Low Expectations

Mark 8:31-33
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, September 27, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gregory Broderick

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again.  He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke Him.

But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, He rebuked Peter.  “Get behind me, Satan!” He said.  “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Mark 8:31–33

 

In Mark 8:31–33, we see Jesus teaching His disciples the hard truths about why He became man.  He teaches them that He came to suffer and to die and then to be raised again from the dead.  After He gives these hard teachings, we are surprised by the response of St. Peter:  he takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him.  This is shocking to our ears, but, of course, it must have seemed very reasonable to Peter in the moment.  And we are all familiar with Jesus’ response:  “Get thee behind Me, Satan!”

As we read this, we wonder how Peter could have been so foolish, so presumptuous, so arrogant as to rebuke the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Second Person of the Trinity.  We wonder that as we read it, but the truth is, we do the same thing all the time.  Whenever we grumble against God for our situation, whenever we think God is not giving us what we deserve, that God is not doing right, we are silently rebuking God.  The main difference between St. Peter and ourselves is that he saw Jesus in the flesh and had to deal with Him face to face.  We tend to rebuke God behind His back, whether in our thoughts or in our speech to others.

The other difference between us and St. Peter is that his ghastly mistakes and shortcomings are written down, preserved in the Holy Scriptures perfectly for all eternity so that we may learn from them.  We do the same thing all the time, but our sins are not written down for everyone to read forever.

We have to ask ourselves:  “How did this happen?  Why did he do it?” It is written down so that we can learn from it.  Peter’s problem was that he had low expectations.  He was focused on what God would do on earth and in time, and so missed out on God’s greater purpose:  our eternal salvation.  He saw the death of Jesus as a failure of earthly objectives rather than as a means to eternal life, rather than as a means to heavenly objectives.  Peter had low expectations about this world, and the truth is, so do we.

I said that Peter’s errors are more widely known.  That is true.  They are more widely known and discussed.  But ours are just as visible where it counts:  in the eyes of the living God.  Make no mistake:  God hears our grumbling and complaining, whether we tell it to His face, or whisper it in the inner room, or just think it to ourselves.  Either way, He knows.  He is the God who sees.  And He sees it for what it is.  He sees our grumbling as a rebuke, just like Peter.

No matter how we may frame our grumbling, God sees it for what it is.  God is not fooled if we label our rebuke as a question:  “Why did you make me like this?” Or as a murmur.  Or, my personal favorite, as a “struggle.”  We hear this all the time:  “I am struggling with discontent.”  Let me translate:  “I am discontent, and it is God’s fault that I am not happy.”  We begin to think God exists to make us happy in this life.  Of course, we know that is not true, but that is how we think about it.

Fortunately for us, God records more than just Peter’s problematic rebuke here in Mark 8.  In addition, God gives the reason for Peter’s sinful rebuke, and the solution for our problem in this area.  In verse 33 Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.”  Now, isn’t that the truth?  We grumble and we complain and we backhandedly rebuke God because we give in to the devil’s temptation, and because we are focused on the things of men, the unimportant minutiae of this passing world.  We are focused on the low things of this life and not the high things of eternity.  How much happier would we be and how much less likely would we be to fall into this trap if we would simply keep in mind the things of God:  the Holy Scriptures and eternal life.  Let us have not low expectations but high expectations—eternal life with God rather than the earthly things of this world.

1. Peter Knew Better

You may look at St. Peter and shake your head at some of the things he did.  But the truth is that St.  Peter was a spiritual giant whose achievements for God and whose faith in God will far exceed our own.  Peter was elect of God from eternity past.  He was specially chosen by God to be a critical witness to the critical event in all of human history.  And Peter is with God in heaven for all eternity right now, worshiping and praising the true and living God face to face.

We may remember St. Peter’s blunders, but when we look at his whole life, there is no question that he is a giant on the level of Abraham, Elijah, Daniel, St.  Paul, and Martin Luther, as one of the most significant people to ever live.

Let us look at Peter’s resumé.  Remember that he was martyred for Christ, likely by the evil emperor Nero in 64 AD.  That is no small achievement.  That is more than most of us will do.  Peter was also the author of 1 and 2 Peter and likely the source for the book of Mark.  He may not have written down the book of Mark, but he is widely viewed to be the source of the book of Mark.  We will not write any Scriptures.  And for those of you inclined to look down on St. Peter in some way for our text this morning, make a note:  If Peter is the source for the book of Mark, then it is Peter who related this story to Mark to be inscripturated for all eternity.  Not for his good, but for our good.  And I wonder, would we be so humble as to include such a story to be recorded for all eternity?

