what God is trying to save us from is that. Is that kind of worldly mindset that has been tainted by sin, that though we confess to believe in eternity, that every decision we make for ourselves and our children contradict the very plain teaching of Scripture, that this world is passing away.

One day, 100% of the people here will no longer be here. And the only thing that will remain are the things that we've invested in eternity, and that includes our children. So the very thing that we think are doing what is best can actually be doing Satan's work if we're not careful.

Matthew 10, 34-39, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth." Think about that carefully. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth." How much of our paradigm is influenced by trying to bring peace to our lives, to our children?

"I did not come to bring peace. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a person's enemies will be of those in his own household." Some of you are probably experiencing that right now because you are following Christ.

It has devised your home because you're taking your faith seriously. Your parents, your siblings, your friends. It caused enmity. And he says, "That's exactly why I came." And then he says in verse 37, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." I pray that this Mother's Day, that we will be sober about the lives that God has given us.

That we are stewards. That our ultimate goal as parents is to bring them to Christ. Even if it is through the cross. To bring them to Christ. And at the end of our life, even the wildest dreams of being successful in this world come true. What does it profit if they do not have Christ?

Let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us. And as our worship team leads us, let's take some time to come before the Lord in prayer because the greatest thing that we can participate in is to connect God with our concerns. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with thanksgiving, with supplication, let your requests be made known to God so that the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.

So let's take some time to pray as our worship team leads us.