3.4.2013 HAVE I FALLEN TOO LOW!?

this morning another number of hours 'frozen' in the bed...not wanting to face another day. i was supposed to be finished working at the end of 2010 and use the rest of my life 24/7 for God. here i am 3.4.2013 still lying face down in the muck of an incorrigible 'old nature'...easily swayed away from doing DUTY, easily putting myself first, not wanting to face the horror of fixing up 54 and selling it. why?
1. i hate working on my own house...always have...don't know why, but i do.
2. as i try to pull away the junk i've accumulated from my flesh, the beat up old down-around-the-ears house seems, growingly more and more precious each day. it, rather than Jesus, evidently is my security.
3. i have so little faith in the One who has, in a number of amazing ways...especially since selling my properties in allentown, abundantly, at times miraculously, provided all i need and more.
why do i say this?
i fear that if i get rid of my possessions so the Lord would be able to move me wherever He desires,
that He will leave me high and dry and i will have nothing to 'save' me from...from what!
dying of hunger, or exposure to the elements, or people hostile to hearing the good news of Jesus...
i don't know, a frightened mind can conjure up totally ridiculous images.
and even if that would actually happened, especially the last, wouldn't that be cause for great joy,
because suffering on account of Jesus' name?
the last time i experienced anything like this was when i was pushed into my own business:
frozen in terror.
look what happened. all debt gone. money in the bank.
oh me of miserable, non-existent faith!

so what did the Lord do? what was His response to another royal slap in the face by my
ungrateful, unbelieving heart? He had me come to the place in luke where He relates to peter...
He spoke gently into my spirit, soothing, calming, giving another improbable dawn of hope...
out of the despair of my inexcusable sin by letting me see His love for peter and for the other 10 who were all thinking about their greatness rather than about Jesus' imminent suffering, abuse and death.

below is lenski's commentary on luke 22.31-4..

in verse 24 they had a strife over who was the greatest among them. Jesus' response?
-again teaching them (had done so a few days earlier mt. 20.25-8) what true greatness is...
being as the youngest among others, being as a servant to all the rest.
-then demonstrating this by washing all their feet before eating the passover meal
-then thankfully acknowledging that they 'have remained through with Me in My temptations' v28
-then saying to them, 'I appoint unto you a kingdom', as My Father has Me v29
-then encouraging them that they may eat and drink at his table in His kingdom v30
-then encouraging them further that they 'may sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of israel
the kind of grace i continually experience at His loving hand,
i give little, usually nothing...and He comes so graciously...ESPECIALLY
when i am enabled to admit explicitly and sorrowfully the latest heinous sin committed
against Him.

v31-2 simon, simon,
lo, satan did ask to have you (humas) to sift as the wheat,
but i Myself begged concerning thee lest thy faith eclipse.
and thou, once having turned, make thy brethren firm.

the doubling of the address expresses deep solicitude;
it is like the doubling in 'martha, martha,
'jerusalem, jerusalem',
and in david's heartbroken cry:
'o absalom, my son, my son!'
the emotion differs in each case but is deep in all of them.
whereas 'simon' was the name that was commonly used to designate him,
in the present instance it is the proper term, not 'peter, peter'.
which would apply to the rocklike nature of the apostle,
which was so lacking in him this night.
Jesus addresses only simon
although what he says applies to humas 'you',
to all the eleven.
we see why Jesus does this.
in the first place,
the others are present and hear that they are all involved;
in the second place, (peri su) 'concerning thee, follows
and shows that simon was involved in a special way
-we know that this was due to his denial of Jesus,
regarding which Jesus also warns him in v34 before them all.

