Mark 9:11 Commentary and Bible Study

Eventually they come to him. They had just seen Elijah in glory, but surely he had got to come first. Malachi clearly says so: ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD’ (Malachi 4:5). They were committed to Scripture and convinced it could not be broken, but how did all these things fit together. Did the appearing of Elijah on the mount have anything to do with the prophecy of Malachi? They don’t seem to think so, but it has made them think of this prophecy. Elijah must appear, and yet there is no sign of him. ‘And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes’ – they taught it all the time – ‘that Elias [Elijah] must first come? And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things.’ So he makes their problem worse. If Elijah is going to come and restore all things, that suggests to the minds of the disciples that all will be well. Elijah will come, and then presumably Christ will take his throne. What's this about his dying and rising again? ‘And how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought.’ Mark gives us this extra word from Christ. It refers back to what the Lord had said before: that he would suffer and be killed. The disciples found the Scriptures hard to interpret, and the principal cause of this was the wrong view they had of the mission of Christ. This was stuck in their minds, and the Lord, as it were, forces them to think again by putting together Scriptures which he knows cannot be made to fit into the scheme of thought. They hear of the restoration of all things, and they think of the nation, a physical and political entity. Later still, they will ask him: ‘Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel’ (Acts 1:6) They cannot imagine any restoration that does not affect the nation, but this is not the plan of God. We, who have the benefit of hindsight and subsequent revelation, can understand how all these Scriptures can be true at the same time. There would be a restoration of the elect in Israel but not of the whole nation. Later the elect Gentiles would be brought into the church. The nation will be rejected for its unbelief and God will bless the true Israel – those who walk in the faith of Abraham. Christ must suffer because he came to be a Saviour from sin who would die in our place. Although the Lord had said this, they did not want to take it in. He would be set at nought – this was an idea that was very objectionable to the disciples. Calvary would make all clear.