The Christ, The Cross, The Call - Luke 9:18-27

Well, grace be to you this morning, friends.

We do study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

If you'd like a paper copy, just lift up your hand and someone will bring one along to you.

It would be good to have the text in front of you, like it is every week.

Also want to welcome those who are worshiping with us online.

In the last week, we've had folks worshiping with us from Palumpond, Philippines, London, England, as well as Vacaville, California, and many others.

May the Spirit of Christ be evident to you wherever you might be today.

Well, friends, we are continuing our study of the Gospel according to Luke.

As Jesus begins to turn his trajectory towards Jerusalem.

For a moment, though, I want us to zoom out just a little bit briefly and look backward in Luke's gospel to reorient ourselves to the primary aim of Luke's writing, inspired by the Spirit.

Last week, if you remember, Pastor Matt called to mind the introduction that Luke gives in his gospel in chapter one.

And I want us to read just a portion of it again.

We'll put it up on the screen so you can follow along.

So this is Luke introducing his gospel.

He says, It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things that you have been taught.

Now we don't know who Theophilus was.

I think he probably had a monocle and a cane.

His name just kind of seems like that to me.

But we don't know who he was.

His name means lover of God.

And apparently he had been taught something about Jesus and his ministry, his message, and his miracles.

But Luke was clear that his primary purpose was to bring together all of his research, all of the careful eyewitness accounts to demonstrate who Jesus was to Theophilus, and I think to you and us today, so that we aren't confused on the matter.

One of the chief strategies of the evil one is to lead us to confusion about who Jesus is.

And I think Luke knew that, and I think the Holy Spirit did as well.

We could read all four of the gospel accounts from now until eternity, and we'll only begin to scratch the surface of who He is.

There is no one in all of history like Jesus.

He's singular, he defies comparison.

He transcends any measure that we could come up with to define what greatness is.

I want us just to run through a few of the testimonies that we've already encountered in Luke that bear witness to who Jesus is.

And some of these testimonies I think are surprising.

We'll put them up on the screen here.

Testimonies about the identity of Jesus.

You'll remember the angel Gabriel to Mary said, Jesus, your son, will be the son of the Most High.

The angel to the shepherd said, Christ, or Jesus rather, is the Savior who is Christ the Lord.

The Holy Spirit to Simeon said, This is the Lord's Christ.

Simeon himself holding the baby Jesus, praising God the Father, saying, My eyes have seen your salvation.

John the Baptist speaking to the crowds, he says, I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

The demons at Capernaum knew who he was.

Speaking directly to Jesus, I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

You are the Son of God.

And of course, God the Father at Jesus' baptism said, You are my beloved Son.

And with you I am well pleased.

You cannot mistake the clarity of the gospel accounts unless you're unwilling to hear and unwilling to see.

The miracles of Jesus that we've been studying recently point to who he is, including the very public miracle that we studied last week, where he fed likely 10 to 15,000 with just a few loaves and a few fish.

So the testimonies about him, his message, his miracles all point to the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as God's Son, the Messiah, our Messiah, our only hope in life and in death.

And just a few moments ago we sang, He is hope for the hopeless, rest for the weary, and help for the hurting.

And I know I can see some of your faces in this room.

I know some of you needed that word of comfort.

But that word of comfort means nothing if he is not the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

And Luke wants us to know that with certainty.

Holy Spirit, open our eyes and ears this morning.

If you would turn with me to Luke chapter 9, verse 18.

Luke 9:18

I'm going to read from the English Standard Version this morning.

I invite us to take a moment of silence just to prepare our hearts and invite the Spirit to bring his word to life, and then I'll offer a prayer for us as we begin.

Father, open your word to us.

And open us to your word.

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear the grace that you have for each of us today.

And by the power of your Spirit, show us the glory of your Son Jesus, in whose name we pray.

And we all said.

Amen.

Well, Luke chapter 9, verse 18.

Luke 9:18

Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him.

We'll come back to that in a little bit.

And he asked them, the disciples, Who do the crowds say that I am?

And they answered, John the Baptist, but others say Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old has risen.

Then he said to them, But who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered, The Christ of God.

