Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Messiah was immediately followed by Jesus’ first teaching about the path that the Messiah would take, a path of suffering, rejection, death and resurrection. This didn’t fit with the idea that Peter had in his mind and hear about what the Messiah would be or what the Messiah would do and so, walking in the same boldness that he had used to confession Jesus as the Messiah, Peter pulled Jesus aside and rebuked Him, “Never Lord!” We talked about it at length our last time together but we have to be careful that our ideas of what God should do never get in the way of God’s Word when He begins to teach us what He “must” do. Peter rebuked Jesus and then Jesus had to rebuke Peter. Hebrews 12 reveals to us that love and discipline go hand in hand, that one requires the other and that God has chosen to love us through His discipline as our Father. Jesus rebuked Peter because He loved him, because He knew the damage that a wrong understanding of the Messiah would do to him, because He could not sit still and try to comfort Peter when the thing that was actually causing him discomfort was the truth he had to learn to embrace. “Get behind Me, Satan!” was not mean, it was not harsh and it was not in the heat of the moment, it was loving and kind and necessary. I think we sometimes forget how important God’s glory is to God and how important our souls are to God and how real the battle is, not merely for our souls but for the glory of God. Satan fell because he tried to steal God’s glory, he continues to do the same thing, he wants the glory of God and so he robs, steals and destroys, he lies and distracts all in an effort to get man to give him the glory that belongs only to God. God won’t stand for it but it’s not simply because He’s jealous for His glory He is also jealous for our souls and our souls are lost when God’s glory is given to another. If Peter went on believing that Jesus should not suffer and die then he would have rejected Jesus as the Messiah, he would have allowed the lie he believed to become greater than the truth he needed and his soul would have been lost. Jesus’ words are a rebuke but they are not in protection of Himself nearly as much as they are in protection of Peter and God’s glory. He had to reveal the influence behind Peter’s discomfort so that He could begin the work necessary to bring about salvation. I think it’s important that we understand that Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah in and of itself was not enough to transform Peter’s life or bring about salvation, it was the beginning of a journey that Jesus would lead him on that would culminate in salvation, in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and of a life of devotion and sanctification. The rebukes of God are not easy, they are not comfortable, they are often not short and sweet but they are always necessary, they are always loving and kind and they are always in protection of God’s glory and the salvation of our souls. What we study tonight is that immediately after Jesus’ rebuke of Peter and the work of Satan influencing Peter Jesus began to teach the disciples what it would look like to follow a Messiah that would suffer, be rejected, die and be resurrected. Remember, they were expecting to follow a Messiah into victory over Rome, He had to remove their wrong expectations and build up in them the truth of what “Follow Me” would really mean.