Going against Christ
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 1 December 2013
Matthew 16:21-23, “21 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. 22 Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” 23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
Now that last statement is an important spiritual principle, "you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” The purposes, plans and acts of God are set against the sinful purposes of men. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” In other words, men cannot see where God is going. Psalm 92:5-6 says, “O LORD, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep.6A senseless man does not know, nor does a fool understand this.”
And we can go against God now just as much as Peter was used by Satan against Jesus that day. Because Peter thought, in his own wisdom, that he needed to correct Jesus Christ. And we also often go to God as if to correct Him when we see things happening that we don't think fit the way things ought to be. And sometimes we want to help God by doing things as if God needs our help.
We need to learn as we mature spiritually that God does many things in ways we cannot understand. Look at David who was refused in 2 Samuel 7 the privilege of building the temple because he was a man with blood on his hands. But when God took away that plan, God gave him back something better and said, you will have a son and that son will have an eternal throne. God promised him the eternal Davidic kingdom on which Jesus Christ would reign forever.
And perhaps the most powerful of all passages in regard to this comes from Isaiah as he speaks on the behalf of God in chapter 55:8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
That is why we are taught in Romans 8:26 that the Holy Spirit groans making utterances for us because we don't know what to pray for as we should. And we see here that Peter wanted to correct the Lord because He was not doing things according to Peter's expectations. A profound principle of learning is to live our lives according to God’s plan rather than our plans.
Peter is a believer and so this lesson applies to us all as believers, right? The disciples just now have affirmed that Jesus is their Messiah. Peter, their spokesman, in verse 16 says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus responded by saying, “this is not something you got from your own human wisdom, verse 17, but this was revealed to you by God the Father.”
And following that, He says to them, in spite of the rejection, in spite of the hostility, in spite of the misunderstanding of the multitudes of people, in spite of the fact that I am not setting up My Kingdom instantaneously and overthrowing the Romans, I am continuing to build My assembly of redeemed people, My church.
And He says to them at the end of verse 18, “Look, I am the Messiah, I am building My Kingdom, and death will not stop it.” And after having said that, He then moves in verse 21 to tell them He will die. But they must know by now that His death is not permanent because He says the gates of Hades can't stop Him. And so He says again in verse 21, “I will be killed and I will be raised again the third day.”
So the one thing they still cannot handle is that the Messiah should suffer and die. They're like all the rest of the Jews of whom Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:23, “to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness.” And because their understanding is incomplete, Jesus reminds them in verse 20 not to preach it until they get it right. And that does not happen until after His resurrection.
Now they don't understand all that He's teaching. In fact, note that it says there that He began to show these things. And they are getting lesson after lesson. Jesus is talking about it in chapter 17 and in chapter 20, in John 12 and He probably talked to them about it many times that were not recorded. He's continuing to tell them about His death and resurrection which they never are able to grasp.
For example in John 13 when Jesus stoops to wash the dirty feet of the disciples, Peter says, "You will never wash my feet." And what he really is saying is, “I cannot accept a humiliated Messiah, this cannot be.” And when Jesus does go to the cross, they scatter. And even after the death of Christ as they walk the road to Emmaus, they are confused about what has happened.
So the Lord is teaching them lessons which they do not fully understand until the Holy Spirit comes. When the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus said to them, He will bring all things to your remembrance. And all of a sudden when the Spirit of God came, they understood all these lessons and all their meaning, it all became real to them.
Now according to this text, it teaches us that we must not substitute the things of men for the things of God. First, Jesus gives us the plan of God in verse 21, "From that time forth," it says and we should stop here for a moment. This is a key phrase, "From that time forth" is a phrase used by Matthew to mark a transition.
In Matthew 4:17, he uses the phrase to mark the beginning of Jesus primarily public ministry to Israel. And now he uses the same phrase to mark the beginning of Jesus private teaching to the disciples. So we have moved into a new phase in the life of Christ, a new era, His ministry now is primarily private. Jesus is teaching them truths they won't fully grasp until after the resurrection, after the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Note the word "began." Now this passage makes it a discussion of a series of events. So it is not a single incident in verse 21, but a flow of information to which Peter finally reacts. Peter has been thinking about it, he may even have offered the consensus of the other disciples. So this comes to Jesus as a premeditated satanic temptation, offered to divert Him from the divine plan.
Peter actually is offering the plan of men as a substitute for the plan of God. Now notice the word "must" in verse 21, “From that time forth began Jesus to tell His disciples how He must..." Now that is the must of a divine imperative. It is a must that is older than the circumstances in which we hear it. This is the plan of God set in motion before the foundation of the world.
Jesus had to die because men are all sinners and they must have their sin paid for. And because of this divine requirement, which is without the shedding of blood there could be no remission, men needed a death and God required a death. And only an infinite God is able by His death to save many people. And prophetic promises foretold that, the prophets had said the Messiah would die. God by His determined council and foreknowledge brought it to pass.
And so all these things, human sin, the demand for a sacrifice, the divine decree, and the prophetic promise all come together to say “He must”. Men cannot say, "God, do it according to my plan." That sounds ridiculous and yet we do it all the time, when we complain, “Oh God, I don't like the suffering I'm going through, I don't like the circumstances that exist," and so on and we begin to talk to God as if we know a better approach. That is the same thing that Peter did.