Highlight that, underline that.

Peter's confession here, the Christ of God in the Greek Christos, the anointed one, the Messiah.

We'll pause here for a second.

Jesus asks these two really important questions.

First, who do the crowd say that I am?

And like Herod, if you remember from our study last week, they're confused.

They give us three prophets: John the Baptist, who is dead at this point, Elijah, or one of the other prophets, or the Gospel of Matthew tells us they were thinking probably of Jeremiah.

So the crowds are confused about who he is.

And then he gets more personal, more specific, and he says, No, no, no, who do you say that I am?

And Peter speaks up, I think, as the spokesman for the disciples, and he calls him the Messiah.

This is the first time that Peter has confessed Jesus as the Christ.

Peter has called Jesus Lord, and that is a good and right title for him.

It recognizes his divine authority, but Christ, the Messiah that they have been waiting for, the anointed one, the one who would fulfill the office of prophet, priest, and king.

This is a turning point in the ministry of Jesus and the growth of the disciples.

So what is Jesus going to do after this confession of Peter?

Well, let's see what he says, verse 21.

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one.

In other words, zip it.

Saying, the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

So what's Jesus doing here?

Why why does he tell them to zip it?

Theologians will call this the messianic secret.

What Jesus is doing here is he's managing the pace of his ministry.

He's managing the potential frenzy of a crowd who might see him as merely a political or a military king, ready to overflow the Roman occupiers.

Jesus is pacing his ministry, and he tells us why, because he has a focused mission towards Jerusalem, towards the cross, towards suffering, towards death and resurrection.

Verse 23, and he said to all, now the group has grown larger, perhaps this is the crowds, or maybe it's just a few more of his disciples, but to a bigger group he says, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever would save his life, or you could translate that soul, it's the whole person, body, mind, and soul.

For whoever would save his soul will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, and underline both of those, me and my words, who he was and his message, the message of the kingdom.

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed, when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

We'll stop there in our study.

This is the Word of God from the Gospel of Luke.

Well, let's consider briefly, just for a moment, this end section, this puzzling section at the end here.

It often stumps Bible students for good reason.

Verse 27 There are some standing here, so the disciples that are in front of them, who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.

What's Jesus saying here?

Did Jesus mean that some of the original disciples wouldn't taste death until they saw the final judgment, the conclusion of history, when Jesus returns fully with his glorious kingdom?

Well, we know that Jesus has not yet returned.

Even today.

So what is he saying?

Well, as we'll study next week, the very next account in the Gospel of Luke is the story of the transfiguration.

When Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up the mountain, probably Mount Hermon, there to meet Moses and Elijah and hear the voice of God the Father again.

An incredible inbreaking of the kingdom of God.

Perhaps that's what he meant.

Or perhaps Jesus is referring to his resurrection, which he's already pointed forward to, or his ascension, or the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, all extraordinary moments when the kingdom of God was luminously on display, and many of the original disciples would have been witness to those moments.

I think the greater point, though, is that the kingdom of God is a reality.

It has come in part, and it will continue to come in his timing and in his way, as we sang earlier.

You and I continue to pray, Thy kingdom come.

And we also pray that he would hasten the day when he returns to finally set all things right.

And to that we say, Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Let's say that together.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

That's a right and proper prayer to pray.

Well, let's look together at the beginning of our text.

If you would set your eyes there at verse 18.

Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him.

So all the introverts in this room are probably having a hard time understanding that sentence.

Alone but with the disciples.

I think, like the prayer we'll study much later in the Garden of Gethsemane, I think this is simply saying the Lord was praying alone, but his disciples were nearby.

Jesus loves his Father.

He lives by every word that comes from the mouth of his father.

At least seven times the Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus withdraws himself to pray with the Father.

His relationship with the Father was intimate, and I believe he wanted his disciples to see that.

And we don't know, but perhaps he was praying for his disciples as he was preparing to tell them about his mission to Jerusalem, where he would suffer, die, and be raised again in a few months.

Now the timing and the location of our story is also significant for us.

If we look again at verse 18, now it happened indicates a passing of time between the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 or the 10, 15,000 last week.

