Q & A

Sermon Transcript

Last year a six-episode series named Chad Powers was released on Hulu. The series was based on a skit from 2022 in which an unsuspecting quarterback showed up at Penn State University’s practice facility for a tryout as a walk-on to the team. Walk-ons, for those of you who don’t know, are players who weren’t good enough to be offered an athletic scholarship, but who could still “walk on” to the team and get a roster spot. You wouldn’t expect greatness from them. As Powers began trying out, some of the players thought he looked a bit old. His 40-meter sprint time was unimpressive, but when he began dropping back and throwing balls, he stood out among the rest, so much so that some started to wonder, “Who is this guy?” At the end of the tryout, he took off his mask to reveal that he was two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Eli Manning. 

 

Most of us will probably never do something that makes people wonder, “Who is this guy?”. But as we come to chapter 9 of the Gospel of Luke today, Jesus has been doing things that made people wonder who he was. When Jesus forgave a paralyzed man’s sins, the Pharisees asked: “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). When Jesus forgave a notoriously sinful woman’s sins, we read that those who were with him asked, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” (Luke 7:49). When Jesus calmed a storm by speaking to it, his disciples asked, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?” (Luke 8:25). And most recently, when King Herod heard of him, he said, “John I beheaded, but who is this about whom I hear such things?” (Luke 9:9). Well today, we get the answer: Jesus is the unparalleled king on an unexpected path, and we’ll see that from this passage by looking first at the question we all must answer, then at what the answer meant for Jesus, and finally what the answer means for us.

 

The question we all must answer

 

Our passage today begins with Jesus praying alone, a common scene in the life of Jesus. If you were writing the biography of a farmer, many of the stories would probably start with, “While he was out in the field…” If you were writing a biography of the President of the United States, many of the stories would probably start with, “While he was in the oval office…” When Luke sat out to write an orderly account of the life of Jesus, many stories began with “As he was praying alone.” It’s just what Jesus did. May private prayer increasingly characterize our lives as well, brothers and sisters.

 

Well as is also often the case in Jesus’ life, someone interrupted him, and he was so willing to be interrupted. The disciples came, and Jesus took the opportunity to ask them a question: Who do the crowds say that I am? At this point crowds had been gathering to hear Jesus preach and to be healed by him. He’d become quite popular, and so Jesus asks his disciples, what are the crowds taking away from all this time hearing me preach and seeing me heal? Who do they say that I am?

 

The disciples suggest three different answers: Some say he’s John the Baptist, others say that he’s Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen. Elijah was one of Israel’s most prominent prophets, and there was a prediction earlier in the Bible that before God’s promised savior came, Elijah would come again. Just before Jesus was born, John the Baptist was born, and the people recognized him as a prophet. So now when they see someone else teaching with authority and performing signs like Elijah, they think he must either be Elijah, John the Baptist, or another of the prophets of old.

 

Whichever of these people said, notice they were all positive descriptions. Many today also have positive opinions of Jesus. Muslims say he is a prophet, Hindus say he is an avatar or Guru, Buddhists say he is an enlightened teacher, Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses say he’s the greatest of all the beings God made, and many more of our neighbors say he was a very good person who wants us to be good people too. These are all positive descriptions, but the question we all must answer is the question Jesus’ disciples also had to answer: “But who do you say that I am?”

 

And Peter, as the leader of the disciples, answered, “The Christ of God.” The Christ is a transliteration of the Greek word Christos, which means “anointed one.” In Hebrew that same word is “Messiah.” Peter isn’t the first one to identify Jesus as the Christ in Luke; the angels announced that he was the Christ at his birth (Luke 2:11), and Luke tells us the demons Jesus drove out from humans knew he was the Christ (Luke 4:41). The good spiritual beings and the evil spiritual beings, the angels and the demons, knew all along that Jesus was the Christ. But up to this point, humans had still been wrestling with the question: Who is Jesus?

 

The crowds thought the answer was Elijah, or John the Baptist, or another of the prophets, because they were used to God sending prophets to them throughout their history. There was only one Christ, though. It’s hard for us to get our minds around how big of a deal it was for Peter to confess Jesus as the Christ, because it’s hard for us to get our minds around how big of a deal the Christ was. Our culture trains us not to put our hopes for the future in any one person; our whole form of government in America was designed to limit the power of any one person, and with good reason. But Israel’s hopes were different. The whole story of the Bible really, up to the time of Jesus, is a story of expectation. The first two and a half chapters of the Bible give us a vitally important, and yet comparatively short, introduction to the story. In the beginning, God simply existed, and God made everything else that exists. Among all he made, he made humans uniquely in his image, for relationship with him, and to reflect what he is like in the world. Everything flourished under God’s loving rule.

