Jesus Prophesies His Death and Resurrection | Matthew 16:21–28

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Last week, we saw Jesus depart from the general vicinity of where he was into Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi, still to this day, and I used the backdrop behind me last week. Caesarea Philippi is a mountainous region. And on that mountainous region, during the landscape of Yeshua and the apostles at that point in time, there was idols upon idols, shrines, temples, to gods upon gods upon gods upon gods. It was at this place that Jesus had retreated from the crowds and asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? And it's where Peter said, you are the son of the living God, the Christ, the Mashiach.
And at that point in time, he left them with a command. We're command loving people. He left them with a command for that moment. Don't tell anybody. Shh. Don't say anything. Maybe one of the hardest commands in the Bible, right? You see Jesus perform miracle after miracle after miracle. Centuries, your grandparents, your great grandparents, every part of your genealogy has read the Torah and the prophets. You heard about your heritage in Abraham. Now Abraham was saved by faith. You heard about what happened at Mount Horeb at the giving of the law. And it all prophesied to this Mashiach, this one who would come, Jesus the Christ. And the revelation is, is he's here now in front of you. And for some reason, out of all the people, he chose you to be in his inner circle, his talmudim, his students. Pretty crazy. And then he says, tell nobody. Don't tweet it. Don't do, don't go on TikTok and shoot a video. You're never going to guess who I'm hanging out with right here at Caesarea Philippi. He says, tell no one.
And that's where we pick up today. Today we're going to pick up in verse 21, and it says, from then on, Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders and the leading priests and the teachers of the religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day, he would be raised from the dead.
Jesus, up to this point, he used parables to speak to his people. Can you read between the lines? Can you understand? After all, these people were people who knew the Torah and the prophets better than anybody. It was ingrained in every portion of their culture. They didn't have to combat the influence of 21st century America or 21st century politics or culture or any of those types of things. This was ingrained in their upbringing. This was ingrained in how they were raised. This was ingrained in what they did. This wasn't something that was countercultural to them. It was a part of everything they did in their culture. But Jesus now shifts into direct teachings. I like direct Jesus. Anybody who's spent any time with me, I'm very direct. I don't like to beat around the bushes with parables or anything. I just like to be, hey, get it done. Let's move forward. I don't have the same grace and compassion that Jesus had. Definitely not. We're all a work in progress, right? But I do like direct Jesus because parables are things that we could potentially get wrong. We could potentially, like, we could miss an inference or we could miss an application. It's really, really easy when my wife says, if you love me, you will unload the dishwasher. I can do that.
But when I know that my wife's love language is acts of service, which is not. So all of you all of a sudden, you like decided like you're going to come clean our house and stuff like that, like you missed the boat, like that's not it. But when it's acts of service, and I got to guess what act of service will prove to my wife that I love her the most. Yeah, don't sign me up for that. Don't sign me up for that. It's not going to work out great. So when Jesus comes and he shifts from parables into direct, Hey Chris, two plus two equals four. I like that Jesus. I can understand that Jesus. I can work with that Jesus. So what does he say when Jesus gets direct? He immediately starts to prophesy. When we think of prophecies, we think of white horses and bow and arrows and cute little baby angels coming down from the sky and all those types of things, some doom and gloom. Depending upon where you've come from, what denomination you've been a part of, it's some sort of futuristic thing that will happen in the future. And normally involves warfare or kings of this world or things like that. That's not necessarily what Jesus is prophesying about in this moment. This prophecy says that he would go to Jerusalem. So far he had stayed away from Jerusalem. That this would lead him by going to Jerusalem, it would lead him into direct conflict with the religious leadership.