Let's take our Bibles now and
turn to Matthew chapter 16. You'll recall our lesson last
week about Peter's divine revelation of Christ. What a blessed thing it was. Our Lord said, blessed art thou,
for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto you. That's
the blessing of the Gospel. It's a divine revelation. It is the free and sovereign
gift of God. He gives to one while another
He doesn't give to. Why does He do that? Because
He's God. Because He's God. It's the only
answer we have in the Scripture. Who art thou, O man, that replies
against God? We can't call God into question. But what a blessed thing it is
to be given the revelation, to see all the promises of God fulfilled
in Him, to see all the demands of the holy and just God satisfied
in Him, to see Him in all the types and all the shadows of
the Old Testament law and the ceremonies. To see Him as the
Lamb and the High Priest in the tabernacle. To see Him who is
God come into the flesh. To see Him who is so far superior
to anything religion has ever had to say about Him. What a
blessed thing it is to see Him as God the Holy Spirit reveals
Him. I heard Jesus, that name Jesus,
all my young life. I went to church three, four,
five times a week. I heard that name Jesus. We sang
about Jesus. Jesus loves me, this I know,
and so on and so forth. And we sang all the hymns. But
I didn't know who Jesus was until God the Holy Spirit revealed
him to me. What a blessed thing it is to
see Him as God the Holy Spirit reveals Him. And then right in
the middle of their rejoicing, they were rejoicing just as we
rejoice. They were rejoicing that they
saw Him, this blessed revelation of Him. And right in the middle of that
rejoicing, the Lord throws a bucket of cold water right in their
face. Matthew chapter 16, verse 20. Then charged he his disciples
that they should tell no man who he was. Tell no man. have this blessed revelation
of Him, but forbidden to tell it. Why would their Lord give
them the gospel keys and then forbid them to open the great
mystery? And actually, there is just one
explanation. His time was not yet come. You see, everything God does,
He does on purpose, and He does it in His appointed time. In
Galatians 4, verse 4, it says, When the fullness of the time
was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under
the law. In Ezekiel 16, verse 8, when
He was talking about that young baby, you remember the story
The young baby had been thrown away, just cast out into the
sand, in that hot desert sand, left there unswaddled, uncared
for, unsalted. He said, when I passed by thee
and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was a time of love. And Paul told those heathen philosophers
on Mars Hill, that the living God, the difference in this God,
our God, the living God, the God of the Bible, the difference
between Him and the God of this world, whoever they are, all
of these gods that they've made these monuments to, the difference
between the living God and those gods. Here's what He's told them.
He said, this God hath made of one blood all nations of men
for to dwell on all the face of the earth. Now listen. and
hath determined the times before appointed." Who determined them? God did. God did. And set the bounds of their habitation. Not a sparrow, our Lord said,
can fall to the ground without your heavenly Father. And Paul
tells us that he worketh all things after the counsel of his
own will. And then David, the sweet psalmist
of Israel, said in Psalm 31, 15, my times are in His hands. Can you say that? They are, whether
you can say it or not. But what a blessed thing it is
to say that. There would be a time to declare
Him as the Christ plainly and without hesitation, but that
time had not yet come. See, the machinery of God's providence,
it turns slow to us, but it turns sure. And it turns according
to His purpose. Now, you might reason in all
of this. I read a lot of the old writers
on these verses. You might reason here that the
Jews might have been incited to take him and get rid of him
before his time. That's no doubt true. They would have cast him off
the brow of the hill. You remember that passage. But
his time was not yet gone. You might reason that certain
ones might have stirred up the people to make him an earthly
king. You might reason that. That's
so. They tried to do that over in
John when he fed the 5,000. They wanted to take him by force
and make him their king. You might reason that the Romans
might have seen him as a threat to overthrow their government
as the Jews got out and murmured and tried to spread rumors to
the Romans. And I can see a lot of things
involved here. One writer said the disciples
were not yet equipped to defend the doctrines of his offices
and his person. And that's certainly true. When
our Lord told them to go to Jerusalem, He said, you tarry there till
you be endued with power from on high. They weren't yet ready
to defend His offices and to defend His person. But here's the bottom line. His
time had not yet come. You see what I'm saying? That's
the answer when it's all boiled down. All right, let's look at
Matthew 16, verses 21 through 28. 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 the third day. Then
Peter, this blessed man to whom God had given this great revelation,
took the Lord That don't even sound right,
does it, to a believer, does it? He took the Lord. He stopped
him in the middle of his speech. He said, well, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. He 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. Ooh, that's pretty rough language,
isn't it? Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an offense unto
me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those
