Mark 8:27-38
February 17, 2019
preached by Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.”

~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“And my heart is black as coal;
It’s been mined and there ain’t no gold.
It’s so dark in there – But I don’t care.
I will lay down in the this empty hole
Where my heart is black as coal.

And oh, there is nowhere left to go from here,
I have fallen past the last frontier.
But at the bottom of this well I hear you breathing
…Love has found me here.”

~Andrew Peterson, The Last Frontier

“As [a Christian] has more holy boldness, so he has less of self-confidence…and more modesty.  As he is more sure than others of deliverance from hell, so he has more of a sense of the dessert of it. He is less apt than others to be shaken in faith, but more apt than other to be moved with solemn warnings, and with God’s frowns, and with the calamities of others. He has the firmest comfort, but the softest heart: richer than other, but poorest of all in spirit; the tallest and the strongest saint, but the least and tenderest child among them.”

~Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

Sermon Passage

Mark 8:27-38 (ESV)

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.

³¹ 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 three days rise again. ³² And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³ 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.”

³⁴ 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. ³⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? ³⁸ 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.”