Deo Gloria
Sermon for February 25, 2024
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Mark 8:31-38
Theme: Follow the Savior to the Cross!
- The way he must go to save us
- The way we must go to follow him
March is right around the corner and along with it March Madness. Basketball fans across the country will fill out their NCAA Tournament brackets and then sit glued to their TVs, watching their favorite team and cheering them on, hoping they might make it to the Final 4 or perhaps even win the National Championship. This is what the players and teams have been practicing for all year long, what they have been working for and training for and sweating for: a shot at winning the national championship. This is what coaches spend countless hours preparing for and planning for, trying to come up with just the right plan, the right strategy that will lead their team to victory.
Our heavenly coach, our Savior Jesus, has a strategy too, a winning plan, a plan that is guaranteed to lead his team to victory. Would you like to hear what it is? Follow him to the cross. “You’re kidding, right?” Actually, I’m not. In the verses of our text this morning Jesus makes it abundantly clear that that is the path he is taking, the road that leads to the cross. He also makes it clear that that’s the path his followers must take. Follow the Savior to the Cross!
If you were to stop the average person on the street or if you were to take a poll in the lunch room at work and ask this question: “Who is Jesus Christ?” what kind of answers do you think you would get? A good man? A great teacher? An inspiring religious leader? That’s the question Jesus posed to his disciples in the verses just before our text. He asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”(vv. 27-29)
Peter is the one who answered: “You are the Christ”(v. 29). It was a beautiful confession on Peter’s part. He believed, as did the other disciples, that Jesus was the One, the Savior God had promised, the one they had been waiting for for so many years, the Messiah.
But did they really understand what that meant? Did they really understand what the Messiah’s mission was, what he came into this world to accomplish? Many in those days did not. Many of the Jewish people were looking for a political Savior, an earthly king like King David, someone who could rally the Jewish people and drive out the Romans and make them a free and independent nation once again. They weren’t looking for a spiritual Messiah, someone who could rescue their souls from sin and death and set them free from the power of the devil. So, what about the disciples? Did they understand? Did they realize what Jesus had come to do?
If they didn’t before, they would now. “Jesus began to teach them,” Mark tells us. In very plain and open words Jesus began to explain to them what the game plan was. He made it unmistakably clear to them where he was going, what he—the Messiah—had come to do. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again”(v. 31). “The Son of Man must suffer…” Did you catch that little word? “The Son of Man must suffer…”
Why? Why did Jesus have to suffer? Why did he have to die? Because that was God’s plan to save us. We couldn’t save ourselves. Try as we might we could never be holy as God demands. You and I are sinful. Every day we disobey God’s commands and sin against him. We have fallen far short when it comes to living a holy and righteous life.
The same is true when it comes to paying for all of our sins. What could we possibly offer God? What could we give to God to atone for our sins? Would $1,000,000 take care of it? Or maybe $100 million? Would a million prayers make up for the times I cursed and swore and misused God’s name? Would a million good deeds make up for the times I hurt my spouse or my children by the things I said or did? No matter what we do, we could never pay off the enormous debt of our sin. And besides, the payment God demands is death: “The wages of sin is death.” Would you want to pay that payment? Would you want to suffer death, eternal death in hell?
But somebody had to. Somebody had to pay that payment. Somebody had to suffer the punishment for sin. God is not some great, big wind bag: a God of all talk and no action. Nor is God someone who changes his mind. He is not about to say to us, “Oh, you can’t pay the penalty for your sins? Well, that’s O.K. You don’t have to. I’ll just let you into heaven anyway.” On the other hand, God is a God of love, a God of mercy, a God of grace. And because of his great love for us he designed a plan to save us from our sins. He planned to send a substitute, someone who would take our place and suffer the punishment we deserved, someone who would suffer and die in our place and take all our sins away. That’s what Jesus came to do. He came to accomplish God’s plan. He came to be our substitute, to take our sins upon himself, to suffer many things, to be rejected by the Jewish leaders, and to die on a cross. And Jesus was ready to do it. He was ready to walk that road to Calvary, so that he might suffer and die as our Savior.
But Peter wasn’t. Peter wasn’t ready for Jesus to do that. Mark tells us that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. “Lord, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re our teacher. You’re our leader. You’re the Messiah, our conquering King. You can’t suffer and die. How is that going to help us? What kind of plan is that? Here, why don’t come over here and sit down and rest for a minute? It’s been a long day.” Peter, of course, was looking at things from a human perspective. He didn’t want to see something like that happen to Jesus. He didn’t want to see him suffer. He didn’t want to see him die. He didn’t understand why Jesus would have to do those things. He didn’t understand God’s plan.
