Jesus the Christ

Mark 8:27-38

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Will peace be with you? Let us pray. Father, may your will be done, Jesus, may your word be proclaimed. Spirit, may your work be accomplished. In us, we pray.
Amen. So there are three scenes in this gospel lesson. We have a confession by the apostle Peter. We have a confrontation between Peter and Jesus, and then we have a calling to discipleship by Jesus himself. And it's these three things that I want to look at briefly this morning, beginning with Peter's confession now in the gospel of Mark.
Up to this point, we're halfway through his gospel, and nobody has uttered the words that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the messiah. The only ones who have professed this are those who have been possessed by evil spirits. So the evil spirits themselves are the only ones who have confessed that Jesus is the son of God. But here we're confronted finally by Jesus, one of Jesus own disciples who have been following him in his ministry. And he questions them.
It says this in Mark, chapter eight. So when Jesus went out along with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way, he questioned his disciples, saying to them, who do people say that I am? They told him, some John the Baptist and others say Elijah, but others one of the prophets. And he continued by questioning them, but who do you say that I am? And Peter answered and said to him, you are the Christ.
And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. So Jesus first wants to know, what are people saying about me? And up to this point, we have only been experiencing Jesus ministry and Jesus the person being rejected by the jewish community. Story after story. If you've been traveling with us over the last few Sundays, we've been seeing how it is too much to hear and listen to Jesus about what he is saying.
And the Jews are rejecting him, and they go off that the people that are receiving Jesus are the ones that are the social outcasts, the ones that are the dogs just waiting for the crumbs of the table to fall from the master. And those are the people that are receiving him, the ones that lie outside of the community, the ones that are overlooked, the ones that are the lowlifes. But here, the whispers in the town, the word on the street is that Jesus is just another one of the prophets that have come from God. Or maybe he's John the Baptist, or maybe he's Elijah, because Elijah has been prophesied to show up again. But Jesus turns their attention, and he looks specifically at them and he says, who do you say that I am?
Regardless of what everybody else might think, who am I to you guys? And Peter says, you are Jesus the Christ. That is Jesus the messiah. And that's a profound confession, because what the Messiah means is this isn't just the son of man. This isn't just the son of God.
This is the messiah, the one who is supposed to come to redeem God's people. He has come for us, and he's come to do something for us in order to redeem us. And so Peter is admonished with his confession of who Christ is as messiah. Jesus the Christ. Jesus Christ isn't Jesus's last name.
It's the title that he bears to be identified as the messiah. That's what each and every one of us must confess for ourselves. If we are to receive salvation for such a one as Jesus the Christ, we have to confess that says, Jesus, you're our messiah. There is no salvation apart from you. There is no other name by which we can be saved than Jesus.
And that's the confession that Peter makes in other accounts. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, Jesus admonishes this confession, and he looks to Peter and says, oh, blessed have you. The father has made this known to you, Peter. But Mark gets straight to the point. He moves from Peter's confession of who Jesus truly is to this confrontation between Peter and Jesus.
Mark would have us to realize the situation that upon confessing Jesus as Christ, you have to also get in line with what he has come to do. And that's what we revealed in verses 31 through 33 of mark eight. And he began, Jesus began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things. Pay attention to what he says he has to suffer to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes to be killed. And after three days, rise again.
And he was stating the matter plainly, but this didn't sit well with Peter. Peter took him aside to rebuke him privately. But turning around and seeing the disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's. Upon the confession of Christ as the messiah, Peter attempts to detour how Jesus will achieve the acts of being the messiah. But Jesus confronts Peter in front of the disciples so that they might know that what he has planned to do is the only way that he can realize being the messiah.
Meaning Jesus is specific, just like he is the only messiah. So his means to save is the only means of salvation. You cannot make jesus do for you what he has not come to do, even in the face in the confrontation of someone he loves. Peter, the temptation that even Christ might have felt in that moment. And according to the gospel of Matthew, Matthew clues us in on that, that this was a temptation for Christ to be deterred from having to go to the cross.
