Sermon Transcript
Mark 8:27-38. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked the disciples, who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others one of the prophets. And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, you are the Christ.
And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them, 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 after 3 days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
When Jesus’ disciples, and particularly Peter, heard what Jesus said in today’s passage, it elicited both much excitement and much confusion, even anger. Because on the one hand, Jesus confirms, yes, He is the Christ, which provoked much excitement. They believed their wildest hopes would be imminently fulfilled. But then on the other hand, Jesus says the Son of God, or the Son of Man, must die. Must.
In other words, His death is absolutely necessary, which elicited much confusion And in Peter, rage might be the right word. When Peter responds to Jesus, it’s extremely strong language. Because in the mind of the disciples, these concepts are mutually exclusive. If Jesus is the Son of Man, then he can’t die. His kingdom’s supposed to have no end.
That’s Daniel 7. So if he does die, then he’s not the Christ, the Son of Man. Which means even halfway through the book of Mark here, and even with Peter’s accurate confession, that Jesus is the Christ, the disciples don’t yet have the complete picture of what was going on, what Jesus came to do and how he was going to do it. They were missing it. So as we study this passage, let us pray that we don’t fall into Peter’s same error.
Lord, help us to see who is the Christ, why he must die, and how his death changes us. That’s where we’re headed today. Who is the Christ? Why must he die? And how his death changes us.
So first, who is the Christ? It’s hard to understate the significance or power of the Christ figure in Israel’s scriptures. The Christ is the person who will end evil, institute perfect justice, across the entire world and even bring total harmony and peace to nature itself. The Christ ends evil, brings justice, restores creation. He actually does a good bit more than that, but we only have so much time.
So first, he ends evil. As far back as the account in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time, God said he would send someone who would crush evil’s someone who would totally end the presence of all evil on the earth. And that promise has repeated itself in various ways throughout the Old Testament. This person would make all wickedness cease. God’s people would be delivered from every oppressor, from every injustice, from all corruption.
No force of darkness would prevail in the end, and it is the Messiah who will bring that deliverance. You know, at Christmas we sing O Holy Night. Actually, Laura sings it, praise God. And one of the lines is speaking of Jesus, right? Truly he taught us to love one another.
His law is love and his gospel is peace. You remember this song? Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression, all oppression shall cease. When we sing those words, our hearts stir with hope, right? Why?
Because we know that’s how the world ought to be. As far-fetched as it seems, we know all oppression should cease. We know all evil should end. We know the world shouldn’t have a one drop of wickedness in it, like zero, even though that seems impossible. I mean, imagine not needing locks on doors.
Imagine no police officers or lawyers. Imagine you could welcome any stranger into your home. Anyone could watch your kids, anyone. You’d have no fear of neighbor whatsoever. You could drop all your self-protective behaviors.
You could be completely vulnerable with everyone about everything all the time without worrying about how anyone would use that knowledge against you. A world without evil is hard to conceive, but at the same time we long for that world. And one day it will be here. The Christ will end evil. But the Christ doesn’t just set up a world where there is no more evil going forward.
He brings perfect justice for all the evil that has happened in the past. All the wrongs of history are held accountable and set right. It’s all over the place in the Old Testament, but if you’re studying at home, check Isaiah 11, Isaiah 42, where the Christ brings a perfect kind of justice to the entire world. World. So he’s not like even the best earthly judges who have to discern through opposing accounts of what happened and just kind of hope they can sort it out.
He’s not like that. The Christ knows fully what happened, and he’s not swayed by any allegiance or bribe. He is not loyal to any tribe. He is only loyal to what is right and true and good and fair. And that is the kind of grand reckoning that he will bring to the earth.
No one will get away with anything in the end. Every hidden evil will be brought to light. No one will be able to buy their way off or sway public opinion in their favor. Every motive will be laid open. Everyone will get exactly what they deserve.
Now, when you cry out for justice to be done, isn’t that what you’re asking for?
That the wickedness in the world will be held accountable? That the bad guys can’t just hire better lawyers to escape judgment? Don’t you want that? If you are someone who claims to care about justice, you should be thrilled for Judgment Day. You should be waiting for it with eager anticipation.
But you probably aren’t, are you? You probably aren’t thrilled for Judgment Day. A couple reasons for that, one now, one later. Because one— the one now, as passionate as modern Westerners are about justice, we seem to hate the idea of divine justice. Judgment.