 

But then the first humans rejected God’s rule, and God is so just, so holy, so righteous, that he would not simply overlook that. So he pronounced a guilty verdict on humanity, and sentenced us to death. That’s why our bodies die, it’s why we are born separated from God, and it’s why, if we remain in that condition, we will spend eternity apart from God’s favorable presence, a condition the Bible calls hell. If you’ve ever wondered why, even though God exists and is everywhere, he can feel distant from us, this is why: We were all born under this curse. And can’t you sense this? Why do we all seem to have this idea that the world isn’t the way it ought to be? From where do we get the “ought”? And why does it seem so frustratingly impossible to achieve the “ought”? We have more money and technology than we know what to do with and we still can’t stop fighting wars, getting depressed, and winding up dead.

 

If you are here today and you are not a Christian, how do you explain both the sense that the world “ought” to be a certain way, and the reality that it’s “not”? The Bible’s short introduction explains both: We were created in the image of God for a life of flourishing with God–that’s where the “ought” comes from. And yet, we rebelled against his loving rule and incurred his just curse–that’s where the “not” comes from–the world is not the way it ought to be. But after that short introduction, the expectation of a restored “ought” comes in Genesis 3:15 when God says this to the serpent who deceived the first humans: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” God promises here to do something in the future that will defeat the evil serpent who deceived the first humans, and the something God will do he says he will do through an offspring of the woman, a single human person: That offspring will bruise the head of the serpent. 

 

And then all throughout the rest of the Old Testament, the part of the Bible written before Jesus came, this promise gets reiterated and further clarified. God promises to send a prophet who will speak his words to his people (Deut 18:15-18). God promises to send a king who will save his people and extend his rule over all the earth (2 Sam 7:12-16, Jer 23:5-6). God promises to send a priest who will do what is right in his sight, and intercede for the people (1 Sam 2:35, Jer 33:17-18). As the story continues to progress and the prophets continue to speak God’s word, these figures begin to converge: The priest is the king; the king is the priest, for example. Listen to this from one of the last prophets, Zechariah: “It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both” (Zech 6:13). Or listen to this from Psalm 110 – “The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!…The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’” He’s a ruler with a scepter, and he’s a priest forever. This figure came to be known as the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one, because both priests and kings were anointed with oil, and even a prophet was once anointed with oil.

 

The expectation of salvation began in Genesis 3:15 with a single offspring of the woman, and after all these different predictions of those God would send for the salvation of his people, they all converge again on one person: The Christ. In an excellent video on this, theologian Gavin Ortlund points out that all of Israel’s hopes eventually got tied to the coming of this Christ: The blessing of the nations (Psalm 72:17), the reunification and peace of God’s people (Isaiah 11:3, Micah 5:4-5), atonement for sin and the cessation of sacrifice (Dan 9:24-27), deliverance from foreign powers (Isaiah 11:1-10, Jer 30:8-9), multiplication of offspring (Jer 33:17-22, Ezek 37:26), and the return to the land (Amos 9:11-15, Ezek 37:25).

 

So when prophets like Elijah, John the Baptist, and the other prophets came, they were pointing ahead to the Christ of God, the one anointed by God for the salvation of his people. So the crowds see Jesus and they think he’s another one of them! But when Jesus asks his disciples who they say he is, Peter says on their behalf: You aren’t just another prophet; you’re the one of whom the prophets spoke! He is the Christ of God, the one of whom there is only one, the unparalleled king who has come to save God’s people. He’s not another prophet in the line of prophets like Muhammad said, he’s not another teacher in the line of teachers like Buddhists and Hindus say, he’s not just a better part of God’s creation like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses say, he’s not just another historical figure in a line of historical figures like many today say. He is the Christ of God, the one on whom it is really safe to put all of our hopes.

 

So, who do you say that he is? It’s the question we all must answer. You can try to ignore it or say, “I don’t know,” but you still have to live as though he is the Christ of God, or as though he is not. Your actions answer the question, even if your words don’t. If you take the things he said that you like and integrate them into your own custom-made spirituality, your actions are answering the question. They are saying he is not the Christ of God. And that matters eternally, because Christianity is not ultimately about what you do with a set of rules or even doctrines; it’s about what you do with a person. 