But Christ quickly identifies who it is that is speaking, who it is that would have him not run to the christ, run to the cross to be the Christ that he has come to be, to receive, to offer salvation to those who are coming and following after him. We see that first and foremost, Peter draws him aside. This is how Satan likes to work. This is how Satan would often keep you in the dark. He wants you alone, private, quiet, to speak influence into you.
But Jesus would not have it. Jesus says, what Satan, you're doing behind the scenes and the shadows of the darkness, I will bring and expose it to the light. He turns and faces his disciples, and he rebukes Peter and he says, get behind me, Satan. Jesus is further demonstrating that as Satan continues to raise his head up against him, Jesus is going to crush his head. Remember, as Jesus began his ministry, Satan showed up to tempt him, to deter him from his ministry.
And here in the middle of his ministry, Satan shows up trying to influence one of Christ's own disciples, and Jesus would not have it. Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. And he exposes the scheme to deter him publicly. We have to understand that. Jesus points out three things, that what makes him the Messiah is his program, that he's come to execute his actions, that he is going to experience is what will allow us to be saved.
It is what he has come to do. If he's come to redeem us, how is it that he is going to redeem us? And he specifically capsulizes or that's the wrong word, summarizes what he has come to do. I've come to be rejected. I've come to die, but I've come to also rise again.
And this is going to show up in just a few verses, and he's going to apply it to your life. But we need to understand first and foremost what Jesus means by this, because this is the heart of our salvation. First we have to understand that Jesus is going to be rejected by the world because the world is adamantly opposed to God. The fact that we are in need of salvation, the fact that we cannot save ourselves, we have to rely on someone outside of us to save us, points to the fact. And the reality is that we are not in tune with God and we need to be saved.
And God has to do it, and the world rejects him.
Second, he has to be killed. He has to suffer death. And this is that point of which Peter probably took offense at and says, no, you're the messiah, the son of God. Why must you die? Isn't there any other way?
I don't want you to die. That's the temptation. Does Jesus the Christ have to die for you? Yes, Jesus speaks the matter plainly. I must die.
Do you understand here, believers, that if Christ does not die, there is no forgiveness of your sins and you're a guilty and rebellious against a holy good God? If he doesn't die, there's no redemption for you?
Paul would go on into his letter to the Galatians and say, if you attach anything to your salvation but cling to the death of Christ, if there's anything else, there's any other way but the death of Christ, then Christ died for nothing. It was needless. You're saying God's an idiot for spending his son so easily. But God is the most wise. The only way to remedy our situation is by God himself taking on flesh, walking as man, being capable of sin, but yet without sin, and to die in our place.
Because if Christ the righteous can go and die for the sins of the world, then we truly know that our sins can be forgiven. And this is evidenced by Jesus saying, and I will rise in three days. The resurrection of Jesus is not just a miracle. It's a verdict that comes down from God the Father, that says everything that Jesus the Christ, my son, has done for you in order for you to receive salvation and redemption is effectual, has worked and is accomplished, and to prove that I don't leave him in the grave in death, but I resurrect my son to the newness of life, to live forever, so that, one, you can know and have assurance that your faith in him is 100% complete, and two, so that you can come to know the type of life that you'll be called to live when you follow after him. There's no other way you can be saved but through Jesus Christ.
And there's no other way that it could have been done than to him to be rejected by the world, for him to experience death on the cross and to be raised from the grave by the power of God almighty. That's how it works. You don't get to change the program. You don't get to add your little contribution to it. That's not what you get to do.
God says, this is what is required to redeem the people. Jesus, my son, go and do it. And Jesus does it perfectly. And we know this because he's resurrected, and the father loves his son and raises him from the dead. And we learn a couple things from this interaction between Peter and Jesus.
