Mon Dec 22

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words Peter and Jesus.

Reading

Matthew 16:13-23—Lord, this will never happen to you!

Optional Reading

Habakkuk 1

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Peter declared Jesus is the true Messiah.
Peter declared that Jesus would not suffer and die.
God told Peter the first, Satan told him the second.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

How did Peter know that Jesus is the Messiah?
Why did Peter oppose Jesus being killed?
Why is Jesus’s death so astonishing?

Notes

(See Saturday for authors.)

As we considered in Habakkuk 1, even more astonishing than the fact that God would use wicked people to discipline His people is the fact that God would use wicked people to kill His Son. All throughout Jesus’s earthly ministry, we see that astonishment—and even unbelief. Sometimes Jesus just tells his disciples that he will suffer and die at the hands of sinful men—and they just can’t understand his words. Other times, like Peter in our reading, they actually oppose Him. Peter says to the eternal second person of the trinity, No. No, Lord, this will not happen to you.

We might expect Jesus to gently explain again to Peter what must happen and why. But instead, Jesus addresses Peter as Satan himself—Peter, who just moments before had declared Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the living God as God the Father had revealed to him. Peter now speaks as Satan had led him, to frustrate (if it were possible) Jesus’s atoning and sacrificial death.

It is astonishing and unbelievable that God the Father put Jesus to death by wicked men, and that God the Son willingly made this sacrifice for His people. It is astonishing, but we must believe it. Unless we believe in Jesus’s sacrificial death for us, we will be cast, deservedly, with Satan into the eternal fires of hell.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday notes for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 139d, 57b

Prayer

Pray that even in your astonishment over the gospel, you still submit to Jesus.
Pray for a specific application from yesterday's sermons.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.