Half-way Isn't Far Enough

[0:00] Open up your Bibles to Mark chapter 8 again. We covered these verses, we covered really the second half of chapter 8 last week, and we touched upon the verses that we're going to focus upon this morning, but I want us to do that.

[0:16] I want us to be more focused this morning. I want us to dig down a little bit deeper into a handful of these verses that we find here in Mark chapter 8. And so we're going to begin reading in verse 27 and read all the way down to verse 33.

[0:31] So if you'll stand with me as we read. This is what Mark writes. He says, And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.

[0:42] And on the way he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others one of the prophets.

[0:52] And he asked them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, You are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

[1:03] And he began to teach them that the Son of Man 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.

[1:14] And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he 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.

[1:30] Let's pray. God, help us to understand this passage. Help us to see Christ more clearly in it. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. We use the word blind in a lot of different ways.

[1:48] Sometimes we say that people are blinded by love. And when we say that, what we mean is that they have such a strong attraction to someone that they are in that moment or during those days or sometimes even months, they are unable to see the truth about that person.

[2:04] And so we've all known people who've been in relationships and we're thinking, Why are you with that person? Why are you with that guy? Why are you with that girl? What in the world do you see in them? Because we see one thing and they're unable to see all the things that we see.

[2:18] We've probably all known believers who have dated or even married non-believers. And they were warned by others at the time, They don't follow Christ. They don't trust in Christ.

[2:29] And always there was this hopeful note, But I think they're going to. But I think they're just, I really feel like they're close. And everyone else is going, They're not close. They don't love Jesus. Get away. But we say that in those times they're blinded by love.

[2:42] Or sometimes we say people on the other end are blinded by rage. Really that usually is just blinded by bitterness in reality. So that somebody does something mean to you or they hurt you in some way.

[2:54] And then from then on everything that they do is an attack against you. You just know it. So they do something that has nothing to do with you. That doesn't reference you at all. And you hear about it and you think, I can't believe they did that.

[3:06] Why would they do that to me? It's nothing. You're just blinded by your anger and your bitterness. And everything that they do is somehow tied back to you. And you can't see. What's obvious is that it has absolutely really nothing to do with you.

[3:18] Now what both of those kinds of blindness have in common Are that the person who we say is blind, What they are unable to see is really the truth.

[3:29] They're unable to understand what's actually happening and what's actually there So that what reality is is not what they are seeing in their mind. And the Bible uses the term blind or blindness in that way all the time.

[3:46] To say that there are things that are true and that are real And we simply do not see them. That is, we do not understand what's true. We embrace a falsehood.

[3:58] Or we ignore the truth in favor of a lie. We do it all the time. That's why the Apostle Paul says that Satan, Who he calls the God of this world, Has blinded the minds of unbelievers So that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

[4:14] That, as I said last week, Is Satan's great work in the world. To keep people from seeing. To keep people from understanding the truth about Christ. And he will use anything that he has to.

[4:25] He will put anything in your way. He will blind you in any way necessary To keep you from believing and understanding the truth of the gospel. And here in Mark chapter 8, We see a kind of spiritual blindness.

[4:41] We see first, we saw last week, A man who's literally blind. He can't see. And Jesus heals him. But as we saw, he does it in a strange way. He does it in a two-step process.

[4:52] First, he sort of halfway heals the man. So the man looks and says, Well, I see men, but they kind of look like trees. In other words, they're really blurry. I can't make them out. I know they're not trees because they're walking around.

[5:04] And I'm smart enough to know that trees don't walk. So they've got to be people. But I can't really make them out. And so then Jesus again touches his eyes. And then we're told that he saw everything clearly. His sight was fully and completely restored.

[5:17] That's strange because it's not as if Jesus doesn't have the power to fully heal him on the first try. Right? I mean, when he heals the man who's deaf and has a speech impediment, it just requires one touch and suddenly the man can hear.

[5:35] Suddenly the man, we're told, can speak clearly so that everyone can understand him. So that what we're being told by Mark when Jesus heals the deaf man is that Jesus isn't just slowly, progressively making him better.

[5:47] Jesus isn't like rehab on steroids. Okay? That's not what's happening. Instantaneously, the power of Christ makes it as if he was never deaf, as if he never had a speech impediment.

[5:58] But here, he doesn't do it that way. Takes two touches. He does it in two stages. And I told you last week that I believe that the reason that he does it that way is to teach us about the normal pattern of recovery of spiritual sight.