Often in the modern West, people here believe that everyone, don’t they, believe that people should be able to define right and wrong for themselves, correct? We just do whatever we want as long as we don’t hurt anybody, that’s what we think, right? And how dare any of us judge, how dare any of us be judged for how we live our lives. There shouldn’t be absolute standards that apply to all of us. We can choose our own path.
Right and wrong is in the eye of the beholder. That’s what many in the West think. But respectfully, I’ll just— I’ll point out to you, because maybe you haven’t thought it through. If everyone can define right and wrong for themselves, then the very idea of justice or injustice has no meaning What I believe is unjust, you might think is right and good. You think it’s the way the world ought to be.
And if we’ve just said that everyone can determine their own right and wrong, then how can I say that you’re being unjust? You think it’s fine. I mean, for instance, take it out of our context— women’s rights in the Middle East. Who are we to judge them? Can’t they determine their own truth?
How can we call what they are doing is unjust if they think it’s great, right? What standard would we appeal to if there is no such thing as a universal standard that applies to all of us? It’s just Western ideals versus their ideals. We can’t say they’re objectively wrong because there’s no such thing. All we have is our opinion and they have theirs.
Which means there is no real justice that applies to everyone. There is only relative justice. I hope you see the problem. We can’t simultaneously bewail injustice and at the same time say that right and wrong is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn’t work.
It’s one or the other. If you want real justice, if we want justice to mean something more than just our opinion, And we do. We may as well admit that, right? We want oppressors to be penalized regardless of whether or not they think what they are doing is okay. We want to be able to say, I don’t care if you think what you are doing is acceptable.
I don’t care. It isn’t acceptable.
If we want to be able to say that, and we do, then we need a divine, universal kind of judgment with objective standards. And the Christ brings it. He brings real justice to the world. So, he ends evil, he brings justice. Thirdly, the Christ brings harmony even to creation.
Again, this Isaiah 11, among other places, where the wolf lays down with the lamb, the child plays near the the midst of the cobra. Creation will be so vibrant that even in Psalm 98, rivers clap their hands, mountains sing, the seas join the chorus when the Messiah comes. He brings that level of harmony to the earth. And I know, like, with our kind of scientific snobbery, we immediately think those images are only metaphorical. We think they are only symbols of maybe how content we will feel.
Okay, and that might be true. They might only be symbols, but I’m not so sure because think about it. Even in our broken world, trees, they grow toward light. If they are starved of access to the sun, they’ll grow much slower. They look almost sickly compared to trees that that have access to open skies.
Plants thrive when they’re cultivated with the right water and soil. Their blooms are more vibrant, their fruit more delicious. Like, we see that already.
So imagine if plants and trees not only had good light and soil, but what if they could bask in the glory of the true light of the Creator himself? And drink the living water that comes from his throne, what would they do then?
The idea of singing and clapping may not be as metaphorical as we assume. Romans 8 talks about how all creation is currently groaning, and if you pay attention, you can kind of hear it, right? Nature is red with tooth and claw. It’s a struggle. Life is violent for, for all of us.
It’s painful. Painful, chaotic fight for survival. There is a groaning. But when Creator returns, Jesus says the rocks can cry out. Creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.
Also Romans 8. The struggle will end. So what will that sound like? Singing? Maybe.
Might not be metaphorical when Messiah comes. That’s the Christ. He ends evil, he institutes justice, he brings harmony to creation itself. So when Peter said, Jesus, you are the Christ, that’s the Christ that’s in his mind. Peter’s expectations of where this whole Jesus movement is going could not be higher.
His excitement would have been through the roof when Jesus confirmed, yes, I am the Christ. But Jesus was about to deflate the balloon. Because while Peter has a totally solid understanding of what the Christ will do, he is completely blind to how the Christ would do it. Peter never expected to hear Jesus say, I must die.
But in Peter’s defense, it is quite jarring, isn’t it? Even in just the little time we’ve spent with the topic today, we probably wouldn’t assume such a magnificent figure and hope for the world must die. Like, how could the Christ accomplish everything he was supposed to accomplish if he was dead? That’s why Peter rebukes Jesus so forcefully. Like, how’s the world going to be put back together?
How are you going to institute justice? How are you going to end evil if you are dead? It was confusing to them, to say the least. But the phrase Jesus really— the phrase Jesus uses really is must die. The Son of Man must die, which means Jesus isn’t only saying something like he could see the writing on the wall.
