Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 16th Chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew: Verses 21–28:
21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of
the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third
day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him,
saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 But
he turned and said to Peter, “Get
behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your
mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24 Then Jesus told
his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if
they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in
return for their life?
27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his
Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not
taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
There are times when I think about how hard it must be to
assign readings for the various days of the church year. I am very thankful for the admirable job that
our church fathers have done in creating the Three Year lectionary that fairly
represents the teachings of the Bible on a year by year basis focusing on
different Gospels each year. At the same
time, we should also remember that every reading happens within a context. There is the context of the rest of the book
… the context of the Bible as a whole … and the context of the culture of the
author and the original audience of the book.
The Gospel reading for today has even more to teach us when we consider
it as a continuation of the Gospel we heard last week.
Last week, we heard that marvelous confession by Peter: “You
are the Christ, the Son of the God who lives.”
You may recall that Jesus praised God the Father for revealing this
special confession to Peter. Then Jesus
sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone about this confession. As we read the rest of the Gospel accounts,
we learn that Jesus regularly told people to keep His identity to
themselves. It almost seems as though
Jesus did not want people to know that He was the promised Messiah or Christ. This particular instruction puzzles many
people. Why wouldn’t Jesus want people
to know His true identity? Why did He
strongly warn people not to tell others about Him?
Today, we hear the answer to that question. Peter got the words right when he confessed
that Jesus is the Christ, but he obviously did not know what those words
meant. If you read last week’s Gospel
and this week’s Gospel together, you understand that right after Peter made
this marvelous confession, Jesus began to
show his disciples 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. Basically, Jesus had heard
this great confession and now He wanted the disciples to understand what it
means to be the Christ. It means suffering,
death, and resurrection. It means taking
our sin onto Himself and carrying it to the cross.
Peter very ably demonstrated that the disciples did not get
it. Peter
took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This
shall never happen to you.” That
word rebuke is just a fancy way of
saying that Peter gave Jesus a stern lecture.
Think about that for just a minute.
Peter is the one whose mouth confessed that Jesus is the Almighty Son of
the living God. Then, just five verses
later, that same Peter is telling-off the Almighty Son of the living God … the
one through whom all things were created.
It becomes very obvious that the title Christ means one thing to Jesus
and something entirely different to Peter.
Jesus lost little time in straightening out Peter’s
theology. He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance
to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the
things of man.” There is a lot going
on in this reply.
First of all, Jesus demonstrates zero tolerance for false
teaching. We live in a world that has
corrupted tolerance into the encouragement of any and every activity that the
sinful mind of man can imagine.
Consenting adults can agree to any activity, and this corrupted form of tolerance requires us to celebrate their
activity no matter how stupid or immoral that activity may be. Jesus is not very politically correct.
Second of all, the reference to Satan is not just a figure
of speech. The devil regularly tempted
Jesus throughout His ministry. The basic
premise of those temptations was for Jesus to take a short cut that allowed Him
to accomplish His mission while avoiding the cross. That is what the temptations in the
wilderness were all about … when the devil offered to crown Jesus as the king
of the entire world if He would simply fall down and worship him. Peter was actually acting as an agent of
Satan by telling-off Jesus for talking about the cross.
There have always been many false teachings in the world and
things are no different today. Most of
the false teachings that seem so new today are really ancient heresies that
have been remarketed with new names and appearances, but the same old
lies. Most of them are wrong ideas about
what it means to be the Christ. Some
teach that Jesus was only a man. Others
teach that Jesus did not become fully human, but only took on the appearance of
a man. Still others teach that Jesus
only appeared to die on the cross. Then
there are those who teach that Jesus did not earn our full salvation on the
cross. Instead, His death on the cross
gave us the power to save ourselves. There
is a wide variety of wacky theological opinions out there. The point is that Satan and his demons continuously
try to deprive us of our salvation by depriving us of a true understanding of
what it means that Jesus is the Christ.
All four Gospel accounts tell us that Jesus often explained
what it means to be the Christ … that he regularly spoke of His suffering and
death. Those same Gospel accounts tell
us that the disciples were unable to understand this meaning until after the
events happened. It was not until after
Jesus rose from the dead that the disciples began to understand what it means
to be the Christ. It was on the day of
His resurrection that [Luke 24:45-46] [Jesus] opened [his
disciples’] minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is
written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the
dead.” It was when they understood
this that Jesus told them, [Acts 1:8] You will receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will
be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to
the end of the earth.” It was after they understood that the Christ
is about suffering, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins that
Jesus sent them as witnesses – that Jesus sent them to tell the world that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
This is the golden thread that forms the tapestry of God’s
Word. This is the key to the right
understanding of Holy Scripture. The Old
Testament points forward to the Christ.
The New Testament tells of the Christ.
The life, suffering, death, and resurrection of the Christ are what make
the Bible a love letter from God that offers forgiveness, life, and salvation
to all mankind.
The devil wants to take this love letter away from us. He continues to work through his agents in
order to tempt us to abandon the Christ.
That is what Jesus was talking about when He said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me.” When Jesus
talks about the cross we bear, He is not talking about the type of hardships
that sin brings to everyone in this world.
He is not talking about illnesses, family squabbles, economic hardships,
injuries and so forth. He is not even
talking about death. Instead, He is
specifically talking about the difficulties that we have simply because we are
Christians.
When we think about the cross that Christians carry, we
often think about the persecution of the church in this world. The violence in the Middle East is just one
example of the persecution of Christ in the world today. Google the Internet website “Voice of the Martyrs” and you will read
testimonies and view pictorial evidence that informs us that Christians regularly
suffer and die for their faith all around the world. There are many nations in this world where
Christianity carries the death sentence by the law of the land. There are other countries where Christianity
is legal, but law enforcement will look the other way if a crime is committed
against a Christian. We in the west have
been fairly blessed to avoid such persecution for now, but at the rate things
are going in this nation, our children and grandchildren may well be asked to
surrender their lives for the sake of the cross.
As bad as all of this is, it is not the most dangerous cross
we face. The most dangerous cross comes
from within. Our own sinful nature works
to convince us that the plan of salvation laid out in the Bible just doesn’t
make sense. It insists that God’s plan
of salvation should conform to our
wants, our desires, our felt needs. Our sinful nature wants to judge itself
according to its own rules and not according to God’s rules. Instead of relying on God’s promises, our
sinful nature wants to judge God. Does
God’s way make me healthy, wealthy, and wise?
Does it make me feel good? Our
sinful nature wants us to forget about what God said and rely on our own
feelings instead. This cross is actually more dangerous than outward
persecution. When we deny the true
meaning of what it means to be the Christ, we reject the very forgiveness,
life, and salvation that Jesus earned for us by being true to His mission as
the Christ … by suffering and then rising from the dead.
The devil used Peter to tempt Jesus to give up the mission
of the Christ. Jesus resisted the
temptation and kept His appointment with the cross. Jesus’ suffering and death earned the
forgiveness of sins for all people. His
resurrection from the dead opened heaven to us all.
After Jesus rose from the dead, He gave Peter and all the
disciples a clear understanding of what it means to be the Christ. On Pentecost, Peter preached the confession
that he received from God the Father Almighty.
He understood it so well that he eventually lost his life on earth for
that confession.
Peter and his fellow apostles suffered much for this
confession and they wrote this confession down so that the church could pass it
down through the generations. Now that
confession is ours. Because Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the Living God, all of us who trust in Him will receive the
eternal gift of heaven from Him. He will
always be with us and we will always be with Him. Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond
all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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