[6:18] In other words, when we're talking about spiritual blindness, it does not normally disappear and go away the first time that we hear the gospel or the first time that we learn about Christ.

[6:30] We come to see the truth and understand the truth in incremental stages. Now, there are always those cases where we hear of someone who the first time that they hear the gospel, the first time that they ever hear anything about Jesus, they instantly believe all that they're told, and they instantly receive spiritual sight at that moment, and there are no stages.

[6:50] But that's not how it works for most of us, right? Most of us hear the truth and we understand a little bit of it. And then we have to be taught some more about the truth and we understand a little bit more. And it happens in these stages the same way that this man is healed.

[7:03] Well, that's true of Jesus' disciples. That's true of you and me. We know it's true of the disciples because in the verses that follow that we're looking at this morning, they get it half right.

[7:17] Or at least Peter, on behalf of the disciples, gets it half right. When Jesus says, Who do you say that I am? Peter gives the right answer. When Jesus goes on to teach, not just about who He is, but about how He's going to save His people, Peter can't believe it.

[7:32] Peter can't see the truth. So the disciples are in this process of increasing spiritual insight. And that process began all the way back towards the beginning of the Gospel of Mark when Jesus first called them to be His disciples.

[7:47] The Gospel of Mark over and over uses this concept of blindness to help us to understand spiritual insight. So, for instance, if you turn back just a couple of pages to Mark chapter 4, where we see that Jesus tells His disciples specifically that He's doing something for them that He's not doing for everyone else.

[8:10] And that is, He's giving them spiritual insight. He's not doing that for everyone else. He's doing it for His people. So, He gives them this answer in the context. And when they say, they come to Him in chapter 4, and they say, Jesus, why do you teach people in parables?

[8:27] Why do you use these complicated word pictures so that people have to figure out what you mean? Why don't you just say what you mean? And this is what He says in Mark chapter 4, verse 11.

[8:37] He says to them, To you, that is to my disciples, to you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God. But for those outside, everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and they may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.

[8:58] Do you see the language about seeing? They see in the sense that they hear the words of Jesus, but they don't perceive, they don't really see, because they don't understand what Jesus is saying.

[9:10] Jesus says it's a mystery to them. It's hidden from them. But to you, I speak everything plainly. I am in the process of giving you spiritual sight.

[9:23] But it's a process. Because just a few chapters later, if you'll remember, after Jesus, at the beginning of Mark chapter 8, after Jesus fed the 4,000, He's already fed the 5,000, which is really like the 20-something thousand.

[9:39] And now He does that same kind of miracle again in chapter 8, and He feeds 4,000 people with just a handful of bread and fish. He doesn't have much. He feeds all of these thousands of people.

[9:50] And then He and His disciples get on a boat, and the disciples begin to fret over the fact that they don't have enough food. They didn't bring enough. To which Jesus has some harsh words to say.

[10:05] He says to them in chapter 8, verse 17, Why are you discussing the fact that you don't have any bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand?

[10:17] Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? You've seen Me do these great things, and yet you haven't seen.

[10:30] You've seen miracles, and yet you don't see Me for who I am. You don't see what I'm doing. So He's revealing things to His disciples. He's giving them spiritual sight that He hasn't given to everyone.

[10:42] And yet we come four chapters later, and we see that their sight that He's giving them is far below what it ought to be. The process is not complete. They're in the middle of the process of seeing Him and understanding who He is.

[10:57] And we jump right back into the middle of that process here in the middle of chapter 8, verses 27 through 33. They see some things.

[11:08] They don't see other things. So let's jump in at verse 27 and first look at what they get right. Verse 27 says that, And Jesus went on with His disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.

[11:22] He has just been in Bethsaida. That's where they landed after they got off the boat, and He spent some time there in Bethsaida with them. And now they're moving further north. This is the second time in the last couple of chapters that Jesus and His disciples are going to completely leave Israel.

[11:40] Because where they're going, Caesarea Philippi, is outside the boundaries of what is officially considered Israel. Jesus is still on this sort of discipleship traveling journey with them.

[11:51] He left earlier, and they left Capernaum, and He left Galilee, and they went near the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and they spent time there, and they looped way around to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, still in Gentile territory.

