SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
7/25/2012 8:07:53 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Confession
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Mark
8:27-30
Message
of the verses: In Today’s SD we will
take a little break from the book of Psalms and look to the eighth chapter of
Mark’s Gospel. It has been my desire to
look more intently into Mark’s Gospel, taking one chapter a month and study it
and then use that study as part of my Spiritual Diaries.
Confession: (vv.27-30):
“27 Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of
Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them,
"Who do people say that I am?" 28 They told Him, saying, "John
the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets." 29
And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ." 30 And He
warned them to tell no one about Him.”
As we look at this section of
Scripture we must understand that this is a turning point in the ministry of
Jesus Christ, for from now on we will hear about the fact that Jesus is the
Messiah and that as the Messiah He would suffer at the hands of the Gentiles
and die on a cross for the sins of the world.
This is something that His disciples did not want to hear, and I suppose
the question is why they did not want to hear about it. The answer goes deep into what the Jewish
people thought about when they thought about their Messiah, and Jesus did not
fulfill all of those expectations. In
the OT there are many prophecies about who the Messiah would be and what He
would do. When we look at passages like
Isaiah 52-53 and also Psalm 22 we see a suffering Messiah, but most of the Jews
did not want to look at a suffering Messiah because they were living in their
own land, but were not in control of their own land and so they were looking
for a Messiah to come and to defeat the Roman government, to make Israel the
capital of the world, and so when Jesus tells His disciples that He is going to
die then they do not want to hear of any such talk. I must say that I am getting ahead of myself
so we will save this type of talk until the next SD.
We see in verse twenty-seven that
Jesus and His disciples were moving along heading to the villages of Caesarea
Philippi, and while they were walking along they began to talk and Jesus
questioned them by giving them a two part exam:
Who do people say that I am? Who
do you say that I am? We will get to the
answers to these two questions in a minute but first I want to talk a bit about
the town that they were heading for, Caesarea Philippi. This town was located at the base of MT.
Hermon, a mountain of about 9,000 feet where when the snows begin to melt it
runs off and makes up a part of the head waters of the Jordan River. The town was name after Augustus Caesar, who
was the leader of the Roman world and some thought to be a god. It was also named after Herod Philip who was
the ruler of this part of Israel. There
was a marble temple that was built there that was dedicated to Augustus, you
see there were towns like this around the Roman Empire that were built in honor
of the Emperor, but we don’t see any of them today but what we do see today is
that Jesus Christ is still Lord and is still being praised for who He is.
Now back to the questions. If we think about a person asking another
person what others say about him we might think that there is an evidence of
pride involved, but of course this is not the case with Jesus, for He was
teaching His disciples something here and that is the reason for the
question. In fact what people think
about who Jesus is, is the most important question that can be asked for the
correct answer will put you in heaven and the wrong answer will land you in
hell. The answer the His disciples gave
was that many people thought He was John the Baptist or Elijah or even some
said that He was Jeremiah. Why
Jeremiah? I am told that in the book of
Second Maccabeus (Spelling?) that there is a story about Jeremiah that says
that he took some articles out of the temple before it was destroyed, including
the Ark of the Covenant, and when the Messiah comes Jeremiah would come before
Him. The same is true with John the
Baptist and also Elijah. These people
were thinking that Jesus was the forerunner of the Messiah. The next question is who do His disciples
think that He is and I think that when Peter speaks he is speaking for the
whole group with the possible exception of Judas when He says that Jesus is the
Son of God. We know that this is
something that Peter did not understand on his own for in another Gospel Jesus
tells him that flesh and blood didn’t cause him to answer correctly, but His
Father in heaven revealed this to him.
This of course is true not only of Peter, but of anyone who truly
confesses this of who Jesus Christ truly is.
Jesus tells them not to tell any
people about this and this may seem a bit strange. Why do you suppose that Jesus would make this
statement? Let me make a comparison to
another time in the life of Jesus, after He arose from the dead when He states
that His disciples were to go into all the world and tell others about what He
had done, which is the “great commission.”
When Peter made his confession the message of the Gospel was not
complete and this is probably the reason that Jesus warns them not to tell
others about this.
Jesus had spent over two years with
these men and in a short time He would be leaving them to go back to His
Father, and in those two plus years we wonder how much they truly learned about
Him. The good part is that after Jesus
did go back to heaven to be with His Father the Holy Spirit brought into
remembrance the things that Jesus had taught His disciples and these twelve men
turned the world upside down with their message about Jesus.
7/25/2012
9:05:13 AM
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