Mark 8:1-30
Date: February 12th 2023
Speaker: Samuel M. Crites
Scripture: Mark 8:1-8:30
Exegetical Outline
Main Idea Text: The disciples finally come to an understanding that Jesus is the Christ, but they struggle to understand his death and resurrection.
8:1-8:30: After struggling to understand all that Christ has taught them, the disciples come to a correct understanding of the identity of Christ.
8:1-10: Jesus feeds the 4,000 with 7 loaves and a few fish, because he has compassion on them.
8:11-13: Jesus refuses to give the Pharisees a sign.
8:14-20: The disciples do not understand what Jesus is saying about the leaven of the Pharisees, because their hearts are still hardened.
8:22-26: Jesus opens the eyes of a blind man twice.
8:27-30: The disciples correctly identify Jesus as the Christ.
Mark 8:1-30
Homiletical Outline
Main Idea Sermon: To be a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth is to understand that he is the Christ.
Those with hard hearts cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ.
The hard heart must be healed in order to understand that Jesus is the Christ.
To understand that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that Jesus is the Christ.
Introduction:
We have been building up to this sermon text for five months. Since we began preaching the Gospel of Mark as a Church in October, we have been looking forward to this particular sermon text as the climax of the first major narratival segment of the book. If you will remember, the climax of the story is important, because it reveals the meaning that the author is attempting to communicate. It shows the point of the story. This is what makes a story a story and not news. While all communication is biased, the storyteller is conscious that they are crafting a narrative towards a desired end.
We have been looking forward to Mark 8, because it is the climax of the first act of the story. If you will remember, Mark has three major acts. The first act is Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. In this part of the story, Jesus is training his disciples to understand who he is and what is his purpose on earth. In the second act, Jesus is going to be preparing for and making the journey to Jerusalem. During this act, Jesus will be attempting to teach his disciples that when he arrives in Jerusalem, he will be crucified and rise again on the third day. As we will see today, they struggle to accept this teaching. The third and final act is Jesus’s time in Jerusalem, leading up to and including his crucifixion and resurrection.
Today, we are going to study the climax of the first act. The tension that has been developing for the last 7 Chapters is between Christ’s efforts to teach the disciples and their inability to understand him because of the hardness of their hearts. He has attempted to teach them through parables, miracles, and personal experience. When they were finally tested at the feeding of the five thousand, we saw that they failed the test, because their hearts were hard. They failed to see the spiritual reality that Christ was trying to get them to see. They misunderstood because they had hard hearts. But Christ did not give up on them. He has been using every opportunity to continue to teach them about their hearts.
At the beginning of Chapter 7, he taught them that the heart is the origin of evil. The evil actions that people commit are just the overflow of an evil and broken heart. It is not the things that people eat that defile them, but the evil actions that flow out of their evil hearts that defile them. The chief example of this was the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees. Last week we saw that, in contrast to the scribes and the Pharisees, two gentiles were the chief examples of right heartedness. The Syrophoenician woman demonstrated persistent faith and the deaf man demonstrated the genuine joy of conversion.
Even after the disciples failed the test of the feeding of the five thousand, we have seen Christ continue to teach the disciples and follow up that teaching with real world examples. As we will see in this week’s sermon text, this tension between Christ’s patient teaching and the disciple’s hard heartedness is going to finally reach its climax and be resolved.
Before we begin our sermon, my original plan was to preach Mark 8:1-9:1, because it is a complete unit of thought. I found, as I was writing, that this was too much material to cover in one sermon. So, I will focus on Mark 8:1-30 this week, and Mark 8:31-9:1 next week.
So, read with me Mark 8:1-30. Pay special attention to the climax of the tension and how Mark shows that it is resolved.
Mark 8:1-30
In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, 2 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. 3 And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” 4 And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” 5 And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” 6 And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. 7 And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. 8 And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9 And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. 10 And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. 12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13 And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side.
14 Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” 16 And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. 17 And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20 “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21 And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”
27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.
The main idea of our sermon this week is this: To be a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth is to understand that he is the Christ. This sermon will have three primary points. First, those that have a hard heart cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ. This is the disciples’ problem. As we will see, since Mark 6, the disciples have been struggling to understand Christ, because their hearts are hard. They want to understand, but they cannot because their hard heartedness blinds their eyes to the truth. Second, the hard heart must be healed in order to understand that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus leaves his rebuke of the disciples open. He points out the hardness of their hearts but does not resolve the issue. Then, it seems, the story is interrupted by the double healing of the bind man. We are meant to see the parallel between the double healing of the blind man and the two times the disciples did not see clearly. The disciples’ hard heartedness is healed just like the blind man. Third, To understand that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that Jesus is the Christ. We know that the hard heartedness of the disciples has been truly healed, because Peter’s confession could only come from a heart that is no longer hard. He confesses the truth because he can see the truth. To be a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth is to understand that he is the Christ.
