Luke 9:21-22--Jesus Foretells His Death

Luke 9:21-22
English Standard Version
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Jesus Foretells His Death
21 And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

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This is a continuation from the last passage where Peter confessed Jesus to be "The Christ, the Son of the living God."  This was information that had been revealed to the disciples by the Father, but apparently, Jesus didn't want them going around telling anyone and everyone His identity yet.  That would accelerate the timeline too much and there was still about a year left before the next Passover when all the pieces would be in place for it to be the perfect time for Jesus' death, burial and resurrection.

While Jesus didn't tell the disciples the date of His death, He did tell them the reality that He was going to suffer many thigs and be rejected by all the leaders of the Jewish people--the elders (that would be the Sanhedrin), and the chief priests, and the scribes.  This is everyone that the people would have looked to for guidance spiritually and politically when it came to what it meant to be a "good" Jew.  They were not going to stop at simply making Jesus suffer, but they were going to kill Him, but Jesus was going to be raised from the dead on the third day.

All of this will come into focus later, but for now Jesus is telling them that He knows what's going to happen to them, and it's going to be because of His identity.  The leaders won't tolerate Him saying that He is the Christ and the Son of God.  They believe they are doing the right thing by putting someone that is claiming such things to death (if that person falsely made these claims), yet they had no standard in place to know if someone was truly the Christ.  They expected that they would have figured it out and they would be the ones to authenticate who the Christ was and it irritated them to no end that Jesus called them out for not knowing and not seeing Him and that the pagan Gentiles saw the truth of who He was even with little to no access to Scriptures.

It was the "unclean" shepherds that were the first witnesses to the birth of Jesus and they were the first to be sent out to share the good news of the gospel.   God also made a way for the wise men from the East to see the sign of the birth of the one who was born King of the Jews and they came to bring Him gifts and to worship Him.  We didn't see any of the religious leaders there--in fact the only Jews that we saw that were somewhat ready and waiting were Simeon and Anna.  Will there be more people who are ready for Jesus's death and resurrection now that He's given such clear statements about their reality, or will the the world and even the disciples be taken by surprise when things happen exactly as Jesus says here?  We'll see.

Jesus is going to be a little more direct to the disciples and the people during this last year of ministry.  While there is some sense in which He is being indirect by talking to everyone mostly in parables, He's going to make sure the disciples get it and He's also going to make sure that the Pharisees, scribes, and teachers of the Law understand it too, sometimes even making sure the crowds understand that the parable was talking about them or the religious leaders, but that mostly the parables were to teach the people about Himself.  This is going to turn up the heat slowly but surely, and in about a year, things will come to a boil (that will be in about 10 chapters in Luke 19 and following).