In some ways, our biggest challenge in gauging the influence of Jesus is taking Him for granted in the ways in which our world has been shaped by Him. For example, children would be thought of differently today were it not for Jesus. One historian doing research on the way children were perceived in the early centuries of the time of the church, children and not only did not even get a name roughly until their eighth day, but it also gave parents that amount of time within which they could decide if they wanted to keep the child. If the child was not the right gender or was deformed or the like, they had the opportunity because it wasn't named and therefore wasn't a person. This practically was changed when a group of disciples began to live by the words Let the little children come to me. Jesus never married, but his treatment of women led to the formation of a community that was so congenial to women that they trusted him into that community in droves. Jesus never wrote a book, yet his call to love the Lord your God with all of your mind moved this community to value the written word, to value reading. And later on, when the gospel was rediscovered in Europe, Calvin in Geneva made education required for all, not just the wealthy, so people could learn to read and young children and all could read the Bible for themselves. Jesus never held an office or led an army, and yet the Christian movement would eventually bring an end to emperor worship. be cited in documents like the Magna Carta, began a tradition of common law and limited government, and began to undermine the power of the state in favor of individual rights. The Roman government into which, the Roman Empire into which Jesus was born was extremely impressive in their accomplishments in so many ways, and yet it was cruel especially for the malformed and diseased and the enslaved. But Jesus had said, for whatever you did to the least of these, you did it to me. And that then moved the Christian church and others to begin to value everyone. And that led to the formation of hospitals and relief efforts. Who is Jesus? Who is this man who has made such a huge difference in our modern world? Who is he? Well, that's a theme that we're continuing to look at over the course of our weeks leading up to Christmas. As I mentioned in the first sermon dealing with this topic that I'm taking the title of this sermon series, he preached Jesus to him from The book of Acts, chapter 8, as you recall, Philip, after the persecution by Saul, was traveling, I think, through Samaria, I think, and he happened upon a caravan, a man, an Ethiopian high official, a eunuch, was traveling, and he had been in Jerusalem, and he was reading, and He was reading from the prophet Isaiah, and he didn't know what he was reading, and Philip engaged him, and it says he preached Jesus to him, and he was converted. Our aim is that we would do likewise. In many ways, preach the Jesus that we are discovering in the Gospels, and so we're gonna look at, next week, a section out of the Gospel of Luke. And then as we move into Christmas, I'll be focusing on some portions out of the Gospel of John, just to find out an answer to this question, who is he? So today we're gonna look at a section from Mark's Gospel. If you're in your bulletin or in your Bible, Mark chapter eight. And when Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, And on the way, he asked his disciples, who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist. And others say, Elijah. Others say, one of the prophets. And he asked them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, you are the Christ. And he strictly charged him to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed And after three days, rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. And then calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses life for my sake will save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his own soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said to them, truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power. Who is Jesus? Today we're going to consider the centrality of Jesus, but not so much as we have touched on for his mission to the world. We might have to do that at some point again, but rather We're going to focus on the meaning of Jesus for disciples. And I guess I'm going to just preface my sermon remarks by just letting you know that this sermon is going to give you an opportunity to take an inventory. Would you consider yourself a disciple? Would you consider yourself one who belongs to Him? Would you be able to say out in the open people that you work with, people that you know, if it were to come up in a sort of natural way, yes, I follow Jesus? Well, one of the ways in which we're gonna have to answer that question is to first ask and answer the question, who is Jesus? And that's what the gospel of Mark has been dealing with all throughout. the gospel of Mark leading up to chapter 8 until he then, Jesus then, turns it around to Peter or the disciples when he asks them, who do you say that I am? And Peter gives the answer that we will look at in a minute. So let's consider today this question, who do you say that I am? And Peter says, the Christ. We know this Christ label is to speak of him as a king. And so the answer to the question is he is the king. But not a king that is like the kings that we think about. Point one is what we'll consider for a while, the king on a cross. Peter says, you are the Christ. And he began to teach them, the son of man must suffer, must be rejected, must be killed, and must rise again. That's verse 32. Jesus is a king. He's a king who must suffer. He's a king who must be killed. He's not the kind of king that you think of when you think of king. It says here that he must. It means it's necessary that this king be so treated. It's essential that this king be treated in this way, that he be rejected, that it's a precondition