February 22: “Get Behind Me Satan”
♫ Music:
Day 6 - Monday, February 22
Title: “GET BEHIND ME SATAN”
Scripture: Matthew 16:21-23
From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
Poetry:
Prayer
by Marie Howe
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day
something more important
calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty
products, the luggage
I need to buy it for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the
garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own
breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like
complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
GET BEHIND ME, SATAN!
This striking statement comes from a terse exchange between Jesus and one of he future seminal leaders of the ancient church. Upon explaining to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he’ll “suffer many things” and be “killed” by Jewish authorities, Peter pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. J. Dwight Pentecost points out the word rebuke means to “reprove, censure, or warn in order to prevent an action from happening.” Apparently, Peter feels it’s beneath a Messiah to be crucified and he’ll have none of it. Jesus forcefully responds: “Get behind me, Satan!” Ironically, Peter who had been deemed earlier by Jesus as a “rock” was now a “stumbling block.”
How do you react to this shocking exchange? Does it make you uncomfortable? To be honest, I find this passage to be deeply unsettling not so much for Jesus’s handling of Peter, but his worldview. In this exchange we learn Jesus not only believes Satan is real, but that he can infiltrate and influence his inner circle. Do I equally view Satan with the same sobriety? And, would the reality of Satan change how I go about daily activities?
A few years ago, while researching the topic of spiritual battle, I consulted the Scriptures and scholars and was reminded how seriously early Christ-followers viewed the reality of an adversary.
Early church leaders understood that following Jesus necessarily meant paying attention to the demonic Christian author Kenneth Boa notes that “about 25 percent of Jesus’s ministry as recorded in the Gospels involved deliverance from demonic affliction.” Jesus’s focus on the reality of spiritual opposition was not lost on early church leaders. Paul links a failure to resolve conflict with providing the devil a foothold (Eph. 4:26-27) and notes that a pursuit of godly marriages will necessarily entail adorning spiritual armor (Eph. 5:22-6:18). John offers a shocking assertion that the entire world lies in the power of the evil one (1 Jn. 5:15). In summary, the Bible starts in Genesis with the serpent tempting the first humans and ends with the defeat of Red Dragon in the book of Revelation. Boa draws a chilling conclusion that ought to catch our attention during this Lent season, “The forces of evil did not disappear when Jesus left the earth.”
Yet, is my life altered at all with the reality of evil forces or spiritual opposition? “On this topic,” suggests New Testament scholar Clint Arnold, “some of us suffer a double-mindedness. Although mental assent is given to the likelihood that evil spirits exist since it is affirmed in the Bible, in reality it makes no practical difference in the way we live our day-to-day lives.”
As a Biola professor, each year I’m asked to affirm our doctrinal statement. One section specifically addresses Satan. It reads in part: “There is a personal devil, a being of great cunning and power.” For the last 16 years I’ve confidently affirmed the statement. Yet, does the existence of a cunning and powerful adversary make a difference in how I teach my classes? Love my wife? Parent my three boys? Approach people with different political views? Address anger? Sadly, not much. All too often I exhibit the double-mindedness described by Arnold. How about you? If you believe in Satan, does it change how you do life?
As we engage in Lent and find our hearts cold, frustrated by kids in quarantine who seem always underfoot, or disappointed in a God who doesn’t just make the pandemic stop, we need to ask: Is spiritual attack happening? The biggest difference between the ancient and modern church lies in how each would answer. The ancient church assumed spiritual attack was part of the Christian walk; while the modern church seeks indisputable proof a spiritual war is waging. What steps will you take this Lent season realizing life is done in the midst of a spiritual warzone? Paul states the first step is to uncover the schemes of the devil (2 Cor. 2:11). In researching spiritual battle, I read a number of books on the subject and put together a list of ways Satan seeks to derail us. The top ways commonly identified by these authors are uncontrolled anger, lack of forgiveness, catastrophic thinking (pandemic will never go away), violent dreams, not believing the best about yourself, or no longer believing the best about God. If any of these are present, will you respond like the ancient or modern church? Acknowledging the reality of spiritual opposition is the first step to counteracting it. The next is to fill our minds with God’s truth—which can happen—in part—through these Lent devotions.
