February 13 was
Ash Wednesday and I suspect that for most of us that designation passed by
without us even noticing it. For other people, it is a significant day because
it marks the beginning of a season of fasting and repentance in preparation for
Easter. Jeremy has already reminded us that we are in the season of Lent which
extends for about 6 weeks leading up to Good Friday and Easter. Many people
mark this season with some type of fasting – either from meat or something
else. We have traditionally not marked it at all. This year, I would like to
mark it not necessarily with fasting, but with focus. Beginning today and over
the next 6 Sundays, whenever I am preaching, I plan to preach on some aspect of
the story of the death of Christ. Today we will begin with Mark 8:27-9:1 and then go to
Mark 14 and continue
through the entire Passion story until we conclude on Easter Sunday with Mark 16 . After Easter I plan to
return to the rest of Mark and complete the series on this gospel.
I discovered an
interesting thing in Mark. The word “boat” appears 17 times in Mark 1-8 and then never again in
the entire book. The reason for this is that the early ministry of Jesus took
place around the Sea of Galilee . In Mark 8:27 we read that, Jesus
was in Caesarea Philippi, which is in the northern part of Israel, at the head
waters of the Jordan River, near Mount Hermon. From there he took a journey,
making one more brief stop in Capernaum in Mark 9:33 ;
going down into Judea, the southern part of Israel
in Mark 10:1 , and
then on to Jerusalem Mark 10:32 . The rest of his ministry
from that point on takes place in the area around Jerusalem Jerusalem
I. The Way of the Christ
A. Who is Jesus?
Throughout Jesus’ ministry in Galilee , we have already noticed that His popularity
increased greatly. People came not only from the region around the lake, but
also from the entire country. As they observed that Jesus taught with
authority, healed with compassion and cast out demons with power the question
on everyone’s mind was, “who is this?”
Jesus raised
this question with His disciples and they reported that the people had
certainly recognized that there was something special about Jesus. They associated
him with some pretty significant people. Some thought He was John the Baptist.
As we know from Mark 6 , John
who had had a significant ministry that impacted the entire country, had been
beheaded by Herod. Some people heard the preaching of Jesus and saw His power
and wondered if perhaps John the Baptist had risen from the dead. Others
thought that perhaps He was Elijah. As you may remember, Elijah was probably
the greatest miracle worker in the Old Testament and he had not died, but had
been taken to heaven in a chariot. So some thought that this was Elijah
returning. Still others identified him with one of the other prophets.
In all of
these conjectures, they had recognized that Jesus was special, but they had not
really understood. They had identified him as a forerunner to the Messiah, but no
one had actually perceived that He was Messiah.
B. You are the Christ!
Then, as Jesus asked the disciples
the same question, they responded with the right answer. Peter, quite clearly
said, “You are the Messiah.”
What are we to make of this
identification? We have so much more information than the disciples did and we
have a lot of New Testament ideas about what this means. But what did it mean
to the disciples that Jesus was the Messiah?
The Hebrew word “Messiah” means
“being anointed with oil.” Being anointed meant being set apart for service and
being recognized by God and others as called. In Exodus 28:41 we read, "You
shall put them on your brother Aaron, and on his sons with him, and shall
anoint them and ordain them and consecrate them, so that they may serve me as
priests." In other words, when Aaron was called as priest, he was anointed
with oil and set apart to serve the people of Israel
Throughout the Old Testament, God
revealed the coming of a special person who would be called of God to redeem
His people. God promised King David that an eternal king would come from his
family line. This promise was repeated in Jeremiah 23:5 which says, "The days are surely
coming, says the Lord, when I will
raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal
wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. This concept is
also reflected in Daniel 7:13 ,14 where we read, "As I watched in the night visions, I
saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the
Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory
and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His
dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship
is one that shall never be destroyed." These promises formed the
background out of which the Jewish people were expecting an anointed one, a
Messiah, to come and deliver them and reign eternally.
Peter
identified Jesus as this one – promised by God and anointed by God to reign
forever. How amazing! And yet how puzzling when Jesus warned them to keep
silent about His identity. Why would he do that?
C. His Path of Suffering
After this warning to keep silent,
Jesus went on to teach them what being Messiah would mean. In Mark 8:31 , Jesus announced to
his disciples, for the first time, what was going to happen to Him. He was
going to suffer. He was going to be rejected by the elders, chief priests and
teachers of the law. He was going to be killed. Then after three days he was
going to rise again.
