A Dangerous Declaration

I love my phone. I have an iPhone X that I bought a couple of years ago. It still is in great shape and works perfectly the way I want. In fact, I am recording this video on it right now, as I have been for the last ten months for most parts of our online worship service. When I first set up my phone, it asked me to accept the terms and conditions. And I always do. But I have never read them. Have you ever read the terms and conditions for, well, anything?

I just scroll quickly to the bottom, agree and then start enjoying my phone. And that makes sense because the apple terms and conditions are 56 pages long. 56! Let me help put it in perspective. I often write my sermons out as a manuscript. That means I write out every word I am going to say. My average sermon is about 5-6 pages long, and it takes, at my average speaking speed, about 25-30 minutes to read aloud. To read the terms and conditions for my phone would take me almost 5 hours to read aloud. Ridiculous.

I wonder how many of us have done that with our faith? We sign up for all the benefits and awesome things, but we fail to read the fine print. In today’s passage in the book of Luke, Jesus shares with us the fine print of what it means to follow him. And knowing that fine print might just change how you relate to God, how you see yourself and how you define what it means to follow Jesus. So join me in reading Luke 9:18-27. 

The first thing that Luke tells us in our passage is that Jesus was praying in private. Prayer is a central theme in Luke’s writings. When Zechariah had his vision, people were praying outside. When Jesus was baptized and was praying, the heavens opened up, and the Holy Spirit came upon him. When his popularity soared, he withdrew to lonely places to pray. After spending a night in prayer, Jesus chose the 12 disciples. Here in our passage, Jesus prays and then, for the first time, predicts his suffering and death. Later in chapter 9, he prays and is transfigured in front of Peter and John. In Chapter 11, while he was praying, his disciples came up to Jesus asked him to teach them how to pray. He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane on the night he was betrayed by Judas. Jesus’ entire ministry - his whole life - was hinged on prayer.

Seeing Luke's emphasis on it should cause us to pause and reflect on prayer's priority in our lives. Prayer is more than how we get stuff from God, t's our relational lifeline to our Heavenly Father. It's how we stay in communion with Him, instead of drifting off and doing our own thing, oblivious to the presence of the Lord in our lives. It's how we see the kingdom breakthrough in our families, our workplaces and our schools. It's how our friends and family will come to faith, and it's how we will overcome the temptations of our enemy. I believe that there are three things that we as Christians should be known for: 1) How well we love people, 2) How deeply we study the Bible and 3) How passionately and frequently we pray.

Prayer was vital in Jesus' life, and when we read this passage, we see that this whole exchange between Jesus and his disciples is an outflow of Jesus' prayers. Jesus has been in prayer, and in that time, he discerns that it is time to help his disciples know what's to come.

So he asks them a question: "Who do the crowds say I am?" This question isn't Jesus being insecure about who he is. It is Jesus leading his disciples towards a deeper understanding of who he is. "But pastor, why is that important?" you may be asking. "Great question," I would reply. Because if you don't have an accurate view of Jesus, you don't have an accurate view of God. You can't be wrong about Jesus and right with God. It doesn't work because Jesus is God, the exact representation of his being. If you just see Jesus as a miracle worker, you miss out on Jesus being our saviour. If you only see Jesus as your saviour, you miss out on him being your Lord. If he is just a good teacher, then his sacrifice means nothing, and we are all still dead in our sins. Because we need to have a right view of Jesus, he probes his disciples with this question, "who do the crowds say I am?"

The disciples’ reply “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.” Malachi 4:5, which was written long after the death of the prophet Elijah says,

Malachi 4:5 NIV

“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.

This passage primed the people to expect someone to arise who would be like Elijah - a prophet. Since John the Baptist was the first prophet in Israel in centuries, it makes sense that the crowds, most of whom were not at Jesus' baptism, believed that Jesus was the return of John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the other prophets.

But the crowd's opinion is only necessary to Jesus as a measuring stick for his disciples - a gauge to see the difference between the masses and his disciples, his friends. So he asks them a second question, "But what about you? Who do you say I am?"

Again, this question is not a sign of insecurity or a need to be validated. The question is a test of the disciples' discernment, their theology, and their faith. It's a question that will define them, and it defines us as well. Who is Jesus to you? Put your answer in the comments and in the chat.

Is he just a myth, or is he real? Is he the person the preacher talks about all the time, or is he your Lord and Saviour? Is he someone who lived a couple of thousand years ago, or is he the eternal God, the firstborn over all creation, the one who died and was resurrected and now sits at the right hand of the Father?

How you answer this question in the depths of your heart will define you. When Paul the apostle tells us that we should examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith in 2 Corinthians 13:5, he implies we need to answer this question in a real way. Either we fully believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and by that faith, we are saved and are being transformed to be like Jesus in our character and our cause, or we don't, and we aren't.

So who is Jesus to you? Take some time today and really reflect on that question. Move past the first, shallow answer and look deep into your life, the choices you make and the ways you react to the world and see if what you believe about Jesus lines up with your life. Today might be the day for a change.

