Atmosphere: A Sermon by Donald Gee, 1970

The following is a rare sermon by Donald Gee, that General in the Assemblies of God.

Atmosphere
DONALD GEE
Peter was beneath in the palace (Mark 14: 66)
SOME MONTHS AGO in England my personal morning reading in the Word of God happened to be the familiar story of Peter’s denial of Jesus. All that day I travelled to one of our large Holiday Camps. When the Supervisor met me at the station several hours later my natural question was: “How is the Camp progressing?” He answered with enthusiasm: “There is a splendid atmo-sphere.” I knew what he meant, and in some strange way that word “atmosphere” became at once linked in my mind with my morning reading of Peter’s denial.

It has been usual for us to explain Peter’s sad failure by the impulsiveness of his nature, and a corresponding streak of instability. I am sure there is much truth in all that. But we might well remind ourselves that “likewise also said they all.” Peter was not alone in his failure of loyalty to Christ. With that thought of “atmosphere” in our minds, I want to suggest that a large part of the explanation of Peter’s lapse may be found in the circumstances “without” the man, and not only in weaknesses of character “within.” Atmosphere literally is the air around us that we breathe, and by “atmosphere” my friend the Camp Supervisor meant the spiritual and social tone that happily was permeating the Camp and making it easy for God to work and bless the hundreds of happy holiday-makers, until one seemed to breathe something holy into one’s very soul. For Peter and the others on that tragic night of his denial there were spiritual, emotional and physical surroundings and circumstances that created an atmosphere in which first of all boasting, and later denial, became fatally easy.

The atmosphere of boasting
This possessed four elements that all conspired to lift Peter to a height of self-confidence that could boastingly affirm: “If I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee in any wise.” And so said they all.

(a) Congenial company.
Judas had gone out from them into the night, and the little company left in the Upper Room were all of one heart and one mind. In such unity we always experience an enlargement of spirit that temporarily blinds us to the difficulties without.

(b) They had listened to Great Words.
Our Lord had spoken to them the glorious message of comfort and promise recorded for us in John 14: 15, 16, and after that they had been privileged to hear His intense intercessory prayer for all His disciples. They were experiencing that burning heart within that we also feel after we have listened to great preaching under the anointing of the Spirit, or shared in a passionate prayer-meeting.

(c) They had just partaken of the Lord’s Supper.
The ordinances that have been instituted by the Lord for our observance in the Church are divinely intended to help us to “grasp with firmer hand the eternal grace,” and they usually and rightly quicken sacred emotions of love and gratitude towards the Redeemer. In addition to the Supper there had been the previous foot-washing. The whole occasion, with the Lord physically present and personally presiding, was enough to create a spiritual and emotional atmosphere charged to the full with affectionate devotion.

(d) United bymn-singing.
This is the only recorded occasion when Jesus sang, and our imagination dwells with pleasure upon the scene as their male voices blended in singing together the appropriate Passover psalms. There is, as we too have proved, almost to our danger, a tremendously emotional power in our united hymn and chorus singing that produces an
“atmosphere” in which men and women are lifted beyond their ordinary selves to affirm great swelling words of protestation of love and loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. United singing of great hymns can be almost intoxicating to the soul.

The atmosphere of the denial
Within a very few hours their environment underwent a tremendous change. They went from one extreme to the other in their spiritual circumstances. Even so, it is almost incredible that Peter could have begun to curse and to swear saying: “I know not this man of whom ye speak.” Perhaps a consideration of the vastly different atmosphere will help us to understand and to sympathize.

(a) Peter was physically miserable.
The hour was about 4.30 a.m., and all experience will confirm that we are apt to feel very different then from what we do at about 10 p.m. the night before. Peter was feeling wretchedly cold as he tried to steal some warmth from the fire lighted by the servants in the courtyard. Added to the chill he had had very little sleep, and what he had snatched had been light and broken. We do well to admit that our physical condition has an important effect upon our spiritual vitality. It is easier to succumb to temptation when physically and nervously exhausted and run-down.

(b) He was in unsympathetic company.
Peter looked around the fire in vain for a kind and friendly face. He was in utterly unsympathetic company.
The whole staff of the High Priest’s household must have been made cynical towards any religion through intimacy with formalism, hypocrisy and hatred towards all that Jesus stood for. Added to all that, Peter was sneeringly recognised by his speech as a Galilean, a provincial, a rank and crude outsider in Judean circles. He was socially lonely and outcast, and the whole atmosphere of the company was against loyalty to Christ. Many today who have to live and work in similar social and spiritual surroundings know only too well how antagonistic and frigid they can be.

(c) The Master was under arrest.
Jesus had been arrested and bound, and even now was standing before the chief priests, who were taking the first judicial steps to try and ensure His condemnation to death.
The full force of the fact had suddenly burst upon Peter that it had become very dangerous to be recognized as a disciple of the Nazarene. To be labelled as “one of them” contained most unpleasant possibilities. When discipleship becomes socially unpopular the Christian has to face a very different atmosphere from that which obtains in times and places where it is respectable and even honourable to be known as a servant of Jesus Christ. None of us knows his own heart when he has lived only in nominally Christian lands. Testing times are again upon the earth when it has become unpopular and dangerous to avow Jesus Christ as Lord.

(d) Peter’s sense of personal failure.
Answering to the misery and loneliness and danger of his outward circumstances there was in Peter’s heart a stinging sense of having failed by going to sleep in Gethsemane after Jesus had particularly asked him to watch with Him one hour. A consciousness of having failed a loved one in some time of need cannot but be profoundly depressing to a naturally generous spirit. Peter’s condition of inward misery answered to his outward circumstances, and drove him to an extreme of passion. It was the surrounding atmosphere of the courtyard that supplied the final element to provoke the denial.
Peter had no inward strength left to meet it.

What can we do about atmosphere?
The Christian ought not to be content to be merely the victim of spiritual circumstances.
For one thing, we must control it as in us lies.

This we can do to a great extent by carefulness in choosing our companionships and surroundings in both our work and our play; by insisting upon a holy cheerfulness in the face of any surrounding gloom or pessimism; and by courage in the midst of danger and fear.

We all react upon one another far more than folk realize. There are women and men whose very entry into a company automatically silences the smutty tale and the scandalous gossip. We can recall incidents during the war in Britain when the courage of one individual calmed a whole assembly during a raid and comforted us during journeys home through the streets while the shrapnel was falling around. It is said of John Wesley that he so diffused cheerfulness that his entry into a room seemed almost like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.
Some leaders can alter the whole atmosphere of a meeting.

For another thing, when beyond our control we must
“watch and pray.”
That had been the precise warning given by Jesus to Peter. We all have many occasions when the duties of life, and in that sense the will of God, compel us to live and work in an uncongenial spiritual atmosphere, fraught with much temptation to our souls. All we can do is to commit ourselves to God for His keeping power. It was Peter’s self-confidence without humility that caused his failure. We need confidence, but it must be based on the grace of God to keep us. We need to know very well our own weaknesses and constant need of the Saviour.

Christ helps us in this matter of atmosphere by preparing us for it beforehand (His prayer for Peter undoubtedly saved Peter from the worst) and we need to watch and pray with our Saviour by making the most of every opportunity that is afforded our souls to gather strength for trials that are to come. Every time Christians gather together in His Name there is a forward look of preparation for future testings and victories.

Originally published in Like as of Fire: 12 Pentecostal Sermons, p 9, Puritan Press, 1970.