Mark 8_ Bible Study Notes
When Jesus asks Peter, Who do men say that I am, Peter responds and says that Jesus is the Messiah. Though a few minutes later, Jesus explains to the disciples that He will suffer and be rejected and killed, then Peter tried to correct him… and although he was doing this because of his loyalty to Jesus, Jesus rebuked him by saying “Get thee behind me, Satan” referring to Peter as a “Satan-like man.” In other words, he was saying that the mindset that Peter had was that in opposition to the will of God. No, Peter wasn’t intentionally defiant against what God had in store, but he did not have an understanding of the purpose that the Lord had in store for Jesus.
I did think it strange that just prior to this conversation, the Lord had just asked Peter who do men say that I am and Peter’s answer was confirmed as the Lord’s revelation to him. So this tells me that you can have revelation of identity but not yet have revelation of purpose.
The following conversation says that Jesus said to his disciples that Whoever will take up their cross and follow Jesus must deny themselves; whoever will save their life, will lose it and whoever will lose their life shall save it — for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lost his own soul? So how does it benefit you to value the things in this world over eternal life? I believe that Jesus was saying this because Peter saw who Jesus was and yet was denying the purpose by which he was sent to the world. If a person values the world over the Lord’s will, he will hold onto the things in this world (which is what was happening when Peter rebuked Jesus for telling him the will of the father) but if a person will value the things of God, then he will keep his soul (Jesus was explaining that he would end up giving up his life in exchange for the soul “life” of man — when Peter rejected this, we was rejecting the will of God for the entire world; he had a lack of revelation of the will of God_ this was because he was holding onto to the natural man that Jesus was without considering the reason Jesus was on the Earth and truly it’s not like he didn’t know the will because the Old Testament profits wrote about what was to come).
Sidenote — I am on vacation this week with a friend of mine and I promised myself that I would genuinely take some time to study the word and get closer to God and as I am studying this section of the scriptures, I am realizing that for the past few weeks the Lord has been showing me that I need to truly begin to mind the things of the spirit rather than the things of the world. This was first brought to the surface for me in the chapter of Mark that was talking about how Jesus walked on water and almost passed by the disciples who were struggling in the boat; he was walking in the spirit giving focus to his mission and the assignment while the disciples were toiling in the boat working against the resistance of the wind but wasn’t getting anywhere. The key here is to stay mission minded and allow the will of God for your life to be more important than the things in this world. You cannot service God and mammon.
Days after this, Jesus took Peter, James and John to the mountain of transfiguration where God would reveal to them who he was. Initially I thought this to be odd that he was speaking with Elijah and Moses, but what I’ve realized is that the Lord God was revealing to them that Jesus was in communion with the great leaders and prophets from old. They saw a glimpse of what was happening in this spirit realm. By them being able to identify with Jesus alongside Elijah and Moses was confirmation that they should be listening to him because of the conversations that were happening in a higher realm. (The mountain representing the Kingdom of Heaven in the heavenlies)
How does this translate to us today, when the Lord begins to use us in a mighty way and promote us divinely, there will be people who will walk alongside us and will be able to see that the Lord has anointed us for what he has called us to do. These will be those people who are called to walk with us, they will have insight that have not been revealed to others about the great revelations that the Lord has made available to us. This is how it was with Peter, James and John, they were able to see that there was a divine communication happening in the spirit realm confirming for them that Jesus is the Christ and the words that he was speaking to them were not that of his own will but coming from the overall will of the father from even those great leaders who had walked the earth before.
This also makes me think about who Jesus was with. Moses — a man who freed the people out of years of bondage and Elijah — one who ascended into heaven and never actually died.