(soft piano music) - Hello, Harvard student county. Pastor Matt here with Pastor Paul for another edition of the midweek. How are you this week, Pastor Paul? - I am doing well. - Anything new and exciting in your world? - There's always something new and exciting in our world. It's what we're excited about. No, God is faithful. God is doing a work in and through our lives. And we're excited about that. Seeing so many people, being excited about being in God's word and how it's changing their lives. And that is super, super exciting. So we're hearing God's word preach on a Sunday morning. We know this, we're ready to dive back into small groups that know small groups. We're studying God's word. We're going through a reading plan. Soon coming to the end of that, we're gonna start another one up. So we're always gonna be in God's word on really a daily basis. We're gonna dive deeply into it on our small groups. I'm gonna hear God's word preach at Sunday mornings. And so it's a way for us to continue to be immersed in God's word. - Yeah, and it's fantastic that we're in that place that God has taken us to that place. We've been so focused on what he has to say about things. And in this past sermon on Sunday, Pastor Justin preach from Mark chapter eight verses 31 through 33. The title of his message was, "It's Your Call." And in this message, the text clearly emphasizes God's sovereignty and human responsibility. It is one of those texts that hits both hard. So why don't we take a moment? We're gonna get into the passage. I'm gonna read verses 31 and 33 from Mark chapter eight. And then we'll break it down. Beginning in verse 31, it says, "And Jesus began to teach them "that the Son of Man, referring to Christ, "would 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. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me Satan. "For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, "but on the things of man." Our one point from Sunday was a call to faith. So let's just, for a moment here, let me break that down and then we'll get into a little more application. This is where Jesus throws the disciples a massive curve ball. Because up until now, they had been thinking that Jesus, the man was basically invincible. Like think about some of the things he's doing. He's walking on water, he's healing the blind, he's casting out demons. But in verse 31, he tells them that sometime in the semi near future, Jesus will be killed. And he does give the good news that he will resurrect, which secures our salvation, praise God. But the disciples don't have a clue what he's talking about when he gives them this message. In fact, Peter, speaking on behalf of the disciples, he rebukes Jesus. We see that in verse 32. He's more or less saying, "That's not gonna happen. "You've got it all wrong, Jesus." And then Jesus rebukes Peter with that memorable line. It just jumps out at us, "Get behind me Satan." And that is a shockingly strong response. Because earlier, Jesus had praised Peter for being God's spokesman. You can read that account in Matthew 16. But in this moment, Jesus is very directly calling out Peter's sin. And he's saying, "Peter, you're thinking "the same way that Satan thinks." So Paul, our big questions here, why did Jesus respond with such intensity to Peter's rebuke and why is Peter not understanding? What is he not getting about what's happening here? - Yeah, it's such a great text. And obviously goes back to, again, Christ always revealing our hearts. Like, whatever God speaks. And this is what happens in, like we mentioned earlier, the preaching of God's Word, our study in small groups or discipleship groups in our personal study in God's Word. When we are listening to God's Word being preached, when we're studying God's Word, God's Word is studying us. And so obviously, Jesus is speaking in this moment. So obviously, it's revealing Peter's heart. But one of the things that is happening really with Peter is the idea that what God is laying out, what Jesus is laying out is God's plan for the restoration of mankind, for the reconciliation of mankind. Unless someone dies, a perfect man dies, we are bound to stay in our sin. And so obviously, this is what Jesus is communicating. But obviously, what Peter's not getting, which is the question we're getting here, what is Peter not getting? Peter is wanting to, I think their thinking is that we're going to set up our throne. We're going to reign with Christ. We already have our positions. We're in this spot. We are moving forward. The crowds are coming. They're feeling the crescendo and the massive crowds that are coming around them with the feeding of the 5,000. This is a shoe in. They were nobody from nowhere, Will. And now they're with Jesus. We're going to reign in his kingdom. I've been chosen. This is going to be awesome. And then Jesus plunks on and said, "Wait a minute, I'm going to die." - Yeah. - And absolutely, I believe it absolutely is a bullet in the balloon of his thought process. Like everything I'm thinking has just been shot through, deflated, what are you doing? And