Those that have a hard heart cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ.
First, those that have a hard heart cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ. The first act of the Gospel of Mark has been focused on teaching the disciples who Jesus was. This man, this Jesus that grew up in Nazareth, is the Messiah, the anointed one of God. If you are going to follow him, you must accept this to be true. The problem is that the disciples cannot understand and accept this, because their hearts continue to be hard.
Let’s reread Mark 8:1-21, paying special attention to the hardness of the disciples’ hearts.
Mark 8:1-21
In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, 2 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. 3 And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” 4 And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” 5 And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” 6 And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. 7 And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. 8 And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9 And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. 10 And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. 12 And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13 And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side.
14 Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” 16 And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. 17 And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20 “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21 And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
We have already seen one miraculous mass feeding. In Chapter 6, under very similar circumstances, Christ fed 5,000 men and even more women and children with five loaves and two fish. If you will remember, that feeding took place on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee. Mark 6:45 says that they were opposite of Bethsaida which likely meant that they were somewhere outside of Gennesaret. This new feeding of the four thousand took place on the far Southeastern side of the Sea of Galilee in the area of the Decapolis. As we discussed last week, the Decapolis was a predominantly Gentile area. These two feedings are very similar in their details, but happen in two totally different areas: one to Jews and one to Gentiles.
A couple of weeks ago when we preached through the feeding of the five thousand, the focus of the feeding of the five thousand was on the disciples. When Jesus was done teaching, the disciples were tested by Christ. The disciples had a problem. The crowd needed to eat. So they approached Christ and asked him to send the crowd away, because they needed to get food. But Christ told the disciples to not send the crowd away, he wanted the disciples to feed the crowd themselves. Now the disciples had just come off of multiple days of intense ministry where they preached the Gospel, healed the sick, and cast out demons. You would have thought that miraculously feeding five thousand people would have been a small task for them to accomplish. They failed the test because Mark 6:52 tells us that they had hard hearts.
The disciples are not the focus of the feeding of the four thousand. The Pharisees are the focus. While some events happen in a similar manner, one interesting detail is that we don’t know how many fish there were. In fact, the fish almost seem like an afterthought in the story. Once the crowd’s hunger is satisfied and they are sent away, Jesus and his disciples travel across the Sea to the District of Dalmanutha. When they arrive on the shore, they are confronted by Pharisees that seek to test Jesus by demanding a sign from him. Jesus’s frustration is palpable. He refuses to give them a sign, gets back in the boat and begins to sail away.
The trip is so sudden that the disciples do not have a chance to get any bread. They only have one loaf of bread. In my mind’s eye, I like to think that maybe Jesus can see the bread in the boat and the Pharisees on the shore. He looks at one and looks at the other and with frustration in his voice says to the disciples, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
As the reader, you might be starting to see something. Bread in the feeding of the four thousand, leaven of the Pharisees, one loaf of bread in the boat: these stories are not stand-alone episodes. There is one thing that Mark is attempting to get us to see across all of these little episodes. They are all linked by bread. Like Christ does, he uses this real world experience to teach the disciples a spiritual reality.
The disciples just have not gotten there yet. They have not figured out was Christ is attempting to show them. When Christ says, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” they look at the one loaf of bread that they have and start arguing about the fact that they don’t even have bread that came from the Pharisees. The bread they have is probably from the feeding of the four thousand, and it is not even enough for them all to eat. Not only did the disciples not get the bread from the Pharisees, but there is also not even enough for them to all have some of the bread that they do have. What in the world could Jesus be trying to say?
And this is where we can see the rising tension in the story. The disciples don’t get it! And Christ is frustrated with them that they don’t get it. He says to them,
Mark 8:17-21
“Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” 20 “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” 21 And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”
Their hard hearts are still preventing them from understanding. They totally miss Jesus’s point.
So what is Jesus’s point? Jesus’s point about the Pharisees is connected to what he already taught them. In Chapter 7, he taught them that they must avoid the teachings of the Pharisees. They are not the teachings of God, but the teachings of men. The Pharisees do not open people’s eyes to the truth. They blind people to the actual word of God. They heap the teachings of men on top of people and burden them to the point that they are unable to obey the explicit teachings of God. The problem is that the disciples are too hard hearted to understand this.
