Lectionary - Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus | August 30, 2026

Well, good morning and welcome to Trinity.

My name is Mike, and I'm one of the pastors here.

And I'd like to invite you this morning to turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, you can grab one from the stack in the back.

You can find Matthew 16 on page 772 in the church Bibles.

And if you don't have a Bible at all, we've got some giveaways in the back as well.

Please feel free to grab one, take it with you.

Just a reminder for you big kids who have stayed behind in church this morning.

If you take notes, either in one of the little notebooks that we have in the back or in the margins of your Bible, you can show it afterwards in the kitchen.

We're happy to shamelessly bribe you to do so with candy.

If you're not sure what it means to take notes, this is why I do slides.

Just copy what's there, write it down, you'll get candy.

Last week, Jesus asked his disciples two questions.

Do you remember this?

Who do the crowds say that I am?

To which the disciples essentially replied, a prophet.

And then Jesus turned to his disciples and said, Who do you say that I am?

To which Peter boldly replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

It's a miraculous response.

It's a sort of declaration that, if acted upon, can completely change a life.

And Matthew tells us, Jesus himself said, Oh, the only reason you're even able to say this is because of the grace of the Father.

Jesus replies to Peter as he makes this bold declaration of faith: Blessed are you, Simon, son of Barjonah, for upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Then in verse 20, Jesus exhorts his disciples, now let in on the secret of his identity as the Messiah, not to tell anybody the news yet.

I noted last week that a declaration of faith like Peter's is for a disciple of Jesus a life of faith.

For those seeking to live a life of faith, it's a starting point, starting line, not the finish line.

Well, what we'll see this morning is part two to last week's part one.

We'll see Peter, the same Peter who just got it so right, we'll see Peter get it so wrong.

We'll get it so wrong.

And we'll see that if a bold confession of faith is the starting place, what the race itself looks like.

So for those of you who like to know where we're going, there's two big ideas in today's passage.

First, that the way of the Messiah is cruciform, that it is cross-shaped.

It's the way of suffering and death.

And second, that the way of discipleship, likewise, is cruciform, shaped by the cross.

A life spent following Jesus must be shaped like the cross.

But before we go any further, let's pray.

Gracious God, thank you for this morning for the chance to gather, to sing, to pray, to hear from your word.

Gracious God, I pray now that as my words line up with your words, that they might fall on ears and hearts ready to receive them and respond.

And gracious God, if I say anything that isn't from you, I pray that those words would quickly be forgotten.

And I pray these things through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Last week we saw Peter make a life-changing declaration.

Jesus, you're the Christ.

The disciples led in the secret.

They know he's the Messiah.

What they don't yet understand and would spend a lifetime learning is what that means for their future.

They've reached a turning point, but they can't yet understand the implications of what the new life is gonna look like.

Do you know that feeling where you've made or are making some sort of big decision?

Maybe you've reached some significant new information in your life, or both.

Maybe you're in a season of transition.

You're not exactly sure what your future is gonna look like.

You're not exactly sure what it means yet.

You just know, I think, I think maybe something has changed.

And I don't really know how.

Have you felt like that before?

Here's one for me.

There should be a photo on the next slide.

Back one more.

Or wherever.

There you go.

That's me when I had a lot more hair and no beard.

That's my wife Jenny.

That's the day that we graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Two weeks to the day from when we'd be married.

I was graduating from college.

We were moving back to San Diego where we grew up, but I was moving into an empty apartment.

I knew I was starting seminary, graduate school in the fall.

We knew that Jenny had a job.

We knew we were about to get married, and we had absolutely no idea what all of that would mean for our future life.

Right?

Like you finish college and you're like, I'm pretty sure everything has changed, but I we didn't know how to adult, right?

We were about to be married.

We'd been together at that point since we were 16 for crying out loud, but we had no idea what it meant to be married.

Right?

We we didn't really know.

We'd always lived in the dorms, we didn't know what it was like to live on our own.

I didn't know what grad school was like.