[12:04] They briefly went back to Israel, and now they're going far away again into the north. It's this long journey that Jesus takes His disciples on just before He turns to head toward Jerusalem so that He can teach them.

[12:18] So that He can begin to remove more and more of their spiritual blindness. It's in the middle of that, towards the end of that trip, that Jesus asks them this all-important question.

[12:31] He asks His disciples, Who do people say that I am? What's everyone saying, guys? Who do they think that I am? And they give an accurate answer, because we've seen all of these same answers to the question of who Christ is already in the Gospel of Mark.

[12:51] They say to Him, Well, some people say John the Baptist. So some people think that Jesus is John the Baptist, come back to life. He's come back to life, and now He has great powers because He's risen from the dead, and that's why He's able to do all these miraculous things.

[13:05] Others, though, say that you're Elijah, and still others say that you're one of the prophets. Now, what we've got to understand is that these are not insults.

[13:16] In other words, people are saying good things about Jesus. They're just not true things that they're saying about Jesus. I mean, it's an honor for them.

[13:28] It would be an honor for anyone else to be called John the Baptist. I mean, John the Baptist is revered by the people. He's so revered by the people that when the Pharisees come and they challenge Jesus, Jesus answers back to them with a question about John the Baptist.

[13:44] And we're told that they were afraid to say anything bad about John the Baptist because the people loved him so much. So if the people are saying, He's John the Baptist, come back.

[13:56] The people think that He's someone that they love and revere and respect. It's not a bad thing to say about Him. It's just not true. It's even what Herod thought. Herod thought that perhaps this Jesus that he's hearing rumors of is John the Baptist, come back.

[14:12] And Herod was afraid because he had put John the Baptist to death. It's not an insult. It's a good thing to say if it were true. But it's not true.

[14:24] Some people say that you're John the Baptist. And then they say that some people say that you are Elijah. Again, that's a compliment. The people of Israel were looking forward to a day when God would send another Elijah to them.

[14:40] In fact, if you turn back to the book of Malachi, Malachi chapter 4, we read this in verse 5.

[14:55] It says, that behold, God says, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. So the prophets of the Old Testament say that God is going to send Elijah or someone like Elijah before the great day of the Lord.

[15:16] And all of Israel has been waiting for that day. They've been looking for this Elijah-like figure whom the New Testament tells us was John the Baptist. But they think maybe Jesus is Elijah or maybe Jesus is a prophet like Elijah.

[15:28] That's a compliment. It's something they've been looking for and hoping for, but it's not true. It's a good thing to say, but it's not a true thing to say about Jesus.

[15:42] And then finally, they actually find one opinion that's true, but it's not in the full picture. Because some say that he's one of the prophets.

[15:56] Well, it's true in the sense that Jesus is a prophet. What does Jesus say when he's rejected in his own hometown of Nazareth? A prophet is not without honor except in his own hometown. Jesus himself recognizes he is a prophet.

[16:10] The New Testament is replete with examples of Jesus being called a prophet. He is a great prophet. That's true, but he's not just one of the prophets.

[16:21] Do you see? That's the problem. He's not one of the prophets. He's the prophet with a capital T and a capital P. Moses even all the way back in the Torah, all the way back in Deuteronomy, Moses, the greatest prophet of the old covenant, Moses looked ahead and said, there someday will be a prophet like me who's greater than me.

[16:41] And that's who Jesus is. He's not just one of the prophets. He's the prophet. That even Moses, the greatest of all the prophets, even Moses was looking ahead and hoping for a day when a greater prophet would come.

[16:54] So, it's partially true, but not fully true that he's one of the prophets. Yes, he's a prophet, but he's greater than all the prophets.

[17:07] So, there's an important lesson to be learned just in the answers that the people give about who Jesus is. It's not enough to say nice things about Jesus. It's not enough to have a high opinion of Jesus.

[17:21] You have to know the truth about Jesus. And the people don't know the truth. The disciples, on the other hand, at this point, the blindness is beginning to fade.

[17:34] So that Jesus turns and says to them, but who do you say that I am? The people are wrong. The crowds are wrong. I want to know who do you say that I am? And Peter answered him, you are the Christ.

[17:49] Now, don't move too quickly over that because we sometimes think of Christ as Jesus' last name. Well, it's just another term for Jesus. It's just another way of referring to Jesus.

[17:59] That's not at all what Peter means. He doesn't say, well, you are your Christ. I mean, that's just, you know, we know that. He says, you are the Christ.