Now look at the divine plan, beginning in verse 21. First, He must go to Jerusalem, the city of sacrifices. He had to be the Passover lamb, He had to die the death for sin. At the moment, He was still in Caesarea/Philippi, that little town in the northeast corner of Palestine. But now He must go to Jerusalem. Thomas in John 11:16 said, "We will go with You and die also." In other words, they knew what awaited them there.
It was the center of hostility. Matthew 15:1 indicated that the Jewish leaders who gave Jesus the most trouble were all from Jerusalem. The religion of the Jews hated Jesus Christ. But the Jews would not have to chase Him. Jesus went and offered Himself for He Himself said in John 10:18, “No man takes My life from Me, I lay it down of Myself." He said to Pilate in John 19:11, "If it weren't for God you couldn't do one thing to Me.”
Jerusalem means "foundation of peace" and it became known as the "Golden City." This is the most well-known city in the world. First mentioned in Genesis 14:19 as the dwelling place of a priest of El Elyon, the God most high, a servant of Yahweh by the name of Melchizedek, a picture of Christ. And as Melchizedek was associated with that city, so would be the Anti-Christ later.
That very location is the place where Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac and finds a sacrificial animal who also is a picture of Jesus Christ who would be a sacrifice in that same vicinity of Mount Moriah. David came and took that city and made it the capital of Israel and it was the city of David in 2 Samuel 5:9. Three months later he brought the Ark of the Covenant there and it became the city of God for He dwelt in the Ark symbolically.
Solomon called it the standard of perfection in Song of Solomon 6:4 and he built the temple to the Most High God there. It has become the sacred center of worship for the Jews. But the city of Jerusalem by the time Jesus got there was hostile to God. It wasn't the city of God anymore. We can't even call it Jerusalem, foundation of peace because when Jesus was born they tried to kill Him as an infant.
And when He began His ministry, the first Passover He went to Jerusalem, He took a whip in John 2, and He had to clean out the defilement in the temple there. On the second Passover, He went and violated their Sabbath tradition and they tried to kill Him, says John 5. The third Passover of His ministry, He deliberately stayed away because of their hatred.
Later in the year, He went to the Feast of Tabernacles and the leaders in John 7 tried to arrest Him to execute Him. In John 8 He went to the temple to teach and they tried to stone Him to death. He taught on the porch of Solomon and had to escape for His life. And when He returns for that last Passover and raises Lazarus from the dead, He did it at the expense of His life and they killed Him.
Jerusalem has a new name today in Revelation 11:8. Listen, "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified." And in 70 A.D. God used the Romans to wipe it out. It will get its rightful name back, Zechariah 14 says, when it flourishes again when Jesus returns to set up His glorious Kingdom and then again it will become Jerusalem, the golden city of David, the city of God, the foundation of everlasting peace.
The second phase of God's plan was to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests and scribes. Now those three groups of people constituted the Sanhedrin which was made up of leaders and judges from all of Israel. Then you have the chief priests who were primarily Sadducees and the scribes who were primarily Pharisees. And together they were the legal court, and Jesus is going there to be tried by the religious leaders of Israel, even though the trial is a mockery. The holy city and the leaders are both not holy.
Verse 21 says also that He must be killed. The word here is not a word of judicial execution, it is a word that means to be murdered. And Jesus says that He was going to be killed. But they did not pay attention and they did not hear the part of verse 21 that said, "And be raised again the third day.”
So we see the things of God in verse 21. Now look at verse 22 and see the things of men. Peter began to rebuke Jesus and he came on strong. It's because of pride, the Lord had just told him, "O blessed are you, Peter, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you but My Father was in heaven," and he was beginning to feel like a spokesman for God.
And look what Peter says, “Far be it from You, Lord,” That's an idiomatic expression, it means “Lord, take it easy on Yourself...don't do that." And then he adds, "this shall not happen to You!” We're just not going to allow it. It just didn't fit the plan and he would make a great liberal who wants a kingdom without a cross.
The Lord immediately answered in verse 23, "He turned and said to Peter," Get behind Me, Satan, you are an offense to Me.” As soon as Peter said this to Him, the Lord knew the source and He said, “Go away, Satan.” He had said that once before, in Matthew 4:10 when Satan took Him up and tempted Him, and after the temptation was over, He said, “Be gone, Satan.”
And remember that the same believer, who can be used to speak the Word of God in one verse can be used in the next one to speak the word of Satan! The same believer who on the one hand extols the plan of God can on the other hand extol the plan of Satan. The same one who takes a side with God can turn around and take a side against God, yes Jesus is talking about us and to us.
Here is the specific principle at the end of verse 23, and Jesus now gives us a generalization from that specific incident and He puts Peter's action in a category that all of us are in from time to time, "For you are thinking along not the lines of God but the lines of men.” And men still see the cross as a stumbling block because our thoughts are not His thoughts and our ways are not His ways.
Peter was thinking selfishly and all he could see was the process and not the end. All he wanted to do was to eliminate the present pain; he gave no thought to the ultimate value of that pain. And we are like that too. We forget that the Bible says that through trials you are perfected and that God is moving us to the image of Jesus Christ. All we see is the present pain and we cry to God to release us when it is that which perfects us.
We must learn that there is pain in the sanctification process and you're going to lose your life in the process. But that's the road to glory, that there's no glory to be had without pain. The Lord’s way is suffering, then glory, then joy, then blessing. Peter learned that, too. 1 Peter 5:10 says, "After you have suffered a while, (God will) perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.” May we too learn this. Let us pray.