Jenny had done an internship with the company she was starting at, but like 40 hours is a little bit different.

And it's like this with just about every major transition, isn't it?

Like you know you're leaving something behind, you know you're looking into stepping into something new, you don't have uh you maybe begin to have an imagination for it, right?

Like I could imagine what being married and going to grad school was like, right?

But you don't really know.

Every big move is like this, every job changes like this, um, major turning points in relationships like this, going away to college, starting a new school year, right?

It's all like this.

Having a baby, a second baby, a third baby, man, that third is a doozy.

Like there are these moments where we know, Nate, you're not a doozy, I love you.

But going from one on one, going one-to-one to zone defense is a whole other ball game.

I think this was that moment for the disciples.

Peter's made this big declaration, Jesus, you're the Christ! Jesus says, Blessed are you on this rock, I'm gonna build my church.

They know something has changed.

They've been led in on the seeker of the Messiah, but they have no idea.

They have no idea.

They've reached a turning point, big decision, new future, new unknowns.

Disciples, they've been told Jesus is the Messiah.

They might have wondered up until this point, now they know.

But they have no idea what it means.

And so, Matthew tells us, looking at verse 16, Jesus begins to show them.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed.

And on the third day be raised.

The disciples now know that Jesus is the Christ, and so he begins to teach them what it means to be the Christ.

It means to suffer, be rejected, then be killed.

This is the way of Jesus.

And it's not at all what they had imagined.

They'd probably been wondering for some time now: is Jesus the Messiah?

The one sent to rescue God's people?

And they finally been led into the secret.

Yes! It's him! He's here, and we're with him, we're his disciples.

Only immediately Jesus begins to show them the implications, suffer.

Rejected, betrayed, killed.

And friends, this is where Peter starts to get it wrong.

He's not really listening to Jesus, is he?

If you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you've got to listen to Jesus.

Got to actually pay attention to what he's saying, hear what he has to say, not just hear what you want to hear, but hear what he actually has to say, what he's actually saying, and it is so easy, isn't it, to not pay attention?

But we've got to pay attention.

Otherwise, we'll just run off in front of Jesus with our own narrative of what we assume things will be like, what we've imagined it'll be like, and what we want to hear.

If I might make an educated guess, that's what the disciples did.

Or at least Peter.

Big change.

He assumes he knows how it's gonna go.

He's got a narrative in his head for that, he's imagined it, but he hasn't actually listened to what Jesus is actually saying, and he gets out in front of him.

We know this.

Because in verse 2, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.

Peter cannot imagine that Jesus, the Messiah, might have to suffer, be rejected, and killed.

That's not how he imagined the season was going to go.

And yet, and yet, after all this, Peter's got to be thinking.

God's Christ has come.

Didn't he come to end suffering?

Not to endure it?

Didn't he come to win?

Not to lose?

Peter's got the confession right, but he has absolutely no clue as to what the way of Jesus will really look like beyond that.

He's got his narrative for the future, but he's not paying attention to what Jesus is actually saying.

Bold move, Peter, correcting the son of the living God.

What's interesting to me is that he seems to miss entirely what Jesus has to say about the resurrection.

Do you notice that?

He's so locked in on the suffering, the rejection, the killing, that he doesn't ask about the rising on the third day bit, which actually, if I think about it, actually makes sense to me.

And so human.

Peter can imagine, kind of at least, suffering and persecution and death, just as he can imagine victory and happily ever after.

What he can't imagine is why the Messiah needs to suffer and die.

And so he gets stuck on the bad, and the way it contradicts the narrative he had about happily ever after in the future.

Because of that, he can't even begin to imagine another way like a resurrection.

He doesn't have a framework for it.

He doesn't even think to ask.

He just goes straight to correcting the Son of God.

He's so stuck, he's so stuck on the hard thing that he doesn't understand that he doesn't even think to ask Jesus what he might be doing in the hard thing.

No, this is so like us, isn't it?

We get stuck on the hard thing.

We get tunnel vision.

