Jesus' Rebuke to Peter and to Us

Even in his failure, Jesus had something to teach Peter because He was one of God's chosen ones. Jesus lived the righteous life of self denial and taught Peter what it meant to pick up His cross. He died for Peter even though Peter's sinfully weak perspective changed very little during the whole time of our Lord's earthly ministry. Let us remember this, because this is often the way that it is for us as Christians. We do not think that we need the Lord to rebuke us. Indeed, if He were standing before us now, without His grace working in our heart and mind, we might fall into this same sinful perspective as Peter had that day. Perhaps we are holding this perspective and trying to justify it. So what I want to do in preaching this sermon, is to have us think about this rebuke in relation to ourselves this morning, and receive it to ourselves as though we were Peter. For we may indeed be trying to justify trying to live our life without either Jesus or ourselves having to pick up a cross. I want us to look, first of all, at Jesus' teaching of His sufferings as the basis for rebuke. I want to look secondly at Jesus' rebuke to Peter, of His stating that Peter had fallen into Satan's hands. And then, thirdly, I want to look at Jesus' rebuke of Peter as teaching him the true meaning of discipleship.