Scripture calls us to a measure of confidence. But what happens when that confidence is misplaced or misdirected? In the garden of Gethsemane, Peter’s self-assurance led him to foolishly attack one of the men who came to arrest Jesus—but later that night, he thrice denied even knowing his Lord and Master. In his sermon “A Question for Peter,” Alistair Begg helps us see the danger that can come on the heels of overconfidence:
We saw in our earlier study how Peter was prepared to wield the sword. In that darkened alleyway, if you like—in amongst those trees, in amongst those olive groves, under the covers of darkness—he’s a big, brave man with a sword, ready to confess that Jesus is his Lord and his Master. But now we find his retreat as he doesn’t find it in himself to declare such a brave confession of his allegiance to Jesus, not in the face of the amassed crowd with clubs and swords but with a servant girl at the entryway to the high priest’s court.
He’s impulsive. He’s impetuous by nature. And all of that is revealed in what follows. He loves Jesus, and so he follows him, but when push comes to shove, he was actually afraid to display his colors. He must have thought that he knew himself better than Jesus knew him. We do not know ourselves better than Jesus knows us. “You will deny me,” Jesus said. “But he said emphatically, ‘… I will not deny you’” (Mark 14:34–31). That’s Mark’s version: “He said emphatically, ‘… I will not deny you.’”
Surely a developed sense of self-assurance is a dangerous thing—an unrealistic sense of self-assurance. When we read the Gospels, we see its danger. Indeed, when we read the history of the Bible, we can see it. Uzziah was tremendously effective, a genius of a young man, able militarily, able architecturally. In every way, he was a whiz kid. But you remember how he ended. He wasn’t living in the palace at the end. He was living in a little cottage at the gate. He was leprous. He was separated from the entire company that he had presided over in the early part of his life (2 Chron. 26). What happened to him? The Chronicler tells us, “Uzziah was gloriously helped until he became strong. But when he became strong, he grew proud to his own destruction” (2 Chron. 26:15–16; paraphrased). And here we see the elements of this in Peter.
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