this is why I think Peter responds with such a rebuke, is the idea that this can't be, this is such a shock to his mental state of where he was at. - And Pastor Justin, on Sunday, he used this line. He said, "We do everything we can to do what we want." And the disciples, in this case, Peter speaking on their behalf, they have this picture of what the kingdom's going to look like. And they're looking at it from a very earthly human mindset. And when Jesus contradicts that human plan, like it wrecks Peter's world. Like he doesn't understand. Galatians 5, 17 says the desires of the flesh are against the spirit. So there's really a war going on here where Jesus is making very clear what God's will is for this situation, for this plan of salvation. Peter and the disciples don't want to hear it because their flesh doesn't agree with it. - Right, so you're looking at, obviously, God's will will be done. - It's spoken all the way through the scriptures from the beginning of Genesis to what we hear the end of Revelation. God has a plan, he's moving it through, and men obviously listen to their own flesh and their own thoughts are contrary to what God wants. So he's, and obviously the Bible's riddled also with people who are trying to fill up God's decrees and doing their own things, still trying to appease God in the process. That doesn't work. We mess ourselves up as we come against God's plan because God's plan, God's will will always be done. And our response in this moment, I think this other thing, our response in this moment is something that we need to be able to take a thought of. When Christ always says that we should pick up or cross and follow him, that's a death to ourself. - Yes, yes. - That's a death to it. And so having to come to grips with that reality, and this is what he was calling them to, they were calling to, hey, this is gonna be great, land of milk and honey, right? All the things they've heard, like we're moving into this state where this the Messiah believed that now, but their idea of what the Messiah would be like is very different. - Yeah, they didn't grasp that God's plan is the one that matters here. God's will, you said that God's will will be done. It'll always happen. We see in Ephesians chapter one, verse 11, God works all things according to the counsel of his will. And this is something that the disciples didn't understand yet. They thought they could still manipulate things and get things to play out that the way they felt was best. So Peter, along with the rest of the disciples, he wanted Jesus to be king, but Peter didn't want Jesus to die on the cross in the process. He didn't realize that the cross was essential. That was something else that Justin said on Sunday. The cross was essential to the plan of salvation. Peter didn't get that. And then also Peter wanted to be, you could say a soldier, quote unquote, in the king's army, but he didn't want to be a servant leader in the process. And a true Christian leads by serving. Peter didn't get that yet. It didn't register. So can we talk a little bit about what does service look like? We seem to crave in our flesh a life of ease and pleasure. I mean, I am so guilty of this. Like it's 8.30 p.m. man, I'm tired. I just want to sit on the couch, watch them TV, eat some cereal, go to bed. I just want to relax. But we're really not called to that state of leisure constantly. So how do we combat that? What are we actually called to? What kind of life? Well, yeah, we're called to life of serving. And it comes to the reality of understanding God's sovereignty and understanding God's goodness. And I think those two, we mix up, we don't see those two interments, but we really grab those concepts at a high level. And then it helps infiltrate everything we do. The Justin used the word, and I've heard this before from other men who have used it, but Justin used his word, the suffering servant. It really embodies who Christ was in everything he did, who he was, what he did, how he worked, how he cared, how he endured the suffering that happened. He really, truly led by serving. He served his disciples. He served the people. He served ultimately Christ's humanity, right? In the way that he died on the cross, he died in a way that he gave his life up for us. And he gave us an example to follow him in the way that we are to then lay our lives down for the people that we are in contact with, right? Especially our family, our church family, our brothers and sisters. How do we live in that way? He gave an example to live in a way where we're sacrificial. Sure, yeah. And one thing to just reiterate, we're not saying at all that it's sinful to take a moment to relax. 