When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.” And the disciples were filled with grief.

Matthew 17:22-23

Jesus is determined to make His disciples understand His mission, which is to die for the redemption of Mankind, a concept that would have been a hard one for the disciples to grasp. Jewish men were not accustomed to thinking of their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as a God who would want to redeem the Gentiles, for this went against the customs and traditions of their culture and community. To put it in modern terms, it was “radical”.

It was radical for another reason: Jesus was the Son of God; how could He be killed by mere men? How could God allow such a thing? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this is the reason Jesus kept on bringing it up; it was hard for the disciples to fathom, especially for Peter, James and John would had witnessed the transfiguration.

Just think about it; the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah, the one whose supremacy was demonstrated so dramatically on the mountain by none other than Almighty God Himself, the one who had done all the miracles, the one who has the faith that can move mountains was going to be delivered into the hands of men who will kill Him… how can that be?

The disciples were filled with grief… as well they should be.

Do you see what they were missing?

Yes, that’s right; they were filled with grief because Jesus would be killed. They were apparently so filled with grief (and shock) that they weren’t listening to “and on the third day he will be raised to life” They were not yet ready to realize that Jesus was going to the cross, but that was not a sign of weakness, it was a sign of faith that moves mountains. It was not a defeat, but the victory that would change the entire cosmos forever.