Let us look more at St.  Peter’s resumé.  He was a leader among the apostles, those chosen few.  You can see that here.  Peter was the one to take Jesus aside and rebuke Him.  But surely Peter was not alone in thinking to do it.  He was the one who did it, but he probably was not the only one who thought it.

Jesus brought Peter into the room when He raised a girl from the dead.  He brought Peter up on the Mount of Transfiguration.  And He brought Peter down to Gethsemane to pray with Him.

Peter’s leadership is also clearly on display in the book of Acts.  He led the one hundred and twenty in picking a replacement for Judas in Acts 1.  The Holy Spirit came upon him at Pentecost, and he preached to a great crowd, saving three thousand people in one day (Acts 2).  He spoke boldly before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4).  He pronounced judgment on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5).  He was sent to Samaria as the official representative in Acts 8.  He brought the gospel to Cornelius the Gentile, and laid hands on him and his household, and the Holy Spirit came upon them.  And Peter was the one who had the standing with the others to persuade the early Christians that God had opened salvation to the Gentiles.  That was no small feat in that time.  But Peter had the standing to do it.

Not only was Peter a leader, but he also performed great miracles for God.  You may remember the crippled beggar of Acts 3.  God made him rise up and walk, but Peter was the instrument God used to do it.  He healed the paralytic Aeneas.  He raised the dead Dorcas in Acts 9.  It is a pretty short list in the Bible of people who raised others from the dead, but Peter is on that list.

He was also a man of great faith.  To begin with, He followed Christ.  Peter and His brother Andrew were the first called in Mark 1.  Jesus said, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  And verse 18 tells us that at once they left their nets and followed Him.  Luke 5 tells us that Peter owned the boat and the gear, that he was a married person, that he had an established life there in Galilee.  But he left it immediately.  He left it all there on the shore to follow Christ with no idea of where they were going or what they were doing or how they would get by.  That takes great faith.  Would we have such faith?  Have we left our fishing boat and our fishing nets on the shore to follow Jesus as Peter did?

Peter also demonstrated his faith at other times, stepping out to walk on the water with Jesus.  Now, we know, of course, that his faith faltered and that he sank.  But think about this:  No one else even ventured out of the boat.

Peter also followed Christ despite knowing that there would be a great cost to him personally.  Jesus told Peter that there would be a great cost, but Peter went anyway.  You may recall that the risen Christ, in reinstating Peter and charging him to feed His sheep, said, “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  Despite the risen Christ foreshadowing that Peter would die a martyr’s death (and he did), Peter moved forward.  He took up the mantle as Christ’s evangelist and minister, despite knowing what was ahead.

Peter was mocked for Christ.  He was arrested for Christ.  He was imprisoned for Christ.  He was flogged for Christ.  He traveled the world for Christ.  He preached Christ.  He stood for Christ.  He lived for Christ and he died for Christ.

Peter was a giant man of giant faith.  Most importantly, he confessed Christ as his Lord and Savior.  In fact, it happened right before our text here in Mark 8:31–33.  Peter is the one who steps forward and answers Christ’s challenge:  “Who do you say that I am?” While the other disciples may have hesitated, Peter stepped forward boldly and proclaimed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And we know that this confession was genuine.  We know it from Peter’s life.  He lived it out and preached it the rest of his life.  But we also know it was genuine because the parallel account in Matthew 16 has Jesus telling Peter, “This was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”

Just like us, Peter was a sinner, dead in His transgressions and sins and in need of God’s monergistic work of regeneration.  He was not saved by merit.  He was not saved by superior holiness.  He was saved by grace just like us.  All the same, God granted Peter a great faith, revealing to Peter by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus was the Christ and enabling Peter to put His trust in Christ alone.  So we know that Peter knew for certain and for sure that Jesus was the Christ, and he courageously confessed it before Jesus and before the Twelve.

2. Despite Knowing Better, Peter Fell

Despite this genuine faith in Christ, Peter still fell, and quickly at that.  Right after Peter confesses the profound and earth-shattering truth that Jesus is the Christ, he stumbles here in our text, and he stumbles in a serious way.

