There are tremendous lessons in our Holy Scripture. There are lessons not only in the words, or the content, but that there are lessons for us even in the construction of the writing—there are lessons in the style as well as in the words themselves. For example, in Mark the disciples had been with Jesus as he healed people, as he feed the thousands, but in a minute I’ll read where “Jesus began to tell them…;” many translations read, “He then began to teach them.” It is striking to me that after all this time Jesus begins to teach or to tell them the things then needed to know and the lesson has to do with Who is leading. Listen to what Jesus started teaching the disciples, and us…
Scripture: Mark 8:31-38 NLT
31 Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. 32 As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things.
33 Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples, then reprimanded Peter. “Get away from me, Satan!” he said. “You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
34 Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
This is the Word of God for the people of God.
There’s the story of a soldier frantically digging in during battle as shells fall all around him. Suddenly his hand feels something metal and he grabs it. It’s a silver cross. Another shell explodes and he buries his head in his arms. He feels someone jump in the foxhole with him and he looks over and sees an army chaplain. The soldier thrusts the cross in the chaplain’s face and says, “I sure am glad to see you. How do you work this thing?” (i) When Jesus tried to teach the disciples that he would die on a cross they didn’t understand. Peter didn’t know how to deal with the cross—he didn’t understand how it worked, so he tried to tell Jesus what to do. He had reached that stage in his spiritual development where he thought he knew more than the master. Peter wasn’t trying to be difficult; he was just convinced that Jesus shouldn’t have to die.
Sometimes we are too confident, too sure that we know how to handle our lives, so we tell Jesus the answer to our prayers. I will confess that there have been times when I answered a question before the person asking the question finished—then when I realized I answered the wrong question I felt silly. Have you ever done that? It is easy to be overly confident that we know what the other person is going to say and when we do, we are at risk of making ourselves look silly.
I suspect that some of us make a similar mistake when we pray. We try to tell Jesus how to answer our prayers. Like Peter, we are so sure we know how things need to be handled that we jump right in and tell Jesus how to handle our life. I read that there is one prayer that is always answered, and that prayer is, “Thy will be done.” If only Peter had listened to Jesus, then said, “Thy will be done.” I encourage each of us to listen to Jesus then pray, “Thy will be done.”
Not only did Peter fail to listen to Jesus, and not only did he try to tell Jesus what to do, he did all of this from an earthly, human point of view, and not from a divine, heavenly, God-inspired point of view. We live in a culture where we sing “I did it my way,” then we go to a restaurant and expect them to say “we do it your way” when they put a grease burger in front of us. It is hard for us to understand that we don’t always choose the way things work out; it is hard for us to give up control and to let Jesus lead.
Let me explain it this way: I have a $1.00 bill that I have decided is really worth $20.00. I want to trade my one for your twenty. Please understand that I know my one, I have had it my pocket since I got change at the store the other day. I have put a lot of emotional energy into convincing myself that my one dollar bill is the same value as your twenty dollar bill.
I am sure that none of you believe that story about my one dollar bill—each of you understand that I am trying to make a point. That point is that we don’t get to decide the value of our currency; the decision about the value of money is made external to us. It is our job to understand and adapt to our national monetary system. A one is a one and a twenty is a twenty no matter what we want them to be.
In much the same way, the reality of God’s existence, the truths of our Holy Scripture, the salvation that comes to us through Jesus Christ are facts no matter what we think. I know people who don’t believe the truth of our Christian faith. They say, in so many words, “Well, it’s OK for you to believe the way you do, but I choose to believe another way, and both ways are OK.” My answer is, “No, it’s not OK; there are not multiple ways to salvation—Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.”
We can choose to have a hamburger cooked “my way,” but we can’t choose to have one dollar bill be the value we want it to be. I wish we wouldn’t sing “I did it my way,” and there is only one way to salvation—through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus died on a cross to save us from our sins no matter what anyone believes. The truth is the truth.
Now this is extremely important and I hope that each of us have this idea firmly in mind when we leave today. We can’t just decide what is true and what is not true. My favorite seminary professor, Loyd Melton explained the meaning behind Jesus telling Peter, “get behind me Satan.” “Satanic thinking is living by the value system of our age…it is living by the values of Donald Trump not the values of Mother Teresa. Similarly, denying oneself does not mean stopping at 3 pieces of pie at the church supper instead of our usual 5, it is seeing that life is not about me, it is about God.”
Jesus told Peter, “get behind me Satan” when Peter disagreed with Jesus’ teachings about the cross. When we decide to live according to our point of view instead of Jesus’ point of view we are disagreeing with Jesus. Any time we live by the values of our age, by human rather than divine values, then we are using satanic thinking.
Listen closely because the next thing I’m going to say could be misunderstood. “Good people” are some of the most difficult people for ministers to deal with. Please understand that I do want Christians to be good. The problem that I have had, and the problem I have heard other ministers express concern about, is that there are some people who think that being “good,” or being “moral” is the same thing as being a Christian. In fact, people who are terrible sinners know they are not Christians and often become wonderful Christians when they are converted. However many “good” people think that being ethical is enough.
The point of this sermon is that it is not enough to be a “good person,” instead we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. I believe that Peter was a good person; he had left his home and his occupation and he actually did follow Jesus. But Jesus called him “Satan.” Then Jesus called the crowds to join the disciples and Peter, and Jesus taught them this: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.
Some translation read, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” I read a sermon by a preacher who had great insights about self-denial. “Self-Denial sets us free to be content….the world would have you believe that if you only have more “things” you will be happy. …This mindset puts us in perpetual bondage… because there is always MORE we can have, more we can control, more power to obtain, more toys to collect. It just never ends….Self-gratification is a bondage; a miserable bondage. Self Denial sets us free from this enslavement…Self-Denial sets us free to live in peace. When we embrace self-denial we become free to lay down the burden of always needing to get our own way. We have this obsession that things go the way we want them to go and this is one of the greatest things that holds us in bondage. We can spend weeks, months, even years in a perpetual stew because some little thing did not go like we wanted.” (ii) In spite of what the commercials tell us, we don’t have to “have it my way.” Self-denial brings contentment and peace. Self-Denial sets us free to take up our cross daily.
If we want to follow Jesus there are three things he instructs us to do:1) deny oneself , 2) take up one’s cross, and 3) follow Jesus. Once we deny ourselves, then we are able to follow Jesus anywhere he leads us. We can take our cross and follow him through the garden. We can deny ourselves and go with him through the judgment. Wherever he leads we will follow, because he will give us grace and glory. Let us sing that great hymn, “Where He Leads Me.” (iii)
Amen
(i) David Washburn ,"The Burden Of The Cross;" accessed at SermonCentral.com
(ii) Norayr Hajian, “Freedom Through Self-Denial,” accessed at “SermonCentral.com.
(iii) Where He Leads Me; Text: E.W. Blandy