And the other synoptic gospels, Matthew and Mark, give us more detail about what happened between that time.

But Luke gets right to the point.

Matthew also tells us that the location here is Caesarea Philippi, formerly known as Panaeus, named after the Greek god Pan, and we'll put up a map here on the screen just to kind of locate us geographically.

There on the left hand or the right hand side, you can see Caesarea Philippi towards the north.

It's a border town.

You don't see it on the map there, but it's near Dan.

If you're a student of the Bible, you've heard the phrase from Dan to Beersheba.

That's from north to south.

That's all of Israel.

And so in our story today, it's toward the top Caesarea Philippi by Dan.

On the left-hand side, you can see kind of an elevation.

Looking at Caesarea Philippi, and in the background we have Mount Hermon.

Which is why some think the transfiguration was there.

Caesarea Philippi, like the original name, Panius suggests, was a pagan town, pagan city, where all kinds of things were practiced and mixed with Jewish worship practices.

And here's a couple of modern-day photos.

This gives you a sense of the site.

Even today, and we've been there, if you've been on a TBC trip, you've been there, you can still see vestiges of that pagan worship today.

And for a deeper dive on this city, I encourage you to look up our study of Matthew 16 on our website.

You might want to write that down, Matthew 16, which talks a little bit more about the significance of this city to this story, which the Gospel of Matthew emphasizes.

So when Jesus asks this question, who do the crowds say that I am?

In the background, and we have to put this in our mind, in the background is this largely pagan city.

Along with all those who had followed him from his Galilean ministry, the crowds would have represented a whole salad bar selection of spiritual beliefs and practices.

And I think most were fascinated, many were fascinated with Jesus, but the commitment went no further.

And there's many parallels to our day-to-day.

So when Jesus asked the disciples the question, Who do you say that I am?

I think he's asking emphatically, in contrast to the uncommitted crowds who see me as a prophet or as a guru or as a novelty, who do you say that I am?

Personal and specific.

It's the most crucial question every human heart must respond to.

Our response to the question, who is Jesus, will determine our eternal destinies.

It's the grounding for our hope today and tomorrow, and it's an invitation to life.

I'd love for us to consider three essential takeaways for our study today.

The first one, who Jesus is as the Christ of God.

The second, what Jesus has done.

The cross of Christ and what Jesus calls us to, the life and the death of the disciple.

So, number one, who Jesus is, the Christ of God.

John Stott is so helpful.

He says this.

The ultimate question is absolutely plain, even to the man in the street, to whom semantics and culture and theology are all closed books.

It is this is Jesus to be worshipped or only to be admired?

If he is God, then he is worthy of our worship, our faith, and obedience.

If he's not God, then to give him such devotion is idolatry.

Luke has from the very beginning of his gospel, and we surveyed all of it so far, he's been highlighting for us exactly who Jesus is.

And for the first time, Peter confesses him as the Christ of God, the Messiah, their Messiah.

And that confession changed the trajectory of their lives, and it was the foundation that confession was of the new community that Jesus would build by his spirit, the church, and he's still building today.

Much like Caesarea Philippi, our city bursting with spiritual ideas and all kinds of worship, we live in a time where I think there's genuine fascination with Jesus as a moral example or as a way of life or another topping to choose from in your build your own burrito spiritualities.

I actually ran across this article from a British journalist named Mary Harrington.

I don't know if she's a believer, but she sketches out what I think is great insight about our current spiritual climate.

She says this I do think there is real pressure on young men and women to exist in a state of perpetual optionality, leaving all our options open forever.

And she actually, it's not on the slide here, but she goes on to describe modern life as an all-you-can-eat consumerist buffet, stuff we can just pick up and put down at will.

So set your eyes at verse 20, if you would.

Verse 20, then he said to him, earth to them rather, but who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered, the Christ of God.

The Christ of God.

The text uses the definite article, O Christos O Theos.

In other words, there is no other Messiah.

Jesus is the Christ of God, meaning in the mystery of God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, the rescue mission of Jesus to save rebels like me and like you has been planned since the foundations of the world.

The identity of Jesus isn't on the table for negotiation.

