“And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them, saying, “Who do the people say that I am?” 19 They answered and said, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again.” 20 And He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.” 21 But He warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.” 23 And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. 24 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. 25 “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? 26 “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 “But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
Although Luke is not the one who tells us geographically where this discourse took place, we know from Matthew and Mark that Jesus is with His disciples in the area of Caesarea Philippi, at the southern foot of Mt Hermon. If you look at a map in the back of your Bible, find the Sea of Galilee, then scan up north from there, you will find Mt Hermon and at its southern base you will see “Panias” or perhaps “Banias”. The name is derived from Pan, the demon god who was worshiped there. His worshipers believed Pan was born in a cave there, and there were idols set up all over the area, where sacrifices were also made for Pan and other demon gods. This is the setting in which Jesus asked His friends, “Who do you say that I am?”
JESUS AMONG OTHER GODS
For my subtitle to this portion of my sermon I’ve borrowed the title of a book by Ravi Zacharias. It is not because I will be referring off and on to this man’s book that I use his title, but because this sermon will at least in part follow a similar path.
The book, “JESUS AMONG OTHER GODS”, contrasts the claims of Christ with those of the founders of the major world religions and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is truly ‘the way and the truth and the life’.
In his own introduction Zacharias says this:
“We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you do not claim it to be true. Morally, you can practice anything, as long as you do not claim that it is a ‘better’ way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, as long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized.” JESUS AMONG OTHER GODS, R. Zacharias, W Pub Group, a division of Thomas Nelson, 2000
Well, we are not going to be comparing Christianity with Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism today. We really are not going to be comparing Christ to Pan or any other demon god.
What we are going to do is remember where Jesus and His disciples were during this discourse of His in verses 22 through 27, and let the Holy Spirit illumine in our hearts the eternal contrast between that which would destroy our souls, and the One who offers the only and everlastingly safe haven.
This region in which sat Caesarea Philippi was spiritually black with the infestation of demon gods, whose shrines dotted the countryside. Now remember that Caesarea Philippi, located at the southern base of Mt Hermon, is about 25 miles north of the north end of the Sea of Galilee.
There is no other record in the New Testament of Jesus being this far north. Commentators often employ the word ‘retire’ here, speaking of Jesus’ retirement from public ministry. They usually put the word in quotes because they certainly do not mean to imply that Jesus was ready to retire in the way we think of leaving our life’s work and going fishing.
This is what is meant. It is apparent that Jesus spent at least 9 days here with His disciples, because we are told by Matthew and Mark that they had come to the region, then here in Luke 9:28 he writes that some 8 days after this discourse they went up ‘the mountain’, which would be Mt Hermon, where Jesus was transfigured and where Peter suggested a perpetual Feast of Tabernacles with Jesus, Moses and Elijah.
So this was a time of seclusion far from the multitudes that had been following Jesus around, spent alone with His disciples before going one last time to Jerusalem, where Jesus would be arrested and Crucified.
So it seems that this trip was a spiritual preparation, for Jesus Himself, and for the disciples who would need the fortification that this discourse and the heavenly vision they would receive on the Mount would later give them.
The disciples could not have been aware of the turmoil this must have caused in the spiritual realms, for Jesus to be declared openly and vocally as the Son of the living God, but I’m certain that Jesus was very much aware, and there must have been a great deal of rejoicing in Heaven to hear the Divine Son and the Light of the World, and the True Shepherd, proclaimed to the dark corners of this dark, dark place.
And let it not escape our notice, that although Luke is not the one who told us where Jesus and His disciples were, and that it was Matthew and Mark who gave us that information, on the other hand neither Matthew nor Mark told us a very important bit of information that Luke did, when he wrote, “…while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them…”
You live in a sinned darkened, demon-filled world, Christian. Anytime you have an opportunity to proclaim the True Shepherd and the Light of the world, and the One who is greater than any and all lesser gods, you would be well-advised to pray first.
CROSS TALK
If we pause to consider the historical setting of this discourse we might be inclined to expect that the words of Jesus here must have been startling to the twelve.
They had just recently come from Bethsaida, where Jesus had miraculously fed the 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes. This may very well have been the act that finally settled the minds of the disciples that they were indeed with Messiah. If there was any doubt left, it surely would have been vanquished that very night as they crossed the sea and a storm came up that threatened to founder their boat and Jesus calmed the weather with a verbal command.
So here they are just days later at the foot of Hermon, and He has put this question to them, and they [with Peter acting as their spokesman as usual] have passed the test. “You are the Christ”.