You know, the political powers of his day were getting more and more more agitated with him. And he, he knows if he’s a threat to those who hold power, eventually they’re just going to use their power to take him out. Jesus is not saying that. He does not only say he will die or his death is inevitable— that’s not the word he uses. He says, I must die.
I have to. My death is needed. If I don’t die, something absolutely crucial will not happen. So what is that? What won’t happen if he doesn’t die?
Again, more than we can say in one day, but just to tie it to what we’ve already said, if Jesus doesn’t die, he won’t end evil, he won’t institute justice, he won’t bring harmony to creation. His death is actually necessary for each one of those because his death defeated the powers of evil, paid the the debt we owe and even restores creation. Defeated the powers of evil, paid the debt we owe, and restores creation. We’ll take those one at a time too. Jesus’ death defeated the powers of evil.
In Colossians 2 it says Jesus’ death defeated the principalities of this world, speaking of evil forces. That’s verse 15 of Colossians 2. It says he disarmed them, made a public spectacle of them, and triumphed over them by the cross, which is like deliberately contradictory. How could you triumph over something by being tortured and executed? It’s the op— like, it triumphed over you, right?
But he’s saying no, the cross, this brutal torture and execution, provided some kind of victory to disarm and make a spectacle of evil powers, or embarrass them for lack a better word.
That probably means a lot of things too, but it at least means, or it at least happens, that Jesus wins, or when Jesus wins by giving himself up, by becoming powerless, when he does that, he breaks the illusion that evil uses to say that victory can only be achieved through domination. Evil will always entice us to power up and decimate opposition in order to win. Evil says that’s the only way to win, actually. And that’s what Peter thought. That’s why Peter gets mad at Jesus.
Peter had these grandiose and correct ideas of what the Messiah would do. I mean, Peter rightly believes Messiah will defeat evil, institute justice, reign over the whole world. But Peter believes believes the only way to accomplish those dreams is for Jesus to go to Jerusalem and take it by force, overthrow the occupying government, squash the opposition into dust, and then sit on the throne, and then the nations will come and bow. Peter thinks Jesus must win by winning. It’s inconceivable that Jesus could accomplish what the Messiah was supposed to accomplish by dying Peter believes Jesus must power up, not power down.
And in response, Jesus tells Peter, get behind me, Satan, which is about as strong of a rebuke that Jesus could deliver. Get behind me, Satan. Probably doesn’t mean that Peter was literally possessed, but Peter is operating in the mindset of the powers and principalities of the world. Peter is thinking like evil thinks. The only path toward victory is by obliterating the enemy, by outpowering the enemy.
And Jesus says that is not the way. Jesus says my victory is won by giving myself up, by serving others, even my enemies, surrendering literally everything I have. That’s how I win.
Win. And Jesus’ way worked.
Christ does win. All nations do or will bow to him, but not because he outpowered them, but because he died for them. This is Philippians 2. It says Christ took the nature of a servant, became obedient to death, even death on the cross, and therefore, therefore it says, God raised Jesus to the name above every name. That is why every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.
Because he lost is a totally different path toward victory. Jesus’ name is not above every other name because he pulverized his enemies into submission. That is not why he was raised to the name above every name. It’s because he lowered himself all the way to death on a cross. This is Philippians 2.
You can read Read it if you’re not familiar. And when Jesus won that way, it proved, so to speak, that we don’t have to squash our enemies in order to defeat our enemies. Evil’s mindset and thinking was disproven. It was disarmed. It was embarrassed.
It was exposed as faulty. The truth is we can win by losing.
Because if Jesus could win by going to the cross of all places, and he did, he did win, then there is no level of servitude so low that can’t also produce a victory for us. So whatever battle you are facing, if you get down on your knees and serve the opposition, it’ll actually be far more effective and life-giving than just getting a bigger sword sword and trying to outpower the opposition.
Okay, so Jesus defeated the powers of evil by breaking their spell that victory can only come through domination. Second, Jesus’ death pays the debt we owe. As much as we may cry out for justice upon our enemies, if God really brought perfect justice to the earth, it causes a problem for us. Because it’s not only our enemies who are guilty of all kinds of wrongs. We are guilty too.
