And here in Matthew 16, we see the Lord Jesus Christ,
the revealer of secrets. He's revealing to them what is
about to take place. You and I don't know what's going
to happen one second from now. I mean, we literally don't know
what's going to happen one second from now. But our Lord knows
what's going to happen from eternity to eternity because He has determined
everything. He predetermined, predestinated. I'm not afraid of that word.
I'm glad it is. Really, I'm glad it is. I'm glad
things are not just willy-nilly running along. I thank God that
the God of infinite wisdom has ordered it all. There's no one
wiser to do so. I'm thankful he has ordered my
steps because if not, my steps would be going in another direction,
I assure you. Now it's evident here in these
verses that the disciples did not know the full work of the
Messiah. How much does a person need to
know to be saved? It's not how much you need to
know, it's who you need to know. Peter said, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God. The eunuch said, when Philip
said, if you believe, he said, I believe. I believe in the doctrine
of election. I believe it. He didn't say any
of that, did he? He said, I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God. That's where faith starts. And
from there, we learn doctrine. Henry said this so many times. We do not arrive at the Lord
Jesus Christ through doctrine. we arrive at doctrine through
the Lord Jesus Christ. If we learn it right, we learn
it through Him. We don't learn of Him through
the doctrine. We learn the doctrine through Him. And that helped me so much when
I heard him say that. Christ is the focal point. He's
the focal point. And from there we learn everything
else. That's where we learn everything. And they didn't know the full
work of the Messiah. It's evident here. And like all
babes in Christ, and they were at that time, there was so much
growing to be done. You know, I realize as I've gotten
older, older in the Lord, that there's still a lot of growing
I need to do. There's a lot more growing in
grace, in love. and kindness. There's a lot more
growing in that I need to do. I'm not going to grow in the
doctrine of election. It is what it is. But I can grow
in loving you, and you can grow in loving me, and we can grow
in loving God. We'll never love God too much. I can love chocolate too much.
And it can be evident. But you and I cannot love God
too much. We can't worship God too much. Can't do it. It's not even possible to render
unto God the glory and honor that's due unto His name. But the disciples here, they
did believe the one thing essential to salvation, and I've already
mentioned it. Thou art the Christ, the Messiah,
the appointed one, the Son of the living God. I believe that with all my heart. You're the Messiah. You're the
Savior. Now teach me. Instruct me. You're the Savior. You're the Son of God. You are
God manifested in the flesh. That's what they're saying. John
said if someone comes and they do not confess that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh, they're not of God. Our first confession
of faith is that Jesus Christ is God Almighty in the flesh.
Now, there's three things I'm gonna look at, and we're only
gonna go to about verse 23. We'll pick up the others next
week, Lord willing. We have a revelation. We have
a response of Peter to that revelation. And then we have the Lord's response
to Peter. and what Peter had to say in
our Lord's response to that. Now first of all, here's a revelation.
He must go to Jerusalem. They wanted to avoid it. The
disciples wanted to avoid going to Jerusalem. They knew the people
in the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem hated him. They knew they wanted
to kill him and they did not want him to go to Jerusalem.
Here we have a predestinated must. A must. All that the Lord Jesus Christ
did, He did because He must do it. He must do it. In order to save sinners, He
must go to Jerusalem. It was foreordained of God before
the creation of the world that the Son of God would come into
this world and go to Jerusalem and die. Everything about Jesus Christ,
everything, was ordered of God, or ordained of God. He must go
to Jerusalem. He's got to fulfill the Scriptures
because the Scripture says that he must do that, so he's got
to do it. As he said to John the Baptist when he came to him
to be baptized, and John the Baptist said, No, I need to be
baptized of you. And he said, It becomes us to
fulfill all righteousness. John, it is foreordained that
this must be so. It's written in the Scripture
that it must be so. And if that's the case, it has
to be done. It has to be done. Now I want you to notice, after
Peter's confession of thou art to Christ the Son of the Living
God, that's when the Lord began to plainly, clearly reveal what's
about to happen and what's about to happen to him, what he must
go through. Up until this point, that's not
been real clear to them. But after Peter said, Thou art
to Christ, the Son of the living God, our Lord said, all right,
now I'm going to let you know, I'm going to reveal to you what
must happen. This is what's going to happen.
Step by step. He knew step by step what was
going to happen, and He makes it known to them. He reveals
in detail what He must do in order to redeem us from our sins,
in order to save us. There's no going around this.