When Jesus asked the disciples this question, their answer was “God’s Messiah.” Now, this is a very intuitive and very dangerous declaration, as Jesus shows us in our passage today.

In Jesus’ day, there was a hopeful expectation, that a person would come along and save Israel from her enemies, which, in that particular time, was the Romans. That person, born in the line of David and prophecied throughout the Jewish scriptures, was called the messiah, or anointed one.

Have you ever expected one thing and gotten something else instead? Like when you are trying to make a Spongebob cake for your kids, you anticipate that it will look one way (Picture 1), and it comes out…a little different (Picture 2). Or when you see that Winnie the Pooh bear online, that takes you back to your childhood, so you order it, and that (Picture 3) arrives. Or your kids who are stanning Frozen a little too hard want an Elsa cake (Picture 4), and she ends up (Picture 5) looking like someone who has seen some stuff in her life. Or you get a pepperoni pizza ready to enjoy (Picture 6), and this is how it comes out of the box (Picture 7). Or, lastly, you expect parenting to be this (Picture 8) 24/7, but in reality, it's this (Picture 9).

Everyone had an expectation of what the Messiah was supposed to do. Lead a revolution that would expel the Romans from Israel’s land. But Jesus understood that the real battle wasn’t against Rome, but against sin and death. So in our passage, Jesus begins to prepare his disciples, who are ready to follow him to glorious military victory, showing them the real nature of the Messiah .

Luke 9:22 NIV

And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Can we just take a moment and appreciate what Jesus says here because it is such a beautiful reminder of how deep his love for you and me is. When most people know danger is coming at them, they do something about it. A martial artist will block a kick; a boxer will slip a jab; even a soccer player will cover his, you know, when they are doing that "standing-as-a-wall-during-a free-kick" thing. When danger is close, we will either fight hard, sometimes striking first, or we will flee and run away from it.

But Jesus wasn't concerned with protecting himself. He was concerned with saving you. He didn't need to block the soldiers' blows as they whipped and beat him to an inch of his life. He didn't run away from his appointment with pain, suffering and death and try to flee to another country where he would be safe. No, because of his love for you, he went to Jerusalem, knowing there was danger; because of his love for you, he willingly endured suffering and died - all so that you could be reconciled to God and have life to the full.

The role of the Messiah was to bring freedom to God's people. If Jesus embraced the title of Messiah in a public way, then people would be expecting him to lead a military revolution. But Jesus knows that the real problem isn't the government; it's sin and death. So instead of a revolution that would only help God's people of a particular time and place, Jesus offers himself as a sacrifice to help all people for all time by atoning for sin, defeating death and offering a life with God that is by faith, not by works. That's the reality that Jesus came to address, and it went against most people's expectations for the Messiah.

Now that Jesus has taught his disciples the true meaning of what being the Messiah is, he teaches them the true meaning of being a disciple.

Luke 9:23–24 NIV

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

Being a disciple of Jesus means that just as Jesus sacrificed for us, we offer our natural, base desires - our self-centeredness and submit them to the will of God. We take up our cross. As crucifixion was a standard tool for the Romans' capital punishment, many people were crucified. Part of the humiliation accompanied it was that you had to drag your cross through the town and up to the hill where you were crucified. Everyone knew that to carry your cross was a one-way trip. You wouldn't come back because the cross is the emblem of death. To "take up your cross" is a euphemism to say that you choose to die to yourself. That you no longer live to serve your passions and desires but that everything in your life becomes surrendered to the character and will of God.

And what's unique in Luke's description of this event, as opposed to Matthew or Mark's, is that we are to take up our cross daily in Luke's account. It's not just a one-time altar call at the front of the church. No, it's a daily surrender. Before we put our feet on the floor, we should pray to God and surrender our lives to him for that day. Take up your cross daily and follow Jesus.

While the idea of "taking up your cross daily" sounds a bit dreadful, it's actually how we find the abundant life Jesus promises us. Our best life is when we stop focussing on ourselves, and we turn our eyes to Jesus. Then we experience life in a new and vibrant way. Jesus says in verse 24

Luke 9:24 NIV

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

If you are self-focused, you will miss out on the bigger life that God has for you. While it may look like you are winning at life because you have all the things you want, you are actually losing because the only things that truly matter are the eternal things, like love, forgiveness, mercy, and peace. While they significantly impact life on earth, all those things are rooted in the character of God. To the person who dies to themselves and surrenders to Jesus, God gives them life. A real-life that is substantive and impactful, and eternal. If you give it all up for Jesus, it may look like you have lost in the eyes of the world, but in truth, you win. You get life. After all,

Luke 9:25 NIV

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?

When Jesus asked his disciples, "who am I" they responded with a dangerous declaration. They declared Jesus God's Messiah. They declared that he is the chosen and anointed one that they need to follow. Jesus warns them of what that means - it means that as Jesus suffered and died to atone for sin, so we too must suffer and die to ourselves to follow Jesus in our character and our cause.

Who is Jesus to you? Are you ready to die to yourself and follow Him?

Pray.