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    Sep 15, 2024

    Cross-Talk

    Passage: Mark 8:27-38

    Preacher: John Repsold

    Series: Gospel of Mark

    Keywords: discipleship, cross, doubt, questions, deny self, rebuke, crucifying

    Summary:

    This passage presents three snap-shots of Jesus preparing his disciples for following a suffering Messiah. See what kind of discipleship Jesus calls his followers to.

    Detail:

    Cross-Talk

    Mark 8:27-38

    September 8, 2024

     

    Fellowship Question: What’s one of the teachings of the Bible that you have most difficulty embracing?

    Review:

    How are we coming on our lists of “spiritual blind people” that we are praying we’ll have opportunities to help them see Jesus?

    INTRO:  Ever been in a group or meeting where cross-talk is going on?  By cross-talk I mean, one or more people are having a side conversation (be it on the phone or in person).  It’s usually distracting to people around them, though they seem to be oblivious to that fact.  It always keeps them from hearing what is going on with the rest of the group. 

                Most of us probably learned at the dinner table that ignoring what someone else is saying, butting in with our thoughts and words, or carrying on a private conversation that disengages us from the family communication was not appropriate behavior.  Some people are still learning!

                In today’s text, there is a lot of “cross-talk” going on.  Some of it is of the nature I just spoke about—private side conversations that take away from what the group needs to pay attention to.  But in our passage in Mark 8 today, there is another kind of “cross-talk” happening.  It was and still is one of the most challenging and difficult messages of Jesus.  It was and still is one of the central truths of being a Christ-follower/Christian.  And it was and still is one of the most important corners any person can turn if they want to get out of life everything God wants them to experience. 

    Mark 8:27-38

    27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

    28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

    29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

    Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

    30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

    31 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. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

    33 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.”

    34 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. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 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.”

                There are actually 3 snap-shots being presented in this section:

    • Peter’s great declaration of Jesus as the Christ (vss. 27-30).
    • Jesus tough teaching about the suffering Messiah…with Peter’s great failure to embrace that (vss. 31-33).
    • Jesus teaching to all about what brings life/saves a soul and what loses life/a soul (vss. 34-38).

    I would like to suggest we try answering 3 questions from this passage today—one for each major snapshot.

    1. Who do YOU believe Jesus is?
    2. What are you having a hard time embracing about Jesus as Savior & Lord?
    3. How are you living out Jesus’ call to the crucified life?

    SNAPSHOT #1—A pop-quiz on the most important question of our lives:  Who have you concluded Jesus is? 

    This is probably the easiest question for most of us here to give an answer to today.  Most of us have probably, like Peter, concluded that Jesus is more than an amazing prophet, more than a great teacher, more than a good moral example and certainly not a liar or mentally-deranged, dead, historical personage. 

    Most of us here have concluded, one way or another, that Jesus is God who took on human flesh and nature, a man who lived the only sinless life ever on this earth, the God-man who died on the cross to take the punishment due us and our sin, was buried, and rose from the dead bodily after 3 days, ascending to heaven where he currently intercedes for us before the Father.   

    Most of us have answered C.S. Lewis’s challenge to conclude Jesus either was a fraud claiming to be someone he wasn’t (God in human flesh), a nut-job believing he was someone he wasn’t (God in human flesh), or actually who he claimed to be (God in human flesh come to rescue any and every person who accepts him as such).  Most of us here have answered, “Option C—who he claimed to be—God come to earth to be my Savior and Lord.” 

    Sadly, most people in your school or at your work or in your neighborhoods or perhaps even your family have not even bothered to ask themselves this MOST important question crying for an answer before they die:  Who have I concluded Jesus is? 

    Sadly, some of you seated here have either refused to answer that question OR have answered it wrongly.  Both those possibilities will lead to an eternity of separation from God. 

    CHALLENGE: 

    • Don’t put off answering that question.
    • Don’t pretend because you are here that you’ve answered it correctly,e. actually concluded that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of your soul, put your faith and trust in Him, and, as a natural result, are seeking to experience him as Lord of your life for the rest of life. Unless you’ve actually embraced Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and are seeking to experience his saving power and lordship in your life, don’t conclude you’ve actually “answered” that most important question correctly.

    Who have you concluded Jesus was…and IS in your life as a result?

    Well, Peter was apparently the first Apostle to score 100% on the 1-question pop-quiz.  He got it theologically correct.  But as we move to the next snapshot, having the right theology doesn’t mean you will make the right applications.  (But having the wrong theology makes it virtually impossible to have the right application.)

