The Way of the Cross

Intro

So last week we ended the first section of Mark..

As I mentioned, Mark is written in three distinct sections...

It really three questions that you can ask that show the sections of Mark’s writing

Who is this man?

Chapters 1-8 are just jammed pack with both the disciples and onlookers to Jesus’ ministry asking who is this guy? Even the wind and waves obey him! Demons obey him…Who is he…Actually the question that

What does it mean for Jesus to be the messiah?

So this is where Jesus will really lay it out to his disciples that he has to die and be raised again

And How does Jesus become king?

This is Holy week and the cross

So today begins A new Section of mark

So up until this point

Jesus calls his disciples Mk 3:13-19, He sends them out with power to cast out demons and cure diseases (Mk 6:7-12)

He has allowed them to be every part of his ministry

He had them help with feeding the 5000 and the 4000

The disciples are really in it now. They have seen things that they can not unsee. Being with Jesus was the most amazing part of their lives

But what the disciples have missed up until this point is a bit of information that we know....

Mark’s editorial notes tell us the reader that Jesus is the messiah, but it isn’t like totally explicitly stated by Jesus just yet,

Mark tells the reader that the Pharisees and Herod are trying to kill Jesus…We know this...

but the disciples do not know this...

So lets get into the text today:

Mark 8:27–30 NIV

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way 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?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

So Jesus takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi....a Roman Pagan outpost...

And in addition to going to this gentile area..If you were a Jew traveling through this area you would have been reminded of the painful historical memories of this area

Just 200 years before Jesus, It was in Caesarea Philippi that Antiochus IV gained a decisive victory over Egypt, causing Palestine to fall to the Seleucids and plunging the whole region into twenty years of war following the Maccabean Revolt in 168 B.C. This was not a high point in Jewish history...

The city was also famous for its sanctuary to Pan). Half man and half goat, Pan was revered as the guardian of flocks and nature and worshiped in a grotto at the foot of Mt. Hermon next to the cave from which one of the three major tributaries of the Jordan River originate.

It is here in the outer regions of paganism and even hostility to Judaism that Jesus is first proclaimed Messiah

So what is happening in this new section of Mark is that Jesus is beginning to walk toward the cross…

And so what is the question he brings up?

Who do people say that I am?

They say…some say John the Baptist…Some say elijah some say one of the prophets

Which in of itself is a huge complement....But thats not who Jesus was

So he asks Peter....But what about you…Who do you say I am?

I want to pause here because Jesus is asking the question of the faith of his disciples...

Jesus asks his disciples who he is at the middle of the Journey not at the end of the journey

Jesus didn't raise from the dead and say…Now who do you think I am…No he asked them when they couldn’t fathom what would come next....

He asks them in the middle of the journey....when his messiahship could still be denied or explained away by other things

And I think that this is a key point…and its your first fill in...

Faith means actively following Jesus on the way

It would have required zero faith of the disciples to say…

“You know what Jesus…I am just going to sit over here and see how this plays out”

And yet for some of you that is what is what your faith life looks like...

You watch your wife follow Jesus

You watch as your kids follow Jesus

You watch as your husband follows Jesus

And you come to church and you see others passionately worship Jesus but your a sideline person you have never pushed all your chips to the middle of the table and gone all in...

Of course you are a christian.....

But following Jesus for you is reactive and not proactive

Because you have a sideline faith not an all in faith

But faith really is following Jesus when you don’t know the outcome…and you're settled in that

In fact it is following Jesus and abandoning the outcomes to him

If you are the kind of person who has to control outcomes then faith is so hard for you…This is what it means to pray...”Not my will but your will Jesus”

Bring your request to Jesus and abandon it at his feet!

I know because in many ways that is me! That has been a struggle for me for years...

I love to define an outcome and achieve it…But because of this I have to be very careful because sometimes living that way means that there is no faith required and that I am living in my own power

And I think we get stuck with this....

It is easy to forge a spectators faith…Where you are just watching from the sidelines...

But real faith is not knowing the outcome of your life and surrendering all outcomes to Jesus!

I think this is why Jesus asks them in the middle of their Journey...