The apostles expected an earthly kingdom.  But Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession was not to declare the new Davidic kingdom that they probably expected.  It was not to throw off the yoke of Roman rule from oppressed Israel.  Rather, Jesus’s response to Peter’s confession is to tell them, first, to keep it quiet (v. 30).  That is unusual.  This is pretty big news, but He says, “Keep it quiet.”  He tells them that He must suffer.  He tells them that He must be rejected.  And He tells them that He must be killed to rise again on the third day.

This was quite a surprise to these apostles.  The Christ was supposed to be a mighty conqueror.  He was supposed to crush the head of the serpent.  He was supposed to establish a kingdom (2 Sam. 7).  He was supposed to be a prophet like the mighty Moses (Deut. 18).  He was supposed to be greater than David (Ps. 110).  His enemies were supposed to be His footstool.  He would have a mighty scepter and willing troops.  He would be arrayed in holy majesty.  That is what the Christ is supposed to be.  What is all this talk about suffering, rejection, and death?  They may have been thinking, “This is not what we signed up for.”  Surely there would be an earthly kingdom, and the disciples would be like a modern-day cabinet, perhaps with Peter as vice-president.  They were early investors, early adapters.  They were looking forward to their positions in this earthly kingdom.

So Christ’s declaration that He would suffer, that He would be rejected, and that He would die did not make sense.  This hard teaching, violated the disciples’ expectation and future earthly hope.  You see the problem.  I read all those things the Christ was supposed to be, and he is all those things, He was all those things, and He will be all those things.  But the apostles had the wrong perspective.  They had only earthly things in view.

So having their expectations violated, Peter takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke Him.  In the parallel passage in Matthew 16, Peter says, “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”  And we know Jesus’ rebuke:  “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

Now Peter’s error here is glaring, and it shows us how far we as God’s people can fall, and how fast it can happen.  If Peter, a greater man than us, can fall that far that fast, then certainly we can as well.  And although it is not expressed in our text, we get the impression from both Matthew and Mark that this rebuking happened very shortly after Peter had confessed Christ.   In other words, he made the confession, and maybe five minutes or thirty minutes later, he is taking Jesus aside to rebuke Him.

This is a warning to us all.  First, we should all be aware that we are all capable of falling.  If it happened to a great man like Peter—and this is not the only incident—it can surely happen to us.  In this life, we will never arrive.  We will always remain dependent upon God to uphold us by His righteous right hand.  So first, it is a warning that it can happen to any of us.

Second, it is a warning that we can fall very fast.  We can fall at any time.  We should be aware that we can fall very fast and that we are at special risk of spiritual failure right after a great spiritual triumph.  Peter had made a great confession.  He had received a great commendation from Jesus:  “This was revealed to you not by man, but by my Father in heaven.”  He was at a spiritual high, and then he fell to a spiritual low.  Peter confesses Christ in one breath, only to rebuke Him in the next.  We see this at other points throughout the Scripture.  Think of Elijah, who defeats the eight hundred and fifty false prophets and restores rain to Israel after several years and a terrible drought.  He outruns the chariots of Ahab.  But shortly thereafter Elijah flees in fear from the wicked Jezebel.  He has a great crisis of faith and he stumbles.  Or think about Hezekiah.  He is miraculously healed by God and given fifteen more years, and God confirms it with a miracle.  After this amazing spiritual high, Hezekiah stumbles in pride, showing off his kingdom to the Babylonian army and condemning all Israel to oppression and destruction.  He went from great high to great low, and very fast.

Our enemy the devil is always looking for the opportune time to tempt us.  He is always looking for us to get off balance so he can push us into one ditch or the other.  He is always crouching at the door, looking to tempt us and destroy us.  So, friends, we must remain vigilant, especially in times of great spiritual victory, lest we drop our guard and give the devil an opening to strike.

Thus, we must learn from this account that any of us can become a conduit for the devil’s attack.  Notice that Jesus here rebukes Peter:  “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Not, “Get thee behind me, Peter!” but, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” We must see that Satan is behind all of our sin and Satan is behind of all of the attacks on God’s people.

Now, surely Peter did not go to Jesus with evil intent.  He did not go to rebuke Jesus as a willing or conscious agent of the devil.  He would never do that.  Peter thought he was doing something good.  He was totally unaware that he had become a tool, he had become a vehicle for the devil’s attack against Jesus.

