Confessing Christ (Mark 8:27-9:1)

Introduction

For Narnia! The book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a classic children’s story where 4 siblings find themselves entering a strange and foreign land through a wardrobe, that is a self standing closet.

In this story, we have one of the 4 children who goes his own way to the White Witch. And as Edmond gets marked as a traitor, his blood is now required at the hand of the White Witch. However, Aslan steps in and offers his own life in exchange for that of Edmonds. Edmond is guilty, but another steps in his place, Aslan. Aslan goes to the Stone Table willingly and is pierced and killed. His innocent blood is shed to cover that of Edmond, sparing his life. Though Aslan was the great king, he laid down his life for the guilty in order to set them free.

It is a similar story where we turn this morning as we come to Mark 8:27-8:38. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Mark 8:27. (If you are new to the church and unfamiliar with the Bible, the eight there are what we recognize as chapter numbers and they are the big numbers you will see in the Bible. And the 27 is what we would call a verse and these are the smaller numbers that help us find our specific reference we are referring to.)

Recap

For 12 of the last 13 weeks we have been working our way through the gospel of Mark. And this morning we come to the last sermon in Mark before breaking away for the summer to study the Book of Ecclesiastes.

In our time we have seen that Jesus has revealed himself to the beloved Son of God who has come to save sinners. However, while this has been revealed, there has been much confusion in who Jesus is from those around him, including that of the disciples.

Time and time again they have failed to see who they are with and trust in him for their provision. This morning though, this begins to change, Jesus begins to slowly open their eyes partially to understanding who he is.

If you have a Bible, I invite you to go ahead and open with me to Mark 8:27. It is here where we come to the Climax of Mark’s gospel as he reveals fully who Jesus is to his readers. Follow along with me as I read.

Main Point: Jesus came as the Servant King who willingly suffered on our behalf. Therefore, Christian, we should eagerly take up our own cross to follow him.

Points

The Christ

The Suffering Servant

The Cost of Discipleship

The Christ

Who do others say that I am?

Jesus now gets a moment alone with his disciples here as the climax of Mark’s gospel takes center stage. The group is on their way traveling to Caesarea Philippi. And on the way, Jesus questions the twelve, he asks them who others say that he is. And notice how all have so far thought of Jesus there in verse 28, again it says (READ).

Jesus is thought of as one of the greats in other words in Israel’s long history as they compare him to John the Baptist, Elijah, and the prophets before him. When Jesus is merely seen as another prophet or great teacher as some would make claims of him today, the identity of Jesus is missed. For Jesus to be seen as merely a prophet or good teacher leaves out the very purpose of his coming, it fails to grasp all that Jesus was doing as his authority was being revealed in teaching and healing and casting out demons.

One of the reasons many admire Jesus but fail to worship him is a wrong understanding of who Jesus is. This takes place in the hearts of the social justice warriors who claim that Jesus is a great example to social justice, but they fail to see the need to bow to Jesus. Others miss Jesus as they think of him as a great teacher, but one of many ways to get to heaven. Still others miss Jesus when they only come to him in an attempt to better their earthly life. Thinking that there is an earthly value to following Jesus to better themselves in society either economically or positionally. They make claims to follow Jesus to improve their position.

Jesus is far more than an earthly advantage. He is far more than just a good teacher, a good social justice model. Jesus is not just another prophet. He is not the next Moses or Elijah. Jesus is more than this.

Who do you say that I am?

And this is why Jesus turns the question to his disciples, he asks them, “who do you say that I am?” Jesus now wants the disciples to make their own judgement, their own proclamation of who he is. The confession of Jesus is not meant to be who the world and others declare him to be, but a judgement of who he is in spite of who others think he is. In his commentary, James Edwards writes, “Faith is a judgement about Jesus, and a willingness to act on the judgement in the face of other possible judgements.”

And with that the twelve, with Peter as the spokesman, answer there in the last half of verse 29, saying, “You are the Christ.” Christ, some would even use the Messiah, is the title belonging to the long awaited King who was going to come and deliver God’s people. It is the one who was to come and sit on David’s throne forever. The Christ was the promised one by God to King David as the one who would come and reign over the people of Israel forever and ever without end.

