Shadow of the Cross

Matthew 16:21-28

Immanuel – 9/29/24

From the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry His message has been simple: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Jesus then went on to authenticate that proclamation with His miracles, by overcoming satanic strongholds, by making what was unclean clean, by forgiving sins.

Jesus would not force His identity upon people. Rather, with great patience and gentleness and endurance, He desired to draw people into His identity. Jesus doesn’t just want people to know who He is, He wants us to know Him. It’s the difference between being acquainted with someone and having a meaningful relationship.

Purpose

Today’s passage is about knowing Jesus and understanding what it means to have a relationship with Him.

          With astonishing clarity and faith, Peter has spoken Jesus’ true identity: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. After affirming that Peter has spoken correctly, and affirming Peter’s own identity, Jesus then begins to teach the disciples what it truly means to be the Messiah. As He does this, Jesus will so redefine the nature of the Messiah that the disciples will no longer recognize what Jesus is talking about.

Read vs 21

          Suffer, Die, Rise

When Jesus speaks of the elders, chief priests, and scribes; He refers to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin: the supreme legislative body among the Jews; wielding political, legal, and religious power. Among the Jews, there did not exist a higher authority on planet earth – even if they were being temporarily suppressed by the Romans. To the shock of the disciples, Jesus was telling them that the Sanhedrin would kill their own Messiah.

Look again at the language Jesus uses: Jesus began to show…He must…suffer…be killed…and on the third day be raised. How was it that Jesus was showing the disciples these things? He was showing them what Scripture taught about Himself.

Very briefly, let’s look at how the Old Testament, written hundreds of years before Jesus, spoke of the Messiah’s suffering, death, and resurrection.

The Messiah would suffer.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.                                      -Isaiah 53:3-4

The Messiah would suffer such tremendous misery that His sufferings would cause people to cringe and turn away in shame. Even God would turn away.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest…Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.                                                                                                                 -Psalm 22:1-2,12-13

Remember Bashan from last week as a realm of the demonic? Psalm 22 says that in addition to His other sufferings, the Messiah would be forsaken by God and in the void of despair, a horde of murderous and ravenous demons would surround Him. Scriptures foretold that the Messiah would suffer beyond comprehension.

The Messiah would be killed.

Again, from Psalm 22: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

                                                                   -Psalm 22:14-15

The Messiah would be laid in the dust of death, and when the people had the eyes to see what they had just done, they would be overcome with grief.

When they look on me, on Him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over Him, as one weeps over a firstborn.                                                                   -Zechariah 12:10

          But the bitter mourning of death would turn to joy, for the Scriptures spoke of a resurrection.

On the third day the Messiah would be raised. Back to Psalm 22.

O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!       -Psalm 22:19-21

Though the Father would forsake the Messiah, it was for a moment. God heard His cries, He would allow no demonic victory, He would rescue the precious life of His Beloved Son.

And the Father would raise His Son on the third day. This time we find no single prediction in the Old Testament. Instead, we find a typological thread.

1.      Three days after God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son a substitute was found. Abraham lifted his son from that altar as though he had returned from the dead.

2.      The greatest manifestation of the glory of God in the Old Testament happened three days after Israel arrived at Mount Sinai.

3.      Then there is the one that Jesus has now cited twice in Matthew: the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:39, 16:4). Three days after Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, he was vomited back up from his maritime grave.

          Scriptures were pointing towards a resurrection and glorious revelation three days after the Messiah would suffer and be killed. When Jesus began to show…He must…suffer…be killed…and on the third day be raised; He was surely walking His disciples through Scriptures like these (there are many more).

On top of this, Jesus says these things must happen at the hands of the religious leaders. How jarring this would have been for the disciples!

It was not the worst of humanity that would kill Jesus – not sinners and mongrels. Jesus is saying that the most religious, the most righteous, the most law-abiding people on the face of the planet are the ones that will kill Him. The very best that humanity had to offer, living to the highest standards of morality and religion, slaughter their Messiah.

And this is too much for Peter. The Messiah is supposed to restore the nation of Israel to its former geo-political glory, defeat Rome, and vanquish all Israel’s enemies. Not suffer and be killed by the best of the Jews. This is unthinkable! It doesn’t matter what the Scriptures say, it can’t happen that way!

(Beware people who accept parts of Scripture and reject others! It is satanic!)

          Peter, knowing Jesus can’t be right, takes the initiative to correct Him.

          Read vs 22

          Though Peter is speaking, he is again speaking on behalf of the other disciples. They all agree that Jesus has gotten this wrong. It appears that when Peter pulls Jesus aside, he is trying to spare Him from embarrassment. Though Peter has offered Jesus the respect of some privacy, His words are very disrespectful. Peter is effectively scolding Jesus, even being sharp about it.

          Evidently that whole bit about resurrection went in one ear and out the other. Peter effectively says, “God would never allow this to happen to you. You’ve got this wrong; your kingdom is supposed to come without all that suffering and death – unless it’s the suffering and death of the Romans. It is not going to happen as you say.”