We forget to lift up our heads and ask Jesus, what are you doing in this?

God's teaching perhaps challenges us in some way.

It pushes against what we desire or what we've always imagined.

So we go our own way, we get out in front of him, we defend our own impulses or actions, convinced that we know better than God.

Almost every commentary I consult this past week as I was studying said the same thing.

We are Peter.

Like individually, each of us are Peter.

The church.

We are Peter.

The leaders of the church.

We're Peter.

One second full of faith and conviction.

The very next, daring to believe we know better than God.

The church is Peter.

I'm Peter.

I get wrong.

Jesus has strong words for him.

Look at verse 23.

Turn to but he turned, Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me Satan.

A little bit of whiplash here.

One second Peter is blessed and chosen.

And the very next he is Satan.

One second he's the rock, rock, stumbling rock.

And do you notice what Jesus says to Peter?

You got a Bible open in your lap, underline it.

Get behind me.

You don't have to underline Satan.

This is God's gracious discipline and correction in Peter's law.

Would you scribble Matthew chapter four?

Matthew chapter four is the very first words Peter hears from Jesus.

Do you remember what those words are?

Come and follow me to get behind me.

Come and follow me.

A disciple's place is following him, even and perhaps especially when we have no idea what the future looks like, when we can't imagine, when we can't see the implications of our decisions, of what lies right in front of us.

Of course, of course, of course, Peter doesn't know what he doesn't know, what he ought to know.

What Jesus is reminding him.

And what's illustrative for us is that to be a disciple of Jesus means to follow Jesus.

Friends, we've got to stay behind Jesus.

If we get out in front of him, we'll get it wrong.

Now we should probably talk a little bit about Jesus calling Peter, who he just called blessed in the rock, Satan.

Can we do that for just a second?

Perhaps, I don't know, that seems a little strong, maybe.

But maybe not, if you understand what Peter is tempting Jesus to.

Because it's the same thing to which Satan tempted himself to Jesus back in the desert again in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

So if you've got a Bible open your lap, you're the type that scribbles in the margins again, Matthew chapter 4, 8 to 10.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Here's the situation.

Jesus has gone to the desert, he's fasted for 40 days, and then Satan comes to tempt him.

You know the story?

First he tempts him with food.

Then he tempts him to demonstrate his authority over the angels in heaven, which Jesus will come back to at the end of this passage.

And then in verse eight, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And the devil Satan said to him, All these I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.

That's Matthew 4, verse 9.

Matthew 4:9

And Jesus says to him, Have we heard this before?

For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

I will give you the world, Satan offers, if you'll just worship me.

Of course, the world belongs to God.

It's not Satan's to give.

So what's the temptation here?

The temptation to Jesus is to be a king without a cross.

The temptation is to claim the world as his own without walking the road of suffering.

But as we saw right here in today's text from that time, Jesus began to show his disciples what?

That he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

Peter took him aside, began to rebuke him, saying, Surely, Lord, far be it from you, this shall never happen.

And Jesus turned to Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, you're a hindrance to me, for you're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Peter is tempting Jesus to a kingdom without a cross, just as Satan did.

He's tempting him to be a king without a cross, to claim the world as his own, the Messiah, without walking the road of suffering.

He's so focused on victory, on the ends, that he finds himself opposed to Christ's means.

Gripped even in the Greek, on a future that he imagines rather than on the things of God.

He's got his own narrative for what his future and the Messiah's will look like.

So I've got to ask, what is your mind set on?

What are you gripped by?

Your own concerns or the things of God?

Are you asking God what his narrative is for you?

Or do you already have it all mapped out?

Last week we saw how Christocentric Peter was.

The Christ, Son of the Living God, he declared.

Now hear me when I say this.

It doesn't matter how high a view of Jesus you might hold, if you're unwilling to walk the way of the cross.

You can have all of the theology right, buttoned up neatly.

You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

And if you're unwilling to walk the way of Jesus, to walk the way of the cross, you kind of get it.

It's all wrong.