This must have been an emotional high point for everyone in the group. They have left the multitudes behind. On this 25 mile hike there must have been much chatter between the disciples, scattered along the roadway, about the amazing things they had witnessed of late. Maybe they were finally putting some things together in their heads as they talked. We’ve seen Him raise the dead, heal the blind, astound the Pharisees and Scribes with His irrefutable teaching, and now He has fed an entire mountainside of people from some scraps in a basket, and even the wind and the waves have obeyed His voice! Can this be any other than Messiah? No, it cannot!
And of course the natural follow up conversation would center around how He must soon raise up His army and destroy Rome and establish David’s throne forever according to the Scriptures.
So when Jesus starts talking about suffering, and rejection by the elders of the nation, and being killed, they must have thought they were dreaming.
“What did He just say?” “I am not sure! I don’t think I could have heard Him correctly!” “Did He say, ‘killed’?” Things were just starting to look pretty good! He has a following of thousands, He has proved Himself Master over time, over the elements, over nature, over misfortune, over men…
…and it is not in Luke that this is recorded for us, but this is the setting in which Peter strongly denies that this can happen and Jesus rebukes him for his worldly thinking. And we are usually so quick to find fault with Peter of the foot-shaped mouth, aren’t we? But let’s be careful here. The things Jesus is now saying are flying directly into the face of some recent moments of great triumph; into the face of everything these Jews have been raised and taught to believe about Messiah; into the face of the very declaration Peter has just been praised for making!
This is the Christ! This is the Son of the living God! Killed?
Yeah, so what if He finished with, ‘and be raised up on the third day’. We hardly even heard that!
But wait, He is continuing. Can this be true? He is now talking about a cross. That’s the Roman method of capital punishment. It’s not even Jewish. And there was nothing abstract about this picture for them, fellow Christians. The cross for them was not something on the top of a hill on the outskirts of town that lights up at Easter time. It was not a trinket to wear around the neck. They had walked roadways lined with these things, with men nailed or tied to them, hanging in the sun to die, in many cases after death rotting there until their decomposed flesh gave way and what remained sagged from the cross to the ground and stank.
So in a few short words their emotions have been dashed from a mountain of victory to a pit of horror.
The Master is going to be raised up on a Roman cross and die? This is the destiny of the Messiah? Think about it for a moment. We do not dare criticize them for balking at the proposition.
Anyway, He sure has their attention now, don’t you imagine?
With this setting in mind, let’s go on to consider what He had to say in private to His chosen twelve in this out of the way place and what it has to say to everyone who would desire to be right with God.
POSTURE AND ATTITUDE OF THE FOLLOWER
Let me remind you at this point that Jesus is now speaking very plainly to those who will be the Apostles of the church.
The time for riddles and parables is over. They have had three years of ‘Disciple 101’, and it’s almost graduation time, but final exams are going to be tough.
As I said earlier, the things He is going to say to them now constitute the bottom line of being right with God. If you aren’t straight on who Jesus is and who you are in relation to Him then you are lost forever, for it is impossible to be wrong about Jesus and right with God.
This is the time to cement the foundation in their minds, for there won’t be time later. They’re going to Jerusalem and the twelve will for all intents and purposes become helpless spectators. It will be later that they will need to reflect back on these words and both know what is expected of them and have the encouragement to move forward.
Now these words were spoken to the twelve, folks, but they are recorded her in God’s Word because they are now spoken to you and to me, and before I say more, be aware that there was still one in their midst who would not follow; who would in his own life prove the things Jesus is about to say about saving one’s life or losing it; trading one’s soul for that which is passing away and thereby losing Christ.
So if it happened that way to one of the twelve, it can happen that way to anyone who reads or hears the words of this passage and goes away having made the wrong choices.
These words of Jesus in this passage we are studying draw the line forever between those who will taste of death and those who will not, and before the day is over you are going to make a decision which side of that line to fall on.
To begin, here is the posture and attitude that must be adopted by the one who would propose to follow Jesus. First, that one must be willing to deny self. The term used there literally means ‘forget that he exists’.
Hard already, huh? I hate final exams.
We’re supposed to forget that we exist? Well, let’s not get silly. You and I know we can’t do that. I mean, to literally forget that we exist would mean that we belong locked up on a mental health ward for our own protection.
So what does He mean? Something almost as hard. Stop being self-centered and self-focused and self-seeking. Stop feeding the flesh as your primary function in life; as though you exist to consume and then spend your energies on your lusts. That’s a beginning. Sorry. This pains me too, y’know, but that’s where we’re going here.