We learned that you can have good intentions. You can learn that you might have really good ideas about what it is that should be accomplished. But even those good ideas, those innocent motives, might still be opposed to the intentions and the interests of God. And when you're opposed to God in any way, shape or form, you're either for him or against him. And his ways are not our ways.
And that's the rebuke that Jesus offers Peter when he says, get on my page. You're completely interested in yourself. You're completely interested in telling God how it is that we ought to. I need to be a messiah. You don't do that.
We are not God. Christ is God. He knows. And sometimes we like to say and think we can contribute something. Well, this is a.
This seems like a better plan.
My motive is just to be genuine here. But be careful. Be careful. We have to come to submit and to surrender to the will of God. The question becomes, well, Bruce, how do I know?
How do I know that I can, what the will of God is? How can I get my heart and my mind situated so that I'm thinking and feeling the exact same way that God is? How can I get on God's page? That's a very great question. And Christ answers that for us.
At the end, he talks about his word. There is no other way to be in harmony with God so that you could be in tune with his will than to listen and to read and to understand for yourself what he has already spoken. He has revealed everything you need for life and godliness right here. He has manifested his desire for the world and for the people he's redeeming right here. And if you spend only 15 minutes in it, I could probably bet that you are going to be more interested in achieving your ways than God's ways because your mind isn't oriented to this.
We have to be the people of the word. We have to sit under its teaching. We have to read it, we have to listen to it. We have to live our lives based on this, not our own ways, by this. This is why we can have all kinds of conversations in this church.
But you will not persuade me, and I hope that you won't be persuaded. Unless this is divided rightly and we're speaking it to one another, you might have an opinion on how we ought to do service, or this, that and the other thing and what our church ought to be doing. But don't just bring me suggestions, bring me. The word of God says this, and we must do this. So let's all do it together.
We are a people that is guided and governed by this. It's not by Pastor Bruce's word. It's not by your word. It's by God's word. And that's how we align ourselves as a church, if we be or if we want to be an authentic, genuine church.
Bride of Christ. The bride of Christ is only moved by the word of God, not by own preferences or own interests. If you were able to attend any of our membership classes, when we talked about what kind of ministry we're gonna engage in, I lifted before you the scriptures and how we have to tend. Jesus asks us to tend to widows and orphans, to those who are needy and poor and hungry and in prison. And if we're not doing those things, if those things don't dictate our ministry programs, then all of a sudden it's what we think might be beneficial.
And I'm not for that. You might get frustrated with my ministry if you want to impose some kind of, hey, I think this is really nice. Other churches do this. I don't care what other churches do. I care what God says for us to do.
And we're going to do it as best as we know how. So let's speak to each other with the word of God and not our own interests. Let's Christ look to us and say, get behind me, Satan.
And then we're moving on to the third category, the third scene that we're offered, and that is found in verses 34 through 38. And Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and he said to them, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me, in my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his father and with the holy angels. Here we learn that there is more than just confessing. Jesus as Messiah. Jesus as Messiah confronts the interests of man with the interests of God, which is accomplished through redemption for his people.
And we learn how it is that he will achieve this. But he doesn't stop there. He just doesn't tell us like a friend and invite us into his council. I am the messiah and this is how I'm going to redeem. But he also moves us into a calling.
So if you want to follow me as your messiah, here is what you need to do. So jesus leads by example. He goes, here's what I'm going to do, because I'm the messiah. I am Jesus the Christ. And here is how I'm going to afford you redemption.
And in order for you to follow after me to obtain that redemption, here's what you need to do. Here's the calling that I'm asking you to follow me in. And it's nothing. He is not going to call us into anything that he hasn't already done. I told you to pay attention to what it is that Christ says that he was coming to do because it matches exactly what he's calling us to do as well.
Right? To be rejected, to don't go after the world. To be willing to die for the sake of him and the gospel and to live a resurrected life that he afforded us. That's exactly what it looks like to live like a disciple. And that's what the calling is.
