Who Do You Say He Is? Breaking Boundaries Series
Apr 5, 2009 Palm Sunday Luke 9:7-9, 18-27
Intro:
http://www.sermonspice.com/videos/19995/i-am
Who Is Jesus?
One of the themes, weaving it’s way through our study of the book of Luke thus far, has come to us by way of a question: “who is this guy Jesus?”. We saw John the Baptist ask it in Luke 7, “John called for two of his disciples, 19 and he sent them to the Lord to ask him, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?””. The disciples ask it when Jesus calms the storm in chapter 8:25, “The disciples were terrified and amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!””. And, in a passage we skipped briefly past earlier in Luke 9, King Herod asks it: “7 When Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, heard about everything Jesus was doing, he was puzzled. Some were saying that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. 8 Others thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the other prophets risen from the dead. 9 “I beheaded John,” Herod said, “so who is this man about whom I hear such stories?” And he kept trying to see him.”
It is very much a “Palm Sunday” question as well. The story is familiar to us – the week before His crucifixion, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, and the crowds of people who join Him have one answer, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Lk. 19:38), while the religious leaders were plotting to have Jesus arrested and killed for claiming to be something they believed He was not.
First Dawning Realizations:
But Palm Sunday is still a ways off in terms of time back in Luke 9; Jesus is still in Galilee and this question is on lots of people’s minds – who is this Jesus guy who can heal, who commands demons, who raises the dead, who calms storms? In today’s passage, it is the exact subject of the conversation…
Luke 9:18-27
18 One day Jesus left the crowds to pray alone. Only his disciples were with him, and he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 19 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say you are one of the other ancient prophets risen from the dead.” 20 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!”
21 Jesus warned his disciples not to tell anyone who he was. 22 “The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”
23 Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. 24 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. 25 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed? 26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my message, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in his glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels. 27 I tell you the truth, some standing here right now will not die before they see the Kingdom of God.”
Peter’s Confession vs. 18-20:
Everyone is talking about it, so Jesus just comes right out and asks. First, what the “crowds” were saying about His identity, but then more to the point, what the disciples believed: “But who do you say I am?”
This really is the critical question, both in Jesus’ day but also in our own. What are we going to do with Jesus? We’ve been talking about sharing our story, about being sent with power and authority, about being like Jesus and breaking down boundaries between people and God, and this is a fantastic question for you to memorize and to genuinely ask people about. You see, in our context lots of people believe in God, 93% of Canadians according to Reg Bibby (cited from http://reginaldbibby.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-god-deador-just-misread.html on Mar 27, 2009). And that is good, people believe in God, we have a great place to start. But then the question we bring to the conversation is “what about Jesus – who do you think He is?”
For the first time in the gospel story in Scripture, the disciples are able to see the true answer. Peter mouths the words, but he does so not as one individual but as the spokesman for the group. Having walked with Jesus, heard Him teach, seen Him do miracles and then seen themselves do miracles in His name, and precisely because Jesus has just been praying for them (see vs. 18), they figure it out. ““But who do you say I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah sent from God!””.
This is a huge “aha!” moment. A turning point in the entire story of Jesus’ life and ministry, for the first time the disciples understand Jesus’ true identity as Messiah. They get it!
Ok, but what is “Messiah” though? vs. 21-22
They get it. Jesus is more than John the Baptist, more than Elijah, more than one of the other prophets, Jesus is the Messiah. Now, I need to back you up here. For us 2000 years after the cross, we understand that to be the “Messiah” means to suffer, because we know that the Messiah went to the cross and died and then rose to life.
But at the time of the story, we need to remember that the Messiah was understood to be a mighty, fearless, victorious military and political leader with nationalistic ambitions for the Jewish people. Literally, the Messiah was to be a warrior who would throw off the oppressors and return the nation to its “glory days” like under King David and King Solomon. So when Peter says, “You are the Messiah sent from God”, he means it in that revolutionary sense.
And that is why Jesus has to move very quickly from that realization into the next conversation, redefining what it means to be “Messiah”. This is what Jesus does in vs. 22. He re-frames it completely, turning the concept completely on its head. Being Messiah is not about military power or about fame and glory. Being Messiah is about suffering. “The Son of Man must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”
As we follow the gospel story, we realize that the disciples didn’t understand this the first time around. They continue to expect Messiah to be a political leader and revolutionary, really only coming to grips with what Jesus says here after the resurrection. But in the moment, they cannot comprehend a suffering saviour. Those two words are too opposite.
Well then, what does it mean to be a follower of Messiah? vs. 23-27
So Jesus’ true identity is now recognized, and He has attempted to define what that means in terms of suffering and with the hope of resurrection. He continues from there to something that may have been on everyone’s minds… if that is who Jesus is, what does that mean for me? There is a clear hint that they haven’t grasped the suffering aspect just a little further down when the start arguing about which one of the disciples is the greatest, but Jesus is really really clear about what it means to be His disciple. In verse 23, Jesus gives three very clear and powerful commandments. So clear and powerful that they become the very definition of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The three are: “turn from your selfish ways” (or “deny yourself”), “take up your cross daily”, and “follow”.