It must happen. It must happen. And the revelation
was shocking to them. Shocking to them. They were expecting
our Lord to do then what He's going to do when He comes back
the second time. See, they were missing the middle
part. They were expecting Him to reign
and to rule and to set up His kingdom. Redemption's got to
take place first. The blood's got to be shed first.
In order for you and I to be forgiven of sins, in order for
sinners to be saved, the blood has to be shed. It can't be without the blood. The
kingdom can't be set up without the blood. The kingdom can't
be established without the blood. And they were missing that part.
And I thought of this, when Peter's reaction to this, I thought of
this. Had their teachers been correct,
they wouldn't have been so shocked. What happens is when somebody's
teaching you something, and the truth is over here. And it's
like, oh. But I thought, you know, I said
that one time. I was in the machine shop. I
said, well, I've been thinking. And a guy said to me, he said,
there you go, working with that tools again. That's Peter. I thought, this is the way I
thought it was supposed to be. Well, you've been getting some
bad teaching. You've been getting some bad
teaching. Now, by his revelation, our Lord
shows this. He shows his foreknowledge. Nothing surprised him. Nothing
took him by surprise. He knew exactly what was going
to happen. He knew when it was going to happen. And he knew
how it was going to happen. This is his foreknowledge. He
knew this. And He reveals this to them.
He knew exactly what was going on. He knew His work. He knew
what He came to do. He knew He was given a work by
His Father. He says that in John 17, I have
finished the work which you gave Me to do. I have finished it.
He knew His work and He was obedient to it. He was obedient to His
Father. He never turned back. You and
I have a real tendency When things get tough, to go the other direction. We have a real tendency now,
we'll complain when things get to be tough. Now if it's the
Lord's will for me to go through something, should I not go through
it willingly? Well, you and I are full of sin,
but Christ knew no sin. So He willingly and obediently
took what came, took what was foreordained of God. He was a
willing Savior. He was an obedient Savior. And then here He revealed what's
about to happen and He revealed here a person. He said, He. He didn't say, We. He didn't look at His disciples
and say, Now, we all have to go to Jerusalem. No, He said,
I have to. The sheep are going to be scattered.
All of you are going to leave me." Of course, Peter's so bold,
he says, not me. They all may leave you, but I'm
the one, I raised my hand, I'm not going to. And he's the first
one that did. And I'll tell you this, the Lord
gave the sharpest rebuke to Peter when Peter took him aside to
rebuke him. The Lord gave him the sharpest
rebuke, more than when he denied him. You know, the Lord was tender
to him. When Peter denied it, the Lord
was very tender to him. All he did was just look at him.
But boy, here, he really trims him down. He trims him down. But our Lord reveals a person
that must go to Jerusalem. He, not talking about someone
else, he must go to Jerusalem. There is a specific place he
must go to, Jerusalem. Why is that? That's the place where the sacrifice
is offered. That is the place where the Passover
lamb is offered in Jerusalem. He's got to go to that place.
He's got to go to that place because God foreordained it to
be so. That is a foreordained place
for him to go to and be sacrificed. It can't just be anywhere. The lamb wasn't just offered
up anywhere. God designed and ordained a specific place for
this to happen. And he says, listen, I must. This is not an option. This is
not optional. I must go to Jerusalem. Now, when he says he must go
to Jerusalem, he must go there and do three things. Three things
have got to happen. Three things has to happen. First
of all, he must suffer. He must suffer. Our sins deserve
suffering. The law requires suffering, not
just a quick death. It never hit me like this until
yesterday, and I called Tom Harding, and I said, Tom, let me ask you
something. I said, I know, I know he has to suffer. I know our
Lord has to suffer. I said, but why does he have to suffer and
it can't just be a quick death? Why can't he just go to Jerusalem
and just die and that's it? And I said, I want to hear your
take on it, Tom. I want us to discuss this a little
bit. And we did. And one of the thoughts
that I had was this. If I were to perish, if God were
to send me to hell, I have to suffer God's wrath for an eternity
because I can't satisfy justice. He's got to suffer what I would
have suffered. He has to. To be my substitute,
to be a proper substitute, he has to suffer the wrath of God. Jesus Christ, a real man, suffered
on Calvary's tree for my sin. And I think of it like this often. He suffered for my sins as if
no one else existed but me. I caused the death of the Son
of God. He took my suffering. He took my death. It's like And
this is probably a poor example, but it's like somebody was getting
ready to shoot me, and then, or, and somebody jumps in front
and takes the bullet. And they take the bullet, and
I'm standing there, and I'm alive, and I think, and I, now, if that
happens, you think, you're gonna be so thankful to that person,
so. Our Lord took the bullet of God's
wrath. He took God's wrath. He really
died. A man really died for me and
because of me. So he has to suffer because I
must suffer. And here are three points that
Tom gave me when we were talking. First of all, you've got to suffer
to fulfill the Scriptures. Isaiah 53 says, He was wounded
for our transgression and bruised, tormented, tormented. The Scripture says
he must suffer, so he must suffer. And then he must suffer because
God is holy. God must punish sin. Now He's going to punish it in
me, in you, or in our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. But God's
going to punish sin. And then thirdly, justice has
to be satisfied. It's got to be satisfied. It
can't just be a quick death. There's got to be punishment.
