Sunday March 8 Mark 8:31-38

Hello to all. Hopefully with this new format everyone can participate and comment with their thoughts or on mine. I have been enjoying the devotional that members of the congregation contributed to and hope you have too.

Background for Sunday’s text: Jesus has taken His disciples to Caesarea Philippi to question them about who He is. This was a very pagan area and had been devoted to worship of the god of Pan. Pan was depicted as having the top half of a body of a man fused to the bottom half of a body of a goat. Herod Phillip had built a temple to Caesar there and renamed the city Caesarea (for Caesar) Philippi (for himself). When questioning His disciples Jesus asks them who people say that He is. They answer a prophet. He asks them who they think He is and Peter responds “The Messiah”. Peter is correct however we shall see that his definition of Jesus’ Messiahship is wrong.

V31 On the way back from this event Jesus begins to teach them, in His first passion prediction that He will suffer, be rejected, be killed and rise again on the third day. This is a verse packed with meaning. Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man. This is a reference to Daniel 7:13. In this chapter of Daniel “one like a Son of Man” rules with the Ancient One (God) over all the nations. Previous to this verse strange beasts were described in the chapters leading up to this and they were the Gentile empires that had ruled Israel. In this chapter God will begin ruling the world and the “saints of the Most High”, “Son of Man” (Israel’s righteous) will sit at His right and rule with Him. One day Israel will rule the nations. Jesus applies this term “Son of Man” to Himself. He is the new true Israel and He will rule the nations. The evidence will be the resurrection when God vindicates His mission. Now some of the Jewish people believed there would be a resurrection during the Messianic age when all would be raised. Also there would be release to all the captives and all the blind would see. This would be the “world to come”. The Pharisees were the ruling body that believed in a resurrection one day. The Sadducees, consisting of the priesthood and upper elite of Jewish society didn’t. With these ingrained thoughts in the disciples minds Jesus is trying to teach them a new way of thinking. He, the Messiah, will not stage a revolt against Rome and take over the Temple but rather He will be condemned by the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme court). He will be killed. This would be unthinkable as a true Messiah would not be killed but kill others in a successful revolt and after only three days He would rise again.

V32 As we can see by Peter’s response the disciples don’t understand at all what Jesus is telling them. They have their preconceived ideas, mentioned in the previous verse, and to them that is how the timeline will go. Peter as much as tells Jesus He is wrong about what is going to happen by rebuking Him. A Messiah must not die. The disciples don’t understand that Jesus has to die. He has to give up His life willingly.

V33 Jesus now turns to look at all of His disciples and rebukes Peter. Jesus is rebuking Peter’s statement. He is not calling Peter “Satan” but Jesus is telling Peter Satan has used his limited knowledge of the Messiahs role to speak against Jesus. Satan is anything that will try to prevent Jesus from going to the cross. Satan wants Jesus alive not dead. This is the same Peter who had just declared Jesus to be the Messiah. Peter’s confusion is a reflection of all the disciples’ confusion. They just can’t grasp this teaching.

V34 Jesus now continues to tell the disciples and the crowds what it will take for them to follow Him. They must give up their own agendas and self interests and follow Jesus. They must be concerned with what Jesus was concerned about. A servant lifestyle.

V35 If you live for self you will eventually loose a place with Jesus but if you carry on the work of Jesus and the kingdom you will have a place with Jesus.

V36 What will a person gain if they profit from worldly empires (over throw Rome) and loose their life because they did not follow Jesus in selfless service to others. If they are concerned what benefits are in it for them they will miss Gods’ kingdom. The key is; empires and ruling nations will always exist in this world but we are called to do the kingdom work of God in this world.

V38 Those trapped in worldly things will not be acknowledged before God by Jesus when they come into the Fathers presence.

This was a very difficult teaching for the disciples and crowds to understand and in fact they didn’t understand it until the resurrection. We have the benefit of being on this side of the resurrection so to us it makes sense although we still struggle with it. Imagine if all the things you had been taught would happen in a certain way don’t. Our culture has begun to read authors that lay out what will happen when Jesus comes again. Even though these books are fiction we still believe the second coming will happen as they describe. It won’t. There are other things that we have ingrained as teachings of religion that aren’t correct. It would be just as difficult today to have Jesus explain the kingdom to us as it was for those first century people. The important thing is that we have an email from God (the Bible) that we can read, contemplate and study in attempt to learn His teachings.

Peace be upon you, Kim