He's calling true disciples, authentic disciples, to mimic his life. We gotta live like Jesus. And living like Jesus is going to bring rejection to your life. It might bring rejection from your family members, it might bring rejection from your friends, it might bring rejection from the community, it might bring rejection from the government. The world killed jesus because they despised him.
Jesus was despised by men in the world and they killed him because they didn't want what he was offering. And if you're in tune with God and you're in harmony with his will, and you're following after Jesus and your life begins to look like Jesus, guess what the world is going to do to you? The question becomes, like, how much of that are you actually facing? Are you being rejected by the world? Or do you look a little bit more like the world than you do Jesus?
That's a gauge you need to work out and have the spirit reveal to you. But nonetheless, Jesus is calling us to a life of self denial. Get over yourself. We're all sinners. Understand that.
Because when you understand that we're all sinners, then you're not going to lord over anybody else who is also a sinner. Thinking that you have a better claim to life than they do. You won't look at anybody over in chain breakers, who is transitioning from prison to society and think you are better than them because you recognize that all sin is. Is gross and offensive and stinks to God, and you're no better. And that you are equally in need of Jesus as much as anybody else.
Tells you to deny yourself, and he tells you to trust in him because he has looked after your interest. He knows the state you're in. He knows the hole you've dug for yourself. And he says, I see you. I hear you, and I came down for you, and I'm gonna rescue you.
I'm looking after your interest. So you don't need to look after your own. Deny yourself and then take up your cross. Take up your cross. The audience that is reading the gospel of Mark for the first time completely understood the culture of the cross.
It is a criminal culture. If you bear a cross, that means you've committed some crime, and you're walking through town going to bear it in shame. The community is laughing and rebuking you for the crimes that you committed. And Jesus says, you have to be willing to endure the cross as well. Take up your cross and bear it.
I'm a sinner saved by Jesus Christ. That's bearing your cross. It's not admitting that, hey, I'm put together. I'm really good. I can do this well.
I could do this well. It's a self denial, and it's bearing the cross. I'm a sinner. That's the starting point of receiving some really good news. You give yourself the bad news that you're a sinner, that you can't save yourself.
Jesus says, good, I got good news. I'm here now for you, and I want to save you.
But not only self denial and taking up our cross, but then following Jesus in life. Jesus says, I'll be resurrected on the third day. Will you follow me in resurrection life? Resurrection life isn't just some kind of future state. Oh, well, we'll pass through death, and then we'll live for all eternity.
Resurrection life, for the believer in Jesus Christ begins the moment they place their faith in Jesus. You place your faith in Jesus, Ephesians 113, and he will give you his spirit. And that spirit will begin to clean house. That spirit will begin to renew your mind, start thinking like Jesus will renew your heart so that your desires are more like Jesus, begin to renew your. Your whole entire life, your outlook, how you walk, how you talk, how you act, what you hunger and thirst for.
He begins to start changing you. And this could be a very long eternal process. But it begins the moment you place your faith in Jesus and say, I can't do this. Recreate me. Cause me to be born again.
And Jesus says, follow me. Then each and every day walk a resurrected life, not a life of death. That's how we follow. He calls us to live upside down.
He says, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. Jesus flips the whole idea of the world upside down, the philosophies and the ways of this world upside down. You can hear all the self help all over social media. Here's how you can live a better life.
Here's how you can orient yourself in such a way as to be a better pet owner. Here's how you could be a better parent. Here's how you could do you. Here's how you could be better. You here.
Just be confident in your insecurities. It's all about you, you, you, you, you, and making you better so that you can have the best life possible for you right here. Presently, Jesus says, if you are living your best life in this world, then you're not going to be living your best life later. The true way to obtain life is not through self help. The true way to obtain life is to lose your life.
