Jesus broke free of the misconceptions and ideas the Samaritan woman had as we saw in yesterday’s blog. It was just the Samaritan woman tried to put Him in a box. Even the disciples had trouble with Jesus, His teaching and the fact that He did not fit the image they had of the Messiah. Some turned from Jesus when His teaching was difficult and did not please them, John 6:66.
This departure obviously affected Jesus for he turned to the twelve and asked whether they also wanted to leave him, verse 68. Peter answered, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God,’ verse 69. When we look at the account of this incident in Matthew, we see that Jesus declared this knowledge could only have come from God, Matthew 16:17.
But only a short while later, when Jesus is explaining to the disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed before being raised on the third day, Matthew 16:21 Peter revealed his misconceptions. Peter believed Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of God but He did not want to believe that Jesus would suffer and die before being raised to life, Matthew 16:22. Why? Because it did not fit the image Peter had of the Messiah. What Jesus was suggesting was radical. It was outside the scope of Peter’s limited view of God. In no uncertain terms, Jesus told him he had the wrong viewpoint on the situation and on what God should or shouldn’t do, Matthew 16:23.
Peter wasn’t the only one with ideas about how God should behave. At the cross, the passers by Matthew 16:40 and the chief priests challenged Jesus. They argued that if He was the Son of God as He claimed, then He should come down from the cross. Jesus should prove Himself, verses 41-43. In other words, they wanted to put God in a box and dictate how events should pan out and what things the Son of God could or should do. But Jesus knew the only way for mankind to come back into relationship with God was for Him to die and take the punishment for our sins, See Isaiah 53 and 1 John 2:2.
If you or I had been planning a rescue mission for mankind, I’m sure we‘d have gone about it a different way. But our thoughts are not God’s thoughts and our ways not God’s ways, Isaiah 55:8. God knew what needed to be done to save us and He did it. He acted in love to bring it about John 3:16-17, 1 John 4:10.
But despite the Old Testament Scriptures and passages like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 which pointed to Jesus and what He came to do, people could not conceive that this was what would happen. That’s because they had their own preconceived ideas about God and how He should act. What preconceived Ideas about God do you have? Where might you need to change your ideas? Does your picture of God line up with that in the bible? Or have you tried to stick God in a box and dictate how He should act? God is in the habit of breaking out.
Bible references from The New American Standard Version
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