Matthew 16:21-28 | The Unfair Cross

One of our modern day assumptions is that new is always better. I think this is due to the rapid development of technology. And with regards to technology, this assumption almost always holds true. New is always better. New chips equals more and faster computational power. Artificial intelligence. More efficient manufacturing and more productivity for less! It’s true in regards to technology new is almost always better.

And so, I want to encourage you, today we are starting something new. For the next year I plan to only preach what Artificial Intelligence writes for me, ha! Just kidding! Although, I have tested out ChatGPT and to be honest, it doesn’t write the worst sermons. They’re little wooden, but content wise, it’s not a bad theology. That’s not what we’re doing, we are doing something new, but for those of you with old souls among us, be encouraged, the new thing we’re doing is actually quite old. As it turns out, in regards to Christianity, we should be skeptical of new and we will usually be helped by returning to what is old!

Now, I’ve been praying and planning for this upcoming year and our teaching series for probably around 9 months and it dawned on me about 6 or 7 months ago that we have a lot of folks coming out of more traditional Church back grounds. A lot of folks that grew up in and around Lutherans, Methodists and Catholics and other rich faith traditions like them.

And I want to key in on that last phase a second: rich faith traditions. Don’t raise your hand but I’m curious of those of you coming out of some of these rich faith traditions, I’m curious how many of you would say that those traditions felt rich to you?

My guess is that if you’re here with us, perhaps part of the reason is that some of those faith traditions had grown rather stale for you personally.

Please hear this correctly, this is not a slam on any of those denominations. If they’re preaching Jesus and the Bible, they’re on our team and we’re on theirs!

This is more of a commentary on tradition itself. You see, if we stick any tradition long enough and we’re not careful to continually set before us the reason behind it, our traditions can become just route religious hoops we jump through or boxes we check off our spiritual to do list. And if we’re not careful, those traditions that we once found life giving sort of loose their meaning and significance all together. Sometimes, familiarity has a habit of stealing our awe and wonder when it comes to traditions and the gospel of Jesus! And so we have to work to keep things fresh.

Those of you who have been with us for long enough may remember that we preached through the 10 commandments as well as the Lord’s prayer a few years back. And I’ll never forget the comments we received as we worked through those series. I can’t tell you how many of you told me, “you know, I grew up reciting this or I grew up hearing all about this, but I never really understood it until now.” “I grew up reciting the Lord’s prayer as a rote tradition, something good to say, but I never actually stopped to examine what it actually says or what it really teaches us about God and our relationship with Him.” And I heard similar things about the 10 commandments.

And as I thought and prayed on this, I started to think about the historic Church calendar. Again those of you who grew up in a more liturgical Church, that would be a Church that regularly followed a Church calendar, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You grew up hearing about and celebrating things like Advent and Lent as well as Pentecost and other major Christian events on the Calendar like something called All-Saints Day!

There will be others in here I’m sure that are sort of clueless as to what I’m talking about, and honestly, I’m sort of in that camp. I’ve never been part of a Church that really followed the liturgical calendar that much.

And so I thought, wouldn’t it be fun, for a year, to do just that! Wouldn’t it be fun to take a really old tradition and put our own Crossroads spin on it! Wouldn’t it be fun to try and enrich some of the traditions so many of you in here grew up with, to breathe some new and fresh life into something that perhaps has grown kind of stale for you over the years.

And so that’s what we’re going to do, for the next school year and maybe even through the summer of 2024, we’re going to follow the Church calendar using something that’s called the Revised Common Lectionary.

The RCL, is simply a 3 year Bible Reading Plan that follows the Church Calendar. And if you’re wondering what the Church Calendar is, according the excellent website gotquestions.org: “The Christian calendar is an annual schedule that commemorates certain days and seasons to help us remember the important acts of God in the history of redemption.”

The calendar technically starts in late November with the time Advent, which is a season that looks forward to the coming of the Messiah at Christmas. Naturally, advent is followed by Christmas then which focuses on the arrival of the Messiah. After that is the time of Epiphany, which as it says on the screen, focuses on the glory of Christ, but honestly I haven’t studied a lot about this yet so I’m not really sure what Epiphany is but I’m excited to learn! From there then we’ll move into the season of Lent, which is a time to focus on the holiness of Christ and put into practice some spiritual disciplines that help us become more holy like Christ. Then we’ll celebrate Easter and later Pentecost, which will bring us to the end of the Church calendar in late spring of next year and into the summer and early fall which you’ll see is labeled here as “Ordinary Time” which focuses on the mission of Christ and His followers.

That is the season we find ourselves in currently. So as we work our way through the Revised Common Lectionary, until we get to the season of Advent, I’ve put together a few series that will help us think through more specifically what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ. (series informed by Kelley, Jessica Miller, ed. 2016. A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series: Thematic Plans for Years A, B, and C. First edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.)

Today we’re starting a series called “No Fair” unpacking the joys and hardship of living out grace practically in our lives. Then we’ll move on to a series called the Enemies of Gratitude, which is a series on stewardship and how to manage what God blesses us with by learning to live with contentment and gratiditude. Lastly, we’ll wrap up the season of “Ordinary Time” on the Church calendar by looking a bit more at death from the Scriptures, and more specifically how we can learn to live with hope in the face of it as Disciples of Christ.

This will all be done, preaching from texts, that are outlined in the Revised Common Lectionary starting in the end of Year A on what’s called Proper 17, which is today!

If you’d like to receive a text messages to read scripture along with what will be preached on the following Sunday as well as the other suggested scriptures for each day in the RCL, you can opt into this series and we’ll send you a text with the reading. You can opt out at any time by texting the words “end devo”.

With that all said, let’s dive into our text this morning from Matthew 16 and kick things off!

And to kick things off I’d like to talk a bit about entitlement. We live in a world full of entitled people. People from all walks of life and all racial backgrounds who in some way or another feel like they deserve something. And a lot of those people are loud about expressing what they deserve and what has been unfairly withheld from them.

Some of those feelings are rooted in reality and some of them are not, regardless, I think it’s safe to assume that as human beings we struggle with feeling entitled and with things being fair. Whether it’s a sibling who feels that his or her sister received more ice cream than they did or something more serious like racial injustice or prejudice against an illegal residence of the united States who’s just doing their best to try and take care of their family.

The word equity is thrown around a lot; as is a term you’ve all heard called social justice.

Equity, fairness, and justice are words that God cares about, but Church these are things that we would to well to let the Bible define rather than the so called experts of our day. We would all do well to allow Scripture to set our standard of justice and righteousness and to reorient our idea and standard of fairness as well.

The reality is sometimes life is unfair, and yet, we’re still called to love and to give grace and be gracious. Like Jesus did for us.

You see, we love to sing about grace and we love to receive grace. It’s a joy to receive grace, isn’t, to receive that which we don’t receive, the promise that because of Jesus, God will always be happy to see you, to be with you. That’s grace. It’s free to us, but grace is not free to give! Nor was it fair for Christ to have to have paid the cost! Grace costs God dearly and it will cost you dearly as well if you learn to follow in the footsteps of your savior. Let me suggest to you this morning that as a people of God, we would all to well to loosen our grip on fairness and instead embrace a different f-word, faithfulness!

Inevitably in your journey of discipleship, as you follow Jesus, you will reach a moment where the action that is fair for you to choose will be at odds with remaining faithful, and I hope and pray that when that happens, the Spirit of the risen Christ will empower us to choose faithfulness rather than fairness!

Following Jesus is not always going to feel fair Church. There will come a day where giving grace to others will feel more like a hardship than a joy. But this is the way of Jesus because the way of Jesus is the cross.

Read it with me:

Matthew 16:21–28 (NIV)

21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. 28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Just a few verses earlier, Peter, had just confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God, which Jesus affirms and testifies that God Himself is the one who revealed this to Peter. Jesus goes and to say that the Gates of Hell will not stand against this reality. For those who acknowledge like Peter that Christ is the son of God and the Lord and Savior of the world, He will grant to them the keys of the Kingdom, the authority to bind and loose. That is, believers in Jesus will be given authority to bring some of heaven down here to earth! If what we do and say accords with God’s will and what is pronounced in the courtroom of heaven we will operate with power and blessing from the Father to further His Kingdom. We will be loosed upon the earth in power, but if what we do and say runs afoul of what God has said and ordained in the courtroom of heaven we will be bound.

And so Peter professes Jesus is Christ and Messiah and Jesus affirms this revelation and declares that Peter your words and your belief in this reality not even the gates of hell or death will be able to stop a person who professes this truth! Powerful stuff, but then in what appears to be only a few moments later, the same man who was just uttering prophetic revelation from God is now credited at speaking words from the mouth of Satan.

Jesus declares the way of the cross. The way of unfair suffering to accomplish God’s work and pay the costly price of grace! Jesus prophesies about His coming crucifixion and Peter, now apparently informed more by the world and Satan, speaks words that prompt Jesus to tell him, “get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

There’s much we could say about this, but I think the most important thing for me to point out is that often times the thoughts of humanity and this world are more inline with Satan than they are inline with God. Often times the wisdom of this world is more inline with Satan than it is with God.

So Christian, based on this, we must all take careful stock of our thoughts and make sure they are in accordance with God’s Word and the courtroom of Heaven, His concerns, rather than the dungeon of hell and merely human concerns.

And hear this, many times God’s thoughts and God’s responses and God’s call on our lives are going to lead us into situations that do no feel fair, and more than that from a worldly perspective will not be fair.

Now we’re going to do a little bit of meandering away from the text for a few minutes because I believe this is how God wants me to preach this, but hang with me and I’ll try to connect the dots for you at the end.

In this section of Scripture, Jesus modeled for us and gave us instructions for how to think about this life; and the call, is to not live your life for this life alone. If you are a believer, you are now a new creation. You have a new identity, you’re not a sinner, you are a saint. You have a new home and it ain’t here. Heaven is your home, you are now a foreigner and exile an illegal alien in this world! Trespassing in the enemies territory, but like a sheriff in the wild west, you’ve been deputized by your King and given authority to walk in these lands. In fact, where you tread, where you set your feet, the Kingdom of God claims that territory as it’s own! Not only are you a sheriff for King Jesus, you are His ambassador!

But being as you are an alien, a foreigner here, because you live by another standard, because you speak another language, life is going to be difficult for you here in this world at time. Or at least it should be to some extent. If you are comfortable in this world, chances are you are too chummy with the world!

Now hear me, God is not telling us to seek out suffering or to pray for suffering, but Church if you are loving God and living with God as one of His disciples, eventually this world is going to make you uncomfortable because God forbids you from endorsing or acting in certain ways and when we shine this light in the darkness, that light is going to be abrasive at times! Not intentionally so, but it will be. It’s like when you just wake up and someone comes in and turns on the lights. It’s not pleasant because it’s not what you’re used to!

As we share and shine our lights for Jesus and His Kingdom, we will be reviled and hated by the world that has become comfortable living in darkness.

There will be a cross to bare.

And in some ways I’m thankful that many of us in here don’t really know what carrying a cross for Christ means because we've been afforded a large amount of freedom to worship Jesus and live for Jesus here in this country without much of a cost. For many many Christian throughout our world, this is not the case, there is a tremendous cost to worship Christ. But along with that, too few Christians in American know what it means to bare the cross of Christ because “except for attending a church service and maybe giving a little money to the Church, many Christians today do in our country with their time and money much the same as what morally upright non-Christians do.(Keener, Craig S. 1997. Matthew. Vol. 1. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.). And so because of the blessings of our free country and the failure of true discipleship in many of our Churches, we have a whole lot of Christians that don’t know what it means to carry a cross for Christ and who reject the idea of suffering for Christ all together. A band of false teachers on TV has sold American a bill of goods claiming that if you really have truth faith, you’ll know only health wealth and prosperity.

To that I say, what was wrong with Jesus’ faith then?

This is truth faith Christian, that one would lay down his life for not just His friends but also for His enemies! That Jesus would choose faithfulness to God over worldly fairness before man.

We know what faith and faithfulness looked like for Jesus. It looked like the Cross. But what does it look like for us. It looks like love our enemies Church. It looks like choosing faithfulness to God over fairness and an avoidance of suffering at any cost!

And to share this with you I want to I want to share a testimony from one of our Church planters in the FEC. A man named Nashwan. He spoke here about a year ago. Nashwan is planting a church to reach the muslim and Arab community of immigrants that have moved into Toledo area with the gospel Jesus Christ! He is Mark Clausings partner in the gospel. Marks

Nashwan is from Iraq. Several years ago, he and his wife were captured by ISIS militants and imprisoned and beaten. Why? Because they were Christians.

Do you know what the fair thing to do in that situation would have been for Nashwan. They took his wife. They beat his wife. They beat him. For no other reason than because He claimed to follow and live for Jesus.

The fair thing would have been for Nashwan to either call curses down from Heaven upon these men, to spit in their face, or to break free and go on a quest for revenge hunting down these men and bring some worldly justice down upon their heads. That would’ve been fair.

What else would’ve been fair? Well, Nashwan, could’ve simply renounced his faith. I mean how could a good God every allow one of his own to suffer like this at the hands of evil men? Surely if he was real, surely if he cared, Jesus would have visited some swift judgement on these guys!

Or perhaps, Nashwan could’ve rationalized a lie. I’m just going to lie. I’ll convert to Islam but not in my heart, surely God won’t mind. He knows my real heart. Surely, he doesn’t want me to suffer for His name. Is He really worth all that??

From a worldly standpoint here is some earthly thinking for you. Or as Jesus calls it thinking about things with merely human concerns.

But Nashwan did not do any of those things. Do you know what Nashwan did, when his captors came back into his cell again to lay another beating on him. He prayed for them! That they would know the love of Jesus! He prayed for them, church. He prayed blessing over them rather than cursing!! He showed them grace! And it cost him dearly.

Why? How could he do such a thing. If he were here today he would tell you, he didn’t do it in his own power. He did it by the Spirit of Jesus that lives within him! He understood this passage Church, that if Jesus saves you, He’s your Lord and He gets all of you, even your life! He understood not just his human concerns but more importantly God’s concerns, the long view. These men were lost. Yes there was pain and suffering to endure here, the price was high, but how could Nashwan choose fairness over faithfulness when His Savior chose faithfulness and paid so dearly to give grace for him? Nashwan understood that one can loose more than their lives, he understood that his and his captures souls were in the balance!

Church the Son of Man, that’s Jesus, is going to come again in the Father’s glory with His angels and He will reward each person according to what they have done.

That’s not a call to work harder. It’s a call to trust more, Church. To stay faithful, to choose faithfulness to Christ over fairness from a worldly perspective. Jesus loves you, but just like He was faced with a terrible price to pay in order to give grace, there will come a day where you face a similar price and when that day comes choose faithfulness over fairness Church! The cross was not fair, but Jesus faithfully followed the Father and bore it to pay the price of grace!

God is a God of justice. He cares deeply about justice, and justice will be served either on the cross or at the end in the judgement, but folks, in the meantime as we seek to live for the justice and righteousness of the Kingdom of God, let us not make fairness our standard, let us make faithfulness to Jesus our standard!

To this end, I feel compelled to conclude with one more thought about fairness and our politics. Hear me, we are not a blue Church or a red Church, we are not a black or a white Church, we are a Jesus Church. Heres what this means folks. We are not a voting block to be handled! We are the people of God and we stand with and for Jesus not a donkey or an elephant. This means we are for what Jesus is for.

Is it fair for illegal immigrants to receive care from the state at the tax payers expense. No it’s not fair, but would you turn away care from an orphan, widow or foreigner in true need? Better question? Would Jesus? Would He choose fairness in that situation or faithfulness to God who cares deeply for the orphan, the widow and the foreigner? If we are going to preach about the sanctity of human life in the womb, then we should preach it not just in the womb but all through the lives of individuals clear to their last breathe! Immigrants legal or illegal are people made in the image of God and that should be reflected in how we speak and in how we vote, but more importantly in how we ourselves live our everyday lives. There are opportunities to care for immigrants right here in Napoleon and in Toledo as well.

This is one example where fairness should not be the sole driving aim in our discussion!

The 2 parties in our system both have their problems. Here’s our solution. Be for Jesus. If you are for what Jesus is for, we’re for you. If you’re against what Jesus is against, we’re against you!

And in regards to fairness, don’t look at things from a merely human point of view. Consider first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these other things will be added unto you.

Pray.

“There are so many areas that we feel entitled. We need to understand that more than fairness, faithfulness to God needs to drive all we do from how we vote to how we live our everyday lives.”