    Now we come to the 2nd snapshot.

    SNAPSHOT #2:  the cross-talk of Jesus and Peter. 

    Vss. 31-32—“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….”

    “Son of Man”—used by Jesus of himself some 81 times in the Gospels.  Jesus clearly borrowed that title from…

    Daniel 7:13-14--13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

    Sounds like just the kind of Messiah and Christ Peter was expecting, no?

                Peter is just coming off of this stellar declaration of truth about who Jesus is—the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Redeemer and Savior of the world.  Simple fisherman Peter got it first, apparently. 

                As the parallel passage in Matthew 16:13-20 tells us, he “got it”, not because of his brilliance but because of the Father’s grace towards him in opening his eyes and revealing it to him.  Jesus followed up by giving him that great promise, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”  Without getting stuck in the weeds of who or what the “rock” here probably is, the least we can all agree upon is that Peter’s correct answer shot him to the front of the class. 

                I don’t know how you feel when you “get it right” like this with some ‘right answer.’  The limited number of times that has happened to me in the hundreds of classes I’ve been in in my life felt pretty good.  And they also usually set me up for falling on my face shortly thereafter.  Nothing like success to produce a little pride.  And we all know that Scripture is clear: “Pride comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Prov. 16:18).  Peter was no exception.

                This passage actually marks a major shift in Jesus’ ministry.  Up until now, he’s been proving his deity and messiahship.  But now he’s heading to Jerusalem for his most important work—being our sacrificial lamb that will take away the sins of the world.  So he begins to prepare his disciples for this radically jarring reality by telling them WHO is going to persecute him, HOW they are going to do it, and WHAT the result is going to  be, i.e. his death, burial and resurrection. 

                All this is too much for star pupil Peter.  Doesn’t Jesus know the Scriptures?  Has he forgotten that the Messiah is going to bring justice to this unjust world, rule with a rod of iron from Jerusalem, and make the lion lie down with the lamb?  A suffering Christ was nowhere on his radar.

                So, Peter pulls Jesus aside and “begins to rebuke him.”  Rebuking the Son of God doesn’t usually end well.  “Never, Lord,” he said.  “This shall never happen to you!” (Vs. 22)

                Just because Peter got one really important theology correct (Christology—the nature of Jesus) didn’t mean he got the rest of theology correct (like soteriology—the truth about salvation:  how it would happen, what it would involve, etc.).  And it certainly didn’t mean he got the right application about the Messiahship of Jesus.  His application was that Jesus’ lordship must mean a crown, a throne and a world-wide government.  A cross, rejection by existing authorities, death and a cold tomb was not in the “Who Is the Christ?” syllabus for Peter.  So clearly, the Professor was mistaken about something. 

    APP 1:  This event should inform all of us that, at our best, we can be influenced and become the tool of the worst—Satan himself.  Satan wasn’t indwelling Peter; he was just using him to be the mouthpiece for a heretical message. 

    APP 2:  Jesus didn’t dump Peter after this either.  He knew this was a temporary failure of understanding on Peter’s part.  That should also teach us how to treat others who may have a momentary lapse of judgment or truth or even obedience and righteousness.  Love will always want to see restoration, not desertion.

    APP 3: We would be wise to follow Jesus’ example here and realize that the demonic realm is often operating behind what appears to be simply human.  We need to understand that Satan may be using some good person to communicate some lie to us.  We must recognize that there is sometimes a spirit of evil behind the person…and rebuke that…rather than attack the person.  Face it, the church and God’s people in it are where Satan is often most active.  But we must not confuse the fingerprints of Satan with the failings of God’s people.  One calls for definitive rebuke, the other for grace.

                Well, Jesus response to Peter is nothing short of… embarrassing, humiliating and a bit shocking.  Jesus “turned and looked at his disciples” (vs. 33).  From a private cross-talk conversation with Peter, Jesus stops the whole crew, and then he “rebuked Peter” with one of the most brutal rebukes in all of Scripture:  “Get behind me, Satan.  You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.”  (Mark 8:33).  Ouch! 

                If I were Peter, I’d be thinking, “Really, Lord?  I was just having a little personal chat with you and you blow this up in front of the entire class.” 

                What we probably need to understand as well is that, as kind and compassionate as Peter’s rebuke might have seemed on the surface, it was straight from the pit of hell.  It was just what Satan himself wanted: keep Jesus from doing the will of the Father.  Keep Christ from becoming Savior of the world.  Let him become the world’s greatest ruler.  Just don’t let him conquer the hearts of people by becoming the Redeemer of the world.