Deny self. Then He says, ‘take up his cross daily’. Notice it doesn’t say, “Deny self daily and take up his cross”. So… I have to take up my cross daily, but how often do I have to deny myself?
Nah, don’t do that. That’s stupid thinking, and it’s an attempt to excuse ourselves. His wording here is not cryptic, let’s not make it that way.
Jesus meant that on a daily basis, as a believer in Him, the only way to keep our soul safe is to get our minds and affections off ourselves, putting self to death, so to speak, and follow Jesus. Follow Jesus means put Him in the center, set our mind and our affections on Him and things eternal, and walk away from worldliness.
I’ve said this before but it’s just the simplest way to put it, Jesus said to deny self and daily take up a cross and He only carried a cross to one place. So this does not mean that obedience to Luke 9:23 is in dragging a wooden cross down the main avenues in town so everyone can see. It means mortifying the old man – the flesh – because the flesh cannot and does not want to follow Jesus.
The posture and attitude of the one who would follow Christ is that of denial of self interest and willingness to die every day to the world, the flesh and the devil.
PROFIT AND LOSS OF THE FOLLOWER
Let’s have verses 24 and 25 refreshed in our minds.
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?”
I heard somewhere that men catching monkeys for sale to zoos would fix a small-mouthed jar so it couldn’t be carried away, and put a piece of fruit in it then wait. When a monkey found the jar he would reach in and grab the fruit, which made his fist too large to pull out of the jar.
In his greed the monkey would refuse to let go of the fruit in order to free himself and the trappers would simply walk up and toss a net over the animal. (I don’t know how they finally got him to let go of the fruit.)
This is precisely the dilemma of lost mankind that Jesus is warning about in these verses. Men with the tenacity that comes with avarice and self-worship will stubbornly cling to that which they cannot keep, refusing to surrender their will to God who alone can give them what they could never attain for themselves.
Now let’s be clear here on what sort of losing and saving Jesus is talking about. He has just said that a follower of Him must daily deny self, so the losing of self Jesus refers to is a deliberate turning from one’s own selfish desire; what Paul called the putting off of the flesh. Jesus said that if a person clings to self and won’t let go, he will eventually let go in death and have nothing.
Then notice that He says, that whoever loses his life will save it.
Did He say that? No, He did not. That doesn’t even make sense.
What He said was, the one who loses his life ‘for My sake’ will save it.
Ah, ha! Now that makes a great deal of sense, doesn’t it? And by the way, though He uses the word ‘loses’ here, it is not only a reference to someone losing his life by having it taken from him in persecution.
The thought being conveyed is that when a person denies self completely and dedicates his or her existence to serving Christ, they are in effect depositing their life in the place of eternal safety.
If I remain in and of the world I can only pass away along with the world. But if I reject self and remain steadfastly in Jesus, since He is Life everlasting I can never pass away but will be everlastingly alive in Him.
Then He asks this rhetorical question, ‘…what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?’
Some of you may remember hearing or reading the famous response of then richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller, who when asked in an interview how much money was enough, replied, “Just a little bit more”.
And that is not a sentiment unique to Rockefeller, by any stretch of the imagination. In point of fact, a person does not have to be wealthy to be guilty of the love of money; to be motivated by greed, by lust for power, by the need for material gain.
This question Jesus has put to the minds of His disciples and now to us bears greater weight by virtue of who asked it than it ever could from the lips of any other man.
This One spoke the universe into existence. We read articles or watch documentaries of space discovery in recent years and we are astounded by comparisons that rock our imagination, concerning the vast size of single planets that could swallow up hundreds of suns the size of our own. We are boggled by the mention of distances that we can’t get our brains around.
He could have spoken into existence entire galaxies of diamonds; planets of solid gold or silver; moons of precious jewels – and would you sell your soul for paltry penance?
The term, ‘loses’ or ‘forfeits’ in verse 25 means to suffer loss as in a shipwreck. It is total, it is devastating, it is irrecoverable. Such is the life of the one who, rejecting Life, steers his own course and ends up dashed to pieces on eternity’s rocky shore.
The one who would follow Jesus must deliberately lose his life to this world – that is the beginning. Then, having crucified self for the sake of the Master he will find his life saved to the uttermost.
TESTIMONY OF THE FOLLOWER
When I come to these closing statements of this discourse my mind is taken back to the setting and I wonder, were they actually standing where they could look around and see these alcoves that held statues of Pan and Hermes and Echo and Baal and other pagan gods?