And here with Peter’s confession, on behalf of the twelve, they recognize Jesus as this Davidic King who has come to reign. The use of Christ here in their confession is only the 2nd time in Mark that it has been used to refer to Jesus. It’s other use was back in Mark 1:1 to introduce the gospel, but has yet to be proclaimed by anyone in referring to Jesus.

But now, with this confession that Jesus is the Christ, the disciples confirm Jesus as the one who is to come and sit on David’s throne as King. The King therefore has come at last for the people of Israel. The one who was promised to crush the head of the serpent from Genesis 3 after the fall. The King who would conquer his enemies. The one who God’s hand would forever remain on has come in Jesus. This is the confession that Peter and the other disciples are making as they declare Jesus as the Christ.

And it is this confession of Jesus as the Christ that is foundational to the Christian faith. One cannot be a disciple of Jesus without making this confession. You see, it is upon this confession we learn in Matthew’s gospel of this same account where we learn upon this confession of Jesus as the Christ that the church will be built.

In other words, those added to the church will be those who echo this confession of Jesus as the Christ. Therefore one cannot be a disciple of Jesus unless they recognize Jesus as the long awaited Messiah who has come to rule God’s people. It is the willful coming under and submission to the Messiah’s rule that shows our allegiance to Jesus. This is why Psalm 2:12 says: Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

To be a disciple of Jesus starts with the confession of faith to Jesus as the Messiah King and one’s turning in allegiance towards him. And the disciples are beginning to grasp this understanding now of Jesus as King. And it is this same confession, this same judgement that each of us must come to. To be a Christian, that is a Christ follower one must confess Jesus as the Messiah King and place one’s allegiance with him. All who have ears this morning, may we hear the call of the King and come and bow our knee to him. Let our tongues confess Jesus as Lord. For it is this confession that is the foundation of the Christian faith and the bride of Christ, the church.

A charge not to share, at least not yet

And yet, as foundational as this confession is, what follows in Jesus’ charge in verse 30 seems counter-intuitive and to go against this grain. For there in verse 30 we read: And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

The confession of Jesus as the Christ is essential, what they claim is right about Jesus, but the twelve are charged not to tell anyone about him? Why is this the case?

Well Jesus does this for both the benefit of the disciples as well as that of the world. While the disciples made the right confession of who Jesus is, they still are lacking in understanding what the title Christ means. Therefore for them to go out with this misunderstanding and tell others will not further the gospel, but hinder it.

The correct title can be used for Jesus, but unless the role of that title is rightly understood, people will miss Jesus. All we have to do is take time to ask people who they think Jesus is around us, and we will quickly see this for ourselves. If you go up to 20 people in our area, my guess is that you will get a variety of different answers to who Jesus is. There is mass confusion to who Jesus is. And for the moment, the disciples don’t need to go and tell others, they need to learn more of who Jesus is.

The Suffering Servant

We turn now to our second point, the suffering servant.

I must suffer

Look with me again there at verse 31, it says (READ). Jesus begins here to reveal to the disciples that he is to suffer, to be killed, and to be raised.

But we need to notice the phrase Jesus uses in regards to this all. He says, the Son of Man must suffer many things. Earlier in our study of Mark, I mentioned how this phrase Son of Man ties back into the prophecies in the book of Daniel. In particular that of Daniel 7:13-14 in the son of man coming and being given dominion. Which this ties into Jesus and his role as the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah. However, what is bezaare is that the Son of Man who is to be given an everlasting dominion must suffer.

Typically when we think of kings and the advancement of their kingdoms, we think of kings and their knights or soldiers going into foregin lands and conquering the lands through earthly battle. What we don’t think of is a king coming to suffer in order to further his kingdom. This is foreign, it makes no sense. And yet, this is exactly what Jesus begins to teach to his disciples and the others gathered. The Messiah King has come to conquer, but that he must do so through suffering. Jesus was to be rejected, killed, and then was to rise again.