Peter may not have understood what was happening, but Jesus did.  “Get thee behind me, Satan!” He says, “You are a stumbling block to me.”

We must see that Satan’s attacks ultimately are not even against us, God’s people.  He attacks us too, but his attacks are directed against God.  While the devil surely hates us too, his hatred for us is only derivative.  His hatred for us is only secondary.  When we were still sinners, before we had been saved by God and confessed Him, the devil largely left us alone.  But when we confess Christ, we declare war on the devil, and he declares war on us.  So his hatred for us is secondary.  The primary object of his hatred, the primary object of his attack, is God.  It will not work, but he still keeps bringing the attack.  He may try to bring us down, but only as a way to try to strike out at God.  The devil may hate us, but only because he hates God more.  Indeed, the devil would be very happy to offer us whatever we like in this life if only we would become his subjects, pawns in his attacks against God.

Just look at this passage.  Jesus was preparing to go to the cross to accomplish the most difficult thing ever accomplished.  He had to live a perfect life in thought, word, and deeds, then suffer a gruesome and unjust death on the excruciating cross, and then take on the infinite wrath of God in our place.  That is what He is getting ready to do.  That is why His teaching has turned to these difficult topics.  He is entering the stretch run of His purpose here on earth:  to go and die and suffer God’s wrath.  Jesus is getting ready to do all that, even though from eternity past He had enjoyed perfect unity and infinite love with God the Father as the Second Person of the Trinity.  But now, for our sake, He was preparing to be abandoned and forsaken by God and to experience the full blast of God’s wrath, which was due to us.  We cannot even really understand what that means.  As finite beings, we cannot fully understand what it means to experience the full blast of God’s wrath.  But Jesus knew, and He knew what was coming.

We also know that Jesus was even tempted not to go—not that He gave into it, but He was tempted not to go.  The night before Jesus suffered this terrible fate, He went out to Gethsemane, and it says His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.  In Matthew 26, He prayed that if it were possible, God would remove this cup from Him.  So it was not some small matter.  This is God-made-man, and yet He is praying for maximum grace, maximum Holy Spirit, because He is going to suffer maximum pain, maximum wrath, maximum punishment.  Indeed, angels had to attend to Him and strengthen Him.  His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground, it says in Luke 22.

So this was a difficult task which Jesus was turning to, which Jesus knew was coming, and which He was sorely tempted to avoid.  As our Pastor has told us, Jesus suffered the maximum temptation to sin because He never sinned.  If you give in to it, you did not suffer the maximum temptation.  And yet in facing this task, having revealed to His disciples, His companions, His friends, His supporters, He faces this additional temptation:  His closest friend and brother says, “Don’t do it.”  What a betrayal and what a stumbling block!

Friends, let us always be on guard and pray and think carefully before we act, lest we become a tool of the devil and a stumbling block to God’s purposes.  Let us be careful that we do not become an unwitting temptation to God’s people.  God has put us here to build one another up.  God has put us here to strengthen one another, to strengthen our brothers and sisters in the Lord, to strengthen our elders and pastors and leaders, and for them to strengthen us.  Let us not instead become a stumbling block.  Let us not become a tool of the devil, bringing additional temptation to that person to sin, additional temptation to that person not to do what God said as Peter did here.

3. Peter’s Rebuke Was Born of Arrogance

“Pride goes before a fall” (Prov. 16:18).  We know that Peter did not intend harm here by taking Jesus aside and rebuking Him.  He did not intend to do the devil’s work.  He intended to do good.  As Matthew Henry comments, Peter was probably motivated by a sense of concern for Christ.  He did not want to see his Lord and Master suffer and die.  (GTB)  That is a very charitable interpretation, but that is what Matthew Henry said.  I said earlier that Peter and the others were probably motivated by their worldly expectations.  They had expectations that this Christ was going to bring a kingdom and that they were going to be big shots in that kingdom, so hearing about this death was a big disappointment.  They were not going to get their earthly reward.