 

Imagine a king calls you to become a citizen of his kingdom. Would it really do for you to say, “No thanks, but I do like some of your laws, and from this day forward I’ll do my best to live by them”? Would it really do to say, “No thanks, but I’ll study the books that have been written about you, and I may even write one of my own”? Jesus is not calling people into a new rule of life or a new field of study; he’s calling us to himself, to a living, vital, personal relationship with him, and therefore the question we all must answer is, “Who do you say that he is?” There are plenty of other questions you may wonder about as you follow him, and some of them I assume we’ll never get the answer to. But this is the one we all must answer–“Who do you say that he is?” He is the Christ of God, the unparalleled king, but before we see what that means for those of us who agree with that confession, let’s look next at what that meant for Jesus. He is the unparalleled king, but he’s also on an unexpected path.

 

What the answer meant for Jesus

 

So Peter gave the right answer to the question, but then we get our first hint this might not go the way we expect when in verse 21 we read that Jesus strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one. After Jesus rose from the dead, he commanded them to tell everyone (Acts 1:8), but here he commands them to tell no one. What he says next explains why: The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Though Peter called Jesus the Christ, here Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, which is the most common way he refers to himself. The son of man was another one of those predicted figures in the Old Testament who would receive authority from God for the salvation of his people, and here we see it’s yet another figure who is fulfilled in the Christ. All the streams of God’s prior promises converge in the Christ.

 

In many of the predictions of this Christ, though, he appears victorious. Even in the prediction specifically about the Son of Man, we read, “And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Dan 7:14). So many Israelites in Jesus’ day expected that when the Messiah came, he would deliver them from the rule of the Romans and give them a political victory. Even the extrabiblical Roman historian Suetonius writes of how people in that region expected Judeans to rule the world. Jesus knows that, but he also knows the path he must take is not a path that goes directly to glory. Instead, he says the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and only then, on the third day, be raised. The people of Jesus’ day assumed the Messiah would take a direct path to glory, while Jesus knew that his only path to glory was through the cross.

 

That’s the most likely reason he strictly charged and commanded his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ–he didn’t want people to come and try to make him king apart from the suffering of the cross (cf. John 6:15)! Amid all the glorious predictions of the salvation and glory the Christ would bring, we also find ones like these: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 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. 6 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” (Isaiah 53:4-6).

 

Jesus saw clearly what was there in the scriptures: The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Or, as Jesus puts it later in Luke, he must first suffer, and only then enter into his glory (Luke 24:26). And the prophecy from Isaiah tells us why: All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, everyone, to his own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Recall that in the Bible’s brief introduction, human sin incurred the just sentence of condemnation from God. So if God is truly just, and he is, he can’t just waive the sentence of condemnation, or release us from the penalty. When we see injustices, we instinctively cry out for justice, not mercy. When someone who committed a heinous crime gets off, nobody praises the judge for his mercy. The job of a judge is to do justice, and God is a just judge over all the earth.

 

So if the Son of Man, if the Christ, is going to save guilty people like you and me, the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected, and ultimately be killed. He didn’t just have to die; he had to suffer, be rejected, and be killed. Through his sufferings, through his rejection, and ultimately through his death on the cross, Jesus bore the penalty for the sins we committed, so that we could be forgiven. And then, with that penalty fully paid, on the third day he rose from the dead, and entered the eternal life, the glory, the unbreakable fellowship with God for which we were created, but to which we forfeited our right by our rebellion against God. If the unparalleled king had gone straight to glory, we never could have gone with him. So instead he first suffered and died in our place, so that we could join him in glory forever. 

 

Consider the love of God revealed in this. All justice required for our sins was condemnation. And God didn’t need us; he has all the love he needs within himself, in the eternal union of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But he is so good, so kind, that he chose to love us, and out of great love for us, instead of condemning us, committed himself to saving us, though it meant that he must then become man, suffer, be rejected, and be killed. He could have exempted himself from all of that, and still been eternally satisfied. But he chose to love us, he chose to suffer for us, and he chose to die for us, for no other reason than that it pleased him to do so. That’s just the kind of God he is. He is the kind of God who gets sinned against, and who almost immediately promises to send a savior for the very people who sinned against him. He’s the kind of God who continues to be sinned against, and who continues to promise to send that savior again.

