Bible Study Series: Peter the Apostle
Peter Rebuked - Get Behind Me Satan - Matthew 16:21-26
by Fraser Gordon
Last time we were in Matthew 16 looking at the wonderful truth of Christ as the rock on which the church is built. We also looked at the great heights of revelation given to Peter who recognised that Christ was the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
Matthew 16.20, Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.
It had just been revealed to the disciples that Christ was the Messiah and that the Lord Jesus Christ was going to build His church which the gates of hell would not prevail against. It was still in the future and would be born through His death and resurrection. Then Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone. Why? In reality the disciples had no clue whatsoever about Christ’s mission or the will of God for His Son. They recognised that Christ was their Messiah, the anointed one, but if they had opened their mouths it would only have been in error. They understood a Messiah that would rule and reign and deliver His people from the Romans - a Messiah like David. What they failed to grasp was that the Messiah was also a suffering servant and that He first must die for the sins of the world. He would then return a second time to rule and reign. Jesus stops His disciples from speaking about things they know nothing about and giving a distorted view of the will of God for His people. This is the reason He commanded them to tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ. Had they done so they would have been in error because they didn't know the full picture.
Last time we read of the great height of Peter being blessed in a revelation of who Christ was. Now we're going to be brought right back down again. This is the reason Jesus told His disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.
The Father’s will
From Matthew 16.21 Jesus outlined to His disciples for the first time what the Father's will was for His Son. He would suffer at the hands of the elders, suffer with the priests, be killed and then be raised again on the third day. What a shock this must have been to them. This was approximately six months before His crucifixion. They had recognised Him as the Messiah yet they didn't fully understand until after the resurrection what it all meant. Jesus started to lead His disciples to Calvary by revealing the truth of God’s will to them.
Matthew 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.
Jerusalem is known as the Foundation of Peace or the City of Peace. The Messiah is the Lamb to be slain in the City of Peace so that peace may come to all mankind. Now this is a must, it's not a may or may not be, it's not see how I feel or there are many roads we can go down. Jesus doesn't say that, He says “He must go to Jerusalem”. Jesus is revealing to His disciples what His Father's will is. The disciples had been given a revelation of who the Messiah was, and that Christ, this anointed one, was going to build His church. Now He starts to speak to them of going to Jerusalem, that He must suffer, be killed and be raised again. The disciples had no idea about any of this.
After Jesus’ resurrection Jesus travelled with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Luke 24:27 “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”.
Luke 24:44 Then He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me." 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. 46 Then He said to them, "Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
The sole focus of all scripture is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus gave this little Bible lesson He opened up the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms and showed them all the things that concerned Himself. He said to them that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and necessary for Him to rise from the dead on the third day. Up to this point the disciples didn’t understand any of it.
Peter rebukes Jesus
Now we get to Peter's response. Peter has just come from a great high of being called blessed. He recognised that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. But now we're going to hear Peter's response and he's going to come crashing down. Jesus told them not to tell anybody who He was because their message would have been distorted. The disciples only had half the picture.
Matthew 16:22 Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!"
Can you believe this? Peter took Jesus aside to give Him a great old telling off. Have you ever been taken aside or ever taken someone else aside? If you're like me and been taken aside, you normally know straight away you're in trouble. Peter listened to what Jesus said about going to Jerusalem, suffering many things and being killed. Peter responds, ‘Lord, we know you're the Christ, the Messiah, but we've got big plans. You will rule and reign. Stop all this negative talk about suffering and dying. Stop this talk about rising on the third day, whatever that is!. This is not in our schedule and it won't happen to you. We've heard all your words, but we're not having it!’. “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen to you!” Suffering was nowhere in their thinking. For Peter, the idea that the Messiah would have to suffer was beyond comprehension. Had he remembered what Isaiah 53 said, he would have realised that it “pleased the Lord to bruise Him… [and] make His soul an offering for sin”.
Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.
From God's perspective it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. It pleased the Lord to send His Son Jesus to suffer at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and then be killed. Peter responded, ‘We're not having any of that talk’, and he took the Lord Jesus aside. This is one of those times when I would love to have been watching to see what happened. Peter's intent was actually out of love. He really cared for the Lord Jesus and loved Him. But he didn't understand God's plan. All he understood was that the Messiah had arrived, and the disciples wanted a ruling and reigning one. They didn't understand the suffering servant aspect of the promised Messiah. For have we also, saints, said this to God at times? Has God ever required something of us and we have not liked His will, His path, or His direction? Has someone ever said to you ‘this is what God wants me to do’, and we've given a negative response? Or have our children ever come to us and said, ‘this is what God is leading me to do’, and we've been afraid because we want them to be secure?
