Accept or Reject

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

ACCEPT OR REJECT

Mark 9:11-13

11 And they asked him, "Why do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?" 12 Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah does come first, and restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be rejected? 13 But I tell you, Elijah has come, and they have done to him everything they wished, just as it is written about him." 

NIV

It appears that because of the transfiguration, even though Peter might have been thinking in the earthly realm, wanting to build shelters, the three might now actually believe Jesus is the Messiah. This is concluded because of the question they ask. Because Jesus is the Messiah the learned men have taught the people that before the Messiah appears, Elijah must come first to restore everything. Jesus is affirming that is what they teach, and in fact that is what has happened. Luke records for us that John the Baptist came in the spirit of Elijah restoring the correct teaching about the coming Messiah, preparing the way for Jesus, and we know what happened to John. On the surface this particular passage seems a little confusing but the truth is not hidden from us because we have all the scripture to examine. The importance being able to cross reference other accounts and records of events and sayings of Jesus is to get the whole picture, not taking one thing out of the context of the whole truth. But why are we told this story in the first place? Why is it important that it is recorded for us? Jesus is affirming what in fact the prophet Elijah wrote about him. Jesus will suffer and he will be rejected. That happened and it will continue to happen. Men will still reject him; men will still cause Jesus to suffer by their rejection. We know the heart of Christ, we know the heart of God, we know he desires that all men come to him for salvation through Jesus Christ, yet that is not going to happen as men will reject continue to reject him. We also know that seeing the whole story in all of scripture we have to be careful not to reject some of it and only appear to accept some of it. In other words we cannot go through the bible with an al a carte approach, taking only what we want to believe and rejecting what we think is not for us today. This is especially true when we come to passages where Jesus is referring to events past and future at the same time. We have all the truth and we can know exactly what Jesus meant and understand it. He is the Messiah, He came to save us. So the question is do we accept all of it, or do we reject some of it? How can we even think of rejecting any of the scriptures, that they do not apply to us? Accept or reject.