He is the Christ, you might circle the of God.

Very important.

And that should lead us to fall down in worship because he didn't have to come.

But he did out of his great love.

And for our world, I think malnourished with this perpetual optionality that Harrington talks about, I think the result inevitably, and we see it all around us, is confusion and a frenzied search for stable meaning and purpose and joy.

And the scriptures bring clarity and grace, pointing to the truth of Jesus as the one who has come and will come again to make all things right, to satisfy every longing, and to nourish hungry souls.

The good news of Jesus is an invitation to life.

This is an offer for all who would come to Him.

And we should praise God that we actually seem to be living, I think, in a particular moment where many hearts are open to hearing about Jesus.

And I pray for more of that.

We should pray for more of that.

Pray for revival, that old crusty word.

Pray that our own hearts would be set ablaze with the truth of who Jesus is, so that we are ready when someone might come up to us and say, So who do you say that Jesus is?

Which brings us to our second uh takeaway from our study today: the cross of Christ.

What he will do for these disciples and what he has done for us.

This side of the cross.

The confession of Peter and the disciples is a turning point, I think, in the ministry of Jesus.

It begins to point ahead several months from now to what he alone will bear in his body as he lays down his life.

The prophet Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus, told us that the Messiah would be a suffering servant.

Listen to Isaiah's words that may have been ringing in the mind of Jesus as he described to his disciples what his mission was.

From Isaiah 53.

He, the Messiah, was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Perhaps that was in the mind of Jesus as he told his disciples what his mission was.

And here I think we see in Isaiah and in this text this morning an open window.

An open window into the lavish Love of God for those who have turned to their own way, and that's all of us.

We've tried to gain the whole world apart from God and found only empty wells.

And the grace of Jesus is so evident here.

The forgiveness that you need, the life that you're searching for, all of that can be found in Him.

I'm going to the cross for you, he says.

Now follow me.

Let's get the order right.

I'm going to the cross for you.

Now follow me.

Set your eyes there at verse 22, if you would.

The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes.

And the translation could be, and must be killed and on the third day be raised.

If the Christ that we follow is a Christ without suffering, without death, without resurrection, he is not the biblical Christ.

Luke wants us to know with certainty the nature of our Lord Jesus and what he has accomplished for us.

Jesus for them will pay it all, and for us, has paid it all.

Octavius Winslow, oh, this is so beautiful.

He said, So completely was Jesus bent upon saving sinners by the sacrifice of himself, he created the tree upon which he was to die.

And nurtured from infancy the men who were to nail him to the accursed wood.

The disciples couldn't fully comprehend it yet, but this side of the cross, our only proper response is faith, trust, and worship.

I love the old hymn that says, Man of sorrows, what a name.

For the Son of Man who came, ruined sinners like me and you to reclaim.

Let's say it with gusto, hallelujah.

What a savior.

And it's from this truth about what Jesus accomplishes for us that he calls us to new life.

And our third consideration this morning, the life and the death of a disciple.

We look again at verse 23.

And he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him one deny himself, two, take up his cross daily, and three, follow me.

The first two are essentially the same, almost a progression.

You say no to yourself, but then he says, take up your cross daily.

Luke's the only one that adds the word daily.

Jesus probably said this saying many, many times.

And in this particular case, he says, daily.

The call and the cost of discipleship, of following Jesus, is your whole life.

And what we gain is life in him, set free from the tyranny of self.

Do you remember what the uh the character from Willy Wonka, Veruca Salt, used to say?

The self will say this too.

I want what I want, and I want it now.

Our frenetic quest for more possessions, more position, more pleasure, more meaning, more purpose, all are put in their proper order in submission to the Lord and his word.

Emily and I flew to the UK over the holidays, and we rented a car.

If you've learned how to drive in the United States, driving in the UK is an intensive study in denying every impulse in you for how to properly drive.

In my humble opinion, they drive on the wrong side of the road.

The driver's on the wrong side of the car.

And when you add into that tiny roadways and roundabouts, it's one of God's great methods of sanctification.

Following Jesus means that we pay attention to him and to his words.

We're going where he goes instead of where I want to go.