Peter responded like this because although he heard what Jesus said, it just sounded too terrible and it wasn’t part of their agenda or scheme. Peter tries to turn the Lord Jesus Christ from the Father's will. He's halfway through his rebuke when Jesus turns and addresses him.
Get behind me Satan!
Matthew 16:23 But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me,...
Jesus instantly addresses the real issue, Satan. You see Jesus recognised who was behind the words of Peter. It was the same voice He had heard right back in Luke 4.1-12. In the wilderness Jesus was tempted by Satan to turn stones into bread, bow down to him, and to jump off the temple. Satan was trying to get the Lord Jesus Christ to act independently of the Father. Satan said about the kingdoms that if Jesus bowed down to him, “All this authority I will give You”. But you see the kingdoms had already been given to Christ. The Father was going to give Jesus the nations and they would be put under His feet, but first He had to go to the cross, suffer and die. Satan tried to shortcut this process because he knew the cross would bring about his own defeat.
In Luke 4:13 it says, “Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time”. By using the mouth of one of Jesus' closest disciples Matthew 16.22 was the opportune time for Satan to once again try and prevent Jesus from going to the cross. This is exactly what Satan tempted Jesus with in the wilderness; he would give Jesus the kingdoms and He wouldn't have to suffer. In Matthew Satan uses Peter for the same purpose. “Far be it from You, Lord, this shall not happen to you!” Jesus addresses the real issue straight away - the enemy of our souls.
I thought a bit about this and realised that you don't actually have to be demon-possessed to be used by Satan. Satan used the mouth of Peter, who wasn't indwelt by Satan, to say something of satanic origin. I wondered, who else in scripture had been used this way? The only person I could think of was in 1Chronicles 21.1 “Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.” Satan moved David to take pride in the amount of soldiers he had and the result was a judgment on David and the house of Israel. Satan was behind it. It was his intent to deceive David into taking pride in how great the nation of Israel had become. 1Chronicles says that Satan moved David. So somehow he put thoughts into the mind of David which led him to do this great sin and brought judgment from God.
We need to always be ready. It is possible that our mouths can be used by the enemy to thwart and hinder the will of God. Peter didn't realise he was being used as a mouthpiece of Satan. To stop the Lord Jesus Christ from going to Jerusalem. To stop Him from suffering, from being killed and from rising from the dead. When I read this, I thought how on earth would Peter have felt? Here he is rebuked. Two of the Gospels record this event. It is in Matthew, but also in Mark 8.33 which records that Jesus turned and looked at His disciples when He rebuked Peter. Everybody heard. How would Peter have felt being rebuked in this way? He's only just come off a mountaintop experience where he was called blessed. He's gone from the heights right down to the muck. Peter is told in front of everyone that his viewpoint is Satanic. Jesus said, “You are an offence to me”. Peter was in Christ’s way. Yes, he was a rock, a small piece of rock, a pebble, but at that moment he was a big rock that was lying across Christ’s path and an offense to the direction Christ was going. This would have been incredibly hard for Peter because it was not just the two of them - all heard what Jesus said.
The things of God and the things of men
Matthew 16.23b …for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."
So what are the things of God? God's viewpoint is that Jesus is the Son of God and He is the Lamb slain before the world was even begun. Jesus had to go to Jerusalem. In Hebrews 10.7 it says, “Behold, I have come-- In the volume of the book it is written of Me-- To do Your will, O God." Jesus had to go to Jerusalem and He had to die. He had to be made an acceptable sacrifice to make atonement for sin for the whole world. This is why Isaiah 53.10 says, “Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin”. God's ways are not our ways and His paths are not our paths. They are beyond our understanding. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God has chosen the foolish ways and the things that are shameful. This is God's way. Peter was not mindful of the things of God, but mindful of the things of men.
