Mark 26-31; Isa. 8:11-15, Stumbling and Watching (1)

We continue to operate under the idea that everything Jesus encountered with respect to the cross was written before (14:21).  As they left the Upper Room to go to Gethsemane, Jesus made a prediction based on a previous prediction. All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night.  He knew this because He knew Zech. 13:7: I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.  We previously spent time in Zechariah and the “Shepherd Prophecies” from which this comes.   Jesus knew who He was, and He knew all that the OT wrote about Him.

Why did Jesus tell the disciples that they would be scattered?  If you complete Jesus’ words in the passage you see why.  He told them they would be scattered, but after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.  Jesus did not consider the scattering the end of the story.  He still planned to meet afterwards.  When Peter, and the rest of them denied that they would do such a thing, Jesus responded by assuring them that this would really happen.  He was not criticizing them but was preparing them for what they might consider to be the end of their relationship with Jesus.  They did, in fact, have that meeting in Galilee (Mt. 28:16; John 21). 

The Greek for “stumble” (14:27) is scandalizo.  It is a scandalous thing to do.  But it’s not just that Peter denied his friend.  What Peter did was to stumble over the “stumbling stone.”  Who or what is this stone?  Peter answered this question in his first epistle.  1 Pt. 2:8 refers to Jesus as “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.”  Peter was quoting Isa. 8:14.  To get the essence of the passage consider Isa. 8:11-15.  The LORD told Isaiah not to “walk in the way” of the majority, the people, who considered his preaching to be a “conspiracy theory.” The supposed conspiracy had to do with the promise of Immanuel (Isa. 7:14; 8:8,10).  Isaiah was saying that God would come to Israel as an infant, born to a virgin.  Instead, Isaiah need to hallow and fear the LORD (8:13).  Immanuel was to be a holy place (sanctuary) but also a “stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” to both the houses of Israel. 

Paul spoke of this “scandal.”  We preach Christ Crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).  He spoke to the Galatians about this possibility of stumbling, the fact that they were in danger of committing this offense.  And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution?  Then the offense of the cross has ceased (Gal. 5:11).  If, in any way, we seek to come to Christ by works and not by grace, we stumble over the cross and over Christ, the stone of stumbling.  Thus, the application of Paul in Gal. 6:14 is this: But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 

The disciples stumbled over Christ.  But their repentant faith, seen in gathering to Him in Galilee, tells me they put their faith in the Cornerstone.