Our last study closed with Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ”. All of the book of Mark had built to that moment, everything that Mark wrote, the way that He described Jesus’ words and works was all to bring us to the moment where we recognize that He is indeed the Messiah. From the moment of Peter’s confession, the rest of the book of Mark will be revealing the reality of what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah. The word Christ is simply the Greek word for “Anointed One” or Messiah, Peter did not call Jesus the Christ, He would have called Him the Messiah. The interesting thing is that this word, of the utmost importance to anyone in Israel, is used for the first time in the book of Mark (other than Mark’s introduction where He refers to Jesus as “Jesus Christ, the Son of God) in Peter’s confession. There is no mention of it by Jesus, He has spoken in parables and asked people touched by His miraculous power to be silent all in an effort to not publicize Himself but to allow His Father to reveal His true identity to the hearts of those that would be willing receive. As Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16, “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood but by my Father in heaven.” While the promise of the Messiah was of utmost importance to Israel, in fact, it was their one place of hope, their understanding of who the Messiah would be and what purpose He would fulfill held a wide range of beliefs and opinions. In his commentary on the book of Mark, Michael Card writes “To some he would be a glorious king who, with Jerusalem as his throne, would reestablish the theocratic nation of Israel. To many he would be a militaristic Messiah who would come and kill the Roman oppressor. What these differing dreams all held in common was the notion of glory, victory and divine power. Above all, the Messiah would never submit, surrender or suffer.” When you read that description of what was expected in a Messiah it is much easier to understand how they would have overlooked Jesus when He came, He didn’t fit their expectation mostly because their expectation was not God’s purpose or God’s plan. Jesus knows this and so now that His apostles have recognized that He is the Messiah He has to go to work to teach them and anyone else that will listen and be willing to have their hearts opened to the Father not only that He was the Messiah but what it meant for Him to be the Messiah and what it would mean for them to follow Him. They would go into battle for sure but it would not be as they expected it to be, there would be war but it would be in the heavenlies, there would be death but it would be to sin and there would be victory but it would be over sin, death and the grave. Knowing Jesus’ identity as the Messiah starts the journey, trusting Jesus’ plan, His purpose and His heart is what leads us to salvation and to become witnesses to Him on the earth.