Year 3 Day 6

Year 3 Day 6


Pray (ACts)


Read - Mark 8:31-32


Message - Alan Burke


Suffering, rejection and death! Three words that I’d say if someone told you lay ahead in your future you wouldn’t want to hear. Suffering, rejection and death! Not one of us likes to suffer, there is not one of us that likes to be rejected and although death comes to us all it is one of those things that we do not like talking about or being faced with. If someone gave you an option, before you lay decision and one would lead to suffering, rejection and death the other would lead to triumph what would you choose? I’m going to assume triumph, yet Jesus came to suffer, to be rejected and to be killed and that in this, in His suffering, rejection and death He would rise victorious, defeating death that we might escape the wrath of God that is due to us for sin. For we have sinned against a Holy God, in though word and deed, not only that we are by our natures sinful. 


As we pick up today remember that Peter had just confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah but now as Jesus speaks plainly to these He tells them the reason that He came it was indeed to suffer, be rejected and killed. These words thought were not what the disciples had expected, believed or wanted. The people of God looked to passages like Isaiah and Psalm 22 and dismissed that they spoke of the Messiah, they interpreted that it was his people who would suffer these things but not their Christ, not their Messiah, they knew he would be a triumphant King, who would reign over them in righteousness as the prophet Isaiah foretold (Isa. 9:7), but they did not understand that it would mean that He would first have to suffer, be rejected and die.


This is not the kind of thing the followers of Jesus wanted to hear, imagine giving up everything to follow a man who you thought was going to change the world, that He was going to start a revolution that’s going to change the world. Then He tells you He’s on a mission to suffer and die. What Jesus was saying to them is unlike the parables that came before, here He taught them plainly about it so they could be in no doubt what to expect.  


Jesus here wasn’t outlining one of many future possibilities, He was making it clear that this is what He had came to do, and that this is what was going to take place. It wasn’t that He would possibly suffer, it was that He would suffer, it wasn’t that He would possibly be rejected, bur rather He would be rejected, it wasn’t that He would possibly be killed it is that He must be killed and three days later rise. Then Peter the one who had confessed that Jesus is the Christ, well for him this was too much, it messed with his head, everything he had known or wanted, or expected, was being messed with by Jesus, and he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him.


I suspect though, that part of Peter’s problem was not only how Jesus had totally messed with their Messianic expectations, but that if these words were true, and they would have know Jesus’ words to be true from their time with Him, that there were implications, very real implications for them. If their master would be rejected, if He would suffer and die, then what could they expect as His followers to that Jesus would make clear. 


In the midst of this prediction that He would suffer, be rejected and killed there was also great hope. For although what lay ahead was suffering that would see Him rejected and scorned, it would also lead to His resurrection, when He would be exalted as King of kings and Lord of lords. Later in Mark’s gospel in chapter 10:45 Jesus made it clear to them why it was to be this way, for the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (10:45). For Jesus had come, no matter how hard that moment Peter found it to understand, to die, and by his death that we might live, He had come to pay the penalty of sin, so that we would escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin. Believer know this day that Jesus has taken all the punishment for your sin, all of it, and that you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ the Suffering Saviour.  


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q13 Did our first parents continue in the estate wherein they were created?
Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God. (Gen. 3:6–8,13, Eccl. 7:29)