Jesus Predicts His Death
21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. 28 I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
How often don't we think we know better than God?
It sounds incredibly foolish. And yet we've all felt that way at one time or another. Maybe you haven't realized it or verbalized it that way, but every time we question our circumstances, complain about our trials or ignore God's nudge in a direction we don't want to go - that's exactly what we're doing.
And that's what Peter was doing here.
The very idea that the Messiah would die was repulsive to them, and so utterly different from their expectations, despite all the OT evidence to the contrary, that Peter just couldn't handle the idea, and actually had the nerve to rebuke the Lord of the universe. The same Jesus he had just confessed as being the Christ. He thought his plan was better than God's plan.
Peter is not alone. We all think that God needs a little help in our particular life's plan. Sometime we think it needs a complete reroute, other times we think a little detour would be nice, and sometimes we just think a little tweaking would perfect it. The sheer audacity of that way of thinking is mind boggling. Yet incredibly commonplace.
We need to trust in two truths. God loves us. God is sovereign.
If we truly believe those two truths, then we should trust Him implicitly. We should trust that our circumstances have been filtered through His hands and that NOTHING can happen to us without His knowledge and consent, and that everything that happens to us is ultimate for His glory and for our own good.
The latter part of our passage strikes a death knell to the healthy/wealthy/happy charismatic Christianity that truly makes a mockery of the cross and treats Jesus like a genie there for their exclusive benefit. What a gross misrepresentation of Christianity that movement has put forth. MacArthur tells it like it is....
I submit to you that to view coming to Jesus Christ as simply to get is to prostitute the divine intention. To come to Jesus Christ, yes, is to receive and keep on receiving forever and ever. But there's pain before the gain and there is a cross before the crown and there is suffering before the glory. And there is sacrifice before the reward. And I believe that's what our Lord is teaching us in this critical passage.
The disciples had just acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus has just told them that He would build His church and that death would not prevail against it. He told them that they would be heaven's authority on earth as heaven revealed truth to them. They were listening closely here. But then He said that He would be killed, and they stopped listening. They didn't hear the part about Christ rising again. And Satan works through Peter to try to dissuade Jesus from the cross.
But God does not think the way men think.
Men think about the gain without the pain, the crown without the cross, the glory without the suffering, the reward without the sacrifice. That's the way men think. And you're thinking like men think, not like God. God says the gain comes through the pain and the glory comes through the suffering. It has to. There's no other way because you cannot put God, whether incarnate in the Son or alive in the hearts of His people, in the midst of an anti‑God society without there being some suffering, without a reproach, without hostility.
We need to be willing to die for Christ if that's what it takes. We need to realize that at the moment we becomes Christians, and then as we continue on as Christians as well. It's a continuing thing. And it will be worth it in the end, when Christ comes in glory.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Matthew 17:1-13
1 comment:
It is so true that people often think they know better than God what is best for them and their own life. It is so hard to trust sometimes that something that seems terrible to us can be ultimately for God's glory and our own good.
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