You will find the basis of our meditation
this morning in St. Matthew's Gospel in chapter
16, and we read verses 21 to 23.
From that time forth began Jesus to show
unto his disciples how that he must go
unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the
elders and chief priests and scribes and be
killed and be raised again on the third
day.
Then Peter took him and began to rebuke
him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord,
this shall not be unto thee.
But he turned and said unto Peter, Get
thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence
unto me, for thou savourest not the things
that be of God, but those that be
of men.
This is such a contrast to the episode
we were considering last Lord's Day morning when
Jesus was heard to say to Simon, son
of Jonah, Thou art Peter.
Indicating the emergence of an entirely new man
in the place of the old.
New man he was.
But at this point, at any rate, he
is a very immature boy, very ignorant of
many things, albeit very certain of one thing.
And it is necessary for us this morning
to see the certainty that Simon Peter enjoyed
alongside the evident ignorance that characterized his life.
He was certain of the fact that Jesus
was none other than the Messiah, son of
the living God.
That certainty had been given him by God
himself.
That alongside of that certainty there was a
whole territory of ignorance.
And this episode is born out of the
application of that ignorance to a given situation.
Just a word of application as we pass
this by.
This is always true.
Never let us think that because we are
sure of one thing we are necessarily sure
of everything.
It is possible in the Christian life as
it is in life generally to be absolutely
certain of certain things whilst at the same
time to have a whole territory of experience
concerning which we are really ignorant.
Wise is that man that holds his certainties
without attempting to allow his uncertainties to rule
the roost.
Now there are three things here that we
can only look at briefly this morning.
The first is this.
It's the disclosure by Jesus of what was
divinely considered indispensable to his messianic vision.
From that time Jesus began to show unto
his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem
and suffer many things of the elders and
chief priests and scribes and be killed.
And on the third day berayed, at this
point Jesus turns to his disciples and now
begins to unravel the significance of this over
-mastering must that directs his going.
Jesus is not going around in circles.
He is moving in the direct and progressive
line of God's perfect will.
He knows where he's going.
And now that the disciples have come to
know who he is, he will tell them
how he is going to perform his messianic
mission.
Now that they have acknowledged him to be
the Messiah, the son of the living God,
now they must be told how his work
is to be accomplished.
Jesus did not claim to be the son
of a prophet.
He did not claim to be in the
line of the ordinary prophets of Israel.
But one thing is quite clear.
He foresaw the way along which he should
travel.
He saw the city where he was to
die.
He recognized the parties concerned in his murder
and bloodshed, and he names them.
He must go into the holy city, so
-called Jerusalem.
He must go to the holy men, so
-called, the scribes and the elders.
The three parties mentioned here are the parties
that comprise the Sanhedrin, the elders, the chief
priests, and the scribes.
He must go to Jerusalem.
He must suffer at their hands.
He sees this.
But the same must as brings him to
Jerusalem to suffer and to die, takes him
into Jerusalem also to accomplish the salvation that
as Messiah he had come to perform.
He must rise again.
Now it's necessary for us to see that
that must is related to all the separable
actions in this statement.
He must go to Jerusalem.
He must suffer.
He must be killed.
He must die on the third—rise again on
the third day.
And so he unburdens his heart to the
disciples, tells them of this divine must.
The necessity arises, of course, simply from the
fact that God has chosen to save sinners.
May the wonder of this come upon us
afresh this morning.
Did not God so love the world, there
would have been no need for Calvary.
And Simon's wishes could have been granted, let
Jesus go another way.
What made it a must was this God
had set his heart upon saving you and
saving me.
And if we are to be served, then
someone must bear the price of our salvation,
pay the awful debt in our place.
And the anointed one who was to do
that was Messiah, Son of the living God.
Therefore, he must needs go to Jerusalem.
The disclosure of what heaven deemed indispensable.
Calvary was no accident.
Calvary was in the plan.
Calvary was at the heart of things, divinely
understood.
Because God would save the Lord.
And this was the only way.
Now, we move on and we come next
to the disapproval by Peter of what he
found personally incomprehensible.
Here we come to one of the most
audaciously arrogant deeds ever to be contemplated, let
alone executed, by even the most arrogant of
men.
Turning to the Lord Jesus Christ, he says
to him, or let me read the whole
verse, verse 22, And Peter took him and
began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid, Lord,
this shall never happen to you.
You talking about dying?