Let’s end this post with an encouraging affirmation as we press into Lent. While Satan is God’s adversary, he is not God’s equal. “There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one that points to the figure of Satan,” notes Christian author John Ortberg. “This reflects a sometimes-forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God’s counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.”
Prayer
Father, as I seek to move through this Lent season to discover all You have for me, let me be aware of an Adversary who seeks to distract, lie, and deceive. Let Your truth guide me and protect me. And let me never forget that our Adversary—though cunning—is a mere creature destined for destruction and You our benevolent Creator are everlasting.
Amen.
Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!
Ilya Repin
1895
Oil on canvas (sketch)
45 x 61 cm
The Russian Museum
St. Petersburg, Russia
Russian realist painter, Ilya Repin, was one of the most renowned Russian artists of the nineteenth century. In his 1895 painting, Get Behind Me, Satan, the realism normally associated with Repin’s work is not present. Instead Repin loosely paints a faint outline of Christ, with Satan outlined standing behind him. For this Scripture passage, many other artists portray Peter walking behind Jesus or Jesus strongly rebuking Peter, but Repin instead symbolically portrays Peter as he really was at that moment—the embodiment of the enemy suggesting that Christ go against the will of the Father and not fulfill his destiny.
About the Artist:
Ilya Repin (1844–1930) was a Russian realist painter and one of the most renowned Russian artists of the nineteenth century. He played a crucial role in bringing Russian art into the mainstream of European culture. During his lifetime, his place in the world of art was often compared to that of Leo Tolstoy’s in literature. Tolstoy said of Repin, “He depicts the life of the people much better than any other Russian artist,” and he was praised for his ability to paint humanity with “powerful and vivid force.” Repin’s search for truth led him to an exploration of the great stories of the Bible and the spiritual truths they revealed. True to his realist roots, he based many of his greatest works on dramatic moments in key biblical narratives. When the Finnish/Russian border was closed in 1918 as a result of the Russian Revolution, Repin found himself on Finnish land, which enabled him to continue painting his religious works. Repin donated his collection of Russian art, along with many of his own works, to the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Repin
https://www.breadforbeggars.com/2018/02/get-behind-me-satan/
https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/peter-the-rock-devil-get-behind-me/
About the Music:
“Matthew 16” from the album Matthew Audio Bible
About the Composers/Performers:
Streetlights, a ministry of Creative Communicators, is called to intentionally engage the global urban culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ by producing, translating, teaching, and proclaiming God’s Word so all can understand. The simple vision of Streetlights began in 2006 with the desire for a group of young men in Chicago, many of them facing social and educational barriers, to know Jesus and understand his word. That vision was made a reality when God’s word was recorded word-for-word and set to a hip-hop soundtrack. After listening to the recording of God’s word in this unique format, the young men not only understood the passages they heard, but they all participated in profound dialogues about the spiritual truths they heard. The idea matured into a desire to produce God’s word in an audible format that they, and thousands of young people just like them, could hear for themselves with no barriers of illiteracy, and thus began Streetlights New Testament Audio Bible. Now upon completing a decade of ministry, Streetlights has produced vast amounts of God’s word in various forms including audio, video, and print.
https://www.streetlightsbible.com/
About the Poet:
Marie Howe (b. 1950) is an American poet who was named the 2012 State Poet for New York. Howe did not devote serious attention to writing poetry until she turned thirty, at which time she was accepted at Columbia University, where she received her M.F.A. She is presently on the writing faculty at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. After Howe’s brother died of an AIDS-related illness, she co-edited a collection of essays, letters, and stories entitled In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic that sought to foster an open dialogue about the plight of AIDS in the United States. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, and Harvard Review. Her honors include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marie-howe
https://poets.org/poet/marie-howe
http://www.mariehowe.com/home
About the Devotion Author:
Tim Muehlhoff
Professor of Communication
Co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project
Biola University
Dr. Tim Muehlhoff a professor of communication at Biola University and co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project designed to reintroduce civility into our private and public disagreements. Tim is also an author whose latest books include Defending your Marriage: The Reality of Spiritual Battle and Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing without Dividing the Church both IVP publications.