of his very identity. The king is the king on a cross. All kings come with their regalia, with their pomp, with their power, with their dominion, with their troops marching lock, stock, and barrel after the things that these kings claim to be. Here Jesus is claiming to be the son of David, the son of the promises. Mark has already said in the very first verse of the Gospel of Mark, that he is the son of God, and yet here he is saying something that has never been anticipated until now, that this king is now one who must die. The very program of the one and only God revealed here, the promised king has come to fulfill his very reason for coming, and that is to be achieved in his suffering and death. We need to ask why. We need to ask the question, why is the coming of this king such that he has come to die, come to be killed, come to be rejected, come to be tossed aside by the very people who are his people? Well, let's consider some of these terms here in this early portion as we just get to the bottom of this. Notice he refers to himself as the son of man. the favorite name of Jesus for himself. I remember the first time I ever heard R.C. Sproul give a lecture and I had known of him. I had a book by him, Hunger for Significance I think was his book, and I had it in my library. I tend to buy books because I like the cover. I like what it said and I bought it and never read it. had a kind of a picture of young R.C. inside the jacket, and then he came to Biola, I was a grad student there, and he was the guest preacher, and he had a workshop on the names of God. And I went to this, I never heard of the guy, I only heard of him, never actually heard him. I thought, holy Toledo, who is this guy? It was so enriching, in fact, the book came to be known, we sang the title. One Holy Passion, that little lecture became one of his books named by that. And you know, I think about just to commend to you a study of the names of God. You know, if you're looking for something with which to enrich yourselves, to get out of concordance and look at the names of God and just look at all the verses about the various names. Well, here is Jesus' favorite name for himself, the Son of Man. The name Son of Man is taken out of the book of Daniel. And this character in Daniel was, as Daniel says, one like a son of man, a divine figure, who comes with the heavenly hosts, comes with the angels. He comes to make things right in the world. He comes as a messianic figure, a divine figure, a heavenly figure. In fact, Jesus is claiming this name for himself. If you notice verse 38, The Son of Man is going to return to the earth in the glory of my Father's glory and with the holy angels. Right there, he's identifying himself with that character, but here he's gonna say something that has never been connected together. The Son of Man phrase he is using as not only this divine figure, but also here, the Son of Man must suffer. At this point, he's bringing together those two ideas that had never really been brought together before, that the Messiah not only was the one who was going to come with the angelic hosts, they expected that, but not the Son of Man who would come and suffer. They didn't expect that. Notice verse 30, it says that he strictly charged them not to tell anyone. That word is the same word used in verse 32 where Peter takes him aside to rebuke him, same word. It's the same word that Peter is rebuked with. Jesus rebukes him. Later on, it's used in the gospels where Jesus rebukes the demons. Peter is totally taken aback by the notion of a suffering king. Nevertheless, this is what Jesus, in fact, is saying about himself. He's saying this to them and to us that He is the King of Kings, the Son of Man, and He is saying that the Son of Man, before He comes with the glory of His angels, that He must suffer. It is necessary, He says. It is essential, He says. It is not negotiable, He says. There's no other way in which the Son of Man's coming can be in any other way than He is one who must suffer. So the question in this first point I'm going to raise and try and answer is why? Why must he suffer? Why must the Son of Man be a man of suffering? And I have three reasons here. The first reason is that there is a judicial reason why the Son of Man must suffer. That there is a legal reason why the Son of Man must suffer. What do I mean by judicial? What do I mean by legal? Well, the whole creation is set up by rules. God has created the world, and He governs the world by rules. You know, the rules that govern the physical world. You know, if you were to defy and thumb your nose at the rules of gravity, well, there would be consequences. You can't really expect to think that you can just say, you know, jump off this thing. No, the rules of gravity are rules, they're non-negotiable. You know, we have rules that govern other areas. Gender is a case in point, it's a big deal today. But there's no negotiating this. You change these things. You can't do that without consequences. There are moral rules as well. The fall of Adam and Eve changed the world. What was good, In the original creation became evil and corrupt and tainted because of the fall. And God set out to fix this before the creation of the world, to fix the problem of human sin. It was anticipated in the old covenant as we know, but Jesus became the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Let me put it to you this way. Let's think of it this way. Think of sin as a debt. You probably have done this before. You've loaned something that belongs to you. to somebody who needed it. I used to have a rule. Actually, before I adopted this rule, I would loan my books out. And I discovered that people would forget. I would forget. And so now, I don't generally loan them out, because I want them back. I use them. They're like my tools. Now, you have tools. Somebody comes to your door and says, I need to have a pipe wrench I could borrow. And you go over to