When the One they had just declared faith in as the long-awaited Messiah was using phrases like ‘the glory of the Father’ and ‘the holy angels’, were the disciples realizing the immeasurable gap between the heavenly things being referenced and the deadness surrounding them?
Were they aware that Pan was called by his worshipers, ‘ruler of all nature’ and ‘great shepherd’, and that his father was Hermes which means ‘of the earth’ and that the true God of Creation and the true Great Shepherd was by His presence declaring His Lordship and preeminence over all these?
And were their spirits now being lifted back up from the talk of crosses and death that began His discourse, as He now spoke clearly of His return in glory and the power of the Kingdom that would soon be made manifest?
We’ll talk about that before we close and try to get some understanding of this statement of His that ends His discourse.
First though there needs to be some things said about His two-fold use of the word ‘ashamed’ in verse 26.
Jesus has been talking about being identified with Him.
Mankind ceased to be identified with his Creator when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. At that point and from then on, the nature of man was fallen and turned around backward. The Bible says ‘dead in trespasses and sins’, ‘without hope and without God in the world’.
Fallen mankind focuses inward at self and cannot see or understand God. Therefore, identification with Christ requires a turning. That’s what the word ‘repent’ means. Identification with Christ requires turning outward from self toward God. It requires, using the wording of our text, denial of self and confession of Christ. It requires faith in and obedience to His Word.
Look again at what He says in verse 26. “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My Words…” (Italics mine for emphasis)
Is He speaking of any specific words here? I think so. I think He is referring to the words He has just been speaking.
If anyone would come after Christ, he must daily put self down like a rabid dog, by turning away from the pursuit of self and self-will, reckoning his flesh crucified with Christ, and follow. That’s what His word is for them and us and if we cannot follow in obedience and unashamed then there can be no identification with Him.
Here’s how He said it. “…of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”
Do you know what that word ‘ashamed’ means? It means ‘ashamed’. Nothing more or less. Ashamed. How do you react on the inside when someone identifies you as a Christian? How do you react when you hear them openly mock Christ and Christians? How do you respond to an opportunity to confess Christ? Does it depend upon who is present? Does it depend upon whether you feel you are in a friendly environment or not?
How do you respond on the inside to the challenge to deny self and seek Christ?
I put those questions to you, because He is coming in glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels, and when you see Him face to face I know you don’t want Him to say He is ashamed of you. How terrible would that be?
KINGDOM COME
Ok, I said I had some comments about verse 27.
This is one of those places the commentators find difficult. One says that Jesus is talking about the day of Pentecost and the birth of the church. Another says, no, it is about His Second Coming. Yet another says that since ‘some’ of them will not have tasted of death, Jesus must have been talking about God’s judgment on the nation in the sacking of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Then another says, no, He’s talking about the transfiguration.
Let me tell you what I believe. I believe He used the word ‘some’, because Judas was still in the group and Jesus knew this guy was not going to end well.
Jesus has just told His Apostles that He is soon going to suffer and die at the hands of the rulers of Israel. He has made reference to the cross, letting them know this would be His mode of death, and He has very clearly told them that if they want to be His followers they would have to be willing to be identified with Him in his death so that they might be identified with Him in His Life.
He has clearly taught that the only way their souls would ever be safe is if their souls were invested in Him, and their lives would demonstrate that security in a willingness to proclaim Him openly.
So when we come to verse 27 and Jesus says, “But I say to you truthfully…” this language to their Mid-Eastern ears logged that as, “Listen carefully because what I am about to say is absolute, unchangeable truth and it is vital that you get it”…
“…there are some of those standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
What He was giving them assurance of was that as those who would be brought into the Kingdom by birth from above those ‘some’ would not taste death. Jn 8:51-58 11:25-26
This He also says to you and to me. Lose it so you can save it. How is that? How can that be?
Only if you lose it for His sake. Lose it for His name, in His name, unashamed of His Word, unashamed to be identified with Him, letting go of the world and taking hold of the eternal in Him.
What could possibly be so precious in this world, this life, that it could begin to compare with the incomparable Christ?
Where are those who bowed down to the statues that once filled those alcoves on the side of Mount Hermon? Who were they? We don’t know their names.
Where are those who stood in the shadow of that Mountain, near the gaping mouth of that cave of demons and said ‘You are Christ”?
Well, all but one are known for denying self, taking up His cross and following unashamed. Some of the other eleven wrote the Bible, some traveled to foreign lands to preach the gospel, all but one were martyred, but none of them tasted death, and all of them saw the coming of the kingdom of God.
Souls, safe in Christ. Is yours?