          This moment should remind us of something that happened to Jesus nearly three years prior. It was the third temptation.

          The devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these I will give to you, if you will fall down and worship me.”                                          -Matthew 4:8-9

          Make no mistake, it took incredible willpower to overcome Satan’s temptation. And what made this temptation so alluring? Jesus was being offered the easy road to glory, gains without the pains, the kingdoms of earth without suffering and shame. All Jesus had to do was engage in a little devil worship.

Though Jesus hears Peter, there is another voice in the disciple’s words.

          Read vs 23

          The Gospel of Mark tells us that in response to Peter, Jesus turns and addresses all the disciples. He then delivers one of His most forceful rebukes in all of the Gospels. He wants all the disciples to hear it; His rebuke of Peter is a rebuke of all of them.

Get behind me, Satan! It’s even stronger than the words Jesus said after that third temptation in the wilderness. This should signify the magnitude of Peter’s error. Yes, Peter has accepted, in faith, that Jesus is the Messiah; but he still doesn’t know His Messiah. And in His misunderstanding the voice of Satan slips in. It is in love, then, that Jesus serves His disciples by sharply rebuking Peter.

Understand exactly what is happening here: Peter attempts to impose his will and desires upon Jesus, rather than allow Jesus’ words to shape his thinking. Peter thinks he knows best, so he would attempt to assert his will over the will of God. To assert your will over the will of God is not to be a disciple of Jesus; it is to be a disciple of Satan.

(Again, beware people who accept parts of Scripture and reject others! It is satanic!)

In light of such misunderstandings, Jesus tells them exactly what it means to be a disciple of a Messiah like Him. The theme of suffering is central to Jesus’ mission. It is central to His disciples’ mission too.

Read vs 24

Take Up Your Cross

The cross is not just for the Messiah, it is for any who would follow Him. To us this might not sound so bad. We wear shiny crosses around our necks and place them on our walls. Crosses are decorations.

But to those who first heard Jesus’ words, this was an abhorrent and humiliating thought. They immediately would have pictured a naked and mangled body on a blood soaked cross, pathetically gasping at air, wracked in agony, unable to control bodily functions, elevated so all could see and mock. Then, the body left for weeks in the elements; rotting and stinking. The cross was a device of torture created to dehumanize and shame the condemned.

No one in all the world would dare submit themselves to such a death. Yet, Jesus says if you want to follow Him, you must deny yourself and take up that cross. Every person that was crucified by the Romans was required to carry the horizontal cross member to the place of execution. So when we take up our cross, we are taking it up to die. We carry it to the place of execution.

Jesus is talking metaphorically, right? Because He certainly can’t mean that every Christian will be crucified.

Yes and no. Church tradition tells us that Peter, Andrew, and Phillip were crucified. Countless other disciples have been too. Even more recently, at the hands of ISIS, some of our indomitable Syrian brothers and sisters were brutally crucified.

Even still, Jesus is not telling His disciples that they must get crucified. Nor would He command us to find ways to cause ourselves physical pain. That is asceticism, and Paul tells us in Colossians 2:23 that such practices are worthless.

But, there is a link between denying yourself and the cross. Jesus is explicitly comparing denying yourself to dying on the cross. There is something about denying yourself that feels a lot like dying.

What can this mean? The Bible teaches us that we each have hearts that exist in utter rebellion against God. Our pride, selfishness, and lusts compel us to hate the things of God. We want to do what we want to do – and forget Him. To put it more starkly, we value our will over His will – just as we saw Peter doing in his rebuke of Jesus.

God puts our senseless rebellion in these terms:

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”                                                                 - Jeremiah 2:13

God is the fountain of living water. All we have to do is go to Him and drink and be satisfied. But we say no, and we work and dig and toil in the dirt to build for ourselves artificial cisterns. But the cisterns we build hold no water, and we become slaves to the digging and the dirt.

That will, so bent on digging in the dirt, so bent on trying to find satisfaction from places other than Christ; crucify that will. Kill it. It is rebellious and foolish. That rebellious heart must die.

What does it mean to kill your own will? It means when your heart is tempted you say, “Get behind me, Satan!” And then you trust that Jesus will satisfy you like nothing in the world can.

Following Jesus is killing your sinful desires. It is active and intentional. It is painful and persistent. But you are the one doing the crucifying. Bring shame, disgrace and death to your rebellious heart.

As Paul writes, And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.                                          -Galatians 5:24

          Very practically, here is what “taking up your cross” looks like on a daily basis. You are tired at the end of the day. Your desire is to scroll your phone and zone out. Denying yourself is crucifying that desire so you can spend some time with God in His word or in prayer, or intentional time with your family.

          Someone is annoying or abrasive, and you desire to get away from them or speak poorly of them. Crucify that desire and love them. Find ways to honor them.

          You desire to be liked, so in order not to rock the boat, you stay silent about Jesus. Crucify that desire and speak. Risk offending someone’s sensibilities with the radical message of the gospel. Jesus gave up His life for you. The least you can do is give up a little popularity for Him.