[18:14] You are the anointed one. You are the Messiah that we've all been waiting for. See, in the Old Testament, this word for Christ, or the Hebrew word is the Messiah.

[18:28] This word that means anointed one was originally used to describe the priests. So the priests had to be anointed in order for them to enter into the temple and to offer sacrifices before God.

[18:40] And so early on, the term Messiah, the term anointed, would refer to the priestly class of people and in particular, the high priest who would be anointed so that he could go in and offer the sacrifices in the Holy of Holies.

[18:53] But later on, the term anointed referred to David. It referred to the kings of Israel. Because when a man became king, he was officially anointed.

[19:04] Oil was poured over his head. Prayers were said. He was pointed out as the chosen one of God over God's people to lead them. And David was the anointed one.

[19:16] He was the Messiah par excellence in the Old Testament. In fact, if you turn over, I want you to hold your place in Mark. And I want you to turn to 2 Samuel.

[19:29] Right in the middle of the historical section of the Old Testament. 2 Samuel chapter 7. And I've referred to this passage in other sermons, I know, because it is one of the most pivotal, most crucial passages in all the Old Testament if you want to understand the New Testament and if you understand who Jesus is.

[19:49] In 2 Samuel chapter 7, we find the passage where God makes a covenant with David to say that one of David's descendants would reign as king forever.

[20:02] And it comes in the context of David saying, I want to build the temple. God has been, we have been using a tent, we have been using the tabernacle, a temporary dwelling place for God.

[20:14] And I have this palace. I want to build a permanent, massive temple structure. I'm going to build a house for God. Now jump into verse 8. Verse 8, God says, Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David, Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel.

[20:39] And I've been with you wherever you went, and I've cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more.

[20:56] And violent men shall afflict them no more as formerly from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel. And I will give you rest from all of your enemies. Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

[21:13] When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.

[21:24] He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

[21:35] Now there is a sense in which that's partially fulfilled in David's son, Solomon. Because Solomon does build a temple. God allows Solomon to finally build the temple, and Solomon builds a house for God, even though David was not allowed to.

[21:49] But Solomon was not the ultimate fulfillment because Solomon did not sit on the throne forever. Solomon's kingdom did not last forever.

[22:00] In fact, Solomon's own son, Rehoboam, led to the fracturing and division of the kingdom that God had given to his father, David. And so there lay in the future beyond Solomon a descendant of David, a seed of David who would be king forever, and who would build a permanent house for God.

[22:20] He is the anointed one. He is the true, ultimate, final Messiah that all the Old Testament looks toward.

[22:33] We read earlier while we were singing, we paused and read from Jeremiah chapter 23. In Jeremiah chapter 23, this promise that was made to David is remembered by the prophet.

[22:50] And God speaks through Jeremiah and says, Behold, the days are coming, the days are coming when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

[23:08] So the prophets and all Israel were hoping for, looking for a time when this descendant of David, when this righteous branch of David would be raised up and he would reign forever over God's people.

[23:23] And he's the one who is called the Christ. When Peter says, You are the Christ, Peter means, We know who you are.

[23:36] You are the long-awaited, anticipated fulfillment of all of the promises. You are the deliverer. You're the one who will come and rescue your people, Israel.

[23:51] We've been waiting for you for a thousand years. And now you're here. You see how much better that is than to say, Oh, he's one of the prophets.

[24:03] Oh, he's like Elijah. Oh, he's another John the Baptist. No, he's not those things. He's the fulfillment of all the promises. He's the Christ.

[24:16] So far, so good. All that's true. All that is right. But there's more that they need to know about him. They are right in seeing Jesus as a conquering king.

[24:29] They are right because he is a conquering king. But before he can be the conquering king, the scriptures tell us he has to be the suffering servant. And they don't yet understand that.

[24:41] Take a look at verse 31. It says that he began to teach them that the Son of Man... Now, we'll just stop right there in the middle of a sentence. I'm going to pause for a second because Jesus already, simply in the way that he refers to himself, is trying to help his disciples see that yes, he's the conquering king, but he's more than that.

[25:03] In fact, he's more than just a human king. He's more than simply a descendant of David. He is the Son of Man who in the book of Daniel is a divine human figure who comes to conquer.

[25:17] He's not merely human. He's human. He's the Son of Man. But he's a divine figure who comes, Daniel says, on the clouds and he comes to conquer. He comes to rescue God's people. He comes to judge the nations.