your garage, and you have, like my dad did when he was in his garage, he had all of his tools hanging on the wall. and he had them outlined with pencil. So he would know, oh, my pipe render's gone, oh, my hammer's gone, oh, my mallet's gone. He would know, and so he'd get wigged up if we didn't put stuff away. You know, people do that. You loan it out, you loan it out, and then if they forget about it, you haven't. And so when you see that person, they're engaging you, and they don't seem like they have remembered the fact that there's something outstanding between us. How do you rectify a debt? Well, there's two ways. One is you go and make it right. You go and tell the person, I want my thing back or you owe me money. And if they can't pay it, you have to, you kind of insist on it. And there are all kinds of ways in which legally that can happen. That's one way of doing it, where you go and make the thing right yourself by requiring the person to bring back to you the thing that you loaned or the money or whatever. That's one way you can do it. Another way is to cancel the debt, to pay for it yourself, is to release the person of the obligation to pay it back. I'm reminded of that story, the parable in Matthew 18. It's a story about forgiveness, but as I've meditated on Matthew 18 in the past, as you recall, Peter asks the question, how many times should I forgive my neighbor? Seven times, 70 times seven. He tells the story of the parable of a slave who owed the master or the king 10,000 talents. In a New American Standard Version Bible, the margin says roughly $10 million. And basically it's to communicate that when the king forgave the debt, that there had been no way for the slave to get out of debt. He was hopelessly in debt. The slave were to have lived 100 times more, 100 times And all he did was to make money and save to pay back that debt. He would never have been able to have been released. And forgiveness costs something. It costs somebody something to cancel the debt. The Bible says Jesus Christ is the propitiation. And that's a legal word. Jesus is the legal satisfaction of the debt we incurred before God. God was willing to pay off your debt through the death of Jesus, legally. Well, there's another reason why it was necessary for the king to die, and that is a personal reason. Some time ago, I purchased a book entitled, The Risk of Love, in which the author makes a case for saying that while love, real love, true love, is kind of hard to define, that almost anybody can know intuitively when a person is using fake love. It doesn't matter whether a person is old and mature or whether a person is very, very young, that people know instinctively, intuitively when a person is faking his or her love. A person may not be able to describe in terms what real love is, but we know when it's not. The author says in true love, your aim is, true love is to spend yourself and use yourself for the happiness of the other without any strings attached. It is to do everything for that other person's joy. That's what true love is. Your affection is unconditional. You give regardless of whether you get it in return. And you give and give and the fact that person is happy with your giving, whether you get it in return, that there is no need because the other person's joy is your satisfaction. The person says, surprisingly, that our real problems in human experience that nobody really can love that way because all of our human love is in some way or another tainted with self-interest. All of our love is in some way or another, to some degree, motivated by self-interest. Now, I appreciate what he's saying. I think, you know, when we think out in our real context, there are unhealthy people, and you know, I might know some. There are healthy kinds of lovers, and you know some. I think generally speaking, there's a spectrum here to consider this idea, but I think generally what he's saying is true. But how do we love if we don't have it in ourselves to love? Who is capable of loving that way? Well, the Bible says this, God commended his own love toward us in that while we were yet, what? Sinners. While we were yet friends, did God love us? Because he wanted to reestablish, he lost his friendship with us. He missed his friendship with us. Is that why he did what he did? In that while we were yet customers, he wants to reestablish commerce with us. Is that what He's, He wanted to reestablish us as His allies? No, God commanded His love toward us in that we were sinners long before. In fact, it was possible for, impossible for God to view us as in any way contributing to Him. He loved us. He suffered because of love. He suffered out of love. We sing a hymn here. He left his father's throne above so free, so infinite his grace, emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race. On occasion I have the opportunity to meet with a couple, a married couple, and they're struggling in their marriage. And they want to know how to repair their marriage because they've had some very, very difficult times. And I always tell them, that you need to realize it's going to get worse before it gets better. And the reason why I say that is because the kind of love that they need to show to each other is going to go unrewarded for a while. The kind of love you need to invest in each other is going to be unreciprocated love for a while. And the damage that has been caused in the marriage relationship is such that you really ought not to expect that your loving actions are gonna be returned. And if you do that for a number of maybe weeks or months, you can begin to see repair, but it's gonna get worse before it gets better because often we don't have it within ourselves. We don't have that kind of love to give in the first place. Where do we get that kind of love? We get it for the one who commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners against him. As we retreat to him, we are resupplied with the