And while this goes against what one would expect of the coming Messiah King, it was not foreign to the pages of the Old Testament that foretold of the coming King. Isaiah 52:13-53:12 clearly lays out the call for a suffering servant. And while we are not going to take time to read the entirety of this section, I would encourage you to write this passage down and then take some time this afternoon to read through it and reflect on how Jesus fulfilled this on the cross.

In this section though in the most well down of these verses, Isaiah 53:5-7 we read:

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

Jesus was to the fulfillment of this promise in Isaiah 53 to be the suffering servant who was to be pierced for the transgressions of his people. He was to be slaughtered like a sheep as a sacrifice to cover the iniquity of the people. The Messiah King wasn’t just to come and conquer through the shedding of others blood to advance the kingdom of Israel, he came to shed his own blood for the guilty so that the guilty could be declared righteous. Jesus came to suffer as the innocent one without stain or sin in place of the sinner. Jesus came as the Christ to purchase sinners not by wielding the sword, but the laying down of his own life.

As Aslan laid down his life for that of Edmond, so Jesus lays his life down for sinners. And we are all sinners. There is not one of us who is not a traitor to our creator. For each of us has wronged the Lord through sin. And yet, Jesus, the beloved Son of God, the Messiah King willingly goes to the cross on Golgotha in order to shed his blood in our place. His blood cleansing us from our guilt and shame, so that we may live.

And not just live here and now, but inherit eternal life. For Jesus rose on the third day following his death on the cross, and in doing so defeating death. Though our earthly bodies will one day die and perish, there is the hope of resurrection life. For on the day the Messiah King returns, he will call all the dead who believed in him to rise again, giving them new bodies and to be with him forever in glory.

The Messiah King came to serve as the suffering servant therefore to deliver us, to bring us into his kingdom through the shedding of his own blood. All that he requires of us is to acknowledge our sin and turn from it and believe in him. Trusting that our salvation rests on his sacrificial death and resurrected life.

The denial & rebuke

It is this truth of the suffering servant that is the grounds of our salvation, not our works or anything else. The Messiah King came to serve mankind in laying down his life that we might live. And we see just how essential this is in the back and forth rebuke of Peter and Jesus there in verses 32-33 (READ).

Peter first rebukes Jesus that far be it from him suffering and dying. But, Jesus in return turns to the whole of his disciples and rebukes Peter. In fact, he rebukes him so strongly that he compares him to Satan. He tells him that he isn’t setting his mind on the things of God. The ways of God are not the same as mans. We know this from Isaiah 55:8 where God says: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. And the reason here that Peter is called Satan is that because anything that stands against the plans of God are the work then of Satan and furthering his kingdom and dominion. Not to mention, it was the cross that Satan was trying to keep Jesus from in his wilderness temptation of Jesus.

Satan was willing to give everything to Jesus, avoid the suffering, if only he would bow to Satan. Jesus in his coming isn’t merely to inherit the earth, but to defeat sin and death. And that is only possible through the cross and his resurrection.

By one’s profession of faith in Jesus as the Servant King, one can have surety before the throne of God above that our sin has been satisfied by the blood of Jesus. There is an old hymn written in 1742 by Charles Wesley called Arise, My Soul, Arise. The first verse goes as follows:

Arise, my soul, arise; shake off thy guilty fears;

the bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears;

before the throne my surety stands, before the throne

my surety stands, my name is written on his hands.

Our salvation rests then not in us, but in the blood of Jesus and our faith in him! And because of what we have in Jesus, we are called to follow our glorious king.

The Cost of Discipleship

And that is where we come to with our final point this morning, we look at the cost of discipleship. Following his rebuke of Peter, Jesus calls the crowds to him and he starts by saying, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

In this verse, we see 3 imperatives or commands given to what it means to come after Jesus as his disciple. These are a call to deny self, a call to take up our cross, and a call to follow Jesus.

A call to deny self

First, we start with the call to deny self. To deny self is a call to say no to our own self-centered, personal, self-interest desires and focus. A call to deny self is a call to reject oneself as the determining factor for our goals, aspirations, and desires in life.

