Introduction
The American author and humourist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (better known as Mark Twain) was once travelling home on a train from the north-eastern state of Maine after three weeks of very successful fishing. The thing is though, it was out of season for freshwater fishing in that part of the USA so it was strictly forbidden and, had he been found out, he would have faced a hefty fine.
But it didn’t stop him bragging about his very impressive but very illegal haul of trout to the only other passenger in the carriage. This fellow traveller grew increasingly ashen as he listened to Mark Twain’s cocky boasting. When Twain finally asked him what he did for a living, the stranger explained that he was the State Fisheries and Game Inspector. “And who are you?” he asked. “To tell the truth”, Twain said, “I’m the biggest liar in the whole of the United States!”
Have you ever opened your mouth and come out with something you instantly regretted? Maybe asking a woman if she is expecting a boy or a girl and learning from her reply that she is expecting neither because she is not pregnant…
Years ago, I remember getting collared by a very strange and extremely talkative man after church one Sunday, and when, after what seemed like half an hour, I finally escaped, I said to one of my colleagues, “Pfff, who’s that guy?” only to hear the reply, “Well, it’s my dad, who’s with us this weekend.”
Someone once said, “It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.” And there are few people for whom that is more true than Simon Peter.
His mouth works twice as fast as his brain, so he routinely bursts out with impulsive remarks that surprise everyone. And that means two things; either his comments are highly ill-advised, or they’re absolutely inspired.
And the passage we’re going to look at today is ‘buy one, get one free’ time, because inside a minute Peter comes out with both the prophetic and the pathetic. And so, in a flash, he goes from hero to zero.
Let’s read Mark 8.27-37.
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, ‘Who do people say I am?’
They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’
‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’
Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah.’
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ he said. ‘You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Prayer…
Every commentary on the Gospel of Mark will tell you that this is a
watershed moment. Up to this point, the first eight chapters of Mark have abounded with miracles
but been short on teaching; but from here onwards, the last eight chapters will
be packed with teaching and short on miracles. The first half of Mark is mostly set in the north where Jesus is popular; the
second half is mostly set in the south where he is hated.
Everything in Mark’s Gospel before this scene explores the question, “who do we
say Jesus is?” What do you think? All of us here this morning, every man, woman and child, has
to answer this question for themselves.
Who is this man who forgives sinners, who feeds the crowds with a single packed lunch, who never loses an argument, who walks on water, who always knows what to do, who casts out demons, who heals the sick, who cleanses lepers, who tells the weather what to do, and even raises the dead? Who is this? A young man of 30 cannot possibly be as wise and influential as he is.
The demons all know; “I know who you are, the Son of God” they scream, but
every time they speak, Jesus tells them to be quiet. So a rumour begins to spread that he must have had some sort of previous
existence. People haven’t seen anything like the signs and wonders he does since Elijah’s
day, so some think it’s a reincarnation of him. King Herod superstitiously thinks he is John the Baptist come back to haunt
him. His family think he is mad.
But this question, “Who is Jesus?” is only at this point settled by Simon
Peter, “You are the Messiah” he says. The Christ, the anointed one, the special one, the chosen one. You’re the one sent from heaven to earth that we’ve all been waiting for.
Well done, Peter! That’s the right answer. And from this point on, Mark’s interest is no longer “Who is Jesus?” From now on, it’s “Why will the Son of Man have to suffer?”
So in v31, in our passage, now we know who he is, Jesus begins to explain, for the first time, that he must go to Jerusalem and face the religious authorities. And they will mock him, and spit on him, and falsely accuse him, and condemn him to death, and there he will die and after three days rise again. Mark tells us that Jesus’ language is clear and explicit. “He spoke plainly about this,” says v32.
And in an instant, Peter goes from star of the week to dunce of the month. Because on hearing that Jesus expects to suffer on a cross and die, Peter grabs
Jesus by the arm, and he takes him to one side, and he starts telling him off. Mark says, “He began to rebuke him.”
It’s so much harder to hear God’s voice when you have already decided what he can
and cannot say.
Matthew’s Gospel records some of Peter’s words; listen to what comes out of his mouth. “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” And then we are confronted by these jarring words. Jesus turns and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the concerns of God.”
It must have stung
Peter to hear that. Let us not sanitise this or brush over it. This is a severe reprimand, isn’t
it? I can just imagine everyone cringing and suddenly going very quiet as Jesus
said it.