'satan did ask to have you'..
draws back the curtain
and in a starling way reveals who was back of the ordeal
through which the eleven would pass this night.
the verb (ask)..intends to allude to Job 1,
satan's request to try out Job.
satan is not free to assail us at will
and with what power he pleases.
satan my try us out only by God's permission-
a might comfort for us all.
God is faithful in all our temptations
and ever makes a way of escape, I cor. 10.13.
the exposure which Jesus makes of satan's intent
is to aid simon and the eleven as all the warnings of Jesus do.
although they will be struck down by satan's assault,
their escape and recovery are already planned
and jesus is taking the first steps in that plan.

the infinitive with tou states the object of satan's asking;
'to sift (you) as the wheat'.
satan did not, of course, use this figure;
his request was made with the though that the disciples
would not be wheat but only strawy stuff that would remain
in the sieve to be burned.
this figure belongs to Jesus who uses it to illustrate
what the coming ordeal is to be for the disciples.
wheat must be sifted,
wheat cannot escape sifting.
it must be cleaned because of its value.

yet this simple simile of Jesus should not be made
an allegory with a number of points of comparison.
there is really only one tertium comparationis or point of comparison,
namely the violent and continuous shaking of the sieve
to cause all the sound, solid wheat to fall through
on the pile of wheat below
while all the shaking leaves
the strawy and chaffy stuff in the sieve.
so the disciples were with God's own permission
to be put through the severest trials
to see whether they, indeed, had faith or not.
when Jesus returned to this subject
on the way out to gethsemane,
he used another figure,
the smiting the shepherd and scattering the sheep,
which pictures the same painful experience. matt. 26.31

32. it was simon, impetuous and headstrong simon,
who would get into the greatest danger by his own fault.
that is why Jesus addresses him
and lets the others only hear.
and that is why Jesus begged in supplication for him personally
lest his faith totally eclipse (active, aorist-states fact, subjunctive-states possibility rather than reality),
utterly fail and go out.
if the question is asked as to why Jesus did not pray equally for the rest,
we see in john 17 that He sis pray for them,
but the story of peter's denial shows that
he was far worse than the others.
why did peter need the warning given in v34,
he and not the rest?
for the same reason that he needed
the personal and individual intercession
which the rest did not need equally with him.
the aorist 'I did beg'
implies that Jesus' supplication was not in vain.
it was God's will that simon, too, be sifted like the rest,
but it was not his will that simon should disobey Jesus' warning.
it was this sin of simon's
which caused the great Advocate to intercede for him.

but we should not get the idea that jesus' prayer
was heart by God in an absolute or arbitrary way.
God and Jesus used the means that proved effective in simon's case.
the warning about the cock's crowing
after the threefold denial was such a means.
a point is usually brought out by reference to judas.
would he not have repented as simon did
if Jesus had interceded for him in the same way?
the answer is that Jesus applied even stronger means,
mightier warnings to the traitor,
applied them all in vain.
and while He was applying these means
He certainly also prayed for judas,
and yet judas went to perdition (a state of final spiritual ruin).
the prayers and intercessions of Jesus
are not absolute.
man's wicked will is able to damn him nonetheless.
(note: wouldn't i be the trophy to God's grace if we all find judas in heaven with us.
typically judged condemned, he seems to me to have evidenced what looks like
repentence. the last director of Voice of the Martyrs, committed suicide when he
was about to be publicly accused of molesting a child (would it, in fact have been
true or false, i don't know...but whether true or false does that mean he was not
truly saved. there are many reasons of all different natures that human beings ra-
tionalize suicide. some may be sinful but as far as i understand, the only sin not
forgivable is the clear (public?) attributing to satan of what the Holy Spirit does.
did the director of Voice of the Martyrs do this? the following director supposed
that he may have wanted to protect Voice of the Martyrs from wanton slander
(attached to a lie?) judas may have
wanted to protect Jesus, may have been so anguished over what his predilection
for greed drove him to actually do!? or any other motive, sinful or no, of which
we know nothing. i think it would be the capstone of the beautiful Grace of God
for him to be there with all the rest of us undeserving, many times (secretly? openly?)
reprehensible sinners. maybe he never knew the Lord's grace...but i'm rooting for
judas too..)
the grace, the means, even the greatest,
and the intercessions can all be nullified in their effect.
Christ's omniscience knows the outcome in advance.