                This was such a gross failure of right belief and right action that Jesus knew it needed to become a never-forgotten rebuke to anyone who dared to turn his life and ministry away from the power of the cross.  Peter was essentially denying what the Gospel is:  that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again the 3rd day.  Without that journey, we have no Gospel. 

    APP:  While we can perhaps agree to disagree on some secondary issues in Scripture, we cannot allow the Gospel of Christ to be perverted, diluted or misrepresented.  When it is, we must have enough clarity to confront it and call out the error. 

    3 contemporary perversions of the true Gospel come to mind for me:

    1. The “Health-Wealth Theology”—God wants all his children to be healthy, wealthy and living like princesses and princes of the King. Therefore, don’t settle for suffering; name health and wealth…and claim it… “in Jesus name.” 
    2. The “Gospel of Entertainment”—presenting Christ through supremely entertaining church services that make being a follower of Jesus mostly about being entertained once a week in church.
    3. The “Gospel of Self-Actualization”—that “being true to yourself”, learning to “love yourself” and developing a positive self-image is really the reason Jesus came and died.

    The verses that will follow in this passage should be all the proof anyone needs that this is not the Gospel of Christ.  When we encounter it, the least we should do is tell Satan and that message that we reject them and they must stop lying to us.

    Peter, for all his good intentions, did not have in mind, as Jesus said in vs. 32, “the concerns of God” but rather “merely human concerns.” 

                Jesus is enlightening all of us that God’s “concerns’ or designs about our lives do not always match our “merely human concerns.”  What were Peter’s “merely human concerns” for Jesus that so often parallel our concerns for ourselves?

    • Power over humiliation.
    • Comfort over crucifixion.
    • Saving our lives over sacrificing them.
    • Personal satisfaction over personal suffering.
    • Reigning over others rather than redeeming them.
    • Time over eternity: an eternal heavenly kingdom with billions of subjects as opposed to a temporal earthly kingdom with thousands or millions of subjects.

    Peter was having a hard time embracing God’s theology of suffering, redemption and a submitted life.  Which brings us to the 2nd question:  What are you having a hard time embracing about Jesus as Savior & Lord?  (Review Q1?  Who have you concluded Jesus is in your life/relationship with God?)

                Remember the “fellowship question” we started the service with:  What’s one of the teachings of the Bible that you have most difficulty embracing?  I don’t know a true, sincere saint that hasn’t wrestled with one or more of the truths of Scripture and the teachings of Jesus during their lifetime.  Some of us wrestle with many of them much of the time.  Welcome to life as a disciple of Jesus.  I’m sure that Peter and the other 11 Apostles had plenty to wrestle with after the teaching Jesus gave here about the crucified life of anyone who wants to be His disciple.  Peter was ready for a palace position, not increased persecution.  He was ready for a cabinet post, not a cross-posting. 

                I really have a lot of sympathy for Peter here.  I’m not the least bit surprised he got it all wrong about Jesus needing to be the suffering Messiah before he became the reigning Messiah.  Most Jews today still get it wrong.  The surprising thing is, far too many Christians today continue to get it wrong.  Having the advantage of history and being able to look back on the whole flow and scope of Jesus’ life, too many of us are still shocked and surprised to discover how “following Jesus” really involves doing just that to the point of death.  For many Christians, it is a literal death as a martyr.  For every Christian, it should be a daily dying to self and the flesh while living into the resurrection life of Jesus. 

                 Part of that “dying to self” involves subjugating our serious and genuine questions to the lordship of Jesus.  That doesn’t mean we stop asking questions and wrestling with hard biblical truths.  But it does mean that I always come to Him with those questions in an attitude of submission, committed to embracing hard truths and the Lord who gave us them rather than allowing my doubts and questions to drive any kind of wedge between me and my Savior. 

    The fact is, if we really want Jesus… want to be a close disciple of Him…it will involve dying to our opinions, our doubts, our questions, even our disappointments about God in order to follow the Master.  We “can’t serve two masters”—faith vs. doubt, disappointment vs. worship, questions vs. confidence.  When God speaks things into my life that I may not agree with, I need to ask for clarification, not set about correcting Him. 

    ILL:  Early years in missions ministry when I was upset at God for what he had taken away that I dearly loved in ministry.  I grew more bitter and depressed the more I questioned Him and railed against reality.  Only when I truly submitted and told Him, “I want to be close to You and experience that You are more than enough if I never get to have all the other things I long for,” that I started to grow again, experience peace and be content in Christ. 