Why does he give Peter such a crushing telling off? If Peter gets his way here, there is no cross,
no forgiveness, no resurrection, no salvation for the world and you and I would
be lost in hell, without hope, forever. That’s why Jesus says to Peter what he said to the devil in the wilderness;
“Out of my sight, Satan.”
So then, how can Peter get it all so wrong so soon after getting it all so right?
1) Getting it so right
First of all, what’s going on here to inspire Peter to be so spot on?
Matthew’s version of this same incident tells us. On hearing Peter say, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” Jesus
replies, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you
by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.”
No one told Peter who Jesus is. What Peter says here was not picked up in a theology course or read in a book
somewhere. Nor did he mull this over for weeks and arrive at a logical conclusion. This was a spontaneous, prophetic revelation. He heard from God and spoke it out, as ever, without thinking any of his words
through, or analysing the question, or giving it the slightest critical consideration.
We know this because just a few verses earlier in Mark 8, Jesus speaks to all
the disciples, including Peter, and he says, with exasperation, “Do you still
not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to
see? And ears but fail to hear?” And reminding them of the miracle of feeding the 5,000 days earlier, he says,
“Don’t you remember? Do you still not understand?”
So when Peter comes out shortly after with this decisive testimony of who Jesus
is, it’s clearly not because he’s an erudite man of great learning and
understanding. He’s like Noel Gallagher’s description of his brother Liam. Peter is “a man
with a fork in a world of soup.” Most of the time, Peter just doesn’t get it!
But God can speak to, and through, literally anyone. God wants a people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who hear his voice,
where sons and daughters prophesy, where old and young, and men and women alike
are seeing visions and dreaming dreams. Speaking out what people need to hear, not what they want to hear. This is God's design for us.
In his book No Well-Worn Paths, Terry Virgo speaks of a visit to Metro Vineyard Church in Kansas City in 1995. For over half an hour, a preacher called Paul Cain spoke prophetic words over individuals in the 2,000 strong congregation. At one point, Terry and Wendy heard their names being spoken. They were asked to stand with their family. Paul Cain had, at that point, briefly met Terry and their eldest son Ben but he knew nothing else about the family.
Nevertheless, he proceeded to name all five children accurately. He told their daughter Anna that she had a South-African in her heart. (She
went on to marry South African church leader Steve van Rhyn). He gave words to their son Joel about a time he had spent in Africa. He even gave a word concerning their third son Simon, who was 16 years old at
the time and had backslidden and drifted away from God. He quoted Jesus’ famous words; “Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you
that he might sift you as wheat.” He spoke a word of promise and of recovery. Simon is now a church elder in
Richmond on Thames.
About 10 years after this, I was at a ministry training day in Versailles, France. And at the end of one session, the main speaker said, “I’ve brought a team with me and they’ve been standing at the back, praying over you and asking God for words for you while I have been teaching. I thought, “I bet there won’t be a word for me. There’ll be words for everyone else, but not for me. There’s never anything for me.”
So imagine my surprise when they come forward and this guy picks me out first and begins to prophesy over me, including details such as my name (though he did not know me), the very specific focus of my ministry (so specific I was the only person in the country his words applied to) and also the biggest issue I was struggling with at that time which was gladly submitting to the authority of people I did not respect.
A colleague of mine was there with me and he said, “Of the 6 billion people
alive on planet Earth, if you asked me ‘who is that man describing?’ I would
reply without hesitation, John Lambert.” It was scary, actually. I remember my heart thumping inside my chest as the fear of God came over me. I
mean, what else was this guy going to reveal in front of all these people? The secrets of my heart were being laid bare.
Kathie and I got to know that man quite well; we invited him to speak at a
couple of church weekends for us and each time, his accuracy in words of
knowledge and prophetic revelation was truly amazing. I once asked him before he spoke at our gatherings if he wanted me to share any
background about the church, where we were at, what we were facing… and he said, “No. The less I know about a church, the more accurate my
prophetic ministry tends to be.”
In 2 Peter 1, Peter talks about how the prophetic works. Peter says, “prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though
human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” That word “carried along” in the original Greek is the same word as the one
used in Acts 27 to describe a ship being driven across the sea by a storm.
This is surely Peter’s own experience here in Mark 8. “You are the Christ!” he
hears himself say before the words have been processed in his brain. Peter’s tongue is being carried along by the Holy Spirit as he reveals Jesus’
true identity to the world.
