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Sound & Season is a daily audio devotional designed to connect the routine moments of life to the rhythms of the Church seasons.
This is Sound in Season. It's Thursday, 20th day of Lent. Our passage today comes from the Gospel of Mark chapter 8 verses 22 through 38. And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him, 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? And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.
Lauren Starnes:Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes. His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly, and he sent him into his home saying, do not even enter the village. 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? And they told him, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others, one of the prophets. And he asked them, But who do you say that I am?
Lauren Starnes:Peter answered him, You are the Christ, And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after 3 days rise again. And he said this plainly. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, but turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, get behind me Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Lauren Starnes:For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. This is the word of the Lord.
Lauren Starnes:Thanks be to God.
Jeffrey Heine:Today's passage begins with a healing scene, familiar in the previous 7 chapters, but it concludes with declarations that are unprecedented. 1st, Jesus asks his disciples a question that Mark has suddenly been asking for 8 chapters, who is this Jesus of Nazareth? 2nd, Jesus tells his disciples about what must soon take place, namely that he must suffer many things. He tells them that he must be rejected by the people and the rulers, he must be killed, and he must rise again from the dead. If you did not know that he would suffer bearing our griefs, carrying our sorrows, if you did not know that he would die, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, and if you did not know that upon him was the chastisement that would bring you peace, and that by his wounds you are healed, you probably would have tried to stop him too.
Jeffrey Heine:Peter tried and was rebuked by Jesus. It wasn't that Peter was against Jesus, it's just that he didn't understand what Jesus was for. He was here to do the will of the father, and it was the will of the father to crush him, to put him to grief, to make intercession for transgressors. Peter wasn't wrong to feel so overwhelmed by the idea that the Son of Man would have to suffer. In fact, we would do well to be overwhelmed by this reality today, too.
Lauren Starnes:Free from the bondage of believing that this world would ever be enough to satisfy us. Oh, Lord, would you make us into a people unashamed of the redeeming power of your gospel? Let us taste and see that you are good. Oh, lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
Lauren Starnes:Amen.