          You desire safety and comfort, so you avoid risk and see danger in shadows. Crucify those desires and follow Jesus into dark and hard places. Did He not rescue you from such a place? If God is for you, who can be against you? Do not sacrifice your life on the altar of safety!

In the moment, denying yourself in these ways feels like dying. But take up your cross and follow Jesus, that you might decrease and He might increase! And we don’t do all of this because we have to, we do this because we love our Lord and we long to follow Him.

Then, Jesus shows His disciples why it is worth it to follow Him in such a way.

Read vs 25

In this context, life is three things:

1.      Being alive       2. The quality of living             3. Your truest self

If you want to be alive, if you want to really feel like you are living, if you want the truest part of yourself to flourish; then you must not try to sustain yourself; you must not try to dig your own cisterns. You cannot do these things for yourself. You cannot extend your days. The only abundance you can sustain in your life is an abundance of brokenness. And apart from God you have no idea who you are. Leave behind the life of self-sustainment. It is arrogance. It is death.

Leave your artificial cisterns. Drop the shovel and turn to Jesus. Repent and believe. Come to the overflowing fountain of life that is Christ. Let go of your ambitions for your life and take up Christ’s ambition for the gospel. In doing this you will find life forevermore, and your days will be filled with joy, and your soul – once bound – will be truly free.

          Following Jesus is not a both-and. You cannot seek the things of the world and follow Christ at the same time. Being a disciple is an either-or.

          Jesus said: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”                                                           -Matthew 6:24

Read vs 26

What does it matter if everything is yours and yet you have no life? How many modern examples of this are there? Lottery winners soar out of poverty with millions of dollars and in a relatively short time, they are broke, their friends and family are alienated, they have nothing. They are breathing, but they are not alive. Their souls – their truest selves – have only found chains in the promise of wealth. And that deadness will only increase, continuing eternally in hellish separation from the One who is the source of life.

Is there anything that you can give to God in payment for your soul? Our sinfulness has accrued a debt beyond measure before His eyes. Who can repay it?

But listen to the words of Jesus”

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and give His life as a ransom for many.”                                                         -Mark 10:45.

Christ makes the payment for your soul. Being a disciple means that your way is paid. That your unfathomably large debt – which makes the national deficit look like pennies – was completely covered.

What man could not give in return for his own soul, Christ has given. His life for our lives. Apart from Him there is no hope of paying the debt against you.

And then Jesus says something, which for us, seems like it comes out of left field.

Read vs 27-28

These two verses could easily be a sermon. But understand this, this statement fits right in to what Jesus had been saying about discipleship and His own suffering. To understand, we need to go back to the prophet Daniel, and the vision he had of the Son of Man.

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.            -Daniel 7:13-14

When Jesus talks about the Son of Man coming in His kingdom, He is not talking about when He returns to earth. He is talking about this vision in Daniel 7. After the resurrection, Jesus ascended into the clouds. Daniel’s vision is what happens when Jesus passes through His suffering, rises, ascends into the clouds, and is presented before His Father.

And just before Jesus ascends on the clouds of heaven, what is it that He says to His disciples?

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”                                               -Matthew 28:18-19

Those words are a fulfillment of Daniel 7, and his authority means something for his disciples.

So when would some of the disciples see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom? Some say Jesus was referring to the transfiguration, which would soon happen. Others say it was the resurrection. Perhaps it was when the Spirit of God fell upon the disciples at Pentecost. Others say it was the judgment that came upon the Jews in 70 AD when the temple was destroyed and that corrupted religious system was forever torn down.

Undoubtedly, in the first century there was a progression of Jesus’ authority and kingdom being made visible. Whatever the timing Jesus had in mind, there were at least some of His disciples still living to witness it.

Jesus, the Messiah, suffered and died a horrific death. But on the third day God raised Him from the grave and gave Him all authority in heaven and on earth. And with that authority, Jesus makes His resurrected life become our everlasting life. And He makes His cross become our cross; that we might not live for ourselves, but deny ourselves and live for another.  His mission becomes our mission; and as He made disciples, so must we. 

          Being a disciple of Jesus means loving and valuing Jesus so much that it is a joy to be relationally intentional when we are tired. It is loving Jesus enough to seek Him in Scripture and prayer when you would otherwise veg out. It is valuing honor for Jesus more than honor for yourself.

If we value Jesus enough to follow Him in the path of self-denial, He promises that He will give us the whole earth, and eternal life to enjoy it. More than that, we will enjoy Him eternally. We trust that Jesus pays all of the debts our sins incurred, and He will do the same for any who believe. So we go, proclaiming this good news, and bringing honor to the Messiah - who through His suffering, dying, and resurrecting - accomplished eternal victory over sin, Satan, and death!

          This is the Messiah we are invited to know. This is the Messiah we are summoned to follow.  Crucify your old self, that rebellious heart, with its passions and desires.