 

Jesus is that savior, that Christ, the unparalleled king, and what that meant for him was an unexpected path: First the cross, then the crown. What, then, does it mean for you? That’s where Jesus goes next.

 

What the answer means for you

 

Jesus turns to all in verse 23 and says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus just told us about the path he’s on, and so perhaps the application is obvious: If you want him, you will also have to walk the same path. Notice first how inclusive the command is: If anyone would come after me. I’ve heard people sometimes describe themselves as “bad Christians” because though they were baptized and raised in churches, they aren’t part of a church anymore and disregard various commandments they know Jesus has given. The implication behind such a statement is that it’s possible for someone to really be a Christian, but to not really deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Jesus. Jesus shows us here that’s not true. To be a Christian at all means to deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow him. That’s not what some special group of Christians called saints or priests or “good Christians” do; that’s what Jesus says anyone who would come after him must do.

 

To deny yourself means to no longer live most fundamentally for whatever desires occur naturally to you. A Christian lives for Christ, not for self. Jesus is not a supplement to the Christian’s life; Jesus is the center of the Christian’s life. All their desires are subordinated to his. Of course, this does not mean that a Christian denies themselves happiness. In the very next verse Jesus makes clear that it is the one who loses his life, who denies himself, for Jesus’ sake, who will in the end save it. He assumes that all humans would rather save their lives than lose them. If you could deny yourself the desire for happiness, you would cease to be human. So denying yourself doesn’t mean that, but denying yourself does mean you trust Jesus for your ultimate happiness; you trust him especially for salvation, such that the path to saving your life is to give it up to him.

 

If a farmer loves his seed so much that he holds on to it, he will eventually lose it. It will eventually dry out, and be incapable of growing into a fruit-bearing plant. But if he lets go of it, and entrusts it to the soil, in which it undergoes a kind of death, it will grow and bear fruit. That’s the idea here. Self-denial is not suicide; it’s a letting go of our life, placing it into the hands of Jesus, and trusting him to bring you into the glory he has now entered. 

 

On the simplest level, this means denying yourself sinful desires. If you want something and the Bible forbids it, following Jesus means saying “no” to the desire. But consider this in addition: Jesus is telling us to follow him on the same path he’s on, that’s a path of self-denial, but Jesus had no sinful desires. So what did Jesus deny himself? Jesus denied himself what I’ve heard theologian Michael Allen describe as lesser goods for the sake of greater goods. First and foremost, he denied himself the good of serene and peaceful existence in heaven to become man in a sin-cursed world for the greater good of the glory of God in the salvation of his people. Then once he became man, as the God-man, he could have done anything. He could have been born in a king’s palace, he could have skipped right to adulthood, he could have gone on a military rampage against all his enemies, he could have enjoyed nightly feasts with the best and brightest of society. Though none of that would have been inherently sinful, he denied himself all that to instead suffer, be rejected, and be killed, for the greater good of the glory of God in the salvation of his people. 

 

Now, none of us have received the exact same commission from God that Jesus did. The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all; the LORD isn’t now going to lay anyone’s iniquities on us and send us to the cross to pay for them. And yet, if anyone would come after Jesus, he must deny himself, Jesus says. You must fundamentally reorient your life around Jesus, such that pleasing him, glorifying him, advancing his cause, becomes the driving force in your life, and everything else gets subordinated to it. It’s not always obvious how to do that, but I think you can understand the concept. This is the time of year I try to get to a Phillies game or two, and when I’m going to a game, my goal is to watch the game. I may stop and get a soft pretzel on the way in, but if all I wanted was a soft pretzel, I would have just gone to a soft pretzel shop. I wouldn’t have ridden the subway all the way down there. And if on the way in I realize I don’t have time to stop for a soft pretzel and still see the game, I skip the pretzel and go to the game.

 

So also, on the path of following Jesus, the Lord may enable you to enjoy good things in this life–a nice meal, a vacation, an hour watching a TV show just because you enjoy it. The Bible describes God as the God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy (1 Tim 6:17). It tells us that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:4). It even labels those who forbid marriage and the eating of certain foods as demonic (1 Tim 4:3). And yet, Jesus says if anyone would come after him, those things can’t be the things driving your life. You must hold them with an open hand, and be ready on any occasion where the glory of Christ requires it to part with them, just like I’m ready to part with my soft pretzel if making the game requires it.