And it’s actually probably why we contend so passionately that everyone can determine their own right and wrong. It’s probably why we push so hard against the idea of judgment. It’s probably why we don’t like it. We don’t like the idea of a judge coming because deep down we know that we are wrong, that we have been wrong, that we are guilty. And if every wrong in the history of the world is going to be held accountable, then we will be held accountable too.
We will owe for our sins, and that is a problem for us. The question is, what is God going to do about it? Is he going to make us pay what we owe, or will he forgive us? Which means, of course, that then he must pay the debt that we owe. It will be one or the other.
Either we pay or he pays. Because we have created an offense, someone must pay. Has to. Now, if that bothers you, you for some reason that you owe God and there needs to— there’s a debt that needs to be paid. Just forget about God for a minute, okay?
Think about any other relationship. Anytime anyone offends anyone else, payment is required. Someone must bear the cost of the offense whenever there is any offense, always. When someone wrongs you, just think about it, when someone wrongs you, especially if it’s really significant, a sense of debt is created. You feel like they owe you something because of how they’ve wronged you, and they do owe you.
So either they need to pay it or you will forgive them, which means really, of course, you pay it, right? I mean, if they damage or destroy some material object of yours, they stain your favorite shirt, It’s ruined. What needs to happen? They either need to buy you a new shirt, maybe get it cleaned if that’s possible, in which case what? They are paying for their offense.
Or you can say, I forgive you. But then what happens? You have to pick up the bill. You have to pay in order to forgive. And even if it’s not material, if it’s maybe more emotional, they’ve ruined your career or your reputation, they’ve slandered you, you.
I hope I don’t trigger anybody thinking about somebody who’s hurt you. Maybe they’ve offended you in some way. Someone’s robbed you of happiness somehow and you’re bitter for what they have done to you, right? Just like the shirt, you have the same sense that they owe you for what they’ve taken from you because they do. A debt is created.
And again, you have the same choices. You can make them pay, you can retaliate, you can try to ruin their career or reputation, you can try to inflict suffering on them in some way, you know, eye for an eye, you tell everyone else what they did to you, you try to build a coalition of people who hate that guy as much as you do, right? You’re taking revenge, you’re collecting the debt.
But warning, if you go that way, it’ll slowly eat away at your soul and then turn you into someone that you don’t want to be. Not to mention you will be prone to take more vengeance than, you know, the equitably eye for an eye. There will be an impulse for you to take more from them than what they took from you. You’ll raise the stakes even higher and then the original offender will retaliate against you and now we’re Montagues and Capulets. But it’s an option, right?
They pay, Or you can forgive them. But if you do, and you have had to have experienced this, if you forgive them for something really big that they’ve done for you, the debt doesn’t just go into the air.
There’s a real sense in which you pay or carry the debt they created because every time you would want to make a snide comment or have an opportunity, or you have an opportunity to ruin their career career or their reputation, every time you feel a need to collect the debt and you really want to do it because they deserve it, if you’re forgiving them, you just swallow it.
It takes work not to tell others what a terrible person that guy is. It feels like you’re losing something. ‘Cause you are. You’re paying their offense and you’re suffering for it. There’s no way around it.
Whenever there’s an offense, someone is going to pay through suffering. It’s Hebrews 9:22, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Someone is always going to bear the pain of the offense, always. It’s true in our personal relationships, it’s true in every religion, Right? I mean, karma, of course, is you pay your debt in this life or the next life.
But in Christianity, God pays. We owe, he pays. Jesus paid through his life on the cross so that you can be forgiven, so that you don’t suffer for your offense as you deserve when he brings justice to the earth.
Earth. So we’ve seen Jesus’ death defeats the powers of evil, it pays the debt we owe, and thirdly, Jesus’ death restores creation from the consequences of sin. The consequence of sin is death, Romans 6:23. Sin always means death, and we’ve all experienced that to some level. Lying means the death of what?
A relationship. Stealing might mean what? The death of trust in a community. Something is always really lost when we sin. Something dies.
And that consequence is never limited only to ourselves. There’s actually no such as one of kind of the delusions of the enemy. There is no such thing as a private sin ever. Our sin and its consequences get all over everyone else always. And in Scripture we learn that the consequences of our sin, the spread of death has gotten all over the world.
The world, as we said earlier, is in bondage to decay, Romans 8:21. Creation itself is bound up in our corruption. When humanity decided to walk away from God, when we decided to walk away from life and we walked away from goodness, we left those things, then of course if we abandon life and goodness then what we found was decay, darkness, and destruction. But those consequences didn’t just affect us. It affected everything.