    Whatever you are having a hard time embracing about Jesus or the Word of God, ask God to show you “His concerns” about it while abandoning “your concerns.” 

                Last question:  How are you living out the cross of Christ in your life on a daily basis?  This is the application question to the teaching of vss. 34-38.

    34 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. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? 38 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.”

                There is a 3-fold experience here to discipleship in Jesus:

    • Deney self
    • Take up our cross
    • Follow Jesus

    The rest of the passage are really reasons WHY we should be willing to do that:  our souls are worth more than this entire world; life is found in letting go of it, not clinging to it; God’s approval is eternally more important than the approval of any crazy-wicked and sinful generation of any age.

                Let’s just cap it off today with HOW all of us who want to be a close-following disciple of Jesus can do that every day this week with every temptation to live for “our concerns” rather than “God’s concerns”.

    1. Deny ourselves: This hugely counter-cultural call of Jesus is really not that mysterious.  Jesus is, I believe, addressing the propensity every one of us has to “care about our own concerns rather than God’s.”  It’s the battle between the flesh and the Spirit, between sin and holiness, between living the way I want to and living the way Jesus wants me to.  It’s the first step of simply saying “NO” to what my flesh wants to do so that I can take the next step of saying “YES” to what the Spirit wants.

    ILL:  A “self-denial” issue I’ve been wrestling with over the last year in our new neighborhood.  My flesh just wants to work on the house, not the relationships with my neighbors.  I’d much prefer to spend most evenings and weekends puttering around the house, making it nicer.  I’m basically an introvert.  So to go make friends with strangers, to make commitments that will obligate me to spend time away from the tasks I love and building relationships I find challenging is, to say the least, a ‘denying of my concerns’ in order to live more to God’s interests/concerns for my neighborhood. 

                When I stop and think about it logically, there is no contest about God being more concerned with the souls and lives of the people in my neighborhood than He is with my house projects.  “His concerns” for my neighbors is not a big mystery. And in order for me to adopt His concerns over mine, I must “deny” my interests first place all the time. 

    1. Take up our cross.

    The strangeness of that demand of Jesus has lost its bite for us.  But when he first spoke that command, “Take up your cross,” it must have sounded shocking.  It was like saying, “Take up your electric chair” or “bring your lethal injection.” 

                I think Jesus is warning us that discipleship with Him will involve daily death experiences with our old self, our flesh.  There won’t be a day of my life in Jesus where I’m not going to have to decide to let the Spirit of God crucify or KILL some sinful desire OR let my flesh dominate and do what it wants to do.  Crucifixion was always a painful process.  I think Jesus is warning us that growing in being a Christ-follower will involve a bit of pain for the sake of those He has called us to serve and love. 

    ILL:

    1. Follow Jesus.

    We can’t follow the flesh and follow Jesus at the same time.  We can pretend we are…and convince ourselves we are.  But we can’t really do that.  Jesus took his disciples a lot of places they would have preferred not to go—Samaritan villages, Gentile regions, graveyards with demoniacs, pools flooded with sick people.  But if we want to be close to Jesus, we’re going to have to go into places, people’s lives, and experiences that we wouldn’t normally choose.  But when we do, there will be a host of blessings and surprises that we will never get anywhere else. 

    ILL:  Missions again.  Never had any interest in learning another language, living in Spain (Switzerland, maybe!), or being separated from our families stateside.  But Jesus asked us to go, so we did.  It was painful, grief-provoking, slow, hard for someone who thought way too much of what others thought of me.  Pushing myself to have conversations with strangers who thought we were from a cult (i.e. Protestants), didn’t really want American friends and weren’t very interested in God was about the hardest thing I’ve done in life on a daily basis.

                BUT, I found a very different and deep relationship with Jesus in those years.  I found a new depth of the Body of Christ both all over the West Coast and in Spain.  I found Jesus in ways I never would have going directly into the pastorate here in the U.S. 

                I’m still being called to ‘live out the cross of Christ daily’ here in Spokane.  It just takes different forms with different challenges. 

    So, how are you answering these three questions today:

    1. Who are you saying Jesus is by your beliefs and life?
    2. What questions about God, His workings and His Word are you submitting to Him and looking for God’s concerns in rather than your own?
    3. How or where are you daily embracing the cross of Christ as a Christ-follower?

    May God use one or more of these questions this week to help you follow the call of Christ on your life in deeply fulfilling ways. 

     

    BENEDICTION

     Col. 1:9-14