it is this foreknowledge which already now tells peter
that his faith will not perish utterly.
this telling is a part of the means for saving him.
so also is Jesus' order to him, that,
after he has once turned, he should make his brethren firm,
namely when they, too, passed through the sifting attacks of satan.
why did Jesus not give such a command to the other disciples?
the answer is not that of the romanists:
because peter was to be the first pope;
and not that of many others:
because he was the foremost of the apostles and their leader.
the answer is almost the opposite.
because he fell so deeply, fell as none of the rest fell,
therefore, when he recovered, he was the one who could help the others
by means of his own sad experience,
should make the wavering faith of the others firm again
so that it would not give way as his own faith
had given way almost completely.
his brethren are the other ten.
the fact that simon would aid his brethren in the wider sense
in a similar way throughout his ministry is only a deduction.
Jesus deals only with the ordeal of the apostles.
we see that He is thus preparing the means which He needs
and that will be most effective, special means
for simon's special case
and his recovery as an present command to peter,
which is based on his foreknowledge, is to help them all.

the participle epistrepsas is intransitive
and speaks of simon's having turned back from his fall
in repentance.
this is not conversion in the absolute sense as though
every spark of simon's faith had gone out.
but in the relative sense as when a disciple
turns back from a course that has almost destroyed
his faith.
'once' on having turned, Jesus says,
because He is not specifying when the turn will take place.
we cannot agree that this participle is transitive:
'once having turned thy brethren, make them firm'.
so little does the adverb 'once' support this sense
that it actually forbids it
since 'once' intends to leave unsaid just
when simon will turn and recover,
and that this turning of his alone will enable him
to do anything for his fellow apostles.
we catch a glimpse of simon's aid to them in 24.34
where the others are jubilant in reporting that Jesus had appeared to simon.

33. but he said to him, Lord,
together with Thee i am ready to
go into prison and into death!
but He said, I tell thee, peter,
a cock will not crow today
till thrice thou didst deny to know Me!

it is thus that simon answers the warning of his Lord.
how can satan harm simon when he is so strong,
so valiant?
why, if it should come to such a test,
even prison and even death
have no terrors for him.
he does not say:
'by Thy help" or 'by God's help'.
simon's reaction to Jesus' warning and intercessions for is
is that Jesus can count on him and need never worry about
 a man who is as brave as he is.
poor, proud simon!

34. over against peter's contradicting words
Jesus places His authoritative 'I tell thee!'
Jesus overrides peter's self confidence and trust
in his own powers.
straws are they in the hurricane
that is about to descend.
why did Jesus now change from 'simon' to 'peter'?
it is too weak an answer to say,
'in order to remind him that he was not
acting or speaking like peter, the Rock'.
he was trying to do that very thing,
and Jesus practically says to him:
'so thou art already peter-
thou, who this very night, before the cock crows,
wilt have already denied me no less than three times!'
peter will give his own words the lie.
he will be so frightened at prison and death
that he will openly deny once, twice, three times,
in fact, that he even knows Jesus.
the verb means 'to say no'
and thus 'to deny', and the aorist expresses the fact.

this crowing of a cock is not some casual crowing of an individual cock.
two crowings were distinguished, one occurring near midnight,
the other just before dawn.
they helped to divide the night into the midnight or silent period.
the period before dawn, and the period after dawn.
pliny calls the fourth watch secundum gallicinium.
mark 14.30, in the second warning to peter,
refers to both crowings:
'before  the cock crows twice,' ie. before the day dawns.
luke and john refer only to the crowing before dawn.
the phrase is not a mere expression of time
but refers to other actual crowings of the cocks that night.

the word is also spoken with a special purpose.
it does more than merely to foretell
how soon peter will fall,
it already prepares the help
to raise peter from his fall.
peter will actually hear the crowing when it begins;
that will bring Jesus word to his mind;
and this together with a look from Jesus' eyes  v61
will cause the tears of repentance to flow.
the effort to discredit the evangelists
 by advancing the contention that no chickens
were kept in a city like jerusalem
and that no cocks crowed within range of peter's ears,
has long ago been met by ample evidence to the contrary.