A Great Person for a Great Work
“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.” (Mark 8:31-32)
Our God may be as mysterious as He is powerful, but He follows a pattern. Before someone raises the accusation that such a statement puts God in a box, let me remind you of a few things. Our God operates in summer and winter, seedtime and harvest. Our God inspired the Holy Scriptures with their own discernible pattern. Our God made the box. The Scriptures reflect who God is (Mark 7:21), and they are the path that leads us to a deeper knowledge of Him. We would be wise to mark out this path and follow it most closely.
What is the pattern in our passage? In Mark 8:29, we read of the person of Christ – “You are the Christ.” Or as Matthew 16:16 elaborates - “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Note the order – first, His person; then, His work. Before God entered into a covenant with Adam, He first revealed Himself to be our Creator. Before God flooded the world with the devastating deluge, He revealed Himself as a Sustainer and Judge. Before Christ suffers, He reveals to us the dignity and glory of His person. The pattern is purposeful. Our God raises the value of His person, setting Himself before our eyes in all of His glory and splendor, that we may rightly value the work in which He accomplishes.
Many have told us of their suffering, of their rejection, and of their looming demise. They have spoken of these matters in terms as plain as vanilla ice cream, and we have accounted to them absolutely no significance. Rarely do they rise above the level of dinner time conversation. But these sufferings rise to a level of eternal significance, these sufferings will the pulpits of churches and the firesides of a many of homes because these are the sufferings of this glorious, majestic, divine Person. The God of Israel who called Abraham from idolatry, the God who formed and fashioned the very Promised Land they so desperately longed for, this God would suffer by their idolatrous hands, be buried in the very soil they so longed, and rise for the salvation of both Jew and Gentile.
My friends, He has made it plain! He has made it plain! Do you speak of it with the joy and adoration it deserves? Or do you push it aside as we will see Peter do next week. Only one response is the right response.