In Mark,
there are three times when Jesus announced to His disciples that he was going
to be killed. This is the first time. Another prediction occurs in Mark 9:31 and a third in Mark 10:33 . These announcements
are all part of the path to Jerusalem
Peter’s
reaction to this announcement was to “rebuke” Jesus. Peter must have rejoiced
when he heard Jesus affirm that He was Messiah. But we can also imagine his
confusion when he heard Jesus talk about suffering and death. The word for
rebuke is a strong word. It is the same word used by Jesus when he rebuked the
demons as he was casting them out. Why such a strong reaction? Peter had a view
of a Messiah who was victorious. Didn’t the promise to David indicate that this
king would reign eternally? Didn’t the promise to Daniel say that He was to
have everlasting dominion? How could Jesus, the Messiah, speak of suffering and
death? Peter could not wrap his head around that at all and so the only logical
thing was to rebuke Jesus. Peter’s understanding was the same understanding
that most of the people of his time had and they were not ready to hear about a
path to victory through suffering and that was why Jesus told the disciples not
to tell others his identity. They would have misunderstood the meaning of being
Messiah, which would have closed their ears to the message of Jesus.
And yet
this path which Jesus announced was necessary. The word for “must,” in vs. 31,
is a significant technical term for divine necessity. It was because God
planned it and God predicted it that it was necessary for Jesus to follow this
path. In Isaiah 53 , the
path of the suffering Messiah was clearly laid out and Jesus accepted that path
and was willing to follow it. It was necessary.
Therefore
when Peter rebuked Jesus, it represented a way other than the one God had
planned, and in fact, represented a temptation for Jesus. The path was not
easy, but it was necessary and He had chosen it and anything that would derail
him from it would be a temptation of Satan. So when Jesus rebuked Peter, using
the same word Peter had used, he was not personally attacking Peter, but
rather, refusing the temptation which his words represented. He explained that
the path he was on was “the things of God” and the avoidance of that path was
“the things of men.”
Jesus
revealed that He was God’s sent one and explained that the path to victory
which He was going to take was a path that led through obedience to God’s will
and meant suffering and death.
II. The Way of the Disciple
In Mark 8:34 , Jesus changed the
direction of his comments to speak not only to the disciples, but also to the
crowds. After revealing to His disciples what it meant that He was Messiah, He
spoke to all about what it means to follow Messiah.
What Jesus
said next has a very strong connection to what He just said. These two sections
are connected in the sense that following Jesus means going the same way that
He went. Jesus lived in a certain way and if we want to “come after” Him, we
need to live in the same way that He lived. If it is our life’s purpose to come
after Christ, then we need to answer the question, “How do I walk in that way?” Jesus answered that question when he told His disciples,
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me."
A. Deny Yourself
Jesus denied Himself. Philippians 2 says that He
“emptied Himself.” By that we understand that He gave up heaven and all the
comfort, glory and wonder that it meant. He accepted the loss of dignity by
becoming a baby. He accepted the loss of honor and took up the shame of being
hung on a cross. Why did He do these things? He did it because He had come to
accomplish the purpose for which God had sent Him. There was only one thing
that was important to Him and that was not his own will, but doing the will of
God.
Therefore, to deny one’s self means
that, as Geddert says, “the self is denied as the controlling center.” When we
accept Jesus and become His follower, the basic question of life changes and we
no longer ask “what do I want” but we begin to ask, “What does Jesus want?” Are
we asking questions about our life values? What does Jesus want? Are we asking
the question of where we will live? What does Jesus want? Are we asking the question
of a career path? What does Jesus want? Are we asking the question of how to
live in our retirement? What does Jesus want?
Why do we ask this question?
Because like Jesus, to deny our self means that we recognize that we are not on
earth to do our own thing, but that we are on earth to be on mission for God.
We exist to make the name of Jesus known. Is that true in our life or have the
pleasures of this life or the drive for comfort become our reason for
existence?
B. Take Up Your Cross
As we follow the example of Jesus,
we understand that Jesus accepted a cross. Philippians 2:8 says, "…he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross!” Jesus understood
that He “must be killed.” He knew that it was God’s will for Him to go to
death. For Jesus the form that that death would take would be death on a
literal Roman cross. He walked the streets of Jerusalem
carrying the cross and when they arrived at Golgotha ,
the soldiers nailed him to that cross and that cross became the place of his
death. That is what denying self and taking up the cross meant for Jesus.
But when Jesus spoke this, the
disciples would not have understood all of this. They barely understood that
Jesus the Messiah was going to die and they had no idea that He was going to
die on a cross. What would they have been thinking as Jesus told them to “take
up the cross?” The picture of crucifixion which they would have understood was
that rebels against Rome Rome Rome
If we understand it that way to
take up one’s cross describes what the disciple life is all about. What does
that mean for us today? It is likely that the disciples would have understood
this to mean that to be a disciple of Jesus means to stop rebelling against God
and instead submit to God. The difference is that rebels against Rome
For Jesus this submission meant
going through suffering. Taking up the cross cost Jesus shame, suffering, and
even His life. Are we willing to follow God wherever He leads us? What if it
costs us the shame of being ridiculed for Jesus? Are we willing to bear that
shame and keep speaking about Him? It may cost us the loss of job and friends.