But Jesus did. And he rebuked Peter for trying to deter him. “Out of my sight, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men”(v. 33). Jesus understood what Peter did not: that the cross was a vital part of God’s plan, that the cross was not the foolish way to go, or the crazy way to go, but the only way to go, the way he must go if he was going to be our Savior and save us from our sins. And Jesus was ready. He was willing to suffer and die because of his great love for us.
So how about you? Are you ready? Are you willing to go to the way of the cross as a follower of Christ your Savior? “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’”(v. 34). Being a disciple of Christ, being a follower of Jesus Christ, involves the cross. It involves suffering and sacrifice. And it starts with yourself.
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself.” To deny yourself is to swallow your sinful, selfish, human pride and to put Jesus first. To deny yourself is to set aside your desires and your wants and your plans and adopt your Savior’s desires and his wants and his plans. Your sinful nature says, “Me first; what I want, what makes me happy—that’s what really matters.” In following Christ we need to learn to say, “Jesus first, what he wants, what makes him happy—that’s what really matters.” We need to deny ourselves.
“…and take up his cross…” The cross are the things we have to suffer for Jesus’ sake, things we have to suffer because we are followers of Christ. Remember what Jesus told his disciples? “You will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me”(Mt. 24:9). Or remember what Paul told his young co-worker Timothy? “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”(2 Tim. 3:12). As a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, you will face suffering and persecution in this world. You may run into it at school, from classmates or from a professor, who make fun of you for believing in the Bible or for believing that God created the world. You may run into it at work because you try to stand up for what’s right and do what’s right, or maybe because you don’t go out drinking after work with the rest of the guys. You may even run into it at home, from your own family and your own relatives, who do not share your faith in Christ and who ridicule you and put you down for believing in him and for taking time to worship him at church. But the fact is you will run in it. As you follow Jesus your Savior and live your life for him day by day, you will face suffering and persecution. It’s the cross we disciples have to bear.
“…and follow me.” A better translation of the original would be “keep on following me” or “don’t stop following me.” Following Christ is not something we do for just one day or just one week or just one month and then we’re done. Following Christ is something we do every day throughout our lives until the day our Savior takes home to heaven.
That’s what it means to be a disciple, to be a follower of Jesus. It means denying yourself. It means taking up your cross. It means following him for the rest of your life. Are you ready to do that, to follow your Savior to the cross?
Our sinful nature certainly isn’t. Our sinful nature objects: “Do I have to? Do I have to give up my life and my desires and my pleasure? Do I have to deny myself?”
Jesus answers that objection in v. 35: “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Do you have to give up life the way you want it? Do you have to give up your sinful and selfish desires? Do you have to deny yourself and put Jesus first? No. You don’t have to, but recognize what you’ll be giving up, what you’ll be losing: life, eternal life in heaven. On the other hand, if you do deny yourself and your sinful desires, you will be gaining something far better: life, unending life with God.
“Yeah, but is it worth it? If I give up my worldly pleasures and worldly treasures and put God first instead, is it really worth it?” Take a look at what Jesus says in the next two verses: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”(vv. 36+37) Let’s say that you pursued everything that this life has to offer and let’s say that you attained it. You became as rich as Elon Musk and as famous as Taylor Swift and as powerful as President Biden. Let’s say you had it all and enjoyed it all for 30, 40, 50 years; and when you died, your soul went to hell. You forfeited your soul and spent the rest of forever in pain and suffering. What good is it? Or on Judgement Day when you stand before the Judge of heaven and earth, do you think you’ll be able to bargain with God? “Hey, God, if you let me into heaven, I’ll give you $10 million.” Or do you think you’ll be able to convince God to let you into heaven because you were really popular here on earth or because you had 50 people working under you at work? Do you think God will even care? You’ll end up excluded from heaven and spend the rest of forever in hell. And then what good was it?
“O.K. O.K, I’ll deny myself and give up my sinful desires and put Christ first in my life, but that persecution and suffering part—I’m not so sure about that. I don’t like it when people at work put me down or kids at school make fun of me or my own family and friends reject me.”
“If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels”(v. 38). There is no way around it. There is no way around the cross. Shall I be ashamed of the one who gave his life for me? Shall I deny the one who stood up for me, the one who endured mocking and ridicule and rejection for me, the one who went to hell for me so that I might live in heaven with him? How could I? May God give us the courage and the strength to say what the apostle Paul said in Romans, ch. 1: “I am not ashamed of the gospel”—or of Jesus Christ, my Savior—“because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes”(v. 16).
The cross—it’s not the game plan we would have chosen, certainly not the game plan Peter would have chosen, but it is God’s plan, his plan for his Son, our Savior Jesus, and his plan for his followers too. But don’t be fooled by mere outward appearances. The way of the cross is not the path of defeat. It’s the path to victory, to eternal triumph, to the crown of life in heaven. Follow the Savior to the cross. Amen.