You talking about going to the holy city
and there laying down your life and suffering?
Never.
Now, let me just mention in passing the
apparently noble intention of Simon.
No word, no question is raised about Simon's
noble intentions.
This does not excuse the situation at all.
But his intentions are nowhere a question.
He thought he was doing the right thing,
but he thought ignorantly.
And all his calculations and all his schemings
and all his suggestions were born out of
sheer ignorance of certain things.
Assuming that he was wiser than his Lord,
Peter takes upon himself the role of the
natural, mature counselor of the Son of God.
You know, it's arrogant, isn't it?
The very mention of it hits us between
the eyes.
That this fisherman, this recent disciple, this recent
convert, this man whom we shall hear blaspheming
fairly soon now, this man thinks that he's
wiser than the very Lord Jesus Christ Messiah
and begins to tell him, no, no, no,
not that way.
You go the way I tell you.
He would protect Jesus from the pressures of
the hour and from the kind of thing
that he has announced as indispensable.
Now motives.
There's no question of a false and a
wrong motive here, but now look at the
evidently ignoble implications that any mere man should
assume such authority as to qualify him to
correct the Son of God speaks of arrogance
as well as ignorance.
In the first place, I want you to
notice that Peter's action here is a veritable
contradiction of the terms of his great confession.
And if the New Testament stopped here, I
suppose we would all question Peter's conversion, Peter's
Christianity.
Oh, we were so sure that he was
a man of God last Sunday morning.
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God.
Upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.
And Jesus gives to him the keys of
the kingdom of heaven, telling him that what
he binds on earth shall be bound in
heaven, what he looses on earth shall be
loosed in heaven.
But where is he today?
All this is a veritable contradiction of the
significance of that confession.
Now, I must put it to you very
briefly this morning.
I'll put it like this.
If Jesus is Messiah, then he's prophet, teacher.
He's priest and he's king.
Here, Peter is denying that he is prophet.
The supreme teacher of God, the authoritative revealer
of the Father.
He's putting himself in his master's place.
It's a denial of his confession.
He's denying that he's king.
Simon is trying to dictate to him and
say, no, no, no, you've made a mistake,
you do as I tell you.
Now, he didn't put it like that, but
that's the implication.
You revise your plans as I suggest to
you.
That's the implication.
In other words, there is missing here today,
at this point, there is missing the realization
that Jesus is the supreme prophet of God,
is the one Lord and king of all
men, and especially of his church.
It is an implicit contradiction of what last
time and the time before, as far as
our consideration is concerned, we heard Simon say
so openly and so gloriously.
Secondly, Peter's actions stemmed, and I repeat, from
ignorance as well as arrogance.
I must now come back to something we
indicated earlier.
Oh yes, he was quite sure that Jesus
was the Messiah, the Son of the living
God, but there were certain things that he
did not know.
He was ignorant of what Messiahship meant.
Here he was the child of his age
and not the child of scripture.
We've always got to distinguish between these two
things.
We are brought up in a certain tradition,
you in yours and I in mine, and
we inherit certain ideas, about the Bible even,
and about an understanding of the Bible.
And sometimes it takes many a long year
to unlearn things that are purely traditional.
And to learn what is really biblical and
spiritual.
Simon Peter stood at that point.
Oh, he knew that Christ was Messiah, that
Jesus was Messiah, Son of the living God,
but his concept of Messiahship was false.
Now the only point that I have time
to mention this morning is this, and it's
the central one of course, in Simon's concept
of Messiahship there was no place for suffering
and death.
No place for a divinely planned suffering and
a divinely ordained death.
Therefore it was unbiblical.
And it was out of this ignorance of
what Messiahship meant, that Simon turned to his
Lord and said, You, I confessed you yesterday
to be the Messiah, Son of the living
God, are you suffering?
You dying?
Never.
And he puts his humanly protecting arm around
the Son of God and says, Never to
you, God forbid.
Thirdly, it appears as if Peter's action at
this point was a somewhat arrogant attempt to
apply such authority over the Son of God
as the same Son of God had called
him to exercise over men.
Jesus had given him authority, the authority of
the key.
And I say to you, Whatsoever thou shalt
bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven.
Whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be
loosed in heaven.
But you notice what Simon is doing.
He's now trying to exercise authority, not over
men, but over the Son of God.
He's trying to bind the Son of God.
Jesus, in giving Simon the power of the
keys, had not abdicated his own sovereignty in
favor of Peter.