[25:29] He comes to set all things right in the book of Daniel. And Jesus says, the Son of Man. And at that point, they must be excited. They know he's the king. They're excited about that.

[25:40] But now, all of a sudden, something new has come because now Jesus has combined the Old Testament hope for a Messiah from the line of David with the Old Testament hope for a divine coming Son of Man with the clouds who will conquer the nations.

[25:54] He's just combined those two things. That's good news in the disciples' mind. except that he says more than the Son of Man. He says, the Son of Man must suffer many things.

[26:10] Wait a minute. Daniel never says anything about the Son of Man suffering. Never does he say one word about a suffering Son of Man.

[26:21] He doesn't say that. Where is it in the Old Testament that the conquering king from the line of David would suffer? Where is that Jesus?

[26:33] But Jesus says it's necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many, many things. I think that he means at least two things when he says that it is necessary for the Messiah, for the divine Son of Man.

[26:54] It is necessary for him to suffer. I think, first of all, he means that God in his sovereign plan has decreed that the Messiah will suffer. He means that first of all.

[27:06] And also, in that decree, he has made it known through the prophecies of the prophets. So it's necessary from the perspective of God's sovereign plan for history as revealed in the Scriptures.

[27:19] Revealed in passages like, for instance, Isaiah 53, which speak of not the Messiah, not the Son of Man, but another title for Jesus, the servant of the Lord.

[27:33] See, one of the things I think that the Jews often got wrong at this period of time and many continue to get wrong to this day is that they see these different images and they think that they refer to different people.

[27:47] But they all refer to one so that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Son of David. Jesus is the Son of Man of Daniel. And Jesus is the suffering servant of Isaiah. But if you keep them separate, you won't see how they all come to their fulfillment in Christ.

[28:01] But then Jesus begins to pull them together and He says, it is necessary. God has decreed it. God has made it known through the prophets. So Isaiah 53 says, it was the will of the Lord to crush Him.

[28:15] It was God's plan. It was God's will. The Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. This is God's doing.

[28:26] This is God's plan. So, it is necessary means at least it's necessary because God has decreed it and He's made it known through the prophets.

[28:36] It's necessary. But, I think it's necessary for another reason. Something that we can see really clearly in the writings of the Apostle Paul. So turn over to Romans chapter 3.

[28:48] Hold your place in Mark 8. I know we're jumping around a little bit. I try not to do that most of the time. But I want you to see clearly this morning.

[29:02] Romans chapter 3. It's one of the most well-known passages in all of Paul's writings. In verse 23, we know that verse, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

[29:13] But verse 24 goes on to describe how those sinners are saved. He says, they are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now here's how redemption happens.

[29:25] Here's how salvation happens. God put Him forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. God sent Jesus, set Him forward as an atoning sacrifice.

[29:40] That's what propitiation means. It means a sacrifice that absorbs and removes the wrath of God. So God sets forth Jesus, His own Son, to take upon Himself His Father's wrath against sin.

[29:54] He set Him forward as a propitiation. Now, that's how He saves people. Now, here's why He saves people in that way. The middle of verse 25. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins.

[30:13] In other words, God did not punish David permanently. There were consequences for David's sin. For instance, his child that he had through an adulterous relationship with Bathsheba died.

[30:26] But there was no ultimate punishment for sin. David wasn't sent to hell. David wasn't judged by God. David's sins were when David came and pleaded with God for forgiveness, God gave him forgiveness.

[30:39] God called Abraham out of a life of pagan worship and made him the father of all of His people. That's massive forgiveness. There's no greater sin than the sin of idolatry and that's who Abraham was when God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans.

[30:54] That's just who he was and yet God passed over Abraham's sins. He forgave him his sins all throughout the Old Testament. God is forgiving people's sins. Not just great heroes of the Old Testament.

[31:06] He forgives the sins of the nation over and over and over. They sin and they rebel and they experience the consequences and then they repent and He forgives them. There is this massive, massive stream of forgiveness running through the Old Testament and all of it calls into question the righteousness of God.

[31:25] That ever occur to you? That the forgiveness of sins calls into question the righteousness of God because it makes Him an unjust judge?

[31:37] Because He doesn't condemn people who rightly deserve to be condemned? And yet, Paul says, no, God's righteous and He's going to demonstrate His righteousness.