So what is man's viewpoint? Exactly what Peter said. “Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen to you!” Man's viewpoint is to save yourself and avoid suffering. ‘There are many roads we can travel, you don't need to go to Jerusalem. There has to be an easier way! Imagine what you could become, Jesus. People need you. We are just getting going with this thing. Think about all the crowds we had!’. This is man's point of view. All we see from a human perspective is the present so we reason and act according to that. But God's ways are higher than ours. His way is always death first, then resurrection. The way up is always down. There is no glory without pain and there is no crown without thorns in the process.
Jesus addressed the satanic origin behind what Peter said straight away. Some days, saints, we are just like Peter. We can have the greatest truth revealed to us about Christ and then the next thing out of our mouths are words that bring us straight back down to the lowest of all. This would have been incredibly hard I believe for Peter to be rebuked in front of the others in this way.
The seed
From Matthew 16.21 Jesus outlined to His disciples what the Father’s plan was. John 12.23-28 expands on this plan.
John 12:23 But Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. 24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. 25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. 27 "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify Your name." Then a voice came from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it and will glorify it again."
In every single grain of wheat there is the presence of life but there is a process of death by which that life can come forth. The seed has to abandon itself to the elements of the soil, the rain, and the sunshine. A seed will sense moisture in the soil and take up the water, resulting in swelling and softening of the coating before germination starts to occur. Now this is also true of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was holy, righteous, and sinless. What would have happened if He had lived out His life here on earth without going to the cross? He would still have been holy, righteous, and sinless, but He would have been accepted into heaven alone. You see Jesus is the grain of wheat. The Lord Jesus Christ had to be willing to lay aside His right to live and go to the cross and die. In so doing He produced much grain and millions of people down through the centuries have come into life because of His willingness to be obedient to the Father's will unto death. He is that grain of wheat and we see in this passage that it wasn’t easy for the Lord Jesus Christ to lay down His life.
Just as it was true of the Lord Jesus Christ it is also true for you and me. We also are a grain of wheat. Yes we may be saved, but we can be like a grain sitting on the shelf refusing to die. Only in death can life come forth. We need to abandon ourselves, abandon our rights to live our own life and make our own decisions, to choose our own will and our own path. We need to abandon ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ and allow Him to produce in us the only thing that He can produce, life. Those Christians that refuse to die, yes, they want heaven one day. In the same way Peter thinks it’s great that they have the Lord Jesus Christ around, but he doesn't want bad things to happen to Him. Many Christians want the Lord Jesus Christ, they want heaven and all the glories, but they are not willing to abandon themselves and have death applied to their self-life. It is only when a seed falls into the ground that there is the potential for life through death, and it's exactly the same for you and me.
Winning by losing
In Matthew 16.21-23 Jesus describes the path He must take, then from verses 24-26 He describes our path. He starts with His path which is Jerusalem and the cross and then He starts to talk of our path which is to deny self and take up our cross.
Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
This is our path. We win by losing, by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and allowing our lives to fall into the ground like the seed. Allowing God to put the self-life to death so only His life can come forth. His life, the life of the living Lord Jesus Christ. Christ in you, your only hope of glory. Your only hope of living the Christian life is a person, Jesus Christ. He is the life. But we have to be willing to lay down and yield just as the Lord Jesus Christ did. In doing so, yes we lose, but we also win because we gain a person. And God does also, just as He did 2000 years ago in the Lord Jesus Christ when He yielded His life. There are people all throughout this world by which He can show Himself real in the same process of death. Out of that death comes resurrection life.
From verse 21, Jesus starts talking about His path and Peter didn't like it because he didn't understand God's will or process. From verse 24 Jesus starts to say, this has to be your path also my disciples. If you want to be a follower of me, yes you can be saved and on your way to heaven, but if you want to be a disciple, then you need to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Lay down your life and allow me to take it up again. There's many today just like Peter. They want Jesus, but without the cross. But Jesus has come and we have been brought at a price. He has come that we may have life. Now that we understand God's purposes, our only response is to yield ourselves and allow the Lord Jesus Christ to have His way in our lives that He may bring forth fruit and glory to His name.
Peter goes from right up high to right down low which is why I love him because he's just like us. He got it completely right and then he got it completely wrong. His mouth was used by the arch enemy to try and hinder the will of God. Next time we'll continue in the same region of Caesarea Philippi. A lot happens here. The revelation of Jesus as Messiah and building His church, this event and then the Mount of Transfiguration. We'll look at that next time.
God bless you all.