Or maybe a more positive way to say it is my heart is being changed so that I want to go where he's going.

Waiting for his timing rather than my timing.

So I don't want us to soften the edge of what Jesus is teaching here.

Denying yourself, taking up your cross daily.

He's quite literally describing a death to who you once were before Christ, and it's painful.

Taking up your cross daily, it's not simply referring to the harsh realities of living in a fallen world.

What Jesus is describing is a daily crucifixion, a putting to death of all that is in me that is set against him.

It's a daily dying.

He is describing a break pedal, a daily watchfulness for when the old self pokes up its head, demanding to go its own way.

But he's not describing a break pedal alone.

This is a daily death that leads to resurrection life.

It's also a gas pedal, and I think this passage actually is primarily about life.

And just for clarity, Jesus isn't calling us to a daily self-abasement.

He's not asking us to be a doormat.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and you bear his image, but distorted by sin.

I love the line in the song.

We're actually going to sing it a little later.

My worth is not in what I own.

Two wonders here I confess: my worth and my unworthiness, my value fixed and my ransom paid at the cross.

That's the proper posture.

And it's when we turn to him that, as C.S.

Lewis says, our real selves are all waiting for us in him.

I'd love to leave us with two words this morning: a word of challenge and a word of comfort.

Word of challenge.

Let's get really practical here for a moment.

I don't know all of your particular situations, but denying yourself looks like something.

And it may look like renewed honesty when tax time comes around.

It may mean speaking up when you've been silent about an injustice, about hypocrisy.

It might mean doing all you can to reconcile a damaged relationship, to offer forgiveness.

It might mean living a biblical sexual ethic, moving, perhaps even moving out of living with your boyfriend or girlfriend before you've made a covenantal vow before God and one another.

It may mean biting your tongue when you're tempted to share the latest scoop with a friend or a coworker when it's not yours to tell.

Because your heart loyalty to Christ and his word is more valuable than your desire for pleasure, for convenience, for possessions and power and all those things when, if they're the ultimate thing, are empty wells.

Don't hear me saying, shame on you, but grace for you, life in him.

Tony Ranke helps us here.

He says, at root, sin is not wrongdoing, it's wrong-adoring.

Sin is riveting our hearts on any treasure or security that replaces the treasure and security we can only find in God.

When the shape of our life is more and more conformed to Him and His Word, we're not given a pain-free life, we're not given a maximally pleasurable life, but rather a God-exalting, soul-nourishing satisfaction that will last for eternity.

And the fruit of that daily self-denial can be a revival of the soul.

And we do pray for revivals in families and churches and cities.

The greatest problem facing our world is the human heart with the self at the center.

And Jesus invites all who would come to him to turn away from the empty treasures of the world, the self and the evil one, and to turn to him.

It's a daily repentance unto life.

Now a word of comfort.

Let's reflect again on the order of Jesus' teaching this morning.

He doesn't say, if you follow me, then I'll go to the cross for you.

He says, I'm going to the cross for you, so follow me.

His suffering, his death, his resurrection on our behalf is a gift of grace for all of us to receive, and his call to a life of daily denial of self is a gift of grace.

As it leads to more life.

Fleming Rutledge, one of my favorite authors, so eloquently says, Language matters.

Today's familiar locution, live into is misbegotten.

We live out of or out from our baptism, our redemption, our callings.

God is out ahead of us, before us, behind us, over us, not waiting for us to live into him.

He is the originator and the completer.

In other words, the call of Jesus to die daily is a call to live out of who we are as those who belong to Him.

We no longer belong to ourselves or to the shifting winds of the perpetual optionality that the world wants us to try.

We're anchored to the one in whom all things hold together, much more stable.

Who do you say that he is?

I pray that you see him as the Christ of God, your greatest treasure, the wellspring of life, that we all return to again and again and again.

And we all said, Amen.

Church, let's pray together.

This is a prayer from our brother John Wesley.

I'm no longer my own, but yours.

Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will, put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you, praised for you or criticized for you.

Let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and your service.

And now, O wonderful and holy God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, you are mine, and I am yours.

Jesus' name we all said.

Amen.