Now before we deal with the hard heartedness of the disciples, let me give you a particularly relevant application of this last point. There are many churches in the world that have become so burdened by the teaching of men that their members can no longer follow God. It can happen to any Church, and I don’t want it to happen to this Church. So, I want you to write this down. I want you to remember this important point. The elders might be the first line of defense, but the final line of defense are the members. If you ever hear Sam Crites, or any elder of Mosaic Church, but especially me as your lead pastor, teach the opinions of Sam Crites as the doctrines of God, I want you to fire me. I could not be more serious. The ultimate protector of the Gospel in the Church is not the elders, but the members. If the elders or the lead elder is not preaching and teaching the Word of God, it is the duty of the members to fire every last one of those elders, starting with the lead guy. We need to take Christ’s warning in this passage so seriously, and that means that the members need to have their eyes and ears open. Your submission to the elders only lasts so long as the elders are teaching you the Word of God. If they begin to stray from the faith once delivered to the saints, it is your job to remove them.
Now, why did the disciples not understand the teaching of Christ? Why did they miss Christ’s warning about the Pharisees and confuse their lack of bread with the spiritual meaning behind what Christ was telling them? They missed it because people with hard hearts cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ or really any spiritual thing that Christ is trying to teach them. Notice in the text that Christ leaves his rebuke open ended. He asks them a bunch questions about the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand and leaves it at, “Do you not yet understand?”
I think the reader is to provide the answer. No. No, they did not understand. And the reason that they did not understand is the same reason that they have not understood this whole time: they have hard hearts. Hard hearted people cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ, and they cannot understand any spiritual teaching that he might offer them.
Now one thing that has struck me over and over again since Chapter 6 is that Christ has not given up on the disciples. Can you believe that? I am telling you, I would have really struggled to not drop these jokers a long time ago. But Christ has stuck with them, and patiently taught them and retaught them the same lessons. So here is something really tangible that can help us. We should be as patient in our evangelism as Christ has been with his disciples. I do not think the disciples have been regenerated yet. I think they are even now in Mark 8:21, unregenerate men following Jesus for the wrong reasons. I think that is all about to change, but the data seems to support the idea that their hardness of heart is the kind of hardness that Scripture consistently associates with being lost. If that is true, everything that Christ has done for them over the last seven chapters can be seen as his effort to evangelize them. He focused on 12 lost men, to the exclusion of all others, to pursue and evangelize with patience.
In my own personal experience, I have found this kind of evangelism to be more successful. There is a place for spontaneous evangelism as the Lord gives you an opportunity. We have seen Christ do this kind of evangelism all throughout the Gospel of Mark. But, do not miss the persistent, patient evangelism that he is working for the disciples. Organize you life around this kind of evangelism. Go to the same restaurants, the same gyms, focus on getting to know your neighbor, and persistently share the Gospel as your relationship grows. Do not grow weary. Do not give up. Even Christ had a couple of knuckle heads that were too hard hearted to accept the Gospel the first hundred or so times that it was presented to them. But he never gave up, and neither should we.
We have just seen, and really, we have consistently seen since Chapter 2, that hard heartedness prevents us from seeing Christ. Now we will see that we must be healed in order to see him for who he truly is.
The hard heart must be healed in order to understand that Jesus is the Christ.
The second point of our sermon is that the hard heart must be healed in order to understand that Jesus is the Christ. After Jesus rebukes his disciples, we get this short, but important episode where Jesus heals the blind man in Bethsaida twice. Two questions: why does Jesus have to heal this man twice? Why is this story in the middle of the narrative that Mark is telling in Chapter 8? Let’s consider these questions as we reread Mark 8:22-26.
Mark 8:22-26
22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”
I think Jesus heals the blind man twice as a living picture of what is going on with the disciples. We have had two mass feedings where the disciples have failed to see the spiritual reality because their hard hearts are blind to what is going on around them. Perhaps some of them are beginning to see, but like the blind man, they missed it on the first pass. But Jesus sticks with them, the same way that he worked with the blind man to restore his sight, he continues to work with the disciples to help them see.
As we have already seen, the reason the disciples are spiritually blind is that they hard hearts that are preventing them from understanding. So we have this story of Jesus healing the blind man, but I think we, as the readers, are supposed to see the parallel to the disciples. That is the main point. To be able to spiritually see Jesus as the Christ, the disciples needed new hearts.