love that we need to love without any love in return until we begin to rebuild what we need to rebuild and then marital love in particular starts to become satisfying. He did it first on the cross. A third reason why it became necessary for the king to die, and that is for a cosmic reason. He had to die, and the way he had to die was on a cross. Jesus didn't die by hanging. He didn't die by being pushed off a cliff. He died by a cross. It was a form of execution designed to shame. His own innocence made his death an injustice. The way he died was aimed at dealing with shame and injustice. Now today, the topic of justice is a big part of our common cultural dialogue. There's a big push to correct injustice, to speak against injustice, to right the wrongs of injustice. And so how does one go about doing that? Well, there's been legislation proposed. There's creating new laws, protesting. There's the internet version of it where you get shamed into it. Well, the death of this king had cosmic implications that has to do with justice. Jesus himself was a victim of injustice. He was exploited. He was a victim of oppression. In that sense, he stands in line with so many throughout the ages who have been treated in this way. He knew what it was like to be under the lash. He knew what it was like to stand up to a corrupt power and to be struck down. He knew what it was like to be lynched, as it were. He suffered the injustice of a corrupt human System of injustice and what does that mean in the book of Colossians? Paul says that when Jesus died on the cross he defeated the powers and Principalities in high places he defeated the spiritual powers that are in high places now notice back at our text here Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him and Verse 33, he turning, seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, what? Get behind me, Satan. Now when he said, when he called Peter Satan, what is that about? Does he think that Peter has suddenly been possessed by a demon? Early in the Gospel of Mark, he did have to cast out the demons of a man who had this supernatural strength. He would break chains and he would live in the caves and howl and so forth. Is he saying that's what's happened to Peter? He has been possessed by the devil? Well, no, I don't think so. But what he's saying is that there is behind The human structures of power, the reality of evil, the reality of a personal evil, the reality of the devil, the reality of Satan, the reality of demonic forces. Jesus Christ on the cross conquered the evils that have power over these structures, even power over people like Peter who, without his even knowing it, aligned his words with the ideas and values and purposes of the devil. Jesus came to deal a death blow to these cosmic enemies against us as well as against the Lord. That's why he had to die. Now let me talk about you now. The king and his followers. Notice verse 34, and calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, and I want you to think of these words as directed toward you. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. You know, even as he was destined to die, if we would be a follower of Jesus, we must likewise be willing as well. There's a verse you should have underlined in your Bible in Revelation chapter 14, verse four, to follow the lamb wherever he goes. He died on the cross, so must you. If you would follow him, you must be willing. I've had a conversation with all of my kids as they're getting ready to leave for college, leave the house. Once the kids leave the house, they really don't wanna come back. Sometimes they have to, They don't really want to come back. And eventually they leave for good. And by that time, they're kind of out of my sphere. While they're home, I have some access to them. And even when they're home as teenagers, I had access to my kids. But by then, they've already made up their mind. And so I have this conversation with them, and I say something like this. I say, you know, I had this conversation with Jason. I said, you know, I really don't know if you're sincerely following the Lord. I'm not saying, I don't want you to assure me in this conversation, that's not what this is about. I'm simply just, I'm gonna be your father here for a little bit. And at the age of, he's gonna be 21 this week actually, I said something like this, you're gonna have to at some point decide if this is what you want to do. You know, when you get around your dad and your mom, who are kind of big personalities to you and kind of forces to be reckoned with, you know, so you know how to play the drill, you know, how to kind of play and strategize when you're around your parents. You don't say this around mom. You don't say this around dad. That'll trigger a response. I kind of want to just enjoy company right now. You kind of know the strategy. You know the drill. But when you're on your own, you've got to choose. You've got to decide. Not because when you stand before the judgment throne that your dad is gonna be on the other side. No, you've got to decide. Here he's saying, if anyone would come after me. Is that what you want to do? I'm not talking to you now. I'm not just speaking to some engineer. I'm asking each of you. Would you do this? Are you interested in doing this? If anyone would come after me, he says, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. There is no middle ground here. There is no coasting here. If you would follow Jesus, there's only but one way. You must align yourself. He went to the cross. He's offering one to you. You must take it up. Nobody can do that for you. As a father, I cannot do that for my kids. Eventually, even the kids who are living at home are going to have to choose. You have to choose. Let me just say to you right now that Jesus gives three obstacles that are going to stand in your way. They're going to get in your way, and they're going to prevent you from actually choosing to