This defines what it means to be a follower of Jesus. A Christian is not someone who has once said a particular prayer. A Christian is not someone who intellectually agrees with a pre-defined set of statements which someone else decides are “orthodox”. A Christian, according to Jesus, is someone who “turns from selfish ways”, “takes up their cross daily”, and “follows” Jesus. I’m going to ask in a moment if those three things describe you, but first let’s look at them a little more deeply.
“Turn from your selfish ways”:
Darrell Bock writes, “The disciple’s life consists of basic self-denial… Disciples do not respond to their own personal wills, but to God’s. There is a fundamental recognition of allegiance that says, “God needs to direct me; I will not and cannot direct myself.” (Bock, Luke, Baker Exegetical Commentary, p. 852). Of all the things that are hard for us to live out in our context today, this one may just be the hardest. We are not facing persecution, so the next one about “taking up our cross daily” is not real to us like it was for the disciples in Jesus’ day. But in a culture of self-indulgence, of the primacy of individual rights and freedoms, of materialism and consumerism where personal pleasure is the highest pursuit, where advertiser after advertiser have convinced us that their product is a need, where “self-love” and “self-esteem” are taught as ends in themselves, where luxury and indulgence are good things we feel we should strive for rather than the enemies of our soul, where we are constantly bombarded with the message that “we deserve it”, “we’ve earned it”, “we can have it all today and pay for it tomorrow”, in the face of all of that Jesus says that to be His disciple means to “turn from your selfish ways”, or in other translations, “deny yourself”.
We think, no – we believe – that if we were to “turn from our selfish ways”, if we were to “deny ourselves”, our lives would be less. Less full. Less happy. Less joy. If we listen to our culture, we’ll believe that for sure! But Jesus says the exact opposite: “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. 25 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?” Jesus says that the way to life, fullness, happiness, joy, is through self-denial. In fact, Jesus says that is what it means to be His follower.
This should be disconcerting to us, I know it is for me. We think that if we deny ourselves we won’t have what we need, or we’ll barely have what we need and be miserable for all the things we don’t have. But don’t you hear our culture in that fear? If we don’t have “things” we’ll be miserable. We won’t have what others have, and they’ll have more enjoyment in life. But what we will have outweighs all of those fears a hundred fold: we’ll have a Saviour, Jesus Christ, who promises to love and forgive and empower us. we’ll have a mission big enough and bold enough and challenging enough to capture the heart and mind and strength of everyone who genuinely experiences the love and forgiveness of the Saviour. we’ll have a place in the endless Kingdom of the eternal creator and sustainer of the Universe – a place of significance and worth not because of the stuff we have but because the King has adopted us into His family, and a place that will last forever.
Honestly, doesn’t that sound better than the latest gadget? The biggest, brightest, sharpest TV? The newest car? The most luxurious vacation? Jesus said, ““If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways”. It really is that simple.
“take up your cross daily”:
This phrase takes on deeper meaning for those of us who know the end of the story, which the disciples did not when Jesus said it. The point is that being a disciple of Jesus means expecting public rejection, and embracing it like Jesus did. It is not about “dying” in a physical sense – the commandment to do that “daily” just wouldn’t make any sense if Jesus meant it physically. It is about public rejection and about the fact that this is a daily choice. Becoming a Christian is not about making one decision one day, it is about making the decision each day to deny ourselves and live for Jesus, even if that means we are rejected by our culture. So every day, we have to decide: am I going to be a follower of Jesus today – in word and in deed? No matter what the cost? No matter what I have to give up? Will I “take up my cross daily”??
“and follow”:
The third and final commandment Jesus gives to all those who wish to be His followers is really no more than what happens after we have done the first two – we follow Jesus. For us, this means listening carefully to the Holy Spirit speaking to us, so that we know specifically where we need to go and what we need to do, and then enjoying what God does as we follow Jesus. It means that in our moral decisions we choose to follow the commandments of Jesus, like turning the other cheek, like praying for people who hurt us instead of retaliating, of going the extra mile even when a brutal oppressor forces us to go one mile, of loving others ahead of ourselves, of pouring out our lives for Jesus and for the mission of His Kingdom.
Conclusion:
There is more in the passage we could explore, but I think that is more than enough for us to reflect on today. It seems like a lot, don’t you think? Jesus is asking a lot, I think. And defining that as the basics of what it means to be His followers – these are not the commands to the “spiritual elite”, but to “any of you who wants to be my follower”. This is what it means to be a disciple. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus. This is what it means to be a Christian. Do those three things – denying self, taking up your cross daily, following – describe you?
We began with the question Jesus asked: “who do you say I am?”, and so I ask you to answer that for yourself. If Jesus is Lord, then let Him be Lord.
As we head into Communion, I ask you to sit in verse 23. Let the Holy Spirit speak. Take time to repent and be forgiven, and to re-commit yourself as a follower of Jesus.
And if it seems like too much, like Jesus is asking too much and expecting too much and being unreasonable, then please simply look ahead to this coming Friday – Good Friday. Look past it into Resurrection Sunday. See the love of God for us through the cross, through death, into resurrected life, allow the depth of that love to wash over you and infect you and change you. And then respond with a love that matches the love you see there.