We would so love to grow, as a church, in prophetic ministry. We believe God has more for us than we presently experience. The Bible says, “eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially prophecy.” This has been a prayerful preoccupation for our elders for some time now. How can we get released by God into a greater prophetic anointing? And we hope to announce soon how we intend to advance in these things.
2) Getting it so wrong
Well, how does Peter get it so wrong after getting it so right?
I don’t think it's his inability to comprehend. I think that if Peter says, “Lord, I’m not sure I really follow you. Did you
just say go to Jerusalem and die? Can you just expand please, because I’m struggling to understand that…” If he says that I think Jesus just patiently explains.
The problem is surely his tone. Taking Jesus by the elbow, pulling him to one side and rebuking him, saying,
“No way, this is not happening on my watch,” that’s the issue. We don’t get to lecture God on what he can and cannot do.
Some years after that (for me) breathtaking prophetic word over my life, in
Versailles, I looked up the Facebook page of the guy who spoke so powerfully and
insightfully into my life. I knew he travelled widely, including internationally. Where had he been? What
was God doing? What uplifting testimonies of grace and blessing might I read about?
To my dismay, I found post after post on his page grumbling about politics. If he wasn’t criticising the government, or expressing his displeasure about a prominent politician, he’d be weighing in with a spiky comment about some political controversy. The whole tone was off - there was nothing about Jesus, nothing about the gospel, nothing about changed lives, just fanning the flames of contentious issues like Brexit.
It reminded me more of Peter taking Jesus aside and blurting out something
misguided than Peter announcing to the world who Jesus is.
James 3 says, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we
curse people, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come
praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”
I remember a listening to a well-known speaker at a conference, many of you
will have heard of him, about an incident in his church. In mid-flow of a sermon, he noticed a man, about 25 years old, he had never
seen before and he asked him to stand. What you could see is this: his hair was unkempt. He looked unwashed. He was a
bit of a scruff. What you couldn’t see is this: he was a heroin addict, unable to sustain any
kind of relationship. He was living in squalor, unemployed and frankly unemployable. And the word from God that day for him declared that the Lord saw in him a holy
man.
Eight years later, the same man walked up to this church leader and asked, “do
you remember me?” Honestly, the answer was “no.” He said, I’m sorry I can’t place you.” So, the young man told his story. When the preacher spoke that word, eight
years earlier, that young man was instantly delivered of his secret heroin
addiction. Within months he had got a job, settled down, met a girl, got married, and
bought a house. For eight years, he had been clean, and walking with God. God’s word calls into being things that are not.
Several years later though, that same preacher got himself into a bit of a
predicament because, months before the vote, he very publicly predicted who was
going to win the US presidential election. “God has told me that so and so is going to win office. And he called it wrong.
Ecclesiastes 3 says there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. To his credit, that man publicly acknowledged his error, humbled himself, asked for forgiveness and said he’d learn from the experience.
Ending
But it just goes to show again how, like Peter, we in our day can also
get it so right and get it so wrong.
This is why 1 Thessalonians 5 says, “Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not
scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.
Stay away from every kind of evil.”
1 Corinthians 14 explains that God expects us to examine prophetic contributions. “Two or three prophets should speak,” it says, “and the others should weigh carefully what is said.” And that’s what we try to do here whenever someone brings a word.
But as I close, let’s come back to learning from Simon Peter. What does this story tell us about our own discipleship? What is God saying to you this morning?
Are you prepared to publicly confess your faith in Christ? Are you prepared to take up your cross, to let your old life go?
Are you too risk-averse, scared of getting it all wrong? Many of us are reluctant to share a word because of fear.
- You’re less likely to mishear God if you have cultivated a heart of worship.
- You’re less likely to get it all wrong if your mind is saturated with the word of God. No prophetic word will ever contradict or undermine holy scripture. As Voddie Baucham puts it, “The Lord told me” can never replace “The Bible says.”
- You’re less likely to put your foot in it if you have cultivated a gentle and meek heart. Like Mary, the Lord's mother, who said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me according to his word.”
And, more positively, are you eagerly desiring spiritual gifts, especially
prophecy? Scripture commands it. Are you inclined to take a risk, and step out in faith? If you are then, like Peter, you’re a rock. And it’s on that kind of brave faith that Jesus is going to build his church.
Let’s stand to pray...
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 14 September 2025