Punishment for sin. Not just death, but punishment
for sin. And it says in 1 Peter, For Christ
hath once suffered for sins, Christ was once punished for
sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,
And He says here, He must suffer many things. I have many sins. You have many
sins. He must suffer many things. And He must be rejected by the
elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. That's the third.
He's got to be rejected. Because the Scripture says in
Isaiah 53, He's despised and rejected of men. That's what
the scripture says. So it's got to be fulfilled.
It's going to happen. The elders represent the establishment,
the old establishment. The chief priests represent the
religious leaders. And the scribes represent the
scholars. They were supposed to be the
wise ones. All of them, the whole establishment
turned thumbs down on him. Rejected him. These made up the great Sanhedrin
court. and they all rejected him, despised
him. He came into his own and his
own received him not. And now, it's not ending yet. You'd think, well, hasn't he
suffered enough? Is not the lashes on the back and just his visage
was so marred more than any man, is that not enough? No. No. His blood was shed when they
laid his back open? Is that not enough? No. You notice it doesn't say here,
he doesn't say, and he must die, he must be killed. He can't just
die of himself. You know, the Passover lamb did
not die of itself. It was put to death. In other
words, it was killed. It was killed. And just as a
sacrifice didn't die of itself, so the Lord Jesus Christ must
be killed. Just like the Passover lamb,
it must be put to death. In order for Him to put an end
to death, He's got to be put to death. The death of Christ,
I can't remember who said this, the death of Christ was the death
of death. It was the death of death. He must be offered up to God. The Lamb has to be slain. The
Lamb has to be sacrificed. The Lamb must be killed. The
Lamb must be offered up to God. When Jesus Christ died on the
cross, He was not offered to me and you. It's not an offering
to me and you. It's an offering to God. It's
an offering to God. The Lamb is offered to God to
satisfy His justice. We've turned it in offering to
the people. He's offered to God. And God has commanded every man,
every woman, everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. He must taste death for everyone
he represented. The soul that sinneth shall surely
die. I've sinned a lot. and still do, too much, too much. We all do. So since I have sinned, and for
him to save me, he's got to die in my place. He's got to die
in my place. Salvation from sin, from the
curse of the law, can come no other way. Someone has to die
for someone to live. Now here's the good news. There's
good news in all this. And be raised again the third
day. He suffered, yes. He was rejected, yes. He died,
yes. And he was raised again the third
day. And he doesn't say he shall be raised again, he's specific,
the third day. Like he said to that butler,
in three days you're going to be restored. You're going to
be restored. He was raised again the third
day. The scripture says in Romans
4.25, He was delivered for our offenses. and raised again for our justification. His resurrection says God has
accepted His work. God has accepted His person. God has accepted every sinner,
everyone who believes on Him, everyone He died for, God has
accepted them in Christ. In Christ. If He's not risen again, you
and I are yet in our sins and we're not justified. But He's
risen. Our Lord's risen. He's alive and well. He's alive
and well seated at God's right hand. What a motive this morning to
sing with enthusiasm. Not singing from a hymn book,
but singing as unto the Lord. singing from the heart praise
that I don't have to face God's wrath. He has saved us from the
wrath to come, and it's coming. But He saved us from it. We have a living sacrifice in
our Lord Jesus Christ before the throne of God. You know,
all those lambs that were offered, They were killed. They died and
they stayed dead, every one of them. None of them came back
except this one. Except God's land. Except the
land that God provided. He came back. And we have, before
the throne of God, before God Almighty, we have a living sacrifice. Now, had Peter been listening,
he would have heard the good news. But when he heard the Lord
say that he must suffer many things, be rejected and be killed,
Peter shut down. He just shut down. He didn't
hear the resurrection part. He didn't hear that part. You
know how it is when you're listening to somebody and they say something
and you just, you know, you've got to start talking. I mean,
you've already shut them off. And Peter just shut down. I mean,
when he heard that, he didn't even hear the good news. And
Peter, it says, took him. I imagine he grabbed him by the
shoulder or the arms and said, come over here, come over here,
man. Come over here. Pity thyself. Pity thyself. Take care of yourself. Self-preservation, it's the strongest
thing in us. We preserve ourselves and our
lives and our way of life. We preserve it. And that's what
Peter said. Don't let them do this. All he saw was failure. That's
all he saw was failure. You're going to die. That's failure.