Mark does not tell us exactly when this takes place, but at some point between Jesus’s rebuke on the boat and the discussion that happens on the way to Caesarea Philippi, the disciples are healed of their hard heartedness and can see clearly.
In this, you can see the mastery of our author. Not merely the human author, but the Holy Spirit. He is the true author of the text. The double healing of the blind man is a real historical event. There really was a blind man in Bethsaida who had a mom and a dad, friends, people that knew him. He truly sought-after Christ and begged him to heal his blindness. It really did take Jesus two attempts to heal him. All so that the Holy Spirit could weave this story together to give a real living example of what is taking place, spiritually, with the disciples.
It is through the physical miracle the double healing of the blind man that we can further understand the miraculous healing that takes place in the hearts of men at the moment of salvation. This is healing of the heart that takes place has a special name. We call it the doctrine of regeneration. Let me read to you from the Mosaic Church Statement of Faith what we believe about the doctrine of regeneration. My hope is to show you have the Church’s Statement of Faith is a useful tool for you to understand how to read Scripture more accurately. This is how the doctrine of regeneration reads:
VII. Of Grace In Regeneration
We believe that, in order to be saved, sinners must be regenerated, or born again; that regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind; that it is effected in a manner above our comprehension by the power of the Holy Spirit, in connection with divine truth, so as to secure our voluntary obedience to the gospel; and that its proper evidence appears in the holy fruits of repentance, and faith, and newness of life.
So let’s break that down. As we see in Mark, our Statement of Faith says that regeneration is the beginning of the salvation process. It says that in order to be saved, sinners must be regenerated, that is, they must be born again. Their spiritual heart of stone must be removed and a heart of flesh must be remade in its place. How does this heart surgery take place? In some ways, it is a mystery beyond our comprehension because it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus teaches us this in John 3:5-8. He says,
John 3:5-8
5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
One of the primary roles of the Spirit is the work of regeneration. He takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of flesh. It is a free act of His sovereign grace. Like the wind, no one knows where the Spirit comes from or where the Spirit goes to. He moves of his own free choice consistent with the will of the Father.
This sovereign act of regeneration does not make us robots. In fact, when the Spirit gives us this new heart it comes with new desires. The one that has been regenerated, freely chooses to obey the call of the Gospel because they have been remade. Keeping with the metaphor in John 3, no one has to convince an infant to drink it’s mother’s milk. The milk was made for the baby and the baby was made for the milk. Once a lost person has been regenerated, they want the things of God, because they have new desires. These new desires evidence themselves through faith, that is, putting your trust in Jesus; repentance, turning away from sin and the world; and a newness to their life, they no longer are the person they were before. They have become a new creature through the new birth.
This is the doctrine of regeneration and Mark 8 is a perfect example of how it takes place. All of the tension in Mark to this point has been building around the inability of the disciples to understand Christ because of the hardness of their hearts. Multiple times, Christ rebukes them for this, and yet he patiently works with them to continue to teach them. These men were handpicked by Christ to be his apostles to carry out his ministry, because he knew that his time was short. But the work of regeneration is a supernatural work of healing, performed by the Holy Spirit. The needed new hearts before they would have any hope of being useful to Jesus in his ministry.
We have just seen that the hard heart must be healed in order to know that Jesus is the Christ. It is a prerequisite to understanding. You must be born again before you can see Christ or the Gospel clearly. This is such an important issue because we saw in our first point that those with hard hearts cannot understand that Jesus is the Christ. It is impossible for them. So healing or regeneration, of the heart is essential for anyone to be able to understand the Gospel and see Christ for who he truly is.
To understand that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that Jesus is the Christ.
Which brings us to the climax of this first act of the Gospel of Mark. The final point of our sermon is that to understand that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that Jesus is the Christ. Let’s read Mark 8:27-30.
Mark 8:27-30
27 And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” 29 And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 30 And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.
As Jesus and his disciples are on their way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, North of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus asks them two essential questions: “Who do other people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” To the first question, the disciples say that some say that Jesus is John the Baptist, confusing him with a popular teacher of the day. Some said he was Elijah, confusing Jesus as the forerunner to the Messiah. Others were saying that he is just a prophet, missing how important he truly is. All of these rumors swirled around Christ, obscuring his true identity.