that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples,
if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake
shall find it. For what is a man profited if
he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a
man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall
come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he
shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto
you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death
till they see the Son of Man coming into His kingdom." Now
let me tell you something. These verses are full of profound
spiritual truth. Absolute profound spiritual truth. The eternal Son of God appeared
in human flesh and has announced now this long look for Messiah. They look for Him to come, look
for Him to appear on this earth. And now He's come, and He tells
them He's going to die. Not that He's going to die, that
He must die. I see also here a blessed apostle. rebuking what his Lord just told
him that must surely come to pass. And then we have the Lord whose
Father had granted this apostle a divine revelation, calling
him by the name Satan. We have also a declaration of
the necessity of self-denial and commitment to Christ, a declaration
of the Lord's second advent and the establishing of Christ's
kingdom upon this earth and His heavenly rule. Let's look at
some of these divine mysteries and see if God can shed some
light on these things. First of all, He declares to
them the absolute necessity of His suffering and death. There
is nothing trivial in the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing trivial. Nothing trivial concerning the
life and death of Christ. His whole life was on trial. His whole life, everything he
did was being observed. It was being done for a great
purpose. He was a representative man. That's one of the first great
truths a believer comes to see is that the Lord Jesus Christ
came here as a representative man. Everything he did, he did
representing those given to him by the Father from all eternity. You can't make any other sense
out of the life of Christ until you come to see this truth. This
is a representative man. As in Adam, all die. As in Christ,
all shall be made alive. And everything is our appointed
representative that he did was absolutely necessary, especially
his death. His death was the death of a
substitute. He died not for his own sins,
but for the sins of all his elect. That's the doctrine of particular
redemption. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1
through 4, Paul gives us just a short definition of the gospel
he preached. He said he preached how that
God's promised Messiah died for our sins according to the scriptures. Not according to what seems right
to this religious world, but according to the word of God,
according to the scriptures. His death was pictured by the
types thousands of years ago as a substitute. You can't make
any more out of it than that. He's the substitute. Substitute
for who? When that high priest went beyond
that veil, whose names was on his robe? Whose names was on
his breastplate? On his shoulder? Israel. The 12 tribes of Israel. He preached how the Christ died
for our sins according to the Scriptures. and was buried and raised the
third day, according to the Scriptures. In John 10, verse 11, he said,
I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd giveth His
life for the sheep. In John 6, verse 39, he said,
This is the Father's will which has sent me, that of all which
He hath given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again
at the last day. And in John 17, verse 1, it says,
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven,
and said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy Son, that thy
Son also may glorify thee. Now this prayer is about the
death that he is about to die. And he said, As thou hast given
him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to
as many as thou hast given him." And then in Acts chapter 13 verse
48, if you take a note, it says, when the Gentiles heard this,
when they heard the gospel and saw the Jews reject it, saw the
Jews disrespect the gift of God, and Paul said, therefore I turn
to the Gentiles. When the Gentiles heard this,
they was glad. They was glad and they glorified
the word of the Lord. Now listen, and as many as were
ordained to eternal life believed. Think that's something. The death
of Christ is necessary because it is the substitutionary death
of God's elect. It is by this death that God's
holy justice is satisfied, and there's no possibility of a salvation
without His death. And because of His precious blood,
there's no possibility for one of His sheep to perish. There's no possibility that they
will not hear the gospel. There's no possibility that they
won't be led to repentance and given the gift of faith and become
new creatures in Christ Jesus. Not even a chance. God has no work which is ineffectual. His death was necessary and His
death was effectual. And then secondly, because of
Peter's rebuke of God's sovereign decree concerning the death of
Christ, our Lord looked Peter in the eye and said, get thee
behind me, Satan. For thou savorest not the things
that be of God, but those that be of men. Now some folk get
upset at me when I identify the long-established and widely accepted
worldly religions, and I say that they are anti-Christ. And
I use the scriptural phrase, not only anti-Christ, but synagogues
of Satan. That's what he calls them over
in Revelation. or satanic religion. He says
in the Corinthians that they're Satan's ministers, for his ministers
are transformed as ministers of righteousness. And our Lord
didn't pull any punches even to this blessed apostle.