And then Jesus would test their faith with the next thing that he is going to say

Mark 8:31–33 NIV

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

First lets simply acknowledge that while we know how the Jesus story ends…

Every year on Good Friday we tell the story of Jesus’ death on the cross

And every year on Easter Sunday we tell of the victory of the resurrection

We know how the story ends...

But this would have been the first time that the disciples would have heard Jesus talk this way

And I think Peter rebukes him because

maybe its bad for morale among the disciples

maybe it just doesn’t fit his mold of what a messiah does...

Because Peter just had the faith enough to share that Jesus was the messiah

and now Jesus is re-defining messiahship

Not only has Jesus not fit the cultural idea of what a messiah is but he defines what it means to be messiah in a completely scandalous way

Now while Jesus will ultimately have victory over death and he plainly tells his disciples this The meaning of his life will be suffering on behalf of others

Jesus really sums this up with “the son of man must suffer many things”

And if you remember back to the sermon where I unpacked the phrase, Son of Man....There is no mention in Daniel 7 of the son of man suffering and dying…just reigning victorious over the nations...

So this has to be so confusing to the disciples

The prediction of Jesus’ passion conceals a great irony, for the suffering and death of the Son of Man will not come, as we would expect, at the hands of godless and wicked people.

The Theologian James Edwards points out:

The suffering of the Son of Man comes rather at the hands of “the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law.”

It is not humanity at its worst that will crucify the Son of God but humanity at its absolute best

The death of Jesus will not be the result of a momentary lapse or aberration of human nature, but rather the result of careful deliberations from respected religious leaders who will justify their actions by the highest standards of law and morality, even believing them to render service to God (John 16:2).

Jesus will not be lynched by an enraged mob or beaten to death in a criminal act. He will be arrested with official warrants, and tried and executed by the world’s envy of jurisprudence—the Jewish Sanhedrin and the principia iuris Romanorum.

So Jesus now lays a new foundation for his disciples…That he will suffer and somehow this is all good!

In all of this look at Mark 8:32

Mark 8:32 NIV

He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

He spoke plainly about this

The word used for plainly means, boldly or confidently

Jesus was resolute in saying that this would happen

Then it says that Peter began to rebuke…If you like interesting literary things in the bible then circle the word began and then go up to verse 31 and circle the word began again...

Jesus began to teach: He is beginning the arduous task of now revealing to the disciples that he had to die

And Peter began to rebuke: Peter is just beginning what al the disciples would do…and they deny that Jesus had to die

With these two words we see this split that begins to happen...

Jesus had to die…The disciples will try and control the outcomes!

So the use by Mark of the word “Rebuke” is the same word that is used when Jesus expels demons out of people…so there is this interesting thing happening in the text...

Peter rebukes Jesus as if he has a demon

It’s as if Jesus captures the rebuke of Peter and flips it around on him

and he says get behind me satan!

Jesus rebuked Satan in the wilderness in the same words with which he rebukes Peter here.

I think this is what is happening in this situation:

Peter plays God rather than follows Jesus

So this is your next fill in

When disciples play God rather than follow Jesus, they inevitably become satanic

We don’t get to make God over in our own image…We don’t get to tell Jesus what kind of work he is going to do in our life

We get to follow the messiah, not become the messiah

We can not overlay our plan on Jesus’ life…Faith is following Jesus on the way to the cross

Following Jesus in the midst of difficulty

Following Jesus when it is hard to do

Let’s keep moving through the text

Mark 8:34–9:1 NIV

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”

So Jesus has just privately explained to the disciples that he has to die and now he is explaining to a large crowd that if you want to follow me you have to deny yourself…take up a cross and follow me....

He speaks paradoxically and says if you try to save your life you will lose it…but if you give up your life then you will find true life

And then he says hey if your too ashamed of me to do this then I will be ashamed of you too!

WOW we need to unpack all of this!

Context Then

Jesus’ message here is so difficult in todays world and especially in his world...

First of all, Peter is probably writing the book of Mark during the Emperor Nero’s reign who was famous for crucifying christians

In fact there was a huge fire in Rome that was devastating…It was probably started by Nero but the Christians were hated so Nero put out this propaganda that it was the Christians trying to bring down Rome and as a result Nero rounded up many christians and hung them on poles in his garden

He would have lavish dinner parties where christians were burned alive in the garden

So when Peter and Mark are writing this story down they fully understood what Jesus was saying about taking up your cross and following Jesus...