But buried in all these good intentions of Peter is a shocking arrogance.  Peter, a mere man, dares to rebuke and correct the living God and to His face.  He just confessed a few breaths earlier that Christ was the Messiah, the God-man.  But in the next breath, he is daring to bring correction to this Messiah.  He is saying to Jesus, “You are doing wrong.”  He is saying to Jesus, “I know better than God.”  Of course, he would never phrase it that way, and we would never phrase it that way either.  But it is the unstated premise behind Peter’s action in taking Christ aside and rebuking Him.  After all, why rebuke Jesus unless you thought He was wrong, that He was mistaken about the fact that He was going to die?  Why rebuke Him unless you thought He was wrong to foretell His rejection, suffering, and death?

I am certain that Peter thought he was doing right in acting this way.  But we must be very careful, especially when we think we are doing right, never to sit in judgment of God’s plans and God’s methods.  We can never accomplish God’s will by ungodly means.  We must always remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways.  His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55).  It is not the other way around.  It is not even that God’s thoughts are mostly higher than our thoughts, that God’s ways are almost always higher than our ways.  No, God’s ways are always higher than our thoughts, always higher than our ways.  God’s purposes, methods, and executions are always perfect.  They are designed to achieve maximum good and they actually achieve it.  Any adjustment that we attempt to make to God’s perfect plan can only make the situation worse.  That is, if you adjust the perfect, it necessarily becomes worse.  It becomes imperfect.

We must not arrogantly presume to counsel God, to rebuke Him, or to correct Him.  And we must never patronizingly attempt to show God the error of His ways.  There are no errors in His ways.  As Deuteronomy 32:4 reminds us, “His works are perfect, and all His ways are just.  A faithful God who does no wrong.”  Instead, whenever God crosses our will or violates our expectations, we must adjust our thinking, not His plan.  We must say, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”  Of course, we can always pray that God will change the situation.  This does not mean that every bad thing that comes along we must immediately embrace and say, “This must be God’s will for me.”  Maybe it is; maybe it is isn’t.  We can always pray to God, and we can always ask God to change that situation and take away that trouble.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But we must always remember that whatever God ordains is right.

We must pray so that, when that bad situation comes, He will help us to see that God intended it for good, as Joseph did at the end of his life.  It is no fun to be kidnapped.  It is no fun to be thrown into a pit.  It is no fun to be sold into slavery.  It is no fun to be wrongfully thrown in jail.  It is no fun to be forgotten.  But you see at the end he understood how God wove all that together for maximum good for God’s people.

And look at Peter here.  He said, “Don’t go and die.  This will never happen to you.”  But no death for Jesus means no eternal life for us.  We must rest secure in God’s promises to prosper us and not to harm us, in the ultimate sense, to give us a hope and a future, an eternal future (Jer. 29:11).  When that difficult circumstance comes along, or when we do not get that thing we expected, we must preach to ourselves Romans 8:28:  “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and who have been called according to His purpose.”  That is us.  We are those He loves, those who have been called according to His purpose.  No one can snatch us from His hand.  He has not lost control of the situation.

As our Pastor says all the time, “Everything will be all right.”  And it is true.  When we expect one thing—maybe that raise, maybe that good grade, maybe a husband, maybe that baby, maybe that grandchild, maybe that cure for my illness—when we expect that good thing and when we earnestly desire it and God sends something else, we should praise God.  He has something even better in mind for us.  Even better than what we expected.  Even better than what we planned for ourselves.  Peter thought he was going to get an earthly kingdom.  God provided an eternal, heavenly kingdom.  God’s way was better.

When God crosses my will or violates my expectations, He is often sparing me from harm and always storing up good for me.  He promised us, “No good thing will He withhold from His people” (Ps. 84:11).  He always keeps His promises, and He always speaks truth.  If that thing was withheld from you, it was not good for you.  If that trial comes to you, it is not a bad thing.  It might not be pleasant, but it is not a bad thing.  It is good thing for you.  He will not withhold His good from you.

So when that bad thing comes, or when that good thing does not come, we must say, “I believe God.”  And then we can say, “Help my unbelief.”  Instead of opposing God’s plan, I will look forward to seeing how God will provide for me in this situation.  Instead of opposing God’s plan, I would look forward to how He will outdo my low expectations and how He will give me exceedingly abundantly more than I can ask or imagine.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not preaching health and wealth here.  We may be poor in this life and we may stay poor.  We may be longsuffering in this life and stay that way.  We may be barren.  We may be oppressed.  We may be sick with illness for our whole lives.  But what does God say?  “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).  Not, “My grace is sufficient in general,” or, “My grace is sufficient for my people.”  No.  “My grace is sufficient for you, personally.”  You may be sorry now.  You may feel bad in this life.  But He says, “Come and enter my Master’s happiness in eternal life.”  We may have difficulty in this life.  We may have no place.  But He says, “My Father’s house has many rooms, and He has prepared a place for us there.”