Are we willing to follow that far? It may cost us our life? If we were called
before a judge and knew that the question would be, “do you believe in Jesus?”
and knew that to answer “yes” would mean death; how would we answer? Perhaps
the more difficult question is, “If we are never asked that question, but live
every day in a peaceful world with good friends and many blessings; how will we
answer? Will we submit to God no matter where He leads us?
C. To Follow Jesus
When Jesus said “If anyone would
come after me…” He indicated that following Him is voluntary. Notice He said “If.” So the question comes to
us, “Is it our aspiration to follow after Jesus?”
The word
which we most often use to identify ourselves, the word which the world uses to
identify us is the word “Christian.” The word Christian is made up of two parts
“Christ” and “ian.” The Greek ending “ian” is a word that is used in this form
in different settings to refer to belonging. For example, it could have been
used about a slave as one who belonged to his master. So, for example, if I was
a slave of Carla, I would belong to her and it would be correct to call me a
“Carlian.” Therefore a Christian is simply someone who belongs to Christ.
What is your
relationship to Christ? Do you only see Him as a good role model to follow? Do
you simply see Him as the one who has your ticket to eternity? Or are you, a
person who belongs to Christ, whose life is all about learning to be like
Christ, to be one who adheres to Christ?
To follow Jesus means that we
accompany Jesus. Jesus has set the path before us and walks on it with us by
His Spirit. Are we walking along with Him? After Easter, we will look at more
passages in Mark which will describe more clearly what some of the implications
of following Jesus are.
III. It Is Gain!
Taking up our cross is a great
challenge, but too often we have missed understanding what it really means. How
many times have we said, “well, that is the cross I have to bear.” What are we
saying? We are implying, “Poor me! I have it so hard, but that is just my lot
in life and I guess I will have to suffer it.” That is self pity and is not
what bearing our cross is about.
If we read
this text accurately, we will notice that self pity was not the attitude of
Jesus, nor is it what He meant for us. Denying self and accepting submission is
not about embracing hardship for its own sake or accepting suffering for the
sake of suffering. Rather, this is God’s path to victory.
Why was
Jesus willing to die on the cross? Because He knew that it was the way God had
chosen to gain victory over evil and sin and death. The path of Jesus which He
explained to the disciples in Mark
8:31 concluded with the promise of resurrection!
Coming
after Jesus is not an invitation to choose what is hard. “Losing our life” is
not about taking the hardest path we can find in order to beat ourselves for
Jesus. The path of Jesus, which we are called to follow, is intended as the way
to find life. Jesus says, “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the
sake of the gospel, will save it.” It is an invitation to make a choice between
a few measly pebbles and the gold of Christ’s kingdom. Even if we gain the
whole world, even if we win the greatest wealth in the world, even if we could
buy Dubai, we would not have what we get if we are willing to give up
everything, submit to God and accept the path which may lead through suffering.
Jesus sets life before us! He says, if we succumb to the temptation to deny Him
now because it is so much fun living in this world, or it is so hard to stand
up for Him because everyone mocks us, or we don't want to give up our life as
martyrs; we may find in the end that He will deny us. So as Geddert says, “The
cross is a way of living, not just a way of dying.” Look at what the text says
we will gain if we follow Jesus. We will save our life, we will gain our soul
and when Jesus comes back we will experience the glory of the Father! Now what
do you want, a handful of dirt or glory?
Conclusion
Jesus began His journey to Jerusalem and the cross from as far away as He could get
in Israel
In a similar way, the disciples
were on a journey. They did not arrive at perfection in following Jesus right
away. Peter boldly declared, "You are the Messiah" but then in the
next sentence he rebuked Jesus and so demonstrated a complete misunderstanding
of the meaning of following Jesus. Several more times Jesus announced His death
and resurrection so that by the time He died on the cross the disciples should
have known what it meant. But it was at that point that all the disciples fled
and Peter denied Him. They still had not understood what it meant to follow
Jesus. They were beginning to understand and later they would understand.
We are all on the same kind of a
journey. Sometimes we see glimpses of great insight. When we hear people say,
"I have committed myself to doing whatever I am asked" we hear the
voice of servanthood. When we see people not retiring at 65, but continuing to
do whatever they can, we see examples of love for Jesus. When I have asked
people who are seriously ill or even dying declare that they want to be a blessing
even at that stage in their life, I see an example of someone putting Jesus
first. When young people give up well paying jobs in order to do what God calls
them to do, we see followers of Jesus. When we see people willing to die for
their faith, we see what it means to be a disciple.
Each of us is on that journey. If
we have accepted Jesus as Lord, we have entered onto that journey. We probably
won't get it completely right away, but we need to continue on the journey and
grow in following Jesus. The question we need to ask is, "What is the next
step on my journey of following Jesus?" Is there something I need to deny,
something I need to lose for Jesus' sake, some way of living I need to embrace
as I take the next step in following Jesus? Such living leads to life! May we
walk in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment