09.03.2023 - God's Grace to Us

Scripture: Matthew 16 21-28

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.”

9/3/2023

Order of Service:

Announcements

Kid’s Time

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

God's Grace to Us

Afraid of Grace

Sometimes, the things we think we should be most excited about can make us anxious or even scared.

About 17 years ago, I was an associate pastor at a church, working with discipleship studies and programs for all ages. One day, I was talking about heaven with some youth, and one young man named David confessed to me that he was scared of heaven. It was one of the strangest things I had ever heard.

Why would anyone be afraid of heaven? I thought to myself. Rather than express my disbelief at his courageous honesty, I let my curiosity lead and asked what scared him about heaven.

“It’s forever,” he said. “Nothing stays good forever. I would get bored eventually, and then what? It would not be good after that.”

David was partially correct. Growing up in our broken world, you will face disappointment in everything if you are willing to wait long enough. He could not understand what a perfect place could be because his only point of reference was this broken world we share.

I read a book by another man who was anxious about heaven, but he had a different reason. Donald Miller wrote that he knew heaven was a perfect place, full of love, life, joy, and peace... and he was terrified of going there. Donald was concerned because he knew he was a sinner who had not rid his life of every temptation, and he worried that he would be like Adam and Eve, bring sin into the perfect place, and bring about sin and death all over again. Like a bull in a china shop, Donald thought he would break the perfection of heaven.

Because of God’s grace, we get to go to heaven and be with Him when we die. There are a lot of aspects of God’s grace that are both very good and a bit scary at the same time.

David did not understand heaven. Donald did. Donald also understood himself, but neither understood Who God is and what He does when we invite Him into a relationship with us. God, in His grace, opens doors for us and transforms us in ways beyond our understanding and imagination. Thankfully, God's grace makes it possible for our relationship with Him to be corrected.

Reactions and Responses

David and Donald were not the only people that faced disappointment in life. Jesus faced it, too. It must have felt like one step forward and two steps back as Jesus tried to lead the disciples. Peter made it right up to the line, calling Jesus the Messiah, and then, as Jesus finally opened up the master plan to him, Peter’s jaw dropped, his eyes bugged out, and he refused to have anything to do with it.

Peter’s reaction is an idiom that translates as “Mercy to you, Lord,” but we might translate it as ‘God forbid’ or ‘over my dead body.’ In half a breath, Peter went from proclaiming Jesus as His Lord and Savior to protesting His will and claiming He would save Jesus. What happened? Jesus knew Peter was ready to lead the disciples into the next chapter of their lives, but Peter did not want to go. Everything in him wanted to stay there, doing the same ministry they did for the past three years. Peter worked hard to learn that ministry. Why change now?

Crucifixion was an ending. It was what the Roman Empire did to end social movements, not create them. It did not create martyrs to causes. It made leaders beg for death as they carried the instrument of their pain, suffering, and destruction to the place where they would die. Those who watched from a distance would grimace in horror and tell themselves they wanted nothing to do with whatever got that person hung on a cross. It was an end to everything.

The world needed Jesus so much. Peter needed Jesus so much. He could do anything if Jesus led Him there. But not to the cross. Not to that kind of death. Not to the end. “Mercy to you, Lord. Not that. Never that. Over my dead body.” Peter reacted to the shock of that announcement. Calling Jesus Messiah was a response to much experience and reflection. Trying to save Jesus’s life was a knee-jerk reaction at the moment.

Jesus, on the other hand, was very articulate in His response.

“Get behind me, Satan.”

The Other Side of Fear

We don’t usually learn things the first time.

Peter went from head of the class to bottom of the barrel in two statements. He went from proclaiming all that God had shown him about Jesus to being a spokesperson for the devil, sabotaging the mission Jesus was sent to do. Jesus did not change. Peter had finally grown enough to graduate on to the next step of his growth, and that always brings new challenges, new responsibilities, and new rewards.

Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, the Greek word for ‘rock,’ to be something solid that the Church could be built on. Peter’s first act as the rock was to let the devil use him to try and trip Jesus up as He turned toward the cross. After all, that is what a rock is for. It stands still and stays strong. Meanwhile, they left the rock behind and built the church on a different symbol: the cross. All across the world, those seeking Jesus look to the cross as the symbol of their faith—the cross, not the rock.

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Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth that we would be the most miserable people in history if our faith stopped at the cross. Peter could not see past the cross that Jesus told him about, and neither could the early Christians. There was death, their end, and ours, and that was it.

The cross led straight to the grave, but the tomb was sealed over with a rock. It was not just any rock, either. It was enormous, and it took several men to move it into place to cover the body of Jesus, to hold the death of Jesus in place. But three days later, that rock did something utterly contrary to its nature. It moved.

The rock that moved opened the way to our faith, and Peter was one of the first disciples there to see that empty tomb. Peter did not set that foundation in the church because he was strong. He set the example by being willing to move to follow where Jesus led.

Slow Down and Make Room for God

Some of you have heard this scripture taught before and arrived at the point where we talk about denying ourselves, picking up our crosses, and following Jesus. What those crosses might represent is often left up to our subjective personal experience and sometimes even our personal preference. But the cross that Jesus endured was not subjective. The crosses that claimed the apostles' lives were not their personal preferences. They were all placed at points in their lives that looked and felt like endings. They were not pleasant, and most of the time, they were not understood by those around them. Peter’s friends and family likely tried to stop him from going to his cross, just as he did to Jesus. Scripture tells us many people tried to prevent Paul from entering Jerusalem when he was preparing his last journey there. We, too, have our crosses, and we don’t get to choose them. We only get to choose whether we will pick them up and follow Jesus.

How do we allow these significant challenges to be a point of spiritual growth for us instead of things that knock us off the path altogether?

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Slow down and make room for God. God’s grace makes it possible for our relationship with Him to be corrected. To experience that growth, we must let Him move and shape us. We often do that through prayer, and specifically the listening kind of prayer. You may do that in silence. You may do that by reading scripture. However you reach that point of listening to God, that is the first step toward finding and carrying your cross.

Once we find our cross, we must ensure we follow Jesus. It is tempting for us to become martyrs to our own causes, using those crosses we bear. Sometimes, we make them into our endings as well. However, the cross for Jesus was not an end. It was a doorway into something greater. It was a new beginning that could never be taken from Him. To carry our cross, grow in our faith, and follow Jesus, we must pause long enough to reflect and respond to God’s grace instead of reacting to everything around us.

Some of us are strong rocks like Peter, and Jesus has to take His sharp chisel to shape us into what He is calling us to be. Others of us are soft like clay, and God will bring us through the fire to firm up the shaping He gives us at the Potter’s wheel. All of this is God’s grace. He could leave us just as we are, but instead, He grows us beyond our self-imposed limits. He could leave us to deal with the suffering we endure in this world, but He uses that suffering to shape and mold us to be more like Him. He could give up on us when we fail to follow Him, but instead, He corrects us, picks us up, and puts us back on the path He has created for us to follow Him on.

If you and I are going to grow in our relationship with Jesus, we must learn to respond to God’s correcting touch in our lives instead of reacting to everything else.

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Communion

(Pause.)