To Be Blessed Like Simon Peter
“Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 18:17 NKJV
Anytime I see that Jesus is telling someone that they are blessed, I want to know what they did to put themselves in that position of receiving a blessing because that is where I want to be as well. Jesus told Simon Peter that he was blessed, but why? If we go to the verses that precede this, we see that Jesus is asking the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” In other words, what are the world and the wisdom of the flesh saying about me and who I am? Peter said that some said Jesus was John the Baptist, others said Jeremiah, or Elijah or one of the prophets, but Simon Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God! For this Jesus said that he was blessed, but why was he blessed? What did Peter do really to be blessed? He spoke in faith and acknowledged what the natural could not ascertain, that Jesus is the Son of God!
The lesson here is that the wisdom of the world, the determination of the natural mind will always confuse you at best and deceive you at worst. All the natural wisdom of the spiritual leaders of the time had drawn wrong conclusions regarding who Jesus was. Why? Because the wisdom of the flesh and this natural world will always mislead you concerning spiritual realities. Peter had to choose to disregard his natural instincts and wisdom when he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. He saw Jesus every day while Jesus was in the natural human body. Peter would have seen Jesus sweat, get dirty, do all the things that the natural body does. Would he have been thinking that this is God? He gets sweaty and smelly just like me, how can that be? The natural mind would have made it very difficult for Peter to believe and say that Jesus was the Son of God.
However, Peter made a choice to listen to the Word (That being Jesus and all He had demonstrated and taught) and not listen to the wisdom of flesh and blood.
We have the opportunity every day to make that same choice. We can believe what our senses tell us and what we perceive from the natural world we live in, or we can choose to believe the promises of the Word. Jesus told Peter that he was blessed because he had the faith to believe the Word and not the wisdom of the world and the flesh. Likewise, you and I are blessed when we make that choice and speak the Word and not the world. Flesh and blood may say that you are broke, or that you are headed for divorce, or that you have a disease or sickness. Instead, choose to believe the Word which is filled with promises of deliverance for you and then speak boldly as did Peter. It is then that you will enjoy the “blessings” of victory through Jesus.
J Todd Hostetler