The reasons for his rebuke were of satanic influence. That's why he said, get thee
behind me, Satan. Now, I want you to listen to
me. Anything that disregards the necessity and effectual consequences
of Christ's death is satanic. I don't care if they feed the
poor. I don't care if they clothe the
naked. I don't care what else they do. If they disregard the necessity
and effectual consequences of his death, it's satanic. And it will do you harm. And that's why our Lord looked
at this blessed apostle and told him to get behind me. It's satanic doctrine to deny
the fall and complete redemption of God's elect I mean, to deny
the full and complete redemption of God's elect by the death of
Christ, that's satanic. To say that one of God's elect
for whom Christ suffered and died, for whom he came as a representative,
for whom he was appointed to his offices, the whole reason
for creation, the whole reason for the fall, the whole reason
for all of these things. was to set forth the very glory
of God in the redemption of His elect and to say that one of
them should perish. That after all of that, one of
them might, after all of that, perish. And that it was all for
nothing. That's satanic. To say that His
death made salvation possible to all men, that's a lie out
of hell. To say that his death was a down
payment that must be followed by the installment payments of
your good works is a lie. To say that your faith in any
way makes his death sufficient is the doctrine of devils. And
to preach that his death only blotted out your past sins and
you're now made perfect by the flesh is another doctrine of
devils. Paul called it another gospel.
And to imply in any way that anything man does or may do is
necessary to his justification is a denial of the Word of God. Peter was still trying to look
at Christ through the religious ideas of men and the lusts and
desires of his flesh. Christ said, thou art an offense
to me. Why? For thou savorest not the
things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
All right, let's look at this. Here's the third thing. There's
a declaration here of the necessity of self-denial. Now, you'll never
go anywhere in your understanding of the Word of God and the Gospel
of Christ until God the Holy Spirit enables you, convinces
you of sin, convinces you of what you are, convinces you of who He is, and
in the light of those two things, you deny yourself. You deny yourself. You deny your
abilities. You deny your authority. You
deny your old ideas and philosophies. You deny your affection. You deny your regard for your
earthly friends and family in regard to the doctrines of Christ.
You deny your right to free will. You say, let God be true and
every man a liar. God ever showed you that you're
a liar? Has He ever showed that to you? Well, He showed it to
me. Deny your rights. Then fourth,
we had this foolish disciple rebuking the Lord of Glory. It's the Son of God who has come
and given to us an understanding that we might know Him that is
true. That's what it says in 1 John
5 verse 20. To rebuke Him or anything concerning
His manifested glory is to rebuke the Lord of glory. Now let me
hurry and I'll try to get this last thing in. I don't think
I need to go anywhere on that point. But there's a declaration
of the Lord's coming to establish His kingdom. And He said, there
be some of you standing here today, He said, right here, Peter
being the one in view, who shall not see death till you see the
Son of Man coming into His kingdom. And Matthew chapter 16, verse
28, though it's vitally connected in God's eternal purpose of grace,
declare something totally separate from his second advent declared
in verse 27. Verse 28 is talking about the
dawn of the gospel age and the beginning of the last days. It's
referring to his coming in the power of his spirit and the preaching
of the gospel. And so will be fulfilled concerning
those gospel keys that he told Peter that he's given to him.
He said, I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom. When can He use them? When can He turn the block? When can He take those things
and open those mysteries? Not until the Son of God comes
into the power of His Kingdom. When did that happen? On the
day of Pentecost. The very men, though totally
ignorant of these things, would experience them in God's own
time. And what a blessed day in which
we live. Think about this and I'll close.
A day when God is establishing His kingdom, and though the gates
of hell, though the gates of hell come against and assault
this church, they shall not prevail against it. They can, all their
jumping up and down and all the millions of dollars they spend
and all the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of members they
have, and the signs, and the influence, and the politics,
and all the power behind them, and they can't even slow down
God's coming kingdom. They can't hinder it. They can't
slow it down. They can't impede it. They can't
defeat it. God works in spite of all that's
done, even our own ignorance. and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.