Whatever our expectations are for this life, they are pitifully low when compared to the inexhaustible riches, joy, and glory of our promised eternal life in the very presence of God.  It is so much better than what we have here or what we can even dream of here.  We cannot even conceive of what it will be like to be with God worshiping Him in glory forever.

So we must not arrogantly think that we have a better idea than God or that we know a better way than God.  That is what we are saying when we go to God and say, “Not your plan, but my plan.”  That is born of arrogance, and it is born of foolishness.

4. The Things of God or the Things of Men

We have now seen that Peter was this great man of great faith who confessed Christ as Lord, who did great things for God, but who fell spectacularly and became an unwitting accomplice of the devil in Satan’s failed scheme to derail the atonement.  We see that it is at least in part based on pride, based on arrogance.  But we are still left to ask:  How did this happen?  Why did this happen to Peter?

Verse 33 holds the answer.  Jesus tells St. Peter, “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”  That is, “You have low expectations, Peter.”  It is both the diagnosis of the problem and the cure.  The diagnosis is, “You have low expectations.”  The cure is, “Have in mind the things of God.”

When we err or when we sin, it is usually because we have in mind the things of men, the earthly things, the things that are ultimately passing and insignificant.  What does it matter if I have two copper coins in this life or ten thousand talents of gold?  In eternity future—in five hundred years, in five thousand years, in five hundred thousand years—will anyone remember or care what we had in this life?  If I am in eternal heaven in glory, worshiping God face to face, am I really going to look back fondly on my earthly riches?  No, I am not.  I probably will not remember my 401k balance at all in that time.  At the very most, we will look back and snicker at our foolishness in this life and count it all as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Or if I am poor in this life, or suffering on earth, will I look back on my poverty or suffering here on earth and say, “Yes, this last five or six hundred thousand years has been pretty good, but I sure could have used a little more money during my few years on earth”?  No.

By contrast, do you think that those in eternal hell, who are facing an unceasing future of conscious torment and agony, are saying, “Yes, this hell is pretty bad, but at least I had a good run for fifty or sixty years on earth.”  No.  It will be of no comfort to them.  It will be of no import to them what they did in this life except that they will regret that they did not confess Christ as Lord.  Just look at the rich man of Luke 16.  It seems that all his earthly riches—his purple, his fine linen, his luxuries—did not buy him even a moment’s comfort in eternal hell.  The fond memories of his lavish days on earth did not buy him any relief.  In fact, his sole interest in hell is in evangelism, to make sure that no one else will go there to join him, especially his five brothers.  And we can imagine that all his earthly life is a serious regret to him in hell.  We can imagine him saying, “Oh, what a fool I was! I had Moses and the prophets.  I had the gospel and the opportunity to be saved to eternal heaven, but I ignored it all.  I traded it all for some nice parties and some purple pants.”

Let us not focus on the things of men and make the same mistakes.  The truth is that we are easily distracted by the worries of this world, by the things we chase after in this life, and by the deceitfulness of riches.  We are easily distracted by our desire for a certain lifestyle, a certain job, a certain husband, a certain wife, a certain number of children, a certain kind of children, or by our grandchildren, our retirement, or whatever it is.  We are distracted by these temporary things in this life.  These things that we place so much value on in this life are not the important things.  They are almost irrelevant.  They are irrelevant except to the extent that they bear on our eternal life.

The only actions of truly eternal significance in this life are whether we have placed our faith in Christ alone for eternal salvation and whether we have urged others to do so.  Those are the only things that matter in eternity.  We must, of course, deal with all these other things in this life.  God may use these things to bring divine appointments so that we can share the gospel with that person at work or that other person in our family.

These things are even good.  They are not bad things.  God says to work six days (Exod. 34:21).  You have to have a job.  God says to get married in the Lord and produce godly offspring (1 Tim. 5:14).  God even says to enjoy those grandchildren (Prov. 17:6).  But we are not to get distracted by those things and begin pursuing them for their own sakes.  Don’t worship these created things, worship the Creator who made them.  Don’t focus on the things of men.  Rather, seek first the kingdom of God, and God promises that all these things will be added unto us, to the extent that they are good for us.