We haven’t just tainted ourselves with death. We have tainted everything. Death is the largest certainty in our universe. Every human faces it. Every animal.
Every plant. Every planet. Every sun. It’s impossible to conceive creation without death. Like a fish can’t conceive a world without water, it’s hard for us to picture a world without death.
And yet, like with evil, our hearts tell us there is something wrong with death. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Death is more than just sad. We feel like there’s something broken with the whole system. We get angry over it, particularly if someone we love deeply passes away, right?
At that funeral, we don’t just say, Well, death is an inevitable part of the human experience. No, we don’t say that, right? We like rage against it. I was reading an Arnold Schwarzenegger interview recently, and I can’t give you the full quote because if I used his choice of language, I should be fired. But he said something like— and by the way, he doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife, life, so he is not making a spiritual statement at all.
But he said he hates death because he will really miss the stars out of everything. Not to sit with friends, you know, one day that’ll be gone, and to lose having fun, and to going to the gym and pumping it up, and to ride his bike on the beach, and to travel around, and to see interesting things. It’s all over the world. What the bananas?
He’s angry about it.
He senses there’s something wrong with death, not just sad, wrong.
And if you listen to your heart, it’ll tell you the same thing. The world shouldn’t be this way. The system is broken. Your heart tells you that because it’s true. Death is not how it’s supposed to be.
The system is broken. And Jesus, out of his love for us, steps in and takes the consequences of our sin for us. He sucks the poison out of the world, so to speak, onto himself. He takes the bullet for us. For the whole of creation, really, for everywhere the consequences of our sin has spread, he stands in our place and takes our death.
That’s not the end of the story, of course. As Jesus says here in verse 31, he also raises to life again. He reboots the system. He’s the first of a new creation that will not be marked by death. He’s the first of a new creation that is not broken by our sin.
He’s the very first glimpse of the restoration of the entire world, the world that ought to be and the world that one day will be. So there you have it. He had to die to disarm the powers of evil, to prove them wrong. He had to die to pay the debt that we owe. He had to die to remove the consequences of sin sin in order for the restoration of the world to be possible.
Now what does that mean for us? Having seen, witnessed, benefited from his death and resurrection, how now shall we live? Well, he tells us. We take up the cross and follow him. If we have seen him give up everything for us, if we understand he took the penalty of our sin for us, if we see him win by losing for us, the idea is that his death would transform us into a totally different kind of person who joyfully sacrifices for others in similar types of ways.
His death into a new kind of life for our benefit causes our death, so to speak, into a new kind of living for the benefit of others. Our obedience to his example is the result of what he has done for us. We see this all the time in Scripture. We do not follow him in order to get something from him. We follow him because he’s already given us everything.
He has freed us from evil. He has paid the penalty we owe. He has taken the consequences of our again, by losing. And now he says, you go and do that for everyone else. Take your cross, lose.
And then he adds a warning. If we don’t do that, if we revert back to the patterns of this world, if we think we can win by powering up like Peter did, for example, if we forsake the way of the cross and think we can get ahead by forcing our agenda on others, maybe by holding a grudge and not bearing the cost of the offense when somebody hurts us, if we try to win by winning, if we do that, we will lose. Jesus says here, verse 35, if you try to save your life, you will lose it, but if you are willing to lose your life, life, you will save it.
So I wonder, where are we fighting instead of serving?
And I wonder where we feel like we are justified for doing so.
I wonder where we feel like it is necessary to power up in order to win.
It’s probably somewhere.
I’ll confess it’s all over the place in my life. How about you? In your marriage? In your parenting? In our culture wars?
In a work rivalry?
Where do we think we must pummel the other side in order to win?
It always leads to the same place, death.
It isn’t the way of Jesus. And when he sees us doing it, when he sees us trying to justify living that way, like, Jesus, I really need to destroy this other side in order to win, he says, get behind me, enemy Satan. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for Jesus, what he’s willing to do for us. Thank you for the atonement and everything that it accomplished.
Lord, may it actually transform us. May we not only just be inspired by what he did for us, but may we actually take up crosses, Lord, and lose in servitude to others. May we pour everything out even for our enemies, even for those who’ve offended us, even those who deserve— those who deserve to be pummeled, Lord.
May we stand there and shoulder that burden ourselves that we may win like you did.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