And Jesus demonstrates this point blank on the cross. And he says, self denial. That's the way. So he calls us as his disciples to live upside down, to turn whatever the world would have us to believe upside down. And that's probably the right side up.
But not only that, he tells us to be soulful. He's calling us to be soulful. What I mean by that is when he says, like, what good is it? So if I not. If Christ is not the messiah in your life, then what is it can only come from the world.
What does the world offer you that is going to be producing in your life what only Christ can produce? What good is it if you do have a really good setup life? All the bank accounts, all the retirements, all the vacation plans, all the harmonious relationships, you can have all the accolades of everybody around you. What if you lived such a good life that everybody highly respected you and you have the applause of the world?
Think about that.
Is there anything that would rob you of the joy that Christ would have you experience? Is there anything that you're doing in your life right now that says, like, this really pulls me because I really enjoy this and this feels more real to me than Jesus. Got to gauge yourself on that, because Jesus says he likens the chasing after the things of the world and looking like the world to forfeiting your soul. And oftentimes, because the soul is not something we necessarily, like, get to see or touch or experience. It's more mystical.
It's more spiritual. We're more like, hey, give me real, tangible things right now. Give me that thing that makes me feel good right now. I don't want to have to endure anxiety. I don't want to have to endure being depressed.
I want to do whatever the world's doing to alleviate themselves of that right now, rather than just trusting in Jesus that he can do it for me. And Jesus says, you probably find some things that appear to be effective, and you just forfeited your soul, and he moves on from there. So then he asked the question that I think is a real good question, just to ask yourself in a personal reflection, what would you gain? What would you give in exchange for your soul? So, if you went to the soul master, the one who owns all the souls and can determine where the souls end up for all eternity, which is God himself, what would you go before the throne of God and say, all right, so I didn't follow Jesus.
He's not really my messiah. But I have something that I want to offer you in exchange to get my soul.
I mean, I pray that you never utter that in the presence of goddesse. But there's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. But we all, some of us often live like there is something, and we can have Jesus and say, okay, well, so I got Jesus, but I also have these things, too.
God the father's like, absolutely not.
Can you begin to feel that this calling that Jesus is speaking to all these disciples is really sobering comes at a cost.
Cost of your personality. Your reputation can't be about yourself. You have to orient your whole life based on what Christ wants, not what you want. You have to pursue his will, not your own. You have to be dying to yourself.
You have to be pushing down that man of flesh who died in Christ. You have to be surrounding yourself with like minded people who are trying to do the same things, other followers of Jesus. And yet, how many of us come, depending on what kind of mood I'm in and how long my sermon is put in? About maybe 2 hours a week into worship or being taught the scriptures or anything. 2 hours a week.
I don't want to do the math for you, but calculate how many hours are in a week. Calculate how many hours you spend at work, doing things for others and all this other stuff than you do for God. And that can help you gauge where you spend the most time. And Jesus says, hey, I get it. If you want to follow me, here's what it requires.
Here's what a true disciple does. But if you don't, then there you go. We have examples of this in the scriptures. The rich man comes, I want to follow after you. What must I do?
He goes, sell everything. You have too much for him. Guy went away sad. Another guy, family. His dad dies, comes to him.
I'm going to follow you, but first let me go bury my dad. Jesus says, we don't have time for that. There's urgency here. If you want to follow me, you follow me right now.
That's a bold move. And yet that's Jesus the Christ. That's the cost of discipleship. That's what he's calling us to do. And lastly, he talks about reversing that if we're to live a life like Christ, what happens if we don't?
What if we're ashamed of Christ? What if we don't speak his name? What if we don't, and his word is never on the edge of our tongues. We don't share the gospel with anybody. We don't read the gospel.
We don't care about his word. We're ashamed in his life about Christ and his word. How is it that Jesus is going to treat us when he comes back and we actually see him face to face? He tells us, he says, I'm going to be ashamed of you before my father. You're ashamed of me?
I want to be ashamed of you.