pick up the cross. Three. Here's one of them. The first obstacle is self-preservation. Notice verse 35. For whoever would save his life will lose it. Jesus is saying, I'm thinking about my own suffering. I'm thinking about my own rejection, my own murder. I'm calling you to, I'm inviting you to the same. He's saying to his disciples, and he's saying to you. The disciples might be thinking, is he serious? Now, Mark already says, he said this plainly, because they know now here that he's not speaking parabolically. He's actually speaking to them very frankly. You have to choose, you 12, self-preservation. Self-preservation, preserving self, saving self, keeping self, shielding self, leads to self-destruction, leads to self-obliteration. But on the other hand, he who loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will find it. C.S. Lewis said this in Mirror Christianity at the end of the book. He says, the more we can get what we now call ourselves out of the way and let Him take us over and the more truly ourselves we become, our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. He continues, the more I resist Him, the more I try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and my own upbringing, and my own surroundings and my own natural desires. I'm 62 years old and I still have this kind of adversarial thing with my mother. My mother's passed away. She doesn't have an adversarial thing with me anymore. She's with the Lord, but I still have this thing. When I think about my mom, I love my mom. I find my mom very endearing in so many ways. As a part of my memory of my mom, that still vexes me. You know, some of you living at home have a parent like that. You know, I can't stand my parents. Can't wait to get away from my parents. My dad, I could put up my dad for now, but I can't wait to get out of the house so I don't have to be around him anymore. Or my mom. Well, Lewis is right. The more I resist him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity. There is no escaping from your parents. Unless you retreat to him. You will find yourself repeating exactly what your parents have always been to you unless you go to Him. Whoever loses his life for my sake finds the life that you've always wanted. That's what he's saying here. Self-interest, self-preservation will doom you. A second obstacle. It's a what's-in-it-for-me obstacle. Notice verse 36. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? What can a man give in exchange for his soul? My first job was a fryer at Winchell's Donut Shops in San Jose, California. Graveyard, 11 p.m., 7 a.m. Friday night, Saturday night, and I want to assure you that when I got my very first paycheck, I spent every penny. Saved nothing. I didn't start saving. I was way, way. Well, you need to start saving when you start thinking about the long-term implications of not having a retirement, right? And sometimes you can think about it sooner, but you better be thinking about it at some point. Well, think longer term than that with this verse. Think beyond that. What is your soul worth? What is your soul worth? What does it profit a man to gain it all and lose in the end? That's what he's saying here. What's in it for me is short-term thinking. He's inviting you to invite, to receive him long-term. The third obstacle is self-consciousness, verse 38. Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Three obstacles, self-preservation, what's in it for me, self-gain, and self-consciousness. Would you consider yourself to be his follower? Do you? Do you want to claim him? What do you think are the obstacles within you? You know, this song that we sang earlier, I love this song. You know, where the middle one, teach me to feel that thou art always nigh. Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear. to check the rising doubt. You know, I doubt from time to time. I don't really think, as I think about my doubts, I don't think that they're rational. But I have them. You know, it says wean, you know, descend upon my heart, wean it from the earth. You know, we have, you know, we like to medicate ourselves with what the world offers. What the world gives to us by which we medicate ourselves actually tastes pretty good. But it's going to kill us. It says, the rebel sigh. No, he's really, I appreciate this. He's talking about his human experience. He's talking about our human experience. There are obstacles. Do you know what obstacles lurk within you? The Trinity Hymnal, number 511, has this song entitled, Jesus and It Shall Ever Be. In other song books, it refers to, it calls this hymn, Ashamed of Jesus. Jesus and shall it ever be a mortal man ashamed of thee? Ashamed of thee whom angels praise, whose glories shine through endless days. Ashamed of Jesus, that dear friend on whom my hopes of heaven depend. No, when I blush, be this my shame that I no more revere his name. Ashamed of Jesus, yes I may, when I've no guilt to wash away, no tear to wipe, no good to crave, no fears to quell, no soul to save. Till then, nor is my boasting vain, till I then I boast a Savior slain. And oh, may this my glory be, that Christ is not ashamed of me. Whoever loses life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. I commend him to you. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this so momentous of a passage and how we can be challenged and comforted in the invitation by Jesus to find our lives, to find our very selves once more. Lord, thank you that by your great grace that we can find our lives. We can find our souls. We can know that the price that we pay in this life is truly temporary, and yet we can find the great anticipation of that future joy trickling down into our lives today, undergirding us, fortifying us, grounding us, enlivening us, and giving us the freedom that we need. I pray for this congregation. Would you be pleased to enable us all to find Jesus and to find in Him everything we need. We thank you in His name.