'Cause we're called to rest as well, but we are not called to this lifestyle where our entire being revolves around our pleasure and the things that we want to do all the time. We are called to a life of submission and sacrifice and Pastor Justin walked us through a number of these S's. Said that God's will is for our salvation. That's in 1 Timothy chapter two, verse four. Said God's will is for our self-sacrifice. We say that in Hebrews 13, 16. God's will is for our suffering, which is hard for us to embrace. But we are called into suffering for the sake of the cross just like Christ was. That's from 1 Peter 4, 19. And then God's will is for our sanctification, for our continued growth to be conformed into Christ's image. We see that in 1 Thessalonians 4, 3. And the reason that we can eventually embrace this idea of servitude, of submission, of sanctification is if we truly begin to trust in God's sovereignty. 'Cause no matter where I am and what I'm struggling with or what I'm doing now for the sake of the kingdom, even if it's extremely difficult emotionally, maybe physically, spiritually, it's a struggle, this is part of God's plan. And we go back to what we mentioned earlier, Ephesians 1, 11. God works all things according to the counsel of His will. When we're submissive to His will and His sovereignty, then we can better, we can make better use of the responsibility He's given us. - Yeah, so you're talking about kingdom. That's what we're talking about, kingdoms. - Yep. - We're putting that together, so we're talking about God's kingdom, the kingdom of the world. We're talking about two kingdoms that we're dealing with. So it really comes in the contrast of do we believe in the sovereign will and kingdom of Christ. And that way it helps shape what we do. And then it helps us look at some things. Is this what I'm doing? Is it congruent with the kingdom of God? - Mm-hmm, yes. - So we always play that role in how do we do that? But again, it's an upside down kingdom, which means those that are great, as it says in Mark 10, 43, those who want to be great have to learn to serve. - Yep, you must be a servant, absolutely. - Right, so it means the least of these are the ones that are the ones that God's caring for in many ways. So I think that's the, when you begin to look at, that's really where my heart thing gets twisted, because this world has much more of a grip on us than we'd like to think of that's right. So we identify with Peter, right? We go like, you know, Peter's going like, no, I, this is what I really want. And then his kingdom he was looking for, in Christ's kingdom, had a collision, right? So then he's got a choice to make in that moment. So this is what, this is what Justin's really saying. Like, this is where we have a choice to make. Am I going to live, God's kingdom is going to be done? - Yes. - Am I going to live in anxiety and fear and envy and jealousy and an angst in the midst of God's plan being done? Or am I going to submit to Christ and allow the peace and the joy and the contentment that comes with trusting him as his kingdom is going to move? That's where we, the choice is up to us in this moment, right? Do I joyfully go to him in prayer? Do I, am I grateful in prayer, knowing that God's will is going to be done? We can look at our world around us and go like, it's not going the way we want it, right? We'd love to have it happen a different way, but Christ is saying, my will is going to be done. So as we go to that, we go to God in prayer, but we again trust him faithfully, sovereignly, serving him and his kingdom, wanting to lift that up and say, okay, what's our job? Our job is not to overthrow the government or overthrow our, whatever, no, it's to submit to Christ first to his kingdom, serve our church, serve our people as we do it, knowing God's will, God's plan, God's sovereign plan is being done to every job, every title. - Absolutely, absolutely. - Yes, yes, to summarize, in God's sovereignty, he has called you out of a life of sin and into a life of joyful service. - For sure. - And now, now that he's done this for us, it's our responsibility to humbly submit to that call. So it is his sovereignty and our responsibility, working together in what does Spurgeon say? He says, there's no reason to reconcile good friends. They work in perfect harmony. - For sure. - And just to close, I mean, you referenced Mark 10, 43 through 45, I think it's a great way to close, if we just read that passage. Christ says, whoever would be great among you, must be a servant. And whoever will be first among you, must be slave of all, willing to serve the kingdom, it's people, and to share the gospel with the world. It says, and finally, he closes this by reminding us of who set this example for us. For even the Son of Man, Jesus, came not to be served, and if anyone had the right to demand service, it was him, but he came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And that is the gospel, the news of Jesus Christ. The church, thank you so much for listening once again to the midweek, we hope this has been edifying to you. We are going to be meeting once again on Sunday to worship, to sit under the preaching of God's word. If you're curious where we're headed, you can continue in Mark chapter eight, beginning verse 34 until the end of the chapter. That's what Pastor Justin will be preaching from. We are excited to gather once again on Sunday. Until then, God bless. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