[31:50] He has demonstrated His righteousness by punishing those sins in His Son. It is necessary for the great conquering King and Son of Man, it is necessary for Him to suffer and be put to death by the leaders of God's people because over and over and over God has forgiven their sins.

[32:22] He must die. It is necessary. And then after three days it says He will rise again and verse 32 says, and He said this plainly.

[32:34] In other words, there's no parables here. There are no riddles. It's clear. He's making it known to His disciples. He's explaining it in detail. He's helping them to see. He wants them to understand.

[32:45] No misunderstandings here. I'm going to Jerusalem and when I'm there the chief priests, the elders, the scribes, all of them, they're going, they're going to hurt me, they're going to beat me, they're going to kill me.

[32:59] That's what's going to happen. And three days later, I'm coming back. I'm going to rise. That's clear, plain language. It's not complicated. And yet, they don't get it.

[33:12] It says in verse 36, but, I'm sorry, in verse 32, that Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him because Peter can't believe that.

[33:24] Peter sees Jesus rightly as the conquering king, the Messiah, in whom all their hope is placed. He gets that. He knows who Jesus is. What he does not get, what he does not understand, and what he cannot see is how Jesus will go about saving His people.

[33:44] He knows that He's the Savior. His name means God saves. He knows that He's the King, but he doesn't understand how this King accomplishes His work.

[33:57] Jesus saves His people by laying His life down for them. And Peter wants Jesus to save His people by destroying their enemies around them.

[34:10] So this doesn't make sense to Peter. Jesus should be putting these Jewish leaders in their place. Jesus should be showing the elders and the chief priests and the scribes. He should be showing them His authority.

[34:21] He should be pushing them out of the way because they have aided and abetted the enemy, the Romans. Jesus should wipe them out too and take care of all. That's what the king is supposed to do. That's what the Messiah is supposed to do in Peter's mind.

[34:32] And Jesus says, no, I'm not going to do it like that. I'm going to die. That's what I'm going to Jerusalem to do. He can't believe that. And now we think that that's simple because we know Isaiah 53.

[34:49] And we think, how could you not see this, Peter? But the truth of the matter is most people stumble at this point when it comes to the gospel. Because most people, when they want to know how is God going to save His people or when they give an answer to that kind of a question, most people always throw in something that they're supposed to do as well.

[35:12] He's going to do this and I'm going to do that. And when our work comes together, I'll be saved. See, many, many people stumble at this point.

[35:25] Jesus says, I will bear the penalty. I will take it upon myself. and the world says, that does not make sense. In fact, I've read one theologian who referred to this understanding of the work of Christ on the cross and said that it was akin to cosmic child abuse for God to put His own Son to death for your sins and mine.

[35:52] This does not make sense to people. Don't let the fact that you've heard it over and over inoculate you to how difficult this doctrine really is for people to understand.

[36:06] But Jesus says, it's absolutely necessary. And, if you oppose it, if you can't see it, Jesus has a strong word.

[36:17] He says to Peter, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. You see, there's not a middle road.

[36:31] You can't stop halfway into it. You can't say, well, I'll agree with this part of it, but I'm not so sure about that. You can't go halfway into Christianity, which is where Peter is.

[36:43] Peter's halfway there. And if you're halfway there, Jesus says, go away. I don't want anything to do with you. Get behind me. Get away from me. You're causing trouble. He says that to Peter. Don't you think He'll say it to us?

[36:55] If we don't believe all of the gospel, if we want to add something to it or take something away from it, don't you think He'll be just as harsh with us as He is with Peter? If we set our minds on the things of man rather than the things of God.

[37:14] Halfway is never far enough for Jesus. You go all the way or you don't go at all. You take all of Him.

[37:25] You take the conquering King and you take the Messiah and you take the Son of Man riding in on the clouds and you take Him on the cross bearing your sins or you don't take Him at all.

[37:36] That's the message that we need to take to the world. We need to understand that this is not a game that we're playing with people.

[37:51] This is not, well, here, let me tell you a little bit about what I believe and then I'll back off and leave you alone and wherever you fall on that is fine. You kind of just work your way through it. This is not that kind of game.

[38:02] There is truth. This is who He is. This is what He's done. Believe all of it. Beg people. Plead with people to believe all of it because if they only believe half of it, they don't get any of the benefits of it.

[38:20] Let's pray.