No, that's victory. That's victory. When you see
him in a judgment hall, and he's being beaten, and he's being
strangled, and his vision is more than any man, who's winning?
He is. He is. Good is winning over evil. He is. Peter said, no, no, no, no. He
said, far be that from thee. Don't even think that way. What our Lord said was a complete
shock to Peter. It was a complete shock to his
thinking. And that's usually the way it is when the Lord saves
us. It's completely different than what we thought. Completely different. And Peter's response was, It
was satanic. Listen, Peter, when he said this,
I know that in his heart it was out of love to Christ. He did
not want to see him suffer, be rejected, humiliated, and put
to death, be killed. He didn't want to see that happen
to his Lord. But Peter didn't realize that
his response was satanic. That's frightening, isn't it?
That's frightening. And the Lord responds to Peter.
He turns around to him. He doesn't say, now Peter, you
don't understand what's really going on here, I know. He turns
around, because evidently he had his back to Peter, because
Peter's rebuking him. Can you imagine rebuking God?
That's what he's doing. He's rebuking God Almighty. And
I believe our Lord has his back when Peter's talking to him,
and he turns, and he looks him right in the face. Just like,
remember, when Peter denied him, he said the Lord looked at him?
Nobody can have a piercing look like him. He looks right into
the heart. He goes past the eyes. He goes right into the heart.
He looks at Peter. Peter didn't expect this. And
the Lord said, get behind me, Satan. He knew who was behind this response. What a sharp, the sharpest rebuke
I believe our Lord ever gave was right here. Get thee behind
me, Satan. You don't care about the things
of God. You savor not the things of God, but the things that be
of men. You don't care anything about
God's glory. Now whether, now whether Satan
had, was speaking actually through Peter, or if what Peter was saying
was just, he was influenced by Satan. I do know this, that Satan
cannot take a believer over. I know that. He can't possess
a believer and take him over. He's the Lord's. He's sealed
with the Holy Spirit. But we can be influenced and
our thoughts can be influenced by Satan. And the Lord said, He put Satan
in his place. Get behind me. Get out of the
way. This is going to happen. And
you're not going to stop it. I'm going to redeem. I'm going
to redeem my elect. I'm going to redeem a multitude
of sinners no man can number. I'm going to redeem them. And
you can't stop it. Get behind me. Get behind me. Peter's response shows how weak
we really are and how frail and how protected we are. We need
his protection, don't we? What is part of the Lord's Prayer?
Keep us from evil, the evil one. Keep us from the evil one. Don't
let him have his way with me. The Lord said to Peter, He says,
Satan hath desired thee that he may sift thee as wheat. And
you know the Lord, He did not say, but I'm not going to let
him have you. I'm not going to let him have
you. I've got a hedge about you and he's not going to bother
you. You know what the Lord said? But I've prayed for you that
your faith fails not. And it's saying to me, it's saying
this, but I've prayed for you that your faith fail not when
he comes to sift you. Just like Job. When I let him
have some power, when I let him have some way, when I let him
touch you, I pray your faith fails not." We're no match. Tell the devil
to leave. Yeah, right. Lord, you tell him
to leave. Michael the archangel would not
argue with him. over the body of Moses, he said,
the Lord rebuked you. I ain't dealing with you. Jesus Christ, and I close. Jesus
Christ has suffered. He has fulfilled the Scriptures.
He has satisfied God's justice. He was put to death in the flesh.
He's risen from the dead. And there is real salvation,
complete salvation in Jesus Christ. Look to Him. Look to Him. He's never turned away. One sinner
that looks to Him.