Far from it.
He was not thereby making heaven subject to
earth or binding the Godhead to the whims
of a man.
How many people understand the gift of the
keys in that way?
As if from now on, all heaven is
subject to Simon Peter.
Heaven have mercy upon us.
If that were so, there would have been
no Calvary to start off with because at
this very point, he would have diverted the
Son of God from going to the cross.
There would have been no salvation if that
had taken place.
No, no, no.
The Son of God has not abdicated his
right to rule.
He has not put the throne of God
at the whims of a man, albeit the
foundation member of the church.
The gift of the keys was not given
to exercise lordship over the Son of God,
but in an entirely different sphere.
These ignoble implications of Peter's action all point
to the important fact that not all knowledge
comes at once.
We live in an age when we've got
so many slots, and we put our coin
in the slot and we get the whole
thing out suddenly, quickly, all at once, quick
return.
You know, life is not like that, really.
Simon's certainty that Jesus was Messiah was given
him by the revelation of God.
But now, there's a whole tract of ignorance
that can only be rectified as he lingers
in the presence of his Lord till his
ascension, as he reads and meditates the scriptures
and avails himself of the ordinary means of
grace, as he disciplines himself to learn the
Word of God and apply it to his
life and to life's situation.
There is something frightening about this.
Yesterday's submission gives place to today's rebellion.
Yesterday's spirituality has led to today's carnality.
Attuned to heaven yesterday, he's attuned to hell
today, the same man.
And all because he was not able to
distinguish between the certainty that was given him
of God and the remaining ignorance which was
his to be sorted out in due time.
My good friend, you and I need to
learn this lesson, to take with both arms
the certainty that God gives us by his
Word and by his Spirit from his revelation,
but at the same time never to dogmatize
on the basis of our own misconceptions and
human ignorance.
That brings me to the last thing that
I have time to mention this morning, the
discipline exercised by Jesus upon a carnally influenced
disciple.
How can you deal with a man like
this?
How can you deal with a man like
this?
And now can I say one thing in
coming to the main thing I want to
mention in closing?
It is only Messiah, Son of the Living
God, can deal with a man like this.
No man could correct Simon at this point.
None of the other twelve could have corrected
him because, you see, he had received the
revelation and the commendation of his Lord, and
so he was spiritually bolstered.
He was spiritually sensitive to his privileges.
And therefore if any man had said a
word to Simon Peter, my, there would have
been a battle in no time.
Who do you think you are?
I've been given the power of the keys.
I heard the Master say this to me
and that to me.
He's spoken to me in such terms.
Don't you talk to me like that.
But a situation such as this can be
retrieved for the simple reason that Jesus is
Messiah, Son of the Living, not the dead
God, but the Living God, and is able
to discipline his arrogant, ignorant, wayward disciple, whose
motives may still define that whose deeds are
most ignoble and unworthy.
What did Jesus do?
I can only mention them.
One, Jesus tells Peter that such authority as
had been given him was meant not for
him to lead his Lord, but to follow
him.
Listen to the words.
He turned and said to Peter, Get thee
behind me, Satan.
Get thee behind me, Satan.
Such authority as may have been given to
Simon to lead men does not qualify him
to lead the Messiah, the Son of God.
Here we must learn always to follow, never
to attempt to lead.
Is this a temptation to you and to
me?
Do we not want to constrain our Lord
sometimes to come our way rather than follow
in his?
Of course we do.
There is so much of Peter in all
of us.
But you see, the fact is this, that
it is only insofar as we learn to
follow him, not go ahead of him, but
follow him, that we have any right whatsoever
to lead men.
Now I say that as much to myself
this morning as to anyone else.
Though you have called me to be your
pastor, I have no right to expect any
man to follow me unless I am sure
that I am following my Lord.
The mere fact of office is nothing in
and of itself.
It requires the certainty that one goes ahead
of us and we follow in his footsteps.
And insofar as the Lord's servant follows his
Lord, then he has a right to expect.
Only then.
And it's true of us all.
Jesus tells Peter then that such authority as
had been given him was meant for him
to follow his master, not to try to
lead him.
Secondly, the attempt to lead rather than follow
Jesus revealed an alien influence upon the very
recipient of yesterday's divine revelation.
Get thee behind me, Satan!
For you're an offence or a hindrance to
me.
For thou savourest not the things that be
of God, but those that be of men.