 

Jesus adds even that this is something we must do daily. If anyone would come after me, he says, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily. Though God grows us, as long as we are still in these bodies, Jesus teaches us we will have a need for daily self-denial. Don’t resist that. You can take a day off work, but Jesus says there are no days off from following him. Sometimes I confuse those–I get a day off from work and translate that into thinking this is a day on which I don’t “have to” deny myself. I don’t need to pray, I don’t need to serve my family, I don’t need to exercise self-control–This is a day I get to indulge myself. Jesus says no. He says if anyone would come after me, he doesn’t get days like that. And what does a desire for that day reveal? It reveals that deep down I still think the best thing for me is to indulge myself, not to deny myself. It’s like the farmer who wants to stick his seed in the ground but then still pull it out every so often so he can enjoy it for himself. The plant’s never going to grow that way. The best thing for me, and the best thing for you, is to deny ourselves, take up our cross every day, and entrust ourselves to Jesus. He promises that the one who loses his life like that will save it in the end. 

 

But he also warns that the one who saves his life will lose it. And what would it profit such a man, he asks, to gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit himself? What good will it do you to gain titles, houses, and the acceptance of others, and then to appear before the judgment seat of God with no righteousness but your own? Death will part you from all that, but Jesus is the only one who died, and on the third day rose again, the only one who promises to bring you safely through death into everlasting life with him, and the only one with the power to do it. 

 

Face this honestly, because the temptation is going to come that Jesus describes in verse 26: The temptation to be ashamed of him and of his words. He’s trying to tell you loud and clear that following him is going to cost you in this life–it will feel like losing your life. You cannot gain the whole world and gain him. If you are not ashamed of Jesus and his words, there will be people with power in the world who will not like that. It just depends where you are in the world as to which words they don’t like. Some parts of the world, and even some parts of Philadelphia, don’t like Jesus’ words about the necessity of forgiveness: Don’t let someone do you like that; we gotta get back at them. Other parts of the world, and certainly some parts of Philadelphia, don’t like Jesus’ words about marriage, gender, and sexuality. So the temptation you’ll face is to be ashamed of him and of his words when you sense it’s going to hinder your worldly success to openly confess them. But Jesus’ warning is if you act on that, if you are ashamed of him and of his words, then of you will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. You may gain the world, but you will forfeit yourself, and what good will that be to you then, when you appear before the judgment seat of Christ?

 

And yet Jesus ends with assurance for those who do take up their cross daily and follow him: Some of them standing there today would not even taste death before they saw the kingdom of God. Here Jesus is obviously not referring to his final coming, for we know 2000 years later that everyone there that day has now tasted death, and Jesus has not yet returned. Instead, he’s telling them that they won’t taste death until they see the revelation and inauguration of that kingdom, which serves to give them an assurance of the kingdom to come. The first preview of it came in the very next passage, which Lord willing we’ll look at next week, when Jesus’ divine glory was revealed to three of the men standing there that day. The next preview came when Jesus himself rose from the dead. Some standing there that day saw the risen Christ. This promise of losing one’s life to save it was no idle tale. Jesus proved it was the path to life by walking that path first himself, and appearing to his disciples in his resurrected body to prove it.

 

He is the unparalleled king on an unexpected path. He is not just another prophet in the long line of prophets; he is the one of whom the prophets spoke. He is the Christ of God, the anointed prophet, priest, and king that God promised to send for the salvation of his people. He is the one, the only one, on whom it is safe for us to put all our hopes for the future. And what that meant for him was suffering, rejection, and death, before he rose again and entered his glory. His unexpected path was from the cross to the crown, so that whoever now does believe with their heart and confess with their mouth that he is the Christ is forgiven of their sins, reconciled to God, and will one day be raised to live with him forever. As Pastor Mike McKinley points out, we aren’t ultimately saved because we take up our cross for Christ; we are ultimately saved because Jesus took up his cross for us. Who of us has not failed at times to deny ourselves, who of us has not had a day on which we didn’t take up our cross, and who of us has not been ashamed of Jesus and his words before? Our hope is not in our own righteousness, but in Christ’s, who never failed to deny himself, who did take up his cross, and who did suffer, face rejection, and die in our place. And yet, what Jesus shows us here is that anyone who does embrace him as the Christ must sincerely deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow him. Denying yourself is the best thing you can do for yourself. Entrusting yourself to Jesus is the best thing you can do for yourself. So deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow him.