Christians were dying left and right!

In Jesus day the cross was not Jewelry that you wore around your neck

the cross was an instrument of cruelty, pain, dehumanization, and shame.

The cross symbolized hated Roman oppression and was reserved for the lowest social classes.

It was the most visible and omnipresent aspect of Rome’s terror apparatus, designed especially to punish criminals and quash slave rebellions

So Jesus is saying if you want life that is truly life…then you have to lay your life down first...

you have to be willing to follow me to difficult places!

Jesus says to join him on the way to execution

Because it is in that act of self denial that you will find life that is truly life

Bridged Context (REEL)

To deny yourself and take up your cross was just as true 2000 years ago and it is true now

And this is more a revolutionary message now than it ever has been

Notice how Jesus doesn’t say, Celebrate yourself take up your cross and follow me?

Jesus doesn't say affirm yourself and follow me

He doesn't say indulge yourself and your ever desire

He doesn't say promote yourself and then follow me

Become the center of your own universe

indulge yourself

Work hard, play harder

This is such a hard message today because our kids have been told in school that the highest value is that they embrace themselves...

TV, Media, the school system, the government is relentlessly pouring into your kids from every direction and the message that they are sending is “embrace yourself”

And parents don’t hear me wrong, your kids should have good self esteem, they should love themselves

But they shouldn’t get everything they want in life!

Do your realize how hard it is going to be for your kids to deny themselves and follow Jesus if you keep on giving them everything they want?

See as a good parent you can not give into every whim of your kids…

Parents unintentionally and quite lovingly lead their kids astray when they do this....They quite unintentionally show their kids that they never need to deny themselves and follow Jesus

But who we are without Jesus is sinful in need of the cross

Our world is relentless on this message!

Jesus never called us to embrace ourselves but to deny ourselves

It is only through denying yourself that you can walk in an unashamed way with Jesus.

to deny the sinful desires of the flesh

Embrace your true self is the message our kids have been getting since kindergarten

SO how hard is it going to be for them to deny themselves.

Parents you need to be the counter culture and counter revolution…you need to model to your kids what it means to deny yourself

Husbands in your relationship with your wife, deny yourself and follow Jesus

Wives…in your relationship with your husband, deny yourself and follow Jesus

You need to help your kids deny themselves by not giving them everything that they want…its bad for them

Our kids have been bombarded with with a message since kindergarten that is a lie…Embrace your true self…Because your true self is sinful in need of the savior

When confronted by the call to discipleship, we do not have a “both … and” choice—both Christ and our own lives.

we stand before an “either … or” choice.

The claim of Jesus is a total and exclusive one. It does not allow a convenient compartmentalization of natural life and religious life, of secular and sacred.

The whole person stands under Christ’s claim.

So maybe you are here today and there are a few things that are true of you:

Maybe you have had a sideline faith and not an all in faith....Sure you come to church…but you don’t take up the cross

Sure you come to church but your not willing to follow Jesus into the difficult places

Or maybe your a christian and you fall into another trap…You’d rather play God than follow Jesus…Its a fun intellectual exercise for you to think about God and what God might do or what God should do rather than actively taking up your cross and following Jesus

Or maybe you are he and this is the first time it has really clicked for you that in order to follow Jesus it isn't about embracing yourself it is about denying yourself.

I think the only real thing to invite you all today is to the cross

Everything today can be summed up in one meal

This meal is called communion

it was given by Jesus to his disciples to to remind them of everything that Jesus would go through

The apostle Paul talks about this meal and says no one should take it in an unworthy manner…and what he was talking about was that you need to be in right relationship with Jesus to take this meal...

So maybe your here today before we take it

and your on the sidelines of faith...

Maybe your here today and you have not been denying yourself

Maybe this meal in this moment is the time where you say Jesus I am all in…and you need to deny yourself and take up your cross to follow Jesus

Mark 14:22–24 NIV

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them.

Lets pray