April 28, 2012
But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. "Heaven forbid, Lord," he said. "This will never happen to you!" Jesus turned to Peter and said, "Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's." -- Matthew 16: 22-23 (NLT)
God does nothing by accident. There are no words wasted in the Bible. They all have meanings; we just may not yet understand them. God gives us revelation one bit at a time and always at His time; the right time. Even the very order of stories is presented in such a manner within the Bible as to teach us something. In Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Matthew we see back to back stories which show how far apart one can move from God in such a short span of time. How dangerous it is for us to ever think that we have "arrived." The spirit of arrival pervades the modern church as people constantly think more of themselves due to their service or accolades received from man. The principle that kicks in then is simple -- the more you think of yourself, the less you think of God. The first story in this chapter we want to look at is when Jesus asks Peter who he thinks Jesus is. Peter responds correctly that He is the Christ. Here was the response of Jesus to Peter:
Jesus replied, "You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means "rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven." -- Matthew 16: 17-19 (NLT)
Peter must have been feeling pretty good about himself here! He must have been a bit puffed up in who he thought he was. Jesus is going to give me the keys to the kingdom of heaven after all! Yet in the very next story, indicating virtually little time having passed, Jesus beings to tell His followers that He will be crucified and resurrected. Peter rebukes the Lord in our key verse for saying such a thing and Jesus now refers to Peter as a dangerous trap from Satan himself! One story later -- that is how quickly our flesh nature can destroy the good works God is doing inside of us if we are not careful to stand watch for it. You see Peter had his own image of who God was. He recreated God in that image and the ending Jesus was telling was not what Peter had envisioned. When confronted, Peter's flesh assumed that Jesus must be wrong.
To Peter, Jesus was going to deliver the Jews from
the oppression of Rome. He did not yet understand that Jesus was actually going
to deliver all of mankind from the oppression of sin. Jesus has to point out to
Peter something we should be wary of today and that is to not see things from a
human point of view. That is because our point of view is so limited compared
to God's. Our view is constantly warped by the lens of this world. The lens of
the enemy. The lens of sin. God has no such restrictions. He sees exactly how
things are supposed to be.
So as it was, so it goes still today. We can have in our own minds what we think God should be doing in our lives. We recreate Him as we see fit. Maybe we recreate Him as a heavenly grandfather there to comfort us and tell us everything is going to be ok. Maybe we recreate Him as a wealthy benefactor who is going to leave us an earthly inheritance from which we shall never want. Maybe we recreate Him as the same deliver Peter did -- waiting for Him to deliver us from whatever oppression we may deem we are under. And listen, God does want to deliver us. God does want to provide for us. God does want to comfort us. But those are not the reasons for His existence. We serve the Master. The Master does not serve us. He will comfort us in His time, when the lessons learned from the pain and suffering is complete and have done their purifying work in us. He will provide for us but not so that we will over-value the things of this earth over the eternal. He will deliver us but not as long as we are trying to solve everything under our own power. Modern Christianity is so overly focused on the blessings of God they preach a religion devoid of sacrifice. A religion devoid of the role we play in relation to God. The result is an expectant church body that is constantly looking for the blessings from God instead of a thankful church body that is constantly grateful for all God has already done. We were created in His image. There is never a cause to recreate the Creator.
Rev. Anthony