To walk the way of Jesus, as uncomfortable or confusing or seemingly upside down as it may be.

Jesus, Jesus is so gracious.

He's so gracious.

Verse 24 tells us that he turns to his disciples, including presumably Peter, and he extends an invitation, starting in verse 24.

If anyone would, and as the church father John Chrysostom notes, one could translate the word would here as wants.

If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

If anyone wants to come after me behind me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

Come after me.

To Peter, get back behind me.

Let me set the course.

And in that, learn the way that I must walk, the way of the cross.

Friends, to be a disciple of Jesus means to walk Jesus' way.

It means a reordering of priorities, making decisions the world might not quite understand.

It means following, it means sacrifice.

And it comes at quite a cost.

Because it means the cross.

Whoever would save his life will lose it, verse 25.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The way the cross seems to be upside down.

You win by losing, you gain by giving yourself away.

It's not upward mobility like the world might tell us, but it's downward mobility.

It's the way of humility for the sake of others.

It's cruciform, dying to self, giving your life away.

But it's also the way of eternity.

Look at verse 26.

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

This is the promise, Satan's promise in the desert, the whole world, at the expense of a soul.

Kingdom without a cross.

Or what shall it a man give in return for his soul?

This is what Jesus asks for.

All he asks for is your life.

Verse 27, for the Son of Man is going to come with his angels.

There you go.

Satan tempted him with that all the way back in the beginning in the desert.

Call down your angels.

No, it's not time yet, Jesus says.

Angels will come, my terms, my way.

Son of man is going to come, verse 27 tells us, with his angels and the glory of his father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

It can be so easy to focus on the present moment, the current predicament, and forget where we're headed.

Focus on what we say we believe about Jesus without actually following him.

The way of the disciple, the way of the cross.

And on the other side of the cross, Jesus is reminding his disciples in verse 27 is Jesus' resurrection, which he's been telling them about, and eventually his triumphant return.

That's what he's speaking of in verse 27.

The day he will come again.

But Jesus deals in eternity.

Declaration that Jesus is your Savior is the starting line, not the finish line.

Eternity is the finish line.

And the way the discipleship is the middle, and the middle is the race.

And here in verse 27, Jesus promises to come again and make everything right.

This is it.

What he's saying right here, it's the same thing that we say every week.

We believe the mysteries of faith.

Christ, Christ, and Christ.

That's right.

The cross, the resurrection, and his return in glory to judge the living and the dead and to make everything right.

What Peter and the disciples don't quite understand yet, and will spend a lifetime figuring out, is that if a confession of faith is the starting line, and eternity is the finish line, then the race itself is the life of discipleship.

A life spent following Jesus.

The race itself is the way of the cross.

The way of the cross.

So for you and for me, the same invitation that Jesus extended to the disciples has been extended to us.

Jesus says, Come and follow me.

I'll make you fishers of men.

Come and follow me.

And I will teach you the way of the cross.

Come and follow me.

We're going to go lower.

We're going to give ourselves away.

It'll probably mean suffering.

It might mean rejection.

It will certainly mean death.

Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.

But it also means resurrection and then eternal life.

So if I might sum it up for us really quickly, three brief points.

We've got to listen to the voice of Jesus.

Got to hear what he's saying.

Ask when we're uncertain what it means.

We've got to stay behind him.

Let him set the course for our lives and our life together.

And we've got to let him teach us to be a people who walk in the way of the cross together.

Will you stand and pray with me?

Gracious God, I am Peter.

I get it right one second, confess my faith freely and boldly, and in the very next I blow it.

That's how we are.

And so, gracious God, I pray that you would send your Holy Spirit on us afresh, empowering us to follow you.

Where we've gotten out in front of you, gracious God, would you kindly and gently rebuke us that we might repent, get back behind you?

Would you help us by the power of your Holy Spirit to listen to what you're actually saying?

To follow the course that you've set.

Would you give us your imagination for the future?

Oh, and would you teach us together to walk in the cruciform way of Jesus until he comes again.

All things we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.