The point is, don’t become distracted by the secondary things and miss the primary thing.  That is what happened to Peter here.  He got distracted by secondary objectives—the things in this life—and he missed the primary objective—things in eternity.  Let us keep our focus on God, on salvation, on eternal life, and on heaven.  The disciples all had in mind the things of men.  They thought the big thing was to throw off oppressive Roman rule, and they failed to see that Jesus was there for a greater purpose.  Whatever it was, they were distracted, and they missed the bigger picture because they were focused on the finite when the infinite and eternal was at issue.

They were so focused on the earthly that Peter actually told Jesus to disobey God the Father.  It was God the Father who sent Jesus to live the perfect life and to suffer and die on the cross. And Peter is saying, “Don’t do it; it will never happen.”  That is as far astray as we can go.  But Peter was telling Jesus not to go to the terrible, wonderful cross that would achieve eternal life for millions, including Peter himself.  What if Jesus had listened to Peter and not gone to His death?  We and Peter too would still be without hope and doomed to hell.  So I am glad that, while Peter had in mind the things of men, Jesus had in mind the things of God.  How blind we become when we look away from eternal matters.  When we look away from the things of God and look to the lowly, the base, the temporary, the earthly concerns—the things of men.

Indeed, we see that Peter is so distracted here that he misses the key piece of what Jesus is telling them.  Look at verse 31:  Jesus says, “He must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again.”  It is right there in the text.  Matthew 16 says the same thing:  “after three days be raised to life.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but the part of this teaching that stands out to me is “raised to life” or “rise again.”  Yes, we know all about suffering, rejection, and killing.  We see that all around us in the world.  But the remarkable thing is “raised to life,” not “suffering, rejected, and died.”  It was clearly taught.  Verse 32 says Jesus spoke “plainly” to them about these things.  But they blew right past that and looked to “rejected, suffered, and died.”  The “rejected, suffered, and died” is not the extraordinary part of this teaching, and yet that is where their focus was.  Why?  They were focused on the things of men.

But even though that is taught plainly, Peter and the others missed it.  Jesus was telling them about the resurrection, and they missed it.  They were so consumed with earthly rewards that they missed what Jesus was telling them about—an infinitely more valuable heavenly reward.  They were so focused on their low earthly expectations that they missed the high, holy, and heavenly reward and promise that Jesus was teaching them about.

So it is with us.  We are a people of low expectations.  An earth-oriented people.  We are focused on the minutiae of this world and our day to day struggle.  And we get so focused on earthly things that we miss God’s greater plan and purpose for us—eternity, glory, heaven with God.  When we get focused on these things of men, when we put aside the things of God, we do so at our own great expense and forfeit the grace that could be ours.  We become like Esau, willing to trade our birthright of eternity for a bowl of lentils.  Or we act like Peter, rebuking God.

Application

First, let us stop it, and let us stop it today.  Let us set high expectations—glory, heaven, eternity—and not low expectations—money, food, vacation, etc.

Second, let us put our faith and our hope in Christ alone, not in the useless trinkets of this earthly life.

Third, let us stop looking down into the mud and the mire of this world, consumed with possessions or thoughts or feelings.  Let us stop looking down and let us look up.  Let us look up to God.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Fourth, let us stop looking back in regret at what we think we missed out on, and let us look forward to what is coming—eternity, heaven, glory, eternal life with Jesus Christ.  That is something to look forward to.

Finally, when challenges come, let us not be a conduit for Satan or a stumbling block for God’s people, but let us focus on the things of God.  Let us keep in mind the things of God, and let us keep in mind that we are destined for glory.  It is not in doubt.  We are destined for glory for certain because Jesus achieved it for us.  Jesus can preserve it for us, and Jesus promised that He will preserve it for us.  We are destined for glory.

Let us keep in mind these things of God.  That is the way of peace—not the things of this world.  We know that our ultimate destiny is secure—we are secure in Christ.  That should give us peace, no matter what difficult circumstances surround us.  That is the way to peace, that is the way to hope, that is the way to joy—sure, lasting, and glorious joy.  Amen.  Praise the Lord.