We deny ourselves when we stop living for ourselves and begin living for Jesus in all that we do. We stop thinking how can I enjoy life in fulfilling my desires, to thinking how can I use my life for the sake of furthering the Kingdom of God? How can I leverage my job to advance the gospel either within my city or the nations. We deny ourselves when we stop pursuing our own ways and submit to the ways of Christ.

One example of denying self is that of a couple who for three years decided to use their retirement to enter a new kind of work. Joe and Wanda partnered with the IMB in serving in West Africa on their retirement dime. And while they were serving overseas, they rented their house out in Arizona to house missionaries while they were stateside. They denied themselves in order to be part of advancing the gospel. This is just one way that we can deny ourselves.

A call to take up our cross

Next, we see a call to take up our cross. This is a call for those who would follow Jesus are called to give up their lives, that of even death in following Jesus. In other words, we are called to complete allegiance in following Jesus, even if that means dying to identify with our King as his servants.

To bear our cross is not simply that of difficulties and hardships of trials in life. Everyone faces these types of hardship in a fallen world. No, to take up a cross is to suffer as one embraces the life of Christ. One takes up their cross as they boldly declare Jesus even if it means it may cost them their job, their reputation, even that of their lives. Taking up a cross is a call to publicly identify with Jesus even if it means our shame. For the cross was a shameful way to die. It was not an honorable death, but that of the lowest of the low. And therefore it is this shameful instrument that we are being called to take up as we follow Jesus.

A call to follow Jesus

Lastly, there is the imperative to follow Jesus. Or as one commentator puts, keep following Jesus. To come after Jesus is a call to have a sustained devotion to Jesus and the pattern of his life. A call to follow Jesus wherever life will take us, even into suffering and death. Our lives are to be devoted to following after Jesus.

The call to follow Jesus isn’t a one moment event at the moment of confessing Jesus as the Christ. It is a lifetime of devotionally following him. We are to keep following Jesus all our days as our King.

Worth it?

These commands for us to follow Jesus are costly indeed. And yet, we see in verses 35-38 that living in this way is actually gain. For if we think the cost of following Christ is costly, we must then consider the cost of not following him. For Jesus says there in verse 35 to save our life we will lose it. In other words, to spare our life from the cost of following Jesus, in the end it will cost us our life, both physically and spiritually. For looking at what it adds there in verse 36, it will cost us by forfeiting our soul.

To be ashamed of Christ before the world will cause us to be ashamed by Christ before the Father. In other words, failure to count the cost and follow Jesus will result in us standing still guilty before God almighty in our sin. For if we fail to identify with Christ in denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Jesus, then we will be denied by Jesus on the last day.

But, to follow Jesus, to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses, and to follow Jesus, even if it costs us our physical lives we will save our lives. For we have followed the King and identified with him the Suffering-Servant King.

To follow Christ is not a call to a life of ease and passivism in our public relationship to Jesus. To follow Jesus is a call for our lives to publicly identify with him in all that we do. It will be costly, but it will be worth it. This is why the First Question in the Heidelberg Catechism is: What is your only comfort in life and in death? And the answer to that is:

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has delivered me from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Conclusion

The cost of discipleship is costly, but when we see what King Jesus did for us in coming to suffer for our sins by going to the cross to be pierced for our transgressions, our rebellion, then how could we not desire to follow him? For even as everyone I know loves Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for who he is and what he has done, each of us should love Jesus for who he is and what he has done for us.

Whether you are here and have never come to faith in Jesus or whether you placed your faith in Jesus 20 or more years ago, Jesus has poured out his own blood to rescue you from sin and death. Will you not grow to love him more?

If you are new to the idea of Christianity, I’d be happy to talk with you following the service this morning about what it means to come to faith in Jesus. Please come find me or give me a call this week. Others see the need to take up your cross and start following Jesus in your day to day lives. For in following him, no one is on the sidelines passively watching. All are to be in the game serving Christ. Therefore, let us part today and joyfully and eagerly follow the Servant King, King Jesus!!!

Let’s pray...