Unexpected News and an Unexpected Revolution
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Mark 8:31-33 ESV Read More
What a wild conversation this must have been for the disciples. As they are led through the ideas of who Jesus could be – a prophet, Elijah, the Messiah – their minds have to be blown as they come to the truth. As Peter is put on a level with the prophets, that God revealed something to him, the excitement that Jesus really is the Messiah would charge everybody up!
Ok Jesus, now what? Are we going to destroy the Romans? Are you going to call those corrupt Pharisees to account? Are you going to wipe out all sin and suffering forever and gather all of the Jews from all over the world back to Israel?
It says that what He said next, He said plainly. There wasn’t any room for misunderstanding or the riddle of parables here. Jesus explained that He was going to suffer and die at the hands of the priests and scribes. It’s easy for us to miss this since we depend on the fact that Jesus died for our sins, but that wasn’t in the disciples’ understanding. This was like telling someone you have stage 4 cancer or AIDS. As powerful as He was, Jesus was going to suffer and die at the hands of His enemies and He wanted the disciples to know about it first.
Who of us wouldn’t respond like Peter and tell Jesus that He was all wrong? He just healed hundreds, had power over demons, brought people back from the dead; He can’t die!
This shows the even weightier power that Jesus had. He was able to submit all of His power to the will of God. Instead of setting His mind on preserving Himself or avoiding pain, He set His mind on what God wanted. All of the healings, miracles, teachings and daily life weren’t driven by His own desires but by His desire to do what God wanted.
To be a Satan or an opponent to God, was to live for things other than what God wanted. Hebrews 5 talks about Jesus ‘learning obedience’ through what He suffered as if He didn’t know all about it yet.
Submitting and surrendering to God’s will is just about the most profound miracle Jesus would ever undertake. It was awful and disgraceful, but it would end up being the ultimate sign to His followers that obedience to God always wins out. His suffering and death would do more than conquer Rome. A new heaven and a new earth will hold a new Jerusalem filled with much more than just the Jewish people.
Jesus’ death would bring more revolution about than any of the disciples could have ever imagined, but it all rested on surrendering the will of a man over to the will of God.
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