Mark 8:27-30 | Jesus The Christ

Preacher: Joel Fair
Scripture: Mark 8:27-30

1. Who do others say I am?
2. BUT who do YOU say?
3. You are the CHRIST!

Mark 6:14–16
King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some said, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” But others said, “He is Elijah.” And others said, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

Malachi 4:5–6
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

James Edwards
No OT personality held such fascination for first-century Judaism as Elijah. The reason lay not in his deeds, for the accomplishments of other OT figures— Abraham, Moses, David, even Joshua—exceeded Elijah’s. The reason lay in the report that Elijah had been taken bodily to heaven (2 Kgs 2:11) where he was believed to oversee the deeds of mortals, to comfort the faithful and help the needy, and, above all, to return as forerunner of the great and terrible Day of the Lord (Mal 3:1; 4:5–6).

Mark 4:41
And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Matthew 16:13–20
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Jeremiah Fyffe -
The focus of the messianic prophecy was on the result and not the means. They were looking for fruitful results without Jesus’ faithful means.

Ben Witherington
Peter is indeed the representative of the Twelve, but he represents both their insight and their blindness, with this pericope revealing both sides of this reality. By calling Jesus Messiah, Peter sees Jesus as God’s anointed, and so most blessed, one. But there appears to have been little or no expectation in early Judaism that Messiah would come and suffer. Peter obviously doesn’t understand Jesus’ messianic vocation yet, and Mark, for his part, wants to make evident that until one understands who Jesus is, one cannot understand why he had to die. Thus Peter’s confession, while true, is not the whole truth about Jesus.

C.S. Lewis -
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.