Many of us have not changed our positions in Christ for a long time. We've probably placed our faith in Christ, and yet we haven't gone any further or any deeper with him. And Peter, the same guy in this situation, later writes a letter to the churches and he says, you must grow, continue growing in Christ's grace to you, and continue growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
And we need to understand, is Christ more than enough for all we need? Where are you at? Have you stagnated? Have you just stopped in your pursuit of Jesus that you followed him up to a certain point, but haven't followed him any deeper? You need to assess where you're at in following Christ.
I know it's challenging. I know it's hard, but it's also the sweetest thing you'll ever experience. And it's so hard that all the more reason why we should gather together and be with each other, to encourage each other, to embolden each other. This is hard, but we're doing it. We're dying to ourselves so that we can live for the rest of our lives.
And that's more glorious and more joyful. Stir each other up.
For anyone who would confess that Jesus is the messiah, that he is the one who can save, that follows after that confession. In faith, which always manifests in action, our confessions manifest in action. It doesn't manifest. We believe first. But that belief fuels what we do in life.
And what we do in life isn't what saves you. It's the belief that makes sense. The actions come after our faith.
We have to be unapologetically and unashamedly about Jesus. We don't bring Jesus through the back door. We bring Jesus through the front door. This is the slogan, so to speak, that I use a food pantry. The church, the bride of Christ, would not be abused just to.
Oh, let me just get some food from you guys and move on. Well, we're going to take care of that need, but you're going. We're going to give you the gospel. We're bringing Jesus through the front door. I can't tell you how many times I've been part of ministry opportunities where it's like we want to kind of cater to the world.
We're going to have Mountain Dew, doctor pepper, and pizza just to get people in here. We're going to give away prizes, and then we're going to bring Jesus from the backstage and introduce them real briefly. That's the way the world operates. I don't want to entice people, and I don't want to be unapologetic.
I want to say, we're here about Jesus. Oftentimes in youth ministry, when the kids start acting up in the middle of youth service on Wednesday night, I said, if you guys want to play, go to the boys and girls club. That's obviously a place where you guys can congregate, be youthful and play around. But this is church, and I'm not ashamed to say we're going to bring Jesus up to the front door with you guys. I'm here to introduce you to Jesus and for you to get to know him.
That's what it looks like to not be ashamed of Christ. We're not apologizing for it. We're just saying, I really believe the best thing for your life is Christ. And so I'm gonna lead with that. And, yeah, we're gonna have some fun.
I could still have pizza and Mountain Dew and Doctor Pepper. But we're gonna have Jesus and we're gonna feast on him.
Today we have a wonderful and amazing opportunity to really witness what it looks like to follow after Christ. It's baptism. There's two things the church has been given as kind of mysteries and graces. One, it's the Lord's table. That we feast on the Lord, that we take him into our bodies as our nourishment, as our spiritual nourishment.
But also baptism. Baptism is that members only jacket back in the eighties that you would get to make you kind of be fitting in. Baptism is the wedding ring that you put on. That signifies that I am part of the people of God. It marks me as one.
It is one that says, I want to follow after Jesus. It's for those who believe and their household. And today we get to experience what steps of following Christ look like. So here in a moment, we're going to experience baptism and we can celebrate with them. But I hope that as you have heard the gospel lesson this morning, that you have been confronted that Jesus is the Christ and that his ways are not your ways, and that he's calling you to follow after him.
And if we are a people of the word, we will come to know these things and we'll fall deeper in love with Christ. And he will also teach us as we follow him, how we can love others better. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for all that you've done for us. We thank you that you are our messiah and that your plan was perfect and perfectly executed so that we could be redeemed, so that we could be saved.
We lift you up, we honor you, we glorify you for you, there is no other name by which we could be saved. Encourage us. Fill us with your spirit so that we can follow after you, so that we can be more in tune with you and therefore be in better harmony with your will.