But this was not the important question. As we have seen previously in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’s ministry in Galilee was not focused on the crowd. Jesus purposefully tried to obscure the teachings of the kingdom of God in parables so that in hearing, the crowd would not hear, and in seeing, the crowd would not see. The error of the crowd does not bother Christ. The whole focus of his ministry in Galilee hangs, not on the first question, but on the second question.
The important question is “Who do you say that I am?” You, the disciples, the ones that have been with me from the beginning and have been privileged to hear all my teachings and see all my miracles. Who do you say that I am? All of the Gospel of Mark has been leading up to this moment. All the parables, all the miracles, all the failures, have led to this moment.
And Peter’s answer is so simple. Peter says four words, “You are the Christ.” You are the anointed one, the Messiah. Peter said four words, but those four words carried with them all of the hopes of Eve as she looked forward to her future son that would crush the head of the serpent. Those four words carried with them all of the hopes of Abraham, who was promised a singular seed through which all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Those four words carried with them all of the hopes of Moses who was promised a prophet to speak the very words of God. Those four words carried all the hopes of David, who God promised would always have a son to sit on the throne of Israel. Those four words carried all of the hopes of Isaiah, through whom God promised Israel a suffering servant and a conquering king. Those four words carried all the hope of Jeremiah, through whom God promised a righteous branch who will reign in David’s place, a king that will deal wisely and execute justice. Those four words carried all the hope of Ezekiel, through whom God promised a true Shepherd that would care for his people. Those four words carried all the hope of Daniel, through whom God promised one like a Son of Man that would be given dominion and glory and a kingdom of all the peoples, nations and languages of the world. Those four words, “You are the Christ,” were words that all of the great saints of the Old Testament longed to be able to say, and Peter got the privilege of looking declaring what his new heart new saw clearly: That Jesus of Nazareth, this carpenter’s son, was the one, true and only Messiah, the Son of God.
We do not get to see the disciples’ hearts, but we can be confident that the Holy Spirit has regenerated them because of the confession of the mouths. Scripture clearly teaches that there is a reliable and essential link between what people say with their mouths and what they feel link their hearts. If the heart has been truly regenerated, it will confess Jesus as Lord by the power of the Spirit. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3:
1 Corinthians 12:3
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
If the Spirit has truly been at work in the life of an individual, they will confess that Jesus is the Lord and they will truly mean it. It is part of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
Christians have always put a high priority on confession because Scripture puts a high priority on confession. Listen to what Paul says in Roman 10:9-10
Romans 10:9-10
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
Notice the importance of both the mouth and the heart for salvation. Confession that Jesus is Lord is essentially connected to the belief of the heart. One cannot truly claim Jesus as their Lord if their heart has not been transformed by faith.
What does this mean for us? You cannot be a Christian that lives in the closet. Being a Christian is something that fundamentally changes your identity. You no longer belong to yourself, but you have been purchased by Christ. Therefore, everyone person that has been truly regenerated must publicly identify with Christ, regardless of the costs. This is what Peter is doing in Mark 8:29. He is publicly confessing that Jesus is the Christ because the Holy Spirit has regenerated his heart. He can’t help but see and proclaim what is true.
Conclusion
In our sermon text, we have finally seen the disciples understand. Through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, their hard hearts have been healed in order to see clearly and confess that Jesus is the Christ. They are truly his disciples.
Up to this point, they were following Christ. They were doing ministry with him. They were listening to his teaching and enjoying the benefits of his miracles, but they were not truly his disciples. At the beginning of Chapter 8, their hearts are far from Christ, but by the end the Holy Spirit has done his work in their hearts and they have been born again.
I wonder if there are any in this room that are in a similar boat as the disciples. Maybe you are interested in Christ, but frankly you find the things that he says confusing. Maybe you are attracted to Christ, because you see other people attracted to him, but if you were honest you don’t really see the point. Maybe you’re the exact opposite, if you could just have Christ you would take him, but to follow Christ means you also have to deal with the Church and you have been burned by the Church before. Christ is fine, but his people are hypocrites, and you really don’t want anything to do with them.
Friend, your problem is not outside of you, but it is inside of you. You do not understand because your heart of stone blinds you. You do not find him attractive, because you do not truly know him. You are turned away from his people because you do not have a true understanding of your own sinfulness and how desperate you truly are. Come to Christ. His Spirit will give you a new heart and you can put your hope and your trust in the only one that can save you from the consequences of your sin. Like the disciples, he has been patiently pursuing you for your whole life, you have just been too blind to see it. Forget the excuses and trust in Jesus to save you.
Let’s pray.